Different Circles

Chapter 11: Selling Out

The term “with a bullet” had been coined for songs like Celia Valdez’s first single release as a solo artist, The Struggle. After only three weeks of saturation airplay on the popular music stations throughout the United States and Canada, Struggle debuted on the Hot 100 chart at sixty-seven. The next week, as the airplay continued unabated, it was at thirty-three. The week after that, it broached the top 20 at number eighteen. The week after that, it was in the Top 10 at number six. From there, it spent the next two weeks climbing to the number one position, neatly dislodging End of the Road by Boyz II Men like an infantry squad occupying a hill. Once in the number one spot, Struggle would remain there for another five weeks before being dislodged in turn by one of the masters herself: Whitney Houston and I Will Always Love You.

As Jake had predicted, the song was popular across the entire eighteen to sixty-four demographic, as it was neither a rock and roll song or a formulistic pop song. It resonated with people from all walks of life, all age groups with its universal message of love gone bad and spiraling to its death, sung out by Celia’s glorious contralto voice and accompanied by Laura’s mournful saxophone melody.

Jake’s debut effort, The Easy Way, did not fare as well, but it still put in a respectable performance. It was played quite regularly on both the hard rock stations and the pop stations, and research showed that people who enjoyed the tune and kept the station dial in place when it came on outnumbered those who switched by a considerable margin. The song moved slowly but steadily upward on the chart, reaching its peak at number eight the same week that Struggle started to fall downward. Easy held onto number eight for two more weeks and then it too began to drop slowly back down, week by week, falling faster than Struggle, which kept a tenacious grip on the Top 40.

In these days of CDs, where there was no longer any such thing as forty-five RPM records with their two songs for sale for a dollar, simply having hit tunes did not translate into any direct income for KVA Records. The only way they would make money would be to sell the actual full CDs. And people did not tend to buy a complete CD, which would run then around ten dollars at retail rate, based on a single hit song. In the time period between July 14^th, 1992, the release date for the albums, and December 2, 1992, when both Struggle and Easy began to fall from the charts, only fifty-five thousand copies of The Struggle, the CD, and thirty-three thousand copies of Can’t Keep Me Down, the CD, were purchased. These numbers were alarming to Greg Oldfellow, Jill the accountant, and Pauline the manager as they meant that KVA was still operating deep in the red.

Jake, Celia, the Nerdlys, and Obie, however, were not worried. They knew that once two hit songs were getting airplay and starting to chart, the album sales would start to pick up. It was time to put Phase Two of his marketing plan into action.

On December 5, Jake arranged a meeting with Obie, who just happened to be in LA at the moment. He had noticed that Obie was spending a lot of time in LA of late, flying down from Oregon nearly every weekend even though he and the Nerdlys were hard at work on the recording of his own upcoming album, but he didn’t think too much of it. He certainly did not suspect that Obie was coming down to visit his sister so the two of them could play hide the bratwurst in Obie’s hotel room or Pauline’s house. Greg and Celia were invited to the meeting as well, and, since it was in her house, Pauline would be in attendance too. Jake brought along Laura, knowing she could use a little relaxation time. Since it was a Saturday, they decided to have a barbeque after they talked business. Jake brought some New York steaks he’d picked up at a local meat market while Pauline provided some potatoes and zucchini she’d picked up at a local farmer’s market. Celia and Greg brought a few bottles of good red wine they’d picked up at a specialty store in Beverly Hills.

They discussed business first, the six of them finding seats in Pauline’s entertainment room. Since Obie was present at the meeting, the usual rule of no alcohol was thrown out for the day. Obie refused to have a meeting without a nice glass of whiskey in some form in his hand, and he refused to drink alone.

“To success!” Obie toasted to open the discussion.

“Success!” they all echoed, drinking from whatever they had concocted at the bar. In Jake’s case it was a tall, pale rum and coke—which was still his favorite potable for general drinking.

“All right then,” Obie said. “I assume y’all want to talk about the next step in the promotion process for the albums?”

“You assume correctly,” Jake said. “It’s time to get those second songs on the air so we can start picking up some album sales.”

“That’s what those suits down at National keep telling me as well,” Obie said. “They’ve been hounding my ass for a month now about getting the release authority for the next ones. They think you’re waiting too long.”

“Are they seriously afraid that the public will forget about us over four weeks?” Celia asked.

“Especially after she just spent five weeks at number one?” put in Greg.

“You’re not exactly dealing with the most reasonable people when you’re dealing with those suits over in that building,” Obie said. “They act like the fate of the whole goddamn free world rests on putting out the next tune.”

“What tunes are they suggesting we put out?” Jake asked, curious, knowing it probably would not be what he thought they should release next.

“For Celia they want Why? as they next one,” Obie said.

“That figures,” Jake said. “They want to wring the album for all it’s worth as quickly as they can.”

“And if they can score another number one hit before the end of the year, they’ll have a little something to show their stockholders when the royalties start rolling in,” said Obie. “Not a bad strategy, really.”

“I disagree,” Jake said.

“How come?” asked Pauline. “You’ve said a dozen times that Why? is probably going to be the best-charting cut on the whole album.”

“It will be,” Jake said. “All of the tunes on Struggle are good, but Why? is a masterpiece—a work of art that is still going to be played fifty years from now. The melodic guitar work and the violin melody mixed with Celia’s and Paulie’s voices in duet. Exquisite shit. The public is going to eat it up. That’s why we don’t release it for play yet. We hold it in reserve and bring it out only after some of the other tunes have charted and peaked.”

“Okay,” Obie said slowly, nodding his head a little. “I suppose I can see the logic in that.”

“What song of mine do they want to release next?” Jake asked.

“The title cut,” Obie told him. “They want it on all the hard rocks like yesterday.”

“That figures as well,” Jake said with a shake of the head. “They want me to try to pick up some of the hard rock cred I lost.”

“The hard rock cred?” asked Laura.

“Can’t Keep Me Down is the hardest rocking tune on the album,” Jake explained. “A lot of the hard rock fans that associate me with Intemperance didn’t care too much for Easy. You should read some of the letters I got. Sellout is the kindest thing I’m being accused of.”

“Easy was still rock and roll though,” Laura said. “If a different artist had put it out, they would’ve loved it. I don’t understand why they think you’re a sellout.”

“Because I switched to a more popular genre of music and because that music is being played on pop stations and enjoyed by people who did not like Intemperance. In their eyes, that makes me a sellout.” He shrugged. “Maybe I am, in a way, but I didn’t set out to deliberately make pop music. I just put down what I composed and it came out that way.”

“And National is happy with that,” Obie said. “Believe me, they aren’t complaining about Easy’s popularity or thinking it’s bad that you might be a sellout. They fuckin’ live for sellouts. That is a not a bad thing to be termed in their minds, you understand? Still, they think that if they release Down and play it exclusively on the hard rocks, you’ll get some of that credibility back with the Intemp crowd and maybe start to pick up some album sales from them.”

“If only things were that simple,” Jake said with a sigh.

“You don’t think the argument is valid?” asked Pauline.

“Down is a hard rocker, but it’s still well short of the heavy metal genre that Intemperance is associated with. The hard core rockers are not going to like it any more than they liked Easy. Down will be released eventually, and it will appeal to a good section of the hard rock demographic, but now is not the time to put it out there.”

“What tunes do you want put out next?” Obie asked.

“For me, Insignificance needs to be the next tune promoted,” Jake said.

Obie looked at him pointedly. “The mellow guitar and violin piece? The one that don’t have no electric guitar or drums in it at all?”

“That’s the one,” Jake said. “It needs to start getting saturation play on both the pops and the hard rocks.”

“The pops will eat it up,” Obie said. “I’m not so sure about the hard rocks, however.”

“I’m not so sure about them either, but we have to at least try, right? Hopefully the fact that I’m Jake Kingsley will get people to at least listen to it on the hard rocks. And, though it’s a ballad level piece, I think it has enough appeal that the rockers will like it. I honestly think that’s one of the best tunes I’ve ever composed and recorded.”

“I agree,” said Celia. “I love that song.”

“Whether or not the hard rocks keep playing it will have to be determined,” Jake said, “but I think it’s going to chart like mad on the pops—maybe not as fast and furious as Struggle did, and certainly nowhere near what Why? is eventually going to do, but it’ll be the biggest hit on my album, undoubtedly. And, once it charts—once people know there are at least two good songs on the CD, album sales will start to pick up as well.”

“Okay then,” Obie said. “It’s your show, I’m just the one who makes it happen. We release Insig next with heavy airplay on the pops and the hards.”

“Correct,” Jake said. “And I want them to mention whenever feasible that it is me playing the acoustic guitar and my mother playing the violin.”

“You want them to know your mother is playing the violin?” Obie asked, surprised.

“Damn right,” he said. “In the first place, my mom did a fantastic job on that tune. Her violin is a huge part of what makes that song what it is. I damn sure want her to get credit for it. In the second place, I think that having people know that my mother is the violinist will actually make the tune appeal to them a little more. They’ll pay more attention to it. It’ll grow on them a little faster. It will be a conversation piece when people talk about the tune with other people.”

Obie nodded thoughtfully. “An interesting theory,” he said.

“Jake, that is so sweet,” Laura said, beaming at him.

Jake shrugged. “Like I said, she deserves the recognition. She’s a wonderful musician. She didn’t get that gig just because she’s my mother, she got it because she’s badass. I want people to know that.”

“Okay,” Obie said, setting down his whiskey glass to scribble out a few notes. “That takes care of Jake’s next release. What about Miss Celia?”

“Well, it’s Celia’s album,” Jake said, “so I can only make suggestions on her behalf, but I would say that we should put Playing Those Games out next.”

“Games?” Celia asked, surprised. “The hard rock tune?”

“Exactly,” Jake said. “It’s time to establish Celia Valdez as someone who knows how to fucking rock. That tune grinds. We need to get it on the hard rocks first and then start playing it on the pops as well.”

