"George R. R. Martin - Armageddon Rag" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

Sandy sat back, took a swig of beer, and mulled on that. Lynch had been out of the news for years, a
has-been even before Sandy was fired from the Hog, but in his day he had been an important man in the
rock subculture. It could be an interesting story. Lynch had always been surrounded by controversy.
He’d worn two hats: promoter and manager. As a promoter, he’d organized some of the biggest tours
and concerts of his day. He’d ensured their success by booking in the bands he controlled as manager,
and by denying those bands to rival concerts. With hot talent like American Taco, the Fevre River
Packet Company, and the Nazgûl under his thumb, he’d been a man to reckon with. At least up until
1971, when the disaster at West Mesa, the breakup of the Nazgûl, and a couple of drug busts started
him on the long slide down. “What happened to him?” Sandy asked.

“It’s pretty kinky,” Jared said. “Somebody busted into his place up in Maine, dragged him into his office,
and offed him there. They tied him to his desk, and, like, sacrificed him. Cut his heart out. He had one
after all. Remember the old jokes? Ah, never mind. Anyhow, the whole scene was kind of grotesque.
Mansonesque, y’know? Well, that made me think of the series you did back around the time that Sharon
Tate got offed, you know, that investigation of… what did you call it?”

“The dark side of the counterculture,” Sandy said dryly. “We won awards for that series, Jared.”

“Yeah, right. I remembered it was good. So I thought of you. This is right up your alley. Real Sixties,
y’know? What we’re thinking of is a long meaty piece, like those in-depth things you used to go for.
We’ll use the murder as a news peg, see, and you could investigate it a bit, see maybe if you could kick
up something the police miss, y’know, but mostly use it as a springboard for a sort of retrospective on
Jamie Lynch and his promotions, all his groups and his concerts and his times and like that. Maybe you
could look up some of the guys from his old groups, the Fevre River gang and the Nazgûl and all,
interview ’em and work in some where-are-they-now kind of stuff. It would be sort of a nostalgia piece,
I figure.”

“Your readership thinks the Beatles were the band Paul McCartney was with before he got Wings,”
Sandy said. “They won’t even know who Jamie Lynch was, for Chrissakes.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. We still have lots of our old readers. The kind of feature I see on this Lynch
business will be real popular. Now, can you write it or not?”

“Of course I can write it. The question is, why should I?”

“We’ll pay expenses, and our top rate. That ain’t nothing to sneeze at, either. You won’t have to sell the
paper on street-corners afterward. We’re beyond that.”

“Terrific,” Sandy said. He wanted to tell Jared to go get stuffed, but much as he hated to admit it, the
assignment had a certain perverse attractiveness. It would be nice to be in the Hog again. The paper was
his baby, after all; it had turned into a pretty wayward and superficial kid, but it was his, nonetheless, and
still had a lingering hold on his loyalties. Besides, if he did this Lynch piece, it would help restore some of
the old Hog quality, if only for an instant. If he passed, someone else would write the article, and it would
be more trash. “I tell you what,” Sandy said. “You guarantee me that I’ll get cover billing with this, and
you put it in writing that the piece will be printed just the way I write it, not one word changed, no cuts,
nothing, and maybe I’ll consider it.”

“Sandy, you want it, you got it. I wouldn’t think of messing around with your stuff. Can you have the
piece in by Tuesday?”