“Browbeating the new singer. I hate Mariachi. I hope Goliath hires Morrison back. Not that he’s much better, but no maracas in his act.”
Then he reached out and clapped me on the side. The one with the broken ribs.
“Ow!”
“Come to class tomorrow morning. Maybe you aren’t too stupid to learn how to keep from being knocked on your butt.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem much longer. I’m leaving Kresge in the morning.”
“You’ve failed in your quest.”
It was a statement, not a question.
“Morrison mentioned that?” I asked.
“You tell me with your actions,” he said. “A goal is not always meant to be reached, Floyd. It often serves simply as something to aim at. And what of Roman? You’ll abandon the sheriff? Morrison and Goliath?”
“I value my ribs.”
“You should value your friends. Real living is living for others,” he said. Then he clapped me on the side again.
“Ow! Can you stop doing that?”
“Come to class tomorrow,” he said and began to jog in place. “Unless you’re a chicken! Ha!”
And then Jun Fan jogged away and out the door.
“I’ll catch you in the morning and we can go over together. Nancy-boy like you needs all the help you can get.”
Goliath’s voice floated out from somewhere underneath the bar.
“Sure, why not?” I said.
But Goliath didn’t hear me. The little bastard had already slunk off.
“He went back into the stock room.”
I was so startled by Morrison coming up behind me I knocked over Jun Fan’s Hot Mexican. No loss.
“Sorry about that, partner.” He grabbed a bar towel and sopped up the spilt drink.
“Grab the Mezcal. Me and Ricardo here need to drink to our new band.”
Morrison was standing next to an elderly Mexican man. The two were grinning at each other like long-lost comrades in arms.
I grabbed three shot glasses from behind the bar and laid them out on the table, pouring generously into each.
“Going to introduce me?” I asked.
“Floyd, I’d like you to meet Ricardo Valenzuela. He and I just started a new act, ‘Las Puertas.’ Catchy, huh?”
“It’s going to be a Mariachi take on Las Vegas classics. Mariachi meets Dean Martin. We’re going to revolutionize the genre,” grinned Ricardo. “My band will do the music, Morrison and I will do the vocals on the classics, and I’ll do the traditional Mariachi songs.”
“Salud!” said Morrison, picking up his shot and knocking it back. Ricardo and I followed suit and I poured another round.
“Don’t worry though,” Morrison told me, “it won’t interfere with our investigation. Ricardo and I already covered that.”
“Hey! Who’s paying for those shots?”
Goliath seemed to take a perverse pleasure in sneaking up on us, but I’d been expecting him.
“I paid Jun Fan for the bottle,” I lied.
Goliath climbed up onto the counter and stared intently back at me. Maybe he thought if he did it long enough I’d break and give him money.
“Keep your mitts on the other side of the bar or I’ll kick your ass back to the hospital.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” I told him. “Who just did kick my ass? And why?”
The three of them looked like I just told a conclave of nuns their Mother Superior was doing it with the altar boys.
“That was the second time I’ve taken a beating by Goons in black suits.” I was getting angry again. “I appreciate you intervened back there, Goliath, but I really have had a rotten day and I’m sick of dancing around whatever the big secret is, so somebody tell me.”
Ricardo stared at his feet. Even Goliath said nothing for a change.
“Who is the F.B.R.M.? Why do they want me out of town? And why should Morrison know better than to be helping me? Is it because he was kidnapped by aliens?”
It was like I wasn’t even talking.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go check out. Good luck with your Danish amusement park.”
I finished my drink and slammed the shot glass down on the table. I thought it was a pretty dramatic gesture. Then I pushed Morrison out of the way and headed for the door.
Morrison called out “Wait!” before I’d even reached Sheila. All three of them were staring at me, still saying nothing when I turned around.
“This is really none of my business,” said Goliath. He turned away and walked down the bar to a tall pet door that had been installed into the wall. It was like watching a trap door spider scurry into its hole, waiting for hapless prey to come walking by.
“I’ll go make sure the muchachos know the new songs,” said Ricardo. He gulped down his drink, put his hand on Morrison’s shoulder, squeezed it, and walked back to the stage, where the band was still getting set up.
Morrison grabbed the bottle of Mezcal, his shot glass and mine, and nodded toward a table.
“Let’s have a chat, huh?”
* * *
Morrison poured himself three more shots before he said a word.
When a Mexican friend of mine introduced me to Mezcal, he told me it was like Mexican Scotch and only stupid Americans and college students drink it like a shot. You sip it. Let it roll around on your tongue. Part of the reason to savor instead of gulp it is that Mezcal is nearly as combustible as rocket fuel and screws you up hard and fast.
So far Morrison had put back at least a half dozen shots of the stuff and showed no signs of either slowing down or collapsing. I was reluctantly impressed as I continued to sip my second one.
Morrison finally set down his empty shot glass, leaned back in his chair, and let out a yell.
“WoooooooooooHOOOOO!”
Ricardo’s Mariachis looked over at him and just shook their heads at the stupid American.
