by Crane, Megan
‘Someone is trying to kill Tommy,’ Jenna said matter-of-factly. Not that she wasn’t afraid he might hurt her, but at this point she was in for a penny, in for a pound. If she was dead, she was already dead. Plus, sleep deprivation apparently made her brave. She shrugged and met Nick’s stare with her own. ‘He thinks it might be you.’
Nick’s mouth actually fell open. For a moment, he did nothing but look at her in confusion.
‘What?’ he asked again. It was more of a gasp. He shook his head slightly, as if he was dizzy. ‘I want to kill the guy, sure, but not really—I would never—’ He cut himself off. When he looked at Jenna again, his expression was bewildered more than anything else. ‘Does he really think I would do that?’ he asked.
Jenna shrugged, because, of course, Tommy now thought she was the person trying to kill him. Since she knew he was wrong, she didn’t feel compelled to share that titbit with Nick.
‘That stupid bastard,’ Nick muttered, but Jenna could see he was off balance. He threw her a look of intense dislike, and opened his mouth as if to say something. But he stopped himself. ‘I guess I’m glad you told me that,’ he gritted out. ‘Now I can go kick his ass.’
Jenna failed to come up with an appropriate response for that, so they looked at each other in awkward silence for a moment, and then Nick turned and stalked away. Not back to the eighteen-year-olds (and Jenna was being bitchy – maybe they were twenty), but directly to the door and out into the night.
Jenna let out the breath she’d been holding, and smiled sweetly at the pissed-off eighteen-year-olds when the three of them glared daggers at her.
Yes, girls, she thought but did not say, I can repel any famous musician with the power of my dumpy, secretarial words.
It was great for Tommy that his oldest friend wasn’t the killer, assuming she believed Nick, which, for some reason, she did. He’d looked too shocked by the accusation, too appalled that Tommy would think that kind of thing about him. Of course, he could be an excellent actor who had fooled her. It wasn’t as if she knew the first thing about reading people to determine if they were lying to her about their murderous intentions. She wasn’t Sherlock Holmes. Hell, she wasn’t even Maddie Hayes from Moonlighting.
But she didn’t think he was lying.
Which meant, with four days to go until Tommy went over that bridge, she still had no idea who the killer was.
Jenna tossed back the rest of her drink, and got to her feet.
Back to square one.
26
Buffalo was some seven hours and whole worlds away from Manhattan, and light years away from Tommy Seer, the lead singer of one of the decade’s biggest bands. The culture shock, he thought at one point during his impromptu tour of his home town, might just kill him.
But it didn’t. He drove around the city, and through the trailer park where he and Nick had grown up. The place looked exactly the same. If he squinted he could almost see the two of them, feverish with their longing to escape, making up songs and telling lies about their futures on the front steps of one of the double-wides. He drove out of the trailer park and this time, he didn’t look in the rear-view mirror. He just drove. He had no idea where he was headed, but he wasn’t surprised when he found himself outside his old high school.
It was a battered brick building that sat on the crest of a hill, squaring off against the encroaching city and looking the worse for the battle. The place exuded neglect. Chipped paint and faded graffiti marked the walls. Around the back, temporary classroom trailers abutted the main building – the very same ones that had sat in that exact spot when he’d been a student there. The football field out in front was mowed and tended, but the track surrounding it looked cracked and unsafe. He remembered how completely he’d hated this place when he was a kid, and it was strange to feel so disconnected from it now. Not that the school had become smaller, but the surrounding world so much bigger. Maybe it was Tommy’s own ability to put this shitty, forgotten urban high school into its proper, minimized context.
He dropped his head forward in defeat, because he still had all that rage inside him. He still felt trapped, and doomed. Not because of Jenna and her fucking book, but because of the choices he’d made. All that time and all that space, and he’d been doing nothing but running in circles.
He’d left here years ago, determined to outrun his demons, and yet here they all were, together again. It was like a goddamned reunion.
