“Yes.”
“Put 50 $100 bills in a fast food bag and push it under the driver's seat. Go to City Rentals, and tell them your truck needs a paint job. She will give you a key, and you will give her the key to the truck, and a piece of paper with the row and spot number on it. Inside two days, you will get a call asking you to return the car. She will trade keys with you, and tell you where your truck is. There will be no paperwork. Yes or No?”
“Yes.”
The phone went dead.
Boo got the spare key to the house, and left in the morning. The next week, he was back for another barbecue. The truck was painted from bumper to bumper. Strange crabs with evil looking eyes overlooked a sea of shrimp on one side. On the other side, sharks and octopi threatened. Flying fishes soared. Eels lurked. Alligators looked out with malice. The doors in back had vicious sea snakes curled around the phone number and web address. Strange evil looking things looked out of oyster shells.
Only Pedro and Freddie came. They started a fire on one side of the barbecue, and put on some crab boil. This time, Boo had good mud bugs, so they just put them in when it boiled. Boo put some stuff in his room. When the crayfish were done, they started eating them at a cable spool. They threw the junk in a pan where Mauritania could eat what she liked. They would save the rest for her, and dump what she didn't eat in the barbecue. Boo shook a little Tony's on the crayfish. He peeled a few ears of corn that were on the expanded metal table and put them in the boil.
Two guys from the City's internal affairs department came. They made an awkward suggestion about going inside. Keith told them to have a seat, and some crayfish.
“We're all right. We just had a few questions to ask you.”
“Go ahead.”
“This is a private matter.”
Keith sucked the fat on a crayfish. “Not to me. These guys are friends. I can talk in front of them.”
“Do you know Detective Sergeant Michelle Estrada?”
“I think so. I know a lady by that name, but I didn't think she was a sergeant.”
“She is your girlfriend in fact.”
“No comment.”
“You think you're pretty smart, huh?”
“I'm a musician. Anyone who would work as hard as me for as little as I get is not smart.”
“I want to know about the incident when you were apparently the victim of an attempted robbery.”
Shane came in the back gate. “Oh. Is this a bad time?”
“Not at all. Have a seat and have some crayfish. These guys are from the Internal Affairs Department of the City police, they just have a few questions.”
Shane started peeling some crayfish. He took a head, and looked where to throw it, and Keith pointed to his plate. He sucked another one, and the one Shane had just passed over.
“Did Detective Sergeant Michelle Estrada arrest the suspect in that incident?”
“She did.”
“And did she use excessive force in that arrest?”
“No. By no means. If I'd had a gun, I'd have shot the guy until it was empty.”
“What did Detective Sergeant Michelle Estrada do to accomplish that arrest?”
“She kicked his feet out from under him, twisted his arm to make him drop the knife, and cuffed him.”
“Are you aware of any financial indiscretions on her part?”
“If you want to find a crooked cop, look for one who has a lot of money.”
They heard a Harley coming.
“That's all we have at the moment.”
The younger guy spoke up. “Is that your seafood truck out there, Sir?”
“It's legally parked, isn't it?”
“I was wondering what you sell.”
Boo said, “Live crabs or frozen shrimp. 50 pounds for $150.”
They looked at each other. “We'd like 50 pounds of shrimp.”
Boo went out and got it for them, they paid, and they left. Essie came in. Boo and Freddie told her about the interview. She laughed about the things Keith had said. “He's a humdinger.”
They went to work on the crayfish.
Essie continued to worry about the investigation until one day she rescued two small children from a fire, and also busted the arsonist. If anyone in the department had a thought of getting her for something, that thought died.
Boo bought a chest freezer and a nice little printing scale. If someone wanted live crabs, they needed to catch Boo on Monday evening barbecue. Shrimp, Keith could sell for him. Keith got $10 for selling a bag, and $1 a pound out of the $4 a pound they charged for part bags. The musketeers could buy a bag, which they got at $2 a pound, pretty close to cost. That one would be marked and cooked at the barbecues.
