The Old Silent

by Martha Grimes

  "I don't go to airports," she broke in, hastily.

  "You mean you're afraid of flying?"

  Impatiently, she shook her red-gold hair, shining in the reflections from the starry ceiling fixtures. "No. I just don't like things you see there." She put her hands on her hips and said angrily, "Didn't you ever notice? You must have done when you were at Heathrow with your machine gun when that bomb went off."

  This seemed to have little relationship to whatever really bothered her. "Are you afraid of getting caught in crossfire? Anyway, I didn't carry a 'machine gun.' "

  "Well." As if that unraveled the whole mystery, she fixed the last card in place. "Don't breathe on it, for heaven's sakes."

  Then glumly she said, "It's like airports are the last stopping place. People leaving. It's like the last… trench. People dying in each other's arms." She was staring at him through two squares made by the cards. "Before some of them go to the line of fire."

  What, Jury wondered, was this preoccupation with metaphors of war? Perhaps her talks with Mrs. Wassermann, who had had dreadful experiences in Poland during what she called the Big War (the one she shared with Jury), except Mrs. Wassermann wouldn't have talked about this to Carole-anne. It had been too bleak.

  She was telling him a story. "… this little girl, no, boy. His mum was holding him and they were both crying. It was there at the gate, and then other people, probably the gramps, an old man with a lot of medals on his chest, they were standing around looking terrible. The little boy was maybe three or four. And he was crying like it was the end of the world. So was his mum. Well, it must have been his mum." She ran a finger under the bottom cards and the house tumbled airily down as if resisting the pull of gravity. "The little boy had his face nearly up against his mum's and what really… what was so awful was he took his hand and even though he was hysterical he was wiping her face, wiping the tears away with his hand. Maybe it was because if she was crying, too, that meant it was real."

  She stopped suddenly, the "real" hanging there, not dropping at the end. It was as if there were much more but she had neither breath nor strength.

  Jury said nothing. There seemed nothing he could say. He thought of the loss of Elicia Deauville, for some reason. And he thought of all the crazy stories (that he secretly loved) Carole-anne had told to explain her apparent lack of family. That she was found inside a trunk at Victoria; that she'd been chloroformed on a train-all out of stories she had read or heard about. Except for the one about amnesia. Getting hit by a golf ball at St. Andrews was definitely her own invention.

  So while Sirocco's fans were waiting to catch a glimpse of the band as they descended the metal stairs of their private plane, Carole-anne was standing on a railway platform at Victoria.

  Jury swallowed. Then he took the tickets from his pocket and slid them across the table with a try at a smile.

  When Carole-anne saw them, she didn't have to try. All the color rushed back into her face. "Super! Where'd you get them?" Her eyes narrowed. "You didn't go paying them scalper's prices, did you?" Then her blue, blue eyes widened again and she grabbed the little table, leaned across it and kissed him. "But wherever did you gettickets?"

  Jury smiled then, got up, his legs cramped as hell. "Secret."

  Carole-anne loved secrets.

  31

  The Ritz Hotel was still as luxurious as he had remembered it, but not as large as it had appeared to his six-year-old eyes. Few things would be. But however diminished in size, there was no diminution of sparkle, color, and splendor: the plush carpeting, crystal chandeliers, rose and gilt armchairs, columned alcoves where guests partook of coffee or cocktails, and, of course, the long, raised lounge with its white-clothed tables set for tea. Even at this late hour, there were still the partakers of afternoon tea.

  Alvaro Jiminez was drinking coffee in one of the lobby's alcoves. He rose and shook hands when Jury identified himself. He was an impressive man, over six feet, black face finely chiseled, wearing designer jeans and a metal-studded denim jacket over a black turtleneck. He wore no jewelry except for a Rolex watch. He spoke with a self-deprecating air, was probably a master at it. His mother, he told Jury, was Puerto Rican; his daddy from Mississippi. His daddy was one of the best blues men he'd ever heard to this day.

  "Went to school to Earl Hooker. Never did hear no one play like my daddy, except maybe Robert Johnson, Otis Rush."

  Jury smiled: "How about you?"

