by Dave Daren
“Most people had the basic knowledge to put it into terms of a dystopian novel,” he said. “They would throw around words like, ‘Orwellian,’ and ‘brave new world,’ and such.”
He shook his head in slight irritation. “But I saw those philosophical and moral questions from an industry perspective. I knew that I had a very pivotal responsibility in shaping the future of our industry. I had a role toward ushering in a new age of media in a way that protected the rights of the media, and the rights of information, and the way it was gathered and protected for the new millennium. We were at a precipice with the future of media and information, and history would forever judge us on the way we handled it. So, with my team of lawyers and several board members, we drafted a bill, called the ‘The Free Speech Act for the New Millennium’.”
“Was John Malone in that consortium?” I asked.
“He was,” Marvin said. “We also had a D.C. senator that said he would sponsor the bill. So John actually led the team on the bill, and gave it to our senator, who said it was too aggressive, and he couldn’t sponsor it. And every other legislator we had relationships with, and we knew many, both in Tucson and in Washington, either disagreed with the bill, because they didn’t fully understand it, or they wouldn’t touch it, because they said we were jumping too quickly into an ongoing culture war.”
“And without a legislator to back it, the bill was dead,” I concluded.
“Exactly,” he said. “So I created a legislator.”
“Malone,” I said.
Marvin nodded. “I engineered his campaign on the sole premise that he’d push the bill through. Unfortunately, it was harder than we all thought. He got into the legislator’s circle and forgot who got him there. Now, SB 1110 is finally on the floor, but it’s taken him four terms, and he’s made so many bipartisan compromises along the way, it isn’t a fraction of the original bill. As it stands, the bill’s a joke, honestly. But, there are a couple of provisions that we still need, so we keep it alive.”
“Then it sounds like Malone hasn’t lived up to his expectations, then?” I observed.
“He’s marginally useful,” he said. “So, I keep him around. But, this business with Judith Klein...” He shook his head and took another sip of scotch. I was surprised he’d talked so openly about it.
“It’s a colossal failure,” he said. “There are loose ends all over the state from his dealings with her. And I’ve had to bail him out of jams so many times.”
“So, he gets caught in some misdeed,” I said, “and you cover it up by either silencing the press, or paying someone off.”
“That’s the gist of it,” he said.
“And what about Olivia?” I asked.
As open as Marvin was being, I figured I should just straight up ask what I wanted to know. One of the first things he ever said to me, was that he valued directness.
“Olivia,” he said, “was supposed to be a... gentleman’s indiscretion.”
He nodded to Vicki, “Pardon.”
She smiled politely. “And now?”
“Now,” he said, as he fingered the rim of his glass. “I believe she will be his greatest downfall.”
“How so?” Vicki asked.
“The press knows about her,” he said. “And I don’t think I could stop them. I’m not even sure I would want to anyway.”
“Why not?” Vicki probed.
“Because,” he said. “When your maintenance out lives your usefulness, it means your time has come.”
“Did he screw you over in some way?” Vicki asked.
He laughed. “I like the way you think, but I won’t answer that.”
“So, to sum it all up, Malone is a crooked senator that got too reckless with a call girl,” I concluded.
“Right,” he answered.
“Why was he at the PAH that night?” I asked.
“The performance was arranged at the behest of Julianna,” he said. “But the senator attended the event to meet with Olivia.”
“He was waiting for her to come out from backstage,” Vicki concluded.
Marvin sighed. “He arranged a rendezvous with her and paid Judith for the guarantee. According to Malone, she was supposed to sneak backstage and make sure she made it to his vehicle.”
“And then what happened?” I asked.
“As with many things involving Malone,” he chuckled, “it didn’t go to plan.”
“So backstage there was Malone, Judith, and Olivia… this trio of indiscretion, as you put it,” I said. “But how does Beowulf get killed?”
“That,” he said, “is as much as I know. Beyond that, I would like to know as much as you.”
I turned to Vicki. “You have anything else?”
“No,” she shook her head.
“Thank you, Marvin,” I rose. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Marvin and Vicki rose as well, and we all shook hands again.
“Anytime,” he said. “And I do hope the business with Jerry Steele didn’t cause you too much trouble.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think it was up long enough. Matt Chelmi took it down pretty quickly.”
He smiled curiously. “Glad to hear that.”
He showed us back to the elevator and as soon as the doors were closed, I turned to Vicki.
“Did you get the impression that he arranged that with Jerry Steele?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “The way he said it. But why would he do that?”
I laughed heartily as the elevator doors opened back into the lobby. “The same reason he had us meet him here,” I said. “To show us his power.”
“We were investigating him,” she figured out, “and he knew it. So, he wanted to send us a message.”
“But he did it with a shitty video,” I began to realize, “because he didn’t actually want to bring us down. He just wanted to scare us.”
“So he’s got something to hide,” she said.
