The (Original) Adventures of Ford Fairlane

by Rex Weiner

  “Shoot.”

  “Not here.”

  “Where?”

  “Do you want to see the Danelectro?”

  “Let’s go.”

  We split the club. She said the hot axe was stashed in her loft up the street. Walking on West Broadway, I felt the wind razor the back of my neck. Hell no, I wasn’t going to follow Shirley into that loft, no way. I figured it for a setup. But my idea was to peep the address first, then drag her downtown to play canary. That way the cops could take care of their case and I could take care of mine. I had it all figured out.

  Hound-dog cabs streaked uptown looking for fares. Overhead, a jet snarled looking for a place to land. A street cleaner sucked the gutter. A dead Daily News blew by, followed by a bum in a wool cap pulled low and a shabby overcoat. Then, too late, I heard the words again.

  “Looth jointh?”

  I went for my piece but the creep sapped me hard. A flash of red vinyl, then there was nothing. Nothing.

  Chapter 3

  Fifty-Two Pick-up or Die

  When I came to I was in a carnival and my head was the Ferris wheel. It finally slowed down enough for me to make out a big loft crammed with electronic equipment. I tried to sit up but my hands were lashed to the cot.

  “Relaxth.”

  The harelip stood over me, grinning. Next to him was a little skinny guy who was missing something: a nose. Suddenly it made sense.

  “I’m Sphinx,” he said in a voice like Freon. “You have already met my associate, Pointy. I’m sure you can guess how I obtained my own name. But can you guess why Pointy has his?”

  “No idea, bub.”

  “It’s easy. Show him, Pointy.”

  Pointy the hairlip flicked his wrist and the K55 clicked open. He clamped my left hand in his and inserted the cool blade beneath the nail of my little finger.

  “You see? He only uses the point.”

  ***

  It was a big loft. Maybe twenty by thirty. I could see an elevator. There was a little room off to one side. I counted six columns holding up the ceiling. I counted them to keep my mind off my lacerated digit. It hurt like a motherfucker and I wanted to kill. Except I was tied down and the bastards had me where they wanted me.

  “The pain is entirely unnecessary,” smirked the guy named Sphinx. “Just tell us what we wish to know.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “My associate will remove each of your remaining fingernails.”

  “What if I still don’t talk?”

  Pointy grabbed my ear and made a slicing motion in the air. The van Gogh treatment. That was bad. But I was curious.

  “And what if I still don’t talk?”

  Sphinx smiled and turned to his harelipped pal.

  “Pointy, why don’t you play your favorite record for our guest?”

  The place was jammed with all kinds of electronic gear. There were about five synthesizers, three control boards, all kinds of hook-ups, input-outputs, thick spaghetti bundles of wires draped from the ceiling and walls, and a massive phalanx of speakers.

  Pointy pressed a button.

  A giant boom rotated. It touched a tall stack of records, then slid downward. Then it touched another stack of discs, moving upward. Then it paused. The mechanical claw grasped Pointy’s choice. It slid out. The arm rotated. It slung the disc onto the turntable. This monstrous jukebox was equipped with a perfect sound system. Only a genius could have rigged such acoustics: subtle, powerful. The only defect was Pointy’s taste: Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. Full volume.

  “Okay! Okay! Shut it off, I’ll talk!”

  Sphinx nodded. Pointy, disappointed, poked the button. The hellish robot switched off. These guys were connoisseurs of torture. I figured I’d better play the game their way for now. But the game—was it five-card stud or fifty-two pickup? Sphinx threw out the first card.

  “What did Ike Schmidt tell you before he died?”

  I relayed all the details: Shirley, the stolen guitar she laid on Ike, the coke that turned out to be poison.

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing about…Martin?” I shook my head.

  “Martin. Martin. The name means nothing to you?”

  “Martin makes a good classical guitar.”

  “Don’t be funny! You’re hiding something!”

  “Fuck off!”

  “Pointy…”

  The demented harelip, drooling, slid the point of his knife halfway under my thumbnail. If wishes were sulfuric acid, he would have dissolved. But as it was, I sweated. And sucked a lot of spit. Sphinx glanced at his watch.

