by Norman Green
There was nowhere to sit. Alessandra looked at TJ for a couple seconds. “All right,” she said.
“Dude,” TJ said, looking at Rushton, “why don’t you go find another chair for the lady.” Rushton looked around, found the bouncer, then he and the bouncer unseated someone at another table. Rushton brought the chair back, held it for Al.
“Thanks, Luke,” she said.
“I can’t stay,” Rushton said. “I still got equipment to get stowed.” TJ ignored him. Rushton looked at TJ once, then turned and departed.
This guy acts like he’s royalty, Al thought. He doesn’t need to be polite. She had no problem imagining his picture in the newspaper, above a story about imported morphine or a murdered guitar player. Or both. “So,” she said. “How come you two aren’t out on the bus?”
“Pressing the flesh? Doc here is a seriously married man, and I ain’t into it just now.”
“I see. Tell me, how do you think you guys did tonight?”
Doc looked up for the first time, and TJ glanced once in his direction. “It was an okay night,” TJ said. “We did mostly new shit for the first hour, and we’re not all the way there with a lot of that, but once we got past that, we had our moments. Don’t you take notes, or use a tape recorder?”
“Don’t need to,” Al said. “Everybody tells me you guys have a shot at the big time. How does that feel?”
Doc was shaking his head. “Everybody wants to be a millionaire,” he said. “Everybody thinks they gonna die rich.”
“Pay no mind to him,” TJ said. “Doc’s a melancholy drunk.”
“It doesn’t sound like you guys care a whole lot about making the big time,” Al said.
TJ shrugged. “Hey, nobody’s gonna say no to the money,” he said. “Not even Doc.”
Al looked from one to the other. “But?”
“You tell her, Doc.”
Doc looked up at her. “For me,” he said, “for myself, okay, tonight was as good as it’s ever gonna get. No matter what happens after tonight, it’s all downhill from here.”
“Why?”
“Told you he was a melancholy drunk,” TJ said.
“Six hundred and fifty seats,” Doc said, his voice rising to override TJ’s interruption. “Almost everyone in the house is a fan. They seen us before, they’re all on our side. We got nobody telling us what to play, or how long. We mix the sound the way we want it. We play until we’re ready to quit. It’s a beautiful thing, man.” He didn’t look like he’d enjoyed it at all. “But if we make it, if we hit, the record company talent will be all over us. They ain’t gonna sit still for us playing like we did tonight. They got hit doctors and they got producers and they got engineers. If the company wants a blue band, they’ll paint us blue; they want a green band, they’ll paint us green; they want a yellow band, they’ll paint us yellow. And we’ll never have another night like this one. We’ll never play here again.”
“And what if you don’t hit?”
“Year from now, we’ll be playing bar mitzvahs.”
Doc seemed to be done. Al looked at TJ. “Is he right?”
TJ shrugged. “One way to look at it,” he said. “But that’s the way Doc looks at most things. And you know how it is, you got shit on your upper lip, the whole world stinks.”
“So what do you think?”
TJ shrugged. “I try not to think,” he said. “I’m a guitar player. If I was any good at thinking, I’d probably be a dentist.” He shifted in his chair, ran his fingers through his hair.
“So you don’t care about the record company’s money.”
He shook his head. “They haven’t offered me shit. It’s the band they want to buy, and the band has to pay the house, and the promoter, and the manager, and the roadies. We got to pay what’s-his-name to do the sound, we got lawyers and accountants and security, Jesus. You got any idea how many fingers a dollar has to dance past before it gets to me? Forget about it. Listen, lemme tell you something, in this business, you can be broke on your ass or you can be fat. Mostly, you’re gonna be broke on your ass. But it’s impossible to be anything in between. You know what I’m saying? So if some asshole shows up with a wheelbarrow full of money, yeah, I’ll take it. But I ain’t holding my breath, honey, record company contract or not.” He looked at Doc’s empty glass. “I promised you a drink, didn’t I?” He twisted in his chair, waved for the waiter, but couldn’t catch the man’s eye. TJ grimaced, put two fingers to his lips and blew a piercing whistle. The noise level in the place dropped by half, and everyone present stared at TJ. “Hey!” he shouted. “Who you gotta schtup to get a little service around here?”
