Full Tilt (Rock Star Chronicles) (2 page)

“This new cristy blows that stuff away.” Tony glanced at the three visitors, his right eye twitching. “Just in from Pennsylvania. Keep you amped for days. I’ve been workin’ nonstop since yesterday—goin’ on, what? Thirty-five hours?”

Brubaker and the stranger nodded, swayed, and laughed. Wesley simply stared, promising himself he wouldn’t bow down to the grease monkey like everybody else.

“So you need an ounce.” Tony held the light up close to the tailpipe.

“Yep,” piped up the kid in the middle.

“Good old Wesley Lester. I can always count on him to bring me the finest clientele.” Tony nodded toward Wesley. “Do you know who this guy is? Who brought you here tonight?”

The kid stared at Tony with hollowed eyes and shrugged.

“This is the great Everett Lester’s nephew. Bet you didn’t know that.”

What the heck?

The kid turned to Wesley. “No way.”

“Straight,” said Tony. “You’re in the presence of the bloodline of one of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest legends.”

“Dude,” the kid exclaimed, “I saw one of their
very last
shows—at The Meadowlands. They played three and a half hours, at least.”

“With Aerosmith,” Tony chimed in. “I was there. Wesley was supposed to be there backstage, but Uncle Everett stood him up.”

“That’s cold,” Brubaker mumbled.

Silently, expressionlessly, Wesley agreed.

Tony smirked at Bru, but it went right over the head of the kid in the middle.

“I lived and breathed DeathStroke,” the kid said. “Lester was so stoned out of his mind that last show, he could barely stand by the end. But they jammed their
hearts
out.”

“And now he’s a Jesus freak.” Tony’s eyes shifted to meet Wesley’s, but his head didn’t move.

Wesley met his glance without flinching. His nostrils flared and his temper cranked up like the flame on the welder. He searched Tony’s face for the reason he would be trying to push Wesley’s buttons.

The kid in the middle picked up on the friction.

Tony smirked, knelt down, and began banging his tools into the drawers of a tall red metal toolbox on wheels.

“What’s he like, anyway?” the kid barged ahead. “Everett Lester, I mean…”

Brubaker looked uneasy, twisting and bouncing slightly on his toes.

“He’s a loser, okay?” Wesley snapped, walking over to a workbench cluttered with jars of nuts and bolts and old tools. “Dude’s a lyin’ hypocrite. Dang
waste of breath
!”

“Where does he live?” the kid asked. “Does he still have a place in Manhattan?”

Wesley’s back was to the others. He fingered the tools without a word.
I wonder if he’d shut up if I heaved this jar of bolts at his head
.

Brubaker ran interference. “He has a farm near Bedford and a place in Kansas—where his wife’s from.”

“Oh yeah, that chick who converted him,” the kid said.

Tony slammed the middle drawer closed.

“That was some story. I heard she wrote to him ever since she was like a teenager—Jesus this and Jesus that. And finally it stuck…can you believe that? The guy went off the deep end!”

Tony stood, banging another drawer shut. “Some people hit you over the head again and again with that Jesus hype till you’re brainwashed. Seen it happen.”

“Well, look at the guy,” the kid said. “I mean…he’s changed! I saw him and his wife on
Larry King Live
and he, I mean, it’s like he’s a different person—”

“Let’s do this deal!” With three long strides and a commanding kick, Wesley booted a large piece of scrap metal twenty feet across the dusty white floor.

The corners of Tony’s mouth curved up into a quick smile as he raised an eyebrow at the kid in the middle, stomped out his cigarette, and walked over to an old white sink. Pushing up his sleeves, he rinsed his hands and squeezed a glob of gray goop into his palm from a bright orange bottle.

“You got the cash?” he asked the kid above the running water.

“Yeah, yeah.” The kid dug almost frantically into his front pocket and pulled out a clump of folded bills.

“Count it, Wes,” Tony ordered, still washing.

Wesley hesitated before snatching the wad and rifling quickly through the bills. “Fifteen hundred. It’s here.”

Tony dried his hands with a dirty towel, wiped his face with it, and looked at himself in the smudged mirror above the sink. Then he found the kid’s reflection in the mirror. “You don’t know where this devil dust came from.”

