Emerald City (8 page)

“Have you quit before?”

“Only about a half a million times, back in the Seventies. Three days of real hell, the kind they teach you about in Catholic school, and then you're okay. Until you start again. Then I learned how to deal with it, how to balance it.”

“Isn't it expensive?” It seemed like a stupid, naive question, but I was sure it had to be.

“Cheaper than a coke habit,” he said nonchalantly. At my surprised glance he insisted, “I'm serious. These days I spend less than people who put shit up their noses.”

“What about people who don't have jobs or money?”

“They're the ones who rip off houses and take out car stereos.” He shrugged. “Hey, it comes with the territory. You do what you got to do to buy your stuff, and you got to pay what the dealer wants. It's not some bazaar where you can haggle over the price.”

“What happens when nothing gets through?”

“You hurt.” The pain of memory was clear in his voice. “You hurt like a motherfucker and hope it's over soon.”

“What would someone like Craig Adler do? Where would he buy?”

He thought for a long minute, sucking the last drops of milkshake through the straw. He'd left half his fries and a good portion of his burger.

“He'd have friends, he'd go through them, I guess. Find someone, buy from him.” He jabbed his finger for emphasis. “The problem is he wouldn't know what he was doing, what he was buying. So he was lucky. For a while, anyway. And then there's the dealers who'll rip you off, other people who'll steal from you. It can get pretty fucked up.”

“But you've survived.”

He nodded. “I get by. Just don't go thinking there's any romance to it, because, honey, there ain't. If I hadn't started using in 'Nam I'd be a lot richer now, maybe a lot more settled.” He allowed himself a dry chuckle. “'Course, if I hadn't started using out there I'd have ended up in a rubber room, so maybe it all evens out.”

“And you live a normal life?”

“Until I make a mistake somewhere or it all gets too much for my body. It'll happen one of these days.” He gave an eloquent shrug. “That's life. But I'll tell you this, the feeling when I'm floating is worth it all. There's nothing in life like it. No other drug you can take that comes close, no thrill you can have, no love as strong. You get that and you keep craving it.”

“Worth all you've gone through?”

“Oh yeah,” he said with certainty. “Worth every fucking thing in the world.”

I needed somewhere to digest everything Jay had told me, to see how it fitted with what I'd learned about Craig.

But there weren't too many quiet places in Seattle any more. Downtown bustled all day and evening and even the neighborhoods seemed as if they'd received jolts of energy from all the people moving here. The only peaceful place that came to mind was Gasworks Park, up at the north end of Lake Union. I couldn't quite see my apartment from there, but Queen Anne Hill loomed large, rising abruptly from the western edge of the water. Boats and seaplanes were busy on the lake, and a few people were taking advantage of the breeze, flying kites high and colorful, running and laughing over the grass. Joggers pounded the trail, and mothers pushed babies around, admiring the ducks that came demanding food.

I found an empty area down by the shore and sat. Off in the distance were all the skyscrapers, this tower and that one all clustered together in this modern emerald city, the futuristic black glass spire of Columbia Center dwarfing them all. The gasworks that gave the park its name was now rusty and unused, but I'd liked this place since my dad brought me here as a kid. I could stare out at the lake, a working zone full of places processing
fish and fixing boats, piers of houseboats dotted around here and there, little bohemian communities with their own identities, where some of the vessels were as large and luxurious as mansions, many run down and homey, a few little more than floating wrecks.

I felt comfortable here. It was a place that connected me to the Seattle of my childhood, back when my parents brought me down here for picnics; and to the history of the city. It was also good for thinking, with the soft lapping of the water at my feet and the wind soughing lightly through the branches of the trees that grew nearby.

From everything Jay had said, on the surface Craig's death still looked like an overdose, one of those small tragedies of everyday life, something to put a stain on a date that a family could never forget.

I'd have believed that if it hadn't been for the phone calls. That made it seem very much like murder.

