“But stay in touch. I gotta fly.”
Stay in touch. Agent speak for go fuck yourself.
Ray called Bodine and told him about Lou. Ray said, “I was going to get you a case of Magic Hat. Two, maybe.”
“Yeah. Next time you’re by, you can bring me a bottle of Miller Lite.”
“It’s not your fault. It was a good idea.”
“You need money? Come to my gig.”
Ray scoffed. Bodine was always looking for an excuse to get Ray to play with his band.
“Twenty-five bucks is going to really put a dent in that mortgage.”
“Well, I can pay you fifty, but yeah. I could…” Lend you the money.
“No.”
“This latest software gig has got me kind of rolling in it.”
“No, and don’t ask again. ‘Never lend friends money.’ I’m surprised it isn’t one of your sayings.”
Bodine sighed. “I dig it. But you’re in a pickle. A jar full of them.”
Over the next three days, Ray sank back into his gloom. He shuffled around his haunted house, dusted sculptures, surfed the net, and gave customers half-assed sales pitches. Counted the church bells until five. But he did hit the guitar every day. He could do fifteen minutes before his fingers warned him of impending blisters.
Ray had just opened the gallery, a little after ten, and was slouched in his chair when Lou called.
“Ray, I’m glad I caught you.” Agentry had turned Lou breezy, a dry gust from the Southeast. Now something had him blowing faster, almost tripping on his sentences.
“You won’t believe who I had lunch with yesterday. A senior editor from Random
House. A guy our age. A music fan. And guess who his favorite band of all time is?”
“I don’t know. Pink Floyd? Velvet Underground?”
“Blues Revolution.”
Oh. The bells on the door jangled, and it began to open. “Uh, hold on, Lou, somebody’s here.”
Three guys in their twenties sauntered into the gallery. A pork-pie hat on one, ratty beard on another, plaid all around. They had to be hipsters from Brooklyn. Ray moved to the back of the room and kept an eye them. He said to Lou, “Sorry. Go on.”
“This editor still idolizes Karl Maxwell. I told him I’d just spoken to you. He remembers seeing your band open for them on that tour. Now I may have stepped out of line—I was smelling a sale—but you knew Karl pretty well. Weren’t you guys up at his house, doing séances or something?”
Not séances. “Yeah.” The hipsters were twenty feet away, peering at sculptures, cackling, but Ray could smell the reek of marijuana from here. Stoned hipsters. No wonder they thought his stuff was hilarious. “Sorry, Lou. Just one second.”
Ray approached the guys, lifted a price tag and showed it to Pork-Pie. “You break it, you buy it.”
“Whatever, man.”
Ray returned to the back of the gallery. He said to Lou, “I’m back.”
Lou said, “Anyway, this editor says a week doesn’t go by without him wondering—Whatever happened to Karl Maxwell?”
“Uh, where are you going with this, Lou?”
Pork-Pie draped an arm around the back of “Psycho Ax-Murder Baby” and tongued its cheek as his friend snapped a photo. Ray shook his head and gestured the guy away with his hand, but the jerk ignored him. Fucker.
Lou said, “If you answer the question of what happened to Karl Maxwell, I think I can get you a book deal. Karl Maxwell is this guy’s pet project. He’ll buy your manuscript just so he can read it. What I need you to do is write a sample. I’ll help you polish it. Then land you a fat advance.”
Ray blinked rapidly. Karl…a book…an advance… It was too much. He finally got himself together, got his voice working. “Great. I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything. Just get to work. You got to strike while the iron’s hot.” Lou hung up.
Had he just agreed to this? He hadn’t said no. What had he said? Great.
And it was great. The solution to his problems. It would get Liz off his back. Buy his way back into her house. And…maybe her heart.
Lou’s idea was also terrible. The worst.
Ray focused on the guys in his gallery. Pork-Pie approached Ray, shaking his head sadly, like the joke had worn thin. “This shit is dark man. Why so dark?”
