The Rock 'N Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - a Spike Berenger Anthology (43 page)

The blonde hair… the floppy hat…!

The handgun recoiled twice. The shots were not as loud as one might expect. They were more like two firecrackers that teenagers might set off during the days surrounding the 4
^th
of July.

Charles felt his chest explode with a fiery pain that he didn’t think was possible for a human being to experience. As he stumbled backwards, he managed to blurt out a name.

“
Sylvia…!
”

And then he crashed onto the porch.

Whether Charles Nance was too old to rock ‘n’ roll might have been debatable, but he certainly wasn’t too young to die.

“Y
ou’re a good friend,” Ann Berkowitz said as she patted his hand.

“I’m your son, mom,” Spike Berenger retorted, but kindly so. “I appreciate the sentiment anyway.”

“You’re my son? I thought my son lived in Texas.”

Confusion clouded the old woman’s eyes. It broke Berenger’s heart to see her in this condition. Alzheimer’s was a terrible, cruel disease. Berenger had recently noticed that his mother’s memory and recollections were becoming more and more obtuse with time.

“I lived in Texas a long time ago, mom. I live in the city now.”

“The city?”

“Manhattan. New York.”

Mrs. Berkowitz, who had kept the name of her second husband, looked around her room. “Am I in New York?”

“Yes, you’re on Long Island. Isn’t this a great apartment? You’re very lucky. Most people have to pay a fortune to live in a place like this.”

As a matter of fact, Berenger
was
paying a fortune for his mother to live in Franklin Village, an assisted living establishment in Hempstead. Her room was in the special locked wing known as “the Neighborhood,” which kept dementia patients from wandering out of the building.

“And your other son Carl lives in California,” Berenger added. “Look, here are our pictures.” He pointed to the framed family photos of the two brothers, shot a year earlier when Carl had come to visit. The picture sat next to another one taken long ago in Austin, Texas, when the boys were small. “And that’s us when we were little. You remember?”

Ann Berkowitz smiled and had tears in her eyes. She nodded, but Berenger knew she really didn’t recall those years. Her doctor had told him that Alzheimer’s patients often faked answers to questions they weren’t sure about. The poor woman didn’t remember Daniel Berenger, Spike and Carl’s father. She did, however, remember Abraham Berkowitz, the man who had been Spike’s stepfather for a number of years until his untimely death. Particularly painful were the times when Berenger’s mother didn’t remember that he was her son, like today. She knew he was an important friend, someone who cared about her, and a person who came to visit often… but somehow the blood relation concept didn’t always gel.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a picnic?” she said, incongruously.

“Oh, that reminds me… look, ma, I brought you a present.” He pulled a CD out of his shoulder bag. “The Beach Boys. You like them.”

She took the CD and examined the cover. “They look like nice young men.”

“They are. They sing good, too. Here, let me put it on the player.” Berenger opened the jewel case and placed the disk in the portable CD player he had bought her. She no longer knew how to operate it, so Berenger made it a point to play some music for her whenever he visited.

As the music began, Ann Berkowitz’s eyes lit up. It was said that an Alzheimer’s patient’s appreciation for music was one of the last things to go. The woman swayed in her chair as the Beach Boys sang “California Girls.”

“I remember this song!”

“I figured you might. The Beatles and the Beach Boys—they were always your favorites.”

The ring tone on Berenger’s cell phone blasted out the opening riff from King Crimson’s “21
^st
Century Schizoid Man.” He quickly pulled it from his belt and answered it.

“Berenger.”

“Spike, don’t forget we have that IRS audit this afternoon.” It was Rudy Bishop, the co-owner, with Berenger, of Rockin’ Security, Inc.

“Oh, geez, Rudy, I forgot. Okay, I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

“He’ll be here in a couple of hours, so you’ve got some time.”

“All right, I’m on my way.”

“Another thing. Zach Garriott called.”

“Really? Mr. Shredder?”

“Yep. He wanted to speak to you. I told him you’d call him back when you got in to the office.”

“Any idea what he wanted?”

“Nope. He called from Chicago, though.”

“Okay, Rudy.” Berenger hung up and addressed his mom, who was in bliss with the music. “Mom? I gotta go now. I’ll be back next week, okay?”

“Okay, dear.”

“You enjoy the music, okay?”

“Okay, dear.”

He stood, leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, and then left the room. It was best to make goodbyes short and sweet.

Berenger signed out on the visitor’s sheet and then went outside to the parking lot, where he’d left his 2005 Nissan Altima SL. The car had held up nicely and he figured it was nearly time to trade it in and get something newer. Since he lived in Manhattan, he rarely used the car except to make trips out to Long Island or for business.

Zach Garriott
, Berenger mused.
What a coincidence
.

The CD he currently had in his car was a European sampler mix of music related to the same genre from which Garriott had emerged. Berenger’s Italian friend, Sandro Ponti, sent the disk to him from Rome. Ponti was once part of the same Chicago underground music scene, something Berenger knew as “Chicagoprog.” Zach Garriott had played lead guitar with a Chicago-based prog band called Red Skyez in the late-seventies. Sandro Ponti had played bass with a Chicago-based prog band called Rattlesnake in the early seventies. When Rattlesnake broke up, Ponti moved back to Italy, but the rest of the band members formed a new group. For a while it was called South Side, but since most of the members lived in the city’s opposite side, they permanently changed the name to North Side. Zach Garriott was their guitarist for a few years before breaking out on his own and becoming the only well-known, super-successful musician to come out of the Chicagoprog scene. As for Ponti, he still gigged with various bands in Italy.

