The Devil of Echo Lake Read Online Free PDF Page B

gear. What’s he running for mic pre-amps? Uh-huh. Why’s he selling?”
    A long pause.
    Eddie laughed. “It’s not about the trends turning against him, it’s about song craft. He should turn off the computer and write some decent tunes again… Yeah…. Yeah… Nobody listens to dance music outside of clubs anyway. House music? Tell him if he wants to write house music he should write another song like ‘Horses in the Surf.’ You write a song like that, you buy a big fuckin’ house. Listen, Marty, I gotta go. Get back to me about those pre’s, okay? Right. Talk to you.”
    Eddie put the phone down, leaned back in his chair, and brushed some pretzel crumbs off his blue denim shirt. He gestured at the bag on his desk, “Pretzel?”
    “Thanks, I’m all set.” Jake said.
    “So how are you settling in? Susan tells me you moved out of the cottage. You find a nice apartment?”
    “Yeah. Found a place on Main Street, right at the edge of town, just a few miles from the studio. And my girlfriend is even going to move up and give it a try.”
    “Good, good. How’s the car search going?”
    “I should have a beater soon. Maybe sometime next week.”
    “Okay, well I’m sure you can keep getting rides with the other guys until then.”
    Jake nodded.
    “I have your next assignment. I want you to work on the Billy Moon record in Studio C. Starts on November second—that’s next Tuesday.” Eddie tossed a copy of the November schedule across the desk and brushed his hands together, sending salt grains onto the carpet.
    “Cool. Who’s the engineer?”
    “Kevin Brickhouse.”
    “Wow.”
    “Yeah. It’ll be an education. Trevor Rail is the producer. He’s a little intense, but you’ll do fine. Today I want you to go down there and get familiarized with the Neve board. You have any questions, find Brian. The church is also a residential studio. Sleeps four. I don’t know if Moon is bringing a band with him, but we may put some of them up in the surrounding cottages if it’s a big entourage. The church hasn’t been used for housing in a while, so while you’re down there this afternoon, I need you to help out with moving some antique furniture that’s cluttering up the place. Call James LeBuff’s pager; it’s on the directory. Tell him to meet you there with his truck. Buff already knows which pieces have to go.”
    “Okay.”
    “You also need to call Brickhouse before Friday to find out which mics he wants to reserve.”
    “How long is the project scheduled for?”
    “It’s a big block of time. Moon will be writing in the studio—asinine, but good for us. They have the room until New Year’s Day. After that, it’s booked to another client. Don’t worry; you won’t be on that one, so you’ll be able to catch up on some sleep before you’re re-assigned.”
     
    It was a nice day for a long walk. The first thing Jake saw when the gravel road wound around the bend at the bottom of the hill was the belfry poking out above a stand of pines set against a backdrop of purple hills under drifting cloud shadows. It had rained in the morning and the mist was still burning off the trees. When he reached the church, he saw that Buff’s pickup truck wasn’t there yet. He guessed Charlie Hoffman must have had the trees planted like that to create a privacy screen.
    A working church would have needed to stand out on the hillside to draw the locals to its doors, not hide behind a green curtain like this one. But the imported trees were not yet tall enough to conceal the building entirely. Jake expected it would take six or seven more years with heavy rains before the belfry was obscured.
    Stepping under the canopy of boughs onto a carpet of brown pine needles and twigs glazed with crystallized sap, he found a weathered white clapboard building. There was a horn under the eaves, no doubt wired to the burglar alarm for which he had a code written on a business card in his wallet. A series of stained-glass windows