Zeitgeist (6 page)

Tonight’s G-7 playlist also included the insistent “Speak My Language.” The upbeat “Free to Be (Just Like Me).” The pulse-pounding “We’ve Got the Power,” and the ominous, techno-heavy “Remote Control.” The
girlishly assertive “It’s the Only Way to Live” had won many converts worldwide in the eight-to-twelve age bracket. G-7’s showstopping encore, a regional hit from Taiwan to Slovakia, was “Shut Up and Dance.” (The forthcoming G-7 effort, destined for their Teheran debut, was a crossover Iranian folk/calypso number called “Hey, Mr. Taliban, Tally Me Banana.”)

“Eat some baklava, Nick. Try some of this walnut chicken.” Starlitz forced a fork into the accountant’s jittery hand. “Any more trouble shipping the boss’s cut to Hawaii?”

“Yes, that’s very troublesome!” shouted Nick politely. “The shell companies, no problem! Fund transfers to and from Istanbul, no problem! Tax avoidance, no problem!” Nick helped himself to a grape-leaf dolma. “Large sums of Euroyen from the Akdeniz Bankasi to a Japanese bank branch in Hawaii, yes, that is a definite challenge!”

Starlitz grew intent. “We need you to handle that, Nick.”

“The locals don’t like it!” Nick objected. “I don’t like it either!” Enlivened by the excellent dolma, Nick leaned forward to spear an aubergine in peppered olive oil. “Japanese banks are dreadful this year! They’re held together with sticking plasters! They have coppers coming through the front doors and VPs flying out windows!”

“All the more reason that the boss needs ready money. Screw anybody you have to, Nick, screw the Turks, screw the girls, screw the road crew, but don’t ever screw Makoto. I want Makoto fat and happy, man, I want him in his aloha shirt puffing Maui Wowie.”

Nick scowled. “Makoto’s a bleedin’ rock musician. He never checks his books, he can’t even read them! We could take Makoto for anything we want! He’d never know, and he doesn’t even care!”

“Nick, that’s a great wideboy’s analysis there, and I agree with you totally. I love you for that, Nick; I’m glad we have a relationship here. You’re a pro; you’re the tops. Just one thing.” Starlitz plucked the fork from Nick’s
hand. “You do what I fuckin’ tell you, or you’ll be eating off a plastic tray in Wormwood Scrubs.”

Nick laughed nervously. “Look, Leggy, I have it under control, okay? Istanbul will work out for us! Even Iran looks all right! It’s all in line, no problem!”

Starlitz nodded tautly. He left Nick and worked his way through the party toward Liam’s mixing station.

Starlitz plowed through a crowd of young, sweating, half-deafened Cypriots. These kids had the dazed, rootless, half-breed, malleable look of core G-7 fans. Half the population of Turkish Cyprus lived in London. The children of exile had one leg perched on each island; they were teenagers who were uniformly surly and unhappy anywhere in the world. The little hybrid kids were bopping like maniacs, gamely struggling to follow a global beat.

Liam the G-7 Soundman lurked in the shadows behind his massive blinking stacks and keyboards. Liam was a fat, balding musician in a backward baseball cap and a dashiki, with a Players A smoldering in his yellowed fangs.

Starlitz picked up a padded headphone-and-mike rig and plugged in to Liam’s system, so that they could talk inside the almighty din.

“How’s the new hardware, Liam?”

Liam turned and grinned at him. “Can’t you feel that, man?” Liam patted his bulky gut, which was visibly shaking with the bass track.

“I’m tone deaf,” Starlitz reminded him. “Tell me about the vacuum tubes.”

Liam flicked switches and turned down their headphone treble to a muted squeak. “Legs, for two years I’ve been limpin' along with friggin’ Mullards and Tung-Sols! I’ll never use that shit again! Listen to the rich, brilliant spank off these Russki missile tubes! They got big fat midrange furriness, and a big girthy magic down in the low ends!” Liam knocked the side of his skull with his nicotine-stained knuckles. “The top end still sounds a bit thin, but that’s because they haven’t burnt in proper yet!”

“So the tubes are okay?”

“They’re brill!” Liam gurgled. “I put one tube up for auction, on-line. Just to see what the pros would do for it, eh? Latest bid is five thousand!”

Starlitz raised his thick brows. “Five thousand bucks for a friggin’ vacuum tube? Jesus, I’m in the wrong business.”

Liam grinned hugely. “Five thousand
pounds
, boss! Yankees don’t know from tubes!”

