Armageddon Rag

by George R. R. Martin

  The phone woke him just before noon. “I want to order a pepperoni pizza, and hold the anchovies,” the voice said.

  “You’re too fat for pizza, Jared,” Sandy said wearily. He pulled over his notepad. “You got the addresses?”

  “Yeah,” Patterson replied. He sounded grumpy. “You have a lot of ground to cover. John Slozewski lives in Camden, New Jersey, of all the goddamned places. Maggio is in Chicago. And Peter Faxon owns a big house out in Santa Fe, New Mexico. You want us to make airline reservations for you?”

  “No,” said Sandy. “I’ll drive.”

  “Drive? It’ll take you forever.”

  “I have as much time as I need, remember? Don’t complain. I’m saving you money. Now, give me those addresses. Phone numbers too, if you’ve got them.” He copied them down carefully, promised Jared that he’d never phone at that ridiculous hour of the morning again, no sir, and said goodbye.

  Down the road a bit, he found an International House of Pancakes, where he put away an order of bacon and eggs and a couple of gallons of coffee. It left him feeling vaguely human, even if he did slosh a little as he drove back to the motel. He packed quickly, then sat down on the edge of the bed and phoned Sharon at work.

  “I’m kind of busy right now,” she said. “Can’t it wait?”

  “No, it can’t,” Sandy said. “I’m about to check out of this place and drive down to New Jersey, and I don’t know when I’ll be free to call you again.” Briefly, he gave her his itinerary, but when he started telling her about Lynch she cut him off.

  “Look, Sandy,” she said, “it’s not as though I’m not interested. I am. But this is a bad time. I’ve got a client with me, and I’m already late for a showing. Call me tonight. Oh, and by the way, Alan phoned.” Alan was his literary agent. “He’s not thrilled about your new career as a private eye either. You’re supposed to call.”

  “Great,” Sandy said.

  “Which one of your idols was it who kept saying, ‘You knew the job was dangerous when you took it’?” Sharon asked.

  “Superchicken,” Sandy muttered.

  “Ah. I figured it was either him or Gene McCarthy.”

  “All right, I’ll call Alan. Lay off. Thanks for the message.”

  Alan Vanderbeck was on another line when Sandy phoned. Alan Vanderbeck was almost always on another line. Sandy held patiently, soothed by the knowledge that it was Jared Patterson’s money he was burning up. Finally Alan came on. “So,” he said. “The prodigal idiot. Sander, just what in the name of creation are you thinking about?”

  “Good to talk to you too, Alan. Did you get all of Patterson’s promises in writing? I left a message on your machine.”

  “Sure, I got them. You’re going to get the cover, and no cuts, and as much time as you like, and Hedgehog’s top rate. You care to know what that is? Five hundred bucks, Sander. That’s fifty for me. I’ve got better things to do with my time. And so do you, for that matter. I’m not thrilled by the way you leave me a message and duck out of town. I’m not thrilled by this whole thing. I told Sharon.”

  “Yeah, she told me. You’re not thrilled and she’s not thrilled. I’m the only one that’s thrilled. Good for me.”

  Alan sighed a very put-upon sigh. “How long is this going to take?”

  “I don’t know. It’s mutating in some interesting ways. Maybe a month, maybe two.”

  “Perhaps you recall having lunch with me just a few days ago? Perhaps you also recall that I reminded you that the deadline on the new novel is barely three months off? You cannot afford to use two of those three months for some quixotic four-hundred-fifty-dollar gesture to your lost youth, Sander. Haven’t I stressed that?”

  “Damn it, Alan, don’t tell me what to do!” Sandy said, feeling a bit peevish. “I’m tired of people telling me what to do. Look, things weren’t going too well on the novel. Taking off and doing this story ought to be good for me. Maybe it will get me past my block. So I miss the deadline. Big deal. I haven’t noticed the world holding its breath. I was two months late delivering Kasey’s Quest, and nearly a year late on Open Wounds, wasn’t I? You can’t create to a fucking schedule, damn it!”

  “No, Sander,” Alan said. “It won’t wash. The circumstances are different this time. You got a lot of money up front on this book, mainly because Copping Out did well, but the publishers are regretting it now. You seem to have forgotten that Open Wounds still hasn’t found a paperback publisher.”

  “It got good reviews,” Sandy protested.

  “That’s not enough. It’s selling shitty. I’ve warned you, if you’re late on delivering the new one, they’re going to cancel the contract right out from under you and demand their money back. We can’t give them the opportunity.”

