looked old.
It was a strange confession from a man who seemed in every other aspect of his life completely happy and carefree. I’d never known Ray and Slim to have anything but a good time. The music business is a tough row to hoe; the only way to make it through is to have a good attitude and a sense of humor the size of the Goodyear blimp. This was the first crack I’d ever seen.
And I thought again of Marsha and realized that, really, she was about all I had. Lots of friends, buddies, former colleagues, contacts, clients, but people who were my day-to-day, real family? Marsha was just about it.
I suddenly knew exactly how Ray felt. I put down my sandwich and scraped a rough paper napkin across my face.
“Ray, there’s something I guess I ought to tell you. The real reason I’ve been sweating whether or not to get involved with all this.”
The phone rang, its electronic alarm bouncing off the plaster walls and abruptly jarring both of us out of our thoughts.
“Hold on, let me get this.” Ray stepped over to the desk closest to him and pressed a red button on the telephone. There was a cracking noise as a speakerphone popped.
“Yeah,” Ray called excitedly. Before the word could get out, though, a computer-generated voice spoke over his.
“Hello, you have a collect call from-” The voice paused.
“Slim!” we heard Slim say in the split second the computer gave him to talk.
“If you will accept the call, press one on your telephone keypad. If not, hang up. Thank you for using South Central Bell.”
Ray pressed the telephone keypad. “Slim?” he yelled.
“Hey, Ray, how are you?” Slim sounded artificially cheerful.
“Fine, buddy. How the hell are you?”
“I’m hanging in there,” he said. There was the sound of metal clanging, loud voices, and a blaring television in the background. “Listen, these phones are programmed to hang up after ten minutes. We ain’t got much time.”
“Okay, Slim. By the way, Harry’s in here with me. He’s going to help us out.”
“Hey, Harry.”
“Hey, Slim,” I said.
“I’m glad you’re going to try to give me some help. I could sure use it.”
“The best help I can give you is to try to get you out of there.”
“That ain’t looking too good, man. No way I can come up with the bondsman’s fee. But, Ray, there’s a couple of things you could do for me.”
Between the tinny speaker in the phone and the background noise of the jail, Slim’s voice sounded hollow, detached, like he was at the other end of a long metal drainpipe and we were yelling at each other.
“What can we do?” Ray asked.
“First, get the extra key to my house. It’s the green key on the plastic ring in the center of my desk.”
Ray slid the desk drawer open. “Got it.”
“Get on over to my house. Just let yourself in. It’ll be okay. Back in the den, there’s a small desk across from the TV. In the bottom drawer is a file folder. That’s the paperwork on my house and the deed to my grandmother’s house down in Winchester. That house is fully paid for. I can use it as collateral on a loan or just sign it over to a lawyer if need be.”
“Okay. What do I do with it?” Ray asked.
“Just get it out of the house for now. That is, if the cops haven’t already seized all my papers. I ain’t got a lot, but if the law puts a clamp on it, then I’m really screwed.”
“Can they do that?” Ray asked me, lowering his voice.
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t be surprised,” I said, real low.
“While you’re there, pick up the passbook to my savings account at the credit union. There ain’t much in there, maybe two thousand tops, but it’ll help. As soon as I get a lawyer, I’ll sign a power of attorney over to you, Ray, so you can handle the money. If you could write the check for my house payment and my utilities, I’d appreciate it, too. That house and my grandma’s place is about everything I own in the world.”
I didn’t think it was a proper time to tell Slim that it was almost a certainty he could kiss all that stuff goodbye. If the law didn’t confiscate it, the attorneys would get it in legal fees. The pursuit of justice had bankrupted lesser men.
“Slim, do you have any idea who you’re going to hire as your lawyer?” I asked.
“No, not really. Roger Vaden says he can’t do it. He knows a couple of guys he can call. I don’t know, Harry, it looks to me like maybe nobody wants to take the case.”
“Aw, hell, boy,” Ray boomed, “don’t you start talking like that. We’ll get you out of there just as quick as possible.”
“They’re saying it might be three months before my trial starts. If I can’t find the money to make bond, there ain’t no telling how long I’ll be in here.” The first surge of panic flowed into his voice. Again, I didn’t have the heart to tell him he might be in there a year before his case came to trial.
“Don’t think about that right now, Slim,” I said. “Take the Scarlett O’Hara approach; think about that tomorrow. For now, you can help us all by concentrating on anything that might send me off in the right direction.”
“Well, I-”
“But be careful,” I interrupted. “Keep in mind these phones are probably connected to a tape recorder.”
Ray looked at me like,
“So don’t say anything you don’t want them to hear.”
Slim was quiet for a moment, with only the metallic rattling in the background, punctuated rhythmically by bursts of distant yelling.
“I ain’t got nothing to hide,” he said forcefully after a moment. “I’ll tell you what I told the police. We packed up our equipment after the Bluebird closed, and a few of us hung around after the doors were locked. Must have been getting on to about two-fifteen or so by then. Maybe a little later. I had a quick beer. Must have been maybe about eight of us total there. That’s not counting the waitresses and the bartenders and stuff.
“Anyway,” he continued, “Becca kind of pulled me off in a corner, away from everybody else. Said she had something important to tell me. It was going to make a big deal in her career.”
I looked at Ray. He nodded his head; he was there and that’s the way it went down.
“Did she give you any idea what it was?” I asked.
“She never got the chance,” Slim said. “Somebody else called me over, and I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to her. Becca was always passing shit around like it was some kind of big, important, earthshaking secret and I was her only confidant. Only problem was, she was feedin’ the same shit to just about everybody she knew.”
He sighed heavily, as if he had a weight hanging from his neck. “Becca liked her drama,” he said, sadness adding even more weight.
“What happened then, Slim? And cut to the chase. We haven’t got much time left.” I didn’t have time to worry about offending him.
“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat. “About twenty minutes later the party broke up. I didn’t give Becca another thought. Just loaded my car and headed home. My house is over in Sylvan Park, but that time of night, the traffic wasn’t bad, so I got home in about fifteen minutes. I’d just opened another beer-I don’t sleep so well after a gig and usually have to wind down with a couple-when the phone started ringing. It was Becca.”
“Okay, what’d she want now?”
“She was-hell, Harry, I guess frantic’s the word. Panicked. I’ve seen Becca get hysterical more times than I can count. This was different. She was scared. She said she needed me, couldn’t talk over the phone. I’ve had my chain jerked by that woman so many times I figured once more wouldn’t hurt. I’d had four or five beers by then. Maybe I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”
