Music hath Charms
By
Dawnwind
Chapter 5
The six o'clock evening news segued into Entertainment Tonight and, of course, Miles was the main topic there. We hadn't been the lead story on channel 17's newscast--a murder in La Jolla had grabbed that choice position, but we'd come in second. ET plugged us in right at the top of the half hour, replaying all the footage local stations had been running all afternoon, making it look like Miles had started World War III. His background, time in prison and views on Kharistani politics were all covered by an earnest blond with widely spaced eyes and the deep, smoky voice of telephone sex-talk girl. Not that I would know anything about that.
Miles sat on the arm of the couch with his hand on Farzimah's shoulder, idly popping pistachios into his mouth. Neither of them looked pleased with the coverage. I'd been draped over a wingback chair for a couple of hours, half-asleep.
"The Official says we can use one of the safe houses to hide you two out for a couple of days." Bobby Hobbes came in with brisk efficiency, brushing his hands together like he'd just baked bread or something.
"Can't," Miles stated simply.
"Man, these people are getting vicious. Death threats, attacks, not to mention getting shot at last week…"
"I will remember that day until I die," Miles retorted.
"Which could be sooner than later," Bobby mumbled.
"Miles, we can cancel the gig this weekend," Farzimah said softly.
"That'll give the press and all the critics more to talk about," He ran long callused fingers through his blond hair, leaving it standing on end a lot like mine did. "I will not be cowed." He glanced between Hobbes and me, saying, "As long as you keep Farzimah safe, that's all I care about."
"What about me?" She asked with tears in her eyes. "What'll I do if you're dead?" With that dire pronouncement she ran from the room, her black hair trailing after her like a mourning veil. I had a weird thought about the whole Paul McCartney is dead thing back in the late sixties. I'd been kind of young to understand it all, except Paul in the bear suit--or is it a walrus?--had scared me silly. Maybe a Walrus suit would come in handy here…nah.
"Damn," Miles swore. "Hobbes, Darien, man you guys have really come through and I have this feeling that if we can make it to Amahl's celebration next Friday night, then the rest of it'll blow over. A lot of this is because of the coronation."
"Exactly, and if you want to make it there in one piece…" Hobbes argued, "C'mon, Fawkes, chime in here anytime. He's your friend."
"But won't it look less suspicious if he just follows his normal routine?" I asked lazily. "We've been lucky so far. The next one's at the zoo, isn't it?"
"Yeah, concert near the lion enclosure to raise money for new habitats for the animals. I think they want to breed Cheetahs or something," Miles confirmed.
"Think 'Sandstorm' will get 'em in the mood?" Bobby asked sarcastically.
"Hobbes, buddy, nobody'll attack there, with the lions in the background," I assured with more heartiness than I felt.
"Then it's all settled. No safe house and we go forth with the concert," Miles nodded, a disheveled hank of hair falling over his eyes.
"Not all settled," Hobbes countered, standing in front of the rock star like a cocky pug ready to take on the contender. Miles isn't quite my height but he's got more breadth and the size discrepancy between the two of them was almost comical.
"Hobbes," I said, cocking my head for him to come over.
"I'd better go smooth things out with my girl," Miles smiled sweetly when he said the last two words and headed up the Frank Lloyd Wright style stair case.
"They're courting disaster," Hobbes said.
"Got any other predictions, Cassandra?" I asked, grabbing up the abandoned bowl of nuts.
"You think this is funny, Ulysses?" Hobbes shot back.
"It wasn't exactly the Battle of Troy," I shrugged, "But what'd you find out about the Kharistani Freedom fighters?" I'd belatedly given Hobbes all I knew about the campus rally and seeing Mike Kim eye the Asian on the steps of the KTIT building.
"Exactly the reason I want Verbage and the Princess in a safe house." Hobbes grabbed a handful of nuts, deshelling them viciously. "They are registered with the campus office as a legitimate group, sponsored by a Jin Park. There's two or more branches of the KFF across the state and they've got some big money in the coffers."
"Eberts do a little digging?" I laughed.
"Yeah, sends his love. Official's not too happy you haven't shown your pretty face around the place lately."
"I've been working!" I protested. What did they think I was, twins? Couldn't be guarding the princess taking anatomy classes and going in for boring debriefings with the Fat Man. Besides, there was nothing to debrief--that is until today. "Okay, today is something to report about," I said, taking in Hobbes' disapproving glare. "Before it was just--ordinary life."
"And when I stopped in this morning, unlike some people I could name, I ran into Claire. She wants to reschedule the blood sugar fasting thing."
"She would."
"Says since you got shot, she needs to keep an eye on that sort of thing."
