Neon Angel

  Inspector Hadley gave Sandy a dirty look as he produced a single room key, held it up for us all to see. “What are you planning to do with this?” He sneered at Sandy. “Return to the hotel and rob innocent people using your room key?”

  Sandy stammered something about how she must have forgotten to return the key.

  At this, I started to get nervous. I knew what he would find when he looked through the rest of our bags. Hadley moved on to Joan. Silently, he dumped the contents of her bag on the hood of the car. She folded her arms and scowled at the intrusion.

  “What’s all this, then?” he said to no one in particular as more keys clattered across the hood.

  Joan shrugged. “Uh . . . they’re keys?” she offered, nervously.

  He continued rummaging around. He found hotel key after hotel key after hotel key. Sixteen in all.

  The hotel-key thing had started when we met Robert Plant back at that first show at the Starwood. He’d told us that he’d collected the room keys for every hotel he stayed at on tour. He’d display them in shadow boxes—a record of every place he had been on tour. We all thought that this was a cool idea and started collecting our own room keys. Very innocent, really.

  Hadley gestured to another officer, and Joan was taken aside with Sandy. “I told you guys that was a stupid idea,” Jackie said, in her Little Miss Know-It-All manner. Joan gave her the dirtiest look she could muster. Lita stayed quiet, for once. She had told us it was a dumb idea at the time, too.

  Now Hadley came to me. He sifted through all of my personal belongings. Man, this bastard was thorough. I started to think that maybe we’d dodged a bullet here. After all, how upset could they possibly get over some stupid hotel keys?

  Thirty-two keys later and Inspector Hadley had seen enough. He straightened up, and looked at all of us with an evil smile on his thin lips. We grinned back at him, and suddenly the smile disappeared from his face. “I don’t know what the laws are like where you come from,” he said, “but in England this sort of thing is illegal.”

  Scott was about to say something, but Inspector Hadley cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “But they’re just keys!” Joan blurted. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Hmm,” Hadley said, “just keys. No big deal. No big deal until the time that you return to the hotel and use them to sneak into rooms and steal!”

  “Oh, get real, man!” Sandy laughed. “You gotta be kidding us!”

  Hadley looked real serious then. “I don’t kid,” he said solemnly—and I believed him.

  “But—but we have a ferry to catch! We have a show in Paris tonight . . .”

  “Not anymore. We’re going to have to talk about this at the station,” he said. Then, looking to the uniformed officers gathered all around us: “Arrest them!”

  “I can’t fucking believe this,” Sandy said for the third time in ten minutes. “We’re locked up in Scotland fucking Yard! Over some hotel keys and a fucking hair dryer!”

  Joan and I were the only ones who’d been collecting the hotel keys. Sandy really had forgotten to leave that single key behind. And the hair dryer? That was just ridiculous! But no matter how silly it seemed, the fact was that the three of us were now locked up. Lita and Jackie were sent off with Scott and Kent to try to figure out a way to get us out. Sandy and I were in a stark, cold holding room with a set of dirty-looking bunk beds and concrete floors. There were no windows. When they first booked us, we had to sign a bunch of papers, get photographed, fingerprinted, the works. One of the female officers tried to do a strip search of us but I screamed, cried, and made such a fuss that they decided to forget it. Finally we were allowed to call our families. I stood there, holding the plastic receiver up to my ear, muttering “Please pick up . . . Please pick up . . .” to myself. On the sixth ring, Marie answered.

  “Marie! It’s Cherie!”

  “OH MY GOD!” Marie screamed. “We were just watching the TV, and they’re showing this movie called Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway and, like, CAN YOU HEAR THAT? They’re playing ‘Cherry Bomb’! No shit! Man, this is so cool . . . DAD! DAD! Cherie’s on the phone! She’s calling from England!”

  “Please! Marie! Listen to me! I’m in jail!”

  “. . . DADDY! YES! IT’S CHERIE! OH MY GOD!” She was so excited to have me on the phone that she wasn’t listening to a word.

