Career Girls (39 page)

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Will took a lot of convincing. He finally became a fan on the one hundred and third show of the Heat Street tour, in Rio. He’d come into the production office to find Barbara, dressed in delicate black silk, arguing with the promoter.

‘Not very practical,’ Will said, looking disapprovingly at her outfit. It was in the nineties out there, it was total chaos setting up the stage and supervising the dodgy electrical systems, and most of Macleod’s boys had sweat pouring down their backs. Barbara, barely pausing in her yelling at Vasquelez, the promoter, turned round to Will, screamed, ‘You can keep your fucking mouth shut, I wear what I fucking like,’ and went back on the attack. Somewhat taken aback, Macleod started to listen to what she was saying.

‘I can no afford it,’ the guy was whining. ‘It is inflation.’

‘It is theft,’ Barbara snarled, ‘and you will refund what

you overcharged, my friend, or we are not going on.’ ‘You cannot do that, you have contract - ‘

‘Yeah, so do you. And the contract says ten bucks a head. Not seventeen.’

‘You, also, you get more money,’ wheedled Vasquelez, spreading his hands in a gesture of powerlessness. ‘I have more, band has more, everybody is happy, I am an honest man, I will pay you also - ‘

‘Our fans are not happy, you little luck,’ screamed Barbara. ‘I don’t give a damn about more money for the band! We came out here to play for everybody, not for the fucking rich kids with swimming pools! You go out there and you announce that anyone with a seventeendollar ticket can show the stub at the bck gate for a cash refund, right now, and every new ticket sells for the equivalent of ten dollars or we are not going on. And don’t try anything on, because I checked the exchange rate before I left the hotel this morning.’

‘Is impossible,’ shrugged the guy. ‘I cannot do this.’

Barbara turned round to Macleod. ‘Will,’ she said, ‘how long will it take the boys to get everything packed away?’

‘Two hours, tops,’ he said, smiling broadly.

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‘Great,’ she said. ‘Have them make a start, will you?’ ‘No problem, boss,’ Macleod said, nodding.

The promoter stared at him wildly. ‘No! You cannot do this thing! There is hundred thousand people waiting! There will be a riot!’

Macleod looked at the manager, questioningly.

‘Will,’ she said, ‘you saw the ticket price agreement, right?’ ‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Tell me something,’ Barbara said. ‘It seems to have slipped my mind. We’d agreed a special ticket price for the poorer territories, right?’

‘That’s right,’ Macleod said, glaring down at the promoter.

‘Uh-huh. I thought so. Could you remind me what it

was?

‘Ten dollars in local money,’ growled Macleod, enjoying himselŁ.

‘Ten dollars. Not seventeen.’ ‘Definitely not seventeen.’ ‘Absolutely, definitely not seventeen.’ ‘Ten dollars.’

‘Well, you know what?’ Barbara said. ‘Amazingly, some kids in Brazil are being charged seventeen dollars to see Atomic Mass.’

‘By ticket touts?’

‘By the promoter. What do you think we should do about that, Will?’

Vasquelez glanced nervously at Macleod. The Scotsman towered over him.

‘I think we should go on home,’ said Will, airily. ‘And

make sure to let other bands know about the promoter.’ ‘Pack up our gear, Will.’

‘No! No!’ pleaded the little man. ‘They will riot! They will kill me!’

‘Really?’ asked Barbara, not sounding remotely interested.

Vasquelez gave a wail of deSpair. ‘OK, OK. I give the seven dollars back …’

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Barbara shoved her face into his. ‘You do that,’ she hissed. ‘Exactly the way I said. You give that money back now, not tomorrow, not next week, right now. And I’ll tell you what else. My tour manager here is going to supervise it, in case you have any more last-minute problems with your arithmetic. If you make any mistakes,’ she said, with icy calm, ‘he’s gonna rip your balls off and shove them

down your throat. Do I make myself clear?’

Vasquelez gulped. ‘Yes, sefiora,’ he said.

Macleod was beside himself. ‘She’s fantastic,’ he said to Mark Thomas, when they were packing away the kit that night.

‘Oh, she’s the business,’ the drummer agreed. ‘Best female manager since Sharon Osbourne.’

Will Macleod became a good friend to his boss and a trusted ally. They didn’t have deep conversations all that often, mainly because he knew nothing about designer clothes, million-dollar deals or two-timing lovers, and she knew nothing about football. On the other hand, when they did talk, they usually agreed about the important stuffthe band, the show, the venue and the travel rrangements. Barbara Lincoln left him to get on with his job. Right up until this summer, it had been a solid partnership.

