The Rock 'N Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - a Spike Berenger Anthology (66 page)

“I brought you a glass of water,” Berenger said, handing it to him.

“Thanks.” The man emptied it but held on to the glass.

Berenger sat in a comfy chair next to the sofa and asked, “Does Lucy color her hair?”

Nance belched and winced. “Yeah. Why?”

“Just wondering. What’s her natural hair color?”

He gave a short laugh. “She changes it so much I forget. It’s been red for… I don’t know. A few days.”

“What was it before that?”

“Uh… blonde. Why?”

“No reason. Okay, Joe. Can you talk about it, now? It’s important.”

“Talk about what?”

“You know. Sylvia. The past. Whatever’s eating you.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Look, someone is killing your friends and colleagues because of something that happened a long time ago. I need to know what it was!”

“Nothing happened!”

“Yes it did!”

“No it didn’t!” Nance threw the empty glass at Berenger. Luckily, the man’s aim was off due to his condition. The glass shattered on the wall behind Berenger.

“Goddammit, Joe!” Berenger stood, grabbed Nance by the shirt, and pulled him to his feet. Nance swung wildly and managed to land a blow squarely on Berenger’s left cheek. The PI had no choice but to punch the musician hard in the nose. Nance yelped and fell back onto the sofa, clutching his face.

Berenger stood there breathing heavily for a moment and then leaned over to examine the man’s injury. “Joe… I’m sorry. Damn it! Let me see.”

Nance waved him away. “Leave me alone!”

“It’s not broke, is it?”

“Screw you!”

Berenger gave up and reclaimed his seat. Better to let the guy recover with dignity. He watched Nance fiddle with his nose, wipe the snot off his face, and wince. “I don’t think it’s broken,” he mumbled. “Is it bleeding?”

“No. I’m kind of surprised it isn’t.”

“Damn you.”

“Sorry, Joe. You threw a glass at me and you slugged me. I got pissed off.”

And then the unexpected happened—Joe Nance began to sob. He buried his face in his hands and cried as if he’d just learned his soul had been condemned to hell.

“Jesus, Joe, I didn’t hit you that hard, did I?” Berenger asked, but after a few moments he realized that what he was witnessing was not due to the fight. Whatever Nance had been hiding for years was about to come out, and it wasn’t pretty. Berenger stood, went to the kitchen, failed to find a box of tissues, and returned with a handful of paper towels. He handed them to Nance, who used them to blow his nose and weep into.

“It was… an accident,” he finally said. “But we didn’t think so… at the time.”

“What, Joe?” Berenger tried to be as gentle as possible. “Tell me. It’ll do you good.”

Nance took a few more minutes to get hold of himself, and then he told the story.

June, 1970.

S
tuart Clayton, Joe Nance, Charles Nance, Dave Monaco, and Jim Axelrod poured themselves into the Green Room backstage of the Kinetic Playground after a grueling three-hour show and collapsed into chairs. Harrison Brill and Manny Rodriguez were already there, waiting with a cooler full of beer. They could hear the crowd calling for a third encore but the band wasn’t going to have any part of it. Enough was enough.

“You guys blew their minds tonight!” Brill said. “Wish I’d been up there!”

“Sorry, man,” Monaco replied. “You and Manny said you didn’t want to play this gig. And when you step
out
, Jim and I step
in
.”

“Hand me one of those,” Joe Nance said, indicating the beer. “Stuart, you fucked up the chords during my solo again.”

“No, I didn’t,” Clayton countered. “You weren’t listening to the changes.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!”

“You want to go back out there and do it again? You’d just fuck it up a second time.”

Nance stood, ready to pummel his band mate, but Charles held him back. “Cool it, Joe. Be cool.”

Nance pointed at Clayton. “I’m sick and tired of you acting like you own this band. You are
not
the leader, Stuart!”

“Who is, Joe?” Clayton calmly asked. “It isn’t you. I’m the one that brought us all together.”

“That don’t make you the leader.”

“Guys!” Axelrod shouted. “Stop it! You’re acting like middle-school kids. Shut the fuck up and drink some beer. We have a party to go to, remember?”

Joe Nance took a bottle and grabbed his gig bag. “I’ll meet you at the boat.” He walked out of the room.

“Joe, wait up!” his brother called. The drummer jumped up and ran after him.

Rodriguez turned to Clayton and said, “Hey, Stuart, you gotta cut that shit out. When you and Joe are at each other’s throats, it makes it real uncomfortable for the rest of us.”

Clayton shrugged. “If we could get out of this sinkhole and be on the West Coast, things would be different.”

“Hear, hear!” Axelrod chimed in.

Brill said, “Let’s not talk about it tonight, okay? I’m looking forward to getting totally
out of my head
. Where’s Sylvia, Stuart?”

“She’s meeting us at the boat.”

An hour later, all parties concerned had made their way to Burnham Harbor, where Clayton’s 62’ Posillipo yacht was moored. He had bought it brand new in 1968 and everyone agreed that it was a beauty. It was an ideal party boat and Clayton was a more than competent captain. The Loop had spent many nights and weekends on it, as it was purchased primarily to entertain the boys in the band and any female friends that happened to tag along. Clayton didn’t like to flaunt his wealth and usually pretended that he was as poor as the rest of the band members. The boat was the one way he made up for it, although the others wondered why he didn’t put more money into promotion for the group.

