A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1)

by Frank Westworth

  As the bar clock slipped past midnight, Bili sat herself down alongside Stoner. Swung her cascade of curls away from her eyes and smiled, cautiously. Caution is a kindness when dealing with a friend, particularly an unpredictable friend. A friend who was these days but not always and maybe not for ever a friend only in the club context. A musical friend. She smiled. Stoner smiled back.

  ‘Flying tonight, old man?’ As ever, the traditional gentle joke raised the traditional part-smile.

  ‘Not sure. You, young girl?’

  Bili shook more curls. They may have been natural; how do you tell?

  ‘I do have my four strings if you have your six.’

  They centred the stage. The audience, a packed crowd by now, shouted approval for what they hoped would follow. It was what they were there for.

  She sang too. Deeply in G.

  ‘One summer’s day, he went away . . .’ the first vocal burst of the evening. Songs can be rare events in jazz clubs. The audience went silent, leaned forward, elbows on tables, glasses lowered, conversation stilled. Bili sang as she played; beautifully and with the desperate wide smile the lyric demanded. A sad song of lost love and longing, superficially at least. Stoner stroked the strings of his Stratocaster, Stretch chorded sevenths in time with Bili’s wandering bass as she strolled towards the chorus.

  ‘He’s gone, but I don’t worry. I’m just sitting on top of the world.’

  Stoner switched from bass to middle pick-up, pulled the volume control around two points and built a slow, pensive verse around the bass and piano duo, then shook his head to Bili, who sang seamlessly into the next verse.

  Stoner’s personal internal blues lasted three numbers. Just three. And then, as is sometimes the way, he stood up from his high stool, shuffled his shoulders and glanced at Bili, who flicked a smile to Stretch, who kicked the piano’s loud pedal and shifted from minor to major for one single bar as Stoner flicked the pick-up selector away from him, all the way to full treble, reeled the volume control until his little finger could twist the pot no further, pulled his hand back till pick hit string right by the bridge and cranked everything he had into a complex part-chording, moving into ever-louder, sustained single notes. Guitar sang like a sax as he worked his rage, his frustration and his blues away. Feedback and talent battled for control of the instrument in a conflicted riot of exuberance for several verses more than any album producer would permit. Such is one delight of live music.

  Dream over, game played, he made eye contact with Bili and Stretch and the latter hammered the keys so that they rattled against the harsh staccato of the brittle Stratocaster, while Bili fretted her bass high on the board, fingers picking the heavy strings and dropping them back against the fretboard to provide a percussive beat to anchor the song. Piano took over from guitar, Stoner sat down mid-verse, switched back to the bass pick-up, halved the volume, killed the conflicts, the audience drew breath and applauded while Stretch on the piano pulled the whole train into the station of silence and the power trio took their bow.

  ‘Share a glass, Bili?’

  The unlucky house band returned to the stage, clapping their hands over their heads and nodding with fake respect.

  They sat at a table for two, as far into the shade as they could. Stretch sat in with the house band, providing encouragement and occasional ironic accuracy.

  ‘Should we be talking guitars for a while?’ She looked for a drink. Music is always a safe playground for musicians, even if they play for rivalry as much as for mutual respect. ‘Rumour told me that you were considering maybe, almost, contemplating, perhaps wondering, whether you might replace that old Strat?’

  Stoner’s elderly Fender was nothing less than notorious for its capricious moods. Ninety-nine plays out of a hundred it would function as Leo Fender had intended, and would sound rather better than a guitar of its age should, due to a little extra in the switching department, but on its off day it could be a bad boy indeed. A bad buzzy boy. Ancient wiring was the problem; the breakdown of the earthing the cause of the buzz. And the ancient nineteen-sixties soldering could possibly be the cause of the occasional inappropriate silence. Buzzing silence. Stoner had been known to threaten it with conversion into firewood. Or worse; conversion into an unplayed ornament, hanging on some collector’s trophy wall.

