Finest Hour

Chapter 14: Three Days Out

Three Days Out

Ten at night, and Theo Marsh was on the train to the practice room with his heart running at three hundred beats a minute.

Three days to the audition. It was the only thought he had, and it came back at him every time the doors slid open.

He'd been going over last night since he woke up. He went over it again now. The rain. Eli coming in late, soaked through, setting the case down without a word. Not one word about the weather, not one crack about the hour. Tuning, then playing, then the set run twice through, and quiet the whole time.

Theo hadn't asked. He'd known.

There was one subject that turned Eli into a stranger, and rain made it worse.

So when they'd packed up, he'd said it anyway, careful. "So. He's not coming."

"He didn't say he was." That was all Eli gave him. He didn't look up.

"Then let's find somebody else." Theo kept his voice down. "Come on. You know how he is. Put a knife to his throat and he still wouldn't do it. He'd laugh and hold it there for you."

Eli didn't answer. He was looking at the umbrella — the black folding one, laid down by his case, still wet at the tip. He looked at it the way you'd look at somebody who'd just used his name.

Then: "Put the post back up. Another guitarist."

"...What?"

Eli turned and gave him the small smile. "Weren't you already on that?"

Theo opened his mouth and closed it. He'd thought he'd been quiet about it. He was never quiet about anything around Eli, and hadn't been since they were kids.

"So we're not asking him."

Eli picked a dart up off the table. He didn't aim. He threw it at the board on the wall the way you'd flip a coin, and it went in dead center, and the board turned a half turn on its nail and stopped.

"I didn't say that."

Theo didn't understand it. The guy had turned them down flat, and Eli stood there like he'd already gotten his yes and was only being polite about the timing.

But Eli's guesses landed. Every one of them, going back to when they were kids. What he said he could do, he did. Theo didn't know if this was going to be the first one that missed.

At least he'd try other people now. That was something. Theo let the breath out.

Guitarists were everywhere. Everyone said so. Most common chair there was, easiest to fill.

That was yesterday's Theo. Today's Theo knew better.

Normal guitarists. Did not. Exist.

He was still hot about it when he got on the train, so he held his thumb down on the mic and let it run.

"Okay. First guy. Hasn't even met us and he's already talking terms. Prize split. Who gets what. Then I ask for one video. One. A solo, thirty seconds, anything. Six hours, and I'm still the one waiting. So. Both of them are blocked. If either one shows up at the room, I'm not opening the door."

Send. Breathe. Send again.

"Because the other one — the one who writes everything, like we're supposed to thank him — he wants a picture. Of us. He wants to see our faces before he commits. I sent back six question marks. He says he won't be in a band with pretty boys, because it's all fake fans now, the girls only come for a face. So I told him, great, I don't want to be in a band with an ugly one either. What is it even about? Am I hiring a player, or a guy to carry my takeout and load my drums?"

He sent that one too, then sat with his hands in his jacket and waited.

The reply came back in a few minutes. He opened it and Eli was laughing on the other end of it, unhurried, like they had all the time in the world.

"Tell him we're two demons and we keep the third one in a jar."

Theo stared at the little audio line under his thumb.

Right. Straight in the jar.

Three days out and the guy was doing material.

Eli had never had a single unbothered day in his life, and Theo had known him long enough to know it wasn't a bit.

His phone went again. Under Eli's voice there was traffic, horns, wind.

"Just looked at your post. There's a new reply. It's not a guitarist."

"Are you on your bike? Then quit texting me and watch the road."

"Okay."

The next one ended in an engine, which Theo had known it would.

He didn't bother going to the post. The guy wasn't a guitarist. Guitar, bass, drums — he had two of the three and a countdown, and he wasn't spending it on a reply.

There had to be one person in this city who could hold time. There had to.

He told himself to settle down. Locked the screen. Pulled the headphones back over his ears and made himself look at the car around him — and, because that was the kind of day it was, that was when he saw it.

Diagonally across, a balding man, middle-aged, phone out, drifting closer to the girl in front of him. One hand on the overhead strap, back to the car, facing the doors. About to get off. No idea. The angle of the phone said everything.

The post-punk was getting more frantic in his ears, and something hot climbed his throat. He'd already been in a mood.

He pushed the headphones down around his neck. Stood. Crossed the car and dropped into the seat at the creep's right.

He never got the first word out.

"Sorry—"

Low, close, from his left. A man in a suit — white shirt, tie, no jacket — squeezing in beside the creep, hugging a cardboard box with office things shifting inside. A travel mug. A desk lamp. Folders. Recently out of a job, by the look of him.

Theo knew the face. Couldn't place it. Not the point.

One of them on each side. Whether the man meant it or not, he leaned in, toward the creep. The creep glanced up at him, thumb already on the lock button, phone sliding toward his pocket — and Theo caught his wrist.

Drummer's grip. The guy squealed, his fingers sprang open, and the phone dropped.

The suit caught it out of the air. Fast.

"The hell are you doing." The creep tried to stand, and Theo hauled him back down into the seat.

"You're asking me that?"