“For what purpose?” asked Obie. “Do you really think it’s going to chart that well?”

“It’ll chart,” Jake said, “but it won’t chart as fast or as high as Struggle did or Why? is going to. That doesn’t matter though. Remember, the goal here is to sell CDs, not singles. Once people hear Games on the radio, once they realize it’s Celia Valdez throwing that shit down, they’re going to start snatching up the CD in droves, both in the hard rock and in the pop demographics.”

Obie looked over at Celia. “Sound reasonable to you, darlin’?” he asked her.

“I’ve trusted Jake this far,” Celia said. “He hasn’t steered me wrong yet. I say we go with what he suggests.”

“Good enough,” Obie said. “What kind of particulars are we talking about with Games?”

“A couple of things,” Jake said. “On the hards, you need to instruct them to not announce artist name until after the song has played—at least not for the first two weeks after release. On the pops, the opposite. Consistently announce artist before the song is played. The same reasoning as when I did it with Easy, just in reverse. We want the hard rock listeners to hear and appreciate the song before they know who it is, and we want the pop listeners to know who they’re listening to before the tune starts. That should serve to keep those sacred ears tuned in.”

Obie nodded. “It worked before,” he said. “I’m guessing it’ll work again. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Jake said. “This is very important. No mention of who is playing the guitar for Celia on Games. I’m not credited on the album cover, of course, but there are people who know or can guess that I’m actually her guitarist. Discourage any speculation or discussion by DJs about who may or may not be putting down the licks on the tune. Let everyone assume it’s just some studio guitarist playing for her.”

“You’ve mentioned this before, Jake,” Celia said, “but I have to ask you again. Are you sure you don’t want credit for Games at the very least? Like you said about Mary, you did an awesome job on the tune and your guitar playing is what is going to make it a success. You deserve the credit for it.”

“And in addition to the credit,” said Greg, “don’t you think that having people know you’re the guitar player might actually enhance popularity of the tune and increase album sales? Especially if they knew you were playing lead on all of the tunes that have an electric guitar in them?”

Jake was shaking his head. “I think that acknowledging that I’m the guitarist on any of the cuts, but especially on Games, would do nothing but distract people from the tunes, not draw them to it. There would be so many comparisons between my playing and Matt Tisdale’s, so many disparaging words about how I’m not half the guitarist that he is, that nobody would pay attention to the music itself. This is the same reason I didn’t credit myself as the lead guitarist on my CD. This is the same reason I don’t have any classic guitar solos in any of my tunes. The music needs to stand on its own, not be judged on the individual talents of the guitarists.”

Obie was looking at him. “I think you make some valid points there, Jake, and I will, of course, follow your directions, but ... well ... I’m a man who likes to talk plain and say what’s on my mind.”

“Really?” Jake said with a chuckle. “I never noticed that about you, Obie.”

Obie chuckled in return. “Yeah, well, what I’m trying to say here is that I think maybe you have a bit of a misguided opinion of your own electric guitar skills. You play well, boy. Really well. That solo you laid down in Games is top-notch, sends fuckin’ chills down my spine when I hear it.”

“Thanks, Obie,” Jake said. “And I do know that I can play guitar with the best of them, it’s just that Matt Tisdale is the best of the best of them. He’s an asshole and I have at least half a stomach ulcer with his name on it, but nobody currently slinging a guitar can even approach him when it comes to riffs and solos—not Kirk Hammett, not Dimebag Darrel, not that new guy Mike McCready that plays with Pearl Jam, and certainly not me. I’m a realist, not someone with a self-esteem problem, and I know that having my name on that solo will only distract from the tune, not enhance it. The information that it’s me playing guitar for Celia will undoubtedly come out someday, but that someday needs to be in the future, not while the song and the album are making their initial run.”

Celia, Greg, and Obie all looked at each other for a moment and then exchanged a group shrug. “Fair enough,” Obie said. “We’ll play it your way, Jake.”

Jake took command of Pauline’s barbeque grill for the informal portion of the gathering. It sat out on her deck that overlooked the lake. Though it was December, they were in Los Angeles and the weather was still quite pleasant. The sky was blue—well, bluish-gray thanks to the perpetual smog—and the temperature was a mild sixty-two degrees, with just a hint of a breeze blowing in from the west. Comfortable short-sleeve shirt and jeans weather, which was what both Obie and Jake were wearing as they stood out next to the barbeque, cold beers in hand. Laura was out there with them, sipping from perhaps her fourth glass of white wine and starting to get a little giggly.

“How’d you prep those potatoes, Jake?” Obie asked as Jake used a pair of tongs to turn the aluminum foil wrapped tubers a quarter turn on the grate.

“I rubbed them in olive oil,” Jake replied, “put a little salt and pepper on them, then rolled them each in minced garlic before I wrapped them.”

Obie nodded approvingly. “Not bad,” he said. “You oughta try dashing them with just a hint of tabasco as well. Mix the garlic in with it.”

“Yeah?” Jake asked, always happy to get a new cooking tip.

“It adds just a hint of spice, mostly olfactory though since the flavor doesn’t make it through the skin, but it’s worth the time and effort in the end.”

“I’ll give that a shot next time,” he said, filing that away.

“And those steaks you got,” Obie said. “You’re going to sear them on high heat?”

“Naturally,” Jake said. “They’re nice marbled New Yorks, so the seasoning is minimal. Just salt and pepper loosely sprinkled on them, maybe four minutes a side, and they’ll be a nice juicy medium rare.”

Obie nodded his approval at this as well. “Very nice,” he said. “A man’s not really a man if he doesn’t know how to grill up a good steak, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“I know what you’re saying,” Jake said, closing the lid on the grill and picking up his beer.

Obie clapped Jake on the back nearly hard enough to leave a bruise and then turned to Laura. “And how about you, darlin’?” he asked. “This ugly mother hasn’t chased you away yet?”

She giggled. “Not yet,” she said.

“How goes the teaching gig?” Obie asked her. “Still learnin’ them ghetto kids they ain’t supposed to say ‘ain’t’?”

“Only for a few more weeks,” she said. “I’ve put in my resignation letter with the district. At the end of this semester, I’ll be done.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she said with a nod. “I’m a little nervous about it, to tell you the truth. It’s hard to walk away from a steady job, even if it doesn’t pay all that well.”

“Do you have something better in the works?” Obie asked. “Or are you just gonna have Jake here be your sugar daddy?”

“Jesus, Obie,” Jake said, shaking his head a little.

“I’ve got something else in the works,” Laura told him. “I’ve been getting pretty regular sessions down at the National studios doing some fills and overdubs with my sax. I’ve had to turn some sessions down because of my teaching commitment or I would’ve picked up a lot more. I figured it’s time to stop screwing around and go for it.”

“Yep,” Obie said approvingly. “Sounds like a shit-or-get-off-the-pot situation if I’ve ever heard one. What kind of tracks they got you blowin’ down there?”

“I’ve done some overdubs for Bobby Z, a few radio commercials, some fills on a movie soundtrack. It’s all very interesting, really.”

“Bobby Z, huh?” Obie said. “I heard he’s about as queer as a three dollar bill. Is that the straight shit—uh ... so to speak?”

“Yes, he’s pretty flamboyant,” Laura agreed. “He’s a great singer and composer though. I’ve enjoyed working with him and hope I get to do it some more.”

“How come his sax player ain’t doing the overdubs and the fills?” Obie wanted to know. “He’s hooked up with that black guy, right? What was his name?”

“Dexter Price,” Laura said. “Yes, that’s who played the melody on all of the tracks for his album. He’s a wonderful up and coming saxophonist. I would’ve loved to have met him, but apparently he and Z—Bob Zachary is Bobby Z’s real name but he likes us to call him Z—had some kind of a falling out and there is some question whether Dexter is going to go his separate way.”

“What’s their beef?” Obie asked. “Is this about them slinging their salamis at each other?”

Laura blushed a little but nodded. “That’s the rumor,” she said. “Apparently they were romantically involved and Dexter wanted to be a little more exclusive than Z did. Some harsh words were exchanged and Dexter stormed out about two weeks before I started getting the calls to help with the overdubs.”

Obie was shaking his head. “Fuckin’ drama,” he said. “It just gets in the way of production, and those homos are teeming hotbeds of it. That’s why I love making country music so much. We got just as many homos as every other genre, of course, but at least they stay in the fuckin’ closet since your average country fan don’t go for that kinda shit. That keeps the fudge-packing drama down to the minimum so we only have to deal openly with the hetero drama.”

“An interesting point of view,” Jake said thoughtfully.

Another shrug by Obie. “Just reality, boy. Just reality. And speaking of drama, I hear you’ve been getting’ together with that rapper guy, Bigg C.”

“Bigg G,” Jake corrected. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Pauline mentioned it to me in one of our meetings,” he said dismissively. “What’s up with that shit?”

“Gordon—that’s G’s real name—is a friend,” Jake said. “I met him through Nerdly back when Nerdly was helping him mix one of his albums before he went independent.”

“I never did care for that ghetto music,” Obie said. “I hesitate to even call it music. It’s just a bunch of thumping and pounding and some nigger shouting out a bunch of obscenities about bitches and hoes and the po-lice and shit.”

“It’s not all like that,” Jake said. “Like with any genre, there are some artists and musicians who rise above the stereotyping. Gordon is hardly what I would call a nigger, in the strict privileged white person interpretation of the word. True, he was raised in the ghetto, but he’s educated and he’s a professional musician with considerable talent, as well as a fairly shrewd businessman in his own right. I actually think you would like him if you met him, Obie. He’s kind of like a younger, blacker version of you.”

“Yeah?” Obie said, not quite sure how to take that.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Anyway, he’s smart enough to realize that straight rap music is in a death spiral...”

“About fucking time,” Obie opined.

