Chapter One – Bang, Bang. Got Me Good.
Addison Weller pushed open the underground garage access door beneath the
courthouse and glanced over everything before she ushered the Honorable John
Errington through the door ahead of her. The fine hairs on the back of her neck
stood up. She listened and heard only the hum of the industrial heating system,
but a prescient tingle tapped lightly over her spine. Reaching her left hand
inside her jacket, she put the tips of her fingers on the butt of her FN 5.7
pistol. She placed her right hand lightly on the back of the Honorable John
Errington.
A solitary businessman watched them from over the hood of a black sedan
forty feet to their left. Weller noticed he was immaculate in a navy suit,
white shirt, and pale blue tie. His face was smooth and regular as milk, until
he reached inside his jacket. One of his brown eyes darkened and squinted in an
aim as he pulled out a Sig Sauer P299.
Weller drew her heavy FN 5.7 smoothly. Her left forefinger brushed the
safety off as she slid her gun over the crisp linen of her suit vest with a
soft rasp. She tossed her head to clear away a dark brown wisp of hair in her sight-line.
She leveled the gun. Adjusting her own aim to the poor lighting and the lack of
breeze underground, she strained to hear over the adrenaline roaring in her
ears. With one long, sure step forward, she brought her own body between
Errington and the Sig Sauer’s speeding bullet before firing her own weapon.
The two shots fired so quickly that John Errington wondered if he was
dreaming them. For a brief second he thought to protest when Weller pushed him
to the oily ground in front of a black BMW. Then Weller’s stillness rested
heavy on his back, and her weight behind her forearm spread across the back of
his shoulders. He listened carefully to hear her breathing. He heard silence.
“Weller?” Errington shifted his face off the floor just enough to talk.
Under the tunnel of parked cars, he saw a man in a navy suit, arm
outstretched but still holding a smoking gun, and a pool of velvet blood
creeping over the oily floor. The man blinked at Errington as their eyes met,
but the man didn’t make any other movements. Errington watched a sigh fall from
the man’s lips to the floor. He swallowed, and asked again, “Weller?”
Weller’s weight lifted with such speed that Errington was too stunned to
sit up.
He heard the steel door to the garage bang open and lifted his head to
watch Weller wheel around to face the door with her FN 5.7 aimed and ready.
Errington let out a long shaky breath. One of Weller’s team members, the
exceedingly tall one with short brown hair, filled the doorway.
Errington rose to his knees as Weller lowered her weapon, and he heard
her request, “Wimberly, call 911, and then call Jim O’Rourke at the Chicago DSS
field office and tell him we’ve eliminated a hitman. He’ll get the
investigation rolling.”
Errington stood and watched Wimberly nod before leaving to comply with
his boss’s request.
Weller offered a hand up. “Would you like to see if your phone charger is
still in the car now?”
Errington tried to swallow the leaden fear bubbling in his stomach, but
only managed to throw up on the floor between his wingtip shoes.
Chapter Two – Stage Fright, Stage Right.
Shay Greenaura played the guitar like most people played a piano, with
all ten fingers intimately involved. She thought of her guitar as another woman
with a driving pulse that she could bend. The cheers of the seven thousand or
so souls watching her play rushed over and around her like waves washing
against stones at the sound of every clear note she struck. Sweat stung her
eyes and she tossed her head to free the tangle of blond curls sticking to her
forehead. She sang out the closing note and leaned into the tightening of every
muscle in her small body. Her voice broke free and clear beyond the roar of the
crowd for a last, lingering second. Wolf whistles and cheering rolled over the
stage. She was already drunk with the calm, wonderful weariness of giving all
of herself to her passion, her music.
Thirty feet away at
the edge of the stage, a solitary man in a horde of
exuberant women watched Shay touch the hands of her fans and smile at each one
as she walked off the stage. The man eyed the crunchy-granola hippie chick next
to him and decided she would do fine. All
of these liberated, self-righteous women ultimately just want to go home and be
given some order, some direction, to soften the chaos of freedom. He would
seduce her first, as he knew she believed she wanted to be seduced. Then when
she learned to trust him, he would ram order into her with each hammer of his
cock and beat her to the edge of senseless before he silenced her life into
eternal order. He smiled to himself
and smoothed one hand over the Greenaura logo on his T-shirt. He would use the
hippie chick for today. But, one
day...one day soon...Shay Greenaura will be my bitch. That thought made him
hard in his jeans. He caught the blue eyes of the petite blond hippie chick
with a shy nodding smile calculated to earn her interest.
