Settled in her seat, recovered from the effort of climbing up into the bus, Jolie took up the theme again: “Trend isn’t gonna give you sympathetic press, Ray,” she said. “Trend is a lot of smartass New Yorkers; they blow their noses on shitkickers like you.”
“I have my reasons, Jolie,” Ray told her in the deadpan tone of voice that meant it was time to change the subject. He eyeballed her. “Okay?”
“Whatever you say,” Jolie said, miffed. As though he gave a shit.
Now they were all aboard except the girl reporter. The big silver bus with RAY JONES ON THE ROAD in bright red letters on its sides rolled slowly along the winding roads from Ray’s house through the golf course and the condos and the spread-out ranch-style houses to the main gate of Porte Regal and through, then pulled in at the parking lot of Jjeepers! the family restaurant just beyond the guard shack, where Cal had arranged that the girl reporter — Ray couldn’t seem to remember her name — would meet them.
And there she was, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, coming out of the air-conditioned restaurant with her big brown leather shoulder bag bouncing on her hip the instant the heavy bus, elephantine and graceful, eased on down into the parking lot. A good-looking woman, Ray noted, if you wanted somebody who could take dictation, but she didn’t look as though she’d take dictation, if you follow. Ray watched her cross the blacktop toward the bus, saw the intelligence and the eagerness and the professionalism and the big-city veneer, and knew she was going to be perfect.
Cal came down the aisle, like he was supposed to, and was there when the driver opened the bus door for the girl reporter to climb aboard. “Hi, Cal,” she said, springing lithely up the steps. “Thanks again.”
“Oh, sure,” Cal said, and gestured at Ray, saying, “This here’s Ray Jones. Ray, this’s Sara Joslyn, from that New York magazine.”
“H’are ya,” Ray said, and stuck his hand out, and hers was cool and dry and bony. They exchanged strong grips and she said, “I appreciate this, Mr. Jones. I know this is a tough time for you.”
“Our seats are back here,” Cal said, taking her arm, nipping that interview in the bud, and away they went.
That was the point, or part of it. Whatsername — Sara? — was to be permitted to hang around but not to get chummy. Not real access, not to the extent she would ever get the idea she was being set up, since in fact she was being set up. So, for today, she had just this minute been as close to Ray Jones as she was going to get.
The bus coughed and groaned and got itself rolling again, turning left onto 165 south, heading down toward Table Rock Dam to avoid all that traffic mess back up in Branson. Jolie wanted to spend their bus time talking about her latest dealings with Leon “The Prick” Caccatorro, the IRS guy; she was the one negotiating with the son of a bitch. The negotiations were necessary because, as it turned out, Ray had taken some wrong advice here and there, and he’d tuned out once or twice when he really should have been listening, and the way it wound up, all of a sudden he owed the feds so many millions of dollars, they could probably afford another senator or two if they got it all out of him.
Which, naturally, wasn’t going to happen, mostly because he didn’t have that kind of money. Maybe it had passed through his fingers at one time or another, but it was gone. So what was happening now was, like any other mob operation, the government was making itself Ray Jones’s partner. From now on, any dollar he earned, some of it would to go to his agent and some to his manager and some to his lawyer and some to his ex-wife and some would go to the IRS. What was being negotiated now was just what percentage of his income was going to be the feds’ blood money and how long this unwelcome partnership was going to last.
There was a certain amount of pressure on Ray to get these negotiations done and over with, because until they were behind him, he didn’t know what he could afford or even whether or not it would be worthwhile to go on working. But there was also a certain amount of pressure on the IRS, which helped to even things out. The pressure on the IRS was caused by the well-known uncertainties of both life and fame. If Ray Jones were to die, or if the fans were to turn against him (it had happened to others), the government just might find itself reaching for a slice of pie in an empty pie tin; better for them to make their deal while he was still riding relatively high, make their projections from this year’s earnings, not knowing what next year’s earnings might be.
And now, as if all of that weren’t complicated enough, they had this damn murder trial to put up with. For all the IRS knew, they were negotiating with a guy who’d be sniffing the state’s cyanide a year from now, which made Leon “The Prick” Caccatorro quite visibly nervous. Good.
The negotiations were stalled right now, mostly because of the murder trial, but that didn’t keep Jolie from going over every nuance of every word said by every participant at every meeting. Ray himself was staying out of those meetings, so he supposed he should be grateful to Jolie for taking the heat and just giving him the bits and pieces of the thing later, but Jesus! No matter how vitally important this IRS case might be in his life, in truth it was goddamn boring to listen to, and whenever Ray got bored, he eventually got irritated as well, no matter how hard he tried to be good and mature and adult.
This time, he lasted about fifteen minutes, to and through Hollister, the village across Lake Taneycomo from Branson. “Enough, Jolie,” he suddenly said, rising from his seat, stepping forward into the well next to the bus driver, grabbing the microphone from the built-in sound system under the big windshield. Out front, a Ride the Ducks amphibian vehicle full of tourists rolled along amid the campers and station wagons like something in a Road Runner cartoon. Ray gave it a look, waved back at the kids in the rear row of the open-topped amphibian, then turned to face the bus interior, thumbed on the mike, and said, “Everybody awake?”
Moans and groans.
“Good,” Ray said. “Let’s rehearse the new one.”
More moans and groans. Ray leaned back, half-seated on the shelf under the windshield, while the troops unlimbered their instruments. He could see the girl reporter back there next to Cal — damn! lost her name again — all wide-eyed and eager. Sure, let’s give her something to write home about.
Speaking into the mike, Ray called to the new reed man, Jerry, the guy who was taking Bob Golker’s place: “Jerry, you know the IRS song?”
“I been studying it,” Jerry called back. He was a skinny roundheaded guy with glasses, very cerebral; not as much fun as the drunken Bob Golker, but a better musician.
In the front row, next to Honey Franzen, Lennie Elmore leaned over to say, “He’s got it, Ray; he’s a quick study.”
“Okay.” Ray grinned at his people, in his world. “For the benefit of the reporter among us,” he said, wishing he could remember the damn woman’s name,“let me explain the background on this song. I’ve been having a little income-tax trouble lately—”
Jolie snorted.
“—and we’re still talking it over with the government people. Now, sometimes I get my songs out of my own life, and this is one of them. We’re not gonna do this song in public until we’ve cut our deal with the feds, so, little lady, you’re getting a preview here.”