The Armageddon Rag

  Larry Richmond. That was the kid’s real name, as he’d admitted when Sandy questioned him. He’d been born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where his father worked in a steel mill, but had moved to Philly in his early teens, after his father’s death. That explained the accent. Like Hobbins, he was an albino, and short, and had been mocked and beaten frequently for his differences from the norm. Unlike Hobbins, he had been frightened instead of toughened by those childhood torments. Patrick Henry Hobbins was his hero. As Larry put it, “There aren’t many albino role models, you know. The Hobbit was the big one.” So naturally Richmond learned to play the guitar and sing, and naturally he formed a band as soon as he was able, and naturally they specialized in doing Nazgûl material. Larry Richmond sang well enough so that he was even able to make a career out of it, of sorts; he became a teenaged Hobbins imitator.

  And then Edan Morse found him.

  The rest had been Morse’s doing. Richmond had borne only a superficial similarity to Hobbins, a likeness of coloration and size that he had played on and bolstered with clever costuming and a little makeup. But cosmetic surgery, paid for by Morse, had completed nature’s work and made the likeness almost supernatural. Three operations, Larry said proudly. In between, and afterward, the kid stayed in Morse’s beach house, learning a role. He spent six hours a day immersed in the Nazgûl: listening to their albums over and over, watching film and videotape of their concerts, studying every Hobbins move and intonation. He took voice lessons so as to sing more like Hobbins. He took dance class and gymnastics so as to move like Hobbins. He read every word ever written about his idol, including the complete back files of Hedgehog and Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy. He was a big fan of Sandy’s.

  The hell of it was, he was kind of a nice kid. And Edan Morse, like a man obsessed, was trying to obliterate him. In Morse’s house, Larry Richmond did not exist. The kid was called “Hobbins” or “Pat” or “Hobbit,” and Larry himself admitted ruefully, with a nervous little laugh and a glance at his host, that he now answered to those names a hell of a lot faster than to the one he’d been born with.

  Sandy sat back in his chair, his coffee cooling in front of him, watching Larry Richmond come toward them up the beach. He was half-walking, half-running, playing with the dog, a big crazed golden retriever. The dog was yapping and barking and running circles around him, splashing water and spraying sand everywhere, and Larry was grinning and shouting commands to the animal, commands that the big dog seemed to blithely ignore. Richmond’s hair, long and white and silky, moved with the wind and the motion of his running, and Sandy felt once again as if he were seeing a ghost. A pale pink-eyed ghost.

  “I still think it stinks,” he said to Ananda across the table. “Hobbins is dead. The kid should live his own life. Morse is making him over into some kind of grotesque parody. It’s a sick joke.”

  “So you said last night,” Ananda replied, “but I thought we’d talked you around.”

  Sandy grimaced. “You still haven’t told me what happened last night. I remember meeting Larry—”

  “Pat,” Ananda corrected.

  “Larry,” Sandy insisted. “I interviewed him for a while, and when I finally got the whole story out of him I told Morse what I thought of it. Which wasn’t much. And then…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And then it gets all fuzzy.”

  “You remember drinking?” she said.

  “Uh, yeah. And no. I remember, when I first saw Richmond, I was pretty shaken. Morse made me a drink. Scotch on the rocks. I sipped it as I talked to Larry.” He shook his head. “And then?”

  “Then you had another one,” Ananda said. “And another one after that. You sat around talking to Edan and Pat and me, and drinking, and after a while you got pretty happy.” She grinned. “Pretty horny, too. Edan went off to take care of his hand, Pat went to bed, and I finally led you into the bedroom and tucked you in. You were very drunk, and a little stoned from some hash I’d dug out, and silly, and lecherous. If you weren’t having a good time, you sure as hell put on a fine act.”

  Sandy remembered none of it. It was disturbing. It wasn’t like him to get that plastered, although come to think of it, he had been drinking too damn much this whole trip. It certainly wasn’t like him to forget going to bed with Ananda—she was nothing if not memorable. “I feel like a fool,” he said. “And a lout as well.” Despite his long-standing open relationship with Sharon, he felt vaguely guilty, as if he’d betrayed her in some sense. Maybe that was the meaning of the icy image of her face that had troubled his sleep; his own unease come to haunt him. He also felt obscurely cheated; bad enough to sin and feel guilty, worse when you can’t even recall the fun you’d had.