†
Gloved hands pattered on a
keyboard in a dim public library just minutes before closing time on a rainy
Tuesday. A YouTube video of Shay’s latest concert rolled on in a minimized
window, while in a larger desktop window, Shay’s blue eyes crinkled with a grin
in a candid still shot. The photo was a nice close-up of Shay in pajamas, at
home on a winter night, snuggled up on the sofa with her daughter, Iva. The
pleased photographer slashed a warning over the photo in Jack-the-Ripper-horror font, “I
WILL KILL IVA. SLOWLY. SO YOU CAN WATCH.” The photographer saved the
creation to a jump drive, careful to erase the file properties, pocketed the
drive, and erased all history folders before leaving the library.
†
“This is the Chasten Scorn show coming at you live on Talk Time Satellite
Radio. We are all ready to ridicule and beguile Robespierre Greenaura,
bass-guitarist and pansy brother of the infamous liberal dyke singer, Shay
Greenaura. Say hello to the folks, RobO, you know the drill.”
“Hello, world. I’m Rob Greenaura and I can take the Scorn.” RobO flashed
Chasten a wide self-deprecating grin and patted the thinning hair down on the
top of his head.
Chasten shrugged his hoodie smooth over the back of his neck and smiled
broadly. “Then let the games begin. Our first burning question, RobO, is—and we
have done our research, so we do have some dirt—why is your sister quickly
becoming a rich and famous musician with a cause, when you were the first one
with star ambitions?”
“That’s too easy, Chasten. I never had any star ambitions. I just liked
crooning cover songs, and I was floored and amazed that my baby-sister wanted
to play along.”
“Aw, come on, man. Aren’t you even a little jealous that the scrawny
no-name drummer of your Frank Sinatra cover band achieved all of this success
as a singer and a songwriter, while you were stuck tagging along?”
“Well the cover band was mostly for fun anyways. I never expected it to
feed us long-term. Our dad died when I was ten and Shay was four years old, and
our mom wasn’t exactly reliable even before she died, too. So, I’d already been
working as a busboy, and then as a bouncer for several clubs in DC, before I
started trying to sing for more money. Shay had an after-school job, but she
learned to play the drums so we could take home more of the band’s pay.”
“Got tired of ramen noodles?”
RobO chuckled. “Honestly, we got tired of living without power because we
couldn’t pay the utility bills. Even when Shay wasn’t at work, she followed me
to the gigs so she could have air conditioning and light for free for a while each
night.”
“So you took your underage baby sister along to clubs like The Bottom
Line bar for her safety?”
“Ha! No, of course not. Have you met my sister? I took her along for my
safety.”
Chasten laughed boldly at the punchline in a deep rumble that was
obviously playing it up for their listeners. “Point taken, RobO. So you taught
your baby sister to play drums so you could keep her out of trouble and use her
for slave wages?”
“Sort of. She actually taught herself to play drums by watching every
night, I guess. I didn’t have a clue until one night when our regular drummer
got too pissing drunk to stand up and we were about to go on without any drums,
she slipped in behind his kit and started playing.”
“But how did she get from behind the drums to strumming a guitar and
singing then? And how did you end up behind those drums?”
“We were waiting in the alley to go on at some scummy joint above a nice
restaurant one night. Shay picked up Glen’s guitar and sat on his amp fiddling
around with it—just like she did just about every time we waited somewhere, but
that night she started singing along. Some poem she’d been scribbling all over
the back of envelopes and receipts. A more upscale club owner, Jane Karsen,
walked out of the restaurant after dinner and heard Shay singing. She handed
Shay her card and asked us to play an early evening gig at a coffee house she had
just opened called the Daily Grind. Since the time slot allowed us to still
play our regular gig that Friday, we went to the Daily Grind first. Shay and I
played that gig with her singing and me playing the bass guitar. We had to
borrow both guitars from Glen the first few weeks, but then found I found a
three-piece jazz drum kit and an acoustic guitar on sale in some pawn shop.
