The Rock 'N Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - a Spike Berenger Anthology (4 page)

“Seventy-nine?” Patterson asked. “But you and Flame…?”

“Yeah, we were divorced,” Gina answered. “Had been for seven or eight years. Flame was married to that other harlot at the time.” She laughed to show she was kidding but Berenger knew she wasn’t.

“You and Adrian met up with us in Paris, didn’t you?” Berenger offered. “Came to the show and saw Flame backstage?”

“Yeah, wasn’t that a wonderful moment in the lives of the rich and famous? That bitch Carol threw a fit. Scared Adrian half to death. He was, what, seven? Eight? Spike here happened to step in and calm everyone down. Before you know it, he’s taking us to our hotel. The next day was your day off, wasn’t it, Spike?”

“That’s right.”

“And we toured Paris together.”

Rudy looked at him with an “Oh, I
see!
” expression. Berenger blushed.

“We met again in LA, gosh, a year later?” she continued.

“I think so,” Berenger said. He felt awkward with all this stuff coming out.

“We dated for six weeks,” she said, looking at Berenger out the corner of her eye. “And then he
dumped
me!”

Berenger cleared his throat and said, “Uhm, I seem to remember it was you that dumped
me
.”

“I did? Why would I want to do that?” she said playfully. “You were quite the catch.”

“Frankly, I don’t remember,” Berenger said, totally embarrassed. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could dump Gina Tipton, even Peter Flame. Berenger looked over at Rudy and saw that the forty-seven year old entrepreneur was already bopping in his chair. Extremely hyper, Rudy could never keep still. He was always drumming his fingers on the table or wiggling his leg or bouncing to a rhythm that only he could hear. Rudy knew the music business inside and out but he could be a maniac.

“Uhm, is this, er,
history
, going to affect our working together?” Rudy asked.

“Of course not!” Gina said. She looked at Berenger. “Is it?”

“Uh, no, not at all,” Berenger said. “What
are
we doing together?”

“I want you to clear my son,” she said. “He was arrested for murdering his father, for God’s sake.”

“I take it you believe he’s innocent?” Berenger asked.

“
Of course
he’s innocent!” she said indignantly. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Someone’s trying to frame Adrian.”

Patterson spoke up. “I’m representing Adrian and we’re doing everything possible to make sure this thing doesn’t go to trial. We’d like to hire your firm to investigate Flame’s murder and at the very least come up with some other suspects that the police aren’t considering. Our goal is to get the charges dropped.”

“Where is Adrian now?” Berenger asked.

“In jail!” Gina said.

“They’re not going to let him out,” Patterson continued. “Bail has already been denied and frankly we’re not pushing for it for Adrian’s safety. There are Flame fans out there that would lynch the young man if he was seen on the street.”

“I believe it,” Berenger said. The same thing would have happened to John Lennon’s assailant back in 1980. The fans were out for blood.

“They’re transferring him to a protective custody facility at Rikers this afternoon,” the lawyer said.

“Okay, let’s start at the beginning, as they say. Tell me exactly what happened this morning.” Berenger grabbed a legal pad and pen off of Rudy’s desk and began to take notes. Rudy began to drum his fingers on the desktop, completely unaware of how annoying it was.

As Gina spoke, Berenger was impressed by her composure but he could see through the façade. She was very upset and her earlier kidding around was merely bravado.

“I came east to visit Adrian a little over two weeks ago,” she said. “Adrian lives on the Upper West Side. I have a room at the Empire Hotel, across from Lincoln Center. I had planned to go back to LA after a few days, but when Flame died I decided to stay longer until after his memorial service. Now it looks like I’ll be here even longer.” She gave a small, sarcastic laugh.

Patterson took over the story. “The police came to Adrian’s apartment last night around 7:30 and had a warrant for his arrest. They hustled him out and took him downtown to the Sixth Precinct. The Sixth covers West Greenwich Village, where Flame’s townhouse is.”

“Had Adrian been questioned or anything before that?”

“Oh yeah,” Gina said. “Me too. The police talked to everybody in New York that knew Flame. It was being treated as a suicide until, I don’t know, a couple of days ago.”

“Actually I have a feeling that foul play was suspected within a day or two after the discovery of the corpse,” Patterson said. “The DA is being very quiet about it.”

“Who’s in charge of the investigation?” Berenger asked.

Patterson looked at his notes. “A detective downtown… here it is, Lieutenant Detective Billy McTiernan.”

Berenger nodded and smirked.

“You know him?”

“Yeah,” Berenger answered. “We’ve had some dealings with each other. Total jerk. Did you notice he can’t say a sentence without inserting the F-word or the GD-word?”

Patterson smiled. “I did notice that.”

Berenger made his voice go low and gravelly in a perfect imitation of Detective McTiernan and said, “And he fucking sounds like
this
, goddammit!”

Everyone laughed and Berenger enjoyed his little moment before Patterson continued. “So anyway they took Adrian to the Sixth Precinct and booked him. They had him there in a holding cell all night where he was questioned intensely by the detectives. Adrian said nothing except that he was innocent. The one phone call he made was to his mother.”

“Then I got hold of Mister Patterson,” Gina said.

“The DA had his court appearance expedited and he was in front of a judge at 11:30 this morning. I had maybe ten minutes to talk to him before that. It was all very irregular, but given that it’s such a high profile crime—” Patterson shrugged. “They’re supposed to take him away to Rikers right after lunch today.”

