“He’s in the dressing room, meditating, or whatever he does in there before a show. Brenda’s in there with him, too.”
Bristol rolled his eyes. No one had to express the general opinion of Flame’s latest girlfriend, the one they blamed for turning Flame into a cult fundamentalist.
“Any of those other Messenger freaks around?” Bristol asked.
“Of course,” Franklin said. “They’re like groupies. And Flame is their new messiah.” He gestured with his head further backstage. “You’ll find a couple of ‘em outside the dressing room, standing guard.”
“Shit,” Bristol said. “Well, we’ll give it a try.” He turned to Bentley and Jenkins and said, “Come on, let’s go interrupt the Last Supper.”
Franklin continued helping Louis rig the monitor board so the band could hear each other with the In-Ear devices. Technology for touring bands had improved immensely in the last ten years. Franklin had been at it since the mid-seventies, just as Flame had disbanded Hay Fever and gone solo. Franklin stayed on as tour and production manager through the rest of the decade and into the beginning of the Flame’s Heat period. Those had been the years, when Flame’s Heat was one of the biggest bands in the world. But ever since Flame went religious on everyone, Franklin had considered moving on to work for someone else or perhaps even retiring. At fifty-seven he figured that he was probably too old to be doing this stuff but he truly loved it.
“As soon as you get that working,” he told Louis, “you better start the guitar checks.” As monitor and guitar tech, Louis was an invaluable member of the stage crew. Flame wanted no one but Louis to touch his precious Hugh Manson custom-made guitar from the Manson brothers’ shop in Exeter, UK. Flame’s rig had been fairly constant for the last several years but it was a bitch to set up. Pumped through an Ibanez Tube Screamer, which produced less auxiliary noise than most sustainer/compressors, and out of Soldano Decatone amplifiers, Flame’s signature sound was one of the things that made him a guitar god. That, and his uncanny songwriting ability.
Ten minutes later, Franklin heard shouts from Flame’s dressing room area. Apparently Bristol’s request wasn’t received very well. When the three musicians walked back past him with their tails between their legs, Bristol simply shook his head at Franklin.
“Sorry, Dave,” Franklin muttered. “You still gonna stay for the show?”
Bristol shrugged. “I played with the guy for what, over twenty years, and I still can’t get enough. Sure, we’ll stay.”
“Come to the Meet ‘n’ Greet,” Franklin said. “You got passes?”
“Yeah.”
Berenger listened to Franklin’s story with interest.
“So did Dave come to the after-show?”
“No. I didn’t see him. But I was pretty busy with strike, so I’m not sure who all was there,” Franklin answered.
“Anything else occur before or during the show that might be significant?”
“Flame had an argument with Adrian before Dave and his crew showed up. I could hear shouting but I didn’t think it was anything more than what usually happens between those two. Adrian and Gina had arrived backstage and gone to visit him in his dressing room. Flame and Adrian were like oil and water, you know that. Flame didn’t care much for Gina either. Oh, and Carol Merryman had breezed in with Joshua as well and the two ex-wives had collided outside the dressing room. The two half-brothers spoke to each other but the women turned up their noses. Seeing the spoils of two failed marriages one right after another couldn’t have been a joyous moment for Flame either. Maybe that’s why he was off that night.”
“Anything else?”
“Well… I also heard that Flame and Al Patton had a blowup during the Meet ‘n’ Greet. I didn’t witness it but I had a feeling something might happen. You see, Patton showed up backstage during the concert.”
Flame was nearing the end of “Forever Hot.” In a few moments the band would run offstage and wait the obligatory four minutes while the audience screamed for an encore. Franklin noticed that Flame mumbled the lyrics on the third verse, almost as if he had forgotten them. How was that possible? Flame had sung that song at every concert since 1986, when it was a number one hit.
Something was wrong.
“Is he okay?” the voice behind him shouted into his ear, startling Franklin. He turned and saw none other than the hulking presence of Al Patton. His shiny bald head reflected the various colors of the stage lights.
