by Bill Moody
I keep a couple of cars between Emerson and myself. They both turn off just before Sepulveda. By the time I turn the corner, they’re both getting out of their cars and walking into a brightly lit coffee shop.
Traffic is heavy so I drive past, turn around at the next corner, and drive back. Parking opposite the coffee shop, I watch them take seats near the window. Neither of them touches their coffee.
Carlton sits quietly, obviously listening to Emerson, who as usual is talking animatedly with his hands. This goes on for nearly ten minutes before Emerson gets up, looks down at Carlton, then heads for the door.
I slide down in my seat and watch him come out. He’s agitated. He glares at the traffic, gets in his car, and races off back toward Ventura Boulevard.
Carlton, I can see, walks to the register and pays the check. Well, he got the best deal tonight. He comes out, calmly gets in his car, and prudently merges with traffic. He’s headed home. I don’t even have to check Gemini’s parking lot to know Emerson’s gone back to rejoin his party.
I sit there a few minutes watching the traffic go by, feeling as confused as I did when I saw Megan Charles and Bo Harris together at the Frontier in Las Vegas. I can’t make anything of either incident.
Emerson obviously wanted to know what I was doing with Carlton, what I wanted. But if that was all, why the secret meeting? Was he concerned about my seeing the books or was Carlton telling him about it? Maybe I’m getting too close.
I sigh and start the engine, remembering a time when the only thing I worried about was whether or not the piano was tuned and all the keys worked.
Thirty minutes later I’m back at my apartment. Still no sign of Cindy’s car, but Coop and Dixon are out of theirs before I can turn off my lights.
“Enjoying the Southern California nightlife?” Coop says. His tone is different and there’s something in the way Dixon hangs back. All I can think about is something has happened to Cindy or somehow they’ve made a match on the typewriter and I’m under arrest.
“Want to take a ride with us,” Coop says. It’s not a question.
“What’s the matter?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” Coop says. “Get in.”
They both ignore me during the drive back to Santa Monica. When we pull into the parking lot at the rear of Santa Monica Hospital I get even more worried.
“Let’s go,” Coop says, getting out of the car. “Got something I want to show you.”
I’m sure it’s Cindy. Is she lying inside with tubes in her nose, bandages on her face? I chastise myself for involving her, but if it’s the hospital, it’s not too late. She’ll be okay, I tell myself.
With Dixon in the lead, we go in the emergency entrance, through a maze of hallways to an elevator. Wordlessly, we all get in. Dixon presses the down button. The doors hiss shut, and when they open again we’re facing a door labeled MORGUE. I swallow and wait for Coop’s cue.
“Now you’re going to see what you’re really into,” Coop says as he pushes through the door. It’s a cold, spare room with strip lighting. A white-coated attendant emerges from a corner office when he sees us. He walks over to a table with a lifeless form covered in a sheet. He nods at Coop.
Coop pulls off the cover and I’m staring at the body of someone I’ve just seen that afternoon—Elvin Case.
Coop matter-of-factly turns Elvin’s head to the left so I can see the two small holes behind his ear. “You know this guy?” Coop says.
I back up a couple of steps, aware of a sharp intake of breath, the coldness of the room, Coop, Dixon, the attendant all looking at me. My mind is flooded with relief that it’s not Cindy lying there and revulsion at the lifeless expression on Elvin’s face.
“What?”
“He said, do you know this dude?” Dixon says. He’s watching me closely.
“Yeah, yeah, Elvin, his name is Elvin Case, but how—”
Coop nods at the attendant. He re-covers Elvin and wheels him away. All I can think of is I know nothing about Elvin Case. Friends, relatives, girlfriend, who’s going to claim the body.
Coop nudges me toward the door. We get back in the elevator, go up a couple of floors to the hospital cafeteria. Coop points to an empty table and he and I sit down while Dixon goes for coffee. There’s a buzz of quiet conversation. It’s crowded with doctors, nurses, the odd group of visitors, and that universal hospital smell that’s always turned me off.
