Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  As she slid the drawer back into the desk, Ken Hodges, the station’s general manager, appeared in the doorway. He looked like a weasel wearing a bad hair piece. It wasn’t really a rug, but his hair was done in such a rigid Trent Lott style that it looked like one. “You can’t just quit,” he said. “You gotta give me some notice.”

  Megan pulled out another drawer. “I gave you notice an hour ago, Ken.”

  “C’mon Megan, that’s unprofessional. I need a couple of weeks. Just do your shift for two more weeks. I’ll give you a little raise.”

  Megan dumped the contents of the second drawer into her box. “Starting to wish you’d given me that contract last year when I asked, huh?”

  A sigh of resignation seeped out of Mr. Hodges. He needed to keep Megan on the air. She had terrific numbers and, up until now anyway, Ken hadn’t had to pay her much more than minimum wage. “All right,” he said. “We can talk about a contract, if you want. But—”

  “There’s no point in talking about it now, Ken. You’re too late.”

  Mr. Hodges assumed a fatherly tone. “Megan, you’ve heard the expression ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’? You might want to think about that. In fact, you know what? I got a file full of resumes from jocks in places like Nashville. They all hate working in markets like that where they live from book to book, their job completely dependent on their ratings. They all want to come here where there’s security and more of a family atmosphere. Isn’t that what you really want?”

  Megan stopped what she was doing and turned to face Ken. “Do you remember what you told me every time you refused to give me a contract or even a small raise?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “No. I mean, about what?”

  “You said the real value of working here is that it’s a springboard to bigger markets. That’s how you justify your piss-ant wages. You said this was a training ground for moving up. The thing you always said I should aspire to.”

  Ken shrugged, unembarrassed by his lies. “Well sure, what do you expect me to say?”

  “You’re right,” Megan said, “by now I should just expect you to lie. I suppose you don’t have any other skills to rely on.”

  Ken gestured at the flowers Jimmy had given Megan. “What about your boyfriend?” he asked, snidely. “Is he moving or are you leaving him too?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Megan insisted. “He’s just a guy.” Megan paused, surprised by how easily those words had shot out of her mouth. But she meant it. Jimmy was just another guy standing between her and something better. Sure, she cared about Jimmy in her own peculiar way but she wasn’t in love with him. She’d never said she was. More important, Megan thought, yeah, the grass has got to be greener. If nothing else, she owed it to herself to take a look on the other side of the fence.

  Ken knew he wasn’t going to change her mind, so he decided to try something he’d been considering for a while. He glanced up and down the hallway to make sure no one was watching, then he slipped inside the small office and closed the door behind him. Click. He locked it. The next thing Megan knew, he was standing directly behind her with his hands on her ass. “You know, I was just thinking I might be able to come up with a real nice severance package for you.”

  The clod was kneading her ass like pizza dough. And his tone wasn’t that of just another idiot good-old-boy making a clumsy sexual advance. He sounded more determined than that. Megan scanned the desk top. Her options were a letter opener, a stapler, and a pair of scissors.

  Ken fumbled with his zipper. “Whaddya say we tear off a quick piece and I’ll see about a couple week’s pay as your parting gift?” He leaned against her, trying to pin her to the desk.

  Megan selected the best office supply for her needs and reacted with remarkable swiftness. Grabbing the large stapler with both hands, she opened it like a set of jaws, spun around, and closed it within an inch of serious pain. Ken was stunned not only by her quickness and her accuracy but by the viciousness of her proposal. If she finished what she’d started, the next time he peed it would look like a gimmicky lawn sprinkler. “Okay, okay,” he said putting his hands in the air in surrender. “But you don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Megan shook her head. “I can’t even believe you said that.” Then she stapled him.

  Ken screamed like a baby.

  Megan handed him the staple remover then shoved him aside. And on her way out the door she snatched Jimmy’s flowers and tossed them in the trash.

  28.

