The Devil's Beat (The Devil's Mark) (17 page)

“Hey Mike, what's up?”

“Max? You've,” crackle pop, “get out here! You've got–” bleep the call cut out.

“Mike? What's happening? Mike?”

The call dropped, and Max sprinted to his car. If something happened to Mike, he'd never forgive himself. He popped the lock on the driver's side and got in. He completely forgot about the bodyguard till he knocked on the passenger side window. Max let him in and screeched away.

Max sped through town fighting his urgency and his need to drive within the limits. As soon as he hit the county road, he opened it up. He pulled out his phone again and redialed Mike. He didn't notice the police cruiser he passed until it caught up to him with flashing lights and siren.

“Crap!” Max tossed the cell phone onto the seat and contemplated his options. He seriously considered making a run for it until he remembered he was driving his little Honda Civic, not the Maserati. Well, officer Jacobs seemed reasonable, and he would surely understand that this was an emergency. Max pulled over to the side of the road.

As soon as he stopped, he told his impassive bodyguard, “Stay here,” hopped out, and hurried back to the cruiser and its flashing bar. Then the door opened and out stepped a massive chunk of mad in the form of Chief Wayne.

“Ah, shit!” Max stopped in his tracks. He briefly reconsidered making a run for it, but quickly recognized his folly as the Chief stomped up to him.

“Faust! What in the nine hells is wrong with you? Are you trying to kill someone? Are you trying to piss me off? Are you a total idiot?”

While Max was busy cringing, he noted how crimson the sheriff's face got when he was angry and yelling. Max caught himself. No, it's Chief, not sheriff, Chief, not sheriff... He rallied himself and tried to pour his urgency into his “Sheriff, I have an emergency out at my house—”

“I ain't no goddamn sheriff, you pin headed waste of my air!”

“Sorry! Sorry! But I really need to get to my house—”

“Ain't that a shame. You're going to be late. Against the car, Yankee!”

“What? No! You can't—”

Max found out he could. The Chief grabbed him and soon had Max spread-eagled against the cruiser. He roughly patted Max down and then left him there while he headed to Max's car.

The bodyguard was standing impassively by the car.

Wayne growled at him. “Am I gonna have to teach you a lesson, boy?”

His face didn't so much as twitch under his Ray-Bans as he said, “No, sir.” He took a step back as the Chief ransacked Max's car.

Max could feel his own face heating up. He pulled away from the car and advanced on the Chief as he was rifling through Max's trunk. When he was about three feet away, the Chief whirled on Max and Max found himself looking down the barrel of his gun. From this vantage point, it didn't look so tiny. Max stopped and put his hands up.

The Chief growled at him. “You think you can take me while my back is turned?”

Max's eyes nearly bugged out even before he saw Nunzio standing in a spread-legged shooting stance, aiming his huge handgun with both hands at the back of the Chief's head. Max shook his head in terror at the guard. “No! No! Don't shoot! I just need to get home! I'm serious, there is an emergency.”

“That's why we got 911.” The chief holstered his gun, and before he turned, the bodyguard did the same. Unaware of the bodyguard’s actions, the Chief stomped back to his waiting car.

Max's knees almost gave out with the relief that flooded through him as his personal terminator re-holstered his gun. Max turned and watched the car tilt under the weight of the Chief as he climbed in. With nothing else to do, he retrieved his phone from the car and tried to contact Mike again. There was no answer.

“Fuck!”

Images of horrible things happening to Mike at the house poured through Max. He considered making a run for it again. Prudence won out. He waited. And waited. What the hell can he be doing in there? He waited some more. Max was vibrating and bouncing up and down by the time the Chief got back out of his car and sauntered over to him.

“Sign here, and here.”

Max did as he was told. The chief ripped off the ticket and handed it to Max.

The chief's eyes were almost lost in his massive face and scowl. “Court date is in two weeks. If I could make it sooner, you'd be down there today losing your damn Yankee license. If you don't show up, I'll hunt you down myself.”

The Chief turned and headed back to the cruiser. Max jumped into his own car and drove slowly away gnashing his teeth and thinking terribly unwholesome thoughts about a certain police officer.

