Authors: Peter Robinson
‘Anyway, he recognizes Gary and comes over, says he’s a poet and a singer-songwriter and asks if he and his friends can join us. Gary says he can if he recites one of his poems. Like, that’s the price of admission to our little clique. Typical fucking Gary. So he does. I don’t know if it was any good or not, but Gary said he liked it and invited him and his group to join us. Mitch was with his brother, this other guy called Ivan, and a couple of girls. One thing led to another and we went back to the hotel. Gary fucked one of the girls and somehow they just didn’t go away, they became part of the entourage.’
At this point, Bella appeared in the french windows looking bored silly. Her body seemed to be vibrating rhythmically, as if it had a motor inside. She was holding a long strand of hair, pulling it forward from the ponytail and sucking on it with one corner of her mouth. ‘You guys need anything else?’ she asked in a baby-doll voice.
Buxton glanced at Arvo and raised his eyebrows in question.
‘Sure,’ said Arvo. ‘I’ll have another iced tea, please.’
‘And another beer for me, sweetheart,’ Buxton said.
Now she had a purpose in life, Bella swayed back inside. Buxton gave Arvo a look as if to say, ‘Women.’ The fridge door rattled when it opened, then banged shut. Bella delivered the drinks and stood around for a moment, as if unsure what to do. Buxton patted her rear. ‘Hop it for a while, love. Man talk.’
‘Sure, honey.’ She smiled and gave a little wave as she left. ‘You won’t be
too
long?’
‘Course not, sweetie.’
Bella sashayed back through the french windows. Buxton pulled the tab on his beer, then Arvo asked what Mitch was like.
Buxton wiped foam from his lips. ‘He was a cool customer,’ he said. ‘I mean cool in the sense of being cold. You got no real sense of warmth from him, no
feeling
. He was pretty quiet at first. You know, the kind who sits back and observes, tries to figure out all the angles. I got the impression that he was trying to learn how to behave in order to be accepted by us, to please Gary in particular. It was a spooky feeling, as if all his behaviour was planned. They say psychos are like that, don’t they?’
‘Can you give me an example?’ Arvo asked.
‘Let me think . . . Yeah . . . Like I don’t think he had a sense of humour, but he figured out pretty sharpish that people wouldn’t like him if he didn’t, so he created one to order. If he laughed, you sensed that he wasn’t really amused, that he just thought it was appropriate to laugh or people would think he was odd and wouldn’t like him. Do you know what I mean? Never trust anyone without a sense of humour, man. That’s my philosophy.’
‘Absolutely. Can you tell me anything else about him?’
‘He was really good at finding drugs. We hit a new town, he’d score whatever you wanted – whatever Gary wanted – in minutes, man. And he liked to play headgames.’
‘What kind of headgames?’
‘He liked to try and scare people, fuck with their minds. He had that
look,
for a start, with the eyes and all – you know, like Charlie Manson – and he also had an aura about him that made me feel someone had stepped on my grave every time he walked in the room. He carried a flick-knife, too. What do you guys over here call it? A switchblade, that’s it. Not that I ever saw him use it except to clean his fingernails, mind you. But he made sure you knew he had it.
‘Anyway, he was obsessive, man. If he got into something with you, he just wouldn’t let go. If he got you to tell him something about your past, some little incident you were maybe ashamed of, he’d just keep digging and poking until he’d squeezed every detail out of you, every ounce of shame. He liked to humiliate people. Once he made eye contact, he wouldn’t let go until he’d got what he wanted. We got to calling him Gary’s pet pit-bull. A pit-bull of the mind. Once he got his teeth in your psyche . . .’ Buxton gave a theatrical shudder.
‘What about his friends, his brother?’
‘They seemed normal enough, though God knows what they were doing hanging around with him. Ivan and Mitch’s brother were both very quiet. I don’t remember getting a word out of either of them. The brother used to follow him around like a pet dog. The girls liked to fuck a lot.’ He lowered his voice again. ‘One of them gave great head. Candi, I think. The other was called Aspen. I ask you, what kind of a name is that? Who in their right mind would name their kid after a fucking ski resort? Anyway, they were all, like, around, you know, but Mitch was clearly the leader. He was the one people remembered.’
