“Finally! We get to talk about the elephant in the—”
“Banks!”
“You’re sucking the joy out of this,” he said.
Track 7: “Can’t Forget You”
Featuring Tusk
Tusk noticed a pair of wavering figures above the surface of the water and it gave him a start. His mind flashed on the night the barge went down—those figures on the deck, lit by flames, aiming their rifles at them. Aagh! Bad times.
He packed the memories away and surfaced. Blew water from his trunk and flapped his ears to flick the drops from them.
“It appears,” Tusk said, “that I am busted.”
“We did ask you to stay in your room,” Detective Delgado said. She sounded amused, which was a relief.
The detectives stood a few feet back from the edge of the pool. Tusk waded toward the steps and Delgado looked away.
“Don’t worry,” Tusk said. “Elephants always wear trunks.”
Delgado frowned, and Banks merely smiled. Typical. Matt had used the line at a party twenty-three months ago, and everyone laughed. Since then, Tusk had said the same line, word for word, four times, and his laugh rate was near zero. Humor, he thought, was the most intimate act of communication. To make a joke was to make yourself vulnerable. You were saying, Peek inside my mind. This is what I find amusing. Do you share my appreciation of it? The response could be faked, but not often, and not completely. Tusk had begun to worry that his genetic makeup put him out of sync with conventionally evolved humans. He thought he had an excellent sense of humor. Once he asked Matt if he was funny and Matt said, “No, you’re hilarious.” Tusk was still pondering the implications of that.
He climbed out of the pool and Delgado was kind enough to hand him his towel. He dried off, self-consciously. He knew he was extra large. Jumbo-sized, Dr. M called him. When the band appeared in person, the fans—especially the young ones, the tweeners—would swarm the others, but they would hang back from Tusk and stare up at him in some mix of fright and wonder. It was only from the distance of a stage or through a screen that he was safe enough to be loved.
“Is it time for my interview?” Tusk asked.
“We were hoping you could help us understand some things,” Delgado said.
Tusk pulled on a robe. There was no one else around; the rooftop pool was in a VIP walled garden separate from the swimming area used by the IPs or the merely Ps. A perk, but also a necessity. He’d never have a moment’s peace if he were forced to share the water with fans.
They took seats in the shade of a cabana. Chad—the same waiter who’d taken care of Tusk yesterday—appeared out of nowhere and glided over with a pitcher of ice water. Tusk offered to buy the detectives drinks, perhaps some food, but they declined. Tusk ordered the veggie tray.
“Great choice,” the waiter said. “I’ll make sure they don’t skimp this time.”
“Thanks, Chad,” Tusk said.
“We were trying to figure out some things that happened at the party last night,” Delgado said. “And Devin mentioned you have an amazing memory.”
“That’s a stereotype.”
This made Banks smile, for some reason. The detective said, “He said you can carry an entire album in your head, every note. He says you’re a genius.”
“I know real geniuses. Matt, for example. I just have a head for music.”
“Matt is a genius?” Delgado asked.
“He’s brilliant. He’s already been accepted to the genetics program at the University of Chicago. Even if this hadn’t happened, he was quitting the band. He’s going to go on and do things that change the world, I promise you.”
“But you,” Delgado said. “You’re just the man who wrote songs that millions of people love.”
She said it with kindness. He liked that she said “man.”
Tusk shook his head. “I can’t take credit for that. The music just comes to me.”
“Ah, the I’m-just-a-vessel thing.”
Tusk suddenly felt embarrassed. “Is that a cliché?”
“I’ve met a lot of actors and musicians,” Delgado said. “It’s a thing.”
“But for me it’s true,” Tusk said. “If I have a talent, it’s for producing and engineering. Figuring out how sound should best be presented for maximum effect.”
“So what did you think of the CD Dr. M played last night?” Delgado asked.
The sudden swerve toward the murder unnerved him. Delgado seemed very approachable, but she was on the job, and very much in charge. Banks took his cues from her.
