by John Niven
‘Politics,’ she says.
I smile. ‘Interesting times.’
She smiles too, but ruefully, shaking her head. ‘This fucking guy …’ She embarks on exactly the kind of Trump speech you’d expect from a hip twenty-eight-year-old resident of California. I let it all go, let it wash over me, occasionally nodding in agreement, or sombrely quoting idiotic bits of fake news I’ve read in the Guardian, on the Daily Beast, in the Washington Post, as I savour the rich white wine and tiny, expensive plates of fish and meat, surrounded by the fine lunatics of America, all of whom, like me, think she’s talking utter cobblers.
Later, in bed, alone, I reflect on how difficult it is to do boilers when you’re not off your nugget. We went back just as the set was ending. We hung out briefly with Danny and the band (‘Amazing set. I couldn’t believe it when you dropped X into Y. The energy in that place. Let’s meet again in LA next week.’ And so on and so on), then limo’d back to our hotel where we had a debrief in the bar over a whiskey, a chaste peck on the cheek, and then took different elevators to our rooms – me to a suite on the exec floor, her to a regular shoebox. Back in the old days this was all very different of course. Much more straight-forward. You’d drink yourselves senseless, bang a mountain of racket, and get your cock out. Simpler times. I lie awake and find myself thinking about the fact that I’m forty-seven and she’s twenty-eight. Isn’t there a formula that the ideal age for a girlfriend is half your age plus seven years? That would be someone, what, thirty-one for me? Our age difference is nineteen years. So when I’m fifty-five she’ll be thirty-six. When I’m sixty she’ll be forty-one. When – oh God.
I sit up and turn the light on.
I know what all of this means.
Christ, I don’t need this level of complication right now.
EIGHTEEN
Art Hinckley, ordering another Diet Coke, lighting a cigarette, sitting outside a coffee shop in Los Feliz. He checked his watch, just after eleven. The guy was late. Had he got the right place? The fucking balls on him. No, LA traffic, he’d be there. Calm down. Cool. In control. He was holding all the cards here. Be strong. He stilled his internal monologue as a black Bentley pulled into the parking lot. He watched the guy get out. He’d be about Art’s age, but there the similarities ended. Where Art was pasty from endless days spent under the fluorescent tubes of his office, this guy was tanned. Where Art had an extra twenty pounds hanging around his midriff this guy was lean and toned. Where Artie was sweating through his suit this guy looked cool and relaxed in some sort of thin cashmere sweater. Head to toe in black. He sat down opposite and extended his hand, saying, ‘Hi.’
‘I’m Art.’
‘So, what happened to your … colleagues?’
The guy was almost smirking. Take control. ‘I thought it was time you met the first team,’ Art said, immediately regretting it, hearing it as it left his mouth sounding like bad movie dialogue.
‘I see.’
‘So let’s get off on the right foot. No more negotiating on time or money. You have the deal. You pay us the twenty million today or have fun tuning into the six o’clock news tomorrow night.’
‘Friday.’ Saying it matter-of-fact, in his British accent. No hint of apology.
‘What?’ Artie says.
‘Friday. You’ll have the money on Friday.’
‘That’s not what I asked for, you fuck –’
‘Listen, Mr Hinckley. Art. Artie. The money is being put together. It’ll be in the account you’ve specified by close of business on Friday. There’s nothing else to say.’ He reached over and took a cigarette out of Artie’s pack. Lit it.
‘Help your fucking self,’ Artie said.
‘Cheers,’ this Stelfox said, exhaling smoke. ‘You must be worried about them.’
‘Huh? Who?’
‘Your colleagues. The Murphys. I mean the collective brain power of that pair …’ He whistled.
‘One, they’re not my fucking “colleagues”, and two, they’ve done their part.’
‘Well,’ he said, tapping ash into Art’s empty Diet Coke can. ‘There’s also the question of trust, isn’t there?’
‘Trust? Trusting who?’ Art was beginning to see what Bridget meant. It was like there was nothing riding on this for him. Like he didn’t give a fuck.
‘Art, come on. You’re really going to trust a pair who’d get their own son to videotape a half-Fergal ploughing his fucking farter, are you?’
