The Good Fight 2: Villains Read online

  Baltazar Fusilier was his name, and he broadcast every Friday night from Geppi’s Roadhouse beginning after midnight. The first time Mullen heard him, he had nearly driven off the road. Fusilier’s liquid guitar filled the car with blue lava, like lightning traveling harmlessly through his body, leaving behind a breathless tingle. How could he pick that fast, that precisely, that passionately? Had he made a deal with the devil, like Robert Johnson, Charlie Parker, Sig Saucier? Mullen once heard an old roadie, a wizened ginseng root of a man with a Cockney accent, who’d toured with Cream and been a heroin addict for thirty years, say Eric Clapton promised the devil his own son to play as he did, and that was a Done Deal.

  Mullen had always known he was destined for greatness. He could play guitar. So could twenty other guys in high school. They all felt destined for greatness. Mullen took lessons from an old jazz cat who owned a used record shop under the El near Wrigley Field. Mullen followed Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Korn, and Limp Bizkit. He formed band after band—all fell apart from centripetal force. He was willful, arrogant, condescending, selfish, and could cover everyone from AC/DC to ZZ Top. Nobody could stand him. There were plenty guys played as well, easier to get along with.

  "No one understands me," he muttered searching for blues on FM.

  Well fuck it. They’d be lining up to kiss his ass once he studied with Baltazar Fusilier. Mullen planned to throw himself at Fusilier's feet. "Master! Let me serve you and teach me to play guitar!" A kung fu film.

  Mullen played guitar the way Mike Tyson fought. He just went out there and did it. He could tear it up blues or heavy metal and had, in fact, been the highly successful lead guitar for a Deep Purple cover act called Lavender Laundry, until he showed up stoned, drunk and late for the fourth time. After that, desperate, destitute, he’d signed on with Otis. The experience on the assembly line left him deeply scarred. It was no place for a sensitive artist. He cut his fingers on the assembly clips. A guitarist couldn't afford to hurt his fingers.

  Mullen ran over a raccoon outside of Carthage, almost ended up in the ditch, bought some dexamil off a trucker at the Kentucky border. Never shut the ‘Bird down, the whole way. It was close to noon by the time he topped a rise on State Highway 78, south of Springfield, and saw Woonsocket in the distance. A yellow corona hovered around his vision and his head felt as if it were filled with sawdust. He drove around a bend, and there was Geppi’s Roadhouse, a two-story ramshackle structure with a Dixie beer sign hanging in the window and an old marquee on wheels out by the highway. Baltazar Fusilier tonight/Live Broadcast via KLAW! Of course, that was last night. Today was Saturday. The boy had to play on Saturday, or what good was having a roadhouse?

  Even though it was eleven a.m., and Mullen was red-eyed and stinking, he pulled into the gravel lot, sliding to a stop in a great cloud of dust. It was dry. Even a city boy like Mullen could tell it was dry. Mullen could smell his own stink as he got out of the car. Got to find a motel, take a shower, unload some of those singing catfish.

  The front door creaked open. The interior was a barn-like cave, supported by open timbers, smelling of stale beer. Deer and boars looked down from the wall, alongside numerous mounted fish. Singing catfish would fit right in. Metal signs extolled the virtues of Burma-Shave, Indian Motorcycles, Hamm's beer. There was a stage at the back of the room, seven scarred little tables, and an old black bald guy in coveralls mopping the floor. He looked up as Mullen came in, stopped what he was doing and stood up straight as if about to receive a blow.

  “Yassuh?”

  “Yeah,” Mullen rumbled, voice sounding jagged in his ears. “Baltazar Fusilier playin’ tonight?”

  “Every Friday and Sattiday. Don’t come on ‘til midnight.” The man resumed mopping.

  “Yeah. Hey, maybe you can recommend a place I can get a room, wash up. I been drivin’ all night. Come from Chicago to hear this guy.”

  The man did not look up from his work. “Might try the King’s Inn right on down the road. They got reasonable rates and are purty clean.”

  Mullen wanted to ask some questions, or even just chat a while, but he could tell that the mopper was in no mood. “Yeah, okay. Thanks. See you tonight.”

  A mile down the road was a sign: “WELCOME TO WOONSOCKET/PROUD HOME OF MILLER ELECTRONICS!” A little further was the factory, a series of long, low, barracks-like buildings by the side or the road, protected by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. It looked like a Word War II installation. The parking lot was filled with rusting American iron, a few chopped hawgs.

