The Five (27 page)

“Run! Run!” the cook shouted, as he—a truly brave soul—tried to push Nomad back so the waitress could get out. She ran for her life, trailing a shriek, and then the cook let go of Nomad’s shirt and he ran too.

And then Nomad was alone in the Argonaut with three lines of blood on his face and a gun in his hand.

He heard the sirens coming.

His fire had diminished, but it was not yet embers. He put the pistol down on a table and listened to the sirens. Music, of a sort. Ariel could do something with this situation. She could write it out so you could feel the pain and frustration and sadness as if you were living it yourself. Because, really and truthfully, she was so much better a songcrafter than he.

Now there were red and blue lights spinning out on East Congress, beyond the broken window. He didn’t know how many police cars were out there, but it looked like a cop convention. He could hear people shouting. Heard what might have been the voice of that damned bitch of a waitress, raised to ear-breaking decibels.

He had been a bad, bad boy.

“Oh my God,” he said, and though he did not believe in God, who were you gonna call on when the shit hit the fan?

A bullhorn spoke from the street: “Attention in there! Throw your firearm out the window and come to the door with your hands locked behind your head! Nobody’s going to get hurt!”

Nomad just stared at the busted wall and the broken mural, as his shadow danced in a world of red and blue spinning lights. Poor fucked-up Jason, he thought. Standing at that mast, directing a ship that never moved. Believing he was actually going somewhere, getting closer to a golden fleece.

He thought he would put Jason and the other Argonauts out of their misery.

The bullhorn repeated its message, but this time it left out the last line.

Nomad picked up a chair and began to demolish the mural and destroy the wall. When that chair broke to pieces he picked up another one and kept on knocking holes in Jason’s stupid dream. With the breaking of the second chair he picked up a third, and this was hard work now, very hard, but he was determined to finish what he’d begun, he wasn’t a quitter, no way Dean and Michelle Charles had raised a quitter, and so he was still working hard when the two small torpedo-shaped canisters came through the window and he didn’t even turn around, he didn’t even care because he was involved in his emancipation of Jason, and when the gas swirled up around him like purple snakes and his skin began to burn and his eyes involuntarily shut tight because they were full of wet fire he kept swinging in the dark because it was all he knew how to do.

He was on his knees, surrounded by broken chairs, when they came in. They entered as if from another world. They looked like mad combinations of frogmen and masked wrestlers from parts unknown.

They drew his arms back behind him, snapped white plastic restraints on his wrists and ankles, and they hauled him out like yesterday’s garbage.

FOURTEEN.

It wasn’t so bad. He’d paid money to stay in motels that were worse than this. But the bright orange jumpsuit…now,
that
was ridiculous. The thing had its own inner glow, and you still saw it pulsing when you closed your eyes. The huge black-lettered word JAIL across the back wasn’t too cool, either.

The situation being what it was, though, Nomad was impressed by the Pima County jail. It was clean, well-managed and seemed more like a strictly-run—
very
strictly-run—dorm for wayward men. The roach-overrun lockup was dead in the modern era of physical confinement. Now the “cells” were cubicles fronted with impact-resistant glass. Each cell held eight inmates, and eight cells made up what was called a “pod”, each pod with its own dayroom. The place was cheerfully lit and the air conditioning was kept on the chilly side. Books, magazines and a TV were provided. He’d already seen himself on the television screen, several times in fact, and he was a real celebrity around here.

It was nearing ten o’clock on Tuesday morning. He’d been in jail for about fifty-four hours, but who was counting? He didn’t care that he’d come to the end of this particular road; at his arraignment he’d been so tight-lipped and uncaring about the whole thing that the judge had wanted to run him through a battery of psychiatric tests. Nomad had just shrugged. “Whatever you want to do, man,” he’d told Your Honor. “Fuck it.”

Which had not gone over so well. He wasn’t going anywhere soon, because Your Honor had decided to postpone a decision on setting bail until the nutbag questions were done and some mental health geek had filed three hundred and thirty-three reports on the state of Nomad’s mind. But Nomad didn’t have anyplace he really needed to be, The Five was over, everything was done, so why not just stick here for a while?

His call had been to the University Medical Center. He’d asked to have Ariel Collier paged.

“John?” she’d answered. “Where are you?”

“Around. Any word on George?”

“They think he’s going to make it. They’re not sure yet, but they’re saying his vital signs are looking good. John, tell me where you are.”

“I went out to get something to eat. Maybe I went a little too far.” He heard a drunk guy shouting and raging over in the booking area. The cops would take care of that outburst in a hurry, but he figured Ariel had probably heard it too. “I might not be able to get back for a while.”

“What’s that noise?”

“Loud party goin’ on.”

“On a Sunday
morning
? What’s the number there? And what’s wrong with your voice?”