  “You’re too damn pessimistic,” Sandy said. “It won’t be that bad. I’m going to do this one story for Jared, that’s all, and then I’ll be back to work on the novel. Hell, maybe I’ll even make that deadline. If not, you’ll find some way to placate them.”

  “I’m an agent, not a magician,” Alan said. “You overestimate my powers of persuasion. Look, let me make myself perfectly clear—”

  “Jesus,” said Sandy. “You sound like Nixon.”

  “Be that as it may,” Alan persisted, “I’m going to warn you right now that I’m not in business to make five-hundred-dollar deals with Hedgehog. If you don’t deliver this novel, and the contract gets canceled, you had better start looking around for other representation.”

  “Maybe I should start looking around anyway,” Sandy said.

  “Maybe you should,” Alan agreed. He sighed. “I don’t want to do this, Sander. I like you, and I like your work. But this is for your own good. Forget this story, come back to New York and get to work. You have professional responsibilities.”

  “Screw professional responsibilities,” Sandy snapped, “and get off my case, Alan. Don’t you have a call on another line?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. I just thought perhaps I might talk some sense into you. I can see that was a misplaced hope. Think about it, Sander. It’s your decision.”

  “Glad you remember that,” Sandy said. “Goodbye, Alan. I’ll keep in touch.” With a conscious effort, he refrained from slamming the receiver down into its cradle and dropped it very softly into place.

  He was in a sour, surly mood as he checked out and lugged his suitcase to the car. Most of the day was shot already, and the talks with Alan and Sharon had left him feeling hassled and depressed. Maybe they were right, Sandy thought to himself. Maybe it was stupid to be working on this Nazgûl thing instead of the novel. Maybe he was being immature and irresponsible. But damn it, he had a right to be a little immature at times, didn’t he? It wasn’t as if he’d run off to join the circus. He was doing a story, and it might turn out to be a damn good story too, a big one, an important one. Maybe he’d even win some kind of goddamned award. He tightened the straps that held his suitcase in place, stepped back, and slammed down the rear hatch of the Mazda harder than was really necessary. For a moment he stood in the motel parking lot, seething, wanting something on which to vent his frustration, finding nothing. He felt like kicking the car. He’d stubbed many a toe on the tires of Roach, Jezebel, the Battleship Missouri, and the Hogmobile through the years, letting off steam.

  The Mazda, though, the Mazda wasn’t kickable. It sat there in the parking lot, sleek and gorgeous, all low and bronze-colored and shining, with its sunroof and its power antenna and its rakish black rear-window louvres, looking fast as hell and twice as sexy even standing still. Sandy had always dreamed of owning a sports car. He loved his Mazda. Yet somehow it wasn’t an old friend the way the other cars had been, wasn’t the kind of partner in adventure and adversity who might understand and forgive an occasional pissed-off kick that hurt toe more than tire. No. It was a lovely driving machine. It was a status symbol, something to take pride in, to buff-wax. It held its value really well… but that was it. Roach had been a buddy. The Mazda was a
fucking investment, he thought. He glared at it and walked around to open the door.

  Then he stopped. “The hell with it!” he said loudly. He slammed the door shut again, kicked the front tire as hard as he could, and hopped around the parking lot on one foot, grimacing and grinning in alternation.

  He was still grinning ten minutes later, out on the road, whipping down the highway at seventy as the little rotary engine made a smooth purring noise. He glanced down at his tapes, picked up an old Lovin’ Spoonful cassette, and shoved it into the tape deck, turning up the volume so the music filled the interior. What a day for a daydream, John Sebastian was singing, custom made for a day-dreamin’ boy.

  “Daydream,” Sandy said. He liked the sound of it. It was frivolous, fun, something you weren’t supposed to do but did anyhow. “Daydream,” he said to the Mazda, “get a move on. We got us a date with a gopher in New Jersey.” He pressed down on the accelerator, and the speed began to climb.

  FOUR

  Look at the sky turning hellfire red/

  Somebody’s house is burning down, down, down

  Sandy hated the New Jersey Turnpike with a hatred that passed all understanding. It was a bitch of a road, always lousy with traffic, and it cut through some of the most ghastly country this side of Cleveland, a stinking no man’s land of sanitary landfills, oil refineries, auto graveyards, and hazardous waste dumps. The road was shrouded in a perpetual grayish haze with its own distinctive odor, a miasma of carbon monoxide, diesel exhaust, and malignant chemicals, and a whiff of it was enough to evoke old fears in Sandy.

