Never Go Alone Page 8

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  That evening, Jake sat in front of his computer. He was trolling for likes and not getting the feedback he craved. He’d uploaded the photos from Morton’s and he’d gotten only one like—his own. Nothing from Mona, nor Rory. The more he waited, the more Rivett felt like a teenager contemplating his own popularity, or lack thereof. He knew the pictures he’d shot were good. Rooftopping—it was popular. But it wasn’t unique. Maybe all of it had been for nothing. After idly clicking through Mona’s profile for the fourth time in the last hour, Jake reached a decision. If she wasn’t going to contact him, he’d reach out. He composed a message: “Hey, Mona. It’s Jake. What do you think? That’s just last weekend. There’s a lot more where that came from . . . Want to get together sometime?”

  Click. He sent the message. Then he read it again and immediately regretted it. Dammit. Time to step away from the computer, Jakey. You’ve already done enough damage for one night.

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  It was close to midnight. Rivett tried to turn his internal processor off, but he just couldn’t do it. He continued to contemplate the utter lack of reaction to his photographs—and himself—while racing south through the city. At least band practice might take his mind off the case for a luxurious hour or two.

  Jake loved screamo because it pushed people outside of their comfort zones—himself included. Screamo wasn’t about lyrics; it was jazz for the angry. It’s not that Jake was a violent man. He knew what anger problems were and he didn’t have them. Or maybe that’s just what people with tempers told themselves? Who knows. It was just that there were heavy chips lying on his shoulders. He would never tell anyone about them. Instead, he’d spent his life moving fast and chasing risk in an attempt to knock the past out of his mind. That’s why he loved spitting into the microphone and frying his vocal chords. Just like a drug, screamo allowed him to not think. It shut reality down. The music was Jake’s form of therapy, the cacophony of noise equivalent to a juice cleanse for a New Ager.

  Jake had been listening to screamo for a long time, ever since he’d convinced his mother to buy him a CD player in middle school. To be honest, he’d started out much lighter than screamo, with bands like R.E.M. and Pearl Jam. But he’d been forced to wander—at first musically, then physically—because of his father. His father and namesake, an Albany cop named Jake Rivett Sr., was a consistently loud, angry, and obnoxious drunk. Listening to music that raged harder than his father became Jake Jr.’s therapy. And because upstate New York is a small place, and because the Internet didn’t exist and Jake wasn’t the most socialized of children, he didn’t know how far along the thin branch of musical genres screamo balanced. It was its own subculture inside a culture inside sliver of an industry pie. By the time his father sent him to boarding school, ostensibly to toughen him up, Jake finally discovered how few people in the world loved what he did. He also found it quite ironic that all the prepsters and military brats at his boarding school liked Dave Matthews Band and Dispatch. Those bands were supposed to be for chill potheads, and those kids were aggressive punks.

  After he graduated from boarding school and arrived in New York City, Jake began to discover the world through a new set of eyes. He’d moved into a tiny flat in Chinatown, not far from the studio that he was heading to now. He had thrown himself into the music scene in downtown Manhattan and supported himself by cleaning dishes at a restaurant in Chinatown called Palace. After a few years of attempting to “make it,” Jake had learned a few sure facts.

  First, overnight success was limited strictly to lottery winners with stunning personal magnetism. Nothing came easy in the music industry, even for those who worked as hard as they possibly could—even for talented guys sanding their fingers off in the back kitchen of a dingy Chinatown restaurant. No one rose to the top without intentionality and Jake had never been oriented towards stardom. Although he wasn’t oblivious to his talent, his bandmates—a loosely connected group of barflies from East Village haunts—often had to remind him to be a star. Without trying, he was the most popular guy in their group. His long blond hair and Mick Jagger-skinny body looked the part, but his voice? That was the gold right there. That was the magnet. It attracted fans—women and men alike. It was just that being a front man had never felt perfectly natural for Jake. It still didn’t. He just didn’t get it. Music was meant to be personal. The audience wasn’t Jake’s priority. They would always go home and so would he. Was that was life was really all about?

