The Kill Riff (10 page)

    Knox laughed to himself and spread his fingers out before him, palm flat. No tremors; not yet. Cool down just a hair. Get ice. Get control.

    Because of Gunther's absence they were running half an hour behind on the sound check. Gregor, the bassist, was sprawled in a ringside seat, his feet up on the scuffed club table, pulling slowly on a beer. Comet, the drummer, was MIA, probably sniffing for nookie. Knox could see his rhythm man, Fudge, holding forth at the bar, watching the stage in the back-bar mirror. Knox picked up the gray coil of wire and knotted it around his shoulder strap. It was live and buzzed when his thumb touched the contact. They weren't up to the status level of radio mikes and instruments. Knox liked feeling physically connected to his equipment. The knot on the strap was to keep the cord from yanking itself out if the wire was pulled during play. He plugged the silver jack into his agate-black Gibson and strummed a few wandering chords, warming up.

    At the sound of his guitar everyone came to attention. The gofers stopped what they were doing to look up. Faces appeared behind the glass of the crow's-nest, the sound booth of the Rockhound. Women were magically present.

    He got a few friendly catcalls when he picked out "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree." His E string was sour, and he tuned it carefully. He'd do the same regimen for his two identical backup Gibsons in just a second. People were now paying attention. It was better than any drug.

    Knox decided to rattle the rafters, just to wake everyone up and cut through the dense atmosphere of the Rockhound. He twisted the volume knobs on the Gibson to full and gave the strings a hard broadside. Give the people already waiting in line outside something to look forward to, he thought. The rich, evil croon of his axe filled up the chamber and drowned out everything else.

    He slid through a nasty, fret-melting solo, then teased the guitar into a simple but impressive A-E-C riff. After one repetition he kicked in the wah-wah on the pedal board and began to twist the progression into a new shape.

    Then his faithful monitor exploded.

    With a flashbulb
pop
of searing blue fire, the front of the monitor speaker disintegrated, blowing out steaming metal shrapnel that put three dozen large holes in Knox's body even before it tumbled backward off the stool and hit the stage floor in death. Superamplified feedback screeched up and up, pegging everyone's ears. The breakers blew and chopped oft the sound. Knox was spread-eagled on the stage, wide eyes gaping at the empty space where the monitor had been. His mouth was locked open, speechless. Pieces of his beloved Gibson were sticking out of him. The last thing he saw was his picking hand, quivering spasmodically, spattered with his own blood. Then his eyes fogged and he was dead.

    The prep man and other band members had hit the deck in panic. Now some of them conquered fright and jumped to smother the chunks of flaming wreckage that littered the stage. Aabel hurdled one of the P. A. columns, which was lying on its side. He had a fire extinguisher. Foul yellow fog blotted out the flames.

    

    

    Ralph "Sandjock" Trope and the woman reporter from the
L.A. Weekly
ran out onto Ralph's private office balcony, the vantage point that the Rockhound employees called the Spyhole. Ralph immediately broke for the stairs. The reporter fast-drew a Leica from her sling bag and began speed-snapping pictures on 400 ASA film as a crowd formed around Jackson Knox's ravaged corpse. From the Spyhole, it looked as though someone had pushed the guitarist through a tree shredder. He was framed in a widening pool of blood. The people below milled around, stepping gingerly to avoid soiling their shoes.

    The photo proof sheets would later reveal Ralph "Sandjock" Trope, trapped in individual frames like the main character of a nickel "flicker," dashing to the center of the gawkers, slapping his hand to his head in theatricalized shock, then turning away to toss up some very genuine vomit into the bowl of the upended bass-drum. The drum kit was in an alphabet-block scatter all over the stage thanks to the force of the concussion, which had also blown out the back-bar mirror and the soundproof glass of the crow's-nest. The light wrangler got away with superficial lacerations; he had been able to drop his smoldering joint and shield his face as the glass of the booth imploded.

    The reporter continued snapping pictures with total dispassion. She did not care for Jackson Knox's music. Ugly pictures could provide years of photo royalties. The dumb luck of being in the right place at Jackson Knox's particular wrong time was the sort of chance upon which entire careers could be founded. She was able to ignore the carnage below and fantasize picture credits in Rolling Stone.

