FAREWELL GHOST

by Larry Caldwell

  “So I won’t tell anyone. If we’re friends, though, and if you trust me, why can’t I know?”

  Sounds like you already do, Boyle said, and his cool was gone, replaced by a voice that was anxious and stretched thin. What d’you expect me to say? It wasn’t suicide? It wasn’t an accidental overdose? It wasn’t an accident of any kind? It’s what happens when you go down the wrong path? It’d be more useful if I promised to steer you clear of it.

  “What about your killer?” Clay persisted. “They’ll go unpunished. Why would you let that happen?”

  The only reply came from the bleeping of Crossroads in the corner. And Clay had been living with ghosts long enough to know when the hovering energy that was Rocco Boyle had drifted away. “I’m not letting this go,” he told empty room.

  But it had been smart of Boyle not to tell him. Because it was too big a secret to keep bottled up. It wasn’t suicide. It wasn’t an accidental overdose. It wasn’t an accident of any kind.

  All the times Clay had rolled his eyes over the great rock-n-roll conspiracy, how he’d mocked the desperate fans and bloggers who swore someone had broken in and murdered their hero. He had only been fourteen when Boyle’s suicide hit the news, and it had left him feeling confused—betrayed. Like he had been sold something sweet that turned out rotten in the middle. In recent years, though, Clay had developed a deep and enduring empathy for Rocco Boyle. He railed against the conspiracy theorists and their inability to face reality. Because he had come to understand that with the right combination of sadness, loneliness, and loss, anyone was capable of taking their life. Even someone on top of the world. Even the face in the mirror.

  He had wanted to believe his idol was weak because sometimes Clay felt weak.

  But all along he’d been the one mistaken. The diehards were right to keep questioning the answer. They deserved the truth now more than he did. And even if Clay wouldn’t exactly Tweet what he knew to the world, there was one fan whose heartache he could ease. So he drove. Deeper into the Valley, into Panorama City, and a network of potholed, palm-treed streets.

  You only had to visit the apartment that Savy Marquez shared with her grandmother and brothers once to understand her motivations. Clay had dropped her off a few times, but she had never invited him in, and now he understood why. A pair of vagrants were asleep under the stairs. The apartment doors hid behind metal screens, their windows caged with bars. The pool was dry and full of broken tiles and trash. To work double shifts and come home to this, Clay thought, and the privilege of his father’s wealth made him feel lucky and guilty in equal parts.

  He didn’t know which door was Savy’s, but she’d once mentioned living on the first floor and “Ma qu z” was marked on 121’s mailbox. It was around midnight and Savy wasn’t picking up her phone, so Clay hesitated at the door, worried he’d wake everyone by knocking. Hearing the TV inside, he rapped lightly on the screen. And Mo appeared almost instantly, grinning like Hannibal Lecter at a fat man. “Where art though, Romeo!” he shouted across the courtyard, then laughed and motioned for Clay to hurry in as various hostile replies answered back.

  “Savy’s not here, dude.”

  “She’s not?” After practice, Clay had asked if she wanted to catch a kung-fu double feature at the New Beverly Cinema and she’d declined, saying Mickey had a dental appointment she needed to take him to in the morning. Clay had thought nothing of it.

  “Looks like you got competition, Loverman,” Mo said. Then, seeing that Clay had misplaced his smile, he changed course. “Don’t worry, my sister’s smart. You live in a big house, you love music as much as she does, and you’re obviously gaga for her.”

  Clay spotted Mickey—looking small and vulnerable, passed out on the carpet in front of a Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law cartoon—and tried to make a graceful exit.

  “What’s your hurry?” Mo wanted to know.

  Before Clay could answer, someone shouted from a back bedroom.

  “Cállate,” Clay repeated. “Does that mean shut up?”

  “Not exactly. My abuelita just wants us to keep it down. Come on, hang out, bro. Don’t you want to be around when Savannah gets back? Spoil the goodnight kiss?”

  Again that grin, mischievous as hell, but not without its sympathy. It was an expression that said, Whoever she’s out there with can fuck off. Let’s ruin his night! And Clay pondered the long drive home, the empty night of staring at his bedroom ceiling, alone with Boyle’s secret, wondering where Savy was, why she’d lied, and he decided that yes, he did indeed want to create a French-kiss interruptus between her and her mystery man.