Tommy stood for a moment and stared up at the school, empty in the late-afternoon shadows, and then he walked up to the benches out in front, surrounding a desolate-looking flagpole. As he had more times than he could possibly count, he sat down there, and waited. For his heart to stop aching. For the night to fall. For all of it to make sense, somehow – his past and his present and his murky future. For some kind of sign.
He waited.
He lost track of time. The sun went down, and the temperature dropped. He hadn’t thought of Buffalo’s famously cold winters, the ones that started in early fall and often brought snow, and he wished he’d brought something warmer to wear than his leather bomber jacket.
Stars came out, so many of them, and Tommy watched them for a long time. He had the sense of the city spread out around him – the Rust Belt city of his youth in the middle of its rapid decline. He still felt Buffalo as a great darkness pressing in on him, crushing him into his predestined life, the one his family had expected of him before he was born – a life he’d always hated. City of Light, his ass. This had always been a city of pain – of lost opportunities, closing factories, and diminished hopes.
Tommy wondered, not for the first time, what kind of man he would have been if his father had lived. Would he have escaped Buffalo? Would he have worked steel like his father, or defected to the police force like so many of his uncles? Would he have accepted those as his only choices? Would he be sitting here now?
He would not be Tommy Seer, he thought. He would not have had this bright, shining life, however fake it might feel to him now. He would never have met Jenna if he’d lived that other life, that lost, dark life he’d never wanted. He would never have trusted her, or lost himself in her body so fully. Sitting there, it almost seemed worth the trade. Surely a life of misery on the line couldn’t be worse than the way he felt now.
He thought it was nearing dawn when another car pulled into the otherwise abandoned school parking lot, riding low and tight to the ground. Tommy jerked to attention, and wondered if he’d fallen asleep after all. He felt only a detached sort of interest as a figure climbed out of the car, stood for a moment beside it, then trudged up the hill towards the flagpole.
As it drew closer, Tommy saw that the figure was Nick.
His first thought was that he’d been right all along – Nick was the killer. Was Jenna working with him? Would he die in this horrible place, surrounded by the remnants of the life he’d been so desperate to escape? There would be a certain sick poetry in it – even he could see that.
Don’t be ridiculous, he snapped at himself. Jenna was a psycho. She wasn’t working with anyone. He shook her off.
‘You’re an asshole,’ Nick said, lowering himself to the bench next to Tommy.
‘Nice night for a drive,’ Tommy said, in the same conversational tone.
They didn’t look at each other. They kept their eyes trained on the football field, and the city beyond. Tommy didn’t know what Nick saw, but he saw only their past, stretched out before them and dancing in the dark, like ghosts in a Springsteen song.
‘It’s colder than balls,’ Nick muttered.
Nick blew on his hands and rubbed them together, and Tommy had the strangest sense that it could have been any year at all – that he and Nick could have easily been fifteen years old again. Same conversation, same actions. Déjà vu in reverse.
‘Buffalo,’ Nick said in disgust. ‘This fucking place. You make me chase your pansy ass all the way to this shit hole.’
‘No one invited you,’ Tom
my said calmly. ‘You didn’t have to come.’
‘Like hell I didn’t.’ Nick let out a little snort. ‘No good can come of being back here, man. No good at all.’ He shifted against his seat. ‘Please don’t tell me you went back to Lakeshore Park. Eyesore Park. What a nightmare.’
‘You don’t have to be here.’ Tommy kept his voice low.
‘Why do you?’ Nick turned to look at him then. ‘What is going on with you, Tommy? You’re acting crazy.’
‘I’m not acting crazy.’ Tommy laughed, without humour. ‘You don’t even know the meaning of crazy, believe me.’ Time travel, he thought bitterly. Fucking Back to the Future bullshit.
Nick shook his head, his knee bouncing up and down – telegraphing his impatience. His agitation.
‘I’m not trying to kill you, you stupid motherfucker,’ he said in a low, angry voice. ‘If I was trying to kill you, first of all, you’d be dead. And second, you’d fucking know who did it.’