“What did Adrian tell you?” Berenger asked.

“That he didn’t do it. That the last time he saw his father was backstage at the Beacon Theater two weeks ago, the night he died.”

“What can you tell me about that night? You were at the show, right?” Berenger asked Gina.

“Yeah, Adrian and I went together. Al Patton had sent me a couple of tickets. And you know, I felt funny about it all evening, before and during the show. I
knew
something bad was going to happen. You know me, Spike, it was one of those funny premonitions I get. I could
smell
death in the air and I even mentioned that to Kenny, you know, Flame’s tour manager?”

“I know him.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “Adrian was being his usual curmudgeonly self, slumped in his seat and doing his best to show that he wasn’t enjoying the music. Everyone else in the theater was on their feet, clapping, hollering, and whistling. Granted, it had taken them a while to warm up to Flame’s, uhm,
newer
material. I don’t understand Flame. It was obvious that the audience only wanted to hear his old stuff. When the band segued from one of the newer ‘religious’ songs into ‘Keep On Rollin’ to Me’ the crowd went wild. It was amazing what difference a choice of song makes. The audience put up with Flame’s conversion to hardcore religious cult rock just for a chance to hear one measly song that Hay Fever or Flame’s Heat recorded.”

Berenger needed to steer her back on track. “You saw Flame before the show?” he asked.

“Uh huh. He wasn’t just cool to us—he was cold as ice. But what else is new? Did I expect anything else? After all, I’m only the rock star’s
first
wife, the one discarded long ago with a young son to show for our four years of marriage. Anyway, in Flame’s dressing room that night, he and Adrian got into another one of their big arguments.”

“What about?” Berenger asked.

“The usual,” Gina replied. “Adrian’s career, mostly. Flame always accused Adrian of being lazy, and I suppose that’s true to an extent. It’s common knowledge that Adrian didn’t get along with his father. Flame disinherited him in 1988. At the time they were
both
doing a lot of drugs and drinking way too much. You know how Flame could get really belligerent when he was drunk? So can Adrian. Adrian resented the fact that Flame wouldn’t help him with a career in music. All he had to do was pull a few strings and Adrian could have had a head start, but no, Flame wouldn’t do it. Adrian is talented, too. You’ve probably heard some of his music.”

Berenger merely nodded. He remembered that Adrian made a record in the late-eighties that was released with fanfare as the album by “Flame’s son,” but it tanked—big time.

“Wasn’t there an incident at one of Flame’s concerts that involved Adrian?” Berenger asked.

Gina rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Adrian was drunk. He caused what the police called a ‘disturbance,’ and he was arrested. Adrian spent two days in jail because I wasn’t around and his father wouldn’t help him. Look, I know Adrian’s got a reputation for being a bad boy. He’s been arrested a few times, that’s the tabloid truth. But is he capable of
murder
? No. Absolutely not.”

Berenger nodded, letting all this sink in. “Well, I’m going to have to talk to him. Can you get me in to see him?”

“Yeah,” Patterson said. “Visiting hours are restricted, even with his counsel. But we’ll manage something.”

Rudy asked, “How did murder enter into this picture, anyway? Didn’t the guy hang himself?”

Patterson frowned. “That’s what it looked like, at first. I don’t have all the details yet, but obviously the post-mortem revealed some things that weren’t immediately apparent. Like the fact that Flame was strangled to death
before
he was hung. The crime scene was staged to make it look like he had committed suicide.”

Berenger looked at Gina. “So who do
you
think killed him?”

“If you ask me it’s probably one of those creepy Messengers that Flame was hanging with. They’re definitely involved,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Have you ever met them?” she asked. “They’re totally bonkers. They’re what the Manson family would have been if they’d been into Jesus instead of… well,
Manson
. And that
girlfriend
of his...”

“Brenda Twist,” Patterson said.

“Yeah. What a phony. I can see right through her,” Gina said. “She acts like she’s Mother Theresa but I’ll bet she’s got skeletons in her closet. Those people are just after Flame’s money.”

“All right,” Berenger said. “Anyone else?”

“I hate to say it,” Gina said, “but Dave Bristol is high on my list, too.”

Berenger was surprised. “Dave? He was Flame’s friend and partner for years! The drummer for Hay Fever and Flame’s Heat!”

“Exactly. You know they had a big falling out when Flame broke up Flame’s Heat and started doing the religious stuff?”

“I guess they did,” Berenger agreed.

“And Bristol and the rest of the band wanted to use the name Hay Fever but Flame wouldn’t let him. So they started calling themselves Blister Pack.”

“There are some writing credits in dispute, too,” Patterson said. “Bristol filed a lawsuit against Flame two years ago, did you hear about that?”

“Yeah, I think I did, now that you mention it. So you think Bristol had a grudge big enough to warrant murder?”

Gina said, “You know Dave, don’t you? He has a temper worse than Flame’s. And a drinking problem, if you ask me. I think he’s into the nose candy as well.” She tapped her nostrils and sniffed.

Berenger acknowledged that. Bristol had always been an unpredictable and volatile soul. He was usually in trouble with the law—for drugs more than once and for vandalism of public property at least three or four times.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“Well, what about his second wife?” Gina suggested.

“Carol Merryman?” Rudy interjected with disbelief.

“Sure, why not?” Gina countered. “She’s VP of Flame’s company. I’m sure she stands to inherit a shitload of money. Her son Joshua probably does, too.”

“When did they divorce?” Rudy asked.