“You ever see The Godfather?” Old Joe asked, out of nowhere.
The big man drew slowly on his cigar.
“Who hasn’t.”
“I haven’t seen it. My family’s poor.” It occurred to Alex only then that he hadn’t seen a single movie since he woke up in this body, and he couldn’t remember the last one the man he used to be had seen either.
He kept that part to himself.
Old Joe said it slowly.
“Whoever comes to you talking peace is the traitor.”
“You’re suspecting me? Ha!” Pablo laughed.
“A major label reached out to me privately. What does that prove? This is business, not a war. And that was the Italians. That stuff is out of date.”
“Pablo, you called me a child. What I say is that you still haven’t woken up.” Old Joe fixed him with a stare.
“The company that came to you about a deal and the big company that sent us that welcome gift are the same people. They have to be. Just like Barzini in the movie, setting up the hit on Sonny.”
“Fuck!”
Pablo snorted hard.
“Why are you clinging to that ancient way of thinking?
I can guess that much too, and I don’t care!
The fact that they’re willing to spend that much effort on us means they’re high on Lori and high on this album, doesn’t it?
How many Black men rapping ever get that kind of attention out of them?
Business is business, and this is a win for everybody, and I don’t understand what there is to hesitate about!
Thirty percent is the going rate in this industry.
Fine, say we keep the thirty percent — can you even claw your way to a hundred thousand copies?
With them, it’s hundreds of thousands.
It’s a million.
Which of those two puts more money in your pocket?
Can’t you do the arithmetic?”
“Mm.” The big man raised a hand.
“Let me ask something. Which company?”
“Warner.” Pablo looked at him, startled.
“You’re not thinking about getting even, are you? I’d advise against—”
“The Warner Brothers that make the movies?” the big man asked.
“Yes. Same company.”
“Then forget it. Can’t touch that.” The big man put his hand down.
“A drug dealer doesn’t beat a big capitalist.” He turned his eyes on Alex.
“Hey. You’re A Plus? What’s do you think? Give me something.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Alex jumped.
“I’m in high school!”
“So what? I was killing people in high school. Never mind that — didn’t you get a perfect score in math? Your head works better than any of ours. Just talk. I’ve got you.”
“Uh.”
Alex looked at Old Joe, then at Pablo.
Both of them were staring at him hard enough to leave marks.
His sympathies were with Old Joe.
His interests, he thought, were better served by Pablo’s plan.
And then there was Tony and his “job” standing at Lori’s shoulder.
As Alex understood it, the disagreement between Pablo and Old Joe was fundamental.
After they hit the wall in greater New York last week, Pablo had changed his mind and started trying to bring a major label in on the release.
More records, sold faster, and Lori’s road ahead would get wider and wider.
Old Joe was far more conservative.
He was still on tour dates plus favors from radio stations to move product: whatever the album sold, he kept.
Bringing in a major meant handing over thirty percent of the profit and losing control of everything.
And he found the machinations behind the majors thoroughly disgusting, which did not stop him from wanting to get into that game himself and carve the meat with his own hands.
“I don’t have any objections,” Alex said, on the principle that less was more.
“I’m right here. Don’t worry about it. Say whatever you want to say,” the big man encouraged him.
Alex thought for a moment.
“I think they both have a point.”
Bang.
The big man slammed his hand down on the desk, and Alex nearly came out of his skin.
Fortunately, he hadn’t provoked him.
The big man shut his eyes and went away into thought.
Everybody waited quietly for the ruling.
“Forget it!”
Three minutes later he opened his eyes, got up, put on his hat, and walked toward the door.
“Fuck it! I don’t care what any of you want, I don’t understand a word of this! Go play. I’m out.”
“Hey! Your money’s in this too!” Pablo shouted after him.
“I never once planned on making my money selling records,” the big man said, without turning around.
A gust of wind went through the place, and his people outside withdrew after him, clean, all at once.
“So.”
Old Joe was delighted.
He sat back down behind his own desk.
“Business as usual?” He looked at Pablo in triumph.
With the big man declining to intervene, the last word in this company was his.
Pablo was quiet for a while.
“Business as usual for now. But I’m not giving up.” He threw the line out, collected Lori, and left in a hurry.
In the third week everything did carry on as usual.
