Born to Rock Page 15

  He said more—a lot more, and at maximum decibelage, but I never got past those words: I’m still your father.

  He didn’t know! Bernie hadn’t told him. That lowlife didn’t want to take responsibility for being my father, so he let King go on thinking he was. Quite a family, those McMurphys. They treated each other just as badly as they treated everybody else.

  King was still yelling. “Not to mention that I promised your old man you were safe with me! That wasn’t bull! I meant that!” For someone with zero parenting experience, he really knew how to lay a guilt trip on a guy.

  “Sorry, King,” I mumbled. “I thought I was fired.”

  “Well, you’re not. So what’ll it be? Are you coming back or going home?”

  I’m still not sure why I didn’t tell him about the DNA test results. Some of it was definitely cowardice. I was surrounded by King’s acolytes. And just as referees are subconsciously swayed to make calls in favor of the home team, I felt a strange pressure to give the nomads the happy ending they seemed to want.

  But I have another theory, and I’m not proud of it. On some semiconscious level, I was thinking that, as long as King didn’t know the truth, Harvard wasn’t dead yet. And since Bernie wasn’t going to spill the beans, my McMurphy ear and I might be able to keep the secret safe long enough to get the first year’s tuition squared away.

  “I’ll come back,” I told him, to the delight of the nomads. “I just have to write a note to Melinda.”

  I make this excuse: I was desperate.

  Backstage at Concussed it was like I’d never left. Nobody asked, “Where were you?” They just gave me the crappiest jobs, and I did them. Business as usual.

  Well, not exactly as usual. For one thing, Cam mumbled, “Good to see you, kid,” which really floored me. Maybe King had threatened to tear his head off too.

  Also not as usual because Max had recruited Julius as the new nanny to his drums. I knew from experience what a pressure job that was. When Julius dropped the snare, Max threw the kind of hissy fit that you normally associate with toddlers and Tasmanian devils. For a minute there, I was afraid the drum might be broken. It made a funny rattling sound as it hit the floor. Luckily, though, Max pronounced it okay, which was the only reason Julius was permitted to go on living.

  Bernie had made good on his threat to hire a nutritionist for Zach. Her name was Ariadne, and she looked more like a supermodel than a nutritionist—which probably explained how she wowed Bernie at the interview. It obviously wasn’t for her skills as a dietician and motivator. Zach was presently working on a cinnamon bun the size of a curling stone, and she wasn’t even looking in his direction.

  Another unfamiliar face backstage—a lawyer with a ski-jump nose and a paper to serve that nobody would accept from him. We’d been briefed about this. He was a high-profile attorney hired by Neb Nezzer, who had taken out an injunction to stop Purge from performing without him. At least three times I watched the document flutter to the floor off Bernie’s chest. According to the manager, even closing your hand on the paper constituted acceptance. And God help whoever did that.

  Bernie had a circular black-and-yellow bruise on his left cheek. It had probably faded since I’d put it there four days ago.

  He greeted me warily. “Cuz.”

  “I’m not your cuz,” I told him. “I’m nothing to you.”

  “You’re less than nothing to me,” he confirmed. “If I had my way, you’d never come near this stage. Not without buying a ticket.”

  I glared at him. “Do you even remember my mother?”

  He looked exasperated. “You have no idea what it was like to be with Purge in the eighties. Wall-to-wall chicks. You think I remember one any more than the others? We were crazy in those days.”

  “Sounds like you’ve really grown up since then,” I muttered sarcastically.

  “What do you want me to say?” he countered. “That she was a princess and I loved her dearly? You know how I am. Some people get into this business for the music or the money, or because they think they can change the world. I was always in it for the women. I never pretended to be anything else.”

  Charles Manson could have said the same thing about killing people.

  Lethal Injection came crashing to their usual cacophonous ending, and the roar of the crowd gradually petered out into relative quiet.

