U.S. Blues

Chapter 1

A crowd of crusty Deadheads had gathered around the body in the parking lot outside of Alpine Valley Music Theater. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Practically the crack of dawn as far as heads were concerned.

Peter Van de Carr recognized the victim. Pete didn’t know him all that well, but the victim was a fixture in the tapers’ section, religiously taping every Grateful Dead show over the previous couple of years. And now Pete was staring at his dead body. The lifeless eyes. The tie-dye shirt ripped open and drenched in blood from the holes in his chest. The unfinished joint in his hand. The poor dead taper looked like he wanted to let out one last scream, pronounce the horror of the whole thing, tell everyone about the pain and suffering of dying.

He looks like he got shot, one of the crowd said.

He was Russian, right?

What’s the silver stuff around his lips? said someone else. Is that some kind of new drug?

Did you know, another head said, that the Soviet Union is an American front? The U.S. government secretly controls it in order to maintain a common enemy for capitalism to rally around.

Fungous emulsions, said a sozzled freak. His beard was so unkempt it was starting to form dreadlocks.

A burly head stepped forward. I was in ‘Nam, he said, and those don’t look like bullet holes to me. He pulled out a small ruler from his photographer’s vest and bent down to measure the holes. Three-eighths of an inch. No such caliber.

Pete took a closer look at the dead body. The tie-dye shirt made it difficult to see exactly where the holes were. He had trouble distinguishing between the blood and the red dye #2. He noticed that in addition to the holes in the chest and silver stuff on the nose and lips, there appeared to be burns on each hand and forearm.

Well, one head said, lighting up a joint, Death is the b-side of life, man. You can’t get the hit single without the flip track.

Then the cops showed up. Heads ran, hid, swallowed, and ditched whatever was in their pockets. Pete attempted to tell his feet to move but the prior evening he had done a mind-shattering amount of Castaneda-quality peyote. The command to scram lost its way. He wound up just standing there.

A large cop with mirror sunglasses marched up to Pete.

Take a step back, the cop said.

Huh? Pete said.

Take a step back right now.

Oh, OK, man, uh…WD-Forty, Pete said. He actually meant to say 10-4, but his neurons were misfiring like a bomb put together by the Weather Underground.

The cop was losing his patience. Take a step back now!

Pete’s furry moustache twitched. Flies landed on his Doors shirt.

The cop yelled directly into Pete’s face YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO CLEAR THE AREA, and then he gave Pete a little shove.

WD-Forty. Pete started walking away. He glanced back at the victim. Someone had stuck a Steal Your Face sticker on the body bag.

***

What did I tell you? Zeek said when Pete got back to the auto club. Fucking awesome, right?

What? Pete said. No, man. It was grisly. Disturbing. A malignant force.

Dude, it was all fucked up and bloody and mutilated and shit. It was like Faces of Death, but for real.

Faces of Death? Pete said.

For twat’s sakes old man. Open up your mind. The human body is beautiful. Alive, blood-soaked, whatever. It’s all good. You need to learn to appreciate a good dead body.

Pete lit up a hash joint. He was 41 years old. He was continually horrified by this 16-year-old runaway they had only recently picked up. He considered Zeek a human hazard.

Where are Janet and Lars? Pete asked.

In her tent.

Pete went to lie down underneath his tarp before that night’s show.

Chapter 2

Before the start of that 1985 summer tour, Pete was flat broke. He could scrounge together only enough cash to be able to afford a ticket to a couple of shows. He desperately wanted to avoid wasting any of his precious greenbacks on Ticketron fees, but he had a hard time making sense of the mail order instructions put out by the Grateful Dead Ticket Sales politburo. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to order tickets for more than one concert in one envelope, didn’t know what a #10 envelope was, didn’t know the difference between reserved and reserved loge, didn’t know the area code of the place he was staying at, and didn’t have a 3 by 5 index card. So in the end he just bought any old envelope he could find, wrote a note on a napkin that said I was able to find my way out of Avalon Ballroom in ’66 after 20 hits of acid, but I have absolutely no idea what your freaking instructions are talking about -Alligator, stuck in the few bucks he had, and sent it off.

A few weeks later, lo and behold, he received an envelope that contained tickets for the entire tour.

