When Hell Freezes Over

by Rick Blechta

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  Leaning against his amp, Lee looked over at me with an insolent expression. “Because this is just like you, Michael. The conquering hero returns, and we should all bow down. You just want to be the centre of attention again, don’t you? It’s all bollocks.”

  John said softly, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Lee, but a lot of this is about Michael, whether you like it or not. He and Rolly are the ones who wrote nearly all our material—not that we all didn’t have a hand in it—so it seems right that the concert should begin with him. After all, he’s the one who hasn’t been here since our glory days.”

  Tommy jumped in. “And I’ve never heard of anyone starting a concert like this. It’s sort of like we’re letting people see what it was like when these songs were created. Michael noodling around with our material, John joining in, then finally getting to ‘Don’t Push Me’, with Rolly singing the way it was written. No one’s ever heard it like that. The audience will go berserk.”

  “It’s total shite,” Lee said again.

  I was looking over at Rolly and his unreadable expression. Thinking or just hung over?

  The discussion went back and forth between the other three, until finally Rolly looked over at me. “Do you really think this is a good idea?”

  “Yes. Did you have something else in mind?”

  “Here come the bloody flashpots,” Tommy said under his breath.

  “I was sort of visualizing starting with a bang,” Rolly began.

  “Told you,” Tommy huffed.

  “But we really should save ‘Don’t Push Me’ until the end of the set.”

  I tried to keep the exasperation out of my voice as I answered, “But that’s the whole point! The audience is going to think the bit at the beginning is all they’re going to hear of it. We’ll tear their ears off with the familiar version as our encore, just like you want.”

  Rolly thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I like it.”

  As we began working on the material we hadn’t covered the previous day, Lee was staring daggers at me. I’d have to take him aside when we broke for lunch and talk to him. Maybe I could get him to understand that this wasn’t an ego trip for me, that I was just trying to revisit what we’d done through the filter of a quarter century of living.

  Maybe I couldn’t.

  ***

  “So you see,” I told Shannon, “everything’s been pretty good so far.”

  “And Lee?”

  “John told me he’s unhappy that I’m against recording the gig.”

  “Why are you?” I sighed.

  “I don’t quite know. I guess I’m still trying to keep this whole thing as minimal as possible. Maybe it’s because a CD and DVD would make it feel too much like the band is back together again. I don’t know... I suppose I’m being a bit of a prat.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a great idea. Speaking purely as a fan, I’d love it.”

  “I have to make a decision one way or the other pretty soon. We’re moving into the arena so we can get the sound and lights together. The video people will need that time to get their part happening.”

  “How are the tickets selling?”

  “Rolly’s had publicists promoting the hell out of the thing, and our old record company is putting on a big publicity blitz all over the country. Rolly miscalculated and went for a venue he was sure we could fill. It only holds about 5500. The tickets for the first show sold out in day. The other three were added and went just as quickly.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Not really. There are bigger halls in the city. Rolly could have booked the Armadillo, for instance.”

  “The what?” Shannon asked.

  “It’s what the locals call the Scottish Exhibition and Concert Centre or the SECC . The building looks sort of like an armadillo. Now it’s too late. Our long-awaited reunion is being staged in a bloody hockey arena. That’s pretty rich, isn’t it? I could have stayed in Canada and done all the hockey arenas I wanted! John didn’t find out until today where it actually was, and he is not happy about it.”

  “On the whole, though, it sounds like thing’s are going pretty well.”

  “Yeah...”

  “Now that you’re moving someplace where people will know where you are, you’re going to have to be doubly careful.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  What I didn’t want to tell her was that people had already been nosing around the Hilton asking questions. Yes, they might have been reporters or fans, but the two men who’d chatted up John and Tommy in the hotel’s bar the previous evening hadn’t sounded like either one. Plus, they were Yanks.

  And the rest of the band had figured out that I was not staying in the room that had been booked at the Hilton.

  Twenty-Five

  I guess I should have expected it would happen sooner or later.

  To be quite honest, I couldn’t really figure out Rolly’s response to what was happening at our rehearsals. Here the reunion he had been bugging me about for all those years was actually taking place, and so far he seemed emotionally detached from the proceedings. Yes, he sang with everything he had (when it was appropriate), but when we discussed things, got down ’n’ dirty in the trenches as it were, he acted as if didn’t care. In the dim past, he would have been in there slinging mud with the rest of us. The term “elder statesman” came to my mind as I stole glances at him during our (thankfully) infrequent discussions over what we were rehearsing and how it was turning out.

  It really began to get on my nerves as I watched him watching me. What was his game?

  Since we were moving the gear to Braehead Arena across the Clyde that day, I went to the rehearsal space to remove all the cables from the various keyboards. I marked them as to what plugged in where and made a note of all the settings on the keyboard mixer I was using. I always have preferred controlling my own mix rather than letting the sound man do it. Rolly had come down to watch the road crew—some of Angus’s people who’d insisted they wanted to take part—pack up the equipment and load it into the lorry. Since they knew what they were doing, he really had no reason to be there, and actually, had seldom been around to supervise anything (except the groupies) in the old days.