  The moment had arrived for the Lethal Injection roadies and us to strike down the old and put up the new. I’m not sure why, but somehow I knew that I was doing this for the last time. Was it instinct? Or maybe the unusually large number of uniformed police officers in and around the stage area?

  Ski-Jump Nose was arguing with one of them, probably the commander, gesturing emphatically with his unserved court document. The cops couldn’t do anything until someone accepted that injunction. Fat chance of finding anybody stupid enough to do that.

  The lights went down to a buzz of supercharged excitement.

  “Lockjaw recording artists—Purge!”

  It might have been just me, but the sound seemed bigger tonight. Max’s drums were a barrage, like a battlefield firefight. Zach’s bass could be measured on the Richter scale. Pete’s guitar roared out of the speaker towers with a ferocity that was almost scary.

  And King. Maybe this wasn’t the ’80s anymore. Maybe rage was hard work now. But tonight he blazed ten feet tall across that stage, hurling fireballs with his vocals.

  I drank it in, experiencing “Bomb Mars Now” as if hearing it for the first time. In a way, it was the first time, because I’d never really liked it before. I’d learned to appreciate things about it, but I hadn’t allowed myself to experience the whole tableau. It was almost precious to me now, not just the music, but the whole thing—the lights, the fans, the night; the cocktail of musicians, instruments, and a hundred thousand watts of power, turning an empty field into a nuclear detonation of sound and fury.

  It had taken all summer, but I had finally become a punk Republican, if not the first, then one of a select few.

  My eyes wandered backstage where my fellow crew members were monitoring soundboards and mixers, and standing by to attend quickly to blown amps and broken guitar strings.

  I blinked in surprise. What was Owen Stevenson doing in the wings? He didn’t have a backstage pass for tonight. Instinctively, I looked around for Melinda. But it was just Owen, grooving to the music in the midst of a group of roadies. He saw me, waved, and started to walk over.

  It unfolded like a bad pantomime. Owen took three steps before his path was blocked by Ski-Jump Nose. The lawyer held out the injunction to the one person who hadn’t been told not to take it.

  I yelled, “Owen—don’t!” But he didn’t have a hope of hearing me over “The Supreme Court Makes Me Barf.”

  He reached out and accepted the paper.

  And all hell broke loose.

  Ski-Jump Nose signaled the cops, and a sea of blue swarmed the stage. The speaker towers fairly exploded with the twanging thwack of a nightstick making contact with Pete’s Stratocaster. Zach’s bass hit the stage with a deep-throated woomph! Microphones went down in a shriek of feedback.

  “Hey!” Bernie was wading into the melee. “That kid doesn’t work for us! We haven’t been served!”

  In the audience, thirty thousand throats were screaming with outrage. A brave and foolhardy few were rushing the stage, where they were met by more nightsticks.

  In the midst of the chaos burst Ariadne, Zach’s nutritionist. I watched, dumbfounded, as she clicked open a pocketknife and ran out onto the stage.

  “No-o-o!!” I cried in horror, and took off after her. What kind of dietician carried a switchblade? All I could think of was John Lennon being assassinated by a demented fan. What if this crazy woman was trying to get her name in the paper by stabbing King?

  Heart thumping, I followed her through the sea of struggling people. She bulldozed her way to Max’s kit, and, before I could stop her, she had slit open every drum in the set. I didn�
��t think anything could bring order to that donnybrook. But the sight of a supermodel nutritionist carving up all those drums focused everyone’s attention on the back of the stage. Max’s demented scream helped.

  Ariadne reached into the snare and pulled out a fistful of the most brilliant jewelry I’d ever seen. There were diamond necklaces, strings of pearls, chokers set with sapphires and rubies, and gold chains the thickness of hemp.

  The cops took one look at this dragon’s hoard of treasure and forgot all about Neb Nezzer and his little injunction.

  I was twice as blown away as they were. I mean, had I missed something? A cache of hidden jewels?

  What the hell was going on?

  Purge was arrested. Not just the band. All of us—the manager, the staff, the roadies. We were interrogated and searched. That’s how I came to meet Detective Sergeant Ogrodnick and his rubber glove.

