The Kill Riff (16 page)

    The voice came back online. "That was Room 1015, yes?"

    "Thank you."

    A line burred once, twice, with that blatting ring apparently reserved for business office systems and hotels. It sounded like a wet electronic fart.

    The receiver was jerked off the other end on the third ring and dropped to the floor with a clunk. There was a loud, moist sniffle. "Starbase Six, come in?"

    Lucas was out of the gate and running. "Yeah. Is Brion in there with you guys?"

    "Brion? Shit, I don't think-" There was a brief gabbing, off phone. "Nah. I think he's still shacked up or crashed out or sleeping, still, in his room. You try 1021?" Another muffled consultation. Rapid, speed-injected talk cut through several other voices. Somebody giggled. "Yeah. 1021. Give him a buzz there."

    Lucas cut the connection and punched in the Hilton desk again. A different clerk answered, and he asked if it would be any trouble to reserve a single room for one night. He gave his name as Cal Westbrook and explained that the TWA strike was forcing him to lay over in Denver till six A.M. The clerk explained that reservations were tight, but that Mr. Westbrook could be accommodated for one day only. He would have to check out the next day, though. The next day was the day of the concert, Lucas knew, and that was when the rooms would go at a premium.

    Several hours later that evening, late enough to appear travel weary, Calvin Westbrook checked into his room at Hilton. He had little time.

    

    

    It took twelve rings for Brion Hardin to answer his phone, in room 1021.

    "Ahum. Yeah."

    "Brion?" Pause. "We got major trouble with some of the equipment, specifically your computer. The guy who was backing the truck up to Currigan did it with the tailgate open. Guess what fell out."

    "Aw,
shiiiit
." There was a rustling; Brion was either in the rack, or dressing, or undressing. ''Does Van know about this? Where the hell is Marc?"

    "Can't say, Brion, they're MIA. It's not their stuff, anyway. You were the guy I needed to find. I just got the call myself."

    "Who is this?"

    "Murray Banner." Lucas played it fast, leaving no gaps for Hardin to jump in with questions. "I'm with Currigan, and I stopped by the hotel to see Bob Callahan, and I got the news… Can we keep a low profile on this, please? I don't necessarily want anyone else to know. Not yet. You hear what I'm saying? I need you to go over to Currigan with me, pronto. Can you do it?"

    "God, I don't…" The information raced through Hardin's head. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. Lemme get my pants on. Where do I find you, uh-"

    "Murray."

    "Yeah, whatever."

    "Seventh floor, room 704. Bob Callahan is with me. You probably don't know Bob."

    Misdirect him from the fact he probably doesn't know Murray Banner, either.

    It all blew smoothly past Hardin. It was glossy and fast, without bumps to get stuck on. Lucas heard the keyboard man kibbutzing with his bedmate, whose name was Cheryl or Cheri.

    "I'm on my way. Look, if I see Marc, should I tell him that-"

    "No. Not yet. Let's not panic anybody. If the world needs to know, you and I will tell 'em. But after you've had a look."

    Hardin appreciated the special attention. "Room 704. Five minutes."

    "Gotcha. Bye."

    The ensuing five minutes spilled more acid into Lucas' gut than a bad seven-course Italian dinner.

    Hardin might encounter a familiar face in the hallway and stop to repeat the lie. He might drag along someone else from Electroshock. He might show up with Crystal or Cheryl or Cheri in tow. Lucas had gambled, to draw the man off the tenth floor. It was rather like the chances Cass had taken with her life. Close your eyes and jump. But the options were worse. There was no way to mountaineer down to Hardin's room from the exterior of the hotel. That was sheer fantasy. Bluffing past the guards on the elevators and exits was even stupider; he would be cutting off escape if anyone made a wrong noise. Why give a full floor of concert operatives a face to remember?

    

    

    Room 704 was pristine, untouched. Ever since taking the elevator up, Lucas had been wearing surgical gloves. They had crinkled in his ear while he made the phone call to Hardin's room. And they crinkled now, as he wrung his hands together, wishing Brion Hardin would hurry the hell up so this could all be over with.

    He turned on the television, for cover noise.

    Four solid knocks on the door.

    The sound snapped Lucas's head around, involuntarily. The blade of the Randall made a small ringing sound as he drew it from the heavy leather sheath. He threw the sheath, lightly underhanded, to the dark bathroom counter as he made for the door.

    "Brion?"

