by Phil Swann
“We loved each other, Trip. We were going to get married. Can you believe it? She loved me.”
No, I couldn’t believe it. Ken was a nice enough guy and all, but Lydia Starr was way out of his league. Hey, she was out of my league, and I was a musician. She only went out with the guy as a favor to me. But this was not the time to make that point, so I stayed mum and let Ken continue.
“We were going to run away together. It was all planned. We were going to Hollywood. That’s where she belonged, and I was going to take her. Of course, any place was fine with me as long as it was with her.”
I didn’t like where this was heading. “Did she come over last night and tell you she’d changed her mind? Is that what happened, buddy?”
Ken stared into space and didn’t reply.
“Ken, is that what happened? It’s okay, you can tell me.”
“No,” he mumbled. “I didn’t see her last night. I never went home. I’m so sorry, Lydia.” And he was sobbing again.
No back patting this time. I let him cry it out on his own.
I waited until the sprinklers stopped and then asked, “Why didn’t you go home last night, Kenny? And if you didn’t, why is it your fault Lydia’s dead?”
Ken took off his specs and wiped his eyes. He looked at me but said nothing—an uncomfortably long look at that. Finally, he said, “Trip, what I’m going to tell you, I shouldn’t be telling you. Do you understand?”
“Okay,” I replied, trying to make sense of that sentence.
“You can’t tell anybody what I’m going to say. Do you completely understand? I need you to tell me you understand.”
“Yeah, I understand, lips sealed, just tell me.”
He took a deep breath, looked at me for another prolonged moment, and then nodded. “I guess if I can’t trust you, who can I trust, right?”
“Right,” I answered, having no clue what was coming next.
“Okay, here it is.” I swear his voice dropped an octave. “Trip, what I do…the work I do…it’s for the government.”
“I thought you worked for an aerospace company. Lockheed, isn’t it?”
“Good memory,” he said.
“I listen closely when my friends talk to me, Kenny.” I know, I’m shameless.
He went on, “Yes, that’s right. I do work for Lockheed, but in a very special department. A department that deals exclusively with the US government.”
“Okay,” I said.
“What I do, it’s secret. Actually, Top Secret. Do you understand, Trip?”
I was getting a bit put off. “Yes, I understand. You work on top secret projects for the US government. That’s pretty cool, Kenny. I had no idea that’s what you did.”
“That’s the way top secret works.” His eyes filled again, and he went silent.
I knew if I allowed him to stop talking, I might never get him started again. So I said, “What does that have to do with Lydia? Or why it’s your fault she’s dead?”
He jumped up and shouted, “It has everything to do with it.”
I was so taken aback by his sudden outburst, I moved a few inches away.
He raised his hand and sat back down. “I’m sorry, Trip.”
“That’s okay,” I replied, inching back toward him. “Go on.”
He continued, “Last night, while waiting for Lydia to get off work, I went to The Jam Jar to hear Eighty-Eight play. I was sitting there, minding my own business, when two men came over and sat down next to me. They started talking, and I soon realized they knew everything about me: my name, where I was from, where I worked. More than that, they knew what I did at work. Nobody is supposed to know that, Trip.”
“So how did they?”
“I don’t know.”
I nodded. “Okay, then what happened?”
“They offered me money. A lot of money.”
“For what?”
“Information. Classified information on the projects I work on.”
“No way.”
“They also said if I didn’t take the money, they’d…”
Ken was losing it, so I helped him out. “Hurt you?”
He nodded and added, “And Lydia.’
“They knew about Lydia?”
“Yes,” he answered, catching his breath.
“Who were these guys?” I asked.
“I don’t know for sure, most likely Soviet agents, probably KGB.”
“KGB? You mean spies?”
Ken answered with another quick nod.
Under different circumstances, I might have just burst out laughing. KGB spies? I’ve pitched my share of whoppers in my time, but this took the fish-that-got-away tale to a whole new level. The only problem was, in that moment, Ken seemed so earnest, so genuinely scared to death, that I…well, let’s just say if he was spinning a yarn, he was doing a darn good job of it.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“What could I do?” he answered. “I told them I’d do it. Then I went to the men’s room and slipped out the back. I’ve been on the run ever since.”