“Whatever it is,” I said, “it has to do with whatever made him talk to us about Malone.”
“Which may not even be related to this case,” she said.
“That makes more sense,” I said. “He’s got skeletons he doesn’t want us to find.”
“So,” she concluded, “the message was, stick to the murder investigation and don’t dig too deep.”
“Which explains why he gave us all the information we wanted,” I said. “Enough that we would lay off him.”
Chapter 14
The next day was a lazy Saturday morning in our cottage. We didn’t get that often during a big case. When work slowed, we could actually enjoy weekends like a normal couple. But, when we were on a big murder case, like we were now, it was a seven day, around the clock marathon to the finish line. But, today we had a rare moment of calm. I wasn’t complaining. With all of the events of the last couple of days, we needed a break.
I woke slowly with the mid-morning light pouring in through the blinds.
“We need better curtains,” I grumbled.
“We need a better house,” Vicki said. She sat in bed on her laptop.
“No work,” I mumbled.
“Agreed,” she laughed. “If I hear the names, ‘Iakova’ or ‘Malone,’ I think I might throw up.”
“Or murder someone ourselves,” I muttered.
She laughed. “Right? No, I’ve been getting ready for our meeting with Susan tomorrow.”
“Susan,” I recalled as I stretched under the blankets. “The realtor.”
“It’s next week, and she sent me this website,” she said. “It turns out that there’s a lot of good real estate in Sedona. If you’re looking for something… a little avante garde.”
“Avante garde,” I said. “I need food before I can handle avante garde. Get up, and make me some breakfast, woman.”
She laughed and pointed, “Kitchen, there. You have two feet.”
“Damn you,” I said as I grabbed my phone off the nightstand. “I’m ordering in.”
; “Actually,” she said. “I already did. Jitters is on their way.”
“Nicely done,” I said. “I missed a call from my dad.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It went off a couple of times. I didn’t want to wake you.”
I returned the call, and he answered after the first ring.
“Hey, Henry,” his tone was quick and excitable.
“Hey, dad,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“You sound like you were asleep,” he said. “It’s eleven in the morning.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Chasing down murderers and crooked senators is tiring work.”
“I saw that,” he said. “You were on the news last night.”
“Was I?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “You were talking about a big murder case with that dancer they found at the PAH.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “It’s turning into a monster case.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ve been following it in the news. Your mom is concerned about Julianna. She was always a nice girl. Are you going to get her off?”
I knew what he meant, but given the offer Julianna and Gabriel made us at dinner that night, his word choice held a different meaning in my head.
“We’re pretty close,” I chuckled, as I tried to free my mind of the thought.
“Really?” he said. “Is it the senator? Because on the news you said he wasn’t involved.”
“He might not be a murderer,” I said. “But he’s as dirty as they come.”
“Ohhh,” he said. “I get an exclusive.”
“Yeah, but don’t tell anybody,” I said. “He’s already out to ruin my career.”
“Really?” he said. “What has he done?”
“Nothing yet, as far as I know,” I said. “But I’ve been warned. Anyway, is that why you called, that I was on the news last night?”
“No,” he said. “I need a favor.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked.
“So, I got this thing at an auction,” he said. “I need you to come with me, to verify that it was authentic.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well,” he said. “It’s... it’s… alright, well, uh…”
I heard my mother in the background. “Just tell him, already.”
“Alright,” his voice lowered as if he were telling me a great, great secret. “I bought Jimi Hendrix’s storage locker.”
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and I could hear his wide grin through the phone. “Before he became famous, he moved to Sedona and wanted to hang out near the vortexes to get a vision for his career.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that,” I said.
“Legend has it,” my dad’s voice dropped to a melodramatic tone, akin to campfire ghost story, “that for six months, Jimi camped up near Cathedral Rock, and smoked Peyote for a month straight, and that’s when he wrote Purple Haze.”
I laughed. “That’s something I wouldn’t doubt, either.”
“But,” he said, “This is where it gets dicey. When he lived out here, he was flat broke. So, he had to be basically homeless for a while, and lived on people’s couches. And he had most of his stuff in a storage unit.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, as I started to figure out the end of this story. I was unaware storage units existed in the 60s, but I didn’t want to bring that up.
“Then,” he said, “he met an angel, that told him to go to L.A., and so he did. He hopped onto a bus with just what he had and didn’t bother to clean out his storage room. And the storage room was seized.”
“Right,” I said. “And this is coming up sixty years later, because…?”
“Because,” his voice dropped to an even more dramatic tone, “the guy that owned the storage unit, he got busted for dealing drugs through the storage unit, and so he went to jail, and then there was a federal lien on the property, and no business transactions could occur. By the time the lien was lifted, the rights were transferred to his son, who realized whose storage unit it was, and has held on to it all these years.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“But,” he said. “Then, his son recently retired and gave the property to his son, who is short on cash, so he auctioned the unit off.”