    She also knew that Ralph Trope's final response to this unscheduled surprise would be anger. Anger at having to cancel four sold-out shows, at having to refund ticket money to disgruntled rock'n'rollers. That particular task could be assigned to a lackey, but Ralph himself would have to primp for the TV news crews and try to squeeze out a quotable sentiment for the record. Quickly, with admirable skill and sure hands, the reporter dumped a film roll and screwed on her zoom lens. Ralph Trope had his hand over his mouth and was facing Knox's bloody body. That was the tableau shot she wanted. "Call me Sandjock," he'd insisted, all the while feeling her up with his eyes. Now she'd have to ask him nicely for a portrait shot-something that could be boxed, mug shot style, next to an exclusive depicting Ralph onstage, a sort of before-and-after effect. She had no doubt she could sweet-talk him into one more pose. Right now, she had to keep shooting until the guys with the body bags showed up.

    The early birds loitering outside had been scared by the boom. When police and ambulance units responded, the tight little rock 'n' roll army did their best to impede those who would disrupt their squatter's domain on the sidewalk. It was a great opportunity to harass uniforms.

    At last, the component remains of Jackson Knox were carted out. The crowd oohed and aahed. The vinyl body bag was mercifully opaque. It drooped in ways a human body could not normally bend.

    Gunther Lubin was discovered in a garbage dumpster owned by Rico's, a pasta parlor three doors down from the Rockhound. Despite the bulging, purplish-yellow egg growing behind his left ear, he was arrested and charged with murder one. His semi had been located five blocks away, devoid of evidence, its wing mirrors broken off by a sloppy exit from the alley. Several shining gashes decorated both sides of the truck. The only prints inside were Gunther's.

    In the following weeks it would become a measure of rock status in San Francisco to claim membership in the brotherhood of the waiting line outside the Rockhound on That Evening. The club experienced a brief spurt of attendance caused by the desire of various ghouls to touch the place where one of their minor guitar gods had been sacrificed. Ralph "Sandjock" Trope found it wise not to clean up all evidence of the explosion.

    Less than three hours after Knox's death, Ralph watched himself on the news. Squinting under the bar of lights held high by a camera assistant, he expounded at length to fill up the holes of commentary left by the paramedics, who would not make statements about the condition of the corpse; the police, who would not make statements about anything; and the bomb squad boys, who would only say that a "high-velocity fragmentation device" was their best guess. Ralph, wearing an expression of woe that might have been peeled off a dime-store monster mask, grandly compared Jackson Knox's death to the assassination of John Lennon.

    Naturally, Ralph was quoted in all the write-ups.

    

    

    It was a two-hour drive back to Point Pitt. Lucas did not notice the time.

    He was amazed at how easily his combat senses had slipped back. His body hummed on high burn. No mistakes had been made.

    Sapping the dude with the marine corps buzz cut had been child's play. Lucas had checked the guy's wallet to get a useable name, ditched the unconscious body, and pulled a perfect fakeout with the effete club manager. The eyepatch, cowboy hat, bush jacket, and all other props were knotted into a neat bundle on the seat beside him. In the center of the bundle was the sap. And the backstage pass, folded carelessly into quarters.

    He had looked right into the eyes of the enemy.

    
Are you Jackson Knox? You've been looking for Gunther?

    The enemy had even identified himself. Egomaniac. If he had known that Mason Kellogg's handshake had been his final chance to beg for his own life, he might have been more polite, less the rockstar. Courtesy was an almost nonexistent idiom in the rock scene. Perhaps if Whip Hand had ever stopped to consider the safety of their fans, Kristen would be alive now.

    But then, so would Jackson Knox.

    Knox might have begged harder, too, if he had known just what degree of damage could be done by a directional antipersonnel mine. They were designed to be unforgiving. The only touch-and-go part of the whole operation had been slipping the mine into the monitor cabinet and wiring it to the pedal board. The device was a crescent of steel with the detonation works on the back. Stamped into the metal was the most basic instruction of all: FRONT TOWARD ENEMY. The alligator-clip connections had been quickly made. Things had to be done quickly and quietly in the jungle. There had been time for a fast costume change (no one had noticed that "Mason Kellogg" was wearing "Gunther Lubin"'s pants) and a final, tasty gloat.