    The image, fisheye-distorted in the peephole lens of the door, was of a long face, framed entirely in woolly black hair. Hardin had grown a lavish beard since the photo session for The Crash of '86. Two blazing blue eyes helped unify the riot of hair into a face. They were nearly colorless in shade, bright and piercing as the highbeams of a truck. He was glancing impatiently up and down the empty hallway on the seventh floor. He was alone.

    "Yeah. It's me." He shifted from foot to foot, worried about his equipment.

    Lucas slid the Randall blade-down into the waistband of his pants, beneath the gray suit jacket. He prayed the jacket would not cramp his reach or tear. He had decided against wearing the glasses. They might fall off or go askew, or drop to the floor and get stomped on, leaving fragments, evidence of a hundred kinds. No.

    He opened the door. "Come on in."

    Hardin lumbered through. He was taller, wider than Lucas expected. A big man, a mountain man, former member of the Moonshine Express, topping six four. He smelled like beer.

    "Brion, I want you to meet Bob Callahan." Lucas crushed down a jab of fear at seeing his intended victim's size.

    Hardin stopped dead still in the center of the room, his eyes on the nonsense burbling from the TV. He was in the process of turning around, to ask whose joke this was, to wearily acknowledge more rock'n'roll tour horseplay and bullshit, when Lucas shut the door and reduced the distance separating them to nothing.

    "I don't see no Bob Ca-"

    Lucas clamped his left hand over Hardin's mouth and shoved the Randall upward into his chest cavity from behind, driving hard from the renal area, perforating the right kidney, the pancreas, and puncturing a lung. He twisted the knife and ripped it out, stepping back for the follow-through.

    Hardin's air whooshed out in a strangled cough as his body stiffened. He lurched forward, spinning the TV on its pedestal and slamming headlong into the window. He grabbed the drawn drapes to support him. The glass rattled thunderously when he hit. A ghastly retching noise escaped him, sounding like some grotesque Slavic jabber. His right hand pawed uselessly at the gushing crater gouted out of his back. Fresh blood slopped down to streak the legs of his pants. He spun and teetered back against the window, gasping, his eyes seeking Lucas, tipping over into shock trauma. The blue in them shone like comet coals as Brion Hardin recorded the image of his murderer.

    He was still standing up.

    His fists were tight around the curtains, and his eyes were still open, still seeing him.

    "Come on, dammit!" Lucas lunged forward, sacrificing aim for thrust, and sank the blade into the middle of Hardin's wiry beard. He twisted, ripped, withdrew.

    The blade had gone in to the haft. Lucas was ready to strike again if this did not prove fatal.

    It did.

    Hardin's tongue bulged out, rimmed with saliva bubbles. More blood coursed out. His eyes went wide with impact, then dimmed in death. His hand tried to reach up to his throat, to close the breach there, but never made it. He tumbled, top-heavy, like a tipped-over china cabinet, knees cracking on the carpeting, and fell on his face with a huge, muted thump. He was still. The carpet began to darken around his bearish, inert form.

    Lucas stepped over him to check the window. The knife point had come out of the back of Hardin's neck and starred the glass. Too much force. He had nearly gotten sloppy with panic.

    He leapt for the door to check the corridor via the peephole. No activity. Yet.

    Spatters of Hardin's oral blood had shot across the room to decorate the front of Lucas' gray jacket. He hurried to the bathroom and filled the basin with cold water.

    The body on the floor remained unmoving. Not even a residual twitch.

    Blood scattered away from the blade to stain the pure whiteness of the sink. The stream from the faucet diluted it to nothingness. Down the drain and gone. He rinsed the gloves, leaving them on and drying his hands with a fresh Hilton towel. Behind him, the TV pressed onward with its uncaring, lunatic natter, filling the room with useless images, filling the brain with dazzling noise. He daubed at his jacket, not eliminating the stains, but at least neutralizing them to the cursory eye.

    He looked out of the bathroom. Brion Hardin's body was still there, still unmoving, unbreathing, heart stopped like a busted railroad watch.

    Lucas unfurled the wastebasket liner from his sling bag. He wrapped the Randall in it, sheath and all. He stashed the towel. There was nothing abnormal in the room.

    Except for…

    Lucas waited a few moments. Time to meditate his racing heartbeat down to normal speed, to stop sweating, to insure that Hardin was history. Boil everything else away to a sequence of mechanical events. Into the elevator. Strip off the gloves after you punch the button. Stuff them in the bag. Don't touch anything on the way out of the hotel. Cut through the parking lot. Take Court Place to Fourteenth Street and get back to the Holiday Inn. Lay low in the room. Behind the door of that room, you do not exist-like Calvin Westbrook doesn't exist, like Kirk Moore and Dave Klein and Phil Longley and Mark Fawcett and good old Bobby Callahan don't exist. They would all vanish, like 150,000 other people who vanished every year in the United States, leaving no earthly trace. A name on a computer reservation, a cash-paid bill, would be all that was left.

