Show Business Is Murder Page 10

  He howled like a wounded dog, “It’s in perfect tune now, don’t spoil it!”

  “A stranger and the bastard’s ordering me around! They’re all the same,” she thought.

  She sighed and glanced at the huge round clock hanging near the stairs. Jeez, nearly twelve, and she hadn’t come up with a good name yet. She’d wanted to get acquainted with her new name, live in its skin for a while, own that name before moving her act to a spot at street level she’d found near the Grand Central double doors on 42nd. Nobody there yet; she’d checked it out for several days. So in her mind it was already hers. But not Hermione Listenberger’s, it was . . . she didn’t know who yet.

  She glanced again at the intruder. Not even one friggin’ dollar in his hand to throw into her open guitar case that she’d seeded with a few crumpled bills as a hint to the listeners. She had a pretty steady following down here, made enough to keep her in juice and toothpaste, but was still sleeping in a secretly hollowed out refuge between some boulders in Central Park. She wanted, needed, more money. She faced him squarely, hating the creep not only for his intrusion, but for his cheapness too.

  “What!”

  Unfazed, he said, “We should join up.”

  As her head automatically began shaking side to side, he started singing her song, her song . . . “Leave me now, I’ve moved on anyhow . . .”

  “Hey!” she roared.

  “It’s a great song! What’s the rest of it?”

  “Right, so you can steal the whole thing!”

  “No, no, you misunderstand! I’m a singer too!”

  “I work alone!”

  He said with careful patience, “Just sing it with me and listen. I can counterpoint you. We’ll do fantastic. It’s really good, you realize that?”

  “I work alone!”

  “It’s got elements of jazz and blues intermingled, and with us both—”

  God, they never even hear me speak. It’s like having breasts renders me insignificant. “Damn you to hell.”

  He shrugged, obviously unimpressed with her hostility. “Okay. Um, do ‘Baby Jones’ instead.”

  She thought a minute. It was already a favorite of the “underground entertainers,” so no big deal. And if it would make him disappear faster . . . grudgingly she started. As promised, he leaped in, his voice alternating between falsetto and baritone, curling around hers. They sounded good. Great, in fact. Several people threw dollar bills and coins into her case. Some stood in rapt attention, wanting the whole song before moving on.

  She had to admit when they finished, although her guts revolted, that he was an asset. She scooped up the bills, ignoring the coins, and split the take with him. He squatted and dipped into the coins. “All adds up,” he grinned at her, holding up a fistful of quarters and dimes, roughly half; he didn’t cheat.

  Standing again, he towered over her by at least a foot, rail-thin but not wasted. If he had a monkey, it wasn’t hurting his body or mind yet, at least visibly. He was blond, the bleached kind, with dark roots on a short but shaggy head. Doable.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, reminding her of her goal for the morning.

  “What’s yours,” she countered, angry again. Damn him. Sure, money was good, but the right name would improve her future quicker. He’d slowed down her professional growth.

  “Sody,” he said. “Garrett.”

  Sody Garrett. Original, but not worth stealing, so he could keep it. With a resigned sigh she started strumming random chords again.

  “Hey. I asked you your name.”

  “So?” She shrugged, again shifting slightly to face a new direction. A direction in which he wasn’t the center of her line of vision.

  “You come here every day?” he asked.

  Not any more, she said silently. “Oh, yeah!” she replied, her smile almost too quick to catch. Polite, but not exerting herself. He wouldn’t knife her. She knew what he wanted, and it had nothing to do with harming her. Another talent leech.

  Sure enough. “I’ll meet you here tomorrow, but earlier. I play bass guitar. Perfect with your tenor. Acoustics fab down here, the steel strings work perfect without amps. Smart!” She nodded. Duh. Why else would she replace nylon strings with steel. She returned to her immediate task, in her mind running through the names of all the movie stars she could think of. Willing him to disappear.

  She started silently reciting a list of her high school classmates’ names. The popular ones.

  “Don’t forget,” he added anxiously, interrupting her musings.

  She raked one hand through her hair in frustration. “You bet. Tomorrow!” Just leave, you maggot. Briefly she considered the name “maggot.” No. Wrong image.