  Ananda was remarkably understanding. “You’re cute when you’re drunk,” she said lightly. “Don’t worry about it.” She turned toward the beach and waved to Richmond.

  Richmond saw her, waved back, and came trotting their way, the dog bounding at his heels. He climbed up to the deck, breathing hard, and collapsed into the third chair. “Hi,” he said. “Boy, I’m hungry. Can I have your leftovers?”

  Sandy had eaten one waffle and part of a second; he pushed the portion that remained, cold and soggy with syrup, over to Richmond, and the kid wolfed it down eagerly. The dog, meanwhile, kept running around and around the table, stuck in a doggy orbit about them all. Finally Richmond said, “Hey, boy, hey, calm down. Sit, Bal, sit.” The dog paused for a second and shook itself, spraying Sandy with saltwater and sand. Then it sat, and Larry Richmond gave it a piece of waffle. It gulped it down, then peered around and looked at Sandy suspiciously. It sniffed him, seemed to find him objectionable, and barked. Like most dogs, it had terminal halitosis. It barked again. “He likes you,” Richmond said.

  “Oh, great,” Sandy said. “What does he do if he doesn’t like someone? Tear out their throat?”

  “He growls,” Richmond said. He ruffled the top of the dog’s head. “Down, boy. Lie, Bal, lie.” The dog gave Sandy one final bark for good measure, flailed around frenetically with its tail, and stretched out on the deck. “Good Bal,” Richmond said.

  “Bal?” Sandy asked.

  Richmond smiled shyly. “Balrog,” he admitted. “I was really into that Tolkien stuff, you know, on account of Hobbins. Bal and I been partners for six years now. I raised him from a pup. We go everywhere together.” He leaned over and patted the dog’s head. “Don’t we, boy? Huh, don’t we?” Bal barked happily in affirmation.

  Sandy frowned. “Are you really going to go through with this insanity?” he asked Richmond. “The Hobbins impersonation, I mean?”

  Richmond gave him a look of innocent puzzlement. “Sure,” he said. “I mean, why not? Mister Blair, you got to understand, that was what I was doing anyway. Mister Morse has just fixed it so I get to do it better. I’d be pretty dumb to pass on a chance like this. I do my best, you know, but I know I’m not the singer Pat Hobbins was, and I never will be. The only way I can make it at all is by taking advantage of what I’ve got. And now I’m going to get a chance to sing and play with the Nazgûl. You don’t know how much that means to me. The Nazgûl! I mean, wow, you know? I used to dream of just meeting those guys, and now I’m going to be in a band with them.” He got up. “I got to go shower and get dressed. Good talking to you, Mister Blair. I hope you write us up good. Thanks for the waffle.” He slapped his thigh. “Heel, Bal, heel.” The dog rose and followed him inside.

  Sandy found Ananda studying him. “Will you?” she asked. “Write them up good?”

  “I may not write them up at all,” Sandy replied. “In the first place, I still don’t really believe in this reunion. In the second place, I doubt that I’ll be covering it. I don’t think I want to cover it.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table and peered at her intently. “Ananda, your boss is weird, and so is that giant geek of a bodyguard he keeps around. I don’t know what you’re doing hanging around with them.”

  She smiled. “What’s a nice girl like me doing in a
place like this, right? My part, Sandy, that’s what I’m doing. That’s what you ought to be doing, too. As for Edan, are you still so skeptical?”

  “I’ll admit he had me going last night,” Sandy said. “It all seemed very real. He can be persuasive, no doubt of it. But in the cold light of day, it all seems very silly. The man is deranged. He mutilates himself on a regular basis, it seems, and he has traded in the violent revolutionary set for a lunatic pipedream of some kind of rock ’n’ roll armageddon. Come on, Ananda!”

