Larry smiles and sits back, but I'll bet when the film is finished the serial killer will be gone. Larry's instincts are more tenacious than other people's intellectualizations.

The band works till about 4 a.m. and then Bono says he's going to bed. I get in his rented two-seater next to him. As we're pulling away Edge comes out, asks for a lift, and climbs in the jump seat behind us. Bono drives as he always drives, too fast and often on the wrong side of the road.

"Slow down, Bono, I don't want to die!" Edge shouts from his cockpit behind the seat.

"Don't worry, Edge," I tell him, crouching into a fetal position in the passenger seat, "you're in a safe spot, you'll be pulled from the wreckage! I'll be dead and all the papers will say is bono killed and then at the bottom of the page, Also another man"

 [123]

Toward the end of the L.A. week Bono pulls up at a traffic light, looks over at the driver next to him, and sees Axl Rose waving. "I knew it was you," Axi's girlfriend calls. "I recognized your earring!" Bono wishes he weren't driving a Mercedes—not very rock & roll.

Friday morning the Zoo crew get set to depart for Mexico City while the band stays behind to finish the damn TV special. Organizing the travel plans is Dennis Sheehan, U2's longtime road manager. Disorga­nizing them is B. P. Fallon, the viber/deejay/guru who sits in his Trabant on the B stage every night before U2 comes on and spins records and tells the crowd to love each other while wearing a cape and big floppy hat. There are no two more dissimilar persons north of the equator than Dennis and Beep, and they go back a long way. In the seventies they were also on the road together, when Dennis was Led Zeppelin's assistant tour manager and Beep was their publicist. When Bono insisted Beep be drafted for the Zoo tour, Dennis warned, in his quiet manner, that Beep was not at his best on the road. Dennis likes to run his operation like the army, and Beep is the Furry Freak Brother model of a conscientious objector.

In the lobby this morning Beep, who weighs about as much as a canary, is straining under the great weight of a wooden cart laden with a pile of suitcases, trunks, and stereo gear literally taller than the pixielike hippie. Apparently he didn't have his stuff together in time for the luggage pickup, so they left without him. Lately Beep's been on proba­tion. He has a tendency to skip out on the incidental charges on his hotel bills, and to pile his trunks and suitcases onto staggering bellboys whom he never tips. There was so much complaining about "Freebie Fallon" from hotel staff that Dennis resorted to the heaviest penalty: B. P.'s case was handed over to Larry "the Hanging Judge" Mullen, who has agreed to let B. P. finish out the rest of the 1992 dates if he stays out of trouble. (A new deejay will be brought in for the '93 shows.)

Since then Larry has been chasing Beep up and down the inns and restaurants of America making sure he coughs up his share of the bills. Larry also ordered him to stop complaining that every room he checks into is unacceptable, and to quit calling ahead to the next hotel and saying, "This is Mr. Fallon, I'll be arriving on Tuesday and I have a list of specifications for my room." The relationship between the up-and-up Larry and the crafty leprechaun Beep is very much like that between Superman and Mr. Mxyzptik, the mischievous imp from the fifth di-

[124]

mension who used to fly around Metropolis turning the Daily Planet globe into a giant balloon and Jimmy Olsen into Turtle-boy until Superman would trick him into saying his name backward, which would cause him to vanish back to his own dimension. Lately I think I've heard Larry mumbling, "Nollaf P. B., Nollaf P. B."

I leave B. P. hauling his luggage through the lobby like Sisyphus and head out to the airport with Dennis to watch him do the security rounds. It's part of his regular ritual. Before U2 goes to any airport or hotel Dennis has scouted it, gotten the layout, looked for trouble spots, and explained to the staff what will be likely to happen when U2 arrives (fans running toward them, congestion building up in check-in lines or at metal detectors) and trying to get their cooperation to make sure things run as smoothly as possible. Before a tour begins Dennis starts his mornings at 5 a.m. and flies to three cities a day, spending a couple of hours in each scouting out the airport, hotel, and venue. Now Dennis and two LAX staffers run through tomorrow's band departure. They walk through where the cars will let U2 off, where they'll pass through airport security, the stairs to the first-class lounge, the layout of that lounge, the special VIP holding rooms. The whole time he's memoriz­ing this mental map Dennis is also picking up calls from the four band members on his portable phone, relaying to Suzanne Doyle or the hotel that Bono wants a car to go to lunch in half an hour or Edge wants to go to a particular club tonight.

As the airport staff escorts us through one area on our way to another I see a ball of confusion across the lobby. Alarm bells are ringing and airport security and redcaps are running after a little hippie man dragging a huge pile of luggage on a gurney behind him—he has just gone the wrong way through a metal detector and is rolling his trunks in through an "out" door.

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