The Five (41 page)

“The letter.” Chappie had returned with her Eagles cup. “Aren’t you going to read the letter?”

“Oh. Yeah, I am.” Berke picked up the envelope from atop a set of encyclopedias where she’d put it aside. As she tore it open—carefully, so as not to damage the letter—she realized her fingerprints were being left upon it in forty-year-old ink. Chappie stepped back to give her privacy, and the others quietly continued their inspection of the long-dead counterculture, and from the two-page letter that was probably printed out on the computer in the den, Berke heard the voice of her stepfather.

Dear Berke, I hope you enjoy these. I found them years ago in a warehouse in San Francisco, and I’ve been saving them for you. I guess I’m dead now. Ha ha.

I didn’t really have a premonition of when it would happen. I just had a feeling that my time was running out. Through the hourglass, like on that soap opera your Mom watches. My hourglass was getting empty.

I’m no musician or expert on music, and I can’t say that I care much for the modern stuff. (When I say ‘stuff’, I don’t mean to be disrespectful :) I was a pretty conservative young man, everything Rah Rah and Apple Pie. I voted for Nixon. You can imagine.

But I did know what the Rolling Stone is. I read some of these from cover to cover, and they made me realize how proud I am of you. I know you didn’t want me around very much, or to come to your shows, and I understand that, but I hope that now you’ll give me a chance to speak.

You can look at these and see what you’re a part of. This world you have chosen to live in. I guess you chose it, but maybe it chose you???? I think you should know, if you don’t already, that you’re a citizen of a blessed and magic world, though I’m sure sometimes blessings can seem like curses, and there’s not much magic to be found in a dingy old motel room. (Your mom has clued in me on The Road. At least as much as a stodge like me can handle :)

I remember when we went to the Battle of The Bands in August of 1996. It was at the auditorium.

Oh yeah, Berke thought. She remembered it was something she’d decided to forget. Her mom and Floyd Fisk had just met and he was trying to get to know her.

I remember you were watching one of those bands and the drummer was going strong, and I saw you start playing along with him on your knees, just using your thumbs, and your foot was tapping the bass. He really tore it up (at least I thought he did) and when I asked you what you thought of him you looked me right in the eyes and you said, “He was good, but I can do better.”

You said it so positively, from that moment on I believed you.

I’ve seen you on those YouTube videos. You were right. But I never doubted you.

I wish you could have been my real daughter. Then again, I couldn’t have given you the talent that your Dad gave you, but I’d like to think that I gave you something.

So…these papers in the boxes.

If you ever doubt what your place is in your profession, or if you ever doubt what changes for the better music can make in this world, open these and start reading. Oh yeah, there’s the sex and drugs and rock and roll part of it, but I mean the soul of it.

I believe that at its best music exists to give a voice to people who sometimes can’t speak on their own. I believe it helps weak people find their strength, and frightened people find their courage. I believe it helps people understand with their hearts what their minds can’t comprehend. I think it may be the truest link to a higher power, if you believe in that. (And I know you don’t, but I had to get that last one in ;)

Never, ever doubt that you have an important place in this world. Look at these papers and see who came before you, and then think about who came before them, and on back to the hornpipe players and the troubadours and the poor man who played a Jew’s harp in a cold house for the pleasure of his family.

This may be hard to think about, but someday someone is going to watch you playing, either at one of your shows or on your videos, and they’ll say ‘She was good, but I can do better’. And that’s how your blessed and magic world works.

Please take care of yourself and your Mom. She’s the most fun woman in the world.

Love, Floyd.

Berke read again the final five paragraphs. Then she returned the pages to the envelope, and she sat down on a box full of dead men’s ideas and turned her face toward the wall, and she sat there so long without moving that her mother asked her if she was okay.

“Yeah,” Berke answered, her voice very soft and very distant. “Okay.”

It had occurred to her, sitting in this garage she’d not visited for many years, that pain had a way of pushing everything else out of a person. It had a way of owning you, and you didn’t even know you were being owned. She felt she had a long road ahead of her, to escape from that particular master, and maybe she never would—not completely—but it seemed to her that to recognize how it had enslaved you day-in and day-out for so many years was a first step in breaking the chain.

“Ariel,” Berke said, because sitting here holding the letter in her hand and surrounded by all these old decaying books and magazines that were once so new she’d had a sudden clear and pressing thought.

“What is it?” Ariel asked.

