The Five

by Robert R. McCammon

  The gear was unloaded, the check went well, management said the ticket sales were off the heezy, and everybody was in their groove. Their boxes of merchandise went into the same room where merchandise boxes of the other bands on the gig, The Yogi Barons and The Bella Kersey Band, were stored. The Five wasn’t on until around nine, so they climbed back into the Scumbucket and returned to the cousin’s house to grab a few hours of sleep, drink a beer or two, meditate over a candle, watch cage fight matches on cable and do whatever they needed to do to get up for the gig, each to their own.

  Following a high-energy show by the Yogi Barons, The Five took the stage a little after nine and the pumped-up crowd gave a full-throated response to ‘Something From Nothing’. Without interruption the band went into ‘The Let Down’, another hard rocker opened by Ariel on her white Tempest. The gig was going like clockwork, everybody was loose and easy, the crowd was hollering when you wanted them to let loose and quieter when you wanted them to listen. Berke did her drum solo, cutting back on the time and the frenetics, and she allowed Terry to enter with his keyboard part when he was supposed to. Nomad broke an A string during ‘Your Body Not Your Soul’ but it was okay, he was playing for the angels tonight. Forty minutes later they did ‘When The Storm Breaks’, which earned a big positive, then they left the stage, waited for the audience buildup and returned to finish with a thunderous, wall-shaking version of ‘Blackout of Gretely’.

  They met some fans backstage, had pictures taken, and did a quick question-and-answer with entertainment reporter Brad Lowell from The Daily Star, whom they knew from past trips through town. He praised their new CD, said he thought they were on their way to a breakthrough, and he would be the first to say I told you so. He touched only briefly on Mike’s death, but they couldn’t add anything he didn’t already know.

  They settled in backstage to watch some of Bella Kersey’s band. They’d played several gigs with her before, and Ariel in particular was a big fan. Bella was in her mid-thirties, had long prematurely gray hair and the face of a serene earth mother, but she could kick out the jams and lay down some howling firepower with her cherry-red 1975 Gretsch Streamliner. The band was a family thing and they lived in Tucson; her husband played bass and her brother played drums. It was awesome to watch Bella work the crowd, her sultry voice soaring over the flaming chords. She punched the air with a fist and kicked it with a bright red cowboy boot. Then after a riotous rocker she went to her pedal steel and, bathed in blue light, did a slow, achingly-beautiful version of Shane McGowan’s ‘If I Should Fall From Grace With God’.

  While Bella was playing, the Little Genius quietly said to Nomad, “I’ll go bring the trailer around.” He went out the stage door and back through the alley where the gear would be loaded.

  The Scumbucket was parked in a lot on the next street over. Despite the tragic loss, George was feeling good about things. Anybody who might have been watching would have said he was walking like a man with places to go. The band had been hot tonight, very tight, the merchandise was moving, a check on the website said the CDs were selling now in the hundreds of copies, and the YouTube and MySpace hits were through the roof. Yeah, maybe it did have something to do with the kind of media shine that no band wanted, but there it was. Now there was the Casbah in San Diego to get ready for, and after that on Saturday the 2nd came the Big Show, the make or break, at the Cobra Club in Hollywood. The Sunset Strip, baby! What he had not told them—not yet, but he would—was that two A&R guys, one from Sonic Boom and the other from Manticore, were going to be in the audience. Supposed to be. Let’s hope.

  He was going to leave them in good shape, with a future ahead of them. He owed them that much.

  He showed his parking pass to the attendant on duty and walked across the lot, under the bright yellow security lights. He fished his keys from his pocket, unlocked the driver’s door and opened it, and he was thinking of finding a supermarket and buying a bottle of wine for their hosts when a hammerblow crashed into his right shoulder.

  He thought that somebody had actually come up from behind and struck him, but when he spun around, gasping, no one was there.