“Hi, Al, how are you?” Franklin managed to shout above the din in the auditorium. “Did you just get here?”
“I’m fine!” Patton yelled back into Franklin’s ear. “Flame is off tonight.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What’s up?”
“Hell if I know!”
“Did Blister Pack show up?” Patton asked.
“Yeah. They’re in the audience. Flame and Dave had a big fight before the show.”
“Writing credits again?”
“I don’t know. I think Dave wanted to go on stage for a number or two. You know, like a reunion. He said you suggested it.”
Patton frowned. “Damn, I wish they had. That would have been exciting.”
“Flame wouldn’t go for it.”
“How did the new material go over tonight?”
Franklin shrugged. “Same as always. All they want to hear is the old stuff.”
Patton nodded. It was the answer he was expecting. “His next album is gonna tank like the last one,” he said.
The song finally ended. The stagemanager called the cue for the stage lights to black out and Peter Duncan—AKA Peter Flame—ran offstage, followed by Dewey, Corky, Zig, and Chaz, the guys that made up his current touring band. He saw Franklin and Patton in the wings and gave Patton a big, sweaty hug.
“Hey Al! Glad you came by!” Flame shouted.
“Sounded great!” Patton managed to yell over the noise.
“What?”
“Sounded great!”
“Oh thanks!” Flame grabbed a towel from the roadie that stood nearby. The pop star used it to wipe the sweat from his face and neck, and then he grabbed the bottle of mineral water from the roadie’s hand. He swigged it down, bent forward with his hands on his knees, and breathed deeply. Performing a rock concert was terribly hard work, especially when one got to be fifty-five years old. Flame was in excellent shape though. Called the “World’s Sexiest Man” just after his release from rehab—around the time of his conversion—he had aged well. He knew he could still attract groupies by the dozens, although he had given up that lifestyle when he met Brenda Twist.
The four minutes went by quickly. The stage lights burst back to full as Flame waltzed back to the adoring praise of the sell-out crowd.
“They still love him, though,” Franklin said into Patton’s ear. “All he has to do is sing one or two of the old songs and he’s got ‘em back in the palm of his hand.”
“Yeah, I know,” Patton replied. “I just wish he’d drop that fundamentalist religious shit and get back to what he used to do. You know as well as I do he’s not selling like he once did. He’s either gonna have to give up the sermons and go back to doing Flame’s Heat or Hay Fever material—or even his solo stuff—or he’ll find himself without a record contract.”
Franklin nodded. Patton had threatened that sort of thing before. Even back when Flame was solo, before the Flame’s Heat days. It seemed that Flame did his best work within the context of a band.
“I’ll see you later, Kenny,” Patton shouted into Franklin’s ear as Flame and the band launched into another religious number from his latest album. The audience’s response remained at a high level as they tolerated it, knowing full well that Flame would give them one more classic Flame’s Heat or Hay Fever tune to close out the concert.
The various answers Berenger received from the band were consistent. Rubel and Wayne shared the dressing room next to Flame’s and they had heard the argument between Adrian and his father. They couldn’t d
iscern the actual words said, only that they were heated and malicious. Wayne confirmed that Flame also had a not-very-friendly conversation with the Blister Pack boys—Bristol, Bentley, and Jenkins—prior to the fight with Adrian. The entire band agreed that Flame was in a foul mood when the concert began that night.
None of the band members thought that Flame had been using any drugs.
After the concert, they attended the Meet ‘n’ Greet with family and friends, as did everyone else. The band members noted the presence of Reverend Theo and the other Messengers, Flame’s former wives and their respective sons, Al Patton, and Flame’s girlfriend, Brenda Twist. Dewey Wayne thought Brenda had Flame “wrapped around her finger” and couldn’t see the attraction. Rubel admitted he thought Brenda to be very pretty but “vacuous.”
Each band member left the Meet ‘n’ Greet before Flame did. None of them noticed when Adrian departed. Franklin confirmed this because they all came and said goodbye to him on stage.
