Crime Plus Music

by Jim Fusilli

  Bowie was surprised that Ion knew the club where house music got its start. But then he remembered that he was in the game way before there was money to be made, before the B-list spun for fame.

  “I hear you,” Bowie nodded.

  Ion threw his arm around Bowie’s shoulder. “Rakesh is here. Both of us—me, you—we could have a very sweet week.”

  “Okay,” said Bowie.

  HE FLEW COACH AND THEN had to use his emergency credit card to get to Sault Ste. Marie from Detroit. His father drove him home after engulfing him in a hug.

  “So . . . ?” asked Ben.

  Bowie shrugged as if to remind his father that, as a teen, he had the right to remain petulant. Heat streaming from the vent rode up the leg of his Levi’s. Outside the truck, it was silver-sunny and a crisp eighteen degrees.

  “Was it what you thought it would be?”

  “Sort of,” Bowie replied.

  “The good? The bad?”

  “Something to remember, for sure.”

  They left the airport grounds, and soon they crossed 3 Mile Road. Ben had left a sign in the window: LONG LUNCH.

  “Regrets?”

  If Bowie regretted anything, it was leaving behind that hoodie. He was never going to have a hoodie like that again. He thought about keeping the iPad too, as if burying it would protect Ramaaker. But it remained in the booth at Chalk.

  “I’m good, Dad,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Maybe it was necessary.”

  Ben tapped his son on the thigh. “All right . . .” he said softly.

  They headed south toward home.

  At Chalk, the handoff had been fluid: The DJ who called himself Deen Angst ended his set with a pop hit with an EDM platform, so Bowie slid in with a Latin remix of the same backing track. The handful in the crowd who knew the craft caught it, and so did Ionic Strength, who was standing with Rakesh Malik and his African queen at the side of the booth. Bowie popped open an energy drink.

  The Latin groove felt right for the room, so Bowie rode it for a while. African queen was digging it. Bouncing along with the rhythms, Bowie looked through the Plexiglas: people were dancing, not fist-pumping and pogoing in place. One a.m. on a Monday and the room was swinging side to side, not up and down. Rhythm ruled happy, happy Hollywood: Bowie knew good music knocked the blasé out of anyone with feels. He had known this since he toddled.

  He had in his laptop a version of his “Bonnie Bonnie Holiday” that he sweetened with percussion from an old Deodato track. The beats-per-minute was a tad slower than what he had been spinning so he dropped in a few scratches and a thunder pop, then let it fly. It worked.

  But Ion was displeased. Two bars in, he knew Bowie had chosen to spin his own composition, one Ion intended to register with his name as co-composer.

  Bowie brought up a seventies disco remix, then, as if to appease Ion, tossed in a Lady Gaga track that drew heavily on retro house music. But Ion guessed what was coming, and Bowie transitioned to funk and disco-influenced house hits out of mid-eighties Chicago and Detroit. And the crowd, which now included people who had been savoring the main room, didn’t mind at all.

  Malik observed, his eyes reflecting the twinkling lights. He scanned, taking it in with mind, not body: The party was hot; the customers were responding; the boy was in control, certainly, but he acknowledged, as if in gratitude, the energy that was coming toward him. Politeness is an appealing trait in a newcomer, is it not? There is something about him, Malik thought. Natural innocence? Yes, I think so. If he is impressed with his own cleverness, he does not let it show. I like his enthusiasm, Malik thought. But why is Ion so upset?

  Bowie had chosen to end his tribute to early house with an obscure mid-eighties track by Cybotron, a group out of Detroit. It had aged well: It percolated; it was still undeniably sexy and fun. As it unfolded, Ion walked toward the steps at the side of the booth. Seeing him coming, his anger gathering, Bowie switched deftly to “Beverline,” last year’s monster club hit, one that held court from Ibiza to Las Vegas and, apparently, here in LA: Produced by and credited to Ionic Strength, it had ripped off Cybotron. Bowie and Ion may have been the only two people in the room who knew it before the transition.

  Ion had to acknowledge the crowd’s sudden attention. As he waved and forced a smile, the African queen beckoned him to dance.

  Now Bowie was all in. It took him two tracks to get to a place where he could spin Ramaaker. And he did until it was time for him to surrender to the next DJ.

