The Second Coming of Buddy Holley

by Edward Bryant

Wednesday

THE DEAD MAN SLAMMED his fist through the pine door.

No knuckles broke, but his skin tore. Blood streaked the wooden shards of door panel. It hurt, but not enough. No, it didn’t hurt much at all, other things considered. “Other things”—what a euphemistic code for people and relationships, lovers and kin. The dirty little politics of rejections and betrayals. Jesus god, they hurt.

Real mature, my frien’, Jack Robicheaux thought. Going through the grieving process at Mach 10. Right past denial and directly to self-pity. Real grown-up for a guy into his forties. Fuck it.

He gingerly withdrew his hand from the shattered door. Naturally the long wooden splinters faced the wrong way. It was like trying to extract his flesh from some sort of toothy trap.

Jack turned and walked back into the shambles of his living room. It still looked like Captain Nemo’s stateroom on the Nautilus—after the giant squid had wrestled with the submarine in the middle of the Atlantic’s storm of a century.

He loved this room. “Love.” Funny word to use anymore.

Kicking aside a shattered antique sextant, Jack crossed to the outside door—the one opening on a passage leading to the subway maintenance tunnels—and bolted it. As he did so, he caught a last whiff of Michael’s sharp citrus after-shave. The image of Michael’s retreating back, shoulders slightly hunched with denial, flickered in the space the door occupied, vanished, slipped out of existence with not even a whimper.

Jack stepped over the old-fashioned phone crafted as the effigy of Huey Long. Somehow it had miraculously ended on the floor upright with the earpiece still cradled in Huey’s upraised right hand. Ol’ Huey had communicated like a son-of-a-bitch. Why couldn’t Jack?

He couldn’t call Bagabond.

He wouldn’t call Cordelia.

There was no one else he wanted to talk to. Besides, he thought he’d talked enough. He’d spoken to Tachyon. An apple a day hadn’t worked. And he had talked to Michael. Who was left? A priest? Not a chance. Atelier Parish was too far behind. Too many years. Too much memory.

Jack stepped behind the carved mahogany bar with the brass fittings, smelled the dusty plush velvet hanging as he opened the cabinet. The brandy had cost close to sixty bucks. Expensive on a transit worker’s salary, but what the hell, he’d always read in sea novels about brandy’s being administered to survivors of wrack and storm, and besides, the cut-crystal decanter fit this Victorian room beautifully.

He poured himself a triple, drank it like a double, and filled the glass again. He didn’t usually gulp like this, but—

“There is an interesting fact about Mr. Kaposi,” Tachyon had said. His medical smock shone an immaculate white with almost the albedo of an arctic snowfield. His red hair seemed aflame under the examining-room lights. “Shortly before he discovered and named his sarcoma in 1872, Kaposi had changed his name from Kohn.”

Jack stared at him, unable to form the words he wanted to say. What the fuck was Tachyon talking about?

“There was, of course, a pogrom in Czechoslovakia,” Tachyon said, slender fingers gesturing expressively. “He reacted to the sort of ill-informed prejudice that has cursed both jokers, not to mention aces, of course, and AIDS patients alike. Exotic viruses might as well be the evil eye.”

Jack looked down at his bare chest, gingerly touching the blue-black bruiselike markings above his ribs. “I don’ need no double-barreled curse. One to a customer, no?”

“I’m sorry, Jack.” Tachyon hesitated. “It’s difficult to say when you were infected. The tumors are well-advanced, but the biopsy and the anomalous workup results suggest there’s a synergy going on between the wild card virus and the HIV organism attacking your immunosuppressant system. I suspect some sort of galloping accelerated process.”

Jack shook his head as though only half-hearing. “I had a negative test a year ago.”

“It’s as I feared then,” said the doctor. “I can’t forecast the progress.”

“I can,” said Jack.

Tachyon shrugged sympathetically. “I must ask,” he said, “if you habitually use amyl nitrite.”

“Poppers?” said Jack. He shook his head. “No way. I’m not much on drugs.”

Tachyon marked something on Jack’s chart. “Their use is frequently connected with Kaposi’s.”

Jack shook his head again.

“Then there is another matter,” said the doctor.

Jack stared at him. It was like trying to look out from the center of a block of ice. He felt numb all over. He knew the psychic shock would go away soon. And then— “What?”

“I must ask you this. I need to know about contacts.”

Jack took a deep breath. “There was one. Is one. Only one.”

“I should talk to him.”

“Are you kidding?” said Jack. “I will talk to Michael. An’ den I’ll have him come see you. But I’ll talk to him first.” His voice dropped off. “Yeah, I’ll talk to him.”

He proceeded to remind Tachyon of the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. Tachyon seemed affronted. Jack didn’t apologize. Then he left. That was in the morning.

—this was a special occasion. He felt as if he were drinking after his own funeral. “Cajuns do great wakes,” he said aloud, pouring another brandy. Had the decanter been full? He couldn’t remember. Now it was down close to half.

He glanced at the phone again. Why the hell did he want to talk to anyone? After all, no one wanted to talk to him. Now that he thought about it, for the last few months living with Michael had pretty much been like living alone. Now he might as well die alone. Can the self-pity. But it was so easy—

“So what’s up?” Michael had said, closing the door after him before giving Jack a squeeze. No other greeting. No preamble. As light as Jack was dark, tall and slender-limbed, Michael had always seemed to bring something of the sunlit street-level spring down with him to Jack’s subterranean dwelling. Not today. Jack couldn’t read him at all.

“Huh?” Michael said. Jack turned his face away and disengaged himself from the other’s arms. He stepped back. “Something wrong?” Jack scrutinized Michael’s face. His lover’s features were the very model of glowing health. Of innocence.

“You might want to sit down,” said Jack.

“No.” Michael stared at him. “Just say what whatever it is you want to say.”

Jack’s mouth was dry. “I went to the clinic today.”

“So?”

“The tests—” He had to start over. “The tests were positive.”

Michael looked at him blankly. “Tests?”

“AIDS.” He said the hateful word. His stomach twisted.

“No,” said Michael. He shook his head. “Naw. Not a chance.”

“Yes,” said Jack.

“But who—” Michael’s eyes widened. “Jack, did you—”

“No.” Jack stared back. “There’s been no one. No one else, mon cher.”

Michael cocked his head. “There has to be. I mean, I wouldn’t—”

“It isn’t like immaculate conception, Michael. No miracle here. It has to be.”

“No,” said Michael. He shook his head vehemently. “It’s impossible.” His eyes flickered and he looked away. Then he turned on his heel, opened the door, and left.

“No,” Jack had heard Michael say one more time.

—to feel the rusty blade twisting in his gut.

The brandy, it occurred to him, as like an emotional tetanus shot. Except it wasn’t working. All it did was make him feel worse because it lessened his ability to control what he was feeling.

He felt suddenly as if he had inhaled all the oxygen there was to breathe in his home. He wanted to get out, to go up to the streets. So he carefully, with what he realized were exaggerated motions, put away the brandy decanter. Then Jack left by the same door Michael had exited. He followed the ghost’s footsteps to the tunnels and ladders that took him up to the streets.

He walked. Jack could have taken the track maintenance car down below but decided he didn’t want to. The night was too chilly, but that was fine. He wanted something astringent to cleanse him, to flense the bruise marks, to clean out his flesh. He realized he was wishing there was now some overt pain.

He walked uptown, not truly comprehending where he was until he saw the sign for Young Man’s Fancy. I shouldn’t be here, of all places, he thought. He’d met Michael here. He shouldn’t be in the West Village at all. And not at this bar. But by now it was too late. Here he was. Shit. He turned to leave.

“Hey, pretty boy, lookin’ to get some tail? Or you the tail?”

The voice was all too familiar. Jack looked up and saw the memorably overmuscled face, not to mention the body, of Bludgeon emerge from the shadowed downstairs entrance to the closed laundry below the bar. Jack turned and started away.

There was the smack of size-eighteen Brogans on the sidewalk. Fingers like German sausages curled around his shoulder and spun Jack around. “The thing about them gorgeous eyes,” said Bludgeon, “is that all I gotta do is dig my thumbs in there and they’ll pop out like the green cherries onna wop cookies.”

Jack shrugged the fingers away. He felt impatient and not terribly cautious. He just didn’t give a damn. “Fuck off,” he said.

“You need one of these too.” Bludgeon put spurned fingers to his own cheek and touched the ragged, inflamed scar that ran all the way from the edge of his right eye to his bulbous chin.

Jack remembered the triumphant shriek of Bagabond’s black cat. The feline was old but agile enough to have dodged Bludgeon’s flailing fists after the claws had raked down the man’s ugly features.

“Cat scratches get infected,” Jack said, continuing to back toward the street. “You ought to see to those. I know a real good doctor.”

“Chickenshit like you’s gonna need an undertaker,” Bludgeon threatened. “Mr. Maz’ll be real pleased if I bring in your cock in a sammich bag. Them Gambiones love to make sausage, specially outta yellow dicks like you.”

“I don’t have time for this,” said Jack.

“Gonna make time.” Bludgeon’s jaws split in the kind of smirk that can deform unborn babies. “You and me—I figure I can handle a little ’gator rassling.”

The door of Young Man’s Fancy swung open and a gaggle of about a dozen guys spilled out onto the street. Bludgeon stopped uncertainly in midstride.

“Witnesses,” said Jack. “Down, boy.”

“I’ll take ’em all,” said Bludgeon, surveying his prospective victims. He smacked the macelike mutation of his right hand into the palm of his left. It sounded like dropping a beef roast off a stepladder onto a tiled floor.

“A little gay bashing?” said the man apparently leading the others. He grimaced at Bludgeon. “You still hanging around, dork-breath?” His hand dipped inside his jacket and came out filled with blued steel. “Wanna see my Bernie Goetz impression?” He laughed. “It’s a guaranteed killer.”

Bludgeon looked around the semicircle of faces. “I gotta job to protect,” he finally said to Jack. “You,” he said to the man with the gun, “I’m gonna take out your guts with my thumb. Just wait. And you—” he said back to Jack, “you I’m gonna really hurt.”

“But another time,” said Jack.

“Fuckin’ A.” Bludgeon couldn’t seem to find a better exit line. He lurched away from the growing crowd of onlookers and stomped down the street.

“Pretty rough trade,” the man with the gun said to Jack. He put the pistol back under his coat. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Thanks,” said Jack. “I don’t know the guy. He just stopped me for a light.” He turned and headed the opposite direction, ignoring the murmurs.

“So you’re welcome, man,” said the man with the pistol. “Good luck, buddy.”

Jack turned the corner and headed down a darker block. Christ it was cold. He hugged himself. He hadn’t worn a coat. The chill was making him sluggish. Bad sign. He tentatively touched the back of his left hand with the fingers of his right. The skin felt rough, scaly, beginning to transform. No! He started to run. He didn’t need this too. Not tonight.

Stress symptoms. He almost giggled.

He looked for a subway entrance. It didn’t matter which. Red globe or green. BMT, IRT, or PATH. Uptown or downtown. Just as long as the stairs led down.

He searched for the telltale steam from a manhole cover. The sewers would do. That would be better. There’d be no people in the sewers. Those tunnels, warm and slimy, would lead toward the bay. Good hunting. Fine with Jack. He thought about his ’gator teeth ripping into albino gar. That was okay. Bagabond didn’t give much of a shit about mutant fish. Food. Blood. Death. Exhaustion. Blankness.

Jack stumbled toward the deeper darkness, homing in on a warm grating.

I’m losing it, he thought.

He saw Michael’s face. Bagabond’s. Cordelia’s.

Yeah, he’d lost it all right. Everything.

Jack plunged into the night.

Thursday

The volume of the bootleg mix of the new George Harrison album was sufficient to shiver the framed pictures on the office wall. But then the size of the office wasn’t enough to provide much challenge to the cassette deck’s amplifier. It wasn’t a large office and didn’t occupy the corner of the office tower, but it was a separate office regardless, with permanent walls, and it did have a window.

Cordelia Chaisson was happy with it.