They went down to the southeastern corner of the country, Miami and Atlanta, to promote, while Alex went back to grinding out his studies.
Nothing, however, stays where you put it.
Compared with a month ago, the thrift store song had violently rearranged the relationships of every party with a stake in it.
Al was out.
Old Joe and Pablo had all but split.
Pablo and Al; old Morgan and Lil Lori; Lori and Al; old Morgan and everyone — and Alex himself included, for that matter — the old friendships were unrecognizable.
What was left was business.
And as the video they’d shot that day began airing on Chicago’s local TV stations and playing in some of the larger video stores, trouble arrived at school too.
Connie became famous school-wide for her sultry dance in the video.
Connie was Alex’s cousin.
Alex was nicknamed A Plus.
And on the lyric insert that came with Lil Lori’s cassette, underneath the title of the thrift store song, it said in plain letters: Lyrics: Lori and A Plus.
Music: A Plus.
There weren’t many people at this school doing serious studying, which made the gossip that much more vigorous.
Everyone assembled the chain of logic in record time, and Alex had to say goodbye to the business of keeping his head down.
Boom.
Halfway down a hallway something hit him from behind, and his first reaction was that it was one of the boys who liked to shove people.
He turned around and it was the goddess of the football cheer squad.
Having secured his attention, she began working on her hair and arranging herself into poses, at some risk to her lower back.
“A Plus, right?” The goddess bit her full lower lip.
“What do you think of my voice?”
“Uh. Not bad.” You’re talking with your throat squeezed shut.
How would anybody know what your voice sounds like?
“Ooh, ha ha ha.” The goddess smiled in triumph.
“So when are you taking me over to the label for an audition? I — I can sing.”
“An audition? I don’t have that kind of pull. Goodbye!” Alex couldn’t take another second of it and fled.
Boom.
Hit again.
A boy this time: the football team’s starting lineman, more or less the strongest human being in the building.
“Quit harassing my goddess. Stay away from her! Weak-ass little music punk.” His eyes bulged like brass bells as he delivered the threat.
“She’s the one harassing me, big man.” Alex rubbed his aching shoulder, tearless and grieving.
“You’re gonna talk about my goddess like that?”
The guy went off, and a fist the size of a mixing bowl came up.
“Leave it, leave it, that’s Tony’s brother,” said the teammate next to him, hauling him back.
“This one’s for Tony. Next time I catch you having ideas about my goddess, you’ll see what happens.”
Thanks to Tony’s old goodwill, Alex slipped away into the classroom.
A cluster of the girls in his class were huddled together laughing.
…?
Alex got back to his seat.
There was a cassette case sitting on the desk.
Inside was a folded piece of paper with I MISS YOU written across it, signed with the name of one of the class’s less lovely girls.
And underneath the paper — all right, hidden in there was a condom.
“Class!” The bell rang and the teacher came in.
Alex quickly pinched the whole business into a book.
“Yes!” With a whoop of celebration, the girl in question climbed straight up onto her desk and started jumping.
“He took it! He took it!”
“Christ — don’t get the wrong idea!” Alex was so alarmed he raised his arm and threw the case back at her.
Tok.
The case bounced off her, dropped to the floor, cracked open, and out came something that slid and kept sliding.
“Turn to page forty. The material in this lesson is very important. The Civil War,” said the teacher at the front, who appeared to have seen nothing at all, and began the lecture.
The girl let out a truly terrible cry and ran out of the room in tears, hauling a frame like a tank, the floor going boom, boom, boom.
The other girls fell apart laughing, and the boys began drumming on their desks and hooting.
“And when we discuss the Civil War, we must discuss slavery—”
This school is unbelievable, Alex thought.
“Hey! Hayden!” The moment class let out he ran for the pay phone.
“What’s my projected income looking like? Okay. Do you know anything about transferring schools? I don’t care, public or private — what? All right, let’s meet.”
After school he hurried out to the front gate and dove into Hayden’s Dodge Dynasty.
“Hello. A Plus, is it?” He had not expected there to be a white man in the back seat.
“Hello. And you’re—” Alex, a little off balance, shook the man’s hand.
“Let me introduce myself. I’m the vice president of SBK Records, which is part of EMI. Daniel Glass.”