“Your rooms will be made up daily,” Pamela went on gaily. “Anything you need cleaned or laundered please leave by the door, and I’ll have it taken care of. I do hope you’ll be happy here, Hoagy.”
“I think I can manage for the next twenty or thirty years.”
There was a Macallan single malt on the sideboard that was almost as old as I am. It was certainly a lot smoother. As I sampled it I unpacked the Fair Isle sweater vest I’d had knitted for Lulu when she had bronchitis one winter. I didn’t want her developing breathing problems again. She snores when she has them. I know this because she likes to sleep on my head. She wriggled gratefully into it. I put her bowls down in the bathroom. Also the cases of the only canned food she’ll eat—Nine Lives mackerel for cats and very strange dogs. Then I hung up my clothes and decided to explore.
There wasn’t much else in the west wing besides closed doors. The east wing was closed off entirely. The stairs up to the third floor and the dome terminated at a small landing, where there was a set of heavy double doors. Closed. Here sat another guard, reading a copy of USA Today. He looked up at me. He didn’t smile.
“Mr. Scarr’s room?” I asked, glancing at the doors.
“And recording studio. And kitchen. The works. He’s got it all over Hef. You’ll be Hoag.”
I nodded.
“He’s asleep now. Or doesn’t want to be bothered. Later.”
Downstairs I found a library, a formal dining room, a paneled billiards room and a grand ballroom that dwarfed the living room. A Knicks game could go unnoticed in there. Lulu was the one who found the kitchen, where Pamela was rinsing berries in the sink and humming. It was a modern kitchen, and not small. There were three refrigerators and a commercial-size hooded range.
“Have you eaten?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then pour yourself some coffee and sit,” she commanded, indicating a cluttered country pine table. “He’ll not be stirring for hours and hours. He only lives by night, you see.”
“Like Count Dracula?”
“You’ve seen him then?”
“We’ve never met.”
But I knew him. Just about everyone in America had since 1964, when he first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, his scowling, pockmarked face thrust brazenly forward at the camera, nostrils flared with impudence, voice a raspy primal scream. That night he sang Us’s hit version of the Little Richard song, “Great Gosh Almighty.” There would be so many more hits through the years—“Come On Over, Baby,” “More for Me,” “This Must Be Love,” “New Age,” “Miss Eloise,” “We’re Double Trouble,” “For Johnny Baughan.” Sure I knew him. He was T. S., full of talent and anger and himself. Strutting. Preening. Pointing at the audience. Condemning it. Alongside him there on the Sullivan stage stood Rory Law, his blond hair an uncombed mop, his snaggled teeth working on his lower lip as he fired off the brutal guitar chops that gave Us its distinctive sound. T. S. and Rory. Boyhood friends. Co-founders of Us. Popularly known as Double Trouble. Behind them, Puppy Johnson attacked the drums, sweating, grinning. Puppy Johnson, the man who, by way of Monroe, Louisiana, became Britain’s first black rock star. The man who the British press labeled “the wild man of Borneo” for his drumming style and his lifestyle. Thumping away next to him on bass was Derek Gregg, the tall handsome one with the choirboy face and the angelic voice.
They were nasty and rude. They were rebels. Together, the four of them rode the second wave that washed ashore in America after the Beatles hit. That was the one that brought the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Animals. Us would last as long as anyone. They would outlast rhythm and blues, rockabilly, acid rock, reggae, heavy metal and disco. Their sound was their own, and no one did anything better. But that wasn’t the only reason they got as much attention as they did. They were the bad boys. They took too many drugs, threw too many punches, used up too many women. They fought with the world and with each other. Always, it seemed, there was feuding and controversy. Violence. Scandal. Death. Only a year after that first Sullivan appearance Puppy Johnson was jailed in Little Rock, Arkansas for the statutory rape of a fifteen-year-old white girl. The group was banished from America. Two years later Puppy was dead from a drug overdose. The band went on. Triumphed. Broke up. Reformed. Triumphed again until that ghastly night in Atlanta’s Omni auditorium, summer of ’76, when Rory Law was gunned down on stage by a former disciple of Charles Manson. T. S. went on alone from there. Tried performing solo after the release of his album Shadow Man. But when someone threw a lit firecracker up on stage one night, and it exploded next to him, he walked off and never came back. He bought Gadpole and went into seclusion. After John Lennon’s assassination he hired a full-time force of security guards to protect him. He seldom came out now. In fact, he had not been seen in public in over ten years.