A guy in a white shirt, black pants, and a bow tie hurried over. TJ hollered at the guy before he could open his mouth. “Another round,” TJ said. Gradually the noise rose back to where it had been. “Bourbon for Doc, gin on the rocks for me, and whatever the lady wants.”
“Cutty,” she said. “On the rocks.”
“Damn straight,” TJ said. “None of those weenie drinks for you reporter types.”
“So if you’re not making any money with BandX, how do you pay the bills?”
He looked at her, shrugged. “You do what you gotta do.”
He fits, she thought. Two motives: money and jealousy. He knew Willy and he knows the drug scene. “You wanna talk about your recent, ahh, difficulties?”
“You mean rehab? I copped a plea, it was either rehab or do time for felony possession.” He scowled. “It was a bullshit rap. I was holding some shit for a friend of mine. If they had got her with it, she’d have gone away, they would have taken her kids, the whole bit. You see what happens? I try to be a stand-up guy, okay, and I get nothing but shit for it.”
Al looked over at Doc, who was wearing a wry smile, then back at TJ. “So you don’t consider yourself a drug addict or an alcoholic?”
“Hell, no. I can put this shit down any time I want.”
She looked at his glass. “Don’t you have to pass a drip test?”
His lined face split into a grin. “Don’t print this, okay? We cool with that?” Al nodded. “I got the shit covered, man. Place where I go to get tested, okay, one of the nurses there takes care of me. You know what I’m saying? I could piss gasoline and it wouldn’t matter.”
She changed gears. “Do you have any idea what might have happened to Willy Caughlan?”
TJ’s face went dark. “No, man, I don’t.”
“What did you think of him?”
He shrugged. “Nice kid.”
“As a musician, I mean.”
“Hadn’t found his groove yet. Everybody has to go through that, when they’re trying to sound like Hendrix or Knopfler or whatever. Willy had soul, though, and he knew it. He would have been all right, if he’d had time.”
“You think the band would have kept him, and let you go?”
“Not a fucking chance,” TJ told her. “It’s my gig. You can print this if you want, I don’t give a fuck, okay? But these guys are nowhere without me.”
“That guitar that Willy Caughlan had, the one that got stolen. Any idea how much that would be worth?”
“You know something?” Conrad’s voice was angry and hard. “Stevie Ray Vaughn couldn’t fucking buy a decent review when he was alive. Some mentally defective douche bag of a reviewer trashed him in Rolling Stone just before he died. ‘I don’t mind the voice that much,’ the piece of shit says, ‘but the slavish imitation of Hendrix gets old in a hurry.’ You fucking believe that?” He seemed genuinely angry. “How would you like it? You’re the most influential guitar player in a generation, and the slimeballs in the press shit all over you because they’re too stupid or too tone-deaf or too fucked up to understand what you’re doing. And then, before he’s even cold in the grave, they canonize the son of a bitch. Unbelievable.”
“So how much would the guitar be worth?”
“Oh, shit,” Conrad said. “You’re the press . . .”
“It’s all right,” she told him. “
How much?”
He shook his head. “Collectors,” he said. “That’s another disease. Who the hell knows? You get a couple rich half-wits in the same room bidding against each other, shit, man, you might get a couple hundred thou for it. Maybe more.” He shifted in his seat. “Hey, Doc! We should do it! Buy a beat up old Strat, dummy it up to look like Vaughn’s, throw a set of double-ought strings on it, I bet we could score an easy half million! What do you say?”
Doc slid his sunglasses down to the end of his nose and peered at Conrad over them. “You never give up, do you?”
Alessandra held the Astro steady in the center lane, fighting its tendency to wander and her own tendency to zone out, put herself on cruise control, and let her attention stray. She rolled her window partway down to see if the cool, wet night air would keep her more alert. Here you are, she thought, looking around at the other drivers, just like always, you’re surrounded by people, you can’t reach them and they can’t reach you. All you’ve got to keep you company is the noise in your own head. Same old story.