"Getting shot has nothing whatsoever to do with my blood sugar," I pointed out, just to be crystal clear on that point. "I've been shot before, I know." I grinned at the thought of Hobbes going in to keep Claire abreast of my medical condition. That was surely not all they'd talked about, there alone in the Keep. "This job keeping you two apart?" I asked sympathetically. Hobbes reddened slightly, picking through the nuts in his hand for the tasty meat.
"Yeah, well, anyway. The KFF are some up and coming major players and yes, before you ask, we tried to access their membership lists, but they were pretty heavily protected." Hobbes dropped a handful of nutshells in the garbage and wiped his hands clean.
"Eberts couldn't break down their defenses?" I asked incredulously. Eberts could do ANYTHING on the computer. If he could break into the FBI's files, he could manage the KFF's with one hand tied behind him.
"Not so far, when I checked in just now he was still working on it."
"So this Jin Park, what'd you find out about him?"
"Korean money, political--not exactly mainstream democrat or even republican, if you know what I mean."
"Communist?"
"Yeah." Bobby looked surprised, like I'd guessed the correct answer on 'Jeopardy', which I do sometimes. Really. "How'd you know?"
"Farzimah told me. Only she said the KFF was backed by westerners."
"With Korean funds, " Hobbes mused. "North Korea is communist. Ya think they're trying to get some allies?"
Whatever I started to say was cut off by the simultaneous entrance of Miles and Mike Kim. Kim barged in the front door with a thundercloud over his head. I expected lightning and thunder to shoot out of his forehead like some cartoon character, he looked that mad.
"Hey, Mike, I had a coupla questions about…" Miles started pleasantly, but the littler man just snarled at him.
"Not as many as I have, Wonderboy," Kim seethed. "I expressly told you to stay off Kharistani politics on the radio, didn't I? Why'd you try and sabotage your own career? You're gonna have to make nice in a big way for this to blow over. The press are having a field day. I don't even want to read some of the slander that's gonna hit the fan tomorrow morning."
"Can you use more cliches?" I muttered to nobody in particular.
"Mike, I didn't start the conversation, Div did. I couldn't ignore what he said," Miles explained reasonably.
"Deflect, Miles. You're a personality, you direct what's being said. And you dropped the ball big time."
"I happen to be very passionate about the Kharistani charities, and Farzimah."
"That's your big problem, Wonderboy, should just drop that girl and focus on your career," Mike ranted, using the room like a giant pinball machine, bouncing off the far wall, making it over to the sliding glass doors overlooking the ocean then back across the room again. I was tempted to yell out 'ping' whenever he hit a piece of furniture.
"No," Miles said in the same no-nonsense tone he'd used for Bobby's suggestion of a safe house. He glanced back just then as Farzimah came down the staircase, her long black hair now plaited into a thick braid. She smiled a tight little smile that said they were together on this one and nothing and nobody was going to break them up.
Farzimah put her hand in Miles' and stood proudly, showing amazing strength in the face of the nastiness Kim had just thrown at her. "Mike, you were saying?" She asked frostily.
"I want to schedule a major press conference tomorrow morning to deflect what ever shi-crap they're throwing your way. You can apologize for bringing politics into rock and roll and downplay any involvement in Kharistan. Maybe we can cancel-uh-postpone the coronation concert--winter's good for that kind of thing." He hadn't looked at the princess during the entire speech, but now he turned on her, stabbing a stiff fingered hand at her, "And you, sweetheart, need to be a little more like your countrywomen, stay in the background on this one."
"Mike, I'll chalk this up to the fact that you've had a really bad day," Miles could have split wood with the edge on his voice. "But if you ever speak to my future wife in that tone again, you're out the next second."
Both locked eyes, but Kim was the first to look away, his expression clearly frightened, but also shrewd as if he clearly didn't believe Miles Verbage had that kind of leverage over him.
"No press conference tomorrow. If-if I talk to anyone, I'll talk to Barbara Walters on the View. I like her and they've been supportive of my career. And the dinner concert for Amahl stays exactly where it is, next Friday, his birthday. What makes you just think you can just mess around in other people's plans like that? Not to mention other countries?"
I'd never seen Miles in a rage before, but he was tougher than I'd ever given him credit for. Heck, the reason he'd had to cap his teeth was because the other inmates at Soledad were always using him as a punching bag. He'd grown up a lot since then.
"Fine. I'll call Barbara's people. Shouldn't be too hard to get you on, you could take a morning flight out to New York and be on two or three shows in one day. Maybe Today or Rosie O'Donnell. Really good for publicity. The one thing you guys did right on Div's show was air 'Empty Rooms'. There was some great word of mouth from that spin. We can play that up in a major way--just stipulate that you don't get any questions on the whole Kharistani debacle…this could work."
"Only Barbara--the View or her interview show." Miles stated firmly. "My career, Mike, I direct where it's going. Done pretty well for myself so far, haven't I?"
