New Dark Ages Read online

  Danny Lett was wrapping up. “And what does the future hold for the Hot Nasties and the Punk Rock Virgins on their first big tour?”

  “Satan worship, midgets, and untold millions for our Shit from Hell concept album!” I said, to general laughter.

  X stood and headed upstairs to get Luke and Eddie.

  CHAPTER 20

  Detective Pete Schenk looked at FBI special agent ­Theresa Laverty intently. “You were right,” he said, deadpan. “This place has the best fucking burger in SoHo.”

  They both laughed.

  “Told you so,” Laverty said, pleased that she knew something about Schenk’s neighborhood that he didn’t. “Now, a bit of business.”

  Fanelli’s had almost filled up with the lunch crowd — a weird mélange of fashion models, retail clerks, ­photographers, construction workers, and New York City transit workers — and the place was hopping. ­Laverty looked in the direction of the bartender, ­Tommy, and when she caught his eye, gave a discreet nod. If he noticed it, he gave no sign.

  Thirty seconds later, Tommy was at their table, ­clearing their plates and utensils. “In the back,” he said quietly, not looking either of them in the eye.

  Ten minutes later, they were in Fanelli’s back room, behind the thick black curtain. Schenk looked around. All but a couple of the overhead lights were off, but he could see it was an overflow area for the restaurant. Tiny rectangular tables were up against one wall, covered by the same checkered tablecloths; along the other wall, stacks of chairs. Laverty took down three of the chairs and placed them by a window spanning Mercer Street. She sat down and indicated that Schenk should do likewise.

  After a few minutes, Tommy slipped into the room. The bartender looked to be in his sixties, with a ­receding gray hairline, high cheekbones, ­inexpressive mouth, and downcast eyes. He was a big guy. Not an ounce of fat on him, well over six feet. His gait and posture suggested military or police service. He wasn’t young ­anymore, but something about Tommy ­suggested that he was … tough.

  It was his hands that gave him away. On both, some of the knuckles — the metacarpals — were simply missing: boxer’s fractures, caused when a clenched fist hits an immovable object. The knuckles had been pushed back into the tops of Tommy’s hands. Tommy had been a fighter in the past. And, on Tommy’s face, around the eyes and the mouth, tiny scarring could be seen.

  “So,” Laverty said. “This is my friend Tommy. That’s what everyone calls him, but it probably isn’t his real name.”

  His real name wasn’t going to be forthcoming, either. He shook hands with Schenk and the two big men sat, knees almost touching, as Laverty quietly told Schenk Tommy’s story. Tommy’s expression did not change through any of it.

  Tommy, she explained, was from Bosnia, a Serb. His family had been monarchs, but had lost everything to war and the Nazis. His mother fled to the United States after his father was assassinated by an Ustaše death squad. They arrived in New York City penniless and unable to speak any English. Tommy’s mother started to clean the houses of rich New Yorkers, and — when things were very tight — toilets at bars in and around the Houston. She cleaned the toilets at Fanelli’s, too, Laverty said. She would bring Tommy, from the time he was a toddler, with her, because she had no relatives in New York and a babysitter was out of the question.

  The boy was getting big, like his father had been, and he was also getting into fights at school. He was a poor student, although he excelled at languages and writing short stories. He was also good with his fists.

  Exasperated, his mother took Tommy to a place on Bleecker Street where she thought he would learn to put his hands to better use.

  He did; he learned to box. Though wiry and lanky, he soon gained a reputation for viciousness in the ring. He was faster than anyone his age and he had an ability to identify an opponent’s weaknesses in seconds. He started to win titles around the city and seemed destined for great things — until he was seventeen, that is, when his mother was murdered in a mugging that went wrong.

  The day after her funeral — attended by Tommy, a Serbian Orthodox priest, and two dozen other cleaning ladies of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds — Tommy walked into the FBI field office in Federal Plaza and said he wanted to be recruited. The two agents at reception looked at the wiry boy with a black eye and laughed. “What can you do?” they asked him. “How old are you?”

