42. Madison Square Garden
NICKY
He was kind of an oily guy, but when Patterson Murtry demanded complete passes from his secretary—backstage, VIP, and merch storeroom—she got them for him in about ten minutes. The CEO of Lyre Records had his people trained well.
We got back in his Escalade. He rode in the back with me. The same skinny kid who’d driven us out to Long Island drove us to Madison Square Garden.
“Parking over there is sheer hell,” Patterson said. He’d told me he’d recently given up cigars (for which I was exceedingly grateful), and to get over the habit, he carried a large peeled carrot that he gestured with, gnawed on, and occasionally bit and chewed. It was odd, but at least it didn’t smell bad. “Parking is hell, and it’s a hell of a lot easier if Danny here double-parks for us.”
“Kenny,” the kid said up front, but Patterson neither heard nor cared.
“I’m grateful to you, Mickey,” he said. “I’m pissed as hell, but I’m grateful.”
“Yes sir.” The last thirty-six hours had been very strange and I was exhausted, but I was buoyed by hope. Hope that I could bring everything back to normal.
Hope that Ian would forgive me.
Evening traffic around Madison Square Garden was hopeless as usual, but at least the concert had begun and most of the people were inside, not driving around angrily. Aftermath would already be onstage, rocking the house with “Lizabella.”
I fought down a pang. Their second-to-last performance, and I was missing it.
That is, I’d be missing part of it.
“Close enough!” Patterson barked. He didn’t even wait for Kenny to pull over. He leaped out of the car while a river of pedestrians blocked the pathway forward and banged on my side window when he came around the enormous SUV. “Come on,” he shouted. “We’ll walk from here.”
He was an older guy but still pretty vigorous. Powered by anger, I thought and stretched my stride to keep up with him. He had the typical New Yorker disregard for anyone in his way. He was going straight, and everyone else could swerve. The carrot served as an icebreaker.
We were waved through the gate with deferential bows. “Lyre Records owns Manhattan,” he said grandly, striding forward. “At least, the music part of it. Come on, Cassie. We’ll check the storeroom first.”
“Nicky,” I tried for the hundredth time that day, to equal disinterest.
The hallways were still heavily populated, but most of the people had made it back to their seats. Archer was singing “Thunder.” He sounded so good.
Ian’s guitar was perfect. It filled me with longing.
“Hurry up!” Patterson was threatening the manager at the merch booth. He blustered his way into the storeroom and kicked her out. “All right, show me.”
I told him about my inventory system.
“This is the last stop on this leg of the tour,” he said. “They’ll have all the merch together for this. That’s why I’m seeing so few marks on these boxes?”
“I guess.”
“Right. The oversized boxes you told me about. Where are they?”
“Um . . . here’s one.”
“And this is supposed to be filled with . . .?”
“This is twelve dozen white Sheree T-shirts, size small. So a hundred and forty-four shirts.”
“All right.” He found a box cutter and handed it to me. “Count ’em.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Open the box and count how many T-shirts are inside.”
“Um, should I scan it first?”
“Becky, I own all these shirts. Open the box. Count them.”
Astonished, I reported that I’d counted thirteen dozen, not twelve. “But . . . how can they be stealing if there are too many shirts?”
“Old dodge,” he said, puffing on his carrot. “Pay the guy in China to print up too many shirts. He packs an extra dozen in some boxes. The count comes over as exactly as many boxes as we ordered. Someone comes along, lifts twelve shirts, and voilà. The count is still exactly the same, but now you have twelve shirts to sell on the internet.”
“That’s—that’s kind of brilliant,” I admitted.
“That’s just one of several clever schemes we’ve got going here. Shit, listen to that crowd. Sheree’s not on yet, is she?”
“That’s ‘Charlotte’s Lullaby,’” I said wistfully. “Right now, the most handsome guy you’ve ever seen is cradling a nearly full-grown Great Dane on his lap and singing her a sweet song while she paws at his face with enormous feet.”
He stopped pretending to smoke his carrot. “And people like that?”
“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
He was allowed to stand in the portal, and we watched as the crowd cooed with delight at “Charlotte’s Lullaby.”
“That’s a dog?” Patterson called to me over the noise.
“Great Dane.”
“Damn. Big.”
I nodded and thought, She’s sweet too. And will growl at bad men.
Patterson liked what he saw, and we stayed where we were for three more songs. We danced (well, Patterson gestured with his carrot) through “Get a Grip,” “The Missing One,” and “Street Dancing.”
