Berke saw the duct tape over Ariel’s mouth, saw the terror in her eyes and the guy’s arm squeezing her throat. She saw blood streaming from both of Ariel’s nostrils, making a mess of her pretty lavender-colored blouse with the puffy sleeves that Berke herself would never have been caught dead in.
Berke thought she was going to have to kill him. She was ready.
He shuddered, came to himself and his current predicament with a jolt, and he let Ariel go. He pushed her aside and sprang up, like a stocky panther searching for escape. The zipper of his jeans was open. Before Berke could think to shout for help, DJ Talk It Up charged her and swung a fist at her face, but Berke saw it coming and warded it off with one arm while the other punched five into the fool’s bulbous nose.
She gave it all she had, and she had one hell of a lot to give.
His nose exploded like a blood balloon. But that didn’t stop him, he was enraged and desperate and so he kept flailing at her, grabbing at her hair, her breasts, trying to claw her eyes out.
Fucker fights like a girl, Berke thought just before she drove a knee right up into his balls.
Maybe that did hurt him, from the way he whined, but he was running on nerves and adrenaline and he was not going to be stopped by a bagful of smashed nuts. His face might have gone ghost-white, but he still wanted out. He clawed his way past Berke and through the door, tearing himself out of his jacket as Berke grabbed hold of the hood, and then in his flagging white T-shirt stained with tonight’s Hungry Man dinner he started to limp to the left but there were still people who’d gotten backstage passes from Twenty Million Miles To Earth in the corridor, jamming things up, and now they were gaping at him and Berke was shouting, “Stop him! Stop him!”
So DJ Talk It Up turned to the right and tried to get past the handcart that nearly tripped him up and took a bite from one of his ankles as he passed. Two more ball-dragging staggers in search of a way out and suddenly from a door in front of him stepped the Detroit dude.
“Stop him, John!” Berke shouted, holding a dark brown hoodie with nobody in it.
Maybe Detroit couldn’t always beat Philly’s ass. It had been a general statement.
Tonight, though, it was pretty much true.
Nomad got three punches in before DJ Talk It Up realized he was being pounded. They weren’t just ordinary back-behind-the-bar or parking lot disagreement shots; they had some meaning behind them, some muscle, and they were well-placed to make DJ Talk It Up understand he was on his way to the hospital. Another trio of punches, fast fast fast, and DJ was speechless and also toothless in front.
Nomad gave him one to the throat, not as hard as he’d given Quince Massey in front of the Olive Garden that day years ago, but one that would be remembered.
Then the DJ was on his knees. His face was not so much a face as a model for an abstract painting. Nomad stood over the Study In Scarlet With Nose On Forehead. Terry looked out from the door at his back, his eyes wide behind his specs, and he determined to stay right where he was, out of harm’s way.
There was a frozen moment, as happens in the aftermath of sudden violence.
“John! Terry! Help me!” Berke called, and the way her voice trembled pierced Nomad’s heart.
He looked along the corridor. Berke was supporting someone he could not possibly recognize. They were walking slowly, painfully, toward him, and the crew and techs and people with backstage passes and even members of Twenty Million Miles To Earth were around them trying to help.
Nomad saw the duct tape across her mouth, wound around her head and caught in her tangled hair. He saw the blood. He saw her rubbing her wrists, and how a long silver ribbon of tape hung down from one of them. He saw how the lavender-colored blouse with the puffy sleeves had been ruined. One of her favorites, he knew. She lowered her face when she saw him looking, as if in shame to let herself be seen like this.
“Oh, Jesus!” Terry cried out, and he rushed past Nomad to go to Ariel.
< >
Somebody flashed a camera.
Nomad would have torn that person’s eyeballs from their skull and made them examine their own asshole, but he didn’t have to. One of the stage crew darted in and grabbed the camera. There was a protest and two Cobra Club guys suddenly were taking out the garbage.