“Listen to me.” His voice was tired and scratchy. Tear gas was not gentle on the vocal chords. He’d been scrubbed clean, all the purple dye washed out of his hair, and he’d been allowed to curl up in a holding cell and rest until he had enough strength to talk, but it had taken some time. “I’m glad George is going to make it. I’m just going to hang out where I am, so don’t worry. Okay?”

“
John
.” The way she spoke his name told him she knew. “Are you in trouble?”

“A little.”

“Tell me where you are,” she said tersely. “I
mean
it.”

Nomad allowed himself a slight smile. It tugged at the scratches on his left cheek, which wore a pink shine of disinfectant. He’d never seen Ariel angry, never heard her lose her temper. She sounded close to it, right now. That would be a sight, he thought; Ariel Collier, in sympathy with the vibrations of the cosmos, going batshit. “You need to get back to Austin,” he said. “You, Terry and Berke. When Ash gets there, tell him…I don’t know, just tell him to get you guys home.” The drunk dude was really hollering now, about his rights and all that, as three cops were dragging him into a holding cell. “Go back and start over,” he said.

“
Start over
? What do you mean,
start over
? We’re still The Five, John. We don’t have to start over.”

“Oh yes, you do. Believe me.”

“What’ve you
done
?”

“I don’t want to talk about that. Get home,” he told her. And then he was silent and she was silent and he didn’t know what she was thinking but he was thinking he had really let them down this time, he had screwed up when they needed him the most and he couldn’t stand to look into her face again and see her disappointment. He couldn’t stand to look into the faces of any of them again, but especially not hers, because…because he thought she really didn’t need The Five, she was talented enough to go out on her own, and in these last three years he had known that and had never said anything. Never encouraged her to at least think about it, because he was the emperor and emperors could hide their jealousy under their crowns of tarnished tin.

He remembered her saying
I’m still with you
back in Sweetwater. Her loyalty was like a knife to his heart. She was wasting time in this party band, and that’s what The Five was. A band pumping out pablum to be washed down by a flood of cheap beer. A broken-down, sad merchandise machine. One song like ‘When The Storm Breaks’ didn’t make any difference. He knew she was a better guitarist and a better singer and a better songwriter than he, and he believed his leaden earthbound influence was keeping her from finding her own path, because—Christ love her—she meant it when she said
I’m still with you
.

So now was the time for him to find his guts and say it.

He did.

“You ought to go out on your own.” He had to pause for a few seconds, to clear his throat. “Put your own band together. You front it. Audition the players, make the sound you want. You can do it. You could’ve done it straight out of The Blessed Hours, if you’d wanted to.”

“Oh, no,” she answered, in a quietly stunned voice like a child being told to leave the house. “Oh, no.”

“You
can
,” he said. “It would be all yours. What would be wrong with that?” He recalled all the times they’d been working together on songs and he’d steamrolled her, just plowed her under when she’d made a suggestion to transpose it to a different key or add this or take away that or whatever. Even though down in his deep dark grudge he’d known she was right—
usually
right—he couldn’t have let her take control. Once she figured out she didn’t really need him, then where would he be?

But now it was different. Day was night and up was down. Mike was dead and George was shot, the
Argo
had sunken in a sea of broken drywall, The Five had played its final gig and Johnny, there is no roadmap.

“I couldn’t do that,” Ariel replied. “I couldn’t leave my family.”

“Your
family
?” It was said with incredulous sarcasm. “Oh, a few people travelling together in a busted-up van?
That
family?” He hesitated, but when she didn’t respond he went on, because his blood was up and he was ready to hurt her to make her let go. “Musicians are a fucking dime a dozen,” he said. “Bands fall apart every day, so what’s the big deal? When it happens, you just go latch onto some other group of nobodies. So we were together a while, we went through some good shit and some bad shit, but that doesn’t make us a family. Far from it.”

“What, then? What does it make us?”

“It makes us
nothing
. Because we’re over. Don’t you get that? Now, if you want to live in your land of rainbows and moonbeams, that’s up to you. But I’m not living there. I’m telling you, The Five is finished. Okay? And I’m not coming back, so you and Berke and Terry get yourselves to Austin and do whatever the fuck you need to do. I’m out of it.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Listen, stop holding onto me!” he said, with maybe more vitriol than he’d intended. “Either put your own band together or go home to Massachusetts, but quit fucking around with losers like Neal Tapley. If you want to try to save sick animals, go be a vet.” He knew that was a hard punch, because Ariel had tried her best to get Neal off the crack, the speedballs and everything else he was loading himself up with to fight his depression, but she couldn’t hold him strongly enough to keep him from flying off that two-lane in his Volvo clunker. Nomad didn’t know if there was more to that story, if there’d been a “romance”—that’s how they would’ve put it in those godawful old English novels, “romance”—but he’d figured long ago that Ariel was searching for someone to believe in, to trust and to follow.

It ain’t me, babe.

“Go back to Austin,” he said, wearily now. “Just go.”

Still she didn’t leave him.

