by Thomas Zigal
“That was the female. She’s the sweet one,” the man said in a clear British accent. He stared at Kurt with an austere sense of violation. Another rottweiler growled at his side, pulling on its leash, eager to pounce. “But her brother here has a nahsty temper. If you don’t leave these premises immediately, I shall be quite happy to release him.”
“Pitkin County Sheriff,” Kurt said, jerking the leather holder from his hip pocket and raising the badge high in the air. “You sic that dog on me, Gahan, you’ll do time in my jail.”
Gahan Moss seemed both astonished and flattered that Kurt knew his name. But he was an easy make. The years hadn’t ravaged Gahan’s face, as they had those of so many rock stars from his era. Though his hair had thinned to long mouse-colored strands and his waist had spread like a soft pudding, the prominent cheekbones and English jaw held firm, and his eyes had not yet sunk into the dark cadaverous sockets of a former junkie. Perhaps he had undergone a face-lift, like everyone else past fifty in Aspen.
“I assure you the young lady is of legal age,” Gahan said with a wicked gleam in his eye, “if that’s why you’re here, Sheriff.”
Kurt picked up the mangled crutch that had been flung near the hedge like a rubber bone. “Put away the dog and tell the ladies to get dressed,” he said. “I’m here to ask you some questions about Nicole Bauer and Rocky Rhodes.”
“Ahh,” Gahan Moss said, visibly relieved. “Of course.”
By some furtive signal, a subtle yank of the leash, a gentle touch, the rottweiler sat docilely at his feet. “Can’t we shedule this some other time?” he said, glancing toward the picture window where the floodlights burned brightly over a vacant white rug. “As you have no doubt observed, I’m in the middle of something.”
“Re-shedule,” Kurt said. “The world will have to wait another day for the next Gahan Moss masterpiece.”
The musician scratched the top of the rottweiler’s head. He seemed to be considering whether to release the dog and take his chances in court. “On the subject of Nicole Bauer I have nothing to say. The woman was a murderous bitch and should’ve been locked away long ago.”
He had used the word was. “So you’re aware she’s dead,” Kurt said.
“I am aware,” Gahan replied with a scowl. “I can’t say I’m brokenhearted by the news. The slag killed me best friend. They should’ve burned her at the stake when they had the chance, the sodding witch. Her family bought everyone off.”
When Rocky died, so had Gahan’s musical career. Kurt knew he hadn’t cut a record in nearly twenty years, not even as a studio musician.
“Lose the dog and put on some clothes,” Kurt said. “You and I are going to sit down and have a nice long rap about the old days and the way it all went down.”
The interior of the house smelled like marijuana and scorched sex. “Blue Midnight” had finished playing and another Rocky Rhodes classic was channeling through the speaker system. Gahan Moss left him waiting in what had once been the grand room, a circular recessed space as dank and uninviting as a drained pond. The last time Kurt was here, at least twenty-five years ago, this room was a cozy clutter of velvet cushions and wandering plants, the floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with expensive art volumes and colorful masks from Africa and Latin America. Nearly empty now, Gahan’s shelves contained only a scattering of books and stand-up framed photographs of himself and his friends. There was a mounted gold record, other awards. Not enough memorabilia to fill the wide spaces, nor to account for the many lost years since Rocky’s death and the end of the band.
Kurt wandered over to Gahan’s baby grand piano and lifted the dusty fall-board. The ivories had yellowed and cracked like cheap enamel. He placed his fingers in position and played a soft chord, remembering those childhood lessons from his father. The piano needed tuning. No one had cared for this beauty in a long time.
After ten minutes had passed without a sign of Gahan, Kurt wondered if he should go looking for him in the gloomy warren of rooms. He could hear voices raised in argument somewhere in the back of the mushroom, and he imagined the man caught up in delicate monetary negotiations with the two women, reassuring them, begging for another session. Kurt limped over to the bookshelves and examined a row of ornately framed photographs. Hippie musicians and their retinue, draped around one another in smoky clubs, naked in hot tubs, stoned at ancient monuments in timeless lands. The photos spanned an entire generation, from miniskirted young British schoolgirls with long, ironed-straight hair to tough biker mamas in denim and leather. They all looked familiar, a convergence of faces and attitudes from Kurt’s own past. He wondered if one of these young women could be Mariah Windstar. Maybe she was the laughing girl sitting half nude on a speaker amp, over whose ample breasts Rocky and Gahan were pouring streams of wine. Or the Marianne Faithfull look-alike in the floppy hat, pecking a tuxedoed Gahan on the cheek. Or the djellaba-clad groupie wearing dark sunglasses and smiling from the top of a camel.
