“I guess I’d like to play any way I could.”
“Come on, Jupe, I bring enough girls around for you. So does Pete. Don’t you like any of them?”
Jupiter sighed. “It’s more they don’t like me.”
“A lot of girls like you, I can see that. I mean, take that little Ruthie today. She definitely liked you. All you have to do is make your move.”
Jupiter flushed. “Anyway, what about finding out about El Tiburon and the Piranhas?”
“No problem. Let’s go.”
They got into Bob’s bug and drove out of the salvage yard. Bob turned toward downtown.
“Where are we going?” Jupe asked.
“Jake Hatch’s office.”
“But we don’t want him to know we’re investigating — ”
Bob smiled. “Trust me.”
They reached a seedy, dilapidated building on the edge of the main downtown shopping area. Bob parked in the lot at the rear.
There was no elevator in the run-down building. Only a feeble light filtered in through the dusty sky-light over the stairwell. Rows of scarred half-glass doors lined the uncarpeted hallways. On the third floor Bob opened the last door on the right. The Investigators stepped into an outer office. Beyond it was Jake Hatch’s private inner office.
“Hi, Gracie,” Bob said. “Is Mr. Hatch in?” A pretty young woman with blond hair sat at the only desk in the outer office. She was typing some long list. She looked up and smiled when she saw Bob.
“You know it’s his lunchtime.” Bob sat on the edge of her desk and flashed his most charming smile. “Sure, that’s why I came now.”
The young woman laughed and shook her head at Bob’s brashness. He had to be five years younger than she was, but her eyes said she was pleased to see him. “You’re much too sure of yourself, Bob Andrews.”
“Is it a crime that I like to talk to you instead of old Jake, Gracie?” Bob’s smile widened. “Besides, I brought my friend Jupiter along today so he could meet you. Jupe, this is Grace Salieri, the best secretary in the business.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Salieri,” Jupiter said.
“Call me Gracie, Jupiter,” Grace Salieri said. “Now cut the soft soap, okay, Bob? What are you doing here?”
“Sax has a client who wants a La Bamba band,” Bob explained. “We don’t have one. The guy was up in Oxnard a couple of nights ago and saw a gig he liked. He couldn’t remember the name of the group. I thought it might have been El Tiburon and the Piranhas. Were they up in Oxnard two nights ago, and where are they playing the next couple of days?”
“Jake’d want the full commission on Tiburon.”
“Sax doesn’t care about his split on this. He just wants to please the client.”
Grace got up and walked into the inner office.
“What’s she doing, Bob?” Jupiter whispered.
“Checking the booking charts on Jake’s wall. Sax uses the same system. It’s faster than a computer — you see where all your bands are at once.”
Grace Salieri came back. “Yep, Tiburon and his boys were up in Oxnard at The Deuces two nights ago. They play The Shack the next two days.” She sat down behind her desk.
“Great, Gracie, thanks,” Bob said. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Sax’ll ask if that’s where the client saw the La Bamba band he liked. If it is, old Jake has a nice fat commission.”
She laughed. “Get out of here, Bob Andrews.”
Outside the office, Bob winked at Jupiter as they hurried back down the dusty stairs to his bug.
“Even if Gracie tells Jake, all he’ll see is easy money. And now we know Tiburon was in Oxnard when Ty was.”
“And The Shack is a pizza cafe that we can get into,” Jupiter said. “If Ty is out of jail, maybe he can identify Tiburon. If not, we can talk to Tiburon and maybe get some answers.”
“When?”
“Tonight. We’ll meet at HQ,” Jupiter said. “Then we’ll go to The Shack and talk to El Tiburon and the Piranhas.”
The Shack was a popular hole-in-the-wall pizza restaurant on the eastern outskirts of Rocky Beach. Jupiter and Bob arrived at eight. Pete, it turned out, had to take Kelly to a spring-break party. Jupiter only sighed.
Small and shabby, The Shack attracted students from the local high school and junior college. Most places with live music sold liquor, which meant they were off-limits to anyone under twenty-one. The law was rigorously enforced, even to making underage performers sit behind the bandstand under the watch of a club employee. But The Shack was a pizza restaurant, serving only soft drinks, and teenagers flocked to it.
On most nights they flocked. Not this night.
As Jupiter and Bob walked in they saw two high school guys playing a rickety old pinball machine in a corner. Two more ate pizza, their eyes glued to a silent TV set. Four Latino girls sat at one of the tables around the postage-stamp-size dance floor. They had to be the girlfriends of the band players because they were the only ones watching the bandstand.
The Shack was nearly empty, but the sound in the small cafe was deafening.
“La… bamba… bamba… bamba!”
Five Latinos sang and played a Latin rhythm on electric guitars, a bass, and a keyboard that sounded like a Mexican street band. The drummer pounded bongos and gongs and rattled gourds. The musicians were up to their ankles in cables, amplifiers, pedals, and fifty other pieces of equipment that left them almost no room to move on the tiny bandstand.
“La… bam… ba… I”
El Tiburon and the Piranhas! They pounded, gyrated, and grinned like fiends into the almost empty room. Their faces glistened with sweat. They looked eagerly at the door as Jupiter and Bob came in and took seats at a rear table.
“I hate to say this,” Jupiter whispered, “but they’re not very good.”
“Sax says they shout instead of sing,” Bob agreed. “They don’t play very well either.”
“I assume El Tiburon’s the one in the white suit?”
“Right. The tall guy in front playing lead guitar.”
Jupiter watched the tall Latino as he sang and pranced around the wire-tangled stage. Slim and handsome in an exotic white suit with skin-tight pants, a long jacket, and silk shirt open over his chest, he was all showman — a lot of style and not much talent. The four shorter Piranhas playing behind him were dressed in red and black.
“This isn’t much of a Latino hangout,” Bob said. “I don’t know why Hatch booked them in here.”
“I don’t think they do either,” Jupiter said.