“Oh, that Pete Dryer,” Tim said.
Rene laughed. “Oh, Pete, our old buddy.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Butch said.
Jesse waved his arms to regain their attention. “Cut it out guys. This is a big deal. A guy like Pete is exactly what we need.”
“What do we need a manager for?” Dale asked. “Looks like we’re doing quite well on our own.”
Jesse waited until he had everybody’s attention. “We need a manager to help us get in a studio to make a demo tape. It’s all about the tape. Clubs want to hear it, agents want to hear it, and, most importantly, record companies want to hear it. It’s all about getting a recording contract. We can’t do that without a tape and we can’t get a tape made without a manager.”
“Why not?” Tim asked.
“Because we don’t have the money,” Butch said. “A good manager would have the connections to get us in the studio.”
“So, how do we know this Pete guy can do that?” Rene asked.
“We don’t know what he can do,” Dale said. “But, right now, he’s the only one calling.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE SAFARI CLUB
The Safari Club was a sprawling music hall with a thatched roof, tiki torches and fake lion heads on the walls. It stood two stories tall and all alone along the bayou in the flatlands between Thibodaux and Raceland. A wide, wooden porch, designed to look like a boat dock, surrounded the club. The thatch was ornamental. A shingle roof beneath the decorative topping kept the rain out and represented half-hearted efforts to bring the old storage facility up to public safety standards.
The Divebomberz were on the way to their gig at the Safari Club when Dupre and The Wheelers intercepted them 10 miles from the club, providing a thundering escort down the bayou. Long hair, black leather, fringe, and colorful headbands fluttered like freak flags in the high-speed breeze. Boots, chains, saddlebags, skull-and-cross-bone mirrors, and spiked crash bars turned every chopper into an ominous instrument of road domination.
Each Wheeler rode solo. There was no woman riding on back of any bike. The Wheelers were always ready for a fight. They were a combat unit, daring anyone to even think about challenging their highway supremacy throughout the bayou. They looked like a post apocalyptic death gang on wheels.
Motorcycles swarmed around The Divebomberz’ two vehicles and swerved between the band van and Rene’s truck at reckless speeds and angles. Wheelies were pulled at eighty miles per hour. Weapons were brandished like they were holding up a stagecoach. Shots may have been fired into the air but no one could have heard them over the revved up motorcycle engines.
Jesse drove on, happy to have such an outrageous welcoming committee. The overpowering roar of the motorcycles was so invasive that he could barely hear himself shout, “Nobody better mess with us. We’ve got The Wheelers on our side.”
“Let’s hope they stay on our side,” Butch yelled back at Jesse. The wild escort continued for miles until the impromptu caravan rumbled to a stop in a thick cloud of dust in the vast, gravel parking lot of the Safari Club.
The Wheelers were in full party mode as the band stepped out to greet them.
“You boys ready to get down?” Dupre asked as he gave Tim a big bear hug.
Dale climbed out the side door of the van. “We were born to get down, all the way down and then down some more.”
The Divebomberz and the Wheelers embraced each other like long lost brothers. The motorcycle gang had been following the band since their first meeting at the Raceland Festival. Joints were fired up and passed around as the bikers began helping the band haul amps, speakers, and drums into the club.
The celebratory atmosphere was interrupted by what sounded like shouting and trouble from inside the club. Rene came out with two Wheelers, who were marching a bartender out of the club like he was being taken hostage.
A tall, thin Wheeler named Donald explained the situation. “This asshole says the bar’s not open for business.”
“Bring him over here, Don,” Dupre said. “I’m sure he doesn’t really mean it.”
The bartender looked terrified by the time he was face to face with Dupre. Donald let him go with a mean shove.
The head Wheeler grabbed the bartender by the shoulders to steady him. “You don’t really mean the bar’s not open yet, do you?”
The bartender looked around like he was hoping to be rescued. The Wheelers crowded in more closely.
