Platinum Blues by William Deverell

Author:William Deverell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2013-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

At a non-commercial hangar at the Burbank airport. Oliver greets Ford and Oriole’s veep for legal, a Mr. McRae, and a relaxed and hearty Tommy Klein, all suited up for court. Oliver’s in jeans.

Klein quickly draws him aside. “Play it cool, old boy.”

“Why?”

“We’ll have a chance to talk.” He gives Oliver heavy eye intensity, he’s got an important confidence to share.

“Why is he here?” Klein indicates Charles Loobie, who is shaking hands with an irked-looking Ford.

“I want someone along who makes accurate notes.”

“Here’s the thing, we couldn’t get anything bigger in a floatplane than a Cessna 185. With the weight, we can squeeze one more guy in the back, but that has to be Judge Sherman’s clerk, that’s five maximum crew including me as pilot.”

“You as pilot.”

“I’ve flown hundreds of these suckers. Own my own.”

“Oh, yeah, I read in Trial Lawyer, Vietnam ace, too.”

“The thing is we don’t have room for Loobie.”

“Kick out Mr. McRae.”

****

On the first leg of the trip, aboard Oriole’s Lear, Bennie Ford morosely watches Loobie pour paragraph after paragraph into his writing pad. Klein is up beside the pilot, he’s flown a lot more complicated machines than this. Opposing counsel has The Right Stuff. We’ll have a chance to talk. He wishes Klein would stop treating him like a fool.

Over a cup of coffee, Oliver rereads their two experts’ opinions. Persuasive enough, if you don’t dig into them, but phrased too coyly, relying on what Dr. Aloysius Rigby described as “colorable variations.” Colorable, said Oliver’s expert, in the sense that alterations to the plaintiff’s song — some notes and bars here and there — seemed unnatural and purposeful, intended to deceive, to make the unauthentic seem original.

Rigby’s report is full of muscle. These two hasty studies by company stooges are all skin and bones.

The affidavits are of more interest. Ford’s says Arson Garson and Splint are “not known” to Oriole Records. His company is grossly insulted that it could be accused of dealing with song pirates. Tom Slider brought the song into the recording studio on Wednesday, August third. It is true he had some assistance with the lyrics, but Oriole Records has every confidence he is the composer. The plaintiff Gilley is known to have strong negative feelings about Oriole Records. Attached hereto as exhibits are newspaper clippings quoting the plaintiff as saying such and such.

Oliver looks at one of them from Variety. “Label Sucks, Says Singer.”

Slider swears he wrote the song unassisted, no mention of the magic ’shrooms, let alone of the fact Bennie Ford told him to say nothing about said ’shrooms. So Oliver has evidence of deceit here, deceit by omission.

“I was at the aforesaid time staying at an apartment on Wilshire Boulevard. On the third of August while practising my guitar I began to meditate and had what for lack of better words I have publicly described as a psychic experience. That was a metaphor to describe the strong creative feeling I was enjoying as I was in the process of composing ‘Goin’ Down for the Last Time.

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