Max came to a gravel-flinging stop behind Mike's truck and ran in. When he opened the door, the pot smell had diminished. He rushed in, followed by his bodyguard shadow. "Cry little sister" by Gerard McMann, was pounding ominously out of the music room, “Last fire will rise, behind those eyes, black house will rock, blind boys don't lie…” It was a great song, but he didn’t appreciate how it added to his panic.

“Mike! Where are you?”

Mike answered from somewhere upstairs. He said, “Up here. Come on up, check out what I've found!”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, come on up.”

Max turned to the guard and told him to stay, then he trotted up the groaning and creaking staircase. When he got there, he didn't have to look far for Mike because he was at the elbow of the right hallway leading from the balcony as it turned toward the front of the house. Mike was standing at an open door. It was one of the previously locked doors. Without looking at Max, Mike took a step to back from the door. “Look at this!” The door was now open, but instead of leading to any sort of space, it opened onto an irregularly finished red brick wall.

Max snapped at Mike. “You called me in a panic to see this?”

Mike glanced back at Max with a puzzled frown. “What? No, it wasn't panic. This is just wild.”

Max closed his eyes and tried to let his anger go. It's just life; no one is purposefully out to get you Max. Breath. He opened his eyes and stared at the wall.

“A brick wall? You nearly gave me a heart attack, and I probably lost my license for a brick wall?”

“Sorry Max, I thought you'd be excited, too. Come on! A bricked-up room in a haunted house. How much more cliché can you get? Maybe we'll find a cask of amontillado.”

Max grimaced. “There was no cask, it was a lure for a trap.” But still, when you put it like that, it was kind of cool. Max released the last of his annoyance, walked up, and put his hands on the bricks. They managed to be literally cool even in the heat of the second floor. “Huh.”

Mike grinned at him. “That's just what I said. Shall we break it down and see what's behind it?”

Max wasn't really in love with that idea. He said, “I don't know, somebody went to a lot of trouble to put this up here. Maybe it isn't such a good idea.”

Mike said, “Come on Max, where is your sense of adventure? It might be Jimmy Hoffa buried behind there!”

“When did you get so adventurous mister 'I'm afraid to go out to the big bad house'?”

“That's different! This is a mystery! This morning, I knew what was probably waiting for me here, and I didn't want to risk blindness and insanity.”

“Speaking of blindness, was there any problem throwing out Old Josh when you got here?

Mike looked at Max strangely. “Come on, I want to show you something.” He walked past Max and back down the stairs.

Max followed him down past the stoic bodyguard still standing in the hall to the music room where, he noted Dave Mathew’s Band’s “Rhyme and Reason” was now playing. Very odd mix, he thought.  

As he entered the room, Max braced himself for whatever he might see. Mike seemed entirely too self satisfied about it, and as Lucian always said, “Paybacks are a bitch.” Braced or not, Max was still surprised by what was waiting in the room. Josh, who thankfully had his raggedy pants back on, was lying on the floor, stiff as a board again. He lay next to a set of sawhorses that supported what looked like one of the carved wall panels.

Max said, “Oh, damn, he's done it again. I don't know how any human being can get all stiff like that and not be dead!”

Mike waved his hand in dismissal, “Ah, don't worry about it, he must have fallen over in the last hour or so. Take a look at the walls, Max.”

Max did. It only took him a second to zero in on what Mike was talking about. The far wall of the room sported what looked like several brand new wood panels, where before they had been missing or damaged. Max went up to one of the new ones, ran his hands over its smooth, raw surface, and looked inquiringly at Mike. “Wow, where did you find these?”

Mike smiled like the canary who mugged the cat. “When I came I this morning I found Josh working on them. He made them out of some spare wood he found in one of the buildings out back. There is a ton of it back there, and a lot of it's in good shape because it was stored in racks off the ground.”

Max ran his hands over a panel in wonder. “Wow, that's nice work.”

Mike laughed. “That's not all, look up... no, at the statues.”

Max did. The first thing he noticed was that they all now sported large penises. He recoiled in surprise. “Holy crap!”

“Look closer,” coaxed Mike.

