The Man Who Lived by Night (13 page)

I put on
It’s Us Again
good and loud to get myself in the mood. The album was recorded after the group’s first American tour. “More for Me” was its big hit. I set out the tape transcripts and notes, sat at the desk and put a sheet of paper in the typewriter. Almost at once I was aware that something was missing—Lulu always sleeps under the desk when I work, with her head on my foot. I got up, pulled a heavy tome from the bookcase, and tried resting that on my foot. It wasn’t warm and I couldn’t feel it swallow, but the weight was right. Much better. Don’t ever tell Lulu that she was replaced by Anthony Trollope.

I like to set the tone of a memoir with an introductory chapter that takes place in the present. This lets the reader know right off what the celebrity’s attitude is toward the life and career he or she is about to look back on. It gives everybody a handle, including me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do this with T. S. I didn’t have the handle yet. In a perfect world, I would have waited until I did before I started writing. It’s not a perfect world. Publishers have deadlines.

So I started with Tris’s account of his childhood. I covered his early memories of his parents and Rory and getting hooked on Brando, Elvis, and the music. I took it up through the formation of the Rough Boys and those nights spent jamming in the lorry garage. I gave him a tough, uncompromising voice peppered with coarse language and the hint of a sneer. It was the voice that came through on the tapes. It was his voice.

I just wished I knew what he wasn’t telling me about himself. I was starting to take it personally.

Dinner was a roast chicken, in the kitchen with Pamela. I asked her a bunch of questions about how many invisible people it took to maintain Gadpole (thirty-three) and what all of them did. Eventually, I cleverly managed to bring the conversation around to Jack.

On Friday afternoon, when someone had decided to use me, the mini, and Lulu for target practice, Jack Horner had been out, she said. Running errands in Guildford.

And Miss Violet? The irrepressible Lady Vi had been posing for a British
Vogue
layout the entire day. In London.

I turned in early, but I didn’t get to sleep. For one thing, there was too much to think about. Had it been Jack who’d shot at me? He
had
been flatly opposed to my poking around in the past. Violet? Clearly, she was less than stable. Maybe she hadn’t coped too well with my rejecting her. True, I’d heard a car speed away from the shooting scene, and she wasn’t yet old enough to drive. But she wasn’t old enough to do a lot of the things she no doubt did. Operating a vehicle without a license was probably the least of her sins. And then there were the others. Derek. Marco. Even T. S. himself, not that he got out much. Who was it? What was I in the middle of? How was I going to find out?

The other reason I couldn’t get to sleep was Lulu. I was used to her sleeping on my head. I tried putting a pillow over my face but it just wasn’t the same. Didn’t smell like mackerel.

So I watched the videocassette of
This is the Beginning of the End
that I’d borrowed from T. S. This was the infamous Stanley Kubrick black-and-white documentary chronicling the Us ’76 American tour. Their last tour. They were older now, Double Trouble were. They’d had the breakups and the crack-ups, and it showed. T. S. and Rory were no longer two wild kids. This was business now, and they were two polished pros giving their audience what it wanted. Kubrick captured that—just how much backstage preparation and role-playing and outright deception went into creating the onstage illusion of spontaneous good times. And Kubrick got more than that, more than he or anyone bargained for. His cameras were there that hot, humid night in Atlanta. There as T. S. and Rory were on the Omni stage in their torn sleeveless T-shirts, and spandex pants, faces and chests gleaming with sweat. T. S., clutching a hand mike, is strutting around the stage, taunting the screaming audience as he snarls out their encore, “We’re Double Trouble.” Rory, grinning his snaggletoothed grin, is straining for a note on his Stratocaster. He finds it. Leaps in the air with joy. The crowd is on its feet now, pressing towards them. And then suddenly there is a flash of light and Rory’s face contorts even more. Straining for another note, isn’t he? All part of the show, isn’t it?

No, it’s not. Blood is streaming from Rory’s mouth and nose now. He is crumpling. Falling onto the stage floor. The camera is jostled, and for a moment we’re looking at someone’s booted feet. There are screams. Screams that change abruptly from adulation to horror. Derek shoves forward, points into the crowd, and yells. He can’t be heard over the mounting shrieks.

