False Allegations Read Online Free PDF

concerts.”
    I nodded my head in agreement with whatever the hell she was saying, watching her chest hyper–pneumatize the “DON’T! BUY! THAI!” message every time she took a breath. Somebody called her name and she turned in that direction. On the back of her T–shirt, in the same red letters, it said “ASK ME WHY!” I was planning to do just that when a ska–blues singer I didn’t recognize came on, singing about someone named Ghost, a Badger Game man tracking a woman he called Shella. “Who’s that?” I asked Boot.
    “Kid named Bazza,” Boot said. Works with a crew called the Portland Robins. “I pirated it off Miss Roberta’s show in Seattle. Pretty fine, huh?”
    “Sure is,” I said, handing over some cash— the only way you vote in Boot’s country.
    “If he’s any good, he’ll be on the charts,” a black guy in a khaki jumpsuit and a blue cut–down fez said. “Sooner or later, cream comes to the top.”
    The guy with the Jewish Afro lunged forward, but the Prof arm–barred him, saying, “Let me have this one, brother,” like they’d both been challenged to a bar–fight. “Boot!” the little man commanded in a tone a maestro would use to his orchestra, “put on Number One.”
    Boot was too reverent to interrupt the Fascinators’ version of “Chapel Bells.” He waited until the last chord vibrated, then hit some switches and threw the place into silence. He rifled through his shelves, found the tape the Prof wanted, and slammed it into a slot.
    “Give me some silence now, people,” the Prof commanded.
    A high–tension guitar opened it— just a few perfect, fluid notes. A soft, throbbing sax line came up underneath, a tenor with a baritone counterpoint. Then Little Richard walked on. But he wasn’t playing this time— no shrieking and shouting: he stood on the Vegas–gospel borderland, a deep blues taproot anchoring him to the ground. Richard used the girl singers’ background vocals like a trampoline, peacocking his way through his whole catalog: a pure–sweet lusty tenor, climbing the scale at will, comfortable inside himself only because he had no limits. The recipe was a rich gumbo: chain gang chants, church hallelujah, the gunfighter bars where nothing lasts long. He capped the upper–octave waves with his stylized hiccups, surrounding a talking centerpiece of blood poetry woven around sax riffs and that masterful muted guitar, driving off the black girls’ storefront–choir voices, lifted by the organ. Sad enough to make you cry. Beautiful enough to do the same thing.
    Ah, maybe the lunatic was right— maybe Elvis did steal it all from him.
    The last sounds faded to the stone silence of abject worship. Nobody in that room had ever heard better.
    “Now who was that, Solly?” the Prof asked the guy with the Jewish Afro, setting up his pitch.
    “Little Richard,” the guy answered, like he was in school. “I Don’t Know What You Got.”
    “He was alive in Sixty–five, Lord!” the Prof intoned. “Open the door. Tell me more. Who’s that on guitar.”
    “Jimi Hendrix,” the young guy said. “Sixteen years old. Before he— “
    “It was a big hit?” the Prof asked, setting up his speech.
    “No, not really. Made the Top Twenty on the Rhythm and Blues chart, but…”
    The Prof turned to his audience. “You all just heard it. The best song ever done. And never made it to Number One. Even if you escape with your life, the shark always leaves his mark. Case fucking closed.”
    We all bowed our heads, even the black guy in the fez.
     
     
    “W here’s Clarence?” I asked the Prof. We were standing on the curb outside of Boot’s joint— the Prof high–fiving a goodbye to Solly, me waiting patiently so I could talk to him alone.
    “He’ll be along,” the Prof said. “What’s on your mind, ‘home?”
    “Weird stuff. A girl. Client, I was told. She made a pitch, but I don’t— “
    “Danger stranger?” the Prof interrupted.
    “That’s just