  So help me, I didn’t even know what a cavity search was. And when the sergeant explained it, I’m not ashamed to admit I burst into tears.

  “But why?” I bawled. “What are you looking for? What do you think I have up there? Drugs?”

  “Sorry, son. Standard procedure when there’s stolen jewelry involved.”

  “Stolen jewelry?” But of course that’s what they’d think when a zillion dollars’ worth of gems comes out of a snare drum. For all they knew, Purge was a front for a roving band of cat burglars, using Concussed as a cover.

  I won’t go into specifics. I don’t want to give the impression that it was bigger than it was. It wasn’t ripped from the imagination of some sadistic Roman emperor. It was even over pretty fast. But I left that room a changed man. I was so upset, flustered, and discombobulated by the whole experience that I was actually relieved when Ogrodnick didn’t pull at least a couple of earrings out of there.

  The whole story came out after far too many hours and far too many anal probes. Neb Nezzer had nothing to do with our misfortune. It seemed that Ariadne wasn’t a real dietician. She was a private investigator working for Penelope Plank. She’d been hired to smoke out where Max was hiding his money from her divorce lawyers. In the snare drum, as it turned out.

  As Concussed moved from town to town, the drummer had been visiting pawnshops and jewelry stores, turning his life savings into gold and precious stones. In September, when the tour began its European leg, the loot would be shipped out of the country in Max’s drum set, converted back into cash in Switzerland, and stashed in a numbered Swiss account.

  When the Planks’ assets were split in half in the settlement, most of Max’s earnings from the ’80s would be out of his estranged wife’s reach.

  Max confessed all this at about five A.M. in order to avoid his own cavity search. He even had the receipts back at the hotel to prove he was telling the truth.

  The fact that he chose to spill his guts then, and not five hours earlier, thereby sparing the rest of us, was the reason Purge broke up that night.

  Concussed would have to carry on without its headliner.

  It happened right there in the police station. It was remarkably civilized, considering Purge’s reputation. There was no yelling, no fisticuffs. King just turned to the others and said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Bernie put up a fuss, citing loyalties, long friendships, and contractual obligations. But King was Purge. All the discussion back and forth was so much hot air.

  “I’m just done,” King insisted.

  And the comeback was over.

  It would have been sadder if the others had disagreed with him more. But Neb was already gone, Zach was a middle-aged fat guy, and Max’s heart was in divorce court, trying to put a good spin on this attempt to take the money and run.

  The angriest band in America had lost interest in itself.

  King and I shared a cab back to the hotel to pick up our stuff, and headed straight to the airport after that. He bought himself a ticket to L.A. and me one to New York.

  He seemed to relax once our escape had been mapped out, and I’d called my parents to meet me at LaGuardia.

  He leaned back on the couch in the VIP lounge. “Of all the cavity searches I’ve been through, I have to say this one ranks about sixth.”

  Back in Exam 3 with Detective Sergeant Ogrodnick, I had thought I’d never laugh again. I was relieved to be proven wrong so quickly.

  He turned serious. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. Leave it to Max to put everybody in a meat grinder and pull back just in time to save his own carcass. I guess the summer didn’t work out like we planned, huh?”

  “I enjoyed it,” I told him. “Not this last part, but—” Suddenly, I couldn’t come up with anything to list. So I told the truth. “Getting to know you is something I’ll always remember.”

  He nodded gravely. “Same here. Listen, Leo, I know you’ve already got a family. But never forget I’m your father. If you ever need anything—anything—I’m just a phone call away.”

  I gawked at him. This was it—Harvard on a silver platter. I didn’t even have to bring up the subject. He’d handed me the opening. All I needed to do was say the words, and I was home free.

  My mouth was made of stone, sealing the sentence inside my head. I sat facing him, unable to speak as the PA system announced the boarding of my flight. In a few minutes, I’d be on that plane, and the chance would be gone forever. The time to speak was now.

