Girl Can't Help It: A Thriller (Krista Larson Book 2)

by Max Allan Collins

  She sat through four bands waiting for the Pistons—one group dated back to the late ’50s and they played the kind of early rock the boys did, just not as well. Whether it was age or possibly that they never had been good, she couldn’t guess; but apparently they’d been pioneers of local rock. A very good horn band from the Quad Cities was next, playing Tower of Power and Little River Band covers. A ’60s-era band played Ventures and other instrumentals, okay but nothing she related to, really.

  Finally, after getting a big buildup—they were one of only two bands on tonight’s inductees list who’d had national success—Hot Rod & the Pistons strutted out, with cocky Rick yelling, “Okay, Hall of Fame, it’s your wake-up call!” and, damn, if they didn’t lead off with “The Girl Can’t Help It.”

  And the place went crazy.

  . . . can’t help it, the girl can’t help it . . .

  They looked good, all of them. Everybody in tattered jeans and either motorcycle boots or Beatle boots. Nobody looked fat or anything!

  Drummer Steve Pike, in an unbuttoned black bowling shirt with a red collar, appeared solid and muscular, only his silver hair and the grooves of his face to say this wasn’t thirty years ago.

  Danny Davies seemed skinny as ever in his black tee with a cartoon bikini-clad Bettie Page on it, and darkly handsome curly-haired Brian Paulen might have been his late father come back to life with those Elvis sideburns and that black RAT FINK button-up shirt.

  No surprise that Rick Jonsen, playing his guitar at crotch level, had a cigarette tucked behind his left ear, his sky-blue eyes hooded, his sneer going full tilt. Maybe he did look a little like a caricature of his old self, but still close enough to pass. His black T-shirt with a death’s-head motorcycle rider over a bold LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG! might have been misjudged, though, considering he was deep into his fifties. But he was still a babe.

  Finally there was Rod himself—Rodney Penniston, the rare African American lead singer in a twentieth-century Iowa garage band—still cool, with his Apache cheekbones, trim mustache, and his hair cut close to the scalp, red-and-black bandanna at his neck, sleeveless Sun Records T-shirt, and stacked pair of keyboards facing the audience.

  Rod was what separated the Pistons from the rockabilly pack—as a black guy, he could sing Little Richard and Fats Domino and Bo Diddley, unapologetically. (White kids like the Beatles and Beach Boys had always gotten away with singing Chuck Berry.) Also, keyboards weren’t common in rockabilly retro acts, even though piano was what made Jerry Lee and Little Richard famous.

  Though they played a blistering, high-energy set, the Pistons could only stuff eight songs in their half an hour. It was mostly covers—Jerry Lee’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’,” Blue Gene’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” Rick Nelson’s “Hello Mary Lou” (their own Rick sang that one), “Twenty Flight Rock” (also from the Girl Can’t Help It flick, an Eddie Cochran tune), Roy O’s “Ooby Dooby,” and another Little Richard, “Rip It Up.” The only exception was “Bad Boy, Good Girl,” the sole original of theirs that had got any airplay back when.

  For her, though, the highlight had been when Rick spotted her, pointed at her and grinned, said something between songs to the other boys and every single one of them smiled at her and waved a little.

  Throughout the set, the dance floor was jam-packed, couples from their twenties to their fifties hopping and bobbing, the New Wave fans showing they could still pogo, just not as high or for as long.

  When the boys disappeared offstage and the next band came out—she didn’t envy anybody following that!—only Rick came looking for her. She had hoped to at least say hello to everybody. She told him that.

  Still in his LIVE FAST T-shirt, he grinned at her; up close, she could see the years, really see them. He had some eye makeup on. She spotted some gray roots. But he was still a hunk. No question about that!

  “Hon,” he said in the lull while the next band was getting set to play, “the guys said to say hi. Send their regrets. But they know you and I were something special, right? Anyway, Rod’s here with his wife, Steve’s here with some sweet young thing he claims is his girlfriend, and Danny . . . well, he’s here with his ‘partner.’ Did you have any idea he was gay, our Danny Boy? Not that I give a crap . . . Oh. They’re starting.”

