THE JUKEBOX – Episode 5: Slot 167
Help me deal with me…The Dogman
Marcus sat, mesmerized, staring at the name in the notebook: Captain Eric Vasquez, PSYOP, 2021.
Coltrane finally broke the silence. “You gonna call him or just burn holes in that page?”
“Who?“
“Mitchell Webb. He was Vasquez’s team leader. Number’s in the book.“ Coltrane refilled Marcus’s coffee without asking. “He’s expecting your call. Has been for a week.”
Marcus found the number on the next page, written in different handwriting, neater, more precise. Military precision. He dialed before he could talk himself out of it.
Webb answered on the second ring. “This about Eric?”
“Yeah. Marcus Chen. I’m…”
“Jake’s brother. I know. Coltrane called.” Webb’s voice had the flat efficiency of someone who’d spent a career choosing words carefully. “I’m in Fayetteville tomorrow. Bragg Brewing Company at noon work? I’ll buy lunch.”
Mitchell Webb looked like a contractor trying not to look like a contractor; 5.11 pants, plain gray shirt, the kind of forgettable that came from years of practice. He was maybe fifty, fit in that wiry way operators get when they stop lifting heavy and start running long.
“You found the jukebox,“ Webb said, skipping pleasantries. “Jake said you would eventually.”
Marcus set his beer down. “You knew my brother?“
“Not well, but Eric did. They talked every Thursday for about four months before…“ Webb trailed off, then redirected. “Eric was amazing at reading people. It was his job. He knew Jake was carrying something as heavy as his.“
“What did Eric carry?”
Webb took a long pull of his IPA, buying time. “You ever hear of Psychological Operations?“
“Vaguely. Hearts and minds stuff. Propaganda.“
“That’s the Wikipedia version. The real version is messier.“ Webb leaned forward. “PSYOP guys live in the grey area between truth and deception. We craft narratives, build influence, convince people to believe things that serve our objectives. Sometimes those things are true. Sometimes they’re not. Sometimes we don’t know the difference anymore.”
Marcus thought about his undercover work, about living as someone else for months, even years at a time. About the way identity starts to blur when you’re playing a role for too long.
“Eric was one of the best,“ Webb continued. “Could walk into a village, assess the power dynamics, figure out exactly what narrative needed to be sold and to whom. He was a weapon, and weapons don’t get to have opinions about how they’re used.“
“How long did he do it?“
“Twelve years. Four deployments. By the end, he didn’t know which version of himself was real anymore. The guy who grew up in El Paso listening to hard-grooving rock music. The guy who could convince an Afghan elder we were the good guys. The guy who came home and pretended everything was fine.“ Webb finished his beer. “He used to say he was the dogman. Not fully human, not fully beast. Caught between states.“
“Dogman? Like, the band Kings X’s, Dogman, by chance?
“Yup. Eric was a rockhead, turned his whole team onto that band. That song, specifically. He said it was one of the meanest, yet profound joints ever written, and the only thing that made sense. The idea that you could be fundamentally changed, transformed into something you didn’t choose, and nobody could see it but you.”
Marcus excitedly wrote it down with an unsteady hand. He loved Kings X, but knew something else lurked in this story. “What happened?“
“He came home in 2020. COVID, lockdowns, everyone isolated. Eric started drinking. Started pulling away. We tried to reach him…team guys, me, VA…but he was too good at hiding. That’s what we trained him to do.“ Webb fidgeted uncomfortably. “March 2021, his wife found him in the garage. Helium hood. He’d planned it carefully, made it painless. Left a note that just said, ‘I’m tired of being the dogman.‘”
The brewery noise suddenly felt too loud, people laughing, glasses clinking, and “pokies.“ Normal life happenings around a conversation on death.
“His team came to McGarvey’s,“ Webb said. “We were trying to figure out what song. Eric’s wife suggested something mainstream, something his family would recognize. But that felt off. Then his little brother, nineteen years old, Marine recruit, recalled that Eric said he used to blast ‘Dogman‘ before missions. Said it never got old.“
“So, you added it.“
“Slot 167. Last song we added before…“ Webb stopped himself. “Your brother was there that night. He bought me a drink. Told me he understood what it meant to live between identities. Said he had a brother who did it too…in undercover work, living as someone else. He said you used music to find your way back to yourself.”
Marcus sat still. Fixated on every word. “He told you that?“
“Eric and Jake talked about it a lot. The weight of being someone you’re not. Eric said, at least in PSYOP, you knew you were lying. Combat guys like Jake, they just had to come home and pretend they were still the same person who left. Act normal when nothing really is.”
Webb pulled out his phone, scrolled through photos, and turned the screen to Marcus. “Eric took this the last Thursday your brother came to McGarvey’s.”
The photo showed Jake sitting at the bar, talking to a younger Latino guy with a shaved head and sleeve tattoos: Eric Vasquez, presumably. They weren’t smiling, just talking, two men sharing things nobody else could see.
“Eric texted me that night,“ Webb said. “Said, ‘Met a guy at the bar who gets it. Jake Chen. His brother’s a musician who’s gone undercover with gangbangers. Jake says music is his brother’s tether to reality. I totally get it, but my favorite music has become tethered to my purgatory, as the dogman, and I can’t figure out how to morph it into my true tether.“ That was six weeks before Eric died. Three weeks before Jake.”
Marcus seemed to be holding his breath in the now-thick, brewery air.
“I’m telling you this,“ Webb said carefully, “because you’re doing the same thing Jake did. Collecting stories, trying to understand what he was looking for. And I think he was looking for a language, an epiphany, a way to explain what it truly feels like to be the dogman, transformed by experience, unable to go back, unable to move forward. He found that language in the jukebox.“
“Did it help him?“
“I don’t know. He kept coming back, so maybe it gave him something.“ Webb stood, dropped cash on the table. “Eric’s slot is 167. Jake never got a slot. But if you figure out what his song should be, you let Coltrane know. Some people deserve to be “juked,“ even if they didn’t have an anthem.”