  The King’s Inn lay at the north end of town. Mullen could see clear through to the other side. Main Street was five blocks mercantile encompassing a pharmacy, a farmer’s coop, a tiny movie theater showing a Tom Cruise film, a five and dime, a café, a couple of bars, and a hardware store. Gray brick. Dry. Dusty.

  The motel consisted of a tract house and a strip of ten cabins facing the highway. A heavy woman in curlers reading the National Star hoisted herself from a linoleum table behind the counter when Mullen came in, wearing shades and a nylon Cowboys jacket. The woman came up to the counter, caught a whiff, took a step back.

  “Reckon y’all lookin’ for a shower.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Honey, I seen hog wallers smelled better.”

  Mullen brushed the hair out of his face. “Sorry. Been driving all night from Chicago. Came to hear Baltazar Fusillier.”

  The woman nodded solemnly. “Baltazar is quite a musician, yes he is. Reckon you got time to taker a shower, catch some shuteye. My one complaint, he don’t come on ‘til the decent folks are all in bed. I heard him play at a street festival, though. Twenty-four bucks, pay in advance.”

  Mullen peeled the money out of his tattered wallet. “What does Miller Electronics make?”

  “Radios. You got one in your room. Circuit boards.”

  The room was tiny and smelled of bug spray. The radio by the side of the bed was an anachronism, a wood box with a radial dial. Mullen was certain that if he pried it open he’d find tubes. He turned it on but soon tired of low-down country twang and farm reports. Water pressure was anemic but at least it was hot. Mullen used an entire bar of soap on himself and his hair, used both the skimpy bath towels to dry himself off. He sat naked on the thin mattress, reached for his motley-colored leather overnight bag, twelve bucks in Tijuana, and pulled out a zippered purse made out of a frog. He shook the contents out on the bed: three dexamils, a handful of valium, a quarter gram of coke, and some xanax. Save the coke for Baltazar. A couple of xanax ought to do the trick.

  What a dream. The kind you never want to end. There he was, at the Forum in LA, or maybe it was the Rainbow Room, or Max’s Kansas City. Whatever. The place was jammed—sixty thousand people. And right down front, a dozen moist little groupies, pouty pink lips screaming, hands reaching. Mullen’s hands were full of guitar, peeling off one climax after another, like continuous orgasm. He had a hard-on like the figurehead on a Viking ship. He aimed his guitar at one lubricious babe after another, and with each striking chord, said, “You. And you! And you!” On and on. The sax player started to wail.

  No sax. Factory whistle. Mullen swam up, up out of his dream toward the dim light. Quitting time at the plant. He knew that sound too fucking well. Christ on a Stratocaster, it was nine o’clock at night. Must be the second shift. He’d conked out for eight hours. Mullen sat on the edge of the bed, head swimming. He needed a wake-me-up. He eyed his stash: dexamil or cocaine? Ah, what the hell, down the hatch with the little white pill, followed by a glass of hard Missouri water.

  He went through his duds, put on a clean Western shirt, light blue with a beige yoke, pearl buttons, put on his Cowboy boots, fastened his hair in a pony tail. A regular shit-kicker, blend right in. He pulled into Rudy’s Diner: Dawgs, Burgers, Kones and Shakes. The waitress looked like she was seventeen, long legs, blond hair, creamy complexion, the disposition of a cheerleader. “Darla” said the script on her pink Rudy’s Diner shirt.r />
  “What time you get off this shift, Darlin’?”

  Darla eyed the rough-hewn stranger with awe, apprehension, and inchoate yearning. “’Leven. Why?”

  “Thought maybe you’d like to go here Baltazar Fusillier with me. You know who Baltazar Fusillier is, don’t you?”

  “I sure do,” she giggled. “But I got to get up early and go to church with my folks.”

  “Oh come on, Darlin’, surely the Lord understands you got to raise a little hell on Saturday so you can put the devil to rest on Sunday.”

  Three teen-agers came in, unsubtly eyeing Mullen. Strange car, strange dude talkin’ to Darla. He flashed a rock god smile at them. They knew not who he was. But they would. Help put this town on the map.

