Everyone stared. Men, women—I think even the brick walls looked, waiting to see what we’d do next. We hadn’t played one lick, but already we were onstage.
“Sorry we took so long,” Jay said, standing in a way that made her legs seem two stories tall. “I hope we’re not too late.”
Pfeffer took her hand in both of his and stroked it. “Not at all. I was just explaining to your bandmates what good sports the Crazy 8s are. Right this way, ladies,” he said with a wolfish smile. He unhooked the velvet rope and ushered us into hell.
I’D NEVER BEEN INSIDE THE BREWERY BEFORE, so I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that the four blocks of beige brick building surrounded a large open courtyard. Space enough for big trucks to back into. Ancient, unused rails were embedded in the asphalt under our feet. They were probably really handy one hundred years ago when the original owners of the brewery wanted to get their beer to the rest of the country chop-chop. Keep it mountain fresh, and all that.
Now the place was hung with hopvines wilting in the heat. People were packed in like cattle, and the smell of grilled gray sausages and onions filled the air. The only ones happy were the ones who actually got to drink beer in the roped-off beer garden. The underage crowd, which was the bulk of us, was crammed into the open-air mosh pit, but no one was moshing, thanks to the bland, piped-in, prerecorded, between-live-sets music. They all stared at a loading dock, which would be our stage.
Jojo and Crock started setting up our equipment. Jojo was assembling the drum kit. He worked efficiently, no trace of that hippie burnout lag.
Next to him, Crock strummed a chord or two on my guitar. Probably the only two he knew. He nodded and winked at the girls below.
Jurgen spared a glance at them. “I see your road crew is setting up, so you have a moment or two to spend with me.” He leered first at Sonia, then at Jaime. “Come. Let us celebrate your debut.” He put a hand on the smalls of their backs and steered them toward the one place in the crowded festival where people were actually having a good time.
I told myself I’d been expecting the leering, the mauling, that he’d be all over them like an octopus, but that didn’t make seeing it any easier. I had to choke down a sick feeling in my throat, like I’d just been served a frosty mug of human remains.
The beer garden was cordoned off with another velvet rope, where Little Pfeffer sat in front, holding a tiny flashlight and croaking, “ID, please.” No waders from the night before. He had on this pink polo shirt that strained over his shelflike man boobs. The pink shirt didn’t make him look any wimpier. Pastels or no, he’d have no problem shot-putting a rowdy drunk.
Jurgen walked up to him, herding our girls, and said, “These two are with me.”
Of course Little Pfeffer would look up. He looked up at everyone who tried to get past. But this look was a long one. We were standing right behind the girls, but as I mentioned, it was crowded, which might explain why I saw what he did next, but Evan didn’t.
Little Pfeffer flexed his fingers and reached out. For what, I don’t know. A handshake? A caress of skin and satin? It was subtle, then his hand and his gaze dropped back down to his lap. “Ja,” he said, but he might as well have said, How come I never get the girls?
Then he let them go through. Poor guy, with a brother like that who had actual moves and didn’t mind flaunting his conquests. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him all over again, but not for long.
As soon as Cilla walked past and we tried to follow, his arm shot out and the red velvet rope came back up. “ID, please,” he croaked.
“We’re with them,” Evan protested, pointing at the girls.
I pulled Ev away. As far as we were concerned, Little Pfeffer was made of marble.
Evan snarled at me. “Why’d you let him do that, man?” he said. “You promised they’d never be out of our sight. And we just let them walk away with that hound.”
“Relax,” I said. “Do you think I’d go into this without a Plan B?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t blame you. But in this case you’re wrong.”
If I seemed smug to have done something right for once, can you blame me? But I’d get that smug smile beaten off my face soon enough.
Ev sniffed the air. I did too. That nasty beer fug that covered the city? It was now battling an even nastier fug from a cheap cigar.
Then I turned around and faced Idiot Willy. He was wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts that exposed legs that were way too white and hairy, but his face was all red. Probably from the heat. The hand that didn’t prop up the stogie was wrapped around a frosty glass stein with “Coca-Cola” written in cursive on it.