Dupre got into the bartender’s face. “I want you to think about it real hard. Don’t answer until you’re real sure you know exactly what you want to say.”
The bartender took a deep breath and eventually spoke up like a military recruit in boot camp as he exhaled. “What I meant to say was the bar is now open for business and the first round is on the house.”
“My man,” Dupre shouted as a mighty cheer erupted. “Come on boys,” he said as he led the crew into the club. “The first one’s free and don’t forget to tip the living shit out of your bartender.”
And so the party began. The band set up and did a sound check. The parking lot started filling up by 7 p.m. There was a five-dollar cover charge. The club should have started turning people away by 8 p.m. There were already at least three hundred fifty people in a space fire coded for two hundred twenty-five.
Jesse could see the front box office from his position on the stage. They were still selling tickets as fast as they could count the money.
The Wheeler women were looking tough and sexy. They arrived as singles or in pairs. They wore short skirts or tight jeans with tops that showed plenty of skin and cleavage. Hairdos, make up, nails, and jewelry were completely dolled up for the special occasion. Tim made the mistake of talking to one of the bayou beauties. A Wheeler named Big Ben quickly stepped in to introduce the woman as his date for the night. Tim wisely deferred to the massive biker. Big Ben was Dupre’s right hand man, his second in command.
Tim looked at Butch. “Oh, I get it. The single girls are here for the Wheelers. I should have known.”
“Me too,” Butch said. “I won’t be making that mistake.”
Jesse came over to talk to Tim and Butch. “Looks like this is some kind of major event. I don’t think we’re this popular down here yet.”
As he spoke, he noticed Amy trying to get in the front door. Dupre was holding court at the entrance and giving her the kind of trouble that could only be called sexual harassment.
Jesse fought his way through the crowd to step between Dupre and Amy.
Dupre was not happy to have Jesse interrupt his game. “You know this woman? She says she’s with you but I say she’s with me.”
Amy looked terrified as Jesse and Dupre stared each other down for a long moment. Anyone nearby quieted down immediately. The tension was spellbinding …
Jesse shrugged his shoulders. “Actually, I never saw her before in my entire life.”
Dupre waited a couple beats then burst out laughing. Jesse cracked up too as he and Dupre gave each other a brotherly chest bump. Everybody relaxed and joined in the laughter. The street theater between bikers and musicians never failed to entertain.
“What was that about?” Amy asked as she began breathing normally when Jesse walked her inside to the bandstand.
Jesse put his arm around her. “Sorry about that. Dupre was just playing. He knows who you are. He’s just a little loaded, that’s all. You’ve got to know how to handle him. He’s basically a good guy until you piss him off.”
“Let’s not do that,” she said as she squeezed Jesse’s arm tightly.
Rene’s new girlfriend, Polly, arrived at the Safari Club about 8 p.m. with three gorgeous female friends to see Rene and his band. They didn’t have too much trouble from the Wheelers at the door. Polly and company knew how to handle Cajun whistles and catcalls. They whistled right back, made an obscene gesture or two and kept pushing their way into the overcrowded club.
“You guys got it going on tonight,” Polly said to R
ene as she finally made it to the bandstand. “We had to park way back in the lot, and there’s cars backed up all down the highway.”
Rene gave her a kiss on the lips. “You have any trouble at the door, baby?”
“Nothing but the usual thieves and murderers,” Polly said.
“Did they make you pay?”
“What, pay for our sins?”
“No, pay to get in.”
“Of course not. Me and my girls are always with the band.”
“Got that right,” Rene said.
Dale came through the crowd with a tray of beer and shots of whiskey for the band. “Man, it’s packed in here and they’re still selling tickets. The bartenders and waitresses are so busy I had to take matters into my own hands.”
Rene overheard the comment from where he sat, beginning to tune his drums. “I heard this is the Wheelers’ big anniversary party. Something about riding and ruling the bayou for twenty years.”