"You can't believe that you were going anywhere until I came along, Wonderboy. Playing college campuses was not the way to the top. You've been rising for the last year because of my business savvy and if you're blind to that, I can't help much longer." Mike shook himself like a dog riding himself of fleas, "Mark my words, this Kharistan shit is going to get you killed."
Farzimah gasped as Kim stalked out.
"Okay, major weirdness in here," Hobbes expressed it for all of us. "You call that nozzle your business manager? He ain't exactly listening to your side o'things."
"He's in it for the money and fame," Miles sighed, sinking into the couch like he was exhausted. I know I felt like I'd had the crap beaten out of me in the last few minutes and I wasn't even a part of the conversation. "A manager with a major star in his stable has some hefty power in Hollywood. Mike's right, he has been the one who got me really noticed by the powers that be, gotten me on Conan and Leno's show, but I feel very strongly on the Kharistan issue. It isn't just because of Farzimah and I don't think political involvement means you lose your audience."
"Do you think he knows something?" Farzimah asked timidly, her normally brown face almost sheet white. "He just threatened you and you act like you didn't even hear him."
"Mike grandstands, Farzimah, you know that," Miles dismissed the danger but I wasn't sure I agreed with him.
"Miles, we may have more on Mike Kim than just idle threats," I explained the theories Hobbes and I had been tossing about while he was out of the room.
"But Mike's American, born and bred," Miles shook his head, "Just because Kim is a Korean name and so is Park. That's a pretty thin bridge you're building. It just doesn't hold weight."
"I'm still gonna ask Eberts to do a background check on him," Hobbes said stubbornly.
"Why would North Korea be interested in Kharistan anyway?" Miles asked, sounding impossibly naïve. "There are what…20 thousand people in the whole country? It's about the size of Connecticut, for God's sake."
"Three letters, my friend," Hobbes held up the appropriate number of fingers, folding them down as he spelled, "O-I-L."
"But my country doesn't have the oil drilling that Saudi Arabia does, or Kuwait." Farzimah frowned, playing with the end of her long lasso-style necklace. "It's not like we export all that much."
"That's more than North Korea has, Princess," Hobbes answered, "Politically, they're an angry country with a bone to pick. They've been trying to grab a piece of the pie since the fifties and Kharistan is their prize. As long as your family is in power, they don't have a foothold in the government, but with Amahl gone…"
"Or even worse, dead," I said morosely.
"No," Farzimah whispered, the silver chain wrapped suddenly so tightly around her finger it was turning red.
"Then the Koreans could sweep in and take over…" Hobbes finished. "I think that bridge is solid, even if it's built on sand."
"This can't be…" Miles said softly. He took Farzimah's hand, unwinding the binding silver with infinite gentleness. "I can't see Mike involved in…people's lives have been endangered. Melissa was killed. You don't have real proof."
"No," I agreed, "But we may find some easily enough."
"Do so, but keep it completely discrete," Farzimah said in a voice that proved the men in her family weren't the only ones in charge. She knew when to use her power and when to be the quiet, meek princess. "We have one week until Amahl's birthday celebration. I can't let anything happen on his day. There'll be two hundred people in attendance."
"Princess, I think you already know that if necessary, Fawkes can be completely invisible," Hobbes' little joke lightened the somber atmosphere in the room and Farzimah dimpled in response. He hadn't been too thrilled that I'd Quicksilvered Miles and Farzimah but had taken it in stride after ranting for a few moments.
"I'm completely fascinated by your abilities, Darien," Farzimah looked up at me speculatively. "Do you know anything about the properties of the gland?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I admitted. "But maybe when this is all over I can introduce you to my Keeper--uh--Claire. She's the doctor in charge of the project now that my brother is dead."
"I remember your brother," Miles said suddenly. He had been standing apart from the rest of us with a very distracted expression, probably still pondering Mike Kim's treachery, so his comment surprised me.
"You've seen Kevin?" I asked.
"Back then, when we were in prison," Miles nodded, "When he came to visit you. Not as tall as you are, glasses, much neater hair."
"But I don't remember him ever coming while you were there," I sat down, my legs shaky for reasons I couldn't even fathom. Miles had gotten out before me and Kevin had been away at grad school during my entire incarceration. He'd only visited once that I recalled, while on winter semester break, on his way back to Cold Springs to see Aunt Celia. My uncle had been either dead or was dying of cancer by that time.
"I worked in the infirmary," Miles continued. "You got hurt…" he trailed off, obviously not wanting to go any further and in one sickening rush I knew why.
"Kevin came to see me then?" My voice sounded hollow and unsteady. I hadn't known, ever. I had no memory of the visit.
"I'm sorry, Darien, I shouldn't have brought it up," Miles apologized. "He looked like a nice guy. Upstanding, I remember him because you didn't seem very much like brothers. We talked for a few minutes."