  ‘She’s at work again tonight, Bili. It just doesn’t get better. You know that. The thing is what it is and there’s nothing to be done about it. I hate it. I hate myself for hating it. I try to forget it and when we’re together I can pretend that it’s going to get right but I always know it won’t happen. She’s good at what she does. She enjoys what she does. She gets paid well for what she does. Everyone’s happy. Why change it?

  ‘And how is life in your world, hey?’

  Bili tipped back in her chair, tilted her head forward so that her face was mostly obscured by clouds of curls. She drummed her fingernails along the table’s edge; all eight of them, perfect pausing, no gaps between hands. She played keys as well as frets, and it showed.

  ‘I thought you’d deny it. Had a guitar all that time, all those years, all those shared solos, snatches of achievement, bursts of brilliance? Hard to ditch that for a modern impostor. An incomer. Something new which maybe just looks better and has a bit more flash, a bit less abrasion, a little more sparkle and a little less grit. If you did get yourself a new playing mate, a newer younger more flexible friend, then it could just turn into a passing thing. Fun while it lasts, brings an illusion of youth, impresses your buddies, but with no depth. No staying power.’

  Bili was, some suggested, older than she looked. She could certainly play as though she’d spent a hundred years practising.

  ‘But then again. You don’t necessarily need to get rid of the old Strat to play a different instrument, JJ. You could polish it up, pack it in silica gel and preserve it in your attic . . . You do have an attic?’

  Stoner smiled at her. With Bili conversation could be many things.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out, and anyway, what if I did try out a different guitar, lined it up side by side with the old familiar, played whichever I thought suited the song better? Just like the pros, with a half dozen guitars lined up waiting their turn. Isn’t that all a little organised? A little constraining? No room for manoeuvre, for improv, for a little jamming? How does that work? In any case, just how long have you been slapping that tired Ricky; there are better basses, too, lady.’

  ‘A day will come, JJ, when disaster will strike. It will be like your baby burst of brilliance just now, except in reverse. You will twist the loud knob, launch into the best blasting stomp of your life, and the only guy who’ll know it will be you, and even you won’t hear it, just feel it through your fingers. One day you’ll crank it all up and burst into the loudest silence of them all. Won’t that be good? Won’t that be a fine thing?

  ‘I’ll still applaud, though, because I will know that you have fretted your best, that musical history was made before my eyes, if not my ears, and that those notes will never sing your way again. And then you’ll go all Pete Townsend and smash the thing up out of rage. Just like that. How much did you say it’s worth, that most weary of Stratocasters?’

  ‘Too much. Far too much to play. You’re right, though. Come that bad day when the bloody soldering on the jack socket finally lets go, melted by the burning rays of the bright light of my truthful mastery, a bolt from above will strike down that crappy Rickenbacker, frizz those awesome curls of yours permanently straight, and Stretch will take all the credit, all the applause, all the booze for playing solo blues with no cues at all.’

  ‘Hell, JJ, you are a poet. Let us drink to that. Have you considered a flash young thing, maybe an Ibanez, good enough for Joe Satriani, they say, and he’s no slouch . . .’

  This is the thing about the Blue Cube. This is the thing about a good club, and about playing good music with good friends. It’s a world of its own. It’s not the real world. That mad place can be su
spended, ignored for a while, for a time when the realities can be different, when we can try to be what we are not, to be less than we are. We can be just Stoner the guitar player, Bili the bass. An all-absorbing, ever-challenging world where playing the blues blows away the irritations of reality, where one single dimension can take over and you can ignore the rest of it. Just for a while.

  Stoner was walking home. A walk along familiar streets after a few hours at the Blue Cube to balance his internal books. A walk provides time to think, to consider whether he really should return to his own private, semi-secret half-hidden home rather than to the dirty blonde’s. They might be similar, his homes, but only one of them would ever be likely to contain that blonde, even if the timing could rarely be guaranteed.

  His head was clear, his senses up and running well, thanks to the emotional purge of the night’s playing, the rivalries and the shared music of it all.

