“Hello-oo. Earth to Hamster. Anybody home?”
Startled, Ham jumped as he spun around, crimson embarrassment staining his cheeks. “Oh. Charlie. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. I was just admiring the view and I…”
Holy crap, he thought, talk about a view.
His crimson face turned beet as he took in Charlie’s pose. Tanned skin accented by the white bikini, blonde hair flowing across her shoulders, face shining in the way only Charlie could, she was a present from God. Surely He’d never made a more perfect woman of her age in all the history of His trying. And there’d be no point in trying again. It was done.
She batted her eyelashes, exaggeration in each flutter, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “You like? Or should I change into something more demure?”
“NO! I mean, no, you look fine. Where’s your dad?”
“Right here,” Blake announced as he appeared in the archway. With him, he toted three towels, one of which he tossed to Ham, one he draped over his shoulder, and the other of which he handed to his daughter. “Let’s do it.”
Ham followed them out the foyer, into the elevator and out across the street. Wandering now onto the Hilton’s grounds for the first time in daylight, he delighted in its overwhelming sense of tropical wonder. As they meandered past the pools, the open air bars, the penguins and macaws and pelicans, he drank it all in, astounded all over again at his windfall, at being plucked from obscurity into opulence. Until, that is, he once again reminded himself that he had a job to do, opulence be damned. He had a few questions to ask and, not lulled by camaraderie, he intended to press those inquiries.
They wound their way through the massive grounds, arriving at the Hau Tree Bar which abutted the beach proper. There Blake ordered up three chaise lounges, beers for himself and Ham, and a Ginger Ale for Charlie. With great amusement, Ham noticed that Blake’s orders, both for chairs and drinks, superseded all other ongoing transactions. His chest swelled with pride at being here, midpoint of the inner circle.
Two attendants set the chaises just off the water, handed out drinks and stood just out of earshot, awaiting his majesty’s next command. Or so Ham mused.
Charlie chose the chair on the left and smiled coquettishly when Ham immediately grabbed the one on the far right. Blake, with a small but telling grin, settled in the middle.
As great as this was, this feeling of rock royalty and his ascendance thereto, Ham’s inner detective demanded action. “Tell me something, Blake. What would be the motive?”
Blake regarded him with startled surprise. “The motive for…? Oh. The murder. Well, that all depends, now doesn’t it? Maybe it’s a crazed fan, ala John Lennon. If so, then who’s to say what the motive would be? You can’t explain a lunatic’s warped sense of reasoning. It’s just not there, you know?”
“And if it’s not?”
“You mean if it’s somebody close to me?” Ham nodded. “Well, then, greed, I suppose. I have more money than I can keep track of at any given time. Plus a song catalogue that will continue to earn royalties for who knows how long.”
“So why not change your will, leave everything you’ve got to charity or something?”
“All that would change is the motive, not the act.”
“What do you mean?”
“Greed to get it. Revenge if that greed isn’t satisfied. Either way, I’m dead. And in the end, why would I care why?”
“I don’t see it that way. If you eliminate the profit motive, you take away the likelihood of you getting offed. If we’re not talking a lunatic fan but instead a presumably semi-rational, albeit bloodthirsty, cohort, why would he or she take a chance on getting caught if there’s nothing to gain by it?”
Blake smiled tolerantly. “Ham, do you understand human nature at all?”
A small laugh and a shake of the head answered the question but he amplified anyway. “That is not my strong suit, no.”
“Apparently not. So think of this. If a person is amoral enough to kill for money, that same person is amoral enough to kill for spite. In other words, in their mind, I have denied them what is rightfully theirs. Thus, I must pay the price. The ultimate price.”
