Phantom Banjo (21 page)

"With all due respect, sir, here's one hick
would like to have the income to qualify as a yuppie."

"We'll take care of that, Willie. You're a
rare commodity because your talent isn't just in recording—we'll
help you put your showmanship and charisma to good use with
promotional tours, concerts."

It sounded good to Willie, though he did
wonder just how in the hell he was going to give a nonintrusive
concert. He also wondered why Nicholson was tipping his hand about
how much they wanted him and how goddamn unique he was. That was no
way to strike a favorable deal.

"Just what's in this for me?" he asked.

"Why, anything you want."

"What if just for grins, say, I was to ask
for a million—make it two million—a year with a bonus for every
record and each concert—the salary is just to cover the wear and
tear on me from travelin', you understand. And get a bunch of my
friends here for backup musicians."

"You can have all the roadies you want but we
control the musical end of it. Anything else, cars, clothes, money,
gigs playing for the President—"

"How about in Europe?" He wasn't very
interested in Europe, actually. It didn't have a whole lot to offer
compared with Texas, as far as he was concerned, but some women
were awfully impressed with it.

Nicholson shied a little at that, however.
"Different type of promo involved there, Willie, but we'll
certainly see what we can do. To start with we want to make up for
lost time by making your name a household word here—"

"An unobtrusive household word?" Willie
asked, and at Nicholson's puzzled, humorless look said, "Sorry,
just a little joke. It sounds real good, B.B. Shall I give you the
name of my lawyer in Austin and—"

Nicholson cleared his throat and said,
"Actually, in view of certain developments concerning you in Texas,
I don't think that's a good idea. In fact, once you sign with us,
it would be a good idea to let our lawyers take care of that whole
mess for you."

"You know about that?" What swell people.
Supportive, as his last girlfriend said. Real supportive, knowing
you're wanted for murder and offering to sign you for a big
recording contract anyway. "Buddy, I don't know what to'say. I'm
real touched."

"Hey, we've got a huge network, information
channels and resources throughout the world, and we don't offer
this kind of deal to someone we don't really believe in. Don't
worry about anything. In fact, we were in the middle of discussing
our need for someone like you when your name started cropping up in
the news. It's actually what brought you, specifically, to mind. So
you see how even events that are real bummers can turn out to be
for the best? Anyway, hell, Willie, we knew that with you being in
this kind of a bind, you'd need help fast, so we had our legal
department draw up a binder. It pretty much just reiterates what
we've been discussing here tonight. If you want to go ahead and
sign, I can have it sent by courier first thing in the morning and
I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't have you cleared in a day or
so. An organization like ours wields quite a bit of clout."

"I'm real happy for you about that, buddy,"
Willie said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Give it here and let me
look it over."

He hadn't noticed the attaché case
before—funky red rubber with black and silver trim—but Nicholson
picked it up suddenly and with a graceful flourish produced a
multi-paged document from it, flipping pages until he got to the
end.

"Whoa, boy, I guess I had better take my time
reading this or see if there's a lawyer handy here."

"Our legal department is pretty sound.
Frankly, Willie, we are too big an outfit to try to cheat someone
whose assets are as limited as yours."

"Well, but I am part of this deal and I don't
sign nothin' I don't read," Willie said, holding the document away
from him to try to make out the print.

"Then why not put on your reading glasses and
let's go over it together? I can interpret for you. Willie, we'd
like to have you on board but there's this matter of getting your
reputation cleared up. Time is something neither of us can afford
to waste."

Willie had never liked high-pressure
salesmanship but told himself to simmer down, that this man wasn't
selling him anything really, just offering him the chance of a
lifetime.

". . . chance of a lifetime," Nicholson was
saying. "Now, one thing I want to prepare you for because it seems
a little weird to some people, but when you're ready to sign, there
is one step further than a simple signature that we ask, and that's
for purposes of absolute identification. Once you're on board,
you'll be entered into our data banks and our electronic credit
system so that you can draw on our accounts anywhere in the U.S.
For this, you can see, we need to be damn sure it's you. So we ask
for a pinprick blood sample and we use that to take your
fingerprints. That way we have absolutely unique identification and
protection against fraud."

Willie, strangely, was feeling more sober all
the time. He had always been a cash-and-carry sort of man himself
and had no use for systems that catalogued you down to your
toenails before they'd let you at your own money. But he wanted to
sound reasonable so he said, "I'll tell you what, B.B. In view of
the fact that I don't want my fingerprints spread around right now,
let's just have me sign in regular ink tonight and we can do the
other stuff once you've cleared me."

"I'm sorry, Willie, we don't do business that
way. We need the identification on the agreement or no deal."

The banjo played "Don't Let Your Deal Go
Down." Willie wondered if it meant his deal or Nicholson's. The
funny part was, Nicholson had already agreed to fairly outrageous
terms and now was balking at a little thing that ought to be
perfectly understandable in view of present circumstances. Someone
walked behind Willie with a flashlight and the beam glinted red off
Nicholson's left eye.

"Actually, we might be able to work something
out and go ahead and sign you up and start clearing you," Nicholson
was saying, "if you put up some sort of security—say that old banjo
there."

Willie backed off a pace and shook his head.
"Nope."

"What do you mean, 'nope'? I swear to blazes,
man, we offer someone who's been a no-account bar singer most of
his life a chance at the big time, money up front, expenses paid,
fame and fortune, and ask for a little simple something on faith
and you have the gall to say, 'nope'?"

"Yep," Willie said.

"You would throw away this chance I offer you
simply because you're nervous about being fingerprinted?"

Before Willie could answer the flashlight
swung back and pinned Nicholson right in the face, so both eyes
were red as in the color in a bad photograph and the teeth gaped in
sharp and shining surprise.

"What's this about fingerprinting?" the
flashlight's owner asked.

