Crime Plus Music

by Jim Fusilli

  There was a knock at the trailer door. He stepped out onto the metal landing. The stage handler, a pretty girl who looked about sixteen but was probably twenty-five, stared up at him impatiently. She wagged a finger, urging him to hurry up. She looked at him with disdain, like someone else’s worn-out shoe, which, he guessed, he was . . . kind of. The kids assembled outside on the sidewalk and inside had no idea who he was other than some old guy their parents listened to.

  “Come on, Mr. Lake, we’re only a minute or so from the opening credits and your intro,” she said, pulling him along.

  He stopped for a second outside the place to take it in. So this was 2001 Odyssey, the disco moon to Studio 54’s sun, located only a mile or two from his old Carroll Gardens neighborhood. What a freakin’ joke! It even had a stupid hand-painted sign. It was probably supposed to have the word “Space” in its name, he thought, staring up at the floodlit placard on the top corner of the white-gray concrete block building, but the yoyo painter either ran out of room or couldn’t spell it. Whatever!

  Taking this gig was a mistake, though Terry Jim didn’t have much choice about taking paying gigs these days. He was good with a lot of things, with women and music. Jimi Hendrix had even sent him a fan letter about his guitar playing and offered to buy his Telecaster from him for an outrageous sum of money. He had had the letter framed and put up on the wall in his Park Avenue apartment. Problem was he no longer had the apartment or the letter because one of the things Terry wasn’t good with was money. As long as he had been with the General, things were okay. He had never wanted for anything. The General put him on a generous allowance and invested his money for him.

  Sometimes he missed the General. Izzy was more of a father to him than his own father had ever been, but it wasn’t like Izzy hadn’t fucked him. As Chuck Berry himself had once told Terry, “It ain’t a matter of if they’ll fuck you. It’s a matter of how hard, how often, and where at.”

  One of the clauses in their contract gave control of Terry’s publishing rights to the General’s company. Izzy didn’t exactly rob Terry blind, but he kept more of the money than he should have. Terry resented that part of their deal. Still, he figured it was a price he was willing to pay for stardom. Not a bad attitude to have if tastes never changed and stardom lasted forever.

  “Okay, Mr. Lake,” the girl said to him when they got inside the club, “all you have to do when Dante calls your name, is to run onto the dance floor and wave your guitar above your head. Stay in the spotlight.” She looked at her clipboard. “Just like in the run-through at the studio, the announcer is going to introduce the show, then Dante. In turn, Dante will intro the guests. First the Tramps, then Vicki Sue Robinson, then you. When you come off the dance floor, I’ll be waiting right here to take you back to your dressing room. You’ll have fifty minutes until I come get you for your segment. You’re on last. Dante, the other acts, and the dancers will join you on the dance floor in the last minute of ‘Thriller Man.’ We’ll lower your playback, so that Dante can thank the guests, thank the audience, and do a promo for next week’s show of Dance Mania. You just keep pretending to play as the credits role. Got it?”

  He nodded, gritting his teeth. Music came up. Heavy on drums and bass, with a scratchy guitar playing what passed for a melody.

  “Okay, here we go.”

  “Live from 2001 Odyssey in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the birthplace of disco dancing and the setting for last year’s smash movie Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta, it’s Dante Ferrara’s Dance Mania.”

  “Hello, Brooklyn!” Dante yelled, running out to the middle of the dance floor. He was dressed in a bizarre one-piece outfit of red lamé and sequins. After the applause died down, after the cheers for Brooklyn calmed, he said, “Welcome to a very special episode of Dance Mania, live from the mecca of disco, 2001 Odyssey. Tonight’s show will feature our two-round elimination dance contest and a bevy of special musical guests. The Tramps . . . Vickie Sue Robinson . . . and an oldie but a goodie, Terry James Lake here to sing his hit ‘Thriller Man.’”

  There had been no need for the applause to die down after Terry Jim circled the dance floor, a dazzling array of colored lights flashing beneath the soles of his clunky shoes. His name was met with lots of blank expressions and confused whispers, but at least there hadn’t been any boos.