  He was soaked in sweat when Malik met him with a warm handshake and a cuff on the shoulder. The African queen blew him a kiss. Ion waited, then pulled him away from the fans who had gathered around him.

  Bowie had to call a taxi to take him back to the hotel. He was at LAX well before sunrise.

  “I MET YOUR FRIEND EMILY,” Ben said as they drove past the old Best Western. “She seems sweet.”

  Bowie had been reliving the night at Chalk. It took him a moment to understand.

  “Emily?” Yes, the girl who leaked the tracks. How long ago was that?

  “But maybe you could call her.” Ben let out a little, self-depreciating laugh. “Do you guys do that? Do people still call each other?”

  “She’s probably in class now,” Bowie replied.

  “Sooner than later, I’d think.”

  “How did—?”

  “She came to the shop. The thing that Ramaaker put on the Internet: it upset her.”

  Bowie couldn’t believe he heard his father say the name “Ramaaker.” Then he remembered the video, shot covertly and for spite. Somehow, it explained Ramaaker’s rage over learning about Ion, Malik and RM Global. His blog post had been an insulting, condescending screed—but entirely correct about Ionic Strength and his place in EDM.

  “Son?”

  “Emily,” Bowie said. “I’ll do it tonight.” Then: “Did Mom see the post?”

  “Oh yes,”

  “And?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I couldn’t guess,” Bowie sighed. Meaning: Yes, I know.

  “It’s fantastic. You’re a star. How did she put it? ‘The little fish hate the big fish.’”

  “She is going to be disappointed,” Bowie said.

  HE DIDN’T HAVE EMILY’S NUMBER, so he poked her on Facebook. She responded immediately.

  Bowie Thomas: “Don’t worry.”

  “I did a terrible thing,” she replied. “I’m so, so, so sorry.”

  “Really. It wasn’t terrible.”

  “Ramaaker.”

  They both hated Facebook Messenger. There was a sense that a billion people were eavesdropping.

  “Ion’s problem.”

  Bowie waited for her response. He could see her typing and erasing, typing and erasing. Finally, she asked: “What’s he like? Ionic Strength. Ion.”

  Her took her shift in tone as a sign that she understood she was forgiven. His bed beckoning, he told her exactly what he had told his mother: “He wants to kill music.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t you let him,” wrote Emily.

  “’Night,” Bowie Thomas replied.

  RAKESH MALIK HAD SUMMONED IONIC Strength to the RM Global Building in Century City. The chairman and CEO had been informed of Bowie Thomas’s banishment by Ion’s driver, an opportunist who lacked the acuity to be more than useful. To Malik’s mind—and he would be the first to admit that everything but the numbers confused him regarding how the world of electronic dance music functioned—Bowie fit precisely the model Ionic Strength proposed for the next EDM superstar, and the crowd at Chalk approved, heartily. His African queen did too. What had occurred in the aftermath made no sense to Malik, who, above all else, was rational.

  Ionic Strength crossed Malik’s stately office to the strains of a Prokofiev violin concerto. Malik stood and waved the producer into a Louis XVI armchair before his desk. Beyond the chairman’s head, Ionic saw an endless blue sky and velvety clouds. Ion was unaware that he had been betrayed.

&n
bsp; Malik lowered the volume by fluttering his fingers in the air.

  In a blood-orange suit, sandy silk shirt, and Ferragamo python loafers, Ion was in contrast to Malik’s business gray and Brooks Brothers four-in-hand tie in Harvard crimson. He noticed that he hadn’t been offered tea, a Malik custom.

  “They are young,” Malik said without preamble, “and they have been led to believe, by the fantasies encouraged by popular culture, that a modicum of undeveloped talent, willfulness, budding self-awareness, and a grasp of irony will deliver success as easily as the sunrise brings a new day. But”—here, Malik clasped his hands—“we have learned that this is not so.”

  Ionic Strength had come a long way from his childhood in Providence’s rough, crime-soiled West End neighborhood, but his street smarts held and he intuited that Malik had learned he had kicked Bowie Thomas out of Southern California. Malik wasn’t going to listen to any explanation, especially one that couldn’t balance with the income Ion himself had said a new Boy Wonder with the right backstory would generate: “wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of cash rolling down the Avenue of the Stars right here to RM Global’s vaults, Rakesh.” That Bowie had mocked Ion with his set wouldn’t mean a thing, not after Malik experienced the crowd’s reaction while he did his calculations.