Nomad looked again at Ariel, being supported by Berke as Terry worked to get the tape off her mouth and out of her hair. The people around them were stunned into silence. When the tape came off, Ariel took a step forward and then she bent over and vomited on the floor. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Berke said, rubbing her back. Ariel had to lean against the wall, and somebody offered a towel to hold against her bloody face.
Beyond the door that led to the stage, the audience began to chant for The Five.
Nomad stared down at DJ Talk It Up.
The rage came up in him. It sizzled through his veins like life’s blood. Maybe for him, it was. He decided he would end it now.
He reared his right foot back to kick the DJ’s brains out of his head.
The young man lifted his chin. The bleeding face was weeping. Tears mixed with blood coursed along the corners of the mangled mouth. His eyes were sightless, fixed on something far beyond the dude from Detroit.
Nomad was about to let swing.
He wondered what more he could add to this cup of suffering. He heard the DJ’s chest rattle as the sobs rolled out. He saw the DJ put his hands up to his eyes as if to hide from the blinding light. Nomad wondered what kind of shrunken shirt this young man had had to wear, and what had been burned and scarred into his mind and soul. He could imagine this kid leaving Philly with a big-lid ball cap and big dreams. Gonna be a big star, Mom. Gonna set ’em on fire.
Instead, he came to the place where people want things before they’ve earned them, where you are nobody without power and money, where the heat of the dreams melt you down to size, and hey, Mom, lookit me now.
It was not for Nomad to add anything more.
He lowered his foot. When he turned back toward Ariel, he saw that True and two cops had come into the corridor, along with the club’s manager, a spindly guy wearing all black with a trimmed black goatee. True was talking quietly to Ariel, his face close to hers, and Nomad saw her nod. The two cops came over and pulled DJ Talk It Up to his feet. His knees promptly gave way, so they half-dragged, half-guided him into the Green Room. True said tersely, “Call an ambulance!” but Ariel shook her head and grabbed at the manager’s sleeve.
“No,” she said. “No ambulance.”
“Go ahead,” True directed.
“No!” Ariel’s voice was louder. “I’m not going to the hospital!”
Berke said, “Listen, baby, you’ve
got
to go. We’ll be right there with you.”
“No,” Ariel repeated. “No, I’m going on.”
“Going
on
?” Terry shot a quick glance at Berke and then at True, whose flesh seemed to have tightened over the facial bones just in the last half-minute. “Going on
where
?”
“On stage,” Ariel answered, holding the towel against her bleeding nose. It was numb, she didn’t know if it was broken or not. She’d already explored with her tongue to make sure her teeth were still there, and though she’d discovered a few unfamiliar edges she thought she was okay. “They’re calling for us,” she said. “He hurt me, but he didn’t rape me.” She repeated it to make sure they understood. “He didn’t rape me.”
“You’re going to the hospital,” True said, searching her eyes. “Whether you want to or not. Go call the ambulance,” he told the manager.
Ariel took the towel away from her face and screamed.
It was a word.
The word was:
No
.
The manager stopped and no one else moved either, not even the dude who was mopping up the mess. Out front, the chanting went on, louder and louder and
time to
get this party started
.
Nomad walked to her. He saw her eyes tick toward him, and they were her eyes, yes, but they were different now. They had seen things he wished she’d never had to see. They were bloodshot and they were frightened down in their gray depths, but most of all they were angry.
“Nobody’s stopping me!” Ariel said, to all of them, and maybe to the world too. Her teeth clenched; she could taste her own blood and feel all her new sharp edges. “Nobody’s going to stop me from doing this!
Nobody
!”
She pulled loose from Berke and from Terry. She stood on her own.
“
This is what I do
!” she cried. “
I was born to do this
!”
When Berke reached out to touch her shoulder, Ariel pushed the hand away.
“No, just let me…let me…” Ariel shook her head and put the towel to her nose again, and when more of the blood was captured she dropped the towel to her side and her eyes blazed into True’s. “Nobody’s stopping me,” she told him, “from doing what I was
born
to do. This. Music. I didn’t work this hard…I didn’t come all this way…all the bands…the people…everything…to have someone tell me I can’t go on when I say I
can
.”
