Larry Altmann

ATTRIBUTES

Fame: Larry’s fame comes from a lifetime in the music business, as a roadie, then manager. He’s managed several successful bands in his career, and is known for bringing success to some talented bands that would have otherwise remained in obscurity.

Chronic Illness: Larry's chronic illness is HIV. He was diagnosed just two months ago, and has not told anyone yet. It gives +2 to difficulties to Athletics & Soak rolls.

Influence: Larry’s influence is in the entertainment industry, as a manager.

Contacts: Larry has two contacts. One is his brother, Wallace, who’s a New York beat cop. The other is a street dealer, one Larry trusts, who he sometimes picks up some light drugs from.

Specialties:
Charisma: Disarming
Manipulation: Silver-Tongued
Empathy: Gaining Trust

Languages Spoken:
Yiddish
English

Description: 
Larry is an older man, though he looks a log younger then his age of over fifty.  Standing about 5’10” and weighing maybe 160 pounds, he’s hardly built.  Perhaps he was, at some point, but time and an easier life has let his waistline come out a bit, and his body soften.  His scalp is bereft of hair, but whether it’s shaved or naturally gone, who’s to say?  He does sport a dark brown goatee underneath the long nose of his, and his brown eyes have a keen intelligence and raw charm to them.  He’s perennially dressed in a black collarless shirt, white rumbled slacks, and a white sport coat.  A pair of Lennon-style shades rests on his eyes in the daytime, in the sport coat pocket at night.

Weapons:
Larry has a gun, a Sig-Sauer P228, that he’s changed to fairly recently from the old Smith & Wesson revolver he used to carry.

Equipment:
Large wardrobe of clothes
2 cell phones; one for personal, and one for business
A good-sized home in Hamilton Heights
High-end luxury car

History:
Lawrence Altmann was always into music, even as a child. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on a mild day in May, 1957, he grew up listening to his mother, Rosanne, sing to him. She was an aspiring actress/singer, and Larry found many of his formative years in Boston’s theatres, watching his mother audition and, more rarely, rehearse for roles in minor musical productions or stage shows. Roseanne’s husband Jack had died a couple months after Larry was born, in an accident at the factory he worked at. Luckily, he had a strong life insurance policy, and Rosie and her son were able to live comfortably enough while she perused her dream of fame and fortune.

Unfortunately for her dreams, Rosie was lacking the talent and the “look” necessary in order to find fame. She had the further misfortune of her son realizing this years before she did. Sitting in the theatre, he very quickly noticed at an early age that his mother just wasn’t as good as those around her. He tried to tell her it once. Household items were broken, a normally kind and loving voice was raised to irrational screaming, and Larry learned never to threaten his mum’s dreams again.

Larry did well enough in school, but he truly loved the time when he was able to sit in theatres or listen to the radio after classes and listen to music or watch stage productions...long as he ignored his mom. The music bug had bitten him, and when he was 13, he formed a band with some school friends. Regrettably, he had inherited his mom’s lack of talent, and he struggled mightily as the drummer for two months before he quit the band. It was a difficult decision, but Larry was determined to recognize his flaws and be a realist.

His mother, unfortunately, didn’t take Larry’s giving up of his musical pursuits as well as he did. She questioned him as to why he quit, and after some prompting, he answered truthfully. She was horrified by his answer, as something in his sincerity about his lack of talent struck a nerve with her. She demanded that he change his mind and go back, to which he refused. An argument ensued, with Rosie calling her son a quitter and a coward. Larry responded that “At least I knew when to bloody well say when,” and instantly regretted it. Rosie slapped her son with all her strength, knocking him unconscious. When he woke up, he was outside, with a few meager belongings and enough money to survive for a month. His mother had thrown him out. Through choked tears, he picked up his things and headed to a motel.

