He looked around at the rest of us—Bodine, Bassman, and me—and what he saw in our faces made his sad. “Charles fucking Manson, if you ask me.” He retreated to the little room at the back of the bus. I glanced at Bodine—his face was unreadable as always. But shy Bassman actually held my gaze for a moment, in which something real passed between us. Solidarity in this thing, whatever it was.
A few days later, he asked me about that dressing room scene. “Is this really it? Is Karl a true teacher?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I guarantee you, this is the real deal.”
“Thanks.”
Those words would haunt me. They still do. I’d given Karl my blessing, and Bassman had believed me.
Ray was so lost in the writing that the jangle of the bells downstairs made him spring from the couch—Christ, it’s Karl! He rushed downstairs.
It wasn’t Karl. It was business. A tall woman appeared in the door, smiling as the warmth hit her flushed face, followed by a man who didn’t smile. Rare customers for such a frigid day in March. From the looks of them they were New Yorkers—handsome, early fifties, elegant with a slight bohemian edge. Wedding rings. The wife worked her way into the room, looked around, and her smile brightened a notch.
She passed Ray, weaving through the grove of standing sculptures and display cases. Her husband hesitated then followed. She stopped short before “Untitled #13.” Psycho Ax-Murder Baby. She said, “Oh, this is priceless!”
Ray hung back. He knew not to hover. Let the couple do his work for him. And he knew to hold his silly tongue—it’s not priceless, lady, only forty-five hundred bucks.
The husband joined her. “Where would we put it?” It was a reasonable question. It would be the rare living apartment edgy enough for that thing to just fit in.
She raised her eyebrows, shot the guy a fierce look, and he flinched. He asked Ray, “Can I use your restroom? Long ride up from the city, had a double espresso across the street.” He nodded towards Jo’s.
Ray pointed to the back of the narrow gallery. “To your left.”
The woman said to Ray, “He likes it—he just needs a little time to think about it.”
Ray waited for him to return. When people got back from the bathroom they either made a quick exit from the store to the safety of Warren Street, or….
The man zigzagged his way through the sculptures and display cases, fast, his eyes bright. He gave Ray a penetrating, appraising look. Hooked a thumb towards the bathroom, “You do that?”
Ray nodded.
The man finally smiled. “That’s something.” He turned to the menacing figure and glanced at his wife. “We’ll take it.”
Her husband sold, it was her turn to have doubts. “Where will we put it?”
He said, “Good question. Our bathroom! It can’t make it any weirder than what he’s got back there.”
She looked at him questioningly.
He said, “Weird. But wonderful. You look at it.”
She said, “No thanks. I’m good.” The man took out his checkbook, and Ray finally relaxed.
What kept Ray in business was not art, but edge. Dark accessories that let Tribeca loft folks indulge in the conceit that they were more than moneymen and lawyers. They looked at Ray and pictured themselves back in college, hip again. For a couple of grand they could bring some of that edge to their lofts, to show off to their friends.
Ray lifted one end of the sculpture, the man the other, and they shuffled it out to a Range Rover. As they drove away she turned to the guy, and Ray knew what she was asking: “What was with that bathroom?”
Ray bounded upstairs and dove back into the writing.
We were home at the end of the long tour, nursing road wounds, sleeping half the day, getting reacquainted with wives and girlfriends, when I got the call. It was Ethan, who worked in the office of Karl’s management company. He, too, had a British accent and spoke just above a whisper. It annoyed me, and I soon realized why. He was imitating Karl’s voice, but with none of its effect. He just sounded like an upper-class Brit prig. “You are invited to Mr. Maxwell’s house in upstate New York, next Monday. If you do not come, this invitation will not be repeated.”
We were on break with nothing better to do. But I think we would have shown up—at least Bassman and I—even if we were still on tour, halfway across the country. Karl had set the hook in us.
Ethan didn’t call Frank. Our drummer headed to LA, where he remains, playing on everything from hit records and jingles to live at the Academy Awards. And the Nightcrawlers were never seen or heard from again.
Neither was Karl, at least in public. He’d simply dropped off the map. There was precedence for his trajectory—a rock star going spiritual, quitting the business, and disappearing into relative obscurity. Cat Stevens had done it, and Peter Green of the original Fleetwood Mac. And Mel Lyman of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. Lyman played harp, too, and became a guru around the same time as Karl. And from what I’ve read, he had other things in common with Karl.
Ray stopped. He massaged his throat. That lump was back.
He was also aware that the sale he’d just made—the first in weeks—would net him all of fifteen hundred after Maurice’s cut. Buying him less than two months with Liz.
He saved one last time. Before he could change his mind, he needed to email it to Lou. Another momentous punch of the key. As his hand reached forward to hit Send, he had an almost out-of-body experience, the sense that this was not his hand, that he was not him. Yet soon as he heard the whoosh of the message leaving, he felt a huge rush of relief. That hot potato was Lou’s problem now.
Ray woke the next morning breathing fast and shallow, his body cold but his palms slippery with sweat. The sun streamed in the round window, too bright.
