Wizard of the Wind Read online

  Crying and almost exhausted, allowed the needle stay in the groove and track through the rest of the album side. Automatically reject and start over again at the beginning. Over and over, the song and the rest of side one, at least a dozen times through.

  Jimmy Gill spent the rest of the night on the floor next to the speaker, clutching the pillow from her bed to his aching heart, as Cleo Michaels sang the songs again and again, just for him. Finally, maybe too late, he was listening to her.

  Listening as she begged for his returned love in every verse.

  As she pleaded for his heart with every chorus.

  #

  By necessity, Cleo Michaels had long since mastered the ability to disguise herself so she would not be recognized. No make-up, an old scarf, some dime-store reading glasses and she could become as anonymous as she needed to be. No one really expected a star of her magnitude to be checking into the Motel 6 in Morro Bay, California, with one cheap, battered suitcase. Or to be ordering the Mexican omelet for breakfast at Pepe's Eat and Run just off the freeway exit ramp.

  She had disappeared several times before. Pulling in her horns had worked every time so far. It was the cheapest and surest therapy she had found. This latest excursion to solitude had been no exception. She felt better already, just lying there next to the ocean in the middle of a deserted beach watching the unmoving monolithic rock in the bay.

  She had gotten past kicking herself for laying it on the line to Jimmy on the telephone instead of following her original plan: waiting until they could be face to face. But the son of a bitch frustrated the living hell out of her. He could be so wonderful most of the time, so warm, so real. Then other times, he threw up a wall so thick and impenetrable he may as well have been nothing more than just another voice on the radio, talking but not listening.

  "Buenos dias!"

  She jumped, startled, and quickly sat up on her towel. She had not noticed anyone else on the beach. But the man who had spoken had passed on by, walking quickly, waving something flat and metallic above the sand in front of him as he made his way down the beach. A metal detector.

  He was an older man, dark-skinned, in short pants and a golf shirt, with a broad Panama hat shielding his face from the sun. Had he recognized her? Apparently not. She watched him until he disappeared around the curve of the beach. Only then did she lie back down and breathe easily again.

  Cleo had already decided what she had to do. Just not exactly how yet.

  After her last couple of shows, she would lasso the hard-headed so-and-so, tie him down, and they would have their own private little rodeo. Whether Mr. James Gill wanted to or not, he would have to listen to what she had to say. They would finally talk it out. Finally come to some kind of understanding. They would have to decide once and for all if the haphazard waltz they had been doing with each was worth continuing. If so, they would both commit and let the band play on. If not, they would declare “last call” and dance away from each other.

  God, she hoped she could make him listen. Why was it so hard to make Jimmy Gill listen?

  The voice on the radio told her it was "ten minutes leaving eleven o'clock" and her stomach confirmed it. An enchilada platter from Pepe’s was calling her name. Even the screeching of the terns ferrying between the beach and the harbor rock seemed to be urging her on to something hot and spicy and disgustingly fattening.

  As she gathered up her towel and radio and started back to the rental car on the roadway at the edge of the beach, she half-noticed movement a hundred feet down the way, behind the only other car parked anywhere in sight. It was the man with the metal detector, his trunk up, apparently having trouble putting away the instrument. For an odd instant, Cleo thought she could see the man watching her from under the brim of the big Panama hat. But then his head was down, hidden by the trunk lid, trying to fit the long handle and bulky body of the metal detector into the narrow compartment.

  No, he doesn't recognize me, she thought. But it is nice that even the old guys are still checking me out. Ummm. Maybe I will have the tamales instead.

  Putting the rest of her life into some semblance of order had made Cleo Michaels as hungry as a wolf.

  Thirty-seven

  The regular weekly conference call with the station managers had been underway for ten minutes or so. Jimmy was half-listening. His mind was two- thousand miles away from all the loud talk of billings and quotas and capital budgets. But he was forcing himself to listen, to grunt occasionally to let the rest of the guys know he was still there on his end of the telephone line.

