“I think Karney was here… that night.”
“The night of the suicide?”
“The night of the murder.”
Clay waited—for Savy to jump up from the desk chair, or fall backward screaming.
All she did was curl her finger through a lock of hair.
“You’re not surprised?”
“I’ve always felt it in my gut. With Kurt Cobain, you could go back and see the warning signs. It was in his lyrics, his behavior. He talked about suicide and dying all the time. But Rocco was writing his best music, off drugs, in a good place.”
“People have facades. I assumed Boyle was different behind closed doors.”
“But knowing his ghost is still behind that door—that’s what doesn’t add up.” Savy’s finger twisted and twisted. “After I saw Rocco the first time through your skylight, I had my suspicions. If you kill yourself, you want to be done with this world. You’re not going to wander the halls of the place you were miserable in, right? It’s only spirits who want to stick around that have the force and motivation to. Like people who go before their time. Or victims... of something.”
“Not long ago, Deidre’s ghost was here too,” Clay confessed. “In the main house. In this room. She was the one who gave me the stitches. And she kept threatening me, thinking I was with someone who’d hurt her and Rocco. Someone named Rooster. It got so bad Rocco finally showed me how to lay her to rest—in that bottle I buried at the house ruins. I trapped her inside.”
“And Rocco told you”—Savy sounded out of breath—“Davis Karney is his killer?”
“He only said Davis was there. He told me he’s trying to protect us by keeping us in the dark. He doesn’t want us involved.”
Savy stared back at Clay, her eyes hardening. “But we’re going to get involved. You know that, right?”
“Where would we even start? And what would we do—show up at Karney’s door and ask where he was the night of April 24th, six years ago?”
To Clay’s dismay, Savy nodded. “We’ll approach him, mention you live at the Boyle House. Invite him over to jam. Maybe he’ll be tempted to return to the scene and Rocco can deal with him directly, like Deidre wanted to deal with him. Or maybe Karney’ll refuse, but we’ll see the truth in his eyes. Then we can tip a few reporters. This town is full of desperate writers fishing for a story—well, here’s Moby Dick.”
Now Clay’s fingers were in his own hair, twisting. “Karney’s supposed to be a total hermit,” he reminded Savy. “Who even knows where he lives?”
“What if I said I know how to find him? You’d come with me, right? I mean, are you really going to accept that someone killed our hero and got away with it?”
Clay put his head down on his pillow, beginning to dread the day ahead. “I guess if I refuse, you go anyway?”
Savy sat there. She didn’t respond. She didn’t need to.
13
THORNS IN ROSES
Given its rustic seclusion, and relative proximity to L.A., Topanga Canyon had been home to a cornucopia of rock and folk legends. Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and so on. Tucked into a lush pocket of topography in the Santa Monica Mountains, musicians, guerrilla filmmakers, nudists, organic farmers, and a multitude of ageless hippies congregated there to this day.
Or so Savy claimed.
Swinging onto a dirt road off Old Topanga Lane, all Clay witnessed was scrub, trailer parks, unseen properties announced by rusting pickups, and scraggly, glaring rednecks with hatchets and Marlboros. They could have been anywhere in Appalachia. The ruts beneath Clay’s Jeep were pitted and unpredictable, forcing him to activate the four-wheel drive. As they bounced, Clay shouted, “What if he’s not here?”
“He’ll be here,” Savy insisted. “He’s either touring or drunk at home, and the Demons’ tour doesn’t start for another six days.”
“At least he’s smart enough to stay put when he’s shitfaced,” Clay said, referring to the unfortunate demise of Hank Ooljee, who had filled his gut with thousand-dollar scotch and gone racing up the Pacific Coast Highway on his Harley. For days the news had reported the former Rocket Throne bassist missing, before the tide north of San Simeon shoved his mangled bike, and one fish-gnawed leg, onto a narrow strip of shore at the base of a cliff. Hank Ooljee. Rode into the ocean in the dead of night. Another suicide? No one could rightly say; Ooljee had never been one to air his grief, but his drinking had been public record. It wouldn’t have been another suicide anyway, Clay reflected. It would’ve the first. A murder, then a suicide in the world’s greatest rock band. Or… Could it have been two murders deftly covered up? Why had Rooster killed Boyle in the first place? Clay’s head spun with the possibilities.
