The Accompanist - 9

The surviving members of Krank are haunted by the killings and the loss of singer Kim Ryan as police drop their investigation. Susie helps Jack deal with his nightmares.

KARLA

The police had trashed our beautiful Art Deco house but still missed what could’ve been a key piece of evidence. Kim’s sapphire ring! It was in Kim and Dave’s bedroom next to an overturned mattress. The gemstone set off a bluish glint amid the feathers of a pillow the cops had ripped open. “Find me! Find me!” I could almost hear Kim’s voice pleading.

“Don. Look at this!”

Of course Don (my soon-to-be-ex fiancé) didn’t remember the ring. And when I reminded him, he went straight to his go-to solution for everything. “We’d better tell my dad!”

I rolled my eyes. “You mean the guy who set up that fucking ransom fiasco? Who invited Frank’s gangster father over to commiserate? The guy who–”

“But Karla …”

It would have been unfair to blame the old man for failing to rescue Kim. What really galled me was Don’s deference to him. Don had lured me into his father’s sphere of influence, expecting me to accept a role in the family business and the family, maybe working to produce him another heir or two. And for what?

“This means she not only quit the band, but also dumped Dave that day,” I said. “Because this was their ‘engagement to be engaged’ ring.”

“Right,” he said, as if he just got it. “You think we should take it to the cops? They’ll just file it away, and we’ll never hear of it again.”

Don did have a point there.

“I could take it to the detective,” I said. So Don drove me over to Lew Archer’s West Hollywood office and waited in the parking lot. Archer offered me a drink, which I turned down. “I just wanted to show you this,” I said, handing him the platinum band with its sparkly blue stone. “It was Kim’s ring, and it was lying on their bedroom floor when we went in to clear out our stuff.”

I didn’t have to explain the significance. “So she gave it back to him that afternoon,” Archer said. “That does tend to support my idea that she broke it off with him and left before the killings. But it’s too late.”

“What do you mean, too late? You think—”

“We just got warned off. A jurisdiction issue.” Archer smirked.

“Jurisdiction? I thought you were private?”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but apparently there was some high-level covert operation going on around that college, and they told STPD to drop the drugs and prostitution investigation – and any related case. I never saw McMahon so spooked. Normally, well, we run into jurisdiction issues all the time. But this time it wasn’t the FBI, and it wasn’t Drug Enforcement. It was someone you really don’t want to mess with.”

Was he telling me Dave and Frank got caught up in some kind of CIA sting? “At the technical college?” I said, remembering the bumbling ‘Cuban nationals’ who’d broken into the Watergate Offices for Nixon. “You’ve dropped it because of some clandestine operation? At Santa Teresa Tech?”

“It seemed the better part of valor. Besides, even if Kim did run away, why hasn’t she turned up? Maybe she was a willing abductee—but I shouldn’t speculate.” Archer went on speculating: “My theory at this point is that Kim was the girl Jack Adams and I saw being shot, and that – and I’m sorry to say this – she probably bled to death. Then the abductors disposed of her body. Otherwise we would have heard from them again.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this theory, but for some reason I started to cry. I’d built up hope that finding the ring would make a difference, but of course it wouldn’t. Archer got up, walked around his desk, and put a hand on my shoulder. “Listen. I’m not giving up on this. I’ll keep an eye out. Maybe I’ll run across someone who knows something. Maybe we’ll find her alive after all. Meanwhile, you hang on to that ring to remind yourself of your friend. Keep it close. Maybe it’ll bring luck.”

Archer pressed the ring into my palm.

“Thank you,” I said.

I squeezed the ring into my front jeans pocket, where I would feel Kim’s sapphire digging into my skin, a reminder of our time together as Krank’s “Red Hot Mamas.” Don and I rode back to the mansion and had the servants bring us dinner. Then we sat on the porch, watching the moonlight on the pacific.

We’d gotten over our shock, our anger, our fear for our own safety, and now settled into missing Kim and Dave and mourning our shared dream of fame and stardom. Don did his best to forget, turning his attention to the Carton family business. But I was haunted: I heard Kim’s voice “burnin’ in my heart” in Linda Ronstadt’s show-stopping cover of “Heatwave” at an outdoor concert in San Diego. I’d hear Kim’s voice in disco divas like Gloria Gaynor, in gospel belters like Aretha Franklin and Etta James, and in rockers like Ellen Foley, whose plea to Meat Loaf (“What’s it gonna be boy?”) happened to echo a line Kim and Jack had written for Krank. I even thought I heard Kim’s voice in a performance by our old friend Lisa (now billing herself as Lisa Wyeth Ness) dancing with her broom and singing “In My Own Little Corner” in a community theater production of Cinderella. Maybe the amplification helped, but this was our friend Lisa, who thought our music was “swell” but couldn’t get her mousy voice anywhere near a key or tempo. She’d certainly come a long way just to land a starring role! We went to congratulate her, and share condolences over our departed friends, but we were turned away by two guards, who informed us that “Miss Ness has left the building.” As if she was Elvis!