  George put his left hand to his shoulder. His shirt was wet. There was a hot throbbing pain, rapidly escalating. His shoulder felt knocked out of joint. He looked around, stunned. His glasses hung by one ear. It was getting harder to breathe; the breath had been knocked out of him, too. His heart… Jesus, it was really pumping…

  He looked toward the attendant’s hut. Saw the blurred shape of the man sitting on a stool, watching the screen of a small TV.

  It came to George’s mind to call out Sir, I need some help please.

  But the words never left him, because another hammerblow hit him in the chest and he fell back against the Scumbucket. He tried to draw a breath but all he found was a gurgle of liquid. Something in his chest burned like a white-hot coal. He had to get it out, had to get rid of it, and he put both hands against his chest but he couldn’t reach what he needed to find, his fingers were wet, he couldn’t get his fingers deep enough. He clawed at his chest and he opened his mouth to shout for help but nothing came out, he no longer had a voice.

  George staggered. His knees were giving way. He reached out to grab hold of the Scumbucket to keep him on his feet but it was no good, he was falling toward the pavement, and as he twisted and went down he saw in the last of his light his own splayed handprint dark against the battleship gray.

  It was just like the logo on their T-shirt, except this one was melting in the warm Tucson night.

  TWELVE.

  “No, I don’t,” said Nomad.

  He was weary and red-eyed. The video camera lights were not kind. Neither were the questions that came from behind them, and the one that had just been thrown at Nomad was John, do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?

  “Dumb question, Dave,” the Hispanic police captain sitting at the table between Nomad and Ariel said. “Don’t you think we’ve been over this?”

  “All for the public, sir,” Dave the reporter from Fox-KMSB answered. He flashed a thin and humorless smile. “Doing my job.”

  “Miss…Bonneway, is it?”

  Berke blinked heavily and directed her attention to the young woman who’d spoken. “Bonnevay. With a ‘v’.”

  “Okay, got it. Am I hearing you’ve reported to Captain Garza that you were shot at by this sniper when you were in Sweetwater? After your bass player was killed?” The woman, blonde and sharp-featured and maybe twenty-two at the oldest, wore a nametag on the jacket of her beige suit that identified her as being a reporter from the Tucson Citizen.

  “That’s right.” Berke had a blinding headache. She’d been sick to her stomach for the past two hours. “Yeah.”

  “So can I ask if you reported this to the police in Sweetwater or not?”

  “I didn’t, no. I thought… I wasn’t sure it happened.”

  “Pardon me? You weren’t sure you were shot at?”

  “Jamie, this isn’t an interrogation,” said the public information officer, a dark-haired woman in her mid-forties named Ann Hamilton. She was sitting at the end of the conference room table, beside Terry. Her demeanor was quiet but obviously she could pull up some steel when it was needed. “Miss Bonnevay has explained that to Captain Garza. Next question, please.”

  The reporter from KVOA raised his hand, but the Citizen reporter wouldn’t yield. “I’m just thinking out loud, maybe, that we have a sniper on the loose here because the police weren’t properly notified in Texas. Am I wrong about that?”

  “Let me answer,” said Garza, whose deep-set ebony eyes fixed upon Jamie Layne and had the effect of nailing her to her chair. He had a jaw like a brick and a pock-marked face and his voice sounded like gravel being churned into cement. “First off, we’re only starting our investigation. Where it’ll take us, we can’t say. Secondly, you’re assuming that Mr. Emerson was shot by the same individual who killed Mr. Davis, which is far from being proven. And,
Jamie, tossing around terms like ‘sniper’ is not going to endear you to the police department, I can tell you.”

  “It’s a little premature,” the PIO lady added, as a softener.

  “Sir?” said the KVOA reporter. “Are you saying this was a coincidence?” It sounded ridiculous, the way he said it.

  “I’m saying we have a young man who is fighting for his life.” Garza would not rise to the bait. His expression was Buddha-calm, if Buddha had been born the son of a Juarez cop. The hospital public relations rep had only a few minutes ago left this room on the first floor of University Medical Center, after telling the assembled group of reporters, camera crews and various techs that George Emerson had been delivered by ambulance at eleven forty-eight in critical condition, a little more than two hours ago, and was currently in surgery with two gunshot wounds, one to the right shoulder and one to the upper chest. “Until we have more to go on, we can’t draw any conclusions about anything,” Garza said.

