Sedona Law 6 by Dave Daren (best non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

film community now. It’s super exciting, and that’s the kind of… zeitgeist… I guess Leila and I got swept up in.”

I didn’t respond. Maybe we really were on the ground floor of something new and fresh in Sedona.

I also couldn’t believe someone had just used the word zeitgeist properly in a sentence without sounding like a pretentious asshole.

Chapter 6

I met the remaining members of the James Matthews band at Slingers that evening. I perfectly timed my arrival so as to miss the majority of the Merle Haggard covers, but not late enough that the guys would have disbanded for the evening. But, it was clear as I walked through the parking lot that I hadn’t quite missed all of the Merle as the loud music blared down the whole block.

Slingers was an old west cowboy bar, with spurs on light up sign and real wooden saloon doors. Inside, were black and photos of Roy Orbison and John Wayne, and there was a wall inside that had recently acquired a sign stating that Billy the Kid had once shot it. The sign was accompanied by a burn hole, that I suspect was created by a screwdriver and a blow torch.

I walked in to a bored looking tattoo covered bouncer with a handlebar mustache and a patriotic t-shirt.

He eyed me with much less suspicion than he had the first time I had had to come here. But I was still not quite sure he liked me.

“Land o’ the free,” I fist pumped as I passed him.

He grinned and nodded vigorously. “Don’t tread on me.”

I was now officially on the approved list at Slingers. I entered the dimly lit room, and ordered a beer from a waitress dressed like a bar wench.

It was the tail end of Mama Tried done without James Matthews. I sipped my beer, and listened reverently to the band members whose grief spilled out of their music.

The set ended, and the man I recognized as Gary from the photo, glanced toward me and conferenced with the band. They all approached me.

“Hi,” I stood and shook their hands. “I’m Henry Irving. I wondered if I could have a word with you.”

The band members all nodded somberly and took seats at the table with me and then they introduced themselves. They all looked to be in their thirties or early forties. Steve’s mid-neck length wavy hair was pulled back into a ponytail and he wore baggy slacks and a polo. Charlie had a salt and pepper beard and wire rimmed glasses, and Tim wore a black fedora hat, black sport jacket with a blue dress shirt, and jeans.

Roy was a burly man about ten years older than all of them, and my first impression of him was that he could be a bouncer. He had silver hair that reached his mid neck, and big meaty hands. Today he wore black slacks, and a black button down shirt that barely hid his ample beer belly.

Gary and I had spoken earlier, and he had light brown hair, tousled neatly, and deep set blue eyes. He wore a plain blue t-shirt and jeans, with a black windbreaker.

The bar wench waitress handed beers all around.

“On the house,” she said. “James was a good man.”

“Thank you,” Roy raised his bottle to her, and she smiled and left.

“Henry Irving,” Charlie the bassist said and he shook his head. “Your dad’s a shredder.”

The guys all laughed and agreed, and I listened to them tell a couple of stories about my dad.

“Good man, good man,” Charlie concluded.

“Yes, he is,” I said. “But that’s not who we’re here to talk about.”

The mood at the table sobered immediately.

“Kelsi is in a lot of trouble,” I said. “I know that you guys care about each other, your wives. What I want to know is--”

“I love James,” Charlie interrupted me. “Don’t get me wrong. May he rest in peace. But, he was…”

“A shrewd businessman,” Gary  finished.

Everyone at the table agreed.

“In a good way,” Tim added.

His lack of sincerity was transparent. I was onto something here.

“In what ways?” I asked.

“We weren’t getting paid a lot after shows,” Gary admitted. “James would take the check after the show, and then he’d make up some kind of reason. We would have a bunch of shows in a row, and he’d say ‘Oh, I’ll just put in all one in big check,’ and then when the final checks came out, it was like...this is not for four or five shows.”

Embezzlement. I had seen that before.

“Well now,” Roy, the band’s manager, interrupted. “We had a lot of overhead. And I gave you those numbers. Despite whatever personal issues you might have had with James, the money was legit.”

Gary and Charlie exchanged glances and then looked down at the table.

“Anyway,” Charlie raised his eyebrows dismissively. “The big deal was this thing in Vegas.”

“Vegas,” Gary and Tim repeated in unison.

“So, the thing in Vegas…” Tim rolled his eyes and then sipped his beer and slammed the bottle on the table. “Should we even talk about Vegas? Is that all water under the bridge, considering that you know, it’s not going to happen?”

“He’s trying to free Kelsi,” Gary gestured toward me. “He needs to know everything that was going on.”

“Is it relevant, though, to Kelsi’s case?” Tim asked.

“Who knows?” Gary answered.

“Fuck it,” Charlie shrugged in agreement. “The residency in Vegas was originally supposed to be--”

“He cut us all out,” Tim interrupted. “He said that they only wanted him and that they were going to hire a whole new batch of guys. He told us earlier that night at SNL.”

“So he had fired all of you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Tim rolled his eyes and rubbed his palms on his jeans. “Tacky. Just a