Fade to Black (11 page)

Franco pulled out a toothpick from behind his ear and prodded it between his teeth as he thought. When he pulled the toothpick out its tip was red with blood, as were his gums.

“New Wave dental floss,” Franco explained.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Franco grinned and leaned back in his chair.

“Oh, yes. Why do I stab people in the ass. Well, Doc, you see, I think it all goes back to my childhood. Whenever there was a birthday party, we’d always play Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and every time we played, I’d never win. So I ended up with this complex, see . . .”

“Lay off the bullshit,” Moriarty said. “Look, you’re a first offender on an assault rap. You think you’re a rough-and-tumble punk, maybe you’d like to pull a little time upstate with some lifers who’ll want to use your asshole every time their arm gets tired. I mean, that’s real new wave, don’t you think? Or maybe you don’t know what I’m talking—”

“Okay,” Franco said, slouching back in his seat. “Okay.”

Moriarty flipped through several pages in the file.

“You know, Franco, if you changed a few names and dates in this portfolio here, it would sound an awful lot like me when I was your age. A spoiled little upper-middle-class brat tired of playing the same old games. Out for a little excitement, something besides the same old shit, right?”

“Yeah, you got it,” Franco said. “Only I ain’t gonna sell my ass out and become no shrink.”

Moriarty smiled, holding his palm out at Franco. “Touché, Franco.” The juvenile slapped his palm. “You always like to hit below the belt, eh?”

“Only when you ask for it,” Franco said.

“Fair enough,” Moriarty conceded, going back to the file. “It says here also that two of the guys you stabbed were in the group that was playing at the club. Is that right?”

“You got me,” Franco said sullenly.

“The group’s name was Rough and Tumble, wasn’t it?”

Franco shrugged his shoulders, raising a hand to stroke his chin, covering the tattoo on his jaw.

Moriarty read on, “Now, we’ve got two conflicting reports on why you were kicked out of the group. Which was it, because you couldn’t spell or because you couldn’t drum your way out of a paper bag?”

“You tell me, Doc,” Franco said bitterly.

“All right,” Moriarty said, pulling a 45 single out of the file and showing it to Franco. It was by Rough and Tumble. “I listened to it last night. You couldn’t drum your way out of a paper bag.”

“What do you know about it?” Franco snarled.

“Quite a bit, actually,” Moriarty told him. “I’ll tell you something else. I can get you placed on parole with an officer who can teach you the best back beat in the business if you’re willing to work at it.”

“What is this shit?” Franco said suspiciously.

“I’m in charge of a new program,” Moriarty explained. “You’re the first guinea pig I’ve got to work with, so if you play your cards right you’ll get twice as many breaks as you deserve. Inside of two years you can have a clean record and enough skill on the skins to get back into any group that’s got an opening. Now, you think about that a few days and we’ll talk again, okay?”

“What’s the catch?”

“You’ll have to get a job to pay back medical expenses for the guys you poked. Your parole officer will give you two free hours of drum lessons a week, but anything over you have to foot on your own.”

There was a sound down the hallway, and Anne walked up to the cell.

“Gallagher wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said.

“We’re doing fine,” Moriarty assured her. “Oh, ah, Franco, this is—”

“We’ve already met,” Anne said. “I was his escort here.”

Moriarty closed shop for the day and the three of them went upstairs, where Franco was led back to his cell.

Outside, Anne followed Moriarty as he walked over to his bike.

“So how’s the first day?” she asked.

“Miserable,” Moriarty said, unlocking the chain around his ten speed. “You ever look at an old picture of yourself and get the feeling your past is laughing at your present?”

“No, can’t say as I have,” Anne laughed. “Why, did you stab someone in the ass when you were a kid?”

Moriarty suddenly went livid.

“Why don’t you look it up in my file!” he snapped viciously.

Anne looked at him, caught off guard.

“Hey, Jerry. It was just a joke . . .”

Moriarty’s rage faded as quickly as it had flared.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, Anne. My fault. I have a lot on my mind.” He lifted his bike out of the rack and straddled it. “Listen. About tonight. You mind if I call it off?”

“Well . . . no, no. That’s fine.” Anne frowned. “Are you okay, Jerry? Is there anything I can do?”