  When he got back to his dressing room, she was waiting for him. Carla Saroyan, his poison. Carla was, for lack of a better term, his girlfriend-manager-agent. In terms of all three, Terry had run through many of each since the General died of a stroke on August 27, 1967. Not many people noticed the General’s passing because it happened the same day Brian Epstein, The Beatles’s manager, died. Izzy’s son, Bobby, had taken over for his dad, but he didn’t have a stomach for the sharp-elbowed, rough-and-tumble managerial aspects of the business. He did, however, have a taste for publishing royalties, a gluttonous, insatiable taste.

  Fed up with Bobby Gettleman neglecting his bookings and squeezing every nickel out of his songs, Terry Jim left Bobby and accepted a ridiculously small settlement for his remaining percentage of the publishing rights. But the way Terry figured it, between the investments the General had made for him, his gigs and the settlement, he’d be good. What he hadn’t figured on was two very brief and very expensive marriages. He also hadn’t figured on Led Zeppelin and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.

  The early seventies had been unkind to Terry Jim. Squeezed out on the one side by Moogs and metal chords and on the other side by the Carpenters and Gilbert O’Sullivan, Terry couldn’t get arrested. From ’71 to ’74, he’d run through a series of managers and agents, many of whom made promises no one could have kept. Still, even the sleaziest of the bunch, which was really saying something, could claim it wasn’t for a lack of trying. None of them, not the legitimate ones who’d taken Terry on out of respect for the General or Terry’s talent or the ones who had latched onto him to suck him dry of whatever juice he might have left, could create a demand out of thin air. By ’75, he was tapped out, living back in the basement of his folks’ house in Carroll Gardens and making whatever few bookings he could for himself.

  Then he got a call from Lefty Farmer, a bass player with whom he’d done several recording sessions. Lefty, who’d heard Terry was down on his luck, said that he needed a singer and guitarist for a backup band he’d been hired to put together. Some girl singer from Toronto, billed as the Canadian Linda Ronstadt, was doing gigs in the New York area. Terry Jim didn’t think twice about it. The gigs and the girl singer were mostly forgettable, but not her manager.

  Carla Saroyan had once been gorgeous, a cover girl model with impossibly black hair, perfect dark olive skin, brown eyes so dark they were nearly as black as her hair. Her body had been an amazing blend of curves and sinew, but it was her mouth that men and women alike could never see past. In the business, the modeling agencies used to refer to Carla as “The Mouth.” She had made the bulk of her modeling money doing lipstick, lip gloss, and toothpaste ads.

  By the time Terry met her, Carla’s looks had faded some with age and stress. Modeling, it seemed, had an even shorter shelf life than rock stardom, which is why she decided to go into talent management. Carla and Terry were perfectly mismatched as they shared the same weaknesses: drugs, sex, and spending. Worse for Terry, though, was Carla’s appetite for gambling. She had the bug bad. She would as soon bet on cockroach races as the Belmont Stakes.

  But for whatever reason, she delivered bookings for Terry where all the others had failed. She had gotten him this Dance Mania spot, though it had taken her a lot of convincing to get him to do it.

  “It’s a relaunch moment, baby. We’re going to remind the older fans of your glory and introduce you to a new generation.”

  In his darker moments, which were in no short supply these days, he suspected Carla of trading herself for his gigs. He never asked. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was that desperation helped make him conveniently blind.

  “Hi
, lover,” she cooed, tossing her cigarette onto the floor of the trailer and snuffing it out beneath her shoe. “You okay? You look nervous.”

  “You know the way I feel about this gig, how ridiculous I feel.”

  Then, before he could say another word, she kissed him hard on the lips, sliding her tongue into his mouth, slipping her hands beneath his suit jacket and pressing her long nails into his back.

  “Let me make it all better like I always do,” she whispered in his ear, dropping to her knees.

  She rubbed her cheeks up against his crotch, reaching for his zipper. When she found the metal tab, she tugged it slowly down, fished out his semi-hard cock and put it in her mouth. He got that jolt as he always did when Carla put him in her mouth, but he clamped his hands around her shoulders, pushed her away and pulled her up onto her feet.

  “Stop it! Just stop it!”

  “But, lover—”

  “No.” He zipped up. “We’ve got to talk.”

  She lit another cigarette.

