“Yeah, we remember where it’s at,” he said, giving another eye roll. “We’ll clear the hospital and go now.”
“You do that,” Marx said. And then, after a moment. “I wonder if I should head over there as well ... you know ... just to have a supervisory presence?”
“Were you specifically invited?” Jim asked.
“Well ... no.”
“Then I don’t think you should be there,” Jim said.
“But...”
“I’ll let you know how it goes, Steve,” Jim told him quickly. “Catch you later.”
He hung up before Marx could say anything else. He then went to go pry his partner out of the grip of the two firefighters.
Carla parked their rig in front of the rehearsal warehouse twenty minutes later, just a few minutes before four o’clock. In the parking lot was a limousine with a uniformed driver in front, two transport buses, and several higher end vehicles parked haphazardly. There was no signage or anything else to indicate that this building was Matt Tisdale’s rehearsal warehouse. Jim and Carla had been quite surprised when they had entered it on that fateful day. Today, however, Jim was more than a little awed knowing they were soon going to be talking to the legendary (and notorious) guitarist. Carla, on the other hand, was less than thrilled with their mission. She was not a music fan in general, and believed that Matt Tisdale in particular was a slimy, disgusting pig of a man. All in all, she would rather be back in service where she could be running calls and talking to more male firefighters about hose coupling drills.
They exited the ambulance, both of them instinctively carrying their portable radios with them despite the fact that they were out of service. They walked to the same man-door they had entered and exited through on their last visit. Then, it had been chocked open. Now, it was closed and locked. Jim knocked on it and a moment later it was opened by a large, tattooed man who introduced himself as Jack Ferguson, head of tour security. Jim had noticed the man hovering around when he had been here to treat Tisdale but had not been introduced to him on that occasion.
“Nice to meet you,” Jim said, shaking hands with him. “And you remember my partner, Carla?”
“I do,” Ferguson said with a smile.
Carla did not shake with him. She was looking at him with an unshielded expression that was half fear and half disgust. Ferguson seemed unoffended. He led them through the door and into the warehouse. As had been the case last week, the stage and all of the lighting were in place, though everything seemed to be powered down now. Longhaired men in t-shirts and jeans were everywhere. Some on the soundboard, some wandering around the stage area, many just sitting in chairs and talking. Most were drinking bottles of Corona beer. More than a few were smoking cigarettes, imparting the place with a haze of fragrant smoke.
Matt Tisdale was sitting on the edge of the stage just in front of one of the microphone stands. He was looking a lot better than the last time Jim had seen him. His skin was still a bit on the pale side, and he looked generally unhealthy, but nothing near the almost dead, sweaty mess he had been. He had his own bottle of Corona next to him and was munching on a fried chicken breast. His eyes lit up when he saw the EMS crew being led toward him.
“Hey!” he said happily, setting down the chicken on a plate and hopping down onto the warehouse floor. He wiped his hands quickly on his shirt and then headed over to meet them. “It’s the two people who saved my ass! How you motherfuckers doing?”
“Uh ... pretty good, Mr. Tisdale,” Jim said, holding out his hand for a shake.
“Fuck that ‘Mr. Tisdale’ shit,” Matt said, grabbing Jim’s hand and shaking with him. Jim could feel the chicken grease on it. “Call me Matt. Anyone who saved my ass gets first name privileges.”
“All right,” Jim said, resisting the urge to wipe his hand on his uniform pants. “Matt it is. And I’m Jim. Jim Ramos.”
“Ramos huh?” Matt said with a nod. “You a beaner?”
Jim blinked a little. “Uh ... no, not really,” he said. “My family originally came here from Brazil, but that was three generations ago.”
Matt nodded thoughtfully. “I didn’t think you looked like a wetback,” he said. He then turned to Carla. “And you’re Jim’s partner. Carla, right?”
“Yes,” she said tersely, refusing to step forward far enough for Matt to offer his hand to her. “I’m surprised you remember my name.”
“I didn’t,” Matt said. “That corporate motherfucker I talked to on the phone earlier looked it up for me.” He let his eyes look her up and down for a moment. “You know, I was a little too busy getting lit up like a fuckin’ car factory in Sarajevo to notice this before, but you’re kind of hot.”
“Uh ... thanks,” Carla said slowly, showing absolutely no sign of being flattered by this declaration.
“Just callin’ it like I see it,” Matt said. “Now then. Can I get you two anything to drink? We got some beer and a full wet bar set up over here by the soundboard. Or maybe you’d like a couple lines of coke?”
Jim looked at him to see if he were joking. It certainly appeared he was not. “Uh ... no thanks, Matt,” he said. “We’re uh ... you know ... on duty.”
“Oh ... right, of course,” Matt said, nodding. “I guess you don’t do that shit on the job, huh?”
“No,” Carla said evenly, her eyes now looking at Matt as if he were a bug. “We do not.”
“I can respect that,” Matt said. “I don’t get fucked up before performing either. I guess it’s the same for you guys.”
“Right,” Jim said slowly. “We try to stay away from the cocaine when we might have to drive a five-ton rig through heavy traffic and then make life and death decisions when we arrive where we’re going.”
“Understood,” Matt said with a nod. “Anyway, the reason I asked you two to come here, first of all, is to say thanks for saving my ass. This is the third time now that one of you paramedic motherfuckers has helped me out when my heart started doin’ that shit, the second time one of you had to light me up. And you’re the first one to use that Versed shit on me. That was all right, my man! I don’t even remember you frying my ass, don’t remember you putting them paddles on me, don’t remember screaming like some fuckin’ bitch who saw a spider. Not only that, it was a halfway decent high too. So ... from the bottom of my fuckin’ heart, thank you both for what you did.”
“No problem at all, Matt,” Jim said with a genuine smile. Perhaps Matt’s speech of gratitude wasn’t the most poetically expressed in the world, but it was a sincere thank you, something that was few and far between in their line of work, and Jim appreciated the sentiment.
Carla did not seem so impressed. She merely grunted.
Matt glanced at her, his eyebrows going up a tad, and then he seemed to shrug it off. “Anyway,” he said, “having said that, I’d like to actually show the two of you how grateful I am.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jim. Was he going to try to give them some money? It would be a shame if he did, as they were ethically and legally not allowed to accept it.
But money was not what he had in mind, not really anyway. “I don’t know if you know this about me, but I own a motor yacht. It’s an eighty-nine-footer and I have it docked over at Marina Del Rey.”
“Uh ... no, I didn’t know that,” Jim said, although this news was not particularly surprising. Tisdale had to be almost as rich as God.
“It’s the shit, my man,” Matt said. “It’s got a full bar, a hot tub, and five bedrooms, not including the master suite and the crew quarters. There’s even a place to land a helicopter on it—a small helicopter, you know—but I haven’t got me one of those yet.” He shrugged. “Maybe when the royalties start flowing in from this next album. Anyway, I hired up a whole crew to run this boat for me. I got some dago captain who used to drive cargo freighters or some shit like that, a chef and an assistant chef who used to work in some snooty French place, two beaner motherfuckers to work with the captain and keep everything running, a couple of old gook bitches to clean the rooms and pick up all the trash and shit, some fuckin’ kraut marine mechanic to keep the engines running, and a couple of dick-smoking professional waiters from restaurant row to serve the food and make the drinks.”