  “What I see in young Mr. Thomas tells me his focus is aligned with our ambitions.”

  “Sure,” said Ion. “But he has school. He works at Kmart. So, you know, he had to go.”

  “Ah. He chose to leave.”

  “What could I do?”

  “You have his commitment?”

  Shifting in his seat, Ion said, “Well, he’s only seventeen.”

  “I would accept his word as bond,” Malik replied. “At this point.”

  Ion decided to take a shot. “What’s on your mind, Rakesh? Really.”

  “I am led to believe he is excellent. Have we not a stable of people who do what you say?”

  Crafty bastard, thought Ionic Strength. We’re raking it in with cookie-cutter tracks, stadium shows and merch, but you’re hedging. You’re thinking there’s an paying audience for good music.

  “To my mind,” Malik said, “the best part of what is achieved is when it evolves on its own merit and begins to exist outside ego and sentiment. And fashion.”

  “He’ll probably want to finish high school,” Ion offered.

  “He will perform in the main room at Chalk on Saturday night,” Malik said. “You will make it so.”

  Malik fluttered his fingers again, and now the music of Bowie Thomas, and not Prokofiev, filled the room.

  BEN SNORED, SO HE WAS often dispatched to the living-room sofa, which is where he was when he heard it, coming up through the heating vent. Kicking free of the comforter, he sat up, uncertain if he should intrude. He tiptoed to the kitchen, microwaved a cup of instant cocoa, and went quietly downstairs to the family room.

  Bowie was at the upright piano. He played gently, letting the chords linger as he explored notes that added color, tension, aching sadness. Ben didn’t recognize the tune, but he imagined it might be one of Bowie’s compositions. Ben knew his son wrote his songs on piano and then recorded them in electronic form, layering instrument upon instrument, creating complex rhythms, inventing sounds. Often he would eliminate the original piano in the final mix, but, as he said, it gave the track a musical spine that he believed resonated with listeners. “It resonates.” Bowie was fourteen when he made the claim.

  Now he turned toward his father. He wore a T-shirt, PJ bottoms, and his Dr. Martens, the laces undone.

  Ben handed him the cup. “She didn’t mean it,” he said.

  Kim had been brutal, and Bowie may not have known exactly what she meant when she said: “You are throwing away a dream” and “You don’t understand how important this is to us.” He was a boy; resolute and wise beyond his years. But what child knows the depth of his parents’ disappointments?

  Long ago, Kim had imagined an impossibility, given her level of talent and unrelenting anxiety: she wanted to be a rock star, not a rock musician, not a musician. Behind a veil of self-deceit, she hadn’t yet, to this day, understood that she had never tested herself against those who had worked for it.

  She thought Bowie’s gifts affirmed that she had been gifted. She failed to realize, even as she witnessed his effort, that Bowie’s music was the result of relentless dedication, imagination, and humility. Living within the music, Bowie expected very little in return but the profound satisfaction of doing the hard thing well. This was beyond Kim’s comprehension, Ben knew, and it saddened him that she would never know the tranquility found in creation made only for the sake of creation.

  “Stevie Wonder?” Ben asked now, gesturing to the name and face on Bowie’s floppy T-shirt. “We intersect.”

  Bowie nodded.

  Ben retreated to the sofa. “Go ahead, son. Play.”

  MALIK’S SECRETARY TEXTED IONIC STRENGTH. “Kim Thomas called.”

  He was splayed on a massage table. A naked Korean teen walked on his back.

  “Who is Kim Th—”

  The mom. The mom.

  Ion heard it as if she were in the room: “Please. He’s young. He doesn’t know. I’ve talked sense to him.”

  He wondered how deep she would go.

  “This thing with Ramaaker. It threw Bowie off. He was frightened. Give us another shot. He needs someone like you.”

  Hmmm, thought Ionic Strength as he wriggled the girl off his shoulders. This could jump out superfine.

  Impossible for Kim Thomas, way up there where the buffalo roam, to know that Rakesh was displeased.

  And signing Bowie would be in a kick in the teeth to Ramaaker and all those other sanctimonious basement dwellers who think they invented music and dignity.

  Oh yes.

  Oh sweet.

  Oh me.