Morrison rubbed the backs of his hands against his watering eyes. “I wasn’t really abducted by aliens,” he confessed.
So Morrison was just fucking with me when he told me that whopper.
“What a surprise!” I said.
“What do you know about Glasnost and Perestroika?” he asked, ignoring my sarcasm.
“Not a lot,” I admitted.
“I’ll give you the bubble gum wrapper version. Perestroika was Gorbachev’s move to reform the Soviet economy. And it worked, in a sense. The economy collapsed. Glasnost was a policy of transparency in government. Think of it as a very weak First Amendment.”
“Why am I getting a Russian civics lesson?”
“Because you need to understand what a huge change Perestroika was for Russia, or the rest of the story won’t make sense, so shut up, drink your drink, and let me talk.”
I complied.
“Let me try this from a different angle,” he said. “Ever hear of the Big Bopper?”
“Is that the burger at Big Boy?”
“Don’t you listen to anything besides Elvis?”
“To quote Elvis, ‘I don’t know much about music. In my line of business you don’t have to.’”
Morrison brought his hand up to his head and rubbed his temples. “Okay. I’ll spell it out for you. On February 3rd, 1959, a small passenger plane carrying rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper crashed into a field near Clear Lake Iowa, killing all three of them and the pilot. Don McLean even did a song about it, ‘American Pie.’ Maybe you’ve heard that one?”
“Nope. But I do know who Buddy Holly is.”
“Well there’s hope for you yet,” he said sarcastically.
“Are you going to tell me what three dead rock and rollers have to do with the Russian economy and two goons k
icking my ass in the parking lot?”
“They didn’t die.”
“Oh, so they’re zombies,” I said.
Morrison turned to the Mariachi band and pointed to an old white guy sitting in a chair, tuning an upright bass. “That guy look Mexican to you?”
“No.”
“What about the big fat guy, the one with the accordion?”
“No, he just looks like an old, fat white guy.”
“Okay, now take a look at my new singing partner. Ricardo Valenzuela. That name at least should sound familiar to you.”
I looked at Morrison blankly. The name meant nothing to me.
“There is something wrong with you, Floyd. ‘La Bamba?’ You know, para bailar la bamba...” he sang.
The song was one I knew. I’d probably heard it a hundred times at weddings over the years. That and “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog.” And that damn Chicken Dance song.
“You’re trying to tell me that’s Ritchie Valens?” I asked.
“And Buddy Holly and J. P. Richardson, aka The Big Bopper.”
Morrison sat back in his chair and sipped his Mezcal.
As far as stories go, Morrison was trading up. Resurrected music legends was a whole lot more fantastic than the alien thing.
“So there are three dead rock stars playing Mariachi in a third rate bar in the middle of Wyoming?”
“If you don’t like the damn bar, get the hell out, queenie!”
Goliath did a little jump and climbed up into one of the chairs. He was remarkably agile for such a small fellow. Once he’d settled in, he took out a ten-inch cigar, bit off an end and stuck it between his teeth.
“Thought you said this was none of your business,” Morrison pointed out.
Goliath ignored him and pulled a lighter out of one pocket and a shot glass out of another. He tossed the glass to Morrison, who placed it on the table and started pouring. The lighter he tossed to me.
“Flame on, my fairy friend,” he said.
“Light your own cigar.”
“Are you blind or just dumb? Do my arms look like they’re long enough to fire this stogey?”
The man had a point. I lit his cigar.
“Give me back the lighter, asshole.”
I handed it back to him as he puffed contentedly. Morrison slid the shot of Mezcal over.
“Don’t let me interrupt you two lovebirds,” Goliath said, closing his eyes and enjoying his smoke.
“Alright, let’s get back to Ricardo Valenzuela,” I said.
Morrison leaned in and lowered his voice, more for effect than any risk we’d be overheard. The only other people in the bar were the band.
“You need to understand that back in the ’50s and ’60s, the Cold War affected everything. Music. Literature. TV. Even the highway system. You know overpasses have to be a certain height so missile trucks can drive beneath them?”
“You’re stalling, Morrison,” said Goliath between puffs.
“I’m getting to it, little man. My point is, things seemed rational then that might seem, well, stupid now.”
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told him.
Morrison leaned in even closer and lowered his voice again. I had to lean in, too, just to hear him.
“Some time in the early fifties, the Soviets launched a program called Happiness, U.S.A. It was a top secret training facility in a remote part of Siberia.”
“And how do you know about this?” I asked.
“I’m getting to it. Except for the weather, Happiness was a perfect New England town. Everybody spoke English. The restaurants served hot dogs and meatloaf and ice cream floats. And everyone listened to rock and roll. The idea was to train Soviet spies to blend in when they were sent on deep-cover jobs to America.”
“I think I saw this on Mission Impossible. Are you going to get to how The Big Bopper fits in?”
“Training spies was only half of the plan. The other half was a program to disorient the American proletariat by faking the deaths of their most beloved public figures. The theory was if the American youth saw their heroes being killed in their prime in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar, that it would demoralize the workforce, undercut production and destabilize the American economic machine.”
