New Dark Ages Read online

  The story went on like that for a while. Wildly inaccurate stuff about the punk movement, Republicans talking about how we were all practically Satanists or Stalinists, sensationalized accounts of what happens at punk gigs in Portland, and — of course — a few paragraphs about how Danny “heroically” survived a pos­sible murder attempt the previous year. The punk rocker had been found barely alive beside the cold waters of Casco Bay, Ron McLeod wrote.

  “After that traumatic event, some said Danny Hate changed. He rejected punk rock and became Danny O’Heran.”

  We thanked X’s Mom and signed off. We both sat on the creaky old bed in my room at the Broken Arms.

  I spoke first. “That isn’t helpful,” I said. “Stiff won’t like it. It makes us look like a joke.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” X said, toying with the zipper on his biker jacket. “It’s worse for Danny.”

  I thought about that, then another thought occurred to me.

  “What about that shit that McLeod wrote, about how the murder attempt changed Danny?” I asked him. “Do you think there’s anything to that?”

  X looked right at me with those uneven pupils, his expression blank. “Last year changed all of us, brother. All of us.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Click. Click. Ring.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, man. How are you?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Well, I could live without some things, but otherwise, okay.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “Whatever. Doesn’t matter. You predicted it.”

  “Doesn’t make it any easier, though.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But it’s necessary, like you said.”

  “Yep.”

  When you’re onstage, it’s actually kind of hard to know what’s going on.

  Behind me was Eddie Igglesden, sitting behind his battered, sticker-covered Tama drum kit. He was banging the shit out of his snare and floor tom, sweating so much that he’d taken off his T-shirt between the last couple songs.

  To my left, as always, was our albino maniac, Luke Macdonald, twitching around the stage like someone had attached jumper cables to his balls. He was wearing cargo shorts, a Red Brigades T-shirt, his Schott biker jacket, and black Converse. He was going at his bass so hard I could see a bit of blood on his Fender Bullet’s pick guard. A madman in a punk rock–induced delirium.

  To my right, Sam Shiller, also bathed in sweat, was lost in the moment. He was wearing skin-tight black Levi’s, cherry-red Docs, his black Perfecto biker jacket, and a T-shirt X had made for him with JEW PUNK emblazoned across the front. His guitar — his only guitar — was a black Les Paul Custom. He had covered it with Democratic Party stickers. Sam was sort-of screaming, sort-of singing backup as we played “Fashion Show” for the fashionable, almost-sold-out Ottawa crowd.

  I, meanwhile, was at the center of the Barrymore’s stage, wearing neon-green bondage pants, yellow Converse, and another T-shirt X had made: EARL TURNER IS A COCKSUCKER, it said, in orange and red spray paint. I also had a porkpie hat on my head, mainly to keep the sweat out of my eyes. At the moment, I was wearing (but not really playing) my hacked-up and much-beloved Fender Stratocaster, covered with Rock Against Racism stickers and Pollock-style paint dribbles.

  Off to the right side of the stage, just behind Barrymore’s curtains, were the Punk Rock Virgins, dancing away. Beside them, carefully eyeing the crowd, was Bembe Smith. Down on Barrymore’s sticky floor, just outside the slam-dancing Ottawa punks, was Mike the bouncer, arms crossed, intently watching for any trouble, too.

  And, behind all of that, beyond the reach of the stage lights, I knew X was at our merch table, likely standing on a chair, watching us and watching for something, anything, to happen.

  Also out there in the dark, I figured, was Theresa Laverty, in designer jeans and a designer jacket, looking like a fashion model who had stepped into Barrymore’s by mistake.

  All around Barrymore’s — by the bar’s sound board guy up on the second level, at the bar on the top level, and scattered here and there throughout the place, leaning up against the faded red velvet and gilt on the walls — were maybe a dozen undercover cops, totally looking like cops who were undercover.