During that one, he shouted at me again. “These guys are mine?”
“They were,” I corrected. “Now you’ve offered them a five-record deal.”
“Good!”
“But they’re balking.”
“They’re what?”
“Balking.”
“What?”
“They’re not ready to sign.”
“Why not?”
“They’re better than the deal you’re offering.”
“Well, shit. I still want them, though.”
“I hear they’re going to sign an agent.”
“Fuck that. Who?”
“Phil MacGregor.”
“Oh, eat me. Damn it. Well, I still want them.”
I nodded. He was oily but not a fool. Aftermath was going to break all records.
The crowd erupted into screams and applause at the end. Wait until they got a taste of the next song, “Blood Burn.”
But Archer held his hand up. He was a pillar of gleaming white, topped by golden hair. He truly looked like a heavenly being.
“We usually play a real rocker at this point,” he said, and the crowd applauded simply because they were in the palm of his hand. “But we wanted to shake things up a little. Give you something special since you’re Madison Square Garden!” He screamed the last words, and the crowd screamed back at him.
Patterson was grinning. “The kid’s a showman,” he shouted to me.
I nodded.
“Tonight we’re premiering a brand-new song.” My eyebrows went up. What song? “And since it’s by our clumsy guitar player”—he gestured to Ian, laughing, and Ian, dressed in darkness and looking dangerously beautiful, played a lightning-fast riff; the audience howled in delight—“well, we’re going to let him sing it.”
Ian was going to sing lead? My jaw fell open. He had a glorious voice, deep and rich, but he left the melodies to Archer. Ian and Mal only sang harmonies.
Until now.
Archer moved the stool he used to sing to Charlotte. He put it at center stage and gestured to Ian.
Ian handed his guitar to a tech and slipped on the strap to his . . . Olson.
Ian was playing acoustic.
The crowd murmured, unsure of what to think.
The lights elsewhere on the stage dimmed, and Ian sat alone. He played a haunting melody and began to sing.
I knew my ceiling, each detail. Had every tile counted.
No one alive in all the world. My own survival doubted.
Gray nights, staring eyes, in desolation sitting.
Nothing but a raveled sleeve in urgent need of knitting.
I lost my sleep—you found it.
The song was so beautiful, his longing so deep, that I’d already teared up—but the tears overflowed when he sang about me finding his sleep.
Life without desire’s fire is nothing but food without salt.
No zing of lust or spark of hope. All settings at default.
All interests flatlined. No fucks for the giving.
It can be endured, but you can’t call it living.
I lost my heat—you found it.
He was thanking me—in clever fashion—for getting him hard. I laughed even as I cried, knowing it was a secret message to me of bedroom delights as well as of all life’s passions.
Chord progressions unresolved
Circuits that don’t ever close
Madness of a broken scale
’Til Nicky brought resolution
The bridge was madness. He walked each line up a scale until just before the end, when he left the progression hanging, never allowing the listener to feel complete until the last line, when he sang my name to all the world, and resolved the octave.
Gray like a soap scum makes everything dim
It’s hard to remember when you didn’t feel grim.
But Nicky brought happiness back into view.
I thank you forever. I’ll forever love you.
I lost my smile—you found it.
I lost myself—you found me.
He’d said it. Out loud.
To me and to thousands of others.
He loved me.
Or at least he did when he wrote it. But did he still?
“Nellie, shit. You’re crying!” Patterson was astonished to see me simply drenched in tears when he looked over, his hands red from applauding.
“It’s Nicky,” I shouted over the roar of the crowd. “My name is not Mickey or Cassie or Nellie. It’s Nicky!”
“Oh. Like in that song? That’s weird. Okay, let’s head backstage. I want to get this over with before Sheree goes on.”
I had no more adrenaline to dump into my body. I was jumpy. Too little skin, too many nerves. But I wasn’t distracted enough not to notice where we were going. “Wait, Bruce will be in the VIP room,” I called.
“He can come to me. I told the guy to meet us in the greenroom.”
“What guy?”
I got no answer. It was quieter backstage, and the greenroom was filled with Sheree’s band, dancers, backup singers, the hair and makeup teams, and the costumers.
“Mr. Murtry!” Dean leaped to his feet. “A pleasure to see you!”
“Get Bruce.” Patterson didn’t waste a moment.
“He’s upstairs,” Dean said, all but bowing as he spoke. “With the press.”
