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leash?" "Only in election years," I countered.
    "And gave away all the free beer."*
    "For purely medicinal purposes."
    I'd heard all the stories more times than I could
bear. The line between the historical character and the man I
remembered was forever fuzzy, leaving me with a makeshift image of the
old man that was, I suspected, an apocryphal melange of the mythic and
the mundane. I changed the subject as quickly as possible.
    "These days they work for me sometimes."
    She bobbed her head up and down and shook the toast.
    "You're the detective guy, huh? The one George and them always braggin about workin' for."
    "I'm the one."
    "I always thought they was full of shit."
    "They are full of shit. Just not about that."
    She nodded again and went back to work on a newly
arrived plate of hash browns. I leaned back against the cold vinyl of
the booth.
    "What did you mean back there in the jail when you said that was your boy in the paper?''
    She kept her eyes on her plate. "Didn't mean nothing," she said, pushing potatoes around the rim with a triangle of toast.
    She read my eyes. "You think I'm lyin'?"
    "I didn't say that," I protested.
    "But that's what you're thinkin'. It is, huh?"
    "Don't put words in "
    "You ain't the only one allowed to be related to
somebody famous, ya know, Mr. Connections. I wasn't born no damn bum. I
had me a life like anybody else. I " She waved the toast at me. "Never
mind."
    Lukkas Terry had been a dominant light on the
Seattle music scene. Not grunge. Not punk. Not alternative. No
particular label except his own. He was a technical wizard of a one-man
band whose laboriously layered studio renderings successfully crossed
all generational and genre lines. God knows, I'd tried not to like his
music. I'm a dinosaur. For the most part, except for jazz, I make it a
point not to like anything recorded after 1979. There are few
infringements so tyrannical as being forced to listen to some other
generation's music. Terry's music, however, had been an exception.
    His anguished, angry lyrics screamed the fears and
disappointments of an entire generation, while awesome sequencer rhythm
sections drove the music forward like a runaway train.
    Several hundred million other souls agreed. His
work regularly went multiple platinum prior to release. Lukkas Terry
had truly been gifted by the muse. Unfortunately, Lukkas Terry was also
dead.
    Both daily papers had kept strict track of the
legal wrangling surrounding his estate. According to the last article
I'd read, a bit over fifty million dollars was being held in escrow as
the state waited the obligatory ninety days for familial claims. If I
remembered correctly, if no family appeared, both the present estate
and future royalties would fall to his manager and business partner,
Gregory Conover, and his record company, Sub-Rosa Records. And none of
that was the real prize. The big bucks lay in Crotch Cannibals, Lukkas
Terry's as-yet-unreleased final CD. The music trade magazines claimed
that advance orders for Crotch Cannibals would make it, upon the first
day of its release, the largest-selling CD of all time.
    I don't listen to his CDs anymore. My hand quivers
as I pass over them in the racks, but I leave them where they lie. The
circumstances of his passing somehow negated whatever joy they might
still impart. A heroin overdose, for chrissakes. Found blue-faced on
the floor of his Bell town condo with his pants full of shit. What a
shame. What a cliche. Cue the Righteous Brothers. The heavenly band
just got bigger and better.
    Selena poured the rest of the beer down her throat, wiped her lips with the rumpled paper napkin, and slid out of the booth.
    "I'm outta here," she announced, heading for the door.
    "Wait," I said. "Can I--" 
    She stopped, turned, and gave me a rueful smile.
"You can't nothin', Leo. How many times I got to tell you? You keep
this up, I'm gonna have to get you a bell and a tambourine."
    "Well, then, thanks for the help back there in the