Standing On Top

Chapter 10b

Matt's preliminary hearing was the following Monday morning, once again before Judge Waters in the Santa Ana Superior Court building. Matt arrived looking much better than he had during his first court appearance. His face was no longer swollen and most of the bruises were fading away. He was dressed in a suit and tie, his long hair hanging over his shoulders.

The accusations against him were read. He was officially charged with: possession of cocaine for sale, possession of marijuana for sale, assaulting a peace officer, resisting arrest, reckless driving, driving under the influence of alcohol, and twenty-three separate traffic offenses related to running stops signs and red lights. "How do you plea?" he was asked by Judge Waters.

"Not guilty," Matt said, repeating what Perceville had advised him to say.

The prosecutor then laid out the basics of his case against Matt. He told about the moving violation that led to the attempt to stop the offending Maserati. He told about the high-speed chase that ensued. He called as a witness the first sheriff's deputy who attempted to stop the Maserati. This officer testified that he was the one to visualize the Maserati's license number, run it, and discover that the car he was chasing was registered to Matthew Norman Tisdale of San Juan Capistrano.

"Do we have to mention my middle name in the court?" Matt said tiredly. "I've always hated my parents for saddling me with that."

"You are out of order, Mr. Tisdale," Waters barked at him. "Do not speak in my courtroom unless you are spoken to or I'll charge you with contempt. Is that clear?"

"Yeah," he said. "It's clear, Your Honor."

The prosecutor then led the court through a chronology of the events of the day in question. When the deputies were forced to call of their pursuit of the Maserati out of concern for the safety of the residents of Lake Forest (Matt opened his mouth at this point to shout out an angry dispute of the claim that they'd "called off" the pursuit, but Perceville managed to silence him by kicking him in the shin) they sent other units to the registered owner's address to ascertain whether or not Mr. Tisdale was home. When the household staff stated that Mr. Tisdale was not, in fact, home at the moment, the deputies requested entry to the house in order to establish this as fact. The servant did consensually allow the deputies to enter the residence where, in plain view, they found large quantities of cocaine and marijuana. This formed the basis for the search warrant, which, in turn, led to the discovery of almost an ounce of cocaine and a pound of high grade marijuana in the defendant's safe.

It was during this portion of the hearing that Perceville proved his worth. This testimony was offered to the court by the patrol officer — a deputy named Michael Worthington — who had made the discovery of the cocaine and the marijuana in the house.

"Tell me something, Officer Worthington," Perceville said on cross-examination of the witness. "What was your purpose in asking for consent to enter Mr. Tisdale's residence on that night?"

"As I told Mr. Sparks on direct," he said. "We were attempting to establish whether or not Mr. Tisdale was at home."

"So your purpose of gaining entry was to find out if Mr. Tisdale was home?"

"Yes," Worthington said.

"And during the course of this examination of the house," Perceville went on, "you noticed a silver bowl sitting on the coffee table in the entertainment room of the house?"

"Yes I did."

"Was the bowl covered with a lid of any sort?"

"There was a lid on it," Worthington agreed.

"And could you see through this lid and determine what the contents of the bowl were?"

"No," Worthington said. "I could not."

"So you had to remove the lid to this bowl in order to visualize the 'fine white powder, resembling cocaine' you testified to earlier?"

"Yes, I did," Worthington said.

"What made you decide to open this bowl, Officer Worthington?" Perceville asked. "You were there to find Mr. Tisdale, were you not? Did you think it possible he might be hiding in that bowl?"

"No," Worthington said, already seeing where this was going. "I did not think he was hiding in the bowl. The reason I opened it is because, in my experience, such bowls are commonly used to store illicit drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. I had reasonable suspicion to believe there might be such a substance inside. As it turned out, I was correct."

"Was there any reason, at this point in the investigation, to believe that illegal drugs played any part in the traffic violations that had brought you to that residence in the first place?"

"Well... no," Worthington admitted. "There wasn't."

Perceville then questioned him about the marijuana bowl, which had been found across the room from the cocaine bowl. He used the same line of inquiry and got the same answers. The bowl was covered with a lid, the contents were not visible while the lid was on, the container was too small for Mr. Tisdale to hide in, and Worthington had to remove the lid in order to discover the contents.

"Thank you, Officer Worthington," Perceville said, nodding at him. "I have no further questions."

The prosecutor could certainly see where Perceville was going with this. He did a redirect examination of Officer Worthington and went into great detail about his training, experience with drugs and drug storage devices, and whether or not Worthington had ever seen such containers used for anything other than drug storage.