  Two men stepped into his path. One shorter than the other and chewing gum so emphatically that it must be an act. The other was larger, a little bit massive and using that mass to block his way. Not the action of an innocent friendly stranger who has lost his bearings in the big bad dark. He was sporting a decently expensive and tool-worked leather jacket which showed at least a tiny amount of dress sense, unlike the complete absence of politeness indicated by his blocking Stoner’s path.

  ‘Stoner.’

  A statement, not a question, and as such undeserving of a response. The lesser of the two had spoken. Stoner watched the bigger. If there was to be action as well as words, that was where it would originate. He said nothing. Took his bearings, took stock. No causes for concern, no reasons for alarm. So no need to produce any response at all, not vocal, not facial; no action required.

  ‘Stoner.’

  This could go on all night. Which was fine, Stoner was in no real hurry to find that the dirty blonde had yet to arrive home. So his mood could stay good for the time being at least.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ Gumchew appeared to be a man of little patience. ‘For fuck’s sake; you’re Stoner, yes?’

  Stoner continued to ignore him, continued to watch Leatherjacket. The latter appeared mainly to be confused. Maybe silence was less than golden where he came from.

  ‘Jesus.’

  Where obscenity fails, the good thug can always fall back on profanity. Stoner held no views on these grammatical subtleties, preferring at this point to observe that Leatherjacket’s big hands matched his big frame, and that those hands were flexing, as a boxer’s hands are wont to do before a fight. If this was some subtle attempt at making Stoner nervous, to impress him, it would need to ramp up a little.

  Finally, Stoner flicked his gaze to Gumchew. He raised a querying eyebrow. Said nothing. Then looked back at Leatherjacket, who looked right back, flexing his fingers. Stoner wondered for a moment whether he was in fact that rumoured triangle soloist and was seeking an invite to display his art at the Blue Cube. Which delightful thought must have registered in a small smile because Gumchew changed his song a little.

  ‘Look. I know who you are. Who I am is unimportant. What is important is that I’m looking for Handy Mandy and you know where I can find her.’

  The evening was plainly a variety performance. First there was a little light romance over a soothing drop with the dirty blonde, followed by a few hours of good sweet music at the Blue Cube, and finally came the comedy. It was good, too. Stoner laughed. A real, honest laugh. A laugh from the heart.

  ‘You’re looking for a hand job?’

  Very few things could penetrate Stoner’s customary cool, but his mood was atypically elevated after the night’s blues, and this . . . well . . . it was a new experience for him. Over a long life – long by the standards of those who followed his alleged profession, at least – Stoner had been asked to locate many things, but never a hand job. He grinned. The dirty blonde would have been reaching for the Valium at this point, her hysteria a health hazard.

  Gumchew’s eyes bulged a little.

  Stoner beamed at him. ‘You’ve stopped a complete stranger in the street late in the dark of the night to ask him whether he is who you think he is and if so can he sort you out . . . a hand job?’

  His smile slipped.

  ‘Who suggested that I might be the right guy to procure such a service? Do you think I’m a pimp, you silly little boy? If we have a friend in common, unlikely as it seems, then he or she is someone with a considerable sense of humour. I don’t know many folk like that. Tell me this is all a joke, and we’ll get along much better.’

  Stoner leaned back, relaxed.

  ‘A hand job. That’s really, really good.’

  Gumchew appeared to have chewed a chilli. A hot one. Even under the poor lighting he was starting to puff up purple. Laughter was miles away from him. Stoner saw this and he chuckled more.

  ‘Handy Mandy!’ Gumchew yelled.

  Stoner beamed.

  ‘I heard OK the first time. And I am an unashamed man, but do you really intend to be broadcasting your secret needs so loudly? And in so public a place?’

  ‘Handy Mandy. Mandy Hanwell. You know her; she hangs around the club you play guitar in. She’s always there. She was there tonight. She owes something to the man we work for, her and me; you know where she is, and you will share that knowledge so that I can reclaim what she owes. You tell me how to find the stupid bitch, or you can give me what she owes and I will try to forget this. I will try to let you walk away. I will try to forgive your stupid insinuation, your stupid attempt at humour.’

  Leatherjacket was bouncing on his toes and flexing his fingers again.

