The Paradise Gig

by Laurence Shames

  20

  I n the small cottage just inside the gate of the sprawling property on No Name Key, the tall guy and the short guy, dressed in snug black turtlenecks like the ones the Fab Four wore on the Meet The Beatles cover, were arguing about their karaoke repertoire. “Look,” the short guy said, “you got to pick the last song.”

  “Pick it?” said the tall guy. “I didn’t just pick it. We talked it over.”

  “You talked me into it.”

  “Okay, maybe. But look how good it turned out. People loved it. The crowd went wild.”

  “The dog went wild,” the short guy said.

  “Fuck the dog. Main thing is, the song went over great. And why? ‘Cause it’s uptempo. ‘Cause it’s a happy song.”

  “Happy song, happy song,” the short guy mimicked while scrunching up his face to the most sour possible expression. “Listen, my friend, life ain’t all one big, fat happy song. Besides, who do we wanna be? We wanna be The Monkees? Herman’s fucking Hermits? Lightweights with their happy songs. Oi’m Ennery the eighth, oi am. Fuck that shit. I think we gotta show some range, some depth.”

  “Okay,” the tall guy conceded, “I can see some sense in that. I can even picture the moment onstage. The spotlights dim, maybe they bring in some blue, there’s a hush in the crowd, we drop our eyes, give a thoughtful pause, put a soulful look on both our kissers, then, boom, we hit ‘em with our vulnerable side. I get it. But not with that song. It’s just too much of a downer.”

  “Hey, life’s a downer sometimes. Having to look tough, act tough all the time. Having to hurt guys we got nothing against—”

  “Come on,” the tall guy said. “Don’t start in with that.”

  “Don’t start in with it,” the short guy muttered. “How do I not start in with it? It’s painful. Very painful sometimes. Seeing what happens to these kids, knowing it ain’t right, being part of it anyway. It hurts. I mean, don’tcha ever wanna just cry out, Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away.”

  The tall guy shrugged. “No. As a point of information, I’ve never wanted to cry that out. But what we wanna cry out is not the point. The point is what people wanna listen to. And I don’t think there’s too damn many people who go to a bar to hear about some guy with his head in his hand and his face turned to the wall.”

  “It’s a great song,” the short guy said. “So honest.”

  “It’s morbid,” said the tall guy.

  “Morbid? Ya know, sometimes I think you have no heart.”

  “No heart? No heart? Look, you wanna make this personal? Okay, fine, now it’s personal. I’ll tell you another reason I don’t think we should do that song. I wasn’t gonna mention it ‘cause I didn’t wanna hurt your feelings. I don’t think we should do that song because it has some long sustained notes that will expose your vocal flaws.”

  “Vocal flaws, my ass! I nail that song. Every frickin’ line.”

  “Your low notes get a little muddy. But look, let’s not get our bowels in an uproar, okay? It’s just a small creative disagreement. Lennon and McCartney, I’m sure they had ‘em all the time. They worked it out. They rose above.”

  “Until they said fuck it and split up,” the short guy put in bitterly.

  “A sad day. A terrible day. So at least let’s learn from it. Let’s not give in to quarreling and ego. How about we compromise? How about we do “Help”.”

  The short guy put his stubby fingertips together and pursed his lips as he considered.

  “Now that’s a great song,” the tall guy went on. “A song that has it all. Vulnerable as hell, full of raw emotion, has some nice harmony, and at least it doesn’t sound like a goddamn dirge by a depressed adolescent.”

  The short guy riffled through the lyrics in his mind. “Help.” About a cocky guy who’s lost his way, who’s no longer self-assured, who needs to get his feet back on the ground, who’s begging to be seen for who he really is and not for what he’s been posing as for many years. “Okay,” he said. “’Help.’ That could work for me. I could really get my heart and soul into that one. As long as I sing lead.”