“Did you notice the name of this place?”
“Nope.”
“Ray of Darkness. That would be me.”
The guy practically crossed his eyes trying to figure that one out.
Ray said, “You know what? My good friend has a restaurant right across the street with all kinds of goodies.”
“Goodies?”
“A triple choc-o-late torte. With whipped cream.”
Pork-Pie beamed and crooked a finger at his buddies. He waved as they hightailed it to Jo’s.
Ray had been young and hip and stoned once. Rude too.
He sat still in his chair for a long time and gazed out on the street. It had been raining on and off all morning. The kind of end of winter rain that sneaks dank fingers beneath doors and the edges of windowpanes. He was on the verge of shivering. It didn’t matter. He had to get out.
Business was always slow with weather like this. He flipped the sign to Closed and stalked down rain-slick Warren Street toward the River. While most of the fine buildings he passed were from Ray’s preferred Victorian period, in its last blocks the street stepped back in time to its origins when it was a thriving port. The houses shrank, and their fancy trappings dropped away to the clean, boring lines of Federalism. The whole scene fell apart in the final block, the south side of which was consumed by a butt-ugly sixties-era community center. The sixties had been great for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but had been the worst time in the long history of architecture. Warren ended at Promenade Park on a cliff overlooking the Hudson. It was Ray’s go-to place for pondering.
It was in the low forties. By the time he reached the park, his pant bottoms were soaked, slapping icily at his calves. He stood at the railing before a cliff with railroad tracks below and the river just beyond. The far bank was shrouded in fog, sheets of rain angling down, lashing at whitecaps.
The news from Lou was great and…terrible.
The page appeared from memory, as if it sat right before his eyes. The paper was handcrafted, a rich cream, with finely woven fibers. The kind you didn’t get at the local stationary store. The words were handwritten in an odd, elegant script, unlike any he’d seen since:
never speak
never speak about what we do
And if that hadn’t been warning enough, there’d been that voice: Ray. A sound that caressed the ear and lulled the mind. Remember. Still lulling, until the next moment—and there always was that next moment with Karl—You don’t remember? Without raising a decibel in volume, without changing timbre, the voice turned cold and sharp:
Never speak about what we do. Never repeat a word of what I say, not even to each other. Never mention my name.
You could mess around with semantics, get all legalistic and argue that speaking and writing weren’t the same thing. And Karl would give you a look that would burn you to the ground. He’d have a point. Writing was just another way of speaking.
Why? Because rules were rules. Especially when Karl laid them down. Ray hadn’t seen his old teacher in decades. But unless Karl showed up—God forbid—and spelled out a change, the rule was still in place.
What to do? Ray just stood, staring into the mist across the river as if it might hold the answer. He was suddenly overtaken by violent shivering.
He rushed home and took a long hot shower. Opened the gallery again and sat.
Ray had never spoken to anyone about his time in the group, not Liz or Jo, not even Bodine, who was there for part of it. Speaking a
nd writing were out.
Karl didn’t say anything about looking at him.
Ray stared out at the street. He wasn’t going to see Karl out there. He climbed upstairs to the couch. He cracked the lid on the silver laptop, poked a key and the machine grumbled its little complaint and came awake. His new window, with views across the country and back in time. The Great Google.
He typed, “K, a, r, l, M, a….” and his fingers froze. He was that guilty kid again, hanging from a sill, pulling himself up to peer in at some kind of adult business.
Come on. This was public knowledge. He shook off his reluctance and finished typing.
Karl Maxwell. Wikipedia was the first hit, with the history of Karl’s band, Blues Revolution, his abrupt departure from life under the lights and a discography. Nothing Ray didn’t know. He navigated to images: publicity shots, old stage pictures. He flinched at the childish magical thought—If I can see him, he can see me.
The photos of Karl were all from before. Ray stared at the eyes. Did Karl have it yet—the power, the supernatural charisma? No. Not fully. There was a gleam here, but either it hadn’t reached maximum wattage, or Karl was deliberately hiding it from the public. He was certainly capable of that.