Ploughing his farter? And what the fuck was a half-Fergal? What the fuck was this guy talking about? Artie took off his sunglasses and leaned forward. ‘Look, maybe I’m not being clear. Forget about the Murphys. Worry about me from here on in, OK, buddy?’
Now he took off his sunglasses too. And, for the first time, Artie recognised that he was feeling something more here, something more than just a sense of not being in the driving seat. His eyes were dark, black, bottomless. Yes, fear. Artie felt fear. ‘I’m not worried, mate,’ he said. ‘Neither should you be. By Friday you’ll be a rich man. Thanks for the cigarette.’
‘Hey,’ Artie said, casting around uselessly for something to say, feeling he should be the one to end the meeting, trying to regain some kind of authority. ‘Just don’t try any fucking funny stuff. OK?’
‘Sure, Artie. You’re the boss. See ya.’ He walked off towards his car, whistling, leaving Artie feeling like anything but the boss. He looked at his watch again.
Steven Stelfox had been there less than two minutes.
NINETEEN
‘YOU KNOW I HATE FLYING! I WANT MY MILK! GET DR ALI! SHIT!’ A tray full of expensive toiletries went sailing through the air and smashed into the shower stall.
The monthly early-morning chopper ride, over to Phoenix, to the Blezzard Clinic. Things had gone wrong with Lucius’s skin. He had to admit it. On a good day he could pass for a very light-skinned black man. On a bad day, or when he mismanaged the frankly incredible amount of medication he was taking, he had patches that were pink, white, black and brown all within a few inches of each other. Today was not a good day, on many levels. Sadly, tiredly, Schitzbaul watched his client methodically smashing up the bathroom. In normal circumstances he’d have caved of course. Dr Ali would have been on his way over right now, preloaded hypodermic in hand. But Stelfox’s guy had given clear instructions – no propofol twenty-four hours prior. It might interfere fatally with what he had to do. Lucius had no idea what was coming. Famously capricious, it had been decided that it would be best all round if everything came as a total surprise to him. It was also necessary that it happened this way for reasons of witnesses, flight logs, etc. There would be some breakage of course. But the families would be compensated.
‘Lucius, come on. Not now. You can have some right after. Take a Xanax.’
‘NO! I WANT MY MILK!’
‘Or a Percocet.’
Crash, bang, smash. More stuff going over, a mirror breaking. ‘Jesus Christ, man, come on, the chopper’s ready. The boys are ready.’ Schitzbaul, in the doorway, nodded towards Marcus and Jay, coats on, sitting in the hallway.
‘I hate you,’ Lucius sobbed. ‘You don’t care about me …’
Lance controlled his temper and fished in his pocket, for the small brown tub he kept for emergency use only. They were already nearly an hour late and dawn was starting to break. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Just one …’ Lucius looked down into his manager’s fat fist to see one tiny, pale orange pill nestled in the middle of his palm. Dilaudid, 4mg. His red, damp eyes brightened a fraction as he scooped up and dry-swallowed the opioid.
‘OK, let’s go’ Lucius said, suddenly decisive. Schitzbaul gave the signal to Jay and a chain of walkie-talkies crackled into life – ‘Number One is moving.’
They hurried out of there, Jay and Marcus following, falling into step behind them, Schitzbaul barking orders, telling one of the maids about the wrecked bathroom on the way through the great hall, the inner circle moving with purpose, as they used to move through the concr
ete depths of football stadiums and basketball arenas, back in the days when the name Lucius Du Pre meant one of the most visceral entertainers in music, instead of … whatever he was now.
Out the back door and down the steps towards the lawn, the helipad just a hundred yards away, the rotors starting to turn as she fired up, the pilot having been the last stop on that walkie-talkie chain. Several of the staff (witnesses) were lined up on the steps, wishing Lucius a safe flight. (Again, all of this was routine. Everything about this had to be routine.) ‘Bye, Mr Lucius. Safe flight.’ ‘See you later, boss.’ ‘Have a nice trip.’ And so on.
When they were on the grass, just fifty or so yards short of the helicopter, Schitzbaul stopped and put a hand on Lucius’s shoulder. This was as far as he was going. (Again, routine – he never came to Phoenix.) ‘HAVE A GREAT FLIGHT,’ he roared over the rotor blare, wind whipping him in the face. Lucius just nodded and turned to hurry on. Schitzbaul felt the need to say something more, something to mark the moment. ‘LUCIUS?’ he shouted, holding him back. ‘TAKE CARE, OK?’