Rock music started playing from inside again. Louder, this time, and a little more rebellious: Guns N’Roses. Buxton didn’t react to it at all. Arvo sipped some iced tea, then asked, ‘What other kind of games did Mitch play?’
‘He liked to tell elaborate lies. He used to talk about how he wasted someone out in the desert once, or how he’d played in a rock ’n’ roll band, even made a record once. He even said he’d seen the President coming out of a brothel in Reno. Lies. Gary loved that sort of shit, lapped it up. You’d never think such a miserable cynic as him could be so gullible, but he was.’
‘Could any of the stories have been true?’
‘I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t think so. Whenever you asked him to elaborate, he got all vague about the details. You know, like the record had been deleted and you couldn’t find a copy anywhere. That kind of bullshit. To be honest, man, I didn’t really care whether they were true or not. Mostly I just tried to avoid being around him, but that wasn’t always possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he was always
there,
always on the fringes. Because Gary liked him.’
‘He didn’t scare Gary?’
‘Not at all. But then Gary didn’t always see things the way normal people do, if you catch my drift. Nobody scared Gary. He could fuck minds with the best of them.’
‘Was Mitch ever violent in your presence?’
‘Yeah. It could come on all of a sudden. Like, it would just erupt. He ended up being a sort of unofficial bodyguard for Gary and Sal. For all of us, really, whether we wanted him or not.’
‘What sort of violent things did he do?’
Buxton thought for a moment. ‘I saw him hit a few people, usually people who were being obnoxious or pushy. He generally did it very quickly, and they didn’t get a chance to hit back. He was strong and he seemed to have a kind of quick reaction speed . . . I don’t know . . . it’s as if he’d studied unarmed combat or some of that martial arts stuff, or maybe been in the Marines.’
‘Did he ever say anything about being in the armed forces?’
‘Nope. And if you were too young for Vietnam, Mitch certainly was. I’d say he was about thirty, tops.’
He could still have been in the forces, Arvo thought, and if he had been, he might be easier to track down. True, there was no longer a draft, but anyone could sign up. There had certainly been more than enough wars since Vietnam. The Gulf, for example. On the other hand, you could learn martial arts just about anywhere these days. ‘Are there any specific incidents you can tell me about?’ he asked.
Buxton thought for a moment, then said, ‘Yeah. Yeah, there was one time. And it tells you a lot about the guy, now I come to think about it. But why are you so interested in him? You haven’t really told me what this is all about.’
‘There’s been some threats of violence, that’s all, and we think it might be connected to someone who was on the tour.’
Buxton snorted. ‘Well if it’s threats of violence you’re interested in, Mitch is your man. Who’s he been threatening? Can’t be Gary. He’s dead.’
‘I can’t really say any more than that. Will you tell me about the incident?’
Buxton sulked for a moment, then sipped some beer, lit another Camel and recrossed his legs, ankles resting on the table. ‘Yeah. Okay. We were in this hotel bar in Santa Barbara, a few of us sitting around shooting the shit before a concert. Out of the blue, Mitch asks if anyone has a postage stamp and Jim – that’s Jim Lasardi, the bass player I mentioned before – says, “Why, Mitch, do you want to write your autobiography?” It was just a meaningless sort of joke, really, because we don’t know anything about the guy, right? Well, everyone laughs but Mitch. His face sort of twitches in a cold smile, which is definitely not sincere by any stretch of the imagination, and he changes the subject, or someone else does.
‘Then Mitch gets all sulky. He says he doesn’t want to go to the concert that night, so we go and play, and when we come back to the hotel after the show for a few drinks, all a bit wired, he’s, like, still sitting there in the same chair in the bar. It’s the only time I ever saw him close to being drunk. He must have drunk a whole bottle of bourbon and he was still in control.