He stayed at the hotel for the night, wallowing in his misery, before spending the next few days trying to figure out what to do. Children’s Services was pointless...he knew enough from schoolmates who had been through that system to know that he couldn’t rely on them. He had to figure out how to get work. All he knew, though, was theatre and music. And he had no talent. A month passed by, and he found himself out of money, so out on the street he went. For a young, introverted, naïve Jewish boy, the streets were brutal, and he spent his first two months in a state of agony, as he was consistently punked out by others; beat up, robbed of what little he had, et cetera. It took him almost half a year until he adapted to homeless life to the point where he could just be ignored. Another six months was spent trying to accumulate some friends, people he could trust, and he failed at that, for the most part.

In 1966, Larry was alone on the streets, living in alleyways, burned-out buildings, and doorways. He was surviving, but his spirit had been crushed by his mother’s rejection and his isolation on the street. His mother had never even come looking for him, though he had never stopped holding out hope that she would come find him and take him away from all this. He even snuck into theatres in the hopes that he might find her auditioning or even rehearsing. He never did...she must have moved from Boston.

One day, he snuck in to an arena, and found himself listening to a rock band, practicing for a set they had that night. Instantly, he was transfixed. The band was a psychedelic rock group, and while Larry had heard similar music a little bit on the street, he had never really paid attention, as it wasn’t the classically trained show tunes and the like he was used to. When they were done, Larry took off, hooked. He had found something he loved again, and he wanted to be part of it, somehow.

Back in the abandoned apartment he was living in, he smoked as he considered his options. Performing was not an option...he knew that. But he wanted to be involved somehow. He just had to figure out how he would do it.

His answer came when he unexpectedly ran across an old friend. While he was walking down the street, he heard someone call his name. He turned to find Charles Worther, one of his old high school friends and band mates, approaching. They talked for a bit, Larry a little uncomfortable and embarrassed over his situation. His ears perked up, though, when he learned that Charles was in a new band, the Jury Men, who were attempting to follow in the vein of the psychedelic hippy rockers that Larry had come to love. Larry asked if there was anything he could do to help, to which Charles looked hesitant. The only place that the Jury Men were struggling were in manpower to help them travel from gig to gig, and managing themselves financially. Larry jumped at the opportunity. He had spent enough time around theatre managers to understand a little about financial sense, even if he didn’t have the experience or age to use it in any other professional sense. And he added that he’d be perfectly happy to help them lug around equipment and the like. His conviction woo’d Charles, and he agreed to it.

Larry threw himself into financially managing the Jury Men, and did surprisingly well. Soon, he was managing them in a much broader sense, booking events for them and dealing with all the business aspects of the band. Things were looking up, and he even managed to secure them a minor record deal, though they honestly got screwed on the terms of the deal, sue to his inexperience. The band didn’t seem to mind...they were just happy they were able to get a deal. Larry was the king of the hill...for a while.

Quickly, things began to deteriorate as the Jury Men began to work on their first album. Besides creative differences, Larry had begun dating Charles’s sister, Josie. The two were inseparable for a long time...perfect matches for her, as Josie was very outgoing and open, allowing her to draw Larry’s repressed personality out. Things went well for Larry and Josie, until the record deal, and Larry began pushing the band to get to work. He ignored Josie, focusing on the band, and she began to resent it. Angry and alone, she began cheating on him with Mikey, the drummer, and putting maliciously-intended words in Charles’s ear, poisoning the friendship between front man and manager.

It couldn’t last, and it didn’t. After six months with little progress, the band was dropped from the record label and quickly imploded. Charles accused Larry of getting them a crappy deal; Larry accused Charles of holding up the album. Charles then revealed that Josie had been sleeping with Mikey, and after punches were thrown, the band walked away, never to see each other again.

It was 1967, and Larry, once again, was crushed. He was convinced he had failed. However, instead of wallowing in self-pity again, he dedicated himself to succeeding. He left Boston, moving to New York City, and set to work finding himself a band to represent. It wasn’t as easy as he thought, and he ended up as a roadie for Bob Dylan. The experience was a little humbling for a former manager, even of a nothing band. However, it was a learning experience, and he spent a lot of time with the band’s manager, learning how to do things right. By the time he moved on, it was 1971, and began managing again, taking a promising but young rock band known as Evergreen. Armed with the knowledge he had attained, Evergreen quickly found themselves on the way to moderate success, a record deal, and a #10 single.