“Oh…d-definitely n-not.” He smiled anxiously. “I don’t even know you. We never met, as far as I’m concerned. Nope. Never met.”

Tony dropped the towel on the edge of the sink and walked to the tool chest. Lifting the top, he pulled out a Tech .22 assault pistol with his right hand and a good-sized bag of off-white, crystal-like powder with the other. Turning, he tossed the bag to the kid, who fumbled it awkwardly but mangled it at the last second before it escaped his hands. Embarrassing.

“You hear about the body that turned up in Canarsie other day? In the scrap yard?” Tony approached the kid, whose forehead was glistening with sweat.

Here we go.
Wesley wished Tony hadn’t picked up the gun but, at the same time, found it strangely exciting.

“Uh…no.” The kid eyed the piece. “No, I missed that.”

“Well, don’t
miss
what I’m telling you.” Tony’s voice grew vicious as he neared the kid’s face. “That guy had it comin’, okay? I know that for a
fact.
”

The kid’s mouth was wide open, big eyes flashing, cheeks red as radishes.

“He was blabbin’ about
where
he got his rocket fuel.”

“Listen, I…”

But before the kid could eke out another word, Tony lifted the modified Tech .22 sideways, shoulder-high, squinted, and blasted six rounds across the base of the metal wall beneath the workbench with one squeeze of the trigger.

Brubaker floundered back four feet as the smell of gunpowder hung in the air and the rattle of gunfire echoed in their ears.

The kid’s red face went ash white, and he looked as if he might lose his dinner.

Wesley kept a stone face, not wanting to show a trace of the fear that was making his hands shake.

“You know how many twenty-twos this mag carries?” Tony grabbed the fat magazine with his free hand.

The kid jerked his head in one rapid no.

“Twenty. And I got it rigged so I pull the trigger once and the thing can unload. You understand?”

The kid opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Word on the street is, the dude in Canarsie was a rat-squealing tell-all.” Tony lightly tossed the Tech .22 in his right hand. “He got himself
whacked
for blabbing.”

“Oh…don’t worry—”

“And
the same
will happen to you if you tell one soul where you got that cristy, you read?”

“Oh, hey, I read, I read. I’m not about to—”

“Now beat it!”
Tony hoisted the weapon up to his shoulder and the kid scrambled an about-face, practically sprinting for the door with a blubbering Brubaker right on his heels.

Badino’s dark eyes locked in on Wesley, followed by the cock of his head and a smirk. “He ain’t gonna do no talkin’, now is he, Wes?”

Wesley watched the two figures scurry into the darkness. “No, I don’t believe so.”

As Tony banged the Tech .22 back into the toolbox, two things occurred to Wesley: 1) He would love to see the bullets from that weapon rip through Everett Lester’s sickening, superspiritual flesh, and 2) if you ever wanted to commit a murder, Tony Badino was probably a very good person to know.

2

“I’M ABOUT TO GO
on.” Everett Lester sat hunched over a wooden bench in a carpeted locker room, his head almost buried between his knees, speaking into a tiny cell phone.

“I’m so excited for you,” his sister said. “It’s been a long time coming. Are you psyched?”

Chanting and foot stomping from the thundering crowd one floor above reverberated around him in Queens Arena.

He stood. “I’m feeling weird.”

“What’s wrong?”

He found a row of sinks and looked at himself in the big mirror. “I feel like bailing.”

“What are you saying? You were made to perform!”

He got close, examining his intense brown eyes. Somehow, looking beyond them into his restless soul. “I guess I’m worried about what people are expecting…”

“What people?”

“Everybody. Fans. Reporters. Former DeathStrokers. The whole world. Everybody’s watching.”

“Since when have you cared what other people think?”

“I’ve got to set a good example, Mary.”

“I know, but—”

“I had a guy chew me out at the Pro-Am in Pebble Beach.” Everett hoisted himself onto the countertop. “He told me his fifteen-year-old, who’d heard I was saved, got there at seven in the morning to follow me around for eighteen holes. But he followed me for four and went back to the clubhouse. You know why?”

She waited in silence.

“I was complaining about the pin placements…”

“And?”

“I must’ve said something raunchy; it was an accident. I didn’t know anyone was listening. I’m not perfect!”

“Nobody is—”

“He gave up on me! Told his dad I couldn’t be a Christian.”