Butch responded to Rene. “Dupre said he wants to introduce the band and say a few things before we get started.”
Tim was finished tuning up his fiddle and slide guitar. “We better get going pretty fast. The natives are getting restless.”
People were crowding the bandstand, yelling for the music to start.
Dupre muscled his way to the bandstand and gave Amy a friendly hug. “Sorry about that, girl. You’re lucky you’ve got a big strong musician to protect you.”
Amy played along but she gave Jesse a look like, “Get this guy off me.”
“Okay, Dupre,” Jesse said. “We’re ready to go on. The microphone is all yours. You want to say a few things to the party before you introduce us?”
“Damn straight.”
The crowd erupted in a mighty cheer as Dupre took the stage with the band. The bandstand was two feet higher than the dance floor. He quieted the crowd, holding out his arms to welcome them, and began speaking with all the panache of a drunken television evangelist.
“Good evening and thank you all for coming out tonight. As most of you know, this is the twentieth anniversary party for the greatest motorcycle club in the country.”
The crowd began cheering and stomping so hard it sounded to Jesse like the floor might cave in.
Dupre continued. “We’ve got some special treats and surprises for you tonight, but before I get into that, could we please have a wild Wheeler shout out for all the beautiful ladies here tonight.”
The Wheelers started throwing girls in the air to celebrate. The women didn’t seem to mind. They liked being part of the show, and they didn’t try to keep their skirts from blowing up on the way down.
“All right, all right, boys. Let’s not hurt anybody out there. We’re pretty crowded already and there’s bound to be more on the way. So let’s be careful.”
The crowd settled somewhat.
“We want to dedicate this evening to our dearly departed founder, Sonny Daniel. As you know, we lost Sonny about this time last year. He is and will be dearly missed. Could we have a moment of silence for Sonny.”
The party went to church in an instant. Not a sound was made for a full twenty seconds.
Dupre brought them back by speaking solemnly at first and then raising his excitement level like a ring announcer at a boxing match. “Sonny never heard this band. But he would’ve loved them. So let me introduce to you, The Wheelers’ favorite band, our personal friends, the band of the future, the hottest band on the bayou, The Divebomberz!”
The band kicked off in perfect time with “Bayou Jubilee,” a song by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band about a Cajun party. The Safari Club swung into high gear. Everybody started dancing. The old warehouse was swinging on its pylon foundation. The wooden floor was bouncing up and down. The rafters seemed to be straining to hold the place together. The band sounded better than ever. All the bodies in the room absorbed rough edges of the sound like water bags, leaving rich, dense tones to permeate the high-ceiling room.
As the first set went on, Jesse had a vague feeling of uneasiness descend upon him. The club was getting so full it felt like it might explode. People were getting crazy high, snorting and smoking and popping whatever they could get their hands on. But that wasn’t it. He’d seen crazy crowds before. Tonight was different. It felt like something bad was going to happen. He’d learned to trust his intuition when paranoia peaked its ugly little face over the counter. It usually meant some kind of police intervention was about to happen.
Halfway through the set, the crowd was in full swing. Three women were putting on an extremely suggestive show in the middle of the dance floor. They ripped off their skirts and blouses to reveal matching, silver thongs and pasties. Each of them had obviously spent some serious time on the stripper’s pole. They moved in unison like naughty cheerleaders. Then, they wrapped their limbs around each other to perform ballet moves that looked like sexual flowers unfolding in bloom.
The crowd gathered around them too tightly. Their dance area became smaller and smaller until they were swallowed up by the mob. Party people kept pouring into the already packed club. Jesse felt his temperature rising. Sweat from his forehead was getting in his eyes. His hands were so wet he had trouble keeping his fingers on the strings of his bass. He was having trouble breathing. There were no windows to open. The large dance floor became a human gridlock. Dancers had no room to make their moves. There was no place for anyone to go. Jesse could see people struggling to even turn around.
