The Hangman's Sonnet
Page 7
Jenn, Jesse’s ex, had introduced them at a party when she was doing the weather for a local TV station, and they immediately took to each other in spite of their divergent tastes in the Johnnie Walker universe of label colors. When Diana came into Jesse’s life, the three of them would sometimes hang together on the weekends Jesse came down to visit her. It had been months since they’d seen each other or spoken.
“Sorry about Di, man. She was something else,” Roscoe said, taking a big swallow of his scotch. “How you holding up?”
Jesse ignored the question, sort of. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Okay. I hear Jenn got hitched to some rich SOB.”
“Hale Hunsicker, yeah. He’s not as much of an SOB as you’d think, with all that money. Now, don’t you have to spin some records or something?”
Roscoe laughed. “It’s all digital, my friend. Most of the staff here thinks turntables are for turning pottery. I’m like a pilot in a modern cockpit. All I do is like monitor the equipment and say something every now and then to let the listeners know I’m alive. I’ve got a new car spot coming up in about two minutes.” He shook his head in disdain. “Time was I’d let you read the copy on air and the station would’ve loved it. Not anymore, man, not anymore. I should let you do it anyway and get my ass fired. It wouldn’t matter.”
“Why’s that?”
“History’s repeating itself. The station’s been sold to one of those big conglomerates. Doesn’t pay to be an indie station anymore. They think I don’t know about it, but I’ve been around too long to fool. Too many people being let go and getting replaced by unpaid interns. Only reason I’m still here is that I’m relatively cheap. It’s like a ball club dumping salary and trimming the roster for the new owners.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“I’ll land on my feet. I always do. So why’d you really come here, Jesse? Not that I’m not happy to see you and all.”
“What can you tell me about Terry Jester?”
Niles smiled a beaming smile. “They don’t call me the Teacher for nothing. Jester was born Terence Jacobivitz to a schoolteacher mother and doctor father in Boston in the forties. Left college, moved to the village in the sixties, and was part of the folk duo Terry and Stan.”
“Stan White?”
Roscoe was impressed. “You know that schmuck?”
“Met him a few days ago. He’s throwing a big birthday bash for Jester in Paradise next month.”
“Real piece of work, Stan is. We used to be buddies, Stan and me. He was a smart guy. He understood that he had to get out of Terry’s way, that Jester had the looks, the voice, and the talent. It was Stan’s idea to change Terry’s name. Sharp, because as names go, Jacobivitz is even less appealing to the Christian masses than Zimmerman. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it? You know Jester’s music. Everybody does.”
“I know his greatest hits, sure. But White referenced something that I didn’t understand. He said something about the album. Do you know what he was talking about?”
Roscoe Niles sucked down the rest of his drink and nodded. “It’s the stuff of legend, my friend.”
“What is?”
“The Hangman’s Sonnet.”
19
Niles excused himself, once again pulling the mic close to his mouth. He read the car spot as smoothly as if he had it memorized, then hit a button on the console, pushed the mic away, and poured himself another scotch. He fiddled around with a laptop keyboard, tapped the screen, grabbed the mic, and hit the talk switch.
“Okay, folks, the Teacher’s changing the lesson plan. My apologies to Difford and Tilbrook for the interruption. We’ll let Squeeze get back to pulling mussels a little later on. In the meantime, here’s side one, when there was such a thing, of Terry Jester’s classic album Minor Angels and Two-Eyed Jacks.”
The DJ turned his attention back to Jesse, Terry Jester providing the background music. “Where were we, man?”
Jesse said, “The stuff of legend.”
“Right on. So after Jester’s first album ran up the charts, he moved back to Boston and did all of his future recordings at Vagabond Sound on the Cape. Don’t ask me why. Maybe he felt like the place was a good-luck charm for him or something. Who the hell knows with musicians? His first two albums did great guns and then he recorded this classic,” Roscoe said, pointing at the studio speakers. “But his fourth album was uninspired. His fifth was downright awful. Suddenly all the adulation, the comparisons to Dylan and Donovan, vanished. Then, so did he. Stopped touring. Stopped recording. Pretty much became a recluse. There were all sorts of rumors about his disappearance from the scene: bad acid trips, a sailing accident, a smack OD, schizophrenia, a pilgrimage to India to study meditation with some nutty guru. One rumor, my personal favorite, is that he was a passenger in the car when Paul McCartney bought the ranch. Man, I miss those days. You could say anything, crazy things, and people believed it.”
Jesse tapped his watch crystal. “Sometime today, Roscoe. Remember, the stuff of legend.”
“My bad. Sorry, man. So flash-forward to 1974 and there are new rumors, only these are positive ones. Word is that Jester was back in the studio recording an album that was more mature, deeper, more intense and poetic than his old stuff. That it was going to blow everybody’s mind. By the next year, word had leaked from the record-label people about the album’s title—”
“The Hangman’s Sonnet.”
“You should have been a detective.”
“Wiseass.”
“According to my ex, my ass is the only part of me that ever had any brains. Otherwise I would’ve been in a business where I made some real scratch.”