  She considered image. What image did she want to convey? Costuming came after picking a name, but both were totally related to the issue of image. Folk song shtick? She shook her head. Her stuff was more hard-edged but yet had a ballad structure. Deep in rumination she never noticed when Sody left. Besides, folksongs had died out in the seventies and RIP. Pop ballads. She did those sometimes, earned her big bills in the 42nd and Broadway area. All the Midwest tourists loved elevator music. She grimaced. Not ever.

  She loved alternative, but couldn’t do it well alone, on one guitar. Maybe with a synthesizer, but she couldn’t play one if she had it, and she didn’t have it. Hip hop wasn’t her, either. Okay. Time to play again, the foot traffic had sped up, tired of her random chords.

  “Leave me alone, or take me with you, I’m the woman you wanted all your life. Not a wife. Not a child, not a ruby on a pillow, a womaaaaan . . .” They loved her songs. Edgy. Janis Joplin-ish . . . keep that in mind, she admonished herself. She could do worse for style.

  Angrily she thought of Sody Garrett. Jesus, what a name. She ran through random names, still singing, but on autopilot. Auto. Ata. Atai. Alai. Alianna. Lianna. Well, think about that one.

  She showed up the next day, having totally forgotten Sody Garrett’s existence. She had her new name. Lian Logan. Since it had come to her late in the night, she’d decided to devote one more day at the familiar West 50th Street stop to “live” the name before moving to Grand Central. She wasn’t Irish, but the Irish were famous for singing and writing and entertaining. Better than Listenberger. A Listenberger sounded like a manufacturer of pharmaceuticals. At best.

  She considered picking up a slight Irish brogue. Clearing her throat she began, “Aye, ’tis so, me lad.” Ick. She debated different ways to pick up a true Irish voice. Movies—too expensive. And what VCR would she use to play a video, even if she could pop for the three-dollar rental fee? Sometimes she stood and watched entire programs at the Wiz before being chased off. But some of those actors couldn’t handle the brogue either without sounding like fake mish-mash. She put the thought aside for now.

  The answer would come to her, like all the other answers. Luck shimmered in the air around her, it always had. She felt it. Ideas and songs—the assurance that all would come to her swam invisibly around her, nudging her in the right directions, bringing her whatever she needed. It was all there.

  She started to strum, nudged her open case lid with one slender foot, moving the heavy molded-plastic case into the edges of the path of the crowd, not an obstacle, just a hint. Two crumpled dollar bills there already, her seed money. And then Sody walked up to her, shocking her into remembrance of yesterday’s intrusion. She groaned to herself, wishing she’d gone to Grand Central after all.

  On one thigh, he humped his big bass guitar in a black case. Duct tape patched several splits in the cheap cardboard, holding it together. It barely covered his guitar. She grimaced. You had to protect your instrument. His looked like he kicked it around on off days.

  He greeted her with excitement. “Fantastic!” he exclaimed, not specifying just what was so fantastic. She lifted the edges of her mouth in a parody of welcome. And began to sing. An old tune, from Abba.

  On the second stanza, he joined in, tuning his guitar as he strummed, swiftly cat
ching up. She rolled from one style into another, one tempo into another. She couldn’t faze him. They had to scoop up some of the money now and then and shove it out of sight, her case filled so fast. Never want the crowds to think you didn’t need their dollars. After the third hour, suddenly she stopped, drained and unable to sing another note. He let his cords drift off into the tunnel and gazed fondly down at her. “Thought you’d never wear out. I been playin’ on adrenalin the last hour. But we are so fuckin’ good!”

  “My name’s Lian Logan,” she said, trying it on him out loud. Her first foray into the great world of Irish balladeers.

  “Yeah? Nice to meet you, Lian,” he said, not looking at her. He was busy pulling out the dollars they’d hidden to dump them into her case. He crouched, then began making two meticulously neat piles. She watched, but he did the chore fair and honest.

  He stretched as he stood. “Jeez, never did a three-hour gig straight through. I’m wrecked. How about you?”

  She was, too, but ignored the question. “Listen, I play alone.”