  And the next act, a British invasion cover band from Keokuk, was starting up, playing, “Twist and Shout.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “These guys suck.”

  They didn’t, really, but she said, “Yeah, sure, let’s go.”

  He put his arm around her waist. He was sweaty but she didn’t mind. The attention, so immediate after all these years, was overwhelming.

  Outside, the night cool now, he asked, “You got a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I don’t have to catch a ride with Steve, then.”

  She remembered how things went after a gig, and asked, “Don’t you have to tear down?”

  “Naw. The house provided amps. Rod’s hauling my guitar for me, and my pedal board. I’m staying out at West Wind. Got my own cottage there.”

  “Like at Pioneer Beach, the other time?”

  He made a face. “This is nicer. Hot tub and everything.”

  At her car in the lot, she said, “Can we stop somewhere? Coffee? A bite maybe?”

  “I got everything we need back at the ranch.” He got in on the rider’s side and, as she drove to his periodic instructions, he talked about the set and how well he thought it went.

  “That kid Brian’s okay,” he said with a shrug. “I shoulda sang more than one, don’t you think? But Rod, after all this time, he’s still gotta own it. He’s the lead singer! At least we kept Danny off the mic. I don’t want him anywhere near a mic, not even for backup. Guy can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

  It went on like that.

  Very self-centered, not one question about her, where she lived now, what she was doing, how she’d come to be here tonight, no catching up with her, just the gig and how he’d played and what did she think about his guitar solo on this one and that one.

  The cottage was past the big sprawling lodge, set back among some oaks, and Rick finally seemed to be coming down. The adrenaline high of playing for a big responsive crowd was giving in to the natural exhaustion of all the rehearsing and hubbub of the last several days.

  The cottage was rustic outside and modern in, just a kitchenette and one big room with a double bed, TV, few pieces of furniture, a hot tub, and a view of the lake, the new moon reflecting. A fridge was stocked with goodies of the Hickory Farms gift basket variety, and bottles of beer. A stove. A coffee maker, unplugged.

  He kicked off his shoes, no socks, pulled off his T-shirt and his trousers, tossed them. He stripped out of his jockey shorts. What lay beneath was smaller than she remembered, at least at the moment. He had several tattoos now, one bicep bearing a Pistons logo, the other a ’40s-style pinup better suited for the nose of a World War II bomber. His body was neither hairy nor hairless, but (as before) somewhere in between. The hair on his chest and elsewhere, though, now had black and white and gray intertwined. He bent over to turn on the spigots of the hot tub, providing an unfortunate view.

  Still, she felt excited to be here. She was older, too. Had miles on her. She wouldn’t judge. He’d chosen a rough life for himself, on the road. For his age, he was still a handsome man. A babe. A hunk. Or at least the attractive remains thereof.

  She found the bathroom and undressed. In her purse was a toothbrush and paste and travel-size mouthwash; she used them. Touched up her face. Took her time getting ready for him. The water was running out there and the heat from it was crawling under the closed door as she appraised her naked self in the mirror. She raised an eyebrow. Not bad. Not bad at all. A guy like Rick could do worse, and probably did.

  She went out to join him. Not in the hot tub yet, he turned to her, as naked as the day he was born but otherwise bearing no resemblance.

  He smiled, looked her up and down. �
��Nice,” he said. “Like old times. Like old times. Sweeeeeet.”

  “Thank you.”

  He wiggled a finger over at the nightstand as he climbed into the tub. “Bring that here, why don’t you? The goodies? And fix us up?”

  She went over there. A mirror with a big logo that said COCAINE in Coca-Cola lettering had a razor blade and a pile of white powder just waiting for dispersal.

  Never had she been into that. Surely Rick knew that. Remembered that. She’d been into weed only. He was talking.

  “Remember the last time we were in Arnolds Park together, baby? How we partied that night?”

  The only night she’d ever used coke. Not that she blamed that shit for the shit that happened.

