Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

Comeback by Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman’s March 1996 EQMM story “Out There in the Darkness” was later expanded by the author into a novel entitled The Poker Club, and will soon be released as a motion picture under the same title. Also coming out soon is a new Gorman novel, The Midnight Room. The following story will appear, at around the same time this issue goes on sale, in an anthology celebrating the work of author and screen writer Richard Matheson entitled He Is Legend.

The morning of the birthday bash this dude with hair plugs and a black camel’s hair coat and the imperious air only a big-time businessman exudes walks into Guitar City and starts looking around at all the instruments and amps.

A tourist. Most places you see a guy who looks like this you automatically think this is the ideal customer. But in the business of selling high-end guitars and amps you don’t want somebody who looks like he just drove over from the brokerage house in his Mercedes but will only spend a few hundred on his kid.

Some of my best sales have gone to guys who look like street trash. They know music.

I wandered over to him. I assumed he didn’t know what he was holding. The Gibson Custom Shop ’59 Les Paul cost a few thousand more than I make a month — and I do all right.

When he glanced up and saw me, he said, “Hey, you’re the guy I saw on the news this morning.”

I smiled. “My fifteen minutes finally arrived.”

“Well, you’re going to the big party and everything. Sounds like you’ll have some night. Nice that you all still get along.”

John Temple had returned to Chicago on the occasion of his thirtieth birthday. This was at the end of his worldwide tour and his latest CD going double platinum. Some of the friends he’d met while on tour were flying in for the occasion. Names people around the world would recognize. “Too bad you had that falling-out with Temple, you and — What’s the other guy’s name?”

“McMurtin.”

“Right. Temple, McMurtin, and you. You’re Rafferty, right?”

“Right.”

“And you and McMurtin — went off on your own.”

He was polite enough not to finish the rest. The well-known tale of how John Temple decided four years ago that it was time he took his wounded voice out for a test run all by itself. Two double-platinum CDs later, Temple was returning home for a press orgy of adulation.

I was working here at Guitar City. Pete McMurtin was one of the ghosts you saw standing on the sidewalk outside rehab houses shakily smoking his cigarette.

Even though he’d brought up an unpleasant subject, he redeemed himself by saying, “My son’s graduating from Northwestern. He’s very serious about his little band. I was hoping he’d grow out of it by now, but no such luck. He’s coming into the firm but he also plans to keep playing on weekends. So I want something really special.”

“Well, this is really special.”

“Oh? What is it?”

I told him.

“So this is really upscale, huh?”

I smiled at his word. “Very upscale.”

“And he’ll need an amp. A good one.”

“A good one or a great one?”

“What’s a great one?”

“Well, you’ve got a great guitar so I’d go with a great amp — a Marshall. The Jimi Hendrix Reissue. Stack.”

He grinned. “This could all very well be bullshit.”

I grinned back. I knew he was going to go for it. “It could very well be. But it isn’t.”

“Well, I guess you know what you’re talking about. This is your fifteen minutes, after all.” He meant well but it was still painful. “So my son will know what this is and he’ll like it?”

“He’ll love it. He’ll think you’re the best old man a kid could have.”

A hint of pain in his eyes now. Maybe this present wasn’t just for graduation. Maybe this was a guilt present of some kind. “Then let’s do it.”

On my lunch hour I drove over to the facility where Pete was staying. I’d talked to the woman in charge. Natalie was her name. She said that Pete was showing some progress with his cocaine problem and that she was afraid of what might happen if he went to the party. I’d convinced her that I would take care of him. I reminded her that he listed me as his only friend. After his years of living in a coke dream, his family had bid him goodbye.

At one time, the Victorian house had been fashionable. Easy to imagine Packards pulling up in the driveway and dispatching men in top hats and mink-wrapped women laughing their way to the front door fashionably late for the party.

Now the house was a grim gray and the cars were those dying metal beasts that crawl and shake from one traffic light to another.

Natalie Evans answered the door herself. The odors made me wince even before I crossed the threshold. All the friends I’ve had in places like this — bad food, disinfectant, old clothes, old furniture, old lives — despite what the calendar says.

“He’s in the parlor. He got up and worked for three hours this morning helping to clean out the garage. I’m really hoping he can keep going this way. That’s why I’m nervous about tonight.”

Natalie was one of those sturdy women who know how to run just about anything you care to name. Competence in the blue eyes. Compassion in the gentle voice. She was probably just a few years older than me but she was already a real adult, something I’d probably never be.

