“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I heard she can read fortunes and shit like that.”
“No, not really,” Berenger replied. “That’s all a myth. She has some kind of heightened intuition, that’s all.”
“Man, don’t they call her ‘Gina the Gypsy?’” Remix interjected.
“Yes, they did call her that. A long time ago.”
Suzanne smiled at Berenger. “Gee, Spike, you really did get around in the old days, huh?”
“Hush. Let’s get started. Remix, suppose you begin and give us the quick and dirty lowdown on Flame.”
Danny Lewis sat upright in his chair, a big change from his usual near-horizontal position, cleared his throat, and spoke as he looked at notes.
“Okay, folks, here’s the skinny on Flame, AKA Peter Flame, AKA Peter Donald Duncan,” he announced.
“Peter Donald Duncan!” Suzanne gasped.
“Yep, that’s the name he was given when he was born on November 24, 1952,” Remix explained. “Which is why his sons are named Adrian Duncan and Joshua Duncan. May I continue?”
“Go ahead, Remix,” Berenger said and then spoke to the others. “Let’s keep comments and questions until the end of the presentation, shall we?”
“Anyways, as we all know, Flame grew up in New York City and played with a number of amateur bands before he hit the big time with a little outfit called Hay Fever.”
Tommy Briggs let out a whispered, “Yeaaaa!”
“Hay Fever consisted of Flame—he changed his name and dropped the “Peter” when he was a teenager—Flame on guitar and vocals, Dave Bristol on drums and vocals, and Greg Patterson on bass and vocals. The power trio’s self-titled first record was released in 1971 on a do-it-yourself label called Liquid Metal Records and was produced by none other than the big, bald-headed Al Patton. Within six months, the band had two hit singles from the album and it had gone gold. The follow-up LP, Sneeze, came out at the end of the year and was another big one. By 1975, the band had made five albums and presented their adoring public with seven number one hit singles. But things were not very rosy in Denmark. Flame and Dave Bristol, as we all know, were the best of friends and the worst of enemies. Due to that age-old excuse, ‘artistic differences,’ Hay Fever broke up. Millions of people cried themselves to sleep that night. The suicide rate jumped 150 per cent. The stock market plummeted to an all-time low. Women and children—”
“Okay, okay, Remix, we get the picture,” Berenger said.
“Sorry. Anyway, the fans weren’t too happy. Flame went on to try a solo career, simply as… Flame. By now, Liquid Metal Records was a goddamned industry and Al Patton was one of the demigods of the music business. Thanks to Flame and Hay Fever. Now as we all know, Flame’s solo career was very successful from a financial standpoint, but not necessarily from a critical one. It was hit and miss. His first solo album, released in 1977, was called, simply, Flame. That was probably his biggest solo album, wouldn’t you say, Spike?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That had ‘Keep On Rollin’ to Me’ on it and a few other hits. And that’s when the John Lennon and David Bowie rumors started flyin’.”
Rudy spoke up. “John Lennon? What rumors?”
Berenger hushed his partner and nodded at Remix to continue.
“Yeah, in 1974, Flame was hangin’ with John Lennon and David Bowie in LA. That was during Lennon’s ‘lost weekend’ era, when he was separated from Yoko and was spendin’ his time with Harry Nilsson and May Pang. You know, Walls and Bridges. Bowie, he was in the middle of his Diamond Dogs period, trying to cope with super stardom and a nasty coke habit. There was talk that the three of them were going to form a supergroup, along with Nilsson and Dave Bristol. Nothing ever came of it, though. Man, wouldn’t that have been somethin’?”
“I’ll say,” Suzanne replied. “Flame and Lennon together? And Bowie?”
“They’d have knocked Wings out of the ballpark, that’s for sure,” Briggs surmised.
“Now that you mention it, Flame was a lot like Bowie during those years, wouldn’t you say?” Suzanne said. “I mean, he had that androgynous thing going, too.”
“Yeah, some Bowie and a little Rod Stewart thrown in,” Remix added. “Anyway, Flame’s career plodded along through the rest of the seventies and it wasn’t until—”
“Better go over his first marriage, Remix,” Berenger said.
