by Robin Ray
CHAPTER 35
By dinner time, Protest Day had devolved into Protest Night. The sit-in on Tinker Street effectively closed the thoroughfare to traffic. Firecrackers were popping off everywhere. Informal musical groups sprang up around town in the bars, restaurants, parks and houses of worship. Some people dared traipse around in the nude as a form of civil protest. Bullhorns were being used to shout demands to the angels who simply stood by and accepted all the dissention. Tempers flared even further after law enforcement officers from Legal Heaven were brought in to keep the throngs in check. Unlike traditional riot police, this battalion didn’t require pepper spray, water hoses, shields or other riot-quelling devices. Just one stone flung their way would automatically backfire on the pitcher; yes, those who forgot that rule was reminded the hard way as nurses worked overtime to clean and bandage their self-made wounds.
Throughout the night, different citizens went up to the makeshift podium in front of the station to vent their piece. It was becoming clear, however, that two factions were developing – those who wanted Justice for Jones and those who thought the best form of protest would be to simply prepare and have the concerts as a show of force that, yes, the musicians were still in charge of their destiny. Not surprisingly, the artists who insisted on Justice for Jones were those from his era. This included Papa John Creach, Joey Covington, Paul Kantner and Skip Spence from Jefferson Airplane, Mama Cass, Dickie Peterson and Ralph Burns Kellogg from Blue Cheer, Bob Hite, Alan Wilson and Harry Vestine from Canned Heat, John Lennon, George Harrison, Bert Sommer, Tim Hardin, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Clive Palmer from The Incredible String Band, and many others. The musicians who said, “Fuck it, let’s dance!” included Phil Lynott, John Bonham, Jon Lord, Kurt Cobain, Shannon Hoon, Layne Staley, Chris Squire, Keith Emerson, Scott Weiland, David Bowie, Bon Scott, Glenn Frey, Rushton Moreve from Steppenwolf, Randy Rhoads, James “Honeyman” Scott and Pete Farndon from The Pretenders, and several others.
For a while, it seemed like the Justice for Jones crew was going to win, given the unrivaled popularity and influence of artists from his era. The Let’s Party contingent, however, had an ace in the hole. They brought out a secret weapon which no one in attendance could deny – the grandfather of rock & roll, New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair. The words of the legendary bluesman, it seemed, still held court amongst his disciples. Because he thought that the concert would be their best revenge, the artists sided with him and started dispersing around midnight.
The next morning, preparation for the Labor Day Festival began in earnest. The transfer stations in the basement of the police station were getting a kind of workout it hadn’t seen in decades. Streams of carpenters, electricians, monitor engineers, riggers, lighting and sound technicians, the Porta John people, the press, camera crews, medical and security, food services, sanitation and related concerns came flooding through town. As there were no motorized vehicles in Heaven, the artists relied on the matter-manipulating angels to transport and erect the lighting system. Sound and visual rigging for the three-day concert was a breeze because the giant video monitors and speaker systems were, luckily, virtual. With the musicians and angels working side by side, there was no doubt that things were beginning to look up.
That afternoon, Tony and Gregory went on an impromptu tour of Imperial Farms to see how things were coming along. In total, there were about 70 people involved in setting up for the massive event. Speaking to a member of the construction crew, they learned that the stage should be complete in a week to ten days. With Labor Day fast approaching, the detectives felt they were running out of time and decided to speed up their investigation a notch.
“You know what I was thinking?” Gregory said as they strolled around the field. “That whole 27 Club business.”
“What about it?” Tony asked.
“You ever had a gut feeling that something just doesn’t seem right?” he asked. “I can’t help thinking about what Amy Winehouse scratched in the dirt. I don’t know. Maybe it is a dead end and she really was just writing nothing.”
“I can read your mind, G,” the young PI stated. “I have a feeling we’re going back to the house, like, soon.”
“I was thinking about now, actually,” Gregory confessed.
The investigators arrived at their destination around 2PM. That no one was home was a plus; Gregory had never met a lock he couldn’t pick. Entering the house from the back, the detectives rifled through the cabinets in the kitchen, the broom closets, the vanities in the bathrooms, the shelves in the living room, and the dressers and closets in every bedroom.
