by S. W. Lauden
Greg started to wonder if there would be enough room in the van for all of the band members, living and dead. The flood of flashbacks had him pacing before they’d even started the first song of their last pre-tour rehearsal. From there, they’d run the set two or three times, or until the blisters on Marco’s hands burned too bad for him to hold his sticks. That moment couldn’t come soon enough for Greg most days, even though he was the one insisting they practice so often. I’m the face of this band, and I really don’t want to look like an asshole on stage.
He pulled the microphone to his gritted teeth.
“Are we going to play any music tonight? Count us in.”
They all played facing each other in a small circle, so Greg lifted his eyes to look at Marco. His drummer was busy wrapping thin strips of duct tape around his mangled fingers.
“Give me a second, bro.”
“We’ve already been here almost an hour.”
Greg heard his angry voice thundering from the PA, but couldn’t bring himself to care. This tour would be challenging enough with everything else he had going on. He didn’t want to embarrass himself on top of it by fronting a crappy band.
“Why don’t you wear those drummer gloves?”
Marco looked up, pure horror on his face.
“Um. Because I’m not some heavy metal dirt bag?”
“Good answer. Just making sure you aren’t going soft on me. Can we start now?”
Marco grabbed his sticks, bringing them up to click off the first song on the set list. Chris came in with the guitar a beat too early and everything immediately ground to a halt. Jerry slapped JJ on the shoulder.
“Last I checked, the band comes in after the four. Unless something changed.”
Jerry was a thirty-something hired gun who’d toured or recorded with tons of major punk bands over the last decade. His spiky hair was dyed platinum blond, making his different colored eyes—one blue, one hazel—seem to glow in contrast. What he lacked in personality, he more than made up for in raw talent.
JJ shrugged him off, turning to face Chris.
“This one’s a little tricky. No need to rush. Hang back and you’ll get it.”
Jerry stepped over to the nearest mic, his eyes on Chris.
“Nothing tricky about it. Wait until Marco counts to four and then come in. You know how to count, right?”
Greg tried letting the scene play out, but he’d finally had enough. He wanted to leave no doubt whose band this was.
“Chris, come in after the four. Got it? Jerry, stop being a dick. Marco, let’s try it again.”
Marco did as he was told. He’d clicked three out of four times when somebody started banging on the metal door. Greg cursed into the microphone while Chris took his guitar off and went to open up. Most teenage boys on the verge of rocking out would be disappointed to find their mom standing there, but not Chris.
“Did you bring us dinner?”
Junior stepped inside, immediately pulling a face.
“It smells like ass in here.”
Marco set his sticks down on the snare drum. The rest of the band took their instruments off in turn. Junior handed two heaping bags of fast food and a drink caddy to her son before shooing him off. She joined Greg at the back of the room while the rest of the band shoveled fries into their faces. He noticed that her retro punk outfit from the other night had been replaced by the usual baggy sweatshirt, blue jeans, and flip-flops.
“How’s it going tonight, rock star?”
“You got here in the nick of time. It actually looked like we might play a song for a second there.”
“Don’t blame me if you guys don’t move as fast as you used to. Besides, I’m not letting my kid starve so you can indulge a midlife crisis.”
Junior always had a way of making Greg smile.
“How will he survive on the road without you?”
“He won’t have to. I decided I’m coming with you guys.”
Junior folded her arms to signal that there wouldn’t be any discussion about it. Greg brought his voice down to a whisper.
“I must finally be going deaf because I didn’t understand a word you just said.”
“Read my lips—he’s just a kid.”
“And he’ll be in a van full of his favorite uncles.”
“Exactly. No way I’m trusting you losers with my only child.”
“The label already found us a tour manager. Some woman that handles most of their major acts.”
Junior’s eyes flooded with rage.
“I’m not coming to work for you. I’m coming to watch out for my son. End of story.”
Greg took a step back, raising his arms in surrender. Junior looked shocked.
“Wow. That was a little too easy. You’re getting soft in your old age.”
“No time for arguments. Besides, I know when I’m beat.”
“Well, I hope you’re doing okay. Anything I can help with?”
“It would be awesome if you kept me from finding any more dead bodies.”
“You’re on your own there.”
Junior gave a nervous giggle. Greg thought it was out of character for her, but also totally out of line given the situation. His blood began to boil.
“It wasn’t so funny when your son tried to hang himself last year.”
Chris walked over, right on queue. He was a big kid, only a few inches shorter than Greg these days. His hair was dyed black and shaved to a uniform length on most of his head, except for long bangs shielding his eyes from view. The peach fuzz mustache on his upper lip easily could have been residue from the chocolate milkshake in his right hand. A phone was in his left.
“What’re you guys talking about?”
They both answered at the same time.
“Nothing,” said Greg.
“The tour,” said Junior.
Chris brought the straw up to his lips, taking a long pull. He swirled the thick, brown liquid around his mouth and swallowed.
“That’s cool. I thought maybe you were talking about these pictures of Greg.”