  The Hot Nasties gigs, when they go great, are better than sex. When you’re up there, and playing your songs, there is nothing more epic than pausing during a chorus and hearing a hundred kids you don’t know singing along. That wasn’t happening at the moment, because “Fashion Show” was a new song they hadn’t heard before. But the Canadian kids had shouted back the words on “Secret of Immortality” and “I Am a Confused Teenager,” and it made me feel like I was ten fucking feet tall.

  Hey everyone, would you look at me

  Or at least at what I’m supposed to be

  Anything this, is it anything new?

  Frustrated, confused, and acne, too …

  I didn’t have acne so much anymore. One helpful side effect of speed, for me at least, was it cleared up unsightly acne blemishes. But frustrated I was, aplenty.

  We were halfway through the song when I spotted some unusual movement to the left of the stage, at the perimeter of the pit of swirling, surging punks. A flash of fabric and limbs and, in seconds, X was at the center of it, with Mike and Bembe not far behind.

  We kept playing, but we could sort of see a trio of three mesomorphs with close-cropped blond hair, tight white shirts, and hairless faces twisted into sneers. They had attacked two guys who had been holding hands near the front and singing along to the older songs. The two were now cowering and trying to shield their faces from their attackers’ blows.

  X was on the three guys instantly. They were bigger than him and he was outnumbered, but X was un­deterred. He was hitting them, hard.

  At this point, most of the crowd was watching the fight. The Barrymore’s security and the various undercover cops were pushing through the punks at the foot of the stage. We stopped playing.

  I was about to take off my guitar when X whirled around and caught my eye. He shook his head and held up his hand. Stay where you are, he was saying. We’ve got this.

  And they did. In less than a minute, X and Mike had the three big bastards on the ground, and the under­cover cops were whipping out handcuffs.

  The three weren’t Nazi skinheads. They were straight edge guys, I learned later. They apparently “disapproved of the gay lifestyle,” some Ottawa guy told me backstage after the gig.

  “It’s not a fucking lifestyle,” I replied. “It’s our fucking life.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Tommy walked with his old Labrador, Sloane. Pete Schenk walked beside him.

  “That’s it,” Tommy quietly said, nodding in the direction of the nondescript, low-slung building on Kenmare Street, at the point where Center and Lafayette Streets met. “Don’t stare at it.”

  Tommy and Sloane and Schenk were at the tiny triangular parkette. The NYPD detective, who looked too much like an NYPD detective for Tommy’s liking, glanced across at 114 Kenmare Street. There was no sign of life. The dry-cleaning business — Lighthouse Cleaners — was at street level, with a couple signs in the tinted windows: WE GET YOUR SHIRTS WHITE and WE CAN CLEAN ANYTHING.

  “Cute suboptimal messages there,” Schenk said.

  Schenk meant to say “subliminal,” but Tommy didn’t correct him. “Yeah,” he said, as Sloane sniffed the overflowing trash cans, filled by the previous night’s revelers.

  “They think they’re clever.”

  And they were, at least compared to other hate groups. The others drew too much attention with their cross burnings and their ridiculous homemade Nazi and Klan uniforms. The Creators were more careful. They blended in.

  Their New York City meeting place was for “the faithful” — that’s what the area’s Church of the Creator hard-core called themselves, Laverty had said. Its mission was as ironic as the signs in the windows at Lighthouse Cleaners. The Church of the Creator, Laverty had explained to S
chenk as Tommy listened, didn’t believe in God or Christ.

  In fact, she had said, the Creators dismissed Jesus Christ as a loser, a failure. “A Jewish homo nailed to a tree,” is what the Church of the Creator called him. “A made-up ghost story.” If Jesus had really been the messiah, the Creators believed, he’d never have surrendered and allowed himself to be executed. “They think only losers get captured in war,” Laverty had said. “They don’t ever surrender.”

  To the Creators, she explained, race is their religion. Their founder, Bernhardt Klassen, had written up sixteen “commandments,” all of which asserted that whites are nature’s finest — and that their enemies are what Klassen called “Jews, niggers, and mud races.” Mud races, Laverty explained, are also non-whites. They are called that because they are literally dirt to Klassen and his followers.