Our dream had died in that horrific shooting in the basement of the little Art Deco home Don’s father had given us to start our life together. And now I shuddered at what the future held for Don and me in whatever new piece of historic architecture Don’s father would put us in next. Don would set our childish dream aside and focus on preserving Don Sr.’s cardboard and porcelain legacy. And I was expected to go along.

The night after the Cinderella musical, I told my own Prince Charming that I was leaving him.

JACK

My heart would race at visions of three supine boys, red tar bubbling from their chests. I’d be jolted awake by the certainty that my shirt was sopping not with rain or sweat, but with blood, and that I was lying on a slab between Dave and Frank. That was just one of my recurring nightmares. Other times I dreamt of Kim – or that girl who looked like her – seen through a spattered windshield, sinking into the mud. I’d awaken shivering and dry in the mouth, coming to grips with the fact that the clank of bullets on metal was only a nightmare. But this time I awoke to the warmth of a hard, slender body next to me, alive. Not Kim, but Susie.

“I heard you could use a hand,” she had deadpanned when I opened the door.

“Oh Susie. Oh my God,” I hugged her as she dropped her guitar to hug me back.

It turned out Susie had been in LA for more than a year. “I cleaned up my act and knew there was no future for me in the Midwest or with Gina. I came out here to find you. But you were nowhere to be found,” Susie said. She’d waited tables, busked, landed gigs singing folk songs at coffee shops, and started making contacts with club owners and musicians. Then she saw the review of Krank in the back pages of Variety.

She’d stood in the back at the Albatross, watching throngs of college boys in purple baseball caps pushing closer as Kim and Karla taunted them with torch songs. She’d watched waitresses lure boys out a side door, then seen the boys stumble back for a second or third helping of Krank. And more drugs. And more rock and roll. As a recovering junkie it was a matter of self-preservation for Susie to steer clear of that scene, at least until she felt more secure in her sobriety.

“I wanted to see how you were doing, Jack,” she said, giving me another squeeze. “It was enough. Well maybe not enough, but good to see that you were making music, backing those two girls. I remembered how good it felt when you backed me, and I was happy for you. But I saw that you were drunk, too. So I kept my distance.”

Susie said she had witnessed one of my time-killing renditions of “The Impossible Dream,” which only underscored how intoxicated I was. “You were just free-associating those impossible things, and yes it was funny. The irrelevant thoughts, the unthinkable smells and all in that slurred voice, but when got to the unattainable woman, I realized you were just drunk and letting things leak out that troubled you. And you were referring to me!”

I assured Susie I’d never felt troubled by her, admitting to myself that that probably was where the line came from, as I free-associated my own impossible dream for the amusement of my band mates and that throng of stoned college boys.

Susie got out her guitar and I sat at the piano revisiting the songs I remembered from her repertoire and introducing her to Krank’s material. Then we ordered a late afternoon lunch from Ho Hum, and I told her about my search across the Midwest, which had taken place just before the murders.

“So that was you!” Susie said her AA sponsor in Madison had told her on the phone that a couple of men, one old and one our age, had been to the clinic looking for her. I told Susie about the letter her dad had intercepted, and the detective Archer, and my two-week search of the bars and morgues of the Midwest. “Should we tell them I found you?”

“Maybe wait a bit,” she said. “Dad has never acknowledged who I am. So I don’t feel any obligation. The detective? Maybe we should tell him. I mean if he thought I had anything to do with what happened to Kim and Dave …”

I assured Susie she wasn’t suspected of anything. “Archer just has this thing about coincidences. He sees two missing women in the same case and figures there might be a connection that’ll help him solve it.”

She changed the subject. “You know, I’ll always remember how you respected my boundaries when Dad tried to pair us up over that bottle of Southern Comfort. I was ready to go, but you held back. I was flattered by your restraint, ‘cause I knew you really wanted me.”

“I knew you were with Gina,” I said.

