Free Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) by Jesse Sublett

girl.”
“Yes.”
“Try not to.”
    “I can’t help it. Your touch, Martin, your body. It’s so nice. It’s so nice to feel it again, wanting it. But I can’t help thinking, she probably wanted it too. And she might die thinking about it. It’s not fair, Martin. It’s a nightmare and I don’t know if it’s a real nightmare or just a thing, a thing that didn’t happen. It’s not fair.”
    “I know.” I fell back on the bed, and she didn’t cling. She laid there. I laid there. Vick Travis just loomed, a bloated presence there in the darkness, above the bed, above Ladonna’s fragrance, above my guilt. Like the Goodyear blimp hovering over a game that the home team is losing.
“Did you kiss her?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, you asshole.”
    I felt my face flush as I remembered that kiss. It was the kind of kiss that makes promises. It was even possible that part of me regretted not following through. If I would have, maybe she wouldn’t be in a coma now. Possibilities came at me from left and right, none that would do us any good.
“Maybe I should just go. Get it over with.”
She didn’t answer right away. But then she said, “Yeah. Maybe you should.”
“Goddamn it. I told you I wasn’t going to give up easy.”
    “You’ve fought pretty hard tonight. You’re pretty hard to resist, actually. But the other thing . . . It’s big. It’s really big. But I’m trying, I really am. The thing is, I have to work tomorrow. I know that sounds trivial, especially to a musician, but I don’t see this getting any more resolved tonight. I’m tired and it’s hard to think. Maybe you should go. Especially if you think it could help.”
    We kissed good-bye.
     
     
     

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    We sat on folding chairs on either side of a card table in a dusty little cubicle that was heavy with cigarette smoke. A single bright bulb hung from a greasy cord. Bugs fluttered around it. There was a small wooden desk shoved in the corner with invoices, notes, and returned checks pinned to the wall. Keith Richard was nodding out in a poster tacked up by the door leading out to the guitar room. Vick Travis belched, then squelched it with another swig of Carta Blanca beer. He almost looked like he was going to say excuse me but didn’t. It would have seemed too trivial.
    I drank my beer and watched him smoke his fat, aromatic French cigarettes. It was time to get to the point.
    “Maybe the girl was part of it, I don’t know,” he said. “But these guys, there seems to be two of them, they want twenty grand, and they want it damn quick.”
    “They going to burn your store down if you don’t pay up, or what?” I said.
    “Well, it’s simple. It’s kinda funny, the way it worked out. First of all, you know about these records?” He pulled a half dozen albums and EPs off the desk and plopped them down on the table.
    I fanned them out. Big Bad Wolf and the Blues Gig, Live.
    Tammy Lynn Johnson. The Backstabbers. Cloud 19. A. couple of others. All either Austin groups or from the general area. All of them were on the R & R Addiction label, released locally in the late ’70s or early ’80s.
“R & R Addiction is my private label, Martin. You know that.”
“Sure. Tammy Lynn’s getting some action on the college charts now, isn’t she?”
He nodded. “So are the Backstabbers, and they played Cloud 19’s ‘Solo Bolo’ on ‘David Letterman’ the other night.”
“Congratulations. ”
    “The big congratulations are coming from IMF Records in LA. A hundred grand worth of congratulations. They’re buying the label, and they wanna put out the catalog on CD.”
    “They’re buying you out?”
    “Yep. The copyrights, the masters, everything, lock, stock, and barrel. Besides the CD deal, they figure to recut some of the songs, repackage and do a rerelease, nationally. Whatever. I don’t give a damn. They can do whatever they damn well please for a hundred grand. They can melt down all the