“Kenny, why haven’t you called the police?”
“I can’t call the police,” he snapped again. “Trip, you have to get this. What I do is classified. Perhaps the most classified projects this country is working on. I don’t exist. What I do doesn’t exist. I can’t tell anybody about it, not even the police. In fact, there are only a handful of people in our own government who know about the work I do, or where I do it.”
“Can’t you call one of them?”
“I just did.”
Ken was hanging on by a very thin thread, so I was very gentle when I asked, “Why didn’t you call them last night?”
He took a deep breath and let his head fall. “They killed her, Trip. They killed my Lydia. They must’ve been waiting for me at my house, but Lydia….” He almost broke down again. Thankfully, after a few deep breaths, he pulled it together and answered my question. “As soon as I was away from The Jam Jar and it was safe, I called the Ranch so they could bring me in.”
“The Ranch?” I asked.
“It’s what they call where I work. It’s about ninety miles north of here. Officially, it doesn’t exist. I shouldn’t have told you that, either.”
“It’s okay, go on.”
“Getting into the Ranch isn’t easy. You can’t just go there, you have to be brought there. To do that, specific protocols must be adhered to. I told them what had happened, and a Code Red was issued. The Ranch went on complete lockdown. I was given the location of a dead drop where I could acquire a weapon and ordered to stay out of sight until a proper protocol could be enacted.”
“Why didn’t they come and get you immediately?”
He shook his head. “Even under normal circumstances, that’s not how things are done at the Ranch. Nothing is ever that straightforward. To get from point A to point B, you go to point M, L, and Z first. Secrecy surrounding the Ranch supersedes everything. Bottom line, I’m expendable, the Ranch isn’t. I had to follow protocol. Do you understand?”
“Of course, I do.” Of course, I didn’t, but I acted like I did. “So, has a protocol been enacted?”
“Yes, just now they gave me a pick-up location, and I need you to take me there. Will you help me, Trip? My life literally depends on it.”
“The police are looking for you, Kenny. They ordered me to contact them if I heard from you. What am I supposed to—”
“All that will get taken care of once I’m back at the Ranch. The police won’t be a problem, I promise. Please, Trip, I’ve got no one else to turn to.”
All I had to do was say no. Pick up the phone, call Clegg, let him sort out all the top secret mumbo-jumbo stuff, and then I could go back to being the bugle blowing tour de force the gods had intended me to be, done and done, thank you very much, don’t forget your waitress and bartender on the way out. All I had to do was say no. Yeah, I didn’t do that. Here’s a little Trip factoid: I’m a sucker for a friend on the ropes. It�
�s just who I am. Besides, I had a little secret mission of my own in the works.
“Okay, Kenny. I’ll help you,” I said.
He let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Trip. Thank you.”
I stood up and struck a most heroic pose. “So, where’re we going?”
“A gas station north of the city. It’ll take about an hour to get there. You won’t have to wait around, just drop me off and leave. In fact, you can’t wait around.”
“I guess we better hit the road, then.”
Ken stood and extended his hand. “I owe you, Trip. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you, but I will. Whatever you need, just ask. I’ll be there for you.”
And there it was. See? I told you it was best to let Ken come up with the solution to a problem himself. I took his hand and shook it. “Don’t mention it, Kenny,” I humbly replied. “As a matter of fact, I could use your advice with a little problem I’ve got. Have I ever told you about this guy I know named Fat Tony?”