  

  Back at home, Pete made a number of small decisions that did nothing good for his peace of mind. He poured himself another cognac, and somehow put a bit more in the glass than he’d originally intended. He was standing in his kitchen when he did this, and his eyes, without permission from his brain, it seemed, went to the exact spot where Callie had been standing on the night they’d broken up. Damn, but they’d both been stubborn! And proud. And lazy…Drink in hand, he started toward the stairs that led up his bedroom, then decided to put off the lonely march to an empty bed, and went out to the little backyard pool instead.

  It was late by then and Key West was about as quiet as it ever got. Crickets rasped. A light breeze set palm fronds scraping against each other; they made a brushy rattling sound like softly played maracas. Now and then a brief hiss came from the bug zapper as another mosquito fried itself against the seductive violet coil.

  Pete’s mind scrolled back to his earlier chat with Bert. The old man meant well, of course, and it was true that in some ways his memory was nothing short of uncanny. Still, his notion that he’d heard The Beatles singing Sarge’s song in 1964 was clearly a delusion. Sarge had not even been born in 1964. For that matter, Callie had not been born in 1964. The Beatles song was so old that its age could be computed not in years but generations. And besides, Sarge’s name was on the song. Then again, he’d never actually come out and claimed he’d written it. Not in as many words. Then again, he didn’t disclaim it either. Then again, why would he lie, except that it was the entertainment business and that’s what people did?

  On the other hand, it was unlike Bert to be so insistent unless he was absolutely sure about something. So maybe the best approach was as the old man had suggested: Lose the preconceptions and just think about how it might have happened, if it happened.

  Isn’t that what a real detective would do?

  That self-mocking realization came to Pete as he sat there sipping his cognac and gazing blankly at the dim blue light that gleamed beneath the surface of the pool. Of course that’s what a real detective would do. Too bad he wasn’t a real detective. Too bad he’d ever set up as even a pretend detective. Too bad he was now stuck with this preposterous riddle, not to mention unsought obligations to an old friend and a former lover, and he had no choice but to try to get the damn thing figured out.

  So—what did he know so far? That once upon a time, The Beatles had come to Key West. That they’d sung a song that Bert had heard at poolside and that apparently never got recorded. That they jammed until four o’clock next morning, got very drunk, left town heavily hung over and without the notebook in which they presumably kept their jottings and maybe drafts of future songs and that had mistakenly, disastrously, been gotten rid of in the hotel trash.

  Cut to the present. A polite young kid records a song that sounds remarkably like the one the Fab Four were singing in the Key Wester’s pool. Could the exact same song have been written twice, by different people of different cultures, with half a century between the versions? The chance seemed vanishingly small.

  But how else could the song have made its way across two generations to Sarge? Think, Pete told himself. Imagine anything. Don’t censor. Every thought’s allowed.

  So—was it even remotely possible that The Beatles’ lost notebook had somehow survived its mangling trip to Mount Trashmore in 1964, had come unscathed through that churning hell of coffee grounds and fish guts? And even if by some miracle it had, wouldn’t word of it have come out long before? A rediscovered cache of Beatles songs would be big news around the world, a find worthy of front page headlines. But there didn’t seem to be a cache of songs, only this one, “Gone Tomorrow,” that had the sure touch of a genius yet was purportedly written by a kid no one had ever heard of and who’d never recorded a song before. How many people wrote a genius song on their very first try? Anybody? It
seemed about as unlikely as the same song being written twice.

  Pete sipped his cognac, rubbed his throbbing temples, and wished he’d hung a different shingle, any other shingle, for his long ago and semi-fraudulent tax dodge. Tarot Reader. Pet Therapist. Artisan of Custom Flies for Fishing Guides. Anything but Detective. There were plenty of things he might have been equally bad at and that would have been less stressful. Lines of work in which no one would get hurt if he screwed up, if he bailed, if he chickened out, if he just simply flat out failed. He stared at the blue light above the pool and tried a different tack.

  Okay, leaving aside how the song had come to be written, how had it come to be recorded? Promising, maybe. Okay, follow up.