He was here.
“Thanks for coming, sir.”
I’d said “sir” a lot of times in my life, and sometimes to policemen, but I’d never meant it. I meant it now.
“Don’t forget to call me Will, Noah. Is my idiot stepson doing his job?” he said.
It wasn’t the first time in my life I wondered who the actual idiot in that family was.
Evan jerked his thumb behind him. “He’s up onstage pretending to be Noah.”
Willy looked to where he pointed. “I thought you told him to keep an eye on the girls?”
“We did,” I said, and Willy smiled and puffed harder on his stinky cigar.
“I guess that doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “He never had any trouble watching girls. Just not the right ones. Speaking of which, where are Sonia and Jaime?”
“Beer garden,” I said. “That asshole’s got a paw on each of them.”
Willy swore under his breath. “Already? That guy is a fast worker.” He craned his neck around. “I don’t see them.”
“Yes, you do,” Evan said.
Willy’s eyes narrowed like a scope. He’d found them. “Lauren Bacall and Catwoman? Remind me how old they are?”
“Seventeen,” I said. “My sister’s work. She wants to be a beautician.”
“Seventeen,” he repeated, shaking his head.
“Officer,” Evan said quietly. “They’re still our girls.”
“If you could find it in your heart, sir,” I went on, and found the “sir” part came a little easier now, “we’d rather not bust them for drinking underage. We just want to make sure they’re okay when we’re not playing our set.”
He took a sip of his Coke. “You don’t have to remind me. I wouldn’t want to see anyone’s daughter getting groped by that guy. We’ve had our eyes on that particular individual for some time.” He gestured to the beer garden where Pfeffer was smiling, hiding a mouthful of crooked teeth. “There’s still a feeling you get . . . He seems to have zeroed in on Sonia.”
I looked where he was nodding. Sure enough, Pfeffer still had his arm on Sonia’s back at the bar, but Jaime had shaken herself free. She carried a glass stein of something over to where Little Pfeffer was sitting. She put a hand on his shoulder and handed him the drink. I saw her say a few words to him and smile in a way that told me she might look like a movie star, but she was still Jaime, the one who trailed after everyone, picking up what needed picking up. In this case, an overlooked bouncer. Little Pfeffer said something back to her that may have been a simple thank-you, but I couldn’t tell from this distance.
She patted him on the shoulder and dipped her head so her hair covered her face like a curtain. I couldn’t read her expression. Then she left the beer garden and wandered off through an entrance that said TAPROOM over the door. Probably looking for the ladies’.
Which left just Sonia and her black cat suit to worry about. How did Cilla get her into that outfit, anyway? She must’ve had to lube up Sonia’s skin really well. I put my hand to my nose and felt the texture of the scar she left me.
Yeah, she was gorgeous, and yeah, I’d always love her, but I’d never let her lead me around on a leash again.
Idiot Willy slammed the last of his Coke, leaving a residue on his droopy mustache. When he was done, he belched loudly and said
, “Time to circle the wagons.”
And in a gesture that you would never know was a signal, he wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.
In the beer garden, behind velvet ropes that were made of iron as far as Evan and I were concerned, at least four other guys with red faces and loud Hawaiian shirts nodded discreetly, as though they were paying careful attention to what their wives and dates were telling them.
Was it the red faces that gave them away as Portland’s Finest? The mustaches? Or was it the fact that, even though they were sitting in the beer garden, they were all drinking Cokes?
With Jaime safely wriggled free and Sonia monitored by other, more qualified people, I turned my attention to our coming set.
Up on the loading dock stage, Jojo and Crock were almost done. We squeezed our way through the crowd to stand below them. “Thanks for keeping an eye on the girls, Crock,” Ev said.
Crock crouched down to talk to us. “What? I’m doing my job. I can see fine from up here.”
“Are they still in the beer garden?” Ev said.
“Sonia is,” Crock said. “Is she wearing leather?”
