Neon Nights Chapter 13

David Smith hadn’t always written the TMZ-style bullshit he was known for now.

He despised it.

Every time he hit “publish," he died a little more inside.

But he liked money a great deal, and this style of reporting featured piles of it. Enough that any self-loathing or pity about the death of his craft could be assuaged with the hottest new car, watch, or bottle of pinot.

He may not win a Pulitzer, but he also didn't think that the guy winning the Pulitzer could afford his apartment.

His success also helped him overcome his physical shortcomings when talking to members of the fairer sex. He had not been blessed with what people would refer to as good looks so to speak, though the absence of anything disfiguring had made it palatable for women from time to time to find a reason to roll around with him for thirty seconds or so. It was generally enough effort on their part to secure a backstage pass to a show, where they quickly left to hunt down more appetizing prey.

Sellout, hack, sensationalist, dumpster diver. He had been called it all.

Every time he broke a story, though, millions of people in the music world stopped in their tracks and devoured the words he spit out onto their screens.

And another check would appear.

He stared at his screen, mentally submerged in his own Kool-Aid. This series though … this was going to be his masterpiece.

The words jabbed and parried off the monitor.

The buzzwords landed their blows in all the right places, and he wished there were a million more Alec Davidsons in the industry. He would slay all those dragons unapologetically and with a cunning reserved for only the finest wordsmiths.

He read the first piece again and grabbed another sip of black coffee, an expensive and bold Guatemalan blend.

Maybe he would win a Pulitzer?

But first, he just had to get one more piece of the puzzle.

Stephanie Summers’s eyes opened to find sunlight overpowering the windowpanes of her oceanfront condo, and she struggled against the pain in her head and joints as she tried to move her body from the entrance to the patio to shut the blinds.

The tile floor had not been optimal to sleep on, though sleep was probably too strong of a word for what had happened.

She had just caved into a heap when her brain could no longer hold its ground against the substances she was pouring into her body. She seemed unlikely to get her deposit back, she thought as she surveyed the room and then laughed at the notion she would even remotely give a shit about something like that.

It's his money.

She would be more careful when she got her half.

Three other bodies lay scattered about the room, and her head started to piece together the events of the night before. She didn't know their names or how they had ended up in her room. A man lay over the arm of one of the L-shaped couches in a neon green thong, and a fit couple in only their fluorescent body paint slept on the other.

Stephanie looked down and realized she was still wearing her angel costume, so it must not have been a perfect end to the night for her.

The last thing she remembered was a pill, bright as the night, and a beautiful woman placing it on her tongue.

She was dressed like an angel, too, though Stephanie sensed far more devilish intentions were on her mind.

She walked to the fridge and chugged an entire bottle of a luxury water called Temptation, which had a graphic of a crystal-clear lagoon from a Caribbean island on the label. The truth was that it was probably extracted from a municipal water source in Ohio and

filtered a hundred times to kill the bacteria. Whatever it was, it was cold and soothed some of the excruciating pain in her skull. She looked at the clock on the stove, and the numbers jolted her back to reality.

She was thirty minutes late already. Shit.

She scrambled around the room, looking for her phone, and finally found it on the corner of the kitchen counter.

Three missed calls and three messages.

I've got a deadline, where are you???

I'm still here. I will wait 20 more minutes. 2 minutes and I'm out.

That was a minute ago.

She frantically hit the man's number and prayed he would pick up. Four rings.

Nothing.

Shit, shit.

On the fifth ring, she heard an exasperated voice on the other end of the line.

"Be there in twenty," she said and hung up before he could protest.

Busy weekends in a beach town were a shit show and working them was even worse.

And that was the polite way to say it.

They were seventy-two-hour gauntlets, complete with yelling and screaming, physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, and even tears from grown men.

It was just about survival. Pure, brutal survival.

It wasn't about online reviews or customer service. Customers got it.

They knew it wasn't going to be a world-class service weekend. They were just content not to get spit on and get whatever they purchased in under an hour.

On Monday morning, all was right in the world whenever you finally opened your eyes to assess the damage to your body and spirit. The one winner, though, was your bank account, or rather, the shoebox that you kept under the mattress because there wasn't time to go to the bank. And often, it wasn't so much the morning as the early afternoon because on Sunday night, the locals descended into every dive bar in town, with their pockets brimming with Benjamins, Grants, and Jacksons as they proceeded to pound the memories of the weekend's unrelenting lines, irate customers, spilled drinks, and clogged toilets into submission via whatever shot was popularized in hip hop music that year.

By noon, Paul was already six hours into his day, and there were still fourteen more to go.