  “Don’t do that. I have to go on. You know what smoke does to my voice.”

  She cackled at him. “Yeah, and it really kills your voice on an eleven-year-old playback tape of ‘Thriller Man.’ Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that it fucks up your lip-synching.”

  “Don’t be cruel.”

  “Stealing Elvis songs now, Geraldo?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Geraldo. Geraldo. Geraldo. What are you gonna do about it?”

  He turned to look at himself in the mirror again. He felt even more ridiculous than he had before the stage assistant had come to retrieve him. And as he stared at himself it hit him that he just couldn’t go through with it. That he’d sooner go back to singing “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” or unloading lettuce crates off trucks at three in the morning than to sing—lip-synch—“Thriller Man” again. That Carla’s line about a relaunch moment was a load of crap that he forced himself to swallow one spoonful at a time. That he still had an ounce of pride left somewhere.

  She poked him with a fingernail. “I said, ‘What are you gonna do about it, Geraldo?’”

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “It’s what I’m not going to do about it,” he said, pouring on his phony down home accent like a ladle of red-eye gravy.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to—”

  “You know what it means, Carla. I’m not singing that fucking song again. Never. Not ever. Not tonight. Not—”

  Her eyes got wide with panic. “But, Terry—”

  “What happened to Geraldo?”

  She snuffed out her cigarette and threw her arms around him. “I’m sorry, Terry. I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too, darlin’.” There was his accent again. “But I’m outta here.” He reached for his Telecaster.

  “You have to do it, Terry. You have to.”

  “No, I don’t, Carla. It took this stupid disco dance show to make me see that. Took me having to get so low that I would go out and embarrass myself on national TV. Live TV!” He laughed again. “Live TV, what a joke. I was going to go out there and lip-synch a fucking song I recorded a million years ago. They’re not even going to let me plug in, for fuck’s sake. I’m ashamed I ever let it get this far.”

  “No, Terry, it’s you who doesn’t understand,” Carla said, her voice frosty and clear, her eyes narrowing. “People expect you to do this.”

  “People? Fuck people.”

  “Wrong answer, Terry. These are the kind of people who fuck you, not the kind that you fuck. How else do you think a washed-up fake with a half-limp dick like you got a gig on a national TV?”

  “I suppose if I thought about it, I would say your oral talents and willingness to bed down anyone with a pulse had something to do with it.”

  She cackled again, only this time it was very shrill and brittle. “No one’s that good, Terry. Not even me. You got this gig because I sold your contract to some people.”

  “Sold?”

  “I owed these people, Terry. I owed them a lot and they were willing to let me off the hook if I gave them my rights to manage you and if you would make this appearance. They have power. They can get you a lot more gigs. So you see how it is, right?”

  “Explain it to me, honey,” he said, his accent all South Brooklyn again. “Explain it so that even a dumb mope from Carroll Gardens can understand it.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, then. If you walk out of here, they’re going to hurt me, Terry. They say it won’t be too bad. That they’ll just break my legs. They won’t touch my face. Not this time.”

  “That’s too bad, Carla. But once your legs heal, you’ll still be able to spread ’em again.” He wiped the neck of his guitar, then laid it in its case. Stood up. “And to think I really used to love you.”

  She ignored that. “It’s a little late in the game for indignation and jealousy, don’t you think? I’ll be able to spread my legs, Terry, but you won’t have any legs anymore. You don’t go out there and do what you’re supposed to do, you’re dead. And it won’t go easy for you. The guys I sold your contract to, they don’t fuck around.”

  “What do they even want my contract for, anyway? I’m barely making enough for you to lose.”

  “Who knows? You were all I had left to barter. Maybe they think they can launder money with you as a front or maybe one of the old guys liked the way you used to sing. Maybe they want you to be the regular act at the Gemini Lounge on Flatbush Avenue. You ever hear of Roy DeMeo?”

  “Why? He the guy who bought me?”

  Carla shook her head. “He works for the guys who bought you and he’s crazy. He likes killing people. He shoots you in the head, chops your body up, and throws it in the Fountain Avenue dump. And that’s if he likes you. If he doesn’t like you, he skips the shooting in the head part and goes right to the hacking you up part.” She relaxed and came over by Terry again. “So stop being stupid about this and let me make it better the way I always do,” Carla said, bending to her knees yet again. “They said I can still travel with you if that’s what you want. Let me make you want that, Terry. Let me.”