You could have gotten a ride on the tour bus, she thought, and she laughed out loud. Like there’d be somewhere to sit on that bus that wasn’t already smeared with someone else’s DNA . . . At least you get a couple days off before you have to see any of them again, she told herself. The band had a recording session somewhere in Queens in three days, and Rushton had promised to get her in. “Observe and report,” he’d said. “But time is money, okay, so you can’t be asking a lot of questions.” Yeah, she thought. Like I wanna sit right down and have another heart-to-heart with TJ Conrad. Christ.
Maybe Conrad was essential to the success of BandX. Maybe he really did have the touch, maybe he was what lifted them out of the ordinary. He certainly thought so, that was clear, but it wasn’t clear that he cared all that much about BandX, or the record company money that was dancing just out of his reach. Would he kill an innocent kid to protect that?
You forget, she told herself, these guys have already spent years working just to get to this place, just to have this one shot. She wondered if Doc’s pessimism and TJ’s blasé attitude might just be defensive, so that they could tell themselves they didn’t care if everything fell apart. But people had committed murder over matters much more trivial than this. She had seen real envy on the face of Luke Rushton, a man who had spent his entire life chasing the dream—it had to be killing him to be so close to it and still have no chance. Rushton looked sick with the desire, the outright need to be up there on that stage and not behind the console. But she could not see any way that Rushton would benefit from the death of Willy Caughlan.
Sandy Ellison, the A&R guy, was a possibility. Would his career survive if BandX fell apart? Did he need this shot badly enough to murder for it? And Conrad—God only knew what he’d be doing if he didn’t have a band to play in. And would the other members of BandX feel the same way? Suppose two or three members of the band wanted to keep Willy and let TJ slide? Would one of the other musicians resort to murder to get what he thought the band needed? How far would any of them go to protect the experience of a night like this? If the money wasn’t motive enough, what about fame? What about the music? What about the girls on the bus?
If you don’t want to have sex with the musicians, don’t get on the bus . . . Jesus, what a class act that guy was. She wondered what his job title was. Bitch wrangler? Pussmaster? And all of those females stood there and listened to that drivel, each one eager to outdo her sisters for the privilege of spreading for one of the musicians. Maybe you’re getting old before your time, she told herself, then laughed out loud at the absurdity of the idea. God, she told herself, you can’t be old, you’re just getting started. She couldn’t imagine it, though, couldn’t wrap her mind around wanting any man badly enough to debase herself to that degree. Oh, yeah, I might be hot for some guy, she thought, sure, but I am not going to roll around in the dirt at anyone’s feet . . .
The van’s temperature needle had crept close to the red zone. Oh, Bobby, she thought, why couldn’t you have, like, tuned this thing up or something? This is all I need, getting stuck out here on the highway with a broken van and about eighty bucks in my pocket . . .
You could have ridden on the tour bus, she told herself.
Yeah, right.
She rolled the windows the rest of the way down and turned the heat on, and that seemed to help for a while, but then the needle headed back north again. Oh, God, please, Al thought, you gotta be kidding me. She’d seen a sign for the next rest area, but it was still thirteen or fourteen miles away, and she could smell antifreeze. Damn, she thought. This thing has got to be boiling over. I’ll never make the rest area. There was an exit ramp ahead, and she pulled over to the side of the road by the ramp, as far away from the highway as she could get. At least there’s lights here, she told herself, and a little more distance between me and the traffic.
She turned the van’s lights off and pulled the hood release lever. Nothing happened. She felt her own temperature begin to rise. Goddammit, Bobby, why didn’t you take better care of this thing? And why did you have to go and get sick and leave me all alone? Without you I’ve got nobody . . . She gripped the wheel, squeezing hard, gritting her teeth, waited until it passed. She mentally reviewed her assets. She’d allocated two hundred bucks for the trip, and she had about eighty of that left. Nobody’s gonna fix this piece of shit for eighty bucks, she told herself, they won’t even tow it for that much. She had one Visa credit card, limit of five grand. The card was for emergencies, but there’d been too many of those lately and she didn’t know what her balance was, she’d been afraid to look for some time. She had the little silver cell phone, she could use that to call someone.