I’d seen Pete only two weeks ago, but for an unexpected moment there I didn’t recognize the fragile but still handsome twenty-nine-year-old who sat deep in the stained arms of a busted-up couch. The smile was still there, though. John had the voice, I had the licks on the guitar. But Pete had the classic good looks of old Hollywood. Pete had been a heartbreaker since the three of us started Catholic school together in the first grade. He played a nice rhythm guitar, too.

“Hey,” he said. I could see that he was thinking of standing up but decided against it. His three hours of work had apparently exhausted him.

The parlor was a receptacle for stacks of worn-out records, worn-out CDs, worn-out videotapes, worn-out paperbacks, worn-out people. An old color TV played silently, a pair of hefty cats yawned at me, and an open box of Ritz crackers and a cylinder of Cheez Whiz had to be moved before I could sit on the wooden chair facing him. Junkies and junk food.

“I don’t know, Michael.”

He didn’t need to say any more. The apprehension, the weariness in those four words meant that I’d done the right thing by checking in with him before tonight.

“I talked to God, Pete.”

He smiled again. We’d been kidding each other since we were six years old. We knew the rhythms and patterns of our words. “Yeah, and what did God have to say?”

“He said he was going to be muy pissed if you didn’t go.”

“God speaks Spanish?”

“He could be an illegal immigrant.”

He rolled his head, laughing. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Look who’s talking, compadre.”

He leaned forward, sunlight haloing his head. He’d been the most mischievous of us. I’d never seen him turn down a dare, no matter how crazy. He wasn’t tough, but he sure was durable. But not durable enough to stand up to a coke habit that had taken over his life six years ago. Cost him his health, purpose, hope. And it had cost him Kelly Keegan, the girl that both Pete and John had loved since she’d come to St. Matthew’s in sixth grade. John walked away with Kelly and his career. She’d been living with Pete. After that, Pete’s habit got even worse.

“You’re strong enough, Pete. You look great.”

“I look like shit.”

“Okay, you look like shit. But you’re strong enough.”

“I really look like shit?”

I got up out of the chair, walked over to him, and swatted him upside the head. He grinned and flipped me off. I went back and sat down. “You jerk-off. Now c’mon. I’m picking you up at seven and we’re going to the party.”

He lifted his right leg. Pulled an envelope free. Glanced at it. Tossed it to me. “From Kelly. Came yesterday.”

It was indeed from Kelly. It read:

“Wow.” I pitched the letter back to him.

“That’s what I’m nervous about.”

“I thought they were so happy. With the new baby and all.”

“So did I. I mean, I’m still in love with her. I always will be. But I’ve been so strung out I just never considered the possibility—” He lifted the letter from his lap and stared at it. “I almost feel sorry for John.”

“Screw John. He dumped us. If he’d stayed with us we’d all be rich today.”

“You really believe that?”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t know anymore. Maybe we didn’t have what it takes — you know, the way John does.”

“You know that’s a crock, man.” I’d had that same thought myself, of course. But I wasn’t about to admit it. “And he sure didn’t worry about you when he walked off with Kelly.”

He shook his head. “But she’s got to be crazy. Her kid — the whole life they’ve got — the money and all that. What the hell would we have to say to each other?”

“Well, there’s one way to find out.”

“I don’t know. It just wouldn’t be right.”

“He didn’t care about you or your habit. Not the way he left and all.”

He held up a halting hand. “I’m here because I’m an addict. And you’re selling guitars because the little group you put together last year didn’t work out. He isn’t responsible for either of those things.”

“No, but remember how he wouldn’t meet with us? Had that new agent of his handle everything? I just want to see him face to face.”

A knock on one of the parlor doors. The old-fashioned kind that rolled back into the frame. Natalie parted the doors with a deft foot and came in carrying coffee. “I had to make a fresh pot. That’s what took me so long.”

“She makes great coffee,” Pete said.

“Flatterer.” She used her foot again, this time to drag the coffee table closer to us. She set the cups on the deeply scratched wood and said, “There you go. If you want more, just let me know.”

My cup had a piece missing on the lip. I wasn’t worried about finding it in my coffee. The chip had been missing for a long time and Natalie had no doubt washed the cup dozens of times. But it made me feel like hell for Pete. For both of us, actually, I suppose. Those old days in Catholic school, high school especially. Not the best or the brightest but we did all right with the girls and the future gleamed like a new sunrise just down the road ahead of us. So much hope and so much promise. And now here we were in this busted, sad place drinking out of chipped cups.