  He let her.

  IT’S TIME, MR. LAKE.

  As they walked once again from the trailer, through the crowd assembled outside and into the club, the stage girl explained once again how it was going to work, but it all sounded like blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Terry was too busy time traveling to listen. He was back at the air base in Germany. Back offloading trucks. Back on stage at Café Wha? and Folk City. Back with the General having deli at Katz’s on Houston Street, planning their next moves. Back in his apartment on Park Avenue, showing his Jimi Hendrix letter to everyone who came by. Back making appearances on American Bandstand, Where the Action Is, Hootenanny, and The Ed Sullivan Show.

  “Okay, Mr. Lake,” she said, “get ready. Remember go to the center of the dance floor, watch for the director’s cue, and begin playing and lip synching. Try not to actually sing because we don’t want the live mics to pick it up. Go!” She clutched him by the biceps and pushed him toward the dance floor, which again was lit from below with an array of flashing colored lights.

  The director gave him the cue, but there was a delay in the playback. So he began fingering the chords and plucking his silent strings ahead of the recording. Then came that twangy intro a few seconds behind where he was in the song. His lip-synching was out of synch, so he was mouthing the lyrics—Gabe and Gigi lived the lives of nomads—before the vocal playback began. And somehow in the midst of that technical snafu it all came together for him. He realized he didn’t give a fuck about Carla’s legs or even his own. He didn’t care about Roy DeMeo or his bosses or anyone else. He wasn’t going to do it. He wasn’t going to play this fucking song again, not ever.

  He stopped fingering the chords. Stopped lip-synching altogether. Then he started fingering and strumming again. Started singing, loudly. Loudly enough so that the open mics clearly picked up his voice. But he wasn’t singing “Thriller Man.”


  Dante Ferrara turned to the director. “Go to commercial. Go to commercial. What the fuck is he singing?”

  Carla, who’d followed Terry in, said, “You don’t know this? It was a big hit, ‘Look At Me/Don’t Look At Me.’”

  “Nah, that ain’t it,” said the pudgy-faced man with the dead eyes and the slick black hair, over Ferrara’s left shoulder. “It’s a whatchamacallit it. . . . A swan song. Yeah, like that.”

  Carla opened her mouth to disagree, but when she looked into the man’s bottomless eyes, she closed her mouth. She didn’t bother trying to run, either. Why piss off the debt collector? She had heard a broken femur was terribly painful. She couldn’t imagine how painful two would be. She figured she wouldn’t have to imagine for very long. Terry had just seen to that. But like Terry had said, she’d be able to spread her legs again. She laughed to herself. She had never believed him when he said he hated that stupid “Thriller Man” song. She believed him now. You couldn’t have asked for more proof.

  ONLY WOMEN BLEED

  BY GALADRIELLE ALLMAN

  ONCE THE CURVING MAZE OF manicured streets that surrounded the Ponte Vedra Country Club was behind us and the wealthiest kids were dropped at their doorsteps, our bus driver, Sherry Walker, began to relax. Each day as she settled the yellow Blue Bird school bus at the long red light between Kmart and the massive used-car lot with the fluttering pennants strung up high, Miss Walker would pull a pair of pink rubber flip-flops out of an Army duffel she kept tucked under the driver’s seat, kick off her gray sneakers and groan with relief. Her heels were permanently stained with beach tar and the pink polish on her toes was chipped and dirty. The last half hour of my two-hour ride home from school was shared with only three other kids, all of them boys who also lived at the funky end of the Jacksonville Beaches, near the cheap motels, crumbling condos, drive-thru liquor stores, and tourist gift shops stuffed with dyed seashells and cheap beach towels. Miss Walker told the four of us beach kids we could call her Sherry, as long as all the rich kids were gone, but that never felt right. She told us she lived down at the Beaches too, off Atlantic Boulevard behind the old Pick ’n Save building that had stood empty for years. I thought of her whenever my mom drove by the wrecked store, its broken windows showing the toppled shelves and tangled wires inside.