“Perhaps ... anyway, Gordon is going a little experimental on his next album. We’re working on a cut where I play the acoustic guitar as the primary melody. It’s actually coming along pretty well. I like it a lot.”

“A mixture of rap and acoustic guitar, huh?” Obie said. “I can’t even begin to imagine what that will sound like.”

“I gotta go pee,” Laura suddenly announced.

“Then you should,” Jake told her. “You know where it’s at?”

“I do,” she confirmed. “Be back in a few.”

“Okay,” Jake said, returning the kiss she planted on his lips. She then wandered off, her gait not entirely steady, spilling a little of her wine as she made her way through the door.

Obie watched her go, his eyes unabashedly taking in the appealing form of her derriere in her jeans. When she was gone, he turned to Jake and patted him on the shoulder again. “That’s quite a woman you got there, Jake. She’s pretty, she’s smart, and I’m guessing she knows how to blow the old horn pretty well, eh?”

“Uh ... she can put on quite a performance when she’s in the mood for it,” Jake allowed.

“Yeah,” Obie said wistfully. “There’s nothing like having yourself a good woman in your life. Hang onto her.”

“I plan to,” Jake said. “Besides, we’ll probably need her sax skills on our next albums.”

“If someone else don’t snatch her up first,” Obie said.

“I just need to keep her away from dentists,” Jake said.

“How’s that?”

Jake chuckled. “Never mind,” he said. “How are things going with your new album? Are you going to give us back the Nerdlys soon?”

“We’re almost done with the overdubs and ready to start mixing,” Obie said.

“That’s when the Nerdlys truly shine,” Jake said, “although the tedium level and general annoyance level with them notches up pretty intensely in that phase.”

“Yeah ... I saw what y’all went through when you got there.” He shrugged. “We’ll get by. And I’m really looking forward to getting my stuff on the air. I picked up some young guitar players and I’m experimenting with throwing in some distorted electric in addition to the slide—kind of bringing a hint of rock and roll to country.”

“You think that’ll appeal?” Jake asked. “Or are they going to start calling you a sellout as well?”

“Time will tell,” Obie said. “Time will fuckin’ tell.” He looked over at the door for a moment and saw there was no sign of Laura reemerging. He then turned back to Jake. “Listen, there’s something I kind of wanted to talk to you about.”

“What’s that?” Jake asked.

“It has to do with ... with Pauline.”

“Yeah?” Jake asked. “What about her?”

“I’m not one for mincing words and I’m not one for keeping secrets from people, so I’m just going to come out and tell you. She and I are doing the nasty with each other.”

Jake looked at him for a moment, searching for signs in his face that this was a joke. He saw none. “Doing the nasty, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“The first time was up in Oregon, right after we got done negotiating and signing your contract with me. We’ve been getting together whenever we can ever since.”

“I see,” Jake said slowly. “So ... almost eight months now?”

“About that,” Obie agreed.

“Interesting,” he said. “I had no clue. That’s usually the sort of thing I’d pick up on.”

“We were discrete,” Obie said.

“That explains why you come to LA every weekend.”

“That explains it.”

“Why were you keeping it secret?” Jake asked him.

“Well ... at first it was just kind of instinct, particularly since she and I have a business relationship. We didn’t want anyone thinking there was any funny business going on with the financials and conflict of interest and all that shit. There isn’t, you know. Both of us can separate personal relationships from business relationships.”

Jake nodded. “I believe you,” he said. “Besides, Jill would’ve caught any funny business if anyone was trying to pull some.”

“Those japs are shrewd, that’s for damn sure,” Obie said. “Anyway, after we started being discrete, it just got to be a habit. In truth, the sneaking around kind of added something to the relationship. You should try it sometime.”

“I’ve done my share of sneaking around,” Jake assured him. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because you need to know,” Obie said. “Celia and Greg need to know as well. So do the Nerdlys. We’re all getting deeper and deeper into this whole CD release deal and we’re spending more time with each other and things are starting to come to a head. I don’t think it’s healthy for a group of people such as we are, involved in the sort of business that we are, to have a secret of that magnitude floating around. Y’all would’ve found out eventually and, if we hadn’t told you about it first, that would have opened up some mistrust between me and you, between you and Pauline, between me and Pauline maybe. It’s time to let the cat out of the bag.”

“Pauline knows you’re telling me about this?”

“She doesn’t know I’m doing it right this moment,” Obie said, “but she knows I plan to tell you and everyone else. We’ve talked about this and she agrees with my reasoning.”

“I see,” Jake said slowly.

“How do you feel about this, Jake?” Obie wanted to know.

“I’m not really sure,” he answered honestly. “Still trying to process it, mostly, but I like you, Obie. Are you treating her well?”

“I treat all my ladies well,” he said with conviction.

“You’re not beating her, humiliating her, trying to get her to do shit she doesn’t want to do?”

“I do not hit women, Jake,” he said firmly. “I did that once in my life, back when I was in my late twenties and just starting to get into the whole fame and fortune thing. I popped the woman I was with at the time a backhand across the face—and I’m here to tell you, that if there was ever a woman who deserved that shit, that fuckin’ bitch was her. You see this scar on my face?” He lifted up his hat a little, revealing a four-inch, jagged scar atop his forehead.

“I see it,” Jake said.

“She did that shit with a pound of frozen elk sausage out of the freezer.”

“She hit you with a pound of sausage?”

“Frozen,” Obie said. “It packed quite a punch. Took twelve stitches to close it. Do you know why she did it?”

“Why?”

“She was drunk and belligerent and I told her I didn’t want to take her out for dinner that night because she was drunk and belligerent. Told her to cook something up instead because I didn’t want to be seen in public with her. So she went to the freezer, got that pound of sausage, and fileted my fuckin’ forehead open. That’s when I backhanded her—the only time in my life I hit a woman.” He then rolled up the sleeve on his right arm, revealing another scar, this one a ragged mass of tissue on the back of his bicep. “You see this one?”

“Nasty looking,” Jake said. “What caused that?”

“That would be the police dog that bit me when they came to arrest me for domestic violence. You see, them cops were all men, and I have been known to fight with men on occasion. I lost that fight. Aside from the dog bite, I got three broken ribs from getting hit with those sticks of theirs and a dislocated shoulder from when they wrenched my arms behind me to slap on the cuffs.”

“And this story is supposed to make me feel better about you being with my sister?” Jake asked.

“It is,” Obie said. “You see, I learned my lesson from that incident. Even if Pauline does grab a pound of frozen elk sausage out of the freezer and lays my fuckin’ head open with it, I’m still not gonna hit her. Once was enough for a lifetime. And Pauline is hardly the type to be so provocative, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say,” he had to agree.

“As for all that other stuff, I treat ladies like ladies, Jake. That’s kind of how I do things. And your sister is a lady in every sense of the word. And you should know that she’s strong willed enough not to put up with any shit, from me or anyone else.”

“Yeah, I do know that, Obie. Sorry, wasn’t trying to interrogate you. Like I said, still trying to process this.”

“Then we’re cool?” Obie asked.

“Yeah,” Jake told him. “We’re cool.”

Obie gave the promotion instructions he’d been given by Jake to the suits in the National Records’ promotion department. They argued with him, telling him that Jake Kingsley didn’t know shit about how KVA’s music should be promoted. They cited their hundreds of collective years of experience in promoting music. They tried to find loopholes in the contract they had signed (there weren’t any, Pauline had been thorough). They even resorted to begging. In the end, however, they put things into motion, just as directed. Mick Riley and the other independent music promotors across the US and Canada were given their instructions and they informed the corporate offices of the radio conglomerates and the program directors of the local independents what those instructions were. And in the week before Christmas, while kids were out of school and the nation was in the festive, celebratory mood, both Playing Those Games and Insignificance began to get saturation airplay.

Roundup, Montana

December 21^st, 1992

It was the first official day of Christmas break and it was cold. Snow covered the land and the Musselshell River, a tributary of the Missouri, was covered with ice four inches thick as it wound its way through the small prairie town fifty miles north of Billings. The official temperature was six degrees Fahrenheit, but the icy wind blowing across the gently rolling hills from the north instilled a wind chill of around negative fifteen degrees. This was nothing to John Callaway, Renee Brown, and Corey Stillson, all members of the Roundup High School’s senior class and all lifelong residents of the mining and cattle town of 1500 or so residents.

They were sitting on a small rise on the banks of the Musselshell just outside of town. Below them, on the frozen surface of the river, a group of their classmates, mostly males, were playing an improvised game of hockey using upside-down push brooms taken from their father’s garages and a medium sized flat rock that someone had painted black. A pile of wooden pallets swiped from the rear of the local store had been busted up and turned into a respectable bonfire that offered a little warmth if you could tolerate the greasy black smoke it produced as a byproduct. Stuck into the snowbanks here and there were six packs and twelve packs of Milwaukee’s Best beer. Perversely, the beer had been covered in the snowbanks to keep it warm, not to cool it. If left to the open air, a can of beer would freeze solid in about thirty minutes. This was all part of being a teenager in small town Montana.

The three teens were all dressed very similarly to each other. They had on jeans—not Wranglers or Levis, as neither they nor their parents could afford name brands—heavy snow boots, thick jackets covering sweaters, woolen caps upon their heads, and knitted scarves protecting their necks. Each held a can of beer in their hands. John and Renee were both smoking cigarettes—Basics they’d picked up from the supermarket. Sitting on a rock near them was a battered old boombox tuned to KCLD out of Billings—the nearest station that played something other than country music exclusively.

Renee had a cute, rounded face and the body of a farm girl—a body she had earned by working her entire life on her father’s pig farm just west of town. Many of her male classmates—and even a few of her female classmates—had had more than a few unholy thoughts about her large breasts and full hips. She was not a girly girl by any means—such a thing did not really exist in Roundup—and she was not a member of the ruling clique in her class. Her family was dirt poor, but they were hard workers and she was justifiably proud of her heritage.