All the way up the 101, they listened to Karney and the Demons, trying to glean new meaning from the base poetry that Davis Karney called lyrics. Not everyone could be Bob Dylan or Nick Cave, but with lines like “Oooo-ah, baby, give it, pow!” Clay had a tendency to quit hearing the vocals as anything but a wordless instrument. Now he forced himself, willing his mind like a pet-owner willing his dog toward the neutering vet. “Did he just say ‘I’m noshing on a plate of ho’s’?”
“I always thought it was ‘I’m nothing if I hate bro’s,’” Savy replied. “Either way, Davis isn’t confessing to anything other than crimes against the English language.”
“What about the opening line of ‘Lunatic Tears,’—‘I make my decisions with a gun’?”
Savy chuckled. “Yeah, might be suspicious, if the ‘gun’ he’s referring to wasn’t obviously his cock.” They hit a rut in the road and Savy jumped in her seat. “You disagree?”
“No,” Clay sighed. “It’s his cock.”
Each time the dirt lane cut sharply to the left or right, Clay expected his windshield to fill with the sight of a massive secluded estate, a plantation-style manner belonging to the last surviving member of Rocket Throne. But there were no houses this far from the asphalt, nothing but vertical rock walls, drought-twisted trees, and emaciated dogs—or were they foraging coyotes?—wandering the edge of the road.
At last, the rock wall withdrew, and the twisting road revealed a U-shaped field dense with wild grass and large stones. Parked in the middle of this unremarkable patch was a double-wide trailer. “There,” Savy said with certainty.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Barrett says he likes his Canyon neighbors better than anyone in Beverly Hills. The parties here are pretty epic.”
Clay braked to a hard stop and a cloud of dust rolled over the Jeep and across the trailer. There were holes in its sheet-metal siding, and some of the dust wandered inside. “I guess he knows we’re here now.”
Only the breeze stirring the trees greeted them as they climbed the flimsy trailer steps. And Clay was still waiting for the punchline. No wildly successful rock drummer lived here. This was just some place Roethke kept for his secret deeds, far from the prying eyes of jackbooted cops. No one answered Savy’s knock, and Clay understood their investigation was already thwarted. Savy’s tenuous connection to Roethke had been their only lead to Davis Karney.
A crow called out listlessly. Savy knocked again, hammering this time, and for fun Clay pounded the door with her, their fists rocking the whole trailer.
Inside someone groaned and called them assholes.
Two minutes later, Roethke’s face appeared in the gaping hole nearest the door, as leering and unshaven as Nicholson in The Shining. The drummer registered confusion at the sight of Clay on his stoop—his memory failing to reach back as far as last night. Then he spotted Savy and his eyes lit up. “Tigress! I was wondering when you’d come crawling back.”
“Hey, Barry.” The door opened to reveal Roethke in the same tight black shirt he’d been wearing the night before, and a pair of ludicrous pineapple-print boxers that clung to his pale hairless thighs. In the narrow space beyond, Clay observed a rat’s-nest kitchen and a five-thousand-dollar DW drum set. He bit his tongue. A murder, then a sui
cide in the world’s greatest rock band—and this was what was left? Not even noon and the guy was piss-your-jockies drunk? In the impartial glare of daylight, Roethke looked rough, a middle-aged zombie who’d be lucky to see actual middle-age. “We were in the area,” Savy told him. “Thought I’d stop by, see if you made any upgrades to the palace.”
The drummer gestured up at the satellite dish pointed skyward on the roof. “Finally got satellite TV. And you don’t have to flush the head three times to make the bad stuff go away. Other than that, same chickens out back, same creaky bed.”
Clay’s eyes shifted between Savy and Roethke, pondering how many people had been at the “epic” parties Savy spoke of.
Seeing the look on Clay’s face, Roethke offered a bright smile. “You were good last night, m’man. It looked like you were going to fudge yourself before you got up there, but once you were in the crosshairs, something took hold, didn’t it? You were a stud—even I wanted to screw you.” The smile lingered. “I imagine by now you’ve met the blue tigress?”