  He hadn’t really wanted her there anyway. She’d just be a distraction. Maybe, if things worked out, and he stayed on to study with Fusillier . . . It was eleven by the time he pulled into Geppi’s lot. He had to drive around back to find a spot by the dumpster. The lot was filled with pick-ups, jacked-up Chevies, chopped hawgs. The place was a lantern in the dark, a cornucopia of light and sound spilling generously into the street, through the windows, out the back.

  It was hot in the bar, expectation heavy as blood. Virtually every stool was taken. Mullen waited until one patron slid gracefully to the floor and was escorted out, grabed a spot at the bar, let the bartender talk him into a fine Kentucky bourbon. A man in a Miller Electronics hat sat next to him, turned, smiled companionably. “How ya doin’?”

  “Great. You work at that factory? How do they manage to make a living off those radios? You got to be shittin’ me. I’ve never heard of those radios. Where they sell ‘em?”

  The man lit a Camel. His hands were twisted and scarred, like the roots of a tree. He was in his mid-forties, thin, grizzled, skin like a scouring pad. Deep-set dark eyes, maybe some Cherokee blood. “Oh, ah don’t know. They’re popular overseas and with the armed forces, I hear. Radios ain’t all we make. We also make circuit boards for electronic novelties. All’s I know, I been workin’ on that assembly line fifteen year, they ain’t laid me off yet. Where y’all from?”

  “Chicago. I was working on an assembly line up there. Gave ‘em three of the best weeks of my life!” Mullen laughed, slapped the factory worker on the arm, was rewarded with a wan smile. “Made Otis the Singing Catfish, maybe you heard of him.”

  The man shook his head. “Nope, don’t recall that I have.”

  Mullen remembered the hot catfish in his car. “Hey, it’s really something. Looks like a real catfish, only you turn it on, every time somebody passes in front of it it turns its head and sings, ‘It’s a treat to put your feet in the Mississippi mud . . . ‘” Mullen expertly mimed the lower-pitched voice of the journeyman chosen to be the Voice of Otis.

  The Miller man nodded his head and chimed in, starting from the first verse. “Come on down, kick on back. Water’s brown, and the mud is black . . . ”

  Soon they were singing along, Mullen harmonizing, pounding the naugahyde-upholstered bartop in front of him. A few drunks smiled with approval, nodding their heads.

  The factory worker stuck out his calloused paw. It had been cut and burnt so many times it looked as if it had been stitched together out of fragments. “Merle Hawkins.”

  “Jeremy Mullen.” They impressed each other with their grips. Mullen signaled for another round for both of them. Hawkins tipped his hat toward Mullen and tossed it back.

  “Man, oh man, that hits the spot. What brings y’all to Woonsocket, Jeremy?”

  “Baltazar Fusillier. I play too. Heard him on the radio late one night and I couldn’t fucking believe it! You tell me why this guy isn’t bigger than Hendrix, Clapton, and Bruce Springsteen put together?”

  Hawkins shook his head. “Well ah don’t know ‘bout that, all’s ah know we’re lucky to have him. Worked ‘longside the man for seven years. He is a might peculiar, don’t like to wake up too early in the day, guess that’s a reaction to havin’ to get up at the crack of dawn, all those years. Only time I gets to hear him is on the weekend, got to get up early, make the radios, y’know.”

  Mullen looked around. Many of the patrons bore signs of factory life: scars, missing digits, the odd eyepatch. Woonsocket was one gnarly town. “That factory sure leaves its mark, don’t it? How many people died in there? How many gave their lives to turn out those funky little radios? Betcha they got a little cemetery out back.”

  Hawkins squinted, hawked up a lugie and deposited it carefully in a paper cup. “A few. A few. One guy got electrocuted when he turned on a radio to see if it worked. OSHA investigated. Guy was new on the job, didn’t know his ass from his elbow. All in all, ol’ Miller keeps a lotta folks in Dixie, you know what I’m sayin’.”

  Downing his whiskey and signaling for another, Mullen stared at a stuffed bass over the bar. There was something he meant to do, something important. In desperation, he seized a yellow cardboard menu held upright between a ketchup bottle and a matched set of shakers. He studied the menu with Talmudic fervor. Deep fried catfish nuggets! Otis! Otis the Singing Catfish! “Hold my seat, buddy! You’re gonna shit when you see this!” Mullen said, and was gone before Hawkins could say him nay.

