by Dan Ames
KILLER GROOVE
A Cooper & Rockne Mystery Series
Dan Ames
Contents
Killer Groove
Foreword
KILLER GROOVE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
More John Rockne Mysteries
More Mary Cooper Mysteries
More Thrillers from Dan Ames
About the Author
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“A sensation!” -Mystery Tribune
Killer Groove
(A Cooper & Rockne Mystery)
by
Dan Ames
Copyright © 2016 by Dan Ames
KILLER GROOVE is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
Foreword
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KILLER GROOVE
by
Dan Ames
Chapter One
She shook it like she stole it
And I smacked it like I sold it
-Topaz (by Groovy Train)
What had started out being a possible Top Ten drug and booze binge had rapidly turned into a Top Three. It wasn’t the addition of more nose candy and Jack Daniels, but a strikingly sexy Blasian girl, Black and Asian for the less hip. Zack Hatter was certainly not of the less hip variety. In fact, for a guy his age, he was probably one of the hippest cats around. No one knew his real age, and Zack wasn’t telling. Most pegged him around late sixties, early seventies.
Still, a Top Ten binge for the legendary Zack Hatter was worth alerting the press. After all, who else had gotten stoned with the Stones, plastered with Van Morrison and coked out of his mind with the Ramones? Zack Hatter. The Mad Hatter as they called him.
He was a legend, and not just in his own mind, although that was true, too. The Mad Hatter had always sported an ego the size of Montana, but his talent had backed it up. Until the drugs and booze and women had slowly siphoned off the magic that flew from his fingertips night after night, song after song. Oh, it still showed up occasionally, like a dim light bulb that occasionally glowed during a storm or a freak power surge. No one knew why, exactly, but the evidence was plain.
Now, his bleary blue eyes took in the sight of the crooked walls, gaps in the wood floor, and a ceiling with exposed wiring. He closed his eyes, the very ones that used to burn from the stage and turn young women’s hearts to the mushy consistency of oatmeal.
“You’re alive,” the woman said. Her voice had a heavy accent and for a while, Zack couldn’t place it.
Then he remembered.
He was in Mexico.
It used to be that when he had mornings like this, waking up with no idea of who he was or where he had washed up, he would be filled with a soul-killing sadness. A dread that he’d done it again. But the years had cured him of that feeling. It was a waste of time because deep down, he knew there would be more. So why trouble his soul with anguish? He had quit quitting a long time ago.
He was sure it was Mexico.
What was the name of the little town?
Bucerias, Mexico. A little fishing village devoid of all tourists but home to plenty of local drug dealers.
And it was cheap.
So was the girl.
He hoped. He couldn’t remember what he’d paid for her.
Probably not much. Even blasted out of his skull, he never believed in overpaying for pussy.
Zack’s brain and body screamed at him in agony. The hangover was like a freight train and his head was on rails, getting pummeled with each breath. His stomach roiled with acid and he would bet that before long he’d be emptying it orally.
His hands traveled down to his pockets looking for his cell phone and any cash. They were empty.
The only way to make a hangover even worse? Realize you lost all of your shit.
He looked over at a rickety table next to the bed. Nothing there but an empty bottle of tequila and a half-eaten, soggy shrimp. It was a sodden mass, hunkered down in a little pool of fluid.
Zack’s belly groaned at the sight.
It reminded him of himself at the moment.
“What are you looking for, honey?” the woman asked.
He turned and saw her fully for the first time. She was old. Way too old. Probably as old as Zack himself, which he realized sounded awful, but he hadn’t slept with a woman his own age in decades. Wait a minute he’d never slept with a woman his own age. That would be disgusting.
Zack could barely manage to look at her. Her skin was terrible and her teeth were even worse. Her face looked like it belonged to one of those poorly decorated skulls he’d seen at the tourist market.
“Mi dinero,” he said. His words were barely audible even to himself. His tongue was swollen to twice its size and his mouth was dry and gritty. Like he’d swallowed a few buckets of beach sand.
The woman laughed.
Zack wasn’t sure if she found his struggle to speak humorous, or worse, the idea that she had his money. He swung his feet from the bed and tried to sit up. The ground beneath him cantilevered and he nearly toppled over.
“Whoa,” he said. This was definitely a top three.
Behind him, he heard the woman rattle some pills in a bottle, saw her take a couple of them.
“Por mi cabeza,” she said, pointing to her head and wincing.