The Safari Club had only two exits, the front door and a smaller, single door out the back that didn’t even have an exit sign over it. Despite the growing safety hazard, the crowd continued to cheer as the band played an extra long first set.
At the end of the set, even the band had nowhere to go. The area around the stage was so packed with people there was no way to escape.
Dupre managed to get to the microphone. “All right, everybody. We’ve obviously got way too many people in this building. I’m calling on all Wheelers to begin directing people to the exits. Anyone on my right will leave through the back door. Don’t get in a hurry. Everyone’s going to be fine. Anybody to my left, go out the way you came in. Don’t worry, we’ll get you all back in due time.”
As Dupre spoke, Jesse heard a familiar but impossible noise outside. It was the rumble and roar of motorcycles, lots of them. But how could that be? All the Wheelers were inside.
One of the Wheelers yelled the bad news from the front door. “It’s the Gypsies!”
The sounding of that alarm turned what had been the beginnings of an orderly exit into a stampede for the doors. All at once, Jesse realized he was trapped in the middle of a gang war. He found Amy and grabbed her arm to get her out of harm’s way. There was nowhere to go. Each exit jammed up with so many people that almost no one could get out, not even the big and strong. As a few Wheelers managed to squeeze out the doors, they found the Gypsies had disabled many of their motorcycles by pulling sparkplugs and flattening tires. They were riding circles around the club and kicking up what seemed a storm from the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s.
Until that moment, no one knew how big the Gypsies had become. There were at least seventy-five of them, riding crazy and screaming like wild Indians surrounding a wagon train in an old West movie. Rumors had been spreading about a gang rising up to challenge the Wheelers over drug dealing territories. Nobody thought it would come to violence this quickly. Cocaine had become too profitable in the bayou for any one group to hold a monopoly forever. Nothing beats a shrimp boat and ten thousand miles of unsupervised waterways for smuggling drugs into the mainland.
Jesse watched in horror as the party scene inside the Safari Club turned into an insane mob panic. He unstrapped his bass guitar as people began climbing onstage, desperately looking for a way out of the club.
Dupre had to fight to maintain control of the microphone. “Settle down, people. Everybody’s going to be fine. Let’s keep the exit orderly.”
Shouting and screaming from the crowd drowned
out the powerful sound system amplifying his voice.
Big Ben was one of the first Wheelers to fight his way out the back door. He ran to the parking lot and tackled the first Gypsy biker he could get his hands on. He couldn’t see what he was trying to tackle because of the dust. He dove for the spot right behind the motorcycle headlight and made crunching contact. The two bikers went down kicking and punching each other. The unoccupied Gypsy motorcycle kept rolling toward the club and knocked over a tiki torch filled with fuel. A twenty-foot section of the back porch caught fire instantly. Flames spread up the side of the building. The motorcycle leaked its own gas into the fire and exploded like a bomb.
People trapped inside heard the explosion, smelling smoke as the fire spread to the thatch and quickly set the entire roof ablaze. The temperature elevated quickly in the already overheated building. Horrified guests began pushing and shoving each other …
Outside, the Gypsies were shooting up the sky with handguns and shotguns. The explosion, the gunfire, the smoke and heat created full-blown panic among the trapped patrons. People were piling up at the front door and the back door. They tried to climb over each other in futile attempts to escape.
Dale looked at Tim, the terrible conclusion in his eyes. “Looks like this is it, my brother.”
Tim grabbed Dale by the shoulders to restore confidence. “No, no. No way. We’re going to get out of this somehow.”
Jesse disengaged from the danger as a power inside his head began fighting for his attention. He could see Tim and Dale asking for direction, but he was unable to respond. There was so much screaming in the club that he didn’t hear the Voodoo voice at first. He knew it was talking to him. He could feel it but he couldn’t hear it. His spine was tingling. His vision became blurry. He was falling into a trance. He covered his ears and closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
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