The Paradise Gig Read online

  Pete shoots Master a quick look but I guess not quick enough.

  And now it’s Master’s turn to look confused. He looks confused because, to him, the answer is obvious. “Why Pete? Well, I reached out to Pete ‘cause Pete’s a detective.”

  So Callie, seeming more bewildered still, looks at Pete again. “You’re a detective?” she says.

  “No, not really. I mean, well, technically, sort of.”

  “I can’t believe you never told me that.”

  “Sorry. I don’t tell anybody.”

  “You told Bert.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember if I ever told Bert or not. Bert just knows stuff. He finds stuff out.”

  “Can’t believe it,” she murmurs. “After all those conversations in the hammock?”

  “Guess we had other things to talk about.”

  “You told me you’re retired.”

  “I am.”

  “A retired detective?”

  “No, retired from some stupid business. As a detective, I just don’t work. What’s to retire from?”

  “I can’t believe you never told me.”

  Master, finally realizing that he’s caused a little controversy or kerfuffle here, jumps in to try to smooth things over. “Callie, ya have t’unnerstand that Pete’s a private detective. Wouldn’t be very private if he went around telling everybody, right? Besides, let’s face it, everybody’s got their little secrets. Or their big secrets. Part a what makes people inneresting. Got time to join us for a drink?”

  She hesitates. Humans do this a lot, I’ve noticed. Hesitating, I mean. They have trouble making up their minds. Which I find ironic, because humans are so damn proud of their gigantic brains and how that makes them different from every other animal and blah, blah, blah, but what’s the advantage of having a gigantic brain if you spend your whole life with one part of it arguing against some other part? Frankly, I think people would be better off with a much smaller brain that could at least decide what it wanted and go after it without all this dawdling or—what’s that fancy word that people use?—ambivalence. Which is a very tough concept for a dog to grasp, as we are basically a yes or no kind of species. You want the stick? Fetch it. You don’t want the stick? Don’t fetch it. But don’t stand there looking all twisted up and tormented about whether you should fetch it or not. What a fucking waste of time.

  Anyway, after several moments of hanging undecided, Callie finally says, “Thanks, but I don’t think so. I’ve got work stuff I need to deal with. Gotta pick up some shifts, get my schedule back on track.”

  And she starts sort of leaning away. Ambivalently. The top half of her body is moving on, her feet are staying where they are.

  While she’s sort of stuck between leaving and not leaving, Pete seems to be stuck between speaking and not speaking. Eventually he manages to say, “Callie, the other day, what happened at the beach. You sure you’re okay?”

  “You asking as a detective?”

  “I’m asking as an old friend.”

  “I appreciate that, Pete. I do. And I’m fine.”

  Master, of course, can’t miss the opportunity to nose around a little bit more. “So those guys you left with. Friends a yours?”

  “Friends, no, I wouldn’t exactly say friends. Please let’s leave it at that, okay? I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any worry.” And then she starts walking away for real.

  “I still have your stuff,” says Master, before she’s gotten very far.

  “Hm?”

  “Your yogi mat and stuff. Your whaddyacallit, kombuchee. I brought ‘em home. Ya goin’ to the beach tomorra? I could bring ‘em down.”

  “Sure, that would be great, thanks. Sorry for the bother.”

  “No bother. But maybe ya could stop apologizin’ for things that ain’t your fault. Me and Pete, we was concerned is all.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says again.

  Some people, they start apologizing, they seem to find it really hard to stop. It must feel really good in some strange way.

  8

  T hirty miles north, on No-Name Key, just across the bridge from Big Pine, there was a private waterfront compound walled off from the road by a double rank of stout buttonwood hedges. Behind this barrier sprawled several acres of manicured grounds, an improbable luxury in the rocky, mucky, land-starved Keys. Crushed shell walkways wound between stands of oleander and swelling banks of bougainvillea. Pampered palms with every frond in place swayed demurely, with restraint, like old-school debutantes waltzing at a prom.

