The quick infusion of alcohol had jolted me awake. But now my unease was tempered with dread. Had Quinn set me up? Given me Dagney’s passport just to get me out of town?
The thought made me feel sick. Even after factoring in his CV as a former junkie, drug dealer, hired gun, and worse, I couldn’t see him betraying me. I’d spent over thirty years mourning Quinn O’Boyle, certain he’d died in prison or OD’ed. We’d known each other since high school, when he’d been my first lover and my first muse, subject of hundreds of black and white photos I’d shot of him while he was awake or asleep, tying up or nodding out. There was a terrible light in his bruised eyes: Even in photographs it burned through me like acid, but I couldn’t look away.
Those photos had been the portal to my career photographing the birth of punk on the Lower East Side, before I flamed out and hit the skids—one of the briefest artistic careers on record, though I had a lot of competition in those days.
Ever since, Quinn’s wasted beauty had haunted me. I looked for his face in every lover’s, in every blasted landscape I wandered through, in every drink. Reykjavík was the first time I’d seen him since 1978: For the first time in decades, I felt something other than desperation, and craved something more than alcohol or speed. The fact that Quinn hadn’t known the Gambrel was under new management didn’t seem like a good portent for our reunion.
I found a seat in the back of the subway car and dug out the scrap of paper Quinn had given me, scrawled with four words.
The Gambrel Derek Haverty
Nothing about how Quinn knew this guy; nothing regarding how long it had been since they’d seen each other, or where, or under what circumstances. I was starting to get the feeling that maybe I didn’t want to know.
I shoved the note back into my pocket and searched my satchel for the Focalin I’d bought from my connection back in New York, removed four caplets, and popped them dry. I could have done with something stronger, but I assumed London would be a good place for that. The entire 1970s punk scene had been fueled by speed and the same three guitar cords. I stared at the advertisements for cheap mobile phones and vacations in Ibiza, and waited for the buzz to kick in.
At King’s Cross, I jammed myself into a Northern line train. I got off at Camden Town, following the crowd through the station. My nerves fizzed like a lit fuse. Freezing wind howled through the tunnels, strong enough to tear the Dr. Seuss hat off the head of the drunken kid stumbling beside me on the escalator.
Despite the icy drizzle, teenagers and twenty-somethings thronged Camden High Street. Nouveau hippies, teenybopper punks, dreadlocked stoners, rude boys, wiggers, black girls in do-rags and leather, Japanese Lolitas and a claque of French-speaking boys in soccer shirts. It was like a high-school prom where the theme was “Masque of the Red Death.” A crap cover of “Creep” blasted from a stall selling Manchester United T-shirts and thongs emblazoned with the Union Jack. The French boys began to sing “Over the Rainbow” as a girl doubled over, puking. The only person close to my age was a rheumy-eyed guy in a gray mohawk who clutched a placard advertising Doc Martens.
Across the street were tattoo and piercing parlors, shuttered shops, a Super Drug pharmacy. I turned in the other direction and headed down the sidewalk, dodging touts who thrust cards advertising massages and cheap tapas at me. CCTV signs emblazoned with a yellow eye were everywhere: streetcorners, shop windows, above waste bins and newsstands. Halfway down the block, I spotted a second pensioner carrying a Doc Martens sign. A tattoo of a crown of thorns encircled his shaved head.
“I’m looking for the Banshee.” I ran my tongue across my cracked lips. The Focalin had given me dry mouth. “This the right way?”
The grizzled punk took a cigarette from behind one ear and nodded. “Yeah. Toward Chalk Farm, past the canal.”
He lit his cigarette, pulled a can of Foster’s from the sagging pocket of a leather trench coat, adjusted his placard, and walked off.
I looked around for a place to grab a quick drink, but I didn’t see much besides souvenir stalls and shops selling Chinese-made electronics. A line had formed outside a nondescript entryway with a neon sign. ELECTRIC BALLROOM. I wandered over, hoping it was a bar.