Starlitz offered a hearty thumbs-up. He plugged out, submerging himself in the racket again. Liam was useful. Liam was predictable. Once upon a time Liam had toured four continents, lugging his guitar as a Tantric monk of British psychedelic blues. But Liam had survived the sixties; Liam was past the fame, long past the groupies, he had even survived the awesome Niagara of drugs and booze. Liam had fully recovered from rock ‘n’ roll, except for one fatal addiction: his equipment jones. Being a career musician, Liam didn’t require a salary, a roof, dental care, or health insurance. But he couldn’t face himself without an exclusive kit.

Liam owned a lacquered 1957 hollow-bodied Gibson in an exclusive run of twenty-five. He had bass strings made in total darkness by blind Portuguese gypsies. He owned Turkish cymbals made in a five-thousand-year-old Bronze Age foundry. Liam’s G-7 road kit included a cherry Roland 303, a vintage Mellotron, even an Optigan. Liam was getting his own way in the service of G-7. Liam was the picture of fulfillment.

The time had come for a check on the girls. Leggy did not deal with the G-7 girls personally. He recognized this as unprofessional. For the artistes “Leggy the G-7 Manager” had to be a remote, mystifying figure, a creature of high-level deals and cryptic Masonic handshakes. Leggy would look in on the girls periodically, to distribute knickknacks and petty cash. He left the day-to-day discipline to the middle layer of G-7 management: the G-7 voice coach, the two G-7 choreographers, and especially the group’s chaperone.

Tamara the G-7 Chaperone had joined the team from Los Angeles. She had skills and a personal background that were hard to match. Tamara had first become an Angeleno way back in 1990, after fleeing in abject terror from Soviet Azerbaijan, where the collapse of her husband’s Communist regime had made her a nonperson. A courageous emigrant in search of freedom and a better life, Tamara had arrived from the long shadows of the Kremlin onto the bright neon streets of Hollywood, alone and friendless, with no resources other than her Swiss bank account, a small valise crammed with gold bars, and three prime kilos of Afghani hashish. Despite these disadvantages Tamara had gamely worked her way up through the Armenian California mafia of gasoline pirates and chop shops. She’d established a thriving used-car business in Brentwood Heights. Finally, with her English fully polished and her seams straight, Tamara had infiltrated the glamorous world of “Irangeles.”

Los Angeles, California, was the entertainment capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Once upon a time, in the distant royal 1970s, Iran had possessed a Westernized pop culture rather similar to Turkey’s. Iran had nightclub music on vinyl, punch-’em-up black-and-white action adventure movies, belly dancing on TV, quavering male heartthrob pop singers, and so forth. This pop scene had all been scraped painfully off the face of the country and flung overseas by Khomeini. The Ayatollah had installed a fifteen-year pop-music regimen, exclusively consisting of martial songs and folk hymns.

However, Iran’s numerous exiles still required something to play on the stereo and watch on TV. There were a million Iranian emigrés, scattered all over the planet. Germany, Turkey, Britain, and Sweden all had extensive communities, but Los Angeles boasted an Iranian contingent that was eighty thousand strong. So the Iranian entertainment biz had grown and flourished beneath the Great Satan’s palm trees, attracted there inevitably, not by creative freedom, of course, but by Hollywood’s unrivaled recording and distributing infrastructure.

With the passage of the years and a slow thaw back in Mullahdom, Iranian pop was seething back into the homeland, its tendrils weaving a vigorous smuggling network through the Arab Gulf States. After twenty bitter years of Yankee exile, Iranian pop was lean, mean, and beautifully produced, with big digital sound studios and genuine Hollywood set design. Los Angeles talent such as Dariush and Khashaiar Etemadi were hot property in every Teheran bazaar. If not for the fact that their work was pirated (for the Islamic regime brooked no royalty arrangements), these guys would have been the Ratpack.

Mrs. Tamara Dinsmore (it had been a green-card marriage, but Tamara was a stickler for the niceties) had become a major fixer in the Irangeles pop scene. Tamara was a natural for the work of Hollywood, since she had once been married to the Azerbaijani Communist party chairman. Tamara had gamely undergone the obligatory L.A. tucks and face-lifts, and wore tall clacking heels and an Armani suit. Once a woman of rare, exotic beauty, Tamara was in midlife now, rather past mere exoticism and well on her way to the bizarre.

Leggy found Tamara giving a brisk dressing-down to the German One. Though the German One somehow attracted scoldings from everyone around her, the German One was basically all right. She was trustworthy, clean, and obedient. The German One was G-7’s originally installed German. Nothing if not persistent, she had lasted out three entire grueling years.