When I light a cigarette my hand is shaking. I inhale deeply and just look at Coop for a minute, acutely aware of the gap between us now. I think about the way he casually rolled Elvin’s head to the side. Danny Cooper is a cop, homicide, detective lieutenant. I’m a piano player. I get his point. Now I really know what I’m into.
He takes something out of his pocket and lays it on the table in front of me. It’s my card, the one I gave to Elvin with my phone number on it.
“We found this in his pocket. It’s your home number, I believe,” Coop says. He leans back in his chair, digs out a cigar, and lights up. “I’d like to hear about this, please. Who the fuck is Elvin Case?”
Dixon returns with coffee for all of us. “There’s nothing to hear,” I say. “He works—worked in the music business. We met, we talked, he left. When did this happen?”
“Sometime earlier this evening,” Dixon says, as if he knows Coop is not going to respond. “His body was discovered on the beach near Santa Monica Pier. No wallet, no identification. Just your card in his coat pocket.”
“Yeah,” Coop says, “face down in the sand, two neat holes in the back of the head, marks on his wrists where he was either handcuffed or tied up. Two or three guys probably, to do it right. A pro job.”
Dixon nods. “Semipro,” he says. He’s taken out his notebook. “You say his name was Elvin Case?”
“Yeah, but that’s about all I know about him except he worked in the record business and he’s doing some promoting, managing a group now maybe,” I say, remembering the two musicians I’d seen with Elvin.
I drink some coffee. My hand is still shaking. Coop and Dixon haven’t touched theirs.
“And what was your reason for meeting with him?” Dixon asks while he continues to write in his notebook.
Coop, I’m aware, is watching me, waiting for my answer. This is how they do it, I realize. Dixon asks the questions. Coop can study me, gauge my reactions, expression, who knows what else.
“I was just getting some background on the record business, sales, royalties, that kind of thing. I was told Elvin was an expert.”
“By whom?”
“A friend, a bass player.” When I stop, they both look at me expectantly. “Okay, his name is Buster Browne.” Coop looks at me sharply, as if I’m putting him on. “Hey, that’s his name.”
“And where might we find this Buster Browne? Living in a shoe?” Coop asks me.
Dixon stifles a smile. “Cat is good,” he says. “I heard him at Dontes with Teddy Edwards.”
Coop gives Dixon a who-cares look
“Well, he was playing in Vegas with Charlie Crisp, Frontier Hotel.”
“Charlie Crisp?” Coop says. He looks thoughtfully at the ceiling, blows a cloud of smoke aloft, and smiles. “Isn’t it interesting how all these people kind of interconnect?”
“Really quite astonishing,” Dixon says, picking up Coop’s tone. He puts away his notebook and looks at his watch. I look at mine too. It’s nearly ten.
“Was he wearing a watch?” I ask.
“Who, Elvin?”
“Yeah, he showed it to me. It had an inscription on the back, from a singer he produced.”
Coop glances at Dixon, who shrugs. “No watch. What did it say?”
When I tell them, even Coop is impressed by the name of the singer. Dixon takes out his notebook again and writes down the name.
We talk a few more minutes, but they decide I have nothing further to offer. When they drop me off at my place, neither of them gets out of the car. “We’ll be talking to you,” Coop says
. “Does the term material witness mean anything to you?”
I watch them drive away and think about Elvin Case’s last words.
“It can get rough,” he’d said.
The Tape Factory is in Inglewood, just off Century Boulevard. In the seventies, it had been the lair of a big-time rock star. After serving time for various drug-related incidents he still turns up on the talk shows, rehashing his life in the music business, his rehabilitation, how he’d built the Tape Factory, and endless stories about what went on there.
I’d recorded here several times. The two one hundred thousand dollar soundboards, state-of-the-art IBM mix-memorizers, and digital delay system were all still there, as were the reinforced steel doors. Inside, the master production room looks like something from NASA’s mission control, with banks of video screens, heavy security.