Pete had another magnificent stroke of good luck when Lars Kampmann, Pete’s longtime friend and fellow head, received a check from a penny stock operation in Denver for EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS. Lars had invested his life savings (two hundred dollars) in an ostrich farm equipment supply company at the start of the ostrich farming speculative bubble of the early 80’s. He got out right before the bubble burst. Lars used the money to buy an old Plymouth Senator held together by duct tape, and invited Pete and Janet to join what he insisted on calling an auto club (a rough translation of some phrase from Lars's homeland, Denmark, where apparently small groups of people used to cooperatively own cars). Lars pledged to keep the car filled with gas and the auto club filled with food all tour without charging the other members a cent, which was a dream come true.

So at the second night’s show at the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin (6-22-85), Pete should have been in a great mood. It was the beginning of the Dead’s summer tour, and he had a wide open stretch of unmanifested setlists, and the whole country for that matter, in front of him, not yet conquered or developed or polluted or massacred or limited or compromised, but still in a state of yet-to-be, with no worries about his next ride, his next meal, or his ticket to the next show. It’s just that he couldn’t stop thinking about the dead body he had seen earlier in the day. He was disturbed. As he walked into the venue that evening he realized he didn’t even want any of the liquid acid in the eye-dropper bottle he had put in his pocket for the show.

***

During Drums and Space, Pete came to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the murder, the quickest way of bringing the perpetrator to justice and excising the thing from his consciousness, was probably to go to the cops and offer them help. He could be their guide, help them with the theoretical frameworks he had developed to understand the micro- and macro-structures that were to be found in the scene, because as far as Pete knew information like that was crucial to murder investigations…

In general, Pete wasn’t much different than most heads on the subject of cops. Over the course of his life, he had been brained by cops everywhere from California to New York Island. But he thought maybe it was time to reconsider his position. Just because someone wore a badge didn’t mean they were inherently evil. Many of the guys he went to grammar school with went on to join the force, and they weren’t all bad.

Besides, something had occurred to Pete while observing the spoiled-rotten northeastern teenage suburban Deadheads who had joined the tour over the years. They were contemptuous of the police as a privilege of their upper class. They mistreated cops as they would mistreat a valet who had overstepped his bounds. Those coddled Dr. Spock brats hated the police simply because the police had the audacity to interfere with their fun, had the nerve to try to prevent them from having the good time they believed was their birthright. Back in the day Pete hated the cops on principle. But now he realized the cops were more like him than not – pawns of the upper crust. It dawned on Pete that all this time the owners of the means of production had been using the cops vs. heads divide as a way to keep control of the proletariat. It was classic us vs. them hyperbole. Same thing that got the U.S. into Indochina.

***

Outside the Alpine Valley Music Theater after the show, a head wearing a plastic pig nose and a cop hat slowly pedaled past Pete on a bike. He looked over at Pete and snorted like a pig a couple of times. Pete laughed instinctively, but then got upset.

What’s with the nose, brother? Pete said to the guy.

The guy on the bike braked. The fuzz, man, He said. There’s cops everywhere after that murder.

The fuzz are people too, brother, Pete said They deserve to be treated like humans.

Is your neurocircuitry fried? he said. Pigs ain’t nothing but motherscratchin’ pork, man. You’re either with them, or you’re with us. He snorted again and rode off.

Pete saw a cop in uniform standing nearby. He lit up a hash joint and walked up to him.

Hello, officer, Pete said.

You have to be kidding me, the cop said, pointing to the joint.

Oh, uh, sorry man… Pete pulled the joint out of his mouth and was about to throw it away, but then stopped. He hated to throw away even the tiniest amount of his beloved hash. He was paralyzed by the two competing commands in his brain: throw away the evidence versus protect and preserve the sheesh.

Look, the cop said, What do you want?

Can I get a card for your local precinct station?

Let me guess. You want to report an instance of police brutality. Call the god-damn ACLU.

No. I want to offer my help.

With what?

The murder.

The cop gave him a skeptical look.

Really, Pete said. I want to help.

All right, the cop said. He dug into his shirt breast pocket. He scrounged around in there and then came out with an old bent-up card. He handed it to Pete. Go there tomorrow. The man at the front desk will know who you should talk to.

