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Chapter 28
- Texas A&M University Press
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Leon Guidry regarded L.C. Hebert with some misgivings. The two men sat in a corner booth of the coffee shop of the Austin Motel, where L.C. and the band were staying. Hebert, in turn, regarded Neon Leon with equanimity. His manager/lawyer/record company president/booking agent and general all-pro fixer obviously had something on his knotty little mind. L.C. knew there was a certain amount of social discourse to dispense with before they got to it. They’d been chatting about this and that for the better part of an hour; it wouldn’t be long now. “…So I was walkin’ wid Michelle an’ Angela down Telephone Road last Sattidy, an’ yonder comes Lyle Mentone, you know dat sorry bastard, him?” “Yeah,” said Hebert, sipping a cup of coffee. “He told me one time I ought to switch to bass—two less strings to think about. Talk about a waste of skin.” Leon snorted cynically and said, “He looked wasted awright. When I saw him up close, he looked like he’d taken out about forty feet of guardrail. Musta been a long Friday night. “Anyway, me an’ Michelle an’ Angela were strollin’ along, an’ he does a double-take when he sees us. ‘Man,’ Lyle says, ‘You got one CHAPTER 28 187 |28 woman too many…’” Leon paused, savoring his punch line. L.C. made a little rolling motion with his hand to move things along. Leon chuckled—not a pretty sound. “I said, ‘Hey, Lyle, it’s okay…I got two dicks’.” L.C. Hebert laughed appreciatively. Michelle and Angela were his cousin and sister-in-law, respectively, but of course that didn’t matter to Leon. They were both fine-looking women, and L.C. could only speculate on their reaction to Leon’s Noel Coward-esque bon mot. Leon had some funny blind spots, he thought. He’d publicly mortify his friends and kinfolks without a second thought, fuck a rock pile on the off chance there was a snake in it and pistol-whip anybody who jacked him around. But he went to Mass every Sunday, kept five abandoned pug dogs in his two-bedroom shotgun house near the Gulf Freeway and seemed—so far, at least—constitutionally incapable of blindsiding any musician once he had taken him or her under his wing. Guidry himself wasn’t so sure about that last part anymore. He had spent the previous night chewing over his conversation with Senator Cudihay while L.C. finished playing to a packed house at Soap Creek Saloon. Cudihay needed a big wad of untraceable cash, needed it quick, and evidently couldn’t get it elsewhere. It wasn’t a typical shakedown. The Senator had looked pasty and desperate when he braced Leon in the Cloak Room. Scared people made Leon nervous. You couldn’t predict what they’d do. Leon hated bush-leaguers. Give me a stone-cold gangster any day, he thought. Lou-Ellen, you may be a stud duck in the political trenches, but you’re in way over your head on this shit. In the meantime, he could see his client had run out of patience and small talk. “Well, L.C.,” he said haltingly, “I wanna see if you’re happy wid our arrangements. You got a Grammy nomination now, the phone’s ringin’ like crazy, mebbe we’re all gonna get real busy real soon. I was thinkin’, we might wanna talk about, ah, uppin’ the ante on some things, ya know?” “Hey, Leon,” Hebert replied, “I hate paperwork. You book the gigs and pay the band. My management contract is with you, and my recording contract too. You keep track of my royalties, and that’s cool. I trust you been payin’ my taxes to the state and the feds—you damn well better be. You keep me and the band on an allowance—a [3.229.124.236] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:45 GMT) 188 28| per diem, I guess you call it—and that’s enough for me. I just like to have a little whip-out on hand when I want it; I always thought those big flash rolls were for punks, ya know?” L.C. leaned back in the booth and spread his hands. “So, I dunno, man,” he said with a small smile. “The ante already seems pretty up there to me.” “Well, I was thinkin’…” Guidry began, suddenly hesitant. “…Ah, what I thought...