Murder in Rock & Roll Heaven

by Robin Ray

  “You’ll like that one,” Tommy said, approaching the PI. “It’s pretty raw. It’ll remind you of Wake in Fright.”

  “I’ve never heard of that one,” Gregory admitted.

  “It’s Australian, from 1971,” Bolin said. “They don’t make films like those anymore.”

  “What’s in it?” the PI quizzed his new friend.

  “I don’t want to ruin it for you,” Tommy said. “Let’s just say there are things in there you won’t see in mainstream films. So, you wanted to ask me something?”

  “My partner didn’t come home last night,” the PI admitted.

  “Your partner?” Tommy asked, a slight smile forming on his face.

  “Well, not my partner-partner,” Gregory corrected. “My assistant.”

  The clerk nodded. “Oh.”

  Just then, three customers arrived and began perusing the shelves.

  “I know there’re lots of places to play around town, places to practice,” Gregory said as Tommy placed the DVD titles on the shelves near him in alphabetical order. “I figure you’re a guitarist; you might know something.”

  “You know,” Tommy said, “when you told me you’re a PI, I gotta say, I was a little shocked. By now I’m sure you know where you are. The question, though, is why are you here?”

  “Amy Winehouse,” the PI answered, nary missing a beat.

  “Oh, that,” Bolin said.

  “Did you know her?” Gregory asked him.

  Tommy shook his head. “Not really. She came in here a few times but that was pretty much it. She seemed pretty cool, though. I’d play in her band.”

  “The crazy thing,” the PI revealed, “is her soul is missing.”

  Bolin looked shocked. “It is? Really? How can that be?”

  “It is,” Gregory swore. “The angels used some ancient machine they’d dusted off from the archives to discover that.”

  “So who extracted her soul?” Tommy asked. “And how?”

  “We don’t know,” the PI said. “That’s the problem.”

  “You know,” Tommy realized, “I was just about to ask you why are you asking me all this, but this actually sounds a little familiar to me.”

  “What do you mean?” the PI wondered.

  “I’ve been in Heaven for 40 years now,” the musician said. “A lot of my time wasn’t spent here in R&R. I like experimenting as a guitarist so I visited Blues Heaven, Jazz Heaven, spent some time over in Classical with some of those guys. Never again, though, because they’re arrogant.”

  “Who’s arrogant?” Gregory asked. “The classical musicians?”

  “All those guys,” Tommy stated. “Mozart, Vivaldi, Haydn, Wagner, Beethoven…they really, really look down on us modern six string slingers, like what we played was just bastardized, gutter versions of their worst work. You can’t please everybody, you know? Anyway, it was cool meeting those old school guys. They had a lot of stories to tell, and if there’s one thing they loved more than wine and women is a good tale. One myth I heard them mention was about a soul stealer. His name was K’Hassat, or something like that.”

  “What’s the story?” the PI asked.

  “K’Hassat was a demon on the first level of Hell,” Tommy said, straightening the shelves. “He learned how to manipulate time, space and dark matter from banned literature the angels thought had long been destroyed. In reality, it was just buried in an unknown crypt on Level I where nobody could find it, or so they thought. Anyway, he did, then he was captured and banished to the 4th circle of Hell for eternity because he’d led an insurrection where billions of souls died. Obviously, I don’t know if this is true or not because it happened millions of years ago. But, you know, now that I think about it, I don’t see how one of us could’ve taken Amy’s soul.”

  “You mean you think a demon did it?” Gregory asked.

  Bolin shrugged. “Could be.”

  “Can K’Hassat be interviewed?” the PI wondered aloud.

  “You want to go down to the 4th level of Hell?” Bolin asked, taken aback by the PI’s bold request. “Good luck. It’s inaccessible, and even if it wasn’t, it’s the 4th level. You ever heard the phrase ‘walking through hell in gasoline drawers’? That’s where it came from.”

  “Thanks, Tommy,” the PI said. “You’ve been helpful.” He then held up the Touki Bouki DVD. “I wouldn’t mind checking out this movie but I don’t have a computer or DVD player.”

  “We have some players you can borrow,” Bolin assured him.

  Gregory nodded, smiling. “Sweet.”

