Читать книгу His Secret Past - Ellen Hartman - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

August 2007

MASON STAR PROPPED his putter on his shoulder and glared at his son, Christian, but his heart wasn’t in it and they both knew it. When Christian’s cell rang somewhere in the hall outside his office, Mason was glad for the reprieve. Coward. The name fit. Made him feel guilty. But the fact was, he was tired. Tired enough that for the first time in years, he wished there was another parent on the scene. Not Christian’s mother, but someone stable and responsible. He needed a break.

Christian barely acknowledged the ringing phone, ready to keep on arguing. Give the kid credit, Mason thought, reluctantly admiring the dogged stubbornness of the seventeen-year-old.

He shrugged a shoulder at the door and put his head back down as if the interrupted argument mattered even less to him than the putt he’d lined up with the coffee cup across the room. “Get your phone. We’ll finish this conversation later,” he muttered as he swung the putter and then watched the ball miss as Chris disappeared down the hall. His long game sucked and now he’d lost his short game, too. Mason hoped Christian’s call would be an important one. Long, distracting, all-consuming. Possibly lasting the next three or four years.

He dropped the putter on the floor and slumped in his desk chair with his feet up on the oak file cabinet. The walls of his office were covered with photos of former Mulligans residents, interspersed with the golf course signs people had given him over the years.

The first sign had been a housewarming gift when Mulligans opened its doors ten years ago. The community he’d founded to provide a base for people starting over, using their second chance, was named after “taking a mulligan,” golfer slang for a do-over shot. No harm no foul. That first sign read Course Re-seeded. Please Respect the Greens. He kept that one over his desk to remind him of why he’d started the place. Back then he’d been newly sober and doing everything he could to be a man worth respecting.

Mulligans had seemed like a perfect name for the community he’d envisioned where the residents would support each other to remember the past, but not live in it. That mantra was essential for his peace of mind.

The six homes, former railroad workers’ cottages, faced onto a parklike yard and the larger community-center building. Mason and Chris lived upstairs over the community center.

Ten years after he’d opened this place, life was screwing with him, trying to tear him apart again. It had taken almost this long to feel as if he knew what he was doing, knew how to live this life right. And now it was all messed up.

He picked up the letter he’d been reading before Christian came in.

The Lakeland zoning board requests your presence at a hearing to examine the extension of zoning waivers for Mulligans. The waivers are delayed pending a hearing to allow public comment from neighborhood groups opposing the extension.

Mason put the letter back facedown. It rattled him to know neighbor groups had formed under his nose and he hadn’t heard a word about it.

He jumped when, out in the hall, Christian let out a whoop that could only mean one thing. Mason closed his eyes and leaned his head back against his chair even as his son yelled for him.

“Dad, we got it. Alex booked us to open for the Shreds. The Shreds, Dad!”

Christian skidded around the doorway, his unruly, dark brown hair flying back from his face. His hazel eyes, for once not obscured by his ridiculous long bangs, were lit up. They both knew this changed things, gave Chris power over his dad in their yearlong argument. Which meant Mason had to do something, say something, fast. Before he lost the fight and his kid quit school and was out the door on the road with his band.

But man, Christian was happy. Happy didn’t come that often these days. Maybe when he was alone or with his friends Chris still cracked a smile. Here? At home with his dad? Happy was rare enough that Mason couldn’t shut it down.

So he climbed to his feet and smiled. Tried to keep some pissed-off dad in his expression, but there was his kid. And this was big. Chris was happy and wanted Mason to be happy for him.

Crossing the room, Mason put his right hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Your band is good. We both know it. Looks like the Shreds know it, too.”

Christian pumped his arm, the way he used to when he scored in soccer back before his band became the only thing he cared about. Mason missed soccer.

“I gotta call Drew,” Christian said.

“Want me to take you all out for ice cream?”

Christian stared at him, unsure if he was joking. Mason wasn’t sure himself—maybe he just wanted to keep this connection open, have it feel like old times.

When Christian didn’t answer, Mason said, “What? I always took you for ice cream when you won in soccer.”

Christian gave him one of those looks—the one that meant “my dad is a total loser.” Used to be an offer of ice cream made you the cool dad. But the rules had changed and Mason was, once again, fumbling to catch up.

“Thanks, Dad,” Christian said, and then his voice rose, “but we’re going to be onstage at Madison Square Garden with the Shreds!” He looked dazed. “It’s so awesome.”

Christian’s arms, skinny, ropy with muscle earned from hours playing the guitar, moved disjointedly by his sides. The kid had a lanky, almost six-foot frame.