  Sammie burst into the office, almost in a panic.

  “He’s here! He’s out there right now,” she stage-whispered and pointed back toward the lobby. “And he wants to see you ‘right damn now.’”

  Even in her whisper, she did a perfectly believable imitation of the oily, grating voice of DeWayne George.

  "Sam, would you please send them on their way, honey," he told her, half-covering the mouthpiece with his hand so the others on the line could still hear him. "I'm spending lots of the stockholders' money and the managers' time on this conference call."

  She looked at him as if he had lost his mind. Had he not told her to interrupt anything...ANYTHING...if DeWayne George showed up?

  "I know, Jimmy, but it's DeWayne. At least I think it’s him. I can’t tell those two apart. Anyway, he says it's a matter of life and death that he sees you right now. That’s what he said. Life and death."

  She looked pale. Jimmy shuddered.

  Naturally, he had been expecting this confrontation, but now that it had blown into the building like a coiled, slicked-down tornado, he wished there was some way to escape from this penthouse office and avoid the blowup. Some way to dodge the storm that he knew was about to rumble through his big polished-oak double doors.

  "Guys, I got to cut it short," he finally said into the telephone, struggling to keep his voice on an even keel. "Y’all can carry on without me. Jerry, you run the meeting, please. Just sell lots of commercial spots and try to collect at least half of the money we’re charging for them and I'll be a happy man."

  They laughed politely as he hit the cut-off button. He paused a moment to gather his strength and click "on" a tiny switch that dangled from a set of wires under the desk near his knee. He then took several deep breaths and was about to rise, to go out to the lobby to escort DeWayne back—as any good host would do. Suddenly though, without warning, the twin filled the doorway like a black cloud, stepped inside the office without invitation, and slammed the door behind him with a sound like a close clap of thunder.

  "DeWayne George! How's it hangin?’"

  "Listen, you skinny-ass bastard. What kind of shit are you tryin' to pull on me?"

  DeWayne stood there, lightning flashing in his eyes, squeezing his thumbs, seething furiously. His words rattled like hail on a tin roof.

  "What do you mean, DeWayne?"

  "I just talked with Duane a little while ago. The damn power company shut us off this morning in Homestead and yesterday afternoon in New Orleans. They took the meters, dammit! And when I called ‘em, they said the CEO of the fuckin’ company ordered it done himself. And while I was checking on that, Duane called to tell me the FCC had called him. They wanted to make sure we weren't still broadcasting. That is, since the president of Wizard Broadcasting had turned in the damn licenses. Have you lost your damn mind?"

  Jimmy did not take time to breathe. He knew he could not stop to think now or he might cut and run for his life.

  "They're my licenses to do with whatever I please, DeWayne. It’s my name up on the top of them. And when I applied for them, I agreed...swore, in fact...to use those licenses to broadcast to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity. That’s what it says right there in the Communications Act of 1937. I don’t see any way that your dope dealing on the airwaves serves the interest or necessity of most of the public in Miami or New Orleans. Nor the convenience of more than a criminal few either."
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  It was just the way he had rehearsed it. He might have been reading live commercial copy on the air. DeWayne took a step back, recovering from Jimmy’s first shot, but he blew even harder when he spoke again.

  "You’re forgetting one important thing, Brother James. I’m the one that give you the money to buy these and most of the other stations in the first place. I was there when it was convenient for you and provided you with one damn big necessity. Money. Cash money. Else you and the nigger would be back in Biloxi playing cow shit country records and screwin’ fat girls."

  "DeWayne, I’ve told you how much we appreciate your loans. I’ll also remind you that there was no paperwork, no proof that we ever took a dime from you and your brother."

  DeWayne tensed slightly. Jimmy could imagine him mentally pulling another card from a deck to play. He fully expected it to be his trump card. It was.

