The Bum's Rush (15 page)

Except for the guy in the studio, the house seemed
empty. I walked down the three steps and stepped through the open door
into the glassed-in control room, which served more as a crowded
balcony, hovering over another large room six feet below, where pools
of coiled cable surrounded numbered islands of green carpet where the
musicians stood.

The longhaired guy looked my way as I stepped into
the room. Despite the hair, he was no kid, closer to forty than twenty,
his kinky locks flecked with gray. He said, "How ya doin'?"

"Doing great," I said. "This is some setup."

"The best that money can buy. Can I help ya?"

"I was looking for Gregory Conover."

"He's probably outside"--he waved that way--"where
the party never ends." He went back to moving slides and tapping the
glass faces of dials. "Got a bad relay in here somewhere," he mused.

"You ever work with Lukkas Terry?" I asked.

"Nobody worked with Lukkas Terry. You just opened the door and threw cheese sandwiches and Pepsi at him."

"Nobody?"

"Lukkas didn't need any help."

He stopped his fiddling and seemed to take me in for the first time.

"Hey, uh--"

"Leo Waterman," I said, offering a hand. His grip was firm, his hand surprisingly hard and rough, like a carpenter's.

"Marty Stocker. Nice to meet ya," he said. "You know Mr. Conover or something?"

"I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure."

He found this amusing. "How'd you get past Cherokee?"

"Cherokee stepped out," I said.

He liked this too. "Far out." He looked around. "Keep away from that fucker," he admonished. "He's crazy. Likes to hurt people."

I promised I would. "Did he really do it all on his own, like they say?"

"Swear to God," he said. Again, he checked the general area.

"Let me tell you a little story. When I first met
Lukkas, we were still over in Bothell at the old place, but we had
pretty much the same shit in the studio. You know, we've upgraded a few
things since then, but it was pretty much the way you see it. Anyway,
Mr. Conover brings this skinny kid in and introduces us. Happens all
the time. Friends of friends. Plain old wanna-bes who hitchhiked in
from Minnesota. The whole thing. Hands me this cheap shit tape the kid
put together. I stick it in the deck and, you know, I'm ready to run
the usual number on the kid, yeah, not bad, got a hell of a future,
don't call us, we'll call you, the whole dog-and-pony show. But I
notice right away that the boss's got this gleam in his eye." He
stopped.

"And?"

"So I actually listen, for once. And it takes about
one minute to figure out that this kid's got more music floatin' around
loose in his head than most anybody else is ever gonna see."

"Just off a little demo?"

"One minute flat was all it took."

"Amazing."

"No. Here's the amazing part. He leaves the kid
with me. Lukkas starts asking me what everything is, what it does. He
knows from nothing. Never seen a real tape machine before. We've got a
couple of Studer 800 MK3s that just blow his mind. He wants to know
everything. We go through the whole shebang. I start him out with the
tracking console, the mixing consoles, the Nevi and SSI compressors,
the Moogs and the expanders, the sequencers, the pre's, the eqs.
Everything, all the way down to the guitar pedals. He's like this
sponge, just takin' it all in." He took a deep breath.

I folded my arms over my chest and waited for him to continue.

"So anyway, later that afternoon Mr. Conover sends
me down to the Moore to fix some sequencer problems they're having down
there. Things are a mess. I don't get back into the studio for about
two days, and guess what?" He didn't make me guess. "I walk back in
here two days later and the kid is still here. Never left. Been sitting
right here playing with the equipment all that time."

"Really?" I said.

"And here's the wild part he's got it all figured
out. He's already recorded three songs. The first three on his first
album. Absolutely unbelievable. I've been engineering for twenty-two
years, and I've never seen anything like it. He's sittin' in here
singing all the parts in all these different voices. The stuff comes
out of him whole. It's not like he writes one part and then another; he
hears the entire song at one time. Damndest thing I ever saw. After
that, all you did was just leave him alone."

"What was he like? I mean personally."