“I did poke my head into the Meet ‘n’ Greet and saw Adrian and Gina briefly,” Franklin said. “Adrian was pretty agitated.”
The Meet ‘n’ Greet was more crowded than usual. As it was the last gig of the American tour, the hallway and rooms backstage were packed with people. Each of the band members had family and friends that had been given passes but most of the crowd was there to see Flame.
Franklin noticed that Flame appeared tired. It was probably a relief to finish the tour and have some time off. Al Patton was there with him and some of the personal assistants were keeping an eye on things. Of course, Brenda and her gang of born-agains were hovering around the star. Franklin moved to return to the stage and supervise the strike, which also gave him a sense of closure. It had been a long three months of mixed venues—mostly theaters that held about five thousand—unlike what it was in the old days when Flame was playing sports arenas.
Gina Tipton and Adrian Duncan were in the hall. Adrian looked angry—his face was flushed and his mother appeared to be trying to calm him down. She looked up and said, “Hi Kenny.”
“Gina. Adrian,” Franklin said. “Everything all right?”
“Sod off,” Adrian said.
“Adrian!” his mother said. She looked at Franklin and explained, “He’s a little upset with his father.”
Franklin nodded understandingly. “What else is new?” He thought it best to move on, so he did. As he went through the stage door he noticed Adrian pull off the after-show pass that had been stuck on his shirt, wrinkle it up, and throw it on the floor.
Berenger raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure about that? You saw him tear off that pass and throw it on the floor?”
“Yep.”
Berenger made a note of that. “Okay,” he said. “Kenny, tell me about afterwards, when you saw Adrian at Flame’s townhouse.”
Franklin recounted how he had found himself in the unenviable position of taking the money to Flame’s office in the Village. It was nearly two in the morning. When the cab got him to Flame’s street it was probably 2:10 or 2:15.
“He was running from the townhouse,” Franklin said. “At least it looked that way. Where else would he be running from down there at that time of night? He ran right in front of the cab and the driver had to slam on the brakes. I recognized Adrian and even called to him out the window. But he kept on running. I thought it was strange but I forgot about it until I got inside Flame’s building. When I… when I found Flame, Adrian was the first one I thought of. I told the cops that, too. I hated to do it, but that’s the story.”
“How did Adrian look? Was he sober?”
“I couldn’t tell. To me he just looked scared. Like he’d seen a ghost. The headlights from the cab were shining on him when I saw his face, so he was bathed in this big bright light. I couldn’t say whether or not he was sober.”
Berenger rubbed his chin. This was a lot of information to absorb.
“Kenny, going back to Dave Bristol for a minute,” he said, “how bad do you think the blood was between him and Flame? Bad enough to nurture violence?”
Franklin thought about that and answered, “Yeah. I’d say it was.”
13
Boys Don’t Cry
(performed by The Cure)
Berenger picked up Suzanne at her apartment building in the East Village, not far from St. Marks Place, where she rented a funky old one bedroom. She had lucked into it when she was heavily into the Goth scene during the late 1980s and then sublet it to her sister when she left New York to travel through the Far East. The timing was perfect—her sister married and moved to Canada with her husband just as Suzanne returned to New York a changed woman. Leaving her alternative lifestyle behind her, Suzanne became a yoga and martial arts practitioner and eventually an instructor for several years in the nineties. Berenger knew that she loved the East Village and still felt at home among the punk and heavy metal crowd that congregated along St. Marks Place. Remnants of the Goth scene remained there too. She once told him that the boys and girls dressed in black provided her with fond nostalgia for her rebellious era. At one time her short hair was coal black and she had worn pale makeup and black eyeliner and lipstick. There was even a dog collar, a few piercings, and an Ankh that hung in her cleavage. Now her hair was back to its natural dark brown, she wore cover-girl makeup, and she dressed in casual but hip thirty-something fashions.