Thanks, Pete said.

Chapter 3

The next morning, the entire scene had to pack itself up. That night’s show was at a different venue, the River Bend Music Center, so the whole far-out caravan was preparing to truck out to the not-so-far-out hamlet of Cincinnati, Ohio.

When Pete got up, Lars was doing his daily calisthenics (a Royal Danish Army routine that included sit-ups, pushups, squats, dips, and assorted other exercises that looked ludicrous in Lars’s knee-high athletic socks and short athletic shorts). Pete asked him if they could stop off at the local police precinct before getting on the highway so Pete could offer the cops some help with the murder investigation.

How are you going to help the cops? Janet said.

I’ll go over all the details of the scene with them with a fine-toothed comb.

Janet laughed. You haven’t combed anything in decades!

We can stop off, Lars said between knee-bends.

Well then, Lars, Janet said. You’re going to have to call it quits for the day with the Jane Fonda stuff. She gave Lars a pat on the ass.

Pete felt his level of irritation involuntarily rise. A burning sensation erupted on his neck, and he scratched it.

***

It took a while for the auto club to get ready. They had to pack up the trunk of the Senator to Lars’s precise specifications. But as promised, before they got on the road en route to River Bend, they drove to the local cop shop so Pete could go in and offer his help investigating. Janet, Lars and Zeek decided to wait in the car.

You sure you want to do this? Lars said.

Yeah, Pete said.

Well, be careful.

On his walk up to the front door, Pete hesitated. The sight of the station up close sent a shiver of poisonous anxiety through his system. He wanted to think it all over with the assistance of a hashish joint, but was wary of making the same mistake as the previous evening. To hell with it. He gathered his resolve and decided he would go in there and show the cops some real class. Rise above the hyper-stupid bush-league animosity that characterized the head-cops relationship.

He opened the door and walked up to the front desk. The officer on duty looked Pete up and down, shook his head with evident disgust, then went back to doing his paperwork. Pete stood there patiently, waiting for the cop to acknowledge his presence, but the cop just kept on writing. He pretended like Pete did not exist.

With as much positive vibery as he could muster, Pete said, Excuse me, man, but can I trouble you for a minute?

The cop sighed. He slowly put his pencil down. Then he lifted his gaze up to meet Pete’s.

What did you say? the cop said.

Can I trouble you for a minute?

The cop crossed his arms. What do you want?

Uh, I came here to offer my help.

With what?

With the investigation.

What investigation?

The investigation of the murder that happened last night in the parking lot of the Alpine Valley Music Theater.

The cop rolled his eyes. Oh, that investigation.

I’ve come to see if I could be of any assistance.

You know who murdered him? the cop asked.

No. But I know a lot about the scene.

Scene? What scene? The murder scene?

No the Deadhead scene.

Oh, why didn’t you just say so? That should have been the first thing you told me. You ‘know the scene’. Well then, we have an expert on our hands. A god-damn PhD in drugs and rock and roll. That’s exactly the type of person we’re looking to help us out on a case that I want to assure you is one of our highest priorities. Let me just check and see who the investigating officer is and I’ll summon him with the utmost alacrity. We wouldn’t want to miss a lead on this case.

The cop pulled out a clipboard from under the desk. Just to illustrate how completely unimportant this case was to him, the cop moved e-x-t-r-a s-l-o-w-l-y. He raised his arm at the speed of an old VW bus trying to climb the Sierras. He slowly put the clipboard on the desk. He slowly pulled off his glasses. He took a long moment to stare at his glasses in the light to identify any smudges. He cleaned his glasses with a cloth, making sure he didn’t miss one spot. He put his glasses back on his face and then made a big show of finding the exact right distance to hold the clipboard to be able to read it. When he read what was on the clipboard, he coughed in an attempt to cover up a laugh.

Detective Grimes, he said to Pete. Allow me to ring him for you.

The cop picked up the phone and told someone on the other end there was a man here to see him about the hippie murder. The person on the other end yelled something incomprehensible and then hung up the phone. The cop told Pete to have a seat and wait.

