Knife River, page 8
“He carries a great deal of responsibility on his shoulders,” Jesse said. “A lot of people are depending on him.”
“Do any of them give a damn that their golden goose got himself assaulted?”
“Mickey London, his manager, has taken charge of security.”
“Terrific. The man’s a street thug. What could possibly go wrong?”
Jesse paused as she watched the bluebirds tuck themselves into the nest box for the night, and the chimney swifts flying in circles around the flue.
“Spring’s coming early,” she said. “The bluebirds are ready to lay.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
Jesse folded the dishtowel she was using, laid it across her shoulder, and looked at me.
“It’s a fire drill out there,” she said. “A goat rodeo and a shit show all rolled into one, Ty. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Never one inclined toward profanity, I could see that Jesse’s stress level was already reaching its peak.
“They’re bringing in contractors from all over,” she said. “Dozens and dozens of them. Carpenters, electricians, sound people, stagehands … and that’s just the concert venue. They’re still recording tracks for the album. I honestly don’t know how they’re going to pull it together.”
“They’ve got you,” I said. “That’s a good start.”
A hint of a smile appeared in her eyes, and she leaned up to kiss me. Her lips tasted of the wine she’d had with dinner, and her hair smelled of lavender and honey.
“Is he telling the truth?” I asked.
“Ian? Telling the truth about what?”
“That he was jumped on his way back from the Gold Hotel.” I used the name we residents call The Portman, due to its lavish decor.
“Why would he lie?”
“You just said that the studio is swarming with new faces.”
“You don’t think very highly of people anymore, do you?”
That night as the first raindrops ticked against the window glass, we made love with a passion and urgency that bordered upon desperation.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JORDAN POWELL AND I spent the next morning, even though it was Saturday, interviewing a half-dozen ranchers whose properties included helicopter pads, but with very little useful result. The weather had grounded the aircraft, which offered us the opportunity to inspect the choppers themselves, but we discovered nothing that pointed to illegal hunting. We had hit the road early that morning, driving from the Meridian substation all the way up to Lewiston, across to Dunwood, then southward through the pass to Jericho, with nothing to show but two hundred fifty extra miles on the odometer.
Jordan had grown increasingly silent as we started the long trek back toward Meridian, his idle attention fixed on the smoke from a distant wildfire that hung in the folds of the foothills. I saw his face in the dim reflection of the passenger window. He was absently stroking the crescent-shaped disfigurement that marked the edge of his jawline, the permanent reminder of a nearly fatal ambush.
“You okay, Jordan?” I asked.
“Aces.”
His focus remained on the steep cliffs that ascended from the roadside and were forested with conifers and fern. A thin white veil of runoff from a waterfall flowed down from the summit and disappeared behind a stand of old-growth ponderosa.
“That’s where it happened,” he said. “Right over that ridge.”
Neither of us had returned to that place since Jordan had been shot, but I had no doubt it occupied a space inside his brain that would never ebb or melt away.
“You think you want to go back there?” I asked him.
He rubbed his cheek and seemed momentarily perplexed, drifting somewhere far away. Jordan and I had both lost a good friend on that lonely stretch of county road, the victim of duplicitous and avaricious cowards.
“The turnoff is only about a mile ahead,” I said.
Jordan seemed as though he was about to say something, then retreated, his reply swept away inside the mechanical thrum of wiper blades. When I turned again to look at him, I could see he had begun to weep.
I OFFERED to drop Jordan off at the house he shared with his fiancée, but he declined, said he had work to finish at the substation and needed to pick up his truck from the lot. We both recognized the pithy excuse for exactly what it was, but he owed me no justification. Still, I was concerned as to why Jordan felt he needed a pretext to avoid returning to the peace and comfort of a warm household and the woman who loved him without precondition.
“You still inclined to join me for a ride next week to check the yearlings?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Think you can still trust me horseback after today? You didn’t change your mind?”
“I believe you told me you were born seeing the world between a horse’s ears,” I said. “Wouldn’t be right for me to keep a man from his birthplace.”
The specter of a smile touched his eyes, and I was unclear as to whether it was gratitude or uncertainty I saw there.
“Yes, sir, Captain,” he said. “I reckon I could benefit from a little time in the saddle.”
He reached into the pocket of his wool-lined Levi jacket and withdrew a set of office keys. He opened the passenger door and stepped out into the rain, squared his shoulders and nodded to me, brushed the rim of his hat brim with two fingers, and walked away.
A SUNBREAK OPENED between passing storms as I pulled in to Half Mountain Studio that afternoon and parked beside the canteen, just as I had the first time I’d been there. The smell of wet grass and freshly cut lumber spiked the air, and dozens of carpenters, line riggers, electricians, and equipment operators were at work beneath an enormous makeshift canvas tent they’d strung across the platform they were constructing. Accumulated rainwater had swelled the center of the canopy like the belly of an antediluvian beast and sluiced down from the corners into muddy puddles along the stanchions. A laborer holding a length of plastic pipe was pushing at the bulges in the canvas to relieve the weight while a cascade of sparks showered down behind him from where a welder plied his trade high in the scaffolding above the stage.
