“No, I’m just going to go home.”
They got to the ground floor and the elevator doors opened and Frank said, “What?”
“Yeah, I’m tired. I’m going home.”
“You’re not going to see the show?”
“No.”
Frank was standing in the elevator doorway, blocking it so Angie couldn’t leave, and he said, “They’re getting on the bus after the show, going back to Toronto,” and Angie said, yeah, “So?”
“So you don’t even want to say goodbye to Ritchie?”
“No.”
Frank looked really surprised and then overdid the confused look, bugging out his eyes and shrugging and saying, “And he was so worried about you,” and Angie said, yeah, I doubt that, and Frank said, no, “He came to see me, worried about you.”
“Oh yeah, he’s worried.”
“No, seriously,” Frank said, “he’s worried. He said you drove out of the parking lot right after that guy was shot.”
“Yeah, he told everybody.”
Frank thought about that and said, “No, pretty sure he only told me. He really was worried.”
And then Angie got it and she said, “He only told you?” and Frank said, “Yeah.”
She said, “Shit,” under her breath and leaned forward and pressed the button for the fourth floor again, and Frank said, “What are you doing?” and she said, “I’m going to the show, but I need to change, I can’t wear these,” and held up a foot, and Frank didn’t get it but he stepped out of the way and let the elevator doors close.
Then she was thinking she should have known, Ritchie wouldn’t tell the cop. He wouldn’t get her involved, more like Ritchie to try and keep her out of it.
The old Ritchie was the same Ritchie.
Should have known.
THIRTEEN
Barry walked into the hospitality suite and Dale said, “Where the hell have you been?” and Barry said, “What?”
Ritchie watched him and thought for a second he was going to start punching. Shit, Dale was nervous like he always was before a gig but Barry looked ready to explode. Then he just smiled and said, “Hey Dale, how do you know there’s a drummer at the door?”
Dale didn’t say anything and Barry said, “The knocking speeds up.”
Then Ritchie noticed the girl who came in with Barry, thought he knew her from somewhere and then realized she was the hooker in the bar, and he was going to ask Barry how much it cost him to bring her backstage, but Barry was saying, “What did the drummer get on his IQ test?” and when no one said anything he said, “Drool.”
It had been tense backstage before all the shows on this tour but this was the worst. Last night before the break, so many days off before the next show — it was crazy.
And now Barry was saying, how many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?, and then right away, “None, there’s a machine to do that now,” and then he pointed at Jackie and said, “And you better watch out, she could replace you with a machine, too,” and then Ritchie said, hey, Barry.
Barry looked at him, giving him his best Clint Eastwood squint, and Ritchie said, “So these two bass players walk past a bar,” and then he stopped and waited, waited till everybody in the room was looking at him, even the chick Barry brought, and then he said, “Yeah, right, as if,” and heard Jackie’s loud laugh and then Cliff and then Dale started laughing, too.
Barry was still looking at Ritchie and said, “Fuck you,” and Ritchie said, “Oh yeah, baby, the High are back!” and raised his fist.
The most messed up tour they’d ever been on but the craziest thing for Ritchie was how good they were onstage. The four of them, Cliff, Barry, Dale, and Ritchie, stood in the wings and watched the lights go down and the whole auditorium become dark, and then Ritchie smiled as the audience started holding up cell phones, a whole lot of them with flickering flames on their screens, and he said, “Oh, yeah, baby.”
Cliff was vibrating, standing on his toes, raising his knees almost like he was running on the spot and Dale had drumsticks in his hands, rolling out paradiddles on his thighs.
The rumble was building, the audience starting to clap and stamp their feet and yell and make a lot of noise and the sound system started pumping in the sound of a jet engine.
Then Barry said, “Oh for fuck’s sake,” and walked out onto the stage but it was still dark and no one saw him and the rest of the guys followed so they were onstage when the lights burst on and the jet engine turned into an echo and Cliff screamed into the mike and Ritchie pounded out the opening notes and Dale and Barry came in like a freight train and every person in the crowd was standing up and cheering and dancing to “Higher Than High.”
And it went from there, just kept getting better, kept getting higher and higher. The crowd was so into it, Ritchie walking around the front of the stage looking out and knowing every single person there had seen the High before, seen them when they were kids — the audience and the band — and it was like they were all back there, feeling like they did then.
One song after another, Cliff barely saying anything between them, none of his stupid stories, no jokes about how great he was and what a favour he was doing the rest of these guys getting back together, it was just one song building on another.
Ritchie could see people, couples, arms around each other, swaying to the slow stuff, and he was thinking, yeah, someone’s getting laid tonight, that’s what rock’n’roll is for.