  In the old days, he’d gotten busted on the turnpike more than once, cited for fictitious traffic violations, and searched for drugs. The turnpike cops had been as bitterly anti-freak as any in the country, and they used to lie in wait for hippies and longhairs and go after them with an almost crazed zeal. If your car had the wrong sort of bumper stickers, you were in trouble on the Jersey Turnpike, and driving that road in the Hogmobile, with its spray of McCarthy daisies, had been like declaring open season on yourself.

  Now all that was long past. Daydream was respectably expensive and entirely flowerless, and the old hostilities had waned, yet something about the road still unnerved Sandy. The very smell of it made him think of flashing lights in his rearview mirror, of tear gas, of narcs and bloody nightsticks and Richard Milhous Nixon.

  Even the turnpike food gave him indigestion. It was a relief to turn off for Camden.

  The Gopher Hole sat on a major feeder road, less than a mile from the turnpike entrance ramp. From the outside, it was an ugly place, all cinderblocks and green aluminum siding, neon tubing on the roof spelling out its name, a cardboard sign filling up the only large window. The sign said LIVE MUSIC. Though the building was big enough, it looked small, surrounded by the vast empty expanse of its asphalt parking lot. Sandy pulled Daydream into a slot near the door, between a black Stingray of ancient vintage and a trim little Toyota. They were the only cars in attendance. He climbed out, stretched, slung his jacket over a shoulder, and went on in.

  The day outside had been cloudy-bright, and it took his eyes a minute or two to adjust to the cavernous darkness within. He lingered in the entry foyer by the coat-check room until he could see where he was going. By the door to the main hall was a sign on a wooden tripod advertising the nightly performance of a band called the Steel Angels, who smiled out at him from a glossy. They had very white teeth, Sandy thought. Beyond the sign was the large empty club. He could make out a stage, still littered with instruments and sound equipment, a dance floor, a large number of tables and chairs, and at least three bars, a long one by the west wall and two smaller circular ones out in the middle of the floor, ringed by barstools. The paneled walls were covered with old rock posters, which reminded him uncomfortably of Jamie Lynch’s office.

  Behind one of the round bars, a youth was setting up and talking to a big fellow in a pin-striped suit who was leaning against the rail, looking something like a Mafia hit-man. Sandy glanced around and saw no sign of anyone else, so he walked toward them. They both watched him approach. “We’re closed,” the barman finally called out.

  “I know,” Sandy said. “I’m looking for Gopher John. When do you expect him?”

  The man in the pin-striped suit cleared his throat. “I’m John Slozewski,” he said. He held out a hand. “You’re Sandy Blair, right? I remember you.”

  Sandy shook the hand and tried not to do a double take. Gopher John Slozewski had been a huge, glowering bear of a man who liked to dress in ragged jeans and loose tie-dyed smocks. With his vast black beard, his moon face, ruddy cheeks, and paunch, he had sometimes reminded Sandy of a sort of dark analogue to Santa Claus. The man shaking his hand was a stranger he would have passed in the street with scarcely a second glance. Slozewski had lost weight; his face was no longer round and cherubic, and he was trim under that vest. The beard was gone, and the black hair, just starting to recede now, was fashionably combed and styled. Only the size hadn’t changed. The hand that enveloped Sandy’s was huge, the same powerful red fist that had hammered out the righteous, relentless beat of the Nazgûl in full flight. “I never would have known you,” Sandy said.

  “Times change,” Slozewski replied. “I got my place to run here. Mister John Slozewski can run it a lot smoother than any hairy-ass hippie called Gopher John. Would you believe it, I’m a member of the Chamber of Commerce now. What are you drinking?”

  “A beer,” Sandy said.

  “Draw one, Eddie,” Slozewski said. The barman filled the glass and pushed it over to Sandy. Slozewski nodded at him. “Go set up the main bar so we can talk, OK?” The barman left. “So you’re still with the Hog, huh?”

  “Yes and no,” Sandy said. He sipped his beer and eased himself back onto a bar stool. “This is a freelance assignment. Mostly I write novels these days.”