One photograph aroused his attention, and he lifted the frame to study the image. Two young women were kissing underneath a jungle waterfall, their hair slicked back, beads of water glistening on their beautiful tanned bodies. The smaller woman, dark-haired and slender, wore only a black bikini halter. Her companion was a tall shapely redhead with long muscular legs. He was nearly certain that the redhead was Nicole Bauer.
“I’m delighted to see we share the same preferences in women, Sheriff Muller.”
As instructed, Gahan had returned without the dog or his porno talent. He looked refreshed, as if he’d taken a quick shower. His Ben Franklin fringe of hair was damp and his face glowed with a ruddy heat. He had dressed in jeans and a flowing, puffy-sleeved silk shirt, and his tattered leather boots looked like fashion wear from Carnaby Street circa 1967.
“Don’t worry, your secret is good with me,” the Englishman said, smiling cleverly.
Kurt glanced at the photo again. The image was strikingly erotic. “Who are they?” he asked.
Gahan came closer and paused near the piano bench. “Hmm,” he said, raking a thumbnail across his chin. “Some birds we met on our Hawaii tour in—when was it?—seventy-five or seventy-six, if I’m not mistaken.”
“The redhead looks familiar,” Kurt said, waiting for him to identify her as Nicole.
“Don’t they all?” His laugh trailed off into a wistful regret. “In those days there were enough birds to let a few fly away.”
“How about one named Mariah Windstar? Do you remember her?”
Gahan’s brow wrinkled, a wave of creases rippling high into his sparse dome. “Mariah Windstar, Celeste Starpattern, Ruby Moon-shadow,” he said with a hopeless shrug. “I can’t remember one from the other, Sheriff. Too many years of inhaling. In my mind they’re all the same fuzzy blur of bush.”
Kurt was intrigued by the small dark-haired woman in the photograph. There was a butterfly tattoo near her shoulder blade. “Give it some thought, Gahan,” he said. “Mariah hung with the Aspen crowd. Rocky didn’t like her. He called her Pariah.”
He waited for a visible reaction but Gahan’s eyes remained steady and unyielding. The musician walked over and took the framed photo from Kurt’s hand and placed it back on the shelf, in the same spot outlined in the dust. He seemed touchy about his gilt-framed memories.
“Rocky had a nahsty little nickname for everyone,” he said, shaking his head with a distant smile. “He called me Dickweed when he was angry, which was often enough. I loved the bloke but he behaved like a first-clahs prick.”
Kurt was growing impatient with this charade. “Come on,
Gahan. You remember Pariah. She was with you people when you stole the body.” A calculated guess.
The old keyboard man stood back from Kurt and gave him a cold, harrowing stare. “If that’s what this is about, Sheriff, you’re wasting your time. I wasn’t there.”
“Funny, that’s not what the biography says. I have it out in my Jeep if you’d like to read the chapter where three eyewitness
es—your old running buddies—describe how you masterminded the whole thing.”
A dark smile curled around Gahan’s mouth. “At what point did cheesy rock bios become the measure of reality in this culture, Sheriff Muller? You’d do better to look into allegations that aliens abducted Elvis.”
Kurt slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out Rocky’s ring. “You’re right, Gahan. It’s only rock ’n’ roll,” he said, showing him the ring in an upturned palm. “So why don’t you tell me what really happened to the body?”
Gahan stared at the ring. His face turned ashen. “Where did you get that?” he asked in a husky voice, his words slow and deliberate.
“The last time you saw this thing, it was on Rocky’s finger, wasn’t it?” Kurt watched the shock register in the man’s eyes. “You look a little surprised, Gahan. Is it because Rocky was dead and you were dragging his body around the Arizona desert?”
Gahan studied the ring. “May I see it, please?” he asked.
Kurt extended his hand obligingly and the musician lifted the ring with great care, appraising its facets as if it were a sacred relic.