Marcus drove home in silence, Webb’s words echoing.
At his apartment, he went through Jake’s boxes again, more carefully this time. Clothes, photos, discharge papers, a Medal for valor Jake never mentioned. And then, at the bottom, a shoebox.
Inside: cassette tapes. Lots of them. All labeled in Jake’s handwriting.
And then, there it was: Dogman – King’s X.
Marcus’s hands shook as he dug out the old boom box from his closet, the same one from childhood, the one that somehow still worked. He put in the tape.
“Dogman“ launched, invading the entire room. Unmistakably hard, but such an intense groove. Gaskill’s drums, accompanied only by the unmistakably raw power of Doug Pinnick’s voice, then Ty Tabor’s huge guitar tones, solidified that massive King’s X sound that had quite literally changed Marcus’s life.
Then suddenly, thirty seconds in, the music cut out.
Jake’s voice piped in: “Thursday, March 11th, 2021.”
Marcus froze.
In the background, faint but unmistakable: music. His music. Marcus’s old band, Freakdaddy. Born of Kings X’s soulful intensity. Funky, grooving, slamming hard.
“Playing Marcus’s recording from South-by-Southwest ’93,” Jake’s voice continued. “The one where they almost made it. I was there that night. Drove six hours. Stood in the way back of the venue. The crowd was going nuts, and I didn’t wanna jack with the major label networking that followed. Thought I was watching my brother become a rockstar. Then, Anthony, the ‘Mister thinks he’s Axl fucking Rose‘ lead singer, couldn’t keep his ego in check, and it all fell apart. Marcus never talked about it after. Just disappeared into the academy a year later.”
Marcus tensed. He’d never known Jake was at that show.
Jake’s voice: “Met a PSYOP guy, Eric, at McGarvey’s tonight. Calls himself the dogman. Made me think of Marcus. We talked about losing our identity and transformation. Told him my brother uses music to stay sane during his undercover work and how much he dug that King’s X record. Marcus doesn’t know I kept all his recordings. Every demo, every show, every rough cut he sent me over the years. He thinks nobody cares about Freakdaddy anymore. I damn sure do.”
The tape continued. Different dates, different entries. Always with Marcus’s music playing in the background: Freakdaddy demos, live recordings, solo work, recent stuff Marcus had made during undercover operations.
Entry: Thursday, April 8th, with a Freakdaddy staple playing in the background: “Freakdaddy never released this, but they should have. This is so reminiscent of his King’s X influence, yet still so original. Marcus gave me this tape after a rehearsal in ’94. Said King’s X changed his life. Showed him what music could be when you stop pretending. I didn’t understand then. I understand now. Freakdaddy is real. The dogman is real.“
Marcus’s vision blurred. Freakdaddy had written that tune right after the Dogman album release. They worked it up and recorded it, but never released it. Yet, in a way, they had. After all, Marcus had given Jake this tape, and Jake had kept it and listened for nearly thirty years..
More entries. Jake’s voice getting quieter, more exhausted.
“Thursday, May 20th. Eric killed himself last month. His team added ‘Dogman‘ to the jukebox. Slot 167. I watched them, watched his little brother cry, watched them try to make sense of it. Cordova bought me a drink after. Said I looked like I understood. I do. Kind of. Eric was the dogman because PSYOP made him one. Now, I’m the dogman because I came back from Helmand, and the person I was before is dead. Marcus became someone else for a living and finds his way back through music. I don’t know if I can find my way back.”
Marcus hit pause, sweating emotion. Not thinking straight.
He pressed play.
“This is Marcus’s new stuff. He sent it last month, recorded during his undercover work. Said music is the only thing keeping him sane while living as someone else. I get it now. Music is the thread back to who you really are. I’ve been looking for my thread. I think it snapped in Helmand, and I’ve been pretending I could tie it back together. But you can’t tie back something that’s gone. I just have to accept it. I’m the dogman now.”
The last entry: two days before Jake died.
Freakdaddy playing in the background. Same tune. One Jake kept seemingly on repeat. Marcus could hear himself in the music, young, full of hope, driving that massive sound.
Jake’s voice, now barely above a whisper: “I’m the dogman. I’m caught between who I was and what I became. Marcus is out there making something beautiful, and I’m in here trying to remember how to be human. I don’t think I can do both. If something happens to me, I hope Marcus finds McGarvey’s. I hope he hears all those songs and understands what I was looking for. I hope he knows I was listening to him the whole time. His music was my tether. I just wasn’t strong enough.”
Marcus paused. Silent. Reflective. In quiet disbelief.
Freakdaddy’s music continued with Marcus’s younger self playing that King’s X-influenced groove, unaware that so many years later his brother would be using it as a soundtrack to his unraveling.
The tape ended.
Marcus sat quietly on the apartment floor, the boom box silenced. He finally understood.
Jake had a song. He’d had it all along.
Editor’s Note: This is Part 5 in a multi-part series of Tegan Broadwater penned pieces. Please keep an eye on SOFREP for the remainder of the series. – GDM
If you liked this story (and I know you did), please check out T’s popular book, “Life in the Fishbowl.” In it, he documents his time as a deep undercover cop in Houston, where he took down 51 of the nation’s most notorious Crips.
He donates all profits to charities that mentor children of incarcerated parents.
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Tegan Broadwater is an entrepreneur, author, musician, former undercover officer, podcast host, and positive change-maker.
Learn more about his latest projects at TeganBroadwater.com
Tegan’s Music (Artist name: Tee Cad)
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