  A number of buildings dotted the lush landscape, the most impressive being a tin-roofed house with many wings projecting out at many angles, some of the sections featuring enormous windows facing toward the Gulf, others featureless and sealed. A few guest cottages, carefully placed for privacy, were tucked behind their separate gardens of skyflower and ixora. On a small rise with a sunset view, there was a classic-looking shrine, a sort of miniature temple.

  The most modest building on the property, next to a driveway sealed off by a high and solid security gate, was a sort of carriage house that held two bunks, a small fridge, a hot plate, and a semi-professional karaoke machine with dual microphones. Inside this cottage, a tall guy with an odd leaning posture and a short guy with a mat of stiff black hair were discussing their arrangement of a Beatles song that they hoped to perform in public soon. The short guy wasn’t happy.

  “How come,” he was saying, “that whenever we do harmonies, you always take the Paul part and I gotta do the John part?”

  “What can I say?” the tall guy answered. “I have a higher voice than you.”

  “Like I can’t do falsetto? I got a good falsetto.”

  “Falsetto just don’t sound the same. Sounds too thin. Sounds like you’re just singin’ out your nose. Has to be a naturally high voice. High but rich. Like mine. I sing more like Paul.”

  At that, the short guy gave a snorting laugh that he felt deep inside his sinuses. “You sing like Paul? That’s a good one. If you sang like Paul, my friend, we wouldn’t be sitting here with a glorified boom box and a six-pack. We’d be over there.” He jerked his thumb toward the big house with many wings. “Over where the action is. In the studio. Jamming with a solid band. Laying down tracks. Getting somewhere.”

  “We’ll get our shot,” the tall guy said.

  The short guy said, “You still believe that? I mean, you really still believe it?”

  The tall guy curled his fingers, looked down at his nails, and tried to muster some conviction. “Marco promised. Promised when we took the job. That’s the whole reason we signed on, right?”

  “Yeah, right. ‘Cause Marco promised. But Marco promises a lot of things. Promises he’ll record us. Promises he’ll get us some high-class back-up guys. That he’ll make connections for us, ease the way. Lotta promises. And in the meantime, what’s Marco actually done for us?”

  “We’ll get our shot,” the tall guy said again. “We’ll get our turn.”

  The short guy continued his own line of thought. “He’s made us criminals. That’s what he’s done for us.”

  The tall guy stiffened in his leaning posture and said, “Look, we don’t talk about that. We agreed. What’s the fucking use?”

  “Okay, fine. No fucking use. So we don’t talk about it. We just kid ourselves that certain things just didn’t happen. So let’s leave it out. What’s left that Marco did for us? Anything come to mind? Yeah, he made us errand boys. Go-fers. Dressing up like mob guys to run some stupid errand or like Elton John for some dumb party.”

  “That’s Marco-world,” the tall guy said. “It’s what he likes. It’s how he sets things up. It’s all a show. It’s make-believe.”

  “Except when it isn’t. Except when it gets way too real.”

  “Listen,” said the tall guy, his voice pinched and exasperated by now, “you think I’m any happier about the shit that happened than you are? We never should have started in with Marco. There, I’ve said it, okay? Happy no
w? It was dumb we started in. It was dumb we bought the promises. But we did buy ‘em and we did start in. And shit happened, and now we’re kind of stuck. So let’s make the best of it, at least. We work on our music. We get better. We hope for a lucky break. Could happen. Could happen any day.”

  The short guy stared down at the floor and tried to imagine what the lucky break would look like. He wanted and needed to believe that it could happen but at the same time didn’t want to feel like a sucker for believing it. This was a dilemma that he couldn’t solve, so he changed the subject. Pointing toward the main house with his chin, he said, “D’ya meet the new kid? The kid in for the audition?”

  “Not really,” said the tall guy. “Said hello when I let him in the gate. Didn’t really talk.”

  “Seems like a nice kid,” said the short guy. “Down to earth. Not a dick. I hope things go okay for him.”

  “Well, you never know what Marco’s gonna like. What kind of sound. What kind of look. What kind of mood he’s in.”