John and Corey had been her friends since they had all been wearing diapers together. John’s family owned the dairy farm just to the north of the Brown property. Corey’s family owned the auto wrecking yard just to the south. They had all gone to Roundup Elementary School and Roundup Junior High school together—said schools both being located in the same building—and had then gone onto Roundup High. And though both John and Corey had been attracted to her since approximately fourth grade, she thought of them as nothing more than brothers and friends—well, maybe in the case of John, a step-brother, she sometimes thought in her more pensive moments.

“Can you believe it?” Renee asked them. “Only five more months and we graduate. How bitchin’ is that?”

“Pretty fuckin’ bitchin’” John said sourly. Unlike Renee and Corey, he would not be leaving Roundup once he had that diploma in hand. There was no money for him to go to college so he would just remain at home, continuing to be a part of the family business. He would simply be a high school graduate going out to hook cows up to the milking machines and scramble to make sure they were all in their barns on freezing ass days like this one.

“It’s gonna be a big change,” said Corey, who had just tried to drink his beer and found it had turned to an icy slush. He tossed the can to the side and pulled another one out of the snowbank. He popped it open and took a drink. He then spent a moment pondering the life-change of which he spoke. Encouraged by his father, he had been talking to a United States Navy recruiter down in Billings and had all but committed to a four-year hitch once he had diploma in hand. That would get him money for college—assuming he wasn’t killed in some war in a faraway land—which would hopefully get him out of this tiny town for good.

“It all seems so unreal at times, doesn’t it?” asked Renee. She herself was planning to attend Billings Community College for a few years and then hopefully transfer to Montana State in the same city. Her aunt Becky lived just outside of Billings and was willing to let her stay there with her while she was in school, and there was some money her parents had put aside for her to help her pay for it. Pig farming had been reasonably lucrative these last ten years and Renee was an only child.

“Do you think we’ll be able to get together like this?” asked John. “You know ... after we graduate?”

“Probably not as often,” Corey said. “But sometimes. I’ll have leave from the navy now and then, and you’ll still be living here in town, and Rennie will be home on weekends and holidays, right?”

“I should be,” she said. “It depends on what kind of job I get to help me along.”

“We should make a vow,” said John. “At least once a year, we need to come out here and drink some beer together. Sound like a plan?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Corey said, raising his can in salute.

“Sounds like a plan,” agreed Renee, who, at the age of eighteen, was already wise enough in the ways of the world to know that such vows are much easier to make than to keep. She drank her beer slowly, feeling an uncomfortable surge of melancholy washing over her.

“Some new music here for you on K-cold,” said the DJ from the speaker of the boombox. “This is the latest from Celia Valdez.”

“Not this song again!” complained Corey.

“I thought you liked The Struggle,” said Renee, who was assuming that that was the song they were about to play.

“It’s all right,” Corey said, “they’ve just played the fuck out of it these last few months.”

“I like it a lot,” Renee declared. “It just kind of hits you where you live, you know?”

But the song was not The Struggle. “This is called Playing Those Games,” the DJ said, “the latest from her solo album, and ... well ... it kind of rocks. Give it a listen and see what you think.”

And with that, the music started. It was a slow intro accomplished by piano laying down the melody. Soothing, gentle, not bad at all. And then it kicked into gear. A grinding, distorted guitar began to play and Valdez’s voice ramped up into an angry, emotional outburst about the trials and tribulations of falling in love with someone not worthy of you.

“Damn,” Corey whispered, as his feet began to tap to the rhythm. “That’s some good guitar work.”

“The girl can rock,” said Renee, who was smiling as she listened.

“Not bad at all,” said John, who actually started miming an air guitar to the riffs.

They listened to it all the way to the end. Later on, the DJ spun The Struggle again, allowing them to reacquaint with it. Later still, just as the sun was starting to set and they were getting ready to head back to their respective homes, Playing Those Games was spun once more and they listened to it again, giving it all their attention.

On their way home they talked about pooling their money to buy a copy of the CD the next time one of them was in Billings and could hit the Walmart. They could then record it on cassette tapes and each have their own copy.

Bangor, Maine

December 22, 1992

It was icy cold in Maine as well, but inside the City of Bangor municipal building garage, it was nice and toasty thanks to a propane fired blow heater set up in the corner. The garage was responsible for servicing and repairing all of the seventy-four vehicles owned by the municipality. It was the size of a small warehouse and featured four lift stalls, each of which had its own equipment racks full of tools of all variety and an array of diagnostic machines. Lining the walls from floor to ceiling between the stalls were shelves that contained hundreds of different parts needed for routine maintenance: oil filters in varying sizes, tires in varying sizes, lights, hoses, quarts of oil, quarts of power steering and brake fluid, windshield wipers, and many other things.

Steve Bledsoe was a ten-year mechanic with the city. The job paid decently enough and had a retirement plan, although that bitch of an ex-wife of his was sucking out nearly forty percent of everything he made with those alimony and child support payments that shyster lawyer of hers had managed to get the judge to agree to. Just because he had been boning her sister—and that slut had begged him for the banana, had kept demanding it often until they’d been caught red-handed that one fateful night—Belinda got all righteous on him, filed for divorce, and went for broke. Did he really deserve that shit? Hell, he had at least been keeping it in the family, hadn’t he?

Steve was dressed in a pair of greasy overalls with his name stenciled on the breast. His fingers and fingernails were dry, cracked, and perpetually grimy with grease and oil stains. His hair was long and his stomach bulged out a bit with the beginnings of a beer belly. Currently he had a black and white Crown Victoria that belonged to Bangor PD up on the rack and he was draining the oil out if while getting ready to lube up the chassis. On the wall behind him was a boom box tuned to WZAP, the primary hard rock station for the Bangor region, the volume turned loud enough that everyone in the garage could hear it, even over the sound of ratcheting air wrenches.

Currently there was a commercial for Allied Bail Bonds playing, the announcer explaining to the target demographic of eighteen to thirty-nine year olds, many of whom would be unemployed since it was after ten o’clock in the morning on a weekday, how they had a constitutional right to bail if they were arrested and how Allied Bail Bonds’ specialists in providing this service would be sympathetic and non-judgmental to all who found themselves in such a situation. And, they were conveniently located right next door to the Penobscot County jail in downtown Bangor.

The commercial ended and the late morning to early afternoon DJ came back on the air. It was Justin Side, an up and comer recently hired by WZAP after he was fired from a morning show in Montpellier.

“It’s eleven-thirty-three here on the Zapper,” Side told his audience, “and that means it’s time for some new music to guide you toward the lunch break. This is Jake Kingsley’s latest tune, a little something called Insignificance, and it’s from his solo album released last year, Can’t Keep Me Down. The tune features Kingsley himself on the acoustic guitar and, here’s a little piece of trivia: His mother, Mary Kingsley, who is a retired symphony violinist, is playing violin for him. Should be interesting, huh? Let’s give it a listen.”

Steve’s attention perked up as he heard this. He had been an Intemperance fan from the very beginning, ever since he’d seen them open for Earthstone on their first tour date ever on New Year’s Day of 1983 in the Bangor Auditorium. He owned every album Intemp had ever put out and had been quite bummed when the group had broken up. He had been unimpressed with Matt Tisdale’s solo album—he had not bought a copy of that one—but he had enjoyed the one cut from Kingsley’s solo album he’d heard so far: The Easy Way. True, it wasn’t exactly like an Intemperance tune, and it had taken a few listens for him to start getting into it, but now he truly enjoyed the song and looked forward to the times he heard it play. And now, here was something new from the album. Something with a violin in it? A violin played by Kingsley’s mother? His freaking mother? How old would she have to be? At least in her fifties, Steve figured.

The song began to play. He was a little doubtful at first as he heard the opening melody, as he realized there was no electric guitar, no drums, not even much of a bass line. But that guitar playing was kind of cool, a solid, well-played piece that was catchy. And the violin played over the top of it ... that actually was kind of interesting as well. And then Kingsley’s singing—his voice laid down the lyrics perfectly, a dark tale that seemed to suggest that everything a person did in life was ultimately meaningless.

“Pretty fuckin’ deep,” Steve said approvingly, his lube gun in his greasy hand, his head bobbing in time to the rhythm.

The song ended and Steve went back to focusing most of his attention on his work. He finished the oil change on the police car and lowered it back to the ground, after which he drove it out to the ready line and marked it as being in-service. He then pulled in his next project: A city snowplow that needed a diagnostic on its cooling system. He just had time to determine that the thermostat was frozen open before it was time for lunch.

He worked out the rest of his shift and then drove over to Bradford Municipal Park just north of the downtown area. There, in the very back reaches of the recreational facility, he met with a few of his coworkers so they could unwind after a hard day. Steve had a case of beer in his trunk, the cans at the perfect drinking temperature thanks to the thirty-one degrees it was outside. His friend Tommy Vale had an eighth of some decent bud. A joint was passed around and the beers were popped open and the five men talked of things that early thirties men talked of while the radio, tuned to WZAP, played a stream of rock music from Tommy’s car.

The new Jake Kingsley song came on the radio again. As before, the DJ announced that it was about to play.

“You heard this one, guys?” Steve asked them.

“I think I heard them playing it earlier in the day,” said Tommy. “Kind of mellow shit, isn’t it?”

“Nothing like Intemp,” said John Stone with a shake of the head.

“Yeah,” said Rick Farls, who had just killed the last of the joint. “It’s got violins and shit in it. Kingsley’s a fuckin’ sellout!”

“Naw, man,” Steve said. “It’s kind of cool shit, really. Give it a listen. That’s actually his mother playing that violin.”

“His fucking mother?” Tommy asked in disbelief.

“She’s a symphony musician and shit,” Steve said. “She fuckin’ nails it. Check it out!”

