Zombies-More Recent Dead

by Paula Guran (ed)

  “That’s not the point,” he said.

  Not the point? Not the point! I couldn’t believe it. The little geek had the gall to stand there and tell me he didn’t like my decisions. Christ, what did he know? The song was doing great. The critics were calling its stripped down acoustic arrangement and gravelly-voiced lyrics a masterstroke from one of rock’s greatest performers. Industry experts were already anticipating Tommy Grind’s fourteenth Grammy, which I would accept on his behalf in just a few weeks.

  “Tell me, Isaac. What is the point? I gotta hear this.”

  “It’s a cover song, Steve.”

  “Yeah, a fucking successful one, too.”

  “But it’s a cover song. Tommy Grind never did cover songs. It was always his music, his vision. That’s what made him so special. That’s why people loved him.”

  “Oh Jesus,” I said.

  “Seriously, Steve.”

  “You’re so full of shit, you know that? You don’t live in the house with him, Isaac. You never heard him playing in there in his studio. The guy would sit in there and play cover tunes all day long. He loved ’em.”

  “That’s because he loved the music, Steve. He played what made him feel good. But when he put his music out there for the world, it was always his own stuff. Don’t you see?”

  No, you little dweeb, I don’t see.

  I had managed to get together a lot more original songs off of Tommy’s studio tapes than I first thought. We had enough for another eight, maybe nine albums. More if I included the cover tunes he loved so much. And it was good stuff, too. Plus, he had tons of live recordings from the heavy touring he did from 2003 to early 2008. I was thinking of putting together a double live album to go along with a DVD release of his Hollywood Bowl concert last August, maybe a viral marketing campaign on the web. Michael Jackson had been a bigger hit dead than alive, and it was looking like Tommy Grind was going to be even bigger.

  “What is it you’re accusing me of?” I said. “You think I’m selling him out? Is that it?”

  It took him a moment to work up the courage, but finally he squared his shoulders at me and said, “Well, yeah, I do. I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  It took all the self-control I had to keep from killing him right there where he stood. I felt my face flush with anger.

  Maybe he saw it too, because he took a step back.

  “You listen to me,” I said. “Nobody accuses me of selling Tommy Grind out. Nobody. You don’t have that right. You jumped on this gravy train after it had already worked itself up to full speed. But me, I’ve been with him since the beginning. I was with him in Houston when he was working two daytime jobs and playing all night long in the clubs. I’m the one who got him his first radio time. I’m the one who made the club owners pay up. And when he got drunk and wanted to fight the cowboys who threw beer bottles at him in the middle of his sets, I was the one who stood back to back with him and got my knuckles bloody. So don’t you stand there and think you know more about Tommy Grind’s vision than I do. I’m the one who told him what his fucking vision was.”

  That cowed him. He stood there with his eyes fixed on his shoes and it looked like he was about to cry. For a second there I thought he was going to run from the room like a scalded hound. But he suddenly showed more backbone than I knew he possessed. He raised his almost non-existent chin and looked me square in the eyes.

  “What?” I said.

  “You’re the one telling Tommy what his vision is?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, good. Because I just talked to Jessica Carlton’s attorney over lunch. She heard your bit about The Zombie King, and she wants in.”

  “The Zombie King . . . ?”

  “Yeah. The movie you told the press Tommy had just written. Remember that?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and looked down at the naked girl at my feet. I had almost forgotten she was there.

  Jessica Carlton, damn. The bubble-headed blonde who broke onto the scene a few years back claiming to be as virginally pure as Amy Grant, but had no qualms whatsoever shaking her ass for every camera from L.A. to Hamburg. The claims to virginal purity passed away unnoticed right about the time her first movie came out, and she rose to the status of tabloid cover starlet, which if you ask me was a brilliant piece of marketing. Now she was on the cover of just about every magazine in the grocery store checkout line. The last I heard she was dating an NFL quarterback, was doing a new album, and even had another movie deal on the table. She had the goods, definitely. And if she said she wanted to be in Tommy’s movie, well, there was no easy way to refuse that. People would ask questions. People Magazine would ask questions.

