| |
“Patrick had become impossible,” Ruben said. He looked at his two band mates. “Am I wrong?”
David didn't say anything.
“He was always...difficult,” Ricky admitted. “But it was just...him. His way.”
“Bullshit,” Ruben said. “Yeah, he'd always been the leader and we gave him room to be creative and a perfectionist and all that. But you guys know he'd changed.”
“How did he change?” I asked.
“He was impossible to talk to,” Ruben said. He was talking fast now, animated, his voice charged with emotion. “Impossible to talk to. We weren't a band anymore. It was a fucking monarchy and he was the king. It didn't matter if the three of us thought something was a good idea. If he didn't like it, we didn't do it. Period. It was never like that before.” He shook his head. “He was ruining us.”
I looked at the other two.
They weren't saying anything to contradict Ruben's words.
“Every time we got close to a deal of some kind, he shot it down,” Ruben said bitterly. “The last two times, he did it without even talking to us. I was fed up. It was like he was determined to just set everything we'd accomplished on fire. We weren't even getting local gigs anymore because Patrick had put out the word we only wanted 'big' gigs. Whatever the hell that meant. We were going backward, not forward. And it was his fault.”
I didn't doubt anything he was saying. It seemed as if the band had started to break down because Patrick had a vision that not everyone else was on board with. It happened with bands or with any creative venture. It even happened with businesses, when partners disagreed about the direction to take their company.
But I wasn't sure how that was relevant to Patrick's death.
“Did you give Patrick Xanax?” I asked again. “Recently or at any other time?”
Ruben started to say something, then stopped. He looked at the ground, shook his head. “Yeah,” he said with a bark of a laugh. “I gave him Xanax.”
One of the other two whispered, “Shit,” but I wasn't sure which one.
“We'd had an argument,” Ruben said. “I was super pissed. He'd turned down a meeting with a label in L.A.”
“He did?” David said, looking confused.
“Uh huh,” Ruben said, nodding. “He turned down the meeting. And didn’t tell us. The only reason I found out was because I was calling the clubs up in L.A. trying to get a couple of shows lined up. One of the bookers told me that she'd heard we weren't even coming up for meetings anymore and I said I had no clue what she was talking about.” He looked carefully at both Ricky and David. “She told me that he turned down the fucking meeting last week. And since I didn't know, I assumed you guys didn't know.”
He stared at them, waiting for confirmation. The looks on their faces told us both everything we needed to know. They’d been clueless.
“And that is not how we agreed this band would operate.” He looked specifically at David. “I know how much you'd been butting heads with him. I'd stayed quiet. But it seriously pissed me off that he did that. That isn't what we agreed to.”
Ricky and David were nodding their heads.
“I went to talk to him and we got into it,” Ruben said. “Big time. I let him have it. Told him it wasn't fair, that he was doing things to hurt the band, and that if that's how it was gonna be, I was gonna bail.”
“How did he respond?” I asked.
Ruben squinted into the sunlight. “The way he always did. He was pissed, told me I didn't know what I was talking about and that I didn't understand what was best for the band. Typical arrogance. And, you know, arrogance is fine. We're all arrogant to some degree. But with Patrick it was like it became a thing, like he was trying to turn himself into a caricature of a lead singer in a rock band. And, look, I don't know if he was right or not about me knowing what was best for all of us.” He pointed a finger at me. “But I know that isn't how we all agreed to do things and that's what pissed me off the most. We agreed, the four of us, that it would be four equal votes on everything. But over the last six months?” He shook his head. “It was his vote that mattered, and his alone.”
The other two again didn't contradict what he was saying.
“So how did you end up giving the Xanax?” I asked.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So we did the yelling at one another thing and I stormed out.” He turned and pointed away from us. “Literally walked out of the house and right down that way. Didn't get in the car, just walked.” He turned back around. “After an hour, I came back.”
“You came back,” I repeated.
He nodded. “Because I didn't want to fight with him. I was all amped up and so was he. We just needed to chill the fuck out and get back on the same page. So I turned around and came back. He was sitting on the curb when I got here. I asked him if he wanted to go take the edge off and he said yeah.” He blinked several times, and I couldn’t tell if it was from squinting into the sunlight or something else. “We went into his room and grabbed some beers. We drank for a bit. We didn't say a whole lot, just drank and hung out.” He took a deep breath. “Then we started talking again, about before and everything, and I felt like it was getting tense. I didn't want that.” He glanced at his band mates and the defiance he'd shown earlier had ebbed away. He looked less sure of himself. “So I asked if he wanted to chill a little more. I told him what I had and he was in.”