  “We don’t have much time. I ask you again, what do you know about Martin?” “I don’t know anything!”

  “Ike knew too much,” he muttered.

  A bell rang somewhere. Sphinx looked worried. He snapped his fingers and Pointy put away his blade. I breathed easier.

  “Put him in the room and shut him up,” he said. “The others are coming. The meeting will finish in two hours. After that, Mr. Fairlane, you’ll be given one more chance. Then…”

  “Then what?”

  Sphinx shrugged. “You die.”

  I was gagged and packed away in the dark room on the side of the elevator. It was soundproofed, apparently for recording purposes. Lying still, I could barely hear things happening in the loft: the elevator traveling up and down; people walking around; chairs scraping the floor; muffled voices, many of them. And then my eyes grew used to the dark and I saw something unbelievable.

  Along the walls of the room hung about forty or fifty guitars. There was a ’59 Gibson Sunburst Les Paul; a ’58 powder blue Stratocaster with what looked like the original maple neck. I saw a 335 Gibson ES Dotmarker hanging next to an original Gibson Byrdland. And right over my head was the Link Wray lyre–body Danelectro. Rare, fantastic guitars were all over the place, all hot merchandise—worth about half a million bucks. But the unbelievable thing was each guitar was frozen forever in a coffin of solid, crystal-clear Plexiglas. Nobody would ever play these guitars again.

  No doubt about it. These guys were perverts.

  Looking for a way out, I craned my neck, pulling at the cords binding my wrists and ankles. Two hours and they’d be back to bump me off. What were these weirdos plotting? Who—or what—the hell was Martin? Why’d they steal and kill all these rare guitars? It pissed me off plenty.

  There was a hullabaloo in the big room beyond the locked door. Someone was making a speech. A crowd was clapping, then came music—electronic stuff. The melody was familiar in a strange way. What was that song?

  A crack of light shone beneath the door. A woman’s voice piped up. It seemed right outside. The voice was one I’d heard before, but I couldn’t place it right away. The crack of light blinked. Something slid underneath the door. It touched my ear. I thought it was a mouse. Three light bulbs flashed suddenly in my brain.

  The song—it was a synthesizer version of “Deutschland Über Alles,” sounding like two dozen robots on methedrine. The voice—it was Shirley’s, the vinyl-clad vamp who’d lured me into this mess. The thing on the floor next to my ear—it was a knife.

  Now if I could only reach over and…

  The door swung open.

  Chapter 4

  Night Train to Nowhere

  Two naked women stood in galvanized tubs of water playing the theme from Star Wars on saxophones while a third woman dipped her bare feet in pots of paint and danced across a large canvas. A video crew recorded the performance on a State Arts Council grant and fifty suckers who’d doled out ten bucks apiece for entry were watching. Then the ceiling opened up and a guy clutching a knife dropped down, kicking over the paint pots and knocking one of the naked broads out cold. The audience clapped politely.

  Standing on the West Broadway sidewalk,
dripping paint, I flagged a cab and headed uptown to spend the night in a hideaway flophouse where nobody asks you any questions. Pointy, Sphinx, and their gang would be wise to my usual downtown haunts. And any minute they’d find the ripped up floorboards and the guy who had walked into that little room looking for the john all tied up and gagged. Soon those crazy nuts would hit the bricks crying for blood.

  Two matters had to be settled right away. One was to find Shirley, my only alibi in the Ike Schmidt murder. The other was to telephone my client with the bad news about his missing axe so I could dump this lousy case. Everything about it was getting on my nerves: that weird loft, the Nazi music, all those sabotaged guitars. Too many numbers and they just didn’t add up. I wanted my last paycheck. I wanted out.

  For a week I lay low, dialing London every chance I got. The answer was the same each time: client out of town, touring with the band. First he was in France, then Italy, then Australia and New Zealand. Finally, over breakfast in a Lexington Avenue Blarney Stone, I cracked open the Daily News to discover my client had been busted for reefer and locked in a Tokyo slammer. If you want to know the truth, working for rock stars is nothing but headaches.