And there was more to it, but she was about to sob and she feared breaking apart and not being able to pick up her pieces, so she didn’t say that she thought the darkness that had just tried to destroy her
wanted
her to tuck her tail between her legs and go speechless and spineless to the hospital. She didn’t say that she thought the darkness revelled in the wounded silence of broken hearts and raped spirits, that it grew strong on the bitter memory of the crushed dream. She didn’t say that she thought to
not
go on would be the biggest surrender of her life, because to fight that darkness, to push back its encroachment, meant you had to be determined to stand up. You had to play your guitar and sing, if that’s what you were born to do. You had to go out there, bruised and bloody, and let them know you were where you were supposed to be in this world, and
nobody
—surely not that greedy, stupid-minded little
thing
that had tried to throw you out of it—was going to stop you.
She didn’t say any of this. But she did say, “Now listen to
me
. My nose might be broken. There might be a doctor or a nurse or a med student out in the crowd. Somebody who can look at me. I know there’s got to be a first-aid kit here. My head’s hurting, maybe he can find out if I have a concussion. The
doctor
,” she said, so they’d understand. “I need one hour. If I pass out or keep throwing up, then okay…call an ambulance. But I need one hour. And I…shit…I need a new top.”
“You can’t be serious,” True said.
“I need to get cleaned up,” she continued, as if he’d never spoken. “Wash my face. I can’t go back in
there
, though.” They knew what she meant. “Oh Jesus,” she said wearily, “I’ve got to pee again.”
“You’re in shock,” True said.
“No,” she answered. “Too much tea.”
True was about to say something, to deflect her crazy arrow, but he couldn’t remember what it was going to be. He didn’t smile, he kept his face as grim as a rock. But the determination on this girl’s face got to him. He knew why he liked her. She was probably the toughest one of the bunch, but before this moment she’d never needed to be.
“Will you let me—
allow
me to—take you to the emergency room after we’re done?”
“Yes.”
“You need one hour? That’s all?”
“That’s all,” she said, and he knew she meant it.
“Suit you?” True asked the manager.
“You got it.”
“You guys okay with this?” True asked his band.
Terry and Berke looked to Nomad.
“Solid,” he replied. If Ariel could go on with her busted nose, he could go on with his swollen knuckles. This was going to be a gig for the ages.
< >
The corridor was clearing out. In the Green Room, the cops had called for a cruiser to take into custody a suspect they thought was most likely the Duct Tape Rapist. The manager went out on stage, faced the happy beer-sodden and Cobra-Cocked crowd and got to speak into the microphone a question he never thought in a million years he would ever ask: “Is there a doctor in the house?”
Suddenly, when True and Terry and Berke moved away, Nomad was right there in front of Ariel. He stared at her, as a wry and admiring smile slowly crept over his face. He didn’t understand about Jeremy Pett, about that girl at the well, about that song or what it meant, but he did understand that he could fall in love with Ariel, if he let himself.
And maybe he was halfway there.
He touched his bad eye and then he tapped his nose. He said, “I think we’re two of a kind.”
Who reached for whom first? It was too close to call.
He hugged her and she held tightly to him, and he found himself crying, just small tears squeezed out between his eyelids, because he was so very very sorry that this terrible thing, this soul-sickening thing, had happened to her, that though—thank God—the DJ had not violated her, some part of her had to have been touched by his ugliness, by the vileness that had been shaped by his suffering, whatever the cause. But those were things of the world, and he couldn’t protect her from them any more than he could protect himself, or any of them. Besides, all that went into the stew they called ‘writing’.
He put his head against her shoulder and breathed in her aroma. It was a faint smell of honeysuckle, like a sunlit summer meadow. It was the proper aroma for a heroine in one of those Victorian novels who is doomed to fall in love with the callous cad.
But that would not be him, because though he was his father’s son he was not his father, and he would never be.
Ariel pressed her hands against his back, and when she heard him sniffle like a little boy she whispered in his ear, “It’s all right.”