They checked it out. Rick still didn’t care much for it—he was a hard-core Matt Tisdale fan and had never really cared for any of Kingsley’s shit, Intemp or otherwise. Tommy and John, however, seemed to get into it.

“That’s Kingsley’s mom, huh?” John asked. “She really is pretty good with that thing.”

“I did like the violin solo,” Tommy had to admit.

“I told you it was good shit,” said Steve, who was already planning to stop by Tower of Power Records on his way home so he could pick up the CD.

All over the United States and Canada for the next two weeks, similar stories were going on. People heard Playing Those Games and Insignificance on their radios, usually several times in the course of a day. Not everyone liked the songs immediately. Some never liked them at all. But a great majority had the tunes grow on them the more they were exposed to them. And since those who liked the songs also tended to be the same ones who had liked The Struggle and The Easy Way, many of them decided that they would cut loose a little of their funds and go get the CD.

By the end of the first week in January, 1993, Games was getting frequent airplay on both the pops and the hards and the album had cleared two hundred thousand in sales. Games the song, however, was not doing so well on the charts—it had only gone to sixteen in the Top 40. Insig, on the other hand, was moving up the charts with a bullet, powered mostly by requests from the pop stations. It cracked the Top 10, still moving upward. And sales of Can’t Keep Me Down, the CD, passed a hundred and twenty thousand and kept on moving.

The ride was truly underway.

Matt Tisdale heard Insignificance for the first time as he rode in the back of the limousine on his way to a jam session in a Culver City warehouse where he and his band were working up his new material. It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning, just after the turn of the year, only the third such session to be held. The radio in the back of the limo was tuned to KRON and a commercial break had just wrapped up. The ten o’clock DJ, who had just started his shift, then announced that the latest from Jake Kingsley was about to be played.

“Fucking Kingsley,” Matt said in disgust, his fingers reaching for the dial. The last thing in the world he wanted to hear right now was another fucking tune from that sellout motherfucker. It was bad enough he had been subjected to that last crappy tune the man had put out, which, undoubtedly due to some underhanded marketing by National and good old legal tender, was actually getting airplay on KRON instead of staying on the pop stations where it belonged. Imagine Jake Kingsley, who had always held himself out to be some kind of purist when it came to music, now involved in the sleazy marketing of his own shit when it benefited him to do so. That was the very definition of a sellout.

Matt’s finger stopped short of the dial, however, when he heard the DJ say that Kingsley’s mother was playing violin on the cut they were about to hear. Violin? His fucking mother? What kind of sad-ass easy listening abortion is he peddling now? Morbid curiosity, the same kind that made a person want to look at a roadside automobile accident, kept him from tuning out just yet. He had to hear this shit.

He heard it. And, as much as he wanted to, as much as he tried to, he could not hate it. The fingerpicked melody that Jake had laid down was a masterpiece of acoustic guitar skill and phrasing. Jake had always been incredible on the acoustic, perhaps one of the best there was. And those violin fills atop the melody ... well ... it was easy listening shit, true, but goddamn if it didn’t sound pretty good, didn’t fit right in with the tone of the song. He had met Mary Kingsley several times before and he knew that she was a symphony musician, of course, but he had never given her a whole lot of thought other than that she was a nice lady, kind of square, but someone he had respected as a person, nonetheless. She really could play her instrument. Very shrewd of Kingsley recruiting her for the piece. Matt even analyzed the lyrics to the tune as best he could on a first run-through. They were classic Jake Kingsley lyrics, deeper than some he had laid down over the years, dark, intriguing, words that rang true with a universal theme of life that many did not like to acknowledge.

“This fucking song is going to chart,” Matt whispered, partially in wonder, partially in anger.

The song faded out and was replaced by a group of hackers called Primal Fire. Matt had heard their shit before and was not impressed on any level with it. He snapped the radio off and rode the rest of the trip in silence, his mind troubled.

They arrived at the warehouse and Matt went inside. His band was already there. He had kept Steve Calhoun as his drummer, but had chosen not to retain John Engle as his bass guitar player. Instead, he now had a guy named Austin Jefferson laying down the rhythm for him. Austin was a dark-skinned black man who had been raised by upper middle-class parents in an upper middle-class section of Simi Valley—his father a civil engineer for the county of Los Angeles, his mother an athletic trainer for USC’s women’s softball program. He looked very ghetto with his Jheri-curled hair and his gold chain and the tattoos of African tribal symbols on his well-muscled arms, but the truth was, Austin had never really been in the ghetto before, was not even sure how to get there. Still, he knew his way around a bass guitar.

The two musicians had met at a party a few months before when Austin had come up and introduced himself to Matt and then, after a little inane conversation, had told him he was a bassist. Matt had, of course, not taken him the least bit seriously at first. In the first place, people were always telling him they were guitar players or drummers when they met him, and most were nothing but hopeless hackers who could barely crank out Smoke on the Water or pound out the intro to Tom Sawyer. In the second place, Austin was not white and Matt, at the time, could not even conceive of a black bassist being able to play anything other than rap music or maybe some blues.

But as their conversation had gone on that night, Matt became more and more impressed with Austin’s knowledge of musical concepts that only a true musician would be able to speak of so easily. It was then that he learned of Austin’s upbringing and his musical resume, which included playing bass for two well-known local rock bands and doing some sessions on occasion down at Aristocrat’s studios.

“Where you working at now?” Matt asked him.

Austin chuckled. “My main gig, the one that pays the bills these days, is driving a forklift over at the Sears warehouse in Long Beach.”

“Yeah?” Matt asked, having no problem picturing that.

“Yeah,” Austin said. “I got me a master’s degree in Business Administration from USC, but it seems like, for some reason, I have a hard time getting past the first interview when I try to get a gig in that field.” He shrugged. “There must be something about me that makes them guys in suits think I wouldn’t be a good fit in their employ.”

“I can’t imagine what that might be,” Matt told him with a chuckle.

“The world is what the world is,” Austin said.

“Listen,” Matt then said. “I’m probably going to regret this, but why don’t you come to the warehouse I rehearse in sometime and show me what you got?”

Austin looked surprised. “You mean an audition?”

“An informal audition,” Matt amended. “You see, I’m not really happy with the guy I got slinging bass for me now and, well, if you can play like you say you can, maybe we can work something out.”

And so, two days later, Austin arrived at the warehouse, Brogan bass guitar in hand. Steve Calhoun had been invited to attend the audition. John Engle had not been. Matt and Steve found that Austin really did know what he was doing. He was damn good with his instrument. Not quite as good as that dick-smoking freak Charlie had been, but close. They were at least in the same league.

“I’m inclined to offer you the gig as my bass guitarist,” Matt had told him after the audition, “but there’s one thing I need to know first.”

“What’s that?” asked Austin.

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a dude who would put another dude’s schlong in your mouth?”

“Uh ... no,” Austin told him. “I’m into girls, always have been.” He looked at the two musicians carefully for a moment. “Is that okay?”

“It’s fuckin’ perfect,” Matt said. “You’re in.”

Austin was the first to greet him now, as he came into the warehouse to start the day’s session. “What is up, boss man?” he asked. “How are they hanging today?”

Matt shook his head a little. “You need to work on the ghetto talk a little more,” he told him. “It should be: ‘wassup, boss?’ and ‘how they hangin’?’ You’re letting your education show. Stop using some many fucking copulas when you talk.”

“Sorry, boss,” Austin said with a grin. “I’ll work on that shit.”

“You do that,” Matt said, giving a nod to Steve, who was sitting on his drum chair smoking a cigarette.

“Morning, Matt,” Steve greeted.

“It’s morning all right, and I fucking hate mornings. Let’s get in the proper mood for this shit.”

They got in the proper mood by smoking six bonghits apiece. Since it was not a rehearsal, but a jam session, getting stoned beforehand was mandatory. It was, as always, very good weed and it took them into the stratosphere quite easily.

They went to work, trying to put together Matt’s latest effort, a road song he had penned called: Time to Go. As had all of his solo works so far, it featured Matt’s grinding guitar riffs, multiple tempo changes, and multiple guitar solos between the verses. Matt liked how it was coming out, at least as far as the raw tune went, but he could not help but wonder what they were going to do with it in the studio now that he’d committed to letting the engineers get their greasy hands on his work. But at the same time, he also could not help but see the overt similarity that Go shared with his other work. The riffs and the solos were different, true, but what was there that would really distinguish the tune?

He didn’t know. All he could do was keep working and get the thing hashed out so they could move onto the next tune. All the same, however, as he tried to concentrate on what they were doing, tried to dial in Go, his mind kept drifting back to Jake Kingsley’s song he had heard this morning. What in the hell was up with that shit? Why was that mellow-ass shit laid down by a sellout stuck in his head? Why did he keep thinking about it?

They took a break just after one o’clock, all of them taking the opportunity to open a bottle of beer and quench their thirst a little. Matt sat on the edge of the drum platform and, after taking a few swigs, let the fingers of his right hand go to the wrist of his left arm, feeling for the pulse there. He did not have a watch on him at the moment, but he didn’t need it. By now, he could tell by simple feel about how fast his pulse was beating. So far, there had been no repeat of the SVT he’d had that night in Texas (why does so much bad shit happen in Texas? he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time), this despite the fact that he had not slowed down an iota on his cocaine consumption. This seemed to lend credence to his theory that it had been the meth that had put him in that rhythm that night. He had not touched any of that shit since. He still had the horridly clear memory of having electricity coursing through his body.

“Everything okay, Matt?” asked Steve, who got nervous whenever he saw the guitarist doing that.

“Ticking right along, just like it’s supposed to,” Matt said with a nod.

“Good to know,” said Steve, who was never going to forget that night in Houston either.

“Boss, did they really light you up with them paddles while you were still awake?” asked Austin, who had heard the tale.

“Like a fuckin’ Christmas tree,” Matt confirmed.