He was tapping gauges again, flipping switches.
"Hard to say. It's.that genius-madness thing, man. You always hear
about that fine line between them. But this was the real deal. First
time I ever really saw it. Talked to himself in all these voices while
he worked. The boss had to remind him to take showers. Couldn't care
less about anything except his music. The ultimate perfectionist. Kept
going over and over everything, until it drove everyone crazy. Always
late on deadline. Heck, on the last one, Crotch Cannibals, he was three
months late and talking about trashing the whole thing and starting
over. One weird dude.''

He stepped around me, walked to the far end of the
console, and made some adjustments. "World isn't made for people like
Lukkas Terry," he said finally. He
walked to the door at the far end of the room. "I gotta get to work
here," he said.

"Thanks for the help."

"Try outside. The boss is probably out there."

The outdoor festivities consisted of maybe
thirty-five people, settled in knots of five or six, milling about die
three levels, nursing cocktails and pretending to listen to one
another. Fleetwood Mac had been replaced by the Stones. Mick was on his
way down to the demonstration to get his fair share of abuse.

As I came through the doors, I stepped to the
right, liberated a glass of champagne from the buffet table, and took
stock. Two Korean men in spotless white livery attended the table from
either end. Ornamental cold cuts. A little ice sculpture of a dolphin.
Lots of fruits and salads.

Gathered to the right of the food and drink, five
young women stood transfixed, facing my way, forming a loose ilarc
about Gregory Conover, whose arms swung expressively from the loose
sleeves of a gold caftan as he held them, mesmerized.

I went down to the Chelsea drugstore, to get my...

They were all maybe twenty-five or so. I'm not good
with ages anymore. They all look like kids to me. Black was the
predominant color. Black boots, black tights, black leather jackets,
four miles of chain, and enough black eye shadow to paint the porch. As
I approached him from the rear, their expressions caused him to turn my
way. He looked me over carefully, from head to toe and back, before he
spoke.

"Can I help you?" he said in a neutral tone. ... but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get...

If the hair was all his, it was truly a gift from
God. A wondrous thick mass of salt-and-pepper plumage, it feathered
back about his head like a storm cloud helmet, nearly forming a mane or
perhaps the vestige of wings. Despite a general puffiness, his face
still retained its youthful sheen of accessibility. His big brown eyes
seemed open to the moment, making the lines in his face seem out of
place and artificial.

.. . And she said one word to me, and it was...

I stuck out my hand. "Leo Waterman," I said.

He was a two-hand shaker. "Gregory Conover," he replied.

"I was wondering if I might have a word with you," I started.

He was focused back out over my shoulder toward the house, as if expecting someone. The whole chorus sang.

... You can't always get what you want...

"Regarding?" he said, without making eye contact.

"Lukkas Terry."

For the first time, I had his full attention. "And you're from?"

I handed him a card. He read it carefully. "Perhaps we should step into my office," he said with a smile.

Without a word to the young women, he spun on his
heel, took me by the elbow, and guided me back the way I'd come,
through the French doors, down the long breezeway, and through the last
door on the right.

I was expecting a dark gentleman's-club decor. I
was wrong. The room looked out over the alley beside the house through
a half a dozen large leaded windows, which bathed the room in gentle
southern light. The wallpaper was a small floral print. The furniture
was bleached oak. The paintings on the walls were Impressionist garden
portraits.

He closed the door behind us and then read my card again. "If you don't mind my asking, Mr. Waterman, how did you get in here?"

I pulled the gold key and chain from my pocket and
handed it to Conover. "I had a difference of opinion with a guy called
Cherokee." I He looked shocked. "About what?"

"Manners."

"And you--"

"Locked him out," I finished.

"You didn't--" he started. "I mean, there was no violence?" "Nope."

He gave me a big smile. "Extraordinary," he said. "So, now he's outside, and--" He pointed at me.

"And I'm in here," I said.

"Far out," he enthused. Again he glanced at my
card, as we stood in the center of the room. "And what interest would a
private detective have in poor Lukkas at this late date?"

"I represent an attorney who has taken an interest in the case."

