14
Fryer Moog called the bank only to discover that he had bounced thirteen checks. His charge cards, all three hundred of them, were over the limit, and carrying forty percent interest. The cook, chauffeur, and maids had quit. His wife had left him. He looked up at the mantelpiece and noticed that the Grammies, Emmies, and Oscars had been pawned. The living room was a mess, and his nose was bleeding and he didn’t know why. Balls of bloody tissue were everywhere. He felt as though chiggers were crawling over him, and he began to scratch himself, vigorously. He rose from the dirty blankets, where he’d been lying for about a week, and tramped through the boxes of pizza which were crawling with flies. His wet pajamas clung to his skin. He went to the window and stared down at his five cars. The cars weren’t there. They had been repossessed. It almost took him a half hour to reach the bottom of the circular staircase, he was so thin and weak. He went outside to check the mailbox. Bills. The bank was threatening to put his home in foreclosure. But he didn’t care about the bills, his wife, the furniture being repossessed, all he cared about was getting some more coke. He thought for a while. That’s it. He’d make a new album with his meal ticket, Boy Junior. Boy Junior’s albums sold by the millions. And after that they could do a tour. All he’d have to do would be to get Boy Junior’s manager to OK the deal, and he could begin composing the music, which shouldn’t take more than a couple of days to organize.
15
A man was half running toward Nance’s car. He had emerged from the shuttle terminal and was agitated. He kept looking over his shoulder. The man got into his car.
“Where to?” Nance asked the man.
The man gave Nance a Greenwich Village address. “Please hurry.” He was short of breath, and underneath his overcoat Nance could see a pin-striped suit and a striped tie.
“I have to wait for some more passengers, I—” The man shoved a fistful of bills into Nance’s hand. A few more customers like this guy and Big Meat, I can pay down on another limousine and get some guy to work for me, Nance thought.
When they arrived at the Greenwich Village address, the man started to get out of the car, when they both noticed another man, or rather a creature, standing across the street, his muscles bulging under an overcoat. He was built like Arnold Schwarzenneger, and had Mike Tyson’s thick neck. He started for the limousine. “Lock the door,” Nance’s passenger said. The creature moved across the street as if in slow motion, and when he reached the car he began to bang on the windows. To Nance, he looked as though he were dressed for Halloween. He wore one of those horned Viking helmets over blond hair tied in pigtails. His mustache and beard were also blond. He was bare down to his waist. His middle was covered with what appeared to be bear skin. He wore boots tied in a zigzag pattern.
“We got to get out of here,” the man said.
“Holy shit,” Nance said. He started up the engine and began to move, but the Hercules merely grabbed hold of the car’s rear. Nance accelerated the machine, but it wouldn’t move, its wheels spun. Finally, the creature fell back and Nance sent the car spinning around the corner. The creature began running toward them, but soon disappeared from sight.
“Hey,” Nance finally said. “I know you. I saw your photo in the newspaper. You’re Bob Krantz, advisor to President Jesse Hatch, you said that blacks couldn’t accept Victorian values because their genes were bad.” Nance stopped the car. “Get the fuck out of my car. And I don’t want your money.”
“But, but. They’ll kill me. I don’t have anywhere to go.” There was no time for conversation, because heading toward them was the creature, Joe Beowulf, driving a red Triumph. Nance swerved out of the way and headed uptown, tearing through traffic.
“What do we do now?”
“That’s your problem, buddy, I don’t want to get mixed up in this jam you’ve gotten yourself into.” Bob Krantz put a thousand-dollar bill into the tray that was built into the window separating the back and the front seats. Nance took a long take of the money.
“I’ll put you up in my place until we can lose this guy.” They drove uptown, and Nance, who knew Manhattan like a spider knows his web, finally lost the creature.
16
Big Mike and the boys were sitting around, playing cards in the back room of Acme Records. The walls in the lobby were covered with gold records their artists had won. They were talking about how some of the younger members of the “organization” didn’t have “no” respect, and how one of them had come up to Big Mike and called him by that name, the name that had been reserved for only some of his “executives.” “I tried to keep him in the lobby, boss, but the guy pushed me out of the way,” Mike’s “secretary” said. “It’s OK,” Big Mike said, chewing on a cigar stub and not lifting his head from the cards. When the other fellas saw that Mike wasn’t bothered, they and the secretary put away their “toys.”
“What’s on your mind, Moog?” Mike said.
“You got a lotta nerve busting in here like this,” one of Mike’s assistants said. Mike looked over at the assistant, who was furious, and calmed him with his eyes. He then focused on Moog, and Moog could tell that he was annoyed, but Moog didn’t care. He was standing there scratching himself; he smelled as though his clothes had been cleaned by cheap chemicals.
“Mike, I’ll come to the point, I … I need some cash. I thought we’d get Boy Junior to make another album, you know, like the last one, we sold thirty million copies. Mike. Man, these people are threatening to put a foreclosure on my house, and I …” Moog nodded for a moment, shut his eyes. He began to reel. And scratch himself. He then awoke. “Mike, O shit, I forgot what I came up here for.” The guys who were sitting with Mike, playing a hand of cards, began to look at each other and smile.
“You were saying that you needed some cash. What the fuck do you want me to do, spade?”
“Motherfucker, I’m the one who brought Boy Junior up here. Man, I was the one who sold him to you. Shit, you’ve made millions of dollars off of his ass.” Moog was screaming. The shit was all in his bloodstream and brain cells, and he felt bold and confident.
“But what about the money you owe me?”
“Get lost nigger, you’ve been coming up here for three weeks asking me the same thing.” Moog thought for a minute.
“I have?” The men laughed. The laughter was derisive, mocking.
“Well, pay me then.”
“Fuck you, Moog. You snorted and free based all of your profits.”
“But, but you said that the shit, and the pills, and the dope, and all — you said — I thought you were giving me that shit to get me to … to do my arrangements better.” The men laughed again.
“You said you didn’t want cash, you wanted cowboy. That’s what you said, didn’t he, boys?” Mike said. The men nodded, and laughed again.
“You got a lot of nerve calling yourself a composer. Every musician in Hollywood has got a plagiarism suit against you for stealing their shit,” Mike said, turning serious for a moment.
“Those people are just jealous. Jealous of my genius. Look, Big Mike, you’re managing Boy Junior. Get him to come down from that multimillion-dollar tree house and record another record. I should be finished with the songs tomorrow if I work all night, and I can get what’s-his-name to throw together some of that hooker choreography and we’ll go in and do a video and, before you know it—”