“I didn’t think much of it,” Tusk said.
Banks said, “You didn’t think much of it? Or you didn’t think much of it?”
“It’s just a demo. Dr. M took some tape of us fooling around, from our early days. He’s trying to pass it off as something new.”
“But it was you,” Delgado said. “The WyldBoyZ.”
“We may be on the recording, but it’s not the WyldBoyZ.”
“You want to run that by me again?”
“If John and Paul were fooling around with a tape recorder when they were kids, you wouldn’t say it was the Beatles. The WyldBoyZ is its own thing, its own sound.”
The waiter placed the trays on the table. The mounds of vegetables were much bigger than the order yesterday—they were learning. “Please, have some,” Tusk said. Tusk and Banks reached for the tray at the same time, but Banks suddenly froze. This was odd enough that Tusk also paused, the bundle of celery sticks still gripped in his trunk.
“On second thought,” Banks said.
“You sure?” Tusk asked. “There’s plenty.”
“I’m good.”
Tusk shrugged and popped the sticks into his mouth.
Delgado said, “So this demo Dr. M played last night. Why did he do it?”
“That was Dr. M trying to—not blackmail us, that’s the wrong word—extort us into staying together. Dr. M wanted the next WyldBoyZ album, and we weren’t going to give it to him. So he was threatening to release this raw, unpolished recording as our new album.”
“Because Matt was leaving?” Delgado asked. “Or because of the lawsuit?”
“We all were leaving. Devin wants to be an actor, Tim wants to go hide, and frankly, I’m ready to do something else, musically. My dream is to build my own studio—my own production complex, actually. Audio, video, computer graphics, all the tools a twenty-first-century artist would need, and in a serene, isolated environment where they can create in peace.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought about how to spend your money,” Banks said.
“Money buys time and security. You can’t make art if you’re running for your life.”
The detectives were looking at him oddly, and he realized he’d said something incriminating. “I mean from fans,” he explained. “If we walk out onto the street it’s like A Hard Day’s Night.”
“Great movie,” Banks said. “So why not go ahead and let Dr. M release the demo? If you’re not going to make another album, make money off that.”
Tusk was shaking his head before he’d finished the sentence. “Even if we were staying together, we weren’t about to give Dr. M another song—not without reclaiming our rights and fixing the contract he had us sign. He’s been cheating us. You don’t have to take my word for it—this is all a matter of public record. You can read the complaint.”
“Devin already told us Dr. M didn’t write the songs,” Banks said. “That it was all you and Tim.”
“It’s not only the copyright issue. Dr. M was paying himself as both manager and a sixth member of the band. He was double-dipping—triple-dipping if you count the songwriting credit.”
“That sounds infuriating,” Delgado said.
“It was. Is.” Delgado was so easy to talk to. He wondered if she was trying to trap him into something.
“So this demo Dr. M played last night,” she said. “I don’t really understand his plan. Say he would release it as the next WyldBoyZ
album. If it’s from before he was your manager, he doesn’t have any rights to it, does he?”
“Dr. M said if we went forward with the case, he’d argue he has all rights—because we’re his property. Anything we produce belongs to him.”
“‘I own all of you,’” Delgado said. “That’s what he said at the party.”
Tusk nodded. “The matter has never been settled. In fact, Maury paid off people to make sure our status was never determined. He claims to have paperwork establishing his ownership, from our earliest days after the rescue.”
“That can’t hold up,” Banks said. “You’re obviously . . . a person.”
“You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to establish personhood in America. Even if the court finds we’re human, we might still be designated as illegal immigrants. We’d be . . . less than.”
“No wonder,” Delgado said.
“No wonder what?” Tusk asked.
“That when you heard the song, you got so angry you ripped the CD player from the wall.”
Tusk chewed slowly. He hadn’t realized they knew about that. Banks seemed surprised as well. Did the two detectives not confide in each other?