Tommy was absurdly touched by this declaration.
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he said after a few moments. He knew better than to smile. ‘You’ll come from the front.’
‘You better believe it.’ Nick hunched his shoulders into his jacket. ‘You’re my brother. Family. You know that.’
‘I know it.’ Tommy’s voice was as quiet as Nick’s.
Up above, the sky was beginning to show hints of navy. Soon it would grow bluer. Dawn was coming.
Because they were very old friends, and men, they did not talk about the wedge that had grown between them over the years. Too much money, too much fame. Nick did not apologize for his anger. Tommy did not explain, once again, his reasons for wanting out. But as they sat there together, where they’d sat so many times before, the anger and the distance faded away. And soon enough they were simply Tommy and Nick again, troublemakers and dreamers, destined for far better things than the lives they’d been handed.
‘It’s supposed to snow on this godforsaken city today,’ Nick said eventually. ‘I checked, so I could be pissed off about it. How long are you planning to sit here in the dark? Are we going to read poetry and hold hands or something?’
‘Not much longer,’ Tommy said, fighting another smile. ‘Prick.’
‘Because this time I think we should race down the Thruway,’ Nick said, ignoring the insult, though his mouth kicked up in the corner. ‘And let me tell you something – that sweet De Lorean you see parked next to your overrated Ferrari is not about to break down like that crappy Chevy back in the day.’
‘That Ferrari is a work of art,’ Tommy protested. ‘Bite your tongue.’
‘Let’s go,’ Nick said. He stood up, and his gaze swept over the school, the field, the whole of their home town. Then he looked back at Tommy, and his expression was compassionate. As if, finally, he understood. ‘I think we’re done here.’
Forty-eight hours later, and Jenna was dry-eyed, exhausted, and so caffeinated her skin seemed to hum.
She hadn’t slept. She’d gone directly home after speaking to Nick in that bar, she’d spread out all the pages of her notebook in front of her, and she’d studied. She’d remembered. She’d talked her way through the two months leading up to Tommy’s death again and again, looking for something – anything – new. She’d racked her brain for any detail it could give her, desperate to find the piece that she was missing. But there was nothing.
She was getting a fresh cup of coffee in the kitchen, ready to start the process all over again, when she noticed that the sun had come up outside.
‘Two days …’ she murmured to herself. She thought about how quickly the last forty-eight hours had passed, and shuddered.
Two days was no time at all.
Jenna sagged against the counter, despair swamping her, sapping the strength from her limbs. What was she going to do? For all that she touted herself as a walking encyclopedia of Eighties trivia, the truth was, she would give anything for access to the Internet. A good Google search. She was running out of time, and she’d long since run out of ideas.
‘What is the point of this?’ she demanded, feeling hysterical and addressing the air around her – the unseen force, whatever it was, that had brought her here. ‘Why would you put me through this?’
She sank down then, all the way to the linoleum, and sat there with her back against the cabinet. From this angle, she could see the small stove and the tiny refrigerator. If she turned her head to the right, she could look out the window at a brick wall. If she turned the other way, she could only see images of Tommy, naked, lounging there.
Jenna buried her face in her arms, and tried to breathe.
Her mind baulked at the images, but they came anyway.
The grainy news footage of the broken guard rail on the Tappan Zee. Reporters huddled against the rain, speaking in those serious, yet still excited, tones. The search of the Hudson river as the rain continued, as if the skies were mourning him. The battered car, pulled out by a crane, swinging like a crumpled black metronome against the grey river.
Then, later, the funeral. They’d packed St Patrick’s Cathedral. Fans had jammed themselves behind the barricades on Fifth Avenue despite the bad weather, while every last famous musician anyone had heard of had filed solemnly inside. MTV and Video TV had shown live coverage of the funeral, and then played nothing but Wild Boys videos for the next six hours.
Jenna had cried through all of it.
This time around, she didn’t know what she would do. She was sure she couldn’t watch that funeral again. Now that she knew Tommy, all those words and songs seemed egregiously inadequate. All she would do was grieve for him – and try to see if she could spot his killer amongst the glittering, star-studded crowd.