No such luck. Four bouncers stood behind a yellow rope, smoking as they ignored the queue that trailed down the block. Mostly girls shivering in the cold, many of them clad in polka-dot stockings that I assumed were an homage to whoever was the headline act.
I started back toward Chalk Farm. Near Camden Market, the crowds dispersed in a whirlwind of grit and discarded ad cards as people hurried toward the canal or ducked into tattoo parlors. The air reeked of cigarette smoke and weed, vomit and spilled beer. Sodium streetlights made everything look harshly lit and overexposed. It was a relief to reach a side street where the only illumination came from the sputtering gas lamp outside a steampunk clothing boutique.
I found the Banshee in a cul-de-sac formed by construction barricades and the skeletal outlines of a new high-rise. A mock-Tudor pub, walls encrusted with band posters and flyers protesting the ongoing construction. On the door was an Art Nouveau bronze shield boss of a woman’s face surrounded by serpentine coils of hair, her eyes wide and her mouth open in a scream.
Inside, the pub was smaller than it appeared from the street. Scuffed floors and plain wooden tables; unadorned zinc bar counter. A trio of furry folk-music types occupied a table covered with empty pints. Otherwise the place was empty, except for a man polishing glasses at the bar as he stared at a TV replay of a football match.
But for once, my attention snagged on something other than the bar.
“Fucking A,” I murmured.
In the near-darkness at the back of the room glowed a pristine 1952 Seeburg C jukebox. Ice-blue lights rippled up and down its Bakelite panels, and across the glass coping that protected the record selector and sunflower-yellow housing that held a hundred vinyl singles. The casing’s mirrored interior reflected an infinity of forty-fives.
I walked toward it, entranced, then stopped and ran my hands across the fake wood paneling. Scores of hand-lettered labels identified the singles’ A- and B-sides.
Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, early Stones and Electric Prunes. Tonto’s Expanding Head Band and the Green Fuz; “Pretty Vacant” and “Time Has Come Today.” An entire row of Chuck Berry. Big Star. Chris Bell’s “I Am the Cosmos,” a rarity even when it was first pressed. The Seeburg was the elephants’ graveyard of rock and roll. I shook my head and laughed.
This was Quinn’s work—not the immaculately restored jukebox, but the fortune in vinyl. I wondered if it was stuff he’d hoarded over the years, or tracked down for a serious collector—presumably, whoever owned the Banshee.
I checked the coin slot to see if it had been retrofitted for UK currency. It still had the original, with a yellowing note taped beside it.
SEE DEREK TO OPERATE.
I dug through my pockets until I found a handful of coins, picked through them for a quarter. I scanned the rows of 45s, finally slid the quarter into the slot, waiting for it to fall before I punched in three sets of numbers.
Familiar click and grind of the shuttle mechanism as the tonearm slid across the front of the machine, halting as a 45 locked into place. Hiss and pop as the needle dropped then skidded into a groove. Chuck Berry’s Gibson roared into the opening chords of “Johnny B. Goode” as I turned and strode to the bar.
The bartender eyed me coolly. “Sign says to ask before using the jukebox.”
“I’m all checked out on that.” I dropped a twenty onto the counter. “Jack Daniels.”
“Good choice.” He was tall and ebony skinned, his head shaved, and wore a black donkey jacket over a flannel shirt. And he was close to my age, which meant he might be the guy I was looking for. He poured a shot and slid it toward me. “The song, I mean.”
“Thanks.”
Even with my brain sparking from the Focalin, I knew I should proceed cautiously. But then Berry’s guitar rattled into the bridge, and I downed the whiskey.
“Another.” The bartender refilled my glass as I glanced around the room and asked, “Derek here?”
“I’m Derek.”
I raised my shotglass to him as he stared at me, unsmiling. “I’m Cassandra Neary. Cass.” He remained silent. “Nice jukebox.”
