Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,65

but as the face began to return to life, Chase found himself searching through his memory.

Chase opened a second bag of crisps and offered them. “So, then?”

“I’m Nemo Skagg. Or used to be. Ever heard of me?”

Chase started to respond, “Yes, and I’m Elvis.” But his artist’s eyes began filling in the eroded features, and instead he whispered, “Jesus Christ!”

Nemo Skagg. Founder and major force behind Needle—probably the cutting edge of the punk rock movement in its early years. Needle, long without Nemo Skagg and with just enough of its early lineup to maintain the group’s name, was still around, but only as a ghost of the original. Rolling Stone and the lot used to publish scandalous notices of Nemo Skagg’s meteoric crash, but that was years ago, and few readers today would have recognized the name. The name of a living-dead legend.

“Last I read of you, you were living the life of a recluse at someplace in Kensington,” Chase said.

“You don’t believe me?” There was a flicker of defiant pride in those wounded eyes.

“Actually, I do,” Chase said, feeling as though he should apologize. “I recognize your face.” He wiped his hands on his trousers, fumbling for something to say. “As it happens, I still have Needle’s early albums, as well as the solo album you did.”

“But do you still listen to them?”

Chase felt increasingly awkward, yet he was too fascinated to walk away. “Well, I think this calls for one more round.”

The barman from The Queen’s Larder was starting to favor them with a distasteful frown as he collected glasses from outside. Nemo Skagg nodded toward Great Ormand Street across the way. “They do a fair scrumpi at The Sun,” he suggested.

It was a short walk to the corner of Great Ormand and Lamb’s Conduit Street, giving Chase a little time to marshal his thoughts. Nemo Skagg. Nova on the punk rock scene. The most outrageous. The most daring. The savior of the world from disco and lame hangers-on from the sixties scene. Totally full-dress punk star: the parties, the fights on stage, the drugs, the scandals, the arrests, the hospital confinements. Toward the last, there were only the latter two, then even these were no longer newsworthy. A decade later, the world had forgotten Nemo Skagg. Chase had assumed he was dead, but now could recall no notice of his death. It might have escaped notice.

The Sun was crowded with students as usual, but Chase made his way past them to the horseshoe bar and sloshed back outside with two pints of scrumpi. Nemo had cleared a space against the wall and had begged another fag. They leaned against the wall of the pub, considering the bright September day, the passing show, and their pints. Chase seldom drank scrumpi, and the potent cider would have been enough to stun his brain even without the previous bitter.

“Actually,” Nemo said, “there were three solo albums.”

“I had forgotten.”

“They were all bollocks.”

“I’m not at all certain I ever heard the other two,” Chase compromised.

“I’m bollocks. We’re all of us bollocks.”

“The whole world is bollocks.” Chase jumped in ahead of him. “To bollocks!” Nemo raised his glass. They crashed their pints in an unsteady toast. Nemo drained his.

“You’re a sport, mate. You still haven’t asked what you’re waiting to ask: How did it all happen?”

“Well. I don’t suppose it really matters, does it?”

Nemo was not to demur. “Lend us a fiver, mate, and I’ll pay for this round. Then Nemo Skagg shall tell all.”

Once, at the White Hart in Drury Lane, Chase had bought eight pints of Guinness for a cockney pensioner who had regaled him with an impenetrable cockney accent concerning his adventures during the Dunkirk evacuation. Chase hadn’t understood a word in ten, but he memorized the man’s face, and that portrait was considered one of his very finest. Chase found a fiver.

The bar staff at The Sun were loose enough to serve Nemo, and he was out again shortly with two more pints of scrumpi and a packet of fags. That was more than the fiver, so he hadn’t been totally skint. He brightened when Chase told him he didn’t smoke. Nemo lit up. Chase placed his empty pint on the window ledge and braced himself against the wall. The wall felt good.

“So, then, mate. Ask away. It’s you who’s paid the piper.”

Chase firmly resolved that this pint would be his last. “All right, then. What did happen to Nemo Skagg? Last I heard, you still had some of