And again, so he’d be certain of it.
TWENTY-SEVEN.
The wheels
on the bus go round and round…round and round…round and round
.
A children’s song, Terry thought. He wondered if that was how it had begun, for all of them.
Music, heard when they were children. A tune from a local TV show, one of those disappearing breed where the host in a captain’s cap shows cartoons to kids and does magic with balloons and napkins, somebody always named ‘Cousin’ or ‘Cappy’. A snippet of a Christmas carol in a department store, with all the festive lights ablaze and Santa on his way. A tinkling outpouring of silver notes from a music box that holds a tiny dancer, slowly pirouetting. A guy playing a harmonica in one of those old black-and-white westerns or war movies. The distant keening of a train’s whistle, lonely in the rainy night.
Something had been awakened in them early, of that Terry was sure. Something that other children might hear, but not keep. He was sure they all had heard something and kept it, and had it still, hidden away in a place of safety. He knew what his was. He knew very well.
True tapped the brake. The Scumbucket slowed at the top of a rise. Not much of a rise, on this straight and flat stretch of Interstate 40, also known as Route 66, but enough of one. He checked his sideview mirror, looking past the U-Haul trailer.
That white car was still there.
Maybe half a mile behind? Now this was kind of ridiculous, he thought, because there was all sorts of traffic heading west from Albuquerque this Sunday afternoon. There were small cars and big SUVs and tractor-trailer trucks and vans and pickups, all makes and all colors. But that white car—a foreign make, maybe a Honda?—had for a while been close enough for True to catch a glimpse of a man behind the wheel. Wearing sunglasses—
duh
, heading west into the sun, right?—and a ball cap bearing some kind of logo. But then the white car had slowed down and dropped back, had let three or four cars get in between them, and now seemed to be maintaining a constant speed. Or, rather, matching the Scumbucket’s speed.
Which was
slow
.
A white car. Foreign make. Young driver, he looked to be.
How come he didn’t blow right on past?
“What’re you slowing down for?” Nomad asked, from the seat behind Terry.
“Resting my foot, I guess,” True answered, and he gave the old engine some more gas.
A white car. Foreign make. Not a dark blue pickup truck.
True looked straight ahead again. The first layer of this highway could have been laid down using a single gigantic rubber band stretched on stakes across the New Mexico desert. Just pull it tight and pour the asphalt in its shadow. He didn’t know if they’d had rubber bands back then, but they could’ve done it that way if they’d had them.
He was getting loopy, he thought. Life on the road. No wonder these people started smoking dope, drinking too much and throwing television sets out of motel windows. He jumped a little bit—just a hair, nobody noticed—when a tractor-trailer truck roared by, sending an insulting wind slapping against the Scumbucket. True noted it was a Hormel meats truck. A meatwagon, he thought.
He’d never smoked dope before. He wondered if anybody in this van had some in their possession. He’d never asked; he didn’t really want to know, but at least they hadn’t lit up in his presence. This highway was so straight it was hypnotic. On both sides the desert was stubbled with small brown clumps of vegetation that he figured could stab thorns in your ankles at the slightest graze. He wondered how many rattlesnakes were out there, coiled under those ugly clumps, their forked tongues vibrating on the scent of prey.
He knew he was going loopy, because he was starting to think about asking his band what marijuana tasted like.
He shifted in his seat.
“You okay?” Terry asked from the passenger side, and True said he was fine.
True glanced quickly in his rearview mirror. Ariel was drowsing. The bandage was still across her nose, hiding the bruise, but the darkness under her eyes had gone away. Her sniffer hadn’t been broken, though it had really swelled up and hurt her the next day and she’d blown out dried krispies of blood until after Anaheim. She had two cracked front teeth that were going to need some work. She was one hell of a trooper. John Charles was staring into space, thinking. His right eye was ringed with pale green. He had a lot to think about. In the back, Berke was listening to her iPod, eyes closed, head slightly nodding to the beat pumping through the earbuds. That girl could play drums like a machine, but True had made the mistake of asking her what she thought about drum machines and for that he’d gotten a year’s supply of f-bombs packed into his ears. Terry was alert and excited, of course. This was his day.