Mason had been skinny, too, at that age, but in his case he hadn’t had access to three square meals a day. Or any square meals a day. As lead singer of Five Star, a notoriously hard-touring, hard-living band, his diet had consisted mainly of Maker’s Mark and whatever drugs happened to be in front of him. His mother hadn’t been concerned with his diet, choosing to concentrate on her share of his earnings and his Maker’s Mark.

Remembering what his life had been when he was Chris’s age prodded him on. Being a good parent sometimes meant you had to be a bad guy…although not quite as bad as his son’s mother. Ten years ago she’d dumped the scrawny, scared seven-year-old on his front porch with little more than a hissed “He’s yours now” and a birth certificate listing Mason as the father.

“Getting this gig is a huge accomplishment, Chris. Recognition from a band like the Shreds is fantastic for you guys.” He paused. The Shreds were a great band. Opening for them was huge. Mason knew better than most what this gig meant and he knew Chris and his band deserved the spot. Pride and fear sat uneasily next to each other in the pit of his stomach. “But this doesn’t change anything. You’re finishing high school. You’re not taking your band on the road until you have your diploma.”

Christian’s hands balled into fists. Mason hated that he’d wiped the joy off his kid’s face and replaced it with disgust. “That’s completely unfair. Just because you screwed up doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

He was gone before Mason could call him on the attitude or the insult. Not that he had the energy anyway. Holy hell. If living with this particular incarnation of a seventeen-year-old pain in the ass was penance for his own misspent youth, well, Mason wished for the nine millionth time he’d been a better person.

He slammed a hand on the office door frame before pulling the door shut. His open-door policy was one of the founding principles of Mulligans, but he had to put himself back together. Chris and the guys had no business touring at seventeen. What father in the world knew that better than one who’d been on the road at sixteen and in rehab at twenty-three? If his mother had done her job and said no once or twice, maybe his life would have turned out different.

Maybe if he hadn’t been so young, hadn’t latched on to David and Five Star so hard, he wouldn’t have sunk so low when it ended.

He’d protect Chris. Keep him home as long as he needed to until he was sure his boy was ready to face the crap waiting out there for him.

He glanced at the door. Anyone who wanted him bad enough would knock. He picked up his putter, but he couldn’t even line up on the ball.

Mulligans and Christian were all that had kept him sane and sober these past ten years. Now there was this zoning “opposition,” whatever the hell that meant. And Christian was determined to skip out on the normal, middle-class life Mason had worked so hard to put together for them. Crap. He’d never been much of a thinker. Give him a job and he’d get it done. But there was nothing concrete here, nothing he could pin down.

He flicked open his e-mail. He highlighted five stock tips, two penis-enlargement messages and three other messages that looked like spam, and started to push delete when he saw the name. David. Giles@fivestar.com. He blinked.

Just looking at the name made him sick, remembering the last time he’d spoken to David, fourteen years ago. Mason had been begging. Been so far out of it, wasted didn’t even begin to describe it. Somehow he’d gotten it into his mind that Five Star would take him back if they heard the song he had been working on. He’d been singing, or doing what his hollowed-out brain thought was singing, and David cursed him out.

David Giles. The guy had been like an older brother once. The most important man in his life. The man who screwed him up so much he almost didn’t make it.

Mason opened the e-mail, but his finger hovered over the delete key.

Mason,

Heyman. Been a while. I guess you know me and the guys are still touring. Not the same without you. Guess you know that, too. We’re in the studio now, cutting a new album. Sounds amazing. You should come up. Bring your songs. Give me a call when you get this. (212) 555–2413.

David

So that was what it looked like. The invitation had finally come but it was fourteen years too late.

There’d been a time when this was all he’d wanted. Five Star, the guys he thought of as his family, had reconsidered and invited him back.

Still touring. Yeah. With his songs and his name. Not the same without you. That would have had more pull if they hadn’t been the ones who booted him out of the band with no warning, no time for talking and not one single look backward. Bring your songs. As if he owed them one more thing.

Mason felt a satisfaction all out of proportion to reality when he pressed the delete key. He refused to admit he also felt a twist of panic when he closed the door on Five Star again. He didn’t want that life back. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t unnerving to say no to the offer when the life he had here was falling to pieces.