The damage, however, had already been done. The prosecutor finished up his presentation by calling two of the deputies who had fought with Matt while taking him into custody. Perceville did not even cross-examine them. The prosecution rested its case and turned the floor over to the defense.

"I request," Perceville told Judge Waters, "an evidentiary hearing on the admissibility of the cocaine and marijuana found in Mr. Tisdale's residence."

"On what grounds?" asked Judge Waters, although she already knew on what grounds.

"Officer Worthington and the other Orange County sheriff's deputies entered Mr. Tisdale's residence under the rule of consensual search. The scope of this search was to ascertain whether or not Mr. Tisdale was in residence at the time. Officer Worthington has testified that he opened sealed containers on Mr. Tisdale's furniture, containers in which he could not determine the contents through visualization and that were too small to reasonably conceal the object of the search — namely Mr. Tisdale himself. The opening of these containers constitutes a blatant Fourth Amendment violation and the contents should therefore be ruled inadmissible under the Exclusionary Rule. Furthermore, the larger amounts of cocaine and marijuana found in Mr. Tisdale's safe should also be ruled inadmissible under the Fruit Of The Poisonous Tree Rule, in that the warrant used to search Mr. Tisdale's house stemmed directly from the illegal search and seizure of the smaller amounts of cocaine in the bowls on his tables."

Judge Waters nodded thoughtfully. She looked at the prosecutor. "Counselor?" she asked. "I assume you have objection to Mr. Maywood's request?"

"Yes I do, Your Honor," he said. "Officer Worthington and the other deputies entered Mr. Tisdale's residence by consent of the housekeeping staff. It is true that their purpose inside there was to determine whether or not Mr. Tisdale was home and not to look for evidence of narcotic possession. However, Officer Worthington, being an experienced law enforcement professional, was able to recognize that the small silver bowls on Mr. Tisdale's tables were of the type commonly used to store drugs and drug paraphernalia. Officer Worthington has, in fact, testified that he has never seen such bowls used for anything but the storage of drugs and drug paraphernalia. It was therefore quite reasonable for him to open the bowls and examine the contents. He had reasonable suspicion that those bowls, which were in plain view and therefore covered under The Plain View doctrine, would contain illicit substances."

"Rebuttal, Mr. Maywood?" asked Waters.

"Indeed," Perceville said. "I will return to the fact that Officer Worthington was in Mr. Tisdale's house for the sole purpose of determining whether or not Mr. Tisdale was there. Despite what Officer Worthington's training and experience dictate, there was absolutely no reason for him to go opening sealed containers that were too small to harbor the five-foot eleven, one hundred and eighty-three pound man they were searching for. It doesn't matter that, in Officer Worthington's experience, such bowls typically contain drugs. As a California peace officer and representative of the government, he had no right to start opening Mr. Tisdale's belongings."

"All right then," Waters said after hearing this. "I find there is enough question about this matter for me to schedule an evidentiary hearing. We'll reconvene in two weeks and hash this all out then."

With a pound of her gavel, the preliminary hearing was put on hold.

Despite the legal troubles hanging over Matt and the distinct possibility that he might be incarcerated or pending trial on January 15, the day the tour was supposed to kick off, the band continued to put the production together as if they would be going ahead with it. They formulated a play list for the concert and began to put together what little choreography they imbibed in as far as lighting and stage set-up went. The production crew designed and built the stage and lighting sets they would be using and then went about the process of training the roadies to set it up and tear it down. Jake was set up with several language experts who would teach him to deliver his between song banter in whatever the native language of the venue happened to be. It was planned for Jake to learn several different phrases in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, German, French, Dutch, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

"Those foreigners love that crap," Crow assured him when the plan was announced. "They'll eat it up."

"Right," Jake said, thinking that his accent was going to sound horrible and that there was a distinct possibility he'd screw up at some point and either mix up his phrases, misspeak a word, or, worst of all, use the wrong language in one of the countries. He could imagine telling his Amsterdam audience how great it was to be there in Norwegian or Swedish. Nevertheless, he agreed to the language lessons and vowed to do his best.

On November 22, the day after Matt's preliminary hearing, the entire touring stage and lighting set was assembled for the first time in Intemperance's rehearsal warehouse. It looked familiar to them and that was for good reason. With only a few minor changes and upgrades, it was the same stage they played on during the recent It's In The Book tour. The roadies set up all of the band's equipment, amplifiers, effects pedals, and instruments and wired them into a soundboard. That was when Nerdly took over command of the operation. He was the one who dialed in their sound for each venue. His now-constant companion, Sharon Cohen, was at his side as he directed each band member to play this or that on their respective instrument or to sing into their microphone.

