by Steve Brewer
Whitney stared drunkenly at Franklin, his mouth agape. “He’s. . . gay?”
“Queer as a blind guide dog,” Big Bill said.
“But I read where he was datin’ that TV actress.”
Big Bill arched his brows. “Oh yeah, we got some fine public relations firms here in Nashville. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”
Later, as the waitress cleared their plates, Franklin rolled the contract into a tight tube and wagged it at Whitney. “Think about this,” he said. “We want to sign you and we’ve only heard two of your songs. You know how many other artists we’ve signed after hearing just two songs? None. Not a one. Now that must mean we see something in you we don’t see in others, right?”
“I got a whole lot more than just those two,” Whitney said. “If you want, we can go back to my place and I can play some of the others.” Whitney wondered if they were ever going to ask him to sign the contract.
Big Bill ordered brandies all around. He was surprised Whitney hadn’t offered to sign the contract yet. Most newcomers signed before dinner was brought to the table. Big Bill swirled his brandy around his snifter for a moment, then looked up. “Franklin, show him page eight.”
Franklin flipped through the contract. “This is something else we don’t do very often,” he said, pointing to the clause in question. “We’re prepared to offer you a one thousand dollar signing bonus if you’ll let us manage and produce you and publish your songs.”
Whitney took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe it. “You’ll pay me to be my manager?” He could get his truck out of hock and get his boots fixed with that kind of money. He smiled and started to think maybe he’d come to the right place after all. “Where do I sign?”
31.
It was another sleepy, dusty Delta day when Jimmy arrived in Quitman County. He had lunch with two of Eddie’s childhood friends, then met with his high school algebra teacher. After that he went to see two of Eddie’s former employers. There was no one at the Hegman farm where Eddie used to help out during harvesting, so he went over to the Lytle’s property. Lamont Lytle said Eddie had been a good worker, tending their small peach orchard. “He mostly did pruning and fertilizing and keeping the bugs away,” Lamont said. “Some folks don’t like that kind of work, but Eddie didn’t seem to mind. And I’ll tell you, we never lost much crop when he was here.” Mr. Lytle said he wasn’t surprised to hear Eddie had moved to Nashville. He pointed to a rickety out-building down by the grove of peach trees. “That boy used to set down there by the tool shed and play his songs whenever he was waitin’ on me. He’s got talent, they ain’t no question ‘bout that.”
Jimmy went to take some photographs around the old tool shed. Inside were ancient rusting shears and rakes and peach picking tools. A thick network of spider webs connected everything. Rat traps were stacked high on the shelves next to a dozen old brown glass gallon-size bottles and some big rusty cans containing an array of pesticides and fertilizers and other tools of the trade. Jimmy noticed a beam of sunlight blooming through the colored glass, casting amber light on an old pair of boots with high Cuban heels. He took a couple of shots of that and several from the exterior before heading off to track down the public records on Tammy’s death.
The County Clerk’s office and the Sheriff’s Department shared a new, one story brick building with thick tempered glass windows and good air conditioning. Walking in the front door Jimmy could smell fresh paint and caulk that was still curing. Behind the counter was a small, skinny man wearing a maroon knit polo shirt. Jimmy introduced himself and explained why he was there. The man looked at Jimmy with suspicion. “So, what is it you want?”
“I just need to take a look at the coroner’s report and the death certificate for Tammy Long,” Jimmy said. “She died about—”
“Oh,” the man interrupted. “That’s something you need, is it? Not just something you want, but need.” The man squinted in Jimmy’s direction. “Well, if that don’t tear the rag off the bush, you comin’ up here nosin’ around other people’s affairs. You might as well be peepin’ in windows far as I’m concerned.” He leaned on the counter that separated him from Jimmy. “I’m not sure I’m gonna let you see ‘em. Whaddya think about that?”
Jimmy was new at this, having done very little investigative reporting, but he was surprised by the man’s aggressive attitude. He could understand if he was at the Pentagon trying to get some compromising federal documents, but a Quitman County coroner’s report? “I’m writing a book on her husband and I just want to get the facts right.”