Sure I knew him. Long ago, Tris Scarr had been my idol—the one after Mantle and before Mailer. Tris Scarr had provided the soundtrack for my coming of age.
Only, I didn’t know him. No one did. He was, as Jay Weintraub had said, a complex man, a man of different faces, of contradictions, of anger. A man whose personal turmoil was rock ’n’ roll. He had gleefully cultivated high-class friends and sophisticated tastes, yet at the same time blasted those who had money and privilege. He had partied and drugged and wrecked hotel rooms, yet was considered a sensitive poet and a serious intellectual. His stormy love life had consumed some of the most famous beauties of the past three decades, most notably Tulip, the London supermodel—The Mod Bod—whom he eventually married. He was T. S. He had seen it all and done it all—to himself and to others. He was a man who had stories to tell, and he’d agreed to tell them. The feuds. The women. The drugs. It all.
“Bacon and eggs do, Mr. Hoag?” asked Pamela.
“Always have. And it’s Hoagy. Please.”
“As in Carmichael?”
“As in the cheese steak.”
She frowned. “I see.” She went into the pantry and returned with eggs and a slab of bacon. “How do you like your eggs, Hoagy?”
“The same way I like everything else,” I replied, stirring my coffee. “Soft-boiled.”
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS MY FAULT we got lost in the maze.
Lulu hadn’t wanted to go in there. She was having too much fun barking at the herd of deer nibbling on the grass at the edge of the woods. She even made a few of them bound off in terror. It was the happiest I’d seen her since she treed a baby squirrel in Riverside Park. But I insisted, and I’m bigger. Grudgingly, she waddled along next to me through the carefully pruned geometric corridors of ten-foot-high box hedges. First right, then left. Then left, then right. I had never been in a maze before. I liked it in there, and the notion we wouldn’t be able to find our way out never occurred to me—I assumed Lulu would know how to, being a dog. I assumed wrong. To give her credit, she tried. But all she found was one dead end after another. Ultimately, all paths led to the gazebo in the maze’s center, where there was a cast iron table and chairs and a metal strongbox. On the box was printed the words OPEN ME. I did. Inside it was a flare gun and a note: FIRE ME. Twenty minutes later the chauffeur arrived.
“I’m quite embarrassed,” I said, apologetically.
“Don’t be, sir. Happens to all of our guests.”
“Even when they have a dog with them?”
“That is a new one, actually”
The chauffeur cheated. He had a map. We came out on the other side, where T. S.’s car collection was stored in converted stables. He liked Alfas. He owned two—a ’31 1750 Zagato Grand Sport and a ’59 Giulietta Sprint Coupe Racer. He liked Ferraris. He had a mouthwatering red ’59 Pininfarina and a ’67 275 GTB four-cam. He liked nice cars, period. There was a ’52 Aston Martin Lagonda cabriolet, a ’55 Mercedes 300SL gullwing, a ’39 Packard Dutch Darrin convertible, a ’64 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk, a ’72 Maserati Ghibli spyder, a ’52 Bentley R-Type Continental, a ’56 T-Bird, a ’57 Corvette. There were others. He even had a Delo
rean.
“Nice collection,” I observed to the chauffeur, who had gone back to rubbing the Silver Cloud with a chamois. “If you like this sort of thing.”
“Mr. Scarr does, sir,” he replied pleasantly. “He does indeed.”
I stuck out my hand. “It’s Hoagy.
His hand was meaty and strong. “Jack, sir. Pleased to meet you.”
“Been with him long?”
“A number of years. Yessir. Relatively quiet, this. Not like before. The girls used to paint lipstick kisses all over his car. Throw themselves in its path in the hope of meeting him. Plenty of goings on.”
“You must have quite a few stories. I’d like to hear them sometime for his book.”
