by Neil Crabtree
Rooster had flown into Houston and made his way by rental car down toward Corpus Christi, to a large ranch near South Padre Island, where Reggie Dupree had an airstrip and a boat ramp in the middle of nowhere. Johnny Fallon had introduced Rooster years ago when Reggie had supplied them with some primo Michoacan reefer nicely packed in plastic-wrapped kilos and ready to fly to Florida or California and the other places on Johnny’s distribution trail. Now Johnny was dead, but Reggie had reached out to Rooster, with an offer and a request for a small favor. Reggie was an irresistible force, loved by those in The Business and in real business, a broker of land packages and logistics services, and bail money to his musician buddies who always seemed to get picked on for minor dope-charges. Now retired and well-to-do, he was hosting a huge gathering, part rock festival, part chili cookoff, an annual event that you had to know someone to attend. As Rooster got parking directions from a brunette in a cheerleader outfit wearing a cowboy hat with a big 10 on the front, he gave up trying to count jeeps and pickups and SUVs parked in neat lines like at a county fair. There had to be two thousand people there. “Long Tall Texan” boomed from a monster sound system and got louder as he went through the crowded gates and headed toward the big house. Brightly colored shirts and Stetson hats and the smell of burning marijuana dominated the atmosphere. Rooster was handed an ice-cold Lone Star as he moved smiling through groups of laughing young people checking him out.
The sunlit crowd looked like an old-fashioned rock festival. He managed to move through the celebrants and find the host. As might be expected, Reggie had his own crowd surrounding him.
“Rooster, you’re not dead yet!” Reggie Dupree greeted him, loud enough for dancing stoners around him to stop and take a look, see if he was somebody they needed to know. Seeing Reggie again surprised him, the white hair gone wild and face so red he gave the impression his entire head was bloodshot. “Woodstock for the Wealthy” his shirt read, and his long hippie hair was now tinted in shades of grey. A golden young woman with large round and uncovered breasts held on to his arm and laughed as he pushed her. Rooster grabbed her generous hips to keep her from sliding past, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a power kiss felt down to his sneakers. Music from the soundstage covered the two acres, and crazies partying on the beach and grass and tennis court moved around in swimsuits and shorts and bright colors dancing and yelling and drinking. Out in the bay, there were maybe a dozen boats anchored together, and Rooster could see jet skis racing back and forth in the channel. The Tenth Annual We’re Not Dead Yet Party, read the banner across the gazebo.
“I’m not dead yet either,” the half-naked blonde said. She staggered slightly as he let her go, leaving his T-shirt smeared with suntan oil and God knows what else. Reggie handed her his large plastic cup and swatted her behind to send her away. She propelled herself by grabbing people and swinging past, like Tarzan’s mate.
“She’s something, hey?” Reggie said.
“Dancer?”
“Porn star. Pulls in twenty grand a month doing what she loves best.”
“Yow. Seems friendly enough.” Rooster said.
“She eats downers like M&Ms. So, yeah. She’s friendly. I’ll hook you up later.”
“I’m good. Jeez, Reggie. This thing is huge.”
“Johnny used to love this party,” Reggie told him. “I half-expect him to come galivanting in.”
Rooster looked to see if he was serious. Johnny had been dead two years now, but Reg seemed to think that was a temporary situation. They had once been very close, had been in The Business together. Then things blew up, everyone went in different directions. Cocaine had wrecked the drug business for all the old pot people. Reggie saw his face and rubbed the back of his head with a big hand.
“I didn’t shoot Johnny, Reg. That was a cover story.” Rooster said, getting close enough to be heard, but not overheard.
“Never believed it. Didn’t make sense.”
“He had some badass feds after him. Things turned to shit.”
“I know the situation. It’s cost me a fortune to retire,” Reggie told him.
“Looks like you’re doing okay,” Rooster said, waving his hands to the crowd and the music.
“Good thing I’m half-crazy, right? Let’s go inside. See what these knuckleheads have done to my house.”
Rooster recognized the music as the band started up again, a hit from the nineties for a band that had started in the seventies, and the unique vocals of the singer who had proven immune to the self-destructive tendencies that had buried his bass player and his drummer in the last fifteen years, and his second wife just six months ago. They stopped in the middle of the cheering crowd to get a glimpse of history there on the stage. Tall and as slender as a stick-figure, the bearded man behind the big dark glasses had brought back rhythm-and-blues songs to mainline pop and made oldies new again. Live on stage now, he turned to the band, and they started up on “Money.” Cheers rose through the cloud of peppery smoke and everyone sang along, just give me money, that’s what I want, and you could hear the voice of experience there as well, a man who’d tried everything else there’d been to believe in and found the fragility too much to bear. Peace and love only took you so far and brought quite a price to pay in the end. Just give me money, he sang, and all agreed, not out of any self-centered avarice but from a proven lack of alternatives.