And then when Ritchie picked up his acoustic and played the opening chords to “Red Light Street” and just before Dale and Barry came in, Cliff said, “Oh yeah, where were you when you first heard this?” and Ritchie played the intro again and Cliff looked out at the crowd, at the women, and asked them how big their hair was. Were they wearing shoulder pads? And they laughed and a woman yelled, “I wasn’t wearing anything!” And Cliff made a face, looked shocked and then laughed and said, “Honey, nobody was by the time the song ended,” and Ritchie just shook his head and kept playing the intro over and over as Cliff kept talking. It sounded like it could have been rehearsed but then as Ritchie was looking out at the crowd he realized that wasn’t it at all, it sounded like old friends getting together, telling the same old stories but ones they liked, Cliff joking with people as if he knew them all, and Ritchie realized this wasn’t the same Cliff from back in the day, back when they were all trying to be rock stars and reaching for the top and all that bullshit, this was Cliff being himself, having a good time, the guy with grown up kids kicking back and relaxing with his buds.
And Ritchie was thinking, shit, finally we get to this point and it’s the last time we play together. He could feel it. He just knew it — they’d never be able to keep it together. They hadn’t changed at all, it was the same old story, the same old song and dance — Steven Tyler had that right.
Cliff stopped walking, stood completely still, right on the beat, spread out his arms like wings and Dale and Barry came in and Ritchie fired it up — okay, maybe he borrowed a little too much from Townshend there but Cliff could get off a good Roger Daltrey scream and they were airborn.
They were rocking.
The whole show was great, the crowd was totally into it, and when they played the last song on the setlist no one left the stage. Dale came out from behind the drums and the four of them stood there in a row looking at the audience and Ritchie was thinking, this is what bask means. This is what it means to bask in something.
And then he saw Angie standing at the end of the front row, over by the fire exit door, and she was looking right at him and he looked right back at her and then he couldn’t hear anything at all until Cliff said, “Oh hell, let’s do the first one,” and Dale said, “Yeah.” Ritchie looked at Barry and even he was nodding, yeah, let’s do it, so Cliff held up his arms until the place got quiet and while Dale was going back to the drums and Ritchie was picking up his
Gibson, Cliff said, “If it’s okay with you, we’d like to do one more song,” and people screamed and cheered and Ritchie played the opening, his guitar almost sounding like Manzarek’s Vox organ and Cliff said, “This was the first song we played when we got together,” and the audience cheered and then Cliff said, “And it’s where we got our name,” and Dale and Barry came in and Cliff sang the opening, and the place went crazy.
Ritchie was smiling and looking at Angie and thinking this was the first he’d ever heard that they’d named the band after “Light My Fire,” and then he was laughing and thinking maybe way back when they were kids in Brockville and Cliff said, let’s call the band after the song, he meant the Fire and then just went with the High when people liked it.
They finished up big, baby, you know we couldn’t get much higher, and then just walked off the stage.
Ritchie looking at Angie and she nodded a little and walked towards him.
• • •
After the show Gayle walked out into the lobby with Felix, and he was smiling and saying, what a show, man, they can still rock, and she said, “Yeah, they sure can,” and Felix stopped and looked at her and said, “Some things never change.”
Gayle said, no, they changed. “They were good and then they sucked and now they’re good again.”
“See how long they can keep going.”
Gayle said yeah, and then she saw Frank coming towards them shaking his head and when he got beside her he said, “Who the hell was that? Where did that come from?”
The lobby was filling up with people then, still shaking their heads, amazed it was such a good show.
Frank said, “They should release that as a live album,” and Gayle, her ears still ringing said, “Yeah.”
Frank said, “I need a smoke,” and started towards the back door but then they all heard the noise, the rumble seemed to come out of nowhere and just got louder and louder like a plane was landing on top of the casino, and Frank said, “What the fuck?” and cut through the lobby to the front door.
Felix looked at Gayle and he was smiling a little, amused, and she said, “What?” and he shrugged and said, “I don’t know,” and they followed Frank.
Everybody from the concert, all eight thousand people it seemed like, were pushing their way through the front doors and out into the parking lot to see what was making so much noise, and Gayle started to smile and it was Felix’s turn to say, “What?” but she just kept on smiling and pushing her way through the lobby doors as the noise got louder and louder.
Felix was following her, pushing and being pulled by the crowd through the doors and into the parking lot, shoved until he was standing beside Frank and they were both looking at it.
Gayle made her way beside them then, stepping out a little to the front of the crowd.
Felix said, “What the fuck?” and Gayle said, “Yeah,” but not loud enough for him to hear. She could have screamed and he wouldn’t have heard, not over the sound of the motorcycles.
Hundreds of them, the two lines stretching all the way through the parking lot out to the highway and into the night.
Felix said, “This supposed to scare me?” and beside him Frank said, “Fuck, it scares me.”
In the lead Danny Mac stopped his bike and looked at his wife and Gayle was looking back at him, her hands over her mouth, just about crying. It was the most romantic thing she’d ever seen, Danny just sat there looking right at her, hundreds of Saints of Hell behind him, all wearing their colours, Gayle thinking he must have called every chapter in the province. Even Nugs was on his bike next to Danny, Gayle looking at him and he was looking back, too, serious, not smiling at all, but Gayle couldn’t help waving at him a little. Years since Nugs had been on a bike.
She wanted to run up and hug Danny, jump on the bike and ride, but he just winked at her, held up his right hand, and signalled they were moving out.