After that we played any gig we could get anyone to book with either of us
singing lead.”
“The masses just liked your sister best.”
RobO rolled his eyes and shrugged. “No accounting for tastes, heh?”
“What about this
Greenaura crap? Couldn’t you guys make up a better stage name?”
“It’s our name.
Our father gave it to us. All I know is that it means ‘from the village of
Greenaun,’ which is in County Mayo, Ireland. Our father was of Irish descent,
but his family had been here so long, and suffered so many separations, that I
don’t think he knew much more than that. At least, he never told me more than
that.”
“What about your
mother?”
“She was part
Italian and part Polish. She kept a list of family births and deaths in the
front of her bible, but I don’t think she ever knew where or how her own
parents or brothers ended up. I think they gave up on her before we were even
born. I don’t remember any grandparents or uncles or aunts. None of the names
on her list have led to anyone alive so far.”
“You heard that,
world. If you’re related to these shady Greenaura musicians, please let us know.
Maybe RobO will get sentimental and cut you in on the inheritance. Right?”
“Sure thing,
Chasten, we’ll split our whole stock of Irish whiskey and all our bail bonds
with anyone who can show they’re remotely related.”
“Now don’t be so
damned generous, you bastard. Tell us how the hell you got from sleazy clubs in
DC to Chicago in the first place.”
“Well, it’s
really kind of a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
Chasten smirked.
“No, but I’ve gotta ask you to tell it anyway. How else am I going to get a
balding, middle-aged drummer to fill out an hour long show? I’ll interrupt you
when I need to.”
“Okay. You asked
for it.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Our mom died
just a few months after I turned eighteen, but Shay was still only twelve-years
old. Child protective services gave me the choice of assuming guardianship for
Shay, but they advised against it since they didn’t feel I could take care of
myself well enough yet. I opted to let them place Shay into the foster system
for three years until I turned twenty-one and got a little more practice at
raising myself.”
“So you left
your little sister hanging in the wind?”
“Yeah, but in my
defense, I thought I was doing what was best for both of us. It wasn’t until
Shay and I were back together that I realized just how wrong I was.”
“So what
happened?”
“The foster
family Shay was placed with over those three years essentially used her as a
drug mule and beat her into secrecy.”
“Whoa! Holy
Cow!” Chasten’s eyes grew wider. He leaned in toward RobO to listen.
“Yeah, I know.
Unbelievable, right? I had my doubts, too, until Metro PD showed up on our
doorstep one morning to question Shay. The foster parents had been busted for
dealing at a little league baseball game. Based on their subsequent accusations
against Shay, and the evidence they handed over in Shay’s old school back-pack,
the DA was pressing charges against Shay for possession with intent to distribute.”
“So then what? As
far as I know Shay Greenaura has no criminal record.”
“No, she
doesn’t. But it scared the hell out of us since we knew it was her word against
the foster parents’ implications—and we didn’t think that stood much of chance
in convincing any judge. Lucky for us, the public defender worked out a deal. If
Shay agreed to serve as a witness for the DA against the foster parents as
needed, do 500 hours of community service, and serve two years of probation
with active drug counseling, even though she swore she never used any, then the
DA would not press charges.”
“Okay, so how
does that get you from Washington, D.C., to Chicago?”
“Well, Shay
testified and the foster parents were convicted, but then they appealed and the
conviction was overturned on a technicality, not too long after Shay finished
her two years of probation with counseling. We were both afraid the foster
parents would try to cause her some sort of misery in retribution. During the
counseling, Shay saw something about a mission and shelter in Chicago called
Second Start. I started poking around their web site and saw that they
specialized in helping young adults get another start after drug-related
misdemeanors. It seemed like our only real chance out, so we started saving for
two one-way bus tickets to leave.”
“And you gave up
your cover band and your gigs to go?”
“I did give up
the cover band. We couldn’t take the other band members with us, and we didn’t
have any connections in Chicago to restart the band, or knowledge of the club
scene there to arrange any gigs.”
“But?”
“We kept our
pawn-shop instruments. Shay and I played for money every chance we got on the
way to Chicago, and all around the Second Start shelter once we got there. Many
folks at the shelter helped us get paying gigs and promoted our work. Shay is a
natural and it was easy for her star to rise once people could see her perform.