“Blake,” Ham responded, impatient now, “I know all this bullshit. I didn’t spend twenty-two years with my thumb up my ass. I brought a lot of those people down—a lot—both out and out lunatics who had no reason for what they did, and one hell of a lot more who committed obscenities in the name of avarice. So yeah, I get it. My point here is this. If it’s a lunatic, it’s unpredictable. In that case, I can’t be proactive except in the sense of directing your security, to plug as many holes as possible. And that’s iffy at best since there is just no damn way to plug them all. Hell, presidents get assassinated and they’ve got the whole of the Secret Service trying to predict every contingency. So while I’ll do that, that’s not my primary concern. My primary concern is to anticipate, find out the who and why of everybody who has access to you, what they think of you, what they have to gain or lose, and take it from there. So I ask you again, who stands to gain the most? Who absolutely has a blinding, irrational hatred for you, who has a vested interest in your will, and is there anyone who straddles both?”
Blake took a long pull at his beer then peered down at the bottle cradled in his hands as if he were studying the contours of its shape. After a long silence, he took another gulp and turned his attention back to Ham.
“Let me think about this for a bit, okay?” He shook his head sadly. “I really didn’t get this far in my thinking. I’d have liked to think it was a crazed fan. That’s where I’ve been centered. The thought of the alternative is a bit much for me to consider right off the bat like this because I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe that somebody I know, someone I trust, could do this, especially just to get a few bucks. Besides,” he added, “anybody that close to me, if they needed something, all they’d have to do is ask. And I think—I hope—that they all know that. So,” he sighed, “I really don’t see what would be the point.” Flashing anger now, he added, “And I’d hate like hell to think that I’d misjudged somebody so thoroughly, that after all these years all I became was a fool.”
Ham patted him on the arm, hoping to reassure through touch. “Take it easy, Blake, take it easy. I wasn’t implying anything, I was just doing my job, asking questions that no one wants to hear but that have to be asked. You understand?”
Blake nodded but turned his head away, hiding his eyes as well as his thoughts. To Ham, it was just another indication of the man’s artistic nature, a belief in the beauty of humanity that was reflected in his melodies, a sense of child-like wonder at the goodness of it all, a hopeful prayer that in the end goodness will prevail.
The easiest kind of mark, Ham mused.
He found himself actually feeling sorry for Blake. Blake Garrett, Superstar. Guitar God to millions. Cocooned in his pampered existence, he’d never had to live in the real world, had never experienced the ugliness therein. To Blake, a major crisis constituted a broken guitar string in mid concert. Paying the rent had never been a cause for anxiety, let alone a fear in the forefront of his mind.
All right, all right, that’s not fair, he admitted. Not fair at all. His own prejudices, his own broken life, invented a reverse snobbery, an ugly cloud that colored his assessment. And of course it would. He’d lived his own history, a history of solitude, of grudging admittance to the seamy side, a no-man’s hollow slide into oblivion. How could he possibly imagine, let alone relate, to a world wherein your every wish, your each want, is another’s command, is the world’s mandate? It all seemed so…obscene somehow. Yet that was the reality, and it wasn’t Blake’s problem to deal with that. To Blake, his abnormal existence was merely life. To Ham, it was a fairy tale that yearned for reality. Maybe that’s why, in this crazy world, he became the chosen, the one ordained to make Blake see the truth, to bend him to the will of the universe, show him that each of us is the same no matter the station, that e
vading life only usurps life, that…
Whoa, whoa, whoa, just freaking stop that, Hamster, you better…Oh good God, was he now beginning to think of himself as Hamster? Goddamn Charlie.
Ham was the first to admit that he was no philosopher. Not like Carson, the philosopher sniper ghost trainee King. So what the hell was all this, he demanded of himself. Did he admire Blake, was he in awe of him, because of who he was, what he’d done? Or did he secretly hate him because of precisely that? That he was God’s pet, the chosen one, the anointed one, a man blessed above all the rest for whatever reason the crazy deity may have had?
