The Armageddon Rag

  “Your money and our talent.”

  “God, you haven’t changed a bit, have you?” Jared said. “Well, think what you like, but our circulation is three times what it was when you were editor, and our ad revenues are out of sight. Hedgehog has class now. We get nominated for real journalism awards. Have you seen us lately?”

  “Sure,” said Sandy. “Great stuff. Restaurant reviews. Profiles of movie stars. Suzanne Somers on the cover, for God’s sake. Consumer reports on video games. A dating service for lonely singles. What is it you call yourself now? The Newspaper of Alternative Lifestyles?”

  “We changed that, dropped the ‘alternative’ part. It’s just Lifestyles now. Between the two H’s in the logo.”

  “Jesus,” Sandy said. “Your music editor has green hair!”

  “He’s got a real deep understanding of pop music,” Jared said defensively. “And stop shouting at me. You’re always shouting at me. I’m starting to regret calling you, y’know. Do you want to talk about this assignment or not?”

  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. Why do you think I need your assignment?”

  “No one said you did. I’m not out of it, I know you’ve been doing well. How many novels have you published? Four?”

  “Three,” Sandy corrected.

  “Hedgehog’s run reviews on every one of them too. You oughtta be grateful. Firing you was the best thing I could have done for you. You were always a better writer than you were an editor.”

  “Oh, thank you, massa, thank you. I’s ever so thankful. I owes it all to you.”

  “You could at least be civil,” Jared said. “Look, you don’t need us and we don’t need you, but I thought it would be nice to work together again, just for old time’s sake. Admit it, it’d be a kick to have your byline in the old Hog again, wouldn’t it? And we pay better than we used to.”

  “I’m not hurting for money.”

  “Who said you were? I know all about you. Three novels and a brownstone and a sports car. What is it, a Porsche or something?”

  “A Mazda RX-7,” Sandy said curtly.

  “Yeah, and you live with a Realtor, so don’t lecture me about selling out, Sandy old boy.”

  “What do you want, Jared?” Sandy said, stung. “I’m getting tired of sparring.”

  “We’ve got a story that would be perfect for you. We want to play it up big, too, and I thought maybe you’d be interested. It’s a murder.”

  “What are you doing now, trying to turn the Hog into True Detective? Forget it, Jared, I don’t do crime shit.”

  “Jamie Lynch was the guy that got himself murdered.”

  The name of the victim brought Sandy up short, and a wisecrack died in his mouth. “The promoter?”

  “None other.”

  Sandy sat back, took a swig of beer, and mulled on that. Lynch had been out of the news for years, a has-been even before Sandy was fired from the Hog, but in his day he had been an important man in the rock subculture. It could be an interesting story. Lynch had always been surrounded by controversy. He’d worn two hats: promoter and manager. As a promoter, he’d organized some of the biggest tours and concerts of his day. He’d ensured their success by booking in the bands he controlled as manager, and by denying those bands to rival concerts. With hot talent like American Taco, the Fevre River Packet Company, and the Nazgûl under his thumb, he’d been a man to reckon with. At least up until 1971, when the disaster at West Mesa, the breakup of the Nazgûl, and a couple of drug busts started him on the long slide down. “What happened to him?” Sandy asked.

  “It’s pretty kinky,” Jared said. “Somebody busted into his place up in Maine, dragged him into his office, and offed him there. They tied him to his desk, and, like, sacrificed him. Cut his heart out. He had one after all. Remember the old jokes? Ah, never mind. Anyhow, the whole scene was kind of grotesque. Mansonesque, y’know? Well, that made me think of the series you did back around the time that Sharon Tate got offed, you know, that investigation of… what did you call it?”

  “The dark side of the counterculture,” Sandy said dryly. “We won awards for that series, Jared.”

  “Yeah, right. I remembered it was good. So I thought of you. This is right up your alley. Real Sixties, y’know? What we’re thinking of is a long meaty piece, like those in-depth things you used to go for. We’ll use the murder as a news peg, see, and you could investigate it a bit, see maybe if you could kick up something the police miss, y’know, but mostly use it as a springboard for a sort of retrospective on Jamie Lynch and his promotions, all his groups and his concerts and his times and like that. Maybe you could look up some of the guys from his old groups, the Fevre River gang and the Nazgûl and all, interview ’em and work in some where-are-they-now kind of stuff. It would be sort of a nostalgia piece, I figure.”