Hobbes and Farzimah were following this exchange like audience members at a tennis match, their heads turning to Miles and then back to me without a word between them. Farzimah looked confused but interested, Hobbes had a whole different expression, one that scared me. He looked like he knew what I might not be saying and he sympathized. God, I didn't want that. I didn't want to think about any of it. It had been 13 years almost and I hadn't thought about that week from hell in a couple of months or more. For a while it had been nightly, then weekly, now it was only sporadically. The dreams dredged themselves out of whatever nasty place they dwelled when they weren't tormenting me and spread their evilness out over a few nights then usually went away again. Looks like I was in for it tonight.
"L-listen," I tried for a smile, but I'm pretty certain I failed in the attempt. Bobby stepped forward, but I held up a hand like a traffic cop. "Speaking of Claire, she wants me in for my physical tomorrow morning, so I better be going. I'll meet you at the university for chemistry, Farzimah?"
"Yes," she answered automatically, "Two o'clock."
"Hobbes, you take the morning?"
"Sure, partner, anything," Hobbes wanted to comfort, to do something. It was all over his face, but I wasn't about to let him. "You all right? You look like you seen a ghost, and I think you have."
"Kevin haunting me, now that's a good one," I laughed. "I'm just wiped out, gonna get some shut eye. If Eberts gets anything new about KFF's membership or whatever…"
"Yeah, You want to go over to that rally tomorrow night?"
"Plan on it. When do we need to be at the zoo on Saturday, Miles?"
With a sardonic laugh, Miles shrugged, "Mike handles all that stuff. I do what he tells me--within reason, of course. I'd say before noon. Concert is at three."
"You start opening your eyes to this whole thing, Mr. Rock-and-roll-Star," Hobbes started lecturing and I knew it was my chance to get out without any more questions. Even as I eased open the front door and nodded to the two hulking specimens of Kharistan muscle I could hear Hobbes asking, "Now how long has Kim been your manager?"
Sleep wasn't really what I was after, unless there was someway to blot out the memories I knew were poised on the edge of my subconscious to terrorize me. I drove out onto a quiet promontory over looking the Pacific. It was inky dark, the moon just a curved line drawn with one of those glowy gel pens little girls like. The ocean was a black void stretching out to join with the dark sky, only a tiny cluster of faint stars breaking the perfect nothingness. That's what I wanted, nothingness, but I couldn't stop the flood of images in my brain. I didn't remember Kevin, but I remembered more than I wanted to of the rest of it. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that Kevin had come to see me. The prison officials must really have been concerned to call in next of kin. Had I really been that bad off? Nobody really ever told me the total extent of my injuries. I guess they figured I was just a dumb ass prisoner who got beat up; a 21 year old without a lick of sense. Got hauled off to prison before I'd even had that oh-so-important milestone birthday, as matter of fact. So my 'friends', and I say that term laced heavily with sarcasm, had conspired to get me drunk on my birthday. June 27th, 1989 I had my first 'legal' drink, ha ha, while behind bars. It was 100 proof, deadly stuff, concocted in some hidden still somewhere in the bowels of Soledad, behind a bank of washers in the laundry room, unless I miss my guess. I'd been drunk before, dozens of times, what red blooded American teenager hadn't passed out with a six pack of Bud? But that prison hooch went straight to my head. Probably was supposed to, come to think of it. They'd arranged the little party quite deliberately. They kept forcing me to drink more, holding me against a brick wall, someone's fingers so tightly around my neck I couldn't swallow but when I protested, I got hit. I thought I'd drown in the stuff. Once little Darien was passed out on the floor, he got passed around. And around.
When I finally came to, it was two days later. I had a concussion, bruises and lacerations over 90 of my body, inside and out. Broken ribs, fractured fingers with fingernails ripped to the quick, and stitches in places I didn't even want to know about. Apparently I'd tried to fight back, at least a little, but that memory was lost in the ether. As was Kevin's visit. I wish I'd known. What had he thought of me? Just another example of how screwed up his younger brother was?
Oh, crap.
Why, after all this time did I wish I'd seen him, talked to him? Tried to explain that it wasn't my fault…except he'd just mutter he'd heard it all before. I'd denied culpability too many times before and he'd given up on me. That was why his visit was such a shock. But it was also a strangely soothing balm. Kevin had been there, maybe sitting by the bed, keeping watch over his battered sibling. And Miles, good hearted Miles, had probably chatted with him, maybe even told him about the college course I'd been trying to finish, there in the prison library.
I had little, maybe pretend, maybe real, puzzle pieces to add to the jumble of memories from that time. Ones that comforted me like none of the others ever had.
Looking out on the vast emptiness of water, I fell asleep with my head bent against the cold glass of the car window. I think I dreamed, but for once there weren't any shadowy inmates closing in around me, cutting off my air. This time there was pain but also a strange sense of protection blanketed around me like cotton batting.