“Oh, I see.” The skinny little man pulled a stool over to the counter and sat down. “You wanna get the facts right ‘cause you’re so concerned for the families and all, is that it?”
“I just want to get the facts,” Jimmy said. “What do I have to do?”
The little man looked at Jimmy for a moment. “Well, I tell you. You’re entitled to get a look at them documents according to Title Five, U.S.C. Section 552.” He leaned across the counter again. “But I guess a big city writer like you knows all about the Freedom of Information act, don’cha?” He pointed at Jimmy. “Guys like you enjoy pokin’ around in the files and gettin’ everybody’s dirty little secrets, ain’t that right? Does it get you excited? Is that it?” The little man seemed to be rubbing against the other side of the counter.
“No, that’s not it.” Jimmy tried to see what the man was rubbing against. “Like I said, I’m writing—”
“A book, I know. You told me already. What do you think I am, stupid?” The man backed away from the counter slightly.
“Look,” Jimmy said, “the public has a right to information concerning—”
“Oh, now you’re gonna lecture me on the fundamental rights of a constitutional democracy, is that it?” The man smiled in an odd way.
“I’m not lecturing about anything. I just want to know what I have to do to get a look at the public records.”
“Same as everybody,” the man said. “Fill out some forms. I need to see copies of a 37 dash 131 and the Federal FOIA request form along with your tax returns for the past three years and two forms of photo identification.”
Jimmy made an involuntary face. “What? That’s insane. I’m not asking for sensitive federal information here I just—”
The man behind the counter slowly opened a drawer and pulled out a small, dirty pistol which he laid gently on the counter. Jimmy’s eyes opened wide. What sort of a nightmare had he stumbled into here? He half expected the man to open another drawer, pull out a banjo, and start playing the theme to Deliverance. The man’s face tensed like a dam holding back an emotional reservoir. Jimmy couldn’t decide whether to go for the gun or the door. When the man made a sudden move, Jimmy snatched the gun and skittered backwards on the tile. That’s when the dam burst and the man started laughing. “Ewww-weee! You shoulda seen your face!” he cackled. Then he got all serious again. “I’ll need to see your last three tax returns.” He laughed some more. “I’m just having fun with ya man, relax. I don’t get to have a lot of fun here.”
Jimmy was unable to see the humor. He felt the heft of the gun in his hand and wondered if the skinny little guy was the sort of person who ought to be in possession of a loaded weapon.
“Gone and shoot me if you’re mad,” the man said. “Ain’t nothin’ but a starter’s pistol.” He chuckled some more as he imitated himself. “37 dash 131 and two forms of photo I.D.” The skinny man turned and headed for the filing cabinet. “What was the last name again?”
Jimmy stared at the man for a moment before answering. “Long,” he said. “Tammy Long.” Figuring the best thing to do was play along with this lunatic, Jimmy faked a laugh and pointed the gun at the man. “You had me going there,” he said. “I was ready to go get my tax returns for you.”
The guy was rooting through a filing cabinet now, not paying attention to Jimmy. He mocked himself again as he stood there, “Plus your tax returns for the past three years.” He laug
hed. “I wish more folks came in here so I could do that,” he said as he walked back to the counter holding up the file. “You’d be surprised at how dull this job can be.” He stopped short of handing the file to Jimmy. He cocked his head to one side. “What kinda book you writin’?”
“Biography,” Jimmy said. “You ever hear of Eddie Long?”
The skinny man said he’d seen Eddie perform once at the casino up in Tunica and thought he did a real nice show. “I didn’t realize he was from around here though.” He put the file on the counter, then looked around like a naughty school boy. “You better not let the sheriff walk in here and see you holding that gun on me.”
Jimmy slid the pistol across the counter in exchange for the file. It contained crime scene photos along with copies of reports from every county agency that dealt with the matter. The newspaper reports Jimmy had seen said only that Tammy had been found dead in her house. There had been no details about cause of death, only that it was under investigation.
