“Oh Jesus,” I said.
“Seriously, Steve.”
“You’re so full of shit, you know that? You don’t live in the house with him, Isaac. You never heard him playing in there in his studio. The guy would sit in there and play cover tunes all day long. He loved ’em.”
“That’s because he loved the music, Steve. He played what made him feel good. But when he put his music out there for the world, it was always his own stuff. Don’t you see?”
No, you little dweeb, I don’t see.
I had managed to get together a lot more original songs off of Tommy’s studio tapes than I first thought. We had enough for another eight, maybe nine albums. More if I included the cover tunes he loved so much. And it was good stuff, too. Plus, he had tons of live recordings from the heavy touring he did from 2003 to early 2008. I was thinking of putting together a double live album to go along with a DVD release of his Hollywood Bowl concert last August, maybe a viral marketing campaign on the web. Michael Jackson had been a bigger hit dead than alive, and it was looking like Tommy Grind was going to be even bigger.
“What is it you’re accusing me of?” I said. “You think I’m selling him out? Is that it?”
It took him a moment to work up the courage, but finally he squared his shoulders at me and said, “Well, yeah, I do. I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
It took all the self-control I had to keep from killing him right there where he stood. I felt my face flush with anger.
Maybe he saw it too, because he took a step back.
“You listen to me,” I said. “Nobody accuses me of selling Tommy Grind out. Nobody. You don’t have that right. You jumped on this gravy train after it had already worked itself up to full speed. But me, I’ve been with him since the beginning. I was with him in Houston when he was working two daytime jobs and playing all night long in the clubs. I’m the one who got him his first radio time. I’m the one who made the club owners pay up. And when he got drunk and wanted to fight the cowboys who threw beer bottles at him in the middle of his sets, I was the one who stood back to back with him and got my knuckles bloody. So don’t you stand there and think you know more about Tommy Grind’s vision than I do. I’m the one who told him what his fucking vision was.”
That cowed him. He stood there with his eyes fixed on his shoes and it looked like he was about to cry. For a second there I thought he was going to run from the room like a scalded hound. But he suddenly showed more backbone than I knew he possessed. He raised his almost non-existent chin and looked me square in the eyes.
“What?” I said.
“You’re the one telling Tommy what his vision is?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, good. Because I just talked to Jessica Carlton’s attorney over lunch. She heard your bit about The Zombie King, and she wants in.”
“The Zombie King . . . ?”
“Yeah. The movie you told the press Tommy had just written. Remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said, and looked down at the naked girl at my feet. I had almost forgotten she was there.
Jessica Carlton, damn. The bubble-headed blonde who broke onto the scene a few years back claiming to be as virginally pure as Amy Grant, but had no qualms whatsoever shaking her ass for every camera from L.A. to Hamburg. The claims to virginal purity passed away unnoticed right about the time her first movie came out, and she rose to the status of tabloid cover starlet, which if you ask me was a brilliant piece of marketing. Now she was on the cover of just about every magazine in the grocery store checkout line. The last I heard she was dating an NFL quarterback, was doing a new album, and even had another movie deal on the table. She had the goods, definitely. And if she said she wanted to be in Tommy’s movie, well, there was no easy way to refuse that. People would ask questions. People Magazine would ask questions.
“That’s a problem, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s a problem.”
And a week later, I still didn’t have a solution. The Eddie Money cover had slipped down to number fourteen on the countdown, but we were prepping a new single—a Tommy Grind original—and that would be out in another three weeks, so at least his name would stay out there.
But the Jessica Carlton thing was bothering me. She had come to Texas to see her jock boyfriend, and her people had been calling to set up a meeting. No surprise there. I just didn’t know what to tell them.
I started smoking again. Cigarettes, I mean. I never quit weed. That was almost impossible when you hung around Tommy Grind. I quit cigarettes back in 1998, and never felt better. But the stress of dealing with Tommy’s unique needs—he was up to four girls a week now, and it was getting increasingly difficult to dispose of the garbage in a way that didn’t attract dogs of both the canine and human variety—and the Jessica Carlton situation conspired against me. In a weak moment, I bummed a smoke off of Isaac and within a week was back up to a pack a day.
It made me feel ashamed every time I lit up. Like I was some kind of pansy or something, but, to quote Tommy, a need is a need and it has to feed, like it or not.
The situation reached a head on the night of February 14th—Valentine’s Day.
I was in Tommy’s fully restored 1972 Triumph TR-6, headed back to the mansion from the store where I’d gone to buy another carton of smokes. It was a cool, crisp night, full of stars, and I had the top down and Tommy’s 2003 album Desert Nights cranked up on the CD player. The night was cool and clear, and the little Triumph handled the Hill Country roads like a dream. Any other night, I would have been in heaven.
But, like I said, I was troubled.
The feeling got worse when I pulled into the driveway and saw the lights on upstairs.
I had turned them off when I left. Tommy was usually calmest when the lights were off.
“Fuck,” I said, and in my mind I was already throttling Isaac.
I parked and went inside, just to make sure. But I wasn’t surprised to find Tommy gone. Isaac hadn’t even done a half-assed job of cleaning up Tommy’s latest meal. Nice enough girl. Said she was from Kentucky, I think.
I went to the security room and replayed the tape. There was Isaac, talking to Tommy through the Plexiglas, opening the door, coaxing him outside. Tommy staggering toward Isaac, hands raised in a gesture that almost looked like supplication.
And then they were off camera until they got downstairs and out the front door.
I turned on the GPS tracker—basically a glorified version of what veterinarians use to track the family pet—that I had injected into Tommy’s ass after the last time Isaac walked him outside. Then I called the signal up on my iPad and got a good fix on him.
He was heading down to the west point of Lake Travis. There was a secluded little pocket of vacation homes down there for the uber wealthy. Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey both had houses there not too far from Tommy’s. It was his private little retreat from the world. Tommy didn’t often like to disconnect, but when he did, that was where he went.
And then, a terrible thought.
Please dear God. Tell me he’s not taking her to meet Jessica Carlton. He can’t be that stupid.
I called Isaac’s cell, and to my surprise, he answered.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said.
“Can’t talk,” he answered. I could hear Tommy moaning in the background. Car noises. Isaac struggling to keep Tommy off him.
“Isaac. Isaac, don’t you dare hang up on me!”
But he did.
Damn it.
I got in my Suburban—the one I’d specially modified with a police prisoner barrier in the back so I could transport Tommy if I needed to—and headed after them.