Berenger started the car and headed toward Manhattan. The music on the sampler consisted of several new Italian progressive rock acts. Berenger had always been a prog rock fan, and he was happy that the genre had seen a resurgence in popularity during the nineties that had continued into the new millennium. He and Ponti had met in Italy several years after the Rattlesnake era and had got along well. Every now and then, Ponti sent him a sampler of stuff he was listening to and Berenger reciprocated. It was what serious music fans did for each other.

The sampler contained new music by some classic seventies Italian prog bands like PFM and Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso, but there were several new acts as well. One track featured a female singer whose works reminded Berenger of Kate Bush. She had a strong voice and the song was intricate, complex, and hauntingly beautiful. So far it was the best cut on the CD and Berenger played it a couple of times. The singer didn’t sound Italian—Berenger wondered if she was English or American. He grabbed the jewel case and noted that the track listing identified her as “Julia Faerie.” He’d never heard of her. When next he communicated with Ponti, he’d have to ask for more of her stuff.

Typically, though, as he merged onto I-495 toward the city, he quickly forgot about it.

T
he Rockin’ Security office was located in a brownstone on East 68
^th
Street between Third and Second Avenues. Rockin’ Security was the number one security business in the world of rock music. With branches in LA and London, the firm had a database of security personnel that could be called in for a single gig or a major tour at a moment’s notice. Bodyguard service was a specialty. Berenger also had a private investigator license, which was a Rockin’ Security service that wasn’t advertised openly. The PI cases were always the most interesting jobs but they didn’t come around as often as he’d like. All in all, the partnership of Rudy Bishop and Spike Berenger worked like a dream. As long as Bishop handled the money and the dealings with Uncle Sam and let Berenger handle operations, it was a fabulous gig. Of course, a lifetime ago he had dreamed of being a rock star himself. For a while in the late seventies, his prog band, The Fixers, did pretty well for themselves. But the overblown style of progressive rock went out of fashion when punk and New Wave hit the scene, and by 1980 The Fixers couldn’t keep up. Berenger became a music manager for most of the eighties and then formed Rockin’ Security in the nineties with Bishop.

Berenger entered the building’s ground floor, which held Bishop’s office, the conference room, and other administrative areas. Melanie Starkey, the office assistant, looked up and smiled. She was a twenty-nine year old feisty redheaded babe who spoke with a thick New Jersey accent. Even though she preferred to be called Mel, most of the time everyone called her “Ringo” because of that darned last name. Starkey = Starr = Ringo. Who wouldn’t automatically think of the Beatles’ drummer?

“Hi, Ringo,” Berenger said.

“Hey, Spike. How’s your mom?”

“’Bout the same.”

She made a
tsk tsk
sound and looked at him with sympathy. “It’s hard, I know.”

“Yeah.”

He started to climb the stairs when Melanie stopped him. “Hey!”

“What?”

“Have you lost weight?”

Berenger blinked. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“You look like you have.”

“Uh, well, thanks, I think.”

“I guess all that workin’ out you do upstairs is payin’ off.”

Berenger was surprised by her comment because his bulky physique hadn’t changed in years. No matter how hard he worked at it, he never seemed to get rid of that extra twenty-five pounds that had attached themselves to him in his forties and never let go.

“Thanks, Mel. You wanna go out on a date?”

She snorted and said, “I wasn’t
fishin’
, Spike. You’re a good-lookin’ guy but you’re just not my type. Besides, it’s not cool to date the boss. Sorry!”

“Okay, you’re fired. Now will you go out with me?”

“You wish.”

He laughed, but as he ascended, he studied his likeness in the reflective paneling that lined the circular staircase. There was no doubt about it—he was simply a big ol’ hairy bear of a man. The long salt-and-pepper hair he had worn in a ponytail since coming out of the army reached to the middle of his back. His facial hair was slightly darker but the gray and white patches complimented his blue eyes.

Berenger went all the way to the Operations room on the third floor, and that’s where he found most of his team.

Danny Lewis was a smart-aleck kid from Harlem that was perhaps the brainiest hacker Berenger had ever known. He was twenty, half-Caucasian, half African-American, and had no loyalties to either race. He called himself a “mix,” hence the nickname “Remix.” Lewis was the firm’s tech guru, hacker, systems analyst, programmer, and streetwise geek. And damned good at what he did. He was also the practical joker of the group and could be counted on for the more eyebrow-raising shenanigans.

Tommy Briggs was Berenger’s contemporary. At age fifty, Briggs used to be a field agent for the FBI and had held the job for nearly twenty years until he decided to give it up one day and work for Rockin’ Security. Briggs maintained a good relationship with the Bureau and had pals on the inside. He knew people in just about any Federal government organization one could name. If a piece of information could be obtained from an archival or electronic source, Briggs usually found a way to access it though the good old boy network.

And then there was the inimitable Suzanne, his number two. Originally from California, Suzanne Prescott was thirty-nine, had short dark hair and deep brown eyes, and possessed the most interesting history of the entire bunch. In the eighties she was a Goth devotee, sporting the classic black clothes, dark makeup and pale white skin. After doing a bit of maturing she traveled the Far East for a few years and came back a student of eastern philosophy, martial arts, and Transcendental Meditation. After the love of her life overdosed in the mid-nineties, Berenger and Prescott had a brief love affair,
brief
being the operative word. But they remained friends and several months later Berenger asked her to work for him.