“He was?” I asked. “He knew you had pills?”
Ruben nodded. “He hesitated at first, but he came around to the idea pretty quick.”
“He was clean,” Ricky said softly.
“Look, I didn’t pressure him,” Ruben said defensively. He folded his arms across his chest. “I wouldn't have fucking done that.”
“I wouldn’t have even offered,” Ricky told him.
David sat down on the curb, taking his time getting down to the cement, like he was tired and weary. Ricky just shook his head in disgust.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“I went and got the pills,” Ruben said haltingly. “We'd each probably had three beers by that point. I took two.”
I bit back a sigh. “And Patrick?”
Anxiety filled his eyes. “He took four.”
“Jesus,” Ricky said, putting his head in his hands.
“I told him he didn't need that many, but he said he was fine,” Ruben said, again sounding like he was trying to defend himself. “So we took them and we both immediately mellowed. I don't even remember what we talked about. But then I said something to him and he didn't say anything and I looked over at him and I thought he was asleep.”
David was staring at him like he'd never even seen him before. “Dude, what the fuck? You knew his history. How the fuck do you offer him drugs?”
Ruben didn't have an answer for that.
“What happened then?” I asked.
Ruben took a deep breath and it appeared to catch, his body jerking like he'd been shoved. “I don't know how much time passed. I was out of it, too. But I really thought he was asleep. Then I tried to wake him up and he wouldn't wake up. I tried to move him and he was just...still...and that's when I realized he wasn't breathing.” He licked his lips. “I checked for his pulse and tried to listen to his heart, but...but there wasn't anything. I told myself I was still just out of it.” He shook his head. “But I wasn't. I knew he was dead.”
The other two were now staring at the ground, probably in shock. There were tears in Ruben's eyes.
“I don't know, man,” he said. His voice was tight, nearly cracking. “I just freaked out. I wasn't thinking straight. I thought everyone would think I killed him or...I don't know. I just freaked.”
A plane rumbled above us. I watched it disappear to the west, leaving a trail of white in the clear blue sky.
“So then you went and got the needle,” I said.
He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. I just panicked. I knew where he used to keep stuff. A drawer in the dresser, stuffed in an old sock. I went looking for it. I found the needle and an old piece of wrap or something. There wasn't really anything in it. I sort of rubbed the needle with the paper then...I went back out to the couch. Where Patrick was.” He sucked in air, looking like a fish that couldn’t breathe. “I just wasn't thinking.”
“You stuck it in his arm,” I said. “Because you knew no one would question that.”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“And you wrote a fucking note,” Ricky growled. “You wrote a fucking note to make it look like he'd done it on purpose.”
Ruben shook his head. “I didn't write it. I tore it from one of his notebooks. A letter he'd written to Erin. He was trying to turn it into a song. He told me about it.”
“Oh, well, that's so much better,” Ricky said, shaking his head. “I guess that makes it okay.”
“I didn't know what I was doing,” Ruben said.
David pushed himself up from the curb, his hands on his hips. He stared at Ruben as if he'd never seen him before.
“I'm sorry,” Ruben said. “I just freaked out.”
David rushed him, taking him off of his feet and to the ground in a tangle of fists and feet. Ricky made no move to stop it. David had Ruben pinned to the ground, swinging wildly at his face, when I reached him and pulled him off.
David made no effort to escape from my hold, his entire body heaving.
Ruben was on his back, a bright red welt beneath his left eye and a trickle of blood snaking out of the nostril on the same side.
I let go of David and he stalked away from all of us. He didn't say a word, just walked until he rounded the corner at the end of the street and disappeared.
“So what now?” Ricky asked.
It was a good question. Ruben hadn't intentionally killed Patrick. He'd shared the drugs with him, which Patrick had willfully accepted. The needle in his arm hadn't killed him, either, but it had been intentionally done to mislead everyone. I had no idea if Patrick could've been revived or saved if Ruben had called for help. I wasn't sure if anyone would ever know that. It was a mess for everyone tied to Patrick.
I looked at Ricky. “I really don't know.”