“Wow,” Spider said, and now the hesitation was gone entirely from his voice. Who could resist working with C.C. Carusso while sipping piña coladas in paradise? And Fiasco had been won the moment his ass met purple velvet. And Savy was silent now, ruminating.
But all Clay could hear were Boyle’s words again, as clear to him as if his ghost was sitting right in his lap. They’ll take you to some paradise under the guise of getting high, getting laid, recording a record. And after a few days, you’ll be as good as bought. So there it was: After they had been buttered with a gig at the Palladium and basted with a high-profile tour, the Virgin Islands was where Farewell Ghost would be taken to be carved and eaten and passed through the Queen Bitch’s terrible guts. Clay felt a pain in his lower lip before he realized it was his own teeth biting into it. “Virgin Islands?” he said. “You don’t have anything closer—like, Maui?”
Priest’s eyebrows drew up. “I was always partial to the Big Island myself. But if it’s Maui you desire, we’re a phone call away.”
“Maui?” Fiasco grunted. “Don’t be such a fucking diva, Clay.”
“By the time your album breaks, your fans will be nuts for it,” Priest went on. “It’ll hit the charts and stay there and that’s all we really ask of you. Take the world by storm, and it will become your playground.”
“Holy crow,” Spider said. “Don’t say any more, my head’s going to burst.”
Smirking, Priest told them, “I want you to get an entertainment lawyer to look our contract over. Read the fine print. Make sure we’re giving you a fair shake. We’ll pay all necessary expenses, of course.”
He handed the contract directly to Clay and Clay took it slowly, like he feared the pages would combust and burn his strumming hand. “We’ll think about it.”
Priest stared back. This time, there was the slightest crack in his facade—or so Clay imagined. “Naturally there is a limit to doors like this being open. You have till tomorrow afternoon to get the contract back. Or the Palladium, Maui, the world? None of it happens. Understand?”
Fiasco and Spider stumbled all over themselves to assure him they would be good little musicians, and Priest dropped the window dividing the driver. The limo swerved immediately to a stop, and the door was thrown open to somehow reveal the black wall of the Viper Room. As if they had never left. Several passersby stopped to watch Savy climb out, making sure Chris Martin or Lady Gaga didn’t emerge from the limo with her.
Clay was the last to disembark, and as he stuck his leg out Priest gave another deep pull of his nostrils, a cocaine sniff that brought Clay back to his days with Renee and that unoccupied building and that terrible thing chasing Barry Right down its halls. Then Priest said to him, very low, mumbling in a way that might have only been a general clearing of the throat: “Don’t cross us, motherfucker.” And he coughed—a hard, phlegmy bark from deep down that, to Clay, sounded like a chant: Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!
It was well after one a.m., but The Strip was as alive as ever, buzzing with drunks and horns and pounding music the way it had for decades—and would decades from now when Farewell Ghost was dead and gone, whatever their fate may be. “How fast can we get someone to look at the contract?” Fiasco wanted to know. “We’ll need to be in a lawyer’s office first thing tomorrow. Does your dad know anyone, Clay?”
“We can’t sign those papers.”
These were the words they all needed to hear—but to Clay’s surprise, he wasn’t the one who had to say them.
All eyes fell on Savy, leaning against the Viper’s wall, doubled over, breathless.
“My ears must be ringing,” Spider replied. “Say what?”
Never did Clay love Savy more than in that moment, her face full of defiance, her eyes determined, staring down their offended bandmates. Clay went to her, threw an around her shoulders in solidarity. And she looked at him and asked, genuinely, “Where do we even start?”
“Come with us,” Clay told them.
23
ON THE TURNING AWAY
“We’ve heard this spook story before,” Fiasco Joe replied. His arms were spread and he was making a dramatic effort to be patient—which, of course, was just another way of broadcasting impatience. “Only, not so colorfully told,” Spider added.
Farewell Ghost sat around the Generator’s couches and chairs for the hundredth time in their tenure, failing to meet each other’s stares for the first time. There had been long pauses in the conversation, and in those pauses lay a deep divide. Restless, Clay waited for his ace card to come creaking down the loft steps, to lift the borrowed Schecter Banshee off its stand and rip through a midair “Stairway to Heaven,” shocking Fiasco Joe into a state of pants-wetting wonder. But they’d been here awhile and Boyle was as absent as he was from every practice.
“It’s true,” Savy told them. “It’s all true. Rocco was murdered—right over where you’re sitting. He broke his deal with the devil and the devil made Karney snap his neck in the noose.”
“And all this ‘truth’ has what to do with us?” Fiasco demanded. “Are you saying William Priest works for the Triple-6 mafia? We cross him and burn?”
“I would stow the smart-assery,” Clay shot back. “Because that appraisal is a lot more accurate than you know.”
“So the music industry is run by the devil? Shocker! If you were expecting Mickey Mouse and Gandhi, you should’ve never picked up a guitar or had a dream.”
“I still don’t see the harm in getting a lawyer to examine Priest’s contract,” Spider added. “If we know exactly what we’re getting into, we could discuss the drawbacks—”
“You said Karney lit himself