  “Your readership thinks the Beatles were the band Paul McCartney was with before he got Wings,” Sandy said. “They won’t even know who Jamie Lynch was, for Chrissakes.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. We still have lots of our old readers. The kind of feature I see on this Lynch business will be real popular. Now, can you write it or not?”

  “Of course I can write it. The question is, why should I?”

  “We’ll pay expenses, and our top rate. That ain’t nothing to sneeze at, either. You won’t have to sell the paper on street-corners afterward. We’re beyond that.”

  “Terrific,” Sandy said. He wanted to tell Jared to go get stuffed, but much as he hated to admit it, the assignment had a certain perverse attractiveness. It would be nice to be in the Hog again. The paper was his baby, after all; it had turned into a pretty wayward and superficial kid, but it was his, nonetheless, and still had a lingering hold on his loyalties. Besides, if he did this Lynch piece, it would help restore some of the old Hog quality, if only for an instant. If he passed, someone else would write the article, and it would be more trash. “I tell you what,” Sandy said. “You guarantee me that I’ll get cover billing with this, and you put it in writing that the piece will be printed just the way I write it, not one word changed, no cuts, nothing, and maybe I’ll consider it.”

  “Sandy, you want it, you got it. I wouldn’t think of messing around with your stuff. Can you have the piece in by Tuesday?”

  Sandy laughed raucously. “Shit, no. In-depth, you said. I want as much time as I need on this. Maybe I’ll have it in within a month. Maybe not.”

  “The news peg will go stale,” Jared whined.

  “So what? A short piece in your news section will do for now. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right. Those are the conditions, take ’em or leave ’em.”

  “Anybody but you, I’d tell ’em to get shoved,” Patterson replied. “But hell, why not? We go way back. You got it, Sandy.”

  “My agent will call and get everything in writing.”

  “Hey!” Jared said. “After all we been through, you want things in writing? How many times did I bail you out of jail? How many times did we share a joint?”

  “Lots,” Sandy said. “Only they were always my joints, as I recall. Jared, seven years ago, you gave me three hours’ notice and bus fare in lieu of severance pay. So this time we’ll get a written contract. My agent will call.” He hung up before Patterson had a chance to argue, turned on the answering machine to catch any attempted call-backs, and leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head and a faintly bemused smile on his face. He wondered just what the hell he was getting himself into this time.

  Sharon wasn’t going to like this, he thought. His agent wasn’t going to like it, either. But he liked it, somehow. No doubt running off to Maine to muck around in a murder was a silly thing to do; the more rational side of Sandy Blair knew that, knew that his deadlines and mortgage obligations ought to come first, that he could hardly afford the time he’d have to expend on this for the relative pittance that Hedgehog would pay. Still, he’d been restless and moody lately, and he had to get away from that damned p
age thirty-seven for a while, and it had been entirely too long since he had done anything silly, anything spontaneous or new or even a tad adventurous. In the old days, he’d been just wild enough to drive Jared crazy. Sandy missed the old days. He remembered the time that he and Maggie had driven to Philly at two in the morning because he wanted a cheese steak. And the time Lark and Bambi and he had gone to Cuba to harvest sugarcane. And his attempt to join the French Foreign Legion, and Froggy’s search for the ultimate pizza, and the week they’d spent exploring the sewers. The marches, the rallies, the concerts, the rock stars and underground heroes and dopesters he knew, all the off-the-wall stories that had fattened his clipbook and broadened his horizons. He missed all that. He’d had good days and bad days, but it was all a lot more exciting than sitting in his office and rereading page thirty-seven over and over again.

  Sandy began to rummage through the lower drawers of his desk. Way in the back he kept souvenirs, things he had no earthly use for but couldn’t bear to throw away—handbills he’d written, snapshots he’d never gotten around to sticking in a photo album, his collection of old campaign buttons. Underneath it all, he found the box with his old business cards. He snapped off the rubber band and extracted a few.