Her desk was old and wooden and held, besides the computer, stacks of albums, tapes, and press kits. The pictures on the opposite wall were photos of Peregrine, David Bowie, Fantasy, Tim Curry, Lou Reed, and other entertainers, whether aces or not. In the midst of the photographs was a framed cross-stitch sampler reading DAMN, I’M GOOD. Tacked to the wall behind and to Cordelia’s right was a large rectangle of poster board. It held a list of names, copiously emended with cross-outs, question marks, and shorthand notes such as “check film startup,” “rel. fanatic,” and “won’t perform Brit. hol.”

Her phone beeped to her. It was a few moments before Cordelia noticed. She thumbed down the volume control on the deck and picked up the receiver. Luz Alcala, one of her bosses, said, “My sweet lord, Cordelia, do you think you could perhaps use the headphones?”

“Sorry,” said Cordelia. “I got carried away. It’s a great album. I’ve already turned down the volume.”

“Thank you,” said Alcala. “Any word yet on who’ll cut the promos for us?”

“I’m going down the list. Jagger, maybe.” The young woman hesitated. “He hasn’t said no.”

“Have you called him in the last week?”

“Well … no.”

Alcala’s voice took on a mildly reproving tone. “Cordelia, I admire what you’re accomplishing with the benefit. But GF&G has other projects to consider as well.”

“I know,” said Cordelia. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to juggle a lot of things.” She tried to sound more upbeat—and change the subject. “The clearances came through for China this morning. This means we’ll be beaming to better than half the world.”

“Not to mention Australia.” Alcala chuckled.

“Including Australia.”

“Call Jagger’s agent,” said Alcala. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Cordelia hung up the phone. She picked up the small, intricately carved, stone lizard-shape from the desktop where it had nearly been covered over with a heap of glossies. It was actually an Australian crocodile, but she had been assured that it was her cousin and therefore appropriate as a fetish. She preferred to think of it as a ’gator. Cordelia replaced the figure, setting it in front of the small, framed black-and-white photo of a young aboriginal man. He scowled seriously out of the portrait. “Wyungare,” she whispered. Her lips formed a kiss.

Then she swiveled her chair around to face the poster board on the wall. Taking a thick marker, she began crossing out names. What she ended up with was a list of U2, the Boss, Little Steven, the Coward Brothers, and Girls With Guns. Not bad, she thought. Not damn bad a-tall.

But—she chuckled with satisfaction—there was more. She reached up again with the marker—

The three of them had eaten an early lunch at the Acropolis on Tenth Street, just off Sixth Avenue. Cordelia had offered to take them to a plusher place. After all, she had an expense account now. The Acropolis was a mere café, indistinguishable from thousands of others in the city. “The Riviera’s only a few blocks away,” she’d said. “It’s an okay place.”

C.C. Ryder was having none of it. She wanted an anonymous meeting place. She asked that they meet well before the mealtime rush. She wanted Bagabond along.

She got what she wanted because Cordelia needed her.

So they ended up in the Naugahyde booth with C.C. and Bagabond on the side facing both Cordelia and the door. Cordelia looked up from the menu and smiled. “I can recommend the fruit cup.”

C.C. didn’t smile back. Her expression was serious. She took off her nearly shapeless leather porkpie cap and shook out her spiky red hair. Cordelia noticed that C.C.’s brilliant green eyes looked very much like Uncle Jack’s. I’ve got to call him, she thought. She didn’t want to, but she had to.

“See the raccoon rings?” said C.C., pointing to her own eyes. Today she didn’t look much like one of rock’s top lyricists and performers. The effect was deliberate. She wore jeans so old and worn, they looked acid-washed. Her floppy John Hiatt sweatshirt appeared to have endured almost as many washings.

“Nope,” said Cordelia. C.C.’s skin looked smooth and white, almost albino in its lightness.

“Well, there ought to be.” A bare smile ghosted across C.C.’s lips. “I’ve been losing sleep over this whole thing with the benefit.”

Cordelia said nothing; kept looking the singer in the eye.

“I know this is Des’s last hurrah,” C.C. continued. “And I know the cause is a good one. A joint benefit for AIDS patients and the wild card victims is something whose time is long since due.”

Cordelia nodded. This was looking good.

C.C. shrugged. “I guess I gotta come out of the anxiety closet sometime and perform in front of live folks.” She smiled for real. “So the answer is yes.”

“Super!” Cordelia leaned across the table and hugged C.C. fiercely. Startled, Bagabond half-rose from her seat, ready, it seemed to Cordelia, who saw the motion from the corner of her eye, to tear out her throat if she were actually attacking C.C. Cordelia did hear a low snarl, much like one of Bagabond’s cats, as she disentangled herself from C.C. and settled back in her seat.

“That’s wonderful!” said Cordelia. She stopped burbling when she saw C.C.’s face. She could read the expression. “I’m sorry.” Cordelia sobered. “It’s just that I’ve loved your music, loved you as a writer for so long, I’ve wanted to see you perform your songs more than just about anything.”

“It’s not going to be easy,” said C.C. Bagabond looked at her concernedly. “What have we got, ten days?”

Cordelia nodded. “Barely.”

“I’m gonna need every minute.”

“You’ve got it. I’m going to give you someone as a liaison with me who will get you whatever you want, whenever you need it. Somebody I trust, and so do you.”

“Who’s that?” said Bagabond with evident suspicion. The muscles of her gaunt face tightened. Her brown eyes narrowed.

Cordelia took a deep breath. “Uncle Jack,” she said.

The expression on Bagabond’s face was not pleasant. “Why?” she said. C.C. glanced aside at her. “Why not me?”

“You can help C.C. as much as you want,” said Cordelia hastily. “But I need Uncle Jack to be involved with all this. He’s competent and he’s levelheaded and he’s trustworthy. I’m in over my head,” she said candidly. “I need all the help I can scrounge.”

“Jack know about this?” said Bagabond.

Cordelia hesitated. “Well, I been waitin’ to tell ’im.” She realized the Cajun was starting to creep through more as she got flustered. She took a mental grip on herself. “I been leavin’ messages on his phone machine. He hasn’t been answering.”

Bagabond leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. A minute went by. It seemed a long time. The Greek waiter came by to take their orders. C.C. told him to come back shortly.

When she opened her eyes again, Bagabond shook her head as though clearing it: “I don’t know when the boy’s going to answer your calls.”

“What do you mean?” Cordelia felt a listing feeling as though her plans were papers sliding off a carefully leveled table.

“It’s all broken up,” said Bagabond. “Jack’s a ways off—probably about New York Bay, I’d judge. He’s getting his rocks off duking it out with the kind of critters you don’t see in the Castle Clinton Aquarium. As much raw meat as he’s getting”—she smiled humorlessly—”I couldn’t say whether he’s going to get home for dinner anytime soon.”

“Quelle damnation,” Cordelia muttered. “In any case,” she said to C.C., “call me at the office tomorrow morning and I’ll have something lined out. Either Uncle Jack or someone else.”

“Make it someone else,” said Bagabond.

Cordelia smiled placatingly. The waiter returned and she ordered the fruit cup.

—and marked C.C. down on the roster of benefit performers in bold, black letters.

“Doggonit,” Cordelia said aloud to herself, “I’m good.”

Then she hesitated and glanced back at the copy of the Village Voice lying on the desk. A small events notice in microscopic type was circled in red.

She scrawled one additional name on the board.

Friday

Merde.

No two ways about it. That’s what he felt like as he dragged into his home in the early morning. There was nothing welcome about entering the shambles of his living room. Jack stumbled through the debris. Ahead of him he saw the shattered door to his bedroom. His hand still hurt. But now, so did his teeth. His head, his hands—it seemed to him that every bone in his body ached.

“Enfer,” he swore as he saw the blinking red light of his answering machine. He almost managed to ignore the single-eyed demon; then he bent and slapped the playback switch. Three of the messages were from his supervisor. Jack knew he’d better call back later in the morning, or he’d have no job to return to. He liked living down here, and he enjoyed the privilege of gainful employment down in the darkness.

The other eight messages were from Cordelia. They were not very informative, but neither did they sound like emergencies. Cordelia kept saying it was important for Jack to get back to her, but the tone didn’t indicate mortal peril.

Jack rewound the message tape and turned off the machine, then went into the kitchen. He surveyed the refrigerator and didn’t bother opening it. He knew what was inside. More, he simply wasn’t hungry. He had some idea of what he had devoured over the past day and night and didn’t want to think about it. Blind, albino gar. You wouldn’t find that on the menu at any Cajun restaurant in New York.

He went into the bedroom and flopped down on the bed. There was no question of undressing. Jack only moved sufficiently to wind the antique quilt around himself. He was out.

The phone by the bed awoke him at eight A.M. precisely. He knew this because the red LED numerals on the clock burned themselves into his retinas when he finally opened his eyes and reached over to stop the shrilling that was scraping his inner ear into shreds.

“Mmmppk. Yeah?”

“Uncle Jack?”

“Yeah—uh, Cordie?” He came a good deal more awake.

“It’s me, Uncle Jack. I’m sorry if I woke you. I’ve been tryin’ to get you for better den a day.”

He yawned and adjusted the receiver so the pillow would hold it snug. “’S okay, Cordie. I got to call the boss and tell him I’m down with something and been too sick to phone the last couple days.”

Cordelia sounded alarmed. “You really sick?”

Jack yawned again. Remembered what he could have said. “Pink of health. Just went off on a bender, that’s all.”

“Bagabond said—”

“Bagabond?”

“Yes.” Cordelia seemed to be picking her words carefully. “I asked her to look for you. She said you were out in the bay, uh, killing things.”

“That about describes it,” said Jack.

“Something wrong?”

He waited a few seconds before answering. Took a breath. “Stress, Cordie. That’s all. I needed to unwind.”

She didn’t sound wholly convinced but finally said, “Whatever you say, Uncle Jack. Say, listen, do you mind if I come by tonight after work and bring along a friend?”

“Who?” Jack said guardedly.

“C.C.”

Jack thought about her, remembered visiting her in Tachyon’s clinic. He owned everything she’d ever recorded, albums and tapes both, shelved out in the next room. “I guess so,” he said. “It’ll give me an excuse to clean up the house.”

“No need,” said Cordelia.

He laughed. “Oh, yeah, dere is a need.”

“Five-thirty okay?”

“Should be. By the way,” he said, “what’s this all about?”

She was candid. “I need your help, Uncle Jack.” She filled him in on how things were proceeding with logistics for the benefit. “I’m snowed,” she said. “I cannot do everything.”

“I don’ know much about putting on this kind of event.”

“You know rock ’n’ roll,” she said. “Better, you can handle just about anything that happens.”

Almost anything, he thought. Tachyon’s face floated in front of him. Michael’s. “Flatterer,” he said.

“Vérité.”

A few moments went by. “One thing I got to ask,” said Jack. “We haven’t been talkin’ much…”

“I know,” she said. “I know. For now I’m just not thinking much ’bout it.”

“No resolution, then?”

“Not yet.”

“Thanks for bein’ honest.”

More seconds went by. It seemed as though Cordelia wanted to say something, but finally all she said was, “Okay, thanks then, Uncle Jack. I’ll be by with C.C. at half past five. ’Bye.”

Jack listened to the silence until the circuit disconnected. Then he turned over and dialed his supervisor at the Transit Department. He wouldn’t have to concentrate to sound convincingly sick.

When he opened the door to Cordelia and C.C. late in the afternoon, Jack realized that cleaning up his living room probably had been the easier part of the day. Cordelia’s eyes seemed to squint as she looked at him, as though she were actually seeing two images and trying to choose the one she would perceive.

“Uncle Jack,” she said. There was a stiff instant as she appeared to debate whether to give him a hug.

The woman standing beside her defused the moment. “Jack!” said C.C. “It’s good to see you again.” She stepped past Cordelia into the living room, giving Jack a firm hug and a warm kiss on the lips. “You know something?” she said. “Even though I didn’t know what was going on for a long time, it really meant a lot, your coming to visit me in the clinic. Anything ever happens to you, you know I’ll be there every visiting period, okay?” She grinned.