Reggie grinned like the Joker. “That bastard will outlive all of us,” he shouted.
“I hope so,” Rooster yelled back. The noise was too loud to ask, how did you get him here? But Reggie knew what he was thinking.
“He called and asked if it was all right to come,” Reggie said, seeing his amazement. “I hadn’t spoken to him since Alfie’s funeral.” The effort of talking loudly strained his vocal cords, and he coughed and pushed his guest forward toward the big house and away from the stage. A young man stood laughing at the center of a small group on the patio, as handsome and strange looking as a movie star. When he pushed his long brown hair out of his face, Rooster recognized Dana, Reggie’s son, a troublesome kid now grown into a bad-boy celebrity as likely to be in the newspaper for his wild parties as his latest arrest, usually for something unique like diving from a cruise ship or starting a fight at a funeral. His father tried to pass, but Dana grabbed his arm.
“I want to get some footage of you and Basepipe Slim,” Dana said, using the insulting media epithet for the man singing. He pointed to the left of the stage, where a film crew on a platform struggled to work and keep crowd members from climbing up. “We can get you guys backstage, talking about the good old days. You can bring, Jesus, is this Rooster? Unbelievable! How are you, man? Did you bring your gun?”
Rooster fought an urge to knock Dana’s designer glasses into the dirt, teach him respect. His father’s face got redder and he grabbed Dana’s shirt front in a big fist.
“I told you no cameras, no filming. You think these people want to be on the news? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Reggie seemed close to hitting the young man, whose smile never wavered, like a star used to paparazzi. Rooster saw that Dana had managed to turn them around to face the film platform, where a tall young woman pointed a camera and telescopic lens, clicking away. He pulled Reggie and Dana apart.
“Dana, cut the crap,” he said. “Relax and join the party. You don’t need to make a movie of it. Be here, now.”
“Whoa, did you really say that? Did you just say, ‘Be Here Now’?” He pushed his father back and waved at the camerawoman. “Did you get that?” he said into a small headset he wore. The camerawoman waved. “Great.”
“Come on, Rooster,” Reggie said. “He’s in one of his moods.”
Dana wrapped his long arms around his father in a bear hug and gave him a big kiss on the side of the face as Reggie struggled to get loose. “I love you, man!” he said loudly into the microphone. Reggie broke free and chased him away, Dana as light and fast as an athlete, easily avoiding his old man. From a distance it would appear they were playing. As Dana passed close, Rooster stuck out his foot and tripped him, and as he fell forward, reached out and grabbed him before he went down and pulled the headset off.
“Why don’t you go get on that platform and stay there until I leave?” Rooster said to him. Dana snatched the headset from his hands.
“Are you familiar with the expression ‘Go Fuck Yourself’?” He stomped off toward the stage, thoroughly pissed. Then twenty feet away he turned his head and looked over his shoulder, laughing like they’d just shared a joke.
“Kids,” Reggie said, standing beside him. “God’s wrath for screwing.”
“Makes me feel old,” he said. In the afternoon sunlight, with the music and dancing people and seagulls hovering overhead, they had passed from the real to a Reality Show, a depressing change where they’d be thinking about how they appeared instead of how they felt, always aware of the hidden camera, the hyperbolic dish, the inevitable meanness of our two-dimensional images. Only strong drink can help such a desperate situation, and Reggie and Rooster moved inside to find a room with a good liquor cabinet and a locking door. A beautiful redhead in hotpants and high heels bumped into Reggie as she came down the stairs. “Ooh Papi,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“You okay, Phillie?” Reggie asked her.
She passed a hand over her nose, checking nostrils for white powder debris, and giggled. “I am now,” she said, and kind of bounced out into the sunlight.
“That’s Dana’s latest flame,” Reggie told him. He led the way up the stairs to a mahogany door slightly ajar. “Damn, I thought I’d locked this door. Come into my office.”
What Reggie called his office looked like a man-cave, with a giant flat screen TV and huge stereo and the fully stocked dark wood bar complete with barstools and popcorn machine. It didn’t look like any office Rooster had ever worked in. Sliding glass doors gave way to a balcony overlooking the crowd and the stage and the sea beyond, and potted and hanging plants gave a cozy relaxed feel that came right into the room like sunlight. He saw bookshelves and filing cabinets and a huge laser printer, and on a large desk a wireless keyboard and mouse invisibly connected to a computer with dual LCD monitors. In an almond-brown armoire, with a tennis and three different fishing trophies, he could see Reggie’s private collection of virtual reality machines, helmets and goggles and eyeglasses with shiny frames. A digital camera mounted on a stand pointed where the busy executive could sit and make a video unassisted, using remote control.