Which was when something occurred to her.
Every muscle in her body tensed, and her head shot up, though she wasn’t seeing the kitchen. She ran through her memories of the funeral again, and then again to be sure, but there was no doubt.
Jenna couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her sooner. She’d been so caught up in what happened leading up to Tommy’s funeral that she’d forgotten the funeral itself. And it had been spectacular. Sting, Elton John, Prince. Madonna, Cyndi Lauper. All the kings and queens of the glittering Eighties music scene, gathered together to pay their respects.
All except one.
Richie.
At twelve, Jenna had fully understood Richie’s absence that day. He’d released a statement announcing that he was too distraught, and Jenna had found that convincing – after all, she had been too distraught to do much besides flail on the floor and scare her parents into hiring a child psychologist.
But Jenna wasn’t sure she found ‘distraught’ acceptable any longer. Not now that she knew that someone was making that funeral happen, that it wasn’t a suicide or an accident. Maybe Richie hadn’t been distraught at all – maybe he’d simply felt it would be too much to pretend to grieve at the funeral of the man he’d killed.
Jenna knew it had to be someone close to Tommy. But she’d never considered Richie. Why would she? He hardly opened his mouth. Yet, somehow, upon consideration, she had no problem imagining him capable of killing Tommy. In fact, she’d had no trouble imagining any number of people killing Tommy.
She climbed to her feet, and took a deep drag of the coffee she’d left on the counter. Two days wasn’t long, true, but it was better than nothing. And with adrenalin coursing through her veins, she felt almost normal.
She would clean up, try to look like she’d slept recently and was not, in point of fact, a lunatic. Then she would track Tommy down, and tell him her suspicions.
Her heart leapt at the idea, even as her brain knew better. Seeing him would be awful. There was no doubt about it. He would be nasty, in all likelihood – and that was if she got anywhere near him in the first place. She somewhat doubted she would still have her all-access pass to the Wild Boys.
But it didn’t matter, because she wasn’t afraid of his reaction any l
onger. How could she be? She’d already lived through it. She had much bigger things to be afraid of than his reaction.
Jenna blew out a breath, and squared her shoulders.
She had two days.
She would have to make them count.
27
The gallery opening was glittering. Literally.
Everywhere Jenna looked there was more sparkle, more shine. Disco balls hung from the ceiling. Diamonds and other assorted precious gems flashed at earlobes, throats, wrists. The art on the walls seemed to take a distant second place to the über-fabulous types who were supposedly looking at it. Jenna had been in the gallery for about twenty-five minutes so far, and she hadn’t so much as glanced at a painting. Not that such things mattered.
‘Fabulous pieces, visionary, genius,’ one stout society grande dame pronounced to her entourage, though Jenna had been standing next to her for most of the past twenty minutes and knew the woman had no more looked over at one of the paintings than Jenna had. ‘Marty and I plan to invest,’ the woman drawled, setting off an excited murmuring from her friends.
It was nearing one in the morning, and Jenna’s exhaustion was making her loopy. She almost turned to the grande dame and demanded to know when, exactly, the woman had had time to notice the art on the walls while gossiping so strenuously. She restrained herself – barely.
It had been a very long night.
Jenna had been forced to track Tommy down through a variety of sources, none of them her own. Rumour and supposition – plus a pleading phone call to one of Duncan Paradis’s fleet of underlings, pretending to enquire on Ken Dollimore’s behalf – had finally led her to an art gallery on the border of SoHo where, apparently, the Wild Boys might show up. The underling in question had been deliberately vague on this point.
‘I can’t promise you a rose garden or whatever,’ she’d informed Jenna in ponderous tones, which had led Jenna to conclude that this creature was yet another early-twenty-something Manhattanite overimpressed with her own literacy. A citywide scourge, even in Jenna’s day. ‘But if I were you I would tell your boss that he should be there around eleven thirty, and that is all I can say.’