  The air that morning had a damp bite to it, with the sky looking ready to break open at any moment. Pulling my collar up around my ears, I walked over and stood with him next to the lorry. He took a long drag on his cigarette but said nothing.

  “So, how do you think it’s going so far?” I asked.

  Rolly took another drag. “All right, I guess.”

  “Nothing you’d like to talk over?”

  “No.”

  “Rolly, just where the hell are you coming from?”

  He turned and looked at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Rolly and I had been mates since we were seven. We’d been in the same grade at school, and we’d become close because I played piano and he sort of played guitar. Our first song had been written when we were eleven, and he’d made my teens bearable with his good humour and devil-may-care attitude, a good antidote to my propensity for being overly cautious and introspective. There was a history between us.

  So, standing on a Glasgow street, I told him exactly what I was feeling about the rehearsals. He listened but made no response.

  By the time I’d finished my little lecture, the lorry was loaded. Rolly offered to drive me out to Braehead.

  “Let’s stop for an early spot of lunch on the way,” he suggested.

  Scotland doesn’t really have the same pub tradition England has, although they have plenty of drinking establishments. Knowing that the afternoon and evening would be a long slog, we limited our intake of beer to a pint each. The only decent beer in the place where we stopped was Younger’s Tartan.

  “So what are you bloody thinking?” I pressed. “You haven’t said more than ten words in a row.”

&nbs
p; It took a good few minutes for him to speak. “To be honest, I keep wondering when you’re going to walk out again.”

  “Really, Rolly, that’s bollocks. I stick to my commitments. When I said I’d do the concert, I meant it. Now we’re doing four, and you haven’t heard two words about it from me. As a matter of fact, I was going to tell the band that I’d changed my mind about recording the gigs. How’s that for commitment?”

  “There was one time you didn’t stick to your commitments.”

  There. It was out. I could comment or not as I saw fit.

  After all those years, Rolly had presented me with the opportunity to discuss what had happened, but I just couldn’t think of a way to approach what I wanted to say. Hell, we’d never so much as acknowledged that it had happened, let alone discussed it.

  The meal came and went without me being able to pull the trigger.

  ***

  Rolly drove around back of Braehead Arena to the loading dock, so we mercifully didn’t have to walk through the shopping mall to which it is attached. That would have been beyond the pale.

  As we pulled up, the last of our equipment was being unloaded, the sound and lighting company that had been hired had already offloaded, and some fans had actually shown up. It felt very strange to be signing autographs backstage once again.

  Rolly had booked the arena for the three days prior to the shows so we could get used to a big stage (about fifty by twenty-five), and the sound and lighting could be integrated into the performance. The band had yet to run through the entire set in one go, and I still hadn’t settled on the final version of my intro idea.

  Since no one on the road crew had worked with us before (way too young for that!), I had to help set up the keyboards, but once that was done, I headed for the green room: the home team’s dressing room. It smelled faintly of sweat and body odour, despite the fact that it had been thoroughly cleaned and nice furniture, carpets and lighting had been brought in, all the rock and roll mod cons.

  The band had become very tense. It was one thing to rehearse in a small room with only us present and something completely different to play on a large stage with a crew and the arena staff hanging about. Besides, the material wasn’t as solid as any of us would have liked. There would be embarrassing lapses and duff notes.

  Tommy, always sensitive to everyone’s mood, started rattling on about some of the bizarre things that had happened to us on the road, and like every group, Neurotica had survived a lot of those.

  Pretty soon we were all pitching in, and quite often Tommy had to caution his son Ralph not to repeat to his mum what had been said.

  Two hours later, everything was ready and we hit the stage. At first, it was the disaster we’d all feared. My hands were shaking, and I wasn’t the worst. Tommy’s sticks kept flying out of his hands because they were so slick with sweat. Only John seemed unperturbed, but then he’d been working in pressure cooker situations for many years doing studio work.

  It wasn’t until I called a halt, suggested we should have a beer or two then try “Don’t Push Me” that things started to turn around. Tommy counted it in at a slightly slower tempo than we’d been practising it, and that made all the difference. The familiar parts slipped into place like comfortable old shoes, and we just took off. There was Rolly swaggering and strutting up and down the stage. Lee stopped looking like a scared rabbit, and I wasn’t constantly on the lookout for flying drum sticks. At the end, the great groove developed into a long jam with John doing some incredible soloing. We hadn’t played the song like that since our days making only a few bob in grungy working class clubs.

  Neurotica was finally back.

  ***

  We packed it in ten exhausted hours later. My brain was as sore as my fingers and arms.

  “I am completely, and in all other ways knackered,” Tommy said, wiping the sweat from his face with an already sodden towel.

  Rolly, staring directly at me, said, “All right, lads, everyone back to the hotel for drinks and grub up in my suite. It’s all arranged.”

