Alex had been picturing something on the cutting edge of style.
What actually guarded Old Joe Music was a narrow, heavy iron door, and there didn’t seem to be a bell on it.
AK stepped up and hammered on it with the flat of his hand, and the iron gave back a flat, dull banging.
“Go get some pizza.”
Pablo pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, peeled off a few, and handed them to Muffler.
“Get drinks too.” He pointed at an intersection.
“Two lights up, it’s right there.”
Muffler took the money without a word and drove off.
Just then the slot in the iron door flicked open and shut, and a Black man with tattoos on his face dragged the door back.
“About time, Carl,” Pablo grumbled.
Behind the door was a staircase just as narrow.
He went up it first.
Carl bumped fists with each of them as they came in.
“My brother Alex — you can call him A Plus too,” Tony said, presenting him.
Carl nodded, and after one more fist the two of them were acquainted.
Another mute, like Muffler.
Alex kept it to himself.
His attention had already been taken by the photographs running up both sides of the stairwell.
The frames were expensive ones.
Portraits of all kinds of people, black-and-white and color, most of them with the unmistakable clothing and the unmistakable photographic style of the fifties, the sixties, some of them earlier than that.
Every face in them was Black, and the one that came up most often was Old Joe’s — Old Joe young, Old Joe middle-aged.
Apparently he’d been a singer once, with a little bit of a name.
“That’s me.”
Old Morgan pointed proudly at one of them.
“Look at that. Handsome devil.”
The young man in the photograph was indeed in full flower, holding a gold saxophone up across his chest, grinning wide and white.
“Shame the age of the old jazz is over,” Morgan said, hugging the sax case to himself.
But the flicker of sentiment lasted only a second.
“Goddamn rock. Goddamn disco. Goddamn rhythm and blues—” The gray-haired old man turned into an outraged boy in the space of a breath, hanging his own failure on the movement of history itself.
“Goddamn Kenny G!” That was the one he wouldn’t let go of.
The second floor was a good deal more spacious.
Two posters bigger than a man hung in the front hall.
One was Old Joe — and it made an impression on Alex.
He stood in the middle with his arms flung wide, four Black women gathered in against him, all of them built like Aunt Susie, not one of them a face Alex knew.
The other poster was Lil Lori and Al.
Lori, at the visual center, had the guitar slung across him and both hands on a stand microphone, staring dead into the camera, doing cool — there was something of a rock star about it.
Al could only lean in from the edge, one hand holding a microphone, the other throwing a hip-hop sign.
So Lori’s the company’s headliner.
Alex now had a clear reading of exactly how strong Old Joe Music was.
Maybe it had been something once.
It was certainly nowhere near the mainstream today.
Pablo snapped his fingers again and pointed at the phone on the front desk.
“Fast as he can.”
AK reached over the unattended desk and picked up the receiver.
Pablo kept moving and stopped in front of a door with a RECORDING sign lit above it.
He put his ear against it, listened for a few seconds, then took the handle and shoved it wide open.
A woman screamed at once.
“Pull your pants up and get out!” Pablo, unmoved, walked straight in and cleared the room.
After a moment in the dark, a shirtless Black guy came slipping out with his head down, his girl’s upper half wrapped in his jacket.
Tony howled with laughter in the hallway, and still didn’t forget his manners.
“This is my brother, Alex — you can call him A Plus too. Alex, this is Eric, our engineer.”
“Fuck you, Tony,” Eric muttered, and the woman beside him put up a middle finger.
“In! Come on in!”
It was a standard setup.
The outer room was the control room: a mixing desk, chairs, a sofa, various odds and ends of gear.
The small room beyond it was the live room, with thick glass between them so both sides could see each other.
Pablo turned on every light in the place.
“Get to work! Move,” he said, pushing open the live room door and herding Morgan and Lori in.
“The score!” He snapped his fingers at Alex.
Alex got the pages out of his bag, walked in, and set them on the stands in front of Old Morgan and Lil Lori.
Lori was still sulking.
He took his without a word and without so much as looking at Alex.
Old Morgan produced a pair of reading glasses, put them on, and set about slowly unpacking the saxophone case.
“Out here. You talk from here.” Pablo’s voice came through the talkback.
Alex hurried out and shut the live room door behind him.
“If you’ve got notes, you push this. Don’t go interrupting them for nothing.”
