Chapter Four
The visceral shock of recognition made St. James dizzy. He sat down.
How was it possible?
He’d heard all the stories. At school they’d teased him mercilessly about his dead druggie father, breathlessly repeating every rumor and sordid tale. The time Oaian hired three German hookers. The time Oaian rushed offstage to hospital to combat a virulent case of gonorrhea. In I Slept with the Banshees, Barbara Glieberman-Gronsky (1981) claimed both Paddy and Oaian had nine-inch units and compared them favorably with Mick Jagger.
The Banshees’ dark and powerful music had filled Ian’s youth. He read every scrap he could find on the band. A psychiatrist might suggest he was trying to compensate for the father he never knew by studying the man obsessively so as to build an idealized version in his imagination.
That wasn’t it. St. James understood his old man had been a druggie and a lout. It went with the territory. St. James believed that he’d inherited his love for music and modest talents from Oaian, and for that reason alone, he was grateful.
Squaring what he saw with the rational world wasn’t possible. Had Oaian lived, he’d be at least sixty-five. Yet the drummer was the spitting image. More than that, St. James felt a connection. He wasn’t a mystical man, not even religious.
He reckoned Oaian was neither, as well. Nobody believed that Satanic rubbish! It was just to sell records.
His only recourse was to go backstage after the performance and see the man himself. St. James thought of a fourth pint, but he was already slippery and had hardly eaten all day. With 17 korunas in his pocket, he wasn’t likely to be sleeping between clean sheets either. He settled back and enjoyed the show.
The Banshees tore through their set with verve and professionalism. Between songs, Paddy bantered with the audience. “Didn’t think you’d see us lot again, did ya? ’Ow you like Cerberus, then?”
Dozens of hands thrust skyward showing the devil’s horns. The band played another kinetic rocker with a terrific backbeat. Paddy’s words were occasionally lost in the garble. Or he might have been speaking in tongues.
St. James wondered if Paddy would drop trou. It had been a bone of contention between the band and local municipalities.
Cunar leaned into his mike to add the high harmony to Paddy’s rough wail. After a fast and furious forty-five minutes, Paddy panted, “That’s all we got time for, you lot!”
“Moloch Loves Me!” shot back from the crowd. Others took up the chant. Soon the whole club was chanting “MOLOCH LOVES ME!”
Paddy shrugged and grinned. The will of the people. With a glance at Cunar and a tap of his foot, he tore into their signature song. St. James put his Flents back in. He hated the song. Hated what it stood for and what people said it stood for. They took it accelerato, and the crowd morphed into a frenzy of pogoing bodies. There were always a couple thugs in any audience who used the mosh pit as an excuse to slam into people. A scuffle broke out in front of the stage.
St. James was glad he was seated in the back of the room, observing the sudden spastic motion of people either trying to escape or joining the fray. The scuffle spilled onto the stage. The band stopped playing.
“’At’s it, folks!” Paddy called. “See you next time!” The band filed offstage toward the dressing rooms in the rear.
Purple Hair took the mike. She stuttered something in Czech, repeated it in English, “Th-th-th-that’s all folks! Thank you for coming.”
The crowd was jacked up, exhilarated by the music, hungry for blood or sex or drugs. They poured down the stairs into the street and fanned out, some heading home, others heading toward clubs that stayed open all night. St. James remained seated at the booth looking out the window as the patrons flowed from the door like the Mississippi delta.
There was still some kind of disturbance in front of the stage. By the time the patrons had left, the band too had disappeared leaving Purple Hair, a swarthy Greek-looking guy in a white shirt with an open collar showing gold chains, and the skinhead ticket taker standing around a body directly in front of the stage. It appeared to be a young man, sprawled on his side and glassy-eyed. The skinhead prodded the man with his toe. There was no response.
St. James shouldered his backpack picked up his guitar and headed to the stage. The skinhead looked at him as he approached.
“What’s up?” St. James said.
“No business of yours, sir,” the skinhead said.
St. James went right up to them and joined the circle looking down at the dead man. He could see no visible signs of injury. A stroke?
“I’m Ian St. James. My Da is Oaian St. James, and I’d like to see him.”
The skinhead assumed a guffaw without making a sound. His upper jaw thrust itself into a disbelieving overbite. “Sir, the drummer is twenty-eight years old. How can you be his son?”
Sighing, St. James unslung his backpack, set it on the ground and fished around in one of the pockets. He withdrew a well-creased ten by twelve glossy black and white photo of the band, the type press agencies released, and held it up. There was Oaian, not much different as he had just appeared, along with Paddy and Cunar. Across the bottom it read, “THE BANSHEES—copyright Melchior Management 1974.”
“This band?”
The skinhead took the glossy gently from St. James’ hand and stared at it. “I can’t deny that’s them.”
“See the copyright? Nineteen seventy-four. So the question is, if he ain’t my Da, who the hell is he? Who are those other guys? I mean what the fuck? They all died in a plane crash in 1975.”
The Greek guy followed the conversation like a spectator at Wimbledon. St. James didn’t think he understood English. The body at their feet was forgotten.
“Look,” said Purple Hair, “We’re closed. You have to leave.”
St. James looked from her to the body. “You appear to have a dead man here. Has anyone notified the police?”
“We’ll handle that,” the woman said, and sprayed Czech at the Greek-looking guy.
“Look,” St. James said. “Here’s the deal. I’m tired. But I’m not leaving until I see that drummer guy. Otherwise, I go straight to the gendarmes.”
Purple Hair exchanged a glance with the skinhead, who gave an imperceptible nod.
“Go with Kaspar,” she said.