The suit turned the phone around. "Sir. Look here."

Panic makes people obedient. The creep looked. The suit pointed the phone at his face, unlocked it, swiped into the camera roll, tapped the video, deleted it. Two seconds, start to finish.

"You—"

"Your bag looks familiar." The suit smiled, the flat customer-service kind. "You work downtown, don't you. Financial district. That messenger bag is what the bank hands out. Company issue." He let that sit a second. "You wouldn't want this showing up in the work channel."

The creep went gray. "I didn't — that's not—"

"Didn't?" Theo put some volume on it. "Say that again. You know exactly what you were doing. Everyone on this car knows what you were doing."

That turned heads. Including the girl's.

The suit held the phone up toward her. "This man was filming you. I deleted the video, but I can't promise there's no backup. You should call the police."

She turned, took a half step back. "He was—"

"I'll witness it." Theo hadn't let go of the wrist. "Right now. I saw the whole thing."

The doors opened. The creep threw himself at them. The suit's leg came out and the man went down flat.

"Still running?" Theo had him face down with both the man's arms pinned behind his back before the sentence was finished, and tipped his chin at the girl: come on.

The suit followed them out with the box. Station staff, then police. Somebody found the girl a place to sit. Theo finally got his hands back.

He looked the suit over while they waited. Half a head taller than him. Good build under the white shirt. A face that probably got him things without asking. Elite, top to bottom.

"I've got the recording," the suit said, looking at him. "From before. It'll hold up as evidence." A beat. "Give me your number, I'll send it over?"

Theo didn't think about it. He tipped his chin at the girl. "Send it to her."

She came over and thanked them both, then asked if they'd ride down to the police station with her.

"Can't," Theo said. "I've got somewhere to be. Police are here. Go with them."

She looked at the suit.

"Sorry." He shifted the box onto his hip. "I've got somewhere to be too."

"Then the video—" She opened her contacts and turned the screen toward him.

"Almost forgot." The suit looked at her phone. "I'll AirDrop it."

The police came. Theo left, rode three more stops, and got off.

The street was empty and dark. He walked it every night, so it didn't bother him. He put his head down and worked his thumbs.

[Theo: Almost at the room.]

The reply came quick.

[Eli: Not sleeping at the dorm again?]

[Theo: No. Crashing here. Easier. I get tired, I sleep.]

Send. And then a feeling started up at the back of his neck, the kind he got when somebody was behind him. He turned around.

Nothing.

The room was in a block the city had been promising to tear down for years. Cheap. Nobody around to complain about the noise — that was the upside. The downside was that at night it was dead. No lights, no cars, no one.

"Weird." He pulled his hat down and went in through the street door.

He didn't go straight to the basement. He waited behind the door and counted a minute, and it worked, because a shadow came through.

Twice in one day.

Theo stomped. Reached. Got him.

"Don't—"

The stairwell light snapped on and lit the whole thing up.

It was the suit.

Theo stood there with a fist full of white shirt. Then it connected. "You're kidding me. No wonder you wanted my number. I thought you were — you're following me? What do you want?"

The suit was quiet for a second. When he spoke it came out mild. "You've got the wrong idea. I'm here for the same reason you are. I'm not following you."

"Sure. You just happened to walk in right behind me. We're going to the cops, I swear to—"

The suit set the box down and took out his phone and held the screen up.

Theo looked at it. It was his own post.

"I left you a comment. You put the address in the thread. You never answered." He put out a hand. "Avery Coyle. I'm here about the keyboardist spot."

The comment. The one Eli had mentioned.

Theo looked him over again. Suit. Tie. The tired, careful face of a man who'd spent ten years under fluorescent lights. He belonged downtown in a building with all its lights on, holding a coffee, not standing in the basement hall of a dead building at midnight.

"You." Theo pointed at his own chest. "You replied to me. You sure? I'm looking for a musician, not a financial advisor. I don't have any money."

"I know." Avery looked right at him. "I'm a keyboardist."

Which was not what the post had said. Three days out, and the guy couldn't even read.

* * *

Eli had clocked it the moment the reply came in.

He'd opened the profile and gone through the whole account — a gym, a boat, a dog, a glass of wine on a balcony. A life with nothing in it about bands. Not one instrument. Not one show. And the man had walked straight into Theo's post, past the word in the title like it hadn't been printed there.

Strange, Eli thought. He left it at that.

Past midnight, he finished what he'd gone out to do and rode back. He killed the engine at the door. His phone went off on the way down the stairs.

[Ray Delgado: That little errand wasn't worth the trip across town. Send me the address. Next time, just call me. You're a brother to me. Skip the ceremony.]

He hadn't been in when Eli stopped by. He hadn't expected an answer this fast.

Eli sent the address and typed out a thank-you. Eighteen years, and he'd never met anybody this quick to do a favor for nothing.

Smoother than he'd planned. Some nights went like that.

He put the phone away and started down the last flight, and ten seconds later he stopped with one hand flat on the basement door, because behind it, riding over the top of Theo's kick drum, somebody else was playing.