  “Listen!” I repeated. “I’m in jail! I’m in jail! I’M IN JAIL!”

  Photographic Insert

  I was inspired to get this cherry tattoo in early 1976 when I had Marie draw one on my shoulder, then Joan decided on a jet, so we got ours together.

  Photograph by Brad Elterman

  Left: My mom, Marie Harmon, at eighteen after arriving in Hollywood from Chicago to pursue acting.

  Right: Marie Harmon and Don Currie (Mom and Dad) at their wedding, 1950.

  Left: Dad and Mom, 1958.

  Right: Gunnery Sergeant Don Currie USMC, during WWII.

  Sandie, Marie, Donnie, and me, 1964.

  Christmas 1968.

  Our house in Encino. For decades after mom sold it, I dreamed of buying that house back.

  Dad, me, Grandma, Aunt Evie, and Marie, 1977.

  Christmas 1977.

  Marie and I have been taking pictures together for as long as I can remember. Some cuter than others! 1965.

  Seventh grade.

  T.Y. and Sandie, 1974.

  Wolfgang and Mom, 1985.

  Marie, Don, Dad, and Me, 1980.

  David Bowie was my obsession and my inspiration. Here I am as Bowie at a Mulholland Junior High School talent show in 1974, and later, in 2000. © Steven Dewall

  March 1977, Cleveland, Ohio.

  Photographs by Janet Macoska

  We loved that we could help design our own stage costumes. Wearing something other than a T-shirt and jeans made us feel like we were making it in the business.

  Photograph by Brad Elterman

  These were handmade flyers the promoters did for our first gigs.

  Giving Sandy West a piggyback ride between takes on a Japanese television show. Sometimes we would just let down our hair and horse around onstage.

  Joan was my rock in the Runaways. She and I were close friends with great chemistry on and off the stage.

  Photograph by Janet Macoska

  You know you’ve arrived when you’ve got a giant billboard announcing your new album on the Sunset Strip.

  And we were big–huge–in Japan, where fans would mob us on the streets, in stores, and at the arena.

  I loved performing, but life on the road was tedious, tough, and demanding. I would write home just to reconnect and let my family know I was missing them.

  Photograph by Brad Elterman

  Marie and Steve Lukather’s wedding day, 1981.

  Bob Hays delivered our son, Jake, on February 8, 1991. It was the greatest day of our lives. He has been a terrific dad to Jake and the most wonderful friend to me.

  Jake, Bob, and me, 1996.

  Here I am, the ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!

  Photograph by Bob Gruen

  “WHAT?! What was that you said?”

  “I’M IN JAIL, MARIE!!! Put Dad on the line!”

  “You’re in WHERE?”

  “PUT DAD ON THE LINE!”

  Marie went silent.

  When Dad finally got on the phone, I told him that I’d been arrested then started babbling about the hotel-room keys, but he cut me off.

  “Let me make some phone calls, Kitten. Just calm down. Are they treating you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said weakly.

  “Let me make some calls. Hold tight, Kitten. It’ll be all right!”

  Because Joan had recently turned eighteen, she was being treated even worse than us. She had been put into a real cell, the kind with bars. We could hear her screaming and crying and freaking the fuck out. They locked her in there first, and as they led Sandy and me to our room, Joan literally leaped up on the bars like one of those crazed chimpanze
es at the zoo and started rattling them frantically, screaming to be let out. The noise had been going on for forty minutes now, and my heart was aching for her. Her screams were primal, from the pit of her gut. She sounded tortured and scared. I knew that Joan could get claustrophobic, and being locked up in a tiny cell away from the rest of us must have been unbearable for her.

  “Man,” I said to Sandy, “this is fucked up!”

  We listened to Joan’s sobs and screams echoing down the corridors. We decided to start banging on the door and yelling until someone, anyone, would help her. Suddenly the noise stopped. Sandy and I looked at each other. We heard footsteps approaching. Then a heavy clunk as the lock slid back and the steel door swung open. There, with tears on her cheeks and a look of triumph on her face, was Joan, flanked by two pissed-off-looking guards.