Ham drained half his beer in one long gulp, angered and sorrowed by his roaming thoughts. Here he was, swathed in beauty, enjoying a paradise beyond compare, and more than that, enjoying the company of one of the most lauded people on the planet. So now he’s jealous that it’s not him the world applauds? What kind of crap was that, what pure jealous resentment, what pure envy? That had never been him, he’d always refused to sink to that level. The few times he’d caught himself in the throes of jealousy, he’d tossed that thought with a firmness of mind that could not be denied. For if there was one thing he knew—and only one thing he could choose to live by—it was that envy was suicidal, a silent killer that sped straight down the Highway to Bitterness. And at his current rate of rashness, that fatal signpost loomed dead ahead.
So ease up on the pedal, Ham, he decided. Time to make a Uey.
He stretched out on the chaise, intent on relaxing his body as well as mind, and took another hit on his rapidly warming beer. With eyes closed against the glaring sun—having forgotten the mandatory sunglasses Hawaii demanded—he let the soothing susurration of the wind kissed palms, the barely heard splash of the remarkably tame sea, lull him into pleasant drowsiness.
Blake interrupted Ham’s growing stupor with a statement apropos of nothing they had been discussing. “Starting next week, we’ll be back at Tahoe, recording in my studio. We’ve got the songs, we’ll work them out, record them, and try them out on a live audience later at Daytona Beach. There’s a small stage right on the beach there, up from the Hilton—which is where we’ll be staying—on which we’re going to do an unannounced and final rehearsal for the tour series coming up. Our first concert will be at Daytona Raceway, three nights, then on to Orlando. That’s the schedule for the first two weeks. Then on and on for the next three months.”
“And you’re telling me this because…?”
“You asked about us getting back together and about the tour. So I answered.”
“Okay. Where are you going to be until you start rehearsing the new songs? Were you planning to stay here?”
“Prior to Martina’s little bombshell, I hadn’t really thought about it. I kind of just go with my flow, you know? Besides, what difference does it make now?”
“Blake…” Ham’s frustration burst through. “Remember, I don’t tell you how to play the guitar. I don’t tell you how to write a song, how to sing it, how to arrange it. That’s your job. My job is to anticipate. So don’t you be telling me how to do that. Understood?”
“Ah,” Blake smiled. “I stand corrected. I’m to pay you to be my boss. Is that how it works these days?”
“Don’t screw with me, Blake. I’m not in the mood.”
Charlie, who to that point had contented herself with merely listening, chose this moment to interject. “Of course you are, Hamster. You’re always in a mood.”
“Not now, Charlie.” I have a gun. I could make it accidental. “Not now. Please.”
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” Charlie muttered. “Just too, too easy.”
Blake chortled, that little tinkling melody that passed as his laugh. “He is, isn’t he?” he agreed.
“I guess I am at that,” Ham admitted with a sorry little laugh.
“Let’s go for that swim,” Blake suggested. As Charlie popped up, he turned to Ham and advised him of his routine. “I go out there maybe one-hundred yards beyond the break wall and back. You up for that?”
Ham stared out at the sparkling green that turned to blue beyond a rock wall that itself looked to be at least three-hundred yards from shore. “I’ll pass, thanks,” he decided. “Besides, somebody’s got to stay here and protect the beer from thirsty thieves.”
With an insouciant wave, Charlie followed her “dadster” down to the shoreline and on into the crystal waters. Within minutes they were well out to sea, receding into small figures as they were swallowed up by distance and glare.
Ham watched, fascinated, at the far distant breakers that could not invade the interior of the breakwater wall. Almost magically, the half moon wall pushed the sea back, demanded obedience, even beyond its physical barrier. The how and why of that incredible construction captured his imagination to such an extent that he failed to notice a stranger approach, a stranger who then stopped and blocked the sun from behind, casting his vast shadow over the bulk of Ham’s sun-worshiping body.
“So you’re the psychic detective, huh?” the stranger demanded.
Ham peered up, squinted into a face backed by blinding light. Once he’d focused, recognition flashed, and an involuntary gasp exploded from his lips. Unfortunately, when he gasped, so too did his beer. He’d been taking a pull on the bottle when interrupted, hadn’t yet swallowed that mouthful, when that distinctive hair—long frizzy ash blonde hair that draped across his shoulders, sort of a cross between Phil Spector at his unnatural worst and Art Garfunkel at his natural best—identified the intruder as the face from the security tapes.
