The Old Silent

crying, too, that meant it was real.'

She stopped suddenly, the 'real' hanging there, not dropping at the end. It was as if there were much more but she had neither breath nor strength.

Jury said nothing. There seemed nothing he could say. He thought of the loss of Elicia Deauville, for some reason. And he thought of all the crazy stories (that he secretly loved) Carole-anne had told to explain her apparent lack of family. That she was found inside a trunk at Victoria; that she'd been chloroformed on a train-all out of stories she had read or heard about. Except for the one about amnesia. Getting hit by a golf ball at St. Andrews was definitely her own invention.

So while Sirocco's fans were waiting to catch a glimpse of the band as they descended the metal stairs of their private plane, Carole-anne was standing on a railway platform at Victoria.

Jury swallowed. Then he took the tickets from his pocket and slid them across the table with a try at a smile.

When Carole-anne saw them, she didn't have to try. All the color rushed back into her face. 'Super! Where'd you get them?' Her eyes narrowed. 'You didn't go paying them scalper's prices, did you?' Then her blue, blue eyes widened again and she grabbed the little table, leaned across it and kissed him. 'But wherever did you gettickets?'

Jury smiled then, got up, his legs cramped as hell. 'Secret.'

Carole-anne loved secrets.

31

The Ritz Hotel was still as luxurious as he had remembered it, but not as large as it had appeared to his six- year-old eyes. Few things would be. But however diminished in size, there was no diminution of sparkle, color, and splendor: the plush carpeting, crystal chandeliers, rose and gilt armchairs, columned alcoves where guests partook of coffee or cocktails, and, of course, the long, raised lounge with its white-clothed tables set for tea. Even at this late hour, there were still the partakers of afternoon tea.

Alvaro Jiminez was drinking coffee in one of the lobby's alcoves. He rose and shook hands when Jury identified himself. He was an impressive man, over six feet, black face finely chiseled, wearing designer jeans and a metal- studded denim jacket over a black turtleneck. He wore no jewelry except for a Rolex watch. He spoke with a self- deprecating air, was probably a master at it. His mother, he told Jury, was Puerto Rican; his daddy from Mississippi. His daddy was one of the best blues men he'd ever heard to this day.

'Went to school to Earl Hooker. Never did hear no one play like my daddy, except maybe Robert Johnson, Otis Rush.'

Jury smiled: 'How about you?'

Jiminez laughed. 'Me? Hell, I'm just back-porch, backyard blues.' He poured some more coffee from the silver pot. 'I never was into that manic speed picking. Not that I'm putting it down. Van Halen has the most energy of any axeman I ever did see. I'm just not into that 'Spanish Fly'-type solo thing. There's too much metal; more over here than in the States. Thrash metal. The baroque stuff I like. Our music's not just doing the chinka-chinka-chinka rhythm or ten-bar progressions-' He moved his hand along an imaginary fretboard. '-it's more eclectic than that.'

Not only did the diction change when Jiminez got into his real love-blues-but the timbre of the voice dropped. Jury had inferred from his manner that he was a sophisticated man. And although Alvaro was really the moving force behind this band-he'd started it-when he talked about Charlie Raine (who had taken over the tabloids, the media, the covers of magazines), there wasn't a hint of rancor or jealousy. It might have been because he, Charlie, wasn't trying to, didn't care. That's what Jiminez was saying.

'I got a lot of respect for Charlie. Charlie don't buy none of this glitz. He don't seem to want fame nor money nor a five-thousand-watt spot on him. I asked him, 'Charlie, what do you want?' and he doesn't even smile when he says, 'To be as good as you are.'' Alvaro chuckled and shook his head. 'I think he meant it.'

Jury smiled. 'Is he?'

Again Alvaro laughed as he jimmied a thin cigar from a case on the coffee table. 'Shit, no. Look at it this way: I got fifteen years on Charles. Fifteen years of jams, club gigs,'- he looked through the spurt of flame from his lighter at Jury -'but he would be, finally.'

'You'd still be fifteen years ahead.'

Alvaro shook his head, sat back. Smoke coiled upward and he blew and dispersed it. 'Because he is the most focused axeman I've ever come across. It's more than focus; it's like a mission with him. You got to be able to separate yourself from the whole rock-star attitude. You got to be one thing on stage, you got your attitude on stage, but remember when you pack the axe away, like Sly Stallone says, 'You gotta go home and eat spaghetti with your mother.' When I was a kid, I wasn't thinkin' about how did they stiff me with that contract or if my CPA made a mistake on my tax return. Back then it was just playin' for playin'. That's what I mean: you got to be able to put that stuff to one side and just play. I don't have to remind myself I was some shitty fourteen-year-old when I was trading licks with my daddy, because I got so many friends back in Mississippi askin', 'You still wanderin' around with that guitar case? What you got in it, coke? Crack?' There's one friend who can play nearly as good as Stevie Ray Vaughan reminds me I don't know nothin' and we sit around trading S.R.V. licks and I realize I jumped off the stage not a moment too soon. That's Charlie.'

'The reason he's quitting?'

Jiminez shrugged. 'I'm only guessing. Except for saying he's tired and wants to try something new-vague stuff like that-he just don't give no reason. No reason he got the schedule changed, either. We were supposed to be playing Munich this week. Manager nearly cut his throat over that booking.'

'Doesn't make sense.' Jury looked up at the ceiling, the magnificent chandelier faintly tinged by a pinkish glow. 'You say he's dedicated, focused, and that sounds like 'ambitious' to me. But he's stopping at the top, or near-top of his career.' He looked across the table with its silver coffee service at Jiminez.

'Tell me and we'll both know, bro'.'

'Don't you think it's strange?'

'Strange? I think it's insane. But every man's got his own river to cross.'

Jury imagined Alvaro Jiminez had crossed a number of his own. 'When did Raine join up with your band?'

'First saw Charlie when we were on the road, let's see, four years ago. Doin' one-nighters in what felt like one thousand gigs from California to Florida. Charlie come in one night to a dive in the Keys. He'd already met up with Wes; was working gigs in New York. Word-of-mouth place this was, except nobody musta opened his mouth because there couldn't of been more than twenty, thirty customers and they was mostly bonged.'

'Charlie would of stood out anyway. He was at the bar hardly tasting his beer, had this little bitty amp hooked on his belt, had his beat-up Fender leaning against a stool. He looked kinda familiar. Then I realized he was a follower.'

Jury frowned. 'He'd been going from place to place where you played?'

'Think we were the fuckin' Dead. I ask him, did he have me mixed up with Garcia, and he said, straight-faced, 'How could I do that?'' Alvaro grinned. 'The way he said it, I could of been better or I could of been an asshole. Anyway, he pushed a demo at me, told me he wanted to do a number if I didn't mind. Right there, that night. I asked him what the hell's a teenage Brit doin' in Key Biscayne? 'Pickin' up work when I can.' Well, he fascinated me. I said to him, 'You play lead, of course.' Don't they all? He says, 'I play anything. Rhythm, bass, whatever you want. Whatever kind of music' Well, he gets up there with us in the next set and I mean those twenty, thirty actually took the straws outta their noses. They did love him. He could play any of those dusty old songs they wanted. 'Georgia on My Mind'-I thought they'd died and went to heaven. Got up and danced even, some of them. He's just a natural- born crowd pleaser. Put that together with someone's got that kind of funky blues Clapton-like line and you got star quality.'

Jury thought for a moment. 'You changed the name of the band.'

'Yeah. We all thought Bad News Coming was pretty beat, so all of us tossed a couple of names in the hat. Sirocco was Charlie's. We didn't even know what the hell it meant, but it had this nice sound.'