“I was there, dude,” Steve said. “It was some freaky shit, homey.”

“Did he, like fly up in the air off the table like in the movies?”

“Naw, just kinda jerked a little, but there was smoke coming up off his chest, and he screamed like a motherfucker, and the smell! It kinda smelled like...”

“Can we change the fuckin’ subject?” Matt asked, feeling the need to check his pulse again. It was still moving at an acceptable rate.

“Yeah, sure, Matt,” Steve said. “How about I turn some tunes on for a bit?”

“That’ll work,” Matt told him gratefully.

Steve got up and flipped on the radio that sat in the corner. It was tuned to KRON. The song by that new group, Nirvana, was playing, as it had been quite regularly for the past month or so. Matt couldn’t remember the name of the tune—it was one of those titles they didn’t actually say in the verses—but he liked the rhythm and the energy of it, even if he couldn’t understand most of the goddamn words the singer was spouting.

“What do they call this shit again?” Matt asked Austin, who was a little more in tune with recent rock than Steve.

“They’re calling it grunge,” he told him. “Seattle sound. It’s picking up some serious steam on the hard rocks.”

“Simplistic, but it has some soul,” Matt opined. “The guitar work is not very technical, but it’s honest, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying,” Austin told him.

The song went through its outro and wrapped up. While the last note was still fading, the next song started to play. It was something he had never heard before, a piano melody with a little violin mixed in (again with the fucking violin? Matt thought with a shake of the head. What’s up with the all the violins lately?) And then a female voice began to sing out the first verse. Matt’s attention focused a little more on the song. That voice sounded extremely familiar to him. It was the same bitch who sang that song The Struggle. It was Celia fucking Valdez. They were playing her on a hard rock station? What the fuck?

A moment later, he understood why they were playing it on a hard rock. A distorted drop-D electric guitar kicked into gear as the song went up tempo. It was a hard rock song. And Matt did not need to hear any more than the first few bars to know exactly whose hands that drop-D guitar had been in.

“Motherfucker,” he said, shaking his head in wonder and disbelief.

“What’s up?” asked Austin.

“This song,” he said. “Have you heard it before?”

“Yeah, a couple times,” he said. “It’s the new release by Celia Valdez. It kinda rocks, doesn’t it?”

“That’s Jake Kingsley playing that guitar for her,” Matt said.

“What?” Austin asked.

“Jake Kingsley?” Steve put in. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know what his fucking guitar playing sounds like!” Matt yelled. “Trust me on this. It’s him. And he was playing the solo for her on that other song, The Struggle.”

“No shit?” Steve said.

“Is he boning her?” asked Austin, hoping that he was. He knew what the Valdez babe looked like.

“Undoubtedly,” Matt told him.

“Good for Kingsley,” Austin said with approval. “You think her hubby, the actor from that fucked-up movie knows about that shit?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “I don’t fucking care. Where Kingsley puts his fucking schlong is not my concern.”

“He used to tap Mindy Snow, right?” asked Steve.

“Awww, man, that’s a fine piece of pussy there too,” said Austin.

“Can we stop talking about Jake Kinsley and who he is boning or has boned?” Matt yelled.

“You’re the one that brought him up,” Steve felt obligated to point out.

“Hey, here comes the solo,” Austin said. “Check it out, Matt. He fuckin’ shreds it pretty well—not as good as you, of course, but respectable.”

Matt gritted his teeth but he listened to the solo. Austin was right. It was a respectable piece of guitar work, fast, rhythmic, and it fit the tone of the song perfectly. True, Matt would have done it differently, with a little more finger tapping mid-solo and a bit less whammy on the follow-through, but that was nothing but personal preference. Jake had done a good job with it. It was rock the way that rock was meant to be played.

“That motherfucker,” he said again, astounded, feeling an array of emotion going through him. “How come I’m the only goddamn person in the world that knows that’s Jake Kingsley playing guitar for that bitch? Why the fuck aren’t they announcing that shit every time they play the song on the radio?”

“I don’t know,” Austin said. “Maybe they’re trying to keep it on the down-low?”

“On the down-low?” Matt barked. “I heard Jake’s new tune played earlier, while I was heading in. They fucking told everyone that his goddamn mom was playing the violin for him! That don’t sound like the fucking down-low to me!”

“Yeah, I heard that tune yesterday,” Austin said. “A good piece. Really good guitar work.”

Matt gave him a glare that would’ve killed, if looks could do such a thing.

“Again,” Austin stammered, “nowhere near as good as you could’ve done it.”

“Don’t jerk me off, Austin,” Matt told him. “I’m not half the acoustic guitarist that Kingsley is and I know it. That’s not my point though. They should be letting everyone know he’s playing guitar for her. It would help both of their albums sell. So, why aren’t they? Why would they be trying to keep that shit secret?”

“I can’t think of a reason why they would,” Steve said, “assuming you’re right and that really is Kingsley playing.”

“I’m right,” Matt insisted. “I played with the man long enough to know what he sounds like. It’s as distinctive as his voice, maybe even more so.”

“Then I don’t know the answer,” Steve said.

“Neither do I,” Austin put in. “It don’t make no sense to me.”

“Me either,” Matt said as the final outro of Playing Those Games faded out and the DJ came on to tell them what they already knew, that they had just heard Celia Valdez’s latest solo effort, and didn’t it rock?

Matt had the limo driver stop at Kensington’s Records on the way home. He then gave him two twenty-dollar bills and instructed him to go inside and purchase two compact discs from the new release music aisle and then keep the change.

“Whatever you say, Matt,” Tim, the driver told him.

“And if you ever tell a single living human being what I just had you do,” Matt said, “I’ll kill you slowly in the most painful way I can think of. I’ll get a fuckin’ dentist to execute you.”

“What happens in the limo stays in the limo,” Tim assured him.

Ten minutes later, they were underway once again and Matt was holding the CDs in his hands. He looked at Celia’s first, taking a moment to appreciate the juicy shape of her tit on the album cover and to fight down a pang of envy as he thought of Jake getting to put his hands on it. He then opened up the case and pulled out the insert, unfolding it so he could look it over. There were a few more pictures of Celia in there, most of them candid shots, all of them flattering to her form. On the very bottom right of the unfolded insert was a list of the musicians and their roles in the production.

Celia Valdez – Vocals, acoustic guitar

Phillip Genkins – Backing vocals

Pauline Kingsley – Backing vocals

Ted Duncan – Drums and other percussion

Ben Ping – Bass guitar

Laura Best – Saxophone

Cynthia Archer – Piano

William Archer – Synthesizers and other keyboards

Mary Kingsley – Violin

Engineering – William and Sharon Archer

Recorded and mixed at Blake Studios, Coos Bay, Oregon

“Son of a bitch,” Matt whispered, shaking his head again. He did not have the slightest idea who Ted Duncan, Ben Ping, Phillip Genkins, or Laura Best were, but he sure as shit knew the other names. Nerdly’s mother was playing piano on the CD. Fucking Nerdly himself was playing synthesizer. Jake’s goddamn mother was playing violin for Valdez as well. Pauline, his former manager, was singing backup (I didn’t know that bitch could sing!) And the entire fucking thing had been engineered by the Nerdlys. But there was no goddamn lead guitar player listed! How the fuck were they getting away with that shit? Why was no one questioning it? Was that even legal?

He ripped open Kingsley’s CD next, pulling out that insert.

Unlike with Valdez’s insert, there was only one picture of Jake on the entire thing, the cover shot of him playing his old Fender Grand Concert. There was no other artwork to speak of, just a mix of washed-out pastel colors that blended from one to the other and the track listing. In the lower right hand side were the credits.

Jake Kingsley – Acoustic guitar and vocals

Phillip Genkins – backing vocals

Pauline Kingsley – backing vocals

Ben Ping – Bass guitar

Ted Duncan – Drums and other percussion

Mary Kingsley – Violin

Cynthia Archer – Piano

William Archer – Synthesizer

Engineered by William and Sharon Archer

Recorded at Blake Studios, Coos Bay, Oregon

Special thanks to Laura Best for soprano saxophone on South Island Blur

It’s the same fucking musicians! Matt fumed. Kingsley’s and Nerdly’s mothers playing violin and piano for him. Ben Ping and Ted Duncan (whoever the fuck they were) putting down the rhythm. Pauline and this Phillip Genkins motherfucker singing backup. Even this Laura Best bitch on the sax (Kingsley’s got some fucking sax on his CD? What the fuck?) And again, there was no goddamn credit given for the lead guitar position.

How can I be the only one who has noticed this shit? Why aren’t the DJs and the fucking music media assholes all over this story?

He put the inserts back in their respective cases, not bothering to fold them up into the proper orientation, just putting them back to the size that would fit. He did not take the CDs out of the cases. Tim might say that what happened in the limo stayed in the limo, but Matt was not going to let anyone know that he had actually listened to either one of these CDs.

When he got home, however, he went immediately to his entertainment room and fired up the stereo system. His machine featured a twenty-four disc changer and he had to pull two CDs out first to make room, but he inserted both Jake’s and Celia’s work into slots 23 and 24.

He played Kingsley’s CD first. The first cut was The Easy Way, which he had already heard enough of on the radio and which he already knew was Kingsley playing the weak-ass guitar riffs. He skipped over it. The next cut was the title cut: Can’t Keep Me Down. Matt found it was a semi-hard rock tune that featured two distorted electric guitars for the melody—the first a drop-D tuned guitar, the second a standard tuned guitar with milder distortion. He had no idea who was playing the second guitar—although he had to admit that whoever it was seemed to know his way around the instrument pretty well—but he knew within ten seconds that Kingsley was playing the primary guitar for the tune. As with the riffs on that Valdez hard rock tune, the sound was as distinctive as a human voice to his ears.