Savy punched Roethke in the thigh, hard enough for him to howl and fall against the door. “Ahhhh,” he cried dramatically. “She gives the worst dead-legs!”
“So I’ve witnessed.”
“You’re the meanest chick I ever met.” Roethke took Savy’s hand in his own—the one not rubbing the sting out of his leg—and he kissed her knuckles with chapped lips. “What time do we tell the third wheel here to pick you up?”
“We need a favor, Barry,” Savy persisted.
“Fine, be that way. My best cannabis is fifty paces into the woods thataway.”
Savy shook her head and showed him the record under her non-punching arm. “I got most of the Demons’ autographs last night. All that’s missing are yours and Karney’s.”
Automatically Roethke patted his boxers for a pen, turned, and found a Sharpie sticking out of a greasy stove burner. Savy held out the mannequin-covered cover and Roethke scribbled his name. “Wow, I didn’t realize there was still analog in this digital world.”
“We were hoping you could help us track Karney down. Without his signature, it’s not worth much on eBay.”
“So mean,” Roethke said. “At this hour my boss is probably fast asleep with Kiss Kiss. You get a look at her, Third Wheel? Tits like yoga balls. Even Hustler said it was too much.”
“Where does Karney live again?” Clay tried. “Malibu?”
“No, man, salt air dehydrates his throat. He’s off playing king-of-the-hill in Hollywood. But in case the two of you’ve been under a rock, he doesn’t take kindly to visitors. Doesn’t even answer his gate after that lawsuit with the paparazzi.”
“That’s where you come in,” Savy told him. “Any chance you dial him up, put in a good word for us?”
“For a lousy autograph?” Roethke cocked his head. “I know those type of girls, Tigress, and you’re not those types of girls. What’s the game? Is your brother fucking up again? You and Grandma need money?”
Savy lowered her head and seemed to lose the script. And Clay didn’t fail to note the accuracy of Roethke’s details. Hurrying on, he added his part of the preconceived story: “If you want to know the truth, we’re going to ask Davis if we can open some of your shows. We know you already have Kings of Leon, but if we could nab twenty minutes before they come on, the exposure would launch our careers.”
“Keep dreaming the dream, my friend. Our managers would never let an unsigned act on board—even if you guys are terrific.” Then Roethke looked to Savy, her you-can-do-better-for-me expression, and his posture dipped. “Davis was impressed by your set. And he has aspirations about starting his own record label under our music group. Touring with us is a pipe-dream right now, but I’ll call on your behalf. If nothing else it’ll wake Kiss Kiss. You never heard such a sexy throat in the morning.”
Savy grinned and stepped into Roethke’s open arms. He crushed her chest against his own and lifted her off her feet. Clay braced for some antagonistic, male-vs.-male look, but the drummer’s eyes seemed distant, staring into the trees. “Take Rising Moon Road up from Sunset,” he instructed. “All the way to the top. You’ll see Karney’s house behind a wrought-iron gate with a bunch of succubi statues. Can’t miss those.”
Savy stepped away. “Thanks, Barry. You’re a real paladin.”
“Whatever that means. Just be careful over there. Davis Karney is a sexist of the first order. He’s not going to respect you the way I respect you.”
As Savy started down the steps, Roethke snatched Clay’s arm. They watched Savy stride back to the Jeep. “It’s a shame you haven’t made her yet,” Roethke whispered, so close his lips were grazing Clay’s ear.
He did his best to hold his own. “Yeah? How do you know I haven’t?”
“Because you’re jealous of me,” Roethke correctly observed. “And when I mention the tigress, you have no idea what I’m talking about.”
The Jeep wound its way up the narrow passage of Rising Moon, steep enough to press them back into their seats, curving endlessly, and blindly—designed, it seemed, to bring death down on you via a barreling delivery truck or Porsche-wielding film producer short on time and sense. At the hill’s apex, the street abruptly ended at the stone driveway of an ultra-modern house squatting low behind its wrought iron. As Roethke foretold, marble statues of curvaceous nude women stood sentinel on pillars along the fence, their hands posed lasciviously on their hips or reaching out to passersby with all their fingers splayed. Creepy-sexy. Succubi, Roethke had called them. Demon women who seduced mortal men and lured them to dark fates.