When Pete sat down, he realized he still had the bottle full of liquid acid in his pants pocket. That was not good. Under the so-called ‘carrier weight law’, when federal judges sentenced a person for possession of LSD they were obliged to include the weight of whatever the LSD was being carried in. In other words, not only would the few grams of actual acid in the bottle be counted against Pete, but so also would the water it was dissolved in as well as the weight of the glass bottle itself. If Pete was caught, he would be sentenced as if he was carrying enough LSD to expand the consciousness of the entire state of Wisconsin.

Pete tried to arrange his pants so that the bulge wasn’t so obvious. He shifted in the chair. The cop at the front desk looked at him. Pete put a hand over the bulge. It occurred to him that it might appear to the casual observer that he was trying to hide a hard-on. Pete smiled wanly at the cop. The cop shook his head again and went back to work.

In an attempt to do a better job of hiding the acid bulge, Pete picked up a copy of the Milwaukee Journal from an adjacent chair. He opened it above his lap. The article he happened to turn to only increased his anxiety. It was about Reagan appointing a new Drug Czar. The guy in the picture was shaking Reagan’s hand and grinning so gleefully that it seemed he couldn’t imagine anything better than to systematically crush poor souls like Pete’s with the full apparatus of the state.

An old codger walked out from the bowels of the police station. His walk was labored. He wore a baggy suit. He hobbled into the lobby and said at a volume that indicated significant hearing loss, to no one in particular even though Pete was the only one in the waiting room, Which one of you is here to see me about the, uh, the, uh, then he turned to the cop at the front desk and yelled at him, what god-damn case did you just call me about?

The front-desk cop said, I called you about the murder in the Alpine Valley Music Theater parking lot last night.

You called me up here for that god-damn case?

The man right here wants to provide you with some assistance in your investigation.

What man?

Chairman Mao there.

Who?

The guy sitting right in front of you, the desk cop said.

The old man put on a pair of coke-bottle glasses. The expression on his face dropped. Pete made sure to keep the newspaper over the bulging bottle of acid.

Jesus, boy, the old man said to Pete. I thought you were a girl with that god-damn hair. Now, which case are you here to see me about?

The murder in the Alpine Valley Music Theater parking lot last night, sir, Pete said.

Murder? What parking lot?

Last night, said the cop at the front desk, speaking loudly so as to be easily understood. At the Alpine Valley Music Theater parking lot. Assigned to you this morning. The file is on your desk.

Right, said the old man. Then he turned back to Pete and said with disgust, Follow me.

Pete kept one hand over his pocket as he followed the old man. The old cop seemed to get lost as he wandered around the station. Pete wasn’t too experienced with the office politics of the straight world, but it occurred to him that perhaps they had buried the case by assigning it to this antediluvian gumshoe.

Sit down, the old man said gruffly once they found his office. He pointed to a wooden chair. Pete sat down. He adjusted the bottle of acid.

First of all, the old man said, I don’t appreciate your type coming in here without any respect at all for common decency. I mean look at you, boy. You look like a god-damn fruitball. You smell like a Turk. Do you think this is some homosexual picnic? Do you think we’re at the park, eating sugar plums, singing Negro spirituals, and having an air-fairy time of it all? Is that what you think?

No sir, I don’t, said Pete.

The problem with your kind is that you think it’s all about poetry, hemp, and communism. But if you read the constitution you’ll see that communism is outlawed in this country.

Pete was still trying to maintain the positive vibery, but there were some things he could not countenance.

Respectfully, sir, nowhere in the constitution is communism banned.

Did you serve in Vietnam?

No.

Let me guess: conscientious objector. Spoken as if they were the two worst words in the English language.

My draft number was never called.

Bolshevik, he muttered.

To be honest, Pete said, I was more of a Menshevik. But now I’m sort of an anarcho-socialist.

The old man’s eyes went unfocused. He remained in a quiet fog for an uncomfortably long time.

About the murder… Pete said, trying to bring the old man back.

I’ll have you know, the cop said, eyes sharpening again, "that I am never going to let this town be over-run by yegs and hoboes. I’ve bagged more of your kind stealing condensed milk from the five and dime than you could probably count. This might be a hard time for the country, sir, times may be tough all around, but that doesn’t give you license to steal from decent folk. If you’re out of money get a job with the WPA, why don’t you? They could always use someone who is willing to put