  I couldn’t do it. Maybe I didn’t have the guts to tell him about the DNA test, but I wasn’t going to take his money based on a lie. The thought that I’d even considered it made my face burn in shame.

  I leaped to my feet. It was the only way I could manage to hold it together. Warts and all, Marion X. McMurphy was the most genuine person who had ever touched my life. And what had I contributed to our relationship? Conniving. Deception. Greed.

  “I don’t deserve a father like you!” I blurted, and ran for the gate.

  [23]

  PURGE’S BREAKUP AND DEPARTURE FROM Concussed made front-page news all across the country. An estimated 3.5 million dollars in gold and gemstones featured prominently in the story. If Max had been hoping to keep the incident from reaching his divorce court judge, he was out of luck.

  The role of Detective Sergeant Ogrodnick in the incident was not considered newsworthy—except in my lingering nightmares.

  Punk fans were devastated, especially those in the East and in Europe, who had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of King Maggot and Purge.

  The Concussed festival’s organizers, however, had managed to take these lemons and make lemonade. They had quickly signed the surviving members of the Sex Pistols as replacement headliners. So the tour was still on track and selling tickets.

  For this reason, Melinda and Owen had decided to stay on and catch shows in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Boston before heading home to get ready for college.

  When I spoke to Melinda on the phone, she was excited about seeing Britain’s punk pioneers, but also worried about me, my lack of prospects, and my general depression.

  “You’ve got to talk to Borman,” she urged. “It’s too late for him to hurt Owen. So get down on your knees and beg him to clean up your record.”

  “What for?” I grumbled. “I’ll never get my scholarship back. I’m sure they awarded it to somebody else.”

  “Maybe so,” she argued. “But there’s always next year, and the year after that. A black mark like cheating could hold you back for the rest of your life.”

  “Who’s the Young Republican now?” I teased her.

  “Do it, Leo. Don’t screw around. It’s important.”

  The one bright spot in all this was that Melinda and I had agreed to try a long-distance relationship this new school year, despite our religious differences—goth and Republican.

  I couldn’t resist visiting Graffiti-Wall.usa for the occasional glimpse into my new girlfriend’s virtual soul. This was what KafkaDreams had to say about me: nothing. Not one word.

  Which didn’t ne
cessarily mean I had no effect at all on Melinda’s online world.

  DarthLightning03:

  what happened to u, kd? the edge is gone, the attitude, the ability to spot the bs and blast it out of the water—if I want sunshine and roses, i’ll log onto barney, u don’t even suck anymore…

  CzechBouncer was even more to the point:

  Americans always desert you in the end. I’m going to download free music and it’s on your head….

  Of course the change in Melinda might not have been me at all. It might have had something to do with the absence of makeup, hair dye, and several pounds of flowing gothica.

  “It’s all going straight back on the minute I’ve got regular access to a decent bathroom,” she had assured me. “Accept me the way I am or not at all.”

  And I caved. Of course I caved! I’d never really had the guts to stand up to Melinda. Why should now be any different?

  Yet looking at the postings on Graffiti-Wall, I wasn’t so sure she’d be going all-goth again. Partway, yes. She had her style—that was one of the great things about her. But I sensed a subtle softening of the granite exterior of the immortal KafkaDreams. I like to think I had something to do with that.

  Melinda was happy.

  If only I could say the same for myself.

  Mr. Borman scheduled office hours starting two weeks before the opening of school. Somehow, the prospect of sitting opposite this man did little to improve my mood. I secured an appointment for the first available afternoon.

  Home was like a split-level Crock-Pot where a guy could stew in his own misery. After the initial shock of seeing me walk off the plane not dead, Mom was pretending I’d never been gone, and certainly not with King Maggot. Obviously, denial is a river in Egypt for this woman.

  Or maybe not. There was something she said, hunting for a puzzle piece—one puzzle, not an entire houseful of them. “Comes a time,” she mumbled, “that you just have to stop apologizing.”