“Hold up here,” Savy said. “I’ll try Barrett one more time.”
She kept her cell on speaker as it rang. “Please,” Clay groused. “That guy passed out two seconds after we left.” But this time—their fourth attempt—Roethke answered on the last ring before voicemail.
“’ello?”—sounding worse than before.
“Traffic was bad, but we’re at Karney’s gate. Did you talk to him?”
“Oh, yeah. Davis was already up, juicing or some healthy AA shit. He could tell I’d been pouring whiskey on my Honey Smacks, so he really didn’t want to chat—bad influence and all. As soon as I mentioned how badly you wanted to meet him, though, he quit trying to hang up. I thought his record label was a lot of shitfaced rambling, but looks like it stuck.”
Savy thanked Roethke, dodged his invitation to return to his trailer, and clicked off.
“So all we’ve got to do is press Karney’s intercom?” Clay said. He kept his foot on the brake. Looming in the near future was tonight’s gig at the Echoplex, and as yet, Clay had no guitar to perform with. If Savy only confessed to having second thoughts about this, if she suggested going instrument shopping on Guitar Row instead, he wouldn’t have hesitated to crank the gearshift to R and backtrack downhill.
Except when Clay met her gaze, what Savy told him was “We have to.”
“Blue tigress,” Clay replied, a non sequitur, though not in his mind. “Barry kept teasing me with the secret of whatever that is.”
“Don’t worry about Barry.”
“I thought there weren’t supposed to be secrets between us.”
“The tigress is a tattoo.”
“You don’t have any visible tattoos. Even in the pool.”
“It’s an ass tattoo, Clay.”
Clay tried to process the idea, while also expelling the image of that pathetic slob sweating and grunting over Savy. “That doesn’t seem like—”
“It’s not on my ass,” she informed him.
Clay stared back.
Savy rolled her eyes. “It’s on someone else’s ass. Possibly this slut from Reno—who met Barry at the same party. We looked nothing alike, but he was so fucked-up, he did her and woke up believing it was me.”
“And you never enlightened him?”
“By the time I found out, he’d done everything but Tweet it out to the world. I was pissed and felt like he used me for his own ches
t-thumping. So—I used him back.”
What’s the game? Is your brother fucking up again? You and Grandma need money?
Anger creased Savy’s lips as she caught something—skepticism?—in his body language. “What are you anyway, the karma police? I’ll return my nun’s habit on the way out of fucking church.” She motioned at the intercom with the six-gun of her thumb and forefinger. “Now are you driving or do I have to walk over?”
It wasn’t exactly how Clay wanted the conversation to go. He thought about sleeping next to Savy the night before, filled with lust and… something deeper, something fertile begging to be planted, born, and propagated, and he wished he could have been cooler about it (surely there would be male groupies after her at every show). But Clay didn’t think anyone could feel the way he did about her and play a convincing James Dean. Coolness required a removal of emotion, indifference—which was the mortal enemy of a songwriter who needed to stay in touch with every nerve ending in their body. Otherwise: Oooo-ah, baby, give it, pow! So no, Clay wasn’t cool. Just like none of the songwriters he admired would have been cool with loving someone and having to spend every waking hour repressing it. Nevertheless—Clay imagined Boyle telling him—there’s the mind, then the face. You can play it cool on your face, can’t you, dude-love? And that was what Clay did here, or tried, when he told Savy he was sorry, thumbing his long nose and saying he was naturally, hopelessly nosey, haha, forget he ever mentioned it, and he let his foot off the brake and rolled toward the gates.
From their perches, the succubi watched them come.
14
KISS KISS IS GETTING OLD
“Yeah?” Karney’s intercom wanted to know.
“Um, we’re friends of Barrett Roethke’s,” Clay said.
“I don’t care whose pecker you suck,” the female voice fired back. “We don’t entertain guests.”
Clay looked to Savy. “We’re Farewell Ghost,” she announced, like it meant something. “The band that opened for the Demons last night? Davis is expecting us.”
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