There were lots of cars on this highway. Every sort of make and model, big and small. But that white car back there…well, he couldn’t see it now, but he knew it was still there.
What was making True so jittery was the fact of the slow decay. The reality of the money pit, even for the FBI. The large hand on the leash, pulling the little dogs home.
After Anaheim, that next morning, the call had found him.
He would have to make do with one team. The money this was costing was out of all proportion to the situation, he was told. He just loved that bean-counting language. He was told, and to be truthful the voice that told him was not as warm and ole-buddy-buddy as usual, that this whole thing might well be a wash.
I know this was important to you, but
—
Ouch. It hurt when you realized you weren’t as big a dog as you’d thought you were. And, really,
nobody
was that big of a dog.
The team in the metallic gray Yukon had peeled off the caravan. So long, guys. We’re going on.
And then, this morning, after the gig at Staind Glass last night.
True had been shaving in his bathroom at the Comfort Inn when the call had found him this time. “Good morning,” True had said, with lather on his upper lip. “Are you being a heathen
and skipping church today?”
“Truitt, we need to talk.”
“Obviously. You’ve called me.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“No, but I have a razor in my hand.” He’d known what it had to be. He’d hoped a phone call was going to lead a team of agents to a motel where Jeremy Pett was holed up, afraid to open his curtains or door to let in a sliver of sunlight, afraid to leave his crummy flea circus of a room for a takeout pizza because of the media noise, but hoping wasn’t about to make it happen. Pett had plain and simply vanished. Gone to Mexico? That was the theory. But where was his truck? It hadn’t shown up, so where was it? Abandoned somewhere on the border, was the theory. Driven into a gulley, or parked amid the mesquite trees and head-high sticker bushes just north of many of the paths grooved into the earth by the shoes of Mexican illegals. After all, those paths went both ways. Another theory: maybe Pett, trained in the art of going to ground, had actually gone
underground
. Maybe he’d found a tunnel across. Those things were out there.
Jeremy Pett would have to be totally insane to stay in this country with his face and his license number all over TV. That was the theorists talking. He would have to
want
to be caught. And why in this
world
should he follow that damned band to California when he could slide right into Mexico from Tucson?
“Truitt,” said the Sunday morning heathen, “we’re pulling the second team.”
Ouch. True had nicked himself under his left nostril.
“There’s no need for you to stay out. Call it off and bring them in.”
“Slow down, take it easy.” He’d realized he was talking to his heart. “The tour ends six days from now, and they’ve only got two more gigs, in Dallas on the 15th and in Austin on the 16th. Then it’s done. We’re checking out this afternoon and driving to see somebody Terry wants to visit. That’s the keyboard player.”
“I saw the story in
People
. Hell, I
know
their names.”
“Okay. We’re hitting the road right after that and driving to Amarillo. Then, tomorrow, on to Dallas. I figured they could hang out in Dallas for—”
“Excuse me, did you say ‘hang out’?”
True had heard himself sigh. It was a sound of exasperation; those mundanes—Terry’s word—just don’t
get it
. “They’re good people,” he’d said. “Hard workers. You wouldn’t believe how hard.”
“I know they’re a big hit now. Selling thousands of CDs, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” Not only that, but every gig since that night at the Cobra Club had been jammed solid. Which actually put a strain on him, trying to get the security locked down. The news that The Five had aided in the capture of the Duct Tape Rapist had really made the engines rev. Roger Chester was calling him, giddy with glee, saying he had offers from three networks to do a The Five reality series and publishers were calling with quickie book deals and somebody wanted them to be spokespeople for a new energy drink. It was off the hook, as John said. Yet he didn’t say it with a convincing display of joy. So what was up with that?