Moriarty smiled stiffly. “No, I don’t think so. Well, as a matter of fact, you can give me a rain check. Don’t worry. It’s personal. Nothing to do with you.”

Anne smiled.

“Deal.”

Moriarty pedaled away from the station and made his way to Main Street.

Franco had gotten to him, dredged up forgotten memories of his days at Berkeley; the beat years before the antiwar movement had claimed him, back when he’d jam at night clubs until dawn, fuelled on Dexedrine and a desire to live up to his nickname. Dean. Dean Moriarty, the wired hero of
On the Road.
It seemed impossible that the past he remembered was in any way connected with what he had become. It had been a whole different life, a whole different time.

Moriarty slowed down as he came to the corner of Main and Ryder.

Venice de Menice was the showbar Franco had been arrested at. It offered New Wave shows on weekends and Wednesdays, but the rest of the week it was a jazz and blues club.

There was a battered van parked in front of the club, and a group of middle-aged black musicians wearily made trips back and forth between the van and the club, bringing in their equipment. The club wasn’t open for business yet, but music spilled out into the street from the open front door. Elmore James.

Moriarty stopped in front of the club to watch the band bring in their instruments. Old, weathered cases, held together with electrical tape. A faded upright bass, the wood scratched and nicked.

Moriarty felt his rear pocket, where he kept his harmonica.

“Hey, you guys,” he said.

The man carrying the bass, fifty years old, tall and full-bellied, stopped and looked at Moriarty with dull, bloodshot eyes.

“Ah, can I help you move some of that stuff?” Moriarty asked.

Without answering, the man picked his bass back up and carried it inside the club. Another member of the group, short and thin, dressed in a baggy suit, peered up at Moriarty through the smoke trailing upward from his cigar.

“You want to help?” the small man said. “You come here tonight and bring some of your friends. We could use a full house for a change, you hear me? Gettin’ tired of packing it from town to town.”

“What do you play?” Moriarty asked.

“You come tonight,” the small man said, following his burly counterpart back into the club. They closed the door behind them.

Moriarty stared at the door and the corkboard marquee, with its small poster reading blues tonight.

He got back on his bike and rode to the beach, finding a place to himself and taking out his harmonica. He played until the sun set.

CHAPTER •
13

“You think a squealer can get away from me? Huh? You know what I do to squealers? I let ’em have it in the belly . . . so they can roll around for a long time, thinking it over.”

The philosophy of Tommy Udo, courtesy of Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer.

Eric stared, mesmerized by Richard Widmark’s portrayal of Udo, a psychopathic hit man sent out to nail a gang informant in
Kiss of Death.
Widmark, as Tommy Udo, was stalking around the mother of the man he was about to kill. She was an invalid, cringing in her wheelchair.

Eric dragged on a cigarette as he sat next to his projector, dressed like Udo, his eyes fixed to the film like dried blotters, soaking it all in. He didn’t pay any attention to the faint motorized rurr out in the hallway.

“You’re worse than him, telling me he’s coming back,” Widmark snarled on the blank wall Eric used for his screen. The invalid was middle-aged, like Aunt Stella. “Ya lyin’ old hag!”

Eric smiled at the dialogue, mimicked the curdling laugh of Tommy Udo.

Aunt Stella pounded on his door with her baton.

“Come out of there!” she shrieked. “What’s the idea? You haven’t been out of that room for two days!”

She thumped on the door again. “If you don’t open up, I’m going to use the key!” she threatened.

Eric had called in sick to work yesterday and today. Around the clock he had remained in his room, watching movies with the blinds closed, the clocks turned to the walls. He was going through his collection of 16mm prints alphabetically. He’d started with
All about Eve,
featuring Marilyn Monroe in her scene-stealing walk-on with George Sanders. He was now watching
Kiss of Death
for the second time in a row, reveling in the 1947 thriller that had propelled Richard Widmark into stardom.

Smiling as he watched the flicker of black and white on his wall, Eric crushed out his cigarette and pulled down the brim of his fedora. Widmark was unplugging a lamp and using the electrical cord to tie the woman to her chair, despite her urgent pleadings.

“I’ve got another one for you when you’re through,” Eric whispered out loud to Widmark as his aunt pounded on the door a final time and then began scraping her key against the lock.

