“Holy shit.”

“That’s just half of it. When this crying wave hits the audience, the Prisonaires lose it too. They try to go on singing but they can’t. They’re separated from these women, from their mothers, everyone, by the distance of the stage. And they start bawling too. They’re clinging to each other, clinging to microphones and chairs. Trying to reach out, but the guards push them back. It’s like, I don’t know, like Guernica, Jared. It’s a scene you don’t forget.”

“I can really see this.” Jared sounded astonished at his own powers of visualization.

“Of course you can. Okay, so, back up: the governor. He’s getting reports on this stuff. He’s riding a tiger and he’s afraid it’s going to eat him alive. So he springs a couple of the guys. His opponents are roasting him alive, but he springs them anyway. And that’s when a plan emerges. The governor’s got a crafty little aide, a Kissinger type, who suggests they leave Johnny Bragg inside. Bragg’s the one carrying the heavy sentence, and he’s the songwriter, the lead voice-the genius. Split the band away from him and maybe the story can be allowed to die out.”

“No.”

“It’s horrible, but yes. That’s how they play it. They pardon all four of the other Prisonaires, one by one. Everybody’s waiting for Bragg to come out and join them. Looks like a happy ending, but it’s too good to be true. The governor’s enemies on the right have him in a box. So he makes a show of being tough on crime by leaving Bragg inside. The warden cuts off his privileges. The hope is that without the music, this thing is destined to blow over.”

“Jee sus.”

Jesus, yes. Where was I unearthing this crap? I was pitching the Oliver Stone version.

“But Bragg doesn’t quit making music. With all his Prisonaires on the outside, he forms a new prison group, the Marigolds. Years are going by here, you understand. They’re squeezing the life out of this man. In ’56 Johnnie Ray records a cover of ‘Just Walkin’ in the Rain,’ and Bragg gets a check in prison for fourteen hundred dollars-he tells them just to put it in the commissary, he thinks it’s for fourteen dollars. He’s never seen so much money in his life. But he’s got no way to spend it. The Marigolds record a few numbers for Excello Records, but nothing really hits.”

“What’s with Marigolds?”

“There was a craze for flower groups, the Clovers, the Posies, stuff like that. Just like everybody had to be bugs a few years later-the Crickets, the Beatles.”

“Ah.”

“Bragg doesn’t get parole until ’59, six years after the Prisonaires’ first hit. And then he only lasts a year before they set him up for another fall. He’s charged with robbery and attempted murder-for stealing two dollars and fifty cents. Pathetic. White women come forward again, claiming he tried to attack them. He’s a magnet for these kinds of accusations. It’s classic race panic, and Bragg’s this symbol that pushes everyone’s buttons. The man must have had some kind of presence, some pride when he walked down the street, that these white authorities couldn’t abide. They just had to put him back inside, it was their way of coping.”

“I don’t know if you’ll like this but I’m totally picturing Denzel Washington.”

“Listen: that year Elvis Presley, fresh out of the army, detours his trip home to visit the state prison to hang out with Bragg. Picture it, the same weird little kid who was hanging around the studio admiring the Prisonaires harmonies is now the biggest entertainer on the planet. And he remembers Bragg, it matters to Elvis. The thirty-year-old black con and the King. The visit gets publicity, but only for Elvis. No one remembers Bragg’s case anymore, and the Prisonaires are a distant memory. Elvis offers to pay for a lawyer, but Bragg says it’s okay, he’s cut a deal. There’s nothing on paper, no proof, but Bragg’s promised the warden not to push the case to the Supreme Court in return for a promise he’d be out in nine months.”

I paused, then, to set it up.

“Yeah?”

“They kept him another seven years.”

“You’re killing me, Dylan.”

“It goes on and on. In the sixties he re-forms the Prisonaires again, this time with a white guy in the group-it’s the era of integration now. But the other prisoners don’t like it, he gets attacked in the yard. Later he gets out again and marries a white woman, and the cops arrest him for walking down the street with her-”

“Stop, okay? Stop. Don’t tell me any more.”

Jared had been growing steadily more agitated for some time, and now he sprang from his seat, bugged his eyes, and paced to the desk.

“Is something the matter?”

“Everything’s great, Dylan. It’s just-who else knows about this?”

“You’re the first.” I assumed this was the answer Jared had to hear. Needless to say, the Prisonaires story had only been sitting around for thirty-odd years, waiting to be plucked up. It didn’t belong to me. For all I knew another writer was turning in a polished third draft of his version in the office next door.

I dared ask, “You like it?”

“Are you kidding? It’s pure dynamite. I’m just thinking, okay? I’ve got to think. This is Friday, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Okay, practically speaking, that means I’m not going to find anybody until Monday.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Where are you going from here?”

I suspected ForbiddenCon wasn’t a reply Jared would easily make sense of. It wasn’t that easy for me to make sense of myself. “Back to my hotel.”

“Don’t shit me.”

“I’m not.”

“Because a part of me, wow, a part of me doesn’t want to let you out of my office until I know what we’re doing with this, until I get something from you that I can take into a meeting and a promise you’ll give me a couple of days from the weekend. Forty-eight hours at least. Do you want a tissue, mister?”

“Sure.” I’d tear-streaked my face, evoking Johnny Bragg’s dilemma. I wonder how many of Jared’s pitches wept in this office. Maybe all of us, by the end.

Jared plopped his tissue box on my love seat, then leaned over his desk, onto the intercom.

“Mike?”

“Yes?”

“Mike, I just heard something great. This is what I’m always telling you-you never know how it’s going to happen. Some boat-guy’s friend just walks into my office and it’s this writer Dylan and Dylan has something really great, really really great.”

“That’s incredible,” said Mike.

“No, it’s really incredible.”

“Wow.”

“Mike, I need Dylan’s agent right now.”

“Sure.”

Jared turned from the desk. “I know this is moving fast but I just want to say, Dylan, you and I are going to be putting our kids through college on this.”

“Okay.” I blew my nose.

“If I can’t make this movie I’m going to kill myself.”

“I guess that means you have to make the movie.”

“That’s exactly what it means. Holy shit.” He was amazed at himself, understandably. Large events were occurring, and he was at their center. “I need something on paper.”

“I don’t have much written down,” I bluffed.

“I need to be able to explain. I have to make other people get it. I need something on paper, like what you said. What you said was so amazing. It has to be like that.”

“It wouldn’t take long.”

“You’re saying there’s nothing?”

“Not yet.”

“This is bad, Dylan. I really, really need this so I can make someone else see.”

The intercom clicked. “Jared?”

“What?”

“I don’t have an agent for Dylan.”

“I thought I told you always to get contact information. You remember me telling you that?”

“It’s my fault,” I stage-whispered, wanting to protect Mike.

Jared released the intercom. “I’m not into games,” he said.

“Neither am I. Just let me call my agent first, okay?” I had no agent, nor the remotest notion where I’d begin looking for one. “He doesn’t actually know a lot about this whole thing.”