  "Looks like I'll have to let some people know where you got the money to start this little old company, Brother James. They’ll look into it. Where else a skinny deejay and his nigger buddy going to get that kind of money. Cash, too. Lots of people will remember you throwing it out there on the table. And I’ll let ‘em know how we used the new stations to tell our runners where and when our dope was coming in. The FCC would love to get that kind of information I expect. Find out what kind of outlaw they been giving their precious licenses to."

  "Exactly where did I get that money you’re speaking of, Dewayne?"

  DeWayne paused for an instant, not ready for the question.

  "I loaned it to you, of course, you son of a bitch!"

  "And did I pay you back? Every damn penny? And with extremely generous interest?"

  "Yeah, but that ain't the point and you know it."

  "What is the point, DeWayne?"

  "You knew where that money came from. You knew all along that me and Duane was selling 'smoke' and cocaine all up and down Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia!"

  "Did I or anybody else associated with these stations ever sell any dope? Did Detroit Simmons or I ever actually see you or your brother sell any dope to anyone? Did you not include with each package of cash a tally of the money and a note from you with your signature written on the letterhead of legitimate, functioning businesses that were incorporated and run under yours and Duane’s names? Do I have any proof that you sold dope for the exact cash money you loaned us to start the company? That it was anything but the proceeds of completely above-board companies?"

  "No, but..."

  "Haven't you and Duane owned and run legitimate businesses all along? Don’t you have a used car dealership in Pascagoula? An appliance rental store in Pensacola? A package delivery company in Birmingham?"

  "Sure, we have," he admitted, confused, but he looked at Jimmy warily, probably wondering where he had gotten the information. "We got to have fronts to work out of. My competition could spot us coming a mile away. Feds see us flashing the kind of money we make with no legit business to generate it, they’re on us like stink on shit."

  "Then how do I know that the money you loaned me and that we so generously paid back in a timely manner, and with interest, didn't come from the legal businesses you were running? Loans generously offered by childhood friends from Birmingham?"

  "Money's money!" he practically shouted. “You know damn well where most of that money...”

  "And, DeWayne, did I know anything at all about what you were doing on the stations in Miami and New Orleans until I went down there and saw it for myself? And almost got my skull fractured by one of your thugs for all my trouble? Did you tell me beforehand?"

  "Naw, and I wish Duane had kept his damn mouth shut when you blundered in down there. Or that Enrique had finished your ass off like he was supposed to do. That’s what we pay him for."

  George turned abruptly and paced back and forth across the office then like a nervous cat, thinking carefully about his next angle of attack in the face of Jimmy’s full frontal assault. Maybe the animal even suspected he might be sticking his paw into a trap.

  Jimmy simply sat there and waited to see what he spit out next. He had no choice but he had the impression no one had bucked DeWayne George before and that the experience was a totally new one for him. Now, whether he wanted to or not, Jimmy Gill would find out if the thug would back down like a beaten bully or strike out viciously like a trapped animal.

  It was the decision he and Detroit had reached two days before. Whether George struck back or slithered away, Jimmy knew he had to do what he was doing or they would be under his thumb from then on. There was no backing out of this now. Jimmy sucked up all the resolve he could muster and tried to make his voice go as deeply confident as he could.

  "DeWayne, you can go on back to whatever gopher hole you crawled from. You can keep on doing whatever it is that you and your bother do for all your money and leave us alone. Or you can set off such a firestorm that you and me and Detroit Simmons and your brother and your momma and lots of others will get caught up in the whole mess and burn right along with you. Yeah, you might be able to bring me down. But all that you say you've built would be blown to hell at the same time. Hell, from the way you talk, I'd say you're as proud of your little empire as I am of Wizard Broadcasting. Look, DeWayne. You can back off right now, go on about your business, and we can all keep what we’ve built up. Nobody but you and I will ever know what happened between us. Or you can be a big tough bastard like the guys in the movies and push your little vendetta and we’ll all suffer for it. Your choice, man. Your choice."