  The other lesson Jake learned was the golden rule of Manhattan: You can make it here. You can start with nothing and become something. That was the promise and the dream of the place. After a year doing dishes, Jake started helping the proprietor of Palace with supply orders. He quickly mastered Microsoft Word and Excel. He applied to the City University of New York, a small community college that Schaub was already attending. He was accepted. He continued to work at Palace, play in the band, and go to school through his mid-twenties. And when he graduated, he’d applied to approximately one hundred jobs. Ninety-nine of them turned him down, but as he stepped out of interview number one hundred, he’d walked past a police precinct. The posters on the windows made it clear: The NYPD was hiring recent college graduates. Did he want to make a difference?

  Jake took a deep breath, he jumped, and he found much more excitement on the streets than on the stage. Unlike the music industry, hard work in the police department was rewarded. Promotions were possible, yes. But his work made the world a better place. What he did took bad guys—bullies and robber barons alike—off the street. Jake Rivett had spent a decade looking for peace. Once he became justice, he’d finally found his home.

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  It was true. He’d become less mad. So what does a screamo artist do once he can control himself? He writes better songs, apparently. The lyrics that he wrote for Schaub and Mackenzie, his drummer and guitarist respectively, had become softer and much more refined. Tonight, at the studio, was the mastering session for “Out of the Mist”—with its poppy melody running throughout and words that a normal human being might actually discern on the first listen.

  “What up, Jakey-boy? You’re a little quiet,” Schaub asked.

  “Just making room for you, buddy,” Jake joked.

  “Work?”

  “Always,” Jake said, nodding.

  “Want to run it past your pals?”

  “Sure, but then I’d have to kill ya.”

  “A real funny guy.”

  “What happened with your birthday? We missed you . . .” Mackenzie popped in.

  “I would be sorry,” Schaub added. “Except for the fact that we were all waiting for you down at Sophie’s. But you? Nope.”

  “Sorry. I was . . .”

  “Trust me, I know. Hell if we were gonna go all the way up to the Pickle to pick your sorry ass up,” Schaub replied.

  “Hey. Can we stop talking about me?” Jake asked.

  “Would love that, with a vengeance,” Schaub said.

  “When’s the mix ready?” Jake asked, nodding to the sound engineer on the other side of the window.

  “Ten or fifteen,” Mackenzie responded.

  “Hey. While we got the time, I had an idea,” Schaub said.

  “Okay . . .” Jake responded warily. Schaub’s ideas were never for the faint of heart.

  “We should shoot a video. For ‘Mist.’”

  “Don’t have any cash for that,” Jake objected.

  “I know. But I was thinking . . . Let’s do something viral.”

  “Yeah? You just tell a video to go viral, and it does, right?” Jake replied.

  “What if it looks like it’s shot randomly, but ain’t?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s the technical difficulty. I dunno. Not exactly. But, like, running through a police station . . . While singing? You’d get us permission beforehand. But we’d make the video look like it was random and just, like, berserk.”

  “Well . . .” Jake pondered
Schaub’s idea.

  “Straight brilliant. I know. I know.”

  “No way am I asking my boss to shoot a music video.”

  “How come?”

  “’Cause I like my balls, Schaub.”

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  As Jake rode away from the studio that night, he checked his phone. Still nothing on UrbEx. Radio silence. In Internet years, six hours was an eternity. His little stunt at Morton’s Eye Drops had done nothing at all except make it clear that he could lose his life at any moment. Maybe Schaub was right. Go big or go home. Make an impact. After all, Rivett had nothing else in the arsenal, no more levers to pull. He only had one more chance to make them care—if that. The only way to demand respect was by becoming irresistible. It needed to be original. It needed to be mind-bogglingly daring. How could he make the most mentally insane urban exploration video the UrbEx community had ever seen? Maybe, just maybe, by stealing Schaub’s idea.

