Drake frowned. “That’s by Danny Elfman. It’s film music.”

“It is. Are you saying you are above such things?”

“Not at all. It’s first-rate. But I can’t walk into a film studio and say, let me score a movie. They’d throw me straight out.”

“Of course.” Bonvissuto shrugged. “It is obvious that you don’t start there. Or rather, if you choose to start there, I can’t help you. But a dozen paths can lead in that direction.” He stood up, went to his old oak desk, and picked up a cheap black notebook with a spiral binder. “All the time, I hear of musical markets. I write them down. They are open to you, provided that you don’t insist on writing compositions that break new ground. People are most comfortable with the familiar. They say they know what they like, but really they like what they know. See here.”

He opened the book and ran down the list of entries with his long, thin index finger. “I include concerts and recitals on this list, but for you I strongly recommend composition. Are you willing to write a commemorative overture for the hundredth anniversary of the first heavier-than-air flight? That offers four thousand dollars, for eleven minutes. The time requirement is precise, no more, no less. The work will be played after the national anthem, after a Star Wars selection and before ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ I would not recommend march tempo. Or how about this one, which came to me through private channels: a commission to ghost-write a violin concerto for a Cabinet member with musical delusions of grandeur.”

“What would I do?”

“You would write the music, after listening for half an hour to Lamar Malory’s vague and off-key humming of themes. Your name will not, of course, go on the finished work. His name will. The fee offered, for your music and your silence, is four hundred dollars per composed minute. It is not much, but the music does not have to be very good. In fact, it would be suspicious if it were.”