“I need some answers, Gahan, and you’re the one who’s going to supply them. Otherwise I’ll turn your ass over to the district attorney and he can decide what to do with a washed-up junkie making skin flicks in his jurisdiction.”
Gahan sat down on the edge of the piano bench and gazed at the ring. He still hadn’t recovered from the shock of seeing it. “It’s impossible,” he said in a small weary voice. He stared at the object in his hand. “How can it be?”
“It’s his ring, all right.”
“Just please tell me how you came by it.”
“I was hoping you could tell me where it came from, Gahan. That’s why I’m here.”
The doorbell rang. A wiry-haired young cabdriver appeared in the foyer, announcing his presence to “Mr. Moss” with a genial familiarity. It was clear he had worked this fare before.
“Just a moment, Howie,” Gahan said. “I’ll fetch your ride.”
He left and returned a few moments later with the younger woman. Kurt was relieved to see that she wasn’t a local high school girl but some barroom stray well into her twenties, not particularly attractive at close distance, with heavy makeup and teased hair and a Denver Broncos starter jacket concealing the boyish figure he’d observed on the polar bear rug. As she passed by Kurt, leaving a wake of sweet floral perfume, she gave him a naughty smile.
“Yum,” she said. “Is he gonna join us for the next shoot, Gay?”
Gahan hustled her through the foyer and stood outside in the gathering shadows, their voices trilling in one last contentious exchange over money. Kurt wondered where the older woman was.
Before long the musician returned inside, rubbing his cold hands and appealing to Kurt with a wordless, shrugging desperation.
“I once saw you play with Rocky at the Wheeler,” Kurt said. “You were as good as they came, man. Is this what it’s come down to?” He nodded out the window at the young porno queen making her way up the cobblestone path with the cabdriver.
Gahan sighed and dropped his eyes, stung by the question. He was struggling to piece together the remnants of his dignity. “If we’re going to dig up skeletons, Sheriff,” he said, “I’d like to have a drink first. Care to join me?”
Relying on the one intact crutch, Kurt followed him past a dry indoor fountain and up wide steps chiseled out of dark volcanic rock to the upper level of the house. Gahan’s bar was a long gnarled cypress trunk hewed lengthwise and lacquered to a high gloss. Kurt propped his crutch against a tree knob and hoisted himself onto a tall vinyl-topped toadstool. There was a fungal odor in the air, like the underside of a garden stone. He watched Gahan Moss pour himself a shot of Bushmills. The ring lay between them on the glassy brown surface.
“Are you looking to break a story on Unsolved Mysteries, Sheriff Muller?” Gahan asked after downing a mouthful of the Irish whiskey. “Perhaps the telly is a good career move for you,” he said, amused by his observation. “I understand your future in law enforcement is somewhat in doubt.”
He raised the bottle, offering his guest a drink. Kurt ignored the gesture. “I’ve seen the morgue photos, Gahan,” he said. “This ring was on the victim’s finger when the medical examiner performed the autopsy.”
Kurt picked up the ring and slipped it onto the finger that had once worn a wedding band, forcing it past his large knuckle. Smooth and cool, heavy as a lure weight, a very tight fit. He could feel the blood throbbing in his nail.
“But the man’s face wasn’t recognizable, my friend. The boulders weren’t kind to him. I couldn’t tell if it was Rocky Rhodes or some other poor sucker.”
Gahan was hunched over the bar, resting on his forearms, the whiskey glass cupped in his hands as if it were a warming candle. After a few moments of silence he poured himself another drink.
“The body you and your pals half-assed cremated down in Arizona,” Kurt said. “Are you sure it was Rocky?”
According to the biography, Rocky’s mother had made plans to bury her son in a Baptist cemetery in East Texas, against the guitarist’s adamant request to his friends that when he died he wanted his ashes spread over Canyon de Chelly. The biographer claimed that three corroborating participants had divulged to him the definitive story of what had happened. They alleged that Gahan and two other band members had broken into the mortuary and loaded the body into a pleasure van full of waiting female groupies and that they’d driven the corpse down to Arizona for cremation. Somewhere on the canyon floor they made camp in the dead of night and buried Rocky in a deep pit of burning coals. The ceremony lasted throughout the next day, and the eyewitnesses described a bittersweet, tearful wake with peyote, marijuana, and wine. On the second night, when the moon was full, they scattered Rocky’s smoldering remains across several acres of desert.