Yeah? Like who? Caughlan? O’Hagan? Stiles? Wouldn’t that be great. Hello? I’m having this little girl moment, wouldn’t one of you big strong men please come and rescue me?
Be a cold day in hell.
How about Anthony? Anthony could tell her if her black jeans clashed with the van’s purple shag interior, but he wouldn’t be much help with an ailing motor vehicle.
She yanked on the hood release lever again. Still nothing. “Pendejo!” she yelled. “Son of a bitch!” She jerked her door handle and kicked the door open. It flew all the way open to its stop, rebounded, and slammed shut again. “Goddammit!” She jerked on the handle again, then slammed her elbow into the door, regretting it almost immediately. It’s a metal door, she reminded herself. It can’t feel pain. Unlike, say, you . . .
A truck flew down the exit ramp, the wind of its passing rocking the van. Al got out into the rain. What would happen, she wondered, if you just left this thing here? She walked around to the front of the van and looked at the hood. Was it possible that Tio Bobby had the thing chained shut? He might do it to keep someone from stealing the battery. All right, maybe he would, but wouldn’t there be a click when you pulled the hood release? And when the hood popped open a couple of inches, you’d have to reach in to unlock the chain. Tio Bobby would never make you lie down on the ground and reach up inside to unlock a chain, because that would mean he’d have to do it himself. But you never knew, Bobby might have taken it into his head to rig the hood to open backward, just for the hell of it, or sideways, and then hide the button you pushed to operate it somewhere nobody would ever look for it. She looked around the front of the van for some kind of button or lever, but there was nothing.
The rain dripping off her face was doing nothing to cool her down. She stuck her fingers into the crack under the leading edge of the hood and pried up. It seemed to give a little, so she pried harder, and then harder yet, straining muscle against metal, but it was no use. “Son of a bitch!” She lost it then, slammed her fists down on top of the hood, and it popped, jumped open several inches. “God,” she said, relieved, and then she laughed at herself. There was still something mechanical that kept the hood from opening all the way, but she felt around underneath until she found the lever she had to push.
> She felt the heat rising in waves out of the engine compartment, heard water boiling somewhere down inside. She stepped back, looked off into the night, felt the cool rain wetting down her hair. She remembered that first night, the one after she’d run away from her Aunt Magdelena’s. It had been a cruel realization: her mother was truly gone for good, her father was not around, and that left no one to watch over her. She was on her own. Her twelve-year-old self had accepted the truth of that. She wanted to dispute it now, she wanted to believe otherwise, even though she could not marshal any evidence to the cause.
Well, she told herself, just for tonight, why don’t you see if you can nurse this piece of shit back to Brooklyn? She waited, and eventually the engine cooled. She took the cap off the radiator. That would lower the pressure, even she knew that, and wherever the fluids were leaking, they would leak more slowly.
Just do it, she told herself. There’s no one here to help you. She got back in the truck, wiped her face off, started it up.
Twelve
They met for breakfast in a coffee shop on Third Ave. Stiles stared across the table at Alessandra. “Al, honey,” he said, his fat face etched with concern. “You promised. You said you’d drop this if there was nothing in the police reports.”
Stiles had been thorough, she had to give him that. He had copies of all the police reports, plus news articles dealing with Willy’s death, and even some older stuff covering Daniel Caughlan’s early years. Al looked up from the papers, watched Stiles stick a piece of bacon into his face and chew slowly. Bad enough I got to watch the guy eat, but it’s taking him forever to finish. Like watching someone with a dull razor at his wrist, she thought, sawing at himself in slow motion. “I said we’d talk about it.”
He leaned back in his chair. “So talk,” he said. “I looked at everything there. There’s nothing to indicate that Willy’s death was anything more than what it looks like, another musician that got his dosage wrong.”