Chris held the phone up, showing them the screen. It was definitely Greg and it almost looked like he was holding hands with Gabriella Flores outside of her estate. He grabbed the phone from Chris’s hand, scrolling up to the top of the page of the entertainment gossip website. His eyes bugged out of his head when he read the headline:
Are Greg Salem and Gabriella Flores An Item?
A late night at an exclusive house party apparently turned into a sleepover for these two, according to the Hollywood rumor mill. Nobody remembers seeing punk hunk Greg Salem at the snazzy shindig, but it was hard to miss him when he brought luscious Latina rapper Gabriella Flores home the next morning. She still wore the same white dress as the night before, but her hair was a mess and she couldn’t stop smiling. This wouldn’t be the first time Grabby Gabby has cheated on her husband, superstar producer Tony Flores…
“Damn it!”
Greg shoved the phone back into Chris’s palm before tearing off through the rehearsal space. He knocked a cheeseburger out of JJ’s hands as he rushed by on his way to the El Camino. The engine roared to life before Greg closed his door. He sped off down Bay Cities Boulevard toward home without even saying goodbye.
h
“I should have known by the way you’ve been acting.”
“Come on, Kristen. Those gossip sites make things up. Whatever will get the most clicks.”
“Keep your voice down, Timmy’s napping.”
Greg took a tentative step forward. He drew a deep breath through his nose, trying to calm himself down.
“You have to believe me.”
Kristen stepped back, disappointment filling her eyes.
“I don’t know what to believe. You’re different somehow. So distant, and angry a
ll the time.”
“I’m working hard so we can afford to live here. One of us has to keep the cash coming in.”
It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Nothing sent Kristen through the roof quicker than him downplaying the difficulties of motherhood. Greg learned the hard way, but it didn’t stop him from making the same mistakes over and over again.
Concerns she had about waking the baby up were apparently gone.
“How dare you. I stay here with your son while you run around town like some wannabe rock star, and you have the nerve to…to…”
Kristen balled her hands into fists, stomping her feet as she spoke. Greg actually found it a little adorable. Sexy even. He tried to control his facial expression so things wouldn’t escalate any further.
In the end, the baby saved his ass. He decided to thank his son for that, one day when the boy was old enough to understand.
“I’ll get him.”
“Fuck you, Greg.”
She stormed off for the nursery. Greg went out into the backyard to smell the ocean air and try to calm down. It wasn’t working, so he headed for the garage instead. He thought maybe he’d play a few records, strum a little guitar. Something else caught his attention instead. It was on the desk where his bed used to be.
Greg walked over, sizing the book up as he approached. The picture on the cover featured a replica of the red-and-white California state flag. It was tilted on one end, but the grizzly bear at the center was filled in with green marijuana plants instead of brown fur. Among the Grizzlies emblazoned the top edge of the dust jacket, with “Tommy Thompson” near the bottom.
He reached down to pick it up, surprised as always at how much it weighed. Greg had lived at Grizzly Flats—experienced the scope and scale of the illegal growing operation—and came to understand the madness that drove its founder, Magnus Ursus. And he’d been to nearly every other place Magnus wandered both before and after, from porn shoots in the valley to a yacht moored in the harbor off the shores of The Bay Cities. Even with so much first-hand knowledge, he couldn’t imagine how Tommy managed to write this many words on the subject.
Greg was about to find out. He flipped the cover open to the table of contents, skimming chapter titles. The first few looked to be background information about Magnus—“Raised in the Wild,” “A Cub in the City,” “Out of Hibernation”—the origin story of a madman. The narrative changed with chapter seven, “Wild in the Streets,” no doubt in honor of the classic Circle Jerks song. He flipped through the pages until he spotted those words in context. His name started the first paragraph:
Greg Salem grew up along the sunny beaches of Southern California during the eighties and nineties, blissfully unaware of the man who would one day ruin his life. He and his older brother, Tim, killed time surfing the perfect break off of South Bay, skateboarding with friends in the parking lot of the local mall, and listening to the hardcore punk music that shaped their bad-boy image.
Bad-boy image? Greg got a laugh out of that line, even if he found it a little embarrassing. He had to force himself to keep reading.
Their neighborhood was home to a vibrant local music scene, inspired by legendary SoCal bands like Black Flag, Descendents, and Circle Jerks. One Bay Cities High School newspaper article from that era describes “bands practicing in every other garage along Bay Cities Boulevard,” and unauthorized concerts at the local park’s band shell—much to the consternation of local police. “They’d rip the locked cover off of the power outlets, plug in, and set up,” said Bay Cities Police Chief, Robert Stanley. “I didn’t really mind the music that much. Some of those kids were actually pretty talented, but a few of the residents in the nearby neighborhoods didn’t agree with me. There was also the issue that many of them were teenagers who openly consumed alcohol in broad daylight. We had to draw the line somewhere.”
Greg was stunned. It was shocking enough that Officer Bob agreed to an interview with Tommy, but Greg never would have guessed in a million years he’d have nice things to say about the punk scene back then.