  “I can fight,” Tommy told them, and then proceeded to relate his age and a list of his boxing titles in a dozen different languages. The agents stopped laughing.

  Eventually, Tommy’s language skills, and his quickness — on his feet and with his mind — propelled him toward counterintelligence at the bureau. There, he excelled and was posted to U.S. embassies and consulates across Eastern Europe, Asia, and South America. His particular area of expertise, Laverty said, was embedding and extracting “assets.” He was the best at whisking defectors to safety in the U.S. or placing agents in the institutions of foreign governments. No one ever got killed in any of Tommy’s operations.

  He’d kept boxing, too, and taught hundreds of agents how to do so over the years. “I’m one of them,” Laverty said, smiling for the first time. “Tommy said I’m mean in the ring.” Tommy, big arms folded, grunted but said nothing.

  The post–World War era presented a new kind of threat, Laverty continued. Extremist groups in the United States were proliferating — groups that wanted to import Europe’s conflicts into North America. These groups were prepared to take up arms and commit acts of treason against their own country. They were found on the Far Right and the Far Left, and they reminded Tommy of what his mother had said about the fascists in the Ustaše death squad who had killed his father. Tommy was reassigned.

  “We know many of these groups are no real threat,” Laverty said. “They talk tough, but they don’t ever do much. They’re a pain in the ass, but that’s about it — the price of having a free society, and all that. But a few groups, mainly on the right, are now well funded, well trained, and deadly serious. And they have big, big plans.” She paused. “And the Church of the Creator is at the top of that list.”

  CHAPTER 21

  We were up in Canada again. Our lodgings in Ottawa were officially called the Beacon Arms. In the local punk scene, however, the hotel — a dump of biblical proportions — was referred to as “the Broken Arms.” It was on a busy street in downtown Ottawa, not far from the hangout for all of the Canadian congressmen or senators or whatever they’re called.

  It was at a pay phone near their Parliament Hill that I finally reached FBI special agent Theresa Laverty. She was back in New York City and I had been patched through to her by the FBI field office in Fort Myers.

  “Special Agent Kurt Blank reporting for duty,” I said, once Laverty was on the line. “No bodies to report, ma’am.”

  Laverty laughed a bit. “That is correct,” she said. “I can confirm that the RCMP and Canadian police agencies are saying the same thing.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said. “But are you any closer to figuring out who killed Johnny Raindrops and the tranny in New York, or … uh … the guy from here?”

  Shit, I thought. I’d forgotten the Ottawa guy’s name. I’d talked to him at the Barrymore’s gig and I’d already forgotten his fucking name.

  That was speed for you.

  “Nuclear Age …”

  “That’s it,” I said, remembering. “Nuclear Age. Nothing new in his case?”

  “Nothing,” Laverty said. I thought I could hear an announcer’s voice in the background.

  “He was a nice guy,” I told her. “We talked about the Ottawa scene and politics in Canada. He was real­ly interested in politics, I remember. I think politics are super boring, but he actually made it sound interesting.”

  “Politics is certainly interesting here this year,” Laverty said.

  “Yeah. How is that fascist fucker Earl Turner doing, anyway?”

  “Officially, I’m not permitted to have p
olitical views,” Laverty said dryly. “But unofficially, I can say that he is doing quite well, unfortunately. He was at the bottom of the primary pack, and now he’s near the front. His ads are working, apparently.”

  “I guess you know about our former friend Danny.”

  “Yes, I know about him,” she said. “His transformation has been pretty … surprising. I understand that a reporter from Portland has been asking questions about his involvement. Also about how Turner is raising funds.”

  I didn’t ask Laverty how she knew about all that. Were the feds tapping reporters’ phones? Was the FBI spying on Earl Turner?

  Working for him, more likely.

  “Yeah, that’s this guy named Ron McLeod,” I said. “We know him.”

  “He was the one who did that profile of you and your friend X last year, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s him,” I said. “It was stupid. We didn’t want him to write about us, but he did anyway. Reporters suck.”