Russ Porter, the other half of the legendary duo, stood immobile, with a glare that was more than a match for the sun. Upon that realization, Ham inhaled a mouthful of liquid and his lungs responding by spewing the offensive moisture from his mouth and nose and all along his legs.
Oh goddamn it, he fumed, this is great, just great! Now Russ and Blake can compare notes on their first meeting with the wide-eyed yahoo from Vegas. Should I tell him he can call me ‘Ham’? Might as well complete the clumsy cycle.
Instead, he contented himself with a simple reply. “I’m not psychic.”
Russ’ derision belied any humor in the snorted laugh. “Yeah, no, I didn’t think so. You’re just some schmuck taking advantage of Blake’s gullibility.” The sudden easy smile might have been purposeful. “So tell me, how much is he paying you?
Ham pulled his towel from behind his head and began to wipe away the stickiness on his legs as he replied, “I can’t see as that’s any of your business. If you’re curious, ask him.”
Russ regarded him as an entomologist might a bug. “I’m not curious. I’m asking so I know how much I’ll have to fork out to get you away from Blake.”
Ham continued mopping and without looking up asked, “Meaning what?”
Russ moved past the foot of Ham’s chaise and around to the side where he could speak in a lowered voice and still be heard. “Meaning, my greedy friend, you’re obviously for sale. If you’re willing to take his money under these pretenses, I’m willing to outbid Blake in order to save him from making a fool of himself. And to preempt that tell-all you’ll no doubt write for the megabucks later.”
Ham stared at Superstar II, still startled, though the adjustment to reality came much more rapidly than with his first intro to the famous duo. Russ may be a colossus across the world stage, he mused, but he was still just a man and a man, at that, who had just smashed one right across his bow. Indecision momentarily gnawed at him, left him unsure as to whether to lash back or try to smooth it over.
Or, he flashed, maybe he ought to just do his damn job.
“I take it you don’t believe it.”
Russ leaned closer, his questioning eyes boring into Ham’s as though the answers may lie buried deep within. “That’s not the point, is it?” he whispered. “The point is…do you?”
Oh God, Ham moaned, there it was again. That same, damn bedeviling conundrum he’d wrestled with, and lost to, off and on for t
he last day and a half. But what could he say? If he said ‘no’, he’d be confirming Russ’ damnation of him. If he said ‘yes’, he’d be locking himself into defending the indefensible, with no way out of that insistence.
What a beautiful trap, Ham thought with wonder. How absolutely, perfectly, skillfully done. In all the years he’d used similar methods to catch and cage the scum of Vegas, he’d never set such a flawless trap so quickly, so easily, so effortlessly. It had been a mismatch from the start, a decorated, skilled detective versus a withered, out of date guitar playing amateur.
Point, set and match to the aged amateur.
Only one thing to do, Ham, old boy. Weasel out of it.
“I am absolutely convinced that Blake not only believes it, he accepts it as inevitable.” As Russ started to respond, Ham waved off the comment. “Because he does so, I’m forced to proceed as if it were the absolute gospel truth. And by freaking damn, that’s exactly what I am going to do.”
Now, quickly, push back, turn it around, get Russ on the defensive, just like you would any low life perp who tried to deflect by asserting police brutality. Charge, stay one step ahead, misdirect, confuse, muddle, fluster.
“Otherwise, what’s the alternative? I tell him I don’t believe him, he has no one to share the burden, and he worries himself to death, becomes a basket case waiting for the shoe to drop. How’s that helping him? How does that help you, help the band, with your new recordings, with your reunion concert tour? You willing to gamble all that?” As Russ stared at him, he again demanded, “Well, are you?”
The Ghost of Truckee River (A Ham McCalister Mystery Book 1) Page 10