“Okay,” he said.

“Mon Dieu,” said Cordelia, looking around Jack’s home. “What happened here?”

Jack’s restoration efforts had not been totally successful. Some of the smashed antique furniture was stacked to one side of the room. He hadn’t the heart to take it topside to a Dumpster. There was still the chance of careful repair and restoration.

“When I was coming in last night,” he said. “I slipped.”

“Shot while trying to escape,” said Cordelia ironically. “Whatever happened, Uncle Jack, I’m really sorry. This was such a beautiful place.”

“It still ain’t shabby,” said C.C., plopping down in a claw-footed love seat. She spread her arms as she sank into the overstuffed upholstery. “This is great.” She smiled up at Jack. “Got some coffee?”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s all made.”

“Bagabond was going to come along—” C.C. started to say.

“She had some errands uptown,” said Cordelia.

“I think she’d want me to say hello,” said C.C.

“Sure.” Right, he thought. Cordelia offered to help with the coffee, but he shooed her back to the living room.

When everyone was settled with a steaming mug and a plate of scones with strawberry preserves, Jack said, “So?”

“So,” said C.C., “your niece is very persuasive. But so’s my own ego. I’m gonna come out of seclusion for the benefit, Jack. Back to public performance. Cold turkey. Nothing half-assed. A couple billion potential viewers. There I’ll be, in front of God and everybody.” She chuckled. “Nothing like hitting acute agoraphobia head on.”

“Pretty gutsy,” said Jack. “I’m glad you’re doing it. New stuff?”

“Some old, some new,” she said. “Some borrowed, some blues. It all depends on what the boss here”—C.C. gestured at Cordelia—“gives me for time.”

“Twenty minutes,” said Cordelia. “That’s what everybody gets. The Boss, Girls With Guns, you.”

“Equality’s a great thing.” C.C. looked back at Jack. “So you’re gonna help me get ready for the big night?”

“Uh,” said Jack.

“GF&G can persuade the Transit people to give you time off,” said Cordelia quickly. “I talked to one of their guys in community relations. They think it’d be terrific to have one of their own involved in something like this.”

“Uh huh,” said Jack.

“With pay,” Cordelia said. “And GF&G’ll give you a fee too.”

“I’ve got savings,” Jack said quietly.

“Uncle Jack, I need you.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Gently, this time.

“So I say it to you again.” It seemed to him Cordelia’s voice, her expression, her eyes, were all one coordinated appeal.

“It would be good to work with you,” said C.C. She winked one emerald eye. “Free backstage pass. Rub shoulders with the stars.”

Jack looked from one woman to the other. “Okay,” he finally said. “It’s a deal.”

“Great,” said Cordelia. “I’ll start feeding you the details. But there’s one more thing I want to mention now.”

“Why do I have the feeling,” said Jack, “that I ought to be a ’gator at this very moment, lookin’ up at the gaff?”

“You have plans for tomorrow night?” Cordelia said.

Jack spread his hands. “I thought I’d maybe refinish some chairs.”

“You’re coming with us to New Brunswick.”

“New Jersey?”

Cordelia nodded. “We’re going to the Holidome. We’re going to see Buddy Holley.”

Jack said, “The Buddy Holley? I thought he was dead.”

“He’s been on the lounge circuit for years. I saw a note about his appearance in the Voice.”

“She wants him for the benefit,” said C.C. again.

“A nostalgia act?” said Jack.

Cordelia was actually blushing. “I grew up with his music. I worship the man. I mean, nothing’s set with the benefit and him. I just want us to go see him and find out if he’s anything like he used to be.”

“You may be in for a rude shock,” said C.C. “Guitar of clay and all that.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“‘Not Fade Away’ is one my favorite songs ever,” said Jack. “Count me in.”

“Tell him,” C.C. said to Cordelia.

“Bagabond’s going too,” she said reluctantly.

“I don’ know ’bout this,” said Jack. He thought about his first encounter with Bludgeon, when the black cat had saved him from having to tangle with the psychopathic gay-basher. Had the cat been acting on his own, or at Bagabond’s suggestion? He’d never asked the woman. Maybe he would tomorrow night.

“Uncle Jack?” said Cordelia.

He smiled at her. “Let’s rock.”

Saturday

“Oh, my god,” C.C. said, sufficiently low that only Jack heard. “He’s covering Prince, goddamned Prince!”

“And not very well,” said Jack.

Cordelia had worried because of glacial traffic in the Holland Tunnel that the four of them would be late for Buddy Holley’s first set. She also fretted that Jersey youth would make off with the Mercedes she’d borrowed from Luz Alcala.

“It’s a Holiday Inn,” said Jack as they pulled into the entrance.

“So?”

“The parking lot’s illuminated,” said Jack.

“There’s an empty space close to the lobby,” said Cordelia with relief.

“You want me to slip ten to the clerk to keep an eye on the car?”

“Would you?” said Cordelia seriously.

So they’d parked and secured the Mercedes and entered the New Brunswick Holidome.

The trip over from the city had been tense enough. Jack had ridden shotgun in front with Cordelia driving. Bagabond sat in back on the opposite side, as far from Jack as she could get. Both C.C. and Cordelia had done their best to keep a conversation going. Jack decided it was an inappropriate time to quiz Bagabond about whether his erstwhile rescuer, the black cat, had been acting autonomously or on his mistress’s orders.

“Dis is gon’ be great,” said Cordelia. She had slotted a cassette of Buddy Holley and the Crickets’ greatest hits into the Blaupunkt player. The speaker system was far, far better than adequate.

“Cordelia,” said Bagabond, “I like Buddy a lot, but maybe so he doesn’t hurt my ears?”

“Oh, sorry,” said Cordelia. She turned the volume knob down to barely endurable.

Then Saturday-evening traffic slowed to a stop-and-go creep within the tunnel, the stench of auto exhaust rose up in visible clouds, and the four in the Mercedes listened to all of Cordelia’s Buddy Holley tapes before they reached New Jersey.

Cordelia had become more nervous the later it got. “Maybe there’ll be a warm-up group,” she’d muttered.

There hadn’t been, but it turned out not to matter. When the four walked through the door of the Holidome lounge, they saw there was no need to worry about seats. Perhaps half the booths and tables were vacant. Clearly Saturday-night bacchanalia in New Brunswick didn’t center here. They took a table about ten feet from the low stage, Jack and Bagabond on opposite sides, buffered by C.C. and Cordelia.

And Buddy Holley covered Prince.

Jack recognized Holley from the album portraits. He knew the musician was forty-nine, close enough to Jack’s own age. Holley looked older. His face carried too much flesh; his belly wasn’t completely camouflaged by the silver-lamé jacket. He no longer wore the familiar old black horn-rims; his eyes were masked by stylish aviator shades that couldn’t quite hide the dark bags. But he still played the Fender Telecaster like an angel.

The same couldn’t be said for his sidemen. The rhythm guitarist and the bass player both looked about seventeen. Their playing was not inspired. The muddy sound mix didn’t help. The drummer flailed at his snares, the volume coming through at about the right level to completely mask Holley’s vocal delivery.

In rapid order Buddy Holley segued from Prince into a bad Billy Idol and then a so-so Bon Jovi.

“I don’t believe it,” said C.C., drinking a healthy dollop of her Campari and tonic. “All he’s doing is covering top-forty shit.”

Cordelia watched silently, her expression of initial enthusiasm visibly fading.

Bagabond shook her head disapprovingly. “We shouldn’t have come.”

Maybe, Jack thought, he’s biding his time. “Give him a little while.”

As the desultory clapping faded after a game attempt at evoking Ted Nugent, a voice from the back of the lounge yelled, “Come on, Buddy—give us some oldies!” A ragged cheer went up. Most of the clapping came from Cordelia’s table.

Buddy Holley took his Telecaster by the neck and leaned toward the audience. “Well,” he said, the West Texas twang still pronounced, “I don’t usually take requests, but since you’ve been such a terrific crowd…” He settled back and strummed out a rapid-fire sequence of opening chords that his backup group more-or-less followed.

“Oh, lord,” said C.C. She took another drink as Buddy Holley tore into Tommy Roe’s “Hurray for Hazel,” then a quick verse of “Sheila,” finally a lugubrious, almost-bluesy version of Bobby Vinton’s “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.” Holley continued in that vein. He played a lot of music made famous by Bobbys and Tommys in the fifties and sixties.

“I want to hear ‘Cindy Lou’ or ‘That’ll Be the Day’ or ‘It’s So Easy’ or ‘T-town,’” said Cordelia, distractedly swirling her gin and tonic. “Not this shit.”

I’ll settle for “Not Fade Away,” Jack thought. He watched Buddy Holley slog through the dismal pop retrospective and started getting real depressed. It was enough to make him maybe wish that Holley had died at the height of his initial popularity and not survived to fall into this ghastly self-mockery.

Inebriated conversation and drunken laughter escalated at the surrounding tables. It appeared that most in the lounge had completely forgotten that Buddy Holley was performing onstage. When Holley came to the end of his set, he introduced the final number very simply. “This is something new,” he said. The sparse crowd was having none of it; they had turned actively hostile.

“Fuck you!” somebody shouted. “Turn on the jukebox!”

Holley shrugged. Turned. Walked off the stage.

His backup guitarists quietly put their instruments down; the drummer got up and laid his sticks on an amp.

“Why doesn’t he do his classics?” said Cordelia. “Hang on,” she said to her companions. Then she got up and collared Buddy Holley as he headed toward the bar. They saw her talking earnestly to the man. She led him back to the table, dragged up a vacant chair, appeared to be making him sit through dint of sheer will. Holley looked bemused at the whole affair. Cordelia made introductions. The musician courteously acknowledged each name and shook hands in turn.

Jack found the man’s grip warm and firm, not flabby at all.

Cordelia said, “We’re four of your greatest fans.”

“Sort of sorry you’re all here,” said Holley. “I feel like I owe everyone an apology. This isn’t a good show tonight.” He shrugged. “’Course most nights in lounges are like that.” Holley smiled self-deprecatingly.

“Why don’t you play your own music?” said Bagabond without preamble.

“Your old music,” said Cordelia. “The great stuff.”

Holley looked around the table. “I’ve got my reasons,” he said. “It ain’t a matter of not wanting to. I just can’t.”

“Well,” said Cordelia, smiling, “maybe I can help change your mind.” She launched into her spiel about the benefit at the Funhouse, about how Holley could go on early in the following Saturday’s performance, that maybe he could do a medley of the music that had propelled him to superstardom in the fifties and early sixties, that perhaps—just maybe—the concert and the telecast could rejuvenate his career. “Just like when the Boss found Gary U.S. Bonds playing in bars like this,” she finished up.

Buddy Holley looked honestly astonished by Cordelia’s outpouring of enthusiasm. He put his elbows on the table, closely studying the club soda and lime the waitress had brought him, finally looking up at her with a slight smile. “Listen,” he said. “I thank you. I truly do. Hearing something like this makes my night—hell, the whole year.” He looked away. “But I can’t do it.”

“But you can,” said Cordelia.

He shook his head.

“Think about it.”

“Won’t do no good,” he said. “It won’t work.” He patted her hand. “But thanks for the thought.” And with that, he nodded to the rest of them, then got up and trudged through the smoke to the stage for his second set.

“Damn,” said Cordelia.

Jack watched the musician’s back as Holley hoisted himself up onto the stage. There was something familiar about how the man carried himself. It was the sense of defeat. Jack thought he’d last seen that slight slumping of shoulders and hanging of head when he’d looked in the mirror. Just this morning.

He wondered how many years and what disasters had beaten Buddy Holley down. I wish—At first the thought didn’t complete itself. Then he said to himself, I wish I could help.

“You want to go or stay?” said C.C. to Cordelia.

“Go,” said Cordelia. Almost too low to be heard, she continued, “But I think I’ll be back.”

“Like MacArthur?” said Bagabond.

“More like Sergeant Preston of the Yukon,” said Cordelia.

Sunday

“So who are you calling a chickie?” said Cordelia, voice colder than the ocean off Jones Beach.