“And you won,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, this is... this is... the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Well, what’s in there?” I asked.
“That was the terms of the deal,” he said. “There were over two hundred bidders, and it had to be done sight unseen. We stood in front of the closed door. No one had ever opened the lock. The last person to open that door was Jimi himself.”
“Wow,” I said. “That sounds impressive.”
“It is,” he raved. “Now, I need you to come with me. I want you to legally certify that everything I pull out of that unit did in fact come from it.”
I sighed. “When?”
“Today,” he said. “I’m going out there right now.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll meet up with you.”
“Awww, man,” he gushed. “This is amazing.”
“I’ll see you in a bit, dad,” I laughed.
“Alright,” he said.
I got off the phone and filled Vicki in on the Jimi Hendrix locker saga.
“That’s actually really cool,” she said. “He could make a lot of money off that stuff.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Depends on what’s in there.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Hendrix’s storage room? You might need to be inoculated for every strain of STD in the last century.”
I groaned. “You might be right about that.”
I rolled out of bed, showered, and dressed for whatever traipsing through a sixty-year-old storage room might entail. Jeans, boots, and a layered shirt.
Breakfast came in from Jitters, and I took a coffee and bagel to go.
“What are you going to do today?” I asked Vicki.
“I don’t know,” she laughed. “A whole day without you? I might find some other guy. You’d better hurry back.”
I just laughed and pecked her on the cheek.
“Have fun,” I said.
“Don’t be too long,” she said.
I winked and headed out the door. I made the ten minute drive out to my parents’ house. They lived in a modest one-story house that changes colors. One day, it’s painted pink, another day, it’s painted blue. Today, it was hunter green.
I pulled up the drive and smirked at the grassless lawn. Phoenix had once gone through a save the earth phase and insisted they put rocks instead of grass. His logic escaped me. I did notice a bag of grass seed on the side of the yard. With Phoenix gone, were they getting grass?
My dad was out in the yard trying to hitch up a trailer to a... Jeep? He waved when he saw me, and I got out of the car to inspect his handiwork.
“When did you get the Jeep?” I asked.
When I had first moved back to town, the only vehicle the family owned was a Volkswagen bus. The Jeep was a new development. He smiled and patted the silver frame.
“I bought it last month,” he said. “With Phoenix gone and all, your mother and I have been talking about doing more traveling. We thought we could use a Jeep.”
“Did you get rid of the bus?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. “We’ll never part with that.”
“This seems useful in this area,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re going to need it for this trip.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“The unit is way up in the Red Rocks,” he said. “We’re going to need something that can climb.”
I helped him hitch up the trailer to the back of the Jeep, and then he smiled.
“Let’s get a move on,” his grin was huge.
“Jimi Hendrix,” I said, “here we come.”
We got into the Jeep, and he hooked up his phone.
“Pay your respects,” he s
aid.
Then, he cued a Jimi Hendrix playlist and blared it at full volume as he gunned the engine and pulled out. It was an hour and a half drive, and we rocked out to Jimi the whole way up there. The only conversation we had, was the occasional music history lesson my dad felt I needed over the sounds of blaring guitars.
We drove west, to another small town near the Red Rocks, and turned off the paved road onto a dusty trail. We found an old backwoods community, with a dilapidated gas station and a Native American bead shop.
We drove further down. After about the fifth rendition of All Along the Watchtower, we finally arrived at a grocery stand. It was a wooden frame platform that was just a step up from the lemonade stands of childhood lore. But, according to the sign, as we got out of the Jeep, the produce stand sold watermelons, avocados, tomatoes, onions and…
“Chickens?” I asked.
“Yeah,” a voice came from the other side of the counter. “We raise those.”
The man running the stand was an old hippie burnout, with long, shaggy gray hair coming out in all directions, including his face, and it was all barely restrained with a tie-dyed headband around his forehead. He wore a button down Hawaiian shirt and gray cargo shorts, Birkenstock style sandals, and he smoked a pipe. He sat in a lawn chair, with his feet up, and watched an old TV with some sort of improvised antenna made out of wood and coat hangers.
“Hey, Alex,” my dad greeted him.
“Hey, Moondust,” Alex’s face lit up. “Good to see you. This your lawyer-son?”
“Yeah,” he said. “This is Henry.”
Alex nodded at me and took a long drag on his pipe and blew it out slowly.
“Your dad won the auction, but wouldn’t even open the door without it being certified,” he said. “Smart one, your old man.”
“Good to meet you, Alex,” I said, and we shook hands.
Three brown and white chickens wandered up to us and waddled around our feet. I grimaced as one of them checked out my boot, and I thought about how expensive it was, and as hard as I tried, in my heart I really was, ‘that guy.’
“Yep,” Alex said as he shooed them away. “We raise these, and we sell fresh eggs and meat. They’re all free-range chickens, so the folks around here like that.”
“You just sell them here?” I asked. “To the locals?”