  Mullen had some difficulty finding his car, had to sit and do a snort, so he wouldn’t fall asleep, had to stand with his forehead resting against the cool brown steel of the dumpster while he emptied his bladder. He re-entered the roadhouse clutching a boxed catfish and radiating raw animal magnetism, pupils contracted. Against all odds, Hawkins had preserved his bar stool. Mullen sat cackling, was trying to open the box when the lights dimmed, the crowd erupted in hoots, whistles, and clapping, and the p.a. system crackled. A young man with shaved sidewalls and a long blond ponytail bobbed above the crowd halfway back at a soundboard. Some sleazy cowboy in a black hat was barely visible onstage, through the bobbing heads.

  “Awright yew cats and kittens,” the cowboy crowed. “Y’all know why we’re here! Y’all waitin’ to hear Woonsocket’s favorite son, that fantastic ax-wieldin’ warlock of the blues, that low-down, snake-bit, skunk-funky, rockin’ rabid crocodile o’ rock, Y’ALL GIVE IT UP FOR THE ONE AND ONLY BALTAZAR FUSILLIER!”

  Mullen strained his head this way and that, caught a glimpse of a lean figure dressed in black, long, stringy gray hair, shades, like a goddamn Grateful Dead cover by Mouse, move through the crowd and take up position in the center of the stage, on a chair. In between a sea of heads and hands rose and fell obscuring the view. Rebel yells filled the air.

  KERRRRANGGGGGGG!

  That unmistakable tone. Baltazar Fusillier took the cover off his lightsaber and went to work. His guitar cut like a laser, illuminating soundscapes no one ever dreamed existed. The rhythm section, drums, bass, keyboards, followed along, funky, well-oiled independent suspension gliding with him over unlikely roads. Curved roads. The blues were only three chords and twelve bars, but Fusillier swung them with unruly brilliance, diving in and out of the rules according to his own unique and beautiful logic. Each note burst clear and brilliant, followed by another and another, so fast they seemed to merge into one, and yet each stood apart, perfectly fashioned in its own little world. Fusillier effortlessly peeled off one guitar epiphany after another—an endless, perfect blue surf.

  The crowd was rude but adoring, shouts of glee and satisfaction following a particularly piquant passage. Yeeeee-HA! Or Play It, Baltazar! Fusillier sang in a whiskey-soaked baritone that seemed to scrape the basement of existence, a voice filled with living and more than its share of heartbreak. Songs of loss and excess, his baby done left him, and took the rent money too. He just found out he was HIV positive, and his dog died. Mullen was transfixed. The sound was a thousand times more intense than it had been over a radio up north, even the radio in his ‘Bird. Live. You had to hear it live. If he could capture that intensity, there was no limit to what he could do. Destiny, babe.

  Fusillier played “Delta Blues,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” “My B
aby Done Left Me,” “Cross-cut Saw,” “One Room Country Shack,” and “Ain’t Enough Comin’ In.” If architecture is frozen music, Fusillier tossed off cathedrals that beggared Notre Dame as casually as a pasha tossing coins to children. As the last note of the last solo hovered in the air like a rope of gold, the room howled and clapped. Mullen found himself moving, without conscious decision, toward the front of the stage, juking this way and that, slipping between the overstuffed coveralls, leather mini-skirts and black leather jackets until he found himself directly in front of where Baltazar Fusillier sat slumped on a cheap wooden chair, guitar dangling between his legs, long gray hair in his face, wearing an ankle-length rubberized cotton duster. Baltazar had his right hand thrust into the folds of the coat, Napolean-like.

  Mullen dropped before his God, instinctively lowered one knee to the stage, tried to speak. His throat had gone dry as a north Texas pasture, summer of ‘00. The rest of the band had left the stage. People went about their business, a few smirking, waiting to see what kind of damn fool Yankee come all this way to drop to one knee and croak like a frog.

  “Baltazar Fusillier, man, you are the greatest fuckin’ guitarist I’ve ever heard in my life! I came down here from Chicago to meet you, man!” Rough-cut words, stamped from iron.

  The guitarist didn’t move, didn’t look up. “Thank ya,” he said in a soft Missouri drawl.

  “Man, I play guitar myself, Jeremy Mullen, how ya doin’?” He thrust out his right hand. Fusillier raised his head slightly, peered at the hand through tinted glasses, weird tinted glasses that let the eyes shine through, like locomotive lights coming through a tunnel. Mullen stumbled. Cotton filled his mouth and he withdrew his hand.

  “Ya do?” Fusillier said at last.