  As far as the FBI knew, Klassen had never traveled to 114 Kenmare Street. It was too risky — and, besides, he generally preferred to stay in Otto, North Carolina, where the population was overwhelmingly white.

  Schenk and Tommy followed Sloane around Cleveland Place, looking like just any other older gay couple out walking their dog through SoHo. Schenk continued to assess the dry-cleaning place without being too obvious about it.

  “What’s with the name Lighthouse? That mean anything?” Schenk asked.

  “Yeah,” Tommy grunted. “Lighthouse, Florida, is where Klassen founded the Church of the Creator.” He paused. “They also see themselves as the light in the darkness. Shit like that.”

  Schenk shook his head. “So, they don’t ever meet upstairs?” he asked, voice low.

  “Never,” Tommy said, his eyes on Sloane. “Too risky. They’re paranoid. Like I told you, they have a lot more room downstairs. No possibility of being seen. And only the ordained ministers and the security legion get to go down there. The ones trained and approved by Klassen personally.”

  Tommy had told Schenk that at the back of the tiny dry-cleaning business, there was a metal door painted the same drab color as the walls. The door had no handle. When a Creator “minister” came into the dry cleaner carrying a set number of shirts, the burly young man behind the counter would press a buzzer under the counter to open the door. The visitor would slip downstairs and the metal door would clang shut behind him, Tommy had said. Blueprints attached to old New York City building permits described a long flight of stairs into what was effectively a sprawling dungeon beneath Kenmare Street.

  Still watching Sloane, Tommy continued, “It used to be a wine cellar during Prohibition times. They have room down there to accommodate dozens of Creators for days at a time. We think they’ve stored lots of food and water down there, and we think they’ve got enough guns to outfit an army.”

  “How do they get out without being seen?”

  “Klassen basically owns the entire block through a Delaware numbered company. And there’s hidden exits onto Broome, Lafayette, and Center Streets,” Tommy said. “But sometimes, they just walk through the front door of the cleaners in broad daylight.” He grunted again. “Always carrying five white shirts.”

  “Why five?”

  “Klassen makes them adopt five fundamental beliefs, as he calls them. They’re all about the supremacy of the white race.”

  They stopped as Tommy paused to pick up after Sloane.

  “So, you think our guy was there that night?” Schenk asked.

  “Yeah, for sure,” Tommy said, heading toward one of the overflowing trash bins. “Not much doubt. That’s headquarters. Slip in, slip out. He wouldn’t have to go far.”

  “And no one can get a fucking search warrant?” Schenk looked bewildered. “Don’t we have probable cause?”

  “No,” Tommy said, as Sloane led them back toward Fanelli’s. “The Church of the Creator has been certified as an actual church by the Internal Revenue Service, believe it or not. We can’t touch them — not yet, anyway.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Theresa Laverty was angry with us. We were kind of angry with Theresa Laverty.

  “You need to seriously consider rescheduling this tour,” she said. “The level of violence at these things is appalling.”

  “And the police need to be the police,” X said. “Policing is your job, not ours.”

  We were in the ridiculously tiny band room at Barrymore’s, off to the side of the stage. The walls were covered with graffiti and band stickers, and there was a single broken-down couch to one side. All of the Nasties’ and Virgins’ guitars were stacked in front of it, like a coffee table. The door was closed.

  X and I were there, along with Sam Shiller and Patti Upchuck, and Mike and Bembe. Standing uneasily beside Laverty was a local Ottawa Police Service cop named Racicot or something. Like Laverty, she was wearing jeans and a blouse and jacket. She didn’t say a word.

  Mostly, the debate and/or argument was between X and Laverty, with the rest of us watching. X, as usual, wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. Laverty, meanwhile, was one of the few people who clearly didn’t find X intimidating, either. She gave as good as she got.

  Even though X didn’t like cops much, I think he sort of respected Laverty. He liked women who were, in Patti’s immortal phrase, “feminist as fuck.”

  “As you know, I don’t have jurisdiction here to do anything,” Laverty said. “This is Canada. Officer Racicot is in charge, not me.”