  Jiminez laughed. "Me? Hell, I'm just back-porch, backyard blues." He poured some more coffee from the silver pot. "I never was into that manic speed picking. Not that I'm putting it down. Van Halen has the most energy of any axeman I ever did see. I'm just not into that 'Spanish Fly'-type solo thing. There's too much metal; more over here than in the States. Thrash metal. The baroque stuff I like. Our music's not just doing the chinka-chinka-chinka rhythm or ten-bar progressions-" He moved his hand along an imaginary fretboard. "-it's more eclectic than that."

  Not only did the diction change when Jiminez got into his real love-blues-but the timbre of the voice dropped. Jury had inferred from his manner that he was a sophisticated man. And although Alvaro was really the moving force behind this band-he'd started it-when he talked about Charlie Raine (who had taken over the tabloids, the media, the covers of magazines), there wasn't a hint of rancor or jealousy. It might have been because he, Charlie, wasn't trying to, didn't care. That's what Jiminez was saying.

  "I got a lot of respect for Charlie. Charlie don't buy none of this glitz. He don't seem to want fame nor money nor a five-thousand-watt spot on him. I asked him, 'Charlie, what do you want?' and he doesn't even smile when he says, 'To be as good as you are.'" Alvaro chuckled and shook his head. "I think he meant it."

  Jury smiled. "Is he?"

  Again Alvaro laughed as he jimmied a thin cigar from a case on the coffee table. "Shit, no. Look at it this way: I got fifteen years on Charles. Fifteen years of jams, club gigs,"- he looked through the spurt of flame from his lighter at Jury -"but he would be, finally."

  "You'd still be fifteen years ahead."

  Alvaro shook his head, sat back. Smoke coiled upward and he blew and dispersed it. "Because he is the most focused axeman I've ever come across. It's more than focus; it's like a mission with him. You got to be able to separate yourself from the whole rock-star attitude. You got to be one thing on stage, you got your attitude on stage, but remember when you pack the axe away, like Sly Stallone says, 'You gotta go home and eat spaghetti with your mother.' When I was a kid, I wasn't thinkin' about how did they stiff me with that contract or if my CPA made a mistake on my tax return. Back then it was just playin' for playin'. That's what I mean: you got to be able to put that stuff to one side and just play. I don't have to remind myself I was some shitty fourteen-year-old when I was trading licks with my daddy, because I got so many friends back in Mississippi askin', 'You still wanderin' around with that guitar case? What you got in it, coke? Crack?' There's one friend who can play nearly as good as Stevie Ray Vaughan reminds me I don't know nothin' and we sit around trading S.R.V. licks and I realize I jumped off the stage not a moment too soon. That's Charlie."

  "The reason he's quitting?"

  Jiminez shrugged. "I'm only guessing. Except for saying he's tired and wants to try something new-vague stuff like that-he just don't give no reason. No reason he got the schedule changed, either. We were supposed to be playing Munich this week. Manager nearly cut his throat over that booking."

  "Doesn't make sense." Jury looked up at the ceiling, the magnificent chandelier faintly tinged by a pinkish glow. "You say he's dedicated, focused, and that sounds like 'ambitious' to me. But he's stopping at the top, or near-top of his career." He looked across the table with its silver coffee service at Jiminez.

  "Tell me and we'll both know, bro'."

  "Don't you think it's strange?"

  "Strange? I think it's insane. But every man's got his own river to cross."

  Jury imagined Alvaro Jiminez had crossed a
number of his own. "When did Raine join up with your band?"

  "First saw Charlie when we were on the road, let's see, four years ago. Doin' one-nighters in what felt like one thousand gigs from California to Florida. Charlie come in one night to a dive in the Keys. He'd already met up with Wes; was working gigs in New York. Word-of-mouth place this was, except nobody musta opened his mouth because there couldn't of been more than twenty, thirty customers and they was mostly bonged."

  "Charlie would of stood out anyway. He was at the bar hardly tasting his beer, had this little bitty amp hooked on his belt, had his beat-up Fender leaning against a stool. He looked kinda familiar. Then I realized he was a follower."

  Jury frowned. "He'd been going from place to place where you played?"