  “Good for you,” Slozewski said flatly. Neither his voice nor his face betrayed any hint of warmth, but Sandy knew that was misleading. Gopher John Slozewski had been famous for his perpetual scowl, and his short, curt manner with the press and the public. That, and his wild drumming, had gotten him the reputation of being a little bit mean, a little bit crazy, and more than a little bit stupid. None of it was true, as Sandy had found out the first time he interviewed the Nazgûl. If anything, Slozewski was one of the gentlest and friendliest men in the world of rock, but his charms were well hidden by his innate shyness and reserve. It seemed he hadn’t changed much in that respect. After making his comment, he sat quietly, waiting for Sandy to continue.

  Sandy took out his notebook. “You’ve probably figured what I came to talk about,” he said.

  Slozewski looked at the notepad and smiled thinly and fleetingly. “Look at that,” he said. “Been ages since I’ve seen a reporter write down stuff. The new ones all use little tape recorders.” He sighed. “You probably want to ask me about Lynch, right? And the Nazgûl?”

  Sandy nodded.

  “It figures,” Slozewski said. “I was kind of hoping that maybe the Hog wanted to do a little write-up on my place here, you know. We could use the publicity. But I didn’t think it was likely.” He scowled. “They ought to do a piece on the Gopher Hole. You tell Patterson that for me, OK?”

  “Will do,” Sandy said. “It’s a nice place,” he lied.

  “Hell,” said Slozewski, “you’re just saying that. It’s just another goddamned bar to you. I know how tacky the place looks outside. Cinder blocks and all. I’m not dumb. But you don’t know the half of it. This is an important place.”

  “Important?” Sandy said.

  “The Gopher Hole is kind of a dream come true for me,” Slozewski said. “I put everything I had into this place, and I’m losing money on it, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m paying back some dues, the way I see it.” He scowled. “Music’s a tough game. I remember how hard it was, breaking in. I always remembered that, even after we got big.”

  “The Nazgûl?”

  Slozewski nodde
d. “You saw the end of it, those years we were on top. You never saw the beginning. Mean times. We had a new sound, raw and angry like the times, and we did all our own material, Faxon’s stuff. No one wanted to hear it. No one wanted to hear us. When we did get a gig, we’d get these bozos in the crowd requesting all kinds of dumb shit. Standards, you know? And we’d get managers leaning on us to do that crapola. And the pay was… hell, there ain’t no word for it. We all had second jobs on the side. I was a cook at Denny’s, on the graveyard shift.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Well, when we made it, I made up my mind that I was going to make things easier for kids breaking in. That’s what the Gopher Hole is all about. You ought to come back in a couple of hours and hear the Steel Angels. They’re damn good. New Wave kind of sound, you know? Not commercial, but good. That’s the only kind I book. To play here, they have to be doing their own stuff, original. No disco crap, either. I give them a start, a regular gig if they need it. And I pay them decent money, too. I’d pay them better if I could, but we haven’t been doing as well as I’d like.” He shrugged again. “But what the hell, I can afford it. The music is what’s important, not the money. But you don’t want to hear all this, do you? You want to hear about Jamie Lynch.”

  “And the Nazgûl,” Sandy said. “Sorry. Maybe I can get Jared to do a little item on your place.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” Slozewski growled. His voice was as rumbly and deep as it had been in his performing days. “Look, I don’t mind talking to you, but I’ll tell you right up front that I think you’re wasting your time. I don’t know diddly-shit about who killed Jamie, and I care less. And I’m sick of talking about the Nazgûl.”

  “Why?” Sandy asked.

  “Why was Lennon sick of being asked about the Beatles breaking up?” It was a rhetorical question. Slozewski walked around the edge of the bar and continued as he methodically began to fix himself a drink. “Next month I’ll be thirty-seven years old. Forty isn’t so far off. A lot of life. I’ve got a place I’m real involved in, trying to do something good for music. I was a good drummer for a long time. After West Mesa, I had a three-year gig with Nasty Weather, and then with Morden & Slozewski & Leach, and for a little bit with the Smokehouse Riot Act. The Riot Act could have been one hell of a band too, if only Morden and Jencks hadn’t been such flaming assholes. We did some good tracks. If we’d stayed together, we might have made people forget all about the Nazgûl. Do I ever get asked about that, though? Nah.” He scowled and shook his head. “All they want to know about is the Nazgûl. I’d be the last guy to put down the Nazgûl, mind you. We were good. We were a world-class rock band. I’m proud of that part of my life. West Mesa ended it, though. Some crazy out there in the dark squeezed a trigger, and it was over, and we had to move on. Only they won’t let me. You hear what I’m saying? I’m John Slozewski, and I want to be treated like John Slozewski, not just like I’m one-fourth of the Nazgûl. Fuck that shit.”