He helped the kitchen stock up their hot and cold lines with whatever they needed, took out a dozen trash cans, filled up the ice for the bar, and walked down to the dock to help the jet ski rental guys turn over the next hour's renters.

Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Cha-ching.

He headed to the storage shed on the back of the property, pulled up a faded orange five-gallon bucket, and lit a cigarette. His eyes rolled back in ecstasy as the smoke pulsed down his throat and into his lungs, and he released it ever so slowly, savoring every second.

He sat that way undisturbed for almost forty-five seconds.

One of the barbacks, who had been with him a few summers now, came running up with a sincere look of concern on his face.

"Um, boss, there's a couple in a Mercedes over there, and I think they’re having sex."

Paul's laugh almost choked him on the final inhale of the cigarette. "No shit, huh."

"No, sir," the boy said with a sheepish grin.

"I'll take care of it. You head back in and keep cranking." "Yes, sir."

With a spring, the boy was gone in a flash.

Paul wished he could still move like that. He walked into the parking lot and saw the vehicle, a white Mercedes G-wagon SUV with

custom pink wheels and trim that was swaying from side to side. The license plate said SUMMER1.

He walked up to the vehicle and knocked on the front window. The two people in the back seat were startled by the noise and grabbed something to cover themselves.

The woman, less ashamed than the man, crawled into the driver's seat, bringing her underwear with her to put on in front of the intruder. She rolled down the driver's side window.

"What, are you a fucking cop, or do you just want a show, you pervert?"

Paul laughed.

"I own this property, and I can't have you shaking the shocks, so to speak, in the middle of the day when I have families here."

"Whatever," the woman said. "Can we go have a drink then at your bar? I'm assuming this isn't some Mormon place, right?"

"C'mon Stephanie, let's get out of here," the man said from the back as he slipped his t-shirt over his toneless frame and climbed into the front seat.

"Watch your feet, David. This is custom leather!!" Paul's smile almost hurt his cheeks.

"No ... no more drinks today, unfortunately," he said to her.

She kissed her middle finger and shot it out of the window at him.

"You're a lucky guy, David!" he shouted over the growl that roared from the twin exhaust pipes under the passenger side door.

The woman jammed on the gas pedal, shooting gravel from underneath the Pirelli tires, and rocketed her and her passenger straight into a telephone pole at the end of the lot.

Stunned, Paul ran to the end of the row and found the occupants, dazed and bloodied from the airbags but more or less intact. The big SUV had held up well, and while it had caved at the point of impact, the front of the vehicle was still in decent shape.

He pulled out his phone and dialed 911 to get an ambulance out. Then he called Marc.

"How are you calling me in the middle of the day?" Marc asked when he picked up.

"You anywhere around here?"

"This can't be good. Yeah, I'm like five minutes away. You okay?"

Paul smiled. "I'm good, but if you need a bit of a laugh, I've got some real characters here."

When Marc pulled up, he found three uniformed officers and a pair of EMTs talking to a man and woman seated at the back of the ambulance.

Paul was giving his statement to Officer Jordan, a decorated member of the force for over ten years now.

"Fireworks and it's not even the Fourth of July, buddy," Marc said to him with a smile.

"Is it Monday yet?" Paul replied.

Marc gave each man a fist bump and surveyed the scene, which included a crazed-looking woman chastising the man she was with, who looked defenseless and timid.

"She looks fun. Who is she?" Marc asked. Jordan looked at his notes.

"Stephanie Summers, the wife of Alec Davidson, who runs the music festival over at the fairgrounds, and David Smith, a reporter from some website called Neon Nights.

"You don't say?" Marc said with a grin.

"Marc!" Paul shouted toward him as he walked toward the ambulance.

Marc turned around to face his friend. "Yeah?"

The big man laughed.

"Hope you brought your vest … and a cup."

"You two have had a big morning so far, huh?" Marc asked the pair as he walked toward the ambulance.

He didn't know someone could look at a stranger with as much hatred in their eyes as she did to him.

Marc directed his next question to the timid man.

"You were the passenger, David?" Marc asked.

"He was driving," Stephanie interjected before David could get a word in.

Marc pulled his hand to his chin, like generations of detectives before him when faced with a bald-faced lie.

"Really?" Marc asked.

"Really. Right, Davey?" she asked. The man managed a subdued nod. "See, just like I said," the woman said.

"And you are Alec Davidson's wife, right, the festival owner?" "For a minute more, yes," she said.

"Divorced or rounding third to it?" Marc asked.

"We are separated, not that it's any of your business. Davey is my friend, and he met me down here to help with a problem."

Marc nodded.

"What kind of problem?"

"Nosy fucking people, that's my problem," she hissed at him like a cornered cat.

