Prologue 1: Dog Boys

Manhattan, March 1974

The amps were paid for with mob money. Cose Barnett loaded them into the back of the van, which had also been purchased with funds from that same loan. The van was a piece of shit. It had cost less than the amps.

The band had a paying gig tonight, a private party. Those sometimes paid off very nicely. Another five or six private gigs like this one, and they might be able to pay back what they owed to Kaplan Enterprises. Cose smiled and whistled as he shut the sanded steel-grey door of the otherwise green van. Smiling and whistling were optimistic choices, and he was determined to play up the optimism.

He consciously chose optimism because Ben Peller had called him today at noon and offered him the gig. As always, it was a short conversation. “Just give ‘em twenty minutes of your best stuff. You’ll do fine.” Every call from Peller ended with those three words. “There’s a guy from the main office who will meet you there and talk terms with you. He’ll be wearing a gold chain. He’ll find you. Just play your best stuff. You’ll do fine.”

Cose drove the three blocks to Emerald Tower, drumming his hands on the steering wheel and singing his bands best-known song, The Highest I’ve Been, eager to rouse Stephen out of bed and tell him to get ready for the show.

Willing good cheer and a hopeful outlook, Cose ran up the stairs to the third floor of the tenement Stephen called home. He pounded on the door with a drum roll rhythm. “Hey! Kitzler! Wake up! We have a gig!”

Stephen Kitzler came to the door, red-eyed, looking wrecked in a tattered bathrobe. He swallowed and coughed before delivering the bad news.

“Jockley OD’d last night.”

“What?” Cose smiled. It was his automatic response to the shock of bad news. As if his reflex cheerfulness could alter harsh truth.

“His mom called. He’s in the hospital. She didn’t say which one.”

The smile faded from Cose’s face. “Okay. Okay, we can handle this. Let’s go ahead and load up the car.”

“Cose, did you hear me? Our lead singer is in intensive care. He might die. We can’t do that gig.”

“We have to, Stephen. It’s good pay. We need it.”

“Who’s going to sing lead?”

“I am.”

“No offense, Cose, but you suck. Without Jockley, we got no real singer and we got no bass.”

“Matt can play bass.”

“Then who plays drums?”

Cose squinted and shook his head. “Shit! Let me figure this out.” He walked into Stephen’s cheap efficiency apartment and leaned against a closet door. “You play keys and Matt plays bass. I play guitar and sing the best I can.”

“Who plays drums!”

“Nobody, Stephen. No drums.”

“That’s gonna sound like crap.”

“It’s the only way,” Cose said, bringing back the smile. Stephen rolled his eyes and turned to the hot plate sitting by the tiny kitchen sink. A half dozen canned tamales sizzled in greasy red sauce in a cheap pan.

“I won’t do it, Cose. Not without Jockley.” Stephen voice shook as he took the pan off the heat and spilled the tamales onto a plastic plate. Cose only then realized that Stephen was crying.

The High Bridge Hound Dogs were formed around the talented and charismatic Jeff Jockley two years ago. It began as four friends expending their beer-fueled energy in a loft near High Bridge Park. Over a hot summer, the band improved, playing tight enough to get attention from a few local promoters, including Ben Peller. As the gigs became higher profile, Jeff Jockley took advantage of the easily scored coke and speed. Heroin came into their scene just after they played the big show at The Waverley. Jockley took to it like it was mother’s milk. By Christmas of ’73, everybody in the group lived with the fact of his addiction, and dreaded the prospect of someday losing him.

Because of Jockley, Cose decided he would never do heroin. He wouldn’t even do coke. He smoked grass once a day, usually in the evening, and that was the extent of his vice. Stephen and Matt partied with greater daring than Cose did, but not nearly to the extent that Jockley had undertaken in the last six months. And today, the dreaded event was on them.

For an hour, Case sat across from Stephen at a folding table, watching as his friend trying to eat unable to take more than a desultory bite or two. They talked, they argued, they sat in silence, then argued some more. Until Matt arrived and heard the news, and the cycle repeated and intensified.

Matt took Cose’s side. They needed the money, and they needed to find out if they could exist as a band without Jockley. Because now it was a certainty that even in the best case scenario, Jockley would not be there for them.

Matt ventured an optimistic view. “Maybe without drums, we’ll figure out a new sound. Maybe we’ll be so different that we start something great.” And on that notion, the three finished packing the van and made their way to 315 Bowery.

They showed up at the club at 7 pm. CBGB. Ben Peller had said it stood for Country, Bluegrass and Blues, but it as more of an ‘anything goes’ venue. They idled the van at the curb not far from the club’s exuberantly painted awning and unloaded the equipment haphazardly, before Matt drove off to find a parking spot. Cose and Stephen dragged their equipment in the front door.

“What are you doing?” A woman’s voice yelled from the darkness within the space. “Bring it in the back!”