“We’ll want to take care of this without any press. Go get him. And that zombie-looking woman, too—who?” He looked to me to fill in the blank.
“Bianca.”
“Right. Get that Bianca chick too.”
“But she has to stay in the—I mean, the merch—yes sir. Right away.”
We were all frozen, waiting for someone to do something once Dean scurried away. “Sheree not here yet?” He took a drag on his carrot to the fascination of Sampson, the hair guy.
“She’s still on her bus,” one of the dancers said. “Shall I get her?”
He puffed on his carrot. “Nah. She doesn’t need to know about this. Fuck, listen to that crowd. That opener is hot, huh? What are they singing, Mandy? I mean, Nicky?”
I smiled through my nerves. “That’s ‘The Salesman.’ Their first big hit.”
“Oh shit, yeah. ‘You blackhearted turd,’ right? Man, I love that song.”
We could hear the crowd’s screams and cheers from the greenroom. “So do they,” I said, pleased.
“Yep.”
Bruce rushed in. “Pat! What a pleasure! What are you doing here? Not that we’re not glad to see you, of course—very glad. Very, very glad! Someone get Mr. Murtry a drink!” Then he noticed me. “What the fuck! You get the hell out of here! Security! I want security here now! Arrest this woman!”
Patterson held up his hand, and Bruce’s rant dropped away as if someone had suddenly turned down the volume. “That’s not going to happen,” he said.
“Pat, this woman has been stealing from you! I tried to shield you from it, but I’m going to have to bring her up on charges. I don’t know what she told you, but it’s a damned lie!”
“Oh, is it?”
A tidal inrush filled the large room. Sheree and her security detail appeared in the doorway to the garage. Charlotte raced into the room from the door to the stage, rushing me and all but knocking me over when she put her feet on my shoulders to lick my face.
“Oof!” I laughed. “Down, girl! Good, good puppy! Hi, Charlotte! Hi, baby!”
I was still cuddling her, thrilled to be with her again, when Aftermath followed her into the room. I looked up shyly, hoping Ian wouldn’t be mad at me anymore, but he was already across the room, his approach every bit as determined as Charlotte’s had been.
He caught me against him and crushed me, hugging me too tightly to kiss me.
“Nicky, I’m so sorry, I’m such an asshole, please forgive me, I love you so much, I’m so in love with you.”
I was laughing, my heart filled with golden light. “You’re just going to gush that out, all mixed in with everything else?”
He pulled back, not caring that all eyes were on us. “Do you forgive me?”
“I don’t know. Do you forgive me?”
“Nothing to forgive. Nothing. Nothing.” He was hugging me again, almost crushing the laughter out of me, but I was hugging him too.
“I forgive you if I’m forgiven,” I said.
He pulled back again. “Do you love me? Could you possibly love me as much as I love you?”
It was a day for tears. I was crying again—crying, but so happy. “I could. In fact, I absolutely do.”
“You love me? I have to make sure.”
“I love you. And you love me.”
“Wow,” he said. “That’s awesome.” Then he kissed me, his technique made simple by the raw emotion coursing through us. It was a joining of lips and of hearts.
I didn’t know who started the applause. Might have been Archer and Mal. Might have been Sampson or Fist. Could have been Sheree herself. But by the time we broke apart, faces flaming and eyes bright, the whole greenroom was applauding.
“Why the hell do I have to be a part of this nonsense?”
The shriek came from a total stranger at the door, a plain woman in her forties who looked like someone . . . but who?
“Is this someone we know?” Archer had appeared at my side and was murmuring to me.
“I don’t think so. Hang on, that must be?—”
“Sweetheart!” Bruce came to her. “What are you doing here, honey? I thought we were going to talk at home?”
“Ah,” I said. “It’s Bruce’s wife, Eliza. Sister of Patterson Murtry.”
“Who’s Patterson Murtry?” Mal had joined us.
“Head of Lyre Records. That guy there.”
“Sister, that guy is a piece of work.” Sampson leaned over. “I mean, look at that carrot.”
Bruce and his wife were having a hissing-whisper conversation. Bianca stumbled into the greenroom, a determined Dean at her elbow. She looked at Patterson and went—if it was possible—even paler.
“Mr. Murtry.” She gulped.
“Do I know her?” Patterson said to me.
“That’s Bianca.”
“Oh, you’re Bianca. That’s great. Now there’s just one more person we need to get started—ah, there you are. Hello, Martin.”