  “Just leave your soul at the desk,” Tommy grinned.

  “You got jokes,” the PI said sullenly.

  CHAPTER 22

  Mud.

  Has anyone ever awakened in the morning and thought to themselves, Gee, it rained all night? Why did I sleep inside on my warm Craftmatic bed instead of outside in the cold mud? When weekend warriors dragged their 4Runners through the plowed fields at 80 mph, as a badge of honor, they often delayed washing the mud off their vehicle’s chassis, a true sign of suburban bad assery. Pigs loved mud. Female wrestlers made a ton of dough ripping each other’s clothes off in slippery, oily, stage-occluded mud. Napoleon Bonaparte once said he made all his generals out of mud. Maybe that’s bad assery at its finest. Ivan Turgenev, author of ‘Fathers and Sons’, once said, “We sit in the mud…and reach for the stars.” Right. Who’d dare tell that to K’Hassat the Demon, and to his face? After all, he was a vengeful and angry fellow, and unless they were faster than Superman, it was best to avoid his destructive wrath altogether.

  K’Hassat had been imprisoned in the 4th level of Hell for eons. It had been so long he can’t remember when he was defeated and transferred there. Legend has it that he’d been in 4th Hell solitude for 10 million years. Some say longer, some lesser. Doesn’t really matter. The takeaway was that, while imprisoned there, planets have been birthed and destroyed without his knowledge.

  In terms of space, Hell Level IV was larger than the 3rd but smaller than the 5th, with Level VII being the ultimate in size. Each circle was so huge that they’re immeasurable by human standards. Any attempt to define the size of Hell, or Heaven for that matter, would render the curious philosopher catatonic, confined to a padded room the rest of their dribbling, confounded days. It wasn’t easy, and it sure cost a lot of lives, but when the demon K’Hassat was finally captured and exiled in his own section in Level IV, the heavens rejoiced for centuries, and every book that mentioned his name was burned, whittled to dust, made to evaporate in evanescence like a geyser’s formless steam.

  Mud. That’s pretty much all the interior designer of Level IV had in mind for its decorations – muddy floors, muddy walls, muddy rains, muddy clouds, the stench of mud forever tainting the mud-moistened air, muddy edible plants, muddy wastes, muddy silence. K’Hassat, standing at nearly 20 feet, was a hulk of a brute. Even though weighing in at over 2,000 pounds, he made Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, seem like a snail in quicksand. Because he perpetually trudged in mud, his speed had been reduced to a crawl. Doesn’t matter. What was there for him to chase – clumps of mud tossed in the air from his booming footsteps? After about 1,000 years or so, that’d get pretty tiring, not to mention, repetitive.

  Like everyone else in hellish confinement, K’Hassat had no clothes. Apart from particularly muddy, scaly skin and bright, phosphorescent eyes, he was almost human-like in form. Because the sun could barely be seen in Level IV, the 20-foot demon had very little to do so he slept all day, waking only to chomp on a few muddy leaves from the plants sprouting sparsely in the endless muddy fields.

  On one particular day, K’Hassat thought he was having another of his terrifying nightmares, the kind that would keep anyone awake for days. He’d been plagued with them for centuries and there was no panacea. The only cure he found was to stop sleeping altogether, but after a few days of attempting that, he’d eventually lie down in the mud and doze right off. But, one day, not too long ago, a bright shimme
ring blue light the size of a Volkswagen awakened him. The light also emitted a low frequency hum, kind of like the rumbling empty stomach of a starved elephant. Sitting up, the demon studied the light with extreme curiosity. Many things came to his mind: was he being pardoned after all these years? Was he being transferred to a more populated section of Level IV? Was he being graduated to Level III or re-sentenced to someplace higher, like Level V?

  “Who are you?” he finally cried to the floating orb.

  The ominous light flickered, emitting nothing more than its distressing hum. Getting up, K’Hassat trudged carefully towards it, circling around it trying to discern its make or origin. Slowly, he reached a finger towards the light. It felt warm; however, when he got too close, it emitted a spark of perhaps 1,000,000 volts which made him instantly recoil. Angry, he bent down, scooped up a handful of mud and started to fling it at the orb.

  ZAPP!