“Our song.” Berke turned around to face her bandmates and her mother. Berke’s eyes were red, but she was a big girl, a tough girl, a strong girl, and she was not going to cry today. “My part for our song,” she said, and she drew it up from memory: “
Try and try, grow and
thrive
,” she recited. She decided to alter one word. “
Because no one here gets out alive
.”

“Weird,” said Terry, and Berke thought that was exactly how Mike would’ve expressed it.

“Have I missed anything?”

They all turned to see Truitt Allen, wearing a white polo shirt and gray slacks, standing in the open doorway. Before anyone could answer, True took stock of Nomad’s eye. “Ouch,” he said. “That even hurts
me
.”

“Where’ve
you
been?” Nomad asked.

“Why? Did you miss me?” True was carrying a leather satchel that held his laptop.

“Like salt misses pepper in vanilla ice cream,” Nomad told him. He still felt dazed and his eye was throbbing. “If I even
liked
ice cream.”

“I think you need to go back to bed for a few days,” True said. “But not starting today.” His voice had gotten serious, and he looked from one bandmember to another. “Come on, let’s go inside and I’ll tell you how you music stars are going to handle this…” He glanced again at Nomad. “
Gig
.”

TWENTY-THREE.

I can tell you more about him now.” True was eating a bowl of vegetarian stew and having a glass of iced tea at the kitchen table. Joining him at lunch were Terry and Ariel, while Nomad, Berke and Chappie stood at various points in the kitchen. “His name and address on the driver’s license checked out, and his parents were notified yesterday evening. The information was released to the press while I was there, so it’ll probably be on the next news cycle.” By
there
, he meant the FBI field office on the corner of Aero Drive and Ruffin Road. He’d spent the morning planning security for the ‘gig’ tonight and smoothing everything out with the San Diego police, at the same time keeping a call in for details from the FBI and the police in Tucson.

“I told you already he was nineteen and from California.” True spent a few seconds to wipe his mouth with a red-checked napkin. “His name is Connor Addison. He’s from a nice middle-class neighborhood in Oceanside. From what we’ve learned, Connor took his father’s car on Wednesday afternoon, hit the San Diego Freeway using the dad’s credit card for a fillup, and headed to Stone Church. Where he got the pistol from, no one knows.”

“It was a .25, right?” Terry asked.

“Yeah, a .25 Beretta Jetfire. You’ve had experience?”

“I just figured, from the sound. My dad’s a pistol collector. He took me to the range a few times.”

“Small gun,” True said, speaking to all of them again. “Easily concealed.” He didn’t say that when he’d heard the pistol fire at Stone Church he thought it had been at least a .38, due to the sound being amplified by the microphone Nomad had knocked over. “Anyway, Connor lives at home with his parents. He doesn’t have a car of his own. He’s gotten into some trouble with meth and cocaine, flunked out of community college, lost a couple of jobs, wrecked his car last year…kind of a mess.”

“He was copycatting Jeremy Pett, wasn’t he?” Chappie asked. “That’s what Nancy Grace said last night.”

“Maybe.” True took a sip of iced tea, which was very cold and very minty. It had been released to the press right after the incident that the shooter was
not
Jeremy Pett, but Addison’s name hadn’t been put out there for the media until the details were taken care of. “He’s not talking. They can’t get him to utter a word.”

“He’s a nut,” Nomad said. “They ought to go ahead and throw him in the nuthouse.” He was a nut with a hard fucking head, though.

“Addison has an interesting story.” True continued to eat his stew, taking small spoonfuls and then some of the wheat bread that had been offered with his lunch. The agents outside, God bless ’em, would have to make do with trips to the nearest fast food window. “His family was in the news there in Oceanside in 2003. One evening his parents went out and left him at home to watch his eight-year-old sister. Addison evidently got pissed, called some friends over to do drugs, and he told the little sister to go out and ride her bike. She did, and that was the last anybody saw of her until her bones were found in a trashbag in the marsh just off Jefferson Street, five months later.” He took another drink of tea, to wash down the bread. “Some material in the bag was traced to a laundry, and they got a Russian immigrant who lived maybe five miles from Addison’s house. This individual’s great pleasure in life was driving through neighborhoods searching for little girls to kidnap, rape and murder, which he had enjoyed doing in Portland and in Sacramento. And oh boy, did he enjoy
talking
about it to the Oceanside cops. Just painted a very beautiful picture of it, which wound up in some of the sleazier news rags.” True decided he’d had enough lunch, because he’d seen the digitized articles the field office guys had pulled up for him.

