Characters in Sneakers

“What?” Jannings answered without looking up from the board. Georgie Ronkler was standing off to one side, watching Jannings closely and nibbling a cuticle—cuticles were all he had left to nibble; his fingernails simply did not exist above the point where they parted company with live flesh and hot nerve-endings.

“Shit!” “Indeed it is, but I have a crazy idea it’s gonna go top ten. Have you seen the video?” “No.” “What a scream. It’s mostly Ginger, the chick in the group, playing mudhoney in some generic bayou with a guy who looks like Donald Trump in overalls.

… John Tell had been working at Tabori Studios just over a month when he first noticed the sneakers. Tabori was in a building which had once been called Music City and had been, in the early days of rock and roll and top-forty rhythm and blues, a very big deal.

To say Tell had already forgotten the sneakers would be an overstatement, because they had hardly registered on his mental radar screen to begin with. Paul Jannings was producing The Dead Beats’ sessions.

“Where?” “Same old stand. Tabori at Music City.” “I’m there.” • • • Roger Daltrey not only could sing, he turned out to be a tolerably nice guy in the bargain. Tell thought the next three or four weeks would be good ones.

There were dead flies on its slumped shoulders. There was a grating sound not entirely unlike the one the hinge had made. It was the tendons in the dead man’s neck, Tell realized. Sneakers was raising his head.