The Man Who Lived by Night

by David Handler

  Hoag: And Tris?

  Gregg: Mr. Cigar never thought of women as people. Just things to fuck and forget.

  Hoag: I very much want to understand him, but he’s eluding me so far.

  Gregg: He’s the Shadow Man. You can’t get inside of him. No one can. If you remember one thing you’ll understand him as well as it’s possible to: He was a bloke who was willing to do whatever it took to become a rock ’n’ roll star. And that’s a lot. And not all of it is pleasant. Rory, all he wanted out of life was to play his music and party. He cared nothing for the money or the business. He had his faults, of course. He was defiant, irresponsible, childish. But he was right there. Not Tris. He held back. He watched, calculated. Tris could chat up people who might do him good. He could sell himself. Rory couldn’t. Tristam Scarr is an actor. He always has been an actor. I remember that first time he got up and sang at the Ealing Club for Alexis and Cyril—

  Hoag: He was drunk. He told me about it.

  Gregg: He was stone-cold sober. He pretended he was drunk so they would think he was some wild headstrong lad crazy with love for the music. He’s shrewd. Always seems to know what the right move is, and never has trouble making it. He’s not a nice man. It doesn’t matter to him how he gets something. Just that he gets it. As we got more successful, he started asking this and that about the business end. Too late though. We had already been royally fucked over by Marco, who financed his other businesses with our profits and then told us we were broke. We had to pay Marco off with the rights to all of our early songs in order to get clear of our management agreement with him. He robbed us. They all robbed us … You’ve a job, Mr. Hoag. The only man who may have understood Mr. Cigar is dead. I doubt any woman knew him at all, except possibly for Tulip. I remember when they started going around together. She was the supermodel—beautiful, glamorous, socially connected. You couldn’t pick up a mag without seeing her face on it. And she was still around after a few weeks, which was unheard of for Tris. When I asked him about her he said, “I don’t feel like throwin’ her out in the mornin’.” That was all he had to say about the woman he married. Deep down, you see, the only person he’s ever really loved is himself. I’ll never forget the first time we played “I’m Walkin’,” the Fats Domino song, at Crawdaddy. Mr. Cigar, he starts acting it out up there on stage—that was the night he invented The Strut, you see—and the girls, they start screaming over it, loving it. Excited him so much he got a raging hard-on right there on stage. He told me afterward he thought he was going to fire away right in his bleeding trousers … Rory, he lived for today. Tris, he lived for tomorrow. And now it is tomorrow, and there he is, all alone in the tower of his castle. Hasn’t a mate in the world, y’know. Not one. Not that I’m being critical—I can afford to do anything I want, thanks to him. Did I mention I’m opening a conceptual art gallery next month at Beauchamp Place? I’ll be featuring the work of Jeffrey, who you’ve just met. He’s so very talented … I always admired Mr. Cigar, to be honest. I mean, it takes a terrific pair of balls to simply not care if everyone you know thinks you’re an absolute shit. Like the business about dropping Jackie. When Marco approached us about taking Puppy into the group, Tris was the one who said yes. Didn’t hesitate. He had to talk Rory into it. Had to talk Rory into pretending we were from the ’Pool, as well.

  Hoag: How did you meet up with Marco?

  Gregg: The Rough Boys basically broke up as a group after Mad Dog returned to America. Nothing formal. We just stopped playing together. Double Trouble went back to their vomitous little room and to hanging about the clubs. They jammed for a bit at Club 51with Jeff Beck, only Jeff and Tris didn’t get along. Then Tris called me at the men’s shop one day and asked me to meet him and Rory at Crawdaddy that night and to say nothing to Jackie about it. They were there with two men. One was about forty, and shaped more like a teapot than any person I’ve ever met. Marco Bartucci was also the first person I’d seen wearing muttonchop sideburns—still has them, I think. He was sweating profusely. Kept wiping his face and neck with a Western-style bandana.

  Hoag: What was his background?

  Gregg: He was raised in Glasgow of an Italian family. Said he’d worked for Larry Parnes in the fifties. Parnes was the promoter who brought along Tommy Steele and Johnny Gentle and Dickie Pride. I think Marco was some form of errand boy for him, though he claimed to have signed the Beatles for their very first road gig, opening for Johnny Gentle—before they were famous, of course. Lately, he’d been scouting talent in America, which is another way of saying he was waiting for something, or someone, to come along.