  “But they were long range shots, is that correct?” asked the black female reporter from, ironically enough, KGUN.

  “I can’t comment on that.”

  “Mr. Castillo says he didn’t hear any shots. He was right there when Mr. Emerson was hit. If they weren’t fired at long range, then—”

  “Under investigation. No comment.” Garza pointed to the Daily Star reporter whose hand was up. “Go ahead, Paul.”

  “Thanks. How about some background on Mr. Emerson? What’s his age, and where’s he from?”

  The others looked to Nomad to answer, but Nomad just stared at his own hands clenched together on the table before him. He wasn’t feeling much like an emperor at the moment. He was feeling small and impoverished and lost again on the unmapped road. He was feeling caught between tears and rage and if he was to move his head one inch to the left he might start to weep and one inch to the right he might stand up and throw this fucking table over.

  So he sat very, very still.

  Terry cleared his throat. “George is thirty-three. He’s from Chicago.”

  “Can I get a rundown of all your ages and where you’re from?”

  “Old,” Nomad said when it was his turn. He wished he’d kept his sunglasses on, but Garza had told him to take them off when speaking to the press. Just grit your teeth and get through it, Ms. Hamilton had said. He could still feel the stiffnesss of dried stage-sweat in his red T-shirt. “Detroit city,” he added, without looking up or moving his head.

  “I think we ought to wind this up,” Ms. Hamilton told the reporters after everyone else had answered the question. “You can imagine what these people are going through.”

  “Captain, are you planning on asking the FBI to help the investigation?” It was the woman from the Citizen again.

  “That’s not been discussed yet.”

  “Sir? Let me rephrase a question,” said the Fox guy. “Does anybody at that table have any idea about why a sniper might be—might be—stalking your band?” He ignored both the abrupt birth of Garza’s fearsome scowl and the outstretched palm of Ms. Hamilton’s hand. “Or are we talking about music critics taking up arms?”

  Nomad had had enough of this. His face impassive, he stood up and walked out the door behind Ms. Hamilton. Before he reached the elevators at the end of the hall, he was aware that three other people were walking with him. The police captain caught up with them and eased into the elevator just as the doors were closing. They began rising to the second floor, where they’d been given a private waiting area and a cop was on-duty to keep any reporters from intruding.

  “As much as I don’t want to hear that word or see it in print,” Garza said before they reached their floor, “I know the media. They’re going to be talking about a sniper all over this town by sunup, so get used to it. When it goes on the Internet and the networks, it’s everywhere.”

  “This is crazy.” Berke had dark purple hollows under her eyes. “Why would somebody be trying to kill us?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  The doors opened. The cop was on a sofa in a small seating area, facing the bank of elevators. He put aside his Sports Illustrated magazine and sat up straight as a display of vigilance. On the table beside him was a stack of magazines and a dark blue coffee cup bearing a red ‘A’ outlined in white. Garza nodded at him and walked with Nomad, Terry, Ariel and Berke down the long hallway past a nurses’ station to another door. He opened it for them and followed them in.

  It was nothing special, just a room with a few gray upholstered chairs, a sofa, a couple of low tables and lamps, and a TV. On the cream-colored walls were framed paintings of sunwashed adobe houses and orange-tinted desert scenes.

  “Okay,” Garza said as the bandmembers got themselves settled. “Now I guess all you can do is wait. Unless you want to pray,” he added. “If not here, there’s a chapel at the far end of the hall and take a right.”

  “Thank you,” Terry said. He pushed his specs back up the bridge of his nose. “Um…we can leave and walk around, can’t we? If we want to take the elevator down to the vending machines? Like…we’re not under arrest, are we?”