Fuck. He’d emailed the writing. Lou’s problem now. What bullshit. What time was it? It was before nine, but Bodine should be up by now. Ray sat up and called him. “I sent an email. I don’t think the person’s gotten it yet. Any way I can un-send it?”
“If your account’s set up right, you have five seconds.”
“Shit. It’s been over twelve hours. Can’t you, you know, go into somebody’s computer and…?”
“Maybe I could, but I won’t. Let’s back up. What’s this email you’re so intent on not sending? Oh. You drunk-emailed Liz, didn’t you? That’s what you get.”
For sex with your ex. “No, I…” Ray was embarrassed to tell Bodine about this Karl book idea. And, frankly, this morning it seemed terrible again. He’d only tell him in the unlikely event that the thing came through. Which right now he was hoping wouldn’t happen.
“You what?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you doing, Ray?”
“I’ve gotta go.”
He went downstairs. Lingered over coffee and toast. He wasn’t writing today. Wasn’t writing until Lou got back to him. And it was going to be a no. Then he’d be off the hook.
Except for the mortgage. At the thought of Liz, the desire to call her arose like an early flu symptom. He shook it off. He had nothing to say to her. And all she had to say to him was, “Where’s my money?” As he puttered in the gallery, rearranging the pieces to fill the hole Ax-Murder Baby had left, a feeling tugged at him.
He wanted to write. And it wasn’t just the money. He needed to write.
Why?
Of the multitude of subjects for his curiosity, few in his life had held the power of Karl. Karl was the most secretive, opaque person he’d ever known. Who was Karl? In those years Ray had never had a clue. But just a few pages had revealed things he’d been oblivious to at the time.
Like that thing Karl did with his voice. Ray had been so enthralled by it, so immersed in his reactions that he hadn’t noticed that it was a whisper. Until now.
What if he could see inside of Karl? Maybe he could. Beca
use writing was magic. He clanked upstairs to the laptop.
The first time we visited The House, Bodine drove from where he was living in the City and picked Bassman and me up. It was several hours to the Helderberg Mountains southwest of Albany. Bassman slouched in back, being his morose self, while up front Bodine and I jived as usual. But I felt an edge.
I fished a joint from my pocket and was about to light up when Bodine said, “No, I don’t think we should.” Bassman in the back looked relieved. Just the smell of the stuff gave him the willies. I stashed the joint back, oddly guilty.
Later, I’d see that as a pivotal point. Our last moment of innocence, the last time we were still happy-go-lucky hippie musicians. Nothing had stopped us from getting high—we’d smoked once in some kid’s backyard not twenty feet from a cop station, watched officers coming and going, laughing our asses off. Until now.
We rode silently past dreary overgrown farmland, falling down barns and trailers. Bodine said, “This is the northern tip of Appalachia.”
I said, “When are we going to see these famous mountains?”
Bodine said, “We’re already there. Sneaking up their rear end. I did a little research. This is a limestone plateau. The slope is so gentle from this direction that you barely notice. The other side is sheer cliffs.” Bodine had always been interested in geology.
We descended sharply into a deep valley. It was a long way down. We came around a curve, and the cliffs loomed above. My breath sucked in.
Bodine said, “Not quite the Alps, but they beat the hell out of those wimpy Catskills.”
A steep, wooded slope rose a thousand feet to a hundred-foot cliff. Bodine handed me directions scribbled on the back of an envelope.
I read, “Left at a dirt road, a mile and a half past the white church.”
A few minutes later Bodine said, “That must be it.” White was being charitable. The church was more gray, most of the paint chipped off. It looked long abandoned. In fact, this valley showed even fewer signs of life than the plateau.
I said, “Not quite the neighborhood I expected Karl to be living in.”
Bodine said, “Yeah, it’s beat. But we haven’t seen his place yet. He must be going for secluded.”
We lurched onto the dirt road. It was rough, potholed, and quickly climbed into a series of switchbacks. Bassman looked out the window and squealed. “I can’t do this. I hate heights.”
Bodine said, “A little late. I don’t see any place to turn around.”
Like that, I became aware of the absence of a guardrail. I peeked down at the chasm beside the car and felt a little sick myself. Though it might have been anticipation of where we were headed.
I closed my eyes. We finally leveled off. I opened my eyes as the road plunged into darkness—a narrow slot sliced into the sheer limestone, the walls less than a foot from the car. Bodine turned on the headlights.
The cliff continued on our right, and appeared to on the left, until I noticed windows. A stone building. I craned up to see more, but we were driving so close that all I caught was a glimpse of a porch. I said, “Is that the house?” but we were already past it, climbing again steeply around a bend.
Bodine said, “That must be it. But there was nowhere to park.” We approached a line of cars parked on the left, half in the road. Not a great spot if one of the locals screamed down in a pickup truck. If there were any locals. Bodine pulled in behind the last car.
We climbed out, stretching after the long drive from the City. We walked back the way we came. Rounded the corner and there it was. I stopped and stared as the others continued. I gazed up from the bottom, counting three rows of tall windows, capped by the wide cornice of the roof, black against a sliver of gray sky darkening with dusk. Odd lumps punctuated the cornice. It took a moment to identify them: the remains of concrete gargoyles, missing arms and, in one case, the side of a head.