He doubted his ability to keep them down but he had to try. He spotted a half-empty beer bottle on the table by the door.
Zack stood, and lurched toward it, seeing through the window the Pacific Ocean, and the beach. Usually, an image triggered some vague memory of what he’d done the night before but this morning, nothing came. It was like he remembered who he was, and nothing more.
He made it to the table, grabbed the beer bottle then turned to the woman.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Angela,” she replied. “Your angel.”
He tried to laugh but all that came out was a hoarse choking sound. “Angel?” he said. “Angel of death, more like it.”
She w
alked toward him and shook some pills into her wrinkled hand. Angela held them out to him.
“What are these?” he asked, not really caring.
“Magic,” she answered. The woman had to be messing with him. She probably made up her name and picked something she thought he would like. Who knew, maybe that was her tactic for getting him to go home with her.
“Si,” she answered, even though he hadn’t asked a question.
He popped the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the warm beer. He tasted cigarette ash and realized someone had put out their cigarette with the beer.
It didn’t matter.
He swallowed the whole thing down, gagged a little, but clamped his mouth shut. Zack ground his jaws together, determined not to upchuck and he succeeded. Anything to take the pain and sickness away from him, however briefly it may turn out to be. It was a strategy he’d employed daily, even hourly, for a couple of decades.
He looked at the door.
“Buenos noches, senor,” Angela said.
Good night? What the hell did that mean? It was goddamned morning.
He turned to ask her what she meant but the image of her was warped, like a fun house mirror.
Zack took a step toward the door but once again everything tilted at a crazy angle. And this time, it was joined by a creeping sensation of blackness at the edges of his vision.
Holy shit. He had to get the hell out of this place. Now.
He reached for the door and got ahold of the doorknob, but his fingers were unable to grasp it.
Zack stopped, felt a warmth emerge from his stomach where the pills from Angela had landed, and seep across his chest, up to his shoulders, down his arms and legs, and finally, to his head.
The door opened before him and he stepped through it, then realized he hadn’t taken a step.
He had fallen.
The beach rushed up and smacked him in the face.
Gritty sand filled his mouth. His tongue kept rolling itself back up and trying to slide down his throat. Granules were in his nose and his eyes but he couldn’t move anything.
All he could see was the morning sun rising and behind him, the girl talking to someone.
Maybe on a cell phone.
And then a black shadow crossed the bright sunlight and he wondered if it was some sort of magical eclipse.
As consciousness left him, he found one beaming ray of hope, the same final stray of positivity that had always found him in moments like this. The one thing that made mornings like this worthwhile in the end.
It was both a thought and a plan.
This was going to make a great song.
Chapter Two
I came from a town south of New Orleans
Music in the air and thievery in my genes.
-Frazzle (by Groovy Train)
"Well, I guess it's good that he's trying to do something constructive," Mary said. Her voice, usually full of sarcasm was instead this time replete with skepticism.
"Something constructive?” Mary’s uncle, Kurt Cooper, looked at her, his face full of incredulity. “Are you freaking kidding me? My dude can wail!"
They were sitting at a table in the in the center of the banquet hall’s main room, watching the stage where Jason Cooper, Mary's nephew, a pot-smoking young man with a seeming inability to find a steady job, was about to begin playing with his band.
They were called Algae.
The banquet hall was an old club near Hollywood that was now used mostly for old people playing Bingo, drug rehab meetings, and open mike nights where bands competed for a frozen turkey.
Mary said at the plastic table with Uncle Kurt and her Aunt Alice. She was secretly wishing she had a Bingo card to pass the time.
"I for one am very excited to hear his music," Alice said. "I'm sure it's going to be a very entertaining show." And then she added, “One way or another.”
Alice was a small, feisty woman whose husband had passed away years ago. She had the Cooper desire to take nothing seriously and matters of grave seriousness were met with inappropriate sarcasm. However, it seemed to Mary as if she was being sincere. Usually that type of behavior was frowned upon in the Cooper family.
"Very diplomatic," Mary said. “So unlike you.”
"Does he write his own music?" Alice asked. Alice was a short woman, compact, who’d kept in good shape over the years.
Kurt shook his head. He didn’t look so good for his years. Life hadn’t been kind as his comedy career had never really gotten off the ground. He mostly worked retail jobs. Stocking shoes or stocking produce, he could hardly tell the difference anymore anyway.