“What I be sayin’,” said the Holiday Inn morning clerk, “is that we can’t be givin’ out guests’ room numbers to just any chickie what comes along.” He smiled at her. “Rules.”

“You want to know how early I had to get up to catch a train out here?” Cordelia demanded. “Do you know how long I waited for a cab at the New Brunswick station?”

The clerk’s easy smile started to fray at the lips. “Sorry.”

“I’m not a goddamned groupie!” Cordelia slapped an expensively embossed business card down on the counter. “I’m trying to make Holley a star.”

“Already was.” The clerk picked up the card and examined it. Below Cordelia’s name it read ‘Associate Producer.’ The escalated job title had been in lieu of a raise. “No shit? You work with GF&G, the folks what do the Robert Townsend show an’ all that Spike Lee stuff?” He sounded halfway impressed.

“No shit,” said Cordelia. She tried smiling. “Honest.”

“And you’re gonna pull Buddy Holley out of this shithole?”

“Gonna try.”

“O-kay,” said the clerk, grinning. He glanced at the registration spinner. “Room eighty-four twenty.” He looked at Cordelia significantly.

“So?”

With a tone of voice that suggested “Don’t you know nothin’?” the clerk said, “The main roads leadin’ out of Lubbock. The highway to Nashville.”

“Oh,” said Cordelia.

Buddy Holley had been asleep when Cordelia knocked on the door of room 8420 at 9:25. That had been obvious when he opened the door. His gray-streaked black hair was in disarray. His glasses were slightly askew as he peered out into the hallway.

“It’s me, Cordelia Chaisson. Remember? From last night?”

“Um, right.” Holley seemed to gather himself. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to take you to breakfast. I need to talk with you. It’s quite important.”

Buddy Holley shook his head bemusedly. “Are you the irresistible force? Or the immovable object?”

Cordelia shrugged.

“Give me ten,” said Holley. “I’ll meet you down in the lobby.”

“Promise?” said Cordelia.

Holley smiled slightly, nodded, and shut the door.

Buddy Holley came to the breakfast table in crisp denim jeans, a flowered western shirt, and a brown corduroy jacket. He looked somewhat the worse for wear, but comfortable.

He seated himself and said, “You gonna evangelize me again?”

“If I can. We can talk about dat after we get some coffee.”

“Tea for me,” he said. “Herbal. I brought my own. The tea selection in the kitchen is pretty shabby.”

The waitress came and took their order.

“Around your neck,” said Holley, pointing with his glance. “That a fetish? I saw it last night, but I was preoccupied.”

Cordelia unhooked the clasp and passed the fetish over. The tiny silver alligator and the fossil tooth were bound to the delicate oval of sandstone with a tough strand of dried gut.

Holley turned the object over and over, examining it closely. “Doesn’t look American southwest—Polynesian? Australia, maybe?”

“Pretty good,” said Cordelia. “Aboriginal.”

“What tribe? I know the Aranda pretty well, even the Wikmunkan and the Murngin, but this just ain’t familiar.”

“It was made by a young urban aborigine,” said Cordelia. She hesitated a moment. It both excited and hurt her to think of Wyungare. And how, she wondered, was the central Australian revolution, such as it was, going? She’d been too busy with the benefit to watch much news. “He gave it to me as a going-away gift.”

“Let me guess,” said Holley. “The sandstone’s from Uluru?” Cordelia nodded. Uluru, true name of what the Europeans called Ayers Rock. “And the reptile’s your totem, of course.” He held the object up to the light before passing it back over. “There’s considerable power here. Not just a token.”

She refastened the chain. “How do you know?”

He grinned crookedly at her. “Just don’t laugh too loud, okay?”

Cordelia felt puzzled. “Okay.”

“Ever since things went to hell—since they fell apart around 1972,” he said hesitantly, “I been lookin’ around.” He contemplatively sipped his tea.

“For what?” Cordelia finally said.

“For whatever, for anything that meant something. I was just—searching.”

Cordelia thought for a moment. “Spirituality?”

Holley nodded vehemently. “Absolutely. The limos were gone, the homes, the private jet and the high living, the—” He stopped in midsentence. “All gone. There had to be something else besides hitting the bottle and the bottom.”

“And you’ve found it?”

“I’m still huntin’.” He met her gaze and smiled. “Lotta years and a lotta miles. You know something? I’m a lot more popular in Africa and the rest of the world than I am here. Back in ’75 my agent gave me a last chance and booked me into this crazy pan-African tour. Things fell apart—well, I fell part. I really got screwed up after I backed out of a gig in Jo’burg. Somehow I stole a Land Rover and ended up drinkin’ two fifths of Jim Beam ’way out in the bush. You know how alcohol poisonin’ works? Shoot, I was well on my way.”

Cordelia stared at him, held entranced by the flat, West Texas twang. The man was a storyteller.

“Bushmen found me. Tribesmen from out of the Kalahari. First thing I knew was a!Kung shaman leanin’ down over me and lettin’ out the most ungodly screams you ever heard. Later I found out he was taking the sickness into himself and then gettin’ shed of it into the air.” Holley contemplatively touched the pad of his thumb to his incisors. “That was the beginning.”

“And since?” said Cordelia.

“I keep lookin’. I search everywhere. When I played a string of bars in the Dakotas and the Midwest I learned about Rolling Thunder and the generations of Black Elk. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know.” His voice took on a dreamy quality. “When I was with the Lakota, I cried for a vision. The shaman took me through the inipi ceremony and sent me up the hill to receive the wakan, the holy beings.” Holley smiled ruefully. “The Thunder Beings came, but that was about all. I got wet and cold.” He shrugged. “So it goes.”

“You keep searching,” said Cordelia.

“I do that,” said Holley. “I learn. I been off booze since South Africa. No more drugs either. As for what I’m learnin’, it ain’t easy to work with a hardshell Baptist growin’ up, but that’s what I’ve tried to do.”

It occurred to Cordelia that, for all he’d been saying, Buddy Holley still seemed very anchored in the physical universe. She didn’t have the same sense of ethereal dissociation that she’d gotten from spiritually transformed rock stars such as Cat Stevens or Richie Furay. She nibbled a bite from her neglected English muffin. “Most of what I know about this, I learned from my aboriginal friend, but I’ve thought about it. Sometimes, in my job, I wonder whether rock stars, pop singers, entertainers in the public eye in America, are sort of the contemporary equivalent of shamans.”

Holley nodded seriously. “Men and women of power. Absolutely.”

“They have the magic.”

Buddy Holley laughed. “Fortunately the ones who believe they do, usually have nothing. And the ones who truly possess the power, don’t consciously know it.”

Cordelia finished her muffin. “The performers at the benefit concert next Saturday all have the power.” Holley looked wary. “I’m changing the subject,” Cordelia said lightly.

“I don’t think things have changed since last night. You want me to play all my old standards. I just can’t do that.”

“Is this—” Cordelia hunted for words. “Is this a crisis of confidence?”

“That’s probably part of it.”

“Same thing happened with C.C. Ryder,” said Cordelia. “But she changed her mind. She’s gonna appear.”

“Good for her.” Holley hesitated. “The truth is, I can’t play the songs you want me to do.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t own them anymore. ’Long about the time things went to hell, a New York outfit called Shrike Music bought up my entire catalog. They’re real sweethearts. Ever see their logo? A quarter-note stuck on a spike. They been keeping my songs on ice. I hate it, but I can’t do spit to get them back.” Holley spread his hands helplessly.

“We’ll see,” said Cordelia without hesitation. “GF&G’s got some pull. Is that the only other catch?”

“You think you can do anything, don’t you?” Holley smiled as he shook his head. This time it was a genuine smile. His teeth were even and white. “Okay, look. You spring some of my music loose and maybe we’ve got a deal. Just for old times’ sake.”

“I don’t understand,” said Cordelia.

“Well, let me tell you something,” said Buddy Holley. Animation filled his features and his voice. “Back in high school in Lubbock? Back when Bob Montgomery and I were first putting together a band and doin’ some crazy recordings, there was a girl. I thought she was just—well—” He took a deep breath and smiled shyly. “You know the story line. She never noticed me a-tall. Couple years later, she was still in my head when I recorded ‘Girl on My Mind’ in Nashville. That was about the time Decca wanted me to sound like everyone else with a rock ’n’ roll hit in 1956. I sort of got out of the formula with ‘Girl.’” He shook his head. “So anyway, you remind me of her. She knew her own way too.” He leaned back in his seat and regarded her.

“That’s a great story,” said Cordelia. “It’s just like—”

“Rock ’n’ roll,” Holley finished.

They both laughed. Things, thought Cordelia, were back on track.

Monday

First thing Monday morning, Cordelia sat at her desk and contemplated her sins while she waited on hold with the rights and permissions department at Shrike Music. The background tape for Shrike’s hold circuit was classical, somber and dirgelike. Cordelia suspected it was a deliberate psych-out tactic.

It occurred to her as she examined her nails that she had not yet tried to contact Mick Jagger. Luz Alcala would not be happy. At least she had gotten the Mercedes back to Luz without a scratch or dent. Well, there were priorities. It seemed very important to secure Buddy Holley for the Funhouse benefit.

She riffled through the phone messages that had been stacked on her desk. U2’s manager wanted her to know that The Edge had got his fingers caught in a car door over the weekend. U2 just might be without the services of their guitarist. Maybe, she thought, she could convince Bono to do an acoustic set?

The tech people had left a note alerting her that ShowSat III was acting up over the Indian Ocean. They were working on it. They were somewhat confident that malfunctioning relays could be cleared. Somewhat? she thought. Shit. “Somewhat” had better translate into “absolutely.” She knew damn well she didn’t have the clout to get GF&G to commission a shuttle repair flight with five days notice. With any notice. Christ, what was she thinking? Cordelia gulped some coffee and glared down at the phone. How long was Shrike going to hang her up?

Another note was from Tami, the half-Eskimo lead guitarist of Girls With Guns. The world’s greatest all-women neopunker band was stranded in Billings. And could Cordelia wire just enough cash so that all the members of the band could get to New York by Saturday? Probably. Cordelia jotted a note. Talk to Luz.

There was a double beep on the phone and a voice said, “Miss Delveccio, rights and permissions.”

Cordelia introduced herself, sounding as calm, self-assured, and in control as she could manage. She sounded good to her. “I want to talk about Buddy Holley’s catalog,” Cordelia said. “I understand Shrike holds the rights. Here at Global Fun and Games we’re very much looking forward to having Mr. Holley perform a selection of his past hits at this weekend’s global benefit for medical victims.”

There was a brief silence. “What sort of medical victims?”

Cordelia didn’t like the sound of her voice. South Bronx, probably. “Um, AIDS and the wild card virus. The live video feed will reach—”

Miss Delveccio interrupted her. “Oh, right, that benefit. I’m sorry, Ms. Chaisson, but it will be quite impossible to cooperate with Global on this project. I am sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry.

“But surely there—”

“Shrike owns Mr. Holley’s music under an exclusive license. We just won’t be able to release the permissions you need.” The tone of her voice said, and that’s final.

“Perhaps if I could speak with your department head—”

“I’m afraid Mr. Lazarus isn’t in today.”

“Well, maybe—”

“Thank you for thinking of us, Ms. Chaisson,” said Miss Delveccio. “Have a nice day.” And she hung up.

Cordelia stared at the phone for a minute or two. Damn it. She hoped Miss Delveccio would have an extremely difficult period. After another minute she switched on the desk terminal and pulled up the on-line Variety. She flipped through a few electronic pages at random and then turned on the modem and dialed up Variety’s index base. While there were quite a few key-word entries for Shrike Music, but not many for Buddy Holley, there was one story that flagged both. It was dated nearly three months before, while she had been in Australia. It seemed that Shrike Music had inked a megabucks deal with America’s second-largest advertising firm. The advertising company was a client of a major evangelical organization that was looking to market its theme amusement parks and other commercial subsidiaries through what the article, quoting Leo Barnett, termed “the innocent, but energetic, nostalgia” of Buddy Holley’s music.