  Getting itchy, I decided to try to pin down Shirley. I began checking the clubs, keeping an eye out for Sphinx’s mugs and the other eye on the target, for that night I got a tip she was spinning discs at intermission for the Wazmo Nariz gig at Irving Plaza, but all I caught was a bunch of dolts taken in by a third-rate Joe Cocker. Another night I checked out a report she was backstage at the Palladium on Fourteenth Street, recharging batteries for Gary Numan’s robots. All I found was Nash the Slash and other assorted mod automatons.

  Shirley was a no-show all over town.

  I walked into Tier 3 on a wet Thursday night. A trio called the Cyborgs was beeping and booping through a carefully programmed synthesizer set. A handful of people were dancing halfheartedly.

  “Terrible, aren’t they.” said Simeon, a small blond guy who booked the bands. It was less of a question than a statement.

  “Why’d you book them?”

  “Find me something better.”

  I named half a dozen bands. He shook his head sadly.

  ‘They’re guitar bands. A dying breed. You can’t find them anymore. There’s not a guitar band playing anywhere in the city.”

  Sure enough, everywhere I went—Trax, Heat, CBGB, the ’80s, Hurrah, Irving Plaza—the electronic boys had taken over. The whole music scene in New York was completely dominated by synthesizers.

  “Ay caramba!” complained Joe “King” Carrasco over beer and nachos at a Mexican joint too good to name. Joe’s not the complaining type, but he and his band, The Crowns, were in town from Austin, Texas, and having trouble.

  “They stole my guitar. Now we can’t play.”

  “Who stole it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. It was a Fender Telecaster. It makes me very mad.”

  “Go up to Forty-Eighth Street and buy a new one.”

  “Didn’t you hear, man? All the guitar shops on Forty-Eighth Street were firebombed last week!”

  “What about the Third Avenue pawnshops?”

  “Somebody pulled all the guitars shops out of hock. Every electric guitar in the whole city has disappeared. Muy malo. I’ve got to go back to Texas.”

  A few phone calls confirmed it. Like it was hit by some kind of disease, the city’s guitar population had been wiped out. I was just flashing on all those guitars stashed in that weird loft with Sphinx and Pointy when, opening up the Post, I saw that Tokyo had cut my client loose and sent him back to London. I chucked a dime in the phone and dialed the overseas operator. She made the connection.

  “’Ello?”

  It was a smooth, Liverpudlian accent, a voice known to more people than the Pope’s. I outlined the situation. He said he didn’t care what condition the guitar was in, he wanted it back and he’d pay me an extra two grand to get it, plus expenses. Rock stars think they can buy anything. Sometimes they’re right.

  Three nights in a row I spent slouched in a doorway like a Bowery bum. In my fist was a bottle of Night Train. Across the street was the loft where Sphinx did whatever he was doing. I was searching for a way in. The fourth night I found it. Dozens of people were trooping up to the door, ringing the buzzer. They gave some kind of code word before the door opened up. Looked like another one of those meetings. Pulling my hat down over my face, I decided to attend.

  It wasn’t difficult to blend in with the crowd going up the old freight elevator. An excited buzz was in the air, like something special was on tonight’s agenda. We reached the floor and went in. Pointy was standing guard, but he didn’t notice me.

  The room was packed with a funny sort of crowd. Half of them were Krauts or Brits, all dressed mod with crew cuts in tight, dark suits and Dave Clark boots. I recognized members of The Cyborgs and Nash the Slash. I took a seat with the others. There must have been nearly a hundred people, all sitting, waiting. For what? I measured the distance between the little room where the guitars were stashed and where I was sitting.

  All of a sudden there was that music again: a synthesizer rendition of “Deutschland Über Alles.” Everyone stood up and Nazi saluted. I did likewise. From behind a red curtain, out stepped Sphinx, all dolled up in a black uniform. A shoulder patch displayed two F-sharp notes in the form of jagged lightning bolts. The music quit. He motioned everyone to sit down.

  “Our campaign so far,” he announced, “has been as successful as we planned. At the present time, not one electric guitar exists within the city. Electronic music reigns supreme!”

  The crowd applauded furiously.

  “But we will not stop here,” he continued. “There are greater heights to scale. And so now, as I promised, you will see for the first time our secret weapon. With this weapon we will invade the hearts and minds of the public, conquer the music industry, and guarantee Top-40 hits for electronic music for decades to come!”