  “Seemed like a nice kid, though. I hope he doesn’t end up like the last coupla try-outs.”

  The tall guy said, “Look, let’s not even go there, okay? No point getting morbid. We got a happy song to work on. Let’s get back to work, okay?”

  He switched on the karaoke machine and they practiced the happy song again and again. Their voices blended pretty well.

  9

  M arco Mondesi was sitting in the one place in the world where he was truly comfortable—in the insulated, isolated, soundproof, air-conditioned and air-filtered control room of his state-of-the-art recording studio. Flanked by synthesizers, equalizers, buffers, baffles—all the gizmos that made producers the true stars and tastemakers of the modern music business—he peered through his narrow, inch-thick window into the large, untidy performance space where the music was actually being made.

  Or, as Mondesi believed, where a very rough draft of the music was being made. The sounds that came to him through his headphones—he never listened live, in open air; open air was too diffuse, too full of distractions—were often beautiful but never even close to perfect, never close to finished. A singer’s pitch had to be adjusted a tiny bit up or a tiny bit down; vibrato needed to be added or subtracted. A bass line might want doubling, a guitar riff spliced in from a different take. Reverb might be called for to create a spacious feel; or reverb could be stripped out to suggest the intimacy of band practice in the family rec room. For that matter, with a few clicks of a mouse and a few notes on a keyboard, Mondesi could patch in a whole horn section or a string quartet or even an electronic choir. There were one hundred twenty-eight slides and toggles on his control panel. Using them in various combinations, he could mix and re-mix a song in sixteen thousand three hundred and eighty-four different ways, or until it sounded just exactly right. Just exactly right to him, that is, which, going by Mondesi’s track record, also meant that it had a pretty good chance of becoming a major hit.

  The singer he was auditioning just then was one of the better ones he’d heard lately. His name was Sarge LeRoi and he was twenty-three years old, young enough so that his voice still had some of the sweetness of a boy’s—the bell-like clarity, the easy high notes—while just starting to take on some huskiness and some authority. It was a voice that could wail and rock; maybe it was a voice that would also learn to croon; for now it seemed an undecided voice, a voice waiting to be shaped. His guitar playing was only adequate but of course that could always be enhanced. His looks were very promising for pop—sandy hair, mussed but not too; blue and soulful eyes perched atop high cheekbones; a mouth that seemed to kiss the lyrics as they passed his lips, and a lean body that didn’t overdo the motion but seemed to be dancing the music from the inside out.

  The kid had brought his own material, of course. The young ones almost always did. It was a point of pride, a matter of identity. They weren’t mere singers. They were songwriters, artists. The problem was that there are many more people who can sing than can write a decent song, still less a great one, and most of the proudly presented originals ranged from so-so to downright lousy. Tunes that sounded like a thousand other tunes. Clichéd lyrics that had nothing new to say and didn’t say it very well. The work and the earnestness and the hopes that had gone into the writing of those songs could break your heart; but, as Mondesi had pointed out to dozens of young wannabes, that didn’t make them hits or turn their writers into stars.

  Sarge LeRoi had come to the audition prepared to play six songs. The producer listened to three. Then he took his headphones off and cast them aside. There was finality in the gesture, and the singer, who’d been watching through the control room window for even the slightest hint of a thumbs up or thumbs down, felt his confidence leak away and his high-energy posture start to droop. Suddenly the guitar felt heavy on his shoulders. The amp cord snaking away at his feet looked somehow pathetic, like it had been run over by a car. He stood there and waited for the star-maker to pronounce the verdict.

  The control room was perched three steps above the studio itself, and when Mondesi first emerged through its soundproof door he looked like a titan. He wore loose black pants and a snug black turtleneck. His hair was black and straight, with bangs brushed forward halfway down his forehead in the manner of Julius Caesar or Gertrude Stein. His pace was stately, imperial, but as he descended from stair to stair it became clear that in fact he was extremely short, not much over five feet tall, and not exactly pudgy but somehow spongy-looking. His skin was sallow, a mix of yellowish and olive. His eyes were green but not a pleasant green, more a drying seaweed kind of green. He said to Sarge LeRoi, “Nice job, Serge. I like your voice.”