I spotted Jesse and Cricket at the far edge of the elevated drum risers, working with the documentary crew to set up a shot for the B-roll, but they didn’t see me. It was difficult to imagine this venue could possibly be ready to handle ten thousand Ian Swann fans—and the facilities to accommodate them—all in just a couple more weeks.
I cut my eyes along the periphery, where a row of supply sheds sheltered stacks of lumber, bags of concrete, and stone blocks, and saw Ian Swann’s manager, Mickey London, engaging in an animated conversation with three of the men I’d previously seen at the Cottonwood Blossom. As before, they appeared to be dressed for manual labor: snap-button shirts and canvas work jackets, blue jeans and roughout boots. The third man, the one who appeared to be in charge of his cadre, wore military fatigues stained with sweat and black soot from the slash pile of flaming construction debris he was tending. I could see the web of tattoos on his hands as he stripped off his leather gloves. The four of them were standing in a patch of open greensward, Mickey London at the center, waving his arms and gesticulating in the general direction of the recording complex.
The scene was exactly as Jesse had described it to me, the chaos and the buzz of power tools and frenetic activity a strikingly different environment from the creative haven Len Kaanan had portrayed the last time I had been here. A flatbed lumber hauler blew his airhorn at a knot of workmen crossing the dirt roadway, downshifted, and pulled into the baseyard as I turned away.
I moved up the pathway and poked my head inside the canteen, expecting to find someone who could direct me to Len Kaanan, but the room was empty. Rock music blared out of a portable radio in the kitchen, so I headed that direction instead. A pair of skinny kids in cutoff shorts and rubber flip-flops stood at the prep counter dicing root vegetables and tossing them into a steel pot on the burner, bobbing their heads to the music.
I had to switch off the radio to get their attention, told them I was looking for Len Kaanan and Ian Swann.
“Everybody’s in the studio, dude,” the taller of them told me and went back to his work. “But I wouldn’t go in there,” he said as an afterthought.
“Why not?”
The two glanced at each other and shrugged in unison.
“Suit yourself, man. But it’s been extremely uptight around here, that’s all I’m saying.”
I thanked the two cooks and left, followed a narrow boardwalk past the place where I’d parked, and continued in the direction of the barn that I had been told housed the recording studio. The earlier rainstorm seemed to have moved on toward the buttes, the sunbreak expanding, the sky overhead blue and devoid of clouds. I stepped between deep muddy puddles as I made my way toward the studio, the afternoon sunshine warming my back.
I slid open the barn door just wide enough to step into a windowless anteroom, where a heavyset barefooted man in a plaid shirt and overalls played solitaire at a card table in the corner. He scrunched his face and blinked at me, drawing his forearm across his wide brow as a shield from the glare of the outdoors.
“Shut the goddamn door, asshole,” he said.
“I’m looking for Len Kaanan.”
“Who’s looking for him?”
“Sheriff Ty Dawson.”
“You got a badge or something?” he asked, and returned his attention to the cards he’d laid out on the table, already bored by our conversation.
“I’ve got a badge and everything, friend. You mind speeding this process up? Kaanan’s expecting me.”
The man leaned back on two legs of his chair, eyeballing me as he lifted the receiver from a wall phone affixed to the shiplap siding. From behind me, I heard heavy footfalls on the stairs that led down from a narrow stairwell. I turned and saw Ian Swann hustling down the steps, carrying a guitar case in each hand and being followed by a much younger male who appeared to be having a hard time keeping pace. Swann glanced distractedly in our direction, seemingly right through us, clearly irritated and preoccupied, and pushed his way outside and into the daylight.
Len Kaanan appeared on the stairwell a moment later, his silver hair as neat and precise as his clothing and his manner. To the degree that Ian Swann appeared agitated, Kaanan seemed to exude a Zenlike calm. He beckoned me to follow him upstairs, and the man at the table hung up the phone and went back to his card game.
I FOLLOWED the producer through a heavy steel door with a small window cutout at eye level. The seal was so tight to the frame there was an audible rush of air as we crossed the threshold.
The studio space occupied the entirety of the second floor, divided almost equally in thirds by thick soundproof walls paneled in some sort of exotic hardwood. The whole room smelled of Tolex, warm vacuum tubes, and new carpeting.
“Ever been inside a recording studio before?” Kaanan asked.
“Not like this one.”
He smiled paternally and gestured to the area behind me, which was set up like the living room in a hotel suite, complete with a refrigerator and wet bar, beside which was a door marked with a brass plaque engraved with the words machine room.
“That’s where we keep all the noisy gear,” he said. “The quiet stuff—tape machines, console, and outboard effects racks—they’re all in this room where we can reach them.”
Behind Kaanan, a mixing board crowded with rows of VU meters, multicolored knobs, and lights occupied nearly the entire length of the opposite wall, looking like an apparatus that might be used to pilot the starship Enterprise. The mixing board was situated beneath an equally large pane of soundproof glass with a view into a third room, which, at the moment, was bustling with activity. At least half a dozen people busied themselves inside, adjusting baffle walls and pulling sound cables amid a forest of shiny chrome microphone stands and musical instruments.