Keith went over to the Williams' and made some bread dough. While it rose, he helped Marie pull some windows and stuff from the cars. Steel scrap was low, but copper and alloys were high, so they pulled gas tanks from some of the death row cars. Marie had some recently dead cars, so she filled Keith's gas tank. They went in the house, and Keith washed up and made the loaves and buns. While he was doing that he ran the oven for a little while to warm it, and then put in the bread stuff. He set the timer to run an hour later.
They went to Larry's to sell the parts. They wove their way through piles of auto parts and rubbish to the office. Larry welcomed them, and wrote Marie a check for her parts. He told her some more stuff he was looking for, and talked on the phone at the same time. “If you want to take it somewhere else, come and get it. I put in the only tranny I could find. You're not getting charged for labor, which you should be. We'll have to have one shipped. No. Virginia. Think about it. I gotta go.”
He pointed out the window. “That White dumper out there. Tight engine, but it looks like they ran it with no oil in the tranny, so now the inside of it looks like it's been through a rock crusher. This is all somehow my fault.”
They carried the parts into what might well have been the messiest shop Keith had ever seen. There were sockets and beer cans on the floor. A mass of trash and what might have been usable parts had been pushed against the wall. Your mom might have objected to clothes on the floor in your room. Larry's mom could complain about truck engines, mangled parts of car bodies, and the pièce de résistance, half a car upside down in the middle of the floor.
They took off to City Salvage to sell the gas tanks, a tangle of copper wire, and a couple of gin sacks (6 foot gunny sacks made of plastic fiber) of aluminum cans. When they got everything weighed, Marie took Keith to the back, where not everyone got to go. They went to look at the crusher. A huge electromagnetic crane, so big that it had feet instead of tracks, was putting cars in the crusher.
“That crusher is custom built. It's steam powered, not hydraulic. It's fueled by trash. Been here for like, 70 years or something.”
“Must take a lot of trash.”
“That it does. The firebox is over 100 cubic yards. They put like, an entire wrecked house in there. Right from a dump truck. Not like mine. A big one.”
“I thought steam power was obsolete.”
“It's coming back. You can use anything for fuel. Why bury a mountain of trash if you can use it for power?”
She rolled the windows down. “Watch this.”
The crane dropped a car in the crusher, and lifted its electromagnet out of the way. The crusher made a sound like a field gun. Dust, broken glass and such flew out of the crusher. The crane lowered its electromagnet and picked up the car. It looked like a beer can run over by a truck.
She rolled the windows back up. “You can buy a lot of stuff here. I only sell cars, because I don't do mechanic work, but over there is where they put the other stuff. You can build a lot of stuff out of the steel over there.”
She headed over. They came to some junk from a restaurant. Ovens, stoves, and stuff like that. Keith was hoping to find some large kettles they could use at the barbecues, but nothing like that had been sold for scrap. There was a tiny fiberglass rowboat. Keith looked it over. He thought about if there was any need for it, and there would be little, but he liked it. It was in sound condition, and there was a canoe paddle next to it.
Marie grabbed one side. “It will be cheap. Let's take it to the office and see.”
They cruised the rest of the non auto stuff. Just past the stuff they had seen was a dough mixer that had not been cleaned since the Wilson administration. They put it in the truck, too, and went to the office. Marie got the use of an extension cord, and the dough mixer worked. She levered a piece of wood against it, and it meowed and kept going. She led Keith back to the office.
“I want that rowboat and the dough mixer.”
“It shouldn't be a wash, really, but give me your slip, and catch us later with something we can sell.”
She handed the slip over. They went back to Blue Cat. They put the boat in the pond, and tied it up to the micro dock. They went back to her house, and unloaded the dough mixer. She said, “This is going to speed us up a lot.”
“I can show you how to make dough in it.”
“I don't want to know. I have you to do that.”
He went back to the house, and Bert called. “Since this isn't a work day for any of us, we should jam a little. Keep from getting where we can't play a gig if we get one.”