Chapter 6
There’s a word, can’t remember what it is right now, but it means the opposite of claustrophobia. Where claustrophobia is the fear of closed-in spaces, this word means the fear of wide-open spaces. I wouldn’t say I actually fear wide-open spaces per se, but they do make me a bit jittery. I told you that so I can tell you this: even though I’ve lived in Las Vegas for a while now, I’m still not real keen on the desert, especially the desert at night. It’s just so deserted. I realize many people love coming out here and experiencing the plethora of shiny dots sparkling up the vast Nevada night sky, but as for me, no thank you. I prefer my stars on the red carpet. You’re probably asking, “Trip, didn’t you grow up on a farm in Indiana?” Yes, I did. I didn’t like wide-open spaces there, either.
I had no idea what road we were on. All I knew for sure is we were somewhere north of the city, well off the main highway, and heading into ever increasing wide-openness. Nor was it a relaxing road trip. The journey began with Ken scrunching himself into the passenger seat as I drove away from my apartment—yes, he actually did that. Needless to say, I didn’t drop the convertible top. In fact, in an attempt to ease Ken’s paranoia, I covered his head with my black suit jacket until we were safely outside the city limits. A thoughtful gesture on my part, given I believed Ken had taken two giant leaps beyond the line of wacko. Once we were on the open road and Ken was upright again, I tried to engage him in small talk. He wasn’t interested. We’d been driving for over an hour before Ken uttered his first complete sentence. “Slow down, we’re getting close.”
I didn’t know how he knew we were getting close to anything, since I couldn’t see beyond the headlights. “Do you see it?” I asked.
He leaned into the windshield and squinted like a sailor in a crow’s nest looking for land. “Right there, that’s it,” he announced, pointing into the darkness.
I pulled off the road and onto the shoulder, coming to a stop by an old oil drum propping up a hand-painted sign that simply read: GAS. I kicked on my high beams and shined them on a dilapidated shed sitting twenty yards away in the dark. Columns of old tires were stacked roof high on both sides of the rotting structure, and off to the right was the corroded skeleton of what was once a pickup truck. A long deceased soft drink machine sat by a rectangular opening where I supposed a door once hung, and as far as I could tell, there were no windows. The station’s single gas pump was the type where you pumped the fuel up into a glass bottle before putting it into your tank. I think the sign on top of the relic advertised the Texaco star, but it was far too dark and the image far too rusted for me to know for sure. In short, the whole place looked like it hadn’t sold a gallon of go-go-juice since the Model T was all the rage. Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it. I couldn’t believe Ken actually expected me to just drop him off and leave. I couldn’t believe he was willing to be left.
“Nice place,” I quipped. “Are all the secret pick-up locations this chic?”
Ken didn’t respond.
“I should talk to my congressman about how my tax dollars are being spent.”
Not even a chuckle.
Ken opened the door and got out. He jerked his head from side to side and slipped the pistol he’d brought from the apartment into the waist of his trousers, taking special care to cover the weapon with his shirttail. He started to shut the car door.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said.
He leaned in. “Just take this road back the way we came. When you get to the main highway, make a right, you’ll be heading toward town.”
“But…”
“Oh, yeah, sorry, Trip, I forgot.” He reached into his front pocket and took out a wad of money. “Here’s about a hundred bucks, I think.” Then he went to his back pocket and took out a checkbook. He removed a pen from his shirt pocket, scribbled his name on the bottom of the check and handed it to me. “You can get this cashed tomorrow at the bank. Just make it out for whatever Fat Tony wants. There’s plenty of money in there.”
“No, Kenny…I mean, thank you, but…I just can’t leave you out here alone.”
“You have to, Trip. They’ll be here any minute to pick me up. They’re probably here already, and we just can’t see them. But you have to go now. I’ll be okay.”
“Really? They’re here?” I said, looking around.
“Probably.” Then he forced a smile. “You playing somewhere tonight, Trip?”
“What? Oh, yeah, I thought I’d go by The Jam Jar and sit in with Eighty-Eight.”
He nodded. “Wish I could be there.”
“Me too, Kenny.”
“Do me another favor, Trip.”
“What’s that?”
“Play Louie’s ‘Basin Street Blues.’”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Of course.”
It seemed like he wanted to say something else to me, but he didn’t. He shut the car door and ran off into the darkness.
