by M. M. Mayle
Transition from peak volume to excited buzz takes a while. During that period, personnel move back and forth on the dimly lit stage like tacitly invisible Kabuki stagehands. A grand piano is wheeled into prominence, mike stands are repositioned. The drum kit is customized and guitars poised on widely spaced tripods and A-frames. Cables are checked, foot pedals tested, a ripple in an oriental rug smoothed away.
Impatient whistles and catcalls break through the buzz. Three years was long enough to wait, they seem to say. They also seem to say that the Verge reunion is the primary reason the hall is filled to capacity and about to explode in wild anticipation.
Laurel isn’t sure how long she’s been on her feet or at what point she began jumping up and down and waving her arms over her head—behavior she would ordinarily scorn. She’s also unsure how long she’s had hiccoughs that are becoming painful.
Colin, Chris, Lane, and Jesse file onstage with a noticeable lack of theatricality. Their clothing isn’t that remarkable either, although Lane’s pants could double for pajama bottoms, and Chris’s outfit glitters with metallic embroidery.
For simply removing a mike from its stand, Colin receives an ear-shattering ovation. For unbuttoning the cuffs of his ordinary white dress shirt and rolling up the sleeves, he gets another. Chris and Lane are awarded similar response when they strap on their respective instruments, and Jesse gains an extra measure of approval when he issues a rapid-fire drum roll like a warning shot.
With passionate audience encouragement, Verge performs two songs from their early years; two that predate the Aurora period and are closely associated with Rayce’s advocacy, as Colin explained when he first showed her the playlist. Then the band reminds the audience what everyone’s here for with a medley of Rayce’s greatest hits, followed by “Angle Of Repose,” already destined to be a huge posthumous hit.
As the song plays out, various members of the earlier acts drift back onstage to lend their talents to a spirited reprise. They form a previously undreamt of ensemble, a veritable pantheon of greats performing in egalitarian unity. Lead singers humble themselves together in chorus; guitar and keyboard virtuosos share instruments; featured percussionists collaborate to produce a mind-blowing, goosebumping tribute to their fallen brother.
Her earlier fear that the word “repose” would be heard in a funereal sense and evoke images of open caskets, is dispelled in the contagion of joy that’s sweeping the arena. She should have known better. Just as the lyrics to “Revenant” hold forth promise, the lyrics to “Angle Of Repose” are nothing if not hopeful in outlook.
The stage has not yet emptied when Bemus comes for her.
“How’d she do?” he says to Susa.
“She’s right lost it, luv—her concert cherry. Bit reluctant at first. Wary, she was. Then she settled down and proper got into it. Done her homework too, because she never once asked who was onstage or questioned what was happening. Didn’t even blub when they turned the heartbreaker loose on us, and far as I can tell, didn’t pee her pants when her boyfriend hit the stage. Got the makings of a real trouper here—not that I ever thought we didn’t.”
Susa reports all this in a readily overheard voice, so when Laurel is shepherded away by Bemus, it’s to the approving shouts and understanding laughter of the elite sisterhood she’s just joined.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Early morning, May 21, 1987
This morning’s view is no less alluring than yesterday’s, but the same preoccupation that plagued him throughout the memorial concert, and woke him after only two hours sleep, has rendered him temporarily resistant to the finer things in life.
Nate eases out of bed without waking Amanda, and calls for coffee from the bathroom phone. He instructs room service to include all the morning papers and to leave everything in the hall without knocking. He’s finishing with the toilet when the phone trills. In deference to the sleeping Amanda, he snatches it up on the first ring, prepared to ream out some room service flunky who didn’t understand the order the first time through, or anyone else with the temerity to call at this hour.
“Yeah!” he says, now pissed at himself for forgetting to leave a no-calls order when they came in last night.
“I can be there whenever you’re ready.” The coarse American voice can only belong to Brownell Yates, the one caller he is willing to tolerate at this hour.
“Wait. Hold on a minute. How did you know I was staying here?” Nate says.