I still hadn't talked to the one person who could shine a light on everything. Sandy. I knew she was grieving but I really needed her for the article to work. I'd managed to fill in the background, now I needed all the fine detail she could offer and I wondered if there was anything I could do to bring her out of her darkness and encourage her to talk. So much had happened so fast that it was hard to believe that fewer than seven days had passed since Craig put that needle in his arm.

It might take weeks or even months for her to begin to face the world again. The paper would run the story when it was ready, however long it took – but the impact would be strongest when Craig was still fresh in everyone's memory.

Then I hated myself for thinking that way.

And I needed to keep digging away until I found out what my caller was hiding. It was there, somewhere.

I picked up some pebbles and tossed them one by one out into the water, watching the ripples move lazily outwards, letting the surface calm each time before I threw the next one. Slowly the stress left my shoulders and I began to relax. Finally I walked slowly back to the car. A fine drizzle had begun, the kind of weather Seattleites barely noticed. The joke was that it rained here all the time; down at the Market they sold t-shirts that read Seattle Rain Festival January 1 – December 31. What we didn't tell outsiders was that from the middle of July all the way to October there was rarely any precipitation. And rain was always better than snow in winter. I'd been in Chicago in January; I knew.

Instead of heading home I took the road under the end of Aurora Bridge, past the stone troll some sculptor with a sense of humor had placed beneath the supports, then drove up Greenwood. At the top, hidden away in the suburban no-man's land that was just beyond Fremont and not quite Phinney Ridge, was the house where I'd grown up. We'd moved there when I was three, and I could remember that it was so new it still smelled of paint. For a month I'd been scared to touch the walls in case they were wet.

My dad had loved that place. Over the years he fixed up the basement, first into a ratskeller, back when that was the fashion, then a den with a television, pool table and big old couch before it was transformed into my teenage hangout, posters on the walls, a big stereo and my record collection. I'd discovered music with the Beatles; my dad took me down to the old Coliseum to see them in 1966, sitting patiently while I crouched in the aisle and tried to hear what they were playing above all the screaming girls. After that I'd been
lost to rock'n'roll. He never really understood, but he accepted it.

He'd grown up in Seattle and seen it grow from a raw place into a modern city. He graduated high school and went off to war, came home and married the girl he'd dated since ninth grade. It sounded like a storybook to me, but it worked, and they were happy together. I always felt closer to him, though. My mom took me shopping until I was old enough to head off to Northgate on the bus alone, but my dad and I did stuff and went places together, just the two of us. There was always an excitement about getting into the front seat of that blue Delta 88 next to him, a sense of adventure. And I admired the way he was always busy. He looked after the yard, kept the grass and the bushes faithfully trimmed, and he fixed things, the way men of his generation did, always with a sure touch that worked the first time. He loved his hometown, he was proud of the place and made me feel the same way about it.

And finally, when the cancer came and hollowed him out in his late fifties, all he had left of the house that he'd treasured was the bedroom, until he finished his days in the white emptiness of a hospital, everything around him sterile and as devoid of life as he was becoming. My mom only kept the place for a couple of years after that. It seemed too big for one person after a family had once run through it, every inch full of memories. Instead she moved in with her sister and died not long after.

I was an only child, and I'd been orphaned in my twenties. That was the way it felt, anyway. I'd never been close to most of my relatives, happy to keep a distance between us, and I rarely saw any of them. At least my father had lived long enough to see me published and to take his quiet pride in that.

I turned into our old street, parked so I could see the house and switched off the engine. What had once seemed so magical, what had been ours, now
just looked anonymous, another ranch style place from the 1950s, duplicated on other blocks, other neighborhoods, other cities all around the country. Over the years I'd driven through so many towns and done a double-take because I thought I'd seen my parents' house.

I felt a strange calmness sitting somewhere I knew every bump in the pavement, where I'd skinned my knees falling off bikes, had my first kiss and enjoyed all the milestones that built a life. I'd been happy here. Life had been simple and innocent. All that had changed and I missed its simplicity, a time when everything was black and white, the good guys and the bad, not the shades of gray that filled adulthood.

But for all the years I'd spent in it, the house didn't have a hold on me any longer. Seeing it made me smile inside, but it was the same pleasure I got from looking at a photograph from happier times, the old colors and memories blurred.