“Six days, two more gigs,” True had said into his cell, as he’d dabbed the small red dot under his left nostril with a bit of tissue paper. “Can I finish it with them? And can I get some support from the field offices?” Boy, did that sound like begging.
“Truitt,” said the voice attached to the large hand that held the leash. “You do understand you’re not really their manager. Right? You do understand your role, don’t you?”
“I do. But…you know…I told them I’d finish it out.” He’d paused, trying to think of something else to say to pierce the silence on the other side. “They
really
are good people.”
“I heard that the first time.”
“I can’t leave them,” True had said.
“I hear the word
won’t
in that, Truitt.”
“Yes, sir,” True had replied. “That’s correct.”
The silence had stretched a little longer this time, and had been a little more solid.
During it, True had wondered if he should tell his old friend and compatriot and superior that Ariel Collier thought the song they were writing was being directed—well, not really
directed
exactly, but guided in a way, but not exactly that either—by a girl who was not exactly human, but something more than human if you believe in that, and this song they were writing was just a regular song, nobody could see any big thumbprint on it, no hidden meanings or mystical codes as far as they could tell, and if it was supposed to break them through into being a success it was a little late, because the song wasn’t finished yet there was The Five in
People
magazine and their CD catalog was going back for a hundred thousand more pressings, and they were selling big numbers now all over the world, so they were already a success, and by the way Terry Spitzenham—oh, I forgot you know their names—believes the same thing, that this song has a divine inspiration, and Berke Bonnevey and John Charles don’t quite know what to make of it but they’ve come around to admitting nothing ever shook their foundations but this was putting some cracks in the mortar, and also—a
big
also—Ariel thinks there’s a link between Jeremy Pett, Connor Addison and our trailer park communications wizard, maybe even the Duct Tape Rapist too, because this
thing
—this greedy
king
crow
, she calls it, only she says that’s not exactly what she means—wants to stop the song from being finished so it has reached out to human hands to do the dirty work.
And that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
“Truitt?”
“Yes, sir?”
“One of your best qualities is that you’re determined to see a situation through to the end. I appreciate that. I’m going to tell you that you can see this one through, but you’ll have to go it alone.” The voice had paused for True’s reaction. None was forthcoming. “I’ve told the second team to stand down. As of thirty minutes ago, they were relieved of duty and instructed to come home as soon as they can pack up. I imagine Casey’s going to be knocking at your door any minute now. You say you have an errand to run this afternoon?”
“Right.”
“I can’t justify the cost, Truitt. Now, I can work with you on providing security at the venues in Dallas and Austin. But as far as having that caravan burn money and time on the highway…I just don’t see the point.”
True had known there was no use in arguing. When the large hand on the leash didn’t see the point, there
was
no point. It wasn’t as if he could single out anything that had happened in the past week as a reason to keep one team on the road. Everything had gone like oiled clockwork except for that incident at Magic Monty’s in Anaheim last Tuesday night, where a young man stoned on pot had set off a string of firecrackers in the crowd. The Five had stopped playing just long enough for the cops to haul the kid off to jail, and then they’d picked it right up again.
When Agent Casey had come to the door to announce what he knew True already knew, True had told him he appreciated the good work and attention to detail, and he would make sure everybody involved got gold stars on the reports. True had been so tempted to ask Casey to wait two hours, until the band had roused themselves from their late night gig at the converted church, and follow them out along Route 66 before taking off for Tucson, but he couldn’t do it. The orders had been given. The men were anxious to get home to their families.
So long, guys. We’re going on.
But after Casey had gone, True had had trouble steaming the wrinkles out of the gray slacks he intended to wear, the steam just wouldn’t come out of the nozzles, and suddenly he’d felt a hot surge of anger and when he banged the steamer against the bathroom counter he was holding a piece of broken plastic dripping water all over the floor. He realized he was hanging on the edge, and it was not a good place to be.
That was why he kept watch on the white car back there. That was why he wondered who was driving it, and why it kept such a constant speed. He thought about giving the troopers a call on his cell, identifying himself and asking for a little help in checking out a plate number.