  "Think we were the fuckin' Dead. I ask him, did he have me mixed up with Garcia, and he said, straight-faced, 'How could I do that?'" Alvaro grinned. "The way he said it, I could of been better or I could of been an asshole. Anyway, he pushed a demo at me, told me he wanted to do a number if I didn't mind. Right there, that night. I asked him what the hell's a teenage Brit doin' in Key Biscayne? 'Pickin' up work when I can.' Well, he fascinated me. I said to him, 'You play lead, of course.' Don't they all? He says, 'I play anything. Rhythm, bass, whatever you want. Whatever kind of music' Well, he gets up there with us in the next set and I mean those twenty, thirty actually took the straws outta their noses. They did love him. He could play any of those dusty old songs they wanted. 'Georgia on My Mind'-I thought they'd died and went to heaven. Got up and danced even, some of them. He's just a natural-born crowd pleaser. Put that together with someone's got that kind of funky blues Clapton-like line and you got star quality."

  Jury thought for a moment. "You changed the name of the band."

  "Yeah. We all thought Bad News Coming was pretty beat, so all of us tossed a couple of names in the hat. Sirocco was Charlie's. We didn't even know what the hell it meant, but it had this nice sound."

  Jury smiled. "Did Charlie know?"

  " 'Hot wind that blows off the desert,' something like that. Looka there what's comin' our way."

  A woman in folds of gray sable with an uptight hairdo to match had been sweeping toward their corner and had now arrived with a young girl several paces behind. Leather opera gloves, Italian kid shoes, heavy enough with diamond-drop earrings, necklace, and bracelets that the woman reminded Jury of one of the chandeliers. "Aren't you part of that Sirocco band?" Her voice was as showy as the rest of her, low and thick with cultural attitudes. "Aren't you Mr. Jiminez?" Wiggins should have heard the "Jim-" The girl blushed and looked away. Clearly, it was she who had recognized Alvaro Jiminez.

  "That's right, darlin'." He scrawled his name across one of the Ritz's hotel register cards, looked at the woman, and asked, "I guess you're comin' to the concert?"

  The mother looked bemused. "What concert?"

  The girl, Jury knew, could have died where she stood with embarrassment. Alvaro caught her eye, asked her name (which she said was Belle), and he said, "Tell your mama what concert, Belle."

  This seemed to delight Belle; the blush receded, leaving an afterglow that brightened her face and sparked her eyes. "Hammersmith Odeon. Tomorrow night."

  Jiminez grinned. "You're comin'."

  The mother started in on a long explanation of their "schedule" for tomorrow, places they had to go, people they had to see (all important), and Jiminez kept on looking at Belle, from whose face the light had fled, listening to her mother, to whom Alvaro was paying no attention at all.

  "There'll be a ticket at the box office, Belle. From me. Easy to get there on the tube, but take a cab home."

  Belle's eyes were widening more and yet more as he spoke. Jiminez had plunked her down in Munchkinland where all the rules were suddenly, and marvelously, different. The mother in sable was furious, Jury could tell. Her Belle being allowed to breathe on her own, much less hightail it to Hammersmith?

  Alvaro was chuckling as they walked away, the sable bouncing as the mother tried to keep up with her daughter, who was ignoring her.

  "There's one seat taken, at least," said Jiminez. "I don't guess cops have time for that kinda stuff."

  "It's sold out."

  Alvaro Jiminez seemed to think this was funny as hell. "You a Scotland Yard superintendent and can't get tickets? How many you want?" Before Jury could answer he said, "Hell, there'll be four at the box office. Stage manager's a nice guy. He holds some back for us. Mind if I say something?"

  Jury smiled. "Of course not."

  "Somehow I get the idea you ain't really into thrash security. Can't say why. And I got to go, friend." Jiminez stood up. He seemed to tower there.

  As Jury stood to shake his hand, he said, "Just another fan, Alvaro. I want to thank you. You didn't have to do this."

  "I like to come down here, hang out with the swells. Almost didn't get to sit down because I wasn't wearin' no tie. The reason the manager chose the Ritz is because everybody's so rich, nobody'd bother us. Excepting as long as we wore our ties." His expression was completely bland. "Why're you so interested in Charles?"

  "I'm trying to save someone's life."

  "Well."

  Jury knew from his tone he'd say nothing to anyone about this conversation. They were walking toward the entrance, the long line of glass doors that shimmered with the reflected lights of the chandeliers. "Mind if I ask you one more question? About yourself?"

  "Go ahead, man."

  They were looking out on Piccadilly now. "You said your daddy was a great blues man from the Mississippi Delta. Was his name Jiminez?"

