Last of the Independents. Sam Wiebe
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getting one. And a ridged plastic office mat to go underneath it.”
“Oh, you have to get the mat.”
“It’s more of an investment then an accessory, really.”
“Have to spend money to make money.”
After doling out my debit card to the cashier, we ran through the rain, pushing our purchases down to where we’d parked. We folded down the van’s seats and squeezed everything into the back, abandoning the shopping carts on the curb.
As Katherine inched out of the parking spot, I said, “How many government jobs let you pick your furniture?”
“You know,” she said, “there are always going to be other students looking for part-time work.”
“It took a long time for me to get used to your many shortcomings. I don’t want to go through that every year.”
“What you mean to say is, it’s hard to find someone gullible enough to administer a suppository to your dog.”
“Is that what I mean?” The dashboard clock read 11:40. I brought out Django’s itinerary and gave Katherine directions to Enola Curious Studios.
“We’ll be quick,” I promised.
The studio was on the third floor of a yellow building just off Broadway and Quebec. Katherine parked beneath an overhanging maple tree behind the property, her boyfriend’s mother’s silver Odyssey slotting between a beige Vanagon and a custard-coloured Mustang.
The studio’s double-door back entrance was locked. We walked around and caught the front door as a skinny beret-wearing kid was exiting. He looked grateful for the help as he maneuvered his upright bass through the doorway.
On the landing, three forty-year-olds in punk regalia were passing around a joint. Two of them leered at Katherine. The third leered at me. Only as we reached the last flight could I hear soft music from inside. As I opened the hallway door the music got louder, and by the time we were standing at the studio entrance I recognized the song as a thrash-metal cover of “The Way You Look Tonight.”
“Get it? Because it’s ironic,” I said to Katherine as I knocked on the door.
The music cut off. I knocked again. Bare feet padded across the carpet. The door opened and a woman ushered us in. Before I could ask if she was Amelia Yates or Yeats she had disappeared through a glass-paned door at the end of the hall.
On the left side of the hallway was a live room with a piano in the corner, patch-cords snaked across the floor, and a drum kit in the centre surrounded by a forest of microphones on boom stands. The walls were covered with ribbed foam. Movable baffles had been set up around the kit. The right side of the hall led to smaller rooms: a storage closet containing, among other things, a Fender Rhodes and a sitar, two isolation booths with ancient-looking Koss headphones hanging off music stands, and a break room with a pink-upholstered couch.
“Must be worth a fortune,” Katherine said.
From the glass room the music blasted out, stopped, blasted out, stopped.
I opened the door to the central booth. The woman was facing away from us, staring at a pair of computer monitors each bigger than my grandmother’s television. Her crescent-shaped mahogany desk was flanked by speakers, no doubt positioned equidistant from her ears. A half-finished bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper with a pink straw stuffed inside sat next to the office chair.
“Miss Yates?” I said.
“Just a sec, just a sec.” She manipulated a wave form on one of the screens, pulled down a menu on the other. She held up her hand, gesturing for us to wait.
The walls were decorated with framed photos, a gold record, a letter of nomination from the Juno Awards, an official thank-you from some fundraiser. I was looking for clarification on the Yates-Yeats question, but the documents were evenly split. I picked out faces in the photos. The crème de la crème of Canadian music superstardom: the bald guy from the Tragically Hip, Randy Bachman’s brother, one of the bald guys from the Barenaked Ladies, Dan Ackroyd in his Elwood Blues get-up, Randy Bachman’s son, Colin James, Avril Lavigne, the bald guy from Hard Core Logo, and Randy Bachman. And on the door, a very nice signed photo of a young Amelia Yates or Yeats in between the Wilson sisters from Heart.
“Look,” Katherine whispered, nudging me no doubt to inspect one of the photos. Instead she pointed to Yeats’s chair. “Same as the one I just bought.”
“Then you’ve got a lot in common.”
“Okay, sorry,” Ms. Yates said, swivelling to face us. “Just have to bounce this down for those creeps in the hall.”
The song started up again and we were forced to endure the entire two minutes and fifteen seconds. When it finished, she said, “How’s it sound?”
“Fine,” Katherine said with exceeding politeness, or at least her version of it.
“I’m sure The Man will feel it’s been suitably stuck to him,” I said.
“Punk’s not my thing either,” she said, “but you have to admit those drums sound lethal.”
She was unnervingly beautiful. To give a laundry list of her attributes with a poetic rendering of measurements and hues would miss the quality that made her that way — brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, purple slacks, and an oversized Joan Jett tee exposing one perfect shoulder. Mussed hair swept back from her face. She was the kind of impossible thin that we decry in polite company, before retreating to privacy to think about lithe hips and small high firmly sculpted breasts. She didn’t look fragile, though, or arrogant. Just preoccupied.
The tray on her computer ejected a disk. Amelia Yates handed the disk to Katherine. “Could you run this over to them?”
Katherine balked but took the disk and left the room, shooting me a what-a-bitch roll of her eyes.
“Ms. Yates,” I said. “First, is it Yates as in Rowdy or Yeats as in ‘Rough Beast?’”
“Either or,” she said. “It’s a made-up name. My dad always spelled it A-T-E-S because it seemed more American. But he was born in the West Indies, spent most of his childhood in London, and the last thing he wanted was to be reminded of anything or anyone British.”
“Irish,” I said.
“Same difference. So pick a spelling.”
“I like E-A,” I said. “My name’s Mike Drayton, I’m a private investigator.”
“Cliff hired you.”
“Right,” I said.
“He told me this morning you might be coming by.” She pointed to a large grey box in the corner of the room, its empty reels like owlish metal eyes. “That’s the reel-to-reel. I asked him if he had a source for new two-inch tape. He’s working on it. He’s a good guy to know. I’m so sorry about Django.”
“Could you take me through that Friday?”
She nodded, uncapped her soda. “He got here about ten with the Ampex. I had the money for him. We dickered for a little bit.” She shrugged, exposing more of that shoulder. “And then he left.”
“Django was with him the whole time?”
“Pretty much. He likes to bang on the drums, so he did that while Cliff and I discussed price.”
“He seemed okay?”
“Django?” She smiled. “He’s a great kid. I gave him a CD of his namesake, which he seemed to appreciate. He didn’t seem like he got many gifts.”
“You think the relationship with his father was ...” I let her finish the sentence.
“I don’t know. Cliff seems like a good dad. Just strict. But then Cliff could’ve been worried he’d break something expensive. I told Cliff it’s fine, let him play