  There were two different kinds. One, printed in deep black ink on crisp white cardboard, identified him as Sander Blair, accredited correspondent of the National Metropolitan News Network, Inc. It was legit too; that was the real name of the corporation that published Hedgehog, or at least it had been until Jared sold out to the chain. Sandy had come up with the corporate name himself, reasoning—quite accurately, as hindsight demon-strated—that there would be occasions when a reporter for the National Metropolitan News Network, Inc., would have a much easier time getting press credentials than a reporter for something called Hedgehog.

  The second card was oversized, with metallic silver ink on pale purple paper, depicting the paper’s namesake symbol picking his teeth and diapered in an American flag. In the upper left it said, “Sandy,” and down under the cartoon, in slightly larger print, “I writes for da Hog.” That one had its uses too. It could open doors and loosen tongues in situations where the straight card would be worse than useless.

  Sandy slid a dozen of each into his billfold. Then he picked up his beer bottle and strolled downstairs.

  When she got home at six, Sharon found him seated cross-legged on the living-room carpet, surrounded by road maps, old clipbooks of stories from the Hog’s heyday, and empty bottles of Michelob. She stood in the doorway in her beige business suit, with her briefcase in hand and her ash-blond hair rumpled by the wind, staring at him in astonishment from behind tinted glasses. “What’s all this?” she asked.

  “A long story,” Sandy replied. “Get yourself a beer and I’ll tell you.”

  Sharon looked at him dubiously, excused herself, went upstairs and changed into a pair of designer jeans and a loose cotton blouse, and returned with a glass of red wine in hand. She seated herself in one of the big armchairs. “Go ahead.”

  “Lunch was a bummer,” Sandy said, “and the fucking elves didn’t write a word for me, but the ghost of hedgehogs past raised his corpulent head on my return.” He told her the whole story. She listened with the same pleasant professional smile she wore when selling brownstones and condos, at least at the start. By the end, though, she was frowning. “You’re not kidding, are you?” she said.

  “No,” Sandy said. He’d been afraid of this.

  “I can’t believe this,” Sharon said. “You’ve got a deadline, don’t you? Whatever Patterson is paying won’t make up for the novel. This is stupid, Sandy. You’ve been late on the last two books. Can you afford to be late again? And since when have you turned into a crime reporter? What’s the use of messing around in things you don’t understand? Do you know anything about murders?”

  “I’ve read half the Travis McGee series,” Sandy said.

  Sharon made a disgusted noise. “Sandy! Be serious.”

  “All right,” he said. “So I’m not a crime writer. So what? I know a lot about Jamie Lynch, and I know a lot about cults. This has all the earmarks of a Manson kind of thing. Maybe I can get a book out of it, a whole different kind of book, something like In Cold Blood. Consider it a growth experience. You’re real big on growth experiences.”

  “You’re not talking growth,” Sharon snapped, “you’re talking regression. Hedgehog is giving you a license to be irresponsible, and you’re crazy for it. You want to drive up there and play Sam Spade and talk to has-been rock stars and old yippies and relive the Sixties for a month or so, at Patterson’s expense. You’ll probably try to prove that Richard Nixon did it.”

  “LBJ was my guess,” Sandy said.

  “He’s got an alibi. He’s dead.”

  “Aw, shit,” Sandy said, with his most engaging grin.

  “Stop trying to be so damned cute,” Sharon snapped. “It isn’t going to get you anywhere. Grow up, Sandy. This isn’t a game. This is your life.”

  “Then where’s Ralph Edwards?” he asked. He closed his clipbook and put it aside. “You’re really upset about this, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Sharon said curtly. “It’s not a joke, no matter what you think.”

  She had finally worn him down; annoyance was contagious. But he decided to give it one last chance. “I won’t be gone too long,” he said. “And Maine can be lovely this time of year, with autumn just beginning. Come with me. Make it a vacation. We need to spend more time together, and if you came along, maybe you’d understand my side of it a little better.”

  “Sure,” she said, her voice acid with sarcasm. “I’ll just phone up Don at the agency and tell him I’m taking off for, oh, who knows how long, and he should cover for me. Fat chance. I have a career to think about, Sandy. Maybe you don’t care, but I do.”

  “I care,” he said, wounded.

  “Besides,” Sharon added sweetly, “it would be a bit awkward having me along if you decided to screw around, wouldn’t it?”

