Bahama Burnout by Don Bruns

Author:Don Bruns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A year ago he could have stayed at the Cove. Or even the Royal Towers, at $25,000 a night. Davis stood under the portico, watching as the fancy cars pulled up, letting out the high rollers, the posers, the tourists, and the opulently rich tenants of Atlantis.

Not too many years ago, the place was a one-trick pony owned by Merv Griffin. A Club Med. Now it was an industry in itself. And he really couldn’t afford much of it. Not after the year that Johnny Run had had.

“Sir? Are you waiting for your car?” The uniformed man gave him a puzzled look.

“Uh, no. Just trying to soak the whole place in.” He watched the Jaguar convertible pull up and a blonde in a tight sequined dress stepped out. Another attendant escorted her to the entrance as Davis’s parking attendant nodded and moved on to three men with outlandish tropical shirts that did little to hide their over-the-belt paunches.

You could have it all in the Bahamas. Davis had smoked a couple of joints and had a couple of Jack Daniel’s on the rocks just to steel himself for the experience. Then he’d taken the cab. He had a couple of thousand dollars in hundreds. It was money he could ill afford to lose, but he might need it tonight. It might not be enough but it was going to have to get him through.

The bright night-lights beamed on the gigantic seashells that seemed carved into the exterior, and the lights shone on the monstrous seahorses that paraded around the building and gazed into the artificially green-blue waters. It all made him sad. He wanted back on that horse, the one that crossed the finish line first.

He’d read the story. Teddy Bartholomew was dead. Supposedly strangled. And he’d been by there last night. His memory was foggy, but he knew he’d been there. He couldn’t remember why. He’d taken a taxi to and from and maybe somebody could place him at the studio. Maybe somebody like the driver would place him, remembering that he got out, walked the grounds, then got back in. Maybe somebody would remember, but at the moment no one had knocked on the door of his shabby room. There was nothing in the local paper about any suspects.

Just that phone call, congratulating him for causing a buzz. Stirring something up. Someone assuming that he’d killed Teddy Bartholomew. So maybe he quietly needed to take the credit. Because he stood to make some serious money if Johnny Run came roaring back. Serious money. The kind of money that would buy a room at Atlantis. The kind of money that would put him back at the high-roller table.

And the syndicate, this shadowy group of investors, had made it pretty clear that he should do everything in his power to see that Johnny Run came roaring back. Because if the band didn’t produce, if this record didn’t “hit one out of the park,” if the syndicate took another hit, Grant Davis was in some deep shit.

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