Willie stepped back behind the beam and tried
to look hard at Nicholson but the image blurred.

"I was merely offering one of your guests a
job—" Nicholson began.

"Uh-huh," Anna Mae Gunn said, and for once
Willie was glad of the woman's guard-dog brand of charm. He
couldn't quite bring himself to tell this dude to piss up a rope
himself, because he wanted desperately for him to be on the level
and prove it, he wanted to be mistaken and for that big chance to
really be there. But in his heart he knew that was about as likely
as it was that there would be tax reforms that involved giving back
money instead of extorting more. So he was willing to let Anna Mae
do his fighting for him. He may have been scared half sober but he
was still too drunk to walk straight anyway, much less throw a
punch that would do him any damn good.

"He just wanted my fingerprints in blood
first," Willie told her.

"I’ll bet he did. I don't recall checking you
through the gate today, mister. Just when did you get here?"

But Nicholson wasn't interested in Anna Mae
Gunn. His eyes were on the banjo, now thumping "I Don't Want Your
Millions, Mister."

To Willie he said, "No wonder you're such a
loser, MacKai. Lust doesn't persuade you, greed doesn't move you.
You lack the basic motivational elements necessary to succeed in
this life. I'm afraid you'll find simple stubbornness is not going
to do you as much good when you're playing in the big leagues, my
friend."

"Willie," Anna Mae said, "I don't want to
start up with you again but if you still want to do business with
this guy I'd appreciate it if you'd take him off my land to do
so."

"Oh, I reckon we're done."

"That," said Nicholson, "is what you
think."

"Get off my land," Anna Mae said.

"Certainly. But, Willie, you're not the only
one who's stubborn . . ."

"Off," Anna Mae repeated.

Nicholson walked around the nearest tent and
disappeared, but it seemed to Willie that the red glow of his eyes
hung in the air behind him after he'd gone.

"Sorry," Anna Mae said to him. "But I've met
all too many snakes of that stripe."

"I guess it takes all kinds," Willie said.
But he knew what kind Nicholson was now. Too bad. He would have
liked to have seen the image Nicholson's outfit was going to
concoct for him in exchange for the banjo and, if the stories were
accurate, his immortal soul.

* * *

So Nicholson slunk away, but with a grin on
his face, for he preferred to deal with Willie the hard way rather
than the easy, and he didn 't give him credit for being smart
enough to use the banjo effectively enough to ward off
disaster.

If Nicholson had left the conventional way,
by the gate, just a little later, after the campfire died and
Willie staggered off to the truck bed and Anna Mae back into her
house, he would have seen the vehicle with the dark headlamps pull
up to the gate. A man whose hair glinted gold in the remaining
starlight got out of the truck, deftly picked the lock, opened the
gate and drove through, carefully closing and relocking the gate
behind him before he drove, still in darkness, to park among the
other parked vehicles and sleep amid the other sleepers.

CHAPTER 10

The day was bright and hot and more musicians
arrived. The Povatitsas, Burt Sherry's old group, a local hula
class, six more Irish groups, two teams of bagpipers and highland
dancers, numerous singer/songwriters with a variety of accompanying
instruments, and a steel drum band. People who had not performed
the previous evening filled the afternoon with women's music,
children's music, and old union and work songs.

Gussie had gotten up earlier than most and
was alert enough to grab a place under one of the cherry trees to
unfold her campstool and lean her back against the tree bark. The
fliers were gone and her Mexican bag was much lighter. She felt
pleasantly loggy from the night before, and let the music drift
through and around her as she sat half dozing. Bits of the
conversation she'd overheard before she slept came back to her, and
it bothered her, but it was none of her damn business, after all,
and Willie hadn't shown his face yet anyway.

Julianne signed up for a solo spot between
the steel drummer and the union songs. Gussie felt half hypnotized
by the music, the hands that moved so precisely but with such vigor
to strike a note from a drum, a set of strings, the way they were
able to keep the rhythm going, striking just at the right intervals
with pick or fingers, those clever, nimble fingers and surprisingly
strong and sinewy arms, on young and old, male and female. You
didn't see that many musicians who managed to keep extra flesh on
them and it wasn't only because so few could make a living.

Julianne Martin, for instance, standing up
there swaying to her own beat, her face rapt as her slender hand
moved like a feather over the strings of a borrowed guitar. She was
singing some silly little children's song, bouncing from the knees
at the bouncy parts, smiling as she sang. A gentler, prettier
picture Gussie couldn't imagine, and you could see the young girl
she had been shining through to animate her face. You could picture
her hair glossy as warm butter and fine as silk, though now it
frizzed a little at the ends, as if it had suffered a bad
permanent. But at the end of the children's song, Julianne's face
sank back into the overly serious expression Gussie was more
familiar with.

"Since this is a kind of memorial service
we're having here," Juli said, "I'd like to sing a song I wrote for
the memory of my husband. I was very bitter about George's death
when it first happened. But I've learned some things since from a
wonderful man who does psychic readings and healing and has put me
in touch with a longer view of our continuing existence. And I've
come to understand a lot about me, George, and everybody else since
then. This is called 'You Asked For It.'

"In some other life you were rich as a
king

You ruled slaves and peasants and treated
them mean

In this life you sang songs of the poor
working man

But you never tried to work with your
hands

So you asked for it.

The fate that seems so unfair.

You asked for it.

'Cause all along your shadow self was
there.

Like gangrene it ate up your energy

Your happiness, money and health

And you were too angry and too blind to
see

You were doing it all to yourself.

"I used to feel guilty and sad all the
time

For poor hungry people whose lives weren't
like mine

But I no longer hate life for what it is
not

And I know they have asked for the lives that
they've got.

"Yes, they've asked for it.

Being tortured and murdered and starved