I’ve been in strange situations before—oh, I could tell you stories—but leaving a friend in the middle of the desert with a gun at night to be picked up by…not exactly sure by who…because he was being hunted by secret agents, who killed his girlfriend, because he wouldn’t sell them super-duper secret information about super-duper secret projects he was working on, was a new one. I’m not saying I’d completely bought into Ken’s spy story, but all the cloak and dagger stuff had my nerves on edge and my imagination firing on more cylinders than the Falcon. The long drive back to town was downright surreal. My palms sweated, my heart raced, and even though I saw no headlights behind me, or for that matter coming toward me, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being followed. I began seeing baddies disguised as cactus around every curve and became thoroughly convinced the tumbling tumbleweed was out to get me. I don’t think I started breathing normally again until I reached the city limit sign. The lights of Sin City never looked so serene. God, I hate the desert.
There are many less-than-wonderful things about being a professional musician: notoriously low pay, ridiculously weird hours, and absolutely no job security whatsoever, to name only a few. However, one of the best things, and I think my fellow troubadours will back me up on this, is how magically one can wash away whatever miserable day one has had by getting lost in a sea of sixteenth notes. That was my intention as I pulled into the parking lot of The Jam Jar. The last twenty-four hours had gone from violent to heinous to just plain bizarre, and I was done. All I wanted to think about now was laying into a groove and executing the perfectly placed pentatonic scale. I got out of the car, retrieved my horn from the trunk, and made a beeline for the door.
The joint was jumpin’, to coin a cliché. Betsy was throwin’ down booze, Luther was throwin’ down bull, and the Eight-Eight Eddie Quartet was throwin’ down some seriously righteous licks. The crowd cheered when I took the stage. Eighty-Eight flashed his big yellow teeth at me and pointed. Friends, I know a solo when I’m offered one, and I was all over this one.
The s
ong was “A Night in Tunisia,” and from the moment I put my lips to the mouthpiece, the transformative power of music took hold. I let everything out: Fat Tony’s beat down, Lydia’s murder, Clegg’s interrogation, Ken’s nutty spy story, even the desert. I took no prisoners. I played, not so much from the heart, but from the gut. I wish you could’ve been there because words don’t do it justice. In all modesty, I was brilliant. Maybe more brilliant than I’d ever been—which is saying something. If you ever run into anybody who was there that night, just ask them. I have no doubt they’ll back me up.
What was supposed to be me sitting in on a couple of numbers turned into me playing every set, and on pretty much every song. Yes, I played “Basin Street Blues” for Ken, as well as a cool bebop version of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” for Lydia because I knew it was her favorite. Corny? Perhaps. But it made me feel better, and that’s worth something. In fact, the whole gig was just what the doctor ordered. By the end of the evening, I was relaxed, rejuvenated, and back to being the happy-go-lucky Trip Callaway we’ve all come to know and love.
I was saying my good-nights to Silas, the drummer, Vernon, the bass player, and Reeds, the sax man, when Eighty-Eight came up. “Real fine tootin’, Trip.”
“Thank you, Eighty-Eight. And thanks for letting me sit in.”
“You can always blow out some cobwebs here, daddy-o.”
I chuckled. “Well, my cobwebs sure needed some blowing out tonight.”
Eighty-Eight Eddie was black as night, thin as a rail, and as old as…well, the joke goes Eighty-Eight Eddie taught Methuselah how to ride a bicycle. When it came to his attire, what the man lacked in variety, he more than made up for in consistency. I’d never seen him in anything other than a black suit, white shirt, black necktie, and a snappy black fedora. His other distinguishing characteristic was a wide, almost cartoon-like smile perpetually plastered across his boney face. But when it came to being a musician, there was nothing predictable about Eighty-Eight Eddie. He was a virtuoso. A master pianist who could play anything, in any key, in any style, and when he did, hang on, because it’d be unlike anything you’d ever heard before. I never understood why Eighty-Eight wasn’t a household name like Art, Thelonious, or Oscar. He absolutely should have been.