“So I’m supposed to tell her what when you don’t show up?”

“You’re going anyway?”

“Hell, yes, Pete. This’ll be a big deal for me. And there’ll be record people there. Maybe I can make a contact.”

His smile was fond. He was smiling at the same memory I’d had a minute ago. The three of us in high school and all those rock-and-roll dreams. “You never give up, do you?”

“Not dreaming, I don’t. Maybe I’ll be at Guitar City the rest of my life but that doesn’t mean I have to stop thinking about it.”

He laid his head back and closed his eyes. “She’ll look so beautiful that I won’t be able to control myself. I’ll probably grab her. She’s all I think about. Four years later and it still hurts as much as it did the day she told me she was leaving with John.”

“But she’s still in love with you.”

He didn’t say anything for a time. I sipped my coffee. A deep sigh. He said, “I’ll go, but I’ll probably regret it.”

Even in good suits, white shirts, and conservative ties, the two steroid monsters at the front door of the very upscale Regency Hall were clearly bouncers. God help you if your name wasn’t on the list. The usual doormen had obviously been replaced by folks more accustomed to the world of rock and roll. And rap.

If either of the killer androids knew who we were they didn’t indicate it in any way. They simply consulted their BlackBerry list and waved us on through after we handed over the invitations.

The hall was the preserve of visiting artists, classical musicians, noted scholars. The lobby held a discreet Coming Attractions board. Chamber music was the next attraction. Few of the people in the lobby looked as if they’d be here for that particular event. The trendy hairstyles (female and male), the chic clothes (female and male) and the number of visible tattoos (mostly male) spoke of different musical pleasures. Dreadlocks, male rouge, cocaine eyes. Not your typical chamber-music crowd at all.

Pete stood tight against me. He was the child afraid to leave his parent. I could almost feel him wanting to do a little shapeshifting.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said.

And with that the joyous evening began.

John took the stage to a standing O and then went immediately into generic humility. He thanked more people than ten Oscar winners. Nary a mention of Pete or me. No surprise there. He was saving the moment for Kelly. And it was quite a moment. Four years and a kid later she was still the pale Irish redhead of almost mythic beauty. The emerald cocktail dress only enhanced her slender but comely shape.

John, my generation’s Neil Diamond, in theatrical black shirt and tight black jeans, gave her the kiss everybody wanted to give her. I saw Pete look away.

“This is the reason I’m up here. I was going nowhere in terms of my career until my true love, Kelly, agreed to marry me. And that gave me the strength to break away and go on my own. I really mean it when I say I wouldn’t be on this stage tonight without this woman.”

I wondered how many people in the audience understood what “break away” meant. Break away from Pete and me. Bastard.

Kelly didn’t reach for the stand-up mike, so John leaned it toward her. “C’mon, honey, just say a few words.” And as he said this, on a huge TV screen suspended from the right corner of the stage, was a sunny photograph of Kelly holding their two-year-old daughter Jen. The kid was almost as much of a beauty as the mother.

Pete tugged at my arm. “Let’s get outta here, man. I can’t take this.”

I whispered so nobody else around us could hear. “I’m tempted to go backstage and lay him out. Just break him up a little.”

“Yeah. And then I’d come visit you every weekend in jail — if they’d let me out of the halfway house.”

He turned, starting toward the door, but I grabbed him. “Just a few more minutes, Pete. We got nothing else to do, anyway.”

“I’d rather be back at the house.”

Invisible speakers boomed “Happy Birthday” so loud there was no point in trying to talk. Everybody was singing along and then this five-tiered cake was wheeled onstage. John went back into generic humility for the next few minutes as he cut the cake and served Kelly the first slice. This was when the other rock stars appeared, four of them, encased in their arrogance and privileged clowning.

Then dancing and liquor and dope of all kinds broke out. The party was officially on.

Pete managed to leave my side before I could stop him. There was a crowd at the door and he somehow eeled through it. I had to bump between two big important bellies to catch him just as he reached the front door and the androids. I could feel the belly owners glaring at me.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. One of the androids had been facing inside. He lurched toward me.

“No problem here,” I said.

Pete saw that he was eager to waste me so he said, “Everything’s cool. No need for any trouble.”