  “Get in there!” one of them ordered her. She ran inside, and hugged Sandy and me.

  “Now, will you please keep the bloody noise down?” another guard growled, before he slammed the door shut again.

  Hours passed. “You think they’re gonna keep us here overnight?”

  “No! Don’t say that!”

  Sandy frowned. “This really sucks.” That had been her running commentary on the whole European tour so far.

  The guard brought us some food after a while. We each got a cup of watery tea, a single fried egg floating in a sea of yellow grease, a slice of white bread, and some wrinkly-looking grapes. The food was disgusting, so we used the grapes to play hopscotch to pass the time. When a guard returned with another guard in tow to collect the trays, I asked if I could have another cup of tea and Sandy asked for another slice of bread.

  “No!” the first guard snapped. “This ain’t the bleeding Ritz, you know!”

  The other guard, an older man with a mop of gray hair, looked at his partner with disgust. “Oh, come on now! They’re only kids, fer Christ’s sake!”

  At that point, they produced papers for us to sign. The papers stated that we took full responsibility for what was found in our luggage. “If it has your name on it, you’re responsible for it,” the officer muttered. We signed the paperwork and they closed the metal door behind them.

  “Bread, please?” Sandy pleaded in her most pathetic voice. Joan and I giggled.

  The first guard reluctantly returned with a teapot, poured me another cup, then threw a slice of bread wrapped in a napkin to Sandy. He didn’t volunteer sugar, and I didn’t ask. When he left, Sandy mimicked him in her best Dick Van Dyke accent: “ ‘This ain’t the bleedin’ Ritz, you know!’ ” and we got a rare laugh out of our situation.

  This lighthearted atmosphere was brief. It lasted right up until I remembered something that turned my blood to ice. I clamped my hand to my mouth and steadied myself against the wall. Suddenly my knees had turned to jelly.

  Joan and Sandy looked over to me curiously.

  “What the hell’s wrong?” Sandy asked.

  “The coke!” I whispered. “The fucking coke!”

  Joan came over to me and put her hands on my shoulders. “What are you talking about? What about the coke?”

  I glanced nervously at the door again, and I hissed, “The coke is in my fucking makeup case!”

  At this, we all fell silent. Sandy ran a shaking hand through her hair. Joan started pacing the room. “We have to tell Scott,” Sandy said. “He’ll have to get it out of your case before they find it.”

  “And how in the hell is he going to do that?” I wailed, curling up in a ball on the floor. I imagined spending the rest of my life in a crappy little English jail cell like this one. A drug smuggler! They can lock you up for life for that!

  It wasn’t five minutes before the door scraped open again. It was that old bastard Inspector Hadley, the one who started this whole mess. Behind him was Scott Anderson, still carrying that stupid briefcase of his and looking like a whipped dog. They both stepped inside the room and Hadley took a look at us. He fixed me with a nasty stare. “Zip your top up!” he scolded me. Then he muttered, “Bloody shameful!”

  I crawled into the bottom bunk and pressed my body to the wall, away from the gaze of the detective. I made frantic hand gestures to Scott like I was raising a spoon to my nose. He just smiled at me dumbly. I finally knew that he understood me when I saw the blood drain from his face. He looked totally shaken. Hadley had noticed the look on Scott’s face. When Scott felt Hadley’s eyes on him, he cleared his throat and stammered, “A-a-apparently the luggage has been sent on to Calais already . . .”

  For a moment I thought that everything would be okay, but then Scott continued.

  “Inspector Hadley tells me that it needs to be confiscated by Scotland Yard and searched. So that means—”

  “That means,” interrupted Hadley, “that you ladies will be staying with us tonight, until the luggage is returned to Dover tomorrow morning. Once we have a look, we will decide how to proceed.”

  I started frantically signaling to Scott again. Suddenly Hadley swooped down to the bottom bunk and put his face close to mine.