  “That’s a problem, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s a problem.”

  And a week later, I still didn’t have a solution. The Eddie Money cover had slipped down to number fourteen on the countdown, but we were prepping a new single—a Tommy Grind original—and that would be out in another three weeks, so at least his name would stay out there.

  But the Jessica Carlton thing was bothering me. She had come to Texas to see her jock boyfriend, and her people had been calling to set up a meeting. No surprise there. I just didn’t know what to tell them.

  I started smoking again. Cigarettes, I mean. I never quit weed. That was almost impossible when you hung around Tommy Grind. I quit cigarettes back in 1998, and never felt better. But the stress of dealing with Tommy’s unique needs—he was up to four girls a week now, and it was getting increasingly difficult to dispose of the garbage in a way that didn’t attract dogs of both the canine and human variety—and the Jessica Carlton situation conspired against me. In a weak moment, I bummed a smoke off of Isaac and within a week was back up to a pack a day.

  It made me feel ashamed every time I lit up. Like I was some kind of pansy or something, but, to quote Tommy, a need is a need and it has to feed, like it or not.

  The situation reached a head on the night of February 14th—Valentine’s Day.

  I was in Tommy’s fully restored 1972 Triumph TR-6, headed back to the mansion from the store where I’d gone to buy another carton of smokes. It was a cool, crisp night, full of stars, and I had the top down and Tommy’s 2003 album Desert Nights cranked up on the CD player. The night was cool and clear, and the little Triumph handled the Hill Country roads like a dream. Any other night, I would have been in heaven.

  But, like I said, I was troubled.

  The feeling got worse when I pulled into the driveway and saw the lights on upstairs.

  I had turned them off when I left. Tommy was usually calmest when the lights were off.

  “Fuck,” I said, and in my mind I was already throttling Isaac.

  I parked and went inside, just to make sure. But I wasn’t surprised to find Tommy gone. Isaac hadn’t even done a half-assed job of cleaning up Tommy’s latest meal. Nice enough girl. Said she was from Kentucky, I think.

  I went to the security room and replayed the tape. There was Isaac, talking to Tommy through the Plexiglas, opening the door, coaxing him outside. Tommy staggering toward Isaac, hands raised in a gesture that almost looked like supplication.

  And then they were off camera until they got downstairs and out the front door.

  I turned on the GPS tracker—basically a glorified version of what veterinarians use to track the family pet—that I had injected into Tommy’s ass after the last time Isaac walked him outside. Then I called the signal up on my iPad and got a good fix on him.

  He was heading down to the west point of Lake Travis. There was a secluded little pocket of vacation homes down there for the uber wealthy. Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey both had houses there not too far from Tommy’s. It was his private little retreat from the world. Tommy didn’t often like to disconnect, but when he did, that was where he went.

  And then, a terrible thought.

  Please dear God. Tell me he’s not taking her to meet Jessica Carlton. He can’t be that s
tupid.

  I called Isaac’s cell, and to my surprise, he answered.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I said.

  “Can’t talk,” he answered. I could hear Tommy moaning in the background. Car noises. Isaac struggling to keep Tommy off him.

  “Isaac. Isaac, don’t you dare hang up on me!”

  But he did.

  Damn it.

  I got in my Suburban—the one I’d specially modified with a police prisoner barrier in the back so I could transport Tommy if I needed to—and headed after them.

  Thirty minutes later, I was looking up at an eight thousand square foot mansion done up like a Mediterranean villa—red tile roof, white adobe walls, fountains and hibiscus everywhere. I had parked off the main road, in a small gap in a cedar thicket that concealed the Suburban just perfectly, and tried to figure what Isaac was doing. What possible reason could he have for bringing Tommy here? If Jessica Carlton saw him, we were done for. Despite the constant upkeep, Tommy was looking pretty rough these days. Worse than Willie Nelson after a three-day whiskey binge. Which I’ve seen, by the way. It ain’t pretty.

