Denny Ziff burned through his fortune by backing a series of unfortunately written and directed independent films. By 1985, he was living in Taos and painting muddy landscapes. In ’87, he was diagnosed with small-cell carcinoma of the lung that killed him in three months.
Mark Bolt moved to France, bought vineyard land and turned out some decent Bordeaux. Marrying and divorcing four times, he sired twelve children, converted to Buddhism, sold his vineyards and settled in Belize.
Jack Jeffries chased women, nearly lost his life in a helicopter flight over the Alaskan tundra, vowed never to fly again and bunked down in Malibu, overindulging in any corporeal pleasure at hand. In 1995, he donated sperm to a pair of lesbian actresses who wanted a “creative” kid. The match took and one of the actresses gave birth to a son. Jeffries was curious and asked to see the boy, but after the first few visits where Jeffries showed up toasted, the mothers termed him unfit and filed a cease-and-desist. Jack never fought for contact with his son, now a high-achieving high school senior living in Rye, New York. Rug-rats had never been his thing and there was all that music yet to be made.
He slept till three, kept a small staff that pilfered from him regularly, drank and doped and stuffed his face with no eye toward moderation. The residuals had trickled to a hundred G a year but passive income afforded him the house on the beach, cars and motorcycles, a boat docked in Newport Beach that he never used.
From time to time, he sang on other people’s records, gratis. When he performed, it was as a solo act at local benefits and venues that got smaller and smaller. Each year he put on more weight, refused to cut his hair, now white and frizzy, even though every other m.f. had sold out to Corporate Amerika.
He hadn’t been to Nashville since That Time but remembered it as a cool place, but too far to drive. So when the owner of the Songbird Café sent out a mass e-mail requesting participants in a First Amendment concert inveighing against federal snooping in public libraries, he tossed it. Then he retrieved it, read the list of those who’d agreed to attend, and felt crappy about having to say no.
Hemmed in, like maybe the cure was worse than the disease.
Then he happened to bring his guitar for repair into The Chick With the Magic Hands and started talking to her and she made a suggestion and…why not, even though he didn’t have much hope.
Give it a try, maybe it was time to show some cojones.
Two months later, would you believe it, it worked.
Ready to fly.
Good name for a song.
Jack Jeffries, lying dead in a weed-choked, garbage-flecked lot a short walk from the Cumberland River, would be a no-show at the Songbird concert.
Cleared by the M.E., Lamar Van Gundy and Baker Southerby gloved up and went to take a look at the body. The okay didn’t come from an investigator; an actual pathologist had shown up, meaning high priority.
Ditto for the appearance of Lieutenant Shirley Jones, Sergeant Brian Fondebernardi, and a host of media types kept at bay by a small army of uniformed cops. The two local homicide detectives had signed off to the Murder Squad, more than happy to be free of what was looking like the worst combo: publicity and a mystery.
Lieutenant Jones handled the press with her usual charm, promising facts as soon as they were in, and urging the newshounds to clear the scene. After some grumbling, they complied. Jones offered words of encouragement to her detectives, then left. As the morgue drivers hovered in the background, Sergeant Fondebernardi, trim, dark-haired, economical of movement, led the way to the corpse.
The kill-spot was a shadowed wicked place reeking of trash and dogshit. Not really a vacant lot, just a sliver of clumped earth shaded by the remnants of an old cement wall that probably dated to the days when riverboats unloaded their wares.
Jack Jeffries lay on the ground, just feet from the wall, vacant eyes staring up at a charcoal sky. Dawn was an hour away. Cool night, midfifties; Nashville weather could be anything, anytime, but in this range, nothing would weirdly accelerate or slow down decomposition.
Both detectives circled the scene before nearing the body. Each thinking: Dark as sin: a body could walk right by it at night and never know.
Fondebernardi sensed what was on their minds. “Anonymous tip, some guy slurring his words, sounds like a homeless.”
“The bad guy?” said Lamar.
“Anything’s possible, Stretch, but on the tape he sounded pretty shook up- surprised. You’ll listen when you’re finished here.”
Lamar got closer to the body. The man was obese. He kept that to himself.
His partner said, “Looks like he let himself go.”
Sergeant Fondebernardi said, “We’re being judgmental, tonight, Baker? Yeah, aerobics would’ve made him prettier but it wasn’t a coronary that got him.” Flashing that sad, Brooklyn smile, the sergeant leaned in with a flashlight, highlighted the gash on the left side of the victim’s neck.
Lamar studied the wound. All that music. That voice.
Baker kneeled and got right next to the corpse, his partner following suit.
Jack Jeffries wore a blousy, long-sleeved black silk shirt with a mandarin collar. His pants were lightweight black sweats with a red satin stripe running the length of the leg. Black running shoes with red dragons embroidered on the toe. Gucci insignia on the soles. Size 11, EEE.
Jeffries’s belly swelled alarmingly, a pseudo-pregnancy. His left arm was bent upward, palm out, as if caught in the act of waving good-bye. The right hung close to a spreading hip. Jeffries’s long white hair was a droopy corona, some of it floating above a high, surprisingly smooth brow, the rest tickling puffy cheeks. Muttonchops trailed three inches below fleshy ears. A fuzzy moustache as luxuriant as Lamar’s obscured the upper lip. Would have hidden both lips but for the fact that the mouth gaped in death.
Missing teeth, Baker noted. Guy really let himself go. He pulled out his own penlight and got eye to eye with the wound. Two or so inches wide, the edges parting and revealing meat and gristle and tubing. An upwardly sloping cut, ragged at the top, as if the knife had been yanked out hard and caught on something.
He pointed it out to Lamar. “Yeah I saw that. Maybe he struggled, the blade jiggled.”
Baker said, “The way it climbs is making me think the thrust was upward. Could be the stabber was shorter than the vic.” He eyeballed the corpse. “I’d put him at six even, so that doesn’t clear much.”
Fondebernardi said, “His driver’s license says six one.”
“Close enough,” said Baker.
“People lie,” said Lamar.
Baker said, “Lamar’s license says he’s five nine and likes sushi.”
Flat laughter cut through the night. When it subsided, Fondebernardi said, “You’re right about lying. Jeffries claimed his weight to be one ninety.”
“Add sixty, seventy to that,” said Baker. “All that heft, even if he wasn’t in shape, he’d be able to put up some resistance.”
“No defense wounds,” said Fondebernardi. “Check for yourself.”
Neither detective bothered: the sergeant was as thorough as they came.
“At least,” said Lamar, “we don’t have to waste time on an I.D.”
Baker said, “What else was in his pocket besides the license?”
Fondebernardi said, “Just a wallet, morgue guys have it in their van but it’s yours to go through before they book. We’re talking basics: credit cards, all platinum, nine hundred in cash, a Marquis Jet Card, so maybe he flew in privately. That’s the case, we might get a whole bunch of data. Those jet companies can book hotels, drivers, the whole itinerary.”