Dark Star: Confessions of a Rock Idol (49 page)

On the way inside the huge body shop, Wesley felt the chill of the late New York fall that his brother would never feel again. Gritting his teeth, he ran and skipped several feet, bashing the already dented door of the white Beamer with his skinny right leg. Spinning away and following the others, he felt a pang of anguish rise up in his stomach, then vanish as he thrust his dead brother out of his jumpy mind.

Brubaker led the way through the employee entrance, slamming the heavy steel door open against the outside of the fabricated beige metal building. “Ah, smell that?” he said, not looking back. “Good ol’ Bondo. Be high all day if you worked in here.”

Wesley cruised in last, leaving the door wide open and taking a giant whiff of the pungent air that reeked of metal and plastic dust.

Like mice, the three figures hurriedly zigzagged their way through a maze of half-repaired vehicles toward an area that glowed white, back in the far corner of the building.

As they drew closer to the dancing light and long shadows, hard driving music from a boom box mixed with the static sound of a welder. A 1965 steel-blue Mustang sat up on a hydraulic lift, and beneath it—behind a long, black mask and visor—stood Tony Badino.

Brubaker and Wesley came to a standstill, fascinated by the sparks that rained down on Tony; the stranger stopped between them, equally entranced.

Tony Badino was about Wesley’s height, five foot ten or so, but with a much stronger build: round shoulders, thin waist, thick legs. Wearing a dirty, charcoal-gray jumpsuit and scuffed brown work boots, Tony must have seen the others but went on welding like a statue for another five minutes.

Brubaker was like a four-year-old. Constant motion. Repeatedly snapping his fingers, looking back toward the door and out the dirty windows. Meanwhile, the kid in the middle bounced his head, singing, mumbling, and watching wide-eyed as metal melded to metal.

Wesley’s gaze was fixed on the blue-and-yellow flame and the sparks that clicked, snapped, and floated to the floor, still burning—then smoking and fading.

In the flame, he remembered his brother, David, curly-haired and anxious, slapping a twenty into his hand for a teener—one sixteenth of an ounce of some of the best crank Wesley had ever come across. Then he flashedback to David’s demolished Camaro hours later, what was left of the engine, and parts of it scattered along Highway 9—still smoking.

Tony snapped back the flame, lowered the welder in his right hand, and flipped the dark visor up with the other.

“Boys.” He eyed the uppity kid in the middle.

“This is the dude we told you about—from Yonkers,” Brubaker said proudly in his dorkiest voice. “Needs an ounce.”

Tony extinguished the pilot on the welder and lowered it to the concrete floor by its cord, then walked over to the boom box and turned down the volume.

“Slow down, Brubaker.” He shook off his big, stiff gloves and removed the mask to reveal a tough face with small, pronounced features and a glistening scalp covered by what looked like only about two weeks’ worth of brown hair.

Reaching inside the front waist pocket of his jumpsuit, Tony pulled out a silver Zippo and a pack of Marlboros, lighting one with shaky, grimy hands. Once again Wesley noticed the tattoo of a small inverted cross on the inside of Tony’s left wrist.

Grabbing a hanger light from the frame of the Mustang, Tony walked beneath his work, inspecting the length of the exhaust system.

“How do you know Lester and Brubaker, here?” He tapped the muffler, cig in hand.

“Ah…a friend introduced me to Wesley at a party.”

“When?”

“Last week.”

“And Brubaker?”

“Met him a couple nights later.”

“Been tweakin’?”

“Ah…when do you mean?” the kid asked, eyes darting to Bru, then Wesley.

“Tonight.” Tony looked at him.

“Earlier today,” Wesley interrupted, noticing Brubaker scratching the inside of his elbow repeatedly. “Couple teeners.”

Tony went back to inspecting his work. “That same stuff?”

“Yeah, we finished it off.” Wesley coughed.

“This new crystal blows that stuff away.” Tony glanced at the three visitors, his right eye twitching slightly. “Keep you amped for days. I’ve been workin’ nonstop since yesterday—goin’ on what? Thirty-five hours?”

The three nodded, swayed, twisted—laughing slightly in response.

“So you need an ounce.” Tony held the light up close to the tailpipe.

“Yep,” piped up the kid in the middle.

“Good old Wesley Lester,” Tony said. “I can always count on him to bring me the finest clientele. I’ve learned that.”

Now he turned to examine the kid in the middle.

“Do you know who this guy is? Who brought you here tonight?” Tony asked, nodding toward Wesley.

The kid stared at Tony with hollow eyes and shrugged.

“This is the great Everett Lester’s nephew. Bet you didn’t know that.”

The kid looked at Wesley. “No way.”

“Straight,” said Tony. “You’re in the presence of the bloodline of one of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest legends.”

“Dude,” the kid exclaimed, “I saw one of their
very last
shows—at the Meadowlands. They played three hours
at least
.”

