"You said Julie and Les were getting close. Julie is now dead. If the police start looking around and can't find SaintPierre, what are they going to think? You've got to level with them."
"I told you—I can't just go—"
I got my backpack off the floor and unzipped the side pocket.
It was an old green nylon pack, a holdover from my grad days at Berkeley. It served me well in investigative work. Nobody cares much about grad students with backpacks. Nobody thinks you might be carrying burglar tools or recorders or fat rolls of fiftydollar bills.
I took out Chavez's money and put it on his desk. Then I stood up to leave.
"Thanks for the chat, Milo."
Milo leaned back and pressed his palm to the centre of his forehead, like he was checking for a fever. "All right, Navarre. Sit down."
"You agree?"
"I don't have much choice."
The phone rang. Milo answered it with a "hello" that was mostly growl.
Then his entire disposition changed. The emotion drained out of his voice and his face paled to the colour of caffe latte. He leaned forward into the receiver. "Yes. Yes, absolutely. Oh—no problem. Les, ah— No, no, sir. What if—no, that's fine."
The conversation went on like that for about five minutes. Somewhere in the middle of it I sat back down. I tried not to look at Milo. He sounded like an overwhelmed tenyearold listening to Hank Aaron explain why he couldn't sign the kid's baseball card.
When Milo hung up he stared at the receiver. His fingers wrapped around the wad of money, almost protectively.
"Century Records?" I asked.
He nodded.
"It's getting hard on you."
"I didn't want to run the entire agency, Navarre. We've got seven other artists touring right now. I've got promoters breathing down my neck about deals Les didn't even mention to me. Now Century Records—I don't know how I'm going to hold the deal together when they find out Les is gone."
"So walk away."
Milo seemed to turn the words around in his head. They must have rolled unevenly, like rocks in a tumbler.
"What do you mean?"
"Let the agency collapse if it has to. You've got your law degree. You seem to know what you're doing. What do you need the charades for?"
Milo shook his head. "I need SaintPierre's clout. I can't do it on my own."
"Okay."
"You don't believe me."
I shrugged. "Somebody once told me my problem was thinking too small—that I should just take a chance and throw myself into the kind of work I really liked, the hell with what people said. Of course that advice got me a knife in the chest a week later.
Maybe you don't want to follow it."
Milo's eyes traced a complete circle around the room, like they were following the course of a miniature train. When they refocused on me, his voice was tightly con
trolled, angry. "Are you going to help me or not?"
"The Century Records deal is that important to you?"
Milo made a fist. "You don't get it, do you, Navarre? Right now Miranda Daniels is making about fifteen hundred a gig—that's payment for the whole band, if she's lucky.
She has minimal name recognition in Texas. Suddenly Century Records, one of the biggest Nashville labels, says they're interested enough to offer a developmental deal.
They give her money for a demo, thirty days in the studio, and if they like what comes out of that, she's guaranteed a major contract. That would mean over a million dollars up front. Her price per gig would go up by a factor of ten and my commission would go up with it. Other people in the industry would suddenly take me seriously, not just as Les SaintPierre's stepandfetch it. You have any idea what it's like having somebody dangle that possibility in front of you, and knowing that a jerk like Tilden Sheckly could screw it up?"
I nodded. "So what's our deadline?"
Milo looked down, unclenched the fist, rubbed his hand flat against the desktop.
"Miranda's master demo is due to Century next Friday. I've got that long to get the recording redone and to figure out a way to keep Sheck quiet about this forged contract. Otherwise there's a good chance Century will renege on their offer. Ten days, Navarre. Then, if all goes well, maybe I'll take your advice. I'll ask Miranda to let me represent her and let the rest of the agency go to hell."
There was a knock on the door. Gladys stuck her head in and said that Conwell and the Boys were here for the five minutes Milo had promised them last week. They'd brought a tape.
Milo started to tell Gladys to send them away but then changed his mind. He told her they should come on down.
When she closed the door again Milo said, "Unsolicited demo tapes. I could build a house out of what we've got in the back room, but you never know. I try not to blow people off."
He pushed the money back to me.
"Just ask Gladys for the files on your way out—she'll know what you mean. It's some background material I put together, stuff you would need to know."
"You assumed I would stay on the case."
"Read the files over. And it's about time you met Miranda Daniels. She's playing at the Cactus Cafe in Austin tomorrow night. You know the place?"
I nodded. "Julie Kearnes' death isn't going to make you cancel the gig?"
My comment might as well have been a sneeze for all it registered. "Just come check Miranda out. See what the fuss is about. Then we can talk."
I didn't protest very hard. I dropped the roll of fifties back in my bag and promised to think things over.
When I was at the door Milo said, "Navarre."
I turned.
Milo was staring through me, into the hallway. "It'll be different this time. It's not like—it's not like I feel good about the way things happened back then, okay?"
It was the closest he'd ever come to an apology.
I nodded. "Okay, Milo."
Then Conwell and the Boys were pouring in around me, all grins and new haircuts and coats and ties. Milo Chavez switched moods and started telling the musicians how glad he was they could drop by, how sorry he was that Les SaintPierre was out of town.
I heard the easy laughter of the meeting all my way down the hall.
8
On my way out of the office Gladys gave me a thick gray mailing envelope and told me to have a nice day.
The chances of that happening went down considerably when I got outside and noticed Tilden Sheckly's black truck still in front of the agency. Sheckly himself was across the street, reclining in the passenger seat of my VW bug.
The afternoon was so humid the metal on the cars steamed. With the convertible top up, my VW would be about as comfortable as a pressure cooker. The fact that Sheck had probably been waiting there for a while cheered me up.
I walked around to the driver's side but didn't get in. Sheck was reading a book that I'd left on the floorboard. He'd taken off his Stetson and his denim jacket and set an S & W
revolver on the dash.
"I know the cars look alike," I sympathized. "But yours is the one with the pin stripes."
Sheck smiled up at me from his book, my book.
I knew a kid in third grade who liked to set living things on fire with no warning. One minute you'd be sitting there laughing with him about the latest episode of H. R.
Puffinstuff and the next he'd be holding a match to the shredded newspaper in the class guinea pig cage. His face never changed—small bright eyes like pilot lights, a wide friendly smile that was totally disconnected from his brain. He looked so sweet the teachers tolerated him right up to the day he poured gasoline in a sandbox full of kindergartners and tried to set it ablaze.
Sheck's smile reminded me a lot of that kid.