Twenty-Seven

Dee had moved down a floor to 718. She still rated a suite, but it wasn’t half as grand as the last one. I used Mooney’s name as a password to get by the two plainclothesmen guarding the door. I wondered if they were keeping Dee in or reporters out.

She wasn’t alone.

Hal was hovering nervously over an elegant gent who sat bolt upright in an easy chair. I recognized him from the party: one of the men who looked like he’d stepped out of an ad for expensive evening wear. Maybe he was afraid his suit would wrinkle if he leaned back. Dee, forcing a smile, introduced him as Mr. Harvey Beringer, an executive vice-president of MGA/America, who just happened to be on his way out.

Mr. Beringer seemed surprised at the news of his departure. Dee looked like she was having a hard time controlling her temper.

“Great, Dee,” Hal said sarcastically as Beringer banged the door shut.

“You’re next,” she said to Hal. “Scram.”

Hal said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Dee,” I said, “I need a copy of that letter you showed me. From Lockwood.”

“What?… Oh. I, uh, don’t have a copy.”

“Trust me with the original,” I said. “I won’t lose it.”

“Hal, for chrissake,” Dee said, “can’t you just take a walk?”

“No way,” he said. “You’ve got two more press guys and three more MGA reps to reassure. They’re waiting.”

“Dee,” I said, “give me the letter.”

“I told you to forget about it.”

“Too late.”

Her face didn’t change, but her breath came a little faster. “Well, I don’t know if I can find it, see?”

“Then just tell me the titles of the three songs,” I said evenly.

She looked at me, a long, slow gaze, then she yanked open a dresser drawer, pawed under some scarves, and pulled out the envelope.

“I’m gonna pay him,” she said. “Whatever he wants.”

“Can you pound any sense through her thick skull?” Hal said to me, sinking down on the easy chair Mr. Beringer had vacated.

Dee paced the length of the room. Then she said, “Hal here thinks if I need money so badly, I should borrow it from a loan shark. You know, somebody who’ll break my fingers if I come up short.”

“Shut up,” Hal said.

“You shut up,” Dee replied bitterly. “First sign of trouble, and you’re coming apart at the seams.”

“First sign of—I like that! Never have I had somebody die on a tour of mine! Never!” There were two glasses on the marble-topped table next to the easy chair. Hal picked up one that was still full of amber liquid and downed it quickly.

“You know somebody in the loan business?” I asked Hal when he seemed to calm down a bit. “Somebody local?”

“A shark,” Dee snapped.

“A friend,” Hal said defensively. “A guy who’s loaned me money in the past.”

“Hal is a gamblin’ man,” Dee said, giving the words the same intonation she does on one of her songs. “He likes the part of the tour that goes through Atlantic City best.”

“He knows about the money?” I asked.

“I know she’s trying to make some dumb deal with MGA/America she’s gonna regret for the rest of her life,” Hal said. “You can get more than you’re asking for, Dee. More money. More clout. You couldn’t be hotter. If MGA doesn’t want you, Capitol, RCA, anybody, will sign you. For a big fat advance.”

Three hundred thousand seemed like a big, fat advance to me.

“Dee,” I said, “in the letter, is he asking for the right amount?”

“What do you mean?”

I glanced over at Hal. He might know Dee needed money, but what else did he know? “Would a jury give him more?” I asked Dee. “Would a judge?”

“Hal,” she said, “get the hell out of here. Now. Or I swear, you’re fired.”

He left, announcing that he’d be back in three minutes tops and slamming the door angrily.

“Three hundred thou is about right,” Dee said, still holding on to the envelope, still pacing. “If he’d written the songs.”

“Why? How would he come up with that number?”

“Mechanicals,” she said.

I’d heard the term at the MGA party, but I still didn’t understand it. “Explain,” I said.

“You don’t make money from royalties in the music business, not unless you’re a superstar with a studio by the balls. You make money on what you write, especially songs other singers cover. Because for every copy of your song that’s sold, you get your nickel. Or your two-point-five, depending.”

