Carl Hiassen - Basket Case

Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Pause. Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

"What is it?"

"The file name is DRoysteroi," the kid says.

"Yeah, but what is it?"

"Dudes, come on. It's music."

Dommie shuts it down and spins around to face us. "This hard drive you brought me, it's all sessions. What they call a master. That gorky-gork I just played for you is the bass drum part for a cut called 'Cindy's Oyster,' somethin' like that. If you want I can pull up the guitar track, harmonica, vocals—it's all there."

"Only one song?" I ask.

The kid chortles. "Try, like, thirty. Some are already mixed down, some are still in pieces. I didn't sit through all of it because it's not my thing. Plus it would take, like, days."

Juan says, "Dommie's into rap—"

"Nuh-ugh, hip-hop," the kid protests.

"He mixes original stuff for some of the club DJs."

"Yeah, that's how come I can afford Pro Tools," Dommie says. "It's radical bad. Sixty-four tracks. No hiss, no wow, no flutter. Plus I've got AutoTune so it's always on key, even if some stone-deaf mother is singing. State of the art, dudes. Everybody's got it."

"Not us," I say.

"State of the art. Wave of the future. Reel-to-reel be dead and gone," the kid zooms on. "This program can run off a Power Book—know what that means? You can mix a whole record on a laptop, yo, and it's cleaner'n twenty-four tracks of tape. Serious, man."

Juan says, "Jack wants to hear everything on that hard drive. Every single cut."

"Ha, I pity your white ass," says Rapmeister Dommie, twelve going on twenty-nine. It's good that he's wearing sunglasses; I believe I'd rather not see the size of his pupils. He returns to the Mac, closes down Pro Tools and starts diddling with the plug-in board. When he spins around again, the hard drive box is in his hands. He thrusts it at Juan's chest and says, "Hey, they're only eight games out of first."

"Anything's possible, Dommie."

"I really like that rookie shortstop. What a gun, huh?"

"Yeah, and he can actually hit a slider once in a while." From his pocket Juan digs out a couple of tickets to see the Marlins play the Mets. "Hey, buddy, where could Jack listen to all this stuff you found for us?"

"In his car. Duh."

Laughing, the kid stacks a tall pile of CDs on my lap. "I burned these myself, no charge. I'll print out a file directory so you'll sorta know what you're hearing."

"Thank you, Dommie," I say.

"Did my mom say what was for dinner? Better be macaroni and cheese or I'm not leavin' outta this room. It's Tuesday, right?"

"Monday," Juan says.

Something beeps. The kid pulls a pager out of his surfer shorts, glances at the message and snorts. "Douche bag."

"Dommie," I say.

"Kraft macaroni and cheese. Serious, man. Go tell her."

"The music on this hard drive, what kind of—if you had to describe it ... "

The kid jeers. "Folk rock. Country rock. Folk country7—I dunno whatcha call it. My folks'd probably like it but not me. See, I'm strictly into a street sound."

"Ah, the street."

"Strictly."

Dommie is stashing the pellet rifle under his bed so that his parents won't find it. I can't look at Juan for fear of busting out laughing. I, too, kept a pellet gun beneath my bed when I was twelve. However, I also had a pet snake, an arrowhead collection, a homemade basketball hoop and three shelves full of books in my room. Dommie's universe exists largely inside electronic boxes; his games, his reading, his music. I wonder when he last went out to run around in the sunshine. I wonder if he owns a mitt and a bat, or if all he knows about baseball comes from chat rooms and video games.

Then I remember that my own pellet gun was employed chiefly to raise welts on the broad pimply shoulders of one Buster Walsh, a teenage neighbor who occasionally beat me up at the school bus stop. For revenge I'd climb a mossy old oak at the end of our street and snipe at Buster on his way home from wrestling practice. He'd hop around, bleating and slapping spastically at himself as if he were being dive-bombed by hornets. I'd lie low for a week or two, then nail him again when his guard was down. Plinking him was my entertainment, arguably more fiendish than Dommie's impulsive assault on an inanimate computer component. In other words, I'm not the most reliable authority on who's normal and well adjusted.

"If not macaroni then a cheeseburger," Dommie is instructing Juan. "Medium rare. Go tell her, okay? And if she asks about the bang she heard, tell her it was you or Jack that accidentally broke the PC. Okay?"

"No problem," Juan says.

"Don't worry, she won't do nuthin'."

"Thanks for your help," I tell the kid. "Have fun at the ball game."

"I'm taking a lobster net for foul balls," Dommie says brightly. "If I catch one I'm signing Mike Piazza's name and selling it for big bucks on eBay."

"Thattaboy." I flash him a thumbs-up.

Emma is worried about using Evan, but he's perfect: He looks exactly like a delivery boy, guileless and spacey. After a short strategy session I gave him twenty bucks and dispatched him to Cleo's favorite gourmet deli for subs and pasta. He should be calling from her place within the hour. Meanwhile I studiously listen to the CDs that Dommie made from the mystery hard drive.

Jimmy Stoma's unfinished opus.

The songs are in strands, but I can almost imagine how they're supposed to sound when woven together. For a fan it's strange to come upon a bare guitar track or a detached piano; free-floating background harmonies—I'm betting it's the lovely Ajax and Maria, whom I met at the funeral; or Jimmy himself taking three or four unaccompanied passes at the lyrics. Astoundingly, all those years of shrieking like a banshee with the Slut Puppies didn't shred his vocal cords. He sounds good on these recordings.

At first I wasn't looking forward to sitting through hours of raw cuts, but it's been interesting to hear the songs evolve—and instructive. On an early vocal of "Cindy's Oyster" (filed as V4oystio), Jimmy began the third verse this way:

The girl who saved her pearl for me

Showed it to the world on MTV ...

Obviously a sly dig at his young bride, the former Cynthia Jane Zigler. In a subsequent version Jimmy dropped the caustic pose in favor of a leer:

The girl who saved her pearl for me

Keeps it shiny between her knees ...

And by the last cut of the song (Vyoystioall), the line had been altered once more:

The girl who saved her pearl for me

Keeps it hidden in a cold black sea ...

He was no Robert Zimmerman, but James Bradley Stomarti knew how to have fun with lyrics. It's the only reference to Cleo Rio that I've heard so far on any of the discs. While she might not have liked the song, I doubt she would have been moved to murder Jimmy and then Jay Burns in order to gain possession of the recording.

Yet, as young Loreal so sagely observed, it's the music business. Maybe Cleo is a paranoid, egomaniacal kook. Maybe she couldn't bear the idea of seeing a snarky column item pegging her as the inspiration for "Cindy's Oyster." Or maybe she couldn't stand the thought of her husband getting pop ink at her expense.

These theories rest on several wobbly assumptions: one, that Cleo heard the song; two, that she got the point of the song; three, that she believed Jimmy would actually finish it; and, four, that a legitimate record label would put it out.

Unfortunately, "Cindy's Oyster" is the closest thing to a motive I've found, which is to say that the story of Jimmy Stoma's death is a long way from making the newspaper.

Now the phone is ringing and I snatch at it, expecting Evan on the other end.

"Has he called in yet? Is he okay?" It's Emma, the mother hen.