  So—Sarge, through his Mom, had gotten an audition with a prominent producer who seemed to be a very strange guy and who, as well as she recalled, had tried to dissuade her from pursuing the audition at all because of some vague consequences it could lead to; and who, according to Bert, kept a couple of central-casting thugs in his employ; and who, again according to Callie, had had a couple of bad breaks involving the untimely deaths of up-and-coming singers who’d just had their very first hit; and who, according to Cooch, had at least on occasion hosted funerals or memorials at his estate on No Name Key.

  Curious. Troubling. A bit macabre. And maddeningly inconclusive. Rich eccentrics, after all, could hire any style of bodyguards they wanted. Pop music was a famously risky business heavily tinged with tragedy, and young lives got wasted all the time. And besides, how did any of that tie into the inconvenient question of how Sarge came to be the purported author of that genius song?

  Pete rubbed his hair and scratched his neck. His glasses fogged up. This might have been caused by the overheating of his thwarted and bewildered brain, though, more likely, it was just the ever-present haze of Florida creeping in to blanket and muffle the secret hours after midnight. He drained the last of his cognac and then he made what was probably the biggest mistake of all in this long evening of assaults on his serenity. Instead of heading up to bed, he went to his computer, and after finding what he found, there was not much chance of sleep.

  21

  F irst thing next morning, he called Callie. It was at an hour when, back in her drinking days, she would have been groggy or grouchy or still asleep. This time she was alert and cheerful. Pete was the one who was badly rested and easily flustered, and after they’d said hello and made thirty seconds worth of chit-chat, he realized that he didn’t quite know how to proceed. He didn’t want to upset her. He didn’t want to frighten her with creepy long-shot worries of his own. And he certainly didn’t want to accuse her son of lying. But how else could he broach what needed broaching? He wanted to sound calm. He wanted to sound natural. He paused, cleared his throat, then, sounding neither calm nor natural, he blurted out, “I really need to talk to Sarge. Is he there?”

  “Talk to Sarge? Why?”

  “I just need to. Is he there?”

  “No. He went back to his motel last night. But why do you need to talk to him?”

  “No reason, I hope. Probably no reason at all. I just do.”

  “Pete, you sound a little strange. Everything okay?”

  He had no idea that he was about to say what next came from his lips. “I miss you.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I mean, I mean it, I just didn’t mean to say it. I’m just a little bit stressed. I’m a little bit concerned.”

  “About Sarge?”

  “About Sarge.”

  “So tell me. I’m his Mom.”

  “Which is why I don’t want to upset you. Look, it’s probably nothing. I’d just like to talk to him. Trust me on this. Please.”

  “Pete, you being a detective now?”

  “I hope not. For everybody’s sake.”

  “You’ll let me know what’s going on?”

  “Sure I will. Of course. As soon as possible.”

  “I can give you his number.”

  “I think it’s better if we talk in person. Where’s he staying?”

  She told him. Then she said, “Pete?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I miss you a little bit too.”

  

  So the phone rings while me and Master are having breakfast. I don’t mean the little phone that he carries with him except when he forgets it then starts slapping the pockets of his pants and shirt and jacket because he knows the phone must be in one of them, except it isn’t, it’s usually home on top of the dresser next to the bowlful of change right above the drawer where he keeps his gun stashed in the back, wrapped in a blue silk handkerchief. No, the phone I mean is the big faded yellow one with the droopy, tangled cord that hangs on the wall of the kitchen. I’m eating kibble at the time it starts to ring. As a side note, the kibble is from very near the bottom of the bag and it’s so soggy that it tastes like warm and slightly soapy water has been added, which it hasn’t. It’s just that you can’t leave bags of kibble open in Florida. Or bags of anything, I guess. Even treats that start off nice and crispy. After a while, they don’t crunch, they fold. So put ‘em in a Zip-lock or use a clothespin at least. That’s just a free bit of advice. Anyway, Master is drinking coffee and eating All-Bran and a bowl of prunes when the ringing starts. His chair at the kitchen table is about four feet from the phone. It takes him three rings to get there.