She spoke softly, but with grit in her voice: “Don’t you know that we’re all over the news? Front page of the morning
Star
, with pictures. We’re on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and CNN. The sniper story has gone nationwide. Haven’t you seen a TV?”

“No.”

“We need you back here with us. I’m speaking for Berke and Terry, too. Wherever you are, come back.”

“No,” he repeated, very firmly, and with that he had hung up the phone.

Hey, amigo! You that guy on the TV? Right there! You that guy?

Early Sunday afternoon, an officer had come to get him from his cell. Police Captain Garza was here, he was told. Wants to talk to you.

“No,” Nomad had said again, and had stretched out on his bunk. The officer had gone away, and there had been no further word from Captain Garza or, for that matter, anyone else.

So, it wasn’t bad. A clean bunk, good food, plenty of people to talk to when he decided he was ready to talk. Didn’t a lot of cool musicians pay their dues in jail? Not so bad. Except for the Day-Glo orange jumpsuit with the JAIL stenciled across the back. But he would bear that indignity, too.

He was out in the dayroom sweeping the floor when two of the badasses came up behind him. Not prisoners, but guards. Moates, the one with the bald skull and a mole on his forehead, the one Nomad had been warned by some of the other dudes not to look at because he really really
really
did not like to be looked at by pond scum such as themselves; and Kingston, the thin black guy with the goatee, the constant unsettling half-smile on his face and the snakes tattooed on his ropy forearms.

“Charles,” said Kingston, “somebody wants to see you.”

“Right now,” said Moates.

“Who is it?” Nomad asked.

“Move,” said baldie-with-a-mole, and he hooked a thumb toward a red-painted steel door across the dayroom.

“I don’t want to see anybody,” Nomad said.

“Ain’t askin’ you,” said Kingston. “Put the broom aside. Let’s
go
!”

Nomad weighed his options. The two men planted themselves before him, relaxed but ready. They were the real deal, citizens of the world of hurt. Nomad put his broom aside, and he followed Kingston with the bald dude right at his heels.

A plastic pass card was used on a slot in the door, followed by a key. Nomad was led into a stark hallway painted off-white, with several doors on either side. The door was closed and locked behind him. Moates gave him a shove just because he could.

Kingston opened another door without having to use a key. “Get in there,” he directed. “Sit down and wait.”

Overhead fluorescents spread even light on a table and three chairs, one across from two. The walls were the same stark blankness as the hallway. A cork bulletin board held no bulletins or pushpins. There was a smell in here as if it were a place the guards sneaked in to smoke cigarettes.

“Who am I—?”
Waiting for
, he was going to say, but Moates and Kingston were already going out and the door closed. Nomad didn’t hear a lock turn.

He sat down on the side of the table that faced the door. Damned if he knew what this was about. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. He had the feeling that if he walked to that door and opened it, he might return to his cell in the shape of a pretzel.

In about thirty seconds, the door did open. A man entered. He was carrying a brown folder. He shut the door behind him and he did not look into Nomad’s eyes until he was sitting down on the other side of the table.

They stared at each other.

“You’re in some trouble, John,” the man said.

Nomad’s first urge was to shrug off the comment, to present a stone face like he’d seen the other inmates do when they were trying to act all-that in the presence of pressure or despair, but he didn’t because he knew the man was right, and the way the man had spoken was no-nonsense and required respect. But Nomad didn’t answer, and he spent a few seconds putting together impressions of his visitor.

The man was about fifty or so years old, in very good physical shape. He had a ruddy, outdoors coloring. His gray, close-cropped hair was retreating at the temples and sat on his head like a tight cap. He was so clean-shaven a razor might have been his religion. A military man? Nomad wondered. The man’s thick eyebrows were still black, his eyes a pale sky-blue. He had the square chin of a comic-book hero but the crooked nose of a boxer who has gone a few bad rounds in his life. He was wearing khaki trousers and a dark gray polo shirt. Nomad had seen that he was wearing a black belt and black wingtip shoes. The man stood maybe six-one, had wide shoulders and forearms that looked as if he could chop wood for a living. His hands were veiny, one of the few signs of the toll of years. He had a few deep lines in his face, bracketing his mouth and at the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t have the saggy look that old people get. He didn’t have their sad look, of lost chances and yesterdays receding into the rearview mirror. In fact, this dude didn’t look like he’d lost any chance that came his way. The pale blue eyes were keen and careful. He wore a thin gold wedding ring and a nice but not flashy wristwatch. He kept both hands pressed flat against the brown folder on the table in front of him.

“Who are you?” Nomad asked.

“My name is Truitt Allen. I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, based here in Tucson. Want to see my ID?” He made a move for his wallet.

FBI, Nomad thought. Almost military. This dude was a tough old hoss. But he said, “Yeah, I do,” and he waited as the wallet was opened to display a gold-colored shield and the official identification card that bore a picture of Allen’s unsmiling, all-business visage.