  “Oh, c’mon! You never made that much money by yourself, don’t tell me that.”

  She bristled. It was true. “I’m a lone act.”

  “Lian. Am I hustling you? Am I taking a bigger share, or all of it? And I could, a bitty thing like you, I’m twice your size. Don’t you hear how great we sound together? We—we complement each other.”

  Lian scowled down at her case, now tenderly cradling her Gibson in its felt-lined bed, locked for safety. She swung the case up across her shoulders and back, the woven strap tight between her breasts.

  “Tomorrow,” he begged. “Just let me come tomorrow.”

  She looked off down the rails as if seeking the answer written in graffiti there. Feeling her success vibes, testing the idea on her surrounding luck. She stood motionless, waiting. Then, one last glance up at his pleading, handsome face, feeling the extra dollars in her pockets. “Ok. Tomorrow. Eleven.” And she strode off toward the stairs to the streets above, melding into the crowd but alone in her thoughts.

  The next day brought Sody and Lian together again, same place. Without consultation, she, leading off again, struck strongly into some vintage Dylan. He slammed into her path and, grinning, stayed with her all the way in a harmonic third, doing a fantastic job of it, too, she admitted grudgingly to herself. Then a bit of alternative that she’d picked up last week, not the whole song, but a change of pace and mood. Sody handled it well. Tall, slender, his blonde tipped hair shagged just right, he looked like a movie star. She thought about that as she watched him play. Talented, yes. And bringing in cash like a six-foot-tall ATM machine. She gazed off again down the empty track.

  Maybe this was right for her at this stage of her career path. Maybe he’d been “sent” by those lucky airs that carried her to her golden goals. Suddenly she muted her voice, in effect offering him the lead. After a fleeting lift of eyebrows in surprise, he took off, letting her follow, making the decisions and taking the melody. He was excellent, she admitted. And he hadn’t followed her home yesterday, so maybe he wasn’t a creep. Finally, she nodded to herself and accepted him. This time at the end, she divided up the take and when handing over his share, looked up into his happy face and let herself really smile. “Welcome, Sody.”

  He heaved a deep sigh. “Thanks, Lian. You had me worried.”

  She shook her head as she wound the strap from her case around herself again. “Never worry, Sody. Bad for luck. See you tomorrow.”

  He lunged quickly into her path. “Want some dinner?”

  She shut her eyes for a moment and silently cursed. Had she made a mistake after all? “No,” she said shortly, then left.

  The next day she and Sody were again at their post at the subway stop when a short dark young man stepped off the arriving train and walked directly toward them, the familiar stars in his determined eyes. Without pausing in her song, Lian screamed inwardly at her fate, enraged all over again. Was her life being wrenched from her control? Had she proven unworthy of her luck and had it abandoned her?

  “Been hearing about you two topside, on the street. Needing a keyboard?” he asked, and Lian gasped, forgetting her lyrics. Her hands dropped useless at her sides.

  Sody let his bass chords die. He gazed coolly down at the short intruder and said, “You got one?”

  Lian glanced at Sody. Normally she’d be furious at him for acting as leader, but now it didn’t matter. Now she only strained to hear a distant voice come floating to her from down the presently empty track, telling her what to do.

  The stranger was around five seven, a few inches taller than Lian, but his muscles strained his black jeans and tee nearly to bursting. A no-style no-neck, marveled Lian. Hadn’t shaved for days, by the look of him, and not recently bathed by the smell, either. His dark hair, though, curved clean and smooth, the ruffled edges just hitting his shoulders, but unmarred by any purple or green dye, shit that Lian hated. He also lacked the endless body piercing Lian considered childish, although tattoos could make a statement—so long as the statement wasn’t that you’d been somebody’s “partner” in prison or membership in a drug gang. Losers, that lot.

  She considered her last thought. Sounded a bit Irish. Excitement shivered through her for an instant. The lilt was coming. And to help it, this chunk of powerful Irish male had arrived. Again she threw her question down the tracks, asking her luck what to do with this keyboarder with muscles and the genuine brogue she’d longed to learn. No sign came. Or was the answer standing in front of her in the form of this new musician . . .