“So what does this have to do with a scumbag druggie nut trying to kill Ariel?” Nomad asked. “And where’s Jeremy Pett?”

Good questions
, True thought. He’d been going over both of them at the field office, in a conference call connection with the Tucson office, the Tucson police, the San Diego badges, the city attorneys and, it seemed, everybody else with any splinter of a stake in this. He’d even gotten a call from Austin about an hour ago, and that brought him to his next statement.

“Hold onto your questions,” he said. “Roger Chester called me. You’re headlining at the Casbah tonight.”

“Oh whoopie whoopie yay yay!” Nomad was nearly back to his bristling, snarly self. “Where’s that fucking Jeremy Pett, is what I want to know!”

“Just listen for a minute.” True couldn’t begin to tell John Charles what he’d been going through with the Casbah management to meet the security standards. One big problem was that, being out by the airport, the area was full of parking decks. There were a couple of them right across the street, and he was going to have to put men on every level. “
After
the Casbah is what I’m talking about now.
Tomorrow
night. The tickets have sold out at the Cobra Club, and you’re headlining there too, by the way. They’re wanting you to headline again on Sunday night. Then, on Monday night, you’re booked into…wait, let me get this.” He reached for his wallet, a slimline, and brought out the piece of paper with the FBI seal at the top that he’d used to write down The Five’s new schedule. “Okay. You’re booked into the Sound Machine on Santa Monica Boulevard on Monday night. Headlining with—I cannot believe I’m saying this—Sack Of Buttholes.” True looked at Ariel. “Is that for real or did I get set up?”

“It’s for real,” she told him. The SOBs were also out of Austin and were repped by the Roger Chester Agency.

“Jeez,” True said. “Alright, then. Pardon this paper, I’ll get all the info to my PDA. Now…on Tuesday night, you’re playing at Magic Monty’s in Anaheim. Chester thinks you’ll sell out of merchandise tonight, so he’s making direct shipments to Hollywood and Anaheim. You still with me?” He looked up at his charges.

“This is crazy,” Chappie said, her eyes wide. “Are you
wanting
them to get killed?”

“Mom,” Berke cautioned. “It’s our job, okay?”

“You don’t need to be killed for it! Christ Almighty! Get back to Austin and wait until they catch him!”

“Go ahead,” Berke said to True. “What else?”

“Then you’re back to the regular schedule: the Red Door in Phoenix on the 8th; the next night Staind Glass in Albuquerque; on the 15th the Lizard Lounge in Dallas; and on the 16th back in Austin at the Vista Futura.” True had realized, after speaking with Roger Chester, that he was facing a massive endeavor in scouting out all these locations and setting up security, much less keeping the mobile teams rolling. City lawyers were not so keen on putting their citizens at risk, the police departments didn’t want to feel they were being pushed around by the FBI, and for the first time today True had heard from the Tucson office the mention of all the money that was sinking into this operation. Though True was the big dog, he was not the only big dog and there were large hands on the leashes. Also today, the large hand on the leash in Tucson had pointed out that, while reports were coming in of Jeremy Pett being sighted in a dozen states including Alaska and Florida, if Pett had any sense of survival he would have headed straight to Mexico while he was so close to the border. Had he made it in soon after his description had gone public? Had he already gone
before
? The pickup truck’s tag hadn’t been seen on any of the cameras at the border crossings, but a man who wanted to get through could walk it.

Careful with this one, Truitt
, the warning had been delivered.
This could really
blow up in your face
.

This road managing job was hard work. He was a detail guy, sure, but planning the gas stops and the meal stops and where the band was going to stay in all those cities, and then putting together the security both outside and inside the clubs and clearing his operation with the local police and mobilizing agents from different field offices…it was tougher than he’d expected.

He wouldn’t be doing this, if he wasn’t—

“How about Pett’s family?” Nomad asked, breaking into True’s thoughts. “His mother and father. Have you checked his house?”

“The first day,” True answered. “We’re watching the house and we got their okay to set up a tap and an intercept. They haven’t heard from their son since the accident in Houston. He briefly visited them before he went back to Iraq. I’ll tell you that Mr. Pett is also a veteran Marine, of the hard-bitten old school, who I am told seems to think his son lacked the toughness to make it a career. Pett’s mother, I also am told, is hardly a presence in the house. The agent who went there described her as ‘trying to make herself invisible’.”

“I think he’s probably gone to Mexico.” Terry finished his stew and put the spoon aside. “I think he’s done what he wanted to do, and he’s gone.”