This summer, Jake Williams started taking cocaine. At first, Will didn’t comment. IfJake had been on the crew Will would have bawled him out the first time and sacked him the second time. But he wasn’t on the crew, he was the rhythm guitarist.

‘Is Jake out of control?’ Barbara asked Macleod.

Will hesitated. He knew that as the album was exploding worldwide, Barbara was less and less able to get out on the road. Will had become her eyes and ears. She trusted him. She believed him.

He thought about every beer he’d ever had with Jake Williams, every football game they’d played, and the fundamental, basic code of the road. Which includes the commandment, Thou shalt not get thy mates fired.

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‘No, he’s fine,’ Macleod answered, and started avoiding her calls. Of course, he faxed in gate reports regularly and called the office, picking times when she’d be busiest and one of her

associates would deal with him. It was a betrayal of trust. But what the fuck can I do? Macleod thought.

And the band weren’t stupid, either. They recognized the signs, and Macleod knew they didn’t like it. At first, it looked under control: Jake never indulged in front of Atomic, he rarely indulged at a show, and he didn’t talk about it at all. You could almost ignore it. Almost, but not quite.

The Heat Street tour wound on and on, moving from the big arenas to headlining the Monsters of Rock that summer, to filling stadiums to capacity. As the album sold and sold around the world, Barbara’s office multiplied dates, booking four nights in cities that had originally asked for one, and added ftrther legs to the tour as new territories got in on the game; now they were heading for New Zealand and Australia, then he had to make room for Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand, and finally the hot areas newly added to the international touring map -Jakarta, Indonesia and Singapore, as well as the Indian subcontinent.

One year turned into eighteen months, eighteen months became two years, and still there was no sign of stopping. The crew were now working in shifts, staggering the three-week vacation periods, except Will who couldn’t and didn’t want to go home..The adrenalin rush kept him hooked. He was chief of the Mongol hordes, in complete control of this vast juggernaut crisscrossing the world.

Apart from the band and a handful of others, the tour manager rules over everybody on a touL His authority is absolute. His word is law.

And Will Macleod was good at his job. He was a fair guy to work for, and the crew respected him. He made sure that everyone got paid in full and on time, but if he caught somebody slacking or committing an unforgivable breach ofetiqhette, he docked their wages or sacked them. (Selling

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your allocation of tickets was unforgivable; getting a groupie to give you head in exchange for some fifth-rate, no-access pass was not. Feminism had pretty much passed Will by.) Macleod ran a smooth ship, and he got offon the adventure and the atmosphere and the camaraderie of the band and crew.

He also got off on the money. Atomic Mass were generous, and as the stadiums sold out and the CDs flew off the shelves, there was suddenly a lot of serious cash flying around. Merchandizing broke sales records across America, and Brockum, their T-shirt manufacturers, could hardly keep up with the demand. Will noticed it everywhere, in bars, in airports, in newsagents. Wherever he went there was somebody wearing an Atomic shirt. The gold molecule on the blue background was becoming as popular as Metallica’s grinning skulls or the Guns n’ Roses logo.

Everybody was getting rich. Even on the road, away from the obvious symbols like houses and cars, you could see that. One tour accountant turned into three. The singer’s wife was dripping in diamonds. Alex, the bassist, started wearing a gold Rolex. Zach, the lead guitarist, routinely ordered bottles of champagne for the whole crew when one leg was finished, and that ran into hundreds of people. The band stopped leasing a private jet and bought one of their

own.

AndJake Williams took more cocaine.

Will knew now he’d made a mistake. He shouldn’t have deferred to him, he shouldn’t have been too embarrassed to interfere. The lad was getting sick. He wasn’t careful any more, he kept coming out of the loos with an ugly white smudge on his pallid skin. If Macleod pointed it out, he’d curse at him and wipe it away. He was getting painfully thin; he’d always been slender but nowadays he just looked anorexic. His clothes hung off him. He would become mean, nasty and petty when he was high, traits which Will knew weren’t part of his personality. And furthermore, he had no reason to stop.

Jake Williams had no boss and he was making hundreds

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of thousands of dollars a month. He could run a full-on addiction to every drug known to man and service his habit

to his heart’s content without even noticing the cost. For another two months, he still played OK. Then he started to miss rehearsals. Then he started to fuck up onstage.