‘Yeah,’ Lucius said. He turned and doubled over as he walked the last stretch under the whirring blades, Jay guiding him, holding his arm. Oh well, Schitzbaul thought. Not the most profound way to end a thirty-year relationship, but there it was.
Jay helped Lucius up into the front seat, next to the pilot, where he always sat, and then got in the back with Marcus, putting his headphones on.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ the pilot said in a clipped, aristocratic English accent. ‘Seat belts all on please? Good.’
‘Hey,’ Marcus said, buckling up, ‘where’s Nate?’
‘Off sick, I’m afraid,’ Terry Rawlings said, flipping switches, throttling back, the whine of the engine sharpening in pitch. Lucius didn’t notice the change of pilot. He rarely spoke on these trips and felt no need to do so now, with the golden thrill of the Dilaudid just starting to kick in, accentuating the whooshing rush he felt as the grass rocketed away beneath them. It always reminded him of being on the Ferris wheel, which he could see below him now, going up, imagining the shrieks and whoops of children in his ears. Terry hovered high above the property for a moment, the ocean out there, sparkling in the dawn to his left, before he dipped the nose, putting the machine into a turn, and headed off, flying due east, into the rising sun.
Forty-four minutes into the flight – his three passengers dozing gently (as expected, this really was the middle of the night for them) – Terry saw the Pinto Mountains coming up in the distance. He checked his watch – 7.11 a.m. – and took a few deep breaths (not for drama, just on instinct, following training, slowing his heart rate down) as he checked the altimeter, four and a half thousand feet, put her into a gentle ten-degree dive, and engaged the autopilot. He unbuckled his seat belt and took the small hypodermic out. Terry leaned over and, in one motion, clamped his right hand over Lucius’s mouth and jabbed the syringe into his thigh with his left hand. Lucius stiffened in his seat, yelping soundlessly into Terry’s palm. A few seconds of struggle, his sunglasses falling off, Terry seeing panic in those haunted brown eyes, and then he slumped forward, unconscious. Terry undid Lucius’s belt, pulled him out of his seat and sat him in his lap. He weighed next to nothing, about 110 pounds, Terry guessed. The bodyguards in the back hadn’t even woken up. Terry worked fast with the webbing belt, fastening the sleeping Lucius tightly to his chest. Those mountains up ahead, getting closer now. ‘Okey-dokey,’ Terry said softly, to himself. He blew the door – explosive bolts cracking, the door flying off into the slipstream of the chopper – and leapt out.
Jay and Marcus, waking up as one on the bang, freezing air rushing in, filling the cabin, both of them looking around, wild with terror – at the now empty front seats.
Terry in free fall, counting in his head, a fine balancing act, having to wait until he was clear of the rotors, falling fast, weighing nearly three hundred pounds with the addition of the Emperor of Pop.
Jay screaming, Marcus trying to climb over the seats and into the front, desperation making him claw for the stick, even though he had no idea how to fly a helicopter. Suddenly an alarm sounded and a metallic voice started barking at them – ‘TERRAIN! TERRAIN! PULL UP! PULL UP!’ Jay looked ahead through the cockpit and saw the mountains – huge and getting closer by the second.
Terry, popping his chute at just under two thousand feet, feeling the hard tug on his shoulders as they rocketed back up into the early-morning sky.
Marcus’s fingertips almost reaching the cyclic control as he heard Jay screaming ‘FUCK!’ somewhere behind him. He looked up in time to see the mountainside – his eyes fixing ridiculously on a small bush. Now it was a bigger bush. Now it was huge. He just had time to say ‘Momma’, before –
Terry saw the fireball erupt on the mountainside in the distance just as he hit the ground.
