“I’ve got something important to talk over with you,” she said.
“We’re talking now.”
“It’s something I’d rather talk about in person,” she said.
“Uh oh,” he said, feeling a little worm of dread. “Is it a good something or a bad something?”
“It has the potential to be good,” she replied.
“Potential, huh?” he asked. He sighed. “All right, I’ll swing by for a bit.”
“Sounds good,” Pauline said. “See you in a few.”
He disconnected the phone and closed the little flip cover before putting it back in his pocket. He then lowered the partition again. “Hey, Tony,” he said. “Pauline needs to talk to me about something. You think you could swing by her place and hang out for a bit?”
“No problem at all, Jake,” Tony said, giving no indication whatsoever whether or not he was annoyed by the request. He was a professional. And, of course, he would be paid more for the waiting time and the extra mileage.
Jake left the partition down and mixed himself a rum and coke as they headed for Silver Lake. He had the entire thing in his stomach by the time they pulled up to Pauline’s lakeshore house fifteen minutes later.
“I’ll try to keep this as brief as I can, Tony,” Jake told him as he stepped out of the limo.
“Take as much time as you need, Jake,” Tony told him.
Pauline answered the door wearing a pair of sweatpants and a long t-shirt. Her hair was down, uncombed, and she had no makeup upon her face. She looked like what she was: a harried mother of a rambunctious toddler. Tabby was sitting on the entertainment room couch, watching an episode of Sesame Street and munching on carrot sticks. When she saw her uncle, her eyes lit up and she practically leapt off the couch.
“Unka Jay! Unka Jay!” she squealed, rushing into his arms.
He picked up the squirming child and lifted her high into the air over his head, making her shriek with delight. “It’s the Tabster!” he shouted back, spinning her around until both of them were dizzy.
She gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek and a hug that made his heart feel warm. He really did love his niece, as well as his honorary nephew Kelvin (the Nerdlys did not particularly like it when Jake called him ‘the Kelvinator’ or ‘Kelvaroony’, but he did it anyway). He finally set her back down and she returned to the couch and resumed watching the Muppet band The Beetles sing their signature song Letter B.
“That made this little detour totally worthwhile,” Jake told his sister, his smile still on his face.
“That’s good to know,” she said warmly. “Shall we talk a little business?”
“Let’s do it.”
“Why don’t we sit in here?” Pauline suggested, pointing at the dining room table. “I can keep an eye on Satan that way.”
“Satan?” Jake asked.
Pauline nodded toward her daughter. “The terrible twos have arrived with a vengeance,” she said. “Right on schedule, I might add. Every day she finds some new way to get into some kind of weird-ass trouble and then rounds it out with a screaming fit.”
“The Tabster?” Jake asked. “No way!”
“Way,” Pauline confirmed. “There are times when I wish I had a few vials of holy water to spray on her. You want a drink?”
“I’ll take a rum and coke,” he said.
“Do you want to go make it yourself or be responsible for watching Satan while I do it?”
“I’ll keep an eye on Satan,” he said.
“Your funeral,” she said, walking through the doorway and disappearing.
She returned a few minutes later, a tall rum and coke in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other. Tabby had done no Satanic acts while she was gone—or at least none that Jake had noticed.
“She’s just softening us up,” Pauline said, setting the drinks down and grabbing a seat.
Jake picked up his drink and had a generous sip. It was just the way he liked it, heavy on the rum. “Obie still up in Oregon?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said. “They just finished laying down the rhythm tracks for his next album. They’re going to start working on the guitars on Monday.”
“And he hasn’t killed the Nerdlys yet?” Bill and Sharon had hired on as his sound engineers (and were being paid quite a hefty price for it).
“Not yet,” she said, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t issue any term life insurance to them.”
Jake nodded. “They’re a pain in the ass all right, and so anal that Martha Stewart would call them anal, but they really do make an album sound better just by being involved.”
“That is true,” Pauline admitted. “And they also slow everything down to a crawl. They’d better be done by the time Brainwash gets here for the summer session.”
“They’ll be done,” Jake assured her. “That’s nearly five months away.”
“If you say so,” she grumbled.
“Anyway,” Jake said, “you said you had something to talk about?”
“Right,” she said. “I got a call the other day from a gentleman named Jerry Stillson. Do you remember him?”
The name was very familiar to him. He searched his memory banks for a few moments and it came to him. “The head of tour management at National, right?” Back in the Intemperance days, it had been Stillson who was in charge of organizing and booking all of the tour dates and arranging funding for them. Jake had never actually met the man in person, not even during the battle over Matt’s Strat, but he had talked to him on the phone a few times and had had his underlings drop his name on him more than once.
“That’s right,” Pauline said, “although he doesn’t work for National any longer. He’s now the CEO of a bunch that call themselves Music Alive.”
“Music Alive?” Jake asked. “What is it that they do?”
“Uh ... as the name implies, they are in the business of live music,” she said.
“Live music?”
“Yeah,” Pauline said. “You know? Concerts and shit?”
“I know what live music is,” he said, rolling his eyes. “What does he want with me? I don’t do tours.”
“He knows that,” Pauline said. “He’s not interested in booking you for a tour. His group is putting together a music festival and trying to book some acts for it. It’ll be in late September just outside of Indian Springs, Nevada.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“An hour or so outside of Vegas,” she said. “In the desert. It’ll be a two-day festival over a weekend. They’ll call it The Tsunami Sound Festival. Stillman believes that they will be able to sell ninety thousand tickets for each day.”
“Ninety thousand?” Jake asked incredulously. That was four times as many as he had ever played in front of.
“Ninety thousand per day times two days is one hundred and eighty thousand,” Pauline said. “And he believes that, if he gets the right acts, the cheapest tickets will sell for eighty dollars retail while the VIP area tickets in front of the stage will go for three hundred.”
Jake whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”
“That’s why he and his people are doing this,” Pauline said. “They’re trying to cash in on the new market value tickets trend. In addition, there will be sponsorship revenue from beer companies and communications companies, there will be merchandising up the ass, there will be parking fees and camping fees and concessions. If it works out the way they plan, they’ll pull in upwards of ninety million dollars.”
“Damn,” Jake said. “And are they offering me a cut of that to be one of the performers?”
“They are not,” Pauline said. “They’re offering you a flat fee to play both days.”
“How much?”
“One million dollars,” she said.
“One million,” he said, impressed. “For just doing two shows?”
“Two shows, one hour and fifteen minutes apiece,” she said. “In addition, they’ll pay for travel and shipping expenses and put you and your band up in first-class accommodations in Vegas.”