Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (24 page)

“Did he speak to Dumpster?”

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“I wouldn’t let him. Dumpster was upstairs asleep.”

“He really wants to nail Dumpster and he’s using you?” I asked.

“No. He’s using Dumpster—and me—to nail your guy, Shotgun Marriott. He’s obsessed with pinning at least one of those murders on Shotgun and he’s determined to get some kind of evidence via Dumpster.”

“He wants Dumpster to lie to frame Shotgun?”

“Pretty much. He hasn’t exactly come out and said the word

‘lie’ but he’s come close. And he wants me to lean on Dumpster.

And that’s not all he wants.”

“What do you mean? What else does he want?”

“Sex.” Her voice was flat and devoid of emotion. She might have been telling me he’d asked her to pour him a cup of coffee.

But I sensed that this was the only way she could keep a lid on the turbulence that had to be churning up inside her. I admired the way Franny refused to give in to her problems. Grim determina-tion to avoid freaking out at all costs seemed to be her stock in trade, even if it meant driving the rest of us crazy by keeping us out of the loop. “And,” she continued, “he made it clear last night that he’ll hold the threat of turning Dumpster in over me until he gets it.”

“Franny, you have to tell someone—someone who can deal with him.”

“I’m not telling anyone and neither must you. I don’t want anything to happen to my son.That’s why I won’t tell Rufus. He’d go after Detective Morrison right away. Promise me you won’t tell him. Promise me.”

She was clinging to me. Jesus was calling to her from down below in the store and she slowly released me and went to open the door.

“I’m coming!” she shouted and looked back at me. “Well?”

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“Okay,” I said, “I’ll keep quiet. But not for long.”

I was so wound up when I left that I knew I couldn’t just go back to the cabin and wait for something to happen. So I drove to Mallaby and took the unprecedented step of calling on Shotgun unannounced.

The big front door was open and there was loud music blaring out from the house. I went in and shouted that I was there but there was no way anyone could have heard me unless they were standing right beside me.

I followed the sound of the music down a long passage leading away from the hall in the opposite direction to the one that led to the kitchen. And it delivered me to a sound studio with all its walls crammed with recording equipment and a glassed-in booth at the far end with consoles covered with those knobs you slide up and down.

The lights were dimmed but there was a spot on Shotgun. He was standing at a microphone on the soundstage and belting out a raucous song I didn’t recognize.

After a few seconds I realized he was lip-synching and the song was blasting out of the huge speakers either side of him.

This was not a Shotgun I’d seen before. He was wearing skintight red velvet trousers tucked into snakeskin boots with two-inch heels and a black leather waistcoat over his bare chest.

He had chains around his neck hanging down between his nipples and a white-spotted navy bandanna tied around his head.

He was dancing as he sang, moving around, jutting out his hips, banging a tambourine, and sweating profusely.

And he looked utterly ridiculous.

“That was my first number-one record,” he said, grinding to a halt as the song came to an end. “They screamed for it at every concert, right up until the end, and I was thinking if I do this

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book—and it’s a best seller—I can use it to get myself back onto everyone’s radar.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say.Why was it that men invariably assumed that when they wrote a book it would be a best seller?

Everyone always hoped it would work out that way—myself included—but men, far more than women, always thought it was automatic.

“You know, to get everyone’s attention when I make a comeback with my music”—he paused—“I’ll be doing concerts and they’ll want to hear this. So I thought I’d come down to the studio and give it a dusting off.”

Suddenly I felt very depressed. How could I tell him that he looked like an old has-been, that nobody dressed like this now, that even I—who was pretty hopeless when it came to rock music—could tell that his moves were dated. And his upper body, while pretty impressive for a man of his age, was just not in good enough shape to display like this. And what had induced him to dig out his old gear? Hadn’t he been the one to condemn the pretensions of the old rockers he saw on TV? What had happened to his minimalist approach to clothing that rendered him so elegant?