"He seems in a better mood today, doesn't he?" Jake asked Matt while Nerdly worked on Coop's drum set.

"Yeah," Matt said, puffing on a cigarette and taking an occasional sip from a glass of iced tea. "He actually had a conversation with me when we got here. And I haven't heard him whine a single time about having to go traipsing around the Eastern Hemisphere for four intercoursing months."

"You think he just learned to accept it?" Jake asked.

"No," Matt said. "I think that one of two things is going on here. He either thinks I'm going to be convicted and thrown in the joint so he won't have to go..."

"That's possible," Jake said. "It doesn't sound quite right though. Remember, he was still being a little bitch to us the last week or so, and that's when it really looked like you were gonna end up in the slam."

"Exactly," Matt said. "Which is why I think it's the second possibility that's actually going on."

"What's the second possibility?" Jake asked.

"Matt!" shouted Sharon from over at the soundboard. She was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and an extra-large sweater. A UCLA baseball cap was perched on her head.

"What?" Matt yelled back.

"Bill wants you to play a few riffs through the number one effects pedal."

"Aye aye," Matt said, snapping a mock salute at her. He snuffed out his cigarette and picked up a guitar pick. With his left foot, he stomped down on the first of the four effects pedals that were arrayed beneath his microphone stand. His chair was situated so he didn't even have to get out of it. "Coming at you!" he yelled at the direction of the soundboard. He then played a few repetitions of the main riff for Living By The Law, which utilized that particular effect primarily. The sound blasted out of the amplifiers, filling the small warehouse with heavy metal sound.

Sharon made a throat-cutting gesture and Matt stopped mid-riff, restoring silence after the briefest feedback whine.

"Hold there for a second," Sharon yelled at him. "He's gonna adjust the treble and tune down the volume a little bit."

"Fuckin' A," Matt said, setting the guitar back down in his lap. He looked at Jake. "The second possibility," he told him, "is standing over there next to Nerdly on the soundboard. I think he's playing hide the Vienna sausage with her now."

"Well... yeah," Jake said. "It's pretty obvious that something is going on between them. They're together every minute now and they go out almost every night from what I understand. But that's been going on for weeks too. Why would he suddenly get in a good mood today when he's been banging her weeks?"

"I'm not sure, exactly," Matt admitted. "I'm pretty sure it has something to do with her though."

Jake simply shrugged. When it came right down to it, he didn't really care what it was that put Nerdly in a better mood, he was just glad that something had. Being shunned and held in contempt by one's oldest friend was never a fun thing. And when the friend in question was in the running for King of the Nerds, it was even worse.

They dialed in the effects pedals on Matt's guitar one by one — the process taking the better part of thirty minutes. Nerdly and Sharon then started working on Charlie's bass — which he'd just finished cleaning and sterilizing with disinfectant-soaked wipes. Charlie's bass had been wiped down so many times with these wipes that the finish on it was now faded, bleached, and completely ruined in several places.

"Hey, guys," he told Matt and Jake, "did I tell you about the new sponsor I'm signing with for the tour?"

"Pauline said you were getting an endorsement from some animal rights group," Jake said.

"That's right," Charlie said. "They're called HAITA — Humans Against the Immoral Treatment of Animals. They've invited me to be a member of their organization and a spokesperson because of my opposition to eating meat and my promotion of the vegetarian lifestyle."

"What the fuck's up with that shit, freak boy?" Matt asked. "I thought you were a vegetarian because you were afraid of tapeworms and trichinosis."

"I am," Charlie said. "But HAITA doesn't care about that — or at least they don't know about it. They're giving me eighty thousand dollars a tour to put a HAITA sticker on my bass and to do a few magazine spots for them. I get their monthly newsletter for free too."

"Aren't they the freaks that sneak people inside slaughterhouses so they can film the fuckin' cows getting killed?" Matt asked.

Charlie shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "They didn't say nothin' about that."

"That's them," Jake said. "They think we should all stop eating meat of all kind because the animals don't like it."

"Fuck the animals," Matt said. "If they didn't want us to eat them, then they should've evolved better."

"They don't think people should fish either," Jake said. "They say the fish feels too much pain when you catch it."

"No fishing?" Matt nearly screamed. "Because the fish feel pain? That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of."