“DAVID GILES WOULD GET cut in the auditions for American Idol,” Jake said. He was standing behind Anna, watching the monitor over her shoulder as she ran some of the footage they’d shot during the recording session earlier that day. Five Star’s rented studio was a converted warehouse in Jersey City. The band had given them a small room to use as an office. It was windowless and with enough lingering scent of Lysol that Anna suspected it had formerly been a janitor’s closet. Still, it was privacy, which mattered. She’d never worked on a project where she felt so uncomfortable with the subjects. Even the politicians they’d worked with for campaign ads had more integrity than this group. The only one of the four band members who didn’t set off her liar warning system was Harris Coleman, the keyboard player. As far as Anna could tell in the two months they’d spent with the band, he didn’t talk. Ever.

“Blue Maverick rule number 4, Don’t Make Fun of the Documentary Subject,” she said absently to her brother, eyes on the screen, mind running over all the problems with what she was watching.

“I’m stating a fact. That’s allowed.” Jake turned the volume on the monitor down slightly. Anna slapped his hand away and shot him an annoyed look. Jake’s my-sister-is-a-big-fat-meanie expression hadn’t changed since he was three years old. “It’s hurting my ears,” he said.

Anna paused the video and turned off the monitor. “This is serious. If they keep sucking this much there isn’t going to be an album to promote, much less a film.”

If the album had come together, Five Star might be almost finished in the studio and the movie would be well on its way to complete. As it was, the music was so bad, Anna was sure the footage they had was as useless as the session tapes.

Although the band and their managers had agreed to let her include some archival footage and do new interviews—she’d explained it as framing for the story—she’d gotten nothing about the crash or Terri. Chet, Nick, even the normally silent Harris, had all given her the same noncommittal answers. Hard show, late night, everyone bunked down, no idea how the driver lost control. No one knew Terri or why she’d been on the bus. The only interesting thing she’d heard was when every one of them asked some form of the same question. Did you talk to David?

David. He told several stories about heroic crew members pulling Mason Star out of the bus after the crash, several more about his own injuries, which as far as she could tell consisted mainly of a fat lip and interrupted sleep. Then he said if she wanted to know about the crash she should talk to Mason. So everyone pointed to David and then he turned right around to point at Mason. In Anna’s experience, when fingers got pointed it was because there was something to point at. Somewhere in the intersection of David and Mason there was something to know. Her instincts told her that something was Terri’s story.

“You know what David told me? Mason’s mom was a dancer—in nightclubs. She changed her name legally to Sierra Star. Isn’t that wild? Imagine being a boy, growing up with a stripper name?”

Suddenly the door opened behind them and David Giles walked in. He hadn’t knocked, of course. David played bass and had taken over as lead singer when Mason left. He was larger than life with an outsize ego and the mistaken belief that he was irresistible.

It looked as if David had drawn a line in the sand, daring age forty to touch him. His shoulder-length blond hair was highlighted, teased and sprayed to cover the fact that he had passed “thinning” and was well on the way to “bald up top.” His fake tan was more Sunkist than sun kissed and, while his skinny jeans were probably the same size he’d worn in his twenties, considerably more of David Giles’s middle spilled over the waistband than seemed comfortable.

“Anna!” He came up behind her and rubbed her shoulders, more irritation than massage. “How’s my beautiful director today?”

Jake answered, “I’m great. Thanks for asking.”

“Oh. Ha. Ha. You wish you were as good-looking as your sister here. Look at this hair—it’s just begging to be touched.”

Anna’s curly brown hair had been exasperating her for the past thirty years. The way David obsessed over it and felt free to touch it was making her crazy. He was pushing her closer than she’d ever been to breaking Blue Maverick rule number 18, Don’t Punch the Client. She shifted and rolled the chair to the left, temporarily out of punching distance.

“Going over the film?” David’s high, excited voice grated even when he wasn’t singing. “Does it look as good as it sounds?”

Jake crossed his arms and said, “Yep.”

Anna lifted her shoulder and turned her head, hiding her mouth in her sleeve so David wouldn’t see her smile. “We’re jazzed about the stuff we have down,” David went on. “It’s gelling. Organic, you know?”

Anna kept her eyes on David—if she looked at Jake she’d laugh. The music was organic in the same way half-cured compost was organic. “We’re glad you’re feeling good.”

David shifted, touching his hair with his fingertips, a habit she’d noticed shortly after meeting him. It was as if he was reassuring himself the hair was still there, while making sure not to move it even slightly. It was a tic so delicate and unconscious and heartbreakingly desperate she might have found it sympathetic in a person she liked even the littlest bit. In David it made her clamp her jaws shut so she wouldn’t tell him to get over himself.

“You want to run through some of the stuff you shot of that last session? We were really working that one.”

Jake bent deliberately to tie his shoe.

“We don’t show raw tape to anyone, David. We’ve discussed this before.”

“But this is me. Let’s see a bit, sweetheart, huh?”