He listened to the song all the way through, surprised and dismayed to find himself tapping his foot a little with the beat. There was no guitar solo in the main body of the song itself but there was an extended solo on the outro. It was not a highly technical solo by any means, but it was well-played and fit the tune. And it too was unmistakably Kingsley laying it down.

He noticed other things as the song played as well. At several points there was a third guitar playing, an electric with distortion so mild as to almost be clean, and it was mixed in atop the secondary melody in perfect harmony. That too was Kingsley’s work and Matt was familiar with the technique. It was an overdub meant to put in the sound of string strikes on that secondary melody. Intemperance had used that very same overdub atop Jake’s guitar when they’d recorded and mixed I Am Time, one of their biggest hits and their most experimental tune. Matt had fought tooth and nail at the time to not put that overdub in but, in the end, Kingsley and Nerdly had insisted upon it. And, once the tune had been played for them on the master of the album, Matt had had to admit (if only to himself) that it really had enhanced the sound of the tune when it was played in recorded medium.

He moved onto the next tune, something called Hit the Highway, according to the track list. He hardly heard the lyrics at all, concentrating instead on the instruments. The tune used a mildly distorted electric for the primary melody with piano for the secondary. Underneath all that, however, was an acoustic guitar strumming with the rhythm. Kingsley was playing the electric guitar but he was not playing the acoustic. Matt was very sure about this. The song had no guitar solo at all, not even a brief one, not even an outro piece.

He listened to the next song, and then the next until he’d heard the entire CD. He listened to Insignificance and the song with that saxophonist bitch, South Island Blur, twice. With Insignificance his opinion that it was going to be a hit did not fade, but was reinforced. With Blur, he listened again because he simply could not believe that Kingsley was actually trying to pass it off as rock. It used a fingerpicked acoustic guitar (played by Kingsley, he could tell) as the primary melody and that soprano sax as the secondary melody atop it. It sounded like a morph of mellow blues and some shit put down by a reggae band. And yet it had a catchy rhythm and a solid hook that appealed to the listener quite nicely. Once again, Matt found himself tapping along with the beat and even humming a bit to the melody.

He’s a fucking sellout, but he’s got some shit that’s going to chart here, was Matt’s conclusion when he finally finished listening to Can’t Keep Me Down.

He then used his remote control to switch to Valdez’s CD. He skipped over The Struggle, the first cut on the album, but listened carefully to everything else. Three of the songs he listened to twice: Playing Those Games, Why?, and Done With You. He discovered much as he listened. In the first place, it was not just Phil fucking Whoever and Pauline singing backup for Valdez, but Kingsley as well on several of the cuts. Jake was playing all of the electric guitar that could be heard in the album and he could be heard here and there providing some overdub acoustic as well. And now that he had heard an entire album’s worth of Celia Valdez’s acoustic playing (including the stunning fingerpicked melody on Why?) he now knew who the mysterious second guitar player on Jake’s album was. It was fucking Valdez herself.

Perhaps the most striking thing he heard on both albums, however, was the engineering of it. Both were full of overdubs and double-tracking of vocals and instruments on every single cut. But the way it had been done, no one but a professional musician or sound engineer would even notice. That was the mark of the Nerdlys in action.

“Those assholes really can mix,” he muttered to himself as he fixed himself a huge drink once the last song was over.

He sat in the silent entertainment room, sipping and pondering what he had just heard.

Kingsley and Valdez and the Nerdlys had formed their own independent label. He had picked up on the KVA Records logo and had not had any trouble guessing what those initials stood for. They had obviously been working on a tight budget for their production as they had been forced to use the same musicians for both albums. The musicians in question were Kingsley’s and Nerdly’s mothers—who undoubtedly did not charge much, if anything, for their services—and rhythm and support players that Matt had never heard of despite the fact that he had auditioned dozens of studio bass players and studio drummers for his own first album. Where had they dug those people up? They were not hackers by any means, so where had they come from?

Both albums had been engineered by the Nerdlys and recorded at Blake Studios in Oregon. Matt was certainly not a country music fan, but he was a professional musician and he knew who Oren Blake II was and knew that he owned Blake Studios, which was the most advanced recording studio in the United States, and Blake Family Records, the most successful independent country label in the entire fucking world. Valdez and Kingsley had been allowed to record in what was traditionally a country music studio owned and operated by the infamous OB2. How had they pulled that shit off?

With the combination of the advanced studio, the talents of Kingsley and Valdez (Matt had been forced to admit to himself about three songs into The Struggle that Valdez was, in fact, quite talented as both a guitarist and vocalist), and the engineering and mixing skill of the Nerdlys they had produced two albums that were going to sell a lot of copies and get a lot of airplay.

Yes, they were sellouts. But they were going to be rich sellouts, weren’t they?

He sighed, taking another drink and then lighting a cigarette.

Most puzzling of all in this entire deal was the guitar playing. Kingsley played lead guitar on all of Valdez’s cuts as well as his own. Valdez played backing guitar, both acoustic and electric, on many of Kingsley’s cuts. Neither of them, however, were given any credit for this on either album. Kingsley did not lay down any true guitar solos at all except for the well-done piece he had played on Playing Those Games—something he would receive no credit for.

What was the rationale behind this?

And why was no one making note of the fact that the same musicians and producers and engineers were credited on both albums?

“And now for the biggest question,” Matt said to himself as he took a drag on his smoke. “Why do I give a fiddler’s fuck about any of this shit?”

He didn’t know. But after he finished his smoke, he decided to take a few bonghits. Once he was feeling good in the way that only good weed could make one feel good, he used his remote control to turn on Kingsley’s album again.

He listened to it all the way through one more time, took a few more hits, and then played Valdez’s album again as well.

His thoughts then turned to his own music. He began to envision just where and how he could put those overdubs into his own work and how a little engineering might not be such a horrible thing after all.

If he was committed to selling out a bit, he might as well do it right.

On January 17, 1993, Jake’s song Insignificance reached number 2 on the Top Ten list. It was unable to dislodge Whitney Houston and I Will Always Love You from the top spot, but it did enjoy a long bout as the most requested song in the nation. It would remain in the number two position for five more weeks before slowly starting to inch its way back down.

It was during this period of time that Jake’s days of living under the radar came to an end. Now that he was on the charts with one of the most popular songs in the nation, the media reporters began to seek him out once again. Pauline’s phone began to ring off the hook with requests for interviews. As instructed, she scheduled none, but they were persistent and she ended up giving quasi-interviews herself, trying as best she could to remain as vague as possible about everything and anything.

Of course, the most common question asked was about the possibility of Intemperance reuniting.

“There are no plans for a reunion of Intemperance,” Pauline told the reporters. “Jake has moved off in his own direction and seems to be doing fairly well with it at this point, and I’m sure you are aware of Matt Tisdale’s feelings on the matter.”

It took longer than they had any right to expect, but eventually the reporters noticed some of the same things that Matt had noticed, i.e. that the same musicians were listed on both Jake’s and Celia’s albums, that both were marked with the KVA Records label, and that Pauline Kingsley was the manager of record for both soloists (as well as one of the backup vocalists for both).

“It seems like there’s some sort of connection between Jake’s and Celia’s albums,” Julie Lopez from Entertainment Weekly Magazine asked Pauline one day in mid-February. “Can you explain that?”

“What would you like me to explain?” Pauline replied, vowing to herself that it was time to open an actual office—maybe down at the rehearsal studio?—and hire an actual secretary to field all these fucking calls.

“Well...” Lopez said, “National tells us that KVA Records is an independent label and that they are simply handling manufacturing and distribution for them. We’ve found that no other acts are associated with that label beside Jake Kingsley and Celia Valdez, and that you are the manager for both of them.”

“That is true,” Pauline allowed.

“And Jake’s mother, as well as Nerdly Archer’s mother, are both listed as the violinist and piano player, respectively, on both albums.”

“That too is true,” Pauline told her.

“In addition,” Lopez went on, “Nerdly himself plays synthesizers and is the engineer of both albums.”

“His wife, Sharon, is also one of the engineers,” Pauline said.

“Yes, of course,” Lopez said dismissively. “In any case, all of the session musicians listed on both albums also have the same names.”

“They do,” Pauline said.

“So ... that is why I’m asking if there is a connection between the two albums.”

“There is no real connection,” Pauline assured her, glancing at the clock. It was only nine-thirty in the morning but she was already craving a stiff drink. She was starting to get a little understanding of her brother’s alcoholic compulsions now.

“No connection?”

“Not really,” Pauline said. “Each was recorded individually as a completely separate project. Jake and Celia are friends and it was Jake that recommended me as her manager after La Diferencia broke up. I heard what she had to offer and I was impressed enough to take her on. That is why I represent both of them. And when it came time to record the albums, they both worked with musicians they were familiar with and recommended to each other.”

“I see,” Lopez said. “Would you care to comment on the reports we’ve heard that there is a romantic involvement between Jake and Celia?”

“There is nothing to comment on,” Pauline told her. “They are friends and nothing else. Celia, as I’m sure you’re aware, is married to Greg Oldfellow and they are quite happy together. Jake himself has been dating someone quite seriously for the past year or so.”

“He has?” Lopez asked, surprised. “And who might that be?”

Shit! Pauline thought helplessly. I fucked that one up. “Uh ... I’m not at liberty to say, sorry.”

“You’re not at liberty to say?” Lopez asked. “The public has a right to know this information. Can you explain why you are not willing to release it?”

“Jake and his lady friend would prefer to keep their private life private,” Pauline told her. “As I’m sure you’re aware, there have been issues in the past with intrusions and stalking of women that Jake has dated. He and she would both like to avoid all that if possible.”

“There have been issues in the past with Jake and domestic violence as well,” Lopez said. “He is a well-known celebrity with a notorious reputation. The public has an interest in knowing his personal life.”

“I’m sorry,” Pauline said. “I’m not going to tell you who he is dating. Next question, or are we done?”

She wasn’t done, but the rest of her questions stayed clear of the subject of Jake’s romantic life.

