Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

cloud of smoke in the room. Cigarettes give you attitude, atmosphere. And cancer.
    My throat felt fine again. But I was losing my mind.
    I was just headed out the door to buy a pack when I saw Nick walking down the hall. He was shaking his head, roadie’s flashlight stuck in the pocket of his motorcycle jacket, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
    Nick had blond hair down to his shoulders and the heavyset, blockish build common to a lot of roadies. When he was bent over, hooking things up, the back of his jeans usually drooped low enough to show the elastic band on his underwear. “You wanna know what the hell happened?” he said gruffly. “I’ll tell you what happened. We got fucking held up by a couple of Latina biker chicks is what happened.”
    “I don’t think I’ve heard this one before,” I said.
    “Go ahead, laugh if you want. They said they’d give us a ride down to the club if we’d get them in free. Said their bikes were parked back in the alley behind one of the new discos off Red River and Sixth. I swear there’s a dozen new ones opened since we left town.
    “So we follow them back to the alley and that’s when one of them pulls a .357 Magnum and says free up your cash. We did, then they made us strip so we wouldn’t chase ’em.”
    “But you did anyway.”
    “Damn right. They were a couple of tough babies. But we chased after them when they headed back for Sixth Street. Hell, we didn’t think they’d shoot us in front of all those people cruising the strip. We would’ve caught those bitches, too, but a couple of beat cops nabbed us right outside of Raven’s. We had to spend the night in jail. I called you, man. How come you didn’t come down and bail us out? Haven’t you checked your answering machine?”
“I’ve had problems of my own.” I told him about them. The knockout cocktail, the girl in a coma, the circumstantial evidence . . .
“Damn,” he sighed. “I’m sorry. Anything I can do?”
“I’ll let you know.”
    “Sure thing,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Say, I was wondering if me and Steve could get an advance on the next gig. I know we missed last night but it wasn’t our fault ...”
    I gave him a couple of twenties out of the Continental Club pay. “Try to stay out of trouble, OK?”
    He started out the door and gave me a funny look. “You’d better talk to Leo, Martin. I really think he’s losing it.”
     
     
    &&&
     
     
    After Nick left, I sat down with my thoughts for a while. Leo had always been a little zany. Up until this last road trip he’d seemed, if anything, slightly manic depressive. Sometimes he’d brood for days inside his house, not venturing outdoors unless it was for a gig. Then he’d play guitar like a house on fire. I didn’t worry about him then.
    Politicians have to be a little crazy, comedians have to be a little crazy. So do musicians. Leo and I had discussed this at length late one night as we drove from Columbus, Ohio, to New York City. Driving such a long distance between one- nighters makes irony a constant companion. Philosophy comes easy. Because what were rock and blues and jazz after all? What was music to us was always noise to someone else. You dedicate your life to something that is basically noise. Is that crazy or what?
    The people I played with were fanatics for the blues. The blues had evolved more or less directly from traditional African music, the call-and-response chants of slaves in the fields, and the gospel singing of the poorest of the poor black cornfield workers in the Mississippi Delta. It was the legacy of black Americans, but we were hooked on it, too. The guys in this particular band may have been white, but we didn’t identify with white bread America either. Being born white and middle class didn’t mean we had the keys to the castle, and although we stood more chance of ending up with jobs on Wall Street than a kid from the ghetto, it was just as unlikely.
    So there we were, making