I didn’t really need to ask myself the question; I knew the answer. I could hear it in his voice, see it in his face. He had succumbed to insecurity. He was appealing to me.
I’ve still got it,
haven’t I? I can still do it, can’t I? They’ll still love me, won’t they?

Was
that
the real reason he was doing a book? To hang his comeback on its success? I realized I was incredibly disappointed.

I had thought Shotgun had drifted into middle age with a rare and impressive gracefulness, that he had resisted the temptation to imagine his golden years could continue unabated. Apparently not.

And then, as he came closer to where I was standing by the

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door, I realized he was drunk. He wasn’t lurching about the place and his words hadn’t really been slurred but there was a loony grin on his face that told me he was under the influence of something.

“I’m sorry to drop by unannounced,” I said, “but I wanted to transcribe the tape I made of you last time. I was wondering if we could set up a system whereby I came by and went straight up to your office without disturbing you.”

“You can disturb me any time you want,” he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders as we walked back down to the hall.

“Is this what you used to wear onstage?” I asked him, thinking I ought to show some kind of polite interest in what I’d just witnessed.

He paused and looked down at himself as if he’d only just noticed what he had on.

“Well, it’s what everyone used to wear, innit?” Did he sound defensive or was it my imagination? “And before you say anything, it’s not what I’ll be wearing if I go out on the road again.”

“No?” Maybe I had misjudged him.

“Not at all. Do you want to know the real reason why I’m togged up in my old gear and singing my old songs? Well, I’ll tell you. I know I’ve got to give you the story of what happened that night with the groupie and the truth is I needed a little help to get me started down that particular memory lane.”

“You don’t want to go there, as they say?” I thought I’d keep quiet about the fact that it was clear the most help he’d sought had come in the form of a bottle.

“Got it in one. But I will!” He stepped ahead of me, turned and wagged a finger at me. He was an irritating cliché, a bad co-median’s portrayal of a drunk. “I’m going to give you the goods.

I promise. The tape is in the machine right by my computer, by the way, all ready to roll.”

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But when we got upstairs he seemed to forget about me and wandered off down the corridor to another part of the house. I walked around the landing and found the office where I booted up his computer, put on the headphones, pressed play and went to work.

As I listened to his voice, I realized that today he had slipped once again into the phony Cockney of his rock star public appearances. I wondered to what extent he had been playing a role during his years as a performer and how much it had taken its toll on him.

And then I gave myself up to the transcription of the tapes, letting my fingers dart about the keys and working up to a rhythm whereby it was almost seamless the way he narrated his story into my ears and it came out on the page. I was so caught up in it, mesmerized, yet again, by the story of his early years with Angie, that I didn’t hear him come in and stand behind me.

When he touched my shoulder, I jumped and typed gibberish for several seconds.

“I went and had a little rest,” he said, “and while I was lying there, I thought to myself,
I’m going to do it now, while she’s here,
while I’m all worked up to talk about it
. So what do you think?”

But he didn’t wait for me to answer.As I sat there with my fingers poised above the keyboard, he began to speak.

“By the 1980s we weren’t touring nearly as much, maybe only every two or three years, and by 1990
,
when the groupie died, we hadn’t been on the road in five years. So it was something of a comeback tour and the audiences were crazy in their anticipation. I’m not sure it happens anymore but if you were old enough to remember, the rock concerts of the sixties and seventies were sheer mayhem when it came to the fans.That was our heyday but even at the later shows it was still bedlam. Those little girls packed in shoulder to shoulder, crushed up against the stage

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below me, it was thrilling and horrifying to me all at once. And what you have to remember is that at this London concert in 1990, I was forty-fucking-five! But the fans seemed younger than ever.

“They kept fainting and my natural inclination was to jump off the stage and go to their rescue but I couldn’t do that, of course.

It would have made matters fifty times worse. There was no way the ambulance people could get to them through the crowd so they had to be hoisted up and passed horizontally over the audience to safety. Half the time it looked as if they were dead.