“So . . .”
“So the deal was that the album was thematically based on a sonnet written in like 1882 in Wyoming or some such place by an anonymous guy who was about to be hanged for murdering the woman who done him wrong.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Doesn’t it, though?”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming on.”
Niles guzzled some scotch and laughed. “Funny, I think I’m one of a very few people who’s ever heard it. Back when we were friends, Stan White invited me to the studio to hear the master before they turned it over to the record label.”
Jesse was losing his patience. “But . . .”
“The master tape disappeared.”
“It’s been my experience that things don’t just disappear.”
“Okay. Stolen, then. Kind of beside the point, because one way or the other that tape did an Elvis and left the building and it’s never been recovered.”
“I’m no expert, but why not remix the album from the other tapes.”
“There, my friend, is the rub.” Niles took a sip of his drink. “They didn’t remix it because there was only ever just one master tape. They brought the musicians for one day of rehearsals and then recorded the album live on tape, twelve songs straight through over two days. The only editing done was to be the countdowns and the banter between songs. The version I heard still had those things on it.”
Jesse asked, “But why not rerecord it?”
“I guess part of the answer to that is the roster of musicians who played on the album. They were like an all-star who’s-who band of people who were admirers of Jester, people who had rearranged their schedules for this onetime deal. There’s some argument about who was really there, but I’m pretty sure Stephen Stills and Glen Campbell were on guitar, Booker T. on the organ, Leon Russell on piano, Jim Keltner on drums, Charlie Daniels on the fiddle, Earl Scruggs on banjo, and, get this, Paul McCartney on bass. The backup singers were James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Mavis Staples, and Linda Ronstadt. But here’s the best part: None of them has ever admitted to taking part in the sessions. Very mysterious, like they signed nondisclosure forms or something, or ma
ybe none of them has wanted to be associated with a musician’s worst nightmare. Bad karma and mojo.
“But I suppose the better answer is that, unlike the rumors in the sixties, Jester did actually go flip city when the tape walked out the door. He couldn’t bring himself to remake the album, couldn’t even get out of bed. I hear he was catatonic for a spell. When he came out of it, he went into total seclusion, and I do mean total. Greta Garbo had nothing on him. And the lawsuits!” Roscoe threw up his hands. “Everybody was suing everybody else—Jester the recording studio, the record label Jester, Jester the record company. It was a free-for-all.”
“What happened?”
Niles shrugged. “Who knows? History swallowed the details, but I guess some monies exchanged hands eventually, though the suits dragged on for years. In the end, no one came out happier or better for the experience. I do know that Vagabond’s rep was shot and they went belly-up. Every ten years or so, some music journalist or investigative reporter latches on to the story and rides it for what it’s worth. There was a story in the Boston paper yesterday. So, is there anything else I can help you with, Jesse? Not that I don’t love shooting the breeze with you, but I do have to do something here besides bending my elbow.”
Jesse stood and shook Roscoe’s hand. “Thanks for the time. One more thing, Roscoe. How much would that master tape be worth if it ever resurfaced?”
“Several million, at least. You know, there are probably Terry Jester fans out there who run tech companies, people who could drop a few mil without thinking about it.” The DJ let go of Jesse’s hand and hugged him. “Don’t be such a stranger, man. Come down one weekend and we’ll tear it up.”
“Sure, Roscoe,” he lied.
As Jesse moved to the studio door, Roscoe called after him. “Do you miss her?”
“Every day.”
There was nothing else either man needed to say.
20
Eight hundred forty-five thousand dollars! That was the number running through King’s head as he made his way to the meet with the man who had hired him to do the job in Paradise. Eight hundred forty-five thousand dollars, the price of a new Porsche 918 Spyder. He swore he could feel himself harden when he scrolled through photos on the net of the sleek, gunmetal-gray beauty. Still, as much as he loved the car, there was no way he would blow all of his potential windfall on it. Besides, he didn’t much care for paddle shifters. Paddle shifters were for wimps, the kind of guys who spent ninety grand on a ’Vette with an automatic transmission. King was a stick man all the way down to his DNA. You were one with the machine when driving a stick. When he drove on jobs, he always insisted on a stick. But even if the 918 came with a stick, King had other plans for his money. The blondes. He hadn’t forgotten about the blondes. Blondes were way more available than stick shifts or Spyders, blondes of every size and shape and hourly rate.
He downshifted the stolen red-and-white Mini as he got off Route 1 and onto U.S. 93. He’d boosted the Mini from the Walmart parking lot three blocks from the motel. In a few minutes, he’d be at the Whole Foods where the meet was to take place. King had made sure to set up the meet in a public place where he would be protected from ambush, but not one where the exchange of money would be noticed. It was also a store situated at the confluence of U.S. 90 and 93. If he had to split in a hurry, he had lots of options. He could head into Southie on the streets or backpedal to Route 9 if need be. It would make following him or setting a trap nearly impossible. He was proud of himself for that.