Ray found a link to an old article from the Times: “Rock star leaves the stage, but where is he now?” It must have been a frustrating assignment for the reporter, for the best answer he’d come up with was: “Rumored to be secluded in a house upstate.” The writer didn’t mention what town. Upstate New York was a big place.
Another link to an old Rolling Stone article, which Ray remembered reading at the time. He skimmed it.
This was the public part of Karl’s life. Before. If some cat from the New York Times could write about it, why not Ray? He opened a new Word document. Closed his eyes for a minute, then typed.
Karl Maxwell was the front man for Blues Revolution. They were part of the second wave of British invasion bands after the Beatles and Stones. They stormed the US in sold-out tours in ’66 and ’67.
By 1972, they were on their way down, on the long slide that lands you in Vegas, if you’re lucky. Our band, the Nightcrawlers, had just recorded our first album. We were on the way up and intersected the declining trajectory of Blues Revolution, opening for them on a tour of medium-sized venues: old movie theaters, college hockey rinks, and the bigger nightclubs. Onstage, Karl was still a formidable presence. Prancing around, playing tricks with the mic stand, howling his lines, and wailing on his harmonica. Some called him the greatest white blues-harp man alive. Paul Butterfield might have argued, but I wouldn’t.
Karl’s band was tired. At the smaller venues, they were phoning it in. But that just made Karl work harder. At the end of every show, girls lined up by the stage. The road manager, a wizened guy with a ponytail, would point at the foxiest and hand her Karl’s hotel key.
We did our job well. Bodine himself was a fine front man but had been in the game long enough to know to dial it down a couple of notches, not to risk upstaging the main act. Warm them up, but not too hot.
We glimpsed the members of Karl’s band backstage, but as the A-team players, they kept their distance from us. Their guitarist—Joe “Winker” Doogal—and I exchanged the competitive glares lead guitarists did in those days. I ragged on Winker’s playing to our guys: too damned stiff. I heard he thought my blues were too American, which gave me a good laugh, given that the Brits had stolen the blues from us in the first place.
A week into the tour we had our first night off. Winker passed me backstage, sticking his tongue out. I gave him the finger. He laughed and said, “So.”
I said, “Hey, how about a drink back at the hotel?” The best offer of entertainment I could come up with in Akron, Ohio. I figured Brit rockers had a long-standing reputation to uphold as fearless partiers, so I was confused by the worried look that passed over Winker’s face. He looked around to see if anyone was listening, then whispered. “Okay, but in your room?”
Back in the room I shared with Bodine, I introduced Winker to Hilton’s recent innovation—the mini-bar. He said, “You Yanks are clever!” I soon came to understand his nickname—though you couldn’t see it onstage, up close his left eyelid fluttered. As the nips of Jack Daniels sank him deeper into his chair he blinked uncontrollably. This evidence of frailty in a big Rock Star made me start to like him. He had a strange way of talking, and it wasn’t just the accent. He referred to his band mates as “cunts,” which obviously had a different meaning over in England. It had me laughing, because Karl’s guys were all beefy pirates.
Suddenly Winker said, “Oh, bloody hell. How many of these have we had? Spare me some mouthwash? I mustn’t have the other blokes knowing about this.” A minute later he came out of the bathroom, wiping his mouth, and left. The only thing I could figure was he’d been on the wagon and wanted to hide his falling-off from the other band members.
Bodine arrived back at the room a little later. I said, “I figured you found a new friend.” Bodine picked up groupies more nights than not. Which was fine by me—it meant I had the place to myself.
He scowled. “Akron’s a cold town.” He opened the mini-bar. “Started without me, did you?”
“No, believe or not, I had a few with that Winker. Is he supposed to be on the wagon?”
“Not that I know of.”
“So why was he sneaking around, coming here to have a drink with me?”
He shook his head. “There’s something weird about those guys.”