Disappointed, the android stopped, glared at me, and then went back to his post.

I half dragged Pete into an empty corner of the lobby. “Where the hell were you going?”

“Where do you think? Watching her up there—”

“It got to me too, Pete.”

“Not in the way it got to me. You hate him and that’s different from me being in love with her. You just want to hurt him.”

“I want to kill him.”

“That’s what I mean. That’s different. You don’t know what I’m going through.” I’d seen him cry before, too many times, trying to kick coke. But these tears were different, not harsh but gentle, sad as only Pete could be sad.

“Aw, man, I’m sorry.”

“So could we just leave?”

“Sure. We’ll get a pizza.”

He smiled as he brushed a tear from his cheek. “All that fancy food inside and we’re going to get a pizza?”

“Yeah. Better class of people, anyway.”

He saw her before I did. There was a stairway leading to the balcony. She descended it concealed by a group of much larger people. He said “God,” and that was when I saw her, too.

And that was the moment when all the corny moments in all the corny movies proved to be not so corny at all. Her recognizing him; him recognizing her. It was really happening that way. Each stunned by the sight of the other. And all else falling away.

If she said goodbye to the important people around her, I wasn’t aware of it. She simply left them and floated across the lobby to us. To Pete, I mean. I doubt she was even aware that I was there.

He was the old Pete suddenly. The bad drug years fell from his face, his eyes. And it was all ahead of him, the great golden glowing future. And when she reached out and took his hand, I saw that she wanted to be part of that future. That she knew now how bad a mistake she’d made taking up with John. That despite her marriage, somehow she and Pete would be together again.

She tugged him away from the corner. She still hadn’t said hello to me or even let on that she knew I was there. I didn’t care. I was caught up in their movie dream, happy for both of them. And happiest of all that the retribution I’d wanted to visit on John was now far more crushing than a few punches could make it. He was losing his wife. They were gone.

For the next twenty minutes I drank wine and listened to conversations between people who were — or claimed to be — in the music industry. The anger was coming back. I wanted to hear my name instead of John’s. I wanted those chart sales to be mine. I wanted the tour they were discussing to focus on me. John should be working at Guitar City. Not me.

But at least Pete was getting something out of this night. All the way back to grade school he’d been the one she’d loved. And now maybe it was finally going to happen for them.

“Are you Mr. Rafferty?” She was an officious-looking blonde in the red blazer that Regency Hall employees wore.

“Yes, I am.”

“John would like to see you in his dressing room.”

“John Temple?”

“Why, yes.” She gave me an odd look, as if maybe I was stoned and not hearing properly. Was there any other John who mattered here tonight?

“What’s he want to see me about?”

She’d been trying to decide if she found me tolerable or not. She’d just made her decision. Not trying to hide her irritation, she said, “I’m just doing what he asked me, Mr. Rafferty. I’m not privy to his thoughts.”

“Aw, God. I’m sorry. I’m just a little surprised, is all.”

“Well, there are a lot of people here tonight who’d be happy to visit with him in his dressing room. Consider yourself lucky.”

She didn’t have anything more to say to me until we reached backstage and the row of three doors off the left wing of the stage. She knocked gently on the center door and said, “Mr. Temple?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Rafferty is here.”

“Great. The door’s unlocked.”

She stood back for me. I wondered if she could tell how angry I was at hearing his voice. Four years of rage, of betrayal. I wanted to rip the knob off and flatten the door on my way inside, where I’d grab him and begin beating him to death.

But he was quicker than I was. He stood in the open door, all black-clad rock star, smiling camera-big and camera-bright. He’d learned that smirking with your mouth made you enemies. Now he tucked his smirks into his dark eyes. He took a step forward and I thought he was actually going to give me a Hollywood man-hug, but he obviously sensed that that might not be such a good idea so he settled for waving me in. The small room held a large closet, a makeup table with the mirror encircled by small bright bulbs, and several vases stuffed with red congratulatory roses.

“Close the door, would you?” he said.

“You want it closed, you close it.”

He walked over to the dressing table and hoisted a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black. “I’m sure you’d rather have this than all that sissy-boy wine they’re serving. You get some Jack, I get the door closed. That’s how the world works, Rafferty.”

I kicked it shut with my heel.

“Nice to know you’ve grown up,” he said, not looking at me, pouring each of us healthy drinks.

“What the hell you want to see me about?”