"No, I asked him that,” he responded. “He said he doesn't write his material. His material writes him."
Mary groaned out loud.
The band walked out onto the stage and Jason Cooper was the last to appear. Mary figured it was because he was trying to make a dramatic entrance or he had forgotten about the concert. Even money says it was the latter.
Jason had a guitar slung across his chest and his long brown hair hung over his face, half-covering his eyes. Mary knew he preferred that style to prevent it being obvious how high he always was. Of course, the smell of ganja came off him in waves so he wasn’t fooling anyone, except for himself.
The drummer began to put down a beat. It was about as formulaic as you could get, Mary thought. She pictured it in a book for beginning rock drummers: Basic Rock Pattern #1.
The rest of the band members took their preordained spots with the bass player to the left side of the stage, the lead guitarist to the right, and Jason, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist, in the center.
He stepped up to the microphone.
“Here we go, baby,” Kurt said. He clapped his hands together and leaned forward on the edge of his seat.
Jason opened his mouth and shouted, "I want to fuck you!"
Mary nearly spit out her beer and Kurt did a huge fist bump as the band launched into a wildly out of tune, out of rhythm song that sounded like something you hear when you drive by an auto salvage yard and the crusher is mashing a Ford Pinto.
As it turned out, those were the only intelligible lyrics Jason Cooper uttered. For the next ten minutes he and his band put on a musical display that made Mary want to wad up her cocktail napkin and jam the sodden paper into her ear canals.
“Are my ears bleeding?” Alice asked.
“Led Zeppelin can kiss my ass!” Kurt bellowed. He was bobbing his head, trying to match the discordant rhythm coming from the stage.
Mary got to her feet.
“Hey, where you going?” Kurt shouted at her. “They haven’t taken their break yet.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “The audience needs a break.”
“I need to vomit,” Mary answered.
She went to the back of the room where a portable bar had been set up. She asked for a Jack and Coke from the bartender, a guy who had to be ninety years old with his pants pulled up to his chest.
“Make it a double,” she said. Mary pulled out her phone and saw that she had missed a call.
She stepped out of the concert hall into the lobby. The door shut behind her and she breathed a sigh of relief. Mary had never before appreciated the beauty of silence until she’d heard Algae.
The message in her voicemail was a prospective client – always a good thing, about a missing friend.
Missing persons cases weren’t always her favorite, but provided the client’s pockets were deep enough, could often times be very lucrative.
She called the number back.
Any excuse not to go back in and hear Algae.
Even the name. Algae. How had they decided on that?
She guessed Pond Scum had already been taken.
Chapter Three
There ain’t no way to handle
There ain’t no way to see
There ain’t no way to brand it
When you scream out faithfully.
-Bareback blues (by Groovy Train)
“And now he’s mocking me. That’s the worst part.”
I listened to my client and although I’d heard the same story many times before, I felt an especially strong sense of compassion for Judy Reynolds. She was a woman in her late forties with light brown hair and beautiful blue eyes. In fact, she was a beautiful woman, period.
Slim, with an engaging face and a great smile. She worked full-time at the library, which made her even more attractive, in my opinion. Librarians were always a big turn-on for me. Not just because I loved books but because in high school, we’d had a total hottie as a librarian. A blonde right out of college, as I recall. And when I was in the library pretending to be studying, which I found myself doing a lot more once Miss Meyer started working there, I used to have some fairly elaborate fantasies about her teaching me the Dewey Decimal System, which seemed really dirty to me at the time.
“What exactly is he saying?” I asked Judy, forcing myself back to reality.
“That I’m a lifelong Grosse Pointer and now I’m living in the Cabbage Patch.”
The Cabbage Patch was a section of Grosse Pointe closest to the Detroit border and home to mostly apartment buildings. If there was a section of the Pointes considered to be “poor,” most would point to the Cabbage Patch. However, the area was really coming back, especially of late. New restaurants, a brewery, and an influx of medical students who went to Wayne State University, a short drive from GP.
“He’s a shitbag,” I said. Not maybe the most professional assessment, but honest at least. The fact was Judy’s soon-to-be ex-husband was a real piece of work. “The work we did really nailed him and now you can focus on the future. Put him in the rearview mirror where he belongs.”
Judy had hired me to find out if her husband was having an affair. It hadn’t taken me long to discover that not only was he cheating, but he was doing it with multiple women and had been for years.