  “Secrets, eh? We’ll have none of that in here, young lady!” He turned, and sent Scott out of the room like a naughty schoolboy.

  When Scott returned later that evening, it was with the nice guard with gray hair. The guard left us alone. Scott let us know that the luggage was now in Scotland Yard and would be searched in the morning. If I’d thought for a second that he would be coming with good news, I was sorely mistaken. Instead he and Kent had concocted some harebrained scheme to break into the fenced area where the luggage was being held so they could steal the coke.

  “It’s your coke, Scott!” I whispered urgently. “I can’t go to jail for your coke!” My stomach was in knots.

  Scott whined, “If we can’t get into the hold, there’s nothing I can do! You just got to hope that they . . . they don’t find it!”

  “We have to hope, Scott! Because I’m telling the truth if they do!”

  “How are they not going to find it, Scott?” Joan asked. “All they have to do is open up her makeup case and there it is. They’d have to be blind!”

  Scott went quiet for a moment, and looked sheepish.

  “Seriously, Scott—they’re gonna lock me up forever if they find it!”

  “What do you want me to do, Cherie? It’s out of my hands! If I could do anything, I would.”

  “Then tell them it’s yours! You gave it to me! You need to tell them that!”

  Scott gave me a look, and in that instant I knew that he had no intention of doing that. “It’s too late,” he said. “You signed that piece of paper saying that you take responsibility for what’s in your luggage. That’s just the way it is. We gotta hope for the best, that’s all.”

  Before I could say another word, he went over to the door and knocked loudly, three times. “Guard!”

  The door opened, and the gray-haired guard let Scott out. I sat on the bunk and burst into tears. That bastard! That weak motherfucker! He was going to let me take the fall for him! The guard gave me a concerned look before closing the door. Once Scott had left the building, the guard returned with cups of tea for all of us. He sat beside me, and watched me crying and sniveling for a while.

  “What’s wrong, luv?” he asked.

  I shook my head and cried. I couldn’t tell him.

  “Come on,” he said, “it can’t be all bad. . . .”

  I started blubbering to him about how homesick I was, and how badly I missed my family. About how I’d rather be just about anywhere else in the world than stuck in this stupid cell. About how mean the inspector and the other guards were. By the time I was finished, I was sobbing, on the verge of hysterics.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said to me. He put a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll see.” I just sobbed and shook my head.

  Not when they find Scott’s cocaine, I thought.

  Sometime in the early morning hours, I was lying in the bunk listening to Joan and Sandy softly breathing. The cops had left
the lights on, so Joan and Sandy had to sleep with their jackets over their faces. God, I wished I could sleep. Instead, I felt more drained, more fearful, as each second ticked by. I thought I could hear mice in the walls, scrit-scratching against the exposed brick. Every time I started to fall asleep, some cry, or bang, or clang would echo throughout the building and I’d jerk awake, paralyzed by fear and paranoia.

  I had no idea how long we had been in there. There were no windows, just the bright fluorescent bars of light beaming down from the cracked ceiling. It was only when they brought in breakfast that I knew it had to be morning. The nice guard made sure that we had extra food. I couldn’t eat. I was just staring at my cold toast when the door to the cell burst open, and in came Detective Hadley, Kent Smythe, Scott Anderson, and the nice guard. I looked over to Scott for a clue, but he shook his head. He was still in the dark. I looked over to the nice guard, who shot me a friendly smile, as if to say, “Don’t worry.” I looked to Detective Hadley, and felt my blood run cold. He had a mean smile on his thin-lipped mouth, and he positioned himself right in the middle of the cell. I felt beads of cold sweat forming on my forehead and upper lip. Oh God!

  I looked over to the nice guard again, and he was staring at me with a concerned look on his face. He could see that I was about to faint, vomit, or both. He knew that I was scared. He knew that I was worrying that I would be stuck here for the next twenty or so years. But his face radiated a calm cool, and that sweet smile was never far from his lips. His eyes stayed on me as Inspector Hadley began his speech.