She was saved from having to answer when the closet/office door banged open and Nick Kane, the Five Star drummer, pushed his way in followed shortly by a furious Chet Giles, the guitarist.

“You’re not seriously thinking about changing the name of the band, David. Even you can’t be that stupid,” Nick yelled.

Anna instinctively reached for her camera and swung it to her shoulder, adjusting the wide-angle lens so she could see all three bandmates. Jake stepped back out of David’s light. He quietly adjusted the shade on the desk lamp to erase the shadows on Nick’s face.

Chet stepped up to Nick. “That was a private conversation. You weren’t supposed to hear it,” he said.

David held up his hand. “Okay, Nick. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way, but yeah. I brought up a name change to management and they agree. There’s four of us, not five. Mason’s not around but we’re still using his name. Five? Star? None of it fits anymore.”

“The G-Men?” Nick sputtered.

David looked irritated. “It was just an idea.”

“What about this idea? We’re Five Star. Besides, Mason’s coming back. You got in touch with him. You said he’s got new songs. Right?”

Only years of practice at keeping still and silent during shoots kept Anna from reacting. Mason Star was coming out of hibernation? She wanted to look at Jake, be sure he was hearing the same things she was, but she didn’t dare look away.

“We need a plan B,” David said. “He might not say yes.”

Nick looked startled. “Mason was crushed when we kicked him out. He had no idea what happened. Of course he’ll say yes. You said he was working on stuff already.”

“I told you not to worry about this, Nick. You need to back off and let David do what needs to be done,” Chet said. He reached out and poked Nick’s chest. “Got it?”

Nick was the oldest member of the band; he’d turned forty-seven earlier that year. Right now with his dark eyes narrowed and his heavy jaw set, he looked dangerous. And pissed. “You did not just poke me,” Nick growled.

“I certainly just did,” Chet growled back.

Anna focused in on Nick’s face as it tightened and colored. He stared in furious disbelief from Chet to David. Anna mentally scoped out the desk behind her, ready to do what she could to protect the equipment if the brawl brewing in front of her bubbled over in the small space.

“You know what? Go to hell. I should have walked out the day you cut Mason loose. That was wrong then and this is wrong now. If he comes back tell him to call me.” Nick spun on his heel and left the room.

Chet turned on her. “Turn off the camera.” Then he walked out.

David put his hand up as if he was going to run it through his hair, but he stopped himself, fluttering his fingers off the crown instead. “Drama, huh?” he said. “He’ll be back. Nick’ll be back, you’ll see.” He moved toward the door. “We’re not definitely changing the name. G-Men was just an idea. When Nick comes back we’ll straighten this out.”

Anna and Jake nodded.

BUT DAVID WAS WRONG. A week later he came into the office where Anna was at the desk wolfing down a container of leftover risotto she’d brought from home. David said he was shutting down the studio and the movie. Nick was holed up on the farm he owned outside Princeton and he showed no signs of returning to the studio. The album was on hold until the rest of the band figured out what they wanted to do, either find a new drummer or wait for Nick to come back.

Anna’s mouth dried up and she put her fork down. She struggled to keep her voice even as she spoke. “David, we have a schedule. You committed to the movie. How can we—”

“Music doesn’t have a schedule, Anna,” David interrupted her. “You gotta let it flow. Organic, you know?”

Anna thought fast. She couldn’t let him go. She hadn’t gotten what she needed yet. “If you’re taking time out of the studio that’s perfect for the movie. We can do more interviews. Get the historical and background pieces down.”

“Listen, sweetheart, as much as we love spending time together, we’re closing down. If you want to meet up, there’s a club on Sixty-fourth—”

“No,” she snapped, the thought so repulsive she couldn’t even keep her client manners in place.

Obviously irritated by her quick refusal, he said, “We’re out of here at the end of the day. Take anything you need.”

She reached desperately for something to keep him talking. “Have you heard from Mason? Is he coming back?”

“He has our offer. That’s all I can say.”

“What did Nick mean when he said it was wrong to let him go—”

“I told you, we’re shutting the movie down,” David said, cutting her off. “No point in answering questions right now.” Abruptly he turned and left.

It took her seven seconds to go from stunned to furious.

She dumped everything out of the desk into her work duffel. Let them shut down the studio. This wasn’t their movie anyway. Never had been. So what if she hadn’t had the guts to pursue it on her own at first? She did now.

She was through wasting time. Finished waiting for someone to hand her Terri’s story. Blue Maverick was better than that. Anna was better than that.

She was already working on her to-do list as she locked the door behind her. Number-one priority? Track down Mason Star and make him talk.