Whale Music (27 page)

Into this place I must go, this place that is called Minos’ Bar and Grill.

Barney has raised his hackles, bared his teeth, he is not afraid of the beasts that lurk within. Bob has applied his shoulder to the front door but cannot summon the strength to drive it open. I search my brain for legitimate reasons to forestall the assault. “Very well,” I speak aloud. “Let’s do it.”

I adjust my pith helmet, make sure my sunglasses are balanced on my nose, and I lead my comrades through the front door.

A specimen is collecting admission money. He has no jawbone. He demands fifteen dollars, which is three times five dollars. I am afraid to ask if it is common practice to charge for dogs, fearful that his response will be that he failed to notice Barney was canine. I quickly fork over the money, and the three of us hustle to the most proximate table.

The table is to the rear of the establishment, and beside us is
a table full of the
LIVE NAKED WOMEN
. They are not naked now—they have thrown on dressing gowns, but so little does their nakedness mean to them that breasts and bottoms and many other things tumble into sight. The women drink Diet Sprite and talk about sushi and motion pictures. They smoke many cigarettes and laugh too hard. A live naked woman comes over to take our order. She is an older woman, in most respects she looks as though she could be the den mother for a pack of Boy Scouts, but she is naked. “Give us mescal,” I say, for it is the most druglike of potables, slug it back and chew on the worm, you won’t know what hit you. She picks up a pencil and writes that down laboriously. The woman has an appendectomy scar, a long cruel one that slithers across her belly. She leaves in a businesslike manner. It is odd to see a naked person walk in a businesslike manner, her buttocks pumping like efficiency experts walking the aisles of a typing pool.

Over there is a young man in a wheelchair. He wears a hat that says
JACK
DANIELS
. He wears a T-shirt that says
I LOVE LOU
. This is a reference to Lou Gruber, the former dishwasher repairman who has made a fortune by playing old rock and roll songs, including my classic “Torque Torque.” The young man’s arms are covered with tattoos, crude ones, faded purple ink and misspellings. He rests his hands on the arms of his wheelchair and rocks the contraption back and forth. In front of him, standing on a milk crate, is a live naked woman. She is dancing for the young man, if you can call bending over dancing. That’s about all the woman does. She bends over so that her breasts bob in front of him. She turns around and bends over so that, well, you get the idea. When the music stops the woman sits down on her milk crate, has a sip of Diet Sprite, takes a long haul from her ciggie.

“So, do you work, go to school?” she asks the young man.

“Oh,” he answers, “I’m on disability.”

“Uh-yeah.” She nods, looks around curiously. A new song fills the air. “Again?”

“Yeah.” The boy reaches into his jean pocket, extracts a crumpled five-dollar bill. The naked woman slips it into a little change purse, climbs back up on her milk crate.

Mescal comes. I drink mine and Barney’s before Bob’s has hit the table. I ask the den mother for three more. She writes that down.

Bob is grinning idiotically. Barney looks confused. Good for Barney.

There is a main stage set up in the middle of the cave. Actually it is more of a wrestling ring, strong rope girding the edges. In the centre of it a girl is prostrate on a bearskin rug, writhing as if poisoned. She is wearing a cowboy hat, a holster equipped with six-guns, and that is all. Every so often she takes a pistol out and pretends to draw a bead on one or another of the patrons. When the music ends there is a smattering of applause for her act. She climbs to her feet, nods, gathers up her discarded clothing. She puts on a bra and a pair of panties, then slips through the ropes of the ring. She disappears.

Now strange music fills the room. This sounds like the Shriners’ Parade on goofballs, an idiotic bass drum thumping at half speed, a strangely strident organ, lush but nasty, the sort of timbre that I have only heard emanate from the Yamaha 666.
“Claire
,” a fairly pleasant voice sings, “
the way the moonlight bounces in your hair
 …” Ah yes, now I remember, and it comes as no surprise that Claire is climbing into the ring, dressed in what appears to be Saran Wrap. She does not see us, way to the back and shrouded in shadows. Her eyes are closed as she twists her body in time with the music. Claire doffs the Saran Wrap in nothing flat. She is an inexperienced peeler, the idea is to drag that moment out, we are not even into the second verse before Claire is lying down on the bearskin rug.