"That's not terribly informative."

"I know."

He seemed to be losing patience with me. I expected
him to throw me out. Instead he asked, "Do you have a license or some
such thing?"

I showed it to him. He took his time going over it,
and then handed it back. "I have to be very careful about the press,"
he said. "They'd keep poor Lukkas's death on the front page forever, if
they could."

"It sells ads."

"Lukkas Terry was like a son to me," he said sadly.

Before I could open my mouth, he started in on the
canned spiel. The same mythic tale I'd gotten from the papers and from
Marty Stocker. I let him ramble. I was used to it. It was the same
thing they did when they talked about my old man, that mixing of tinted
recall and tainted desire that makes the person simultaneously both
more and less than he actually was and blurs forever the boundaries
between fact and fiction for all who hear the tale.

"So he lived here with you," I said when he'd finished.

"Right up until the end."

"How come he moved out?"

He looked wistfully out the window. "My fault," he
said quietly. "I told myself I was weaning him. That I was getting him
ready for the real world. I mean " He threw his hands up and then let
them drop to his sides. "I thought I was doing the right thing."

"Did you know about you know that hard drugs," I blurted.i

"I should have suspected," he said. "God knows,
I've been around the business long enough. It's always there." He
turned back my way. "He'd lived with me for two years. I hadn't heard
from him in several days. That should have put up a red flag for me.
Lukkas was very dependent on me. It wasn't like him to be out of touch
for three days." Gregory Conover pinched the bridge of his nose and
took a long, deep breath.

"How did you " I began.

The banging of doors and a series of coarse shouts
filtered in from the center of the house. Several voices could be heard
through the door. Conover stepped around me toward the office door when
it suddenly burst open, banging back twice against the wall.

Cherokee looked as if he had either survived the Death of a Thousand Cuts or recently been threshed and
baled. Every square inch of exposed skin was crosshatched with deep
scratches. Several leathery leaves were stuck in his hair. His bright
yellow shirt was streaked with sweat and dirt. He was missing one
sneaker. He seemed to be annoyed.

He pointed at me with a bleeding finger. "You," he bellowed. "I'm gonna take you and tear your "

Conover put a hand on Cherokee's overdeveloped
chest. "Whoa, now, whoa," he said, as if gentling a horse. "We have to
get you something for those scratches." Cherokee was trembling all over
like an over-amped retriever on the first day of pheasant season. I
backed to the far wall, rolling my shoulders, feeling the comfort of
the 9mm beneath my jacket. I had no intention of fighting him. I'd take
my chances with a jury of my peers. I figured they'd give me a
commendation for not shooting him in the head. If he got anywhere near
me, I was drilling him in the foot.

The doorway was filled with wide-eyed partygoers,
pawing past each other for a better view. Holding Cherokee by the
shoulders, Conover spoke out into the hall. "Brittany, you and Melody
go upstairs into the main guest bath. Start a bath. See what you can
find for these scratches." I heard heels clapping across the tiles and
a buzz of conversation from the hall.

Cherokee shrugged the hands from his shoulders and
started for me. I moved to the left, keeping the couch between us. Like
most farm animals, he was a lot bigger indoors. Conover hustled back
between us, steering him toward the far corner over by the windows,
where he administered a hushed lecture to the big fellow. Conover
looked back over his shoulder toward the doorway.

"Reenee," he called.

The shortest of the five young women stepped
hesitantly into the room. Her jet-black hair was cut in a severe
pageboy, bangs low over the forehead but cut up high in back, leaving
only stubble on a long, thin neck. Conover pulled the key and chain
from his pocket and waved it at her. "You'd better show Mr. Waterman
out."

She crossed the room, her eyes locked on Cherokee,
took the key from Conover's hand, and backed her way out. She met my
gaze but didn't speak. I sidled slowly around the end of the couch and
followed her out the door. "I'll find you," Cherokee growled from
behind me. "I'll find you, and when I do "

Whatever atrocities he had in mind were lost as I
brushed by the gaggle of guests and followed the young woman down the
breezeway.