  Stoner was smiling no more.

  ‘I know a lot of people. A lot more people know me. I know no Mandy Hanwell, and I most certainly know no . . . for fuck’s sake . . . Handy Mandy. Let me be, let me by and we can both move on. We have no argument. I’ve told you a simple fact. I have no reason to lie to you, comic though you are.’

  Leatherjacket was a deceptively fit and a deceptively fast man. He leaned his weight onto his left leg and swung his right foot in a well-balanced and well-executed attacking kick. The key to defence is anticipation. As soon as Leatherjacket stopped flexing his fingers, as soon as he stopped bouncing on his toes, as soon as he looked at the guitar case Stoner carried in his right hand, Stoner had understood perfectly what would happen next.

  What happened next was that Stoner strode forward past the upswinging foot and caught the knee behind it. A well-delivered kick is an excellent attack; the excellent defence is to prevent it landing.

  Stoner’s weight was on his left foot; his right foot swung a little outward so that the inside edge of his Caterpillar boot sole met Leatherjacket’s right shin about halfway between knee and ankle. Stoner shifted his weight to the right foot; all fluid motion; all he was doing was walking briskly forward, and the boot sole ground relentlessly down the shin and onward to the foot beneath.

  Fighters who like to fight with their feet face dilemmas when considering their choice of footwear. Heavy shoes are usually loud and usually clumsy; a tricky kicker will often prefer something lighter. As here. Unhappily.

  Stoner’s hefty Caterpillar boot – not a shoe he would have chosen for kick-boxing, to be honest, but a great shoe for walking in comfort – has a well-defined, heavily cleated sole. Great for grip. One of the ways that tread patterns like these provide better grip than a smooth sole made of the same hard-wearing compound is by concentrating the wearer’s body mass through a small area; the area of the studs. These studs can cut through mud and water to find grip on more solid substrates beneath. They can also exert vast point pressure, for appropriate example, on an instep, should they land hard on an instep and should that instep be unprotected by anything more resistant than a shoelace and a thin layer of soft leather.

  Leatherjacket, completely off balance and in considerable pain, struggled to stay standing. Stoner carried on walking, still carrying the guitar case containing his heroically valua
ble Fender, and swung it under Leatherjacket’s elevated right knee, catching the case with his left hand and raising both hands and the case as rapidly and as hard as he could. His assailant had nowhere to go but down. And down is where he went. Hard. His skull announced its arrival on planet earth with a sharp and surprisingly loud crack.

  Stoner carried on walking. He was unhappy to entrust his balance to Leatherjacket’s left instep, so he let go the guitar case handle with his right hand, letting it fall while keeping his grip with his left hand, and swung right, dropping his left foot and its excellent Caterpillar boot onto Leatherjacket’s right knee, and bouncing all his weight through both of his feet. This left him unbalanced, and had Leatherjacket and Gumchew been working as a fighting team he could have been in some trouble, but they were not, so he was not.

  The new imbalance snapped many of the several small and slow-to-repair bones in Leatherjacket’s right foot. He stifled a scream, which cannot have been easy, but he could not retain this admirable quiet when Stoner pivoted again, this time on his left foot – the one on the recumbent unfortunate’s knee, and lifted his right foot from the crackling ankle, stamping down as hard as he could on the big man’s groin. Leatherjacket was flat on his back with his left ankle smashed and with his right leg in the air. There was nothing he could do to deflect Stoner’s punishing foot, with its excellent Caterpillar boot landing with all Stoner’s weight upon his genitals. No man on the planet could remain silent through this. A scream, a curious mixture of wail, sob and screech, split the quiet night.

  Stoner stepped from his loud human footstool and accelerated towards Gumchew, swinging the guitar case back up and catching its handle with his right hand. Maybe a minute had passed since Leatherjacket had made the cardinal, life-changing decision to attack Stoner. Maybe it was less. These things are important when one man is facing more than one attacker. It is too common for the second assailant to prepare and deliver a crushing attack while the solo fighter is unbalanced and while his attention is elsewhere. Stoner knew this. He knew it very well.