Yesterday, for the first time since Macleod began working with him, Jake missed a flight. Will sent the band on ahead and booked two first-class seats on the next plane to Rome. Then he tore back to the hotel and only managed to get into Jake’s room by a succession of lavish bribes and heavyhanded threats. He found his guitarist passed out on the bed, his gaunt body half dressed, a syringe jutting out of

his arm. Macleod pulled it out as gingerly as he could. Smack.Jesus, it was heroin now …

The local doctor, called and even more lavishly bribed to keep his mouth shut, roused him and gave him an emetic to make him throw up.

‘You can thank whichever god it is you worship that he’s alive,’ he told Will, who’d seen this story before and had never known a happy ending.

At least it wasn’t an overdose. Macleod dressed Jake himself and dragged him half-conscious to the plane, got

him strapped in and told the stewardess he was sick.

He had to do something. Fast.

His heart in his mouth, Macleod called Barbara Lincoln at home.

‘Can I speak to Joshua Oberman, please?’ Topaz Rossi said, politely. In front of her, the huge glass windows of the sixtieth floor revealed the island of Manhattan, pread out below her. If she turned to her right, she’could see Musica Towers, the tall building by Central Park glinting in the light of the sun.

It looks so tranquil. Not for long. ‘Yeah?’

Topaz smiled at the gruff voice, intrigued to hear what

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Rowena’s boss sounded like. Old, crabby, intelligent.

‘Mr Oberman, this is Topaz Rossi at American Magazines.

‘

‘I know exactly who you are,’ Oberman said coldly. ‘And I presume you have a good reason for making this call.’

She smiled. ‘Yes sir, I think I do. We’ve had a reporter out on the first leg of Atomic Mass’s Zenith tour for a month, and we plan to run a big story in next week’s Westside magazine on Jake Williams’ addiction to heroin and cocaine. ‘

There was a pause.

‘No comment.’

‘I understand that, Mr Oberman. I’m just calling for the record as to Musica Entertainment’s official policy on the use of illegal narcotic drugs.’

‘Policy? We don’t permit it or condone it. Obviously,’ Oberman snapped.

‘So if an employee of your company was encouraging a musician to take illegal narcotics, that would be grounds for instant dismissal?’

‘Yes, but none of my employees would ever do any such ,thing,’ Oberman barked. ‘Is that all, Ms Rossi? I’m a busy

man. ‘

‘Thank you, Mr Oberman; you’ve been most helpful,’ said Topaz sweetly.

She hung up, grinning.

Barbara walked the last hundred yards or so along the Paseo Virgin del Puerto, where the cab had been forced to drop her because of police barriers, towards the Vicente Calderon Stadium, looming huge in the deepening twilight, floodlit from all sides. Music was blasting into the street from the PA, the earth-shaking rap/rock of House of Pain at the moment. Fans were out in their thousands, clogging the streets, crowding the various entrances to different sides of the stadium, sitting on the concrete with beer and hotdogs and joints, swarming round the bootleg merchandizing stalls, yelling in Spanish and various other languages. She

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had her laminate, hanging round her neck on an inconspicuous black cord, tucked safely inside her shirt. In fact, she’d tugged the little plastic square down between her breasts and was using her bra to clip the cord against her chest, so it wouldn’t flap. If one of these kids saw she was wearing a laminate, they might very well rip it offher and that would be it. She’d never get backstage without a pass. She spoke no Spanish and security at an Atomic Mass gig these days would be adequate for the average head of state.

Barbara threaded her way through the fans around the side of the stadium; backstage had to be over there because she could see all the generator trucks parked in a monolithic cluster, thick powercords and rubber-insulated pipes running from them into the back entrance of the arena. She loosened her laminate as she got further away from the crowd, pulling it out of her shirt when she got to the first row of security guards.

They glanced at it and hundreds of pounds of forbidding muscle just melted away. Fans crowding round the security cordon gazed at her in awe and shouted pleadingly at her in Spanish. Barbara strode into the tunnel leading to the backstage area, looking for someone she recognized, perhaps a sign to the dressing rooms or production office. Crew members scurried about with guitar stands and extra drumsticks, making little finishing touches to the Atomic stage set and taking support band gear away. She wondered how the Knuckleheads, a newish act on as support, had gone over with the crowd..She’d have liked to see them, too, but had decided it was best to keep away from the venue until showtime; any earlier and somebody would have noticed her and told Macleod, or told Jake, and she didn’t want to give them time to hide him. Nobody knew she was here. She wanted it to stay that way.