Too Weird for Ziggy (20 page)

She took the book out of her bag and put it on the table between us, looking at it as if it would walk away from
her and sort everything out by itself. I asked her again why she'd phoned me and she said she had been trying to get in touch with everyone in the book. She'd already managed to talk to a good three-quarters of the names—on the phone mostly; she only had so much money for airfares and very few of them wanted to meet up. What did she want from them? I asked, and she said she wanted to know what their relationship with Duggsy was like—no, really she wanted to know all about
him
: what he did, what he said to them, how he felt about things, what his life was like. Everything.

Most of them, as you'd have guessed, were girlfriends of the extremely part-time variety. Several had geographical locations and days of the week scribbled by their names, or what might have been codes for their sexual specialties. She phoned the numbers and told them she was the band's personal assistant and that they were arranging a surprise party for Duggsy, to which of course the girl in question would be invited. They had given her the job of secretly finding out what Duggsy was into, his likes and dislikes, so they could buy him something a bit more personal than a cymbal and some gold-plated drumsticks. Occasionally she changed the story: She'd been hired to write Shoot 2 Kill's official biography and Duggsy had specifically requested that she interview the girl in question about the details of their relationship.

She called Duggsy's parents and told them her name was Amber—they'd seen pictures of their son's fiancée in the papers but had never actually met her—and she charmed them into talking to her about him at length. They told her what he was like as a child, even told her his health problems.
They sent her photos of themselves with Duggsy as a little boy. Armed with these, she was able to pass herself off to other people as his sister. And they believed her. Hell, I almost believed her too. And she even managed to persuade Duggsy's ex-girlfriend Stephanie—the one who had taken out the child abuse suit—to invite her into the house. Jeanie had hidden a miniature Dictaphone in her pocket and planned to trick Stephanie into admitting on tape that Duggsy was innocent, then take the tape to the cops. But Stephanie kept on saying such dreadful things about him that she slapped her. Stephanie screamed. Neighbors called the police. Jeanie was thrown in a cell.

“The worst thing was they wouldn't let me keep his picture with me,” she said. She took it out of her handbag. It reminded me of the pictures of rockstars that I'd had as a teenager, carefully cut from a magazine but creased and thin from frequent fingering and kissing. Duggsy looked like a tattooed broom in a baseball cap, a thin wet black ponytail flopping through the gap at the back. In the end Stephanie didn't press charges—I guess she felt sorry for Jeanie too—and Jeanie was out the next day. She went back to the house that night and spray-painted the words “God alone judges” on Stephanie's garage door.

But what I still couldn't figure out was, Why
Duggsy?
After grilling her for the best part of an hour I was still none the wiser. No, she didn't want to save him, she said; God alone could save. It wasn't sex—she had a perfectly nice boyfriend, thank you—and it wasn't looks; apparently the perfectly nice boyfriend beat him there hands down too. It certainly wasn't the music—she said she loathed heavy
metal. That first time we met in Long Beach was the very first rock concert she'd been to. At first she couldn't bear it, but, baptized in the sweat that flew off Duggsy's tattooed arms as he thrashed away at the drum kit, she knew—not that she had ever doubted Him—that God had been right. Her eyes, shiny with joy, gazed past me to some distant place where she and Duggsy would sit side by side on the Eternal Drum platform at the feet of the Almighty.

Poor delusional cow, I thought. I said my good-byes and good lucks and got the hell out, planning to e-mail Shoot 2 Kill's management as soon as I got home to warn the band to be on nut alert. But I'm ashamed to say I didn't get around to it. I only remembered a couple of months later, after Duggsy was all over the tabloids in a wedding suit and baseball cap. A baffled look on his face, he stood brideless under a flowered canopy next to a Hawaiian priest. The headline read: “Rock Bad Boy's No Show Blow.” But it was the story on the front page of the next day's papers that made me go cold.

