The Old Silent

Jury smiled. 'Did Charlie know?'

' 'Hot wind that blows off the desert,' something like that. Looka there what's comin' our way.'

A woman in folds of gray sable with an uptight hairdo to match had been sweeping toward their corner and had now arrived with a young girl several paces behind. Leather opera gloves, Italian kid shoes, heavy enough with diamond-drop earrings, necklace, and bracelets that the woman reminded Jury of one of the chandeliers. 'Aren't you part of that Sirocco band?' Her voice was as showy as the rest of her, low and thick with cultural attitudes. 'Aren't you Mr. Jiminez?' Wiggins should have heard the 'Jim-' The girl blushed and looked away. Clearly, it was she who had recognized Alvaro Jiminez.

'That's right, darlin'.' He scrawled his name across one of the Ritz's hotel register cards, looked at the woman, and asked, 'I guess you're comin' to the concert?'

The mother looked bemused. 'What concert?'

The girl, Jury knew, could have died where she stood with embarrassment. Alvaro caught her eye, asked her name (which she said was Belle), and he said, 'Tell your mama what concert, Belle.'

This seemed to delight Belle; the blush receded, leaving an afterglow that brightened her face and sparked her eyes. 'Hammersmith Odeon. Tomorrow night.'

Jiminez grinned. 'You're comin'.'

The mother started in on a long explanation of their 'schedule' for tomorrow, places they had to go, people they had to see (all important), and Jiminez kept on looking at Belle, from whose face the light had fled, listening to her mother, to whom Alvaro was paying no attention at all.

'There'll be a ticket at the box office, Belle. From me. Easy to get there on the tube, but take a cab home.'

Belle's eyes were widening more and yet more as he spoke. Jiminez had plunked her down in Munchkinland where all the rules were suddenly, and marvelously, different. The mother in sable was furious, Jury could tell. Her Belle being allowed to breathe on her own, much less hightail it to Hammersmith?

Alvaro was chuckling as they walked away, the sable bouncing as the mother tried to keep up with her daughter, who was ignoring her.

'There's one seat taken, at least,' said Jiminez. 'I don't guess cops have time for that kinda stuff.'

'It's sold out.'

Alvaro Jiminez seemed to think this was funny as hell. 'You a Scotland Yard superintendent and can't get tickets? How many you want?' Before Jury could answer he said, 'Hell, there'll be four at the box office. Stage manager's a nice guy. He holds some back for us. Mind if I say something?'

Jury smiled. 'Of course not.'

'Somehow I get the idea you ain't really into thrash security. Can't say why. And I got to go, friend.' Jiminez stood up. He seemed to tower there.

As Jury stood to shake his hand, he said, 'Just another fan, Alvaro. I want to thank you. You didn't have to do this.'

'I like to come down here, hang out with the swells. Almost didn't get to sit down because I wasn't wearin' no tie. The reason the manager chose the Ritz is because everybody's so rich, nobody'd bother us. Excepting as long as we wore our ties.' His expression was completely bland. 'Why're you so interested in Charles?'

'I'm trying to save someone's life.'

'Well.'

Jury knew from his tone he'd say nothing to anyone about this conversation. They were walking toward the entrance, the long line of glass doors that shimmered with the reflected lights of the chandeliers. 'Mind if I ask you one more question? About yourself?'

'Go ahead, man.'

They were looking out on Piccadilly now. 'You said your daddy was a great blues man from the Mississippi Delta. Was his name Jiminez?'

'Nope. That's my mama's maiden name. I went by Johnson until he died. Then I changed it.' He paused. 'Mama ran off when I was eight years old with a stand-up piano player. Never heard nothin' since.'

As they both stood looking at the wavering circles of light reflected by the marqueelike bulbs of the Ritz, he added, 'What I thought was, there's a lot of Johnsons in this world, but maybe she'd recognize her own name and come see me.'

Jury didn't have to ask if she had.

***

In a warehouse on the Isle of Dogs Morpeth Duckworth sat dressed in black like a spider in his web.

When Jury and Wiggins walked in he was turning knobs, punching buttons, flipping levers right and left like a man with ten arms; he was surrounded by stacked-up amplifiers, stereo components, an elaborate sound system, digital synthesizers, video screens. His legs were outstretched, feet resting on two separate chairs on wheels like a secretary's chair. He was a man in his element.

Duckworth nodded at them, pushed the chairs toward them with his feet as an invitation to seat themselves. He flicked a few switches, adjusted the volume, so that what sounded like nothing but feedback screams was reduced to music loud enough to shimmer like a heat curtain between them. Apparently, as far as Duckworth was concerned, that level served as viable background music for conversation.

'Can you turn that down some more? My sergeant's ears bleed easily.'

For once, Wiggins didn't appreciate being ministered to. He looked at Jury sternly, perhaps warning him off from comment on the quality of the soundtrack.

Morpeth Duckworth flipped a few more levers, obviously surprised that anyone in possession of his senses would make such a request, given this was prime Hendrix. ' 'The Wind Cries Mary.' The, the, themost beautiful ballad he ever did.' He talked about inversions, double inversions, fat tones, and ghost bends like a man who'd just seen Mary herself materialize in the shadows round the packing cases.

'You don't play with your fingers and sing with your chords, that's what the clones don't seem to understand. Van Halen's been cloned to kingdom come. Excuse me, that's literally Jimmy Page. When Kingdom Come's lead guitarist slipped out and raised that bow I nearly fell off the bed. Any halfway decent axeman could imitate Van Halen or Yngwie or any other technical wizard. What these clones don't see is that they'renot the ones they're ripping off. An obvious point. They'd have to change their whole genetic system to sound like Page or Knopfler or any of the others. It's this gunslinger mentality. For one thing, most people got a tin ear and just because you got two guitarists who are heavily into baroque, heavily classical, and one of them does some thrashing around with arpeggio runs and the other does Bach progressions, the tin ear can't tell the difference. Me, I don't knock technical wizardry.' He leaned forward as if to drive home this point. 'Here's the thing: they're so good at it, guys like Van Halen and Malsteen, that you're damned right the technique stands out; it's so clear it sounds like it's separated from the guys playing it. But it ain't. And that's the reason you get some pissant sitting around doing two-handed tapping and thinking he's Joe Pass, but he's not, so it's nothing.'

'You wanna be Riley B. King, then you get your ass out of those studio sessions and do the chitlin' circuit just like all the others, the real blues men. If what you really want is just to gliss across the stage at the Grammy awards and go multiplatinum, okay, do it, but you can't ride on anybody's coattails. You're not going to be Clapton, or B. B. King, or Hubert Sumlin or Gatemouth Brown-'

Since Duckworth showed no signs of letting up, slowing down, or discussing anything so mordant as a murder investigation, Jury said quickly, 'How do you rate Stan Keeler, then? I understand you know him.'

'I rate him the best R-and-B guy they've got over here. All you have to do is go to the Nine-One-Nine to see what I mean. Stan can do anything: rock, jazz, fusion, blues. Blues, blues, anarchic blues. Black Orchid, on a good day, could blow Sirocco away. But Sirocco's good. I'd like to see a triple-axe threat with Raine, Jiminez, and Keeler. The Odeon would orbit. Stan doesn't do concerts. Part of it's the way he is; part of it's he knows the way itis: it is underground. Fans over here are different; it's very personal. He'll go on forever. Hell, his dog's more famous than Fergie's kid. The bands in the States, they think England's the Pearly Gates because you can rocket to fame over here. What they don't know