“I’m only a chauffeur, sir. You flatter me.”
“It won’t hurt a bit—scout’s honor.”
He shrugged his heavy shoulders noncommittally. And said, “May I be so bold as to offer you a suggestion, sir?”
“Fire away.”
He stepped toward me until his face was very close to mine. His breath smelled of beer and pickled onions and either very strong cheese or very old socks. “Don’t look into the past.”
“That’s my job—looking into the past.”
“Then I wouldn’t look too closely”
There was a hint of menace in his voice now. At my heels, Lulu growled softly.
“Any particular reason?” I asked.
“I’ll put it this way. You look like a bright young gent …”
“Not so young.”
“It wouldn’t be bright.”
A threat, no question.
I nodded. “Duly noted. Up this road get me back?”
“Yessir.”
“By the way—how does the Delorean run?”
“It doesn’t.”
It was dusk by the time we reached the house. After I fed Lulu I phoned the Haymarket. Merilee had arrived, but was presently in rehearsal. I left word where she could reach me. Then I popped open a bottle of lager and watched part eight of a sixteen-part series on BBC 1 called Giant Worms of the Sea. Whoever thinks British television has it all over American TV has never actually watched any. Then Pamela phoned to say dinner would be served in fifteen minutes. I asked if we were dressing. We were not.
The only light in the dining room came from the silver candelabra at the center of the huge dining table. Only one place was set. Mine. There was grilled rabbit and silver serving dishes of fried potatoes and buttered brussels sprouts waiting for me. A bucket held a chilled Sancerre. I dived in. It was delicious. It was also a tiny bit creepy eating there alone in the cold, dark dining hall, surrounded by more portraits of more dead English people, the only sound that of my teeth tearing into the bunny wabbit. I knew there had to be cooks and maids around, but Pamela administered them so discreetly they were never in evidence. I was grateful when she finally came in to ask if everything was all right.
“Excellent,” I assured her. “Most flavorful rabbit I’ve ever tasted.”
“You’ve Jack to thank for its freshness. He’s our gamekeeper. It’s his hobby—pheasant, quail, hare. A fine shot, he is. Care for dessert?”
“No, thanks.”
“Coffee then?”
“If it’s no bother,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I ate in the kitchen?”
That tickled her. She laughed. “Formality makes you Americans so uncomfortable. Yes, yes, of course. You may eat where you wish. Was the time all right?”
“When do you eat?”
She reddened slightly in the flickering candlelight, heightening her lovely complexion. “Seven.”
“Seven it is then.”
She started back to the kitchen for my coffee, stopped. “I intended to ask you—have you a favorite food?”
“Only licorice ice cream.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
The guard at the royal bedchamber door was a different one, but he didn’t smile at me either. Just nodded and knocked. A voice answered from inside. I went in.
“Hiya, Hogarth,” Tris Scarr said dully, as he shuffled slowly toward me in backless slippers, his posture stooped. “Come in. I was just eating m’breakfast.”
Someone once described Tris Scarr as the only man alive who could look angry by the mere physical act of breathing. It was his nostrils—the way they flared. But he didn’t look angry now. He looked weary and weak and sallow. His eyes were heavy-lidded and pouched, his pitted, unshaven face gaunt. He wore a loosely belted green paisley dressing gown. Below it, his bare legs were skinny and pale. Blue veins protruded from the tops of his feet above his slippers. He was smaller than I expected he’d be—five feet eight tops, and he couldn’t have weighed more than 130. His hairless chest was positively concave. He still wore his black hair long and scraggly, only now it was streaked with gray. I hadn’t, I realized, seen a photograph of him in several years—there hadn’t been any photographs since he’d moved to Gadpole. In some ways, he still looked like that same rude, naughty boy of the swingin’ sixties. In other ways he looked much older than forty-five. It was as if his body was in the process of skipping middle age entirely.
He stuck out his hand. It was delicate and unsteady, the fingers yellowed from chain-smoking unfiltered Gauloises. I shook it. He had less grip than my grandmother, who is 90.