Marc bit his lip hard to fight back the laugh. He looked over his shoulder towards Paul and Jordan, who covered their faces, trying to suppress their own cackles like high school boys at a vulgar note in science class.

"Well, Miss Summers, I'm going to go with ‘Miss’ here since I think you've already decided you're divorced; you have another much more complex problem in front of you."

She flicked her hair back from her face, where two black eyes had quickly swelled from the impact.

“Yeah, what’s that?” She snapped.

"You drove this vehicle into a pole, heavily intoxicated, so … not only will you be visiting our jail for a time here in East Bay, but you will also have to make restitutions to the property owner for the damage."

She mouthed two rather impolite words in his direction and then did the same in Paul's.

"I'll take a hard pass on that, but thanks for the offer. David, I'd like to speak with you over there, please," Marc said, pointing to a shaded area far enough away that she might not be able to reach them without announcing herself first.

David stood up like a scolded child, and when Stephanie tried to get up, the two uniformed officers restrained her and snapped on a pair of cuffs. She fought, twisted, and turned against the restraints and cursed everyone within earshot.

"Quite a catch, that one," Marc said to him. The man took a deep breath and sighed. "That's the perfect response," Marc chuckled.

"Sometimes you just know you're making a huge mistake, but it's a slow-motion collision course, and you can't stop yourself." He found

the strength to squeak out a small self-deprecating laugh. "Sort of like hitting that telephone pole."

Marc started to like the guy despite all the reasons to the contrary. "How long have you and her been, er … romantically linked?"

"Today. I think it was just a pity thing. She caught me completely off guard with it." He looked at the ground and poked at some rocks with his shoe. "It's been a long time, so I wasn't eager to say no."

Marc nodded. "Happens," he said.

"I met up with her to get a quote for a piece I am doing on the festival, and things just happened."

They heard more commotion from the ambulance, and someone yelled, "She bit me!"

Marc and David looked at each other and shook their heads.

"What kind of piece?" Marc said, trying to get the ship back on course.

“I own a website called Neon Nights; it's the number one website in the world for the festival life. This show of Alec's has been a train wreck for a couple of years, and I'm getting ready to take the whole thing off its tracks."

"Really?" Marc asked, surprised at the man's sudden arrogance.

"Really. Stephanie became the perfect ally since she and Alec have a bit of a … contentious relationship."

“What do you know about Alec and the festival?"

"Everything."

Marc rolled his eyes.

"Mind being more specific?"

"It has taken me two years of following this shit show around. He won't let me anywhere near it anymore since I published a couple of articles he didn't like about some of the problems that were too big to ignore."

"Problems like?"

"Faulty equipment, inadequate restrooms, food poisonings. Alec's racked up like a hundred lawsuits against the show now."

"Why do people keep coming?" Marc asked.

"The music. The guy always gets the music right. People will tolerate a lot of shit if they feel the music."

Marc nodded. "What does Stephanie have to do with your article? Are you paying her for her story?"

"No money needed. She hates him, a lot. She's all too happy to deliver the final dagger to his heart."

"Damn, that's cold," Marc said.

"She's not going to win any humanitarian awards," David replied.

Marc looked back up to the ambulance where Stephanie had cycled from crazy to morose and now sat inconsolable on the ground, tears streaming out in buckets and shakes starting to overpower her like an earthquake.

"She's gotta be high, right? I'm terrified if that's her personality stone sober."

"Have you heard of Prism?" David asked him.

"As a matter of fact, we've been watching it wreak havoc on some kids this weekend. Do you know who is making it?"

"I don't, but I know this festival and others like it have seen it overrun them in the last year. It's become the de facto pill of the shows."

"Is that her bombshell, that he’s responsible for it?”

David finally managed to look Marc in his eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea about that, but no this is worse."

Marc eked out a cautious laugh this time.

"Worse than potentially selling a deadly substance to kids?"

"Okay, worse to his fans … the people that come to these shows and keep him in his lifestyle."

David pulled a cigarette from his pocket and proffered the pack in Marc's direction.

Marc waved it away with his hand. "I quit a few years ago, thanks."

"Good for you. Wish I could do that," David said as he lit the cigarette with a cheap yellow lighter that took him three strikes to light. "Did you know Alec was famous before starting the festival?"

"I heard that, yes."

"He was big. Headlining tours big. Honestly, I don't know why he left the performing world for the headaches of these things ... I guess the money?" David said.

"Usually a pretty good motivator," Marc replied.

"Well, it turns out that he wasn't quite as good as everyone thought."

Marc gestured for David to get to the point. David shot him an exasperated look.

"He's a fraud."