  “I don’t know what I can say, or how much I should say. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, right? If you aren’t with us, you’re an enemy, and there are things an enemy ought not to be told.” She leaned forward and licked her lips nervously. “But I like you, Sandy. I hope you know that. Really. I don’t get so close so fast to just anybody, you know? So I want to try. For your sake and mine and for the sake of the world, I want to make you see.” She cocked her head thoughtfully to one side and looked at him. “If Edan has no power, how do you explain what happened to you in Chicago?”

  Sandy suddenly had gooseflesh creeping up both arms. He shivered and pulled back from her, still unwilling to accept. “Chicago?” he said. “What do you mean?”

  “You visited Maggio in Chicago and talked to him,” Ananda said patiently. “Rick called Edan as soon as he got home that night, to tell him all about it. Edan decided right then that you could be useful to us, or that you could be a danger. So he decided to influence you, to test you. He…he cut himself, as he always does, to begin the ceremony. Across thousands of miles, he touched you. You felt his power. You can’t deny it, can you? That night in Chicago, something strange happened to you.”

  Sandy was sitting very straight in his chair, staring at her. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. The silence and the tension were palpable. He opened his mouth to reply, hesitated, fell silent, and looked away. He couldn’t bear her serious, somehow scary, eyes. Finally he forced himself to look back. “Yes,” he said, in a low voice. “A dream, I thought. Strange. I was at the Hilton, and suddenly it was 1968 again. The convention. The demonstrations, the police going nuts, the rioting. All of it. I walked through it. It was like it was happening all over again, only it was different too, it was spooky. Sometimes I was part of it and sometimes I was like a ghost. The people were faceless, frightening. I thought it was just a nightmare, but I changed hotel rooms during the dream and woke in a different room.”

  Ananda nodded. “You touched the past. It might have been the future just as easily. Edan says the past and the future are the same thing, in a way, and that either is just as malleable. It is only our mindsets that lock us in rigidly to the moment, right? But Edan has broken through. In a very limited way. With visions.” She reached across the table and took hold of Sandy’s hand and squeezed it. “Sandy, believe me! It can happen! It will! It must! Edan says there is power in blood, and power in belief, and power in the music. And forces are at work now, forces bigger than any of us can understand, and they will bring the blood and the belief and the music all together, and the walls will come down, Sandy, they will, and the past will become the future and the future will become the past, and we can seize the moment and change what was and what is and what will be. We can do it, right? And it’s for the cause, Sandy. It’s the only way. We’ll end racism and sexism and oppression, get rid of war and crime and violence and injustice, we’ll remake the whole fucking world! But we all have to play our roles. And you have to believe.”

  For one eternal moment, the wind shuddered through Sandy and he felt the warmth and the strength of Ananda’s hand around his own and heard the conviction in her voice and remembered the blood flowing from Edan Morse’s hand and the glitter in his eyes and the faceless ghosts in the streets of Chicago, and he was convinced. For one eternal moment; but then the wind blew again, and it all flew away and faded. He extricated his hand. “No,” he said.

  Ananda looked at him, puzzled, defiant. “You felt it yourself. You admitted it.”

  “I had a strange dream,” Sandy said. “I didn’t know how you could possibly know about it, so you had me going for a second. Only I figured it out.” He smiled. “I told you about it, didn’t I? Last night, in bed.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Sandy insisted. “What else could it be? I admit that I don’t remember telling you about it, but I don’t remember going to bed with you either, so I can hardly be expected to recall all the pillow talk. Sometimes I have a very big mouth. Good try, but no cigar.”

  Ananda sighed. “Have it your way,” she said. “You’re wrong, but I’m not going to be able to convince you, I can see that now. OK. You’ll still get convinced, and when you do you’ll come back to us. Just remember the things you saw in the night. And think about what I’ve said, and what Edan told you yesterday.”

  “Let me give you some advice, ’Nanda. Cut yourself loose from Morse, and do it now. This whole scheme is insanity. And Morse is dangerous. He denies it, but I know he’s responsible for Jamie Lynch’s murder and probably for the Gopher Hole fire, and there’s no way of telling what he might do tomorrow. You’re a nice lady, and I know you sincerely want to make things better out there, but this isn’t the way, believe me.”