“Oh, I was savin’ all the personal stuff ‘til after I got through the creative stuff.”
“Let’s keep it chronological.”
Remix wrinkled his brow and whispered, “You’re so anal, boss!” He continued at full voice. “Okay, so he got married to Gina Tipton in 1971, just as the first Hay Fever album was takin’ off. Gina was only seventeen at the time and I guess she started out as Flame’s groupie. Their son Adrian was born on May 4, 1973. A year and a half later, in 1975, Flame and Gina divorced. And it was nasty. Lawyers up the wazoo, money flyin’ this way and that, threats and counter-threats, you name it. Bottom line is Flame and Gina don’t get along too well these days. Gina never remarried and brought up Adrian by herself. She was often linked to a slew of other rock stars though, and to certain Private Investigators whom we will not mention.”
This elicited snickers and catcalls from the group. Berenger smirked and motioned for Remix to move it along.
“In 1982, Flame married Carol Merryman after being linked to a number of Hollywood actresses, Playboy Playmates, and supermodels. Some guys have all the luck, I guess. This marriage lasted until 1987 and the divorce was much more amicable than the first one. Carol remains a vice president of Flame’s company and has a hand in his business affairs. They had one son, Joshua, born March 14, 1983. Now—back to the guy’s career. After only four solo albums between 1977 and 1982, Flame formed the band that would surely secure his place in rock ‘n’ roll history if he didn’t already have one. And that, as we all know, was Flame’s Heat.”
Briggs whispered, “Yeaaaa!” again.
“Flame’s Heat consisted of Flame and Dave Bristol again, along with Brick Bentley on bass and Moe Jenkins on keyboards. Combinin’ the best of jazz-rock with the commercial sensibilities of mainstream pop, the first self-titled Flame’s Heat album went gold when it was released in 1983, again on Al Patton’s Liquid Metal Records.”
“Remix, you sound like you’re reading off the press releases,” Suzanne muttered.
“Quiet, girl!” the lad snapped.
“Excuse me, but do you mean that Dave Bristol and Flame didn’t have much to do with each other during the solo years?” Briggs asked.
“That’s right. They didn’t get along during those days. But they patched things up in time to form Flame’s Heat,” Remix said. “So anyways, throughout the rest of the eighties, Flame’s Heat challenged such acts as U2, R.E.M., and Michael Jackson for favored status on the charts. They were often described as a sort of Steely Dan Meets XTC—they could whip out cool riffs and catchy melodies, immaculately produced, but they could also rock. Hmpf. I guess I was too young to appreciate them back then.”
Remix turned over his page of notes and continued.
“Let’s see, in 1991, Flame was arrested for fightin’ in public. That was in LA, where that kind of thing happens all the time, don’t it? It turned out he had a shitload of coke on him and he got busted. He got off easy, though. That’s what money can do, I’m tellin’ ya. He had to pay a big fine and go into rehab. No jail time. He spent three months at a clinic in upstate New York but he went AWOL. He got picked up and spent three days in jail before his heavy hittin’ lawyers got him out. This time he went to another rehab joint and stayed nine months. He got out in late 1993 and Flame’s Heat went on a worldwide tour. There was a lot of exposure in the music press about how Flame looked good at the beginning but must have jumped off the wagon halfway through the Far East. By the end of the tour he was strung out again. He pretty much went into seclusion and the band released a couple of outtakes a
nd B-sides albums in the interim. Finally, in 1998, Flame announced he was going back into rehab. We didn’t hear anything else from him until a couple of years later, when he reappeared on the scene to say that after six killer albums, Flame’s Heat was no more and he was devoting himself to making music for, ahem, Christ.”
Remix looked upward and silently mouthed the word “Why?” He then went back to his notes.
“He had a new girlfriend, Miss Brenda Twist, whom he met in rehab. She was another born-again fundamentalist, a member of the so-called Messengers. Flame was forty-eight. She was twenty-four. Flame and Brenda became the John and Yoko of the new millennium and did everything they could to promote the Messengers and Flame’s new music. Flame released his first religious album in 2002 and released a second one in 2006, neither of which has enjoyed the sales and popularity of his earlier work. And man, I can think of a million people that would probably want to kill that guy!”