Someone in the crowd, a woman, said, “Not one of them wearing a helmet,” and the guy next to her, a grey-haired hippie said, “Fuck no.”
Gayle watched the bikes roll out, Danny leading them in a big, slow parade past the front doors of the hotel and then the Indian mural on the side of the casino and back up to the highway.
Shit, she even saw J.T. on a bike, first time she’d ever seen him ride, and he looked back at her, nodded, and kept going.
Someone in the crowd started to clap and pretty soon they were all cheering and screaming and Gayle turned around and saw Felix and Frank staring at her, and she smiled at them and stepped a little closer and said, “We’ll talk later,” and Felix said, “This doesn’t change anything,” and Gayle said, “No?”
Felix said no, but Gayle could barely hear him over the sound of the bikes, and she was still smiling, every one of those guys like Danny said, “One of us,” and she looked at Felix and said, “Okay then, we don’t need to talk,” and pushed her way back into the lobby.
• • •
When the crowd had mostly drifted back inside, Frank looked at Felix and said, “You gonna come see Cheap Trick?” and Felix said, no, “I’ve seen them as many times as I need to,” and Frank said, yeah, “Who would’ve thought the High would put on such a show?”
Felix started walking along the side of the building, going around back where his car was parked, and Frank walked with him saying, “We can still work out a deal here,” and Felix said, “Yeah?”
Frank said, “Sure,” and they walked together talking it over, talking about the management contract and the “other” business they were doing at the casino and the hotel and Frank saying he’d been negotiating deals since he was in high school in Toronto, booking Lighthouse and April Wine for school dances. Frank said, it’s all about the deal — the terms change but they can always be worked out, and Felix said, yeah, I guess so, and they got to Frank’s Barracuda and Felix said, “That really is a classic,” and Frank said, yeah, “But it’s not authentic, I put in a Blaupunkt; here, look,” and he opened the driver’s side door and the car blew up, a ton of American steel and glass, Frank and Felix both blown to pieces.
FOURTEEN
Detective Maureen McKeon was standing in the playground in Kew Gardens, what everybody called Castle Park because of the big wooden castle in the middle, watching her husband talking to some other parents, when her phone rang.
She was thinking about going over and getting in the conversation but they were mostly people in the movie or TV business and they’d be talking politics or some new show she’d never heard of, and she looked at the number on her phone and saw it was Price and answered it thinking, great, another murder, at least it’s something I can talk about.
Price said, “Hey,” and she said, “hey,” back and he said, “What’re you doing?”
“I’m just about to open a bottle of wine, drink the whole thing, and go for a drive. You?”
“You out with the family?”
“They’re here, I’m here.”
Price said okay. Then he said, “There was a murder in the Don last night,” and McKeon said, oh yeah?
“Yeah, Jamal Khan.”
McKeon said, “Holy shit, what happened?”
“Boner beat him to death.”
It didn’t really register for McKeon and she said, “What?” and Price said, yeah, I know. “Not many details yet, they were in gen pop, nobody was watching them. Jamal was getting out today and Boner was being transferred up to Orillia. They were both in the can and Boner went off on him.”
“Why?”
Price said he had no idea, but, “It seems like arrangements were made — guys were kept out till he was finished and no one’s saying a word.”
“Incredible.”
“Yeah,” Price said, “Boner’s walking around today like he’s getting his patch for it. Guys are telling him one of these days he needs to kill the right person to get a promotion.”
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McKeon said, “He thinks he’s getting his full patch?”
“That’s the rumour. What an idiot.”
McKeon said yeah, but she was thinking about the biker chick, the wife of the national vice president she talked to in the women’s washroom of the police station, and she was smiling. Shit. She said, “Well, are we going to have to talk to him?”
Price said, no, “Levine and Dhaliwal caught it. Levine loves going into the Don. He’ll be telling us the history of the place for weeks: how the redcoats bivouacked there in eighteen-something and how it was where the last man was hanged in Canada in nineteen fifty-something,” and McKeon said, “A guy was hung in there last month,” and Price said, “We caught something else.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, real estate agent killed in the Beaches, in one of those condos looking out onto the lake.”
“Real estate’s a tough business in the Beaches.”
“You know it. You want me to pick you up on my way?”
“I’m just down the street,” McKeon said, “that park with the castle in it,” and Price said, yeah, just a couple blocks away, and then he said, “I’m at Fifty-Five. I’ll swing by, walk up to Queen. Wait for me in front of the library,” and she said okay.
Then she hung up and looked at all the kids playing in the castle, climbing up the ropes on the side and going down the slide, all the parents drinking café lattes and half-gallon jugs of coffee, women in baseball caps and tank tops, the guys in Hawaiian shirts and there was MoGib fitting right in, laughing at something a guy with blond spiky hair was saying.
McKeon was getting the feeling this was it, this was what life was all about — you do your job and then you go spend time with your family.
One day at a time, as they say.
It could be all right.
• • •
Ritchie was pretty happy sitting with Angie in the coffee shop beside the lobby, almost under the big stained glass roof. He had no idea what was going to happen next, if they were going to be able to work anything out and have any kind of a future, but he didn’t care.
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