The coroner’s report filled in the blanks. It said Tammy had died of poisoning and the death was listed as a suicide. But there was also mention of a gunshot wound to the head. Jimmy looked at the skinny man. “Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
“Yeah,” the man said. He looked over to his desk, then back at Jimmy. “And you wanna see something past strange?” He went to his desk and picked up what turned out to be a printout of an e-mail. “This came in a few days ago from the State Police in Terrebonne Parish, down in Louisiana.”
Jimmy took the document. The information had come by way of the National Crime Information Center, a federal clearinghouse of malfeasance. It said a man by the name of Fred Babineaux, first assumed to have died in a single vehicle automobile accident, had actually died of sodium fluoroacetate poisoning. According to the investigating officers, the poison appeared to have been put intentionally into a dose of Dr. Porter’s Headache Powder which Mr. Babineaux had ingested moments before crashing his car. According to a receipt found in the wreckage, Mr. Babineaux had bought the powder at an E-Z Mart in Shreveport the day prior to his death. Louisiana State Police were investigating his death as a homicide and were making routine inquiries about any similar poisonings in the region on the chance that this was part of a pattern.
“My guess is they’re thinkin’ it’s a serial killer like that Tylenol pois’nin’ back in the eighties,” the skinny man said. “That’d be a pretty good chapter for your book if Eddie’s wife turned out to be a victim of a serial killer, wouldn’t it?”
Jimmy nodded. It certainly would be interesting, he thought. In fact a good serial killer story might be a book unto itself. Jimmy’s publishing career couldn’t seem to stay on one track. He already had a possible biography or a novel — depending on how Eddie’s future played out, and now he suddenly had the start of a true-crime book. Except for the fact that Megan had dumped him, he was having a good week. He held up the fax. “Did you respond to this?”
The skinny guy looked wounded. “‘Course I responded. I called and told ‘em we had a pois’nin’ and that we’d found a box of the Dr. Porter’s stuff in the medicine cabinet.” He rifled through the crime scene photos and found one taken in the bathroom. It showed the open cabinet with the box clearly visible on the shelf. “We sent ‘em the box and, sure enough, there was poison in every one of the little doses, you know, those little envelopes.” He indicated the size of the envelopes with his thumb and index finger. “And you wanna know something else weird?” The man found the part of the coroner’s report detailing the contents of Tammy’s stomach. “Says she’d eaten Chinese food ‘fore she died — didn’t even get digested that poison killed her so fast.”
Jimmy saw that she’d eaten orange beef, one of his favorites. “What’s weird about that?”
The man spread the sheriff’s report on the counter then slapped his hand down on top of it. “Where’d it come from? You know what I’m saying?” He pointed at the photos. “Ain’t nothing in the pictures. No Chung King cartons in the trash, no take-ee out-ee boxes on the counter, nothin’. Not a dirty dish in sight, and ain’t a decent Chinese restaurant within fifteen miles of Hinchcliff. I think they oughtta be looking into that, is what I think.”
“That’s weird all right.” Jimmy collected the sheriff’s and coroner’s reports. “Can I get copies of these?”
The skinny man pointed at the copy machine. “Go on.” As Jimmy made copies, the skinny guy took a phone call. Jimmy stapled the coroner’s report to the death certificate, then made a note to find out what sodium flouroacetate was. After a few minutes of saying “uh huh” and “issat right?” into the phone, the skinny man hung up and looked at Jimmy. “Well, talk about scratchin’ where it itches. . .” The man pointed at the phone. “That there was a detective from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.” He walked to the fax machine just as it started to ring.
“What did he want?”
The skinny man didn’t answer. He just stood by the fax machine, grinning. When the fax finished printing he handed it to Jimmy. “Seems somebody down there had a headache too.”
32.
Eddie picked up the phone to make a call but there was no dial tone. He pushed the button a couple of times, trying to hang up, but to no avail. Finally he said, “Hello?”
“What?” The woman on the other end sounded startled. “I never heard it ring,” she said, then paused. “Eddie?”