  NINE

  THE HIGH-DEFINITION INTERLACING VIDEO flickered as Jake yanked his GoPro camera along with him down Fifth Street at the edge of the East Village. The video feed bounced forward with each of Jake’s steps. Eventually he focused on his target ahead: a beautiful limestone police station. This was the Ninth Precinct, a stunning example of early twentieth-century municipal architecture. With six stacked levels of granite and a beautifully ornate crown towering above the street, the police station could have easily doubled as an embassy building or corporate headquarters. The first floor was highly secured, with cement pylons in front, steel doors for entry, and opaque windows blocking view access. After using the GoPro to encompass the station ahead, Jake flipped the camera around to himself.

  “My boy Mackenzie got drunk tanked last night,” Jake said. He was decked out in street garb, with a beanie hat and leather jacket swung over his shoulder. Jake rotated the GoPro back. The image rustled briefly before becoming fixed once again. He’d secured the GoPro to his chest, aiming outwards in an almost-mirror of his own perspective. Jake’s hand swung out. He reached for the handle of the police station’s front door and pulled it open.

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  The cop lady at the front desk was ultra bored, but she wouldn’t tell you that. The unlocked front door meant that she was protected behind a large, bulletproof cube—like some sort of loan agent. She didn’t look up as Jake approached her. He stood above her for a moment, looking for some way to indicate that he wanted to speak. This was bureaucracy at its best, offering the taxpayer no good way of not being rude in order to receive the services that were his or her right. So Jake acted like a normal peasant and knocked on the Plexiglas. The woman finally looked up.

  “Hey. Uh . . . My friend was put up here last night . . . I called.”

  “Name?” she asked.

  “Jake . . . Wait, his? Peter, uh, Mackenzie,” Jake responded.

  “Sign in. Write his name. Have a seat.”

  “Okey-dokey,” Jake said.

  Jake signed the guestbook as Jake Easton. He glanced around. A few people were sitting in the waiting area behind him. Jake joined them.

  After a few moments, he was feeling antsy. He stood up and approached the desk again. “Hey. Where’s the bathroom?” Jake asked.

  The cop eyed him over—this time slightly longer than the first. Then without a word, she gestured to a door to the side of the lobby. She pressed a button simultaneously, and the door buzzed. Jake strode towards the door and passed through.

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  In the bathroom, Jake addressed the mirror while his GoPro captured.

  “Ever rooftopped a cop station?” Jake asked himself and then responded in kind. “No? Me either.”

  He pushed back through the bathroom door but didn’t return to the lobby. Instead, Jake marched farther down the hallway into the depths of the police department. Half expecting the lady at the desk to come running in his direction, Jake hustled towards a door marked “Stairwell.” He pushed it open. Then Jake reached for the camera again. He twisted it in his direction and grinned maniacally at the lens.

  “Mom and Dad? I’m sorry. But it’s better to be a baller than not to live at all, right?”

  Jake began to run up the stairs. He flew up one story, then another, rotating around the inside staircase as fast as he possibly could. But when he reached the third landing, a door suddenly opened in front of Jake, who had to duck hurriedly to the left in order to prevent his face from being smashed. None other than Susan Herlihy strode out. She was staring directly at Jake, a decidedly less-than-happy expression on her face.

  “Jesus!” Susan screamed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I thought Tony told ya?” Jake said as he reached for the GoPro on his chest.

  “We need to talk . . . Is that a camera?” Susan asked.

  Jake’s finger flicked the GoPro off.

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  After ten minutes of justifying himself to Susan and genuflecting heavily, Jake was back in action. The digital video chip inside the GoPro ignited again, and Jake started over. He began to run up the stairs—recording a second take—like nothing had happened. This time around, Susan did not show her face. Even though Jake was positive that she was probably shaking her head with concern right now while placing a call full of vitriol to Tony. But that wasn’t his problem. At least not yet.

  He reached the fifth landing and kept going. He peered around the corner with his camera, focusing on an ascending set of stairs.

  “What’s up here?” Jake pondered.

