David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

The Jesuit offered a nod in greeting but did not extend a hand. “Ever hear of a guy named Piocha?” His English lacked accent, the voice raspy and deep.

“Yeah,” Roque said. Piocha was the stage name of Jorge Manuel, El Salvador’s most famous guitarist.

“We got him slotted to do the music track for this video. But Sisco here, he talked to your uncle. He says you know your way around a studio.”

Bullshit, Roque thought, Piocha wouldn’t come near these guys. “Not sure how my uncle would know that,” he said, not wanting to seem overly agreeable. He knew this sort, not so different from Godo or Happy, really. Avoid confrontation, they saw you as weak. “But yeah, I’ve spent some time at a board.”

It wasn’t a total lie. He’d sat with Lalo during his recording sessions, paid decent enough attention. He could muddle his way through. The Jesuit invited him to sit and Roque called up the program, noticing a lack of manuals, at which point it dawned on him the stuff was stolen.

It took him ten minutes to figure out their settings, plug everything into the right ports, check to be sure their version of Pro Tools and their Mac OS were compatible, test the Digi 003 for gremlins. Beyond that, without a MIDI to complicate things, it was basically just a digital tape deck.

“Okay, before I start-I’m Roque, by the way?”

The tattooed hulk and the Jesuit traded glances. “Chiqui,” the big one said. Short for Chiquitín, Roque guessed: Tiny. The Jesuit followed, “You call me Lonely,” said with a pinpoint stare. Roque remembered the name from the wall. Assuming it answered to the same reverse logic as Tiny, he figured it meant the guy was never at a loss for company, female company in particular, clarifying finally who the girl in the corner belonged to.

“Okay,” he began again, “I guess I need some idea of what it is you guys are after.”

Chiqui began to say something but Lonely cut him short. “How about you show us what you got, put something together for us to judge, then we’ll see who needs what.”

Roque got that it wasn’t a suggestion. “Right.”

He replayed the vocal track, got a feel for the beat, a standard rap rhythm, apparently kept with nothing but an inner metronome. The good news, they could hold a beat. That permitted him to lay down a click track for reference.

“Okay,” he said to no one in particular, “I’m gonna add a drum bit on the Korg. See what you think.” He trolled through the samples on the keyboard, chose one heavy on the backbeat with a Bo Diddley shuffle, fashioned a four-minute loop and played it through the monitor. The wave patterns jagged hypnotically on the computer screen and the Digi dials self-adjusted like a ghost was working the panel. A little theater, he thought, amp my cred. With just the drum track the video instantly seemed bolder, more polished. He glanced around the room. “Sounds like money to me, what you guys think?” The answer was in their faces.

Lonely pointed to the corner. “What about the zorra , man?”

Up until that moment, Roque had no inkling the girl was anything but window dressing. “What about her?”

“The bitch is here to sing.” Lonely gestured for her to get up, come over. “She knows it.”

Roque hadn’t felt truly dirty until that moment. He reminded himself this was all for Tío Faustino. He had no choice who to rely on, who to deal with, but the girl’s eyes made no distinctions. She rose, arms crossed, and edged up to the pop filter on the microphone.

Roque asked, “What, exactly, is she singing?”

“You figure it out, culero . ‘Take Me Out to the Fucking Ball Game’ for all I care.”

If these two are lovers, Roque thought, it was one of those fucked-up death-do-we-part situations, where you can’t tell the love from the hate, the pain you suffer-or inflict-only deepens what you feel. But the girl’s body told him different: no catty arched spine, no cocked hip, no pout. And the light in her eyes was cold with fright.

“Let me get a few instrumental tracks down first,” he said, hoping to buy some time. “And I have to move a few things around, get situated.” He turned to her then. Hoping to sound kind but not arouse any jealousy, he said, “You can sit down for now.”

“She don’t speak English,” Lonely said. Accusing. Mocking.

Roque, trying again: “Puedes sentarte por ahora.”

For the merest instant, her glance settled on him with something other than hate. Please, he thought, don’t. Almost instantly the fear returned and she pivoted around, walked back to the milk carton, sat.

He tuned the Stratocaster and the Martin using the keyboard, adjusted the tone and volume dials for the cobalt pickups on the Strat, striving for the spooky hollowed-out bite the guitar was known for, then fiddled briefly with the Digi’s volume levels, making sure the waveforms were full and set as high as possible without peaking into distortion. He could feel his heart pounding and once or twice snuck a chance to wipe his damp palms on his jeans. He ran the video twice more to make sure the rhythm track was properly synched, then dubbed in a bass track, again using the Korg, choosing a fat round punchy tone. On top of that he laid down an organ effect, a churchy thrum, with a Hammond B-3 sample.

As he worked, he felt the mood turn in the room. Everyone got quiet, calm, almost reverential. Then a boy appeared in the doorway.

Roque pegged him at ten years old, but kids grow up small down here, he thought. The boy had a cloth bag in one hand, a bottle of Champán in the other, the local variety of cream soda. Lonely gestured him forward. The kid stole a glance at Roque first, then did as he was told.

Lonely snatched the bag from him, peered inside. “¿Cuánto?” How much?

The kid, tottering foot to foot, reached behind to scratch his back beneath his shirt. “Dos cientos, más o menos.” Two hundred, more or less.

Lonely glanced up, met the boy’s eyes. “¿Más o menos?” He lashed out, slapped the kid’s face, then launched into what felt like a full five minutes of insulting venom, accusing the boy of stealing, skimming off the protection take that had been collected by other mareros in shakedowns of the city’s bus drivers. The boy stood there and took it, valiant in his way, verging on tears but never giving in. Lonely made to slap him twice more, but settled for just watching him cringe. He asked three times, shouting finally, how much did he steal? The boy answered, “Goma,” nothing, his voice a little weaker, a little less convincing, each time.

Finally, Lonely ended with: “Te gusta hacerte el suizo. Consigo mi dinero, lelito.” You like to play dumb. I get my money, you little fool.

He waved the boy out with disgust. Once he was gone, Lonely turned back to Roque. “What the fuck you looking at?”

Roque collected the Martin, switched to an open D tuning, adjusted the mike down to chair level. His hands were shaking. Get it together, he told himself as he recued the video. Figuring Lonely and his boys for secret sentimentalists, like most punks, he laid on the schmaltzy rubato as he strummed a flamenco-style rhythm track, complete with backhand flourishes and syncopated thumb slaps on the guitar’s spruce top. Gradually, the pulse in his neck stopped throbbing.

He followed up with a muted arpeggio pattern on the Strat, echoing the bass line but elaborating on it too, giving it an edge, a little extra momentum. When it came time to solo he built it in Dorian mode like Santana in “Evil Ways,” the off-kilter minor jarring at first then jelling, almost medieval in its eerie drift, but full of bite and heat. After one particularly aching lick he could sense it, the gravitational turn, every eye and ear in the room drawn to him and him alone, and he finished with a series of slowly ascending arpeggios ending in a scream.