“I got frustrated,” Tusk admitted. “I tried to stop the player, but . . .” He waggled his fingers, thick as PVC pipe. “I couldn’t hit just one button. And so, yes, violence.”
“Here’s the thing,” Delgado said. “We looked at the CD player. We can’t find the CD that Dr. M was playing.”
“Really? It should be . . . oh no.”
The detectives waited for him to say more.
“A fan may have grabbed it,” Tusk said. “It would be valuable. Not monetarily, because they wouldn’t be able to release it legally. But for bragging rights. The fan community runs on a prestige economy.”
“A fan,” Delgado repeated. “Like the one you saw in Dr. M’s room?”
“Not in the room—I saw them walking out after the party and then getting into the elevator.”
That surprised them. “When was this?”
“An hour after the party ended,” he said. “Four thirteen AM.”
“That’s an exact number,” Banks said.
“I’m good with time.”
“What time is it now? No peeking.”
“Three thirty-two PM.”
Banks looked at his watch. “You’re off by a minute. It’s three thirty-one.”
“Your watch is slow.”
“So almost twelve hours ago, at four thirteen AM, you saw the fan leave the suite,” Delgado said. “This was when you were sitting in the hallway?”
“Ah, Bobby told you that? That’s good—that he remembers, I mean. When he’s in maximum mode, that’s when he blacks out. I took Bobby back to his room a minute or two after three AM. He was drunk, high, and very . . . manic. We were used to this. On this tour especially, he’s been reliably out of control. Sometimes he—is that funny?” Detective Banks had just smirked.
“I’m sorry,” Banks said. “It’s an oxymoron. Reliably out of control . . .”
“Oh! Yes.” Tusk made a mental note: Wordplay could be funny. He should work on his wordplay.
“The hallway,” Delgado prompted.
“Yes. I tried to keep Bobby inside, because he was determined to rejoin the party. Finally I shut him in—this was at three thirty—and sat outside the door, waiting for him to tire himself out. There was a lot of . . . smashing. At three forty-five, two of the hotel security staff came to investigate and I promised them he’d quiet down.”
“And did he?”
“Not a bit. He went on caterwauling until after four.”
“Yet the security guards didn’t come back.” A phone was buzzing. Delgado took a small Nokia from her pocket, looked at the screen, then put it away. “Sorry, go on. The guards?”
“Once they knew it was Bobby, they . . . well, let’s just say it’s one of the perks of being famous.”
“And it was right around then—four thirteen, you said—that a fan walks out of the suite,” Delgado said. “Can you describe them? Was it a man or a woman?”
“I couldn’t tell—they were in full costume. I heard a door open, and it woke me up. I was drowsing a bit. They were walking out of the suite, heading away from me toward the elevator.”
“What kind of costume?”
“Brown fur with a white stripe running down the back. A fluffy white and brown tail. Some kind of small woodland animal.”
“Did anyone else see this person in the hallway?” Delgado asked. Her phone buzzed again, but she ignored it.
“There was no one else around,” Tusk said. “I couldn’t hear Bobby anymore, so I assumed he’d finally passed out, and I went into my room and went to sleep.” Banks opened his mouth to ask a question and Tusk added, “I was in bed by four twenty.” Banks closed his mouth.
“Did you see this costumed person earlier, inside the party?” Delgado asked.
“I did not. But there were a lot of people at the party, many of them in costume. Also, the suite is large, and I stayed mostly in the common area out front. Dr. M kept the door to the master bedroom closed.”
“So as far you know,” Delgado said, “you’re the only person to have seen this costumed person.”
“Ah,” Tusk said. “You think I made them up.”
“I didn’t say that,” Delgado said.
Banks said, “You have to admit it’d be really helpful to Bobby if there was somebody else in the room. And what’s good for Bobby is good for the band.”
“And therefore me,” Tusk said.
Banks shrugged.
“You lied to us,” Tusk said to Delgado.
The detective blinked in surprise. “I did?”
“You said that we weren’t suspects. But of course we are.”