Oh, Cordelia thought. Oh, no. No wonder Shrike wasn’t eager to have Holley’s songs associated with the benefit. This was going to be a problem.

Luz Alcala stuck her head through the office door and said, “Good morning, Cordelia, did you have a good weekend?”

Cordelia looked up. “Definitely. You get your keys okay? Thanks again for the car.”

Luz nodded. “You all right? You look a bit distracted.”

“It’s just Monday morning.”

Luz smiled sympathetically. “By the way, did you reach our lycanthropic friend?”

Cordelia shook her head. Thought fast. “Still can’t find him.”

“Let me give you a suggestion. After you try their management, call the presidents of the companies they record for. When you can’t get satisfaction, go upstairs. It almost always works.”

Aha! thought Cordelia. “Thanks,” she said.

After Luz chatted a little more and then left, Cordelia dialed Shrike back and asked for the president’s office. After two layers of secretaries, she finally reached one Anthony Michael Cardwell. Cardwell was more sympathetic than Miss Delveccio, but ultimately no more helpful. “True, Shrike Music has a responsibility to the community—and we participate in many projects toward that end—but ultimately we are responsible to our shareholders and our corporate owners,” he said. “I believe you can appreciate the difficulty of our position.”

Bullshit, Cordelia thought, furious. What she said was much the same thing. Definitely too blunt. The president of Shrike Music cut the conversation short.

After setting the phone down, Cordelia drummed her fingers on the desktop. Go upstairs, Luz had said. Cordelia touched the terminal keyboard and called up GF&G’s research list of entertainment industry databases. As she started to dig out the roots of Shrike’s corporate family tree, she wondered how Jack was doing.

Naturally Jack had believed Cordelia when she had told him Sunday night that things looked good so far as obtaining permission for Holley to play his own music. More, GF&G would take care of Jack’s leave of absence Monday morning. That would free Jack so he could help move Holley into Manhattan. Cordelia had arranged a room downtown at the Hotel California, Manhattan’s premiere hostelry for visiting musicians. “The management,” Cordelia had said, “doesn’t care what happens to a room so long as the damage gets paid for. Platinum Amex cards are welcome.”

By noon Monday, while Cordelia was playing silicon Nancy Drew, Jack had moved Buddy Holley into his eighth-floor room at the Hotel California. “You’ve got an open account,” the desk clerk had said, so they ordered up sumptuous lunches.

Jack watched as Holley unpacked a compact tape deck and a box of cassettes. There was an eclectic selection of new age music—lots of Windham Hill albums, along with starkly packaged relaxation tapes of wind, storm, sea, rain—and a varied lot of early rock, blues, and country. “Got some scarce stuff here,” said Holley, picking up a handful of what were obviously home-dubbed tapes. “Tiny Bradshaw, Lonnie Johnson, Bill Doggett, King Curtis. Got the better-known stuff too—Roy Orbison, Buddy Knox, Doug Sahm.” He chuckled. “A real Texas collection, those last boys. Also have some George Jones—got a soft spot in my heart for that boy too. Me and my first band played behind him back in ’55 on the Hank Cochran show.”

“What’s that?” Jack pointed at what seemed to be the only vinyl record in the box of tapes.

“I’m real proud of that.” Holley held up the 45. “‘Jole Blon.’ Waylon Jennings’s first record. I produced that for him back when he was playin’ with the Crickets.”

Jack took the record and examined it gingerly, as though looking at a holy relic. “I guess maybe I heard this on WSN.”

“Yep,” said Holley. “Just about everybody I respect from that era learned about music first from listenin’ to the Grand Ole Opry.”

Jack set down the 45 of “Jole Blon.” A tremendous lassitude swept across him. He looked at the remains of lunch. Nausea rocked back and forth in his belly. He sat back on the hotel couch and tried to keep his voice steady. “’Fore I came to New York, I listened to the Opry all the time. Once I was here, I found a station out of Virginia dat carried it.”

“You come from the same place as your niece?” Holley said interestedly.

Jack nodded.

“Alligator your totem too?”

Jack said nothing, trying to control the new pain in his gut.

“’Gator’s a powerful guardian animal spirit,” said Holley. “I wouldn’t mess with one.”

Jack doubled up and tried not to whimper.

Holley was at his side. “Somethin’ wrong?” He ran his hands down Jack’s chest and stomach. His fingers fluttered lightly over the man’s belly. He whistled. “Oh, man, I think you’ve got some trouble here.”

“I know,” said Jack. He groaned. Any other year he’d be pretty sure he could avoid the flu-type stomach bugs. But Tachyon had briefed him about opportunistic infections. He’d had the instant image of viruses zeroing in on him from every pesthole in the world. “I think maybe it’s just the flu.”

Holley shook his head. “It’s a heavy-duty power intrusion I’m pickin’ up here.”

“It’s a bug.”

“And the bug’s gettin’ through to you because your protection, your personal mantle is screwed.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” said Jack.

Holley took his hands away from Jack’s abdomen. “Sorry, nothin’ personal. I don’t know if Cordelia told you, but I—well, I know something about this stuff.” Jack looked back at him bewilderedly. “What you need,” said Holley seriously, “is a traditional treatment. You need to have the intrusion sucked out. I think it’s the only way.”

Jack couldn’t help himself. He started chuckling, then guffawing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like this. It hurt to laugh, but it helped as well. Buddy Holley looked on, apparently astonished. Finally Jack straightened a bit and said, “Sorry, I just don’t think, uh, sucking an intrusion out of my body would be a real wise idea right now.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Holley. “I’m talkin’ about a psychic thing, pullin’ out the cause of the discomfort usin’ the power of the soul and the mind.”

“I’m not.” Jack started laughing again. But Dieu, he did feel better.

By two in the afternoon Cordelia had accessed both the New York Public Library Reference Base and the Public Records DB in Albany. She covered several notebook pages with scrawled numbers and notes. Her task was akin to one of the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles she never had the patience to finish.

Shrike Music was a wholly owned subsidiary of Monopoly Holdings, a New York corporation. Cordelia had dialed Monopoly’s central Manhattan number and tried for the president. Who she eventually got was the executive vice president for corporate affairs. That man told her the Buddy Holley matter was not his to comment upon, but that she should send a detailed letter to Monopoly’s president, one Connel McCray. But couldn’t Cordelia speak to McCray directly? she inquired. The president was indisposed. It was hard to say when he’d be back in the office.

Cordelia ascertained from Public Records that Monopoly Holdings was a division of the Infundibulum Corporation, a consortium controlled by CariBank in Nassau. The call to Infundibulum netted her a frustrating twenty minutes holding for an equally unsatisfactory conversation with the CEO’s executive assistant. The long distance call to Nassau got her a heavily accented Bahamian voice claiming complete confusion about this Holley chap.

After hanging up, Cordelia regarded the frustration the phone represented. “I think I go home now,” she said to herself. A break was in order. She could come back to the office later and work all night.

Veronica and Cordelia shared a high-rise apartment downtown on Maiden Lane. There wasn’t much of a view—the living room windows looked out on a narrow courtyard with eleventh-floor neighbors only thirty feet away. At first it had been like watching very dull big-screen TV. Cordelia quickly learned to ignore the rest of the building. It was pleasant just having her own small room. Veronica could use the rest of the apartment as she pleased.

Cordelia had made the maximum use of her room, engaging a Soho carpenter to build an inexpensive frame of two-by-fours to support her bed. Instant sleeping loft. She just had to remember not to roll off the top during the night. The six feet of space beneath the mattress allowed her a closet, book shelves, and space to store her albums. That left her most of the wallspace for prints and posters. One wall was dominated by a color poster of Ayers Rock at dawn. The opposite wall had the common WHEN YOU’RE UP TO YOUR ASS IN ALLIGATORS poster, but with the tired maxim’s payoff amended in black marker to read YOU KNOW YOU’RE HOME.

Cordelia was slotting a Suzanne Vega tape into the deck when her roommate walked in. Veronica was wearing a slinky white gown, along with a platinum wig and violet contacts. “Masquerade?” Cordelia said.

“Just a date.” Veronica rolled her eyes. “It’s a guy from Malta with a crush on both Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor.” She changed the subject. “Listen, any good tickets left for Saturday?”

“At twenty-five hundred dollars a pop, I can’t really comp you,” said Cordelia.

“No problem. These are for management. Miranda and Ichiko can afford them. They just would like a little consideration about table placement. Close to the stage okay?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Cordelia jotted a note and put her book of Things to Do back in her handbag.

“So how’s work?” said Veronica innocently.

Cordelia told her.

“Sounds like you could use a real detective.”

“If I knew one, I’d ask. I’m desperate.”

“Well,” said Veronica. “It just so happens maybe I can help you out.”

“You want to tell me what you’re talking about?” It would be so good, thought Cordelia, to turn this over to someone else.

“Not yet,” Veronica said. “Let me work on it. And you can make sure those seats are good ones.”

“Help me get Buddy Holley in front of the cameras,” said Cordelia, “and I’ll let Miranda and Ichiko sit onstage behind the monitors. They can hold the microphones. Anything their hearts desire.”

“It’s a deal. Now then,” continued Veronica, “before I go uptown, whose turn is it to buy cat food?”

The men sat and listened to music and drank. Buddy Holley drank soda. Jack drank dark beer. Room service was accommodating. They talked. Every once in a while Holley would get up to change the tapes. They went through Jimmie Rodgers and Carl Perkins, Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty. Jack was surprised that the singer had some tapes of newer artists: Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakum and Steve Earle. “Like the monkey said,” Holley said simply, “you gotta keep up with evolution.”

They talked about the fifties—about Louisiana bayou country and the dry vastness of West Texas. “Tell you,” said Holley, “it ain’t sayin’ much about Lubbock when about the only place to go on Saturday night is Amarillo. I went back there after the oil boom, and then again after the crash, and nothin’ much had changed either time.”

“No Buddy Holley Day?” said Jack.

“Figure I’ll have to die before that happens.”

They had a lot in common, Jack decided. Except there’d never be a Jack Robicheaux Day in Atelier Parish. Not even after he’d died. He fumbled through the box of cassettes and held up one that was unlabeled except for the word “new.” “What’s this?”

“Aw, that’s nothin’,” said Holley. “Nothin’ you’d want to hear.”

There was something about the way he’d protested, Jack thought. When Buddy Holley went into the bathroom, Jack set the mysterious cassette in the deck and punched “play.” The music was simple and unadorned. There was no backup, no double-tracking, no layered sound. The singing was reflective in the first song, exuberant in the second. The lyrics were mature. The characteristic hiccup in the vocal line was there. This was Buddy Holley. Jack had never heard either of these songs before.

He heard the bathroom door open behind him. Buddy Holley said, “After the plane went down with my family, and Shrike bought all my music, people seemed to think I just wasn’t gonna write anymore. And for a few years, I guess I didn’t.”

The third song began.

“All dis is new,” said Jack reverently. “Is it not?”

Buddy Holley’s voice was soft and powerful. “Just as fresh as resurrection.”

Tuesday

The Funhouse was no Carnegie Hall, and as with virtually any other Manhattan club, daylight didn’t become it. This morning the mirrors were streaked and dusty. They’d be polished to a high sheen by Saturday. As Jack looked across toward the stage, what he mostly saw were chairs stacked on tables. The few windows and skylights admitted bars of spring sunlight that contained myriad dancing dust motes. The place smelled stale. The other predominating odor was that of machine lubricant.

Jack stood beside Buddy Holley. Holley stood beside C.C. Ryder. On the other side of C.C. was Bagabond. It was an unbreakable protocol. Bagabond had chosen to be C.C.’s constant companion and protector. Jack realized he had consciously picked a similar role with Buddy Holley. He genuinely liked the singer, and it wasn’t merely a matter of nostalgia for the fifties and sixties. He felt he was becoming genuine friends with the Texan, though too bad, whispered the nasty voice in his head, you’re not going to be buddies for very long. Jack had seen Dr. Tachyon earlier in the morning. Tachyon had proposed hospitalizing him. “No way,” he’d said. Tachyon appealed to his reason. “Can you really predict what my version of the virus is going to do?” he’d asked. Tachyon admitted that he didn’t truly know. But there were precautions … Jack had shrugged ruefully and left.