While Evergreen didn’t survive the rise of the disco era, Larry did, and while he wasn’t a fan of the genre, he flourished in it, becoming known as a sharp manager with a good eye for talent. While he did exceptionally well with his career choices, his personal life was a shambles. He had begun to fall prey to the excesses of the era, with cocaine being his personal drug of choice. A regular at such clubs as Studio 54 and the like, he was in deep with the swinging atmosphere of the 70’s. While he experimented sexually, most of the time while high, he was primarily straight, and would remain that way. Nonetheless, his career soared as his personal life began an unnoticed downward spiral.

That spiral halted in 1977. Larry was near rock bottom at this point. Disco was being replaced by punk, and Larry was falling behind. He was approaching bankruptcy due to his cocaine habit, and his personal life was a wreck. That’s when his angel, his savior came in. Her name was Jessica Kierstan. They met though a mutual friend, and quickly fell in love with each other. Unlike his first, disastrous relationship, Jessica was understanding, loving, and nurturing. Despite her attraction, she refused to see him until he got his life back together. She remained a friend, seeing him through the recovery he voluntarily put himself through. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but he made it through, and by the time he was clean in 1979, they were more then ready for each other. They were married in September, and soon, a child was on the way.

Larry had everything he’d ever wanted. Upon getting clean, his career had picked back up, and he was managing some critically successful, commercially moderate bands. His wife and child, a daughter named Michelle, made his life complete. The 1980’s were a great time for him, as his reputation was established as a man who with a great eye for talent and an uncanny ability to make the unmarketable successful. He even traced back his roots, finding out, with some sadness, that his mother Rosie had died of cirrhosis due to alcoholism ten years earlier. Even joy came out of that, though, as he found a brother, a NYPD beat cop named Wallace. They become fast friends, and very close. Everything was going amazingly well.

Until May 3, 1990.

Larry, to this day, can’t remember the events of that day…it’s permanently inaccessible to his memories. He knows what happened, but he has no personal knowledge of the events.

According to the accident report, Larry was on his way out to a record release party with Jessica and Michelle. Larry recalls that the day before, Michelle had been so excited…it was her first big event, and she wanted it to be perfect. The drunk driver that sped through the intersection was going 60 miles per hour. Larry was laid up in the hospital for three weeks, and didn’t regain consciousness for the first three days. Jessica lasted for four hours in surgery before the doctors gave up. Michelle died instantly, almost faster then the drunk driver.

Meaningless. Life meant nothing to Larry after that. His work never suffered, but after work, he fell heavily into a bottle. Even relations with Wallace became strained. He wandered through the 90’s in a haze, until one day, a young woman entered his office. A singer, unemployed, but looking to make it big. Larry listened to her demo tape, very good, if very political and barely marketable. Then he caught the name. Michelle. Michelle Morgan. The name, same as his daughter’s, gave him pause, and he relistened. By that night, he had a plan.

Michelle was Larry’s second saving grace. She helped him escape the bottle, and they made good business together. Larry looks upon Michelle as the daughter he never had a chance to love, and cares very deeply for her in a paternal sense. She drives him crazy to no end, but he’s with her, through thick and thin. When she was critically wounded in 1998 from a home robbery as she visited her parents, he was there by her bedside every day, except for when that Corin man asked for his privacy. Larry doesn’t understand a lot of the things in Michelle’s life, but he accepts that, and loves her just the same. She has helped him find himself again, and be happy.

Two months ago, another tragedy hit. Larry discovered, during a routine check-up, that he’s HIV-positive. He hasn’t told anyone yet, least of all Michelle. She has so much to deal with, anyway. He’s had a good life…when he goes, he will go peacefully.