by Robin Ray
Murder in Rock & Roll Heaven
A NOVEL
ROBIN RAY
Copyright ©2016 by Robin Ray
www.seattlewordsmith.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the address at the URL above.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's wildly vivid imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Front cover artwork, Guitar Graveyard by Gordon Heaney. Copyright ©2016
For Patrick.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
“EVERYBODY get the fuck down!”
Marnie, bright orange freesias in her left hand and pruning scissors in her right, spun around to see who dared introduce himself like he was on the set of a gangsta flick.
“Oh, Lord,” she mumbled casually, nary a hint of fear in her voice. “Here we go.”
She always knew this day would happen because the road on which her flower shop sat had seen better, more prosperous, times. Aurora Avenue in Seattle, the stomping ground of druggies, pushers and prosties, was held in high esteem back in the days when the 1962 World’s Fair saw fit to plant the now famous Space Needle in Seattle Center. Unfortunately, with north-south traffic now dominated by I-5, all the classy restaurants and quality inns on the strip have been replaced by seedy casinos with ceilings so low you can polish the black orbs encasing the security cameras with your t-shirt still on your back. Amidst the car dealerships, Asian eateries, pawn shops and fast food joints there was still a glimmer of hope that, someday, Aurora would return to its glory days. Right now, though, the resurrection of the avenue was the furthest thing from the mind of the 45-year-old florist, especially now that some black-clad maniac with a black and white bandana for a mask was standing in her shop with a shotgun pointed in her direction.
Glancing quickly around the scent-filled store, the intruder marched straight up to Marnie standing behind the cash register near a wall. From her relatively close distance she saw the man’s eyes. They’re brown like hers – two sepia-toned marbles sitting firmly in one face as soft as silk, the other hard as concrete.
“Who’s in the back?” the robber demanded to know, pointing his midnight black, 12 gauge semi-automatic Beretta at her chest.
“Nobody,” she responded.
“You’re alone?”
“Well, I’m schizophrenic, so no.”
“Don’t be funny.” The armed man leaped up over the counter across to the other side.
“You know,” Marnie suggested, pointing to the knee-high door at the edge of the glass counter, “you could’ve just used that.”
“Be quiet, woman,” he protested. “You got a death a wish?”
The clerk rolled up her sleeves and displayed all the recent cuts inside each forearm, some so fresh there were traces of blood in them. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
“You’re fucking crazy. Open that register.”
Marnie eyed the shotgun in the man’s slightly trembling hands, laid the flowers and shears down on the counter, and opened the old fashioned register, the big heavy metal kind that chimed when the cash drawer slid out.
“Out of the way,” the robber ordered her, shoving the punk-attired clerk to one side. Quickly rifling through the machine, he came up with $22.
“Is this it?” he screamed.
“Yes.”
“Why is it so low?” he demanded, his eyes practically glowing like burnt embers.
“It’s only 10 in the morning.”
“I can’t believe this shit,” he shouted, slamming the counter.
“Who robs a flower shop?” Marnie asked rhetorically, suspecting the intruder may not shoot if she tried to get on his good side.
“Don’t get smart,” he warned her. “I’m not in the mood. You got a safe in the back?”
“Nope.”
“Dammit,” he blurted. “All this shit for 22 bucks.”
“Hey,” Marnie suggested, “that’s two cheese-stuffed pizzas from Domino’s right there.”
“What you got in your pockets, woman?” he beseeched her.
“Nothing you’d be interested in.”
The robber increased the bass in his voice. “Let me see.”
Marnie reached into her ripped pants pocket slowly and carefully, just in case Superboy here with the gun was trigger happy, and brought out a clear plastic bag with a bloodied tampon inside.
“What the fuck?” the gunman growled.
“I was bleeding a lot,” she informed him. “I’m taking this to my gyno to make sure I’m okay.”
“Ugh,” the intruder moaned. “Put that thing away before you make me vomit.”
She complied as he trotted back out to the floor, studying the ceilings and corners while he winded his way around several display cases of flowers, gardening tools and orange terra cotta planters.
“No cameras,” he mumbled, then went towards the front door, stopped, and turned to face the clerk still standing behind the register.
“You didn’t see nothing here,” he instructed her. “Got that?”
“Got it,” she saluted as the robber pulled open the front door and ran out to his rusty gray Fiat hatchback parked on the street in front of the shop. Quickly, he reached for the passenger side handle and tugged on it.
“Fuck!” he screamed as the old, rusty handle broke off in his hand.
He tried to jiggle it back in place but it didn’t latch. Frustrated, he ran over to the passenger side of his two door hooptie where, he just remembered, the handle had been gone for months. Cussing under his breath, he zipped over to the hatchback’s rear door, fumbled with the key in its lock till it finally opened, climbed over the backseat and squiggled into the driver seat. He tried to start the compact auto but, in his haste, forgot to yank the keys out of the back door.