When he did, he noticed that all the statues had been stripped of several layers of paint and the damaged plaster on each had been repaired. Aside from the penises, they looked as good as new. The scroll work at the top of several columns had been restored as well. Max looked wonderingly at the human 2×4 on the floor. “Did he really do all this?” Mike nodded with a smirk. “How did he get time to do all this? He's only been here for a few days!”

“He told me his secret. He didn't sleep the whole time.”

“What? No way! He always looked ready to slip in a coma to me.”

Mike laughed openly. “He told me that secret, too. He called them Captain Rainbow's little pick-me-ups.”

Max looked again at Josh's prone form, and Mike revealed his last little surprise. “I've never seen someone work so fast and still have such incredible workmanship, so I offered him a job.”

“You what?”

“I told him he could stay as long as he wanted and could work for room and board.”

It took Max a moment to digest this. He wanted to object, but couldn't really come up with a convincing reason why, so he caved. He said, “Okay, but the pants stay on.” Max gestured to the statues sitting on the pillars. “And the penises have to go.”

“I told him that, too. He agreed to the pants as long as he could go shirtless and shoeless, but he said, the Hermes were supposed to have enormous dicks.”

“Hermes?”

Mike snickered. “That's what he called those statues, and get this, he said they were all the rage in Rome when he was growing up. He said everything Athenian was golden back then.”

Max shook his head. “That guy's mind is a scary place.”

Mike agreed wholeheartedly.

They left Josh where he lay on the floor next to the table, where Old Bone was once again watching television. That was when Max saw the painting leaning against the wall.

It was a portrait of a woman in a heavy gilded frame done in some classical style (he knew music, not art). She regarded Max with wise, sad eyes set in a pretty face framed with dark hair. For the most part, the lighting was somber and dark, but the girl herself sat in a beam of sunlight from a nearby window and seemed to glow with an inner light. Max could feel her loneliness and sorrow. A brass plate embedded in the bottom frame caught his attention. It had one word: “Sarah”.

Max reeled back as if struck.

“What’s wrong bud?” asked Mike seeing his friend’s stricken look.

“Where did this painting come from?”

“That? Nice isn’t it. Josh found it out back with the lumber. I thought we could hang it in here.”

“No!”

“What? You don’t like it. I figured since her name was ‘Sarah’ that—”

“No, get rid of it!”

Mike lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay bud, no problem. I’ll take it out now, okay?”

He grabbed the picture and hurried back through the secret corridor to the kitchen.

Max stood shaking at the memories.

***

Max finished the song Lucian had brought him. He had tears in his eyes as he strummed the last chords.

“Good isn’t it?” said Lucian with a great deal of satisfaction.

“Good? It’s not just good, it’s incredible. It’s perfect. I’ve never written anything half this good. Who wrote it?”

“You, if you want it.”

“Me? Lucian, I could only dream of writing this.”

“Well, you may not have written it, but nobody else need know. It is yours to deal with as you see fit.”

Max could almost feel the love of his fans upon hearing this. Their adulation and praise. “Jesus Lucian, I don’t know…”

“Think about it. Regardless of who wrote it, you are the only one in the world who can do this song justice. This song was written for you to sing.”

“Can I change the name?”

“Sure, anything you want.”

“I’m going to call it Sarah’s song. She was my first girlfriend.”

“Excellent! Sarah’s Song it is.”

Max was trembling with excitement. Surely taking credit for the song wasn’t a bad thing was it?

As if reading Max’s mind, Lucian said, “Musicians use ghost writers all the time. Look at the Beetles. Half their songs were written by other people.”

Max had never heard that, but Lucian always seemed to know things nobody else did. “Really?”

“God’s truth. Why do you think none of them wrote a single good piece of music after they broke up?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that—”

Lucian waived his hands. “Doesn’t matter. This is yours. This is the song that will take you over the top and burn your name into the history books.”

And it did. And every time Max played it, he lost a little piece of his soul.

***

Mike came back and dragged Max out of his introspective funk. For the next couple of hours, Mike laid out every deficiency he had found in the house. It started with the wiring that had been stapled to the walls in some places, then continued on through structural damage, toxic mold issues, and the complete lack of plumbing. Max got tired just listening to the litany of shortcomings and death traps. It was going to take a lot of work and time to bring this house back to livable condition—let alone to a fully restored state.