The Rock 'N Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - a Spike Berenger Anthology (18 page)

“Can you get us a couple of seats at a table, Matt?” Berenger asked.

“I’ll see what I can do. Follow me.”

He led them through the crowded lobby, quickly got their hands stamped, and found a small round table near the back. “It’s not close but it’ll have to do. Is it all right?” he asked.

“It’s great, Matt, thanks.”

“No problem. First drink’s on the house. What can I tell the waitress to bring you?”

“I’ll have a White Russian,” Berenger said. He looked at Suzanne.

“Just a glass of red wine,” she answered.

“Oh, and Matt, if you can get word to Dave Bristol that I’m here and I’d like to speak with him and the band after the show, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sure thing. Good to see you, Spike.” Eisenberg rushed off, found one of the waitresses and gave her the order.

“Is there anyone in this business you don’t know?” Suzanne asked.

Berenger scratched his head and said, “Hmm. I’ve never met Britney Spears, damn it.”

She laughed. “She’s too young for you.”

“She sure doesn’t act like it.”

The drinks came quickly and Berenger felt his spirits lifting after the rather melancholy drive back to the city from Long Island. His mother’s condition normally didn’t affect him so strongly but for some reason that night it was particularly painful. Perhaps it was the fact that she couldn’t remember his father. Never mind, he told himself. Enjoy the evening.

A local band by the name of Chicago Green opened the show. A five-man jam band outfit, the members appeared to be just out of high school. Berenger was impressed with their musicianship, though. He thought that they were already good enough to attract some attention. Suzanne found the bass player particularly cute.

After a twenty minute break, Blister Pack took the stage. Eisenberg introduced the band, announcing it as their debut performance. Dave Bristol, one of the tallest rock stars Berenger had ever known, waved at the crowd and received a standing ovation with catcalls and whistles. Brick Bentley and Moe Jenkins blew kisses and assumed their positions on stage. Without Flame, the trio focused on Jenkins’ heavy array of keyboards, Bentley’s bass, and Bristol’s powerful drumming and vocals. The result was a power-pop jazz-rock fusion extravaganza very similar to Flame’s Heat but without Flame’s distinctive vocals and guitar. Berenger noted that the material was mostly instrumental, which was a good thing because Bristol’s voice wasn’t made to carry a band.

Half of the ninety-minute set consisted of new stuff that Berenger had never heard. He thought it was damned good, and the way Suzanne was rocking in her seat she apparently enjoyed it as well. The rest of the set was filled out with a couple of early Hay Fever hits and a good deal of Flame’s Heat material. Berenger felt the Flame’s Heat songs didn’t work as well without Flame’s guitar and voice. However, the audience was very enthusiastic. It was as if they were witnessing the remaining two Beatles, reunited for a spin-off project. Half of the magic was missing, but what was there was certainly alchemy of sorts.

The encore was Hay Fever’s title track from the album
Sneeze!
and it brought down the house. No one remained sitting as a swarm of people packed the space in front of the stage. Suzanne stood on her chair and Berenger wrapped his arms around her bare legs to support her. Her skin felt smooth and enticing; he had to force himself to concentrate on the music. For a moment he missed the intimacy he had once enjoyed with her. It would most likely never happen again but it was a nice fantasy.

When the house lights came on, Berenger helped Suzanne down from the chair. She was giddy with excitement. “They were great, weren’t they?” she gushed. “What did you think?”

“They’re tight,” Berenger said. “I would have liked it better if they’d stuck to new material. The old stuff doesn’t work as well.”

“Oh, don’t be a snob. Think of it like new arrangements, or covers, or something. We going backstage?”

“Yeah.”

Eisenberg worked his way through the crowd funneling out of the club and approached them. “Did you like it?” he asked.

“Sure did!” Suzanne said.

“Thanks for helping us out, Matt,” Berenger said.

“No problem. Come on, Dave’s expecting you backstage.”

“They coming out to greet their fans?”

“Nah, Dave was never much for that sort of thing. He always left that to Flame, if you’ll recall.”

“Oh, right.”

Eisenberg led them through the door guarded by a burly bouncer and into the space that served as the wings, which consisted of a couple of dressing rooms and a storage area. Eisenberg knocked on one of the dressing room doors. A shirtless Dave Bristol opened it. He had just emerged from the shower and was dressed only in sweatpants. A good-looking, wiry man in his fifties, Bristol grinned widely when he saw Berenger.

“Hey, how ya doin’, Spike?” The two men embraced each other.

“I’m good, Dave. You guys played great.”

“Thanks, man.” He looked at Suzanne and snapped his fingers. “Suzie, right?”

“Suzanne.”

“I knew that. How are you, beautiful?”

“Fine. I really enjoyed the show.”

“Good. Come in, come in.” He held the door open for them and put on a T-shirt. “Grab a seat and I’ll get the other guys.” Apparently Bristol rated his own dressing room while Jenkins and Bentley had to share one. Bristol knocked on the other door and told his bandmates to join them.

Eisenberg left the quintet alone with a six-pack of cold Bud. Berenger had met Bentley and Jenkins on a few occasions but wasn’t as close to them as he was to Bristol.

“I won’t take up too much of your time,” Berenger began. “I just have a few questions and want to get some impressions from you guys. As you know, I’m working for Adrian Duncan and his mom. I’m not here to say I think he’s innocent or I’m doing my best to get him off. I’m here to gather information and facts to present to his lawyer. It’s up to the lawyer to decide what to do and how to present a defense. So please, I’d appreciate your honesty and candor, okay?”