  “You arrange for any young ladies?” Lee asked and got stared down by Tommy. “Hey, some of you blokes might be married, but I ain’t!” He grabbed his crotch. “Playing always makes me horny.”

  He laughed uproariously at his comment, until he realized that no one else was joining in.

  “Hey, I got my lad here!” Tommy said with a disgusted look.

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t!”

  Before Lee could dig a larger hole for himself, Rolly peeled him off, and they disappeared down the back of the stage. We could hear raised voices from the corridor running around the arena under the seats, but I couldn’t catch any words.

  As he handed his guitar to one of the road crew, John said to Tommy, “He always was the one to make arse comments. Take no notice.”

  To his credit, Rolly did have a nice spread of sandwiches, salads and beer and wine back at the hotel, and to his credit, Lee apologized to Tommy, although it was obvious to me that Rolly had twisted his arm hard to make him do it.

  I tried to be as enthusiastic as the rest of the lads about the concert. True, that day’s rehearsal had been extremely enjoyable once we’d gotten on track, but I could not muster the same enthusiasm for the old days as everyone else, even John. To at least appear part of the group, I stayed until well after five a.m., and since it was so late, I stumbled down to my room there rather than make the trek to the other hotel. Flopping down on the bed fully clothed, I almost immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  Probably because of old emotions that had been stirred up during the day, it didn’t take long for my old nemesis to make its appearance.

  ***

  Another seat back, another plane, but this time Shannon had a good feeling about the trip. Yes, she was putting all her eggs in the Hamburg basket, but what else could she do? The only lead she had to follow to the damned girl was at the address Maria Rota had given her.

  She got through all the usual airport hassles in record time because, coming from the UK , she was already inside the European Union.

  I could get used to travelling like this, she thought as she stepped into a waiting cab and headed downtown.

  It was barely eleven a.m. when she found herself looking across a busy street at a nondescript, four-storey apartment building. One thing had to be said for Gia: she didn’t go for the high life in her living accommodations, outwardly at least.

  Shannon’s palms were sweaty as she climbed over a snowbank and walked to the front door. Crossing herself, she pressed the buzzer for number 12.

  ***

  Thirteen hours later, Shannon wearily fell into a cab at Glasgow airport. She gave the driver the name of the hotel, then added, “Wake me up when we get there, okay?”

  “Sure thing,” he said and winked at her in the mirror.

  Despite her words, Shannon didn’t fall asleep on the ride into town. She was far too upset.

  Her trip to Germany had been almost a complete waste of time and had cost quite a lot of money. She’d waited around a good part of the day for Gia to make an appearance, once she’d made sure the girl wasn’t in the apartment. Using roughly the same dodge she’d used in Montreal, she’d pumped the super (who fortunately spoke passable English), finding out that while the Chameleon did indeed rent the apartment, he hadn’t seen her in at least a month and was getting concerned, since the rent had been due two weeks earlier.

  Of course, she’d been using a German alias: Johanna Braun. The super had recognized her immediately from the photo and could only say nice things about the flight attendant who’d rented the apartment for nearly a year.

  “She keeps an odd schedule, though, not like the other flight attendants I have had in the building. Sometimes, Fräulein Braun is gone for several weeks. I asked her about it, and she told me she replaces people who are sick, and so the airline moves her where they need her, ja?”

  Clever girl, Shannon thought. Here’s yet another person she’
s completely hoodwinked.

  Using his phone, the helpful man had called the apartment and had only gotten the answering machine.

  “Has anyone else been enquiring about her?”

  The man gave a generous shrug. “I am not here all the time, but I can ask my wife when she returns from shopping.”

  The wife knew nothing more, so Shannon had stomped back across the street to a little café in order to watch the entrance and think about what else she might try. The person behind the counter had understood almost no English, so Shannon wound up with a double shot of espresso rather than a cappuccino.

  It was always possible that Gia/Johanna had been in her apartment recently without the super knowing, but she doubted it. The man seemed to be on the ball and wanted to collect the rent. Sooner or later, he would have seen her.

  By six o’clock she knew this had been a dead-end trip. Either the girl had moved on or her cousin had tipped her off. There was only one more card to play.

  Giving up her seat by the window, where she’d been for the past four hours, she went downtown to the main police station, a short taxi ride away.

  The English of the officer Shannon first spoke to was darned near as good as hers. Looking over her PI license, passport and ID , he seemed very skeptical. Shannon gave him the name of two Toronto cops she knew well and Burt from Peel Regional, and he dispatched someone with the information, leaving her cooling her heels for a good forty minutes. Eventually, she was shown into a small office. A tall blonde woman behind the desk was looking over Shannon’s credentials with more than passing interest.

  Shannon sat down and said, “Thank you for seeing me. I’m sorry but I don’t speak any German, so I hope your English is good enough,” she added with a generous smile.

  “Frau O’Brien, we do not usually speak with private investigators, but we have been told some interesting things about you.”

  This was puzzling. “Like what?”

  “That you have been following this Fräulein you are after from your city to Montreal to New York, then Birmingham. That you are a most tenacious adversary.”