“Do the words investigative reporter mean anything to you?”
“Does six in the morning after a big night mean anything to you?”
“It would if I didn’t have a plane to catch, somethin’ you would’ve known if you hadn’t been so eager to take a hike last night.”
“What time’s the plane?” Nate says and learns they’ll be cutting it very close if he doesn’t agree to meet with the reporter within the hour. “Okay, be here in forty-five minutes.” He gives Brownie the room number, washes his hands and face, and returns to the bedroom to wake Amanda.
“Amanda . . . Amanda, honey . . . I’m sorry, but I’m taking a meeting here in less than an hour and I’ll need you to sit in.”
She groans and pulls a pillow over her head.
“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t—”
“I heard you the first time.” She struggles to sit up. “I heard the damn phone.” She rubs sleep from her eyes, then stretches in a way that shows off her bare breasts to full advantage and tests the limits of his preoccupation.
“Who called, who’s coming over? Colin, wanting to have the last word?”
“It’s the reporter I ran into last night just before the concert started. The one I told you about—the guy who could have something concrete for me. For us.”
“In that case, hooray!” She wriggles into last night’s underwear—what there is of it—and pulls on jeans and a T-shirt from a suitcase she’s never completely unpacked, reminding him to do something about his own nakedness.
“I’ll be relieved as you to have this meeting over with if it lets you off the tenterhooks you’ve been on ever since you ran into this guy,” she says, running her fingers through her tousled hair.
“Am I that obvious?” He follows her lead by stepping into the boxers he flung aside not that long ago.
“Ohhhhh yeah. You think I didn’t see you agitating all through the concert? That was apparent even from backstage. And afterward, at the parties, you were jumpy and jittery, and in bed you were flipping around like a fish out of water. I thought I’d have to sleep on the couch if I was gonna get any sleep at all.”
She appears fairly unbothered when she heads for the bathroom, so he doesn’t go overboard apologizing. For anything. In her absence, he scavenges more clothing from the floor and finishes dressing, short of putting on suit coat and tie.
A trolley holding coffee service and a stack of newspapers is outside the door when he looks. He wheels it inside, where Amanda joins him in the sitting room. They settle in companion easy chairs and pass an outwardly placid half hour sipping Kona coffee and comparing their impressions of the memorial concert with newspaper reviews that are universally in the rave category. If Amanda feels the undercurrent of tension that’s jangling him more than the coffee, she’s not showing it. He’s not showing anything either, until he jumps up to answer the sharp rap at the door.
Brownie barges in clear-eyed and every bit as well groomed and turned out as he was the night before.
“Nice digs,” the renegade reporter says after a once-over that includes Amanda. He sits down without being asked and nods in Amanda’s direction.
“Should she be here?” he says before noticing that, in addition to being barefooted and fetchingly curled into an overstuffed chair, Amanda is equipped with a steno pad and pencils. “Oh, I get it. Live-in secretary. Way to go.” Brownie leers approval.
“You indicated time is of the essence, so stop wasting it,” Nate says and takes the chair nearest Amanda’s.
“Okay
, okay. As you maybe gathered from the teaser I threw out last night, I’ve been to Bimmerman. Bimmerman in far Northern Michigan, that is.”
“I know where it is. I’d rather know why you were there.”
“Fact is, I first went to Paradise—the one in Michigan—and that’s what took me to Bimmerman. Because of what I found out up there in Paradise.”
“And that is?”
“That there really was the kinda guy I had in mind when I glommed onto the idea some loser might still be carryin’ a torch for the late Aurora Elliot and be out to avenge her downfall and death. And I’ll be damned if the owner of a sandwich shop where Aurora once waitressed, didn’t remember this pathetic weirdo from Bimmerman who used to pay court to Audrey Shantz, as Aurora used to be called. Then, when I backtracked to Bimmerman, I came across this big old native with a gut you could rest a chainsaw on. He corroborated what the sandwich shop owner said—that way back when, there was a guy who used to ride a bike all the way from Bimmerman to Paradise so he could moon over Audrey-Aurora. Far as anyone knew, she never gave him a tumble and rumor was that she made cruel fun of his puppy dog crush whenever he wasn’t around.”