“Who’s that?” The whispers came from Archer, Mal, Ian, Sampson, and Sheree.
I shook my head. “No idea.”
Patterson ended our questioning. “This is my good friend, Martin Kopser. Detective Martin Kopser of the New York City Police Department. He’s here to make some arrests.”
A ripple went through the crowd. Most of us were fascinated. A real-life crime drama was taking place before our wide-eyed gazes.
Some of us looked a bit uncomfortable.
The two men shook hands. “Thanks for the tickets, Patterson. My wife and kids were thrilled.”
Ah, the old Bribe The Cops trick. Bruce had to have learned it somewhere.
“Happy to have you at the show,” Patterson said. “I’ll introduce you to Sheree in just a bit.” He waved to Sheree, who waved back. “Now, Bruce. You say this young lady has been stealing merchandise.”
“She has! I can prove it! Where’s the tablet, Bianca? Well, go get it!”
“No, Bianca, stay here, please.” Patterson was quite firm. “I’d rather no one left for a bit.”
Perhaps Bruce and Bianca didn’t notice, but I saw Sheree’s security detail begin a careful deployment. Emmett appeared at Sheree’s back.
“You don’t need to show me the reports, Bruce,” Patterson said. “I had my accounting office pull them. I have them here on my phone.” He flipped until he found what he wanted. “For example, your tallies show that in Atlanta, you sold . . . hmm, where is it? Which one?”
He leaned over to me, and I pointed. “Try this one.”
“There. Thanks, Nicky. You sold three hundred and fifty-seven black, size-medium T-shirts in Atlanta. That’s an easy number to remember, right? Like a three-fifty-seven magnum? And at the same concert, you discovered seventeen shirts were missing.”
“Shirts she stole! She was working merch in Atlanta!”
“Yes, but I called my buddy in Atlanta and asked him to verify. He said you sold two hundred and ninety-seven of those shirts in Atlanta. Two hundred and ninety-seven. That’s not as easy a number to remember, is it? But we can at least confirm that it’s smaller than three-fifty-seven.”
“Patterson—”
“So, the next concert was in Charlotte. I called them too. Guess how many of those shirts they say you sold? Why, they said three hundred and fifty-seven! There’s that rifle of a number again. Isn’t that amazing? It’s almost as if the two venues got switched in your report. Wouldn’t that be something? For all those black, size-medium T-shirts?”
“That can’t be right,” Bruce blustered.
“Because if it was right, and every single venue’s numbers got switched, then you could claim that someone working at one place was responsible for merchandise stolen at another place. How about that?”
“Um, I’m sure it’s just an accounting error.”
“Sure. An accounting error. Consistently, over every item of merchandise and every size for the last twenty-one concerts.”
Bruce inhaled like he was going to speak but came up with nothing.
“Of course,” Patterson went on, “all of this could just be basic, submoronic stupidity.”
“Stupidity!” Bruce seized on the concept. He wheeled on Bianca. “You idiot! How could you be so stupid?”
“Me?” She was horrified, but Patterson cut her off.
“That is, if I hadn’t traveled out to your house in Islip this afternoon and found dozens of very familiar boxes in your garage.”
Patterson looked from a red-faced Bruce to his own sister.
Her mouth hung open like a fish. “You broke into our house? Pat—how could you?”
He held up a key. “I didn’t break in. You gave me a key when you moved in. After all, I cosigned the mortgage, didn’t I? Really, I just entered a house that’s part mine.”
“Pat! My own brother!”
Patterson was suddenly furious. “Eliza! My own sister! How could you possibly dare?”
She stalked forward, deeper into the room. “How could you dare? You make millions off Sheree, and you pay your own brother-in-law peanuts! This was nothing more than our fair share!”
“Hoo boy,” Sheree breathed. “This is ugly.”
“Sing it,” Sampson said, wide-eyed.
I was still wrapped up in Ian, the only place I wanted to be. But the relief I felt was profound. No one thought I was a thief anymore.
Patterson and his sister were still arguing. We, the listening public, learned that the FedEx driver was the adult son of Bruce and Eliza (“My own worthless nephew!”) who had been following the tour in the car his uncle had brought him, picking up the merchandise that Bruce and Bianca had stolen and mailing it back to his mother in New York.
“And you!” Patterson, now worked up, wheeled to draw Bianca into his web of fury. “How the hell did you get caught up in this?”
