BLACK Is Back by Russell Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

case.”
    Roxie sat back, apparently relieved. “Awesome. Where’s the check? I’ll go deposit it.”
    “I haven’t actually gotten it yet.”
    “So when you say you ‘snagged’ the client, what you mean is that you didn’t get any money. Is that about right?”
    “I will. I see his manager today at five.”
    “Cool. Then I won’t have to start looking for another job this week. That’s a load off my mind.”
    Black spied the flyers and picked one up. On it a fuzzy photo of Mugsy glowered back at him, with the banner headline, “Lost Cat” across the top, Mugsy’s description under the photo, and then a host of tear-away tabs with the office number across the bottom. “Wow. You really did a nice job on these. I can’t imagine how much of your day went into them.”
    “I need you to put them up all over the neighborhood. I was thinking you could start this evening.”
    “You want me to put these up? Not you?”
    “I’ve got a gig tonight. Sound check’s at six.”
    “I see. Did it ever occur to you that I might have something planned this evening?”
    “Come on. You can fit in a few hours. The most important thingis to hit all the places around here.”
    “I’m sensing a ‘no’ here. Yes, that’s definitely what I’m picking up. No. No, no, no.”
    “So you’ll choose your own selfish desires over Mugsy? No wonder he hates you,” Roxie muttered.
    “I thought you said he didn’t.”
    “I just said that so you wouldn’t be so embittered about having to pay for his food and kitty litter.”
    “I knew it.”
    “Then again, I could be lying to get back at you for refusing to help.”
    Black went into his office and removed his hat and jacket, then called out to Roxie. “Pull up everything you have on B-Side and send it over.”
    “I can’t hear you. I’m listening to B-Side.”
    “Yes, you can, or you wouldn’t know I said anything.”
    “Sorry. I’m not making you out.”
    “Roxie…”
    “Check your email.”
    Black did, and began sorting through the mountain of information she’d sent. The first batch of articles covered B-Side’s rise up the charts with his debut album, Pimped Bitch . The critics had been universally positive on the release, making flattering comparisons to Blunt for the album’s lyrical depth and hypnotic beats, and praising his flashy videos and stage show.
    Next were a number of columns on feuds B-Side was involved in, the most heated one between himself and a young rapper named 2Bad, for whom B-Side had no love, having called him a chump, a bitch, fronting, and every other epithet in the rap lexicon. 2Bad apparently had the same lack of respect for B-Side, and the rhetoric had grown increasingly ugly over the past few months, made worse by a different feud between B-Side’s record label, run by Miles Ferris, and 2Bad’s, which was Blunt’s former label, Laughing Dead Productions. The head of the label was a notorious rap impresario named Maurice Quantrel, better known as Moet, who had discovered numerous talents, including Blunt, and was rumored to be entwined with the drug gangs that ruled the poorer areas of South Central.
    Black’s head started to hurt just trying to keep all the rivalries straight, not to mention the monikers. Why the hell didn’t they have normal names, like REO Speedwagon or AC/DC? How could anyone differentiate between a Blunt, a 2Bad, and a B-Side? Especially as an ex-musician, the entire phenomenon escaped him, where the singers didn’t sing and nobody played an instrument…and that was the most popular form of music in the nation?
    He realized as he was thinking it that he sounded like an old fogey, even to himself. Those kids and their damn music! It’s not even music! All they’re doing is screaming over a drum machine! Reality was that rap had been going strong for over twenty-five years, in the mainstream, and showed no sign of stopping. For better or worse, Black was an anachronism, a throwback to an earlier time