It was a warm, beautiful night. The moon was full and the sky was clear. The lake emanated an ominous, yet inviting glow. Manny Rodriguez commented that the pond was already tripping. He always called Lake Michigan “the pond.”

The seven members of the band sat aboard the yacht, drinking beer, smoking joints, and waiting for the arrival of the woman with the goodie bag.

“Where is she, Stuart?” Charles Nance asked after they’d been there for an hour.

“She’ll show,” the captain replied, although he wasn’t totally sure about it. Sylvia Favero was unpredictable and they all knew it.

“I’m already so high it don’t matter if she does show up,” Monaco said with a smile on his face. He was lying on his back on the deck, looking up at the stars. “Will you look at that universe? Man…”

“How much beer we have left?” Joe Nance asked.

“Plenty,” Rodriguez answered. “Enough to last two days if need be.”

“Anyone hungry?”

“Oh, man, don’t ask me that!”

“There’re hot dogs inside. We can cook ‘em later.”

“Hey, look, someone’s coming.”

Everyone focused their attention on the figure walking toward them on the pier. Even in the dark, the floppy hat gave her away.

“Hooray!” the boys shouted.

“The goddess cometh!”

“Hello, fellas!” she announced. “Are you ready to change your lives tonight?”

She was a little unsteady on her feet, so Joe Nance helped her aboard. Clayton started up the engine. Charles jumped onto the pier, untied the moorings, and leaped back on as the boat slowly pulled away. More cheers.

Sylvia was dressed in a flowery sundress, the hat, and the sunglasses. She lit a cigarette, indicated a large handbag she was carrying, and said, “Okay, boys, come and get it.” She sashayed into the cabin, where she dropped the bag onto the kitchen table. Everyone except Clayton piled inside after her.

She emptied the contents. There was an ounce of weed, a bag of white powder, two pipes, rolling papers, and another baggie containing a sheet of blotter paper. She held up the latter and giggled. “You’re not going to believe this shit. It’s total. It’s so pure.” She took off her sunglasses and the men could see that her pupils were dilated, as large as saucers.

“Are you already high?” Joe asked.

“I dropped two hours ago. Man, I’m
flying
! I don’t know how I even got here.” She carefully tore off squares of the paper and handed a couple to each band member.

“Two?” Brill asked.

“Uh huh,” she said. “This night is going to be special.” She tore off another one for herself and tossed it into her mouth. She then tore off two more hits and said, “I’ll take these to Stuart.”

“Uh oh, he’ll become someone else!”

“He won’t be captain no more!”

Laughter.

“Clayton says he always stops being Stuart Clayton when he does acid!”

“It’d be an improvement!”

More laughter.

The boat sailed several miles out on the vast ocean that was Lake Michigan. Clayton eventually dropped anchor so that he wouldn’t have to concentrate on piloting. The next two hours flew by quickly as their trips took shape, intensified, and soared toward a peak none of them had ever experienced before. By the third hour, the travelers were no longer on a boat on the lake. It had become an interplanetary shuttle caught in a galaxy of sea. The hot dogs were forgotten, but the beer, marijuana, and cocaine wasn’t. By the fourth hour, anything and everything was possible.

“Will you look at that universe?” someone asked.

At some point, Joe Nance kissed Sylvia in front of the others. No one was sure how long that lasted, but it seemed as if she was on Stuart Clayton’s lap and kissing him a mere second later. Then it was as if time reversed itself and she was with Nance again. Or was it Dave Monaco? No, she was kissing Charles Nance. Wait, she was sitting in Manny Rodriguez’s lap and had her mouth locked with his. Where had the sundress gone? Sylvia said it had been cast away and offered as a gift to the alien beings in the new galaxy, which made the boys laugh.

“Will you look at that universe?” someone asked.

The glow from the moon and the lake continued to penetrate their retinas and time finally came to a dead stop. Everyone’s clothing had been shed. During the fifth hour, they were singing songs and dancing in the nude, laughing and crying and holding each other in fear and awe. By the sixth hour, dawn was beginning to creep across the ceiling of stars overhead… and Sylvia Favero had given her body to all seven men—to some of them more than once. The party was out of control. A couple of the guys got sick, probably from too much beer and not enough food. One of them became too wired from the cocaine, but later no one remembered who it had been.

“Will you look at that universe?” someone asked.

During the seventh hour, as the sun rose and turned their surroundings into a bright orange blaze of color and warmth, someone noted that all the LSD was gone. They must have each taken more hits during the night. It was no wonder that they couldn’t land the spacecraft. One of the guys became afraid and had to be coaxed out of the latrine. Sylvia sang and cried and laughed and danced in the nude. Someone poured beer all over himself to wash off the parasites that had grown out of the spaceship’s deck.

“Will you look at that universe?” someone asked. Or was it just a broken record? Someone had said it. No one could remember who. Everyone said it. No one could remember who. They forgot what it was to forget. Someone thought that was a profound statement. No one could remember who.

Time passed, even though it was standing still.

The clock advanced, even though it didn’t.

The boat floated in the heat of the day. The eight humans lay on the deck, broiling in the oven like lobsters on the aliens’ dinner plates. Someone laughed at that notion but no one else did. Most of them were very quiet.

The beer was completely gone as the sun dropped closer to the horizon. Someone said that the lake was perpendicular to the universe. No one knew what that meant exactly, but it was heavy. Somebody wrote it down so they could remember it, but a few minutes later he lost the piece of paper.