  Mo’s night had been spent in a heated game of solitaire, but he quickly reshuffled the deck for nickel poker. Despite his father owning a card table, Clay knew little about cards, and before long Savy’s brother had proven as much, accruing the vast majority of the nickels and quarters and dollars from Clay’s wallet. “Good thing it’s not strip poker,” Mo laughed. “Your sausage and eggs would be dangling by now.”

  Clay did his best to keep his voice low for the sleeping grandmother, even if Mo didn’t know the meaning of volume control. But she finally emerged from the bedroom, a blinking old woman hardly taller than a child, favoring a limp in her left leg. Her face was rutted with wrinkles, but her eyes were razor-sharp appraising Clay. By the time she was all the way to the kitchen/living room, she seemed to conclude that he was not one of Mo’s junkie friends. She said something quickly in Spanish and Mo translated: “She wants to know if you like carne asada.”

  Clay didn’t want the woman to cook for him, especially when he spied how little there was in the fridge, but Mo shook his head—wrong answer—and Clay told her, “That sounds terrific, thanks so much.”

  “Yes, be extra nice to this one, abuela,” Mo told her. “He’s going to make us rich.”

  They went on playing cards as the smells of seasoned beef and green chilis wafted through the room. Mickey’s nostrils flared and he stirred and rose off the floor and automatically began setting the table like some sort of robot child. “I don’t know if Savy told you,” Mo was telling him, “but I’m getting myself clean.”

  “That’s great,” Clay replied, hoping he sounded convinced.

  “I’ve tried a few times before, right, abuela? But this time’s real.”

  The grandmother responded with something like You better! Which Mo pretended not to hear. When the woman delivered a plate of quesadillas, she stepped back and watched Clay take his first bite. “Mmmm, amazing,” he said, and meant it.

  “You are the new singer in Savannah’s band?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “She has great hope in you. You know this, yes?”

  “She’s the best guitarist I’ve ever played with. I think we have hope in each other.”

  To this point, the grandmother had addressed him with the warmest of smiles, but all at once it was gone, swallowed up in a scowl that accentuated every wrinkle in her face. “Hope is not always so good.” She kissed Mickey on the side of the head and swatted Mo on the side of his, then returned to bed without taking a single bite herself.

  “She’s very protective,” Mickey whispered.

  “Our mother married the wrong man,” Mo said, watching his cards. “He convinced her to dump Savy and me with our grandparents and run off. The bitch came back a few years later with an even bigger scumbag and dropped Mickey off with barely an introduction. I heard she has another kid somewhere now. We’ll meet them sooner or later.” He took up a pack of Camels and began fiddling with the cigarettes inside. “My abuelita lives her life frightened that Savy is going to marry an evil prick and I’m going to OD under some overpass and Mickey here is going to end up peddling for the local crews.”

  “She has a right to be afraid,” Mickey shot back. “All three will probably happen.”

  Clay chewed his quesadilla to prolong his silence. To hear such cynicism from a ten-year-old was depressing—Mickey was wise beyond his years for a
ll the wrong reasons—but to see how casual the brothers were about their eventual downfall was worse.

  “I’m getting clean,” Mo repeated. He threw his cards down and slouched deeper in his seat. “It’s rough, though. Like a boot camp for everything in your body. You can’t imagine ’less you go through it.”

  Clay nodded, understanding that Mo was fishing for a kindred spirit. But like Boyle, Clay thought some secrets should be kept. Even if Savy somehow accepted his past, he didn’t want her viewing him in the same light as Mo. He wanted to be someone she respected. He wanted, specifically, to best whoever she was out with tonight.

  After their meal, Mo stood to wash the dishes, and Mickey took his brother’s place as poker dealer and was soon destroying Clay too. The three of them played cards and watched Adult Swim through the night. At dawn, when Clay finally left, Savy was still not home.

  11

  WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

  “Johnny Ace,” Fiasco told them. “Died playing Russian roulette.”

  “Cliff Burton,” Spider replied from the shotgun seat. “Bus accident in Sweden.”