“At the end of each concert they rushed us out round the back and into waiting cars—or helicopters if we were playing a stadium—before the fans could get to us. But sometimes the security was rubbish and some of the more persistent girls would break through and come after us, jumping onto our car as it was moving away. Of course quite often the other members of the band looked down at them from the stage and cherry-picked a few to help them make it through the night.They’d send Freddy, our roadie, to bring them round the back. I never did that, you know? I really didn’t. If I was at a party or a club and I was so out of it, I didn’t know what I was doing, then yes, there were times when I succumbed to temptation. I mean what guy wouldn’t when it’s handed to him on a plate and he’s had a few? But I wasn’t proactive about it. I didn’t point them out to Freddy like the others did and say ‘Get me the redhead with the big knockers.’ ”

He’d been standing by the door and now he slid down the wall and sat on the floor, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his back resting against the doorjamb. He’d changed out of his rock star gear and was wearing just a toweling robe, knotted firmly around the waist.The hairs on his legs were fine and blond and his toes were as long and tapered as his fingers.

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“I first saw her at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester. She was pathetically small and I couldn’t stand the way she was being jostled by the crowd. She went down a few times but she was a game little creature, she was on her feet again in no time. And she was always smiling at me.

“Then I began to notice her at every gig—Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, as well as down south in places like Brighton and Reading—always in the front line. And then finally in London what I’d always dreaded, happened: She was pinned up against the stage and I suddenly noticed that she was flailing her arms around and she was trapped. She was pressed so hard against the stage she couldn’t breathe. She was literally getting crushed to death right in front of me.

“So I had them lift her onto the stage and they took her round the back to revive her. Of course when she recovered, she took it as a sign that I’d asked for her and she was waiting for me in the car. I was quite surprised to find she was American. She’d seen us on our last tour there and she’d followed us to England. Followed
me,
I should say. After what she’d been through, I didn’t like to have her thrown out so I let her ride back with us to the hotel.

“And there I made my escape because what she didn’t know was that I wasn’t staying at the hotel with the rest of the band. I had an apartment off Queens Gate that I always went to when I’d finished a London concert. The home I shared with Angie always had a throng of fans outside and if I went there after a concert it was sheer bedlam all night and we never got a wink of sleep. And of course I was getting on a bit by now, I needed my sleep!

“I was so dead beat that night that I went straight back to the apartment to get some kip. But she was more crafty than I’d bargained for. Apparently she worked on one of the band until he was drunk enough to tell her where I’d gone. Before I’d even taken my clothes off, there was a knock at the door.”

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Even before he told me, I knew there was no way someone with Shotgun’s impeccable manners would shout at her—
Fuck off
out of here, you little slag!
—which would have probably been the only way to get rid of her. Sure enough, he said, he invited her in and made her a cup of tea.

“Nothing stronger. I really was concerned about her age. She said she was twenty-one but I didn’t believe it for a minute.Then of course I couldn’t get rid of her. We didn’t have cell phones in those days and I couldn’t reach Freddy to get him to come and cart her off. He was probably passed out in some club. So she followed me into my bedroom and she wouldn’t leave.

“So I did. I must have been out of my mind to just walk out and leave her there but I swear, at the time, it struck me as the easiest thing to do. I waited until she was in the bathroom and then I ran down the stairs and out of the house. I ran into one of the people living in the apartment above mine on the way out. He was coming in and I could tell he was quite surprised to see me, probably hadn’t realized he had a celebrity neighbor. He acted pretty cool, just nodded to me as if he saw me all the time. I walked the few blocks down the road to our house. I thought if by some miracle there was no one outside I could spend the night there. But of course the usual hard core of fans had settled down for the night in their sleeping bags. I had taken care to keep to streets that weren’t too well lit. If anyone had realized Shotgun Marriott was walking around unattended, I’d have been mobbed.