  “Canada. Right. Thanks,” X said, not giving an inch and frankly sounding like a bit of a dick. “We don’t care. We care about the kids who pay to come see these shows.”

  “Everyone does,” Laverty said.

  “And we want those kids to be safe, and not end up dead,” X said. “That’s your job.”

  “Security at your shows is entirely the responsibility of you and your friends,” Laverty said, pointing a manicured finger at Bembe and Mike. “Not us.”

  X wasn’t backing down. “We are not going to cancel this tour,” he said. “And if another kid dies, it’s on the head of the police.”

  Laverty glared at X.

  The brawl in the middle of the Hot Nasties’ set hadn’t been all that bad, frankly. X and I had been in plenty of worse ones, to tell you the truth. No one got seriously hurt, mainly because X and Mike had moved so fast to take down the three straight edge bastards.

  Except it turned out that they weren’t straight edge after all; they were “Creators” from that fucked-up church. And two of these bastards were carrying big Buck knives under their pant legs, down by their ankles. One of them had a card in his wallet that indicated he was a “minister” in the Church of the Creator. This “minister” was American; the other two guys were Canadian.

  The knives were kind of a big deal. At the punk shows we went to, there were always lots of fights and crap. But nobody ever, ever, ever brought a knife. And a gun was just totally beyond the realm of the possible. I had never seen that happen.

  The X vs. Laverty staring contest was continuing, with neither side giving an inch. Finally, X spoke. “Were these the guys who killed that kid?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Laverty said. “It’s possible.”

  After a pause that felt longer than a Hot Nasties’ sound check, X spoke. “Don’t you have a partner, Agent Laverty?”

  Laverty didn’t blink. “I work alone,” she said. “Why?”

  X ignored her question. “Not that I’d ever tell the police how to do their job,” he said, his voice low. “But you guys should do your job.”

  Hoo-boy. Toronto, here we come.

  The Republican Party, being made up of lying fucking douchebag motherfuckers, planned to hold lots of “debates” between the lying fucking douchebag motherfuckers who wanted to be their presidential nominee. But they weren’t debates at all.

  They were just big Ku Klux Klan rallies with the cross burnings and lynchings artfully edited out, and with dark suits and ties and pearls substituting for the Klansmen’s white sheets, all helpfully broadcast in prime time by every single U.S. network, which I guess b
elieved that providing an uncritical platform for white supremacy was good for American democracy.

  Do you sense that I’m not a card-carrying member of the GOP?

  Anyway, the Canadians, who I had thought were less insane than us Americans, also insisted on broadcasting the first official Republican presidential nominee debate from start to finish on one of their three available TV channels.

  They, too, apparently thought that they had an obligation to give free airtime to crypto-Nazis. It was totally bizarre.

  Sitting on the bed in a room at the Rex Hotel on Queen Street West, I said as much to X and Patti and Sister Betty, who were also hanging out before sound check. There’d been nothing else on Canadian TV, apart from a kid’s show about a giant who was talking to a puppet, and some weirdos on boats in a logging town out west. So we flipped to the Republican’s klavern gathering.

  “Why the fuck do the Canadians think they should put this shit on TV? I thought they were saner than us,” I said.

  X, sitting on the floor and leaning against the bed, shrugged.

  Patti had a theory. “Everyone in politics is a liar,” she said. “Maybe Canadians are governed by liars, too.”

  “Sure, but they’re all socialists up here, with free health care and no guns and an obviously gay-friendly prime minister,” I said. “I mean, why the hell would they broadcast this orgy of white supremacy?”

  X shrugged again. “Makes them feel better about themselves,” he said, which seemed as good an explanation as any. We settled in to watch.

  It started with the usual bullshit with supposedly smart journalists murmuring about the cosmic significance of the debate, then moved on to the requisite playing of the “Star Spangled Banner,” with the dozen neo-Nazi motherfuckers all clutching the spot on their chests where their hearts were supposed to be. When it was over, the moderator solemnly reminded all of the assembled candidates about the rules, which nobody intended to observe for the next ninety minutes.