The time comes for action. I stand up, make an outraged bellow, and storm the wrestling ring. Surprising myself, I haul my bulk up and squeeze through the ropes. Claire is on her
back, her legs sticking straight into the air. She turns her head sideways, sees me.

“Go away,” she says. She lowers her legs, spreads them.

“Come with me,” I tell her.

“Here comes the bouncer,” she says. She flips over on to her stomach, assumes the same position a ten-month-old infant would for a Kiddy Photographer.

“I don’t fear bouncers,” I say, and I truly don’t, I am not alarmed as a thick arm wraps itself around my neck. A hand takes my left wrist, buckles the arm behind my back.

“Okay, buddy,” a voice whispers in my ear. “That’ll be enough of that.”

There is something about the voice, though, that causes me concern.

“Unhand me,” I tell my unseen captor. “I’ve come to take this young lady home.”

“Des?”

“Don’t listen to him,” says Claire. “He’s lunched-out.”

“Des Howl?” the voice whispers in my ear.

“That is my name. Unhand me.”

The arm loosens off my neck, my wrist is released. Claire is carrying on with her act. I place my hands on my sides, am about to say a stern “Now see
here
, young lady,” when I realize that, although I was previously quite famous, there is no way in the world that the fellow behind my back simply recognized me. Claire is doing push-ups on the bearskin rug. I turn around, see a horribly muscled body contained by too-tight pants and a T-shirt. There is the big moustache, the tiny head. I form my hammy paws into fists, I start to circle the perimeter of the ring. “All right, you,” I say, “put up your dukes.” The patronage sends up a huzzah, they would rather watch fisticuffs than live naked women any day of the week.

Claire sits up on the bearskin rug, crosses her legs. “Des,” she says, “what the fuck are you doing?”

“I am fighting,” I inform her. “Please get dressed. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m through.”

“Desmond,” says my opponent, “you know how much I detest violence.”

“I know no such thing.”

“It’s okay,” says Claire. She has stood up, placed a tiny hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Des. You’re drunk or something. Let’s go home.”

“This is unfinished business,” I inform her. “This lout has it coming in spades.”

“Des—” they say simultaneously. I charge in, my right arm helicoptering above my head in preparation for a mighty blow. Before that happens, Farley O’Keefe pops me right in the nose. I hear a gruesome crunching sound, I begin to teeter, I think I’ve lost the fight already, a piss-poor showing on my side. My right hand lands ineffectually on Farley’s cheek. I’m timbering, Claire tries to catch me, the two of us hit the canvas hard. Still, my punch seems to have packed unexpected power, Farley is screaming and hollering in excruciating pain. I am quite proud of myself until I spot a dangling Barney, the pooch’s fangs dug deeply into O’Keefe’s backside. Then a huge fuzzball appears on top of Farley’s tiny head, which I momentarily recognize as Babboo Nass Fazoo. Stunned by my own ingenuity, I begin to roll towards Farley’s feet. I hit like a bowling ball.
Yahoo!
The Whale-man makes Life’s seven-ten split! I employ a wrestling maneouvre made famous by Man Mountain Calhoun. I clamber to my feet, take a couple of steps and then lift-off. I spread out in the air as if about to make a beautiful splash in the pool. There is a small
oof
as I land upon Farley O’Keefe.

He is
out
.

The crowd applauds furiously, some even get to their feet. They cheer and wave fists in salute.

Put briefly, the carriage of my life broke under all the baggage. The straw that broke the camel’s back—although the camel was a crippled, blind swayback long before—was Daniel’s suicide. Accident, I mean. A slip of the brain.

I could not catalogue chronologically the events that have led up to me being here, in this place, this
police station
, being interrogated by a man who fearsomely resembles Broderick Crawford. The man seems to be ingesting cigarettes, he has gone through seventeen in the brief time he has spent questioning me. Myself, I have quit. I decided just now. I tossed my Salems into the wastebasket, all seven packages that I had distributed around my bloated carcass. A filthy habit, cigarette smoking. I feel better already.