The three men nodded. Bristol took a long drink of beer and then said, “Just don’t ask us if we’re sorry that Flame got off’d.”

“All right, are you sorry that Flame got off’d?” Berenger asked.

“I said don’t ask us that.”

“I’d like to know how you feel about it.”

Bristol looked at Jenkins and Bentley. They shrugged as if to say, “Go ahead.” Bristol faced Berenger and said, “We hate the guy, Spike. He was asking for it. I’m sorry to say that but it’s the honest truth. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Flame like a brother, we knew each other a long time, and we went through hell and high water together. But he did some things that will leave permanent scars.”

“Besides breaking up Flame’s Heat and becoming a fundamentalist cult member?”

Bristol nearly choked on a swallow and said, “Isn’t that enough? We’re talking about a very lucrative gig that Flame just walked away from. He threw
us
away like we were expendable pieces from some kind of game he was playing. We were discarded, man. Flame’s Heat was huge and Flame turned his back on us to do
religious cult
music! Is that
insane
, or what?”

Berenger shrugged. “I don’t know. If he found religion you can’t really fault him for that. You have to respect what an artist wants to do with his life.”

“Yeah?” Bristol said. “Tell that to Cat Stevens’ fans.”

Jenkins and Bentley laughed. Berenger smiled and said, “You have a point, I admit. So, tell me. You guys were close to him when he converted. What happened? How do you explain it?”

Jenkins said, “He went crazy, man.”

“Yeah, he went plain nuts,” Bentley concurred.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Bristol continued. “It was that girlfriend of his. Brenda Twat, or whatever her name is.”

“Brenda Twist.”

“Yeah, I know. She seduced him to the Dark Side, man.”

“How did they meet?”

“They met in rehab. Remember Flame went into rehab in 1998?”

“Uh huh.”

“Flame’s Heat was really big at the time and for some reason Flame was doing every drug he could get his hands on.” Bristol looked at the other two guys. “We weren’t saints ourselves, but we weren’t into the excess that Flame was into. It was like the guy
wanted
to kill himself. I was afraid he’d OD one night and we’d find him on his dressing room floor with a syringe in his arm.”

“It was heroin?”

“Yeah, heroin, coke, you name it. He was into the speedball thing, mixing the two of ‘em. He drank an awful lot, too. He was pretty bad off. Let’s see, he was in and out of rehab two or three times in the early nineties. You guys remember?”

Jenkins answered, “I think it was twice, but he didn’t stay long.”

“Yeah, twice. Anyway, I was one of the folks who talked him into going in 1998. Me and his wife Carol. Ex-wife, that is. And Al Patton. Actually—hey!” He turned to his colleagues. “Did you guys see Al tonight?”

“No,” they answered in unison.

“That bastard! He didn’t show for our debut performance! What a prick!” Bristol threw the bottle of Bud against the wall, breaking it. It was an example of his famous temper. Berenger waited for him to cool down a second and then the man resumed talking as if nothing had happened. “Anyway, just about everyone Flame knew pleaded with him to get some help. Finally, there was one night he had to go to the emergency room. It was after one of our gigs in England—Liverpool. He really did OD and had to be rushed to the hospital. We were lucky to keep it out of the newspapers. I think Al Patton paid off some people to keep it quiet. It was touch and go but Flame got through it. We had to cancel some shows. Oh, and the police there charged him with possession of narcotics, too. It was a mess. I don’t think they were gonna let Flame’s Heat return to the UK. Not that it mattered, because we didn’t play in public again after that. Flame went into rehab for good and came out a changed man.”

“And Brenda was in the rehab place with him?”

“That’s where they met. Apparently she was a recovering addict, too.”

“How long was he there?”

Bentley said, “Five months, I think. I really don’t know.”

Bristol continued. “Well, he was in and out of rehab all through ’98 and ’99. It was after new millennium, in 2000, when I was sure Flame was sober and truly out. So I went to see him, you know, to find out what we were gonna do. During those years we weren’t recording in the mid-nineties, Al was happy to release a live album and a CD of B-sides and outtakes, but we needed to record something new. Flame told me the band was finished and he was doing something on his own. He gave me a Bible and told me to read it and join him in his new venture, which was singing for Jesus. I couldn’t believe it. I asked him, ‘What, are you nuts? Have you gone crazy, Flame?’ And he said, ‘Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. I just know that a new path has been laid out for me and I must follow it.’”

“Was that before or after he went to Jamaica?” Jenkins asked.

“That was after,” Bristol replied.

“Tell me about that,” Berenger suggested.

“Right after he got out of rehab for the last time he went to Jamaica with Brenda and the rest of those Messengers. He was there a week or two, I can’t remember. They must have brainwashed him or something, because he gave them a shitload of money and returned to New York all Christ-like and reflective. I had truly never seen Flame act so weird. He was like an automaton. Whatever Brenda said to do, he’d do it. They started living together and that was it. Bye bye Flame’s Heat. I tell you why her name is Brenda Twist—she
twisted
his mind. That’s what happened.”

Suzanne spoke up. “I’ve been to the Messengers’ church. I find their philosophy a little extreme but I don’t think they’re particularly dangerous. Do you?”

“Yeah, I do. I think they’re fucking evil. They have a hidden agenda, I know they do,” Bristol said.

“Like what?” Berenger asked.

“Hell, I don’t know. Taking your money. That’s one thing they do. I can’t tell you how much money Flame pumped into them. And what did he get out of it? You tell me.”

“Peace of mind? Religious comfort?” Berenger proposed.

Bristol waved his hands in the air and rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he said.