  He was saying, “You were headin’ back to Yuppie Town, remember? College comin’ up? So we really tore one on. Or did that even register? You were pretty wasted. How Danny set his camera up? And caught it all on tape?”

  And suddenly she remembered.

  Not that she’d forgotten. But right that instant it all came back into focus, not shuttled to a corner of her mind.

  “Boys are coming over tomorrow,” he said, laughing to himself, sitting in steam. He splashed a little, like a child. “Girls are going to a movie together, so maybe the rest of us’ll take a little ol’ trip down memory lane. Wanna come?”

  “What?”

  “Pop some corn, crack some brews, and take in the flick. You looked mighty fine back then. Nice, now—but back then! Wow.”

  “. . . That tape exists. You brought that tape along.”

  The back of his head bobbed up and down; the crown was thinning. “Figured the fellas would get a charge out of it. Remind ’em what it was like to be real rock ‘n’ rollers and not over-the-hill, stick-up-the-ass straights.”

  She swallowed. Stared at the back of his head as he sat in the bubbling water like a boiling egg.

  “Be a minute,” she said, and went back into the bathroom, where she’d left her purse.

  “No problem, sweetmeat. Hey! That night? That last night? You were never better! Never better.”

  She got the pill bottle from the purse—the muscle relaxant, succinylcholine, that had been prescribed for her severe low back pain. Sux, they called it. Her doctor had cautioned her never to stray from the exact, specified dosage—one tiny pill. The stuff was dangerous, generally used only in a clinical setting by anesthesiologists.

  “Listen carefully,” the physician had said, raising a lecturing forefinger. “It’s one of three ingredients in the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injections.”

  She shook five tablets into her palm and went out and dumped them onto the mirror and cut them up with the razor blade, cutting, cutting, then pressing with the side of the blade and cutting some more until the pills too were powder.

  “Hey, honeybunch—what’s taking so long?”

  She added it to the coke and formed two long lines of the two intermingled substances. Moments later she set the mirror on the edge of the hot tub.

  He looked up at her and grinned, eyes sleepy and so blue, then he leaned over the mirror, saying, “Noooice . . .”

  He took a long sniff, like the practiced user he was, and one nostril did its thing, then the other nostril took the second line in. He frowned, already knowing something wasn’t right. In seconds he began to twitch, all over, displacing water, doing a kind of dance, not unlike some of the boogying fans at the ballroom not long ago.

  Then he was paralyzed—could not take a breath. Could not blink. All he could do was stare at her, the eyes no longer hooded. A man frozen in hot bubbling water.

  “Sucks to be you,” she said, giving him something to think about while he died, and headed off to dump the rest of the doctored coke in the toilet, put her clothes back on, and search the cottage for that damn tape.

  TWO

  Among its many distinctions as one of the Midwest’s most scenic small towns—longtime home of President Ulysses S. Grant, for example—Galena, Illinois, is noted for its memorable, wide-ranging architecture. In the midst of breathtaking rolling hills, sweeping valleys, and limestone cliffs, this “outdoor museum” of around thirty-five hundred inhabitants welcomes a million or more visitors annually, its half a mile of Main Street shopping and dining housed in mostly Victorian buildings of red brick. With much of Galena declared a historic district, including—opposite the downtown across the river—mansions built by once-upon-a-time steamboat captains and mine owners, you might expect the City Hall to be housed in some magnificent example of Greek Revival or perhaps Italianate or French Colonial.

  You would be wrong.

  On Green Street, below Main and across from the historic limestone post office (Renaissance Revival, 1845), the Galena City Hall is a one-story, many-windowed remodeled, refurbished grocery store, red brick but dating only to 1959. Inside and out, it has a sleek modern look and might have been completed yesterday.

  The interior with its pale lime walls, darker green modern furnishings, and blond wood pillars and trim is dominated by the unenclosed city council chamber, with an equally open bullpen for workers off to one side and offices surrounding it on the others. The city council’s half-moon blond table with nine chairs is recessed, facing a podium for citizens to step up and voice their opinions, at the end of an aisle between rows of enough seating to accommodate twenty visitors.