Keith realized that she was not doing very well. He'd been on the rims recently, and was just making it now because Boo was renting his room and bringing food. Even if the band was not making any money, having it fall apart would really hurt for her. Sammy had a few little things to do for income, but he wasn't making much.
They played If Only I Could Love You. They doodled around a little, and Bert took a break to have a beer. Sammy went and sat in one of the cars. Keith picked up Bert's guitar and started fiddling around. With no idea it would happen, he was playing something. He had the latest in cheap digital recorders. Something he got on eBay from someone who wanted ten times the capacity and more fidelity. He turned it on, and played the melody again. Bert took the bass, which she was not much good on, and started singing to the tune. “I know I will never see you again.”
The lyrics matched the blues/rock flavor of the tune. They kept on playing, trading the lead as they knew what had to come next. Sammy kept a gentle percussion behind it. When they got done, they traded instruments, and Bert sang the lead, and played it. They changed things on the fly, with Sammy making the drum part much more intricate. Keith got the laptop and typed it in. They played it over and over, refining their idea. Keith revised the file. The drive was littered with backups of previous versions. Bert got the recorder she used, and plugged them in, and put the mikes up, like at a gig. They played it 'for real.' Keith corrected the file to match what they had played, needing to ask Sammy a few times to play his part again. That night, they uploaded the music and the sheets. They called it Never See You Again.
Keith played it the next time he played Al's. Al liked it. After the Thursday gig, they had a beer.
“Did you write that, Never See You Again?”
“With Bert and Sammy.”
“How is Sammy?”
“Starving but healthy. This area is pretty underemployed, as you know.”
“You're all right.”
“I have Boo paying me $200 a month rent and my mortgage is $100. I'm doing all right. They lost their dinner but I got some crumbs, and I thank you for Wednesday and Thursday. I know it's not much worth your while.”
“Friday and Saturday is my make or break. Paradise has not been making it. They don't have a high energy foxy lady up front, which, you don't have to have, but it's good. They don't show up on time, and they don't have a good work ethic when they get here. Let me ask you, if you came to a gig late, tell me how you would handle it.”
“I would say something like, 'we had a hell of a day. Sorry we're late. Probably a lot of you had a hell of a day, too, and you come here to hear some music and we weren't here. But hey, in spite of it all, it's the weekend.' Then I would plug in the guitar and play some high energy dance music while my drummer set up.”
“They stood around talking at me.”
“When they should have been taking care of your crowd.”
“This is so much how it was.”
“If I took 5 bikers with me, and went to her house and demanded that she apologize for what she said, would you consider taking her back?”
“She would have to for real understand how wrong she was.”
“Guys punch you in the face, women try to hurt your feelings.”
“Getting punched in the face, you get past it faster.”
“They use what they can do. Unfortunately, when you are angry at someone, the worst thing to do is to use a slow acting poison that only takes effect after you are not even mad any more.”
“Yeah. Paradise has this weekend, but by next weekend, it might be different.”
Keith headed home, and decided to look for lights at Bert's. They were on. He tapped lightly on the door, because he didn't want to wake her mom up. Bert's mom had enough problems without her nocturnal daughter's hours messing up her diurnal schedule.
Bert let him in. “You just finished your gig?”
“Yeah.”
They went into the living room. They sat next to Bert's 55 gallon aquarium, which had so many guppies in it that she had to sell or give some away. The secret of her success was, she siphoned out a bucket of water every week, and fed her fishes. She had a one piece undergravel filter with a powerhead on it. She never cleaned the gravel. It was small pea gravel the aquarium store had told her was too coarse. It had a carpet of algae on it. A pass over the glass with an industrial razor was an infrequent event. Snails did that work.
“So what's up?”
“Suppose someone alienated a friend by saying things she should never have said.”
“That happens.”
“Now the friend is ready to accept a sincere apology.”
“This person would have to eat crow.”
“For breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
“If the friend is not in the crow business, what would he want this for?”