Leggy cherished the German One. He took the trouble to stay up to speed with all her various loony flirtations. He was best acquainted with her French self-declared fiancé, a minor-league Belmondo type who showed up every bank holiday with chocolate, champagne, and a sports car. The German One was always coolly polite and considerate to her French beau, but tattered, worthless stage-door Johnnies were the guys who infallibly won her ditzy little Love Parade heart. Sensing a soft touch, these ex–Warsaw Pact hustlers tracked the German One from gig to gig, sending her long ardent faxes in
obscure local languages with acutes and circumflexes, and begging her for expedient loans. The German One had given her girlish all to the big blustery blond Polish kid. She’d fallen under the intellectual spell of the mild and acerbic little Czech kid. Worst of all was the crazed, pistoltoting Serbian kid, who had gotten her into big trouble.

Now the German One was meekly sniffling under Tamara’s dressing-down. It had everything to do with some Turk.

Leggy patted the German One’s dirndled shoulder. “How’s life treating you, German One?”

“I love him.” She sniffled.

“I see. And what does your mom say about that?”

“Mamma hates him!”

“Well, see, that’s your story all over. Nothing new there.” He turned to Tamara. “How’s she holding up?”

“I guess she’s all right,” shrugged Tamara, “she’s just young and stupid.”

“Come on, German One,” Leggy coaxed. “We’re depending on you to pull us through. You’re our rock, girl. You’re our locomotive! Nobody holds your past problems against you anymore! You’re all grown up and responsible now! You’re as sound as the mark! You’ve become our Sensible One.”

The German One wiped her eyes, disturbing thirty dollars’ worth of layered gloss, mascara, and metallic dust. “You think so?” she said, touched.

“Absolutely, babe.”

She scowled. “I’m all right. But the American One’s acting like a stupid bitch!”

“Not again,” Leggy said.

The German One stamped her dainty leather boot. “She’s high on coke and she owes me a lot of money, Leggy!”

“I’ll straighten that out for you, German One. Chin up! Shoulders back! Big smile! I need a word with Frau Dinsmore here.” Starlitz took Tamara aside.

“It’s true. The American One is impossible,” Tamara hissed.

Leggy considered this. It was bad news. “How many American Ones does this make for us now?”

“This is your sixth American One, you big fool! Why can’t you get us an American One who can do the job? Do something right for a change! Try something different!”

Leggy was perturbed. Despite his best, repeated efforts, he somehow had never been able to get an American One to fully click with the group. Maybe it was the fact that America was basically nine different cultural regions. Big continental empires always had weird demographics. “How bad is she?”

“She is totally terrible! The American One is sloppy, rebellious, lazy, and disrespectful!”

“Oh, well.”

“And she believes her own press releases.”

Leggy was startled. “Christ, that’s serious!”

“I’m sick of your stupid American One! It’s time for you to do something! We have a big event coming in Istanbul, and she’s dragging all the other girls down.”

“Tamara, I’ll look after that problem. There’s gotta be some kind of workaround there. Cheer up. I’ve got a big new development in G-7 backstage personnel.”

Tamara looked skeptical.

“This is gonna be a big personal surprise for you.” Starlitz offered Tamara a friendly leer. “Does the name ‘Pulat Romanevich Khoklov’ ring a bell?”

Tamara considered this, her tight face bleak. “ ‘Khoklov’? Is that a Russian name?”

“Of course it’s a Russian name! I’m talking about Pulat Khoklov, the romantic war hero. The flying ace! He used to fly Ilyushin-14s out of Kabul.”

Tamara was skeptical. “Why are you telling me about some pilot?”

“He’s not
some
pilot, Tamara, he’s
your
pilot! Khoklov used to work for you and your husband! He flew contraband into Azerbaijan, during the war! He’s your kind of guy, babe!”

“Leggy, I have plenty of men already. I have too many men. I don’t need your ‘my kind of guy babe.’ ”

“But you and Khoklov were a hot item! He fell for you like a ton of smack! Last time you saw Pulat Romanevich, you were humping him in the back of a bus!”

Tamara’s taut face grew stiff. “I don’t like that kind of language!”

Starlitz was pained. “Look, Tamara, I wouldn’t make this up—I was
there in the bus with both of you
. Think back! Nagorno-Karabakh in the eighties, remember? A handsome, charming Russian guy! White silk ascot and a cool battle jacket full of medals!”

“I never think back.” Tamara’s voice was wintry. “Those days are dead. I never think about that place anymore.”