“I’m beat,” Tony admitted when they plopped down on a sofa in the living room to relax. Sweating profusely, both D’s were drinking flower sodas procured from the dispenser in the basement studio.
“You know,” Gregory speculated, “I wonder if we’re looking for the wrong thing.”
“What do you mean?” his charge asked.
“When I was training to become a detective, there was a class I took called ‘Alternatives to Interrogation’. The goal was to get investigators to think outside the box; you know, look for clues from a non-traditional viewpoint. Right now, we’re focused on the who, what, when, where, why and how of Amy’s missing soul,” he explained, “but I wonder if we’re asking the wrong question.”
“Yep,” Tony admitted, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“Mathematically,” Gregory said, trying his best to put his words into palatable language, “the universe is non-orientable. In the greater scheme of things, you can’t point to one direction and call it north or south because where is its reference point? There isn’t any.”
“You know,” the youngster said, “whatever you’re smoking, I don’t want it.”
“Hear me out for a minute,” his instructor advised him. “I was lost at the beginning, too. The professor had good ideas, but I think because he was German, some things may have been lost in translation. Anyway, he looked at the universe as continually beginning and ending.”
“What?”
“You know what a Mobius strip is?”
“That’s that twisted piece of paper that goes around and around with no beginning or end,” the clever young D answered.
“Right,” Gregory agreed, “except the universe is not flat like a Mobius strip. It’s more of a massive, how should I put this, formless entity with no specific dimensions, just subatomic particles weaving around itself into infinity. And that’s what he meant when he said the universe begins and ends all the time, because there’s no point you can recognize to insert yourself into that you can claim is the beginning or the end.”
“And this is related to Amy Winehouse how?”
“Remember, I just alluded to the universe having no beginning or end,” he repeated. “When people ask questions that begin with who, what, when where, why and how, they automatically ascribe a dimension to the answer they’re looking for. But those questions are woefully inadequate to something as formless, massive and endless like the universe. In other words, to reveal the secret of the universe, you have to move beyond who, what, when, where, why and how.”
“What else is there?”
“That’s the rub,” the amateur philosopher said. “It’s beyond our own human-thinking dimensional restraint to know what that question would be. We just don’t have the capacity for another question outside of the usual six.”
“So, we can’t know the answer because we don’t know the question,” Tony guessed.
“Exactly,” Gregory stated, “and I have a feeling that’s why we’re going around in circles. We gotta think outside the box. Who said, ‘these are the times that try men’s souls?’”
“Donald Trump?” Tony asked jokingly.
“No, you nitwit,” the elder PI laughed. “But maybe you’re right because he did make a fortune with all his businesses. You know,” he added, glancing at the sign over the hearth –
Amy’s Bed & Breakfast Inn
“…I bet Amy’s business would have really taken off if she wasn’t blindsided like that.”
“Yeah,” Tony agreed, eyeing the sign. “All that trouble…for nothing.”
The young D stared curiously at the handmade 3’ by 1’ marquee consisting of black cursives on a white field. Something about it made the wheels in his head start spinning at 100mph. Getting up, he went over and took a closer, more meaningful look at it.
“What’s the matter?” Gregory asked him.
“Hey, G,” Tony wondered, “do you have that picture of Amy on you?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Why?”
“Let me see it.”
Complying, Gregory removed the photo and handed it to his sidekick.
“I’ll be damned,” Tony mumbled, staring at the photo. “Hey, G, look at this.”
The elder detective walked over to the sign. “What am I looking at?”
“That’s not a J in the photo,” young sleuth said. “She died before she was finished; she was making a B.”
“How do you know?”
Tony took out the copy of the sheet of cursive letters given to him by Deng Shiru and handed it to Gregory who, after studying it only briefly, quickly noticed the connection.
“They look the same,” the elder D realized.
“See the B?” the young sleuth asked, pointing to the Bed & Breakfast sign. “Amy started drawing the first part with an upstroke that looks like a J. She just never got around to completing it. This Chinese calligrapher in Painters showed me how she did it.”
“27B,” Gregory hummed. “It could still mean Brian.”