“Dammit!” he extolled, kicking the driver side door open, racing to the back, removing the key, and running back towards the driver side just as the door locked itself shut.
“Fuck!”
Racing to the rear of his auto one more time, he jiggled the key in the lock, opened the door then pulled the keys out, climbed in, shut the hatchback behind him, climbed over the backseat once again, sque
ezed into the passenger seat, hurriedly started the ignition, and screeched southward down the street. Mere seconds later, the sound of a police siren started blaring hundreds of feet behind him. Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw Seattle’s finest quickly approaching and immediately jammed on the accelerator pedal, pushing the engine so hard a passerby could practically hear it wheezing from the sidewalk. Gazing in the rearview mirror intermittently, it’s obvious his old hooptie was no match for the light blue Ford Interceptor behind him so, flipping his wheel to the left, he flied over the raised median, into oncoming northbound traffic where he nearly crashed, and finally into the parking lot of a supermarket plaza. Frightened pedestrians quickly leaped out of his way as he caterwauled screaming through the half-filled lot, knocking over some shopping carts, side swiping a few cars, then speeding out the north exit where he made a quick right onto the recently paved road.
About three blocks ahead, he saw another lit-up squad car zooming towards him. Instinctively, he flipped the wheel to his left to access a new road.
BASH!
The masked robber’s Fiat flied head on into, and flipped over, a late model, dark blue Ford Focus that was just about to exit the road. The powerful force of the collision thrust the crushed Focus diagonally backwards onto the sidewalk, crashing smack into the young man who was walking there with a tenor sax in a case in his hand and an old Beatles tune escaping from his pursed lips. Both cars exploded into flames just as the police approached.
CHAPTER 1
Gregory Angelicus finally stirred awake from his crazy dream. Lying cold and naked in a foetal position on a yellow wooden bench in the midst of a park the size of a baseball diamond, the 40-year-old arouser also felt something in his head that he hadn’t felt in three or four years – a splitting headache. Holding his sinuses, he sat up. What the hell? he thought as he discovered he was as nude as Renaissance Art. Gazing around, he saw nothing with which he was familiar. Judging from the early morning light, he figured it must be around 6AM or so, but where was he? It was chilly but not so cold his mysterious nudity wasn’t a painful bother. At the edge of the bench he noticed a white sheet sitting neatly folded. Picking it up, he draped it around himself then stood up to survey the area.
The ground beneath his feet was a hybrid of manicured lawn and cobbled stone. Around the edges of the park were palm trees, some of which stood nearly 30 feet high. Along the back of the park was a neat row of quaint one-story businesses, all of them in brick & wood houses, and all of those shoppes painted in earthen tones like yellow, red, brown, and orange. Among the stores were a pizza joint, a clothing shoppe, a precious elements emporium, a spiritual reader, a yoga center, music store, weed shop, and a beads retailer.
Walking out to the edge of the road in front of the park, he gazed up and down the block. Towards both ends he saw small groups of people milling about or simply moving on their merry way. From what he could see, most were attired in loose fitting clothes like the ones commonly worn in Africa, Middle East and the South Asian continent. The majority of people, all adults, were white with a smattering of blacks and Asians thrown in for good measure.
Some of the buildings on the main drag, he noticed, were two stories high with at least two being three stories high. And again, like the row of houses behind the park, they were basically homogenously painted in yellows, reds, browns and oranges. Strolling over to one corner of the park, he read the name flanked by blue flax flowers on the wooden sign there -
֍ VILLAGE GREEN, WOODSTOCK ֍
Woodstock? he thought. Woodstock where?
As far as he could tell he was in a small town, village or hamlet. Trees, shrubs and plants were the main decorations in sight. In the distance behind the park he saw two mountains, one snowcapped, the other green as money. The vista towards the front of him was also thick with woodland. The road before him, he noticed, was unpaved but cobbled. Parallel lines of steel tracks ran the complete distance of the main drag. Walking towards the intersection to his left he read the trio of wooden directional signs.
TINKER STREET - MILL HILL ROAD - ROCK CITY ROAD
Gazing up Tinker Street, he saw a man in his mid-20’s with long black hair and a cherubic face walking towards him. Wearing a simple yellow and red dashiki with hemp slippers, he appeared as comfortable as a snowflake in Iceland.
“Hey,” the stranger greeted the white-clothed new arrival.
“Morning,” Gregory responded. “This is Woodstock?”
“Yes.”
Gregory looked puzzled. “Woodstock where?”
“What do you mean?” the stranger asked.
“That sign back there said this is Woodstock,” Gregory stated. “What state?”
