“The boys?”

He nodded once.

“Don’t you mean Cinnamon—their manager?”

He bristled; his nostrils vibrated with tension.

“Lazerbeam Larry or whatever the hell your name is, you are a mediocre liar. For one, you had a stake in all this, a contract and a record to put out—your one shot at glory, per Kip ‘n’ Rog. And the band burned you, cut you loose. Don’t tell me it was nothing. In fact, I’m guessing you probably flipped your wig. Your little paisley fantasy went kaput and probably you couldn’t handle the humiliation, no way. Who knows? Maybe you killed Durazo, and maybe, when Hawley tried to out you, you killed him too.”

“No, no, I—”

“Yeah, you know what? Never mind. Maybe I’ll just take all this up with the cops.”

He was starting to shake in place, whimpering like a crazed terrier, looking to Marie, his master without a leash.

“Or else…you can tell me the truth,” I said firmer, “now.”

In one move, Marie lunged for the green antique lamp and swung for my head—I ducked but then she swung again the other way, bashed me right at the ear.

I screamed, “Dammit!” and yanked the lamp from her hands, chucked it halfway across the trailer—it crashed into the Formica cabinetry. Lazer spun to his wife with a moan. “Why’d you do that? You didn’t have to bonk the guy!”

I had fists up, tae kwon do–style, crazy man in a trailer kitchen—“Don’t do anything stupid, either of you.” Then I grabbed my throbbing ear and said, “Fuck!”

Marie’s face curled, her hands raised in prayer. “I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I thought you were gonna hurt him.”

“You got some ice?”

“Get him something,” Lazerbeam said, “quick, honey.”

Soon I was hunched over in pain on the tiny couch and Marie was beside me, holding a bag of frozen peas up to my ear, caressing my head. Lazerbeam cleared the coffee table of magazines and sat on it to face us. The maternal-paternal awkwardness was worse than getting bonked.

“It’s true,” Lazerbeam said somberly, “I lied to you. But not to protect us. To protect you.”

“From what?”

“Kipler. Paulsen. These are not nice people.”

“I might not have gone down there if you’da been straight with me.”

He stroked his beard with knowing dread. “These are the ugly souls who ruined everything I believe in,” he said. “Destroyers of the love generation.”

“Laze,” Marie said, “please. Just…tell him everything already. Stop pretending to be Bob Dylan and help this kid out.”

“All right, all right. I am sorry. I—look—the sad truth is—”

Lazerbeam looked up to the framed photo on the mantel—the prom shot. It was his shrine, the source of his courage.

I whispered, “Tell me.”

“They were ambitious. They wanted things—and I couldn’t compete. Cinnamon Persky…was not just Emil’s girlfriend. She really ran the band, it was her operation, her thing. I think she’s the one who brought Emil to them in the first place; she’s the one who got them shows. She sat in on the rehearsals, gave them all kinds of advice about the songs, the arrangements. Even what they wore. And…she’s the one who brought them to me.”

“So—she was like their manager?”

“Yes.”

“Then why would you lie to me about not knowing her?”

“Because I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. It wasn’t long before she and I were at odds. First she talked them up, convinced me they were gonna be the best thing that ever happened to the scene. Then, after we recorded, like—days later—she wanted out of the contract; she was sure they were headed for a better deal. I said, ‘What are you kidding me? I just dropped my life savings on this.’ But she was adamant—and she had the twenty-four-track tapes.”

“Where did she think they were headed exactly?”

“Well, look, it’s taken me years to admit—but she had good reason to believe she could take them further. Cin’s folks had real connections. Not like me and my pops, they were real Hollywood people—lot appropriate.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling like I was finally getting somewhere. “Now tell me where Kip and Rog come in.”

“I think it was her mother who set that up,” Marie said.

“Course she did,” Lazerbeam said. “They went back twenty years. Kip and Rog listened to the acetate, but they didn’t hear a hit. They weren’t interested but I believe they knew someone who wanted to break into the biz, a wannabe producer—someone they were in debt to. The ’Graph might’ve made a demo with this guy or started to make one. You gotta see, I wasn’t privy at this point—obviously. All at once, everyone went secretive—nobody would tell me bupkus. A lot of double-talk on the phone. Anyway, they bought the week to record at Sunset Sound—a fortune at that time. That much I heard. And all of a sudden—”

“He dropped them, right?” Marie interrupted. “The producer dropped them.”

“What producer—who? What the hell was his name?”

“That’s just it, we don’t know—nobody we knew, and not a name guy either. But that’s the way I heard it, something maybe went down between this guy and Rey—some kind of bad falling out, I don’t know what. Out of the blue the band came crawling back, begging to redo the contract and put our record out with some new tracks.”

“But you wouldn’t,” Marie said.

“Correction—I couldn’t,” he said. “See, I’d already paid for the design of the jacket, the lyric sheet. I was days away from pressing wax—I couldn’t suddenly change the whole kit and caboodle, I didn’t have that kind of dough! And so we haggled and then—”

He made a grim hand motion—the slashing of neck.

“First Rey…then Emil,” he said. “It was like a nightmare descended. Cinnamon ran off, disappeared. The others…never called me again. I dialed—Hawley, Grunes—no answer. Sandoz came around one time, like, six months later, asking for a handout, jonesing out of his mind. Marie gave him a twenty-dollar bill and told him to never come back again. We weren’t invited to the funerals even. Overnight we became personos non gratos.”

A brittle silence passed in the trailer. I looked to them, a little sheepish—but I still felt like they were holding back. “So that’s…the whole story?”

Lazerbeam and Marie looked at each other in a solemn, unbroken exchange. The force of their bond vibrated with secrets and shared longing, the hesitation of hiders.

He raised a gentle hand in her direction and said, “You tell him.”

“But it’s crazy.”

“Marie Anne—you tell him, or else I’ll tell him.”

“Come on, guys,” I said. “In the last three days I’ve been pushed around even more than I was in junior high. Do me a solid—help me out here.”

Marie looked to the low ceiling for a worried instant, placed her hands on her knees, then studied them like a scolded child.

She said, “I…I thought I saw her.”