He grimaced. “It’s wasted on the kids who come here. You don’t keep a jukebox in a pub. Or gastropub,” he added bitterly. I couldn’t get a handle on his accent—something northern, maybe. “Cost me the Earth. Couldn’t afford it now.”
“No shit.” I hesitated. “I’m a friend of Quinn O’Boyle’s.”
“No shit,” he said, his voice expressionless, and walked to the end of the bar.
I’d lost him. I tried to think of a comeback that might buy me a second chance. Before I could say anything, he returned with a bottle of mineral water, opened it, and took a swig. “So how’s Quinn?”
“Pretty good.” True enough, considering he’d been pistol-whipped in the Icelandic highlands and now had a permanent grin carved into his face, along with the tribal tattoos he’d gotten in prison.
“You’re American.” I nodded. “At first I thought you were the other one. The Swedish chick.”
“That junkie? Fuck no.”
“Quinn here with you?”
“Not yet.” I took a deep breath. “He’s in Reykjavík. I’m supposed to meet him here in the next few days. Well, not here—your old pub in Brixton. The Gambrel.”
“That was never my pub.” Derek drank what remained of the mineral water in one long swallow. His hand tightened around the plastic bottle, crumpling it. “I think you need to find another place to meet up.”
He dropped the crushed bottle onto the counter and held my gaze, his eyes the color of the kind of single malt I could never afford. Chuck Berry’s guitar faded into near silence. There was an almost imperceptible click and whir as the Seeburg’s Select-O-Matic once again slid back and forth, the tonearm replacing one 45 and withdrawing another.
Crackle of scratched vinyl as the needle hopped across a damaged groove and found its sweet spot. The hairs on my neck rose as an electric guitar soared into the sonic tsunami of Steve Hunter’s intro to the live version of “Sweet Jane.”
Derek’s mouth parted. His eyes focused on something just above my head, something I knew wasn’t there. We listened without speaking, until the guitar resolved into four familiar cords and the crowd’s applause surrendered to Lou Reed’s voice.
“Still gets me every time.” Derek looked at me as though trying to remember where I’d come from. “What’s your name again?”
“Cass.”
“Cass.” He got himself another mineral water, returned, and lifted the plastic bottle to me. “To Lou.”
“To Lou.”
Neither of us spoke until the song ended.
“That’s how me and Quinn met,” I said at last. “I went to the record store to buy Rock ’n’ Roll Animal when it first came out. There was only one copy, and this skinny red-haired kid already has it in his hands. I couldn’t talk him out of buying it, but he invited me back to his place and we listened to it for about three hours, nonstop, until his father threw me out.” I downed my Jack Daniels. “I never knew there was a single of the live ‘Sweet Jane.’”
“Only in the UK. 1974. Quinn found it—that’s his copy.” Derek inclined his head toward the Seeburg. “Everything on there came from him; he tricked it up for me when I bought it. Kept it at my flat till I found a proper place for it.”
“You give him a playlist?”
“No. Quinn knows my taste. Always has.”
Cold air blasted as the door opened and a group stumbled in, underdressed girls and a trio of boys with red-chapped faces.
“Excuse me.” Derek turned to greet his customers. “What can I get for you gentlemen?”
Men was pushing it: Back home, none of them would’ve been legal. Not that I cared. As “Sweet Jane” segued into “Telstar,” I looked down and saw a full pint in front of me. I nodded thanks to Derek, paid up, and found a table in the back.
The place was starting to fill up. Someone nabbed the empty chair across from me and dragged it to another table. I sipped my beer, eking it out as it grew warm as blood. Derek seemed to be the only one holding down the place. No one came to ask me if I wanted another drink. No one cleared my table. I stayed put.
After a while, a buzz-cut woman in her forties slid alongside Derek to work the bar. The jukebox had long since fallen silent, replaced by a rising din of conversation and the incessant, witless birdsong of mobile phones. The air smelled like sex and weed and drugstore perfume. Alcohol boosted the Focalin in my bloodstream: For a few minutes I zoned out.