  “No argument here,” Laverty said, then paused a long time. “How are you doing, Kurt?”

  I knew what she was talking about, but I pretended I didn’t. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure, thanks.”

  There was another long pause. The phone line crackled. Behind me, a bus full of Japanese tourists had pulled up onto Parliament Hill. I heard a second muffled announcement over the phone line.

  “Kurt, I don’t want to pry,” she said cautiously. “But as someone who has struggled in the past with those same demons — and always will — I am simply concerned.”

  “I appreciate the concern,” I said, trying not to sound impatient. “I really do, Agent Laverty. But it’s under control. I’m not a speed freak, and I’m still happily in the closet, and everything is fine. Really.”

  This was total bullshit, of course. I was doing way too much of the stuff, and I had started to wonder if I was going to crash and burn. And I was very pissed about being in the closet to all but a few people.

  But I didn’t feel like acknowledging that Theresa Laverty was right. So I tried to steer the conversation to another subject.

  “You had mentioned that fucked-up Nazi church group to X and me, when we met at Gary’s,” I said. “Are they still part of your investigation?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution permits freedom of speech, and freedom of religious expression in particular,” she said, unenthusiastically. “The FBI is not permitted to investigate a group or individual simply because they use extreme or offensive language.”

  “With great respect, Agent Laverty,” I said, “I think we both know that is total bullshit. I even remember from history class at Portland Alternative High School that your boss, that Hoover asshole, wiretapped minor­ities and communists and gays all the time, so he could blackmail them and destroy them.”

  “Hoover is dead. He hasn’t been our director for years, since 1972,” Laverty said. I suspected she was recalling her own efforts to keep her sexual orientation a secret while working at the gay-hating FBI. “And, in fact, some of us wonder whether Hoover was gay himself.”

  “Yeah? Well, if that’s true, he was a self-hating sick fuck,” I said. “And it’s that kind of shit that makes it hard for most of us to trust cops.” I paused. “And it makes it easier for sick bastards to get away with killing the three kids who came to our shows in New York and here in Ottawa—”

  “I know, Kurt,” she said, cutting me off. “I agree, believe me. I have a very progressive boss in Fort Myers, and I believe that is why I was assigned to this case.”

  I didn’t say anything. Had I made a mistake in trusting this FBI agent? Maybe she had just hinted to me she was gay and a former substance abuser to get my trust and suck me in, you know? X and Patti Upchuck had been worried when I befriended Laverty, and maybe they were right. I waited.

  Theresa Laverty seemed to sense all this. “Kurt,” she finally said, “I have taken a considerable risk in speaking to you as I am. I think we have some things in common. I want to help. And I, and all of the FBI, want to solve these murders.”

  “Fine,” I said, not totally convinced. “So, what happens next? Ottawa is where one of the murders happened. Should we be concerned?”

  “We don’t think so,” she said, and I could now make out a flight being called in the background. She was at the airport. “But I am at JFK, waiting for a flight to Ottawa. I will be there tonight, along with quite a few undercover RCMP officers.”

  I was surprised. “Is there something we should be concerned about?” I asked her.

  “Until we catch the killer or killers, vigilance is advised,” she said. “I’m sorry, Kurt, I have to go. My flight is boarding.”

  Not helpful.

  The Ron McLeod story about the former punk rocker known as Danny Hate becoming the right-hand guy to Republican primary candidate Earl Turner, that is. Not fucking helpful at all, particularly in the middle of our first big tour as a Stiff Records band.

  “From punk rocker to political shocker: the bizarre story of how one outsider became an insider,” read the headline, taken from the morning’s edition of the Portland Press Herald.

  And then the lede paragraph: “Danny Hate used to keep the beat for Portland punk rockers the Social Blemishes. Now he’s known as Danny O’Heran, and he keeps the trains running on time for a Republican presidential candidate. And that ultra-conservative candidate is everything the ultra-leftist punk movement despises.”