  Just then Sody turned to her and said, “Let’s give him a try, okay? If he sucks, I’ll throw him back on the train.” The young man glowered at that, as if his maleness had been challenged. Lian shrugged coolly, feeling anything but cool inside.

  “Eleven tomorrow,” she agreed. “Make an impression or Sody will help you fuck off.”

  The young man looked her over with black eyes melting into black liquid. “Him? Small chance. Bugger you, more likely!”

  She listened to this, lips parted and breathless. His voice slid like cream into her ears!

  “What’s your name?” she demanded.

  “Joseph Francis Urban O’Rourke, then. Joe. And you?”

  “Lian Logan,” she said and his gaze changed. She saw the shrewdness in his lightning assessment of her. She knew he’d seen through her and out the other side. He knew it all. Her fake Irishness, her ambition, her dreams. Maybe even her luck. His eyes glittered but with a powerful maleness that Sody could never have summoned, despite his height. Lian doubted Sody would ever be able to throw this one onto a train. Or anywhere.

  “Keyboard.” She repeated stiffly, as if considering, and felt heat rise in her face.

  She looked around for an electrical plug. As if he read her mind, he said, “I bring my own re-charge battery pack, if I need it, an’ I usually do. Not a problem. Why ye got to sing b’neath God’s good earth, though?” He looked around uneasily. “What’s wrong with the open air?”

  Lian’s face hardened. “Not negotiable.”

  “Tomorrow then.” They all nodded to each other and O’Rourke jumped down onto the track, and strolled along the narrow ledge where the trainmen usually walked to get to a needed repair down the line. Lian shivered to watch his carelessness of the massive trains and wondered if this was a stupid male display to impress her. It did.

  In the coming days, O’Rourke became an asset, as Lian had guessed he would, since her luck must have summoned him to her. He seemed to live in an aura of confidence. He didn’t know as many songs as Sody, but he could plug in spots as he caught on to the progression of chords and fill out the music until he quickly learned it.

  Lian’s voice soared like an angel borne up on the talents of these two, but she was careful to practice the song in private. Over the next weeks, they made a lot of money, enabling Lian to dress more and more to fit the image she had chosen, rather than to just cover her body. She subl
et a closet of an apartment, one room with several doors, each of which opened to a murphy bed, the toilet, and a sink next to a two burner stove, so she finally had somewhere relatively clean—and safe—to sleep. And she carefully gave no hint of its location to Sody, Joe, or anyone.

  Then it happened. Lian moved the trio to “her” place outside Grand Central’s double doors on 42nd Street. Joe, relieved to leave the dank underground behind, bloomed in the bright sun and his performances sharpened, to Sody and Lian’s delight. Within a week, a portly man dressed in all black stopped to hear not just one song, but several. He stood close by for nearly an hour, reminding Lian of a Catholic priest in his black three-button suit hanging open over the black silk mock-turtleneck tee. His head nodded to the beat of their music, obviously enjoying himself. Then a sudden realization caused Lian to drop out of the performance of “Baby Jones,” too breathless to sing. It was him! Her “luck” had brought him!

  Sody glanced at her in concern, but after a deep gasp for breath, she rejoined the chorus, her voice energized and full of new emotion.

  At the finish, the man gave her his card, as she’d known he would. “I represent Krim Recordings. How about a meet tomorrow? Four-ish good for you? Bring your instruments.” Lian nodded with as much coolness as she could muster. Sody and Joe gaped. As soon as the man turned the corner, disappearing from sight, Sody snatched the card from Lian’s fingers.

  “Krim! Omigod!”

  “Aye! We got to—what do we got to do?” For the first time, Joe looked flummoxed.

  Lian gazed at her partners in disgust. She thought Sody might cry, from the look on his face. “Well what did ye expect!” she shrieked at them both. Staying in her Irish persona was more important now than ever before. “What’s the point of this if not to step up?”

  Joe stared at her, blinking. “Oh, aye. Sure!”

  Sody swallowed hard. “I can’t sing anymore today. I can’t.”

  Lian said, “And why should ye? We’ll be superstars after tomorrow!”