Since they were going to a music club after the trip to Long Island, that evening Suzanne was dressed in a short black skirt, white camisole, and a blue jean jacket. Her legs were bare. She carried a small classy handbag from Kate Spade. As for Berenger, he had worn sporty khakis, a dark vest, and a white silk shirt.
“You look great,” Berenger said as she got in the Altima. “Man, oh man!”
“Oh, hush. You don’t look too shabby either,” Suzanne replied. “It’s nice to see you without blue jeans for a change.”
“Baby, you can see me without my blue jeans whenever you’d like.”
“Oh stop. Step on the gas, mister, and let’s go.”
Berenger slipped XTC’s English Settlement into the dashboard CD player because he knew Suzanne liked them and then he headed for the Queens Midtown Tunnel. She immediately began to look through the small case of compact discs Berenger kept in the car.
“These are different from what you had here before,” she commented.
“Yeah, I change ‘em every two or three weeks. I’m a man who likes variety.”
“Did you ever see XTC live?”
“Nope. Andy Partridge stopped doing the live shows about the time I started getting into XTC. That was, what, 1982?”
“Yeah. I saw ‘em a couple of times in LA before I moved here. Once they were on the same bill with Talking Heads. That was a great show.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Gosh, I was, what, eleven years old? My sister and I went to see them and it was fabulous.”
“Hey, how are your parents doing?”
“They’re fine. They still love Southern California. They keep asking me if I’m ever gonna move back there. I tell ‘em ‘no.’”
“I guess they weren’t too happy when you left home before you were eighteen, huh?”
“You can say that again. As soon as I finished high school, I was gone. Candy had already come east so I stayed with her in that ratty apartment she had in Brooklyn. Since I was staying with my sister my parents didn’t mind too much. Little did they know I went out and got that apartment in the East Village a month later. I guess my parents thought maybe Candy’d be a good influence on me.”
“Oh, right, I remember. You were a juvenile delinquent when you were a teenager,” Berenger said, smiling.
“Yeah, I was a really bad girl, can you believe it? I was always getting in trouble. I damn near didn’t finish high school. I wanted to drop out but the court wouldn’t let me. That was part of the terms of the plea bargain—I had to finish high school and straighten up my act."
Berenger shook his head. It was ha
rd to imagine the smart, completely together woman beside him sitting in a jail cell—which is what happened to her when she was fifteen years old. A boyfriend had talked her into stealing a car and going for a joy ride with him. Drugs were involved and the pair was caught.
“Whatever happened to, what was his name…?”
“Jerry?”
“Yeah.”
“Hell if I know. Mom and dad wouldn’t let me see him anymore after we got busted. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in prison somewhere. I was a bad girl at the time but he was a whole lot badder.”
“Well, Suzanne, I must say I think you turned out all right. Look at you now. You’re one of the nicest bad girls I know.”
She slapped him on the arm. “Oh, stop.”
On the way into Long Island, Berenger filled her in on his mother’s condition and what to expect.
“I’m sure it’s hard for you,” she said. “I’m thankful my folks are still okay.”
“When’s the last time you saw them?”
“I went to LA a couple of years ago, remember? But it’s been too long. I need to go see them more often. They’re not getting any younger.”
“How’s your sister doing?”
“Candy’s fine. I’ll need to head up to Toronto sometime soon too and see my new nephew.”
“How many does that make?”
“Two nephews and a niece. My sister’s the Fertile Goddess of the Yukon or something like that.”
“Do I detect a little bitterness in your voice?”
“What do you mean?” She looked at him sideways.
“Are you sorry you’re not married and having babies?”
“Are you out of your mind? I’m not ready for that. No way. The beauty of being an aunt is that I can hold the babies for a little while and then give ‘em back. That’s good enough for me.”
“Aw, Suzanne, you’d make a great mom,” Berenger said.
“Too late for that now, Spike. My biological clock stopped ticking a couple of years ago.”
The Rock 'n Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - A Spike Berenger Anthology Page 11