She came out of her shell of fear and insecurity, too, and found a sense of
belonging in the community.”
“Aww. How
rainbow-from-the-ass-ends-of-butterflies lovely is that?”
“Yep. A regular
happy ending. For me, too. I met my wife Sylvia there. Syl had been arrested
for possession of cocaine as a minor before escaping from her rich bitch
parents in the suburbs to the Second Start shelter in downtown Chicago. The
three of us just bonded, and when Syl got a job in the city’s permit offices,
she started networking with vendors who were willing to mentor us all on
promoting our music. Everything worked out for the best.”
“So you’re not miffed about giving up your whole chance at fame and
fortune to look after your sister?” Chasten’s voice played the tonal registers
of false incredulity.
Shaking his head, RobO gave a sheepish grin. “Nope. I just want to keep
my family safe. Shay and Syl experienced so many things because there wasn’t
anyone who cared to keep them safe.”
“Safety is more important than fame and fortune, hey?”
“Yes.”
“But you never get bummed out about it? I don’t believe you.”
RobO half nodded and played with the zipper on his green pleather jacket.
“Well, sure, sometimes. Sometimes I feel I still can’t really keep them safe.
Sometimes I get tired of my brilliant little sister’s talent for change,
evolution, learning, personal growth. Whatever you want to call it. Getting
caught up in all the hubbub associated with that talent can be overwhelming and
tiring at times.”
RobO shrugged out of his jacket and pushed up the shirtsleeve on his left
forearm to reveal his tattoo. He held it up to show Chasten. “That’s why I have
this tattoo that says ‘it is what it is’ right where I can see it when I drum.
I think everything, including change, power, and growth is good in moderation.
Some things you still just have to accept and make the best of. I just have to
accept that I can do more good behind the drums, supporting my sister and
hopefully keeping my family safer, than I can pursuing my own fame and fortune
as a singer. Sometimes what it is should be enough.”
“Jeeze. Deep thoughts by RobO, folks.”
“Yep. It is what it is. Don’t you enjoy being a penny-ante shock DJ, Chasten
Scorn?”
“Oh no, I’m not going to answer that. This isn’t about me. In fact, it’s
time for me to ask you the question that matters most, RobO…what giveaway did
you bring to appease our audience members?”
RobO smiled and reached behind him to pick up a hard-shell guitar case.
“I’ve brought one of Shay’s custom, green-pearl-sparkle,
semi-hollow, body guitars.” He unlatched the case and lifted the guitar out to
show Chasten the sparkle beneath the studio lights.
“Well folks, I’m looking at it right now, and
it is a thing of beauty even if you don’t write lesbian-folk-pop songs. The
first caller who can correctly name RobO’s Frank Sinatra cover band wins.”
†
Shay pushed open the steel exit door a crack and found a score of people
crowding the alley behind the Maddux Theater in St. Paul. She quickly pulled
the door shut again. The cold air fanned in behind her and washed over the
entire sweaty band at her back.
“What’s up?” RobO asked from behind her.
“They alley is lousy with media, fans, and,” she sighed, “protesters.”
She looked at the ratty concrete floor and a dewdrop of sweat beaded down the
edge of her nose to splash against the top of her boot.
“No other exit gets any better, I’m sure.” RobO’s voice was calm and
smooth.
“Let’s just do it.” Fallow, her drummer flexed up and down on the tiptoes
of his green Chuck Taylor’s.
“I’ll go in front.” RobO nudged Shay away from the door.
Shay rubbed her palms over her face and pressed herself close to RobO’s
broad back.
†
The crowds parted around RobO letting him through. After twenty or so
steps, he turned to smile at his sister and found that he could no longer see
her. The crowd around him was looking behind him and shouting.
Hoots of “Shay, over here,” and growls of “Jesus can still save you,
sister” echoed around him. Smartphone cameras flashed. Bodies pushed past him.
The rest of the band was lost in the sea of people. Everyone and
everything sparkled dewy with the night’s humidity.
RobO spotted a small blond head bouncing above the writhing mass of
humanity and turned to push his way back to Shay.
This alley, this venue, the
security isn’t built for this level of recognition. RobO used his arms in a
breaststroke manner to swim through the crowd to rescue his baby sister. I’ll never keep her safe.
 |
| An early cover concept draft. |