  Every chair was occupied this morning, only perhaps a third by local citizens—council members and other prominent types were here by invitation only, as well as several staffers from the weekly Galena Gazette. Otherwise, print media from three states filled the seats and, set up along the left and right of the gallery, compact high-end cameras on good-size tripods were at the ready for reporter/camera teams from area TV stations—Davenport’s KWQC, Rock Island’s WHBF, Moline’s WQAD, Cedar Rapids’ KCRG.

  On this second Wednesday in May, Chief of Police Krista Larson, at twenty-nine the youngest woman to hold that office in the entire United States, stood at the rear of the city council chamber with the heel of her right hand on her holstered .45 Glock 21 and her left hand on her hip. Tall, slender yet shapely, she wore her pale blonde hair pixie-cut, her classically Nordic features barely touched by makeup, her eyes light blue. For all her efforts to play her attractiveness down, the young woman cut a striking figure in her long-sleeve light blue polo with a badge-style insignia, navy slacks, and steel-toed black shoes.

  She was the only representative of her twelve-person department on hand for this press conference. Her presence was strictly for PR purposes, to underscore city government’s commitment to the music festival in Depot Park by the Galena River, scheduled to kick off the summer’s roster of events.

  In a tourist town like hers, that meant a lot of events, and plenty for Krista to do, supporting everything from the Cemetery Walk to the Thursday car shows, the Balloon Race to Independence Day festivities, the Arts Festival to the County Fair. And this would be the first ever Galena Rock and Country Music Fest.

  Five of the nine seats at the city council’s table were taken up, none of them by council members, although these men in varying styled sport coats (all but two in ties) might well have been. And Krista knew, or at least was acquainted, with all five.

  Three were in their late fifties and contemporaries of her father, Keith—at far left, sat Daniel Davies, who ran an antiques shop with a pop culture slant and the best vintage vinyl in the area; next, Steve Pike, night manager at the Tick Tock Motel just north of town; and center stage, Rodney Penniston, who taught vocal music at Galena High.

  These were the three surviving members of the original Hot Rod & the Pistons lineup.

  The other two were younger, both replacements for the two deceased members. Seated next to Rod was Phil Deeson, house-band guitarist from the Corner Stop, the bar the late Rick Jonsen once owned that was now Rick’s ex-wife, Donna’s. Next to Phil sat Brian Paulen, son of another of her father’s pals, the late Tom Paulen, and only two years older than Krista
.

  She had dated Brian in high school, a little—a quiet, quietly charismatic dark-and-handsome type who played bass guitar in a rock band specializing in Green Day and Weezer. They had dated, yes, but nothing that had gotten serious. Brian had moved back here a year or so ago, and the two had gotten reacquainted. She’d run into him on Main and kidded him about missing their ten-year class reunion, and he’d said the only thing he’d missed was seeing her again, and . . . well, after that it had gotten a little serious, second time around. Somewhat serious. Threatening to get serious, anyway . . .

  That had nothing to do with why she was attending this press conference, even if admittedly she could have sent one of her two lieutenants. This was about showing support to Galena and its mayor.

  Rhonda Rector, in a conservative gray suit with a light blue blouse for a casual touch, smiled at the audience of mostly media, with the Girl Can’t Help It vinyl album by Hot Rod & the Pistons fig-leafed before her. The handsome middle-aged ash-blonde woman, who reminded Krista of an older version of Amy Poehler, stood to one side of her guests at the council table; she had already greeted the assemblage. A veteran politician, she needed no microphone.

  “We are happy to announce,” she said, then held up the album and started over: “We are thrilled to announce that Galena’s own homegrown rock stars will be kicking off their reunion tour by headlining Friday night at our very first Rock and Country Music Fest.”

  The mayor paused, and though only the locals at the back of the room applauded, the media did at least offer up smiles and nods. Of course the news of the Pistons reunion was not really news at all to Krista—this had been in the works for several months—but a decision had been made to withhold the announcement until now, three weeks out from the event.