“This guy have a name?” Nate says.
“Yeah and memorable enough it won’t slip the mind. Hoople Jakeway’s the name I was given, along with the advisory he goes by ‘Hoop’ and hasn’t been heard from in a coupla months.”
“Your source—the old native with the gut—his name doesn’t happen to be Bill does it?”
“Yeah, it does. Big Bill, they call him. You know him?”
“Sort of.”
“Then I won’t have to describe this place where he hangs out—this bar in Bimmerman called the Kings Tavern, where the patrons are right outta central casting and they’ve got a canning jar of pickled testicles on display and—”
“No, you won’t, but I would like a description of the Hoop character,” Nate says.
“Keep your shirt on. I’ll get to it in a minute . . . Anyway, lubed with another draft beer or three, Big Bill said that after Audrey-Aurora ran off in search of greener pastures, Hoop pined for her for years. He didn’t think anyone noticed, but according to Bill, all the regulars at the tavern knew Hoop was soft in the head where she was concerned. ‘Warped’ is the word Bill added to that assessment, then he kinda clammed up when I started gettin’ down to specifics.”
Comments made by Big Bill at the accident scene fill Nate’s head as though just spoken. But the first time he heard of the one or two locals who preferred to blame others for Aurora’s inherent shortcomings, the news wasn’t as ominous as it sounds today. Now he’s wondering what else might have slipped by in that long ago morass of shock and dread, when he realizes both Brownie and Amanda are waiting for him to catch up.
“Sorry. The specifics. You were saying that Bill clammed up when . . .”
“Yeah. When I got down to the specifics of askin’ for a physical description of Jakeway and did anybody maybe have a picture of him or know where he was at the moment, I got nothin’. And that was true of the other natives in the place. It’s like they circled the wagons—no, wrong metaphor, that was the pioneers. Anyway, they closed ranks on me like I was a government agent and this Hoop guy was suspected of poaching or strayin’ off the reservation or whatever mischief’s available when drinkin’ gets old and there’s few if any convenience stores to hold up.”
“Wait. Are you saying this is a racial thing? By natives, you mean Native Americans, not just native to the area?” Nate says.
“Well, yeah. I thought I was makin’ that clear. The place was full of red Indians, and like any minority, they tend to look out for each other. Did I forget to mention Hoople Jakeway’s middle name is Walking Crow? From that, you can bet your ass he’s a member of the tribe.”
With racial characteristics that are easy to mistake for those of other darkskinned ethnicities. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Nate says as this revelation impacts on him.
“You got a problem with Indians?” Brownie says.
“No. Not at all. The problem’s with eyewitnesses who can’t tell a Native American from a Hispanic.”
“You gonna let me in on that? Did I also forget to mention I’m expecting somethin’ in return for—”
“Mr. Yates,” Amanda says, “you still haven’t told us what compelled you to go to Bimmerman. Expand, please, on this notion, this idea you . . . what was the word you used?” She leafs through her notes. “Oh here it is—this idea you glommed on to.”
“You got a problem with the way I talk, little lady?”
“Far from it. A tad inconsistent, perhaps, as though you don’t quite have the knack of dumbing yourself down.”
Stopped cold, Brownie looks from one to the other, unsure how to respond to Amanda’s savvy. Then he cracks a crooked grin. “Whaddya call it when a pat on the back’s followed by a shot in the back?”
“Damned by faint praise?” Nate says.
“Yeah, that’s it. And I gotta say I don’t mind bein’ seen through when we’re all on the same side—We are, aren’t we?” Brownie again takes a reading of his audience and evidently sees nothing to discourage his continuing. “All right. Here’s the deal. You’ve got Cliff Grant, celebrity stalker, pornographer, and all-around scumbag with a particular penchant for makin’ Aurora Elliot look bad. Or good, dependin’ on viewpoint. Then you’ve got Gibby Lester, supplier to the stars, with a special place in his black heart for Aurora and her needs, and that may have included assisting with the attempted sale of a newborn.”