  Jimmy knew he’d screwed up. Instead of popping for the yellow roses, which he knew Megan loved, he’d made the mistake of operating under the naïve assumption that it was the thought that counts, resulting in the chintzy $6.99 grocery store arrangement. But in a world where upgrades are always available, who can blame a girl for wanting to improve her position? Jimmy figured it was unfair to expect Megan to lower her standards just because he was a broke-dick writer. Better that he improve his own financial position and pop for the roses next time.

  Once again he thought about calling Megan to apologize. He knew the worst thing he’d done was to buy cheap flowers but he was still thinking about an apology. Christ, he thought, this sensitive guy thing’s got a death grip on me. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should I always be the one to try to smooth things over? Would it be any skin off her perfect, slightly upturned nose to pick up the phone and call me with a little sweet talk and an ‘I’m sorry’? I mean how tough would that be?

  All this was running through Jimmy’s head as he sat staring at his computer. On the screen was a tentative outline for the opening chapters of The Eddie Long Story. But Jimmy hadn’t written anything lately. The momentum of his great book project had petered out owing largely to the fact that Jimmy was spending most of his time trying to figure out a way to make Megan fall in love with him. Jimmy looked up at plastic Elvis for inspiration. “Give me a sign,” he said. “Tell me what to do.” Jimmy jumped when the phone rang. He stared at it a moment before picking up. “Hello?”

  “Hey, man! You workin’ on my book?”

  Jimmy smiled. “Hey, Eddie, how you doin’? I was just about to call you.”

  “Uh huh, and I bet you promise you’ll pull out in time too.” Eddie laughed the way guys do when they retell old jokes. “Listen, Mr. Hemingway, I was just callin’ to let you know that I got your next two chapters. It turns out yours truly has signed a contract with Herron and Peavy Management.”

  “Holy shit! As in Big Bill Herron? Damn. Congratulations!” Jimmy opened a new blank document and started typing. “Details, man. What’s the deal?”

  Eddie told the story of his performance at the Bluebird. “After I played the song,” he said, “I just walked out of the place. Left ‘em with their jaws on the table tops.” He told Jimmy how Herron and Peavy had approached him afterwards, and how they had sealed the deal at Estella’s.

  Jimmy pried the particulars from Eddie. He knew there was a good anecdote in the scene where Eddie negotiated changes in his contract over a plate of fried shrimp with Joe Tex singing in the background. Now that Eddie had signed with one of Nashville’s most storied producers, Jimmy felt new momentum gathering on his project.

  “Alright,” Jimmy said, “so you signed with Herron and Peavy. What’s the other chapter?”

  “My marketing plan.”

  Jimmy paused. “Your marketing plan?” He stopped typing. “I don’t think so. But here’s an idea,” he said brightly. “Maybe you could write a song about it. A real honkey-tonker about direct mail and targeted demographics. I can hear it now.” Jimmy started singing in a twangy baritone. “Come ‘n’ listen to a story ‘bout my marketin’ plan, gonna do some advertisin’ and establish me a brand.”

  Eddie summoned a dark chuckle, then lapsed into his own exaggerated country accent. “Well shoot me for a billy goat if ‘at ain’t the funniest thang I ever heard!”

  “You’re the one with the funny ideas,” Jimmy said. “The book
’s supposed to be about the rise of a populist singer-songwriter, not a business plan.”

  “And if it was still nineteen-fucking-sixty and I was just handing my career over to a producer and his shyster partner, I wouldn’t even bring it up. But times’ve changed and one of the things you’re gonna wanna put in there is how I took charge of my career from the get go. And, to tell the truth, I bet this’ll be one of the better chapters.”

  “Yes, as the marketing section of most musician’s biographies tend to be,” Jimmy said.

  “Look, smartass, you don’t have to use it, but you oughta at least hear it.”

  “All right, what’s the plan?” Jimmy sat back and propped his feet on the table, figuring there was no need to write this part up.

  Eddie took a deep breath. “We’re creating a character,” he said. “A very mysterious character, a guy with a tragic background. And once we’ve generated sufficient interest in this mystery man, we’re going to find him. And then we’re going to sell him to the public.”

