Alex on trumpet, Lori on the drum and the vocal: between the two of them they ran the whole song end to end.
When it was over the agent tipped his head to one side and looked at Alex.
“Are you really your school’s lead trumpet?”
“Uh — yes. I was, anyway.” Alex got his prepared line out in a hurry.
“I lost interest in music for a while there and stopped practicing, so I’ve slipped a long way, and — and I was pretty nervous just now.”
“Yeah, he got distracted. Got himself all wrapped up in schoolwork like a fool. Pulled an A-plus in math, so now we all call him A Plus, ha!” Tony pitched in helpfully.
“Doesn’t that strike you as strange? A song this finished, and you don’t—” The agent shut his mouth halfway through the sentence, produced a cigarette holder, and fitted a filterless Camel into it.
“Never mind. Forget the small stuff for now. I’ll just take you for a genius.”
“Yeah! Alex, you hear the man? You’re a genius. You’re a goddamn genius—”
“Shut up, Tony.”
That was the agent, telling Tony to shut his mouth.
He lit the cigarette and drew on it.
“Have you registered the lyrics and the music?”
“Yes. Lyrics, music, and this demo.” Alex could feel the man wavering.
Lori had already as good as said he’d go with AK’s refusal.
If the agent came down on the same side, this road was closed for good.
Then again — looked at from the other direction, Alex wasn’t especially worried.
He was the one holding a good song.
They were the ones grabbing at the last straw floating past them.
As long as he kept the copyright behind him, making money in America was only ever a question of sooner or later, more or less.
Anyone with a decent nose for opportunity would smell what was sitting in this room.
Lil Lori had checked out entirely.
His eyes wandered up to the ceiling, one leg swinging loose off the edge of the sofa, his whole face saying nothing to do with me.
I’m here to save you, Lori.
Alex kept it to himself.
He was fairly sure Lori was still being kept in the dark by his own agent and his own label boss.
“All right. Let’s go to the company first.”
The agent pinched out his cigarette between thumb and forefinger.
“AK, bring my car around.” Then he kicked Lori’s leg.
“Up. Up! Let’s go.”
Muffler clapped Alex on the shoulder.
“Cool.”
Tony was as delighted as a three-hundred-pound child.
He bounced to his feet, high-fived Lil Lori and then AK, then got an arm around Alex and steered him down toward the street.
“I knew you could do it!” he shouted.
Downstairs he pulled Alex a little away from the others and said quietly, “Hey. Up there just now — I was running my mouth a little, huh. Didn’t exactly help you out, did I.”
His big brother was, in fact, a rough man with a fine-tuned instinct, and he knew how to play the odds.
Take the fight on the basketball court: afterward he’d explained that the kids who played on that particular court came from families nearby, decent households, kids with some schooling in them, which is why he’d dared do what he did.
Move that same confrontation into the projects and he would never have been stupid enough to swing on anybody.
But there was no door on his mouth.
“It’s nothing.” Alex smiled wryly.
“The whole thing’s riding on you and Lori being tight anyway, isn’t it.” Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping.com.
“Yeah!” Tony liked that very much.
“You’re my brother. Brothers are supposed to look out for each other like this—”
Lil Lori and his agent finally came down.
It was obvious they’d had words upstairs.
Lori yanked open the door of Muffler’s Toyota and dropped into the seat, furious.
“You—!”
The agent didn’t bother with him.
He snapped his fingers at Alex instead and then pointed at the Volvo 760 AK had just pulled up.
“Kiss his ass a little,” Tony advised under his breath.
“Relax.” Alex peeled off from him and got into the Volvo’s front seat.
Nice cars really are a different experience.
He worked his backside into the soft leather and thought it over.
Down the road we’ll get ourselves a Volvo.
Buy domestic while we’re at it, support the home team.
Hm.
Something’s wrong with that.
“Do you have an agent?” The man in the back seat came straight at it.
“No. Uh — I’ve got no experience with any of that.” Alex answered honestly.
“Really?”
The agent didn’t believe him.
“Then who taught you to go register the work?”
“I went to a lawyer and paid for a consultation. It was his advice.”
Alex studied him.
Lori’s agent was about fifty, with some Mexican in him somewhere.
Brisk, decisive, sharp.
He kept a good car and by the look of it his finances were in order.
He was also high-handed, and liked to run people.
But an agent was somebody who could help him with his income and his career, and a man’s personality was a detail next to that.
This one was Lori’s agent, and apparently Al’s as well, which meant Alex knew what he was buying.
He wouldn’t be a total stranger, at least.
And Alex had no agent and no other road out.
So he might as well just—
“Uh… you—” Alex had thought all the way through it, and then couldn’t get the words out.
“Pablo.”
“Okay. Mr. Pablo. Will you be my agent?” he asked.
Their eyes met for a second in the rearview mirror.
“In principle, no problem.
But before I become your agent I want one thing clear between us.
Copyright.” Pablo said, “The music — the music’s fine, it’s yours.
The words, though. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Best thing is to hand those to Lori.”
“Why?” Alex was startled.
“This lawyer you found doesn’t understand the rap world.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s the old-school stuff or what came after — the political guys, the gangster guys — a rapper is either expressing himself or expressing a view on something.
The early ones came up from the bottom with no money at all.
Half the backing tracks were somebody banging on something, or straight sampling off other people’s records, so nobody minds who owns the music.
But think it through.
If what the rapper is expressing isn’t his own, then what does it matter who’s holding the microphone?
Nobody in this business needs range, nobody needs real vocal technique.
Honestly, the bar’s low.
Take away speaking for yourself and how exactly are you different from an idol singer some big label put together?
A rapper who can’t own his own words gets laughed out of the room by everyone in it.
He never lifts his head again.”
Then Pablo added, “And the lyrics on your song need rewriting anyway.”
“Uh… uh…”
Alex pressed his upper lip between his teeth and started to speak several times without managing it.
He hadn’t seen this coming.
But he understood perfectly well: lose the copyright on the words and the whole share of the money that ought to come to him from that side was gone, wasn’t it.
“Think about it,” Pablo said.
He didn’t press any further.
He picked up his Motorola brick and made a call.
“Hey, old man! I need your saxophone. Right now. Looks like a big job. Okay — we good? Good. Be downstairs from your place in ten minutes.”
He hung up and told AK, “Old Morgan’s house.”
Ten minutes later they collected an elderly Black man carrying an instrument case, dressed in the full style of the sixties and seventies.
“Well, well, well. Dressed up like that, old man — where do you think you’re going?” Pablo flicked at the bright pocket square on his chest.
“Wasn’t it—” The old man’s eyes went wide.
“Didn’t you say there was a big job? Don’t you mess with me, boy! If it wasn’t you calling, I wouldn’t be out of the house this late.”
“We’re going to Old Joe’s. What did you think I was setting you up with, restaurant backing? Could your old bones even handle it?”
“I’ve got plenty of gigs! Every room in this city is looking for a man who can play saxophone right now.”
“I know, I know. And you can all thank Kenny G for it. Look at this — a kid this size is writing sax into his arrangements.”
“Fuck Kenny G. I don’t thank him for a damn thing. My chops are ten thousand times better than his.”
“Oh, really? I’ve heard you play his stuff. I thought you were dying up there. I was honestly afraid you’d lie down on the stage.”
“Fuck you. I’m talking about technique.”
Pablo and old Morgan traded insults for a while.
In front of an old friend he was a completely different man.
They got where they were going soon enough.
AK parked, Alex climbed out, and looked up at a tall sign: OLD JOE MUSIC COMPANY.
The neon in it was very dim, and several of the letters weren’t lit at all.