The room was immense and round and several stories high, what with the glass dome over it. In the middle was a sunken island of low sofas arranged around a big square coffee table crowded with sketch pads, note pads, books, packages of Gauloises, ashtrays, bottles of pills, more bottles of pills, a wine bucket with a half-empty bottle of sauterne in it, and a half-eaten jar of baby food that had a spoon stuck in it. Strained liver. Goes great with sauterne. Especially for breakfast. There was a bedroom through a half-open door, and a small, modern kitchen. His soundproofed recording studio was on the other side of a glass partition. In there was an old upright piano, an organ, guitars, and a full drum kit. Beyond it was a booth with tape machines in it.
There were lamps, and they were on, but silk scarves were draped over the shades. No music was playing. T. S. never listened to music at any time during our collaboration. The only sound came from the grandfather clock next to the door.
I sat down in one of the sofas. He coughed—a phlegmy cough—lit a cigarette with a disposable lighter, poured himself some sauterne and didn’t offer me any. Then he sat down across the table from me and stared at me. And kept staring at me. He wasn’t what you’d call warm. He wasn’t what you’d call there.
Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “You don’t use a tape recorder.”
“I will. I thought we’d want to get acquainted first.”
He absently flicked the ash from his cigarette. It landed next to him on the sofa. There were, I noticed, dozens of burn marks there in the upholstery. “Acquainted?”
“Acquainted.”
“If you wish.” He yawned and sipped his wine. “Have you questions then?”
I glanced over at his studio. “I didn’t know you were still recording.”
He shrugged. “Personal things. Different things.”
“Will you be releasing any of it?”
“Through with all of that. Don’t care if people hear it.”
“You sound like J. D. Salinger.”
He brightened, though not a lot. “The American writer. Yes. I’ve read he’s written dozens of books but he won’t let anyone read them until he dies. I admire that.”
“Why?”
“Because people are bloody fools.”
I didn’t fight him on that one. “You’re through performing, too?”
Another cigarette ash landed on the sofa. This one began to smolder. “Rockers don’t grow up. We just grow old, y’know? I’ve had it with that. No more pretending I’m still T. S. I want to write, paint, be m’self. Rock ’n’ roll music comes from being young, from being angry.” He looked around at his dome. “Not from this.�
��
“What do you want from this book? Understanding? Appreciation? Respect?”
“Bugger that. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me anymore. I’m looking to close the door and be done with it. Walk off into the sunset like John Fucking Wayne.”
“He once called you a sick limey fairy.”
“Then I must have been doing something right, wasn’t I? I wasn’t there to give ’em a cup of tea and tuck ’em into bed, mate. I was there to shake ’em up. Turn up the heat. Rock ’n’ roll, it’s their last chance, isn’t it?”
“Whose?”
“The teenies, before they go off to be everything they don’t want to be. Just like their mums and dads before ’em.”
“Is that your philosophy of rock music?”
“There is no philosophy. Just the music. That’s all there is. See, I …” He trailed off.
“Go on,” I urged him. “Please.”
“I didn’t want … I don’t want to end up like Elvis.”
“Fat and dead?”
“Before that.”
“Fat and semi-alive?”
“I met him once. When we played at Las Vegas in … perhaps it was the ’69 tour. Or was it ’71? Can’t remember. A blur, it is. We went to see his midnight show at one of those hotel-casinos. It was …” He shuddered, horrified by the memory. “Pathetic. There he was with his fat face, bursting out of his white sequined trousers. Couldn’t sing for shit. But his fans, they were screaming for him like he was still the king and they were still hot and nasty little teenies. They weren’t, you see. They were old and fat themselves. Housewives. Lorry drivers in green leisure suits.” He shuddered again. “Afterward, we met him in his suite.”
“How was he?”
“Zonked. Totally zonked. Didn’t know who we were. Didn’t know who he was. It shook me. I went back to my room and wrote a song about it.”
“Shoot the Old Hound Dog. I remember it.”
“Elvis, he was my idol.”
The cigarette ash continued to smolder on the sofa next to him.
“How do you see yourself now?”
“See myself?”
“Are you a hero? A victim? A survivor?”
The Man Who Lived by Night Page 2