Tumblin' Dice (2 page)

Every show, they were getting better. Rams Head Live Baltimore, Sault Ste. Marie, Cleveland Playhouse Square. The High was the best it'd ever been. Twenty-five years too late.

And offstage here was Ritchie banging the hot twenty-five-year-old chick running the show, Emma from Head Office, the company that put the tour together.

It started after the show in South Bend, Morris Performing Arts Center, when he went to complain to her that his guitar, his Flying V, was gone and no one seemed to give a shit.

Emma said, “You tell Harvey?” and Ritchie said of course he told Harvey, he was the road manager, and Emma said, “What'd he say?”

“He said put it on the list.”

She was sitting at the little desk in her Motel 6 room, the only person on the tour not sharing a room, and she said, yeah, nodding, “It's one fucked-up tour,” not taking her eyes off her computer.

Ritchie said, you got that right. “It's not making any sense.” He was thinking Cliff was having a good time, no sign of
LSD
at all, and usually that guy had the worst case of Lead Singer Disease. Hell, he even bought a round after the last show, getting Barry away from the blackjack table, and Jackie let Dale into the bar even if he only had ginger ale.

Emma said the shows were going great, though, and Ritchie said, yeah, they are, but he was thinking, that's another thing. On the bus, waiting hours to cross the bridge back into Canada from Buffalo, Cliff actually sat down beside Ritchie and said, why don't we put the guitar solo back into “As Years Go By”? Ritchie said, “You serious?” and Cliff said sure, “Why not. The way it should've been.”

Back in '84–'85, towards the end of the High, instead of going hair metal and Poison and Cinderella, they'd gone keyboards and tried to hang on to the pop charts. Ritchie hated it, didn't care that Van Halen was Jumping or the Stones had gone Undercover of the Night or Rod Stewart had his Infatuation, he just wanted to play guitar. They'd recorded a cover of Mashmakhan's “As Years Go By” — that one about when the girl says do you love me, she really means will you respect me, and when the boy says yes, I love you, he really means will you make love to me, and Ritchie added a killer solo that didn't make the final mix.

Ritchie'd said, “You think Barry'll learn a song wasn't on our list?” and Cliff said, “Let me handle that,” and next thing, they're onstage doing their version the way Ritchie'd wanted to and it was great. And Cliff was enjoying himself, he was getting more into every show.

Ritchie sat down on the bed then, watched Emma type fast on the laptop she always had with her, and said to her, yeah, the shows are going great, everybody's into it, “But shit, it seems we're crossing the border after every show, back and forth, man, back and forth, like we've waited in line for hours at every border crossing there is.”

Emma turned to look at him, closed her laptop, saying, “You think it's a lot?”

Ritchie could feel her getting worried, like she's so inexperienced, thinking maybe she wasn't ready to put together a tour like this on her own, worried what her bosses might be thinking, so he said, “No, that's not a big deal. I've done it before,” but he hadn't, and he could tell she didn't believe him.

She said, “We started booking you guys, and as more gigs came up, we just kept adding them, taking whatever we could get — some in the States and some in Canada. If the dates were good, we just took them.”

Ritchie said, yeah, okay, sure. “If you don't mind, what do we care, a few more hours on the bus.” He rubbed his neck when he said it, just wanting to get out of there then, not leave this kid feeling bad like her first in-charge tour was a disaster.

She stood up, came over to the bed, and sat down beside Ritchie, put her hands on his neck and said, “You getting sore?”

He said, “No, I'm fine,” and she said, you sure?

“Yeah,” he said, “I'm sure.” Five minutes later she was on her back, holding her ankles up by her head, a pillow under her skinny butt, and Ritchie pumping away before it came to him: he'd been in rock bands, doing this on the road since before she was born.

Then he was thinking, what the hell, it's only rock'n'roll.

Back on the bus, crossing another border — this time from Vermont into Quebec on their way to Casino de Montréal — Ritchie said to Cliff, just to poke him, see if this new happy mood was real, why don't we do Pagliaro's, “What the Hell I Got”? Cliff said, yeah sure, “Like we did at the El Mo, back in the day. I'll play the acoustic, make it a jam.” And damn if it didn't work, Cliff getting the whole place on its feet, singing along, “Don't want to be lone-ly, no, no, no, don't want to be lone-ly, without you.” They got called back for three encores.