“You don’t know that!” Chappie said. “I think it’s
insane
, you putting yourself out there like—” The Clash played their little snippet of ‘London Calling’ again, and Chappie looked at another number she didn’t know on her cellphone screen. “Sitting ducks,” she finished, before she answered. “Hello? Oh, Jesus. Wait a minute.” She asked the gathering if anyone wanted to talk to the
National Star
.

“Another thing,” True said when Chappie had refused the call. “At your sound check this afternoon—in about ninety minutes from now—there are going to be all sorts of media folks present. Roger Chester clued me in that
People
magazine is sending a reporter and photographer. The local news will be there. Maybe some other magazines and who knows who else.”

“DJ Talk It Up will be there,” Nomad said. “Trying to get a little piece of Ariel.”

“
Who
?”

“Don’t mind John,” Ariel advised. “It’s a guy with a podcast. He called this morning.”

“Nobody gets past
me
.” True’s blue eyes were burning bright. “That’s what I want you to know. I see all credentials and talk to everybody who wants a piece of whomever. Right?”

“You’re the road manager,” Berke said.

“And I thought
I
used to be fucking crazy,” Chappie muttered into her coffee cup.

True grunted but said nothing more. All this talk about
crazy
and
insane
.

He had decided not to tell them the rest of it, either about Connor Addison or the guy with the .22 rifle who’d been captured making his torturous climb up Hell Mountain. No, best not to tell them. He didn’t want anybody to get—what was the term Berke had used?—‘creeped out’.

“I’m going to take a nap for an hour,” True said as he stood up. He took his bowl and glass to the sink, and he realized he was avoiding eye contact with everyone. Then he went directly to the couch in the den, where he had set up his ‘command center’ on the desk next to the computer and wireless cable modem that Floyd Fisk had used.

When the Scumbucket pulled up to the Casbah just before three o’clock with True at the wheel, it was clear the circus had come to town. Satellite trucks bearing TV news logos were nearly blocking Kettner Avenue, and the police were on hand to try to keep everybody moving. The Casbah’s crew helped with unloading the gear. The music room was small—intimate, they would say—and only held about a hundred and thirty or so patrons, but there were at least forty news media people milling around waiting for The Five. The ceiling was low and the stage was backed with a wall of what appeared to True to be black leather seat cushions. He introduced himself to the owner and the manager and talked to them for a few minutes, and then as the equipment was set up on stage True put himself between the band and the media hounds and tried to maintain some order.

Ariel was amazed at this turnout, at the shouting for attention and the glare of the camera lights that followed her as she made her way across the room. Berke didn’t look right or left. Terry ducked his head down, suddenly a lot shyer in a spotlight than he’d ever thought he would be. Nomad just laughed; here were all these cameras grabbing his image for national exposure, and instead of a young long-haired, street-tough Elvis he looked like the loser in a four-man cage fight.

The Casbah’s owner, a bearded man named Tim Mays, got up on stage and told the assembly that they were welcome to do their interviews for one hour—starting
now
—but after that they had to clear out so the checks could be done and everything prepped for the show tonight.

True was true to his word and started asking to see credentials—business cards, personal identification, whatever—of people lining up for interviews, which seemed to piss some of them off but he couldn’t care less about that; the way he blocked the path to the table where The Five had parked themselves said he was the big dog in this room, and if anybody didn’t like it they might as well pack up their digital capture gear into their black bags—which had to be searched, for the sake of security—and move their asses on out da doah.

The
People
magazine team, a young Asian-American woman wearing pink eyeglasses and a lanky guy with curly brown hair who carried his expensive Nikon like it was a five-dollar basketball, came on in and set up to do their interview.
How does it feel to suddenly be so
successful?
Now, how long have you guys been together? John, what did you think about when
you made that jump?
Oh…yeah…you go by the name Nomad, right
?
Do you guys have any idea how you got on Jeremy Pett’s radar? What about Connor Addison? Tell me a little bit about yourselves, just a brief bio. What’s your plan after this tour is over?

Everybody looked to Nomad for the answer to that one. He said, “We’re working on it.”

“Good luck,” said the
People
reporter, after the pictures had been taken of The Five on stage against the black cushion background, their faces pressed together as if they were one single entity, their right hands extended, palms out, each five fingers strong. No smiling, exude confidence and toughness, and let your shiner and the fading scratches on your cheek speak to every poor man’s son.