Ed Mcbain - Mischief

“That won’t happen.”

“Cause then, all of a sudden, I got fuzz wanting to know who I am and what I’m doing and I’m standin there with like my finger up my ass.”

“Would you like me to arrange some false identification for you?”

“A laminate would be terrific.”

“What’s a laminate?”

“Like a card covered with plastic, you wear it around your neck at these events, nobody bothers you.”

“Where would I get such a thing?”

“The promoter’s usually in charge of handing them out, they’re valuable as gold. Anybody asts you anything, you flash the laminate, they say Pass, friend, I go about my work. That’s if anybody asts me anything. Otherwise, I mind my own business, like you said, I don’t look for no trouble, I don’t get none.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“A laminate should be easy.”

“Maybe,” the Deaf Man said. He wasn’t at all sure it would be that easy. “Is there anything else you’ll need?”

“Yeah,” Florry said. “Money. We haven’t discussed money yet.”

“For wiring the job, fifty thousand.”

“That sounds low. In fact, that sounds very low, all the risks.”

“I don’t see any risks. If I can get the laminate for you…”

“Even with the laminate, I still see there could be risks. I’m in there working into these other guys’ shit, I can see risks.”

“You understand that the fifty is just for the wiring. On the day of the concert…”

“It’s still low for the wiring. Cause frankly, that’s the most exposure, when I’m out there placing the stuff. The day of the concert, I’m with you and the others, we’re like mutual protection. But when I’m placing the stuff and there’re cops wandering around looking over the progress of the work and whatnot, this is when there’s exposure, and exposure is risk. So I don’t know how much you had in mind for the day of the concert…”

“I had thirty in mind.”

He really had fifty in mind.

“Thirty’s fine for what has to be done that day,” Florry said, “if it’s as simple as you say it’s gonna be, but for the rigging beforehand I’d need at least another eighty.”

“Sixty is as high as I can go,” the Deaf Man said.

“Seventy-five’s my bottom line.”

“Let’s compromise at seventy and we’ve got a deal.”

“Seventy for the rigging plus thirty for later on.”

“A hundred altogether, yes.”

“Okay, we’ve got a deal at a hundred.”

Which was what the Deaf Man had planned to pay all along.

“When do you want to burn the EPROM?”

“The sooner the better.”

“Then let’s get it out of the way tomorrow sometime, okay? Can you stop by the shop like around eleven?”

“Eleven sounds fine.”

“Bring me ten K in cash,” Florry said, “the rest payable right after the gig. I should actually charge you more up front, cause that’s where the biggest risk is, when I’m in there fuckin up their work. But I’m being a good guy cause I think I’m gonna enjoy the challenge.”

“Thanks,” the Deaf Man said.

Dryly.

AT SIX P.M.on that rainy evening of March twenty-fifth, Sylvester Cummings, otherwise and preferably known as Silver Cummings, met the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.

Her name was Chloe Chadderton.

They sat in a bar atop one of the city’s more elegant midtown hotels, Silver’s agent having made the reservation, thereby paving the way for his appearance. Otherwise, the headwaiter might not have admitted a young black man wearing dreadlocks and what looked like carpenter’s overalls over a red T-shirt, not to mention footwear that had the appearance of used combat boots.

Chloe was more appropriately attired, wearing a simple brown woolen dress—this was springtime, yes, but the weather outside warranted clothing more suited to Scotland in the month of January—high-heeled brown pumps to match, a heavy gold bracelet on her right wrist, and a dangling gold medallion that nestled in the hollow of her throat. If Silver had been pressed to say what color she was, he would have said “Uptown ripe,” what the slave owners down South used to call “high yeller,” which exact words he had used in one of his songs to pillory modern-day bigots wherever they lived. Silver’s own color was a rich chocolate brown, which he hoped Chloe found attractive because thirty seconds after they’d met he was madly in love.

The one thing a rapper could never be accused of was being tongue-tied. He was close to that now.

“It was really nice of me to…of you to come meet me,” he said.

Chloe thought he was sort of cute, stammering and lowering his head that way, like a schoolboy. She figured him for twenty-three, twenty-four years old, some four or five years younger than she was—but since George’s death, she’d dated men who were even younger than that. On the phone Silver had sounded very businesslike. Introduced himself as the writer for Spit Shine, which group she’d heard of, told her he was interested in acquiring the rights to one of George Chadderton’s songs, who should he talk to up there at Chloe Productions, Inc.? She’d told him she was George Chadderton’s widow, and she was the person he should talk to, and he suggested that they meet for a drink, he’d tell her what he had in mind.

Reason he had asked her to have a drink with him instead of going up there to her office was he didn’t know how she’d take to the idea of a rap crew doing only her late husband’s lyrics and throwing his music in the garbage can. He still didn’t know how she’d react. But the lyrics were all he wanted, never mind that calypso shit.

Rain snakes slithered down the long window beside their table. Sunset wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes yet, but the city already looked dark and forbidding and there were lights on in all the office and apartment buildings. Chloe was drinking a Johnny Walker Black on the rocks, Silver was drinking a Perrier and lime. Needed to keep his head clear. He really wanted that song, wanted to get it in rehearsal for the concert coming up.

“The song I’m interested in,” he said, “is ‘Sister Woman.’”

“Good song,” she said. “George wrote it just before he got killed. Well, the lyrics, anyway.”

He could’ve jumped on this at once, this business about the lyrics, but instead he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know there’d been that kind of trouble.”

“Well, it’s a long story,” she said. “Some crazy woman was keeping his brother prisoner…it was really too weird. Anyway, he left this notebook full of lyrics, and I thought something could he done with them. So I hired this person to put some calypso music to them….”

“There’s no composer listed on the…”

“I paid him outright. A thousand bucks.”

Smart lady, he thought.

“Copyrighted it all under the name of Chloe Productions. Wrapped an album deal that netted me three.”

Well, not so smart, he thought.

“Not enough to retire on, but it got me through a long cold winter. How much did you plan to pay for using the song?”

Straight to the point. Had it been another long cold winter? Even so, spring was here. Wasn’t it?

“We’d only want to use the lyrics,” he said. “Spit Shine. We’re a rap group….”

“Yes, I know.”

“We don’t do calypso stuff.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

“So all we’d want would be the lyrics. Cause they make the kind of point we’re int’rested in makin.”

“Um-huh. So how much would these lyrics be worth to you? Did you plan to record this, or just perform it live?”