The rain grew a little heavier, the patterns of drops on the windshield coming together to form wide runnels down the glass. I switched on the engine, started the wipers and drove back to the apartment.

Tom Hardy was one of those good souls who gladly put his savings where his heart told him and kept preaching the gospel of local music. He ran a small record label and released the Seattle music he loved; he'd put out the Snakeblood LP and singles. Tom lived in a cramped studio apartment on Capitol Hill, the walls lined with cardboard boxes full of stock, hoping he'd break even some day. His younger brother Andy helped him out, a strange, troubled kid who always looked angry and never seemed to speak. People said Andy had problems, that he'd spent time in a psych ward, and I was willing to believe it; he was a sullen presence who did what his brother told him.

I saw Tom at most of the gigs I attended, hunched deep into his beat-up leather jacket, chain-smoking Marlboros, usually with a glass of Michelob in his hand. I knew he'd love to be on the stage himself, but like me, he'd been born with the joy of the music and not the ability to make it. He was large, belly bulging even though he was only in his middle twenties, getting by on a small trust fund his parents had left him. But no one resented him; he was a genuine fan trying to help out those he believed in. About three months before, someone had believed in him enough to put serious money
into the label, stopping him from going bust. Twenty-five thousand dollars was the figure people had mentioned. I doubted there'd ever be a return on that investment. When I called he answered on the second ring.

“Hey Tom,” I said, “it's Laura Benton.”

“Hi, Laura,” he said. I heard his voice move up a gear into sales mode. “Have you gotten that new single I sent you yet?”

“Yeah,” I parried, “but I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. Listen, I wanted to ask you about Snakeblood.”

“Oh, man, that was so bad,” he said, and I could hear the emotion. “Craig was a really good guy.”

“Do you know who was handling things for the band at ARP?”

“Let me see. Hold on.” He put the phone down and I heard the soft rustling sounds of paper being moved around on his desk and Tom muttering to himself.

“Okay, I got it. Greg West was the guy who was handling them. He's in A&R and he was really hot to sign them.”

“You have his number?”

I wrote it down, beginning with the Los Angeles area code I knew so well.

“How was Craig feeling about it all?” I asked. “He must have been pretty stoked.”

“Oh man, he thought every day was sunshine,” Tom said. “He couldn't wait. You know I saw him last week?”

“No,” I replied, suddenly alert. “When?”

“Tuesday? Yeah, Tuesday.”

“How was he then?”

“Good. Happy. He had all these plans for the album. That's why I can't believe he did that to himself. He seemed in good shape and everything.” He paused. “You know the really weird thing? Since he died everyone's been wanting the Snakeblood record. I mean, I've had so many requests I can't even keep up with them, I might have to have it re-pressed. It's just not the way I wanted to sell it, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said sadly.

“Listen to that new record I sent you, it's really good. A young band, two of them are still in high school.”

“I will,” I promised and said goodbye.

Greg West was important enough to have a personal secretary. When I explained what I wanted to talk about she put me straight through. I gave him my name.

“Yeah, hey, I've read your stuff, it's pretty good,” he answered in that slightly surprised manner that a woman could understand music and write well about it. “You want to talk about Snakeblood?”

“And Craig in particular.”

“The whole thing was a mess.” His tone changed to outrage. “They should have been here signing with us. I put a lot of effort into them.” He made it sound like a personal affront. “They had a huge future.”

“And instead Craig's dead.”

“I don't know if you've had to deal with junkies,” he said as if I had no experience of life. “I have, and I got to tell you he never seemed like one to me.”

“That's what everyone says.”

“Well, trust me, it's true.” He named a pair of very mainstream rock stars. “I was with them when they were strung out. I know when someone's using, and Craig wasn't.”

“Maybe so,” I agreed. “But he was shooting up last year and it still ended up in him somehow. People think he did it himself.”

He ignored that. “We had the deal down. Everything had been fixed up with their lawyers.”

“So it was all set? No last-minute problems?”

