On stage were three massive amplifiers that looked to Nolan like black refrigerators. A double set of drums was perched on a tall platform, and various guitars were lying about as if discarded. An organ, red and black with chrome legs, faced out to the audience showing its reverse color black and white keyboard. Boom stands extended microphones over the organ and drums, and upright stands held three other mikes for the guitarists and lead singer. The voice amplification was evidently hooked up to two large horns the size of those found in football stadiums.
Vicki said, “You look at that stuff as though you know something about it.”
“I do,” Nolan told her. “Been everything from bouncer to manager in all kinds of clubs. You get to know musicians and their equipment.”
“What does that equipment tell you?”
“They have money,” he said, “and they’re going to be too goddamn loud.”
She laughed and a voice from behind them said, “That, my friend, is a matter of opinion.”
They turned and faced a six-foot figure resembling a coat-rack hung with garish clothes. The coat-rack spoke again, in a thick, unconvincing British accent. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to the gent, Miss Trask?”
She began to answer, but Nolan shushed her. “I can guess,” he said, looking the coat-rack up and down.
The boy was emaciated, the sunken-cheeked Rolling Stone type that shouted drug use. His hair was kinky-curly and ratted, making him look like a freaked-out Little Orphan Annie. His face was a collection of acne past and present, and the sunkenness of his cheeks was accented by a pointed nose and deep-socketed eyes that were a glazed sky-blue. He wore a grimy scarlet turtleneck with an orange fluorescent vest and a tarnished gold peace sign hung around his neck on a sweat-stained leather thong. His pants were black-and-white checked and hung loose, bell-bottomed, coming in skin-tight at the crotch.
“You’re Broome.”
A yellow smile flashed amiably. “Right you are, man.”
“Who picks out your threads,” Nolan asked, gesturing at Broome’s outfit, “Stevie Wonder?”
Broome’s laugh was as phony as his English accent. “You can’t bum me out, dad. I groove out at everything, everybody, everywhere. Bum me out? No way — I’m too happy, man.”
Nolan looked into Broome’s filmy, dilated eyes and silently agreed. “When you play your next set?”
Broome pulled a sleeve back, searched his wrist frantically for his watch, which turned out to be vintage Mickey Mouse on a loose strap. “In five, man, in five.”
Vicki pointed Nolan to the stage where the rest of Broome’s band was onstage already, four boys just as freakishly attired as Broome but apparently less wigged-out — they were tuning up, generally preparing to begin their next set. Teeny-boppers crowded in around the stage, shoving to get as close to the band as possible, and consequently pushing Nolan, Vicki and Broome into a corner to the left of the stage.
Broome was small-talking with Vicki and getting a cold- shoulder in return, Nolan having turned his back on both of them to watch the band set up. From the corner of his eye Nolan saw Broome light up a joint.
Nolan said, “That one of the things that makes you so happy?”
Broome lifted his shoulders and set them back down. “It helps a little, dad, you know?”
“I know.”
Broome spoke to Vicki. “I didn’t catch your friend’s name, love. What is it?”
“His name is Webb,” she told him. “Earl Webb.”
Broome looked at Nolan and something flickered behind the gone eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “I hear you get around, Mr. Webb, is that right? Do you get around?”
“I get around. How about you, Broome? Ever hear of Irene Tisor?”
Broome’s face tightened like a fist. “Maybe I have, Mr. Webb, maybe I have. So what?”
“What do you know about her?”
“She’s dead, haven’t you heard?”
“I heard.” Nolan smiled, the phony smile this time. “You just smoke that stuff, or do you sell it, too?”
“Hey, dad, I’m a musician.”
“Yeah, right. Who sold Irene Tisor that hit of acid? Whose music was she dancing to when she did her swan dive into the concrete?”
Broome dropped his joint to the floor and stomped it out, his face a scowl and in one motion thrust his middle finger in Nolan’s face defiantly.
“Make love not war,” Nolan reminded him.
Broome farted with his mouth and hopped up onto the stage, joining his band, keeping an aloof air when speaking to the other members, and mumbled “One, two, test” into his mike. He gave the band four beats with his booted heel and they roared into a long, loud freaky version of a rhythm and blues number called “In the Midnight Hour.” The amps screamed as if in pain, emitting feedback and distortion, while Broome tried to sound black, crouching over the microphone, as if making a kind of obscene love to it. The Gurus, his four man back-up band, seemed vaguely embarrassed by him, with the exception of the bass player, a blond youngster who wore a page-boy.
Toward the middle of the first number, somebody turned on the ceiling strobe, which flickered, flashed, making everything look like an acid-head’s version of a silent movie.
Nolan said, close to her ear, “I’ve had enough. I won’t get anything out of Broome. Not in public.”
Vicki followed Nolan as he burrowed through the crowd toward the doors. Above the deafening music she shouted, “Didn’t you get anything out of this evening?”
Nolan waited till they were in the hallway with the double-doors closed behind them before he answered. “I got a few things out of it. Saw some pot being smoked, and not just Broome. Did you smell it? Bittersweet, kind of. And I’d put a thousand bucks down that Broome is an addict.”
“An addict? Can you get addicted to LSD?”
“LSD, my ass. He’s riding the big horse. Heroin.”
“Heroin? Are you kidding?”
“I don’t kid much, Vicki. He may have Mickey Mouse on his wrist, but he’s got needle tracks on his arm.”
They moved back through the hallway, past the ex-pug who still didn’t recognize Nolan, and out into the open air. Just as they started to walk away from the Eye, Nolan spotted a familiar face — Lyn Parks, whom he’d last seen in her apartment, as she sat naked, painting a flower ’round her navel. As she went through the door she caught Nolan’s eye; she said nothing but her smile said everything.
Touch of jealousy in her voice, Vicki said, “They all give you the eye don’t they, teeny-boppers on up?”
“Sure,” Nolan said. “Even Broome.”
They walked back to the Lincoln and drove to Nolan’s motel.
4
Nolan pulled the Lincoln up to the Travel Nest’s office, where through the glass he could see Barnes, the manager, at the desk inside.
“I’m going to pick up some of my things,” he told Vicki, “and see to it the manager keeps my room vacant and my name on the register for the next few days.”
“But you’ll really be staying with me?” she asked.
“Right.”
She leaned forward and caught his arm as he began to get out of the car. He glanced back and she moved forward and they kissed. A brief kiss, with a touch of warmth, of promise. He squeezed her thigh and climbed out of the Lincoln.
He had barely gone through the door and into the motel office when an ashen-faced Barnes started babbling.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Webb, they made me let them in, believe me, I couldn’t help it...”
Nolan grabbed him by the lapel. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Those policemen... they made me let them in...”