“Think outside the box,” Tony instructed him.
The ex-cop pondered for a moment, then –
SLAM!
“What was that?” Tony asked.
“Sounded like the back door,” Gregory guessed.
Quickly racing to the rear of the house, Tony pushed open the back door; both detectives then stepped out to the back porch, surveyed the area, but saw nothing.
“Maybe it was just the wind,” Gregory pondered.
“I think we were being spied on,” the young PI figured.
“What’s that?” Gregory asked, eyeing the ground around the Hawkeye apple tree. Quick stepping towards it, he saw that somebody had been digging in the dirt where Brian’s wooden case was buried. “Now who would know where this stash was?” he asked himself. “I told no one.”
“What stash?” Tony asked.
“Brian’s paraphernalia.”
“Sounds like somebody’s covering their tracks,” the new detective surmised.
“Maybe,” Gregory mused. “We’d should probably head over to the station to make sure he’s okay.”
Racing into the station minutes later, the out of breath detectives went directly to Sergeant Drasovya who had his anorexic right foot up on the desk cutting his toenails by carefully using a laser beam emitted from his right index finger.
“We have to see Brian Jones right away,” Gregory told him.
“Why?” Nosferatu’s doppelgänger asked, putting his right foot down.
“He might be in danger.”
“Oh, you humans,” the sergeant groaned. “Everything’s an emergency with you. How y’all live past 20 with all that stress and aggravation on your bodies is a mystery to me.”
“Humor me,” Gregory requested.
“Okay, okay,” Drasovya relented.
Entering the ground floor, all three individuals saw a shimmering bright light emitting from a cell just a few feet ahead. Hurrying quickly, they saw Brian Jones supine and unconscious in the middle of the floor. A glowing ball of pink light the size of a full-grown Doberman pinscher was entering the downed musician’s body.
“Hey!” the sergeant yelled, removing a ring of keys from his pocket.
Quickly opening the cell, he raced to the light, thrust his hand into it, then it disappeared. Crouching down by Brian, he palpated his carotid artery.
“He’s alive,” Drasovya said, “but barely. Let’s get him across the street.”
“How?” Gregory asked.
The sergeant turned to Tony. “The drunk tank is two doors down on the same side as this cell. Bring one of the wheelchairs, if you can.”
The young sidekick immediately ran out of the cell to fetch the medical equipment.
“What was that light?” Gregory asked Drasovya.
“I’ve never seen that before,” the sergeant admitted. “I’ll bring the matter up with the other angels later. How did you know Mr. Jones was in trouble?”
“We were continuing our investigation at the 27 Club,” the detective answered, “but as it turned out, we weren’t alone. The back door slammed; by the time we went out, the person was gone. Whoever it was, they knew where Brian hid his drugs.”
“If that’s the case,” Drasovya figured, “then they came by to silent him permanently.”
Gregory crouched down by Brian and lifted his tunic to expose his abdomen. “Just as I figured,” he realized, pointing to the fresh, but faint, cigarette burn-like scar beneath his ribcage. He turned to the sergeant. “Is there a way you can detect the Anima Furabatur from a distance?”
“Perhaps,” the sergeant said. “It’ll be hard because we don’t know what materials it’s comprised of. I will discuss that with the other angels.”
“What human can change into a ball of light?” Gregory asked rhetorically.
“You’re suggesting one of us is behind all of this?” the shocked sergeant inquired.
“Is that not within the realm of possibility?”
“No, it isn’t,” Drasovya firmly attested. “Arrgghh!” he suddenly screamed.
The sergeant’s wail caught the detective completely off guard. “What’s the matter?”
“Why did this have to happen on my watch with Vai so close to visiting?!”
Gregory shook his head in disbelief. “I really have to meet this angel that has you guys quaking in your boots.”
“Put that in writing,” Drasovya told him. “I’d like to see you eat those words after you meet her.”
“Here we go,” Tony interjected, returning with an old wooden wheelchair.
“Where’d you get that from?” Gregory asked. “The antique store on Main Street?”
“Come on,” the sergeant growled. “Let’s get him up. We’re running out of time.”