The Autumn Dead

Chapter 11

Most recording studios are designed to resemble expensive bomb shelters, tight as cocoons. Not only are the floors carpeted, so are most of the walls. Not only do the doors close tight, they are sealed along the edges. The baffling used to make the studios soundproof combines with somber indirect lighting to give the impression that even if Armageddon did come along, you'd never know about it inside here. You work in shadows, and the studio people seem to think this is just ducky, state of the art.

On the other side of a huge slab of glass, at a control panel the folks at "Star Trek" would envy, sat a very sleek guy with razor-cut hair and a mean black gaze and the kind of colorful, casual clothes that pass for southern Californian out here. He said, "Jack, I don't believe it. I mean, you're not coming across, you know?" He would take my six-second bit and mix it into the rest of the spot. Once he got me to read the way he wanted me to, anyway.

"Huh?"

"Look at the script, okay?"

I looked at the script.

"What does it say?"

"It says: 'If it wasn't for the home-equity loan I got at First National, I wouldn't have been able to send Timmy to college.' "

"Right."

"Well, you've got to sound grateful."

"Right. Sorry."

"You all right this morning?"

"Long night."

He grinned. "Chicks?"

"Nah."

"You know Betsy our receptionist?"

"Yeah."

"She thinks you're cute."

"Great."

"Really." He whispered over the intercom. "Take it from me, Jack. This chick knows things that'll make you blush. And take a gander at those gazongas. Playboy material or what?"

Steve, his name was, and at least the way he told it, he'd slept with no less than 50.7 percent of the women under age ninety-six in the city. But he had an annoying habit of never giving them any attributes but sexual ones. They were never smart or dumb or even pretty or ugly, they were always described only by the size of their breasts or various exotic tricks they seemed to know that nobody else had even heard of. (Over beers one night he'd mentioned a "Mexican sleeve job, you know, like in that 200 European Sexual Positions," and I had been left to ponder what that could mean-why Mexican? And what in hell could a "sleeve job" be?) "You should try her," he said.

"Actually, I've got a friend."

"Oh, yeah. That ad chick. Man, nice-looking."

I guess I should have mentioned earlier that Steve is fifty-seven years old and a tribute to Grecian Formula. He works out not once, not twice, but three times a day, and confided to me once that he attributes his self-described "amazing virility" to massive doses of bee pollen ("I don't have to tell you about bees, do I, Jack?") He is also, for all his unctuous gonadic style, the best recording engineer and director outside of L.A. He takes advertising copy very, very seriously, knows how to make even the most unlikely lines play well, and the agencies are only too happy to send to his place, on a regular basis, big trucks loaded with green Yankee cash.

"You know how I see Jim-this guy you're playing?" he said.

"Uh-uh."

"Close your eyes. I'm going to paint you a picture."

"All right." I closed my eyes.

"He's forty-three years old. He lives in one of the suburbs. He's twenty pounds overweight, and no matter how hard he tries to diet, around eleven o'clock every night he sneaks down to the refrigerator where his wife has got this big sign that reads THINK BEFORE YOU EAT. Only he's so ravenous, he nearly rips the door off and then he just pigs out. Preferably on sweet stuff, but at this point he'll go for anything. He's disgusting to watch. You getting a picture?"

"I'm getting a picture."

"He goes to a Methodist church every Sunday but he nods off during the sermon. He wears Hush Puppies. During the sixties he got a college deferment so he didn't have to go to Nam but he didn't necessarily agree with all the people in the streets. But now this is the tricky part. He works for this corporation where their people are always getting fired. His boss is a real tyrant. Jim uses Valium and Maalox and Turns because inside he's a mess. He's losing his hair, and his erections aren't what they used to be, and even sending his only child to a state university is killing him financially. He's not shit, you seeing it?"

"I'm seeing it." And I was. "He eats because he's secretly depressed, right?" It was like acting class, fun, exhilarating, and only faintly embarrassing.

"Right."

"And maybe he and his wife don't really communicate much anymore, right?"

"Now you're flying, Jack."

"And he always feels that his back is to the wall, and that even the wall's going to cave in on him, right?"

"Exactly. And so, when First National gives him a home-equity loan, it's much more than just a loan-symbolically. Here's this fat guy in Hush Puppies who's this absolute piece of dust with his wife and with his boss-it's First National saying to this guy, Hey, we're your friend, pal. Other people may piss on you and spit on you and revile you with every dirty name imaginable-but not us, we're your friend, can you dig that-your friend? So what do we hear in his voice when he says, 'If it wasn't for that home-equity loan I got from First National, I wouldn't have been able to send Timmy to college'? What are we hearing, Jack?"

The bastard nearly had me in tears. "We're hearing gratitude because somebody finally gives a damn about this poor sad son of a bitch."

"That's exactly what we hear, Jack, and that's exactly what we want to hear from you. Gratitude. Because First National's your pal, your compadre, your best bud."

We got it in one take.

After the session, I went down the hall to the john and on the way I glanced out one of the few windows in the two-story facility to the parking lot where spring was struggling to paint everything green and crocus purple and crocus yellow and apple-blossom pink.

She was at the back of the lot, between a Pizza 2-U van and a large blue Buick. She just sat there and I wondered if she ever got hot inside those black leathers and that inscrutable black helmet, and then I wondered if she wore them for reasons of safety or because she liked the melodramatic edge they gave her.

But now it was time I found out not only who she was but what she wanted, so I went to the west end of the building and down the FIRE EXIT stairs and out the door. Being a cop got me in the habit of always carrying a ballpoint and a tablet that fit in the back pocket of my pants. I didn't need a gun right now. I needed the tablet.

The outdoor smelled of sunlight and diesel fuel and flowers. I wanted to be fishing. I worked my way along a line of cars in the lot until I came even with where she was, six cars over. There was an old woman apparently waiting for somebody in the doctor's office next door. She observed the way I sort of crouched down as I moved. She frowned at me, not frightened in the least, but angry. She was probably going to turn me in.

I came up from behind the Pizza 2-U van and stood four feet from the motorcycle.

And then she turned, obviously sensing me somehow. She'd had her engine running, so it was no trouble to do a fairly exotic wheelie and get out of there. The bike reared like a bronc, the long and curving lines of the woman in leathers as one with the metal itself, and then it came screeching and roaring down in contact with the pavement again and shot off in between a maze of parked cars.

There was no way I could catch her and I didn't intend to try.

But now I had her license number, and for now that was the only thing in the world I needed.