  More fanatical clapping.

  “The man you are about to meet is a genius, the son of a world-famous man who knew what true leadership was about. For years, he has labored in the remote jungles of South America, aided by the best minds of a brilliant, but fugitive regime. Now, at last, he comes to us bringing a fabulous secret weapon.”

  Sphinx tugged and the curtains feel aside.

  “Friends,” he declared, “please welcome Martin Bormann, Jr.!!”

  There he stood a chubby, little creep peering through a pair of specs with lenses thicker than coke bottles. Even so, his eyes projected a mad gleam. He turned to a keyboard, punched out a few high notes that squeezed through a dozen circuits, twisted around fifty condensers, bounced off a hundred microchips, and entered the human ear like red-hot scalpels. It was an eerie performance.

  The little maniac soaked up the applause, then held his hands in the air for quiet. “For many centuries,” he began, “musicians all over the world have sought the perfect tune. The Greeks called it the Orpheus Scale—a three-chord sequence so perfect, so matched to the rhythms of the human body, pitched so exactly to the brain’s own electronic impulses that it would instantly hypnotize all who listened.

  “Ten years ago, in the jungles of Peru, I came upon a Mayan temple. Inside that temple were many wonderful paintings and hieroglyphs describing the musical entertainments of that magnificent lost culture. Among those inscriptions was the score of a Mayan holy song, the title of which, when I translated it, was “Don’t Play Me.” Why? I wondered. Until finally, aided by computers, I deciphered the song itself. It contained three almost impossible chords in sequence—the Orpheus Scale! With it, any musician can rule the world. Together, we shall do exactly that!”

  He pointed a fat finger at a table stacked with papers.

  “There,” he said, “is the blueprint for world conquest. Sheet music containing the three-chord sequence e
mbedded in my own updated version of “Don’t Play Me.” Before you leave here, each of you will take that sheet music, practice it with your bands, go out to the new wave clubs, and play it. But don’t forget: whenever you play “Don’t Play Me” wear earplugs, or the three-chord sequence will paralyze you as it paralyzes your audience.”

  There was a break for refreshments. Lots of Heineken beer and schnitzel. The guy next to me was lighting a cigarette. It gave me an idea. It was a desperate tactic, but it had to work or the whole world would literally be up to its ears in trouble.

  The guy let me bum a smoke. I palmed his butane lighter. Reaching into my pockets I dug out a rubber band, a paper clip, and a pack of matches. Working quickly and using my hat for cover, I fashioned a serviceable version of what the bomb squad calls a Puerto Rican hand grenade. The lit cigarette wedged into the matchbook made a perfect time-delay fuse. While everybody was milling around, I edged over to the table with the sheet music, then I backed away. I bumped into something. It was Pointy, or rather it was Pointy’s gun.

  “Looking for something?” he grinned. I wanted to bust him in the harelip, but Sphinx appeared similarly armed.

  “I hope you enjoyed our little presentation tonight,” said Sphinx. “Because it’s the last thing you’ll ever enjoy. Take him away, Pointy.”

  They would have taken me away, too, if the whole back of the loft hadn’t exploded into a mass of flames. I gave Pointy a karate kick to the heart that would have felled Bruce Lee. Sphinx ran to save the sheet music, but it was too late. I went after him but he disappeared in the mad crush of people struggling to escape the fire that was rapidly engulfing the loft. Next thing I knew, a heavy part of the ceiling collapsed and I was surrounded by smoke, blaze, and waves of burning heat, so I dove blindly into a solid sheet of flame in a crazed effort to find a way out of certain death…

  Chapter 5

  Manic Panic

  Five tourists from Long Island with their newly purchased seven-by-nine photo-realist painting of a red stop sign from the R. J. Plimpton Gallery were struggling down West Broadway. Now my theory is that at birth each of us gets an allotment of luck. Some guys use it up over a lifetime of dice, cards, slow horses, and fast women. Me—I used up my share in thirty seconds crashing through the fifth story window of a burning loft building on West Broadway, landing in the middle of five open-mouthed tourists using a seven-by-nine-foot photo-realist painting as a trampoline.