  So he says hello, and after that he’s doing much more listening than talking which, let’s face it, is a little bit unusual. Mostly, he’s just saying place-holder things like “Uh-huh” or “Hmmm,” and now and then some odd phrase that would tend to indicate concern or even urgency, such as “No way” or “Holy shit.” Finally, he says, “Yeah, Pete, sure, let’s drive up together. I’ll run right over.” And he hangs up the phone.

  A funny word, “run.” I mean, it suggests moving at a high rate of speed, right? But it’s all relative. A young greyhound might run. An old basset hound might also run. True, they’re both going faster than when they walk, but still…Anyway, you get the picture. Master’s trying his best to hurry things along. He leaves the dishes for later and cuts short his usually endless time in the bathroom. He doesn’t bother with the whole elaborate driving outfit, just grabs, for himself, the snap-brim cap and kidskin gloves, and, for me, the stylish and practical goggles that keep the road grit out of my bulging eyes when I stand in an adorable pose with my paws on the window-frame.

  We go down to the garage, where Master’s ancient and gigantic El Dorado is squatting above a puddle of oil and some half-dried streaks of viscous blue and green stuff. The white part of the whitewall tires is flaking off in little tabs and spikes. The car is twice as big and three times curvier than the other cars around it. It makes them look like toasters. The car was once a convertible, but the springs that used to make the top go up and down rusted out some years ago and got stuck in a midway position, the roof covering the back seat but not the front, so the car somewhat resembles one of those old-fashioned baby carriages where you can supposedly keep the baby in the shade. Except I guess if you pictured it that way, the baby carriage would be going backwards. Anyway, we get in, the ignition clatters like a handful of dropped spoons, the engine coughs and rumbles and backfires a couples time, and we drive off, very slowly I might add, to pick up Pete.

  Who looks like hell that morning, I have to say. He hasn’t shaved. His eyes are bloodshot and there are liver-colored bags beneath them. One side of his hair is flat from the pillow and the other side looks like he combed it with a vacuum cleaner. He takes over the front passenger seat where I’ve been sitting minding my own business. At least he’s nice about evicting me. He pets me a little before sort of elbowing me across the console toward Master’s lap, where of course I don’t mind being. The seat change just means I’m facing toward the Gulf rather than the ocean as we head up the Keys, and the view is pretty stunning either way, as long as you look past the trashy liquor stores, bogus tiki huts
, cheapo t-shirt shops, and assortment of Keys kitsch such as mailboxes in the shape of manatees. Who thinks of this shit?

  Pete and Master don’t talk much on the drive. I guess you could say they seem weighed down with worry and preoccupation. Understand, this is just conjecture on my part, since, speaking as a dog, I don’t have much personal experience with worry and preoccupation, and, frankly, I don’t think I’m missing much. What the hell does worrying get you, except maybe acid reflux and eventually a heart attack? Anyway, suffice it to say there isn’t much chit-chat and, after a while, after many cars have whizzed past us and we haven’t whizzed past anybody, we finally get to Big Pine Key and pull into the parking lot of the Sea Dream Motel.

  Which even I can tell is a dump. There’s a low roof trying to look like it’s made of thatch, but through the bald spots you can see it’s only tar. The rooms are just squares of cinder block painted turquoise, except the roller didn’t fill the dents in where the mortar goes, so there’s this very unattractive stripe effect with drips. The doors look beat up and exhausted from being shoved open and kicked shut too many times. I guess it’s the kind of place where humans go when they’re in heat, which I guess is classier than just chasing someone down to do some humping in an alley, though, at the end of the day, doesn’t it pretty much come down to the same thing?

  Anyway, Master parks and turns off the rumbling old V-8, and as the roar dies down it gets quiet enough that we hear guitar-playing from one of the rooms. We go over and knock. The playing stops and Sarge opens up the door. He’s wearing shorts and a blue shirt with the sleeves cut off. Kid’s got a nice build on him, lean but not scrawny. Pete, he doesn’t seem surprised to see. Us, he kind of does. He says, “Oh, my Mom didn’t mention that there’d be anybody else.”