Gahan stood up straight, threw back his shoulders, and tossed down the shot of whiskey. “Forgive my cynicism, Sheriff. There are a million bullshit stories about Rocky’s corpse, and by now I’ve heard them all.”
“A few hours ago I got jammed up with an old freak who looked like the shit end of Rocky Rhodes at fifty,” Kurt said in a calm voice, though he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. “If he’s alive, that means somebody else was killed in that fall and the body was stolen to cover tracks. Maybe Rocky arranged the whole thing, but he had to have help. Nicole Bauer would’ve been deep in it. And right now I’m looking at the guy who was Rocky’s best friend and the lead body snatcher, by all accounts. How do you suppose that reads from where I’m sitting? The word homicide comes to mind, Gahan. Or at the very least, accessory to murder.”
Large beads of sweat appeared high on Gahan’s forehead, near the sprigs of his receding hairline. “I’ll tell you what comes to my mind, Sheriff,” he said. “That wonderful American expression, blowing smoke. I’m afraid your imagination has run away with you.”
Kurt had lost patience with the man’s denials. “The old freak I told you about—he’s acting like a disturbed head case,” he said. “His mind is unstable.”
He wouldn’t divulge that there had been threatening letters to Nicole Bauer, or implicate Rocky in her death. Gahan may have already known these things. If Rocky Rhodes was still alive, Gahan may have known his every move for the past twenty years.
“Let’s say it’s our boy Rocky Rhodes,” Kurt said. “Twenty years on the lam, living god knows what kind of life, it’s understandable he’s strung out. But he’s losing it, Gahan, and I’m going to bring him in. When I do, the walls come tumbling down and everybody involved in the faked death will see the inside of a prison cell.”
Gahan dabbed his forehead with a puffy sleeve. “If what you say is true,” he said, running his hands through his wet hair, slicking the long thin strands against his skull, “then I’m afraid you’ve missed your bloody best shot to crack this one open, Sheriff. The person you really want to interrogate is a stone-dead bitch
named Nicole Bauer.”
The bastard was right. Why hadn’t Nicole told him everything? Maybe she had helped Rocky orchestrate his own death and twenty years later he had returned to torment her. If that was so, then why had she shown Kurt the letters and asked for his help? Was she prepared to expose the truth if it was the only way to save her life? Or did she think she could persuade her old lover Kurt Muller to turn a blind eye to the law and take care of Rocky on his own?
“Forget about Nicole, Gahan. You better worry about your own ass,” Kurt said. “If it’s Rocky, I’m guessing you know how to contact him. So here’s what I’m offering you, man. Help me bring him in and I’ll make sure you aren’t charged with what happened in nineteen seventy-seven.”
Gahan’s laughter sounded more weary than bitter. “You’ve read the biography, my friend. Last time Gahan Moss saw his old droog Rocky Rhodes, the bloke was ashes blowing in the desert wind.” He stared at Kurt with a dark intensity. “I’ve got no clue why you’re fucking with me now.”
Kurt slowly raised his hand. “If Rocky’s dead, then where did this come from?” he asked, showing the ring.
Gahan poured another drink and refused to look at Kurt or the ring. “Damned if I know, old sack,” he said, his eyes following the flow of whiskey. “From some grave robber, I should imagine.”
“You mean a grave robber back in seventy-seven. One of your friends at Canyon de Chelly,” Kurt said. “It must have been quite a scene, Gahan. Everybody crying and singing and stumbling around stoned to the gills out in the cold desert night. Rocky’s loyal entourage overwhelmed with grief. It would’ve been easy for some calculating soul to get to the body and stick the ring in a pocket before you loons lit the barbecue.”
Gahan gazed into his shot glass, brooding in silence. He seemed angry at the last remark.
“So somebody got themselves a relic. A final souvenir from the great dead rock star,” Kurt said, turning his hand over and back, the tarnished gold band catching the faint light. “Yeah, they stole Rocky’s favorite ring, all right. The only question is, was the guy wearing it really Rocky Rhodes?”