With Edgar Allen Poe as my mentor, I should have loved the place. But I knew something of architecture. How proportions based on the “golden ratios” discovered in the Renaissance evoked a feeling of harmony in the viewer. The builder of this pile must have used tin ratios. He’d assembled the elements of a great house—massive walls, ornate window frames, that looming cornice—but he’d measured all wrong. The effect was not only less than the sum of its parts, but downright unsettling.
After we’d been there a few times, Bodine did more research. He explained how Karl’s place was set in an abandoned quarry that once had provided limestone for houses and bridges in the City. It made the owner rich. He opened a new excavation behind the old one farther up on the plateau and built this house.
What was weird was that its facade—which if nothing else had cost a fortune—faced a cliff across a narrow dirt road. Even when some mansion hides behind hedges and gated walls, there has to be some place, some great lawn from which to gape at the thing. Otherwise, why bother? There was no vantage point from which to admire it.
I had a moment’s real doubt: What was Karl doing in this place? I forgot about it when a figure appeared in the gloom, approached and hissed, “Don’t ever park there again.” Where, then? It was the first inkling of the conundrums that I would soon find were the meat and potatoes of Karl’s scene.
By the time I reached the porch, the figure was gone. I was alone. The others had gone in. I hesitated. Maybe some wisdom was telling me that this door might be a lot easier to enter than to leave. Or maybe it was just that monstrosity of a house.
Finally I reached for the doorknob.
The first time I went in The House….
Ray’s hands curled into fists, and his forearms collapsed on the computer keys, like someone had snuck up behind him and was holding them down. He glanced over his shoulder but of course no one was there. His breath came in short gasps.
His damned throat. The burrowing creature in there had died, hardened into something sharp, like a ragged chunk of glass. He squeezed with his hand, but it only got more painful. He swallowed several times and gagged. Leaned forward and puked on the carpet.
This deal Lou was talking about would be predicated on distributing what Ray wrote about Karl to the whole world. Where anyone could read it. Ray could dance around about whether what he’d written up to now violated Karl’s rule. But there was no question, the rule applied to everything that had ever happened, that had ever been said within that house. He felt like Karl had sealed the door of The House shut by some spell, and if Ray even dared to open it a crack…
See inside of Karl? He couldn’t even peek in the windows of his place. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t write about it. He couldn’t even think about it.
He tried. Tried to remember what had gone on in there. They had meetings, meals… those were just words. When he attempted to recall actual moments, his mind slammed shut. All he could see inside that house was the black of a moonless midnight.
At the same time, his fingers gripped the computer, so hard that its edges cut into his palms. This is mine. Not the laptop—that was Bodine’s. The story.
Before he could second-guess, he emailed the latest to Lou. “Another stab at it. Want to make sure I’m on the right track.”
He checked his email, and came on a new one, with the subject line: “LAZY SUSANS….” His heart fumbled a beat. “VOTIVE CANDLES….” The words flashed from the screen like they were in Day-Glo 3D. He flashed on a vision of Susan’s ashes in an urn in some chapel, surrounded by flickering votives, him creeping up and slotting coins in a box, lighting a candle. She’d been cremated, but first she burned alive…twice burned.
It was only imagination. For all he knew, she’d been buried in the ground. Which was just as bad.
He opened the email.
“Decorative trays…. Home items on sale, 20% off!!!”
Fucking spam! Lazy Susan. She was the last person in the world he’d call lazy. It was mo
re like busy bee Susan. He slammed the delete key.
The next day, Ray did some actual work. He went online and researched gallery trends. Called Maurice and told him the good news about Psycho Ax-Murder Baby and asked if he had anything new. “No, but I will.” Artists were easy that way. He didn’t fool himself into thinking this was going to pay the mortgage. But he had to do something. And he wasn’t writing. Not if he couldn’t get in that door.
He set the sign in the gallery to Closed and climbed upstairs and played the acoustic, but it didn’t feel right. What he really wanted to do was wail on his electric. He hauled his ’67 Telecaster up to the couch, tuned it up, and started bending the crap out of the strings. Now that was more like it. The only thing missing was a stack of Marshalls.
He played a solid forty minutes before his fingers got too sore. He was headed downstairs for a late lunch when his phone buzzed.
“Lou here. Are you sitting down?”
Ray plopped himself down at the kitchen table. “I am.”
“That editor I told you about—he bought it!”
Ray hopped up and paced the length of the room. “Uh, that’s super!”
“You bet it is. And the next part’s better. I promised I’d get you an advance.”
“Right. How much?”
“A hundred grand—fifty now and the other half on completion, minus my fifteen percent.”
Ray leaned his forehead against the fridge and closed his eyes. A hundred grand was more money than Ray had ever seen, ever dreamed of making. Crazy energy coursed through his body. It streamed up into his brain and made pictures. A stack of bills piled on the sidewalk outside, higher than the roof. His reaching out his round window—never mind that it didn’t open—and grabbing a handful.
Lou said, “You there?”
Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series) Page 6