No, something was wrong all right.

• • •

Locked in the trunk of the car, pitch black, Cliff could feel the road going by and he was thinking, fuck, a number two hit in '82, would have been number one if it wasn't for fucking “Ebony and Ivory,” fucking novelty song, and I'm going out the answer to a trivia question — what rock star was shot in the head?

Well, after Lennon, of course, but it's not like the High had crazed fans. Cliff was pretty sure some speed metal guitarist got shot right onstage by a crazed fan, but he couldn't remember his name.

Now thinking, shit, get it together. Get out of this alive, get back to your life. Finish this tour, play the rest of the dates, and then get out.

Barry's idea, rob the fucking shylocks, and then this one, some French asshole in Montreal punches Cliff in the face, shoves him in the trunk, says, “You try rob me?”

Because Cliff wanted to be the one with the gun, the tough guy, the bigshot. He was getting such a rush out of it, just thinking about it, way better than being onstage, how he was going to put the gun in the guy's face after Barry sold him Cliff's diamond pinky ring — damn he was going to get that back, too — and tell the guy, give me all the money. Or, put it all in here, pal, handing him the bag. He'd tried a few lines in his head, different things, seeing what would sound the best, the coolest. Then when he pulled the gun out of his coat pocket the guy stared at it and so did Cliff, looking at it in his hand like it was the first time he'd seen it. It gave him an idea, he was going to say something like Clint Eastwood, some kind of “Yeah, it's a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world,” but then he realized he didn't know what kind of a gun it was, and while he was looking at it the guy punched him in the face. Blood poured out of his nose and his eyes watered and the guy grabbed the gun and hit him with it, side of the face, top of the head, kept hitting him after Cliff was on his knees with his arms up over his head.

Sam Cooke, too, shot in the head by a jealous husband, but Cliff also heard it was because he refused to sing “When a Man Loves a Woman” and the chick shot him.

Not even a plane crash like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Ozzy's man Randy Rhoads, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Jim Croce, John Denver, shit, Cliff remembered playing that big festival in Colorado in '79, John Denver smiling and waving, so happy to be a country boy, nobody seeing what a dick he was backstage, or Otis Redding, Otis crashing before “Dock of the Bay” was even released. Marc Bolan would've been remembered for a lot more than “Bang a Gong” if his girlfriend hadn't wrapped her Mini round the old oak tree with him in it. Half the Allman Brothers Band in motorcycle accidents.

But no, fuck, he was after a lousy ten, twenty grand, trying to rob a shylock in a casino parking lot. Not a proper rock star death, not a sex and drugs and rock'n'roll send-off like Jimi or Morrison or Keith Moon or Bonham or on and on, not even choking on vomit or Freddie Mercury fucking himself to death or blowing off his own head like Cobain.

He felt the car going around corners, tight turns and then uphill. Shit, was this guy taking him up Mount Royal? What the fuck for? He thought the guy was going to shoot him right there in the parking lot, blow his head off with his own gun — Barry's gun, now Cliff was thinking, where the hell did Barry get a gun? — but the guy looked around, popped the trunk of the Monte Carlo, and shoved him in.

And this fucking reunion tour going so well, even fucking Ritchie was happy. Even if he was trying to pass his sarcastic, pissed-off attitude, Cliff could tell. Threw him that bone with the solo in “As Years Go By,” all the guitar, putting it right up front, really just 'cause no one wanted to pay some keyboard schmuck five hundred a day. “What the Hell I Got” was good, though, taking Cliff right back to those days at the El Mo in Toronto, all those hot chicks in their tight Levis, slipping out of their tight Levis so fast.

Marvin Gaye, he was shot in the head, too, but it was by his father — that was just weird.

Well, fuck it, Cliff wasn't going to beg for his life. This French fucking asshole had no idea who he was, screw him. Cliff tried to tell him, tried to get him to understand he was clearing ten grand for singing “Honey Trap” to drunken, methed-out zombies handing their hard earned cash over to blackjack dealers and slot machines, but no, the asshole slammed the trunk, said, fuck you.