“First, he wants his feathers smoothed out. Next, he is unhappy with the performance of the folks who replaced this person and her band. And if convinced of the sincerity of the apologies of the person eating crow, he would likely invite her to bring her band back to work.”
“This makes a lot of difference.”
“Invite him to the Monday night barbecue.”
“OK”
* * *
On Monday night, the musketeers were there, and also Bert and Sammy and Al. Boo had brought a lot of crayfish. He was going to sell some and see what the market looked like. The local market was good. The gang went through them like a 30-06 goes through a cardboard box. Mauritania tried her best on the scraps. Pedro had found the disposer, and Cedric had helped Keith install it. Freddie went in Keith's house and ran a bunch of crayfish junk through it. The pond seethed.
Al produced a couple of bottles of whiskey. They took shots and got on the crayfish.
Shane came by, and chatted with Al for a while. He ate some crayfish.
Boo decided it was time to change to crabs. He brought a box over, and filled the boil kettle. Shane asked if there was a fixed minimum on crabs, too. Boo said, “When you deal with a coonass, nothing is fixed. If we like you, then you can have what you want. If we don't, then we sick the bulldog on you.”
Essie said, “You pay for a carry permit, you should treat yourself to a 7 Silver.”
“Which one do you like?”
“You simply must have the autograph.” She threw him a pistol. “It's loaded, duh.”
He looked it over, and threw it back. “.44 Special has a lot of power.”
“About even with 7 Silver. Nothing wrong with Charter Arms, but you can't group with the big kids at 50 yards with it.”
Shane said, “What would we pay for crabs if we buy a bag of shrimp?”
Boo said,” $3 a pound. You got to get them on Monday 'cause I don't bring a lot, and try to sell out. Frozen I can take back, but live I have to sell.”
Shane went back, and Tillie came, and got a bag of shrimp, and then they stayed to cook 25 pounds of crabs. Boo put some more boil on so two pots could go at once, and Keith added a little wood. Shane saved the backs for his dog.
Bert and Al carried on some sort of discussion of music, which made Keith wonder what all the apology had entailed. Keith and Essie had some butter and garlic sauce with a little more cayenne than they were subjecting guests to. Keith fried lots of squash on request.
Al asked Boo about having a shrimp night at his club. Boo said he shouldn't use the big IQF shrimp because they would go real fast and cost a lot. Boo could get him small ones for $200 a hundredweight, frozen in gallon freezer bags. “Take them and put in the reefer three days before your event. Use the same boil over and over. You fish them out with some kind of strainer and put more in. Most bars that do it put lots of salt in the boil because it makes people drink more.”
“Do you sell the boil?”
“I do, but I charge as much as a grocery store. I have no special line on that stuff. If you want it cheap, it's mostly salt, cayenne and garlic powder. The Texas crowd won't want much hot pepper, and you could go without the garlic.”
“Let me get 100 pounds of the little shrimp next week, then. Bert is coming back this Friday and Saturday. I'd like to have it for that, but.”
“I have some in my truck.”
“Then we'll do a shrimp feed.”
“Your bar will have shrimp pieces all over it.”
“Not with my dogs. They eat anything.”
Keith said, “You should have all that stuff there. Mauritania can't eat very much of it.”
“I'll take it. And I have some bills for you, Bert.”
He got them out of his pickup. They showed the band, and said “Bert is Back! Bert McCall at Big Al's Friday and Saturday.”
“I should have 'free shrimp' on there, but I didn't know at the time.”
“Which night do you want to do the shrimp?”
“Friday. Might as well start off with a bang.”
“I'll hand write it on them. Something like 'See us Friday and get free shrimp. – Bert.'”
“That would be great.”
Boo sold the shrimp, and went to bed. Al got his dog goodies and went home. They finished up all the food, and went their ways. Essie went Keith's way.
In the morning, she took off, and so did Boo, who had a tough day ahead of him. Selling is hard work, even when you have something the buyers want.
