Carl Hiaasen – Basket Case

A waitress carrying a coffeepot is poised beside our table, staring uneasily at the grungy gauze.

“Stitches?” I inquire politely.

“Seven,” Janet reports. “No biggie.”

“The big bald goon was Cleo’s bodyguard. The long-haired one was her so-called record producer.”

Janet hoots. “That little bimbo has a bodyguard!” She pulls her leg off the table. “Why’d they bust into my place? What’d they want?”

“Your brother’s music.” I signal for the waitress to deliver the check. “Jimmy’s final album.”

“No way!” Janet sits forward, smoldering. “No way. That is not happening.”

“Don’t worry. They’re both dead.”

“If only.”

I slide the Post across the table and point to the headline next to the picture: Airboat Theft Ends in Fatal Crash. Her eyes widen.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go for a drive.”

Certain details of the story need not be disclosed. For instance, there’s no reason for Janet to know that Emma was kidnapped, or that I was shooting a gun at Jerry and Loreal when they swamped.

But I’m telling her enough to paint the picture.

“What they wanted was the master recording of everything Jimmy wrote in the islands. We found it hidden on the boat after Jay Burns was killed.”

“Jay was in on this?”

“At least the pirating of the tracks, yeah. Maybe more.”

“His ‘best friend,’ “Janet says acidly. “I’m so over these people. But why’d they kill him?”

“He got spooked.”

“And what’s with this ‘accident’?” She taps two fingers on the newspaper photo.

“I told Cleo Rio I had the master. We set up a trade. The guys on the airboat were coming to get it when they wrecked.”

“A trade for what?”

“Something personal. Something they stole from me.”

We’re cruising in the Mustang because a busy donut shop isn’t the best place to be chit-chatting about murder.

Janet says, “I can’t believe they shot Tito. Holy shit.”

“They thought he had a copy of the hard drive. That’s the computer box where your brother stored the album tracks. They figured you had one, too. That’s why they broke into your house.”

“This is nuts. Totally.”

“It’s Cleo,” I say.

“But why would she care about Jimmy’s stuff? She’s the one with the dumbass hit song.” Janet gazes out the window, shaking her head. “Crazed,” she mutters.

I ask her if she sat in on any of the Exuma sessions. “Did your brother ever play any of the songs for you?”

“Long time ago,” she says. “He wrote it for some girl, she dumped him for one of the Ramones.”

“What was the name of the track?”

“God, lemme think. Jimmy only had a few lines written. Mostly he just hummed and played along on the guitar.”

“Would you know it if you heard it again?”

“I dunno. I remember it was a really nice song, but we’re talkin’ like three years ago. Maybe longer.”

I insert the disc of “Shipwrecked Heart” into the stereo and twist up the volume. Janet hunches intently toward the speakers. After about eight bars she says, “Pull the car over!”

This requires some slick navigating, as we are boxed in the center lane on the interstate.

“Jack, come on!” She’s beating the dashboard with both fists.

Flashing my headlights, I shoot through a Fiat-sized gap between two eighteen-wheelers. Snaking a course toward the shoulder of the highway, I’m greeted by upraised digits from a corpulent biker and a swarthy businessman in a Lincoln. As I brake to a halt, Janet begins stabbing at the buttons on the stereo console.

“Play it again! I want to hear it again,” she demands tearfully. “Where’s the damn Replay thingie?”

“Calm down. Deep breaths.”

I re-cue the disc and take her hands in mine. Once more we listen to her brother’s song, Janet protesting, “But isn’t that the name of Cleo’s album—’Shipwrecked Heart’? How can that be?”

“Is this the one Jimmy played for you?”

“Yeah, Jack, it’s the same song. He didn’t have a title yet, but now I remember what he called it.”

“Tell me.”

” ‘Kate, You Bitch.’ ”

Gershwin, eat your heart out.

“That was the name of the chick who dumped him,” Janet explains. She shakes a finger at the speaker: “Listen right here, where he’s singin’, ‘Shipwrecked heart, my shipwrecked heart’? When Jimmy did it for me, it was, ‘Kate, you bitch. You skanky bitch.'”