Bianca was squeezing tiny tears out of her eyes. “Gambling debts,” she admitted. “From a casino in Macao. I speak enough Chinese to get in trouble over there, and the guy who owns the factory where the Sheree merch is made told me I could pay off my debts if I’d bring Bruce the plan. So . . . I did.”
“She’s the mastermind!” Bruce shouted. He was edging toward the door, but Patterson didn’t seem to notice.
“Me?” Bianca switched from sorrow to rage. “You’re the one who made sure that factory got all the contracts! When the Aftermath hoodies had to be made in the US and you couldn’t work the deal, you almost shit a brick, you were so mad! No graft for you, you cheap bastard!”
Now things were getting interesting. I stepped from the comfort of Ian’s arms. “The Aftermath counts are correct?” I asked. “Because if so, then you all owe me some money.”
“No one’s going to pay you, you fucking thief!” Bruce screamed.
“She’s not the thief.” Patterson threw a thumb in my direction. He wasn’t defending me. He was ready to crucify his own family. “I’ve got our accounting department going over the books from the South American leg, but I’m betting you’ve lifted about half a million dollars’ worth of Sheree merchandise.”
“Oh, the hell I have! It can’t have been more than two hundred thousand—and I have to split that with her and the guy in China!”
“And me. Don’t forget about me, you shit heel,” his wife cried.
“See, if I were watching Special Victims Unit,” Sampson said happily, “I’d definitely call that a confession.”
“So would I,” the detective said. We’d forgotten he was there, but he was pulling out his phone. “I can have some plainclothesmen here in a few minutes, Patterson. You want all three of them arrested?”
“And my nephew,” Patterson spat out ruthlessly. “I might not press charges against him. He’s kind of an idiot. But these three? Haul ’em away.”
Bruce made a sudden lunge for the door and came up hard against a large chest. Fist pushed him back into the room.
“Justice will be served,” Fist said in his scariest voice, “and you will be punished. Officer?”
Over Bruce’s head, Fist winked at me.
As we waited for the other policemen to show up, Sampson turned to me in interest. “You got a cut of that cute Aftermath hoodie? The black one? How much you make off that?”
I smiled and admitted, “Seventeen thousand. Which I’ll split with Aftermath, of course.”
Sampson whistled, and Sheree gave me a high five. “Nice job,” she said admiringly.
Archer and Mal were doing the mental math, so I saved them the trouble. “It’s about forty-two hundred dollars,” I told them.
“Which is staying with Nicky,” Ian said firmly, taking my hand.
“It’s okay,” I protested. “It’s only fair to share it with you guys.”
“Love-thing, share it with me!” Sampson waggled his eyebrows at me, which made us laugh.
“Don’t worry about it, though,” I said, holding in my excitement. “That’s really chump change compared to what the white hoodies brought in.”
That sent another ripple through the listeners. “The white one?” Sampson asked. “Which one is the white one?”
“The one we’re selling on the website. The one we get 100 percent of the profits from—not just ten percent.”
“Well,” Ian said slowly, “what’s that worth?”
“After we pay off the manufacturer, the distribution company, and the shipping costs? Aftermath will only have about a hundred and forty thousand dollars left.”
My guys were frozen in place. I couldn’t hide my grin any longer.
“From a hoodie?” Sampson whispered to Sheree.
She nodded. “I make all my money on merch. Isn’t this a strange world? That would be a good song title, huh?”
Ian grabbed me, his hands cupping my ribs. “Are you kidding? Please tell me you’re not kidding?”
I smiled at him, sliding my palm over his drawn face, over his deep scar. “I’m not kidding. You’ll each get a little less than fifty thousand.”
Archer and Mal whooped, and Charlotte joined them, leaping around and bumping joyously into anyone who wasn’t quick enough. Then she stole Patterson’s carrot and he had to chase her, which she loved.
Ian looked at me, his full intensity in focus. “You divided by three, not by four.”
“Because the proceeds go to Aftermath. Read your contracts,” I teased him.
“I’ll share with you.”
He would, too, if I wanted him to. “After Finn’s bills are paid.”
He pulled me close, and I felt his whisper as much as I heard it. “I love you,” he said.
“Oh, sure. Now that I’m rich.”
He pulled back and caught my eye. “For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health.”
I filled my eyes with him. “I’ll hold you to it.”
“Go ahead. You do that.”
He kissed me. And the world was perfect.