The Broderick Crawford clone takes off his jacket, rolls up his shirt-sleeves. He’s got me on disturbing the peace and, chuckle-chuckle, public drunkenness. It’s as if they found Josef Mengele and charged him with littering. Farley is not filing a complaint. I seem to have put the fear of God into that moustachioed lout. I am concerned about my friends, though, Barney, Bob, and especially Claire.

The detective tries to trick me. He leafs through my folder—I had no idea there was so much information on me—and asks, “When was the last time you saw Eddie Joe Keillor?”

“I am not acquainted with the man.”

“He stayed at your house for three months.”

“So?”

“So when was the last time you saw him?”

“I am not acquainted with an Eddie Joe Keillor.”

“You’re not making it any easier on the girl.”

Why should I admit knowing Eddie Joe, a man who is to drug abusers what Santa Claus is to little children? Besides, I never knew that he lived at my house for three months. I stay hushed up—I wished I still smoked, so I could ram a butt into my mouth with punkish resolution—but then I make a quick
ack-ack
and demand, “What do you mean, not making it easier on the girl?”

“Well, I mean, the shit comes up to here on her already”—he draws an imaginary line just under his wattles—“and now I’m finding out that Claire has been spending time with a guy who hangs out with Eddie Joe Keillor. Not to mention Quenton ‘The Geek’ Curso.”

“Mr. Curso was in my employ. We were not friends.”

“You know where Curso is now?”

“No.”

“Curso is
el morto
, Desmond. He got fuggin
hung!!”

“Hanged.”

“It says here that you even know Jerry Lee Lewis.”

I search the Broderick Crawford clone’s face for twitches of levity. There are none. The Los Angeles Police are mad at me because I know Jerry Lee Lewis. It may be time to vacate the planet.

“Mr. Lewis and I are both musicians, I have encountered the gentleman professionally.”

“He played on some fuggin record of yours.”

“Yes.” This man is a moron. “You see, sir, we needed that sound.”

“What sound?”

“A sound like the piano keyboard is a huge dimpled keester and the fingers sailors on shore leave.”

“You couldn’t get anyone else to do it?”

“When one wants that sound, one needs must have the Killer himself.”

Jerry Lee Lewis is called The Killer I think as a joke, although there is a disconcerting similarity in the tragic deaths of two of his wives, both found drugged and drowned in the swimming pool. It is true, he played on one of our records, he played the piano on “Big House,” track four, side two of
Reems Street
. That album cooks, oh boy, it features many special guest stars, Mooky Saunders, um, Keith Richards, er, Dizzy Gillespie (has Dizzy’s head exploded yet?), and for the song “Big House” we needed that distinctive piano sound. So Daniel got on the telephone—an instrument he loved as much I despised—and a few hours later Jerry Lee Lewis stumbled into the studio.

Jerry Lee had been into the amphetamines. He had the speed-induced dental gnash, the grinders meeting with a pressure of several thousand pounds per square inch. He was also drinking Wild Turkey, wrapping his lips around the bottleneck and pumping like a puppy at the teat. “The Killer has arrived!” he announced, unnecessary heralding considering he entered the studio like a tiny hurricane. He spied the piano and shot the boots, catching one of the corners and sending wood chips every which way. In a single move he devalued the Steinway by about five thousand dollars. “You got show these things who’s boss,” he explained. “They’re just like women, all tits, no ass, if you see what I mean.”

Jerry Lee Lewis chuckled, lit a smoke, collapsed onto the piano stool. He polished off the bottle, laid his cigarette down on the keyboard (it burned into the ivory not many moments afterwards), and then the Killer unleashed some music. It was as if he’d unlocked the door of a musical insane asylum, the crazed futzzies stormed into the world defiantly. “This thing’s in
tune,”
he told us, “but don’t worry, I can work around it.” Jerry Lee raised a leg and did his patented playing-with-the-heel. This caused both him and my brother Daniel to laugh very loudly. Daniel had found a soulmate. The
engineer (Fred had been locked up some time back) placed earphones on Lewis’s head, then returned to the console and started pushing up the levels. Jerry Lee popped a thumb upwards and kept it popped, the engineer obediently upped the volume until it matched the exhaust of a Lear Jet. We played the tracks to “Big House.”