The place was dark enough that Cose had to keep an arm extended, ready to feel his way around any obstacles. His eyes began to adjust in the direction of a dimly lit bar. Behind it was the woman whose voice had greeted them.

“Are you the band?” She sounded incredulous.

“We’re the High Bridge Hound Dogs,” Cose answered.

“Hilly’s asleep in the bathroom,” she said. “You should’ve brought that in the back. The stage is over there. Set up if you want to. There’s another band that’s gonna play first, though.

“Do you have a flashlight?” Stephen asked, practically a disembodied voice in this near-nonexistent light, even though he was only feet away from Cose.

“If there is, I don’t know where it is,” she said, and then turned her attention to a customer nursing a bottled beer.

“We should get a flashlight,” Stephen said. He ended up buying one from a thrift shop on a nearby corner. Matt returned in time to be no help getting things set up on the tiny platform stage.

Hilly, the owner, emerged from the bathroom after they had set up their gear. “No drums?” he asked.

“No,” answered Matt. “We had an overdose.”

Hilly nodded at the non-sequitur as though it made perfect sense to him. “If the other band gets here in time, they’ve got a drummer could sit in for you.”

“We’re gonna try going without,” Cose said, flashing his ‘everything’s okay’ smile. “Maybe it works out better that way.”

At a quarter till nine, a band called Television barged onto the tiny stage, shoved Cose’s gear back and set up their own. By nine, they started playing, and they continued for nearly half an hour, pressing Cose and his weary cohorts back to the second slot. They were amazing, and Cose knew the efforts of he and his bandmates would suffer by proximity.

The host did not announce them by their full band name. He simply yelled out, “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Dog Boys!” The three looked at each other with bemusement on hearing that designation, then shrugged and began playing.

The results were loose, sloppy, nervous and poorly coordinated. And it worked. The growing crowd yelled their approval and threw their beers, and even their food, at them. Between the wonky rhythm, Cose’s nervous warbling and the devil-may-care attitude the band arrived at by default, they practically invented a new sound.

They ended their set with the ballad “Nervous Veins,” recently written by Jockley. Cose preceded to holler out the words, even though he felt it should only ever have been sung by Jeff.

Nervous veins betray the pain

I got nothing more to gain

Somewhere I stepped off the train

Will I make it back again?

The crowd wanted less ballad and more halting and awkward rock and roll. They yelled and roiled, and Cose yelled to the other two “Just reprise “Suffer My Love,” guys.” They did, and the crowd clapped out a rhythm. Then the drummer from Television stepped out and started playing a beat to their wobbly chords. The crowd cheered the man, shouting “Billy!, Billy!” The throwaway song became an epic ten-minute encore. Magic happened, and Cose felt it.

When it was over, he and the band picked up their instruments and made their way to the narrow hallway that led to the tiny and unsanitary dressing room. The door was open, and the room was too full for them to step into. The lead singer from the other band, a lanky young man named Tom, praised their sound and told them he thought Dog Boys was a great name. Cose thanked him, and thought to himself that Tom’s sallow face reminded him a little too much of how Jockley had begun to look over the last six months.

Matt and Stephen stepped into the bathroom. Cose felt a hand land with a clap on his right shoulder.

“How are you doing, Cose?”

He turned around and discovered the man with the gold chain.

“You must be the guy Ben Peller told me about.”

“That’s right. It’s noisy in here.” He wore a nice suit. An Egyptian ankh hung from the chain. The man smiled with confidence and a row of brilliant white teeth.

“You guys did great out there,” he said, his smile spreading wide beneath eyes that looked amused, maybe predatory “I don’t think that was what anyone was expecting, but they all liked it. So Jeff couldn’t make it, huh?”

Cose shook his head. “No. He’s not feeling well.”

“Most junkies don’t. It’s noisy in here. Come talk to me outside”

The man in the suit pressed him gently toward the stage door that led back to an alley. “You guys earned your money tonight,” he said as he pushed the door open and brought Cose out into the chilly night air. And as soon as Cose heard the word ‘money,’ he knew that this man was from the Syndicate, and potent chemicals of panic and doom rushed through his system.

“Do you remember me, Cose?” He pronounced it with a Z sound, ‘Coze.’

“It’s pronounced Cose. It rhymes with dose. Or gross. My friends used to call me Gross Cose.”

“Whatever. Do you know who I am, Cose?” Still mispronouncing it.

“i’m guessing you’re with Kaplan.”

“I sat next to you and Jockley when he signed the contract. It’s okay, that was a long time ago.”

Cose looked more closely at the man and tried to remember that afternoon when he had co-signed the deal.

“Did Ben Peller talk to you about how you were getting paid tonight>;;”

“No. He didn’t.”

“You’re getting a cut of the door, plus a consideration from my friends who are partying here tonight. You boys just earned two hundred dollars. Not bad, right?”

“No, not bad.”

“If you guys can play another set tonight, I can probably get another hundred for each of you. Could you do another set?”

“Yeah. We could do that.”