"They do have a good point there, Matt," Charlie advised. "Fish do have a fully intact and functioning nervous system. It stands to reason that they feel pain when you hook them."

"Do they feel pain when a fucking grizzly bear hooks them out of the water and eats them alive?" Matt asked. "At least I kill the motherfuckers before I eat them. Do they want to have guards standing by at the rivers to keep the bears away from the fish? And then what happens to the bears? Now they're fucking starving."

"Uh... well, I think they look at that as more of nature thing," Charlie said. "They think that humans no longer need to eat animals to survive."

"Are you preaching to me, freak boy?" Matt said menacingly. "Don't you dare start telling me what kind of fucking food I should be eating."

"No," Charlie said, terrified, "I wasn't..."

"You start preaching animal rights to me," Matt said, "and I'm gonna go down to Cabo, catch a two hundred pound marlin, bring it back here alive, and then shove the whole fucking thing up your ass."

"No, really," Charlie said. "I'm just doing it for the money. I swear."

"You fuckin' better be," Matt said.

"Charlie!" Sharon yelled over. "Give us a rhythm on the bass so we can dial you in!"

"Right," Charlie said, standing up and moving as far away from Matt as he could get. He began to thump out the rhythm to It's In The Book.

"Fucking HAITA," Matt mumbled, shaking his head. "Just when you think that asshole can't get any freakier."

"Yeah," Jake agreed. "He's a few grams short of an ounce all right, but listen to him play that bass. He's fuckin' magic with it."

"Yeah," Matt said sourly. "He's all right. I still can't wait until Darren gets strong enough to come back."

Jake said nothing to this. Whether or not Darren would ever be able to return to the band was still quite in question. Though he had recovered his ability to walk and move and even lift things, he remained dreadfully weakened by the aftereffects of the botulism toxin on his muscles and nervous system. He had very little endurance for any kind of exertion, generally tiring out after less then ten minutes of repetitious activity. He was going to physical therapy to try to regain his strength, but over the past two months it was reported that he was skipping out on many of his sessions and leaving early from the ones he did go to. He seemed to be locked into the grip of a major depression and there was some circumstantial evidence that he was abusing alcohol and prescription pain pills again.

"Jake!" Sharon yelled. "Give us some guitar with effects pedal two so we can see how it mixes with the bass."

"Yes, ma'am," Jake said, stomping down on pedal two beneath his microphone stand, the pedal that put his guitar into acoustic mode. "Play something mellow, Charlie," he said. "There ain't any acoustic in Book."

"Oh... right," Charlie said. He switched to the rhythm for Point Of Futility and Jake played the backing guitar until Sharon told him to stop.

In all, it took more than two hours until Nerdly and Sharon reached the point where Matt and Jake had to tell them that enough was enough.

"The sound is good, Nerdly," Jake said. "Why don't we try playing a couple of songs now?"

"Are you sure?" Nerdly asked from the soundboard. "I think if I tweaked a little more on the main strings section and played with the low end on the rhythm, I might be able to..."

"Just get your ass over here and sit down behind the piano!" Matt yelled. "Enough is fucking enough."

"Well... all right," Nerdly said. He was unoffended by Matt's outburst. After so many years, it was pretty much the norm.

The planned opening song for the tour was Can't Chain Me, from the It's In The Book album. They did a run through of the song as they normally performed it. Since they were out of practice, they had to stop and restart twice because of mistakes. The first was when Coop played the wrong drum intro to the second verse. The second was when Jake started mixed up the words and put the first half of the second verse in the place usually reserved for the second half of the first verse.

"You ever notice," Matt asked the band at large, "that Jake never fucks up his songs? He only fucks up my songs."

"I could fuck up a couple of mine if it would make you feel better," Jake replied.

The third time was a charm and they went through the tune flawlessly. They then had a discussion about whether they should play it just like that or if they should alter the opening or the closing in some way in order to fit the situation.

"We gotta have some kind of different opening," Jake said. "It's the first song of our first international tour. This is the first time that most of these people will have ever seen us live. We can't just walk out on stage and start playing."

"Why the fuck not?" asked Matt, the die-hard traditionalist.

"I think we should start with a pre-recorded intro track," Nerdly suggested. "Maybe something like the 2001 Space Odyssey theme. Play it all the way through while the stage is dark and then, when the last note fades out, the lights come on and we launch immediately into the main riff."

"Start the tune with the main riff?" Coop asked. "You want to skip the intro completely?"

"Why not?" Nerdly asked. "It'll be revolutionary."

