Resurgence (8 page)
These omissions nag him all the way back to the city and halfway up the west side. He’s north of 42
nd
Street before they’re replaced with nagging reminders of theories and suspicions deemed crackpot only a few days ago, and now resurgent because of Rayce Vaughn’s improbable suicide. If that can be believed, then anything’s possible.
The move from the sleazy North Bergen high-rise motel to the better place on Route 22 takes up most of the morning. When the job’s done, Hoop ponders dropping in on Audrey. The new lodgings are in the same neighborhood as the storage place, but he resists the urge. He’s not ready to share the recent news with her, and he won’t be till his understanding’s better and he’s gained more distance from the fearful drunken toot he went on in the backwash of smashed hope and queered opportunity.
He’s not ready to give much thought to the money wasted by walking out on the paid-ahead arrangements at the North Bergen motel, but that maybe puts him one step closer to admitting he’s got money to burn and a quick means of getting more if it ever comes to that.
Although he can afford a sit-down lunch in a regular restaurant, he’s brought a Blimpie lunchmeat sandwich and a big jug of Coke back to his room at the Speedwell Motor Lodge for the noonday meal. He sets it out on the desk, along with the composition book and pens retrieved from the gym bag before it was locked and stowed away. He opens the notebook to the last entry—written yesterday while he was still under the weather and full of black thoughts—and starts a new page. Wednesday, April 15, 1987, he sets down in block print and then in standard writing begins noting what all was learned from television and a wide sampling of newspapers collected during the past twenty-four hours.
Because he’s heard it so many times by now, he can recount almost word for word the music television report of the superstar drug death over there in London, England. And since he’s seen the name printed in both supermarket-type papers and the more believable kind that fold crosswise, he knows he’s getting it right when he spells out R-a-y-c-e V-a-u-g-h-n with underlining. Underlining, because once he started paying better attention than he did the night of the drinking, the name stood out for being the same as the one related to Colin Elliot’s arrest for scuffling with the jackassed-fool of a photographer. Hoop takes a bite of sandwich and a long swig of Coke while thinking over what else should be recorded as significant and winds up underlining a full page of writing.
This fresh set of particulars says a distraught Colin Elliot—named as Vaughn’s protégé, colleague, and close friend—is secluded at his country estate, along with Laurel Chandler, who they’ve named as his fiancée after a whirlwind courtship of less than two weeks. This reading gets the most going over because there’s pleasure in knowing the rock star is suffering over the death of a buddy and probable partner in crime. And there’s heartening in knowing for a fact that hurry-up courtships never amount to much—that sooner or later the lawyerwoman will return to New Jersey, alone, and with her throat exposed.
But there’s not enough pleasure and heartening in the world to make up for having to spare both Elliot and Chandler the blade last Saturday. Or for evidently failing with the last-ditch attempt to cause trouble for Elliot by planting dope in his ditty bag when it was known he’d be boarding an overseas airplane where they’re supposed to check for things like that.
Four whole days after the planting, none of the regular news outlets are reporting anything about a Colin Elliot arrest for possession. It’s time to accept that rock stars probably bribe their way through border crossings as a regular thing.
He finishes the sandwich, sets aside his writing and selects one of today’s newspapers he hasn’t yet studied. The story’s still front page, but down toward the bottom.
LONDON (Reuters) —
Not since Elvis Presley’s untimely demise a decade ago has a cause of death been as hotly debated as that of Rayce Vaughn, preeminent British rock star who died Monday, April 13, at his lavish townhouse in the Holland Park district of London. Vaughn was found by household staff and pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy performed later that day identified a brain hemorrhage as the ultimate cause of death. Informed sources report that the hemorrhage was, in all probability, induced by the massive ingestion of a controlled substance said to be cocaine of an unusually potent quality
.
Because Vaughn had a long history of self-medication and a more recent history of self-imposed abstinence, speculation is running high that his death may not have been accidental. However, the naysayers aver that Vaughn
—
spectacularly launched on the comeback trail after last Friday’s stunner of a concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with a recording of that event expected to ship platinum, and a sold-out twenty-three date European tour to follow—had everything in the world to live for. Vaughn’s fellow passengers on a charter flight to London Saturday night concur, especially longtime friend and collaborator, Colin Elliot—himself on the comeback trail after surviving a devastating 1984 car crash—who strongly emphasized in a prepared statement that Vaughn displayed typical high spirits throughout the flight. A coroner’s jury may have to decide the issue
.
Vaughn, age 55, is survived by seven children, three ex-wives, and two sisters. According to his manager, David Sebastian of the Manhattan law firm Clark, Sebastian & Associates, a private funeral will be held at an undisclosed time and place
.
Nothing fresh to work with there, so Hoop moves to the wardrobe and retrieves the gym bag containing the few items not stored with Audrey. He works the combination lock and the zipper and takes out the rock star’s pocket photo album, Cliff Grant’s rotary card file, Gibby Lester’s copybooks, and the lawyerwoman’s little diary. The handful of splinters taken from the lawyerwoman’s back stairs, he doesn’t bother with. The rest he lines up on the bed, brings a chair over to the foot of the bed, and sits himself down with every intention of trancing on these objects till one or all of them tell him what to do next.