Keith went to the Williams'. Marie had the dough mixer cleaned up perfect. Keith made a big batch of dough because she had decided she would give a little to friends. Since the mixer took out most of the hard work, she might as well. They warmed the oven a little, and cut up some apples. Some of the dough went to rise with apple bits, and some without.
Keith said, “You may need to give the apple bread a little more time or it will be less cooked.”
They went out and pulled some parts. Keith also got some taillight lenses, and he also took the bulbs if they were not burned out. He figured on putting a medium flat rate box of mixed bulbs on eBay. When he did it, he advertised it as 'at least 1,000 working automotive bulbs.' filling a medium flat rate box. It bid up to $40 plus shipping, and the buyer said only a few had been broken, although Keith had just dumped them in the box. He had something like 10,000 working bulbs, and he wanted the next bunch.
They stripped Marie's Lexus to the bone. Those parts she wanted a lot for. She put the engine and transmission in her shop, and pulled the windows, all the way around.
Keith said, “I owe you $36.47 for taillight lenses and all.”
“It will be a wash when my bread is in the oven.”
They went in and got that done, and Keith went home. It was kind of a nice day, knowing the gang would be at the barbecue that night, and kind of a dreary one, because he had little to do. Ken would come up with a little job or two a week, and they were almost a relief. Keith took a few shrimp and weighed them out as 'shrimp for Keith' which the scale would record. When Boo downloaded the scale data, he would know exactly where every sale had gone, and he could decide what Keith owed him out of the cookie jar. He could call the computer in his room from anywhere in the world, and see the scale data from his wireless LAN in the house. Keith cooked the shrimp and ate them. He went to the living room trying to shake the blues. He played some blues on the junk laptop. A musician listening to music on a player with speakers as big as your thumbnail. He got tired of it, and ate some cheese and crackers. The cheap saltines and the house brand imitation of Velveeta. Not gourmet food. He got out the Fender, and plugged it into the world's worst amp. He tuned up, and reminded himself that he wasn't in trouble on the rent, had food in the house, and firewood in the yard. When the sun went down, his friends would be there to be a little bit loud, and cook some good food. He fiddled around on the guitar for a while. Then he was playing a new tune. He went over it, and it was going well. He turned on the good laptop and wrote a draft of the sheet. He called it Waiting for Boo. The music writing program let him turn over just the lead to it to play, so he could work in the bass. When he got it nearly worked out, he was playing the Fender, and another song came. This would be Wasting the Afternoon.
He called Bert, who called the body shop. The owner was going to shoot a car in the spray booth. They could use the rest of the shop right away. Sammy could come. They went there.
Keith said, “I think these two should be mine. We worked together on Never See You Again. But this is just me.”
Bert said, “I don't claim any rights in Never See You Again. Neither does Sammy. We put it on the sheets with just your name as composer. Every composer, or most of them, have musicians play stuff for them. We didn't write your music. We want to play it.”
“OK. Let's play it.”
They rehearsed the two songs for several hours, and then Bert decided it was time to record them 'for real'. They did that, and she emailed the recordings to an agent she had been talking to. They went to Keith's, and Bert took a shot at calling the agent, Sarah, although it was already far past 5pm in New York.
The agent answered the phone, and Bert put her on speaker. “I have my bass player, the composer, and also my drummer here, Sarah.”
“Keith, are you the sole author of these four songs?”
“Well, Bert and Sammy helped me work the kinks out.”
Bert said, “We don't claim any rights to Keith's work.”
“All right. Let me lay it out. This is good, and I can sell it. If you sign, I will sell it, 99% on that. A debut album is unlikely to make enough money to keep a nice Jewish girl in kosher pickles for the year. So I am going to want to represent you on at least your second album. Next thing, Keith, you are the composer?”
“Right.”