  Jimmy sat up. He had no idea where this was going, but it wasn’t what he’d expected. He put his hands back on the keyboard and listened with increasing fascination as Eddie explained the plan. They had already put the first part into play.

  “We set up a website attributed to a woman named Frances Neagley,” Eddie said. “She lives on a farm somewhere in the Tecumseh Valley. Her website is dedicated to an unknown musician, the identity of whom Miss Neagley is trying to discover. According to the information on her site, this unknown musician — apparently a young man — is the artist behind the most beautiful song Frances Neagley has ever heard.” Eddie sounded like he was sitting around a campfire telling an old story.

  The story, as Miss Neagley related it on her website, was that she was surfing the net one night looking at the web sites of popular country music artists when she stumbled on an otherwise unidentified site called ‘Mysong.com.’ According to Miss Neagley, the mysterious site had a little text and one small MP3 file free for the downloading. Here’s a song that came from deep within my heart, the mysterious musician had written at ‘Mysong.com.’ Please listen to it and pass it on if you like it. Miss Neagley downloaded the file but promptly forgot about it as she continued surfing that night.

  A week later, according to the story, she remembered the file and listened to the song. What she heard was so moving she could hardly believe her ears. She sat there, at her computer, mouth agape, as this stranger probed the aching parts of her heart. She felt like he was singing to her the song she would have written about her worst heartache if she could ever write a song. Her sense of wonder at all this suddenly turned to shock when, halfway through the refrain, the song stopped cold.

  At first, Miss Neagley wrote, she thought she’d accidentally hit a wrong button or something. She played the song again and, just as it had the first time, the song ended abruptly before it was half over. Miss Neagley assumed she had done something wrong in downloading the file. She immediately went on line searching for ‘Mysong.com.’ But the site was gone without a trace, as if it had never been there.

  “‘I listened to this fragment of my heart over and over that night,’ Ms. Neagley writes.”

  “Now wait a second,” Jimmy interrupted. “Is this for real? How did you find this woman?”

  Eddie laughed. “There is no woman,” he said. “Well, there is a Frances Neagley. She’s a friend of mine, she’ll be the webmaster for the site, but the rest is just story telling.”

  “Alright, alright, keep going.” Jimmy had been sucked in.

  “She was so haunted by this song that she’s been trying ever since to find out who and where the mystery musician is and where she can get a complete version of the song, because she has to hear how it ends,” Eddie said. “Now, somewhere on her site, Frances gets a little confessional, and she tells us about herself. She’s a woman in her late thirties, raised in the country, moved around a bit over the years. Had her share of relationships, good and bad, but she finally met the love of her life. They got married and bought a small farm and on their first anniversary her husband was killed in a tragic accident. Frances had no other family and she was left with little more than a mortgage and a hard heart. After her husband died, she thought her capacity for feeling had died with him. Until she heard that song.”

  “We’re talking about ‘It Wasn’t Supposed to End That Way’ right?”

  “Of course,” Eddie said. “At any rate, she’ll start writing letters and emails to country music radio stations asking about this unknown artist, citing lyrics from the song, asking if anyone knows who the musician is.” Eddie paused again. “Are you gettin’ all this?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “This is the best chapter so far.”

  “Like I said.” Eddie continued with mounting enthusiasm. “Okay, in the meanwhile, music directors and programming consultants in other parts of the country are going to start getting letters and faxes from the general public asking about this MP3 file that’s been floating around the net. They want to hear the whole song, they’ll say. People will start writing to country music magazines and record labels and sooner or later, somebody in the business is going to have to hear this song.”

  “What if nobody writes these letters?”

  “Jimmy?” Eddie sounded like he was speaking to a child.

  “Yeah?”

  “Wake up! We’ll be the ones writing the letters, people we hire. They’ll mail the letters, and send the faxes, and zap E-mail from all over the country. It won’t cost much more than the price of stamps and some long distance charges.”