  "Nope. That's my mama's maiden name. I went by Johnson until he died. Then I changed it." He paused. "Mama ran off when I was eight years old with a stand-up piano player. Never heard nothin' since."

  As they both stood looking at the wavering circles of light reflected by the marqueelike bulbs of the Ritz, he added, "What I thought was, there's a lot of Johnsons in this world, but maybe she'd recognize her own name and come see me."

  Jury didn't have to ask if she had.

  ***

  In a warehouse on the Isle of Dogs Morpeth Duckworth sat dressed in black like a spider in his web.

  When Jury and Wiggins walked in he was turning knobs, punching buttons, flipping levers right and left like a man with ten arms; he was surrounded by stacked-up amplifiers, stereo components, an elaborate sound system, digital synthesizers, video screens. His legs were outstretched, feet resting on two separate chairs on wheels like a secretary's chair. He was a man in his element.

  Duckworth nodded at them, pushed the chairs toward them with his feet as an invitation to seat themselves. He flicked a few switches, adjusted the volume, so that what sounded like nothing but feedback screams was reduced to music loud enough to shimmer like a heat curtain between them. Apparently, as far as Duckworth was concerned, that level served as viable background music for conversation.

  "Can you turn that down some more? My sergeant's ears bleed easily."

  For once, Wiggins didn't appreciate being ministered to. He looked at Jury sternly, perhaps warning him off from comment on the quality of the soundtrack.

  Morpeth Duckworth flipped a few more levers, obviously surprised that anyone in possession of his senses would make such a request, given this was prime Hendrix. " 'The Wind Cries Mary.' The, the, themost beautiful ballad he ever did." He talked about inversions, double inversions, fat tones, and ghost bends like a man who'd just seen Mary herself materialize in the shadows round the packing cases.

  "You don't play with your fingers and sing with your chords, that's what the clones don't seem to understand. Van Halen's been cloned to kingdom come. Excuse me, that's literally Jimmy Page. When Kingdom Come's lead guitarist slipped out and raised that bow I nearly fell off the bed. Any halfway decent axeman could imitate Van Halen or Yngwie or any other technical wizard. What these clones don't see is that they'renot the ones they're ripping off. An obvious point. They'd have to change their whole
genetic system to sound like Page or Knopfler or any of the others. It's this gunslinger mentality. For one thing, most people got a tin ear and just because you got two guitarists who are heavily into baroque, heavily classical, and one of them does some thrashing around with arpeggio runs and the other does Bach progressions, the tin ear can't tell the difference. Me, I don't knock technical wizardry." He leaned forward as if to drive home this point. "Here's the thing: they're so good at it, guys like Van Halen and Malsteen, that you're damned right the technique stands out; it's so clear it sounds like it's separated from the guys playing it. But it ain't. And that's the reason you get some pissant sitting around doing two-handed tapping and thinking he's Joe Pass, but he's not, so it's nothing."

  "You wanna be Riley B. King, then you get your ass out of those studio sessions and do the chitlin' circuit just like all the others, the real blues men. If what you really want is just to gliss across the stage at the Grammy awards and go multiplatinum, okay, do it, but you can't ride on anybody's coattails. You're not going to be Clapton, or B. B. King, or Hubert Sumlin or Gatemouth Brown-"

  Since Duckworth showed no signs of letting up, slowing down, or discussing anything so mordant as a murder investigation, Jury said quickly, "How do you rate Stan Keeler, then? I understand you know him."

  "I rate him the best R-and-B guy they've got over here. All you have to do is go to the Nine-One-Nine to see what I mean. Stan can do anything: rock, jazz, fusion, blues. Blues, blues, anarchic blues. Black Orchid, on a good day, could blow Sirocco away. But Sirocco's good. I'd like to see a triple-axe threat with Raine, Jiminez, and Keeler. The Odeon would orbit. Stan doesn't do concerts. Part of it's the way he is; part of it's he knows the way itis: it is underground. Fans over here are different; it's very personal. He'll go on forever. Hell, his dog's more famous than Fergie's kid. The bands in the States, they think England's the Pearly Gates because you can rocket to fame over here. What they don't know is that when you go down you go down dead. It's High Noon time. The press over here's a killer. In one column I could demolish some poor metal band that hasn't got the fans yet. It doesn't work that way in the States."