  Hoag: And the man he was with?

  Gregg: The other man was an American black in his early twenties. He had on a dark green suit of some shiny material, ruffled shirt and sunglasses, even though we were indoors and it was night. He wore grease in his hair to keep it straight. Chewed gum and kept tapping his fingers on the table. He was very wound up. Marco introduced him as Mad Dog Johnson’s nephew, Albert, who went by the nickname Puppy and who played the drums. I said, “Pleased to meet you.” He said, “Likewise.” He spoke very softly, almost in a whisper. Marco had brought him over from America with the idea of making him into a rock ’n’ roll star. See, there hadn’t been a black rock star yet in Britain. Marco saw this as an opportunity.

  Hoag: Smart.

  Gregg: You’ll never hear me call Marco stupid. What he had in mind was to put Puppy together with a young British R & B group. We came to mind because we’d toured with Mad Dog. I turned to Mr. Cigar and said, “What about Jackie?” And he replied, “Jackie’s out.” (pause) I was the one who told him. He wished us luck.

  Hoag: Was Jackie upset?

  Gregg: Why should he have been? He had no inkling of what was about to happen. Neither did I. Christ, I’ll never forget the first time I heard Puppy play. A positively thrilling moment, it was. Puppy, he took the drums into an entirely new dimension. Made them into a lead instrument almost. Nobody played drums like Puppy did.

  Hoag: Tris believes he was murdered.

  Gregg: (laughs) That old business? He never gives up. It was foretold, or so he believes. He also happens to believe in flying saucers, gypsy curses, and voodoo.

  Hoag: Foretold?

  Gregg: The night before Puppy died some freaky witch who Rory used to drop acid with warned us that great tragedy was about to strike us. She saw it in her tarot cards or some such shit. Mr. Cigar, he took her warning seriously. Asked her if it was going to be some kind of accident—like getting bashed by a lorry—and she said no, it would be no accident. She said there was great hostility in the air. Christ, she was just some cow who painted her fingernails black. I can’t believe he’s still going on about that.

  Hoag: You don’t think Puppy was murdered.

  Gregg: I know he wasn’t. I was there. He took too much speed and drank too much champagne. That’s what happened. Nothing more to it than that. Don’t listen to Mr. Cigar.

  Hoag: Jack agrees with him.

  Gregg: Jack is loyal. And dim.

  Hoag: He believes Puppy was done in by someone in the band, or close to it.

  Gregg: That is just utterly absurd. Believe me, Mr. Hoag, Puppy’s death was an accident. None of us killed him. It’s absurd to even consider the idea. Puppy was our mate. Furthermore, he was our ace. He put money in our pockets. Why on earth would any of us have wanted him dead?

  (end tape)

  (Tape #1 with Marco Bartucci recorded in his office at Jumbo’s Disco Nov. 26. Is casually dressed—wears an inferiority complex in place of a necktie. Does look like a human teapot, with muttonchops. Is uneasy, hostile.)

  Bartucci: What does T. S. want of me? Hoag: Information. To fill out his recollections.

  Bartucci: I see. So now he’s asking me to help him sell books. Why should I? What have I to gain from it? Not that I’m a self-centered person.

  Hoag: No, of course not. I think your interests will be served by talking to me. It’s an opportunity for you to tell your
side.

  Bartucci: You want my side? Very well, here it is: whatever T. S. says about business I deny. Lies. All lies.

  Hoag: Are you warm?

  Bartucci: No, why?

  Hoag: You’re perspiring.

  Bartucci: I always do. Means nothing.

  Hoag: I understand you and the band came to a rather ugly parting over money.

  Bartucci: I gave those boys everything, and for that, this terrible, unjustified smear continues to follow me about. As an example, the gentleman I’ve started this club with, my backers, they’re Middle Eastern gentlemen, and they know very little about the past and Tris Scarr’s groundless accusations. Now they’re going to read about me and wonder.

  Hoag: That shouldn’t present a problem to you. The club seems to be doing quite well.

  Bartucci: Thank you. I try.

  Hoag: Unless …

  Bartucci: Unless what?