  “Clever boy.” Jimmy had never thought of Eddie as devious, but this was certainly in the neighborhood. It was an inspired deceit but it raised a question. “How ethical is this?”

  “This is a marketing campaign. What’s ethics got to do with it?” Jimmy snorted a laugh. “Anyway,” Eddie continued, “assuming this works and we get the attention of the marketplace, we’ll move to phase two where someone posts a message on Miss Neagley’s site saying they think the mystery musician is a guy named Eddie Long who wrote the song after his wife died and no one’s seen him since. Now, one thing we want to do, but we haven’t figured out how to do it yet, is to get promotion directors at country radio stations to turn this into a ‘Find Eddie Long’ contest. But we’re working on it.”

  “Interesting,” Jimmy said. He was impressed by the quirky possibilities of the plan, but he was skeptical of it’s viability.

  “Again,” Eddie said, “assuming all this works, Herron and Peavy eventually contact the record labels to announce that they represent this Eddie Long guy, the artist behind the most wanted song in America. And any record label that wants me and my song is welcome to make offers. Whaddya think?”

  Jimmy thought about it for a minute. “It’s different, I’ll say that. But, I don’t think that’s how record companies work. I mean, I guess I’m having a hard time imagining that a record company would sign an artist based on Internet buzz.”

  Eddie paused a moment. “I’ve got three words for you, Jimmy. Blair. Witch. Project. Remember that a few years ago? No major Hollywood film distributor would ever consider picking up and releasing a feature shot mostly on videotape by a bunch of nobodies from Florida, right? Never happen, right? Not in a million years. But it did happen, and the damn thing made over two hundred million dollars.”

  “Well, I’ll give you that.”

  “We’re just trying to find a new way to skin the cat, that’s all. If it doesn’t work, we can still take our tape to the record labels, we just won’t be in as good a negotiating position. No big deal. See, even though the Internet’s ready to be a means of music distribution, the general public isn’t ready to use it that way. But the public is already using it to get information, even if the information isn’t genuine, so that’s what we’ll use it for.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jimmy said. “Could be a great way to get the labels’ attention.”

  �
��That’s the plan,” Eddie said. “So what about the book? How’s it coming?”

  “It’s shaping up pretty good,” Jimmy said. “Especially now. I mean you getting hooked up with Herron and Peavy, well, I know it doesn’t guarantee anything, but that’s a major step. Right now I’m still working on the first three or four chapters and I’m heading up to your old neck of the woods to find out about the young Eddie Long. You know, interview some of your old teachers, friends, and neighbors, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh?” Eddie’s tone changed suddenly. He sounded unenthused.

  “Yeah, who’s most likely to tell embarrassing stories on you?”

  “No shortage of folks to do that,” Eddie said. “Most of ‘em’ll make shit up if they think it’ll get their name in a book. Fact there ain’t no tellin’ what kind of crazy shit you’ll hear about me from those folks. Best advice I got is, don’t believe everything you hear.”

  29.

  Jimmy felt like someone had plugged him in. He pushed back from his desk and spun around in his chair a few times. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes and let things take shape in his mind. He could see the cover for the book — a tall backlit figure wearing a Stetson, arms outstretched with a guitar held aloft in the right hand, a glint of light starring off the pearl inlay of the fingerboard. The title stretched boldly across the top: The Long and The Short of It. The Eddie Long Story cut a path through the middle of the backlit figure. Finally, in a slightly larger typeface across the bottom, the author took his place: Jimmy Rogers.

  Someone called his name. The curtain pulled back. Jimmy strode onto the stage to warm applause. “Oprah! So nice to see you,” he said, bussing her cheek. No, it wasn’t really an Oprah book, was it? “Dave!” Nah. “Jay!” No, none of the network shows ever promoted authors. “Charlie Rose, such a pleasure.” Unlikely. PBS was probably too snooty for the book. “Crook and Chase! So nice to be here!” Syndication was better than nothing.