“Not the same song again, though. And no more of that weepy druggie shit. Hit us with something that makes them want to get on their feet and dance or something.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

“So, if I come up with three hundred, here’s how it goes. You give a hundred to your bass player, you give a hundred to the guy on the electric piano. I keep your hundred.”

“You keep it?”

“Yes, Cose. I keep it and it comes out of Jockley’s bill. You understand that?”

Cose understood, but in the moment, his nerves worked against him, and he smiled. He smiled and said, “What?”

The man shoved Cose against the brick wall and punched him three times in the gut. The initial dull shock of the punches didn’t hurt, but in the seconds that followed, a broad dull pain kicked in and stole the strength from Cose’s body. He went limp and slid to the ground, his jacket scraping against the coarse brick.

The man sat down next to Cose, and leaned casually back. He gave Cose a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Cose. That’s all the rough stuff I have for you tonight. It’s gonna hurt for a few minutes. You’ll have a bruise or so tomorrow morning. But you’re not in any danger.”

Cose brought his knees up and moaned as he leaned forward to hug them.

“Are you gonna be okay to play?”

“I don’t know,” he groaned. “Maybe you should have waited till after our set to do that.”

“No. That had to happen now, Cose. Now, you need to listen to me. If you pay attention and do what I say, we can make sure that never happens again. First things first. My name is Adam. I want you to remember that, because we’re probably going to see each other every now and then.”

“So, I think it’s safe to assume that Jockley is out of your band.”

Cose closed his eyes and dropped his head against his knees. “Did you do anything to him?”

“No! Everything that’s happened to Jeff Jockley, he did to himself. He’s in bad shape. As far as what he owes us, I don’t think he’ll be paying up anytime soon. And we won’t have access to him while he’s in the hospital or in rehab. That puts me in a bad position, because I took on the responsibility for his debt. Do you know how much he borrowed from us?”

Cose knew, but he pretended not to. “I don’t remember.”

“Really? Because you witnessed the agreement. You signed the paper, and you took on the responsibility to kick in if anything happened to Jeff.”

Adam drew a pack of Lucky Strikes from his coat pocket. “You want a smoke?”

“No. I don’t smoke. Not cigarettes.”

“I didn’t bring any Mary Jane, but I could set you up with some if you need it.”

“No, thanks.”

“Two thousand dollars, Cose. That was meant to pay for new equipment, studio recording time, and so on. Jeff Jockley made an agreement with us to further the success of your band with that money. You know when the due date was?”

“A couple of months ago.”

“Six months ago, Cose. We gave Jockley as many extensions as we could. He hasn’t paid back any of it. He won’t be able to. And we can’t wait any longer. So, the burden falls on you.”

“I have sixteen dollars in the bank. Maybe eight bucks on me.”

“Yeah, I figured. Well, you would have another hundred, except as I just said, I’m taking that off of the bill. You’re already doing better than Jockley ever did. I appreciate that.”

Cose looked at Adam. The man was broad-shouldered, with a heavy brow, and a sharp-cornered smile that looked both demonic and perpetually amused. He had smart eyes, active and aware.

“Here’s what’s gotta happen. In a few days, you’re going to talk to Kaplan.”

“Oh shit.”

“No! That’s a good thing!” Adam lit a cigarette and savored a couple of draws on it. “Hey, a lousy two-grand contract isn’t normally something Kaplan would give his personal attention to. That means it’s important to him, for some reason other than money. That means he’s probably figured out a way you could help us out. And we could help you in return. I recommend you keep an open mind, Cose.”

The back door opened and three party-goers stumbled out. They moved in a cluster over to the other side of they alley, talking loudly over each other. One of them pitched a glass bottle against the wall and howled with joy when it shattered into a wet mandala of warm beer. The others laughed and took turns with exuberant hoarse-throated yells.

“It’s getting noisy out here,” Adam said, snuffing the recently-lit cigarette on the ground. “We ought to go in. But first, you gotta tell me. Do the other two guys know? About the loan.”

“Steve and Matt? No. We never told them.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Cose. I really am. It’s gotta stay that way. If they ask, you and I were out here negotiating the pay for tonight, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Now, do your best to go back inside. Plan a real good set with your boys. I wanna hear something good. Something I never heard before. I’ll give you my review when I talk to you later.”

Adam stood and slipped back inside. Cose slowly made his way to his feet, then slouched into the building and the narrow, dark corridor. The pain in his abdomen felt three sizes bigger than his body, like it radiated out, adding to his girth. Like it needed its own space.

Matt found him huddled there sick in the dark.

“Cose? You okay?”

“No. I will be.”

“Cose, listen. We just found out.”

Cose looked up at Matt, could barely see him in the dim light. Could barely hear him over the din of music and shouting.

“Cose, Jockley died today.” Matt took Cose by the shoulders. “His sister showed up. She’s here. She just told us. Jockey died.”


Next Chapter: Prologue 2: Connie