  “You can go wherever you please. Just remember that if the reporters are hanging around, they can get to you downstairs. But probably most of them are going back to the crime scene.” Garza checked his watch. “Which is where I need to be.” He moved toward the door. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  Nobody answered, but then Ariel spoke up: “I’d like to know,” she said. “Where the shots came from. They were from long range, weren’t they?”

  “Miss, I just can’t say. It’s true Mr. Castillo didn’t hear them. He didn’t see anybody else in the lot but Mr. Emerson. So…the only thing we’re sure of is that it wasn’t a drive-by. Other than that…” He let the sentence die. “We have a lot of work to do,” he finished.

  “Thank you for doing what you can,” Ariel told him. Her eyes were swollen and had the shine of shell-shock.

  “Yeah. Well, the trauma team here is the best in the country. That’s not just my opinion.” He glanced quickly at Nomad, who was sitting in a chair slumped over with his hands to his face. “Hang in,” he said, and then he left the room and shut the door behind him.

  For a while no one said anything. At last Terry quietly breathed, “Wow,” which served to sum up their collective inability to grasp the fact that the Little Genius lay on an operating table with surgeons trying to keep him alive. Also, they were so tired they could hardly move. It was a bad dream, and at its center a worse one. How long George had been bleeding out on the ground before the attendant had seen him was still unknown, though the police thought it had only been ten or fifteen seconds. Still…ten or fifteen fucking seconds? While George had been down with two bullets in him, and one right in his chest near the heart? It was more than they could bear to think about.

  The attendant—Castillo—had recognized the blue parking pass as being from Fortunato’s. Musicians parked their vans and trailers over there all the time, in a special area in the back. He’d called nine-one-one, reported a man down and unconscious and his chest covered with blood. About the time the ambulance and the first police cruiser had come screaming up, Nomad had walked out Fortunato’s stage door into the alley to see where George was, and when he heard the sirens he later told Ariel that he’d felt like a knife had ripped open his guts because he knew something very bad had happened to their friend.

  At the hospital, Nomad had called Ash on his cell and had gotten the I can’t pick up right now, but—

  “Pick up, you dumb shit!” Nomad had shouted into the cell. “It’s John Charles! Pick up!”

  “Hey, hold on with that language!” There had been some hot spice in Ash’s heavily-accented voice. Little did he know how close he was walking to a burning crater in Hell. “Who do you think you’re talking—”

  “Shut up and listen!” the emperor had commanded, and Ash had shut.

  Ash was coming to Tucson, would try to get a
flight out by afternoon or at the latest by Monday morning. In the meantime, he would make the call to George’s mother and father in Chicago. Ash had sounded stunned, and when he asked Nomad, “What is going on?” Nomad knew he was asking why two members of The Five had been cut down by bullets and to that there was no good or easy answer.

  Nomad lowered his hands from his face. Terry was standing in front of him.

  “Maybe we ought to pray for George,” Terry said, and he looked at Ariel and Berke to gauge their reactions. “Don’t you think?”

  “I think we should,” Ariel agreed.

  Nomad closed his eyes and shook his head and masked his pain with his hands again. Berke said, “I’m not what you’d call religious.”

  “Can’t you be? For just a minute?” Terry asked, but Berke turned her face away. Terry went over and sat beside Ariel, and they grasped hands and put their heads together, and when Terry began with “Dear God,” Berke got up and left the room.

  When their prayer was finished, Nomad sat back in his chair and rubbed his temples. If he’d only gone to get the van with George, he thought. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. If only, if only…

  “John?”

  “What is it?” Nomad watched as Terry pulled a chair up in front of him and sat down.

  “Don’t you believe in God?”

  “No,” came the reply. “I believe in myself.” He saw his lamplit face reflected in Terry’s Lennon-specs. “God is a myth made up to keep people from freaking out about death.” Terry was silent, as if waiting for something else. “Listen,” Nomad said irritably, because Ariel was watching him too, in that expectant way she had when they were writing a song together and she was waiting for him to supply a line. “I want to rest. How about leaving me alone.”