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

promoters—Ray Ash out of New York and Craig Wilson out of Nashville. Both pleaded guilty to payola and criminal tax charges, but they’re not gonna have to serve any time. Both used to work with Mikey Sigor, you see, and you can bet your ass that they ratted him out.”
    “You think they ratted on Bingo, too?”
    He shrugged carelessly. “Who knows? It doesn’t matter. Payola is the system, man. It’s the only promotional system the record companies know. Once in a while somebody is gonna get thrown to the lions. But here’s the feds, with the first two convictions on the payola statute in thirty years, and another one on the way. They’ve hit the East Coast and Nashville, and they’re about to score on the West Coast with Mikey Sigor. I guess they figured they might as well get one in the Southwest market. Their blood is up, they come here, and they find Bingo.”
    “Bingo.”
    “See, Bingo had got out of the promo business while the getting out was good, before he got caught with his finger up a deejay’s ass. Just like how he got out of the real estate biz. But when he jumped back into the promo gig, he wasn’t hip to the new, ’80s way of doing things, and his good old boy approach stuck out like a sore thumb. They nailed him with the help of this DJ in San Antone who had IRS problems and offered to cooperate. He wore a wire and let ’em videotape Bingo personally handing him five grand in cash to play the shit out of a couple of new records. They say he’s a little paranoid about Bingo. I heard he wants to go into the witness protection program, and that’s one of the things that has slowed up the indictment. But the word is the case is solid, and Bingo’s looking at doing a dime in the pen.”
“Hmmm.”
“You got that right. No major label is gonna do any business with a guy like me who used to do business with Bingo Torres.”
“It would look bad.”
“Look pretty bad. Yeah, you right, it’d look pretty bad, especially now.”
“Well, Vick, there’s no such thing as a good time to be blackmailed. But what could Retha Thomas have had to do with it?”
    “Hell, I don’t know, Martin. Maybe nothing. Maybe she was keeping an eye on me for the blackmail crew. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Otherwise, I got no real enemies. I’m just here on the fringe of the music community, a junk collector, an average guy, ’cept maybe a little bit fatter than everybody else. I try to help people, make sure a guy can get the right kind of clothes to wear on stage, so he doesn’t have to go to the mall and buy a bunch of trendy shit makes him look like an MTV clone. Make sure a guitar player has a decent, American guitar on stage. Tube amplifiers. Leather jackets. These goddamn records. I’m just an old fat rock and roller, Martin. I collect junk, and people come here looking for treasure, they think they found it. Who’d wanna fuck with me?”
    “I give up.”
    “Come on, Martin. You want a guitar, a bass guitar? Come
    on, what you want? I got a cherry ’63 P-bass suit you fine. Ampeg scroll top, even an old Kay upright Willie Dixon played down at Antone’s one time. Could let you have that for a C-note, you help me out. I gave Stevie Ray Vaughan that pink Strat of his. Gave the Thunderbirds all matching white dinner jackets one time. I help you, you want it. You gonna help me?”
    “Help you what?”
    “Help me handle this, you know. What can I do? I can’t stand this kinda stress. I talked to my doctor yesterday, he said, ‘Vick, you weigh three hundred and twenty pounds. You either gonna have a heart attack or blow up. My nurse has twenty bucks says you gonna blow up.’ How do you like that? My goddamn doctor is laying odds I’m gonna have a heart attack.”
    “What about the nurse?”
    “Fuck the nurse. I know I’m not gonna blow up. But I can’t stand this stress. I can’t make the payoff, meet some scary-ass guys on a country road in the middle of the night. I don’t