The eye smirked as the hand offered me my drink. “We didn’t leave on the best of terms. Maybe I feel guilty about things.”

“Oh, man. Spare me this crap, all right? You dumped us because you knew we were going to get a contract and then you’d have to share the spotlight with us. You wanted it all your own.”

The sharpness of his laugh surprised me. The contempt was bullet-true. “God, Rafferty, do you really believe that? Please tell me that’s not what you really think.”

But before I could say anything he went on.

“I stayed a year longer than I should have. I stayed because we went all the way back to grade school. I stayed because we were friends. But Pete’s habit got worse and worse and you—” He paused.

“And me? What about me?”

I noticed that the smirk was gone. The gaze was uncomfortable. “You’re not the greatest guitarist I’ve ever worked with.”

“I was good enough to write songs with.” But the whine in my voice sickened me as much as it probably pleased him.

“You’ll notice I’ve never recorded any of those songs. Never played them on stage. Never tried to sell them.”

“So you called me in here to tell me what a genius you are and what losers Pete and I are?”

“I called you in here to have a drink and to say that I’m sorry for how things were left. It’s natural for you to think of me as a bad guy. But I had the right to do what I did. A lot of people leave groups and go out on their own. I didn’t commit any mortal sins.”

“Maybe not. But you helped destroy Pete.”

“Pete was already destroyed. It was just that neither of you would admit it then. I’ve kept track of him. In and out of rehab. Every time the stays get longer. Every time there’s a little bit less of the Pete we grew up with.”

The words came out. I didn’t say them. In fact I was as shocked as John had to be. “Well, right now there’s enough of him left to be off alone somewhere with your wife.”

There was a flash of deep pain in the eyes. “I’m well aware of that, Michael. One of my people has been keeping an eye on her for me. Kelly and Pete are in a small office off the balcony. I’m trying not to think about what’s going on.”

Again he spoke before I could.

“I could stop them. But she needs to get it out of her system. She thinks she’s still in love with him. Her one true love. I have everything I’ve always wanted now, but I’ll never have her the way Pete had her. Maybe when she sees him tonight, sees that he’s not who he once was—” He shrugged. “But that’s kidding myself. She loves the idea of Pete. She knew he was a junkie and that’s why she went off with me. But she can’t get rid of this idea of him.” He tapped his forehead. “She won’t see him as he really is. He’ll be the old Pete to her.”

I wanted to think that this was just a performance. That way I could enjoy it as simple bad acting. But I knew better. As much as I hated him I knew that he was telling the truth.

“That make you happy, Michael?”

“Yeah. It does. The one thing you can’t have. That makes me very happy.”

And then, snake-quick, the smirk was back in the eyes. “You like it at Guitar City, do you? I’m told that you’re their best salesman.”

“Screw yourself.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Michael. Are you happy at Guitar City?”

The girls don’t come as easy as I thought they would. You see all these reality shows where girls will do anything to sleep with rockers. But I do all right. A lot better than I was doing before John added me to his band. The money’s pretty good, too. I own a ’57 ’Vette and when I take it back to the old neighborhoods you’d think the Irish were having St. Patrick’s Day.

The touring was cool for the first year, but now it gets to be a drag sometimes. John’s letting me play on the next CD. He says that’ll keep us in L.A. for at least six months. Cool by me.

Kelly has pretty much willed me out of existence. Even when I’m forced to stand close to her she won’t acknowledge me in any way. Everybody in the band notices, obviously. I think they feel sorry for me.

She only came after me once. This was after a gig in Seattle. She’d had a few drinks and right in front of John she slapped me and said, “I know where he got the coke, Michael. You gave it to him. More than enough to kill him. And I know who put you up to it.” She was staring right at John when she said it.

The word is she’s staying with him because of the kid. And that may be true. But maybe she’s like the rest of us. You know, the whole rock-and-roll thing. She’s the belle of the ball, “The Nicole Kidman of Rock,” as People called her recently. And maybe that’s how he keeps her. She wouldn’t be as hot if she divorced him. More number-one double-platinum CDs. Not even her beauty can match that.

The last time I went back to Chicago I stopped by the halfway house where Pete had last stayed. The woman Natalie? I gave her a check for $2,500 to help with the bills for the house. I thought she’d be real happy about it but she handed it back and walked away.

Late at night I feel bad about it sometimes. But as John always says, maybe we did him a favor. I mean, it wasn’t like he was ever going to have a comeback or anything.