  An arc of lightning shot from the light and singed the demon’s wrist, causing him to drop the muddy projectile.

  “I mean you no harm,” the orb spoke with a powerful, crackly voice.

  “Who are you?” K’Hassat asked, bewildered.

  “Who I am is of no importance,” the light responded. “I need your help, K’Hassat.”

  The demon eyed the orb with intense curiosity. “For what?” he asked.

  “The secret necromancy of soul removal,” came the reply.

  The demon shook his head. “I have no knowledge of that.”

  Just then, lightning started bursting forth from all points of the orb. Frightened, K’Hassat stepped backwards. After a few seconds, the lightning subsided; the demon breathed a sigh of relief but kept his awareness heightened.

  “I don’t wish to add to your agony, K’Hassat,” the orb continued. “10 million years of this purgatory…wouldn’t you like to return to the First Circle?”

  K’Hassat’s heart skipped a beat. Leave Level IV? After all these years?

  “I’m listening,” the anxious demon said. “What do you want from me?”

  “How do you remove souls?” the light begged.

  “I’m forbidden to speak of such things,” K’Hassat replied, fear elevated in his voice.

  “Even if it means finally escaping this Hell?” the orb asked.

  K’Hassat thought about that for a moment – ‘escaping this Hell’. Three little words that was a symphony of joy to his ears.

  “Follow me,” he instructed the light.

  Trudging through the mud for roughly 10 miles with the giant glowing orb close behind, K’Hassat quickly arrived at a cave so large that Lambeau Field could fit in it comfortably.

  “In here,” he told the light.

  Sloshing down a slippery mud path, they came to a chamber whose ceiling was four times as high as the demon. Walking across the mud-filled room, K’Hassat reached both of his hands into a slot in the far wall and pulled the two huge doors of a hidden cabinet open. Floating in the middle of the faintly-lit cabinet was a rotating device comprised of a 7” tubular steel blade the width of a child’s pencil attached to the hilt of a 5” black handle containing two switches.

  “Anima Furabatur!” the orb gasped, its voiced filled with incredulity.

  “The Soul Keeper,” K’Hassat added.

  “I have traveled far and wide for this device,” the light cried. “Just being in its presence fills me with unmitigated dread.”

  “As well it should,” K’Hassat boasted.

  “Bring it,” the glowing spectrum of light ordered.

  “I can’t,” the demon replied.

  “What do you mean you can’t?” the light queried in a stern voice.

  The demon demonstrated exactly what he meant by reaching for the instrument. Immediately, powerful lightning emitted from it, singing the giant’s hands.

  “I see,” the orb continued as K’Hassat trembled in pain. “Then I’ll retrieve it.”

  Just as the orb was about to enter the cabinet, K’Hassat positioned himself in front of it, effectively blocking the light’s path.

  “Do you agree to release me to Level I?” the demon asked threateningly.

  “Yes,” the orb answered. “I am bound by tradition to tell the truth.”

  “Why should I trust you?” K’Hassat barked.

  Lightning bolts shot out from many points on the orb, some of it singeing the ceiling, the rest boiling the mud on the ground and the wall behind the demon. Getting the point, K’Hassat reluctantly stepped aside. The light swooped into the cabinet, completely engulfed the tool, and flew off into the air.

  “Remember me!” the demon yelled, punching his fist upwards as the orb disappeared with the Soul Keeper through the muddy ceiling.