Morrison paused to hit me with a cold stare.
And I laughed. I laughed so hard I made my ribs hurt. I kept laughing anyway.
Morrison and Goliath weren’t laughing with me.
I had to give Morrison credit. When he spun a tale, it was a good one.
“Come on,” I said. “You’re joking. The Russians faked the deaths of a few musicians to win the Cold War?”
Goliath blew a smoke ring, and Morrison continued.
“You believed Elvis faked his death. What makes this so different?” Morrison asked. “If you weren’t there, it’s hard to understand. But it wasn’t just a few musicians. I said the program started in the early ’50s. Ritchie and his pals weren’t the first. And they weren’t the last.”
“So how many abductees vanished into this secret Russian program?” I asked, only half seriously.
“Hundreds. Thousands. We don’t know. But we do know that the Happiness, U.S.A. facility and the snatch and grab program were running along mightily until Perestroika cratered the Russian economy.”
“How do you know that?”
“Happiness didn’t come cheap.”
“It never does!” added Goliath, chomping on his cigar.
“You want to tell this?” Morrison asked, glaring at him. “Floyd, the program was unbelievably expensive. After Perestroika, they ran out of money and started sending us back.”
“Us? They kidnapped lounge acts?”
“Man, how dense are you? What’s my name?”
“James Morrison.”
“And that means nothing to you?” he asked.
“No.”
It was Goliath’s turn to laugh.
“Liberace knows a hack when he sees one!”
“Shut up, Goliath. James Morrison. Jim Morrison? The Doors?”
Of course I knew who Jim Morrison and The Doors were. Jerry Sheff, who played bass guitar for Elvis, also played for The Doors. I’d listened to the album he played on once, out of curiosity, but didn’t see what the big deal was about.
“You’re Jim Morrison?” I asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Goliath,” I said, “You guys are yanking my chain?”
He took the cigar out from between his teeth and dunked it thoughtfully in his drink.
“No,” he said.
I had a hard time getting from legendary counter-culture icon to tuxedoed lounge act.
“You believe everything Morrison just told me?”
“I do. It’s all true. You’re sitting across from the Lizard King himself.” He brought the cigar back up to his mouth.
I snorted.
“You and Valens and Buddy Holly and the Bopper just decided to move to Kresge, Wyoming after the fall of the Soviet Union?” I asked.
Morrison let out a small sigh and exchanged a glance with Goliath.
“Tell the kid, the place is clean,” said Goliath.
“They didn’t exactly give us plane tickets and say ‘Have a nice life.’ We were brought back one by one and ‘relocated’ here. And we were told that if we tried to communicate with anyone from our old lives, told anyone who we really were, tried to leave town, or even talked to other...returnees...to compare notes, we’d be sent back to that frozen hell in Russia. Or worse.”
True or not, Morrison was managing to answer a lot of questions.
“The Goons?” I asked.
“The fucking F.B.R.M,” said Goliath.
“Who ar
e they?”
Morrison swirled the Mezcal around in his shot glass and set it down again.
“You have to understand, they have everything, and everybody, bugged.”
“But not my place!” said Goliath. “No bugs in here. I check twice a day.”
“I’m still waiting.”
“Federal Bureau of Relocation Management,” Morrison whispered.
“That doesn’t sound so scary,” I observed.
“No, it doesn’t,” Morrison admitted. “That’s probably how they get it funded. But believe me, cross them and you disappear. Forever.”
I’ve worked for a lot of conspiracy nuts. There is always a secretive government agency responsible for all sorts of nefarious events. I’m not normally inclined to believe in that kind of thing, but based on my own interaction with the Goons of Kresge, I found myself almost convinced.
“So how many people in Kresge were...returned?”
“I don’t know. We’re discouraged from talking to each other. Back in Happiness we mostly just talked with our students. The rest of the time we were sort of under house arrest unless we got a weekend pass for good behavior.”
“I’m pretty sure that the car wash guy is John Belushi,” Goliath added between puffs. “That guy is funny as hell.”
“And there’s a chance that Roman, well...” Morrison stopped, unwilling to finish his sentence.
“That Roman what?”
“He might be James Dean,” he said.
I looked at Goliath, who just nodded his head.
“Hey, makes sense. The women love him,” Morrison said.
“Why is this being kept a secret?” I asked
Morrison and Goliath looked at each other again.
“No idea,” said Morrison, shrugging. “But any breach of that secrecy, and a relocated resident of Kresge disappears. ‘I was abducted by aliens’ is what we’re supposed to tell anyone curious about us. Makes us sound like crackpots.”
“But what does this have to do with me and my search for Jon—”
I didn’t need to finish my question. The answer smacked me in the face.
“You two think Elvis was one of the people the Russians kidnapped?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” said Morrison. “But Elvis was the best ever. He got the ball rolling for all of us. I always wanted to meet him, and that’s why I helped you.”
Elvis Sightings (An Elvis Sightings Mystery) Page 16