  X’s mom was reading the story to X and me as we gathered around the receiver in my shitty room at the Broken Arms in Ottawa. She’d called us right away, unsure whether the story was a good thing or a bad thing.

  It was a bad thing.

  It went on:

  Danny O’Heran is someone you’ve seen on TV many times, but you probably don’t know his name. O’Heran would probably prefer it that way — his punk rock past is something he’d rather everyone forget. But O’Heran’s presence on the surging Earl Turner campaign is one of the most bizarre political pairings in a season of many bizarre political happenings.

  O’Heran, at just 19, is the personal assistant to Republican presidential candidate Earl Turner. He’s the gatekeeper, the one with the coveted role of who gets to decide who gets to get near Turner on the campaign trail. Everyone interviewed for this story sang his praises, but very few of them knew about his punk rock past. Many were shocked to hear Danny O’Heran used to go by the name Danny Hate.

  Earl Turner isn’t one of them. “Everyone makes mistakes, and the Lord says everyone should be allowed to atone for their sins,” Turner said in an exclusive interview with Associated Press. “Jesus taught us that. Danny started as a volunteer after he had repudiated his godless, leftist punk rock past. And he’s shown us that he’s hardworking, discreet, and smart. He’s left behind all that punk rock insanity, and he’s become an important part of our crusade,” Turner said in an interview at his bustling Portland campaign headquarters.…

  X’s mom asked us if we wanted her to keep reading. We didn’t, but we also did. She kept reading.

  Turner’s deeply religious parents could not be more proud of their son, who is the oldest of six children. Reached at their modest Portland home, the O’Herans were delighted that Danny had joined the Turner campaign and proud that he had been named the GOP candidate’s full-time personal assistant.

  “We are so happy,” said O’Heran’s beaming mother, Edith. “We prayed that he would leave behind all that radical punk nonsense, and God answered our prayers. And Mr. Turner is a great man who wants America to be great.”

  I felt like I was going to puke.

  The O’Herans attend Mass at Portland’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, overlooking Casco Bay. During his rebellious punk rock years, the O’Herans said, their son stopped going to church and started wearing what they called the “weird clothes” favored
by nihilistic punk rockers. He’d given up on God, they said. He fell under the sway of a pair of influential punk rockers who attended Portland Alternative High School with him.

  X’s mom stopped reading. “Are the ‘influential punk rockers’ you and Kurt?” she asked, sounding something between bemused and bothered. “Is that good?”

  X asked her to keep reading.

  Earl Turner changed Danny O’Heran. “Mr. Turner put Danny back on the right path,” Edith O’Heran said. “He saved our boy. God bless him.”

  Danny O’Heran refused multiple requests by AP to comment on this bizarre tale. Like most Turner campaign senior staff — the ones who wear the distinctive triangular Secret Service lapel pin that identify them as individuals who are allowed to get close to the presidential aspirant — O’Heran resisted all attempts to seek on-the-record comment.

  It’s that discretion that persuaded Earl Turner to promote O’Heran, Republican insiders say. And it’s his willingness to do any job — from picking up Turner’s trademark button-down shirts from the dry cleaners, to ferrying Turner to campaign events all over the primary states — that has put O’Heran’s political career on the fast-track, they say.

  “He does whatever Turner tells him to do and he keeps his mouth shut, and that’s why Turner likes him,” said one senior Republican in a rival’s camp. “No one really knew who this kid was, or where he came from. This punk rock thing probably won’t be helpful to Turner. His voters won’t like it.”

  But some observers aren’t so sure. One Republican operative, presently undeclared, notes that Turner has drawn significant support from the evangelical community, who like his attacks on minorities and his willingness to invoke God’s name in every campaign event. Said this senior Republican: “Turner’s base is ultra-religious, and they love a good redemption story. You might say Danny O’Heran got struck by the Turner lightning bolt on the road to political Damascus,” said the Republican, who spoke to AP anonymously. “It’s a great little morality tale, even if it’s bogus. It shows Earl Turner can bring just about anyone over to his side. That’s what Republicans want to hear if they are to retake the White House.”