Ev got real still. “Where’s Jaime?”
Crocked scanned the crowds. “Is she wearing leather too?”
“Asshole,” Ev muttered. “Where is she?”
“Relax,” I said. “She’s just in the bathroom or something. I saw her leave.”
Evan got really still. I’d seen him like that before. Not often, but enough to know that he thought I’d done something really stupid and he didn’t want to tell me straight. “How long ago?”
I looked at my watch: 6:20. She’d been gone only fifteen minutes. Plus she was a girl, so she might be putting on more lipstick or checking her hemline or something, but still . . .
My vision got blurry around the edges. And when I turned to my right, Ziggy was standing at my shoulder, looking feathered from head to toe. “Something’s wrong,” he said.
“I know. I can feel it.”
“What, Noah? What can you feel?” Evan said, his words tumbling out like dice.
I looked out over the crowd. In the beer garden, Sonia was still blowing smoke around Big Pfeffer.
I zeroed in on Little Pfeffer sitting at his bouncing post. When had he changed his shirt? This one was inky black.
Then he turned to one side. His face was tattooed. This wasn’t Little Pfeffer at all. It was some other musclehead who was just as wide but not as preppy.
A cold panic settled over me. Where had Little Pfeffer gone? And what had ever made me think he was harmless? The pink shirts? The fact that he didn’t act like a hound? He was strong enough to knock a girl around and feel sorry about it later. Dad used to do that all the time.
Evan and I had spent a lifetime reading each other’s cues. Any blood that might have been left in his face drained from it now. He was pale as marble. “Oh god,” he said. “The bodybuilder?”
“Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I’m being paranoid.”
Jojo didn’t think so. He was crouched next to Crock on the loading dock. He didn’t tell us to mellow out or offer us a spliff. “Get the fuzz, Noah. Get the fuzz now.”
“I can’t. They’re in the beer garden and we can’t get past—”
“I’m on it. You guys check the little girls’ room,” Jojo said, jumping down from the loading dock and picking his way through the crowd.
Crock cocked his head at the entrance behind the loading dock. “I always wondered what their bathroom looked like,” he said, and he zoomed off. Why did he have to make everything sound so sleazy?
Then it was down to Evan and Ziggy and me.
“She won’t be in the bathroom,” Ziggy said.
“I know,” I said.
“What?” Ev said. “You know what?”
“That she won’t be in the bathroom.”
Evan kicked the stage. “Fuck! I knew it. Where will she be?”
I didn’t need Ziggy to tell me. “The hot room. He always takes them to the hot room.” By now I understood that “he” was not who we thought he was. We could see Big Pfeffer just fine from where we were. I now understood he was like Crock—skanky, but not dangerous.
Ev looked around at the warehouse entrances. There were lots of them. Four city blocks. That’s how big this place was. Where would we even start?
“Great. How do we find that? This place is a maze. It could be anywhere. Goddamn, Noah, she’s not like us,” he said, tugging on his baby-fine hair. “She’s got the wrong shoes for kicking ass.”
“Shut up, okay? Just shut up.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, because I knew I would never get to the right place by looking for it. Not in time. It was something I’d have to feel. Or hear.
And then Ziggy whispered in my ear, “You could use a guide right now, son.” And I knew he wasn’t talking about himself.
My eyes snapped open. I shoved through the crowds to the front entrance.
“Noah! Come back! You’re going the wrong way!” Evan said.
“Trust me,” I said, and I ran out the front.
We sprinted down the street past the long line of people waiting to get in, Evan keeping pace with me. Ziggy was right with us. I didn’t see him but I could feel his hair brush the back of my neck.
Ev looked up at all the brewery accessories—the smokestacks, the water towers, the fire escapes. “Shit. What do you expect us to do? Follow the smell?”
“No. I got a better plan,” I said, ogling the piles of trash that had blown against the buildings, looking for something shiny.
Evan huffed. “Will you at least tell me what we’re looking for?”
“The guy with the tinfoil brain,” I said.