  Hoag: Unless you’re stealing from them, too.

  Bartucci: (silence) I’m afraid I don’t like you, Mr. Hoag.

  Hoag: It’s a problem I run into fairly often.

  Bartucci: T. S. hasn’t changed. He’s still the same rude, nasty boy who slurped his food and called anyone a cunt if they looked at him sideways. I can’t stop him from saying what he wants. I never could tell him anything. He had total contempt for me. All rock musicians have contempt for their managers. They can’t stand people who are responsible, but at the same time they expect someone to be responsible for them. And when things don’t go exactly as promised, they scream bloody murder. A misunderstanding—that’s all we had. I didn’t steal from them—I invested. I made some mistakes. I’ll admit to that. But if it hadn’t been for me he’d still be hanging around Crawdaddy, playing for beer and smokes money. I made Us. He’ll deny that, but it’s a fact. They were a blues band going nowhere. Nobody wanted them. They needed direction. I gave it to them.

  Hoag: Can you tell me about Puppy?

  Bartucci: The boy never knew his real father, who was in jail for life. Mad Dog lived with the mother off and on, and helped to raise him. So he took Mad Dog’s family name, and called him his uncle. He was a big, strong, muscular boy. He’d been a paratrooper in the army. Loved jumping out of airplanes. I remember once when he was very stoned in Stockholm he jumped out of a third-floor hotel window for fun. Broke both of his ankles. “The rush, man,” he said, as we waited for the ambulance to arrive. “The rush.” After the army, he got work on what they called the chitlin circuit, drumming for Little Richard, Ike Turner, the Isley Brothers. The first time I saw him he was playing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem behind some absolutely nothing soul singers. He was an unusually athletic drummer. Put on a show as well. He’d twirl a drumstick up in the air while he played, as if it were a baton. Or he’d spin 360 degrees around on his stool without missing a beat. Or he’d flick his tongue at the girls. I was taken by him. I went backstage and introduced myself. He was an up, good-humored boy. He mentioned that his Uncle Mad Dog was over here in Britain at the time being a famous American Negro blues artist. He was thinking about coming over here himself, just to see what it was like. I told him I was moving back soon, and that if he ever did come to look me up. And he did. He was finding it very strange being here. There were Jamaicans and Bahamians here at that time, but there were very few American blacks like Puppy. It was because of Puppy that Hendrix came over, you know. The two of them had played together in Harlem when they were very young. Puppy paved the way for Jimi, and for others. He was a revolutionary—not that he thought of himself that way. God no.

  Hoag: What did you tell him when he showed up?

  Bartucci: That I’d do what I could. Nothing came to me until I happened to bump into T. S. and Rory one evening soon after that at Crawdaddy. I knew them casually, to say hello.

  Hoag: What were they like?

  Bartucci: Talented. Cocky. Hungry. I happened to mention I knew someone they’d enjoy meeting, since they’d worked with Mad Dog. So the four of us got together for drinks, and the boys went crazy over him. He was, after all, their own age, yet he’d actually played with people like Little Richard, who was one of T. S.’s idols. They wanted to hear all about his experiences, all about Chicago and Memphis. Puppy was flattered. Also a bit overwhelmed. In America, white people knew very little then about blues performers like Son House and Leadbelly. The boys knew all of their songs. They talked to Puppy for hours. And then they heard him play.

  Hoag: They were impressed.

  Bartucci: Ginger Baker and Keith Moon were the very best of the young drummers around town then, Mr. Hoag. Puppy was so much better than them there was simply no comparison. T. S. and Rory watched him play, I swear, with their jaws down to here. They were dying to play with him, of course. I suggested that if they were serious that they think young and fresh as opposed to bluesy. And think about Liverpool. The ’Pool was the place then. The Mersey sound was the sound. So they got together with Derek and the four of them started playing together. And they cooked, right off. Toe-tapping music. Can’t-sit-still music. It was Puppy. He made the difference. When they had it together I took them to Liverpool with a new name. We talked about promoting Puppy as Mad Dog’s nephew, but the boys had already been down that blues road and failed at it, so we decided not to mention Mad Dog. When EMI signed them up, their people made out Puppy was the son of a Yank seaman who settled in the ’Pool after the war. They wanted the other boys to be from there as well, and to have scouse accents. Rory hated that part so much he elected to be the silent one.