“Oh . . . look.” Laurel twists in her seat to watch the scene he’s monitoring in the rearview mirror—Anthony peering through the bars of the big main gates that have just swung shut in their wake.
“Yeh, he’s doing his abandoned orphan bit.” Colin brakes at the end of the driveway and cranes to see that Anthony has now climbed up onto a wrought-iron crosspiece and is extending a beseeching arm. “No, my mistake, it’s the ‘last refugee out of Saigon’ routine. The lad’s obviously got a stage career ahead of him and I’m thinkin’ it won’t have anathing to do with music.” Colin lowers a window and returns the wave before entering the unmarked road fronting the estate.
“Drama aside, he does know we’ll be back tonight?” Laurel says.
“He does, and it’s not like he’s gonna suffer in our absence. Three of his soccer mates are joining him for the day and when they’re not terrorizing livestock and scoring goals in the rose garden, they’ll be trashing the kitchen with their Easter
egg
coloring.”
“I almost forgot about Easter—that it’s Holy Week—that today’s Good Friday.”
“Any bleedin’ wonder what with all that’s come crashing down on you. If anyone should be carrying on like a detainee, it’s you. Cooped up, you’ve been, ever since you arrived.”
“There’s no place I’d rather be, and I’d hardly call free access to endless acreage and countless rooms being cooped up.” Laurel casts a wan smile his way.
“No matter, you need the change of scene as much as I do, so the request from Amanda couldn’t have come at a better time, could it then.”
“Did she say why this—whatever it is—couldn’t be handled by phone or fax?” You’ve already approved the press releases, haven’t you?”
“I get the feeling she’s leavin’ nothing to chance, but you’d know more about her persnickety side than me.”
“True. Amanda can be thorough to a fault. With a new assignment, doubly so. Nothing she does should really surprise me, but I can’t get over how confident and self-possessed she seemed when I spoke to her, and she’s only been in London two days.”
“London must agree with her, then.” Colin threads the black Jaguar XJ6 through a roundabout and onto a motorway bound for London.
“Would certainly seem so, and there’s no question the assignment’s a perfect fit.”
“Did you think to ask whose idea it was?”
“Are you still questioning David’s motives?”
“Yeh. Given this particular set of circumstances, wouldn’t you? And if it wasn’t strictly David’s idea, then I’d wanna know who
is
pushing the buttons and supplying this extra boost to her confidence.”
“I refuse to ask what it is you’re suggesting. I will, however, assure you that Amanda’s no dupe and she would
never
set herself up as
anyone’s
puppet. Okay?”
“Yeh. Okay, then . . . Are you pissed now?”
“No, it’ll take a lot more than that to get me going.”
“Then why are you twitching about and hugging yourself like that?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Tell me.”
“Very well. I’ve never ridden in the front passenger seat of a car in England. I keep thinking the steering wheel’s fallen off and I’m out of control.”
“Sorry. Should’ve seen that coming. I used to experience similar when I first visited the States and the answer for it was to do the driving. You wanna drive?”
“In this traffic? Good lord no.”
Till she mentioned it, he hadn’t actually noticed the increased volume of traffic, unusual for midmorning with the start of the Easter holiday likely to blame. Their progress slows even more as agricultural land gives way to suburban sprawl and he’s soon reminded of their return to Manhattan from the visit to the New Jersey shore, when he was only too glad to do the driving as the best means of keeping his hands off her.
He watches her now, out of the corner of his eye, gauging when traffic might come to a full stop, and when it does, where all he will kiss her, starting with that spot right in front of her ear and maybe grazing on her neck for a bit before touching on eyelids and nose and working his way down to the corner of her mouth and into her mouth.
“Colin?”
“Jesus! What? Sorry—you were saying something?”
“I was only echoing something you said earlier about being barred from Rayce’s funeral—that by being denied the ritual, you were being denied a crucial element of the mourning process.”
“No shit. Selfish bunch of twits, that rag-tag family are, and I don’t give a flying fuck about their reasoning that a funeral ceremony open to his friends would’ve become a circus. Rayce’s bleedin’
life
was a circus. Try denying that, won’t you!” He gives the steering wheel a hard thump.
“I’m not, sweetie. I’m just agreeing with you that closure will indeed be difficult to accomplish without some event or ceremony to mark his passing.”
“We’ll have to make do with a coroner’s inquest for that, won’t we, then?”
“It begins to look that way.” Laurel slumps into a resigned silence that encourages him to alter his outlook a bit.
“In the back of my mind,” he says, “ever since we got in the car this morning, I’ve had the idea that while we’re rather removed—encapsulated, you could say—and in motion, we could suspend these cares and woes and sneak a bit of the happiness we should’ve been wallowing in these past four days. Days that should’ve been amongst the happiest we’ll ever have—and there’s
another
reason why I’m dead certain Rayce didn’t do himself in. Suicide’s a selfish act. Rayce may’ve been a great many things over the years, but he was never selfish. He’d never willfully do anathing to lessen the happiness of someone he cared about—and he did care about my happiness. He rather reveled in it, actually. The day Rayce met you he rang my mum to say we all were gonna be blessed with way more than we ever could’ve hoped for. He was delighted. Thrilled, he was. Clear over the moon.”