The dashiki-donned stranger started laughing. “You’re new, huh?”
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” the stranger answered, shifting his weight from one foot to the next. “You can call this place Woodstock if that’ll make you feel better.”
“Well what else would I call it?”
“Heaven,” the stranger answered flatly.
Oh, boy. Gregory thought, gazing curiously at the man in front of him. Somebody left the floodgates at the asylum open again. He took another look around the serene hamlet. Glass & metal lamps, some incandescent, some oil, were glowing behind some windows of the buildings, painting the vista as being both casual and cozy. Decorative white flags, some with drawings of blue flax flowers, others red, dangled from every wooden light post. There was hardly any litter in the streets or sidewalks.
“This is Heaven, you know,” the long haired gentleman repeated.
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” the doubting arrival groaned.
“I’m Tommy,” the young man said, offering his hand. “Tommy Bolin.”
“I’m Gregory,” the sheet-attired man identified himself.
“What do you play?” Tommy asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Musical instrument,” Tommy clarified. “What kind? Guitar? Piano? I play guitar.”
Gregory shrugged. “I’m not a musician. I’m a PI.”
“A what?”
“Private investigator.”
“Really?” Tommy asked. “That’s odd.”
Not as odd as waking up naked in who-knows-where, Gregory thought. “Why?” he asked the black haired questioner.
“It’s just…odd,” Bolin maintained.
Gregory scratched his head. “I’m confused about something, Tommy. Maybe you can answer a question.”
“What is it?”
“A question,” Gregory joked, “is a sentenced expressed so as to elicit information.”
“No,” Tommy asked, taking the comic seriously. “What do you want to ask me?”
“Obviously I got so blitzed last night I don’t even know where I ended up,” the recently arrived man revealed. “Where my clothes are, I don’t have a clue. Am I still in Washington State, maybe near Tacoma or Bellingham? I’ve never heard of Woodstock, Washington before.”
“You’re not in Washington State.” Tommy assured him.
Gregory furrowed his brow in disbelief. “No? So where am I? Spokane? Portland?”
“Heaven,” the stranger stated flatly.
“Yeah,” Gregory moaned, “you keep saying that. I woke up with my nards exposed on that bench over there but I don’t know how I got here.”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Tommy swore.
“What?”
“I’ve gotta go,” Tommy insisted. “I’m late for work.”
“Do you have a phone I can use?” Gregory asked.
“A phone!” Tommy exhorted, as if Gregory just asked him if he owns his own 70’ luxury yacht and marina. “Who can afford that?”
“What’s so special about phones that they’re expensive?” the surprised Gregory asked.
“Not just phones,” Tommy explained. “All electronic items are beyond what anybody would pay for them. You really are new.”
“I don�
��t see what’s such a big deal about electronics,” Gregory shrugged, “but whatever.”
“You could check out one of these stores, they might have a phone, but I doubt it. These shoppes aren’t open yet. I mean, they are open – they’re always open – they just don’t have any attendants at the moment; maybe around 9 or 10AM.”
Gregory squinted. “I’m not following you. The stores stay open without workers?”
“Yep,” the black haired fellow answered, then pointed to one of the wood & glass doors. “See? No locks.”
Gregory, finding Tommy’s assertion hard to believe, went over to the store and, sure enough, there was no lock. I’ll be damned, he thought. Checking a few more stores, he realized that none of the doors, all constructed of wood and glass, contained locks. Grabbing the door knob at one of the shoppes, he turned it. Sure enough, the door opened. Looking in briefly, he saw no one in the relatively dark store then shut the door and returned to Tommy. Another interesting fact about the environs had him thinking.
“They sure have a lot of restaurants here,” he noticed. “Almost every other establishment, it seems. That’s kinda bizarre. This is a tourist town, pretty much?”
“You’ll understand later,” Tommy pledged. “I really gotta go.”
“Wait,” Gregory pleaded. “Can I walk with you to your job?”
“There’s no phone there, either,” Tommy enlightened him. “You can hang out till somebody comes by, but people don’t really carry phones around here.”
“Why not?”
Tommy shrugged. “No need to. This is more of a face to face kind of place.”
“Really?” Gregory asked. “I don’t get it. How do people even get around? I don’t see any cars anywhere.”
“What about those?” Tommy questioned, pointing to a few parked electric scooters and rickshaws.
Gregory stared at the rudimentary modes of transportation Tommy alluded to. I’ve seen some ass backwards towns in my life, he thought, but this really takes the cake.
“And there’s the main trolley,” Tommy added. “Doesn’t run that often, though. If you want, the Cumby’s at the end of that road,” he said, pointing down Mill Hill Road. “It’s manned 24 hours. They might have what you need.”