They found Amber's body in a cheap apartment hotel in Honolulu. A friend of hers had come by the office, the manager said, and paid for two weeks up front, cash—guy, girl, he didn't remember, but his wife did and it was definitely a woman. His wife hadn't seen her but they'd spoken on the telephone—she told her that they didn't want maid service and that they needed to be alone because her friend had some big problems to sort out. She figured they were lesbians, not that it was any of her business. Then maybe that she
did
have problems and it was suicide. Though the fact that Amber was slit head to foot and skinned didn't particularly point to that conclusion. I couldn't stop thinking
of Jeanie slipping into Amber's flesh and turning up at the wedding, popping out at kiss-the-bride time like a little Russian doll.

I scrambled around on my desk and on the floor to see if I could find the piece of paper I'd written her phone number on. Finally I did, and I dialed. I was surprised that my hand was shaking. I had no idea what I would say. “We're sorry,” said an android voice, “your call cannot be completed as dialed.” I called international directory; there was no listing for a Jeanie Jackson or Angie Carson in Long Beach or Los Angeles or the dozen other U.S. cities I persuaded them to try. Nothing. I called Eric and got his answering machine. Then I called my editor. He asked me if I'd heard the news: Duggsy had been taken in for questioning; with his history of violence against women, it was no great shock.

A couple of years later, I was back in Long Beach, this time to do a story on Wet Dream. Same old arena; different roadies handing out passes after the show to girls. Backstage was smokier than Keith Richards's lungs and Wet Dream was busy doing the old grip-and-grin, obligingly wrapping tattooed arms around men in designer jeans and logoed jackets who worked for the record company, radio, and TV. A balding promo guy who'd found just enough hair to drag back into a ponytail was hurling superlatives at the band. “That was the greatest, man. You were kill. Fucking brilliant. You guys kicked serious ass.” They'd have kicked him off of
Spinal Tap
for overdoing it. Backstage really is the most boring place in the world. I looked around for the iced-beer
bin and grabbed myself a bottle, then slipped out past the impenetrable crowd of freeloaders protesting that their name most definitely was on the VIP list and roadies running about with equipment. I sat with my beer on a box by the truck-loading bay, welcoming the cold rush of air through the open door, until a crew member came over and ushered me off.

“Wardrobe!” he yelled. “How're we doing there? Any cases ready to go? What
is
the new girl's name?” He was asking me the question, as if by mere intuitive femaleness I should know the answer. “I can't keep up with them. Just got used to the last one and she gets pregnant and fucks off.”

“Hey there.” The tour manager came striding over to me, waving a sheet of fax paper at me and smiling. We've bumped into each other backstage off and on for years. “Don't say I don't give you anything.” He handed me the fax, and under the management's letterhead I read: “Dear Harry, Effective next Tuesday, 25th, Aaron Pike in the dumper, Duggs Dugsdale in. Official press release out Friday. Don't let it drive you to drink. Mitch.”

“Duggsy of Shoot 2 Kill is joining Wet Dream?” I gasped. “Is he out then?” Last I heard he was still in pokey—got six months in Stephanie's domestic abuse case. He'd never been charged with Amber's murder, though. No one had.

The tour manager nodded. “Certainly is. A new man, I believe,” he said, rolling his eyes as he took back the fax. “Oh well, I'd better get busy ordering up the video booth equipment.” When I looked askance he added, “Duggsy's new hobby. You don't want to know. But just in case, as I can see from your eyes, you do, it encompasses the Dugsdale
holy trinity of girls, cameras, and onanism. Right, back to work. Stay out of trouble.” As he turned to go he shouted over to the roadie, “The new girl's name, as I've told you a dozen times already, is Jeanie.”

“Wardrobe, ready to go!” a sweet, bright Southern accent called.

“You're not listening.”

She was. She just didn't give a fuck; she had things of her own to worry about. She lay on her back on the super-king-size bed like an effigy, eyes closed, hands across her chest. Adam sat on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette. A tear in the corner of the blackout blind let in a clot of smoggy afternoon sun that spotlit the guitar propped in the corner. There was something childish about his self-absorption; there was nothing maternal about her. Her big fake breasts were as hard as her heart. She knew what he was going to say anyway. Ants.

“Something's gonna have to be done about those fucking ants!”