  The stairwell door was clearly labeled “Roof.”

  “Target in sight,” Jake announced.

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  Moments later, the door to the roof swung open. As Jake bounded through, he ran directly into two cops standing in the portico of the doorway. One male and one female. Jake didn’t know them, and they didn’t know him. They were in uniform, sharing a cigarette. They were quite alarmed, both turning and staring at Jake’s camera. One of them reached for his gun.

  “Hey! Stop! I’m department, bro!” Jake had to yell. “Damn,” Jake continued, “guess I’ll have to cut on motion twice. You know what they say about best laid plans . . .”

  “Hey, man. Is that thing on? What are you doing?” the female cop inquired.

  “Yeah. Yo, what are you using that video for? My wife can’t see this.”

  “Why? The cigarettes?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah, Ron. Why?” the female turned towards Ron.

  “Listen, she’s got problems, you know that . . .” Ron addressed his colleague.

  “Right back at her, woman!”

  Jake realized that he might have stepped into something deeper than just two colleagues sharing a cigarette. Just his luck. He had to step in to avoid a meltdown. “Hey. Do you guys want to be in my movie?” he asked. They stared at him. So he tried another tact. “Susan Herlihy is in the building. Ask her. Or you could just help me and we’ll leave her out of it. Which might be better for all of us.”

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  Serendipity was a powerful thing. While at first Jake was upset by the distractions standing in the way of his plan, he realized that these two blues would add a whole other level of excitement. Back in the stairs, he turned the camera on.

  This time, when Jake burst through the door to the roof, no one was there. He continued to orate into the camera’s microphone.

  “Absolutely incredible. Want to know where I am? I’m currently standing on top of a police station . . . Ninth Precinct to be exact.”

  Jake guided the GoPro’s lens around the entire top of the building. The building itself stood twenty to thirty feet above most the brownstones on the street, affording a fantastic view—specifically to the east where he could make out parts of Brooklyn over the river.

  “Might be the most epic rooftopping I’ve ever done . . .” Jake began. Just then, the camera darted towards a noise behind Jake. Out of the door came two police officers, male and female. They were sprinting across the roof towards Jake, yelling as loudly as they possibl
y could.

  “The hell do you think you’re doing!” they screamed.

  Jake flipped the camera towards his face. He made a funny look. Then nothing less than a mad dash commenced. He sprinted across the roof, away from the door. Just as the cops were about to overtake him, Jake cut left, cutting them at the knees. He doubled back towards the door and smashed it open with his shoulder.

  Inside the stairwell, Jake took the stairs two at a time. Once he reached the bottom floor, Jake stuffed his hat and jacket into one of the trash cans before hustling back out into the waiting room. Breathing hard, Jake sat back down in one of the waiting room doors. He tilted his head downward—winking into the GoPro’s ever-recording camera. Then the two cops finally appeared, pushing through the steel door to the exterior and racing outside. They didn’t notice Jake. He pulled the GoPro out of his lap and aimed it out the window, taking in the two cops. They were both acting perturbed, like they’d seen a ghost. Then they started yelling at each other before finally making their way back into the building and disappearing into the depths of the place.

  Jake flipped the camera around and focused on himself. A look of pure exhilaration raced across him, his face flushed with excitement.

  “Explore or die,” Jake said into the camera. He lifted his hand up to form the peace symbol. “Peace.”

  TEN

  RIVETT KNEW ENOUGH ABOUT SOCIAL media now that he wanted to make it his bitch. The vigil in front of UrbEx hadn’t abated—it had now extended for forty-eight hours. Jake had spent the last two days repeatedly refreshing UrbEx’s main feed. But this time around, with the cop house infiltration and rooftopping video, it wasn’t all in vain. No, in fact, Jake’s new video had over six hundred likes and had been floating atop the feed for a full day now. He’d struck a nerve. Whether it was with the site’s users, or the algorithm controlling it all, he couldn’t be sure. But he knew the content was damn good.