When I looked up again, the buzz-cut woman was alone behind the bar. Derek stood feeding coins into the Seeburg. An old Dusty Springfield song came on. He crossed the room, extended one arm into a knot of drinkers, and, as if by magic, snagged an empty chair and pulled it toward me.
“Okay if I join you?”
I nodded. He sat and withdrew two bottles of mineral water from the pockets of his donkey jacket, slid one across the table to me, popped the other, and drank from it with his eyes closed. A raised scar traced his jaw like the outline of a hinge. I glanced down at the table, and noticed the ring finger of his right hand had been severed at the second joint.
After a minute, he opened his eyes. Dusty Springfield gave way to Amy Winehouse. Derek shook his head.
“These kids can’t figure out how to work a fucking jukebox. I used to show them, but they’d just play the same goddamned song over and over. ‘Rehab.’ I had to take it off.” He took a sip of water, gestured at my unopened bottle. “You should have some of that. Stay hydrated. You don’t want them to find traces of blood in your alcohol stream.”
“No danger of that,” I said. But I opened the bottle and swallowed a mouthful.
Derek cocked his head. “How do you know Quinn again?”
“High school. I used to photograph him.”
“You still a photographer? That’s a dying breed.” He laughed. “Make that ‘dead.’ You and that jukebox.”
“How do you know Quinn?”
“We used to work together.”
“At the Gambrel?”
“No.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Quinn didn’t do business there. He had more sense than I did. Back then, anyway.” He stared at the Seeburg, its blue glare throwing the planes of his face into stark relief. “What were you doing in Reykjavík?”
“Just killing time.”
“Nothing else?” An eyetooth flashed as he smiled, but his amber gaze remained cold. He pointed at the barely healed starburst beside my right eye. “That where you got that scar?”
“No.”
“What about that?” He touched the fresh gash in my cheek, and I flinched.
“A bird attacked me in Iceland,” I said. “A raven.”
I thought he’d laugh. Instead he continued to stare at me. After a minute, he said, “You run with a rough crowd, Cass. But I guess you’re aware of that. You know it’s risky for Quinn to try to enter the UK?”
I nodded. I knew Quinn was afraid of being deported back to the U.S., but I’d avoided asking why. He had a laundry list that began with knocking off a pharmacy when we were kids. Somehow, I’d let desire for him and my own fear of remaining in Reykjavík override the obvious fact that if Quinn left Iceland, he was fucked. Quinn was a lot of things; stupid wasn’t one of them.
I didn’t want to think about the conclusion to this line of thought—that if Quinn didn’t show up in London in the next few days, I was fucked, too.
I finished the dregs of my beer and stared into the empty glass. “Yeah. But I think he worked something out.”
“That would be quite a feat. Where you staying?”
I shrugged. “Can you recommend someplace?”
“Around here? Holiday Inn, but it’s expensive.”
“How much?”
“Dunno. Three hundred quid?”
“For a fucking Holiday Inn?”
“This is London.”
“Yeah, I get that part.”
I looked away. At the bar, a pretty blond girl wearing polka-dot stockings and a fuzzy teddy bear hat leaned into a guy whose hair bore an unfortunate allegiance to LeBon-era Duran Duran. “Who’s playing at the Electric Ballroom?”
Derek yawned. “Don’t know. Hey, Kerry!”
“Hey, what?” the buzz-cut bartender shot back.
“Who’s at the Electric Ballroom?”
Kerry inclined her head to the blond girl, mouthed a question then yelled, “Rapture of Lulu.”
Derek turned to me. “There you are: Rapture of Lulu.”
“Who the hell is Lulu?”
“No idea. I’m still trying to figure out which one is Baby Spice.” He gulped down the rest of his water and stood. “Let me know if you hear from Quinn. He owes me money.”
You and fifty other people, I thought, but said nothing.