He had hair down to his shoulders, although I saw in the subdued yellow light that he was thinning on top. He wore two big earrings in his left ear, gold hoops that were gaudier than what was usually considered fashionable for men.
Where had I seen this guy before?
He laughed at something the woman next to him said, then took a hit off a can of Coke.
That’s when it struck me. I thought how odd it was that someone would be swilling Coke in church. Whoever this guy was, he had a habit of drinking sodas in inappropriate places, like in Judge Alvin Rosenthal’s courtroom during Slim’s preliminary hearing yesterday. He’d been lucky, I knew from my years spent in courtrooms as a reporter, to avoid a contempt citation. You just didn’t behave that way in a courtroom.
Curious, I moved closer to the outer edges of the small group, catching glimpses of the conversation.
“I heard she had a development deal with CBS.…”
a feminine voice said.
“No,” another voice, this one male, said. “It was for a series pilot on TNN.”
“Had she finished the other album?”
“Why did she fire …” That voice trailed off before I could hear the rest. I shuffled around, just listening and watching.
“There’s a slew of people in this town that ain’t sorry she’s gone.” My ears perked up.
“Shhh,” another voice said. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Why not?” the same voice shot back. “It’s the only time you’ve got a chance against ’em.”
“Mac, what do you reckon this is going to cost the record company?”
I turned. The long-haired Coke drinker took a last slug off the can, then turned around and pitched it into a wastebasket next to the stairwell. So that was Ford McKenna Ford.
“Beats me,” he said. “They’re speeding up the release of the new album, but who knows? Sometimes death makes an artist’s career. You think Elvis’d be selling like he does now if he hadn’t crapped out on a toilet seat?”
“Elvis dead?” a guy standing behind Mac said. “Say it ain’t so.…”
Interesting perspective, I thought. From inside the cavernous church, the organist began a serene, somber dirge. A requiem, I thought, for a sweet, now silent voice. As the volume increased people slowly filed into the church. The group over near the stairwell that had been the subject of my eavesdropping splintered as well.
The Coke drinker lingered outside for a moment, talking to a young woman, early twenties tops, to his right. She had hair the color of blue coal, sharply drawn eye makeup, and candy-apple-red lipstick that was thick and bright enough to reflect what little light it could find. Even though he was fairly short, maybe five-six, five-seven, she was even shorter.
I stepped over to them quickly. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing. Are you Mac Ford?”
He glared at me suspiciously. His eyes danced quickly and nervously about and there was something alive in his face that was almost a tic. He seemed wired, agitated.
“Yeah, I’m Mac Ford. What can I do for you?”
I held out my hand, but he didn’t respond. “I’m Harry Denton,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to call your office and set up an appointment. I’m a friend of Slim Gibson’s, and-”
“If you’re a friend of Slim Gibson’s, we ain’t got nothing to talk about.” He turned quickly and took his companion by the arm.
“Wait, just a moment of your time, please,” I said. I reached out and touched his arm. He stopped, stared down at where my fingers had brushed him just above the back of his left elbow.
“I don’t think Slim had anything to do with Rebecca’s death,” I said. “I think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then made a series of terrible decisions after that.”
“That ain’t what the police think,” he said. He spoke quickly, almost maniacally, with an intensity in his voice that made me glad I didn’t have to negotiate a music deal with him. He had a trace of Southern accent in him, but spoke with the cadence and rhythm of a New Yorker.
“The police are wrong,” I said. “I’m a private investigator, and I’ve agreed to help Slim out as much as I can, even though he can’t pay me much, if at all. I’m sure it means more to you than most to find out who actually did this.”
The young woman turned her face up and stared into Ford’s face. Ford looked back down at her and paused for a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “This is my administrative assistant, Alvy Barnes.”
“Hi, Alvy,” I said, smiling at her. To hell with the executives; you want to get anywhere in this world, be nice to the people who work for the executives. “Glad to meet you.”
She nodded and smiled as Ford continued. “Call her this afternoon and set something up for tomorrow morning. I’m leaving town right before lunch. Becca’s funeral is in Waverly tomorrow at one.”
Waverly, Tennessee, is a small town in west Tennessee, near Kentucky Lake and just north of I-40, maybe an hour and a half’s drive away. I remembered from the newspaper articles that Rebecca Gibson had been born there to a mother who worked in the cafe on the square. Her father had been a truck driver, but he disappeared when she was six and neither she nor her mother had ever seen him again.
“Have you got a card on you?” I asked. “I don’t have your office number.”
He dug in the inside pocket of his jacket and retrieved a small gold case. Expensive, I thought, a little overstated but still classy. He handed me the card. MFA, INC. it read, in a bold red script that whipped across the width of the black card with flair and style. Below that:
MAC FORD ASSOCIATES, ARTIST MANAGEMENT.
“I’ll call you as soon as I get back to my office,” I said.
“Right. We’d better get on in there.”
I let them go ahead of me, and then I took a seat near the back. Even though everyone was seated and a speaker had taken the podium, Ford McKenna Ford walked up the aisle with Alvy trailing him and took a seat right up front, dead center. In the pecking order of Rebecca Gibson’s life, I figured I’d do well to remember who was in the first row.
The service lasted just over an hour, and by the time I got back to the parking garage across from my office, the shadows across Seventh Avenue had deepened. The temperature had dropped as well, like a spring cold front that moves in as one last insult from the past winter.
I climbed the ramp again to the top level to check out the car. The windshield repairman had come and gone, and left behind what looked like a decent patch job. He’d even swept up most of the glass around the car, then vacuumed out the broken glass from inside. Not bad for a hundred bucks.
I figured I’d be in my office for a while longer, so decided to move the car down to one of the spots below. I sure as hell didn’t want to run into the brick chucker again after dark. I fumbled with the door lock, then plopped in on the torn cloth seat without thinking.
For one brief, intense moment I danced around and did my vocal imitation of a Subic Bay sailor on shore leave as broken bits of safety glass embedded themselves in my backside. I jumped out of the car, swiping at my pants like I’d sat on hot coals. Then I realized I had ground glass stuck in my palms; long red scratches decorated the insides of my hands.
“Shit! Why do they call this stuff safety glass?”
I keep a box of tissues inside the car for emergencies, and this certainly qualified. I blotted the scratches on my palms until I determined they weren’t going to bleed much anyway. Then I balled up a wad of tissues and dusted the car seat until I couldn’t see anything else glittering. Gingerly, I slid back into the car, then hit the key. As the rotary engine whined to life I put the car in gear and headed down the ramp to a safer place.
This day had well and truly bitten the big one. As I crossed the street, with stray bits of glass still brushing my butt and the backs of my thighs, I wondered what else could go wrong. I jumped a couple of steps into the alcove and nearly mowed down the letter carrier as he stepped out the door.