  Ananda was looking at him with her large dark eyes, and for an instant the expression there was strange, somehow alien. Then she smiled and shook her long black hair and her eyes lit with amusement. “It’s the only way,” she said. “And you are wrong about Edan. He did not have Lynch killed and he did not have the Gopher Hole burned. Take my word for it.”

  “I wish I could.” He stood up. “I’ve got to get going. Suppose you show me where my clothes are and drive me back to Santa Monica?”

  Ananda nodded and led him back inside. When Sandy shrugged out of the heavy robe and started to dress, she moved close to him and draped her arms lightly around his neck. “Sure you don’t have time for a quickie?” She smiled. “This time, you could pay close attention. There might be a pop quiz afterward.”

  She was warm and tempting as she pressed lightly against him, but the fire had gone out, and Sandy shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”

  Ananda disengaged and gave him a mock scowl. “You can’t trust anyone over thirty,” she said. Then she hit him with a towel.

  But later, much later, after he had dressed and she’d driven him back to his motel, Ananda leaned out of the van and gave him a quick kiss on the forehead and said, “Take care of yourself. I’m going to be seeing you again, right?”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Sandy said.

  “Oh, yes I am. You don’t know it, but I do. You’ll be back.” She grinned, “Meanwhile, keep on truckin’.” She revved up the van, backed out, waved at him one last time, and shot off down the street. Sandy went back to his room. He was cold inside, and empty, and anxious to be off. He started to pack.

  FOURTEEN

  Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight/

  Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight

  In the high mountains of western Colorado, Sandy ran into the first onslaught of winter. Cold winds hammered at Daydream and shivered through her door cracks, and a thin powdering of snow covered some of the roads and forced him to slow down. It took him longer than anticipated to get to Denver, and longer still to find the Byrne estate, though he had been there once before, a long time ago.

  It was an imposing place, occupying a block all its own, sealed off from the grunge of the city by a ten-foot-high wrought iron fence that ended in an intimidating row of black spearheads. Behind the encircling barrier were thickets of old trees that obscured the view of the house from the street, so common eyes might not peer at the Byrnes at play. Behind the trees were broad green lawns, carefully tended flower beds, and four lean and nasty Dobermans that roamed the grounds freely and liked to lunch on unwelcome visitors. The house itself was big, white, and vulgar, w
ith four tall columns in front that gave it the look of an old plantation house. The only thing needed to complete the image was a shuffling darkie or two, and no doubt the lack was deeply felt. There was, Sandy remembered, a lawn statue of a black jockey out front, which Slum’s father in his infinite charm liked to pat and call “Jigaboo Jim.”

  Inside, the Byrne house was full of dead animal heads, antique furniture, and guns. It smelled of pipe smoke and money. Northwestern had been an expensive school, but of Sandy’s college chums, only Jefferson Davis Byrne—Slum—had come from real wealth. Maggie had been on full scholarship till she dropped out, Sandy himself had a partial scholarship and a work-study job and a student loan, while Froggy Cohen and Bambi Lassiter and Lark Ellyn had all hailed from affluent upper-middle-class environs. Only Jefferson Davis Byrne had arrived freshman year driving his own Corvette Stingray.

  Sandy parked Daydream on the cold, sunny street across from the big double gate fronting the drive, got out and walked around the car and stood there a moment, looking up at the house and remembering. It had been Christmas of sophomore year, and Slum had invited Sandy to come for the holidays, and Sandy had accepted. One of the biggest mistakes of his life. The real irony of it was that he had accepted mostly so he could meet Slum’s father. Even then Sandy had wanted to be a writer, and the head of the Byrne clan was a very successful writer indeed, even though Sandy found his books sexist, racist, and semiliterate. Sandy’s opinion made damn little difference, however. Joseph William Byrne was the author of an endless series of big, fat, steamy, bloody novels about mercenaries, all of them full of explicit gore and manly martial virtue and cheerful rape. Every one of them was at least six hundred pages long and had a one-word title. The best of them had dominated the bestseller list for months at a time, though they were the sort of books that no one would ever admit to reading. The worst of them still outsold Copping Out, Sandy’s most successful book, by a factor of about four to one. In the trade they called him “Butcher” Byrne, and he was proud of the nickname.