Xavier Desmond, his elephantine trunk seeming to wilt down his chest, watched over the stage preparations. He moved slowly, in the manner of a man knowing the real proximity of death, yet he seemed proud beyond words. For a night the eyes of most of the world would be on his beloved Funhouse.

The limited space in the club was being further curtailed by the camera tracks laid in front of and to the side of the stage. The tech people had cleverly rigged a superthin Louma boom from the ceiling. “Don’t let it brush the chandelier!” Des said as the remote operator put the mantislike camera mount through its paces.

Even with the shafts of sun glinting off the mirror balls, the club looked drab.

Buddy Holley scratched his head. “Shoot, I’ve seen worse stages.”

C.C. laughed and said, “I’ve played them.”

“Guess there won’t be no chicken wire around the stage, huh?”

C.C. shrugged and affected a deep, deep Texas accent. “Joe Ely used to tell me about places so tough, you had to puke three times and show a knife before they’d let you in. And that was if you was singin’.”

“Des runs a classier dive,” said Jack. “I figure people laying out twenty-five hundred dollars a seat aren’t gonna heave Corona bottles at the band.”

“Be more real if they did.” Holley glanced at C.C. “I gotta tell you, I’m pretty excited about hearing you sing.”

“Same here,” said C.C., “though I’m still edgy as a cat. You decided to go on for sure?”

Holley turned to Jack. “Anything from your niece?”

Jack shook his head. “I talked to her this morning. I guess things are going slow with Shrike, but she said no sweat. Just bureaucratic runaround.”

C.C. poked Holley in the ribs. “Listen, man, I will if you will.”

“A challenge?” Holley slowly grinned. “Think this’ll be as much fun as racin’ for pink slips? What the hell. Okay. I’ll go on first like the Ghost of Charts Past, and if I have to, I’ll cover—oh, Billy Idol.”

“No!” Bagabond spoke up. “No, you won’t.”

Things weren’t going terribly well for Cordelia. She had gotten into the office by seven. It was too bad about being so phased that she forgot about the sequence of time zones west. Little Steven’s road manager wasn’t terribly happy about being awakened in his hotel room at a little past four in the morning.

On the other hand, better news had come in about ten. X rays had determined that The Edge’s fingers were mildly sprained rather than fractured. Even though U2’s performance that night in Seattle was being scrubbed, the guitarist had a good shot at being operational by Saturday.

Then there was the matter of Shrike Music. Cordelia had a terrific flow chart with lines and arrows indicating the tangled skein owning the music publishing firm. She had lists of CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, and heads of promotion departments. And lawyers—lord, hordes of attorneys. But no one would talk to her. How come? she wondered. Is it my breath? She giggled. Fatigue, she thought. Early burn out. Way too soon. There would be time to collapse after Saturday night. She poured another cup of high-caf Colombian and started thinking seriously about Shrike and its masters, and why everyone was evading as if she were a Congressional investigator out bird-dogging payola charges.

The phone beeped. Good. Maybe it was one of a dozen executives connected with Shrike or its Byzantine ownership returning her calls.

“Hi,” said her roommate. “You got the tickets for me?”

“Have you lined up Spenser, or maybe Sam Spade?”

“Even better,” said Veronica. “Got somebody here I want you to talk to.”

“Veronica—” she started to say. Why was everyone playing cloak-and-dagger?

“This is Croyd,” said an unfamiliar male voice. “You met me. We had a little date, you, me, and Veronica.”

“I remember,” said Cordelia, “but—”

“I’m in investigations.” Flatly.

“I guess I knew that, but I didn’t think—”

“Just listen,” said Croyd. “This is Veronica’s idea, not mine. Maybe I can help. Maybe not. You want to know something about Shrike Music.”

“Right. Buddy Holley and I need to find out who really owns his music, so I can get permission for him to sing it, and I can convince him to appear Saturday—”

“So isn’t Shrike in the phone book?” said Croyd.

“They’ve been stonewalling me like they were the Mafia or something.”

She heard a dry chuckle. “Maybe they are.”

“Anything you can do,” Cordelia said, “I’ll be very—”

Croyd broke in again. “I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll get back to you.” The connection clicked off.

Cordelia set the phone down and allowed herself a smile. She crossed her fingers. Both hands. Then she picked up from the desk the next note begging her attention. This one was simpler. Maybe she could find out in less than an hour exactly why Girls With Guns seemed to be hung up in Cleveland.

Wednesday

GF&G had decided that the Funhouse club band would back both C.C. Ryder and Buddy Holley. Actually it was C.C. who approved them; GF&G paid the checks.

“They’re all sound musicians,” said C.C. to Holley.

“Good enough for me.” He watched and listened as the two guitarists, drummer, keyboard woman, and sax player tuned.

Jack observed too. Practice would be long and tedious. But if you were an observer, it was show business in action. It was diverting. Glamorous. It was heaven.

C.C. led Holley onto the stage. Bagabond sat down at a front table, though the action looked performed under duress. Jack knew that she really did want to follow C.C. on up there.

“Mind if I sit here?” he said to her, setting his hand on the back of the chair opposite. Bagabond’s dark eyes fixed on him fiercely for just a split second; she shrugged slightly and Jack sat.

“Okay,” C.C. was saying to the musicians on the stage. “Here’s what I’m gonna want to start with. Or maybe end with. Damned if I know yet. All I really know is that it’s new and it’s part of my twenty minutes.” She jacked in her ebony twelve-string and strummed a chord progression. “We got a whole three days to get in tune. So remember the advantage we have over dudes like the Boss or U2.” Everybody grinned. “Okay, let’s do it. This is called ‘Baby, You Been Dealt a Winning Hand.’ One, two, three, and—”

The moment C.C. started bto play, she looked stricken. Nervous, Jack thought, was too mild a word for it. There was no crowd. There was no audience save the musicians, the technicians working on sound and lights, and the few odd observers such as Jack and Bagabond. C.C.’s lead went hideously flat. She stopped, looked down at the stage while everyone in the club seemed to hold a collective breath. Then C.C. looked up, and to Jack it seemed the motion was executed with enormous effort. Her fingers caressed the strings of her guitar. “Sorry,” she said. That was all. And then she played.

Baby, the cards are out

    Baby, there is no doubt

That when the dealer calls

    You been dealt a winning hand

The drummer picked up the backbeat. The bass player chugged in. The rhythm guitar softly filled the spaces. Jack saw Buddy Holley’s fingers lightly stroking the strings of his Telecaster even though it wasn’t jacked in.

You played since you were just a kid

    You played till you got old

Baby, you never knew a thing

    Cause all you ever did was fold

The woman on keyboards ran an eerie, wailing trill out of her Yamaha. Jack blinked. Holley smiled. It sounded like the rinky-tink Farfisas both remembered from the presynthesizer, good old days.

Baby, don’t ever fold

    Not when you got

    That winning hand

When it was done, there were a long few moments of absolute silence in the Funhouse. Then the tech people started to clap. So did C.C.’s backup musicians. They cheered. Bagabond get to her feet. Jack saw Xavier Desmond in the back of the room; it looked as if there were tears on his face.

Buddy Holley scratched his head and grinned. A little like Will Rogers, Jack thought. “You know somethin’, darlin’? I think maybe all of us here were privileged this mornin’ to see the high point of the concert.”

C.C. looked pale, but she smiled and said, “Naw, it’s pretty rough. It’s only gonna get better.”

Holley shook his head.

C.C. Ryder marched over to him and tilted her face up toward his. “Your turn in the barrel, boyo.”

The man shook his head, but his fingers were caressing the guitar.

C.C. tapped the side of her head. “I showed you mine.”

Holley made a little shrug. “What the heck. Gotta do it sometime, I reckon.”

“No Billy Idol,” Bagabond said.

Holley laughed. “No Billy Idol.” He strummed contemplatively for a moment. Then he said, “This is new.” He glanced over at Jack. “This one ain’t even on the tape you heard.” The strum deepened, picked up strength. “I call this one ‘Rough Beast.’”

Then Buddy Holley played.

“It was incredible, Cordie. It’s the old Buddy Holley with all the maturity laid in.” Jack’s voice was exuberant and uncritical. “Everything he played was new, and it was absolutely great.”

“New, huh?” Cordelia tapped the earpiece with her right index finger. “As good as ‘That’ll Be the Day’ and ‘Oh, Boy’?”

“Is ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ better than ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’?” The excitement crackled in Jack’s voice. “It isn’t even apples and oranges. The new stuff’s as energetic as his early songs—it’s just more”—Jack seemed to be searching for the precise word—“sophisticated.”

Cordelia stared at the photographs across the office but wasn’t seeing them. Click. There might as well be a light bulb switching on above my head, she thought. I’ve gotta slow down. I’m starting to miss a lot. “What I’m guessing,” she said, “is that Shrike doesn’t have any claim on the new stuff. What I can do is put him in the hammock in the middle of the show. Maybe cut him down to ten minutes.”

“Twenty,” said Jack firmly. “It has to be as much as everyone else.”

“Maybe,” said Cordelia. “Anyhow, he’s in the center so the audience warms up before they have to decide whether they’re gon’ be disappointed when Buddy Holley don’ sing ‘Cindy Lou.’”

There was a silence on the line. Jack finally said, “I don’t think he’ll mind.”

“Okay, then. Great. This is really gon’ simplify matters. I can tell the wet-brains at Shrike to screw off.” Cordelia felt the crushing weight start to lift from her head. “You sure he’ll do the show with new material?”

Jack’s words were a verbal shrug. “The ice do seem to be broken. He and C.C. are reinforcing each other. I think it’s all gon’ work out.”

“Great. Thanks, Uncle Jack. Keep me current.”

Cordelia’s mood was cheerful after she hung up the phone. So Buddy Holley was in. And now she could call Croyd off the wild-goose chase. But when she phoned the apartment, no one answered. All she reached was the answering machine.

Maybe, she thought cheerfully, it’s all gon’ be downhill from here.

Thursday

Cordelia realized she was humming “Real Wild Child.” The up-tempo rocker perfectly matched her hyper mood this afternoon. She wondered for a moment where she’d heard it as she identified the tune. She knew it was on none of her Buddy Holley albums. The song must just be in the air.

She tapped along with her fingers to the guitar runs in her head as she dialed her postlunch calls. Cordelia had phoned over to the Funhouse just about the time her takeout Vietnamese soup had arrived. Jack was sounding up.

“Practice is going great,” he had said. “C.C. and Buddy are getting along fine. And Bagabond even nodded to me when I said good morning.”

“How’s the music?”

“They’re both doing mostly new stuff—well, Buddy’s is all new.”

“Can he fill the whole twenty minutes?” Cordelia had said.

“Just like before—when I said he wouldn’t have any problem? He still won’t. You really ought to give him an hour.”

“I’m not sure how U2 or the Boss would like that,” Cordelia said dryly.

“I bet they’d love it.”

“We won’t be finding out.” Cordelia sniffed the fragrance of crab and asparagus wafting out of the styrofoam soup bucket. “I’ve got to go, Uncle Jack. My food’s here.”

“Okay.” Jack’s voice hesitated. “Cordie?”

“Mmmp?” She already had the first spoonful in her mouth.

“Thanks for asking me to do this. It’s a terrific thing. I’m grateful. It’s … keeping my mind off everything else going on in the world.”

Cordelia swallowed the hot soup. “Just go on keeping C.C. and Buddy Holley happy. And Bagabond, too, if it’s possible.”

“I’ll try.”

About two o’clock Cordelia was dialing the contract firm that was trying to exorcise the demons from ShowSat III when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught an unfamiliar figure silhouetted in the office doorway. Setting down the phone, she saw a distinguished-looking middle-aged man dressed in a cream silk suit that she knew had to be worth two or three months of her salary. Tailored to the final angstrom unit. Knotted foulard precisely positioned. Head cocked, he regarded her with sharp eyes.

“You’re too well-dressed to be Tom Wolfe,” she said.