‘Anyway, he starts rabbiting on about all the things he’s done in his life, like how he’s worked down the mines, picked grapes with the wetbacks in Napa and Sonoma, written songs for a famous band whose name he can’t remember, driven a cab in Frisco, published his poems, travelled around South America with nothing but a few dollars in his pocket . . . You get the message? He goes on and on and on, and nobody really knows why he’s telling us all this, or even whether he’s putting us on. But there’s something in his tone that makes us keep quiet and listen till he’s finished.
‘Then he says something about people making a joke out of his life, belittling what he’s done, and suddenly we all know what this is about. Uh-oh. This guy has been sitting brooding about Jim’s stupid joke all night.
All fucking night
. Can you believe it? So Jim says something to ease the tension, like he didn’t mean anything by it, but Mitch isn’t hearing by now, and he just reaches over, really fast, pulls Jim by the collar and nuts him right on the bridge of the nose. Blood everywhere. Jim’s nose is broken. Next thing, the hotel manager comes over and throws a fit and Mitch decks him as well. One punch to the side of the jaw and he’s out.’
‘What happened?’
‘Gary smoothed things over.’
‘And did Gary let him stay around after that?’
‘Gary said he had a word with him and, to be fair, Mitch never did anything like that again. But things didn’t feel the same any more. We all gave him an even wider berth. You have to understand, though, that Mitch would do anything for Gary. Anything. He loved the guy, hero-worshipped him. And Gary’s ego was never so well stroked it couldn’t do with a bit more.’
‘What about Sally?’
‘He was very protective about her. Very courteous. A real gentleman. Funny that, isn’t it?’
‘Did he ever come on to her?’
‘Not that I know of. It wasn’t like that. Everyone else treated her like a tart, but Mitch treated her like gold. He opened doors for her, that kind of shit. He even used to have pet nicknames for her.’
The hairs on the back of Arvo’s neck prickled. ‘Like what?’
‘Oh, just cute stuff, you know. He’d call her “The Lady,” for example. “The Lady’s carriage awaits,” he’d say when the limo arrived. Or “Princess.” “Little Star.” Names like that. Look, if Sally’s been getting threats, they’re not from Mitch. He worshipped the ground she walked on.’
But Arvo was no longer listening. He put his glass down and sat up.
‘Do you know where he went after the tour ended?’ he asked.
‘Haven’t a clue, man.’
‘Mind if I use your phone?’
‘No,’ said Buxton, looking puzzled. ‘Not at all. No, don’t get up. Stay where you are. I’ll get Bella to bring it out to you. Bella!’
32
Stuart and Sarah ate a hurried lunch at a table opposite Brentano’s in the open plaza of the Century City Shopping Center. Sarah nibbled at a corned beef on rye she’d got from the deli and Stuart sucked at his Diet Coke and tucked into a Johnny Rocket burger with the works.
Sarah was still in her Anita O’Rourke costume from the morning’s shooting – this time a navy-blue business suit over a pearl silk blouse – and one or two shoppers stared and whispered as they walked by, recognizing her.
It was almost three o’clock and the lunch hordes had gone by then. When she was filming, Sarah often didn’t get a lunch break until two or three. Today, Stuart had taken pity on her and brought her here just to get her out of the gloomy studio atmosphere for an hour or so. At least that was what he told her. She knew Stuart well enough to know he had another agenda, too.
It had been a tough morning’s filming, especially given the mood on the set over Jack’s murder. The director wanted to do a few fill-in scenes and solo Anita scenes – the female cop at home feeding her cat, eating her breakfast and so on – basically just about anything he could get away with shooting without Jack.
The whole affair gave Sarah the feeling that the network was some sort of gigantic perpetual motion machine and, whatever happened, it must not be allowed to wind down. Sarah had found it difficult to concentrate and felt annoyed with herself because they had to do simple scenes over and over again. Usually she prided herself on her professionalism, but today she’d been like some kid fresh out of drama school. Worse, a high-school play.
Between mouthfuls, Stuart was telling her about the morning’s meeting he had attended, but she found her attention wandering. Even in public, in broad daylight, she felt jumpy. She kept wondering if the dark figures she saw coming towards her out of the corners of her eyes meant to do her harm, if one of them might be
him
. It was hardly paranoia, she assured herself – someone really
was
after her – but somehow the thought didn’t offer much comfort.