“I reviewed the contract with the web site. I don't think it will give us problems. But I don't want you signing anything with anyone except you can sell sheets with Goldstein and Cohen. You need to write about 10 more as good or better as these I just heard. If you get that far, I will send you to Houston Studios to record it all. They will charge me about 5 to record your CD, and you will pay me twice that out of your income on the CD. You will not risk any loss out of the money I am sure you do not have. If I sell this album for you, you guys will work like dogs to make me another one I can make money on. So if this is all clear, go write some tunes, and see if I will sign you. Adios.”
Keith said, “She's a little abrupt, but I guess that is all right.”
Bert said, “She has a lot of gold record artists on her client list. She doesn't want us if we can't make it happen.”
Sammy said, “We can.”
Keith decided he would find time every day to play around a little and see if he got new ideas. Boo came, and also Freddie and Pedro. Boo had two bags of shrimp left, and a few crabs. They managed to jam the shrimp in his freezer in the house, so he would not be carrying them back to where they were worth the least. He turned off the truck's reefer unit, and opened the freezer door. There was a part bag of shrimp, not much, but it might as well be out of there. They took it and the crabs to the barbecue.
“I sold the crawfish, but I had to ask everyone to buy them. I'm gonna have to bring a little less, I suppose.”
They put a pot on and started cooking crabs. Bert found a few ears of corn in the garden, and put the stalks on the fire starter pile. When they dried, they could be cut up for the oil drums in the garden shed, or used to get the barbecue going.
They all went back and found a few cantaloupes and a watermelon. They put the watermelon in the reefer, and the cantaloupes were passed around. Boo wanted some cold for tomorrow, but not to take home. He preferred to be unburdened. He washed out his truck, and threw the trash in a debris box.
The crabs were good. Essie rode up in time to get in on them. They put on the shrimp and corn, and Keith fried some squash. The grease caught fire, but Essie put the lid on the pot with Keith's excuse for a poker, a piece of pipe with a bolt welded into the end and smashed to a sort of point. Keith made some batter like pancake batter, and cooked some shrimp when the squash were done. It was hard to get the batter to stick to the shrimp, but he managed to make some good ones. His guests thought they were pretty good, and Mauritania was less critical.
They told Essie about Sarah's response to the new tunes.
“Well, write a couple hours of music, and maybe you will make the big time.”
“Easier said.”
“Most things are. You have written some good tunes. You can write some more.”
They took the grease pot off the fire. They put some more crabs in the boil. They ate boiled shrimp, and Freddie went into Keith's house with some heads and stuff, and ran them through the disposer. The bluegill went wild eating them.
“I don't know how to make them happen. I'm going to mess around on the guitar every day and see if I get something to happen, but it just happens sometimes.”
Essie said, “Maybe J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton could sit down and know they could write a song. Maybe Willie Nelson. Likely Carlos Demat could.”
“Carlos Demat can read the sheet of a song he's never seen in English, play it, and sing it in Spanish. But I'm not any of those guys.”
“Well, you have to figure out what it is that makes you play a new song, and connect to it, I guess. Most of the people who can churn out work on demand are like, formula writers, who write the same bestseller over and over, or slick gallery painters who can just do it again. I would hate to see you be like that, even if you made millions doing it.”
“Not much risk of either.”
They ate some corn, which Boo had put the supercharged butter and garlic sauce on. They threw the cobs into the barbecue wood bin, and had a few drinks of Essie's tequila.
Bert went in the house and got the Martin, and came out and played some comedy tunes. Her version of Arlo Guthrie's 'Alice's Restaurant' was very good. They had a pretty fun night. The next day, Keith's left foot was bothering him. Essie wanted him to go to the doctor. He charged $70 for 15 minutes, and prescribed an antibiotic that cost another $40, a good sized sum for a guy making about $400 a month. Keith made dough at the Williams' and helped Marie take some doors off a couple cars, and pull some glass.
The band played the Friday and Saturday night gig, and it went well. They played their new tunes, and lots of requests. On Sunday, Keith went back over to the Williams'. He made some more bread for Marie to give her friends. She didn't want to pull