“Indeed I am not. Tom Wolfe, that is.” He didn’t smile. “Do you mind if I come in and chat with you?”

“Did we have an appointment?” Cordelia said puzzledly. She glanced down at her calendar. “I’m afraid I don’t—”

“I was in the neighborhood,” said the man. “We have an appointment. It’s just I’m afraid you were not informed.” He extended one hand. “Forgive the lack of formal introduction. I’m St. John Latham, at your service. I represent Latham, Strauss. I expect you’ve heard of us.”

Cordelia caught a gleam of intensely manicured nails as she grasped his hand. His grip was dry and perfunctory. “The attorneys,” she said. “Uh, yes, please, do sit down.”

He took the guest chair. As a backdrop for Latham’s suit, the Breuer looked a mite shabby. “Let me get to the point, Ms. Chaisson—or may I call you Cordelia?”

“If you wish.” Cordelia tried to gather her thoughts. For the senior partner of one of Manhattan’s priciest and nastiest law firms to be sitting in her office just might not be a good omen.

“Now,” said Latham, his fingers steepled, the index fingers just brushing his thin chin, “I am informed you have been causing considerable commotion with a number of Latham, Strauss’s client corporations. As you doubtless discovered, we are retained by the CariBank Group, and thus have an interest in their respective subsidiary holdings.”

“I’m not sure I see—”

“You have obviously been rather inventive with your computer and modem, Cordelia. You’ve not been terribly discreet with your calls to a variety of corporate officials.”

It was suddenly coming very clear. “Oh,” said Cordelia, “this is about Shrike Music and Buddy Holley, right?”

Latham’s tone was even—and functioned at about the same temperature as a superconductor. “You seem to have an extreme interest in CariBank’s corporate family.”

Cordelia smiled and held up her hands. “Hey, no problem, Mr. Latham. It’s not my hassle any longer. Holley’s got a whole collection of new music that Shrike can’t touch.”

“Ms. Chaisson—Cordelia—Shrike Music Corporation is the least consequential of your enquiries. We at Latham, Strauss are concerned about your apparent need for information about the rest of CariBank’s family. Such information could be … a bit troublesome—”

“No, really,” said Cordelia decisively. “This is a nonproblem. Honest, Mr. Latham. No problem.” She smiled at him. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got an incredible amount of work to catch—”

Latham stared at her. “You will desist, Ms. Chaisson. You will pay attention to your own business, or, I assure you, you shall be very, very sorry.”

“But—”

“Very sorry indeed.” Latham looked at her levelly until she finally blinked. “I hope you understand me.” He turned on his heel and exited with a whisper of expensive tailoring.

It hit her. Hang me with corde à boyau, she thought. I’ve just been threatened by one of Manhattan’s most powerful and predatory attorneys. So sue me.

Cordelia had plenty to do that helped take her mind away from Latham’s visit. She called the tech people in charge of satellite transmissions and discovered the happy fact that ShowSat III was operational again. A healthy chunk of the other side of the world would have a shot at viewing the Funhouse benefit after all. “I guess the gremlins are on vacation,” said the consulting engineer.

Then GF&G’s switchboard relayed a collect call from Tami in Pittsburgh.

“What on earth are you doing there?” Cordelia demanded. “I sent enough cash so all the Girls With Guns could fly into Newark today.”

“You’re not gonna believe this,” said Tami.

“Probably not.”

“We bought a lot of feathers.”

“Not coke?”

“Of course not!” Tami sounded scandalized. “We ran into a girl who had an incredible selection. We need ’em for our costumes Saturday night.”

“Feathers don’t cost six hundred bucks.”

“These do. They’re rare.”

“Dose feathers gon’ to help you fly?” Cordelia said dangerously.

“Well … no,” said Tami.

“I’ll wire some more money. Just give me an address.” Cordelia sighed. “So. You ladies enjoy riding the bus?”

Friday

Jack and Buddy Holley headed back to the latter’s dressing room after they’d both watched the Boss do his run-through. Holley’s final rehearsal session was scheduled for ten o’clock, later that night. Little Steven, U2, and the Coward Brothers had gotten in their licks early in the afternoon. The Edge had winced a lot, but he’d played. Then came the Boss and the other guys from across the river.

“Not too shabby,” said Holley.

“The Boss?” said Jack. “Damn straight. So how did it feel, him treating you as though you were one of the faces on Mount Rushmore come to life?”

“Shoot.” Holley said nothing more.

“I thought it was pretty impressive when he asked if you’d play ‘Cindy Lou.’”

Holley chuckled. “Funny thing about that tune. You know it almost wasn’t gonna be ‘Cindy Lou’?”

Jack looked at him quizzically.

They rounded the corner of the hallway behind the stage. The lighting was something less than adequate. “Watch out for the wire on the floor,” said Holley. “Good old ‘Cindy Lou.’ Well, that was the original title all along, but about the time the Crickets and me were gonna record it, our drummer, Jerry Allison, asked if I’d change it.”

“Change the music?” said Jack.

“Change the title. Seems as if Jerry was marryin’ a gal named Peggy Sue, and he thought she’d be just tickled to death havin’ a song named after her.”

“But you didn’t.”

Holley laughed. “She jilted him, broke the engagement before anything permanent could be done about the song. So ‘Cindy Lou’ it’s stayed.”

“I like it better,” said Jack.

They turned a final corner and came to the small room where Holley was keeping his guitar and the other things he’d brought over from the hotel. Holley went in first. When he flipped the light switch, nothing happened. “Blamed bulb must be out.”

“Not quite,” said a voice from inside.

Both Jack and Holley jumped. “Who’s in dere?” said Jack. Holley started to back out of the doorway.

“Hold it,” said the voice. “Everything’s fine as long as you two’re Buddy Holley and Jack Robicheaux.”

“You got that right,” said Holley.

“The name’s Croyd.”

Holley said, “I don’t know any Croyd.”

“I do,” said Jack. “I mean, I know who you are.”

The voice chuckled. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, and I’m trying to be subtle, so why don’t the two of you come on in and shut the door.”

The two men did so. Croyd snapped on a penlight and let the beam play briefly across their faces. “Okay, you’re who you say.” He set the light down on the makeup table but didn’t turn it off. “I’ve got some information for your niece,” he said to Jack, “but her office doesn’t know where she is, and I don’t have time to wait around on her.”

“Okay,” said Jack. “Tell me. I’ll get it to her. She’s jumping around like a frog in a tub of McIlhenny’s, what with about ten thousand things to get done before tomorrow night.”

“She asked me to look into Shrike Music,” said Croyd.

“Oh, yeah?” Holley sounded interested.

“I thought it might be one of the Gambione fronts; you know, a Mafia laundering operation.”

“So?” said Jack. “Are Rosemary Muldoon’s hands dirty there too?”

“No,” said Croyd. “I don’t think so. Whatever Shrike is—and I think it’s dirty as hell—I really don’t think it’s connected with the Gambiones or the other Families. Tell Cordelia Chaisson that.”

“Anything else?” said Jack.

“Yeah. As far as I could follow the trail back, I got some hints that the brain behind Shrike is Loophole. You know, the lawyer, St. John Latham. If I’m right, you better tell your niece to be real careful. With Loophole, I’m talking one dangerous son-of-a-bitch.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “I’ll tell her.”

“If you find out more—” Holley said.

“I won’t. I’ve got my own problems to deal with.” Croyd’s chuckle was very dry.

“Oh,” said Holley. “Well, thanks anyhow. At least I know my songs aren’t tied up in pasta.”

“Listen,” said Croyd, some animation coming into his voice. “‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ is one of the best rockers ever recorded. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different. I just wanted to say that before I took off.”

“Well,” said Holley. “Thank you very much.” He strode forward in the darkness, toward the makeup table. “I’ll shake the hand of any man who tells me that.”

“What can I say?” said Croyd. “I’ve liked your work for a long time now. Glad you’re back.”

Jack had the impression of a pale albino face in the dark. Pink eyes flashed as the penlight snapped off.

“Good luck with the concert.” Then Croyd’s indistinct form was out the door and gone.

“Okay,” said Jack, “let’s see if we can round up a fresh light bulb.” He winced. The pain was coming back, the pain and something else. In the darkness he touched his own face. The skin felt scaly. The virus was eroding his control. It was getting harder to remain— He didn’t like filling in the blank. Human was the word he was looking for.

Saturday

The audio ocean combers of U2 crashed over them. The Edge’s picking fingers had healed just fine for tonight. Bono swung into “With or Without You” with his exuberant never-sing-the-song-the-same-way-twice voice in great form.

C.C. abruptly stared at Buddy Holley with concern. She reached out to steady him. Jack moved in from the other side. “What’s wrong, babe?” She touched his forehead with the back of her right hand. “You’re burning up.”

Bagabond looked concerned. “You need a doc?”

The four of them stepped back as a cameraman with a SteadiCam double-timed by, heading for the stage.

Holley straightened. “It’s okay. I’m all right. Just a little flop-sweat.”

“You sure?” said C.C. skeptically.

“I guess,” said Holley, “maybe I was feeling some momentary melancholy.” His three companions registered uniform incomprehension. “Waitin’ to go on out there, it’s getting to me in a strange way. I’m looking at all this and I’m thinking about Ritchie and the Bopper and how they both went down with Bobby Fuller in that Beechcraft back in ’68 when Bobby was tryin’ his comeback tour. Lord, I do miss ’em.”

“You’re alive,” said Bagabond. “They’re not.”

Holley stared at her. Then he slowly smiled. “That’s putting it straight.” He looked past the curtains toward the full house. “Yep, I’m alive.”

“You’re gon’ sit down for a bit,” said Jack. “Rest just a while.”

“Remind me,” said Holley. “When do I go on?”

“The Coward Brothers are on next. Then Little Steven and me,” said C.C. “I’ll warm ’em up for you. You’ll be up before Girls With Guns and the Boss.”

“Comfortable in the hammock, huh? Heavy-hitter company.” Holley shook his head. “You know how the world would change if somebody nuked this club tonight? Not a bit.” He staggered. “Well, maybe just a little bitty bit.”

“You’re gonna sit down,” said C.C. firmly.

Jack looked toward the stage. This was probably the only rock concert he’d been to that wasn’t choked with smoke. But in the confined space of the Funhouse, the management, the Health Department, and some of the performers had begged for abstinence. The tech crew was using a fog machine to get the right lighting. With the lights in his face Jack could see nothing. But he knew who was out there.

Cordelia was sitting next to the small, roped-off space where the floor director was sequestered with her video monitors. Everything looked good. The satellite feeds were webbing the globe satisfactorily, though god only knew if any eyes out there were actually watching.

Every seat was taken. People had paid two grand just for standing room. Cordelia had checked around her chair before U2 had been announced. The table immediately behind her was occupied by New Jersey’s junior U.S. senator, the senator’s wife—Hoboken’s head of cultural development—a hot, teen heartthrob actor, and the actor’s ICM agent. The next table to the left held Senator Hartmann and his party. Tachyon was back there too. A beaming Xavier Desmond was right up front.

Off to her right, Miranda and Ichiko had seen her looking and had waved and smiled. Cordelia had smiled back. Luz Alcala and Polly Rettig, GF&G’s top management, also sat at Cordelia’s table. Now and then they said appropriately laudatory things to her. Obviously they were enjoying how the benefit concert was progressing. Boffo, thought Cordelia. That’s how Variety will describe this. Dey better damn better.

U2 ended its set and the Irish quartet trooped offstage. The applause thundered on, and they came back for a quick encore. That had been budgeted into the schedule. It was assumed.

After the encore the screen dropped down from the Funhouse’s ceiling, barely missing the Louma crane, and the slick, donated media spot for the New York AIDS Project blazed forth. This was the commercial. No one minded.

Cordelia wondered if she should go backstage and check that all was in order. No, she decided. She needed to be in place where she was—waiting for hideous crises. No use seeking them out.

The Coward Brothers came out to a storm of applause. T-Bone and Elvis burned the place up with “People’s Limousine” and another sixteen minutes that flashed by like no time at all.