    Mission accomplished.

    There was a phone carrel outside the Licorice Pizza store at the intersection closest to the Rockhound. Lucas pretended to converse with a dial tone for fifteen minutes. He hung up when he heard the muffled boom half a block away. And when the vehicles with the flashbars converged on the Rockhound, he bought a can of Pepsi from a machine and took his leave. Specifics he could get from the news. There was no rush, now.

    Back at the cabin, all was tranquil and ordered. It was late, but Lucas decided to grill a steak after cleaning up the hand-built brick barbecue outside the rear door. He added a delicious ash-baked potato and six bottles of Dos Equis. Again, his almost ravening thirst surprised him. When he had checked in at Olive Grove, he had certainly had nothing approaching this sort of passion for the brew. It seemed the perfect complement to his food. It seemed just the right amount. Everything was extremely balanced.

    He burned the bundle of clothing after dousing it with gasoline. The burning gas smelled like napalm. Then he tossed in the cardboard jackets of Jackson Knox's two solo albums. The shrink-wrap hissed and shriveled. The vinyl discs smoked and sagged down into a topographical mimic of the pile of coals. The record labels blackened and ignited. The polychloride plastic bubbled hotly, releasing evil tendrils of carbonized waste floating into the air like fibrous black snowflakes from hell. Maybe the crackpot fundamentalists could use that. When you burned the cursed records, black demons fled into the air, momentarily visible, like a spirit relinquishing possession of a Haitian. Like a soul or animus departing a human corpus at death. That ought to be good for at least two newspaper articles full of ignorant outrage. And free publicity for folks like Ralph Trope. As an employee of Kroeger Concepts, Lucas never failed to consider the publicity angle of anything. Perhaps this knowledge might be used in some way back in L.A. The very idea almost prompted a tolerant little laugh. Lucas wanted no truck with religious nuts or their devils.

    The records dissolved away to black puddles of plasma on the coals. One down.

    

    

    THE KNIFE WAS A MONSTER.

    Lucas jerked it from its heavy sheath. The noon sunlight sneaking in through the cabin windows made the blade glimmer. It was a matte-finish Randall combat blade, one of the type smithed up especially for the Green Berets. Everything about it was in aid of a single purpose-to help human beings quit this mortal coil. Catalogs called it a "survival knife." Survival, in combat, meant knowing how to kill people quickly and silently. The nine and a half inches of edge were honed discriminatingly enough to halve a piece of toilet paper floating in the air with one downward swipe. The blade was nearly four inches across at its widest point. Its backbone was serrated for gutting. At the butt of the haft, a screwcap sealed a tiny, waterproof compartment in the handle. The underside of the cap contained a tiny compass.

    In unskilled hands, the weapon could do little more harm than, say, a large butcher knife. Lucas knew this. Back in 1965 the government had devoted two weeks to instructing him on how such a knife might be used skillfully. It had all come back to him. It was like swimming or bicycling-something your body never really forgot how to do.

    
Grab the enemy's head from behind. Seal off his mouth and snap his neck across the blade. You hardly move the knife at all. Let the blade do the work. Jam it between the ribs from behind. Twist and rip it out at an angle thirty degrees radical to the entry. Or plunge it into the V just below the solar plexus. Uncork your enemy and let his life dribble out. If they stab at you, shield yourself with your forearm. If the attacking blade penetrates your forearm, twist your arm so the bones trap the blade and you can take it away from your attacker.

    He replaced the knife in its scabbard and left it on the spool table by the fireplace after tucking the little whetstone on its hide thong back into the secondary sheath. Hanging above the fireplace embers was a cowboy coffeepot besooted with lampblack. He used a rag to insulate the metal handle while he refilled his cup. Coffee steam was an excellent aid to contemplation and reflection.

    That morning he had dumped all of his Jackson Knox ashes into the sea.