  “Damn it, who said I wanted to…”

  “You don’t have to say it. I know you. Go ahead, it doesn’t bother me. We’re not married, we’ve got an open relationship. Just don’t bring anything home with you.”

  Sandy stood up, fuming. “You know, Sharon, I love you, but I swear, sometimes you piss the hell out of me. This is a story. An assignment. I’m a writer and I’m going to write about the murder of Jamie Lynch. That’s all. Don’t get bent all out of shape.”

  “You use such quaint nostalgic expressions,” Sharon said. “I haven’t gotten bent out of shape since college, dear.” She rose. “And I’ve enjoyed about as much of this as I can stand. I’m going to my study to work.”

  “I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning,” Sandy said. “I was thinking maybe we’d go out for dinner.”

  “I’ve got work,” Sharon said, walking to the stairs.

  “But I don’t know how long this will take. I might be gone…”

  She turned and looked at him. “It had better not be too long, or I might forget all about you and change the locks.”

  Sandy watched her back as she climbed, frustration building within him with every click of heel against wood. When he heard her enter her study, he stalked into the kitchen, grabbed another beer, and tried to return to the preparations for the trip, but it took only a moment to realize he was too mad to concentrate. What he needed was music, he thought. He took a sip of beer, and smiled. Some rock.

  Their record collection filled two tall cabinets on either side of the speakers, huge old JVC 100s that had given Sandy years of faithful service. Sharon’s cabinet was packed with blues, Broadway show tunes, and even disco, to Sandy’s never-ending dismay. “I like to dance,” Sharon would say whenever he got on her about it. Sandy’s records were all folk and vintage rock. He couldn’t abide what had happened to music in the past ten years, and the only albums he bought these days were reissues he needed to replace old favorites worn out
by play.

  Sandy wasted no time selecting music to suit his mood. There was only one possible choice.

  There were five albums, filed between the Mothers of Invention and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. He pulled them out and sorted through them. The jackets were as familiar as the features of an old friend, and so too were the titles. The first, Hot Wind out of Mordor, had a kind of Tolkienesque cover, hobbits cringing in the pastel underbrush while volcanoes belched red fire in the distance and the dark riders wheeled above on their scaly winged steeds. Nazgûl offered a surreal landscape of red sun and scarlet mist, twisted mountains, and shapes half-living and half-machine, all vivid, fevered, hot. The big double album was shiny black, front, back, and within, without lettering, empty but for four tiny sets of hot red eyes peering from the lower left-hand corner. There was no title. It had been called the Black Album, in deliberate parody of the Beatles’ White Album. Napalm, which followed, showed children in some jungle, crouching, burning, screaming, while oddly distorted jets streaked overhead and vomited fire down on them. It wasn’t until you looked closely that you realized the scene was a restatement of the cover for Hot Wind out of Mordor, even as the songs within were answers to the group’s earlier, more innocent compositions… though they had never been entirely innocent.

  Sandy looked at each album in turn, and replaced them in the cabinet, until he held only the fifth album, the last one, cut only weeks before West Mesa.

  The jacket was dark and threatening, done in dim shades of black and gray and violet. It was a concert photograph, retouched to remove the audience, the hall, the props, everything. Only the band remained, the four of them standing on some endless empty plain, darkness hulking before them and below them and pressing in, the shadows slimy and acrawl with suggestive, nightmarish shapes. Behind them a vast, glowering purple sun etched their figures in relief and threw long shadows black as sin and sharp as the cutting edge of a knife.

  They stood as they’d always stood when playing. In the back, among the drums done up in swirling patterns of black and red, Gopher John sat scowling. He was a big man, moon-faced, his features all but lost in his thick black beard. In his huge hands the sticks looked like toothpicks, yet he seemed to crouch, for all his size, to hunker down among those drums like some great fierce beast surprised in its lair. In front of Gopher John’s dark nest stood Maggio and Faxon, flanking the drums on either side. Maggio hugged his guitar to his bare, scrawny chest. He was sneering, and his long dark hair and droopy mustache were moving in some unseen wind, and his nipples looked vivid and red. Faxon wore a white fringe jacket and a thin smile as he plucked at his electric bass. He was clean-shaven, with long blond braids and green eyes, but you would never guess his brilliance by looking at him.