New Dark Ages Read online

  “Fuck,” I said, sitting back in the booth. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

  PORTLAND (AP) — Police fear a sadistic killer is stalking followers of a bizarre youth subculture following a trio of bloody murders in New York City and Ottawa earlier this spring.

  Two young men were slain in New York’s gritty Bowery and another not far from Ottawa’s picturesque Parliament Hill, following gatherings of area punk rockers, police confirm. And all three victims had attended performances by a Portland, Maine, punk rock quartet, the Hot Nasties.

  The same band was in the headlines a year ago, when a member of a hate group killed its lead singer.

  “These punk rockers are into shocking people,” said one Portland police detective, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But it now appears that they’re into murder, too.”

  The detective added, “If your kid is involved in this punk stuff, get them out, now. They could get killed.”

  After I read this enough times to memorize it, I looked at X. “I guess we know why Ron McLeod was trying to reach us last week,” I said. “What a fucking asshole.”

  X shrugged. “It wouldn’t have done any good to talk to him,” he said. “He was taking dictation. He wasn’t being a journalist. Someone talked him into this.”

  “But we could have given him our side of the story. We could have reminded everyone that punks are the victims, not the fucking perpetrators,” I said to him, exasperated.

  “Journalists aren’t interested in that. They’re interested in what sells papers.”

  The AP story went on with some stuff about the three victims.

  The first victim, known as Johnny Raindrops, was an aspiring musician and a regular at a New York punk rock bar called CBGB. He was butchered at his apartment in nearby Chinatown. The body of the second victim, a transvestite and prostitute known as Colleen Tomorrow, was found in a Dumpster in an alleyway near the punk rock mecca.

  Both victims had been gruesomely mutilated, a detective close to the investigation said. And both had been in attendance at one of two performances by the Hot Nasties group at CBGB. Police estimate the pair were murdered a day apart. The third victim, a student at Ottawa’s Carleton University named Juan Conseco, was known in that city’s punk scene as Nuclear Age. Conseco was in his first year at Carleton’s journalism program and had also attended a Hot Nasties’ show at Barrymore’s, a popular local rock ’n’ roll venue. Conseco had been mutilated in the same manner as the two New York City victims, Ottawa Police Service spokesman Ian MacLeod said. MacLeod echoed the call for young people to stay away from punk rock shows. “We don’t know who the killer is, yet. But we are working on the theory that this boy and the others were murdered by someone who knows this youth subculture, likely by another punk rocker.”

  MacLeod and New York City police would not comment on suggestions that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is involved in the cross-border probe of the killings. However, Canadian and American police confirmed that a joint police task force had been established to solve the vicious murders.

  “What a load of fucking bullshit,” I said. “Punks killing punks? Never. And a ‘joint police task force’ has been set up? Also bullshit. No cop, anywhere, gives a shit when a punk is killed.”

  “They will now,” Patti said, poking at her burger, appetite gone. “This is going to stir up a ton of hysteria. Again.”

  “Yes,” X said, looking out on Queen Street West. “But that’s not why this thing was written now. The murders happened months ago.”

  “Why now, X?”

  “This story was leaked to McLeod for a specific reason. It came out now because it pushes someone’s agenda.”

  “Who, X?” Sister Betty said.

  X, gazing through the Shanghai Cowgirl’s window, didn’t say anything. But I figured I knew who he was talking about.

  I need some speed, I thought.

  Tit Sweat.

  That’s what the local opening act was called: Tit Sweat. It was the most epic, awesome, fucking kick-ass punk band name we’d heard yet.

  On our tour, you see, the opening act that traveled with us was — as you already know, duh — the Punk Rock Virgins. They’d get a percentage of the door plus all of whatever merch they sold, and we shared the min­uscule per diem we got from Stiff Records with them — twenty bucks a day, mostly just for food and hotel stuff. X and Patti would have a room, of course, and then Eddie would crash with me, or Sam, or whoever. That way Leah and Sister Betty would have their own room.