On the other hand, he wasn’t particularly proud of keeping Hump out of the loop. True, Hump was as dumb as a bag of hammers, but he was about the only friend King had anymore, and his time inside would have been much worse if Hump didn’t have his back. Dumb as Hump was, he knew the rules of the game. Honor among thieves was a load of crap, and just like in the boxing ring, you had to protect yourself at all times. If Hump had forgotten how it worked, well, that was on him.
King pulled into the lot. He was sure to be ten minutes early so he could check to see if he could spot anything that didn’t fit or seem to belong, but what the hell did he know about fitting or belonging? He’d been inside for so long he always seemed to be out of place. The thought made him self-conscious about his clothes—a pair of ill-fitting secondhand-store jeans, Payless running shoes, a Wham! T-shirt, and an Old Navy hoodie. He took a deep breath, counted to ten, and got out of the car.
Once inside he circled the store, stopping to pull jars and cans off the shelf, pretending to read the labels, dropping some in his handbasket. By the time he got to the produce department, he saw his employer was right where he was told to be, standing by the mangoes and pineapples. King liked mangoes. He loved the way they smelled so sweet and how slippery they were when the pieces slid down his throat. He watched his employer pick up three of the green-and-red fruits, prod them, hold them up to his nose, and put them back.
“They’re best when they’re slightly soft to the touch and when they smell sweet,” King said, walking up behind him. “But they shouldn’t smell too sweet or give too much when you poke them.”
“They teach you that in the prison kitchen?”
“We never got them inside. You got the money?”
“Right here.” His employer patted his jacket pocket.
“Come on, let’s shop a little.”
As they moved out of the produce section, King’s employer said, “Did you find anything?”
“First I’m gonna put my basket down and then you’re gonna drop a can off the shelf. When you bend over to pick it up, drop the money in my basket. Then we’ll talk.”
The employer sighed in disgust. “Who are you, James fucking Bond?”
“Just do it.”
A minute later, there was a thick brown envelope in King’s basket. They strolled some more.
“Here.” King handed a piece of folded white paper over to his employer.
As the man unfolded the paper, he said, “And, Jesus, did you have to kill the old broad?”
“She croaked. We didn’t kill her. Just look at the paper.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s a photocopy of a safety-deposit box key and the account number . . . Well, most of the account number. I took the trouble of blotting a few of the numbers out. Now, are you gonna bitch about the old lady giving up the ghost?”
The employer’s eyes widened. “So what? For all I know, the old lady was keeping her pressed flowers in the box.”
“This has to hold what you’re looking for. Truth is, we almost missed it. Tore the whole damned house apart and I got lucky and looked a second time.”
“Okay, you’ve got your money. Hand it over.”
King snickered and shook his head. “No. What I got in the basket there is a small down payment. Maybe if I didn’t know what was in the box, I would take the envelope and walk away, but the problem is I know and I got a pretty good idea of how much it’s worth to you and how much it’s worth to me.”
“Oh, yeah? And how much is it worth to you?”
“A mill.”
The employer laughed. “Get the fuck outta here.”
“Nice try, boss. The thing is, if it’s worth a lot to you, it’ll be worth just as much to other buyers. Right now, you’ve got exclusive bidding rights. You walk outta this store without making a deal with me and you’re outta the bidding.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re in a box yourself. You’re wanted for murder and assault. You don’t know anyone in the business. You may have the goods, but you’ve got no juice, no contacts.”
“Don’t worry. I got all the contacts I need, and I got the key. The clock’s ticking, boss. Tick tock, tick tock.”
“Fuck you!”
King picked up his basket and walked away. His employer waited a beat to see if King would stop, but he didn’t. He caught up to him in the parking lot.
“Bullshit.”
“I swear.”
“Okay, then, eight hundred forty-five thousand bucks. Not a penny less.”
“What the hell kinda number is that?”
“It’s your magic number and mine. Deal?”
“It’s going to take me a day or two to get it together.”
“Call me tomorrow and we’ll set up the swap.”
King smiled, shoving the envelope with the ten grand into his pants. “Okay. Tomorrow. You try any slick stuff or try to squeeze me and I go find another buyer,” he said, feeling now like he was the boss. “Understood?”
“I know when I’m beat. Call me.”
King got in the Mini and split. He was in too much of a hurry to see his employer clap his hands together and look up to the skies.
21
Hump was going stir-crazy in that motel room. Made sense. Being inside for half his life had trained him to hate confined spaces. But inside you didn’t have a choice about it, so you lived with it. You couldn’t just slide the bars back or swing the cage door open and step out. There were a million rules governing everything you did inside—written and unwritten, official and unofficial, guard rules and prisoner rules. When to talk. When to wake up. When to sleep. When to do everything. Who to look at in the eye. Who your friends could be and who they could never be. Rules enough to choke an elephant.
The fact that he could open the motel door and leave if he wanted to made it all worse somehow. There was something about freedom that gnawed at his gut, always had. He didn’t understand why. Hump had never been good with understanding the why of things. That was the reason he kept finding friends like King, inside and out of prison. Men who understood things and could explain them when he asked. What Hump never needed anybody to explain to him was how he felt, and he felt itchy in there.