I stared at the back cover, transfixed by the band, their easy oneness. Durazo—eyes of innocence.

“But why,” I said, “why would Emil have killed his own band member?”

Marie said, “We don’t think he did.”

“Okay,” I said. “So…who…?”

“Nobody knows,” Lazerbeam said. “And it broke our hearts, man. Because we really did see them as our discovery, ya know? And we were gonna work hard to take them places.”

“It’s not like they were some kind of a pro act,” Marie said. “They didn’t shop around; nobody’d even heard about them.”

“It’s like—rock and roll–wise, they were our kids. And we were gonna bring them to the world.”

Together, they stared at me like children themselves, the abandoned kind.

I nodded, took a last look at the LP cover, breathed it in.

“This was…great, man, both of you, I’m so glad I got to meet you guys. The paisley underground—amazing history lesson.”

Lazerbeam grinned with pride. “Anytime, man, anytime.”

“Just call first,” Marie interjected.

“And come by with that test pressing,” Lazerbeam said. “Let’s grok it together, man.”

“I’d like that,” I said. “Say, is it okay if I take some pics? Like, on my phone?”

Lazerbeam looked to his old lady for permission and she gave a cool nod. I took some cell snaps, of the album cover, front and back, and a few random flyers xeroxed on blue-and-yellow paper, long faded. Then I fished out Elkaim’s roll and lay a hundred on the table, thanking them both.

Marie tilted her head and said, “Good luck, darlin’. You’re wasting your time, but good luck.”

At the door, Lazerbeam shot me a look—the hapless, nervous gaze of the henpecked husband. He knew it all made him seem a little ridiculous, the nostalgia, the cowering, and he worked overtime to fend off self-pity. But beaming from his pupils was something else, a trembling beyond panic, beyond shame: Please don’t judge me. I can’t let go of the dream.

I myself was in a kind of dreamy shock as I got back in the Jetta and drove off. I couldn’t put a shape on the feeling until I came up over the mountain, and then it hit me full force, larger, louder than the Hollywood sign across the basin.

Emil Elkaim, Reynaldo Durazo, Devon Hawley Junior.

They weren’t strangers or even just acquaintances.

They were a band.

At the bottom of the hill, I cut east and headed for Steam World.

They were…a band.

I tore down Washington Boulevard in a late afternoon daze.

Like a family—a band.

I pulled up to the Quonset hut.

This time, Hawley’s baby blue Dodge was parked out front.

9

I banged on the front door—once again, no answer. Then I walked around the building—the red-ridged service entrance was half-open. I leaned into the brightly lit open warehouse and yelled, “Hello in there.” Still no answer, but he had to be in there somewhere.

I ducked to enter, then froze, hypnotized in my tracks. All around, bathed in the glare of open-faced halogens, miniature sets rose up off wide steel tables, city neighborhoods stretching into opulent SoCal skylines. There had to be a dozen of these crazy things—Hollywood, Santa Monica, downtown, Boyle Heights—and none more than five or six feet high. Hot white beams cut through the room, lighting up the hustle-bustle like electric suns, giving the perfect enamel paint a vaporous glow. These were not ordinary models. Each neighborhood seemed to be constructed with a year or an era in mind. Culver City late ’40s, Sunset Strip ’66, Bunker Hill of the Roaring Twenties, and so on. Through the glare I yelled “Hello” again and when nobody answered, I moseyed up to the edge of mini-Hancock Park and hovered over it. The touches were mind-blowing. I’d seen some bitchin’ dioramas before but this was something else—vivid, rough around the edges, like a vintage photo come to life. My eyes traced the frozen traffic on the 101 over the Cahuenga Pass, down through the Hollywood Bowl—insane. I spun around: moony twilight glistened on the shiny silver-blue Malibu bay. You could practically hear the waves lolling. They were strangely comforting too, these models—they weren’t fixed. This was urban chaos as shrunken head, the world in motion, everything floating by, flowing, overflowing, shimmering with the fumbly-bumbly hyper-real weirdness of a miniaturized normal day. I stood there slack-jawed and looked around, tried to shake off the dream stupor.

“Mr. Hawley? Devon? Hello?”

No answer—some green screens formed a kind of partition at the far end of the warehouse. Maybe he was working there.

“Mr. Hawley, you back there? It’s Adam…I called earlier today…”

No sound but the buzzing lights—I headed back there slowly, keyed up in a kind of miniature-land ecstasy. I wanted to take it all in. I stepped gingerly through the winding path, turning 360 in near-total hypnosis. Mini-freeways formed bridges between islands, connecting neighborhoods like a walking maze, the kind of thing you might see at a World’s Fair—but how would you move it?

I came upon a model of the RKO Studios building, circa 1930-something, complete with the corner globe topped by a telegraph shooting electric bolts. The words R-K-O RADIO PICTURES were painted red. I never knew that. I’d only ever seen the thing in black and white. And at the little studio gate, a tiny milk truck sat, no bigger than a stick of butter. I knelt to take a look. In teensy-weensy letters it said, Drink “Home Milk”—It’s Beautiful! And on the opposite corner, a fire escape in ornate grating, a windowed little flower shop with buckets slightly misarranged, a pretzel vendor’s pushcart—one of those jeweler’s magnifying glasses sat beside it, looking giant. I pivoted to the adjacent table, also under construction—Hawthorne Boulevard circa ’63, complete with an AAMCO Transmissions Shop, a Foster’s Freeze, and a Hughes Car Wash with motorized spinning sign. No cars yet, but a Go-Pro faced down the mini car wash tunnel layered in splashes of white acrylic to look like spritzing foam.

As I knelt there, studying it all, mesmerized, soft music began to creep through the whirring of electricity and AC, gentle and small, from some faraway speaker. I got up and turned around slowly. I moved in the direction of sound until I could make it out—more KSRF, golden oldies—Friends of Distinction, “Grazing in the Grass.” Cheery, but played so quiet it sounded like a lonely echo from a faraway time. Music meant somebody was here, though…or at least planning to come back.

Louder this time I said, “He-llooooo?”

I heard a rustling and then what sounded like a low moan from behind the green screens. My heart thumped.

“Mr. Hawley?”

The moan got louder.

I cut through the models, around the partitions, banged into a silver cart rattling cupped paintbrushes, the cramped space cordoned off like some kind of makeshift office—a desk area, clipboards stuck by magnets onto a great metal filing cabinet, a big industrial shelf with cutting and painting tools and parts and glue, hundreds of little mini-wheels and bricks and poles.

And on the floor, Devon Hawley Junior.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” I said, “don’t move! Stay still.”

He was on his belly, crawling slowly, eyes closed, mouth open, slack in the legs, hands tied in thin rope behind his back, his feet thrashing listlessly. He’d been crawling, from the belly, trying to pull himself by his chin, a great big oil spill of blood across his big bald head.

“Oh fuck!” I said, then double-taked, but Hawley twitched, and I dropped to my knees. “Don’t move, don’t move.”

I untied his hands, looked around, jittery, paranoid. His grip loosened, hands trembled.

“Stay, stay.”

He moaned.

I knelt.

He grunted something, two syllables; it sounded like be hard or be hurried or something.