Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) (6 page)

It wasn’t Vick Travis, it was Ed. He always seemed to be at a doorway—working as a bouncer in a bar or working security at a concert. He worked cheap and was good at bouncing troublemakers, but he was scary looking and occasionally he bounced people too hard. Consequently, it was the sleazier bars and the more shakily financed concerts that employed him. He was shaking his head, using a mop handle to point to the “Closed” sign. I was tapping the glass with my keys, trying to shout through the glass that it was important, when a car engine suddenly roared to life and tires screeched. I looked back toward the street. Nothing remained of the Plymouth but a cloud of blue smoke. Someone had been in a hurry, someone who’d had his head down when I pulled up behind.

If Ed the Head cared about the quick departure of the customer in the Plymouth it didn’t show on his face. Abruptly a dark bulky shape blotted out the light in the entranceway behind him. The dark shape loomed about a foot taller and a hundred and fifty pounds bigger than Ed. Inky shadows dripped down from the stone ledge of brow on Ed’s face and danced from side to side as the shape I recognized as Vick Travis reached around and turned the key in the door. They made a scary- looking couple, the three-hundred-pound man with his arm around the hundred-and-fifty-pound thug.

I came inside and Vick looked me up and down as if I were the weird-looking one. He creaked as he moved in the extra- extra-large black motorcycle jacket, mopping his forehead with a red bandana, coaxing back a corkscrew of dark hair. “Well, what is it, Martin? Break a shoelace before a big gig? Your bass amp blow up on you? What the hell is the emergency?”

“Retha Thomas is the emergency,” I said.

“Never heard of her,” he said. As he stepped back to give me a few inches’ breathing room, he hit me with a suspicious look. But there was something vaguely conspiratorial about it, like a cigar store owner with some Havana cigars in the back that he’s dying for you to ask for.

“Well, she heard of you,” I said. Ed was uncomfortably close, fingering the mop and glowering as if I were standing on the last spot of floor that needed to be mopped. I gave him a look and said, “Do you know where I went after the party last night?”

He shook his head. “I left before you. Came straight over here.”

“That’s right, Martin,” said Vick. “We had a little party of our own.”

“Then neither of you know what happened to the black girl I was with?”

“Only the gossip we heard tonight from a couple of customers,” said Vick. “You’re the first one mentioned a name. What’s it got to do with me?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” I said. I scowled at Ed. He scowled back.

“Hey, Eddie, you get the bathroom done yet?” said Vick.

“Sure,” he said in a dull baritone.

“You mop it good, Eddie?”

“I swabbed it, yeah.”

“Well, check it again, OK?”

“What's the matter, Vick, afraid you left something in there?” When Vick didn’t answer, he shrugged and ambled off, saying, “I’ll check it and then I’m out of here.” When he was gone, Vick motioned for me to follow.

The store was a terrific cluttered hell of overflowing bins of used clothes, racks of leather jackets, rows of tweed, polyester, herringbone, and hound's tooth, shelves stacked with appliances, dishes, records, books, and junk with vague or unknown purposes and origins. I followed him into the back room, where dozens of old guitars hung from hooks like the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Moonlight poured in off the tinfoil lake through barred windows, enhancing the effect.

Vick sat down on a carpeted ledge below the guitars, wheezing from the effort of walking from the front of the place to the back. He propped one boot on the edge of an old Gibson guitar amplifier and mopped his forehead again. “Tell me about it, Martin.”

“This girl you say you never heard of came to town, asked a lot of questions about you, then got beaten to a pulp and left for dead. Whoever did it used my bass. They didn’t rob her. But someone slipped a dose of elephant tranquilizer in a drink I ended up drinking and I think it was intended for her, so that makes it look like it wasn’t just a random assault, either. You see what I’m getting at?”

“Let’s pretend I’m stupid, OK. Might save time. Why don’t you tell me where this truckload of bullshit is headed.”

“Like I said, she asked a lot of questions about you. Ed was at the party. Let’s pretend I’m stupid. Why don’t you tell me how these things might fit together.”