The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “Yeah,” he said. “Speaking.”
“Surprise! It’s me. Megan.”
“Hey, girl! What’s going on with you?”
Megan moved her lips close to the mouthpiece of her phone and slipped into her earthiest radio voice. “Guess who’s working nights at 106 point 9 FM in Nashville?”
“Get outta town!” Eddie said. “But don’t stop talking that way.” He knew flirting when he heard it.
Megan lilted the station’s tedious slogan, “Givin’ you everything you want. . . and more.”
“Wow,” Eddie said. “You oughta forget radio and go into phone sex.”
“Probably pays better,”Megan said, “but you don’t get all the free cd’s and t-shirts.”
“So what’s the deal?” Eddie asked. “How long’ve you been in town?” He hoped Jimmy hadn’t come with her but he wasn’t sure if he should ask or wait to see if she dropped it into conversation. “Where’re you livin’?”
“Some apartment complex way the hell out past Brentwood. It’s pretty tacky, but at least my commute’s a bitch.”
Eddie laughed. He could picture Megan behind the control board at the radio station wearing a too short t-shirt revealing her flat stomach. “Man, I’m glad you called when you did. You came damn close to missing me,” he said. “Just now, I was pickin’ up to call the phone company about getting an unlisted number. I mean, one second later and, hell, I don’t even have call waiting.”
“Well, like they say, timing’s everything.” Timing was one of the things on Megan’s mind at the moment. She was wondering how long Eddie planned to wait before he started dating and she wondered how long she should wait before making a move. “You gettin’ an unlisted number ‘cause you got girls stalking you?”
“Not hardly.” Eddie told her all about signing with Herron and Peavy.
“Ohmigod Eddie! That’s fabulous! Congratulations! I knew you were going to make it. And just think, I knew you when. . .” Wow, she thought, timing is everything.
“The unlisted number’s part of this whole marketing plan we got.” He paused. “Listen, I’d love to tell you about it. . .”
“And I’d love to hear about it.”
“Hey, listen,” Eddie said. “Uh, did Jimmy, I mean is he—”
“Oh, we broke things off,” Megan said, real casual. “I mean we’re still pals, but he didn’t want to try the long distance relationship thing. So I guess he sort of dumped me in that sense. But, you know, no harm done. No blood, no foul. I’m a big girl.”
“W
ell, I’m, uh, sorry, you know. So, uh, how’re you doing?”
“Hey, I’m over it,” Megan said. “New city, new apartment, new start.”
Eddie knew the door had just been opened. “That’s cool,” he said. “Listen we’re going in to record this weekend. You wanna be my date?”
“I’d love to.”
33.
Eddie and Megan arrived at Big Bill’s house an hour before the start of the recording session. The three of them sat in the six hundred square foot kitchen sipping sweet tea. Megan was playing it cool, but she was agog at the proportions of Big Bill’s Belle Meade estate. This was exactly the sort of place Megan could see herself living. “I just love your house,” she said.
Other than that, Eddie was doing most of the talking. He was noticeably excited, and not just about the recording session. He had some good news. “Silicon and copper,” Eddie said cryptically. “Connects the whole world.” After a brief rumination on the wonders of the microprocessor, Eddie gave Big Bill an update on the Internet marketing scheme. He had explained the entire strategy to Herron and Peavy the night he signed his contract. Herron and Peavy had agreed to fund the plan as long as the costs were as low as projected and only if Eddie managed it. They’d figure out later how to make it recoupable against Eddie’s royalties, assuming he ever had any.
Meanwhile, Eddie had hired eight net-savvy Vanderbilt undergraduates for minimum wage plus promotional copies of CDs from Herron and Peavy’s stable of artists. Their job was to create buzz by spreading the word on the Frances Neagly website and the search for the mysterious musician who had stirred her still heart with his song ‘It Wasn’t Supposed To End That Way.’ The Vandy crew was in the process of visiting every e-zine, bulletin board, and chat room related to pop music, country music, or free downloadable music files.