“That’s what we call the ‘Live Room,’” Kaanan said. “Where the musicians perform the music. See that fellow in the back corner?”
He gestured toward a husky man wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, smoking a cigarette and tinkering with a pedal steel guitar. As if he’d heard Kaanan, he looked up and grinned out from a bushy black beard and nebula of dark curls. He tossed a wave at the producer and went back to his work.
“That’s Jerry Garcia,” Kaanan said. “He’s laying down some tracks for Ian’s record.”
Kaanan took a seat in the executive chair at the audio console, gestured toward a matching one next to his, leaned back, and knitted his fingers behind his head. I took off my hat and hung it on an unused mic stand. I was just about to speak when one of the technicians pushed in through the door from the Live Room.
“Not now, please, Steve,” Kaanan said. “I need a few minutes with Sheriff Dawson. Tell Jerry we’ll be ready in ten.”
The man named Steve ducked out without a further word, and Kaanan turned his attention back on me.
“Any luck finding the eagle poachers?”
“Not so far,” I said.
“Ahh. That’s too bad. Still makes me sick to think about.”
“These things take time,” I said. “It’s not like TV, Mr. Kaanan. It’s not all photographs, pushpins, and strings.”
“Yes, well …” he said. “As you can see, I’m a little busy here. We’re rush-releasing one of Ian’s singles,” Kaanan said. “Means we have to—”
“I know what a rush-release is.”
“You are a man with a surprising breadth of knowledge.”
“You see me wearing a cowboy hat and a pair of boots and assume I’m a yokel. I’ve had some life experience before you arrived in town, Mr. Kaanan.”
“You keep calling me ‘Mister,’” he said. “Why do I feel as though I’m being sandbagged?”
“Funny. I was thinking the same thing myself.”
Kaanan swiveled his chair and surveyed the activity on the other side of the soundproof glass. He pressed a lighted button on the console and spoke into a tiny built-in microphone.
“Hey, Steve,” he said. “Set up the Neumann in the vocal booth. I want Ian to sing live with Jerry on the next take.”
The smile on Kaanan’s face had changed when he turned back toward me.
“Can we please cut to the chase?” he said. “I’ve got a live concert outside in just under two weeks, and I need to get this single out to radio by Friday.”
He leaned back in his chair again, crossed his legs at the ankles, hands folded across his flat belly.
“I saw Mickey London outside by the stage,” I said. “He was talking with three men who look as though they take pleasure in making bad things happen. I saw them at the Blossom the day Ian’s car was vandalized.”
“Mickey is taking responsibility for event security. I don’t get involved with whomever he might be speaking to.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that, Mr. Kaanan.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Sheriff. Mickey London is a prick, but he’s also a pro. Between his experience and mine, we can put on this concert in our sleep. As you folks might say, ‘this isn’t our first rodeo.’”
“I don’t abide terms like ‘you people.’ It implies an elitist frame of mind I find troubling,” I said.
In my experience, the noisier that type of rhetoric, the more despicable the behavior, and I viewed it as a moral failing.
“My apologies,” he said. “I meant no insult.”
I had no real reason to doubt his sincerity, but I did anyway.
“I will not tolerate another Altamont. Not in my county,” I said. “Am I making myself clear?”
“As crystal, Sheriff.”
I got up to leave, and Kaanan stood to walk me out, obviously happy to see me go.
“Ian looks like he’s taken a ride inside a cement mixer,” I said. “Do you happen to know anything about his injuries?”
Kaanan cocked his head and studied me before he answered.
“You know,” he said. “Ian took a big risk coming here. But I thought it might be cathartic for him as an artist.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You don’t know his story?”
It was the first I’d heard of it, aside from the vague comment he’d made about returning to a place that’s familiar not being the same as never having left at all. Even so, I failed to see Kaanan’s point.
“We all carry a cross of our own making,” I said.
“Are you being intentionally dismissive, Sheriff?”
“Only stating the truth as I have come to know it,” I said. “But if this is intended as one of those homilies about a prophet never being loved in his hometown, you can save it for somebody else.”
I plucked my Resistol off the mic stand and turned to leave.
“Please let Mr. London know I’ll have some of my men here for the show,” I said. “That’s not a request.”
He twitched a smile, but something smoldered behind his eyes.
“By the way, Sheriff,” Kaanan said. “Your wife is a real pro. A real pleasure to work with.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “Let Mr. London know I’ll be here, too.”
CHAPTER NINE
EVEN THE PALLID afternoon sunlight burned my eyes as I stepped out of the relative dark of the studio barn. I squinted my eyes and scanned the guest cabins and grass-covered knolls that surrounded the lake, hoping I’d spot Ian somewhere among them, but didn’t. Failing that, I returned to the cooks in the kitchen and asked where I might find him.
“Look, I don’t know, man,” the skinny one said. “We’re really not s’posed to say.”