“‘Suspect’ isn’t a legal term,” Delgado said. “But in a practical sense? Sure. Everyone in the hotel last night is a suspect.”
“But especially Bobby,” Tusk said. “And Tim.”
Banks nearly dropped his pencil. Delgado said, “Why don’t you tell me about Tim attacking Dr. M?”
“Tim is an unhappy person, but I’ve never seen him act out like that,” Tusk said. “He’s more of a seether.”
“Yet he went at Dr. M and knocked him over. I’m assuming you remember that—you were standing right there.”
“Tim was angry because Dr. M was insulting Kat.”
“The Queen of the Roadies,” Banks said. “What’s her full name?”
“Katherine Vainikolo. She’s been with us almost since the beginning. She was our first bus driver, our first everything—in the early days she worked the soundboard and lights, set up the PA and tore it down, sold the merch, handled the fan mail, even combed Devin’s hair. These days she manages dozens of people who do those things. The only job she can’t delegate is taking care of Tim.”
“What’s the matter with Tim?” Banks asked.
“He’s extremely shy,” Tusk said. “And bitter. He’s stopped talking to us, I think because he just wants all this to end. He’d quit the band if it wasn’t already blowing up.”
“And Kat, she’s his girlfriend?”
“No!” The thought was abhorrent. “More like—I was about to say ‘handler,’ but that has unfortunate connotations.”
“Let’s say babysitter,” Banks said.
Delgado looked off to the side. Tusk wondered what she was thinking about. The phone was in her hand.
“I’d like to offer my full assistance,” Tusk said. “I can give you the names of everyone I saw at the party, and the descriptions of the ones I don’t know.”
Delgado looked up, raised an eyebrow.
“As it turns out,” Tusk said, “I have a near-photographic memory.”
“You said that was a stereotype,” Banks said.
“It is. It just happens that in my case it’s true.”
Banks opened his notebook. “Let me have it.”
Tusk closed his eyes. “Let’
s start to my left.” He pictured the room as it had been at its most crowded, around 2:30 AM. “Gordon and Shweta Wisniewski were by the door, greeting people. They’re a married couple. Shweta’s the president of the fan club, and Gordon’s her gopher. She was dressed as a zebra.”
“What was Gordon dressed as?”
“I just told you.”
Banks sighed, for some reason. “Go on. . . .”
“Next to them were the Dalmatian twins, Bob and Gary—”
“I’m sorry,” Delgado said. Her phone was vibrating again. “You two keep going, I need to return this.”
“Of course. Detective Delgado, I’m telling you the truth about seeing a person in costume leave the penthouse. And I’m serious in that I want to help you, in any way I can.”
“Good to know,” Delgado said.
Track 8: “Skin in the Game”
Featuring Detective Delgado
Luce walked to the other side of the pool. She’d gotten five calls in the space of five minutes, and all were from the same number: her sister Maria’s.
“Lo siento, no sabía que Melanie te estaba llamando,” Maria said. “¡Oh!, ella está aquí mismo.”
“No se la pases todavía,” Luce said. Before Melanie got on the phone, she had to explain that the investigation was going to roll over onto Luce’s regular night shift, so . . . could Melanie spend the night? Maria, being Maria, said it was no problem, they could even drop her off at school in the morning, wasn’t a bother at all. And Luce, being Luce, promised it was the last time. None of these outrageous statements even counted as a lie. This game between the Delgado sisters had been going on so long it was like playing poker with all the cards showing.
Luce switched to English. “Okay, let me talk to Melanie.”
“Mom!” Melanie shouted. “Bobby O is in jail!”
“I know, sweetness. Listen, you can’t call my cell phone unless it’s an emergency.”
“This is an emergency! Are you investigating? Why did you not tell me? Did he murder Dr. M?”
“We don’t know yet, Mel.”
“What are they like? Are they nice?”
Luce deflected those two questions, and the next thirty-two. Finally, she got to ask one of her own.
The Album of Dr. Moreau Page 5