“Of course not,” West answered with disdain. “I'm a pro. We'd spent months nailing this down. I'd talked to a doctor. Craig was clean, I'm certain of that. You have any idea how often I'd been up there talking to people?”

“What were they going to get?” This was the big question.

“I'm not sure I can really give that out,” he said, still sounding cocksure. “You know how it is, we never like to release details.”

I didn't believe a word of that. Like any company they'd want to parade their triumphs, especially the costly ones. I tried to cajole him. “Just give me a ballpark figure, then.”

“Let's say the advance was six figures.”

“High or low?”

“Low,” he answered after a moment. “They were pretty much an unknown quantity so we wouldn't pay too much.”

“That's still very good money.”

“We expected a lot from them,” he replied. “Believe me, I've been in this business a long time, I can tell when a band's good. Craig had that real star
quality. The crowds would have loved him. We'd have gotten them out on the road, support dates with some big acts, built them up, then headlining and they'd have been stars in two years.”

“Maybe.” I knew full well there was no guarantee of that, but West's life was built on certainties. All the failures he handily forgot.

“The people at the top here were behind them,” he insisted. “We were committed to breaking them.” It was language I'd heard so often before that it meant nothing. Record company promises were only strong until the next big act came along, then they'd switch their money. Snakeblood would have stood a chance, but it would have been a limited opportunity. And however much a hundred thousand dollars sounded, it wasn't that great a deal. Not after deducting recording costs, promotion costs, and all the other million and one things they'd end up paying for. They'd have been left with a living wage for several months, long enough to deliver the album and head out on the road.

“I can't believe Craig could have been so dumb,” Greg West said.

I gave a grim smile. If the band had done well he'd have taken full credit for discovering them. As it was they'd always remain on that teasing what-if list.

“Who was their lawyer?”

“Hold on, I'll check.” I heard the sound of papers and he gave me the name. “Does that help?”

“It does. Thanks for all the information,” I said. “Take care.”

I looked through the Yellow Pages and found the listing for the law firm. I didn't hold out much hope of help, but I called anyway. The secretary informed me curtly that they couldn't give out any information about clients. It was
exactly the dead end I'd expected.

I looked out the window at the rain. I needed groceries. On a dry day I'd have walked up to Safeway. But if I drove I could stock up on everything.

The parking lot was full, and I splashed through puddles into the store. By the time I came out twenty minutes later the long shower had passed and the sun was trying to struggle out from behind the clouds, a faint, pale, damp glow that was never going to break through.

I unlocked the hatchback and put in the full bags of groceries. The engine caught first time and I threaded my way through the lanes to the exit. I pulled slowly out on to the street. The road rose slightly before dipping to a sharp bend then winding steeply down the hill.

Another car was approaching quickly, its signal blinking. It turned in front of me. I pressed down on the brake. Nothing.

I pushed down once more, harder, and felt the pedal sink all the way to the floor. And again and again. I kept pressing, hoping for the brakes to catch. Nothing. They were dead. My mouth was dry, my breathing hard. I could see the driver of the other car clearly, his eyes wide, his mouth moving as he cursed me. I took a deep breath and shifted into neutral, my teeth clenched and hands clutching the wheel so tightly that they hurt, the skin over the knuckles white. The other car slid by, just two yards in front of me, the driver honking his horn wildly and flipping me the bird. I exhaled slowly and focused on the road.

There were no cars parked on my side of the street. The Pinto was slowing. I edged it close to the curb, letting the tires bump against the concrete. Each time it hit I slowed a little more. I glanced ahead. The crown of the hill was
coming closer. If I went over that, it was all over. Just do this right, I told myself. You've got to do it right. My palms were slick with sweat. I gripped hard to stop them shaking..

As soon as the speedometer showed five miles an hour I took a deep breath and yanked up on the handbrake, praying it would hold. The car jerked to a stop, throwing me forward against the seat belt. I turned the key and switched off the engine. Then I bowed my head, closed my eyes and leaned against the wheel. My heart was racing and my body was shivering. I couldn't control it.