Stanley was only a couple of years into his career in those days, beginning his climb through the ranks. But he knew many of the local teens because of his involvement as a coach in the local little league. The Salem brothers stand out in his memory to this day. “The older brother, Tim, was really quiet. Mostly kept to himself until he got a few drinks in him. Then he’d unleash that sarcastic humor of his on anybody who was around. The younger brother, Greg, didn’t need booze to get worked up. That kid was always looking for a fight.”
BCC, as they are more commonly known, started out as a passion project for Tim the summer before his junior year in high school. He’d gotten a guitar for his thirteenth birthday, but didn’t play it in public for a couple of years. By then he had developed an aggressive strumming style that would become a signature feature of the band’s earliest songs. “Dude turned into a total shredder overnight. I had no idea he played guitar until he showed up with it at school one day and said he was starting a band with his little bro,” said BCC drummer, Marco Johnson.
Greg slammed the book down onto the desk. It was one thing for Officer Bob to give an interview without letting him know, but Marco? They practically lived together for the last six months, ever since Greg saved his life. The least he would expect is a heads up that his drummer was spewing quotes about Greg and his brother. He decided to say something about it to Marco right then.
Greg felt the blood rushing up into his face as he pounded across the backyard for the house. He went inside intending to call his drummer, but spotted his car keys first. Yelling at Marco in person suddenly seemed like a much better idea.
He snatched his phone and keys, stepping back out onto the deck. He was half way across the yard when two men stepped out from the shadows on either side of him. Both were wearing baggy black suits and had identical slicked-back hair. They advanced on him without saying a word.
Greg pivoted, ducking down to deliver a solid uppercut to the goon on his left. He spun around for the guy on his right when the points of a crackling Taser connected with the soft skin on his neck. Greg could smell his own flesh burning; his knees buckled and he hit the ground. He listened to his son crying somewhere inside the house as one of the men slipped a black bag over his head.
They handcuffed his wrists and stood him up before hauling him through the back gate. The tips of his sneakers dragged on the ground behind him as they rushed him to their car. Greg felt like he might be sick. He’d been on rides like this before. They never ended well.
Chapter 6
The trip was mercifully short and painless, aside from the handcuffs digging into his wrists. They let Greg ride in the backseat, instead of the trunk, which he took as a good sign. He’d driven those winding cliff roads enough to have a good idea where they were headed, despite the bag over his head. It wasn’t much of a surprise when they pulled him from the backseat and shoved him up the marble steps of the Flores Estate.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light when they pulled the bag from his head. The entryway alone was bigger than Greg’s entire property in South Bay. They pushed him along a hallway and into a high-ceilinged living room. Everything was painted a stark white that glowed against the dark, wooden floors. Several enormous paintings lined the walls, each splattered with a different color of neon paint. Bass-heavy, electronic dance music thumped from the tiny, surround-sound speakers mounted at careful angles high up near the intricate crown molding. It might have been a modern art museum if it weren’t for the stodgy antique furniture in the center of the room.
They led Greg to a purple velvet sofa, forcing him to sit. The two men walked out of the room in stride. Neither of them had said a single word since the moment they snatched Greg from his backyard. He was impressed with their no-nonsense approach to getting shit done, but hoped he’d never see either of them again—at least not alive.
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Left to his own devices, Greg stood up and began inspecting the room. An oil painting hung over the garage-sized fireplace, featuring a naked Gabriella lying on her stomach. It felt like her eyes followed him over to the large picture window looking into the backyard. There was an Olympic-sized pool out there, lined on one side with the type of canvas cabanas you’d find at a Vegas resort. A squat pool house sat beyond that, with floor-to-ceiling windows tinted the color of black smoke.
Turning around, he found a bookcase built into the opposite wall on the far side of the room. Throne-shaped chairs were arranged around an egg-shaped coffee table. A small man sat there with his elbows on the curving arms, legs crossed before him. His fingers formed a steeple under a pointed chin, while his dark eyes bored into Greg’s.
“Did you screw my wife?”
It sounded soft and effeminate. The kind of voice that should have been accompanied by a lisp, but this man’s words were as short and sharp as his features. Each one delivered with a precision suggesting he had all the time in the world, but none to waste.
Greg folded his arms, furrowing his brow.
“It’s a good question, but I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
The man sighed. He stood up to remove his sport coat, carefully laying it across the chair. Next, he rolled the sleeves of his designer dress shirt until they were up near his bony elbows. He cracked his neck with the palms of his hands and sauntered toward Greg. His hair went from a soft brown color to dark black the closer he got.
He didn’t stop until his chest was only a few inches from Greg’s.
“The tabloids seem to think you did. Which would be a problem since I hired you and your little friend to keep her from whoring around.”
Greg thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. The man, who had looked so slight across the room, was only a few inches shorter than him up close.
“That’s not the way I heard it. We thought you wanted us to take some pictures. Give you proof.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”