  “Buddy Holly,” Savy said behind him. “Fell out of the sky.”

  “Ritchie Valens,” Mo countered. “Fell out of the sky at the same time.”

  “Lynyrd Skynyrd,” Clay added. “Fell out of the sky at a different time.”

  “John Denver, Otis Redding,” Spider replied. “Ditto.”

  “Stiv Bators,” Fiasco reminded them, “run down by a taxi in Paris.”

  “The Exploding Hearts,” Savy said reverently. “The entire band, lost in a van accident.” This halted the conversation briefly, while everyone contemplated the fact that Fiasco was racing them along in a van with bad brakes and no side mirrors.

  “John Lennon,” Clay said. “Accident with an obsessed fan in New York.”

  “Kurt Cobain,” Spider added. “Accident with a shotgun in Seattle.”

  “Rocco Boyle,” Mo said. “Accident with a length of rope in Burbank.”

  With some effort, Clay managed to keep a straight face. “Johnny Thunders,” he hurried on, “caught a dose of rigor mortis in New Orleans.”

  “Noooo, no,” Fiasco retorted, “we don’t have nearly enough time for the drug overdoses. Besides, have a little respect for Guillermo back there.”

  “Don’t you hold back for me,” Mo told him. “It’ll do me good now that I’m sober.” The last few weeks, according to Savy, had been heavy, as her brother battled the worst of his withdrawal without the benefit of medical attention—the disappearing, reappearing fever, the desperate scrambles to the bathroom to evacuate one end or the other, the general malaise and foul temper and exhaustion. Clay’s own recovery had been a cakewalk in comparison.

  Mo’s intention to clean his life up seemed a serious one, at least, and Savy had made it her mission to keep him busy and distracted, getting him out in the sunlight when he was able, letting him hang around band practice—and now having him roadie their first gig. “The music industry is full of parasites and monsters,” Mo told them on more than one occasion. “You’ll need me watching your backs.”

  Savy craned her neck to stare at the urban landscape out the windshield. “Do you know where you’re going, Fee? Or are we lost in Watts and you’re not saying?”

  They had exited the 10 Freeway twenty minutes before and were now circling some sort of industrial wasteland south of downtown. “I’m following the directions to the venue turn for turn,” Fiasco assured her.

  Savy lifted her palms. “What venue? A petroleum plant?”

  They found out five minutes later, pulling to the gates of what looked to be a large abandoned factory, where they were met by uniformed security guards. “Invitation only,” one warned.

  “We’re the band,” Fiasco replied.

  “Which one?” the guard asked, going out of his way to be unfriendly.

  “There’s more than one?” Spider asked.

  Fiasco showed the guard a red slip of paper and his attitude shifted. “Follow the road to the right, sir. Park at the loading dock.”

  The gates parted and Fiasco crested a bridge over what was either a concrete moat or a bone-dry tributary of the L.A. River. They passed a parking lot and saw it was full of cars. No junkers either, but Audis and Teslas and Range Rovers—as if Beverly Hills’ hottest club had suddenly relocated to the bowels of South Central. “What the fucking fuck?” Savy said. “I thought you said 20-30 people, tops.”

  What was more, when they reached the loading dock, there were not only two other band vehicles, but a full-on bus, the kind of humming luxury coach that ferried major-label acts from tour stop to tour stop. This isn’t a party with clowns and ice cream, Clay realized with mounting dread. This is a real-deal, slam-bam rock show.

  One of the building’s bay doors rolled up and two long-bearded gentlemen—professional roadies or soldiers in the Hells Angels—emerged, smoking cigars. Music poured out of the factory behind them. Live music. No mistaking the sound of real drums.

  Fiasco sighed, gripping the wheel, even if the engine was off. “Okay, I think it’s been established that I wasn’t given all the information. Allow me a moment.”

  Savy leapt out and shadowed him into the old factory, while Clay, Spider, and Mo kept an eye on the equipment piled in back. “This isn’t like any birthday I’ve ever been to,” Mo remarked. “Looks more like Woodstock in the hood.”

  “And that band playing,” Spider said, “are either doing an amazing cover of a Physical Jerks song or they are The Physical Jerks.”