  And then it hit me. Valentine’s Day. Today was Valentine’s Day. Isaac Glassman had no chance of ever becoming Tommy Grind’s lover. Not anymore anyway. The pathetic bastard’s heart was probably breaking. He couldn’t give Tommy flowers, or candy, or stuffed animals, or any of that worthless shit people give each other on Valentine’s Day. But he could give him something pretty. Something that Tommy did still care about.

  I heard shouting from the house. It was muffled, but definitely shouting.

  Then gunfire. Three pistol shots, one after another.

  That lit a fire under me.

  I reached behind the driver’s seat of the Suburban and took out a badly scuffed Louisville Slugger, the one with nicks in the business end that went back to the Houston beer joint days.

  Old School persuader in hand, I advanced up the driveway and tried the doors and windows until I found an unlocked servant’s door off the kitchen.

  I looked up and saw a camera in the corner, pointed right at me.

  Same system as at Tommy’s. I could deal with that.

  I looked around and noticed the stove. A huge Viking gas range with a dozen burners.

  I cranked them all up to full and walked into the living room, where I could hear a man whimpering.

  I didn’t recognize him, which probably meant he was part of the legal community. Maybe one of Isaac’s lawyer friends. He wore a light gray double-breasted suit with a canary yellow silk shirt and no tie, both of which were torn and splashed with blood. He was clean-shaven and fit looking, but his eyes were crazed. Had to be Jessica Carlton’s lawyer. He must have brought her here so the talent could play while the lawyers talked contracts. He turned his insane eyes on me and that’s when I saw the pistol in his hand, the slide locked back in the empty position.

  “Help me,” he pleaded.

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Who else is in the house?”

  “To-Tommy Grind. Oh Jesus. He . . . something’s wrong. He attacked Jessica. He bit her leg off. I . . . I think she’s . . . I think she’s hurt real bad.”

  Then he held the gun up in front of his face like he had never seen it before.

  “I shot him. I emptied the whole magazine into his chest. He just . . . he just kept coming. He’s . . . oh Jesus.”

  “I see. Listen, what’s your name?”

  “Leslie Gant,” he said. He was in deep shock, functioning on autopilot.

  “Great. Listen, Leslie . . . you mind if I call you Leslie?”

  “Huh?”

  “Leslie, I want you to kneel down right here, okay?” He let me guide him to his knees. “That’s right,” I said. “Just like that. Now put your arms down at your side. Look over there.”

  “What? Why?”

  I pointed his face toward the sliding glass doors that led out to a beautifully dappled swimming pool.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Now I’m gonna tee off on your head with this bat.”

  “Wha—”

  I swung for the fence. Laid him out like a sack of rocks.

  Then I went to find Isaac and Tommy.

  Isaac was standing in a hallway outside the master suite. He turned when he heard me approach, and his eyes went wide as the bat came up.

  “No!” he said, showing me his palms. “It’s okay. Stop, Steve.”

  “Like hell it’s okay. I ain’t gonna let you ruin us, Isaac.”

  “No,” he pleaded. “You don’t understand.”

  I was close enough now to see into the master suite. Jessica Carlton, blouse torn off, exposing her absolutely amazing tits, skirt hiked up high enough to give a peek of a white, lacy thong, was pulling herself across the deep pile, honey-colored carpet. There was blood on her face and a huge big bite mark on her right leg. From her expression, I could tell she’d been drugged.

  Tommy was staggering towards her, moaning like I’d never heard him do before. There was fresh blood on his face and hands and chest, but if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he was aroused.

  “What the hell?” I said. I turned to Isaac. “Did you drug her?”

  “Yeah. GHB.”

  “How much did you give her?”

  “The usual.”

  “The whole dropper full?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she’s still moving around?”

  He shrugged.