The camera finds the shooter there in the third row, brandishing his gun, eyes crazed, spittle bubbling from his lips. There he is—Larry Lloyd Little, witness for the prosecution in the Manson trial. Fringe family member. Pimp. Out of jail after three years. Flashbulbs explode. He’s babbling something. Original sin, he is saying. Or so the press later reported. Original sin. And he won’t drop the gun. And the police are firing on him now, and he’s hit. He goes down, terrified fans scrambling to get out of his way as he falls. And we hear a voice now in the erupting chaos, a voice from the stage crying “Help him! Can’t somebody please help him!” It’s a voice we’ve never heard before. It’s the real voice of T. S. He’s dropped his fake scouse accent. The act is forgotten as he kneels over his dying partner. Rory lies there on his back. His eyes are open. Derek is there. So is Jack, and Corky Carroll, the tour drummer. Then the ambulance arrives and the paramedics put him on a stretcher and take him away. T. S. is now alone there on stage. Rory’s blood is on his hands. He’s looking around, bewildered, lost. Derek comes over, tries to comfort him. “Why?” T. S. keeps saying. “Why?”

I hadn’t seen the movie in a long time. It seemed even more powerful to me now, for a lot of reasons.

I was still awake at three a.m. when I heard a door open and close down the hall. Violet’s door. I slipped my trench coat on over my nightshirt, quietly opened my own door, and stuck my head out into the dimly lit hallway. No one. Just the sound of footsteps—reaching the stairs, going down the stairs. I followed, stepping lightly. It was so silent in the great house I could hear the mice scratching around in the walls. I started down the curved staircase. The footsteps were on the marble floor now, heading toward the kitchen. A late-night snack?

There was no one in the kitchen. Just the hum of the refrigerators. The pantry door, however, was open an inch. Pamela always kept it closed. No one was in there, but the door to the herb garden was unbolted. I stepped outside into the cold. No palace guard seemed to be stationed here, and it was dark—a blind spot in the security floodlights. I heard the gate to the vegetable garden squeak, and the soft crunch of gravel under feet. I pursued through the gardens until I came to a stone fence about four feet high. This I climbed over.

I was in a small meadow behind the garages. Ahead of me, in the darkness I could just make out Violet striding briskly toward them. She went inside a back door to the utility garage, which connected to Jack’s apartment.

His lights were on. I found a window that had a nice view of his parlor. Jack was sitting in a lounge chair in front of the fireplace, which had an electric space heater inserted in it. Violet stood before him with her head bowed like a penitent child. He was gesturing sharply at her, and she was apologizing. I couldn’t hear the words through the window. Until he raised his voice:

“You know what happens to bad girls, don’t you?”

“I
said
I was sorry, Jackie!
I did!”

He grabbed her roughly by the arms, pulled her across his lap and yanked her sweatpants down, exposing her round, firm, altogether perfect young bottom. This he spanked with his meaty hand. Hard. She yelped. She yelped each time he smacked her, which was either six or seven times. She began to sob. Then Jack said something to her. Whatever it was, it made her giggle. Then she sat up and put her arms around his neck and kissed him, and he carried her into the bedroom.

(Tape #5 with Tristam Scarr. Recorded in his chamber Nov. 29. Wears bathrobe and slippers. Is very agitated.)

S
CARR
: THEY STILL HAVE
no idea who shot at you?

Hoag:
None. Do you?

Scarr:
Me? Why should I have any idea?

Hoag:
Well, there’s your little theory about Puppy’s death to consider.

Scarr: (pause)
So he
was
murdered. I’m right. Have been all along. And whoever it is is afraid I’ll say something, aren’t they?

Hoag:
I want you to know I don’t scare easily, Tristam. I scare
very
easily.

Scarr:
You’ll be quitting then.

Hoag:
That’s up to you.

Scarr:
Me?

Hoag:
Oh, for Christ’s sake—let’s stop jerking each other’s chains, shall we?

Scarr:
Giving me something of an attitude, aren’t you, mate?

Hoag:
I don’t think so. I’ve gotten shot at.
Me,
not you. I have a right to know why, and you’re not telling me.

Scarr:
I’ve told you everything I—

Hoag:
Who killed Puppy?

Scarr:
I already told you! I don’t know!

Hoag:
Bullshit.

