“It’s a mad-mad world, brother.”
Clay whirled from Peter’s taillights to find a man leaning on the wall of the tattoo shop behind him. He knew the face just as quickly as the first time. Barrett Roethke was wearing a leather vest over a stained white shirt and a Lakers cap pulled low against his brow. How long he’d been standing there Clay couldn’t guess, but the drummer had been privy to at least some of his conversation with Peter and Estelle. “First, you see one thing, then you see another. Welcome to Hollywood. More illusions here than in a David Copperfield box set.”
Clay took a few steps toward him. “You know what’s happening then?”
“Bright lights cast a long shadow,” Roethke replied. “If I had to guess, I’d say things started going south for you when you paid your visit to Karney. The cops questioned me about the fire, you know? I didn’t tell them you and the Tigress were there that day.”
“That’s very noble.”
“I should’ve ratted. Thanks to you, I lost my second frontman in seven years. I’m closing on forty, I like drinking better than touring—how much more lightning can I catch in my bottle?”
“So why not rat?”
Roethke shrugged, his eyes drifting, as if looking for someone in the dark across the street. “I’ve been getting these e-mails,” he said cryptically.
“From Savy?”
“From someone calling himself Rocco Boyle. At first I figured it was some random dick and I explained to them how hard they could suck me off. But the e-mails started coming faster than I could delete them. Spam from hell. And when I finally read some, it was strange. There were things in them—little memories, band tidbits—I’m pretty sure no one in the world knew except Rocco and me.” From his vest pocket, Roethke withdrew a gold flask in the shape of Texas and fiddled with the cap. “Maybe I indulge too much, maybe that’s all it is. But I’ve convinced myself that my old singer is e-mailing me from the grave…”
Not the grave, Clay thought, knowing how Boyle liked to play with laptops left on the Generator’s coffee table.
“…and Rocco seems to think I should be helping you.”
“You know what happened to him, don’t you?”
“I know who happened to him, if that’s what you mean.” Roethke lifted the flask and Clay was treated to the sight of his bobbing Adam’s apple. “The master who pulls all the strings,” he muttered at last.
“You’ve met him.”
“Hell no. And I never want to.”
“He’s the one who sent that… girl after me?”
“Duh,” Roethke replied. “And not to be crass, but did you spend your seed in her?”
Clay hesitated, self-conscious, before shaking his head.
“Good. They say a succubus owns a man the moment she has his seed. She was sent as a first test. Looks like you passed, which should please him. He much prefers working with the tough-to-corrupt.”
Clay recalled his masked groupie, how he might have given her exactly what she wanted had Essie never shown, and he shuddered mightily. “What does he want with me? I’m nobody.”
“It’s more like, what do you want from each other?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
Clay glared. “How does Rocco expect you to help me? You’re a washed-up wreck.”
Roethke shrugged back. “I’ve been in the music world long enough to know everyone. I could make all the right introductions, help you get what you want without needing to make a deal with the Master of Puppets.” Roethke glanced around again, more paranoid than ever. “Of course if I did that, I’d be screwing with his plans—and that’s still not something I’m willing to do. Rocco says I owe him, and that’s true. But I’m not him, you understand? I’m a survivor, not a martyr. And you survive in this town by looking out for yourself. Hank couldn’t accept that—he couldn’t handle the lies we told about Rocco being depressed and committing suicide. So he got on his bike and played chicken with the Coast Highway. Me? I’m fine hiding in Topanga.”
“You’re not here on Rocco’s behalf,” Clay realized. “Or mine.”
Roethke acknowledged the accusation with a tip of the cap. “I’ve set up a meeting for you —just not with the people Rocco wanted me to. All you’ve got to do is hear them out. Have a conversation.”
Clay glanced at his watch. 11:55pm. Five minutes till his meeting with the reps from Sweet Epiphany. “You’ll want to skip your face time with the indie label,” Roethke said knowingly, “and take this one instead.”
The front of the Viper Room was visible from where they stood. Clay could see his band now, congregating out front, wondering why the hell he was cutting it so close. And Clay felt the wildest impulse to shriek at the top of his lungs, just to let them know where he was. Part of him still expected his “succubus” to appear from nowhere with her castration knife. Except his throat was tight, mute as he watched a black Bentley limousine pull to the curb in front of the club. “Who’s the ride for?”
“Ask not for whom the ride rolls,” Roethke told him, “it rolls for thee.”
“Who’s inside, Barry? Is it the Hailmaker?”
“Oh, I doubt you’ll be getting an audience with him. Although if you don’t want him sending something worse than a little girl after you—or our Tigress—I’d get in that limo and listen real fucking close.”
The conviction in those words, the threat, squeezed Clay’s guts. Though he was determined not to show it. “You’re pathetic.” And before he knew what he was doing, Clay had Roethke by the vest and was shoving him into the lurid window of the tattoo parlor. The pane gave a thick thunk and the O and P in the open sign buzzed and winked out and back on again. “You deserve whatever empty fate is waiting for you.”
Roethke answered not with violence or fear or even amusement, but with a