“Ev, God knows your heart—”

“Yeah, but I’m under a microscope!”

“So what? Most people are gonna like what they see.”

“I just feel like I need to be this…saint.” He hopped off the ledge.

“Who else is making you feel that way? Not Karen?”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to know the Bible as well as her dad,” Everett said. “Like I’m supposed to lead her in spiritual things. Heck, she knows the Bible better than I do. But it’s like she’s waiting for me to step up and be this mature leader—overnight.”

“And you’re—”

“I’m not there!” He swung around and peered at the “new” Everett Lester in the mirror. All tidied up. Short hair. Tattoos gone from his wrists and the back of his neck. “I’m trying. I love the Word. I love what God’s done in my life, and what He’s doing—”

“That’s enough, Ev!”

“No, it’s not! It doesn’t
feel
like enough. You can’t imagine the expectations. I’m telling you right now, I can’t carry the load. People are just waiting for me to blow it.”

“You don’t have to be someone you’re not!”

“That’s exactly what I feel like.” A mixture of regret and frustration stirred as he ran a hand through his two-inch-long brown hair and examined the long-sleeved sweater he wouldn’t have been caught dead in two years ago. “Why do you think I cut my hair and had those tattoos removed? Why am I livin’ on a farm in Bedford, New York?”

“What are you saying? You feel some guilt complex about ‘looking’ the way society says a Christian’s supposed to look?”

“That’s part of it.”

“What else?”

“I wanna be what Karen and her folks want me to be.”

“You don’t need to change for Karen or Sarah and Jacob. I know them. They don’t think about that stuff.”

He turned away from his image, knowing she was right.

“Let me ask you something. Are you feeling pressure from God to be this overnight spiritual sensation?”

“I don’t know.” Everett meandered back to the bench, positioned between two rows of beige lockers. “All I know is, I’m not perfect. Never will be. Can’t live up to it.”

“You may not like this, Ev, but I think you’re doing this to yourself. You’re letting the enemy get to you. This is a guilt trip Jesus doesn’t want you to go on! Satan’s the one who wants you cowering. He wants you all inward-focused, so you won’t have the impact he knows you can have.”

He hoisted a foot onto the bench and leaned over, pushing up a sleeve and stroking one of the black serpents he hadn’t had removed.

“I’ve been where you are,” she insisted. “I’ve done the legalism thing. You know that. I did the works. I did the performance grid thing, for God and for other people. It’ll burn you out! And it may even lead you away from Christ.”

“Well, what do I do?”

“Just know you’re His child. Love Him with your life. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. That’s between them and God. If you’ve got that vertical relationship, nothing’s gonna stop you.”

“I just want to reach these people…” His sentence was cut short by a surge of emotion. He cupped his mouth and dropped his head backward to relieve the stiffness in his neck.

“You be yourself, Everett Lester! God made you
precisely
the person you are, for
His
purpose—for this concert today. He had your life all planned out way before you were born. And you’re on the right track.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I want to reach the ones on the fringe, Mary, the ones like me. The ones with ratty hair and nose rings, and tattoos and drug problems. The ones who are so confused; they’re all just searchin’…”

“That’s right.” Her voice quivered. “You meet them where they are.”

He dropped his head in his hand, so thankful for his older sister.

“You’re different, Ev.” She got her wind back. “You’re creative and caring and charismatic. You’ve lived in the depths of hell. Remember what God’s done. He’s given you a platform. Explain what’s happened. Be transparent. They’ll respond, Ev. I promise—”

“There’ll be opposition.”

“Absolutely. Praise the Lord! He’s gonna stir the pot today. You’re gonna go out there and be the fragrance of Christ to those who are perishing and to those who are being saved.”

Dropping to the bench, he found himself laughing and crying at the same time. As usual, Mary’s exuberance was contagious.

“I’m so excited for you,” she said. “Jerry and I are gonna pray for you the whole time! God’s gonna move.”

“Thanks, Mar.”

“Is Karen there?”

“She’s got a doctor’s appointment, but she’ll be here later.”

“Why’d she make an appointment for today?”

“Ob-gyn. She’s had it scheduled a long time.”

“Routine checkup?”

“Kind of. She wants to make sure all her equipment’s running right, you know, for the dozens of kids we’re going to have.”