  BOWIE WAS BACK IN SCHOOL, and a few of his classmates had heard what had happened. Something about going out to Hollywood, maybe signing a contract—all abstract; was Hollywood real? Mild interest was stirred, a little bit of a buzz in the halls, though the metalheads wouldn’t cross the borderline to ask him about it and the jocks kept on preening, a home game tonight. Bowie was glad: he got off easy. He hadn’t processed it yet, at least not well enough to put it in a good place.

  He had a parking spot in the senior lot. He figured if he got to the car without having to talk about it, that would be fine. He’d drive off to log in stock at Kmart. At least he’d be some sort of busy.

  Basically, it had could down to reality. Long/short: he was in no man’s land. He was the guy Ionic Strength turned down and Ramaaker disavowed. Even if neither interpretation was exactly true, that was his legacy. At age seventeen. His story would read: UP kid had his shot, set up at the Mondrian and spinning at Chalk, but he couldn’t pull it off. He was willing to slave for the overlords of dumbed-down EDM, but he couldn’t make it happen. He’s tainted. Boy is a careerist, a suit.

  Kim’s Volvo purred behind Bowie’s car. She stepped into the bitter air when she saw her son in the rearview, and called to him with enthusiasm. Kim in buckskin fringe, jeans, suede boots.

  Kim Malczewski Thomas wanted her life back, to be the girl she was when she became pregnant at nineteen, before the drunken hookup with a dewy-eyed hippie carpenter, a man happy to sling a hammer. She could’ve sworn he said he knew Freddie Mercury. Turned out Ben had built a chiffonier for a man who saw a Queen tribute act eating ButterBurgers at Culver’s.

  “What’s on, Mom?” Bowie said tiredly, as he dropped his backpack.

  “Ionic Strength called the house,” she said.

  Technically true. He returned her call.

  “Mom, please—”

  “It’s good news, Bowie.” She smiled and swiped playfully at his arm.

  He stepped aside to let a car pass. Soon there would be a steady stream toward the exit gate.

  “He wants to see you. He said he’s still interested. Isn’t that—What, Bowie? What
now?”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “Don’t make a face,” she said.

  “The whole thing . . . It’s not—It’s not valuable.”

  “Valuable? Bowie, are you serious?”

  “It’s a trap.”

  All he had seen and felt flashed across his mind: the private jet, the limo, the clothes, the hotel, Malik’s home, the beauties, the cash: it didn’t balance with what he prized. “I don’t need it.”

  “Bowie, this man . . .” She began to sputter. “This man, he represents everything you could ever want. He is—Who is bigger in your field, Bowie?”

  Bigger? What is that?

  “Could you explain what the options would be? If you say no to this man, where do you go?”

  “Mom,” he said softly. “The only part of it I enjoy is making music. Spinning is the cost, so I do that too and I don’t mind. But all the rest? It makes my skin crawl.”

  “He will give you everything, Bowie.”

  “I’m trying to explain—”

  “What’s your option? You open up a shop on 3 Mile Road where you can sell your little records?”

  Bowie said, “Mom, don’t. Please.”

  “You’d better make up your mind, Bowie. Ionic Strength is coming tomorrow. He’s coming, and you’re going to appreciate what he’s trying to do. Or you will live with regret for the rest of your long goddamned life. Nobody gets three chances.”

  Kim flung open the car door, jumped inside and squealed away.

  THIS TIME NO SHOCK AND awe when Ionic Strength arrived, no über-cool staging. To keep it earthbound, Bowie made sure his father would attend. Kim vetoed a meeting in the shop, but otherwise was resigned to Ben’s presence.

  Neither Ben nor Bowie knew Kim had invited Ion to come back to the UP. Once he agreed to fly east, she envisioned a role in Bowie’s management. She saw a house in Venice Beach, and a reserved table at the Roxy, the Viper Room, the Troubadour. Velvet ropes would be brushed aside. She felt clever and delicious. Something had reawakened.

  Bowie had gone about his business: homework, too quickly; and then back to the digital work station, where he was tidying up a piece he called “Karlheinz” that he’d been working on for weeks. The piano part had been looped to unfurl in reverse, and Bowie, Fender Jazzmaster in his lap, was trying to insert a kind of wet Bootsy pattern between the notes. Given it would hardly be audible among seventy-two tracks, it didn’t matter very much if his playing wasn’t perfect—he could fix it with the software—but he wanted to get it right, even if only he knew he had done so. He cursed himself for being such a crappy bass player.