“And I was ready to do a little performance for my father, to get him off my case about Gina.”

Later, after Joey returned from work and the three of us jammed for a couple of hours, Susie said she’d like to stay. “It’d be nice to feel you next to me.”

She hugged me and I felt the tension in her body release. “So you’re going to reward me for not taking advantage of you by fuc—”

“I said want to feel you next to me,” she repeated, giving me a playful poke in the ribs. “A repeat performance—but sober this time.”

So that’s how Susie got there, next to me that morning – my unattainable woman helping loosen the grip of my nightmares.

“That was nice. But you know, even this can’t last,” she said.

I knew. But we continued our platonic affair for quite some time, holding each other, feeling the weight of each other’s bodies, drifting off not to nightmares but to dreams of the music we might make.

BARRY

Hey, Krank’s Last Tape! Good title! Well, maybe I shouldn’t joke about it, but it’s been years, right? I made the rounds of L.A.’s sound studios to see what happened to Garner’s master, or the mixed-down cassette. Of course no-one knew shit. I did go over to Mr. Carton’s place for updates and played dumb when the cops interrogated me. After that I just kept my head down, hoping they wouldn’t come back on me like Columbo with ‘just one more question.’

It must have been a couple of months later that word got around that they’d dropped the case. No one knew why. Maybe Frank’s mobster dad put the kibosh on it. Or maybe Dave’s father. Whatever. It meant I could approach the cops with a few questions of my own. Like, by the way, did they happen to find a reel-to-reel or a cassette from Record Breaker Studio in the house? I figured a tape could be used to promote the studio or the remaining band members. Well the cop, McMahon was his name, hadn’t seen any cassette. But he’d found an empty reel and a pile of one-inch audio tape on the basement floor. Never listened to it for clues! McMahon said they thought they might find something hidden in the core of the reel—money or drugs—but didn’t. They checked the tape for prints and when there were none, they left it in a pile and tromped all over it. Christ. The cops are even stupider than the rest of us! As soon as the cops finished trashing the place, the Cartons sent in their cleaners to prepare the house for sale. And that was that. No master tape. All I had was the mixdown with the wrong singer up front on half the songs. And a video tape of Krank’s Cable TV appearance that nobody could play back except for TV guys with professional equipment. And they wouldn’t be interested. I mean the girls looked fine – really fine! – but their voices were buried in static and background noise. And, of course, the main girl on that videotape was gone, forever as it turned out.

I went to Jack and Joey’s place in the Arts District and found them drinking herbal tea and listening to Nina Simone with a black-haired girl named Susie. Susie went on to bigger things, too – another one that left me behind! Back then she came off as goth before goth was a thing, rail thin with white skin and a gaze that cut like a stiletto. “Nice to meet you,” I said. She cast a sharp glance at my jugular and shook my hand. “You’re Barry?” she said. “You’re the one who got these guys onto that cable show?”

“You know what happened, don’t you?”

“It’s a fucking tragedy, what happened” she said. “All because her boyfriend was caught up in that drug op—”

Jack jumped in. “Susie knew us all back in Des Moines,” he said to me. “She’s a singer-songwriter. I used to accompany her.”

I had some weed on me and made the mistake of pulling it out just when Susie was winding into a diatribe, blaming drugs for Frank and Dave’s deaths and Kim’s disappearance. It turned out Susie was an ex-junkie and like most ex-junkies was down on anything stronger than, well, the herbal tea they were drinking. Jack signaled me to put the baggie back, but it was too late.

“They flooded the campus with acid, cocaine and smack to pacify us, make us docile and helpless,” she said, looking disdainfully at my baggie of weed. “You remember that guy at orientation, don’t you? Telling us how it would be ok to indulge if we `kept it on campus’ and didn’t try to corrupt the high school kids down the street?”

Jack and Joey remembered. They’d both been active in the antiwar movement in high school. And they’d both been seduced by promises of an easy student deferment at the small liberal arts college with its Marshall McLuhan influenced curriculum. But they were skeptical the rampant drug use was part of a government conspiracy, even after Susie pulled out a clipping of a classified ad that promoted the school’s new “international” campuses, all in trouble spots in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

“Dave was dealing,” Joey acknowledged. “But he always said it was temporary. He said he’d be able to stop once Kim hit it big. He told us to keep our own noses clean, steer clear of the waitresses and all. And we’d be rewarded in the long run.”

Susie scoffed. “That was a lot of pressure to put on Kim. And you see what happened when she tried to get out!”