“How the hell do you know about that? That was only rumored, nothing was ever proven.” Nate says.
“I’m an investigative reporter, remember? And do you think you can remember to stop interrupting? I’m losin’ my train of thought.”
“You just finished your indictment of Gibby Lester,” Amanda says.
“Okay, we’ve got Lester accounted for . . . and then there was this Sid Kaplan creep. Opportunist, wannabe extortionist, and freelance porn distributor, who also could be seen as having taken advantage of Aurora and—”
“Where are you going with this? We already know the three are connected,” Nate says.
“Four! There’s four. And if you keep on interruptin’, I’ll never get to the point,” Brownie says.
“Has someone else been whacked?” Amanda says.
Brownie groans and rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah, if you’re willin’ to count Rayce Vaughn. Although it’s not commonly known, he’s another one that had a piece of Aurora—crudeness unintended, little lady. If anyone could be held responsible for leadin’ Aurora down the garden path—and I’m not sayin’ anyone should—it would be him. Of the heavy hitters she attracted, he had her first, and in the eyes of someone out to avenge her alleged corruption, he’d be high on the list of offenders. Abusers. But not as high as Colin Elliot.”
“You’re hypothesizing that someone is out to retaliate for perceived wrongs done to Aurora? Nate says.
“Yeah, but I would’ve only called it speculating.”
“You still haven’t said what inspired this theory.”
“And I’m not gonna.”
“You will if you want my further cooperation.”
“Seems like I’m the one doin’ all the heavy-duty cooperatin’.”
“As well you might, if it gets you closer to the guarantee I gave you Easter morning—closer to the advance and the exclusive rights you’re holding out for, and the legitimacy you say you’re after. So why not tell us what initiated your current thinking? Or are we done here?”
“You can be the judge of that after you hear what else I have to offer.” The ambitious reporter launches into a rapid-fire recounting of what little is known about Hoople Jakeway’s recent activities.
“And according to his landlady—another member of the tribe that didn’t want to talk to me or describe this guy until I bought some info with a bottle of Kessler’s—Jakeway left Bimmerman on or about March twenty-eight, abandone
d his few belongings, blew off his job at the IGA store, and disappeared. No one’s heard from him since, so she said.
“But get this. A few days after Jakeway vanished, Cliff Grant was separated from his head, and after a plausible interval, Gibby Lester’s throat was fatally slashed with a box cutter. Next, Sid Kaplan’s throat was cut and stuffed with drugs that originated with Lester, and fairly soon after that, Rayce Vaughn’s found dead under mysterious drug-related circumstances. Maybe those were Jakeway’s postcards home. Obits of the known offenders, with Elliot’s still to be written.”
In the prolonged silence following this grim forecast, Nate studies Amanda’s frozen expression and attempts to make it his own. “In the absence of alternative theories, nothing you say can be ruled out. Proper precautions will be taken,” he says without giving away anything more than words.
“That include goin’ to the police?” Brownie says.
“I could ask you the same.”
“Your non-answer says you’ll be workin’ alone till there’s somethin’ better to go on.
“And your evasion says you won’t be in touch with the authorities either.”
“I won’t unless they can give me the same guarantee you did,” Brownie says.
“How would you like to fly back to New York on the Concorde?”
“That could work.”
“Amanda . . . do you mind?” Nate says.
Amanda moves to a the nearby phone desk, where she invokes his name to secure a seat on the afternoon flight. If she does mind performing this extra bit of secretarial service, she doesn’t say so. At least not yet.
When Brownell Yates gets up to leave, she stops him with a final question Nate should have thought to ask.
“If we are to believe this Hoople Walking Crow Jakeway was out to settle scores with those individuals he saw as having corrupted Aurora Elliot . . . why now? Why would he have waited so long?”