Chris Squire with the Tori Cobras at the Casbah
(photo by Eric Rife)
He Should Have Known Better
Page 3
On the Road Again
Now without a job, Squire moved on. Of all places, he packed up for New Hampshire, where writer Lisa Carver lived. While in Phoenix, Squire had corresponded with her, which led to the two becoming an item.
Long before blogs and online diaries, Carver had built a following writing about the intimate details of her life, first in her fanzine Rollerderby and later in books and magazine columns. Part of her public life included her relationship with Boyd Rice, a former San Diegan noise music pioneer who performs under the moniker NON.
Despite being 3000 miles away, Squire knew his problems in San Diego would catch up. Toward the end of 2005, he got a phone call.
"I'm in New Hampshire, and my mom called me up and said, 'These warrants showed up in the mail for you.' Fuck it, I'm not going back to California."
Carver was involved in a custody battle, and Squire moved out, finding a room on craigslist that was across the state line in Maine. He moved in with a couple in a rockabilly band. The woman, he later discovered, was porn star Isabella Soprano.
He considered his time in Maine temporary while he tried to decide his next move. His way out was another band calling for a fill-in musician.
This time it was electrosynth punk band Digital Leather from Phoenix, who needed a drummer.
In May 2006, Digital Leather flew Squire to Arizona, and they hit the road. Squire said part of the deal was a guarantee that the tour would be profitable. He should have known better. Even midlevel bands with a nightly guarantee are lucky to break even.
"This was all on the promise that they were going to make some money on tour and buy me a plane ticket to New Hampshire when the tour was over," Squire said. "What happened was they didn't make money. They ended up borrowing money from me and burning through all of that." The tour's last show was in San Diego at Scolari's Office on May 27.
"I had the choice of going with them back to Phoenix or staying in San Diego. Either way, it was going to be with no money and no plane ticket home. I didn't want to end up back in Phoenix, so I ended up staying in San Diego, which everyone had been warning me not to do. My friends were telling me, 'Don't go back to San Diego. You're gonna get arrested.' "
You Have the Right to Remain Silent...
Despite his network of friends in San Diego, Squire quickly fell on hard times.
"I was basically homeless, with no job and no money, so I had to hustle. I did what I knew how to do and started selling drugs. I got thrown into the mix real quick."
Squire had gone from selling weed to his friends to selling crystal meth to an assortment of shady characters. He was using regularly. By selling, he could both keep himself supplied and make money.
By now, he looked and acted like a tweaker, riding his bike around Imperial Beach and San Diego -- Loma Portal, Clairemont Mesa, Hillcrest, North Park, South Park, and downtown -- making deliveries at all hours of the night.
Most of Monday, August 14, 2006, was spent dropping off dope at prearranged spots.
"I remember I spent most of the night just waiting around to pick up drugs," he said. "I was just floating around. Sometimes I had money, sometimes I had drugs, sometimes I had both. But I was just rolling around San Diego waiting to turn drugs and money into more money. It was a really long night. I spent a lot of time on the trolley or running around throwing my bike into people's cars, getting rides to places, and then getting back on the trolley. All the way, I was just counting down to the time where I was either going to make a lot of money or I was going to go to jail.
"Then I got the phone call. Someone wanted some drugs. I was sitting on a big bag of dope that someone had already paid for, but I figured I'd sell it."
His plan was to sell a marked-up ounce to the new buyer, use the money to buy a replacement ounce, and deliver that to the original buyer. He figured he'd pocket several hundred on the deal.
Squire showed up at the prearranged meeting spot, the Mobil gas station at the bottom of Washington Street, across from Gelato Vero.
"I went to where I was supposed to meet them and they weren't there," he said. "I was riding my bike across a crosswalk to go across the street, lock it up, and get a cup of coffee, and all of a sudden these plainclothes cops roll up on me from every direction.
"They had this crazy story about how they were doing a stakeout on the gas station because it had been getting robbed, and they said they thought I was robbing the gas station at three o'clock in the afternoon on a bicycle. It didn't make any sense and just tied in with my whole suspicion that I had been set up."
Squire was caught with 31.5 grams of meth -- slightly more than an ounce -- a scale, and bags.
"I had been so depressed being separated from Lisa and being aware of what I was doing to myself and with my life. I wasn't making any progress, and I had totally taken two steps back after a year."
As he headed toward downtown for booking, he settled into the seat and cracked a smile.
"Finally, it's over," he thought to himself.