A clean, professional roll-out, even with the encumbrance on his chest, and he was quickly gathering up his chute. Terry unstrapped Lucius and laid him sleeping on the desert floor while he stuffed the chute back into the pack and strapped it on his back. He shielded his eyes against the morning sun and looked west. He calculated he’d only missed the drop site by about half a mile, not bad in the circumstances, bailing out of a helicopter at low altitude, but it could be fatal if someone happened to be out this far for a dawn drive or hike. This was the most dangerous, the most exposed, part of the whole operation. He picked up Lucius, threw him over his shoulder, and started running. Terry – a man whose training had involved running fifteen miles uphill in a hailstorm in the Brecon Beacons, carrying close to a hundred pounds of weapons and equipment – covered the half-mile in just over four minutes. He unlocked the Dodge, threw Lucius and his parachute into the boot and slammed it shut. He checked his watch once more – 7.19 a.m., eight minutes from start to finish – and tore off in a shower of dust and gravel, heading south-west, towards the private airstrip outside Palm Springs, around forty minutes away.
Stelfox got the first call from Terry a few minutes after 8 a.m. Just five words. ‘Elvis has left the building.’
Stelfox rang Lance Schitzbaul and told him the same thing. Lance sat down and waited for the phone to start ringing.
James Trellick had made sure he was in the office even earlier than usual that morning, at 7.30 a.m., just the cleaners and that idiotically gung-ho new kid in marketing in the building. He’d thought about his speech over and over. It would be brief. He went over the backstory they’d agreed on: he’d gotten the first call, from Schitzbaul. He’d had a little while to process his shock, so he could afford to look somewhat composed. All of their thoughts were with Du Pre’s family and friends and of course with his legions of devastated fans. He was a truly unique, inspirational artist whose legacy would be measured in generations. All that kind of balls. A little after eight he turned the TV on in the corner of his office, to CNN. But, as was often the way, he saw it first on his Twitter feed: ‘Lucius Du Pre feared dead in helicopter crash.’
Art Hinckley was in the car, driving over to Silver Lake for a 9 a.m. meeting with a prospective, housebound client, an elderly lady who was looking to sue a pharmaceutical company. Man, he would be glad to soon be free of this shit. He flipped between stations, getting Boston doing ‘More Than a Feeling’, and turned it way up. He was about to scream along with the first chorus when an urgent voice cut into the track, a news bulletin. ‘We’re bringing you some breaking news now,’ the guy said. ‘There are reports that a helicopter carrying Lucius Du Pre has crashed near Joshua Tree National Park east of Los Angeles, with the loss of all life on board. We’re now going live to –’ Art pulled over into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, his heart pounding, his hands trembling. He dialled the Murphys’ and got ‘please leave a message’.
Breakfast time in the Murphy household. Mum and Dad, still in bed, hung-over, Connor Murphy channel-hopping on the sofa while eating a bowlful of dry Cap’n Crunch. (No milk in the fridge. Again.) It was almost nine and he was late
for school. Fuck it, they were all about to be rich, weren’t they? He wouldn’t need school soon. As he pumped through the channels – ‘now available with zero per cent financing … are your teeth sensitive to hot and cold? … we were on a break! … if you’ve been injured at work through no fault of your own …’ – something caught his eye, on CNN. It was a shot, taken from a distance, of a desert hillside, with white smoke pluming up from a patch on the face of the mountain. But that wasn’t what caught his eye, it was the caption below it – ‘LUCIUS DU PRE AND THREE OTHERS FEARED DEAD IN HELICOPTER CRASH’. He turned the volume up as some man, in overalls, was being interviewed. ‘I just heard this buzzing sound and by the time I turned around, it … it just went right into the mountain.’
Connor ran down the hallway and straight into his parents’ bedroom. ‘MOM! DAD!’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Glen said automatically, ‘what time –’
‘Turn the TV on! Now!’
‘What the fuck, Connor?’ Bridget snapped.
‘Now! The news!’ They saw he was nearly crying, standing there with balled fists. Bridget fumbled for the remote and clicked it on. An aerial shot, of the crash site, someone saying, ‘… just after dawn this morning.’ And then his face came up on the screen – Du Pre, smiling on a red carpet somewhere. Before he knew what was happening Glen was in the bathroom, on his hands and knees, hearing his vomit spattering into the bowl. Bridget just kept staring at the screen – now showing the model of helicopter believed to have crashed – and repeating the word ‘no’ over and over again: ‘No no no no …’ She turned her phone on and saw she’d already had four missed calls from Art. Dialling his number she became aware that her son was crying. ‘Connor? What is it?’