  Hoag: I always wondered why he let Tristam do all of the talking. I’m interested in your thoughts on Puppy’s death.

  Bartucci: What about it?

  Hoag: Do you think he was murdered?

  Bartucci: (silence) I never did believe his death was an accident.

  Hoag: You didn’t?

  Bartucci: Because of Puppy’s drug bust, Us was banned from appearing in America, where the major money was and still is. Without tour support, their record sales there slumped considerably. The ban wounded Puppy deeply. He offered to quit the group, let the others go on without him. They wouldn’t hear of it, of course. They were fiercely loyal. Puppy was very, very down those last few weeks. That wasn’t like him—ordinarily he was Mr. Up, Mr. Good Times. The parties, the drugs, the girls—they were always his doing. He was the instigator. That was why Tulip never cared for him. She thought he was a bad influence on T. S., who she was trying to turn into a gent. Puppy, he was a man of uncontrollable appetites, of major highs—and major lows. When a man like that gets down … It was no accident, his death. Puppy took his own life. Suicide. That’s what I’ve always believed. Sad, really. Such a talent. So young.

  (end tape)

  CHAPTER SIX

  THAT WAS THE DAY my new suit was ready at Strickland’s, so I stopped off after I finished with Marco and tried it on. It seemed to fit. So did Marco’s explanation of Puppy’s death.

  Suicide. It made a lot of sense to me in this case. It certainly made more sense than Tris and Jack’s murder plot. Like Derek had said: Why on earth would any of them have wanted Puppy dead? No reason, at least none that was apparent.

  A ghost is brought in partly to keep a celebrity from making a consummate asshole out of himself. To that end, I decided I’d play down the murder theory in Tris’s memoir—allude to it but not dwell on it. If I did, Tris would come off as paranoid and drugged-out. The critics would go after him. The book clubs would steer clear of him. Besides, there was plenty else for us to concentrate on, like Derek’s gayness and his love for Rory. Definite bombshells. There would, I hoped, be more.

  Illusion. No one was who they’d seemed to be. That was the Us story. What was Tris Scarr’s story? I didn’t know that yet. He was still peeling away like an onion—layer by layer, and with great difficulty. I was also getting the sinking feeling he was holding out on me, not letting me in on something about himself that was important. I had no idea what it was, or why I had this feeling
.

  He was the Shadow Man. What glimpses I’d gotten of him outside of his chamber had been few, and creepy. They were always at night, when he prowled the estate like a burnt-out lost soul. Once, I woke up to see him outside my window in the floodlit field behind the house, dressed in soccer shorts and cleats, intently kicking a soccer ball to an invisible goalie. Another night I saw—and heard—him careening through the maze like a human pinball on a Norton Commando 750cc motorcycle, bounding off hedges, splattering gravel. And once, while I was reading late at night by my sitting room fire, I heard the hall doorknob turn, then stop. When I went out in the hall, there was no one there. Only the smell of Gauloises.

  He was the Shadow Man. How did the song go? “Don’t come over to my side/You won’t like what you see.” What had he seen? I had to know. It was time to start beating on him. And to talk to Tulip. If only she would return my goddamned calls.

  Lulu and I strolled along Savile Row, both of us blinking from the glare. It was the very first sunny afternoon since we’d arrived, and the city seemed completely different. Shiny. Bright. The air was fresh and tangy. The Christmas shoppers were smiling. It wasn’t my London.

  I got a haircut at Truefitt’s in Bond Street from a tall, vaguely Indian-looking guy named Christopher. From there we headed over to the Saville Club on Brook Street. It’s a stylishly run-down establishment that has a reciprocal arrangement with the Coffee House, where I sometimes go for lunch in New York. I had a lager and some ham sandwiches at the bar. Lulu had kippers. Then we started back to where we’d left the car. I was still watching for a tail—had been all day as I went from interview to interview. I was not being followed. I was quite sure of it.

  It was when we were passing a corner newsstand that I spotted Merilee’s picture—a publicity still from her show—and the screaming afternoon tabloid headline: “MERILEE SHE ROLLS ALONG!” I bought the paper and stood there and read it: