Crime Plus Music (21 page)

Lenny looked around and noticed the T-shirt and hat boxes and Harlan and Terry's personal gear were gone. “Ah shit,” he said to Otis and shook his head. “We're getting fired.”

“What?” Otis cried.

Mickey looked at them nervously.

Terry cleared his throat. “You're not getting fired, but he's right our time together is done. We both appreciate the hell out of the last year you've given us. You got us closer to the goal line and we, of course, got you all some good exposure. We were a good team. But there's no point in beating around the bush. Harlan and me are moving on to Nashville. Our wives are heading there as we speak. He's inked a deal but part of the deal was to rethink the band. The look of the band, the sound of it. We're going to start from scratch in Nashville. That's the truth. So in each of the envelopes is a bus ticket to Phoenix leaving tomorrow at 10 a.m., a thousand dollars for the four weeks, and a bonus each of two hundred dollars plus an extra hundred for baggage charges.”

Mickey began shaking his head. “I hate the bus. Couldn't you at least fly us out of Salt Lake or Reno?”

“I looked into it but we don't have that kind of money,” said Terry.

“What did you do with our gear?” asked Lenny.

“It's in the showroom. We've loaded out our stuff already. Security has a man keeping an eye on it. Otis, you can keep the Peavey.”

“You keep the fucking Peavey,” said Otis. “I want my Deluxe back.”

“I want it back, too,” Terry said. “But there's nothing stating it's our liability.”

Lenny began laughing and stood up. “Shit, let's get out of here.”

M
ICKEY
SAT
IN
THE
MIDDLE
nursing a pint of Jim Beam and eating an extra-large pack of Red Vines. To the left of him Lenny was drinking off a pint of peppermint schnapps and eating popcorn, and to the right was Otis drinking off a pint of Jägermeister and eating from a jumbo-sized bag of M&M's. They had seen
Bridge of Spies
and were now watching
Spectre
.

When the movie ended they walked back toward the Stockman and dusk fell on the empty streets.

“There's nothing sadder than a Sunday night in a small town,” said Lenny quietly.

“That's true,” Mickey said, drunk and depressed. He stopped and pointed down a residential street. “Over there is where all the whorehouses are. Last night I saw Harlan coming out of one. We get fired and he's having a good time getting laid.”

“Harlan was coming out of a whorehouse?” Lenny said and laughed. “Were you just walking by or going in?”

“Walking by,” Mickey said. “I'm trying to lose weight so I've been walking. Anyway, the last time I checked I had twenty-three dollars in my bank account.”

Otis stared down the street and began kicking the ground with his boot. “What was the name of the place he came out of?”

“I think it started with an I. Maybe Ingrid's,” Mickey said.

“Well,” said Lenny, “it's like my dad always told me, ‘If a man don't wear his vice out in the open like a headband then put on your track shoes and run as fast as you can the other way. 'Cause what he's hiding ain't something you want to know anything about.'”

Mickey laughed but Otis was lost in thought and kept looking down the street. He kept kicking his boot on the ground. “Well boys,” he said after a time, “I guess this is where we part. I'm heading down to the whorehouses.”

“You're nuts, man,” Lenny laughed. “The last time you went to a hooker you got so depressed you didn't stay sober for a week.”

“I was only drunk for five days,” Otis said, grinned, and began walking down the street alone.

H
E
CAME
TO
A
SMALL
row of brothels: Inez's D&D—Dancing and Diddling—Sue's Fantasy Club, and Mona's Ranch. Inside Inez's, he ordered a drink at the bar and waited until an overweight redhead in her thirties sat next to him dressed in a black lace nightgown.

“Are you here to party?” she asked.

Otis nodded. “Last night my buddy came in here. He looks like a model, about six feet tall, has tattoos on both his arms, and is always wearing a black cowboy hat that looks dipped in plastic. He also wears a black leather motorcycle jacket.”

“What about him?”

“You remember him?”

“I think so.”

“He said the girl he was with blew his mind. I'm looking for her. Do you remember who it was?”

“I'll tell you for twenty bucks,” she said.

Otis took twenty dollars from his shirt pocket and handed it to her.

She folded the money and put it between her breast and the nightgown. “It was Amber,” she said.

“You mind getting her?”

The woman got up and said to the bartender, “This boy here said he'd buy me a Manhattan. I'll be right back.”

The drink was thirteen dollars and the woman was gone for ten minutes before a fat middle-aged trucker came from the hall and shortly after him an Asian woman dressed in a shiny red gown. She was just five feet tall and had immense fake breasts.

“So you want to party,” she asked and sat down next to Otis.

He told her he did and she grabbed his hand and took him down a hall to her room. Inside was just a small tract-home-style bedroom. The walls were painted red and it smelled of lemon air freshener and patchouli. There was a red light and a black light glowing in opposite corners of the room.

“So what kind of sugar do you want?” she asked.

“What I really need is some information.” He took forty dollars and two joints from his shirt pocket. “There was a guy who came here last night. He had a bunch of tattoos, looks like a movie star. He has a black cowboy hat that looks like it's been dipped in plastic. I was just wondering what he did with you.”

She looked at the money and the joints. “Why do you want to know?”

“It's a long story,” Otis said. “But he's married to my sister.”

She took the money and the joints. “He fucked me in the ass and took a video of it,” she said, got up, and opened the door. “Is that it?”

“How much that cost?”

“Five hundred,” she said.

“Five hundred dollars?” Otis cried.

“How much would you charge to be fucked in the ass while someone taped it?”

I
N
THE
BACK
OF
THE
casino bar, while the Sunday night NFL game played, Otis sat for two hours with his laptop and phone. Mickey and Lenny ate four orders of chicken wings, drank beer and shots, and watched the game in the near empty bar. Otis called brothels in Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Carlin, Wells, and Reno and as the night wore on he found a brothel in each area that had seen a good-looking man with tattoos and black cowboy hat come in. Otis even sent a PayPal payment of fifty dollars to a prostitute in Wells, Nevada, who told him the same thing. Harlan fucked her in the ass and recorded it on a digital camera.

“How much?” Otis had asked her.

“Four hundred,” she said.

L
ENNY
LOST
FIFTY
ON
THE
Seahawks and Mickey puked in his beer glass and had to be carried to his room. As they left him on his bed, Otis told Lenny what he found out about Harlan.

“I'm gonna kill that motherfucker,” Lenny yelled drunkenly and threw a full beer bottle against the wall of the hotel and stormed off.

The next morning Mickey beat on their door at 8:30. “I just wanted to make sure you guys are up,” he said when Otis let him in.

“Thanks,” said Otis.

“Jesus, why is it so cold in here?”

“It's Lenny,” Otis said and went to the window, closed it, and turned on the heat. He used the toilet, dressed, and went to Lenny and shook him until he woke up.

“Wha?” Lenny cried.

“We gotta get some chow and be at the bus station in an hour.”

Lenny tried to sit up but as he did he began to gag. He sprang out of bed fully dressed and ran into the bathroom and vomited. He came out ten minutes later sweating and pale but clean-shaven.

“You shaved the handlebar,” Otis said and laughed.

He nodded and collapsed back on the bed.

T
HE
BUS
TO
L
AS
V
EGAS
was a quarter full and Lenny was leaned against the window glass, passed out in a row by himself. Mickey was in the row in front of him, and Otis was across the aisle from Lenny. They had left the station and were on the outskirts of town when he called Terry.

“You guys get the bus all right?” Terry asked.

“Did you know Harlan was a pervert?” asked Otis.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“We're driving right now.”

“You and he stole the bass, the watch, and my amp.”

“I didn't steal anything.”

“So it's just Harlan?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“I called a bunch of brothels. He's spending four to five hundred a night. He stole Lenny's dad's bass just so he could fuck a hooker?”

Terry kept silent.

“At least tell us where he sold the shit so we can get it back.”

“I'll call you in ten minutes,” Terry said and hung up. Otis waited a half hour and called back to find his number blocked.

T
HE
BUS
STOPPED
FOR
A
lunch break at the Silver State Restaurant in Ely. They had just ordered when Mickey received a call and went outside. He was on the phone for a half hour. Lenny ate a half a piece of French toast and put his head on the table. Otis ate and then put Mickey's food in a to-go container and they left. Lenny stumbled across the street to a minimart, bought a pint of schnapps, and they got back on the bus.

“Who was on the phone?” asked Otis. Mickey got up from his seat, came back to Otis's row, and sat next to him.

“My wife found the watch in Reno,” he said excitedly. “She'd been putting notices up everywhere online and found that some old guy had bought it from a pawn shop. Can you believe it? My wife just wired the old guy four hundred dollars. We're getting it back. He's shipping it overnight tomorrow. It'll be home before I am.”

Otis congratulated him and Mickey got up from the seat and went back to his row. Otis leaned back, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. A half hour later he woke to Lenny vomiting into a plastic sack.

“Bad chicken wings,” Lenny murmured. He puked three times before he went to the toilet. He came back twenty minutes later and sat in the aisle seat across from Otis. His face was drenched in sweat and his skin was gray.

“Bad chicken wings?” Otis said and fell into a fit of laughter.

“I'm serious, man,” Lenny whispered sickly. “It was the chicken wings. I remember the exact wing. I can see it in my mind.”

“I told you this tour is cursed.”

“Maybe, but maybe not. While I was in the can I thought of something.”

“What's that?” asked Otis.

“You remember that rockabilly gal from Tucson, from the band Lucky Lucy and the Lariats?”

“The blonde?”

Lenny nodded. “Lucy.”

“I always dug her,” said Otis.

“Her husband left her and took their band with him. What made me think of her is that she's a puker. Sometimes you see her and she's heavy, sometimes she's not. She's bulimic, has fake teeth and everything. Anyway I heard a few days ago she was looking for a band that was edging more toward country. I didn't think much of it 'cause of Harlan but now . . .”

“She's big in Europe, right?”

Lenny nodded and smiled.

“We'll have to get passports,” Otis said and clapped his hands together.

Lenny took the bottle of schnapps from his coat pocket and opened it. He took a quick drink from it, handed it to Otis, but as he did he began gagging and had to run desperately for the toilet.

EARWORMS

BY ZOË SHARP

S
HE
WAKES
FROM
THE
MAELSTROM
of sleep, from a black hole at the center of darkness. All she hears is the beat of her own blood. All she feels is the urge to flee. For a few seconds she lies absolutely still, letting her senses stabilize, her logic circuits reboot.

Perhaps it is simply the echo of another nightmare.

They come so frequently she is afraid to close her eyes. Often she spends the unlit hours sitting upright in a chair, staring at nothing and hoping, for once, there will be nothing staring back.

But there is always something staring back.

Something she remembers.

Something that remembers her.

She concentrates on her breathing, on drawing her diaphragm slowly down and out to fill her lungs to capacity with each breath, oxygenating her system for primeval response.

It takes another minute before the sound that stretched down through the layers of disturbed sleep comes again. It is close to nothing. No more than a quiet slither.

It is enough.

She slides out from under the covers in one fluid move. Her hand reaches for the Glock hidden beneath a towel on the nightstand, retrieving it without noise or fumble. She knows it will be loaded—thirteen .40 caliber hollow-point rounds in the magazine, plus another in the breech. She checks it every night, part of the ritual. But she checks it again now, sliding her forefinger over the loaded chamber indicator as she ghosts toward the bedroom doorway.

As she steps through she recognizes her mistake. The hairs riffle at the back of her neck a moment before the blade touches her skin and the Glock is plucked from nerveless fingers.

They're pros. She knows this even before her legs are kicked efficiently from under her, as her hands are zip-tied, as the hood goes over her head. They have to be good to have gotten this far, past the perimeter sensors and the yard dog and the alarm, not to mention the acres of barren isolation.

They've come in numbers. Probably two on point and another two to manhandle her down the stairs, across polished hallway, front porch, and gravel. It is only then she hears the roar of an approaching engine. Her shiver has little to do with the still night air.

She wonders what has become of the dog. Not through sentiment but because it is her most effective early warning system, trained ruthlessly not to take bait from anyone's hand but her own.

As the first vehicle slews onto the driveway she feels the sting of the needle in her arm. The hood contracts as her mind explodes into static and haze.

And then there is nothing.

S
HE
WAKES
DROWNING
.

Her gulp for air is a reflex. She finds only water. It binds the cloth to her face, saturating her mouth, her nose, her eyes. She inhales, retches, and drowns a little deeper.

The flow subsides. She feels the excess running down her body in a river of cold. Her arms are suspended out and up, tied so that her feet barely touch the ground.

As she heaves the water up out of her lungs, as the air rattles in, she understands the place they have taken her.

Not where, but what.

And she is terrified.

It doesn't matter that she knows they will not waterboard her to death. Not yet, anyway. If they had wanted her finished quickly there would have been no point taking her from the house. Or she would never have woken from the needle.

So they want something first.

Information?

Or simply revenge?

From the way sound ref lects she deduces the room is small and overcrowded. There are at least four of them with her—all male. She can smell their sweat even above the stink of her own fear.

Besides, she knows how this goes. Two to haul her up. One to grip her head. One to pour.

The air oozes with a stifling humidity. As her gasping eases she hears the underlying susurrus of distant insects, like whispers of dissent.

Somewhere nearby comes a scream that ceases more abruptly than it began.

No . . . not here. Not back here . . .

The hood is yanked from her head. For a moment she squeezes her eyes shut. Not just against the brightness, but against confirmation.

“Look at me, Clara.”

She opens her eyes and takes in the man standing before her. His arms are folded. His face is hidden behind a ski mask.

Is that good, because they intend ultimately to release her?

Or bad, because someone she has come to know and trust is behind this?

No, in this business she has learned to trust no one.

He steps in close.

“I own you,” he tells her. “Every human right you think you have is a privilege here—one that has to be earned. But you know how this goes, don't you?”

“What do you want?”

He shakes his head. “That's not how this works. You know that, too. We'll talk later. When you've had time to realize the . . . reality of your situation.”

He nods to the men holding the ropes at her wrists. They slacken so suddenly she jars to her knees. The hood drops over her head once more. Her hands are short-shackled to her ankles so she cannot stand. The men are deft, without malice. She might as well be an animal they're hog-tying for the slaughter.

The headphones go on, positioned carefully so her ears are completely covered. Now she knows exactly what's coming. Not a beating, not rape or more water torture.

This is far worse.

And it won't leave a mark on her.

T
HEY
START
WITH
HEAVY
METAL
, of course, played loud enough that it's impossible not to hear the words or blank out the music. The reproduction quality is good, and the irony of that fact is not lost on her. She can't even pray to be struck deaf by distortion.

So begins Metallica's pulsing “Enter Sandman” on constant repeat. After the first half dozen plays the lyrics start to stick inside her head. Lyrics about dreaming of war, of sleeping with one eye open and of never waking up. Who
would
get her blackened soul, she wonders? With no visual distractions, the monsters that might be lurking at the corners of the room—she doubts there
are
any closets, and there certainly isn't a bed for them to hide under—take on shape and mass and venom.

As the single guitar riff cycles endlessly through its series of gradual changes she is overwhelmed by the prominent beat of the drums until she wants to scream. The words fracture into shouting.

Even shaking her head doesn't work. Someone is monitoring. They reposition the headphones every time she jiggles them loose until eventually they tire of the game and duct-tape them to her ears.

A
LL
CONCEPT
OF
TIME
VANISHES
. There is no respite, hour upon hour. Day upon day, for all she knows.

Until, just as suddenly as it starts, the music stops.

She flinches, the silence more frightening than the noise. Either that, or the prospect of what might come next.

She has a right to fear.

The
Sesame Street
theme song starts up in her ears. She has listened to it numerous times over the years. There are no children of her own—her career has seen to that. But visits to aunts and cousins mean a TV set in the background acting as a kind of electronic pacifier, allowing the adults to talk unencumbered in another room.

Now she is scared that the next time she hears the jaunty tune, the children's raucously cheerful singing, she will run amok. The contrast between this and the previous music is well chosen, she knows, for maximum effect. She feels it as a pounding in her chest, the tightness of her jaw, a vibration through her body as it tries to contain the rage.

It is nowhere near over yet.

“W
HAT
DO
YOU
BASTARDS
WANT
from me?”

She can't tell how long she has been subjected to Eminem's “The Real Slim Shady,” but the repetition in the chorus has her near to breaking. And
Kim
is her. She has become the woman from the song desperately trying to placate her crazy ex. The man who's just slit her second husband's throat—their son's throat—right in front of her. Every time around, she thinks she might be able to escape him. Every time, he catches her.

Every time, she dies.

“Y
OU
KNOW
WHY
YOU
'
RE
HERE
, Clara.”

“I don't!”

“Of course you do. And every time you lie to me, you go back under.”

“No, please! I did nothing!”

“Ah. . . . At last we begin to get somewhere.”

F
OR
ONCE
SHE
IS
ALLOWED
to rest, to lie curled on a blanket. For once the only sounds inside the hood are those of faint weeping, the hot wet night, and her own despair.

“
I did nothing.
”

It is both truth and lie, because she is back there right now, in the vividness of the moment. The moment she is newly arrived, filled with the aggressive energy of self-righteous indignation. She watches hooded detainees shackle-shuffle between their tiny dirt-floored cells and the interrogation rooms. She sees them forced into stress positions, humiliated, half drowned, surrounded by barking dogs and strobe lights. Over the coming months she feels a little more of her humanity slipping from her grasp. She still cannot abide the color orange.

But in the beginning she has no uncertainties. They are the enemy, or why would they be there? They are intransigent, defiant, and all she can see is the towers falling and the blood on their hands.

When, later—she is ashamed of how much later—she voices those doubts to her boss, back home in his air-conditioned office in the five-sided fortress, word passes down the line that she needs to piss or get off the pot. She of all people cannot be seen to weaken. God is on their side.

She hardens, learns to ask the questions she is told to ask without emotion, without empathy. And if she lets others carry out her commands, it is poor distance.

The policy of “no-touch” interrogation seems a salve to what remains of her conscience. She tries to ignore that Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the USA”—initially blared out continuously over the camp speakers as part of the softening-up process—has to be quickly abandoned for the sanity of the guards as much as the prisoners. By some tacit agreement, it is never discussed.

So she does nothing—nothing to protest use of the headphones and the music.

The same headphones—and the same music—that is now being used on her.

“T
HE
HUMAN
MIND
CAN
ITSELF
prepare, mentally, psychologically, for physical abuse, but music? Music takes us back to a time in our evolutionary history when reacting to noise was the difference between survival and being eaten. It triggers a response on an elemental level—one against which we have no defense.”

Recognizing the truth of his words keeps her silent. That and the guilt which has plagued her ever since she came home. She has left the job behind her but it will not let go.

“Music has been an integral part of war through the ages. The beat of drums and pipes as an army marches into battle. It was designed to strike fear into the heart of the enemy.”

She says, “We
were
at war.”

“Your so-called ‘War on Terror'? Tell me, how can that war hope to be won by inflicting terror on those who might not even
be
your enemy? Is this not like attempting to put out flames with gasoline?”

“We were sanctioned to use enhanced interrogation techniques—”

“Semantics.” She can almost hear the shake of his head although by now she is hanging on to reality by her fingernails. “What are your ‘enhanced interrogation techniques' except another name for torture? What is ‘food manipulation' except another name for starvation?”

“I never starved anybody.”

“But the rest you admit, yes?”

“I . . .
we
were under pressure to get results.”

“So the end justifies the means, is that it?”

“No. Yes. I don't know.”

“Which is it, Clara?”

“I don't know,” she repeats dully. “I don't know what this is all for. What do you want from me?”

“If you have to ask, then you are not yet ready.”

She hears him shift. She is shaking, her head pulsing to a beat no longer there.

“Wait! Please! Ask me something—anything. What do you want me to say?”

“That you are a liar?”

“I am! I'm a liar. I've lied to you. I'm sorry.”

“What have you lied to me about?”

“About everything. But you have to understand, we were under attack. It was vital we obtained intel from detainees.”

“It would have been kinder to beat it out of us the old-fashioned way.”

“Us” not “them” . . .

“I would not have been a party to physical cruelty.”

“But you were under pressure to produce results, Clara. It was ‘vital that intel was obtained,' yes? Admit it—there was nothing you would not have done.”

“There was nothing I wouldn't have done,” she mumbles.

“Just as, right now, there is nothing you would not say in order to stop me placing those headphones back over your ears and leaving you in here another twenty-four hours.”