Opening the door, Aunt Stella rode into the darkened bedroom. It was obvious she’d spent the past few hours letting her temper build to the breaking point. She let it out slowly.

“Eric, you’re hopeless,” she said, staring at him. “You can’t stay in here forever. This isn’t a charity ward. Either you go to work, you eat, or you can find yourself another place to live!”

Breathing in short, excited bursts, Eric aped Widmark, baring a toothy grin and sneering, “Shaddup!” without taking his eyes off the movie.

Brandishing her baton, Aunt Stella shifted her chair forward, exploding, “This is final! Watching movies again, spending all your money on films—”

“Aunt Stella, this is the best part,” Eric implored her in his own voice.

Aunt Stella moved in front of the shaft of light shooting out from the projector, blocking the film and throwing a shadow on the wall. Tommy Udo’s face shined over her own.

“Everything’s movies, movies, movies—”

“Aunt Stella, please!”

“I’m sick and tired of it!” she raged, charging her wheelchair at the table and knocking over the projector.

“Jesus Christ!” Eric wailed as if he had been wounded.

The projector kept running for a few seconds after it fell to the floor, thowing its darting image sideways onto the bedroom wall . . . Tommy Udo pushing his bound captive down a staircase.

Eric charged from his chair and around the table, turning off the projector. The rear reel continued to spin, trailing the severed strip of celluloid so that it slapped at the floor before coming to a stop. Eric looked down at the projector as if it were a best friend lying in a dead heap. He gently picked the machine up and set it back on the table. He was weeping silently.

Aunt Stella wheeled away from him and stopped in the doorway leading to the adjacent room.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Eric ignored her, continuing to stare at the projector, running his fingers softly over the bent front reel. His aunt thundered, “I said I’m sorry!”

Letting a fresh rage wash over her, Aunt Stella shifted the wheelchair into the next room, which was filled with the overflow of Eric’s memorabilia.

“Look at this place!” she howled. “This room is a disgrace! Eric, come in here!” She turned the gearshift on her wheelchair and it jammed momentarily, adding to her fury. “Oh, this damn thing! Eric, get in here now! Get in here right now! Eric!”

Eric came into the room silently, his face lifeless.

“Eric, I have had it with you,” Aunt Stella said. “I want you to get rid of all this junk. Do you hear me? Move it!”

“You ruined it,” Eric said, his voice wavering. “You ruin everything.”

“I said move it!” she shouted. She put her hand on the shift knob, intending to back out into the hallway. The temporary wiring on the motor gave way and the engine slipped into gear and jammed again. This time, however, it wasn’t for only a second.

“I can’t stop the chair!” Aunt Stella shouted as she found herself suddenly propelled forward.

Eric watched her curiously. She was heading straight toward the upstairs doorway, unable to change her course, too out of her wits to grab for something to stop herself.

“Eric!” she sobbed, trying to look over her shoulder at him.

Eric laughed the close-lipped squeal of Tommy Udo as he followed behind his aunt, making sure the chair proceeded down the carpet unobstructed. He had a glazed look to his face, as if he were walking in his sleep.

“Eric! I can’t stop the chair!” Aunt Stella continued to scream hysterically as she yanked at the gearshift knob.

When they came to the doorway, Eric reached over his aunt and threw the door open. Weeping, Aunt Stella clung to his arm.

Staring at his aunt, eye to eye, Eric chortled, like Tommy Udo, “You think a squealer can get away from me? Huh? You know what I do to squealers?”

“Eric, I didn’t mean to—”

Her pleading was interrupted by her own scream as she rolled out onto the side stairway. Eric pulled her hand away from his arm. One wheel dipped over the first step, pulling the rest of the chair with it, bounding crazily down the flight of steps. Aunt Stella was thrown slightly forward, but not enough to pitch her out until the wheels slammed into the sidewalk. Flung free, Aunt Stella plunged forward, striking her head against the sidewalk with a force that silenced her screams, once and for all.

One wheel of the overturned chair continued to turn after the motor had stopped, much as the takeup reel on the projector had. Midnight, the black kitten, scampered down the steps and over to the chair, jumping up onto the frame and pawing at the wheel playfully.