  CHAPTER 23

  Weekends in Woodstock were typically festive occasions, and this Saturday was no exception. The Triple C Rally – Concerned Citizens for Change, had convened. Several leaders of the community, as well as their supporters, gathered in the sprawling. dewy field in front of the Playhouse to discuss their demands and proposals from the angels. The three ersatz leaders, Wolfman Jack, Wendy O. Williams and Phil Lynott, sitting behind an elongated table containing microphones, pads, pens, water jugs and other items, were all wearing wide, white headbands, similar to the Japanese Hachimaki, with red, yellow and blue C’s silkscreened around the length of it instead of Japanese characters. Atypical for the Punk Princess Wendy, she was attired in a comfortable red kimono decorated with flax flowers of different sizes and colors, a matching light blue obi around her midriff, wooden clogs, and flowers in her hair. Wolfman Jack, sitting to her right, was dressed in a long, yellow tunic with white pyjama pants and light brown flax slippers. Phil Lynott, sitting on Wendy’s left, was similarly attired in a long blue tunic with white pyjama pants, bamboo slippers, and multi-colored streamers in his afro. Scattered throughout the audience of approximately 400 were luminaries such as Tommy, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Stiv Bators, Darby Crash, Ritchie Valens, Duane Allman, Lou Reed, Nico, Karen Carpenter, Ray Manzarek, Nicolette Larson, Dusty Springfield, Ronnie James Dio, Bon Scott, Keith Moon, John Entwistle, Jerry Garcia, George Harrison, and many others. Some were waving white flags with the tri-color 3C logo, others were sporting 3C buttons or handing out 3C pamphlets to the late arrivals.

  As was the norm for any rally, several refreshments booths were giving out bottles of water, juice and beer while others were serving treats like grape leaves stuffed with tomato & rice, vegetable egg rolls, Buffalo and Korean-styled fried cauliflower, bean-stuffed fried jalapenos, scallion pancakes with Queso dip, potato & caper empanadas with cilantro sauce, broccoli pizza with berbere sauce, curried eggplant with chickpeas & spinach, and several other international tastes representing a smorgasbord of flavorful not-to-be-missed cuisine.

  Gregory, just entering the outdoor convention, strolled around the grassy knoll soaking up the sights and sounds. Some groups of people were singing and playing guitar, others were dancing to music blasting from virtual speakers, while others were just lounging around enjoying the sun and passing a psychedelic bowl around. Having not had breakfast, the detective checked out the various snack booths and opted to stand in the queue of a food shoppe called A Taste of Hunan where several chefs were busy tossing vegetables in their large woks or mincing heads of lettuce, ginger and other ingredients.

  “They have this every year?” the PI asked the couple of guys waiting in front of him.

  “Yes,” the bespectacled, long haired gentleman wearing a camouflage dashiki and dark blue pants answered, turning around, “but it’s bigger now. Long time coming, and way overdue, too, I would say.”

  Gregory nearly collapsed when he realized the man who had just answered his question was the legendary Beatle…

  “John Lennon!” he shouted, greeting the songwriter as if he’d known him for years.

  “Shhh,” John whispered, smiling. “You’ll blow me cover.”

  “Mine, too,” George Harrison said, turning to wink at the PI.
<
br />   “This is unbelievable,” the PI blushed. “You two look good.”

  “How else should we look?” Lennon asked.

  “Well,” Gregory attempted to clarify, “I…I…”

  “Relax, mate,” John consoled him, patting his shoulder. “No sense getting torn to ribbons off meeting a couple of songwriters.”

  “Right,” the detective said. “Y’all are just songwriters just like the Pacific is just water.”

  “What’s your name?” the ex-Beatle asked.

  “Greg Angelicus,” the PI answered, shaking the musicians’ hands. “Nice meeting you.”

  “Same here,” Lennon and Harrison swore.

  “So, what’s this all about?” Gregory asked. “I notice these 3C signs all over.”

  “Yes,” John said, “Concerned Citizens for Change. As far as I know, this has been in the planning stages for some time, maybe months, maybe years. No one wanted to lead it because, you know, they don’t trust the angels that much. Are you an angel?”

  “No,” the detective shook his head. “I’m a PI. I just got to Heaven this past week. It’s been pretty intriguing, to say the least. Hey John, tell me something. How come people have so much beef with the angels? Are they that oppressive?”

  “Well, to me, they’re okay,” John admitted. “I mean, I’m not really sure why people don’t like them. I get along fine with Ba’al’figor, L’Da, all of them, really. They’re just doing what they do – keeping order in Heaven. You know what a rock and roll crowd is gonna be like. Bottom line: no challenging of authority, no rock and roll. Pretty simple. It is what it is.”

  “What about you, George?” Gregory asked. “Get along with ‘em?”

  “To tell you the truth,” the My Sweet Lord scripter said, “I keep such a low profile I hardly run into anyone at all. It’s even rare I’m out for this meeting. Maybe I’m getting old, I guess.”