“I’ll say,” Briggs added.
“Anyways, that’s the end of my report. You have heard ‘The Life and Times of Peter Flame’ by Remix.” He immediately reclined in his seat, one leg draped over an arm of the chair.
“He has picked up an entirely different audience, though,” Suzanne said. “Hasn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Berenger replied. “Don’t underestimate the popularity of Christian Rock. It may not make it on Billboard’s Top Ten, but it does very well. And Flame’s fans run the gamut of ages. Remember he started back in 1971. Hell, I was even a Flame fan back when he was with Hay Fever.”
“Golly, I guess that makes you an old fart,” Remix said, chuckling.
Berenger ignored him. “I think it’s important that we find out exactly what happened to Flame at the turn of the century to make him turn to religion. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who was into drugs and groupies and the whole rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle for years. Why did he make such a drastic change?”
Rudy shrugged. “Maybe he just saw the error of his ways?”
Briggs said, “You gotta remember that the operative words here are ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘cult.’ It’s just my opinion but there’s nothing wrong with Christian rock or being Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu or whatever you want to be. It’s the fundamentalist and cult parts of it that put it into questionable territory. From what I understand, the Messengers use Christianity as a starting place and then take it into outer space, like those wackos in California that believed they were all aliens and that a great big spaceship was going to come down and take them all to Heaven. They ended up killing themselves in a gigantic religious ritual.”
“I totally agree,” Berenger said. “It’s always the cult sectors of religions that cause controversy.”
“And often violence,” Briggs added.
“Do we know if Flame ever had a medical emergency related to drugs?” Suzanne asked. “Did something happen that scared him?”
“Good question,” Berenger noted. “Not that we know of, but they could have kept it quiet. I’ll look into that. In fact, I’m going to tackle the families and the former bands. I know Gina already and can look at her side of things. I’ve met Carol, too, and hopefully she’ll cooperate with me. Dave Bristol and I go way back. Tomorrow I’m going with the lawyer to see Adrian at Rikers. I’m very interested in hearing his side of the story. There’s some indication that the guy was involved with the Jimmys.”
“Uh oh,” Briggs said.
“Yeah,” Berenger nodded. “Not good.”
“Hey, have you heard their latest CD?” Remix asked.
“No,” Berenger said, rolling his eyes. “But I’m sure you were the first on your block to have it.”
“As a matter of fact, I was. Man, it kicks ass.”
“They’re thugs, Remix,” Briggs said. “Throw it away.”
“No way, man. Just because you don’t like their politics don’t mean you can’t like their music.”
“Politics my ass. The Jimmys are not about politics, they’re about crime!”
“Okay, okay,” Berenger said. “I think we all know that the Jimmys are not the best role models these days. We’ll have to evaluate their involvement in the case when we learn more about it. Anyway, first I’m going to pay a visit to our friend Lieutenant Detective McTiernan.”
There was a collective groan from the group.
Berenger slipped into his low-voiced imitation of the man. “Yeah, he’s in charge of the goddamned investigation.” This elicited a laugh from the group and then he switched back to his normal voice. “So they’ve got to have the wrong guy in custody, wouldn’t you say?”
“What if they’re right, though?” Suzanne asked. “What if Adrian did kill his father? I mean, what’s all this with the Jimmys?”
Berenger gestured with his hands. “I don’t know yet. Look, if he’s guilty, then there’s not a lot we can do about it, is there? Suzanne, I want you to start looking into Brenda Twist. Find out more about her. Flame did a good job keeping her personal life out of the press. We don’t know very much about her, so let’s educate ourselves.”
“I guess that means looking into the Messengers, too,” she said.
“I guess you’re right.” He looked at Briggs. “Tommy, I want you to use your sources at the Bureau and see what you can find out about all the interested parties in this case. Especially the Messengers.”
Briggs tapped a legal pad full of scrawls that sat on the desk before him. “I’ve already done a little digging and I’ll tell you what I know so far.”
