Read Online Cover-Up Story by Marian Babson - Free Book Online Page B

for us, Douggie boy. I’ll admit there are wheels within wheels. It’s an awkward situation.’
    â€˜Then you’d better fill me in on it. You know it’s as important for a public relations man to know what to avoid as it is to know what to publicize.’
    â€˜Well.’ He clawed blindly for a cigarette, avoiding my eyes. ‘It’s like this.’ He paused to light the cigarette, and I lost him again. He stared abstractedly at the match until it burned down almost to his fingers, then he shook it out and took to staring at the lighted tip of the cigarette instead.
    â€˜Come along,’ I prodded him, ‘you can tell me. I’m on your side, you know. I don’t care if Uncle No’ccount runs an illegal still in his backyard down yonder – I’m not going to shop him to the Revenue men.’
    â€˜Naw.’ Sam shook his head impatiently. ‘Nothing like that. There’s nothing wrong with Uncle No’ccount – he’s clean as a whistle.’
    â€˜And what’s buzzing with the Cousins?’
    â€˜You heard about Ezra?’ Sam twitched nervously.
    â€˜That was nothing, really – just kid stuff. Playing around with love potions. It could have happened to anyone.’
    â€˜Not in my circles,’ I said firmly.
    â€˜Yeah, well, not in mine, either. But things are different way down South. So, when he got this wild passion for an older woman four or five years ago, he put some Spanish fly in her drink.’
    â€˜My God! Isn’t that stuff poison?’
    â€˜Yeah, he found that out. He’d given her an overdose, too, to make matters worse. He was lucky she pulled through.’
    â€˜The only reason the jury let him off, I presume.’
    â€˜Hell, it didn’t get that far. I told you she was an older woman – friend of his mother’s, in fact. She didn’t press charges. Soon as she was feeling better, she couldn’t help seeing the funny side of it.’
    â€˜All good clean fun,’ I said weakly.
    â€˜That’s right. And it sure taught Ezra a lesson. We won’t have any trouble with him. And the rest of the Cousins are A-Okay.’
    â€˜Good. That helps narrow the field, doesn’t it?’ I had a fairly shrewd idea to whom the field was going to narrow down, but felt I ought not to rush Sam too much. He’d tell me, now that he’d started. It might take a while, but I hadn’t any plans for the afternoon.
    â€˜I mean, you’ve got to understand the background to this set-up before you can know how awkward it really is.’
    â€˜Okay, fill me in.’
    â€˜Sure, I’m going to.’ Again he gave the imitation of a man wishing someone would yell ‘Fire’ so that he could beat a fast, explicable retreat. No one obliged.
    â€˜You see, it’s like this.’ He gave up with a sigh. ‘They – the Big Boys in New York – have kept their eyes on the Nashville Scene for a long while now. Some really big ones have come out of there since the days of Hank Williams. They may start out as Hillbilly, or Country and Western, but they can be turned into Folk – and that means International appeal today. The Madison Avenue boys keep an eye out for stars they can build, characters with staying power, who can capture the public and keep them. Preferably, ones who won’t go off the rails with a bit of success and start blowing their brains out with LSD, or drinking a couple of quarts of com squeezings and then racing their sports car down a highway playing “chicken” with oil tankers.’
    â€˜And so, with all those sterling qualifications in mind, they picked on Black Bart?’ I said incredulously.
    â€˜Well, uh, no,’ Sam said. ‘As a matter of fact, they picked on Lou-Ann.’
    â€˜Lou-Ann?’ That was even harder to believe. ‘You can’t seriously mean you think that that little –’
    â€˜Cool