Alex could follow the logic of Al’s stubbornness.
He just couldn’t agree with it.
So you swallow something bitter — so what?
Working alongside people you can’t stand is an ordinary feature of human society, and America turned out to be no exception.
A sum of money that size sitting right there in front of you: if you don’t take it, it doesn’t vanish, it just goes cheap to Pablo and the rest of the people you hate.
The beneficiaries would be counting it and laughing at how dumb you were.
That was a perfectly clear line of reasoning.
How was it hard to understand?
But he decided not to press him any further.
If he talked Al into going back, and then one day Al lost his grip and actually did pick up a gun and clear a room out, Tony would be standing right there behind Lil Lori as his flunky — sorry, as his partner.
Safety first.
In week two the DJs of Chicago radio started discussing the thrift store song in cooler, more measured terms, but the overall temperature stayed very high.
Supermarkets, restaurants, and shops of all kinds added it to their background playlists one after another; the familiar melody kept surfacing out of the students’ Walkmans; and thrift stores in particular, large and small, loved the thing so much they simply put it on infinite brainwashing loop.
In Illinois alone, the first run of seven thousand cassettes sold out in about ten days, and the next ten thousand were already in the stores.
Old Joe and Pablo, greatly encouraged, pointed the next leg of the promotion directly at the greater New York area in the Northeast — the beating heart of the American record business.
Their plan was six days across New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Washington, and to shove Lori II straight onto the Billboard Top 200, the weekly album sales chart.
Alex began to feel that his song was on the eve of breaking wide open.
Reality, however, is a cruel business.
Friday night Tony called, and this time they had walked face-first into a wall.
At the first stop they were simply lost in the bottomless ocean of New York media.
Two radio interviews and one small performance didn’t so much as raise a ripple.
In Philadelphia, Old Joe was publicly mocked by the well-known DJ Philby in an interview.
Philby’s words were so cutting that the two sides very nearly put on a full-contact production outside the studio.
In Baltimore, Lori was heckled at a club show by a rapper nobody had heard of.
Young and hot-blooded, he accepted the man’s demand for an impromptu battle.
He was struck speechless inside a few rounds.
“On stage?”
“On stage. Lil Lori’s standing there holding the mic, his mouth’s moving, and there is no sound coming out at all. I swear I could see the tears swimming in his eyes, and the man was shaking. I was about to get up there and put the other guy on the floor, and Pablo grabbed me.”
Listening to Tony describe it over the phone, Alex put himself in Lori’s shoes for a second and felt exactly what Lori must have felt.
The goosebumps were coming up.
Old Joe and Pablo had exploded at each other several times, and Lori was unhappy about old Morgan’s stamina dragging the whole group’s schedule backwards.
“Don’t blame them, they’re wrecked. We sleep on the plane. We get off the plane and go straight back to an airport. We barely have time to eat or go to the bathroom in between. Everybody’s mood is bad in that state. And there’s something wrong with Joe’s promo strategy — maybe we shouldn’t have started with New York, maybe the schedule shouldn’t be this tight. Uh. Pablo said that.” Tony had found himself a source.
“Don’t put anything on your Sunday. They want to hold a meeting with you.”
“All right.” There wasn’t much else Alex could say.
They were all in the same boat now.
On Sunday, Alex called his agent Hayden and had him come out to Old Joe Music.
The atmosphere at Old Joe Music was off that day.
Two Black men were posted outside the door, one of them scanning the street with real alertness while the other searched Alex and Hayden — searched them very thoroughly.
Across the way, the number of cars parked outside the underground club had gone up considerably too.
“This job.” Once they were inside, Hayden looked like a man regretting having taken Alex on as a client.
“It’s fine. Gangsters are usually reasonable people,” was all the comfort Alex had to offer.
Old Joe’s office was packed.
Behind the boss’s desk, a Black guy of about thirty with a bandana tied over his scalp and a cigar in his mouth was slouched lazily against the chairback.
“Everybody here? Then let’s get started. The rest of you, out.” He waved a hand.