  Mike and Bembe, meanwhile, would usually get a room with a couple beds in it. I personally found that hilarious: Mike (from the all-white biker culture) and Bembe (from the all-black Rasta culture). They had become pretty good pals, despite the wildly different lives they led.

  In any of the places we’d played so far — Burlington, Montreal, Ottawa, and now Toronto — the bill had only included us and the Virgins. But in Toronto — where the likes of the Viletones and the Diodes and Crash Kills Five and the Demics and the fucking amazing Teenage Head were located — the scene was huge, bigger than any place outside of New York or London or L.A. It was one of the best cities to see punk bands in North America. Those bands were legends to us, so we were pretty humbled to be playing at the Horseshoe Tavern, on their turf.

  Tit Sweat, meanwhile, were an all-girl outfit, like the Punk Rock Virgins. And they were all members of a couple of the local Native tribes — the Mississauga somethings, I think. And these chicks were fucking hard core. We walked into the Horseshoe when they were doing a sound check, and they were on the Horseshoe’s postage-stamp-sized stage and — holy fuck almighty — they were totally ripping it up.

  The bassist and guitarist had these super-cool neon mohawks and tons of piercings, and they were wearing hacked-up biker jackets over homemade T-shirts. One said: AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT. The other said: WE WERE HERE FIRST, MOTHERFUCKER.

  Like I said, hard core.

  The drummer was just a kid, skinny and tall, and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. She beat on her drum kit like a guy twice her size would, like her life depended on it. She was wearing all black, and she didn’t smile once. Totally in the zone.

  Meanwhile, none of us could take our eyes off Tit Sweat’s lead singer. She was wearing the standard Ramones-issue uniform: a biker jacket, skin-tight jeans torn out at the knees, white Vans on her feet, and a T-shirt with KILL THE INDIAN ACT written on the front.

  And she was stunningly, drop-dead gorgeous. She had the face of a model and this killer, killer body. I’m as queer as a three-dollar bill, boys and girls, but if I ever have sex with a female human, I’d want it to be with her. She was just fucking amazing.

  She had charisma like you wouldn’t believe, too. All of us — the Nasties, the Virgins — couldn’t stop watching her. When we walked in, she was howling on this hardcore-ish number, like she was making the last radio transmission from the end of the world.

  Her name was Nagamo, which Leah Yeomanson said meant “she sings” in Ojibway.

  The song came to a stop, and we were stunned. Tit Sweat were incredible. We all clapped. The band waved and bowed and said thanks. But Nagamo didn’t say anything. She just stared at us, still holding onto the mic stand.

  Scratch that. She wasn’t staring at us. She was staring at X. Like, right at him.

  I had seen this sort of thing happen before, with both males and females. X is a pretty good-looking guy, and he often attracts lots of approving glances. Occasionally, he’d get propositioned. I’d seen it happen at Gary’s a few times — some girl (or guy) would walk up to him and just hand him their phone number scribbled on a napkin or whatever.

  Before Patti, and after, he always just politely declined, or said nothing at all.

  But — even as we all stood there, Patti Upchuck included — this chick was just staring at X. And her look left no doubt about why.

  Patti noticed — I mean, it was hard not to — and she reached over and touched X’s arm, and said somethi
ng to him, something I couldn’t hear. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see X was still looking in the direction of Tit Sweat (generally) and Nagamo (specifically).

  It was wild. It was also getting super uncomfortable. So, Kurt Blank to the rescue!

  I clapped my hands again, loudly, and yelled: “Tit Sweat kicks ass! Who wants a drink on me?”

  Eddie and Mike and Luke are always up for a drink, day or night, and indicated their support. So we all headed over to one of the Horseshoe’s two bars, the one near the front door where a woman in an Eddie and the Hot Rods T-shirt was serving.

  Tit Sweat followed us over to the bar. There was lots of musician talk, lots of sharing of notes about the scenes in our respective hometowns. Suddenly, I noticed some movement farther down the bar and raised voices. Patti Upchuck was storming out of the Horseshoe, with Sister Betty not far behind.