“Man, I’m just a junk salesman. Why you trying to dump all this in my lap? Some Jane blows into town and takes the wrong guy home with her—what does that have to do with me?”

“She was raped too, more than likely, Vick. My blood type is B positive. I wonder what yours is.”

“I’ll be glad to tell you, you buy something.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, say a pack of strings. You use those Rotosound round-wounds, don’t you? Give me twenty-five bucks, I tell you my blood type.”

“I’ll give you something else, you fat son of a bitch.”

“You feel froggy, Martin, go ahead. Jump.” He folded his hands over his belly, closing his eyes and tilting his head back so that the fold of his extra chin disappeared. The old notion of fat people being jolly came to mind. Vick was too strange for the word
jolly
to fit. But there was something unformed and boyish about his big round face. The fat seemed to inflate all the details out of his expressions, making them seem like childlike curves drawn on a ball of dough. He was smiling now.

I wanted to slug him but I didn’t. He leaned forward and backhanded me playfully on the stomach. I didn’t like it.

“Martin, do I look like a rapist?” he said, holding his hands out to his sides, emphasizing his bulk. “She wasn’t squashed flat like a tostada, was she?”

“This is not a joke, Vick. And you haven’t answered any of my questions.”

“Go to hell or Hollywood, man. You ain’t the police. I told you I was here. I don’t hardly go out anymore anyway.”

“And Ed was here with you. After the party.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s very convenient. Especially since we both know Ed has a temper.”

“Fuck you, man. I’ll talk to the police, straighten this shit out. While I’m down there, I’ll ask ’em if they checked you out properly. They’ll tell me, too. Vick Travis been an institution in this town a long time. I’m big, man. Ha, ha, ha.”

I could hear him still laughing as I went back through the store.

“I’m
big,
man,” he bellowed. “I’m big as shit.”

&&&

I went home and moped. The cat crawled up in my lap and rubbed against me, breathing asthmatically, his eyes big and round as marbles. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to give or receive sympathy. It didn’t much matter. I called the police station a couple of times, but Lasko never came to the phone. I called his trailer, but there was no answer. I called his beeper, but no one called me back. There was one message on my machine, from Billy, returning my call. Call me tomorrow, he said, he

was going to bed. He felt like the road was catching up to him.

I got back inside my jacket and walked down to the Continental Club to catch last call. Other than the bartender, who gave me a couple of drinks on the house, there was no one there who could help me. I thought about Ladonna and wondered if she was awake, and, if so, if she was thinking about me. Those thoughts got me nowhere. I bought a pack of cigarettes and lit one for Retha Thomas. It wasn’t a candle, but I wasn’t Catholic. I set the cigarette in an ashtray and watched the smoke curl up from it, hoping that she’d be OK. When there was nothing left but a slim finger of ash, I put the pack in my pocket and walked home.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Hello?”

“Martin?”

“Lasko? What is it? What’s the word?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, Martin. It’s Jeff LeRoy. I’ve got a gig for you.”

“Uh . . . I’m sorry. I just dropped the phone. I was expecting another call. What’s the deal?”

I supposed I’d gotten two or three hours of deep sleep and a couple of hours of unpleasant horizontal time, eyes peeled back, cold sweat, shaking hands, ice cube toes. I accepted the gig and digested the details pretty professionally, considering the fact that my frayed nerves were taking to raw wakefulness like a naked person diving into a snowdrift.

The gig was a part of the local chamber of commerce’s efforts to help out the music scene. They felt a bit guilty after relentlessly promoting the type of economic development that reaped a bumper crop of skyscrapers and microchip consortiums at the expense of skyrocketing downtown rents that forced a lot of clubs to shut down. The guilt came after the real estate boom went bust and the new buildings stayed empty and the industries they wooed with tax concessions and university endowments skipped out of town. Then someone did a survey and found out that most of the town’s residents felt that—surprise—the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Antone’s, and the Cannibal Club were just as important (if not
more
important) to Austin as IBM and Motorola. And a majority also felt that Austin had suffered a decline in the quality of life, one of the elements that had been loudly trumpeted in the brochures and portfolios used to lure industry and investment to Austin in the first place. Someone sensed a vicious cycle at work.