    There was one more thing to do.

    Lucas had thought of it while sitting around the Holiday Inn, waiting for the KPPL interview. He kept thinking back to his conversation with Garris, the guy in charge of
On the Brink Records
in San Francisco. Any diversionary tactic, however small, might buy breathing space later if it was needed.

    So, on his way to the Hilton, he had stopped at a twenty-four-hour drugstore and bought a can of red spray paint from the hardware section.

    He pulled the can out of the sling bag and shook it. The stirring ball inside clattered around. On the blank wall behind the TV set, next to Hardin's corpse, he sprayed a large cross, starting near the ceiling. Half of it extended to the mirror over the desk. He watched himself paint it, and his face was blocked out by a swath of wet red. He made his cross several strokes bold, about seven inches thick. Next to it, he added his message in equally large lettering.

    KILL SATANIST ROCK.

    The letters dripped glutinously toward the floor, to meet the bloodstain that was now approaching the wall. Paint mist stung his nostrils and obscured the fetid smell of fresh blood and exposed viscera. Let them think a religious whacko was loose in the Mile-High City.

    More mechanicals: The cab back to Stapleton Airport. The jet back to San Francisco. A catnap at the Holiday Inn, as Kirk Moore. The maid would have cleaned up his premeditated mess, and he'd be back in time to despoil the bed again before leaving; proof he'd "occupied" the room. The Bronco, and the trip back to Point Pitt.

    And Cass.

    The woman who reminded him so much of Kristen, the daughter whose pointless death was now two-fifths avenged. The thought of turning his back on the slaughter and returning to the timeless reality of the cabin evoked a pleasant tingle in his guts and groin. Cass was so very much like Kristen. Maybe an improvement.

    He smiled. He had stopped shaking. He dropped the can of spray paint into the sling bag and zipped up, checking the corridor again before opening the door. Before leaving he turned off the television. The cessation of the audiovisual barrage calmed him. He looped the DO NOT DISTURB card over the knob and closed up room 704 for good.

    This phase of his plan had been successfully executed. Ditto Brion Hardin.

    

    

    "ALL YOU OUTLAWS OUT THERE are eavesdroppin' on Robbin Banks here on KRZE-cra-zy rock and roll for the City of the Angels and all of suntanned southern Cal. As most of you already know, every Sunday in the A.M. we take our lives in our hands and open the lines for talkback. That's right-rock'n'roll, social issues, riddles, suicide prevention, you set the goal and we does da roll. Whatever's in your head this morning. And if you're marooned in the middle of that clog on the Santa Monica Freeway… Rex just stuck his
GQ
profile in here to inform me that a tractor trailer has flipped and they don't expect to clear it for another fifteen minutes… well, hey, give old Robbin a buzz on your mobile phone, and the KRZE group consciousness will dump some grat-ti-fi-ca-tion on yo po' white head… But first, we got Headbanger, with 'Outta My Face'-a request, natch, on KRZE…"

    Robbin Banks snubbed her Benson & Hedges in the resident ashtray of the KRZE booth, a ceramic gargoyle with its head tilted back, its wide, toothy maw open to gobble butts. You parked your smoke between the Tolkienesque tusks. Reflex made her fire up a fresh cigarette as her eyes followed Rex's progress, watching him through the soundproof window. The cheeks on Rex's Sergio Valentes were worn thin, and Rex knew Robbin knew it. He had a splendid rump. Every male deejay at KRZE had tried to cut time with Robbin ever since her arrival, down from KUSF in the bay area, and Rex had been the first she'd succumbed to. He was a full meal that was difficult to resist.
Oh, those calories,
she thought. He'd begun his campaign by stuffing a single, long-stemmed white rose into the driver's side window molding of her Volks Rabbit, anonymously. Time did its dirty work. Ever since the night she'd slid her thumbs into his waistband and pushed his pants to the floor of her apartment in Venice, he'd sent her different signals. Alarums. His cool chilled. When Sandy Chin had joined KRZE's office staff, Rex's eyes had settled on her like sniper sights, and Robbin almost felt sorry for the new girl. She and Rex smiled dazzlingly in the hallways. There were still times when she wanted him so bad she ached. And he knew it. And she hated him for it. And life, how it did grind on.