  A minute later, Sam Shiller came over and stood between me and Eddie.

  “Whoa, brother,” he said, voice low. “Whoa.”

  “What, man? What happened?”

  Sam looked down the bar, to ensure that no one other than Eddie and me could hear him. Motörhead was playing over the sound system, which helped.

  “That chick from Tit Sweat walked right up to the bar, between X and Patti, and just looked at him and said, ‘I’m going to fuck you,’ just like that. And Patti heard it!”

  “What did X say?” Eddie asked, always interested in someone talking about fucking, or actually fucking someone.

  Sam shook his head. “That’s the thing — he didn’t say anything! He just kept looking at this gorgeous chick, like he wanted to or something!”

  I sighed. Toronto was going to be memorable for more than the gig, apparently.

  CHAPTER 28

  Earl Turner wanted Danny O’Heran to understand exactly what he was saying. Typically, this involved speaking to Danny like he was a fucking moron.

  “Danny, no one else on the campaign can know about my friend Ben, do you understand me?” he said, emphasizing just about every word, as if Danny no longer understood the English language. “Not my so-called campaign management team, not the press secretaries, not anyone, do you understand?”

  Danny nodded. Derwin Hailey knew Ben the Billionaire existed, and quite a few others on the campaign did, too, but he decided against reminding Turner. Some political candidates, he had learned, live in a sep­arate reality. So, he kept quiet. “Yes. I understand.”

  They were sitting in the Jeep, parked on Commercial Street and near the Hilton on the Portland waterfront. Turner looked at Danny. He was squinting a bit. Danny tried to return his gaze, but couldn’t.

  “Danny,” Turner finally said. “You know how much I trust you, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. And you know how well things are going, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Things are going well because of the efforts of guys like you, and the people on the campaign I trust and who I am close to.”

  Danny suspected this included Daisy Something and Stacey Something, whom Earl Turner had taken to fucking on a regular basis at a motel near Mother’s Beach in Kennebunkport, across from a submarine sandwich place. After he’d finished banging their brains out — almost always accompanied by lots of screeching and moaning by Daisy Something and Stacey Something — Turner would then open the door a crack and ask Danny to go across the street to get them submarine sandwiches. Sometimes, Danny would pick up a couple sandwiches for the Secret Service guys, too. They liked Danny, but they didn’t like Earl Turner very much.

  “So,” Turner said, looking up and down Commercial Street. The only people around were tourists, and none of them seemed particularly interested in the campaign Jeep at the moment. “So, we need to keep my relationship with Ben totally off the books, do you understand? No mention of it to anyone.”

  “Yes, sir,” Danny said. He figured Turner wanted to hide his relationship with the mysterious Ben — or, more specifically, the millions Ben was wiring to one of Turner’s personal accounts at the Bank of Credit and Commerce, for use in the ad campaign — because it could get him in a lot of trouble. Danny correctly suspected that Ben’s millions were being donated illegally. But he also sensed that something else had Earl Turner nervous. He suspected, but didn’t know, that this other Ben-related secret had something to do with the two or three young guys who shadowed Ben, apparently around the clock. At first, Danny thought they were bodyguards for the enigmatic multimillionaire.

  But they didn’t act or look like bodyguards. They had close-cropped hair, and Danny initially thought they might be skinheads. These young guys wore almost-­identical, tight-fitting clothes, and they had pronounced muscles, like they were all bodybuilders or something.

  These guys went everywhere Ben did, driving a big, black Suburban — just like the kind of vehicle the Secret Service guys favored.

  When Ben wasn’t around, they were loud and goofed around and attracted some attention. When Ben was present, though, these guys would stand still and straight, like military academy recruits, and not say a word. One time, Danny watched one of these guys in an extended conversation with Ben. It ended with Ben affectionately patting the young man on his enormous shoulder.

  From his seat in the Jeep, Danny could see that the muscle-bound guys put the Secret Service guys on edge. When Earl Turner was meeting with Ben, the Secret Service would observe Ben’s entourage carefully and sometimes speak into the little microphones they had up their sleeves. Most of Ben’s guys were armed, Danny suspected.