Alex was accumulating a certain amount of local literacy, and he could read the various patterned bandanas of the South Side now.
This one was like dead ET’s: it carried the Hell’s Bobcats scrawl, which meant the crew was Hell’s Bobcats, and the six-pointed star worked into the cloth meant it answered to the larger organization, the Gangster Disciples.
The GDs in turn belonged to an alliance called Folk Nation, and Folk Nation was currently at war with the other alliance, People Nation.
Most of the room emptied out.
“Tony, you go too,” Pablo said, evicting Tony, who was still rooted to his spot.
“And this white guy?” The big man pointed at Hayden.
“He’s my agent,” Alex said.
“Is he one of us?” the man asked.
“Uh.” Alex had no answer to that, so Pablo bailed him out.
“Hayden, out you go too.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Hayden left at a speed that suggested he had not been breathing.
Six people were left in the room: the big man, Alex, Old Joe, Pablo, Lil Lori, and old Morgan.
“Go ahead and start. I don’t know a thing about the record business. I’m a shareholder and a mediator, that’s all.” So the man from Hell’s Bobcats held a stake in Old Joe Music, and was very possibly the gang muscle standing behind everyone in the room.
“I want a substitution!”
Lori fired the first shot, aimed squarely at old Morgan.
“What do you want from me? I’m old.”
Old Morgan plainly had no intention of surrendering a meal ticket this good, and pushed back.
“I’m just too tired. Once we’re through this stretch it’ll be fine. Nobody does promotion this hard forever.”
“Tired, my ass, you piss too much! The second you’re on a plane you’ve got a bottle up to your mouth, you old drunk!” Lori punctured the lie without ceremony.
“Hey! Hey! Boy, show some respect. I was a hit before you were born! And I never stood on a stage and cried about it!” Old Morgan’s counterpunch was fast and it was mean.
“Motherfucker! You fucking old bastard!” Lori, stepped on precisely where it hurt, went up like a spring and launched himself at Morgan.
“Hey! Hey!” Old Joe and Pablo got between them fast.
Old Morgan didn’t dare provoke him any further and turned a pitiful look on Old Joe.
Old Joe smoothed it over for him.
“Morgan, you really can’t be drinking like that anymore—”
“My — my fault, I swear it won’t happen again,” old Morgan said, taking the exit he’d been offered.
“Pablo, you’re their agent, aren’t you? What’s your read?” The big man looked at Pablo.
“Do you accept old Morgan’s word on it?”
“Old Morgan watched us grow up. I’m not going to leave him hurting.” Pablo shrugged.
“But he can’t keep up with the intensity of an album’s promo window. Bring in a session saxophone player to cover it for now, and put Morgan back on for the actual shows later.”
“Pablo, you—” Old Morgan swallowed the rest of it.
“Old Morgan, do you agree to it that way too?” the big man asked.
Old Morgan nodded, aggrieved.
“And? What else?” The big man kept running the room.
What else was the fight between Old Joe and Pablo.
Pablo laid it out calmly.
“We blew the greater New York promotion. I don’t think we can keep going the way we’ve been going. Some of the Big Six have been in touch with me and they’re willing to help with distribution. That’s a win for everybody.”
“A win? Ha.” Old Joe sneered.
“They take thirty percent off the top for putting it in the stores. That’s our money, all of it. And you’ve been negotiating with them behind my back — I haven’t even settled that with you yet!”
“Don’t be a child, Joe,” Pablo said.
“You still don’t see it? What happened to us in New York this week was the Big Six’s welcome gift. Otherwise, Philby in Philadelphia — that man took our money. And then he risked his own reputation to break the deal? Without somebody powerful behind him, telling him to, he would never have dared! Distribution on a small scale, fine, no problem. National distribution, we cannot do it without the Big Six. Stop being short-sighted!”
“Hold on, hold on.” The big man had lost the thread.
“Pablo. Which six gangs are we talking about?”
“Uh.” Pablo took a moment to explain.
“Not gangs. The six major record companies. Warner, Universal, Sony Columbia, PolyGram, EMI, and BMG. Bertelsmann Music Group.”