"We ain't using no fuckin' pre-recorded tracks," Matt said. "You can just scrap that idea right now."

"I don't think cutting the intro to the song is a real good idea either," Jake said. "The Chain Me intro is very distinctive and very hard-driving. A lot of the fans will be pissed if we don't play it. We can expand it to give us more of an opening flourish, but we can't cut it."

"You guys never like my ideas," Nerdly pouted.

"We like your good ones, Nerdly," Matt said. "This just ain't one of 'em."

After another ten minutes of discussion, they decided to alter the intro into something with a gradual build-up in both volume and intensity.

"We start with something simple," Jake said. "A little five note progression, medium tempo. Something like this." He started to strum out a rhythm on his guitar, five notes, over and over. One... two... three, four, five. One... two... three, four, five. He did this six or seven times and then looked at Charlie with irritation. "Feel free to jump in here anytime, Charlie."

"Oh... right," Charlie said. He began fingering his bass strings, quickly picking up the rhythm Jake was setting.

"And then I can come in with effects three distortion," Matt said.

"Right," Jake said. "The same distortion level as the tune."

Matt started to play sharp, choppy notes at the same tempo as Jake. It was a classic rock intro piece.

"We can keep the lights down during this part," Jake said. "They'll be up just enough for the audience to see our silhouettes. Coop, now you can come in with tom strikes on the changeover."

Coop did that a few times. "I could gradually work up to double strikes," he suggested.

"Let's hear it," Matt said.

They heard it and liked it.

"Nerdly," Jake said. "Start throwing in some random piano accompaniment."

Nerdly did so and it was good.

"It would be better, Jake," said Matt, "if you put your guitar on effects three, just like mine. We'll do it in synch until we get to Nerdly's piano part. After that, you keep up the rhythm and I'll start putting in some solo bits."

"Okay," Jake said, liking the sound of that. "Let me switch over." He stomped down on pedal three, changing the sound of his guitar. Matt matched the tempo with him and, while Nerdly threw in his random piano pieces, Matt began to solo using long, drawn-out notes and moderate tempo fingering on the strings.

"Yeah," Coop said, hitting his toms again. "I like it so far."

"Now let's start to pick up the tempo," Matt said. "Gradual progression. Freak boy, you take the lead on it and Jake and Nerdly will keep up. Coop, as it speeds up, start to give us more toms and some bass drum."

"And then," Jake said, "when we start to get closer to the climax, start giving us constant tom and snare back play."

"Right," Coop said.

They worked on it for more than thirty minutes, stopping and starting, changing and modifying, until finally they had the very basics of a forty-five second intro piece that climbed to a grand climax and ended with a furious drum barrage and a rapid, signature Matt Tisdale guitar solo. The plan from there was to let the last note of the guitar wind down and then turn on the lights and launch into the distinctive main intro for Can't Chain Me.

"So far, so good," Jake said as they silenced their instruments and stretched their arms. "Let's take a break and then work it some more."

"Yeah," Matt agreed. "Isn't it about lunch time?"

"I could go for some chow," Coop said.

"Me too," said Jake.

"Yo! Mrs. Nerdly!" Matt yelled at Sharon, who was standing by at the soundboard with two of the assigned technicians.

"Yeah?" she yelled back.

"How about you do what you interns do best and go get us some fuckin' sandwiches?"

"You don't have to talk to her like that, Matt," Nerdly said, frowning.

"I gotta be me," he said. "So how about it? What's everyone want?"

They all gave their orders to Sharon, who wrote them down carefully and then accepted a one hundred dollar bill from Jake to pay for them.

"Bring us back some beer too," Matt said. "By the time we're done today I'm gonna need a few."

"You aren't supposed to be drinking, Matt," Jake said. "They could rescind your bail if you get caught."

"Who's gonna catch me?" he asked. "You didn't really think I was gonna stop drinking just because some pansy-ass black robed bitch told me not to, did you?"

"No, I guess I didn't," Jake said.

"What kind of beer do you want?" Sharon asked meekly.

"Corona," Matt said. "And get some limes too."

She wrote this down. "Will a twelve pack be enough?" she asked.

Matt, Jake, and Coop all burst into laughter at her question.

"What?" she asked.

"You'd better get three twelve packs," Nerdly told her.

She looked at him for a moment to see if he was kidding. After a moment, she determined that he wasn't. "Okay then," she said. "Three twelve packs of Corona and some limes."

"And ice," Matt said. "I can't stand warm beer."

"Right," she said. "And ice."

She left the warehouse, closing the door behind her.