Pablo pointed at the talkback key, demonstrating.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said into the microphone.
“Don’t rush me, don’t rush me. I’m old, not like you young people—” Old Morgan’s complaining came back through the monitors.
“Where’s Eric?” Pablo looked around.
“Didn’t you just tell him to get lost?” Tony was baffled.
“Go get him back. We can’t do this without him.” Pablo made all his arrangements and then left in a hurry.
That left Alex alone in the control room.
He sat down in front of the desk and had a careful look.
Besides the board there was a great deal of equipment he couldn’t name, and the walls were papered over in acoustic foam.
It looked genuinely professional.
Except, that is, for the long sofa at the back, which was a disaster area, and the smell of sweat still hanging in the air, testifying to the fierceness of the recent engagement.
The saxophone part on the thrift store song was mostly mechanical repetition.
Old Morgan tried a few bars off the page, then put the horn down and swore.
“What the hell. Which dumbass wrote this garbage?”
“That was me.” Alex was embarrassed, and answered honestly, then remembered he hadn’t pressed the talkback.
“Uh — that was me.” He had to say it twice.
“I don’t understand the kids making music now. This stuff you write, this is supposed to be a hit?” Morgan carried right on and turned to Lil Lori beside him.
“You think this is a hit? Singing this kind of thing, huh?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Oh, kids these days. I really don’t get it. You know? When I was your age—”
Old Morgan nagged on without end, and Lori was happy to sit in it.
Alex knew he was in no position to order either of them around, and he had no appetite for making enemies.
Fortunately it wasn’t long before Pablo pushed the door open, with Old Joe behind him.
Old Joe was still in the same pink suit as that day.
“Morgan!” He mashed the talkback down and roared into it.
“You believe I’ll come in there and tear that old mouth off you and throw it in Lake Michigan for the fish?”
Same enormous subwoofer of a voice.
And his face wasn’t so different, either, from the old man in the pink suit in the thrift store video the Revelation had handed him.
Alex had to fight down a laugh at the sight of him.
“A Plus, right?” Having delivered Morgan’s scolding, Old Joe put out a hand.
“Good to meet you. I’m the man who owns this company. Joe. You can call me Old Joe, but I prefer BOSS.”
“Hello, BOSS.” Alex shook his hand, and when the music started up inside, stepped aside to let him have the board.
Morgan played the sax, Lori sang and worked the drum, and the two of them ran the song through properly.
The effect was a great deal better than Alex and Lori had managed.
“Okay…”
Old Joe pursed his lips, giving nothing away.
“Again.” He pressed the talkback.
While Old Joe and Pablo listened to the second pass, Alex’s mind was moving fast.
Tony had told him to kiss Pablo’s ass — but from that conversation in the car, Alex and Pablo had a conflict of interest.
Pablo was Lil Lori’s agent, and he wanted Alex to “make a gift” of the lyrics to Lori.
Getting him to change his mind wasn’t going to happen on flattery alone.
And even if Pablo did become his agent down the line, the moment his interests and Lori’s collided, which way he’d jump was anybody’s guess.
Maybe asking Pablo to be my agent isn’t such a good idea.
But Old Joe, standing right here, was a completely different proposition.
As long as a record sold, the man who owned the company had interests that pointed the same direction as Alex’s.
Once he’d worked it out, he acted.
He waited for the second pass to end.
“Uh — boss.” Alex got Old Joe’s attention.
“So, the thing is. The inspiration for this song came the day we shot Lori’s video—”
“Yeah, I heard. Thrift store,” Old Joe said without much interest.
“More than that. Part of the inspiration was you, boss,” Alex went on.
“I wrote the hook for you. I really like your bass.”
“Me?” Old Joe was surprised.
“Yeah. Why don’t you give it a try?” Alex made an after you gesture toward the live room.
“Try it?” Old Joe traded a look with Pablo.
Pablo twisted his mouth and nodded.
“Try it.” Old Joe pushed open the live room door and went in.
He took the score, spent a moment getting himself ready, and the third pass began.
“I’m gonna pop some tags Only got twenty dollars in my pocket I’m, I’m, I’m huntin’, lookin’ for a come up This is fucking awesome!”
His deep voice came in on the hook and he’d barely gotten a few words out before Alex noticed Pablo leaning forward in his chair, his eyes suddenly bright.