“With Aerosmith,” Tony chimed in. “I was there… Wesley was supposed to be there, backstage.”

“That’s cold,” Brubaker mumbled.

Tony shot Bru the evil eye while it went right over the head of the kid in the middle.

“I lived and breathed DeathStroke,” the kid said. “Lester was so stoned out of his mind that last show, he could barely stand by the end. But they jammed their
hearts
out.”

“And now he’s a Jesus freak.” Tony’s eyes shifted to meet Wesley’s, but his head didn’t move.

The kid in the middle may have noticed the friction as Wesley cooled to an icy chill and his nostrils flared.

Tony smirked, knelt down, and began tossing some of his tools into the drawers of a tall, red metal toolbox on wheels.

“What’s he like, anyway?” the kid barged ahead. “Everett Lester, I mean.”

Brubaker looked uneasy, twisting and bouncing slightly on his toes.

Tony shot a glimpse back at Wesley.

“He’s a loser,” Wesley snapped, walking over to a workbench cluttered with old tools. “He’s a hypocrite. A weak, irresponsible
waste of breath
.”

“Where does he live? Does he still have a place in Manhattan?”

Wesley’s back was to the others. He fingered the tools without a word.

Brubaker ran interference. “He has a farm…near White Plains, and a place in Kansas—where his wife’s from.”

“Oh yeah, that chick who converted him,” the kid said.

Tony slammed the middle drawer closed.

“That was some story, how she wrote to him ever since she was a teenager—Jesus this and Jesus that. And finally it stuck…can you believe that? The guy went off the deep end!”

Tony rose to his feet. “Some people hit you over the head again and again with that hype till you’re brainwashed.”

“Well, look at the guy,” the kid said. “I mean…he’s changed! I saw him and his wife on
Larry King Live
and he, I mean, Larry couldn’t—”

“Let’s do this deal!” Wesley fumed, turning around and kicking a piece of scrap metal across the dusty white floor.

The corners of Tony’s small mouth curved up into a quick smile as he raised an eyebrow at the kid in the middle and walked over to an old white sink. Pushing up his sleeves, he rinsed his hands and squeezed a glob of gray goop into his palm from a bright orange bottle.

“You got the money?” he asked the kid above the running water.

“Yeah, yeah.” He dug almost frantically into his front pocket and pulled out a clump of folded bills.

“Count it, Wes,” Tony ordered, still washing.

Wesley snatched the wad and rifled quickly through the bills. “Fifteen hundred. It’s here.”

Tony dried his hands with a dirty towel, wiped his face with it, and looked at himself in the smudged mirror above the sink. Then he found the kid’s reflection in the mirror. “You don’t know where this ice came from.”

The kid gulped. “Oh . . . definitely not.” He stammered and smiling anxiously. “I don’t even know you. We never met, as far as I’m concerned. Nope. Never met.”

Tony laid the towel on the edge of the sink and walked to the tool chest. Lifting the top, he pulled out a Tech .22 assault rifle with his right hand and a good-sized bag of off-white, crystal-like powder with the other. Turning, he tossed the bag to the sweating kid, who fumbled it awkwardly but mangled it at the last second before it escaped his unsure hands.

“D’you hear about the body that turned up in Canarsie other day? In the scrap yard?” Tony approached the kid.

“Ah…um, no.” The kid eyed the gun. “No, I missed that.”

“Well, don’t
miss
what I’m telling you,” Tony’s voice got rough as he neared the kid’s face. “That guy was a
narc
. Okay? I know dat for a fact. And you know what he was blabbin’ about?”

The kid’s mouth was wide open, big eyes flashing, cheeks red as radish.

“He was blabbin about
where
he got his rocket fuel.”

“Listen, I…”

But before the kid could eke out another word, Tony lifted the modified Tech .22 sideways, shoulder high, bit his bottom lip, squinted, and blasted six rounds across the base of the metal wall beneath the workbench with one squeeze of the trigger.

Brubaker floundered back four feet as the smell of gunpowder and the echo of the gunfire hung in the air.

The kid’s red face went ash white, and he looked as if he might lose his dinner.

“You know how many .22s this mag carries?” Tony grabbed the fat magazine with his free hand.

The kid jerked his head in one rapid “no.”

“Fifty. And I got it rigged so I pull the trigger once and it unloads. You understand?”

The kid opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Word on the street is, that guy in Canarsie was a rat-squealing tell-all.” Tony lightly tossed the Tech .22 in his right hand. “He got himself whacked for blabbing.”

“Oh…don’t worry—”

“And
the same
will happen to you if you tell one soul where you got that cristy, you read?”

“Oh, hey, I read, I read.” The kid fell apart. “I’m not about to…”

“Now beat it!” Tony hoisted the weapon up to his shoulder as the kid scrambled about-face and practically started sprinting for the door with a blubbering Brubaker right on his heels.

***

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