When Mr. Rock Star went to jail, it had been auctioned off by the IRS to a record company for back taxes, renamed the Tape Factory, and was now leased out to anyone who could afford studio time fees. The upstairs rooms, once fitted with mirrored ceilings, waterbeds, and electronic gadgets, the site of drug deals and videotaped sex orgies, now were offices, but the legendary parties were still talked about.
A bored security guard watching a small TV checks my name on a list and directs me to one of the mixing studios. Eric Hartman and another technician are hard at work, listening, manipulating the controls on the soundboard.
For this music—adult contemporary, pop, whatever you want to call it—the engineers are the true artists. They can make anyone sound good. Tonight it’s a girl singer with a powerful voice, but everything is at peak volume.
Eric looks up when I come in and waves. “Be with you in a minute,” he says. His voice is almost inaudible over the playback monitor. He’s slumped in an office chair, his long frame spilling out, his hands folded across his lap. The black frame glasses have slid down his prominent nose.
There are empty coffee cups, full ashtrays, and fast-food containers scattered about the control room. Through the glass that separates the studio and control room I can see a maze of cables and music stands and a lone guitarist packing up equipment.
“Bump the bass channel,” Eric says to the technician, a young kid in his early twenties with long hair and a T-shirt with the logo of a rock group on the front.
“Add some treble to the voice,” Eric says.
The kid glances at me, rewinds the tape, and we all listen to the singer superimposed over a sizable backup band complete with voices and a brass arrangement. All of it sounds over arranged, overwritten, but six months from now it will certainly make the Top Forty charts.
“Okay, let’s lock this one,” Eric says, satisfied with the results. The kid rewinds the tape again, takes it off the spindle, and puts it in a box. He writes the date on it with a marker pen, nods to me, and leaves.
“So, my friend, how can I help you?” Eric says, turning to me. He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, and digs for a cigarette. “What shit,” he says. “What happened to music?”
“Progress, Eric, progress. How many takes on that tune?”
Eric smiles. “Would you believe seventeen?”
When the same song is played seventeen times in succession, there’s little spontaneity left. With few exceptions, jazz recordings will rarely go more than two or three takes. The feel is paramount in jazz, and that’s why most groups you hear in clubs or concerts sound exactly like their recordings.
I take out the cassette I’ve brought along. “Can you listen to this?”
He takes the cassette from me, puts it in one of the recorders, and presses the play button, He listens for a moment to the voice, frowns at the quality. “This is your answering machine tape?”
I nod yes. He takes a fresh reel of quarter-inch tape, threads it onto the bigger machine, and copies my cassette onto a reel-to-reel player. He rewinds both, ejects my cassette, and tosses it to me.
“This will be better,” he says as he presses the play button. The voice booms out of the playback speakers and sounds even more menacing. Eric makes a few adjustments for clarity and we both listen. It still sounds like Darth Vader. He hits the stop button and stares at the machine for a moment.
“There are a couple of computer programs,” Eric says. “You hook up your computer to a recorder and it filters your voice, anyone’s voice, to sound like that or virtually any way you like. There’s another, cheaper program with a menu that probably offers Darth Vader. Some people like to put them on the answering machine tapes for laughs.” Eric shrugs and looks at me thoughtfully. “Someone playing jokes on you?”
“Maybe,” I say. “There’s no way to unscramble that, is there?”
“You mean reverse the effect to the real voice?” Eric shakes his head. “No, it’s really kind of primitive, a kid’s program. You don’t know who it is?”
“No.”
“Well,” Eric says, “sorry I can’t be more help. When am I going to see you in here recording again?” Eric had been the engineer on one of the first dates I’d done. He stubs out his cigarette.
I look at my hand, flex the fingers, remember I’ve left the new rubber ball Cindy gave me at home. Maybe I’m outgrowing it. “I wish I knew, Eric.” I get up to go, disappointed there’s not more. “Oh, one other thing. Do you know a guy named Elvin Case, record company type?”