“All right.”
“The Messengers are an elite ultra-conservative religious cult that began here in Manhattan in 1992. The front man is a guy named Theodore Ramsey, but he goes by the name ‘Reverend Theo.’ He’s from Jamaica but he married an American woman, Juliet Lacey, so that gave him the necessary right to stay in the country. As far as I can discern, the Messengers are just a bunch of harmless weirdoes. There are no blood sacrifices involved or anything spooky like that, as far as I know. They don’t say they’re aliens or anything like that. They have their own church, over on Tenth Avenue and West 44th. No problems with the IRS, no problems with the city, nothing. But I’ll dig deeper. I’ll find out more about this Reverend Theo. He may have some skeletons in his closet, you never know.”
“Seeing that he’s from Jamaica, do you think he might have any ties to the Jimmys?” Berenger asked. “Didn’t they start in the Caribbean?”
“Nothing I’ve found out so far indicates that, but you never know. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good,” Berenger said. “Remix, you keep doing what you’re doing, but if you get a chance, see if you can hack into the Messengers’ e-mail.”
Remix looked surprised. “That’s not legal, is it, boss? I’ll get right on it!”
“That’s all for today, folks. I’ll know more tomorrow after I talk to McTiernan and to Adrian. I’m also going to the reading of Flame’s will tomorrow afternoon.”
“That should be interesting,” Briggs said. “You think someone’ll bring punch and cookies?”
Berenger sighed and replied, “I just hope no one brings any weapons.”
5
Morning Has Broken
(performed by Cat Stevens)
Berenger was up early the next day. Having a case that was as high profile as this one was invigorating. And it was a case, not some run of the mill security job. He didn’t particularly relish playing bodyguard for Elton John, which was the most exciting thing he’d done in the past few months. He accompanied the superstar across the Far East and Australia and was on call twenty-four/seven. Berenger liked Elton personally and was compensated well for the work, but he would rather have been ferreting out clues in a criminal investigation. It was what he was good at and what he was trained to do back in the army’s CID. Southeast Asia seemed like a century ago, but everything he had learned in the Criminal Investigations Division could be applied to nearly any situation.
Now, here he was, working on wh
at might be the biggest rock ‘n’ roll crime since Lennon’s untimely demise. Flame’s alleged murder was certainly being compared to that. The nonstop outpouring of sympathy and grief from fans all over the world had been overwhelming. It also made good press. Every day the second-tier papers in New York published some new angle on the case. Did Adrian Duncan really do it? Was Flame into drugs again? Was it a mob hit? Was it a government-sponsored conspiracy?
Fans and family alike were upset with the details of Flame’s interment, yet another controversy that fueled the rumors. That morning’s New York Times, of all places, revealed that three days before Duncan’s arrest, Flame had been cremated and the ashes were given to none other than the Messengers, per Flame’s own instructions. Carol Merryman was already in the process of fighting this decree tooth and nail but until it was resolved, Flame’s urn was being kept under lock and key at the Messengers’ church on the West Side. If anything was going to give the Messengers fifteen minutes of fame, that was it.
Berenger left his apartment at 68th and Second Avenue—just down the block from the Rockin’ Security office—and picked up a coffee with cream and sugar and a chocolate-frosted donut from a street vendor. He then flagged a taxi heading downtown. The lawyer, Patterson, was supposed to meet him at the Sixth Precinct at nine o’clock. Berenger gave himself a half-hour to fight the traffic and get over to the West Village in plenty of time. The breakfast he could eat in the back seat of the cab.
The Sixth Precinct was located on W. 10th Street between Bleecker and Hudson, not far from where the crime occurred. Its jurisdiction covered most of West Greenwich Village and Berenger had been there on several occasions. He knew many plainclothes detectives as well as uniformed officers all over the city—some he got along with and others he didn’t. The Sixth’s Lieutenant Detective Billy McTiernan was one he would just as soon keep at arm’s length.
The sergeant at the front desk looked up and recognized the big man that walked inside.
The Rock 'n Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - A Spike Berenger Anthology Page 4