  “Damn,” I said, and whistled. “The girl must be in pretty good shape.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tommy caught up with her, fell on her, started to feed. She let out a weak scream, but there was nothing behind it. In less than a minute, she had stopped thrashing.

  Feeling stunned, I said, “Isaac, I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to unfuck this situation.”

  “I was . . . ” he said, and drifted off feebly. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

  I didn’t even bother to respond.

  “I wanted to give him something, you know? We just take and take and take from his talent. Nobody ever gives back to him. I wanted to give him something special.”

  “So you gave him Jessica Carlton? Jesus, Isaac, how did you expect to pull that off. This isn’t some two-bit groupie chick. People are gonna notice she’s gone.”

  “She wanted to meet Tommy. Leslie Gant called me. He said she was going to be in town. He asked me if we could set up a private meeting between them. You know, a little romantic Valentine’s Day dinner the paparazzi wouldn’t know about. She’s still with that football player guy.”

  I took a moment to absorb all that. Then, “So no one knows she’s here. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Leslie Gant knows too.”

  “I’m not too worried about him,” I said.

  But I was worried about Isaac. In his mind, he must have felt he was making the supreme lover’s sacrifice. He must have felt almost like a martyr, giving someone else to Tommy Grind so that they could satisfy him the way Isaac only wished he could.

  “This must have been really hard for you,” I said.

  He looked at me, a suspicious note of caution in his eye.

  “I mean that,” I said. “I know you’ve been in love with him for a long time.”

  Isaac started to object, but then he hung his head and nodded.

  “Listen, come with me. Let’s go have a drink and let him eat. What the hell, right? There’s nothing more you can do here.”

  I put my arm over his shoulder and led him back to the living room. He balked at Leslie Gant on the living room floor, but I guided him away from the body.

  “Don’t worry about him,” I said. “Here, we got time for one drink. Then, we got to think about how we’re gonna clean all this up. Can’t afford any loose ends.”

  He looked back at Leslie Gant and grunted.

  I handed him his drink. “To Tommy Grind,” I said. We clanked glasses. I downed mine in one gulp. He sipped his, but managed to get most of
it down just the same.

  “Hang tight here, okay? I’m gonna go get Tommy and put him in the car.”

  About five minutes later, I was done with Tommy and back in the living room. Isaac was nearly passed out on the couch.

  I slapped his cheeks to rouse him. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t pass out on me yet.”

  He stirred.

  “Okay,” I said, “here’s what we’re gonna do. You got your lighter on you?”

  He reached into his pocket and held up a pink Bic.

  “Pink?” I said. “Seriously?”

  A corner of his mouth twitched. As close as he was going to get to a smile at this point.

  “Well, it’ll work. Start lighting those drapes on fire, okay?”

  He nodded.

  I took the whiskey and a couple of other bottles back to the master suite and lit the bodies on fire. Once I had it going, I came back to the living room and grabbed Isaac by the shoulder.

  “Come on,” I told him. “Gotta stay on your feet until we get to the car.”

  We passed his car in the driveway, and though the drugs I had slipped into his drink had made him so groggy he could barely walk, he was still able to point at his car and groan.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  At that very moment—and I mean it was cued like something out of a movie—the house behind us blew up.

  And I’m not just talking a part of the house, either.

  The whole fucking thing exploded.

  The shockwave nearly knocked me down.

  Isaac stared at me, stupidly. His mouth was hanging open, a thick rope of drool hanging from the corner of his lips. Some people don’t handle the GHB well at all.

  “What did you do?” he managed to say, though it came out all as one syllable, slurred together.

  “This is your big chance,” I said. I leaned him up against the front fender of the Suburban, reached into the driver’s side window, and turned up Janis Joplin’s “Take Another Little Piece of My Heart.”

  One of Tommy’s favorite songs.

  Then I helped Isaac Glassman to the back and balanced him on my hip as I opened the door.

  Tommy was waiting inside, watching, his dead eyes locked on Isaac.