  Jimmy Gill had said his piece and his voice had only broken a time or two. He prayed that there was at least an ounce of rationality in DeWayne George’s sick mind. That the psychopath was listening to what he had said to him. Jimmy searched for something in the man’s twitching face that might show he had reached George on some level that he could understand.

  But there was not a flicker of understanding or reason at all to be seen there. Instead, he only saw the mottled face of hate. Almost the exact same face Jimmy had seen years before on DeWayne’s father, Hector George, when he had chased Detroit Simmons away from the duplex with his rifle. The same expression on the face filled with vile loathing, visible in the light from the dashboard of DeWayne’s old man’s beat-up car as he plowed through Mr. Polanski's island of beauty back on Wisteria Street.

  Jimmy’s stomach sank. He had gotten adept at reading a man’s intentions by his face, his body language. It stood him in good stead when he was negotiating a deal or shoving some flunky to greater accomplishment.

  Jimmy Gill realized then that he may well have just lost the most important deal he had ever attempted to close.

  It was apparent that the bastard was going to stand and defend his own squalid territory. Do whatever it took to fortify his bailiwick of ugliness. Defend it as readily as his old man had. Screw the consequences! Reason be damned! Nobody could be allowed to bring anything but hideousness and evil onto DeWayne George's block.

  The brute paused for a second, apparently thinking, then stalked some more, suddenly stopped again, spun, slapped an expensive china vase from a table near the window, and methodically stomped its shattered pieces into shards of rainbow glass with the heel of his snake-skin cowboy boot. Finally, he tramped over to the desk and leaned across it, his face only inches from Jimmy’s.

  "I don't know if I can do that, Brother James. Let you or anybody else get away with fucking me like you have. I'm bringing in probably a third of the Mexican marijuana that's bought and smoked in Alabama and Mississippi. A big part of the cocaine, too. And I'm making progress every day against Garcia in South Florida and the Musso family in Louisiana and East Texas, and they don't even know who I am yet. But they will soon. By then, I'll have them by the balls. But you know what happens if they find out their worst enemy got buffaloed by some half-ass skinny disk jockey like you? That I'm weak enough to let you pull a stunt like this and get away with it? And they will find out. Somehow they will."

  S
pit flew into Jimmy’s face as DeWayne forced out the words, as he stabbed Jimmy in the chest with a dirty-nailed index finger. Jimmy swallowed hard before he spoke.

  "There's only one way they'll ever find out about what has happened between us, DeWayne."

  "Okay, smart boy. You tell me how?"

  He fell back and began to pace again as he listened.

  "Well, if you decide to tell the Federal Communications Commission or the Drug Enforcement Administration or any law, you might as well buy yourself some prime time commercial spots on The River and tell the whole world at the same time. The word's going to be all over the place in about a minute. Garcia and the others are almost certain to be wired in to the F. B. I. and the D. E. A., so they're sure to know your name, address and social security number as quick as somebody can get to a telephone after you spill your guts to the feds."

  Then Jimmy paused, allowing DeWayne to mull over the logic of what he had just said. Slowly, Jimmy stood, careful to not make a sudden move that might force the twin toward violence. Jimmy stretched as tall as he could, as if he was merely working out the kinks in tense muscles, but he was checking for something. Making sure for his peace of mind that it was still there.

  If he had only reached up to the chandelier that swung just above his desk, he could have touched the wireless microphone Detroit had put there. He could see it, strapped to a fourteen-karat gold candle holder, but DeWayne could not see it from where he paced. At least, Jimmy hoped he couldn’t.

  Its weak transmitter had been rigged with a power amplifier and a heavy-duty battery pack. The remote power switch was taped to the bottom of Jimmy’s desk drawer. He had barely managed to get it flipped on before DeWayne blew into the office like a gust of bitter wind.

  They were simultaneously making four copies of the tape. One was to be removed from the recorder and placed into an envelope just after DeWayne admitted that he imported and sold drugs and that he had used the radio stations in the course of his trade. It was ready to be delivered to someone who would take a great deal of interest in the nature of the twins’ business dealings.