The air kicked on quietly and they both enjoyed the cool air after the afternoon humidity. Outside the crowd cheered loudly but sounded far way, though he could see them clearly not a hundred feet out the window.
Behind the bar, the host poured single malt over ice cubes in heavy crystal glasses. He looked at his guest, smiling as he poured. “I must be getting old,” Reggie said, handing Rooster a glass. “I actually prefer the quiet up here.”
“I’m with you on that. This is nice.”
“I’ve been adding things to this property since I left the Galveston. By the time I get it the way I want it, some developer will start clearing the surrounding land and bringing in the upwardly mobile. Then I’ll sell the place and move to Costa Rica.”
Reggie held his glass out in a toast. “Confusion to the enemy.”
“Amen to that,” Rooster agreed. The scotch was very smooth. “How many people live here?”
“It depends on what day of the week. Or what work has to be done. I still run the holding company. We’re building condos off Padre Island now.”
“Long way from airstrips in the night.”
“Yeah. Thank God. No more guns in the back of the head. Though I do worry about the Miami Duprees making trouble.”
“Why?” Rooster asked, as he clicked off messages on his iPhone. No one pays total attention anymore, not during conversations or even intimate moments.
“Hit a jackpot on my China trip. About to shake up the holding company in a big way. The Duprees are going to war.” Reggie looked, checking to see if Rooster knew anything, a family secret, a rumor, something he was supposed to do.
“Yeah, I brought it.” Rooster said. “Trudi gave it to me at the airport. Said Rex was busy.” He stood up and removed a money belt he wore under his shirt and handed it to Reggie.
“There we go,” Reggie said, putting the belt on the desk. He searched a drawer and found a small key and used it to open the pouch. What he took out shocked Rooster and made him swear.
“That’s not money,” Rooster said, as Reggie opened an envelope and removed a baggie filled with white powder. “I carried that through security, damn it. I thought it was cash.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to know. You don’t want to be paranoid.”
“I don’t want to be arrested for flying with an ounce of cocaine hidden under my shirt.”
“Of course not. It was rude not to tell you,” Reggie said.
“Johnny told me you were crazy. Crazy and dangerous. I’m really pissed, man.”
“At me. I suppose I have it coming.”
“Damn you.”
“Hey. Let’s do some Don Joaquin. Right here and now. This is some uncut you will not believe.”
“I don’t do that anymore, Reggie.”
As Rooster watched, Reggie shook out some white powder, and began arranging it into big lines on the glass desktop.
“Jesus. I can’t believe you still snort cocaine.”
Reggie looked up, grinning. “It’s either this or Viagra. Don’t ever do both together, let me tell you. Your freaking heart don’t know what to do.”
“My heart’s confused enough as it is,” Rooster said.
“I hear that. Come on, Rooster. Lighten up. A couple toots, we go find my porn star friends and have a good old fashioned dick fight. May the best man win.”
He shook his head. Reggie took a gold straw from the drawer and, leaning over the desktop, snorted a huge line, made a face, then snorted another. Then sat back, patting his nostrils with his fingertips lightly, his face redder than ever. “Ah, the numbness, the numbness,” he said.
Then Reggie’s eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed backwards and fell out of the chair with a thud.
Rooster ran around to him as he threw up on the carpet.
“Reggie, come on man. Let’s get you up.” He pulled him up by holding his arms. His eyes kept closing, and when Rooster pulled back his eyelid, his huge pupil looked like it had exploded. “God damn it. Let’s try to walk. Come on. Let me help you. Come on, Jesus, man.”
Rooster stood and tried to pull him into a standing position, but it was impossible. The overdose or heart attack or whatever had him completely unconscious. He seemed to be melting. He propped Reggie up against the desk but the unconscious man slid down again. Rooster tried what he remembered of TV CPR, pounding on the chest over the heart, but got no real response. He could not get him to keep breathing. Then he listened, ear to chest, and heard no heartbeat, other than his own pounding away. Rooster rolled him over and tried to force any obstruction out of his air passage by pressing hard and releasing, pressing and releasing, like with a drowned swimmer. Reggie seemed blue like he’d been frozen. Rooster kept trying with no response, then ran and opened the sliding glass door and tried calling down to the crowd for help. He had trouble being heard over the music, and finally went and got a marble paperweight and threw it as hard as he could at the outside bar. That got some attention. The music stopped. He waved for help, stopped when it dawned on him he was in a locked room with a man dying from an overdose of a white powder he’d just flown in from Miami. Reggie’s son Dana saw him, waved from the camera platform. He turned the camera around to film Rooster yelling for someone, anyone, come help save Reggie Dupree.