  He was right. Cameron Moreno, the Jerks’ frontman, had a distinctive tenor, and Clay would have put money on it being him in there. “What the fucking fuck?” he said.

  Suddenly there was a pneumatic hiss as the door of the luxury coach folded open, and Clay did the requisite double take at the man stepping out. The second look was pointless, of course—he would have recognized the face in a crowded room at a masquerade ball. Barrett Roethke, ex-drummer for Rocket Throne, current drummer for Karney and the Demons, nodded as he strolled past.

  We’re in over our heads, Clay realized. Way over it. He spied the keys hanging from BadVan’s ignition, and for a moment, saw himself in the driver’s seat, hauling ass out of there.

  Savy appeared from a side door just as the famous drummer entered the big bay door, missing each other by seconds. “You’re not going to believe who I just saw,” Clay said.

  “Neither will you,” Savy told him.

  The girl’s name was Crissy and she was turning sixteen today. A student of Fiasco’s at Dooley’s Den, she was also apparently the daughter of somebody named “Ricky Somebody,” a fact that simultaneously delighted and frightened the others. “Who’s Ricky Somebody?” Clay dared to ask.

  Fiasco laughed without humor and hung an arm around Clay. “Since you’re new to L.A., I’ll give you a pass on that borderline retarded question.”

  “He’s basically the concert promoter in these parts,” Savy told him. “If any big act wants to come through SoCal they dial up Ricky and ask him, politely. If we had a little heads-up that Crissy was his daughter, it might not’ve been a shock to find a thousand people here.”

  “She never told me,” Fiasco insisted—for, however good he was at playing the asshole, he was even better in the role of the supplicate. “Her parents are divorced. Her mother picks her up from lessons. Their last name is Rudinski, for shit’s sake!”

  For some reason, Mo was grinning ear to ear. “Then, if this Somebody is such a big cheese, why aren’t we in Malibu or the Chateau Marmont or something?”

  “I couldn’t find Crissy in there, but I asked one of the organizers. I guess she’s friends with a record producer’s daughter, who had her party in an empty warehouse with a house DJ.” Fiasco shrugged. “Remember when your friend had their party at a bowling alley, then you wanted yours there too? Guess it’s that way with filthy-rich kids too.”

  “Only instead of a DJ,” Savy cut in, “she
had her father hire a bunch of established bands. And us.”

  There was a pause while everyone tried to fathom that. When Clay next spoke, he was surprised to hear how calm he sounded. “Who else is here tonight?”

  Their bassist offered a bashful smirk. “The Physical Jerks obviously. We’re going on after them. Then Karney and the Demons follow us. And Social Distortion is closing.”

  Spider said, “You booked our first gig opening for Davis Karney?”

  “Crissy’s always sort of had a crush on me,” Fiasco confessed. “She told me she wanted to ‘help’ my band by hiring us to play her party. I didn’t think it would literally help us.”

  After some minutes of cursing Fiasco, and slapping Fiasco, and punching him, and headlocking him, and casting various aspersions upon the wretched sperm that had made Fiasco, they dared to go inside. The building had been a cat-food factory once upon a time, the stage thrust against the far wall and the audience spread across the large, open floor where processing machines and conveyor belts had once performed their industrial duties for finicky felines everywhere. Beyond that, farthest from the stage, were a few dozen tables set up for the older folks (presumably Mr. Somebody and his cronies), complete with balloons, tablecloths, and a five-tier birthday cake. The pungent tang of cannabis was so heavy on the air you could feel it on your eyeballs, and horndogs of indeterminable age seemed to be making out in every dim corner. And I thought I had birthdays that were over the top, Clay thought.

  As the hired talent, they were given access to a catwalk that ran thirty feet over the main floor, and they made their way toward an enclosed office with soap-scrubbed windows on the far end. Halfway there, Clay stopped to contemplate the raucous crowd below. Hardly a teenage girl to be found among them. More a violent cross-section of all ages and countercultures. Their only common ground seemed to be a mad desire to slam into each other—to the rhythm of the music or not. And there was a birthday clown after all, a leering grease-painted spastic hopping madly along on a pogo stick, cursing and throwing elbows at the punks trying to trip him.