We found Terrence in the spot where we’d first passed him that one night when Evan couldn’t hide his headaches anymore.
He hadn’t been there earlier, but I was glad he was there now. He was crumpled into a pile of rags. He had a new tinfoil crown.
I kicked him on the foot. “Wake up, soldier.”
In less than two seconds, Terrence went from being asleep to being on his feet and saluting me.
“No time to spare,” I said. “He’s got her.”
Terrence’s eyes? The rheumy yellow ones? They cleared right up. “This way, sir,” he said, and sprinted down the block in duct-taped shoes.
I would’ve missed the entrance completely if it weren’t for Terrence. It was down a narrow alley, covered in shadow—and that beer fug? It was extra intense here. Evan coughed and wheezed but refused to slow down. I brought my kerchief up around my nose, hoping the cotton filter would help me catch my breath.
We followed Terrence into the alley and down a set of stairs that had a DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE! sign on the railing.
We weren’t fooled. There was no voltage.
We bolted down the stairs. At the bottom was an ancient door with one window and an iron grille over it, like you’d find in a mental institution.
Terrence fiddled with the door handle, which was so loose it rattled and heaved, but didn’t give completely. Then he put his shoulder to the whole door and it caved inward. He stumbled in and we piled after.
We found ourselves in a forest of vats, each at least twenty feet tall. They were all cooking something, making a staticky humming noise while belching that intense hops smoke through the curled tubing that ran from the top of each. Too salty. Oh god. There was too much tang in the smell. I prayed that Little Pfeffer hadn’t had time to add an extra ingredient.
How were we ever going to find her in this? There were at least twenty vats, all of them two stories high, the hatches on top reachable only by rolling staircases that had been shoved out of the way against the brewery walls.
She could be anywhere.
Evan pushed past us. “Jaime!” he called.
I heard a shriek that could’ve come from anywhere. It was a room of buzzes and echoes.
“Jaime!” he shouted again. I heard a metallic bang! Like s
omeone had kicked the side of one of these giant vats.
Ev ran ahead and I followed. I lost track of Terrence.
Thank god for Ziggy. I’d forgotten he was with us. “Look, m’boy.” He pointed at something lying on the ground. It was a wilted gardenia. The one Jaime had been wearing in her hair.
I grabbed Evan by the jacket and showed him what we’d found. “This way,” and we wove off beyond the flower, calling her name. “Jaime! Jaime!”
And then came the sound we didn’t want to hear. There was a splash.
It seemed like we rounded a corner and there he was, on top of a rolling staircase, his huge arms pinning something down into the metal vat. Jaime’s head?
Little Pfeffer was broader than Ev and me put together. No way we could climb that thing and wrestle him down in time to save Jaime’s life, if she was still alive in there. But she was. I could see those long fingers slapping and pulling.
Ev was smart. He went to the bottom of the rolling staircase, lifted knobs that locked the wheels in place, and kicked with everything he had.
The staircase tipped up. It seemed to hang there, balanced for an impossibly long time, then toppled over backward with a loud clatter. Pfeffer went down with it, falling twenty feet. He managed to twist himself in midair, and he landed on his hands and knees with a loud crack!
He looked up at me with loathing in his eyes. He leaned back on his heels and brought his hands off the floor, trying to rotate them. He said, without a trace of a German accent but with a profound stutter, “You b-b-b-broke my wrist, you little p-p-p-punk.”
Why he said this to me and not Evan, I don’t know, but I was ready for him. I ran at him while he was still down and, with one heavy boot, kicked him between the legs. He was an asshole. He was my dad. I had to protect my family from him.
“Steady on, lad,” Ziggy whispered. “Help Evan first.”
Ev was putting the staircase right side up. It didn’t seem heavy, but it was large, with a platform at the top. He didn’t even lock the wheels before he bolted up the steps and plunged his arm into the hatch. I saw him make a face. How hot was the liquid in there? Was Jaime already boiled alive?
The Rise and Fall of the Gallivanters Page 17