Still, the bag had been opened and the cat had a route out of it. It didn’t take long for the reporters to start trying to coax that feline free.

It was Paul Peterson who broke the story. The notorious celebrity stalking photographer who sold his shots to the highest bidder—that bidder was, most of the time, the American Watcher publication, which had the highest budget for such things—put himself on the case as soon as he saw the report that Kingsley was dating someone and had not been officially seen in public for more than two years. That, coupled with the fact that Kingsley was back on the charts with his solo album, made for a lucrative stalking.

Peterson was forty-two years old in 1993. He and Jake had crossed paths on multiple occasions throughout their respective careers, thanks mostly to Paul’s relationship with Mindy Snow. Mindy had enlisted his help back in 1983 when she wanted to break out of the goody two-shoes reputation she had been saddled with by her childhood acting on the family-oriented TV show The Slow Lane. She set up a romantic relationship with Kingsley for that purpose and had then given Paul times and locations where he could photograph the two of them together under the guise that he had just happened across them. Paul would have performed the service for free, but Mindy had paid him for it, both in American currency and sexual favors, as long as he kept both forms of compensation secret.

He kept up his end of the bargain and, in addition to getting to bang the hot actress once a month or so during the peak of their collaboration, he made a considerable amount of money and developed a considerable amount of reputation as a top paparazzi due to the deal. It had been he who first captured the images of Jake and Mindy in swimwear on Dune Beach and he who had captured nude images of them swimming together in the waters of a secluded Los Angeles County lake. And, though Mindy had not been involved in this one, he had been the one to take the compromising shots of Jake and an anonymous redheaded slut getting ready to bone each other down in Mexico. The most memorable shots of Jake he had taken, however, had been the ones that had never been published and that only he, Mindy, and Mindy’s ex-husband, Scott Adams Winslow had ever seen. They had been the shots of Jake, Mindy, and Winslow’s secretary having a three-way that involved double penetration with Jake’s cock in Mindy’s snatch and a large strap-on dildo in Mindy’s ass. Those shots had been used to blackmail Winslow into disregarding the prenuptial agreement Mindy had signed and not contest the divorce.

Alas, his relationship with Mindy Snow was no more. The Winslow shots had been the last he had been personally commissioned to take of her and she had not contacted him since depositing the two hundred thousand dollars she paid for the job (and for his promise to never reveal their existence) into his account. Mindy was a user and he had always known that. Still, though he no longer had her help at his job, he was still quite the premier stalker of all things celebrity.

He knew where Jake Kingsley lived, of course. Kingsley’s address was a matter of public record and, when the singer had first moved into the house back in 1987, his neighbors had not been very happy about it and had staged daily protests that made national news. As far as he knew, Kingsley had not moved from that location, so it was a simple matter of driving his Mercedes to the corner of Nottingham Drive and Sherwood Avenue up in the Hollywood Hills and finding a discrete place to park and stake out the house.

He sat there for five hours, his three thousand dollar Nikon camera with its four thousand dollar Nikkor 400mm parfocal zoom lens sitting by his side. He smoked cigarettes one after the other and listened to the radio (tapping along when Celia’s song, Playing Those Games came on) while watching the traffic drive by. When he had to pee, he did it in a jar that he kept just for that purpose. When he was hungry, he pulled a snack out of a bag he kept in the center console compartment just for that purpose. It was boring, mind-numbing work but he was used to it. It was his profession, after all.

Finally, at just after five o’clock in the afternoon, he saw a royal blue, late eighties BMW 7-series car come pulling out of Kingsley’s driveway. He already knew from checking with a contact of his at the DMV that this was the car currently registered to one Jake Kingsley, of 9503 Nottingham Drive, Los Angeles, California. He crushed out his smoke in the ashtray and picked up the camera, putting it to his eye and getting ready.

He pointed the camera at the car as it approached, his hand on the lens turning the focus and adjusting the zoom rapidly, with the consummate skill of a man who made a living doing such a thing. Within a second or two, the face behind the wheel filled the entire field of view and came into sharp focus.

Who the hell is that? was Peterson’s first thought as he saw the short hair and the mustache. Does Kingsley have a male servant that’s driving his car?

But then his mind, trained for years to recognize celebrity faces in an instant, took in the size and shape of the nose, the square of the chin, the swell of the lips, the color of the eyes. He realized he was, in fact, looking at Jake Kingsley, but that Kingsley had altered his appearance from what the public knew.

Son of a bitch, he thought in wonder. That’s almost brilliant! He pushed the button on his camera and it began to take rapid-fire shots, three per second. Though there was no one else in the car with Kingsley, the altered appearance was a story in and of itself. He could score maybe five hundred dollars from the Watcher for such shots alone.

He ducked down as Kingsley approached and waited until he passed. He looked up just in time to see the rear of the car disappearing down Sherwood Drive toward the main road. He snapped a few quick shots of the license on the rear. It was California plate, number 3WFG972, the same number his DMV contact told him belonged to Kingsley. Confirmation.

Ninety minutes later, Kingsley returned and pulled back into his circular driveway. He was still alone. He parked his car in the garage and that was all Peterson saw that day. He waited another hour, until the light was too poor for photographs from a distance, and then went home, where he developed the shots he had taken in his darkroom into negatives, and then picked out a few of the better ones to turn into prints.

He was back before sunrise the next morning. He did not know if Kingsley’s alleged girlfriend actually lived with him or not, so his plan was to follow the singer if he left again, hoping he would lead him to the girlfriend in question. As it turned out, however, following the man wasn’t necessary.

At 8:15 AM, after smoking only six cigarettes and peeing in the jar only once, Kingsley’s garage door opened up and a forest green Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible backed slowly out.

That’s a fucking chick car if I’ve ever seen one! Peterson thought excitedly. Either that, or there’s a fucking fag living with him.

The camera came up, his eye went to the viewfinder, his left hand went to the lens, his right index finger went to the shutter release.

The car backed out onto the street and headed toward him. He took a few quick shots of the front license plate and then focused intently on the driver’s position. There was a cute redheaded woman behind the wheel.

Not bad, Peterson thought as he started to snap away. Looks just like the kind of chick Kingsley would be boning.

He managed to get off nearly thirty shots of her face before she passed by. Before her taillights had even disappeared down the hill, his own engine was running and he was headed for his darkroom.

He printed one shot of her license number and twelve shots of her face. The license number was a California personalized plate. SAXMSTR. He took a few moments to try to interpret that and then finally came up with ... Sax Master? What the hell did that mean? Was she a saxophone player? That thought triggered a memory of when he had examined the insert for Kingsley’s new CD looking for clues. He had mentioned special thanks to a saxophone player, hadn’t he? He remembered that mostly because he thought it odd that a Jake Kingsley song would have a saxophone in it at all.

He left the darkroom and went into the entertainment room of his house. There, on the shelf with the rest of his CDs, was a copy of Kingsley’s solo effort. He opened it and ripped out the insert again, unfolding it and going to the right lower corner.

Special thanks to Laura Best for soprano saxophone on South Island Blur.

That was far too much of a coincidence to be a mere coincidence. Laura Best had to be the cute redhead in the Cabriolet. But he had to have confirmation.

He picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory. It rang three times and then a female voice answered.

“Department of motor vehicles,” she said. “This is Julie.” Julie Barstow was one of the managers of the North Hollywood DMV office. The two of them had had an under the table business relationship for more than ten years now.

“Hey, Jules,” he said. “Paul Peterson here.”

“Paul,” her voice said, giving no inflection. “What can I do for you today?”

“I need you to run a license for me and give me the particulars on the RO.”

“Shoot,” she said, not having to mention that the service he was requesting was going to cost him fifty dollars cash, delivered within two days if he ever wanted to employ her services again.

“California personalized plate,” he said. He then proceeded to spell it out in police department phonetics. “Sam, Adam, X-ray, Mary, Sam, Tom, Robert.” As he spoke, he heard the sound of her fingers tapping on a computer keyboard.

“Gimmee just a second,” Julie told him. “Okay. Here it comes. The RO is Laura Lynn Best. The car is a ninety-three Cabriolet, first registered in October of 1992. The registration puts the address of the vehicle at nine-five-zero-three Nottingham Lane in LA. There is no loan company listed on the title, so someone paid it off at the time of purchase.”

“Perfect,” Paul told her. “What can you tell me about the RO?”

“That’ll cost you another fifty, Paul.”

“Understood,” he said. “Give it up, hon.”

“Hang on,” she said. There was the sound of her fingers tapping the keyboard again, a pause, a few more taps, another pause, and then: “Okay, here we go. Laura Lynn Best. Date of birth is April 11, 1965. She’s five-three, one hundred and twenty pounds allegedly, red hair, green eyes. No moving violations on record. License is in good standing. Address has recently been updated to that Nottingham Lane address. Prior to that, her address was 6312 Parkland Lane, number 213 in Burbank.”

“Excellent,” Paul said. “Are you able to look at her DMV photo?”

“No,” she said. “We haven’t been digitized yet.”

“A pity,” he said, “but that’s okay. You’ve given me what I need.”

“Always glad to help,” she told him.

“I’ll be by tomorrow sometime with a little envelope for you,” he promised.

“I’ll be expecting you,” she said.

And with that, they disconnected the call.

Paul hung up the phone and lit a cigarette. He smiled as he smoked. There was a just a little more grunt work to be done on this job. He just needed to stake out Kingsley’s pad a few more days and follow Laura Best around until he got a good shot of her outside of her car. It wouldn’t hurt to follow Kingsley as well and get a few more shots of his new appearance.

Experience told him that would not take more than a day or two.

And once he had the shots of the two of them in hand, he knew his contacts at the Watcher would pay him at least two grand for the photos and another grand for the information.

It wasn’t as good or as lucrative as working for Mindy Snow, but it paid the bills.