“Depending?” I asked, more puzzled than before.

“Listen. You got your recording studio, your songwriter, your song publisher, and your singer. Let’s forget about the singer for now. The songwriter’s share is always a nickel. That’s mechanical; it’s carved in stone. If you keep your publishing rights, you get the whole nickel. Now, sometimes songwriters talk about ‘losing’ their publishing rights. If you lose your publishing rights, you get two-point-five cents a copy. The song publisher splits your nickel with you.”

“How do you ‘lose’ your publishing rights?”

“A lot of companies put it right in the contract. They get the publishing rights, or you don’t get to do the album. And you’re young and stupid, and you don’t know enough to hire a lawyer or a manager to tell you to hold out for the whole nickel. I lost the publishing on ‘For Tonight.’ If I lost the rest of the nickel on that one, I’d go broke. Thank God, you can’t negotiate the two-point-five away. If you could, some maggot businessman would figure out how to nab it.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “How does this add up to three hundred thousand?”

“Work it out. An album goes gold at five hundred thousand copies, platinum at a million. I write one song on a platinum album, I earn twenty-five thousand dollars. You know how many golds and platinums ‘For Tonight’ wound up on?”

“Nope.”

“Well, three hundred thousand dollars is just about what I’ve made on that song. It sounds like a lot, maybe, but it’s come in dribs and drabs over, what? Twelve years. It’s my living money.”

“And the other two songs the lawyer mentioned?”

“Nobody else covers them. My money song’s ‘For Tonight.’”

“And Davey would be able to figure out how much you’d earned on it?”

“Anybody in the business could figure it out. But we’re getting away from the point here. I wrote the goddamn song.”

“But that’s not the point, is it, Dee? That letter’s not about mechanicals, or rights, or who wrote the songs.”

“It says what it says,” she answered after a long pause. She stopped pacing long enough to draw the drapes aside with her hand and stare down at the street below.

“Dee, don’t do the MGA deal yet. Give me a little more time.”

“To find Davey? Davey’s gone nuts.”

“Cal Therieux’s out looking for him.”

“Cal,” she repeated slowly.

“Did you know he was here? How come you didn’t tell me to start with him?”

She swallowed hard, let the drapes fall back in place. “We lost track,” she said. “Just another boy who stole a little piece of my heart. How did Erma Franklin sing it? I always liked her version better than Janis Joplin’s. ‘Take it! Break another little piece—’”

“Give me the letter, Dee.”

“Why don’t you just butt out of my life?”

“I can’t believe how much I used to admire you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you didn’t know me. You never saw anything but my hands on a guitar. You thought the songs I wrote were me. You still do, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe you still hate me a little for Cal, huh?”

“Maybe.”

“So why the hell should I trust you?”

“Who else have you got?”

“Don’t lose it,” she said when she finally handed over the envelope.

As I left, I could hear her singing “Piece of My Heart.” She was staring at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

Down in the lobby I used an elegant pay phone to ring Joanne at D Street.

“Mickey,” I said. “Mickey who works for the Gianellis. He’s a shark, right?”

“You broke down and asked the boyfriend?”

“I haven’t even seen Sam,” I said.

“Well, you’re out of date. Mickey Manganero used to be a shark.”

“Atlantic City?”

“Bingo. If that’s the appropriate term.”

“And now?”

“Skipped up the ladder. Money laundering. Nobody’s sure how he handles it, but he seems to handle it in fairly big chunks.”

“Drug money?”

“I can let you talk to a narc.”

“No. Let it go for now. Mickey got a rap sheet?”

“Since Juvie Hall. That’s sealed, but he’s been busy ever since. Car theft, burglary, molestation. Almost got him on a rape. He likes young girls.”

“How young?”

“Why don’t you ask him? I’m sure the boyfriend can set up a meet.”

“Maybe I will,” I said.