  “Thanks. But it’s Sarge.”

  “Ah.” Maybe Mondesi was bad at names or maybe the mistake was his way of reminding someone that as of now he didn’t count for much and that no one knew or cared what the hell his name was. “Put the ax down, let’s talk.”

  The young man put his guitar in a stand and sat down on an amplifier. Mondesi climbed into a high chair that had rollers. “So,” he went on, “your act. Your voice, it’s very good, extremely likeable, maybe a little bit unformed. I’m giving it a nine.”

  Sarge said nothing. He was leaning forward, hungry for compliments as young men always are, trying not to beam too much or let the hunger show.

  Mondesi said, “Nine is a very high opinion. You don’t say thank you?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Looks, I’m giving you eight-plus. Handsome but not so handsome that you’re threatening. Nice-boy handsome. Handsome enough.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Guitar playing, mediocre. Five or six. But don’t sweat that, that’s why God made session guys. Now let’s talk about the material. Material, I don’t give number ratings. You know why?”

  Sarge said he did not.

  “Because it’s too important. Complicated. Subtle. Crucial. So…your material, it isn’t bad at all. In fact it’s really pretty good.”

  The young man had his hands hooked around the edges of the amplifier. He leaned forward even more, as if to hear the praise a nanosecond sooner.

  “Which is a polite way of saying that it’s basically crap.”

  Was this a joke? A gut-punch? Sarge’s face cramped up somewhere in between a smile and a wince.

  “But hey, don’t take it too hard. Look, ninety-nine percent of the songs out there are crap. Ninety-nine percent of everything is crap. Music, movies, TV, paintings, books. Ninety-nine percent is crap. That’s what makes the one percent that isn’t crap so amazingly fucking beautiful. And besides, crap is generally good enough. More than good enough. People accept it. They’re comfortable with it. It’s what they’re used to. But it isn’t great and it doesn’t last and it isn’t good enough for me. Do I listen to crap? Sure I do. All the time. Do I produce crap? No, I don’t.”

  The young singer was looking at the floor. His fingers were stiff from grasping the edge of the amp and it took a few seconds to
uncurl them as he began to rise.

  “Where you going?” Mondesi asked.

  “Home, I guess.”

  “Home? Why?”

  “Well, you just said you’re not interested in producing me.”

  “Did I say that? No, I don’t think I said that. I think maybe you weren’t listening carefully enough. I didn’t say I won’t produce you. I said I won’t produce your songs. That’s a whole different thing. So sit down, don’t be in such a hurry. Cigarette?”

  “No, no thanks,” the young man said, and gingerly perched on the amp again. But he wasn’t leaning forward any more. Now his elbows were locked and he was ready to weave. Sitting there had become less a matter of absorbing compliments than of slipping jabs.

  Mondesi lit his cigarette, blew some smoke out his nose, and said, “Listen, Serge, why’d you come here today?”

  It sounded like a trick question, and it was. Haltingly, the kid said, “To try out. To audition.”

  The producer took another drag and flicked some ashes onto the floor. “How about we cut to the chase, okay? You came here today because you want to be a star. Is that right?”

  “Well, yeah, sure. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Actually, no, not everybody. A lot of smart people who want to live a long and happy life and die at home in bed don’t want that at all. But leave that on the side for now. Being a star—what’s the appeal? How do you think it would be?”

  How would it be? The fantasies were so enormous and delicious that Sarge LeRoi didn’t quite know where to start.

  Mondesi saved him the trouble. “Look, here’s what you’re probably imagining, ‘cause this is what everyone imagines at the start. You’re rich and famous. You ride in limos and fly in private jets. The parties are amazing, the women are gorgeous. You get laid a lot, any time you feel like. And you do pretty much whatever you want. Is that what you picture?”