A week further into the tour, after the show in an old opera house, the Blues Revolution road manager came up to me. “Mr. Maxwell wants to meet your band.”
As I approached Karl’s dressing room, I spotted Bodine. He glanced at me, shrugged and stepped in before me. The light was dim inside. Our drummer Frank, Bassman, and Karl’s band and roadies were all there.
I looked around for Karl. “Sit,” rang out in the room with the force of a command, though it was barely above a whisper. It sounded like Karl, but could it be? I’d only ever heard him shout and scream. And how did you command with a whisper?
We scrambled in the gloom for chairs. Musical chairs, I remember thinking, hiding my grin at the bad pun. Bassman ended up sitting on the floor. Though he did it faster than I’d ever seen that slowpoke move. Now that we were all seated, I could see Karl, sitting at the front of the room facing us. It was the first time up close. I had known how big he was from watching him onstage, but not how solid. Solid as stone. And as still.
Ten minutes before that he’d been rocketing around on stage, turning it up full for an encore that brought the crowd roaring to their feet. I flashed on a Buddha I’d once seen in a museum, in dim lighting like this….
I was startled when he finally moved. He turned his head with a fluid grace and whispered something to a guy who scurried over and closed the door.
I studied his face. Oddly, his eyes were a dull shade of gray. The stage sweat was gone from his cheeks. They glowed in the dim light, like they were polished. Even for that big body, his head was too wide, his forehead too tall below a raven widow’s peak. His face was oversized, but unquestionably handsome. Perfect for a rock star. And perfect for his new role.
He began speaking, his lips barely moving, in a voice soft as silk, rich in mellow overtones as an old Martin guitar. The accent was British—no surprise—and upper class.
It was a little frightening that one person could instantly transform like that, as if some switch had been thrown, reversing his polarity.
Karl was famous for his knockdown cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “I Put a Spell on You.” And it was a killer. I suppressed another giggle. Talk about putting a spell on. I don’t recall a word he said that night, only that murmuring voice, and the warm stillness that like a palpable stream flowed from him out into the twilit room and into my body, calming me, one by one switching off the circuits of
my mind.
His mouth had, of course, always been the source of his power on stage as he howled and blew on his harp. But by some law of inverse proportion, the softer that voice grew, the more force it exerted.
It was making me stone like, still and chill except for this fluttering in my chest. The feeling was finally too much, and I looked away from him and around the room. It was the same as our funky dressing room, just a little bigger—flaking plaster above wainscoting scuffed by a thousand jostled guitar cases.
Only the space had transformed. It was like the stillness pouring from Karl had suffused this humble place with a soft glow, touching up the shabby plaster and wainscoting so it now seemed elegant. Like the grand foyer of some fine house.
And then it was over. Karl knitted his hands together, bowed in a blessing. He rose and glided across the floor. The same guy who’d closed the door before opened it, and Karl was gone. I felt an acute pang of loss. But then I was up, gliding out, too, in my own way on some kind of cloud—already imitating him? And the pang left. Because though the meeting was over, it was also the beginning.
Ray looked up from the laptop and frowned. The beginning of what? He was missing something here. Something had to have happened in that room aside from a guy mumbling in a strange voice. That meeting had changed his life. He stared sightlessly from the window and it came.
I do remember one thing Karl said. How could I forget? “You’ve all been searching. Some of you for a long time. Searching for this.” He raised a hand and held thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Searching for this jewel of consciousness.” And the way he said it I could see it sparkling, feel it cool in my palm. And I wanted it, desperately.
Afterwards our tour bus rumbled towards the next night’s venue. No one spoke for a long time. Finally, our drummer Frank did. He was the most practical of us. Dabbling in the spiritual was common among everyone we knew, musicians and non alike. Astrology, every kind of Eastern religion. We lost more than a few friends to Scientology and Jesus Freaks. But Frank just kept his foot on the downbeat, and his eyes on the next gig.
Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series) Page 5