So the chamber of commerce was picking up the tab for air time on the local stations. Joe Ely had been scheduled to do a ninety-second spot—eighty seconds of music and ten seconds saying, “Get off the couch tonight. Turn off the TV and go see a band.” But something had come up for Joe and we were going to do it instead.

I felt lucky that I was able to locate all three of my bandmates plus one of the roadies—Nick—and get them to agree to show up at the Channel 36 studio at one o’clock. Then I checked my watch: eight o’clock. It hadn’t been luck; they’d all been in bed, like me. I’d have to call them later and remind them that it wasn’t all a dream.

I had less luck getting in touch with Lasko. I called back and asked for the lab, but no one there would talk to me. I called Brackenridge Hospital. There had been no change in Retha’s condition.

Ray and Leo were late as usual. Ray was consistently twenty minutes late. Leo could run from an hour to an hour and a half late, showing up only five or ten minutes late once in a blue moon just to throw off the average and to make you think that the rest of the time he just couldn’t help it. The technicians were getting nervous, so they helped Nick unload and set up the gear. It wasn’t like setting up a heavy metal band with walls of megawatt amps and double-bass drum kits or racks of synthesizers, tape machines, and flash pots. We were stripped down retro and proud of it. I used a customized Fender Bassman tube head and a cabinet loaded with two heavy-duty fifteen-inch speakers. Billy kept the beat with a kick, floor tom, two racks, hi hat, ride, splash, and, occasionally, a cowbell. To go with his thirteen electric guitars, Leo had about half that many amplifiers, though he never packed along more than two of them. Lately he’d been using a Pro Reverb. Nick had everything plugged in and tested inside of thirty minutes.

Leo straggled in at a quarter of two hauling a triangular guitar case with a pink tag attached to the handle. A new guitar. He set the case down, opened it, and slung a vintage red Gibson Flying V over his shoulder. He grabbed the guitar cord Nick handed him, plugged in, and said, “Hello, Martin. How you like it?”

With its flawless fire engine red finish on the V-shaped body, rosewood neck, and original square headstock, it was a beauty—the prototypical Albert King model. But what got my attention was the white plaster cast on Leo’s right hand.

“Don’t worry, man,” he said, acknowledging my stare, “I can still play.” He held up the cast. His index finger and thumb were still free, and there was a pick between them. “See?” he said, and slashed out the loud three-chord riff to “Mannish Boy.”

BUH
BAAH
BAH DUM

In the key of E, it was the rudest, machoest musical figure that had ever been bora. Leo slashed it out again.

BUH
BAAH
BAH DUM

You could almost hear Muddy Waters growl his fearsome testimony of elemental manhood, you could almost feel the sawdust on the floor. Leo Daly’s mojo seemed to be working.

BUH
BAAH
BAH DUM

The cast was disturbing, but the guitar tone said it was all right. Leo’s face said something in-between. The chords shook the room, causing toes to tap, heads to nod. That riff had been used in everything from real folk blues to burger commercials. It was a deeply rutted thing, second nature to rock and rollers and blues players alike, as basic as the missionary position, but like that tradition also, oh, so serviceable.

Leo stood with his legs apart and slung his head back in a grimace, deviating from the riff by ripping into the strings with a series of quick runs up and down the frets. It wasn’t flawless, and it wasn’t the best he could do, but it would work. He let out a big sigh and wiped his hair out of his eyes with the cast- encased hand.

“What happened?”

“I fought the wall and the wall won.”

“Was that after you were up on top of the American Bank building howling like a gut-shot dog?” I asked.

His grin died an ugly death. He unscrewed the top off a quart of Jack Daniel’s, took a big slug, and set it on top of his amp. “Nope,” he said. “It was before.”

A couple of the techs had gathered around and they nodded and elbowed each other, impressed. They looked fresh out of college and, having been weaned on the excesses of the Stones and Led Zeppelin, they thought they were witnessing rock and roll attitude incarnate. But they were nervous, looking up at the studio clock every couple of seconds, then looking back at me and the empty spot on stage right where Ray’s saxophone stand waited like a bride at the altar.