  Earl Turner swung his cowboy boots out of the Jeep and stood on Commercial Street. He turned and smiled at Danny. “When I come out of the Hilton, you and I are going to go celebrate somewhere, Danny. We are about to move this campaign to an entirely different level. We are going to dial up our ad campaign — and we are going to have a few things to say about your former friends, Danny.”

  Danny O’Heran wanted to ask what this meant, but he didn’t. Instead, he just said, “Yes, sir.”

  Turner swaggered toward the main doors of the Hilton and disappeared.

  Ben’s three big guys were standing near the big, black Suburban, which was parked near the Hilton’s entrance. They watched, too. And then one of them — the one Ben had patted on the shoulder that one time — turned and stared at Danny.

  It made Danny uncomfortable, so he looked away, toward Casco Bay.

  CHAPTER 29

  Okay, class. Time for my little lecture about sex and gender and punk rock, okay? Get comfortable and listen up.

  So, as I’ve said already somewhere else, punk wanted to destroy what rock ’n’ roll had become. It wanted to smash it to fucking bits — every self-indulgent drum and guitar solo, every synthesizer, every costume change, every overpriced ticket, every stupid lyric about metaphysical bullshit, every hippie haircut, every honorific bestowed on another overpaid musician, every phony love-and-peace sermon recycled from Woodstock, every pompous Studio 54 rock star millionaire, every fawning focus-grouped profile in Rolling Stone, every performance by coked-up assholes standing motionless on a stage that is so far away they resembled ants. All of it. Smash it to fucking bits, and then start over again.

  On some of that stuff, punk was successful. Rock ’n’ roll songs became shorter again, and a lot of bands went back to a sound that was raw and more real. Twenty-minute guitar solos became the exception, not the rule. Hair got shorter. Buckingham Palace, briefly, found fewer takers for medals. Bullshit rhapsodies about peace and love got supplanted, at least temporarily, by the gritty reality of hate and war. Gig venues became smaller. Guitars were being heard more, synthesizers less. Musicians wore clothes that real people wore, or at least clothes that didn’t cost a real person’s annual sal­ary. And bands started writing lyrics about things they knew, taken from the lives they actually lived, and not some distant, surreal, fantasy bullshit world inhabited by druids and hobbits.

  Hallelujah, class! Praise the Lord
! About fucking time!

  But, after all that effort, there was still work to do, especially the socioeconomic kind of stuff. Having learned that pissed-off punks could change rock music, and having learned that punk’s DIY spirit could change the way a lot of people approached the future, and having learned that punk could change the way that some people actually lived their day-to-day lives, it was only natural and normal that punks should turn their attention to politics.

  Politics was, after all, the subject matter of a lot of songs by a lot of British bands, such as the Clash, Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, the Tom Robinson Band, X-Ray Spex — and even unknown local bands like Tit Sweat. (The Hot Nasties, not so much; we rarely wrote songs about politics. We preferred lyrics about Star Trek and teenage relationships and going to 7-Eleven.)

  For some bands, singing about politics and social change was good. Doing something to bring about actual political and social change, however, was better. And punks have had a bit of an impact.

  Because punk has always been basically leftist in its politics — leftist because punk is anti-authority and the douchebags in charge in the Western world almost always lean to the right — it’s usually influenced stuff like women’s liberation, anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and voter rights. On those issues, punks have changed things, a bit. In my opinion, anyway.

  And my opinion is what you came here for, right? Right.

  Anyway. The fact that rock ’n’ roll (and the world) was a toilet bowl swirling with the shit that is sexism and misogyny was so obvious, I shouldn’t even have to say it. Men mostly ran politics, and they mostly ran rock ’n’ roll, too. Women were the exception, not the rule. The whole music “business” was run by guys. The musicians, the writers, the technicians, the engineers, and the producers were all men. Everyone knew that, but not everyone was pissed off enough to try to change it.