Eric thinks a moment. “Name rings a bell, but I can’t really place him. Is that him on this tape?”
“No, I don’t think so. Elvin never did any recording.”
It’s almost midnight when I get home. Cindy’s car is in the carport and there’s a light on, but I decide not to bother her. I grab a beer and put on a Bill Evans record, one of the old live recordings from the Village Vanguard. I sit on the couch for a few minutes, listening to Evans glide effortlessly through a set of standards.
I look at my own piano. I haven’t touched it in weeks. I sit down and play some chords with my left hand, mimicking Evans’s voicings. I make a few tentative runs with my right hand but it’s like the hand of a different person. Once strong, my fingers just won’t cooperate. There’s no control and my hand begins to ache almost immediately. I ball my left hand into a fist and pound the keyboard. The dissonance rings throughout the apartment as the Evans record finishes to applause.
In my mind, I keep seeing Elvin Case lying on a table in the hospital morgue. I suddenly go to the phone and call the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. I check my watch as the number rings. There’s still time. Somebody picks up the backstage phone and I ask for Buster Browne.
“Wait a minute, I’ll get him,” a voice tells me.
Buster comes on a couple of minutes later. “Yeah?”
“Buster, it’s Evan.”
“What’s up, man? We’re about to go on.” I imagine the scene backstage. Musicians milling around, the comic nervously waiting in the wings. Almost show time.
“How’s it going?”
“Hey, what can I tell you? It’s country. Good charts, though.” He waits a moment for me to say something more.
“Buster, Elvin Case is dead.”
There’s a moment of silence before Buster answers. “Whatta you mean?”
“He was shot. They found him at the beach.”
“Jesus!”
“Listen, Buster, watch your back, huh?”
“Man, what kind of shit are you into?”
“I’ll talk to you when you get back. Give me a call.”
“Yeah, right. Listen, I gotta go, man.”
I hang up wondering if I’ve done the right thing when there’s a soft knock at the door. Cindy is standing there in a terry-cloth robe, arms folded, fresh from the shower and still smelling of soap.
“Evan, are you all right? I thought I heard your piano,” she says. Her face is full of concern.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry, did I wake you up?”
She shakes her head. “No, I was kind of waiting up for you. Why don’t you come over?”
> I hesitate for a moment, then turn off the stereo, lock up my place, and follow her out. We go into the bedroom. I stretch out on her bed. She hands me a glass of wine and watches me closely.
“Evan?” She climbs on the bed and begins to unbutton my shirt.
Sex with Cindy is always kind of an athletic affair, but tonight she’s slow, almost careful. She takes the wineglass out of my hand, sets it on the nightstand. She turns me over, unties her robe, and begins to massage my neck and shoulders. I feel her breasts brush against my back as she straddles me. “Stay here tonight, Evan.”
I close my eyes and let myself sink into the bed. When I turn over again, Cindy is hovering over me. I lose myself and block out everything, almost even Elvin Case lying on a cold table.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It’s just after eight-thirty. I’m getting out of the shower when the phone rings. I’ve left Cindy again. If this keeps up I should just move in with her. Still wrapped in a towel, I grab the phone.
“Mr. Evan Horne, please.” The voice is female, very pleasant, very efficient.
“Speaking.”
“This is Pacific Records, Mr. Horne. I have a call for you from Mr. Rick Markham. Can you hold, please?”
“Yeah, sure.” I don’t know him personally, but Rick Markham is one of the stars in the Los Angeles record business. The newest West Coast whiz kid, Markham holds a Harvard M.B.A. and, according to several profiles I’ve read in the trade papers and Los Angeles magazine, has a shrewd business mind. Markham had taken over a sinking Pacific Records, made some new stars, stolen some old ones from other labels, and turned the floundering company into a major player.
I have no idea what he wants with me.
“Mr. Horne? Rick Markham. I wonder if we might meet this morning.” His voice is crisp, modulated. I imagine he’s got a couple of other calls on hold and is probably glancing at memos as we talk.