Between sets, when the broadcast had gone to a taped message, the lighting director turned the spots on the Funhouse’s mirror balls and chandelier. The interior of the club exploded in a phantasmagoria of shattered light.

Little Steven and his band came on. The roadies had been fast and accurate. The musicians plugged into the house system and were off. Little Steven had a new scarf for each song in the set. The crowd loved it.

It was C.C. Ryder’s time. She held the neck of her shining black twelve-string with both hands.

“Don’t strangle it,” said Holley. He wrapped his hands loosely around hers.

“Break a leg.” Jack gave her a hug. Bagabond didn’t seem to mind.

The latter hugged C.C. in turn for a few seconds and said, “You’ll be great.”

“If I’m not,” said C.C., “I hope this time I’m an express.”

Jack knew she was referring to her years-ago wild card transformation when trauma had catalyzed her into becoming a more than reasonable facsimile of a local subway car.

C.C. hit the stage running and never stopped. It was as though she was casting a net of power over the audience. There was a moment at first when she faltered. But then she seemed to gather strength. It was as though energy were flowing out into the people in their seats, then being amplified and broadcast back to the singer. The magic, Jack thought, of genuine empathy.

She started with one of her old standards, then quickly segued into her new ballads. Her twenty minutes flashed past for Jack. C.C. ended with the song she had publicly debuted at the first rehearsal.

Baby, you never have to fold

    ’Cause what you’ve got

        Is a winning hand

 … Is a winning hand, came the refrain. Never forget.

C.C. bowed her head. The applause had megatonnage.

When she came offstage, she waited until she was past the curtains before collapsing. Jack and Bagabond both caught her.

“What’s the matter?” said Bagabond. “Oh, C.C.—”

“Nothing,” said C.C. She grinned up at them, her face lined with exhaustion. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Okay,” Cordelia muttered as the Jokertown Clinic spot unspooled above her. “Buddy Holley’s next.” In spite of what Uncle Jack said, she wondered if she should cross her fingers. Maybe toes too.

“Hold on a sec,” said the floor director. She leaned toward Cordelia. “Change in plans.”

Shit, thought Cordelia. “What?”

“Seems to be a minor rebellion among the musicians. It’s still getting sorted out.”

“Better be quick.” Cordelia glanced at the LED counting down on the director’s console. “Like in about twenty-two seconds.”

“But I’m supposed to go on now,” said Buddy Holley stubbornly.

“The deal is,” said Jack, “both the Boss and Girls With Guns have decided they want to go now and let you be the final act.”

Bagabond glanced beyond them. “The Boss and that girl Tami are arm wrestling. Looks like she’s winning.”

“But it’s my gig,” said Holley.

“Shut the fuck up,” said the Girls With Guns’ leader, Tami, as she strutted up, rubbing her right shoulder. She uttered the words with considerable affection. “Him and I”—she gestured at the Boss, who was ruefully grinning—“we both figure we learned most all we know from you. So you’re gonna be the climax. That’s it, Bud.” She leaned up on tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. Holley looked startled.

The stage director was signaling frantically.

The glass eyes of the SteadiCams implacably zoomed in.

Girls With Guns upped the energy ante by tearing out the heart of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart’s bubblegum standard “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight,” stomping it into jam, smearing the residue on their sneering lips, and just generally raising hell. They ended up with “Proud Flesh,” a razor-edged anthem of romance and nihilism.

“So,” said Tami to the Boss as she led her sisters swaggering offstage, “top that.”

The Boss did his best.

Oh, god, thought Cordelia as the echoes finally died. She watched the Boss raise his guitar in one hand and elevate a fist with the other. Let Buddy work out. Please. The Boss gave the audience another bow, then led his band backstage.

Cordelia blinked. She thought she’d seen St. John Latham at a table in the back of the club. Latham, Strauss’s cash is as good as anyone else’s, she thought. The problem was, Latham seemed to be staring directly at her.

She sighed as the penultimate PSA faded to black and the director cued in the Louma. The monitor showed a wide tracking shot sweeping back and up from the stage.

“And … go!” said the director into her mike.

Please, Cordelia again mentally implored.

“Hello, Lubbock!” Buddy Holley said to the immediate audience and their five hundred million electronic shadows. The crowd smiled.

Jack smiled too from his vantage at the edge of the stage. He crouched down to avoid getting in the way of the camera dollying past on its track. The pain was gnawing regularly at his gut, and he didn’t know how long he’d be able to hold this position. He realized that what he wanted now more than anything else was simply to lie down. He wanted to rest. Soon enough, he thought morbidly. I’ll rest all I want. For good.

Holley hit his first note, then brushed his fingers across the chord. The magic Buddy Holley touch. Now it might be a standard technique, but three decades before, it had signaled a revolution.

Rou-ou-ou-ou-ough beast

The characteristic hiccup was still there, though no one in the paying audience had ever heard this Buddy Holley tune before.

When the moon slides low

    And lo-ove rubs thin

I’ll be knockin’

    Askin’ to be let in

To Jack it seemed a little like vintage Dylan. Maybe a dash of Lou Reed. But most of it was just pure Holley.

Rou-ou-ou-ou-ough beast—almost a wail.

Jack realized he could easily cry.

When my friends

    Like my center

Cannot hold

    And every feeling I got

        Has just been sold

He was crying.

I’m the rough beast’s prey

    In the rough beast’s way

Buddy Holley’s Telecaster sobbed. Not in self-pity, but in honest grief.

Without friends

    Without love

        Forever

Jack loved the music, but the pain was horrendous. When he could no longer withstand it, he got up and quietly left. He missed the encore.

Cordelia was already looking ahead to the final extravagant encore when every performer would come onto the stage and all would stand there with hands and arms linked. She blinked and registered a double take as she realized Buddy Holley looked about ready to fall flat on his face as he stood there taking the applause from his final song. She was close enough that she could see the flush in his face. Holley staggered. Oh, Jesus, she thought, he’s sick. He’s going to collapse.

But he didn’t. It was as though the flush in his skin metamorphosed into a ripple of heat that ran along his body from feet to head.

What the hell? thought Cordelia.

Then it was Buddy Holley’s flesh itself that rippled. A transforming nimbus of energy seemed to glow around his body. He held the Fender Telecaster out in front of him and something astonishing happened. The steel strings became ductile, melting like taffy, flashing away from the frets, stretching out and out like lines of silver sparks. They whipped around camera mounts and lights, anchoring themselves like jungle snakes.

Illusion? Cordelia thought. Maybe it was telekinesis.

The guitar strings formed a kind of enormous cat’s cradle.

Buddy Holley looked around at this, then at his hands. He slowly raised his head and gazed upward. Holley seemed to be seeing something nobody else could comprehend. He smiled and the smile transformed into a joyous grin.

And then he danced. Slow and deliberate at first, the pace grew more rapid as Holley began to whirl around the stage. The audience stared, gaping.

She had seen this dance before—or something like it. Cordelia recalled the memory. Wyungare. She had seen the young aboriginal man dance in this manner deep within the Dreamtime, far into the desert heartland of Australia. This was a shaman’s dance.

Holley’s grin widened. He leaped and gyrated. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and James Brown could have done no better. Then Holley leaped into the shimmering, almost invisible webwork of silver sparks.

He whirled and his right hand came off, severed at the wrist with a gush of crimson smoke.

Someone in the audience gasped.

Holley continued to dance. The other hand. The right arm, up to the elbow. His left leg at the knee. Scarlet smoke fanned out like the curving trails of fire from a catherine wheel.

Cordelia became aware the director was addressing her. “Should we go to a spot?” The director’s voice was taut.

It was all coming clear to Cordelia. “No,” she said. “No. Leave it. Broadcast everything.”

Buddy Holley whirled within the cradle of sparking tracers. He disassembled himself as the audience murmured and cried out.

From the chair beside her at the table Cordelia heard Polly Rettig say, “God almighty, it’s just like with Kid Dinosaur.”

“No.” Cordelia said aloud. “It’s not. It’s the death and resurrection show. It’s just—a joke. It’s entertainment.”

“Entertainment?” said Rettig. “He’s … killing himself.”

“I don’t think so,” said Cordelia. “He’s transforming, but he’s not dying. This is a shaman’s trick.”

The last of Buddy Holley, a nearly limbless torso, wavered and tumbled to the stage. The body parts lay stacked in a haphazard heap. Curtains of bright smoke rose up. Sparks shot up in fountaining streamers.

The audience watched, uncertain how to react.

Cordelia felt calm and sure. She trusted Wyungare. She wondered if Holley’s transmogrification was a direct result of the wild card virus. That would explain his apparent illness.

The pile of arms and legs stirred. The bones began to reconnect, joint to joint. The muscles and ligaments wound around them. The skin slithered onto the limbs, and the limbs rejoined the body.

Buddy Holley stood before them, whole again. He wasn’t completely the physical original. This Buddy Holley was fitter, the spare tire around his waist and the bags under the eyes gone. His hair was a glossy black again, with no gray. His skin was smooth and unwrinkled.

The crowd began to clap. The cheering rose as the audience’s collective tension released. Someone behind Cordelia said, “That’s the absolute fucking performance of a lifetime.”

The guitar had also reassembled. Holley picked up the Telecaster and held it loosely.

He got what he wanted, Cordelia thought. “He’s become a shaman,” she said aloud.

“Buddy Holley and the Shamans,” said a voice behind her. “Bitchin’ name. After this, it’d sell like Fawn Hall’s underwear. Man, this Holley could become a presidential candidate.”

Cordelia turned and saw it was the ICM man who had spoken. She gave him a frigid stare and turned back toward the stage. The new being that had been Buddy Holley smiled reassuringly. Then he brought his hand across the guitar strings. The chord throbbed as though resonating with every heart in the audience.

The sound, thought Cordelia. It’s a trigger for states of heightened consciousness. This is the power of rock and roll.

Then Buddy Holley, the reborn man of power, stood before the awestruck audience and played the best version of “Not Fade Away” that had ever been performed.

It was, Cordelia suspected, a portent.

As Jack slipped away from the alley door of the Funhouse, he felt sick in heart and body. I should have stayed for Buddy’s encore, he thought. But Buddy would do just fine.

There was the scraping on asphalt of something inhumanly large shifting its weight.

Jack stopped abruptly as a shadow deeper than the darkness in the rest of the alley fell across him.

“I figured a blue-ribbon fag party like this would draw all my little buddies,” said Bludgeon. “But I didn’t even hope the first fucker would be you.” Without warning, his deformed right hand whistled out, catching Jack across the head and slamming him back into the brick side of a building.

Jack felt something give, bone or cartilage he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he was slipping away from what light there was. He wanted the darkness, but not yet, not this way. He tried to struggle. He was aware that Bludgeon was grasping him tightly and holding him upright. Bludgeon jerked loose Jack’s belt and pulled down his pants.

“Got a little going-away thing for you, Jack. Something I figure you’ll love. I bet your niece Cordelia’ll eat it up when I get around to her too.”

Jack tried to will himself back into full consciousness. Then he felt what Bludgeon was shoving between his buttocks. Into him. Spreading and tearing. Nothing had ever hurt this much. Nothing!

“I’ll save the little girl for later,” said Bludgeon.

Jesus, thought Jack through the agony. Cordelia. “Let her alone you rat-bastard cochon!”

“Sticks and stones,” said Bludgeon, emitting a high-pitched giggle, “but only the Fatman can hurt me…” He thrust forward and Jack screamed.

Where was the other? Jack thought desperately, his brain seeming to heel over in a grinding haze of pain. I need you. Now. I’ve got to transform. This once. Just to kill the son-of-a-bitch.

And then he felt the change coming.

He also knew he was dying.

Good, he thought. Good to both. And a surprise for Bludgeon.

Jack felt the teeth springing up as his jaw elongated. Pestilence or claw, you son-of-a-bitch, you’re gon’ die. The fierce anger carried him a little further.

Bagabond! his thought shouted into the night. Hear me! Save Cordelia.

I’ll save the little girl for later, Bludgeon’s threat echoed. It all rippled into a void. And died.

The dead man plunged into darkness.