"Changed it to what?”
"Katie Cochran. Which was better than either Katherine or Kate.”
"Did you find a band for her?”
"You have to understand it's rare that a rock group comes along actually needing a singer. Very rare. These kids 'start as a complete entity, they got everybody in place from go, including the lead singer.
They write their own music, they make a demo CD, they try to get it played on local stations, they're hoping for a bigtime recording contract. Every now and then, though, somebody's replaced, like Pete Best was by Ringo Starr. But that's rare. Very rare. So it was lucky I represented this group where the girl singer had left to get married cause her boyfriend made her pregnant. A group called The Racketeers.”
"The Racketeers?" Brown asked.
He'd never heard of them. Knew every rock group ever cut a record, but not anybody called The Racketeers. "They later became The Five Chord," Kaplan said. Brown hadn't heard of them, either.
"I get kids in here," Kaplan said, "they call themselves Green Vomit, they think that's cool, Green Vomit. Would you like to dance to the music of Green Vomit? The rappers are an altogether different story, they think it's cute to call themselves 4Q2. I sometimes wish I was still in the rag trade, I got to tell you.”
"So what happened?" Carella asked., "What do you mean'! IAzci ratle ocmttJ o,."..,. “
big rock star? You know she didn't. She ended up a dead nun, didn't she?”
"I meant with The Five Chord.”
"Oh. It was a fortuitous happenstance, as they say. Katie. was looking for a band, they were looking for a lead singer. Boys, meet Katie Cochran. Katie, here's The Racketeers. Soon to be known as The Five Chord, catchy, no?”
Brown didn't think it was catchy at all.
"So you're saying she joined the band," he said. "The Five chord is what that means. Five people.”
“Then what?”
"I sent them to a booking agent.”
"And?”
"He booked them.”
"Who was he?”
"The booking agent? Guy named Hynie Rogers, no relation to Richard Rodgers. Or even to Buck Rogers. He's dead now.”
"Do you remember the names of anybody in the band?”
"Sure, all of them. Addresses and phone numbers, forget it. For that, you have to go to the musician's union.”
The woman who answered the phone at the number the musicians' union had given them identified herself as Alan's mother, Adelaide Figgs, and when Carella asked if he could speak to her son, please, there was a long silence on the line.
"Alan is dead," the woman said.
ae words were chilling, not only because the woman's voice was so sepulchral, but also because they conjured up the instant horror of someone methodically knocking off members of The Five Chord. What Carella definitely did not need at the moment was a serial killer. Let all those other detectives out there occupy themselves with serial killers. He himself could count on the fingers of one hand all the serial killers he'd encountered in all his years on the force.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said.
"He died last month," the woman said.
This enforced the notion of someone out there stalking The Five Chord.
Please don't tell me he was strangled, Carella thought. He waited. The silence on the line lengthened. For a moment, he thought he'd been cut off.
"Ma'am?" he said.
"Yes?”
"How did he die, ma'am?”
“AIDS," she said. Gay, he thought.
"He was gay," she said, echoing his surmise, the short sentence laden with such bitterness that he dared not pursue it further.
"Sorry to have bothered you;' he said.
"No bother," she said, and hung up.
Sal Roselli was watering his lawn when they found him.
A short, wiry man with curly black hair and brown eyes, barefoot and in shorts and a tank-top shirt, he stood happily spraying his grass.i could turn on the sprinkler," he said, "but I enjoy handling the hose. I'm sure that's Freudian.”
The lawn was at the back of a development house on Sand's Spit, near the airport. It had taken Carella and Brown half an hour to drive here in light traffic, and it was now a little before noon. The heat was beginning to build again. The water splashing from the hose made them think of yesterday's rain, made them long for rain again today.
"You got my number from the musicians' union, huh?" he said.
"Yes.”
"They probably thought it was for a job.”
“No, they knew we were policemen.”
“So Katie's dead, huh?”
“You didn't know that?”
"No. First I heard was when you told me on the phone. Something, huh? Do the others know?”
"We haven't talked to the others yet," Brown said.
"Last time I saw them was at Alan's funeral. He died last month, did you know that?”
"Yes?”
"AIDS," Roselli said. "Well, I'm not surprised. I always thought he had tendencies. Anyway, we were all there. Not Katie, of course, God only knew where she was. Now she turns up here. Dead. A nun. It's difficult to believe.”
"When's the last time you saw her?”
"When the band broke up. Four years ago? Right after we finished the tour. She told us she was quitting. We had a little farewell dinner, and off she went.”
Did you know she was returning to the order?”
“Didn't know she'd ever been in an order. I figured she might be going back to Philadelphia. I knew she had a brother there, inherited a lot of money when their parents died in a car crash.”
"So that's the last time you saw her.”
"Yes. Around four years ago.”
"And the other guys in the band last month sometime.”
"Yes. It was really sad. Made me realize how much I miss The Five Chord. What the band was well, first off, we had no leader. Like The Beatles, you know? We all had equal billing. There was Davey on drums, and me on keyboard, and then Alan on lead guitar, and Tote on bass. Davey Fames, Alan Figgs, and Tote Hollister. Everybody but me sounded Dickensian. Tote was short for Totobi, though, which didn't exactly come from Great Expectations, either. Tote's black, I guess you already know that ...”
"No.”
"He is. Which caused a bit of difficulty in the South, but that's another story. His real name is Thomas. Thomas Hollister. The Totobi was his stab at finding roots. I'll tell you the truth, the band was just a run-of-the-mill, all-American garage band until Katie came along.”
You think of The Supremes, you-think of Diana Ross. You ihink of The Mamas and the Papas, you think of Mama Cass. You think of Big Brother and the Holding Company, you think of Janis Joplin. Mention The Five Chord, and after the wild applause and uncontrollable hysteria die down, you think of Katie Cochran. Well, you know the trite scene, don't yot? Singer starts her song; everybody stops sweeping. Mouths fall open, jaws hang agape, even the gods are awe stricken Struck? Whatever.
That's what happened the first time she walked into the Oriental, where we were rehearsing. You know the Oriental rehearsal studios off Langley? She looked sixteen, she could've been anybody's kid sister.
Herbie Kaplan had sent her down, he was representing us at the time, we were still calling ourselves The Racketeers. She did "Satisfaction”
for us, giving the old Stones tune a spin old Mick never dreamt of in his universe, and promptly knocked our socks off. Here's a kid who looks like she needs permission from her mother to attend the senior prom, and she's got a wisdom and maturity in her voice and in her eyes that signal Sign me, Sign me, Sign me though at the time The Racketeers didn't have contracts to sign, not even on napkins.