Scarr:
Don’t push me, mate! When T. S. says he doesn’t know, he means it.

Hoag:
More bullshit.

Scarr:
What is it you want? A punch-up?

Hoag:
What I want is the truth.

Scarr:
I repeat: I do not know who killed Puppy.

Hoag:
Okay. Fine. Duly noted. I don’t know if I believe you or not, but I suppose that’s my own problem.

Scarr:
Why won’t you believe me?

Hoag:
I’ll tell you why—because I don’t know you. We may have spent some hours together talking, but I still don’t know you. And until I do there’s no such thing as trust.

Scarr: (silence)
You’re trying to relate me to your terms. They don’t apply. I’m not anyone else. I’m T. S.

Hoag:
And who is T. S.?

Scarr:
He’s … I’m … someone who’s monstrously, royally, fucked up. And always have been. Okay?

Hoag:
How?

Scarr:
Christ!
(long silence followed by sounds of heavy breathing)
Ever since I was a lad, alone in m’room, I’ve felt …
(sounds of heavy breathing sniffling) apart.
Isolated. I-I was often sick, as I told you … But … But …

Hoag:
Yes? Go on.

Scarr:
What I didn’t tell you was … There was this thing inside m’head. This terror. It would last for days, weeks. Total fucking freak-out. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I’d get headaches. So bad I couldn’t keep m’eyes open. I’d just sit there in the dark, alone. I-I still get them. Had one last week. A bad one.

Hoag:
You did seem a little out of it.

Scarr:
I thought money and fame would make it all go away. That’s what drove me to make it in music. I was wrong. None of it has ever gone away. That’s the biggest disappointment of my life … All the drugs, they just made it worse. Acid very nearly destroyed me. Made me so bleedin’ paranoid I-I couldn’t believe in anyone, especially if they wanted something of me—and everyone wanted something of me … I’ve never been one to take things as they come, see the good in them. I’m totally preoccupied by the bad. The truth is I never enjoyed any of my success. I’m not capable of it. And that has made me want to lash out at people, destroy what I was building.

Hoag:
Did you ever get professional help?

Scarr:
My unconscious is the heart and soul of my creativity. I could never let someone fuck with it. I’ve always been looking for answers on my own. It’s taken me a long fucking time to realize there just aren’t any.

Hoag:
Did Rory know this about you?

Scarr:
He didn’t understand it, but he knew of it, from when we were lads. M’glums, he called it. Rory, he was the only one who could sometimes pull me out of it. He was my mate. My only true mate. When I lost him, I just freaked out. Most people thought I retired because I was afraid of being shot myself. That was only a part of it. It was losing Rory. I still feel his … his
loss (sounds of weeping, then
s
ilence)
Christ … Haven’t had a good bleedin’ cry in don’t know how long. Sorry about all of this, Hogarth.

Hoag:
Congratulations, Tristam.

Scarr:
For?

Hoag:
For breaking through—from the public you to the private you. This has been far and away our most important night’s work. I’d say it calls for a drink, my friend.

Scarr:
This goes in the book?

Hoag:
It does.

Scarr:
I don’t know if I—

Hoag:
Trust me.

Scarr: (pause)
Sancerre do?

Hoag:
Always has.

Scarr:
You haven’t a glass, Hogarth.

Hoag:
Another cause for celebration—you finally noticed.

(end tape)

(Tape #6 with Tristam Scarr. Recorded in his chamber Nov. 30. Still wears robe and slippers.)

Scarr:
I’ve read the pages you sent up. I like it so far. Very much.

Hoag:
I’m glad.

Scarr:
You don’t think there’s too much soul-searching about the laddie days?

Hoag:
It’s dynamite.

Scarr:
If you say so.

Hoag:
Good man. I’d like to hear about Liverpool.

Scarr:
It was gray and depressed and nowhere—unless you happened to be a rocker. The Mersey sound had taken over the charts. Brian Epstein’s doing, actually. Aside from the Beatles, he’d brought along Gerry and the Pacemakers, who had two number ones, “How Do You Do It?” and “I Like It.” Then Billy J. Kramer did “Do You Want to Know a Secret?,” a Lennon-McCartney song, and that went to the top as well. There was The Searchers, Cilia Black … The ’Pool’s where it was at. London wasn’t, at least not for us.