“Take a guess.”
He grabbed the ball as it careened off his office door. He moved like a sixteen-year-old trying to impress the girl next door. “Anybody’s guess. The new album takes off, she picks up an award or two. Best estimate, maybe a million, million-three, maybe million and a half. Worst estimate, low six figures.”
“What’s your cut of that?”
His nonstop motion ceased for just a moment, and he glared at me, insulted. “My cut is whatever salary I take out of this place. MFA Incorporated gets a twenty-percent management fee from all its clients. And, by the way, we work our butts off for that commission.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t. I only ask because I’m trying to gauge how much everyone’s lost.”
“A shitload,” he said. “The world’s lost a shitload.” He flung the ball in a wide arc toward the hoop again. This time, the ball sailed through the net without touching metal.
“Swish!” he called. “She was a great talent.”
“Let’s assume that Slim didn’t kill his ex-wife. If you had a list of suspects that included everyone she knew, who would you pick out of the lineup?”
Mac Ford’s face darkened, although in the dim light it was hard to tell, especially with the two-day growth of beard and the mop of scraggly black hair that draped down over his forehead after that last jump shot.
“That’s a dangerous game, man,” he said. “Unfounded accusations can get you in trouble.”
“Nobody’s accusing anybody. But the way I see it, you’re the second biggest loser in this whole affair. Rebecca Gibson lost her life.”
“Hey,” he said, letting another one fly to the hoop, this one swishing nylon as well. “I’ve still got my health.”
“Minus a pretty good-sized fortune Rebecca Gibson was going to make for you over the next few years.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. He leaned against a wall and scratched at his chin. “The way I see it, nobody benefited financially. We’re all losers. So it had to be revenge or passion or something like that. An old lover. For that matter, a new lover.”
“Would that be Dwight Parmenter?”
“Maybe. If I was checking everybody out, I’d sure add him to the list.”
“Is he one of your clients?”
He snorted. “Dwight? Hell, no. Dwight ain’t got the fire in his belly.”
“But he might have enough fire in his belly to beat Rebecca Gibson to death with his bare hands.”
“Them’s two different kinds of fires, bud.”
“What about this guy Pinkleton? The guy who was her road manager.”
“Yeah, she canned his ass a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it? She told me she was going to. Said he’d been hitting the nose candy kind of hard and equipment had been disappearing. She figured he was ripping it off and selling it to buy dope.”
“Isn’t that something you would handle? Firing Pinkleton, I mean?”
“Becca was a control freak. I handled her contracts, money, billings, accounting, tour schedules, dealing with the battalion of idiots a major act has to deal with. But when it came down to the nitty-gritty of putting a show together, who played what and when and where and how loud, Becca did it all herself. Anybody who tried to tell her what to do got slapped down, hard.”
“So you thought she was hard to deal with, too.”
Mac Ford crossed back in front of me and fell back into his chair so hard it rolled back and slammed into the wall behind him. He grabbed the now dead cigar out of the ashtray, then lifted his legs and let them fall with a thud onto the desk.
“You just had to know how to handle her, that’s all. I never had any trouble with her.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a disposable butane lighter, then fired it up and relit the cigar with the three-inch-long flame. He inhaled deeply, taking the smoke into his chest like it was a cigarette, then sighed as he exhaled a stream of blue toward the ceiling. Iron lungs, I guess.
I thought for a moment. “So if you were drawing up a list, you’d put Dwight Parmenter and Mike Pinkleton at the top?”
“Yeah, that’d have to be it. You can take it to the bank, bud; if Slim Gibson didn’t kill Rebecca, then one of them two others did.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me that might lead somewhere?”
He thought for a second. “Nope, that’s about it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s all I need for now. Like I say, I’m just following a trail to see where it goes. Thanks for helping me out. Can I call you again if I need anything else?”
“Hey, bud, you call me anytime. Grab one of those cards off the desk. It’s got my home phone number. And you be careful, you hear? Anybody that can beat the dogshit out of somebody as hard as he did Rebecca ain’t going to be shy about doing it again.”
“That’s already occurred to me,” I said.
He didn’t look like he was going to make any attempt to crawl out of that chair, and I didn’t feel like leaning across his desk through the smoke to beg for a hand-shake. I stood up and pocketed one of his cards, then turned for the door. As I opened it I caught a glimpse of him reaching for the remote control. He punched a button, and this time the room was filled with a raw, rocking beat that had the momentum of a runaway locomotive.
When I closed the door, the roar inside Mac Ford’s office was muffled almost completely. Alvy Barnes sat at her desk, typing something into a computer. She turned and smiled at me.
“Get everything you need?”
“For the time being,” I said.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a couple of business cards. “I meant to give him one of these. Can I leave it with you?”
“Sure.”
“There’s another one there. You keep it. Like I told Mac, I’m just trying to find out anything that will lead me to the truth. If you think of anything that might help, will you give me a call, too?”
She brushed the two cards into the center of her desk drawer. “Glad to.”
“Thanks. It was good to see you again,” I said, turning to leave. “By the way, how does he get any work done in there with all that noise?”
Alvy shook her head. “Beats me. I’ve been working here two years, and he does that every day. He has a great mind, but it works in mysterious ways.”
I walked down the long hallway alone, then down the stairs. Next to the receptionist’s desk, I stopped and listened. I was directly below Mac Ford’s office. Amazing, I thought, these old buildings are really solid.
Outside, I settled into the Mazda and managed to get it cranked up. The traffic on Music Row was backed up so far I couldn’t get out of the parking lot, so I turned and went down the driveway and into the alley, figuring I’d exit out onto a side street. Behind Mac Ford’s building, like a lot of buildings on the Row, there was a private parking lot carved out of what had once been somebody’s backyard. Signs warned strangers not to park and threatened towing to Siberia. Other signs marked off slots by name. The center parking space, the one closest to the back entrance of the building, had a sign that read RESERVED: MAC FORD.
A silver Rolls-Royce was parked in the slot. I don’t know much about Rolls-Royces, only that they cost a hell of a lot and are real nice to look at. I don’t know what year or model this one was, but I recognized the insignia.
On the back of the Rolls was a mounted vanity plate: TRUSNO1. It took me a second to figure it out.