Yeah well, Cliff thought, fuck you, too. He wasn't going to wet his pants and cry. He played fucking Live Aid in '85, toured with the Stones, just the Canadian dates, but still, was sharing the bill with the fucking Doobie Brothers and Ted Nugent, cat scratch fucking fever in every casino.

He was pretty sure some guy from Earth, Wind and Fire was murdered, too, and one of Booker T & the
MG
s, probably one of the black guys, but he didn't know that for sure. And all those fucking rappers, shooting each other all the time.

Fuck it. It wasn't right. Not a rock star death, not drinking himself to death like Janis or Bon Scott. It was better than a Beach Boy drowning, the fucking irony. Brian Jones drowned, too, but Cliff was pretty sure he was high or drunk or both.

The car stopped.

Cliff closed his eyes. They were wet. So were his pants. He started begging, saying, “Please don't kill me — I'll do anything. I can get money, drugs, anything, please God,” and the trunk opened.

Cliff kept begging, crying, hands over his face, and then he heard Barry say, “Come on, let's go.”

Cliff climbed out of the trunk. They were on the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the Montreal skyline lit up behind them, the cross on Mount Royal higher than all the buildings. The French asshole was on the road, a guitar strap around his neck.

Barry said, “Get his legs.”

Cliff said, “Jesus Christ,” and Barry said yeah, bending down, picking up the guy's shoulders.

Cliff said, right, yeah, grabbed the guy's ankles, and they climbed over the railing to the sidewalk. A cab drove by. Cliff only saw the driver, guy wearing a turban talking on the phone, didn't even glance over.

Barry said, “Okay, now,” and they tossed the guy over. It took a while for him to hit the water, seemed like forever to Cliff, and when he did it hardly made any sound and he was washed away in the rushing current.

They climbed back over the railing, and Barry walked to the car he'd followed them in, a
BMW
X
5, saying, “Leave the Monte Carlo. They'll think he was a suicide.”

Cliff said, yeah, okay, right, getting in the
X
5. As they were driving away, he said, “Fuck me.” He was a mess, his pants wet where he'd pissed himself, blood and tears all over his face.

Barry drove over the bridge to the south shore, Longueuil, and then turned right, driving on the highway beside the St. Lawrence River. He said, “We'll take one of the other bridges back. You know how to get to the casino?”

Cliff said no.

They didn't say anything for a while, driving in the dark. There were houses on their left, post-war bungalows and brick two-stories, and the river on their right. It looked about a mile across, the skyline all lit up behind it. It was three thirty in the morning by then, a Tuesday night, the whole place asleep.

Crossing the Victoria Bridge, the Pont Victoria, Barry said, “He was going to kill you,” and Cliff said, “I know, fuck,” starting to calm down a little, the fear going away and getting pissed off.

Barry said, “We didn't have any choice.”

“I know.”

They came off the bridge onto the island of Montreal and Cliff said, “That's fucking it, though. No more,” and Barry said, okay, sure.

There was a sign for the Casino de Montréal and the Vieux Port, and Barry followed it, driving through a neighbourhood looked like it used to be a slum, row houses right on the street, no front yards at all, factories and a slaughterhouse, but parts of it were going upscale, getting renovated, gentrified.

Then Cliff said, “Oh fuck,” and Barry said, what?

“The fucking guitar strap, haven't you ever seen fucking
CSI
? Any of those shows. They'll be able to trace it. They'll fucking find us. Shit.”

“It'll come off in the water,” Barry said. “And besides, it's Nugent's.”

Cliff said, what? “What the fuck are you talking about?”

But then he started to laugh, saying, Jesus Christ, are you serious, and laughing till he cried, getting it all out.

• • •

Back at the casino they got straight onto the tour bus and Barry was still worried about Cliff, but starting to think it'd be okay. Figured he'd already changed the story in his head, taken out the pissing his pants and begging for his life.

The water was running in the little bathroom, Cliff cleaning himself up, and Barry heard him say, “Holy shit, there's hot water,” and Barry said, “Good, use it all up before fucking Ritchie gets here,” and Cliff laughed.

Yeah, this'll be okay. Tough part'll be Cliff not talking about it, Barry sure that by now it was a great story and Cliff was the hero.