Nomad had found them a way to save some money this time into Tucson, and he reminded George of the address and how to get there. They were staying for the night with the cousin of one of his old bandmates from Uppercut, which had lived and died within the space of six months, but the cousin was cool, he’d let them rehearse in his garage. The house was in a development northwest of the city. They got there without a problem, said their hellos to the cousin and his wife, unpacked their bags and had time to eat the ham sandwiches and taco chips that were graciously provided for their lunch. Then they turned around again and headed downtown, to the brown brick Fortunato’s on North Fourth Avenue, for their three-o’clock load-in and sound check.
The gear was unloaded, the check went well, management said the ticket sales were off the heezy, and everybody was in their groove. Their boxes of merchandise went into the same room where merchandise boxes of the other bands on the gig, The Yogi Barons and The Bella Kersey Band, were stored. The Five wasn’t on until around nine, so they climbed back into the Scumbucket and returned to the cousin’s house to grab a few hours of sleep, drink a beer or two, meditate over a candle, watch cage fight matches on cable and do whatever they needed to do to get up for the gig, each to their own.
Following a high-energy show by the Yogi Barons, The Five took the stage a little after nine and the pumped-up crowd gave a full-throated response to ‘Something From Nothing’. Without interruption the band went into ‘The Let Down’, another hard rocker opened by Ariel on her white Tempest. The gig was going like clockwork, everybody was loose and easy, the crowd was hollering when you wanted them to let loose and quieter when you wanted them to listen. Berke did her drum solo, cutting back on the time and the frenetics, and she allowed Terry to enter with his keyboard part when he was supposed to. Nomad broke an A string during ‘Your Body Not Your Soul’ but it was okay, he was playing for the angels tonight. Forty minutes later they did ‘When The Storm Breaks’, which earned a big positive, then they left the stage, waited for the audience buildup and returned to finish with a thunderous, wall-shaking version of ‘Blackout of Gretely’.
They met some fans backstage, had pictures taken, and did a quick question-and-answer with entertainment reporter Brad Lowell from The Daily Star, whom they knew from past trips through town. He praised their new CD, said he thought they were on their way to a breakthrough, and he would be the first to say I told you so. He touched only briefly on Mike’s death, but they couldn’t add anything he didn’t already know.
They settled in backstage to watch some of Bella Kersey’s band. They’d played several gigs with her before, and Ariel in particular was a big fan. Bella was in her mid-thirties, had long prematurely gray hair and the face of a serene earth mother, but she could kick out the jams and lay down some howling firepower with her cherry-red 1975 Gretsch Streamliner. The band was a family thing and they lived in Tucson; her husband played bass and her brother played drums. It was awesome to watch Bella work the crowd, her sultry voice soaring over the flaming chords. She punched the air with a fist and kicked it with a bright red cowboy boot. Then after a riotous rocker she went to her pedal steel and, bathed in blue light, did a slow, achingly-beautiful version of Shane McGowan’s ‘If I Should Fall From Grace With God’.
While Bella was playing, the Little Genius quietly said to Nomad, “I’ll go bring the trailer around.” He went out the stage door and back through the alley where the gear would be loaded.
The Scumbucket was parked in a lot on the next street over. Despite the tragic loss, George was feeling good about things. Anybody who might have been watching would have said he was walking like a man with places to go. The band had been hot tonight, very tight, the merchandise was moving, a check on the website said the CDs were selling now in the hundreds of copies, and the YouTube and MySpace hits were through the roof. Yeah, maybe it did have something to do with the kind of media shine that no band wanted, but there it was. Now there was the Casbah in San Diego to get ready for, and after that on Saturday the 2nd came the Big Show, the make or break, at the Cobra Club in Hollywood. The Sunset Strip, baby! What he had not told them—not yet, but he would—was that two A&R guys, one from Sonic Boom and the other from Manticore, were going to be in the audience. Supposed to be. Let’s hope.
He was going to leave them in good shape, with a future ahead of them. He owed them that much.
He showed his parking pass to the attendant on duty and walked across the lot, under the bright yellow security lights. He fished his keys from his pocket, unlocked the driver’s door and opened it, and he was thinking of finding a supermarket and buying a bottle of wine for their hosts when a hammerblow crashed into his right shoulder.
He thought that somebody had actually come up from behind and struck him, but when he spun around, gasping, no one was there.
George put his left hand to his shoulder. His shirt was wet. There was a hot throbbing pain, rapidly escalating. His shoulder felt knocked out of joint. He looked around, stunned. His glasses hung by one ear. It was getting harder to breathe; the breath had been knocked out of him, too. His heart… Jesus, it was really pumping…
He looked toward the attendant’s hut. Saw the blurred shape of the man sitting on a stool, watching the screen of a small TV.
It came to George’s mind to call out Sir, I need some help please.
But the words never left him, because another hammerblow hit him in the chest and he fell back against the Scumbucket. He tried to draw a breath but all he found was a gurgle of liquid. Something in his chest burned like a white-hot coal. He had to get it out, had to get rid of it, and he put both hands against his chest but he couldn’t reach what he needed to find, his fingers were wet, he couldn’t get his fingers deep enough. He clawed at his chest and he opened his mouth to shout for help but nothing came out, he no longer had a voice.
George staggered. His knees were giving way. He reached out to grab hold of the Scumbucket to keep him on his feet but it was no good, he was falling toward the pavement, and as he twisted and went down he saw in the last of his light his own splayed handprint dark against the battleship gray.
It was just like the logo on their T-shirt, except this one was melting in the warm Tucson night.
TWELVE.
“No, I don’t,” said Nomad.
He was weary and red-eyed. The video camera lights were not kind. Neither were the questions that came from behind them, and the one that had just been thrown at Nomad was John, do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?
“Dumb question, Dave,” the Hispanic police captain sitting at the table between Nomad and Ariel said. “Don’t you think we’ve been over this?”
“All for the public, sir,” Dave the reporter from Fox-KMSB answered. He flashed a thin and humorless smile. “Doing my job.”
“Miss…Bonneway, is it?”
Berke blinked heavily and directed her attention to the young woman who’d spoken. “Bonnevay. With a ‘v’.”
“Okay, got it. Am I hearing you’ve reported to Captain Garza that you were shot at by this sniper when you were in Sweetwater? After your bass player was killed?” The woman, blonde and sharp-featured and maybe twenty-two at the oldest, wore a nametag on the jacket of her beige suit that identified her as being a reporter from the Tucson Citizen.