On the floor, off to the right, was a portable Honda generator mounted on a handcart. It was one of those super-quiet deals, rumbling like a cat getting scratched. Orange and yellow cables were hooked up to the generator, and snaked across the floor through another doorway about midway back and also on the right.
George appeared. “Back here, guys.”
They went through the door, watching their step on the cables, and into a smaller room that was no less defiled. The others were in there already. Many impressions crowded in on Nomad: more graffiti and bullet holes, and places where it looked as if machetes had hacked the drywall; the sunlight streamed down through several bullet holes that had punctured the roof; the rear wall had been scorched shiny black by fire, and upon it was pinned a large clean American flag; cigarette butts, crushed beer cans and other trash littered the floor, but areas had been cleared to accomodate the tripod legs of two floodlight stands, their illumination powered by the generator. The tech dude was plugging in a plastic fan on a waist-high stand with the cable he’d brought, and a second young guy with a brown beard and a suffering expression had opened the paint can and was brushing bright blood-red over the gang symbols. Two pro camcorders outfitted with lights and microphones were situated on the floor, protected from the nastiness by virtue of sitting atop their individual Delgado Cable yellow canvas bags.
“We’d better do this quick,” said the man who turned the fan’s control knob up to Fast with a thick brown hand adorned with three diamond rings. He angled the breeze up into his face. “Fucking warm in here, huh?” When no one answered, he looked at them from under his black cowboy hat and scanned them all except for George, who stood beside him. “I’m Felix Gogo,” he said. “But you already know that, huh? Seen my show before?” He answered his own question. “‘Course you have. Who hasn’t? I can tell you the numbers, week-by-week. Always going up. Amazing how many people tune in, late nights. Fuckers can’t sleep, they’re all worried and shit. They can watch me, I make them happy.” He grinned, showing a blast of white teeth that had to be some dentist’s dream house. “Hey, amigos! You get happy too, huh?”
Happiness, Berke thought, was different things to different people. She saw the glint of his eyes and some accusation came at her like a bullet, and then he’d swept his gaze past her and she stared at the American flag on the flame-licked wall and wondered whose god they had offended to wind up here, on such a happy day.
Felix Gogo, whose real name—according to Ashwatthama Vallampati—was Felix Goganazaiga, was obviously not only one of the biggest Toyota dealers in central Texas and the metroplex, and not only saw himself as the central Texas and metroplex late-night cable TV show Dick Clark—check that, make it Ryan Seacrest—but he had more than a passing familiarity with the term “photoshopping”. He was about twice the width he appeared to be on his billboards. Black could not make slim he who would not lay off the enchiladas. He was maybe in his early fifties, with the same thick silver muttonchop sideburns and the silver mustache. Besides the black cowboy hat, he wore the black tuxedo jacket, the black ruffled shirt and black bolo tie with a triangular topaz clasp. On the jacket’s right lapel was an American flag pin. Topside he was camera-ready, but bottomside was casuaclass="underline" he was wearing a pair of khaki shorts, gray anklet socks and a pair of expensive Nikes. He had spindly legs for such a hefty dude, Mike noted. Gogo’s gut would’ve made a decent tractor tire.
“Can I ask a question?” George sounded timid in the presence of such celebrity. After all, the half-hour Felix Gogo Show had been an eleven o’clock Friday night—rerun, two-thirty Saturday afternoon—event for over ten years. It was on Delgado Cable in Austin, Temple, Waco and the metroplex. The guy had run music videos and interviewed hundreds of bands. He’d also interviewed stars such as William Shatner and Jenna Jameson, and there was still a video on YouTube of a shell-shocked Sandra Bullock watching a possibly inebriated Felix shimmy to Rod Stewart’s ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ back in 2002 on the studio set. There were the Gogo Dancers to keep things lively between segments. He was a showman and a character and a very rich man, and above all he seemed real happy.
“Go right ahead, George.” Gogo spoke with the sincerity of a new best buddy. Nomad figured George had either talked to him by phone before the directions had been emailed, or George had shaken Gogo’s hand and introduced himself just a minute or so ago.
“I’m wondering…how come we’re not in the studio? I mean…isn’t this—”
“A hellhole, yeah it is,” Gogo agreed. “Well, the main studio’s in Dallas. See, the thing is, I had my crew here scout a location. Find just the right place, suitable for your band. The interview, I’m saying. This was going to be the first stage of an office park, huh? New subdivision up the road. It went bust, and no more office park either. Then the bangers moved in. I wanted to find a place that went along with your video. Did I not succeed?” Before George could answer, Gogo said to the wall-painter, “Hey Benjy, just do from yay-high to yay-low. We’re doing close shots, none of that area’s going to light up. And we don’t want to suffocate on the fumes, okay? Let it drip some, get that bloody look.”
“Sir,” said Benjy, obediently brushing.
“I tell you what, put that poster up there. Just stick it up right there next to the bullet holes and fling some paint on it. Kinda put it at an angle.”
Benjy dutifully crossed the room and retrieved from one of the canvas bags a crumpled and wrinkled The Five poster, which showed their faces—all as serious as sin, couldn’t have a musician smiling, that would be instant death—with the signature black handprint in the middle. Nomad knew Ash had sent Gogo a press kit, with their pictures and bios and shit, when he sent the video. “Angle it like so,” Gogo directed. Benjy pushed the poster up against the wet paint as he was told. “Okay, fuck it up some,” said Gogo, and Benjy flung droplets of red paint across it. “One more time. Yeah, there you go. Art for the artists,” Gogo said.
“We’re ready,” the tech guy with the skunk-shave hairdo announced. He’d been shifting the floodlights around and checking his meter, and now everything was as he wanted.
“Let me tell you how we’re going to do this.” Gogo took a black handkerchief from an inner jacket pocket and wiped the sparkles of sweat from his cheeks, even though the fan’s air was fluttering his bolo. “We’re going to get you placed, and then I’m going to gab with you for about a minute in front of this wall,” and here he indicated the red-spattered poster and the bullet holes. “Then we’ll move you back there,” a nod toward Old Glory against the shiny burn, “and gab for about two more minutes. That’s your spot, three minutes. You really get more than that, ’cause remember, we’re showing the video in between the backdrop changes. George, how about introducing me around real quick, huh?”
“Hey…can I ask something?” Nomad spoke up, before any introductions could be started. He didn’t wait to be invited. The heat, a solid prickly thing, was making sweat itch the back of his neck and trickle down his sides. Gogo stared at Nomad blankly, as he put his handkerchief away. “I’m not getting what this place has to do with our video.”