She opened her eyes slowly. Adam wasn't there. There was a cone of cigarette smoke pointing at the hole in the blind. She stared at it for a few moments blankly and then he reappeared, like a conjuring trick, leaning over the bed. He looked smaller than he did onstage—looked actually like he had been bigger once but had been reduced in size for convenience. “They're all over the fucking snakes! Thousands of them. On their heads, in their mouths, all over their fucking eyes. I don't believe it! I told you to call pest control.”

“I did. You also told me, ‘Tell them not to spray anywhere near the snakes.' So I did. And they didn't.” Matter-of-fact, bored even. He couldn't engage her. The audience wasn't listening. He stormed into the wings.

The phone rang. She rolled over onto her stomach and picked it up, tugged up the antenna, speaking in the same flat voice. “Yeah? No, he's busy. Squashing ants. That's what I said. In the serpentarium. With his fingers, one by one. How the hell do I know? Hours I suppose—there's thousands of them. Adam!” she yelled over the sound of running water. “Coz. Telephone.” Coz was Shoot 2 Kill's manager. “He's not answering,” she said. “Okay, I'll tell him.” She hung up and rolled on her back again, staring at the sunbeam on the guitar neck, distractedly stroking her tiny stomach.

Before she married Adam, Gerri was a model like all the other rockstars' wives, “model” being a generic Los Angeles term for any woman who got paid to take her clothes off. Adam, like all the other rockstar husbands, had upgraded her with every rise in fortune. Her long legs were lipoed, her lips collagened, her nose clipped, her hair bleached, streaked, and extended; her breasts now stood at a top-of-the-market 38 double-F, exactly like all the other rockstar wives. They all saw the same cosmetic surgeon, worked out at the same gym. If you stacked them in a row they'd all match exactly, like paper dolls, or reflections of reflections in a mirror that went on forever.

The phone rang again. “Just thought you should know,” said Coz, “I'm wise to you. Keep the fuck away from Rex. You hear me?” She went cold, sat bolt upright, staring at the bedroom door as if Adam was standing there and could hear everything. “I don't know what the hell you are talking about,” she said. She wanted to hang up, but the phone stayed glued to her ear. “Find someone else to fuck. That's all. Not that it's my business, but you might try your husband.
And don't forget to tell him to call me. Urgent.” He hung up. She lay there shaking, still holding the telephone, listening to silence and to the blood shrieking in her ears.

“I don't fucking believe it!” said Adam, walking into the bedroom, wearing a pair of wet black boxer shorts and clutching his cell phone. “Howie's not there.” Howie was the snake man, an English expat with a long list of rockstar clients who came by once a week to clean and feed the snakes in an old pickup truck packed with live rabbits and mice. He called it Squeals On Wheels. “He'll call back,” said Gerri, guilt making her momentarily solicitous. “His machine's not on and his cell's not taking messages and his paging service says he's been cut off for nonpayment. Fuck!” As if to contradict him, his mobile rang suddenly. “Hey, man, it's Joss,” she could hear from where she was lying. Bass players always had loud voices, as if they refused to be ignored off-stage like they always were on. “Can I come by?” he asked. “Right now is not a good time, Joss,” said Adam. “Man, it's important,” she heard Joss whine. “Look, I'm just pulling into your road.” And she rolled her eyes, pissed off at Adam on principle at Joss's arrival while gratified that she had an excuse to be more pissed off at Adam than he had every right to be at her. She got up, pulled on yesterday's T-shirt, and went downstairs.

She took a half-gallon carton of juice from the fridge and poured herself a glass, grabbed a blueberry muffin from the open pack on the kitchen counter, and took them to the sofa. Picking up the remote, she turned the TV on and sat back, tugging the T-shirt over her bent knees. On a screen as big as that of the average suburban multiplex cinema was
a huge white woman in a cheap red satin blouse telling the talk show host that she had been in McDonald's when that guy let loose with the Uzi and redecorated the place with a dozen people's guts. The bullet hit the crucifix she wore around her neck and branded its shape right between her breasts. Gerri heard Joss's Jeep pull up in the drive, heard him knock at the door, stayed sitting. The woman on the television lifted up her shirt to show the studio audience, and they all gasped as the camera closed up on two huge white mounds, made modest for American TV with what looked like black duct tape, and the red-brown, angry-looking cross that stood between them. Joss knocked again, less patiently.