Free Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) by Jesse Sublett Page A

stock and stick it up their butt, all I care.”
    “So how does that get you blackmailed?”
    “Well, that’s one side of the record—I’ve tried to keep the deal a secret, but this is a small town when you’re dealing with the music scene, so evidently these boys, whoever they are, know I’m getting the money. The flip side of the record is this ...” He flipped over the Backstabbers record and pointed to some fine white print.
    “Danny Cortez, Executive Producer,” I read aloud. “That’s what you wanted me to see?” He nodded. “The title ‘executive producer’ means he put up the cash for making the record, right?” He nodded again. “And that name sounds familiar. Would that be Bingo Torres’s old stage name, back when he was playing the teen canteens?”
    “Yep,” said Vick. “Bingo Torres, South Texas Payola King. Currently about a cunt hair away from federal indictment on the payola statute. He’ll do time, too. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
    “What’s your connection?”
    He shrugged, then spread his hands out expansively. “I’ve known him a long time, man. Like I know everybody, except this New Wave crowd. Back in the ’60s he used to come in the Jade Room over on the East Side, peddling thirteen-year-old girls so he could afford to keep that band of his going. Wanted to be the brown James Brown. Ran peyote out of Matamoros for a while in hollowed-out Bibles. Then his uncle died and left him a radio station. You know how they got records played back in the ’60s, man. It was the good old boy network, and we had a lot of Texas hits. Remember Mouse and the Traps, the Zachary Thaks? Thirteenth Floor Elevators, the Chains, Freddy Fender, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Playboys of Edinburg, Sir Douglas Quintet? Tons of ’em. Hell yes. Well, Bingo got to know one of the indie record promoters, checked out his territory, how he did his job. What Bingo did, he found out what all these deejays liked, you know, as tokens of appreciation. It wasn’t always nose candy or cash. One it would be a certain brand of whiskey, a single malt Scotch, real expensive, especially by the case. One liked black girls with real small tits. Another one had to have a new car every year. Bingo tallied up exactly how much money he’d need for six months’ worth of juice, got a loan for that amount, and then went to the record labels and said, Hey, I can do this cheaper and better than you been paying these other guys to do it. They gave him a chance, and within a couple of years he’d built himself a regular empire. Not off those groups I just mentioned. They really were popular; they didn’t need juice to get their records played. It was acts from the coasts, one-hit wonders looking for a comeback and lame, mob-backed artists that really needed him.
    “You know, after Alan Freed got busted they passed some laws and everybody acted real shocked that stuff like that was going on in the music business, you know, like they thought that the reason something got played on the radio was because everybody liked it. Yeah, real funny. These things go in cycles. So Bingo saw the cycle coming and got out of the promo biz and went into real estate for a few years, made a pile of money, then got out before the oil glut knocked the bottom out of the real estate boom. He jumped back into record promotion, and he also paid for the pressing of a couple of my records here, using his old stage name. But those records flopped, and Bingo ‘Danny Cortez’ Torres don’t give me the time of day anymore. Let’s talk modern history. You familiar with a record promoter named Mike Sigor?”
    I nodded. “I think I met him once.”
    “Well, the feds probably got a picture of you shaking his hand in their files. They been dogging him for three years and they haven’t been able to make a case, but last October they got lots closer than they been. What they did, they nailed a couple of smaller fry, a couple of indie