The Kill Riff

by David J. Schow

  The label was color-coded for Friday and read ROCKHOUND-CREW. There was a stamped and codenumbered bit of intrigue beneath that, a cryptic okay from Rockhound management. Gunther slapped the pass onto the crotch of his jeans. He was expected, but early. He had debated stopping for lunch before unloading Jackson Knox's gear, but prime among the endorsements for Gunther as a primo roadie was his unflinching sense of self-sacrifice. The show must go on and on. About anything peripheral, Gunther really didn't give a gilded shit.

  He dropped the lift gate, and the chain latches clinked. Musical footlockers and cases were padded and stacked and backed up to the inner edge of the door track. Nobody could pack a truck like Gunther Lubin.

  He turned to press the red button that would summon the Rockhound's munchkins to open the back door and get the lifting started. But his finger never made it. The sudden, flat jolt of pain felt as though a lead meteor had bulleted down from deep space to crash-land right behind his left ear. Maybe it had homed in on his silver skull earring…

  Lightning jumped whitely across his vision, and he went completely numb. Dirty pavement rushed to fill up his view. He felt no sensation of falling except air on his eyeballs; did not hear the sound of his body colliding with the chuckholed alley surface. He could see abrasions on the palms of his hands. He could see the blood. He thought, Bushwhack… goddamn… must've snuck under the truck ouch, before his sight blanked out.

  He expected to feel his wallet being pulled, and he did. He had been sapped, expertly, and. could not depend on what he thought he felt in any case. He thought he felt the wallet being replaced. Hallucination, he thought. Strong hands crimped under his armpits and hoisted him. His legs lolled uselessly as he was dragged. Gunther Lubin, boss roadie, had just faded to black.

  He thought he felt the all-important stage pass being peeled from his pants.

  ***

  "All right, all right, goddamn it to hell, I'm coming, I'm coming already! Jesus!"

  Ralph "Sandjock" Trope hurried to the loading platform door wearing his irritated-executive face and sucking on a Turns. He had just taken twenty milligrams of Valium to come down off the coke, and his mouth tasted like an armadillo had taken a dump in it. His face was intended to intimidate underlings out of his path. Lifters and swampers could be satiated with free tickets. If a return favor was of sufficient magnitude, Ralph granted special dispensation to sneak backstage and gamble for the chance to mate with a female backup singer or hump a thumbs-down groupie. But roadies, like the asshole trying to buzz himself through the dock door by osmosis or some goddamn thing… god! They were always surly toward Ralph. They never called him "Sandjock." To them, he was just a promotional underling, in no way connected with the almighty music, and to be held in that brand of sneering contempt that reminded Ralph that there were some clubs he could not join, period. And roadies could only be bribed with drugs. Expensive drugs, which were an executive hassle. So much harder to bury in the budget.

  He cranked over the locking levers and rolled the door up on its counterbalanced rails. The roadie waiting outside was a dusty dude encamped behind three days of beard stubble, a leather eyepatch with a rhinestone in the center, a battered cowboy hat, and an unfiltered Camel.

  Ralph asked the dude if he was Gunther Lubin and -felt stupid at once.

  The cowboy sucked slowly on his smoke, wearied, and cocked a thumb at the ROCKHOUND-CREW sticker pasted to his roughout jacket. His eyes-eye, rather-never left Ralph's.

  "Just show me where you want it." His voice was a whiskey growl tinged with traces of an Atlanta accent. As he spoke, cigarette smoke puffed into Ralph's face. It tortured Ralph's deviated septum.

  "Follow me," Ralph croaked. Daylight was doing horrible things to his eyes, and he wanted to escape.

  The roadie ambled back to the tailgate and pulled out a steel-reinforced tour locker with KNOX BOX stenciled on the side in white spray paint. "If I'm gonna follow you, ace, somebody by-damn better be watchdogging this truck. Unless you wanna pay for what might walk off by itself."

  Ralph put his expression of executive pique on hold. He yelled into the depths of the theater, and Aabel, a sandy-haired gofer wearing an AC/DC tour shirt, burst dutifully forth to await orders, so eager to do something that he was almost jogging in place. Ralph thought of a hunting dog waiting for the order to fetch. "Tell Jimbo and Ferrett we're offloading and to keep an eye on the truck."

  Aabel fetched.

  Keep an eye on it. That was rich, thought Ralph. The road-bumout cowboy only had one eye to spare.

  Once the bucket brigade of rock and roll ordnance commenced, Ralph phased back to the more important tasks of terrorizing the bartenders and hired help. And the cowboy… well, the cowboy could just go jerk off into his eyehole. He watched the man sling the footlock-er up with a practiced air of robotic boredom. Then he pushed past Ralph without comment and strode down the corridor. Amid the junk dangling from the cowboy's belt was the usual biker's wallet, linked by chain to a mountaineer's snap ring. There was a big lock-back knife in a scuffed leather sheath, a thousandweight of jangling keys, and a teardrop-shaped sap with a handle of braided cowhide. Another rock 'n' roll soldier, Ralph thought with distaste. Another dude who got off on being a mean motherfucker. The lead shot in that sap could powder your brains and send them flying out your nose-wappar The thought of nose powder made him wince.

  When the roadie came back, Ralph said, "Hey- when does the great man and his band show up?"

  The cowboy swiveled slowly, considering Ralph as though contemplating a cockroach on a doughnut. "Jackson always shows up one hour before the sound check. One hour. Always. The sound check is always two hours prior to the first show. Always. You, therefore, have a while to wait, ace."

  Jackson. Now Ralph was starting to fray. Jesus, this guy is on first-name terms with the son of a bitch. And it means nothing to him. Ralph's anger, of course, was veiled envy. He knew it. And it made him angrier.

  He spun with a sigh and left the whole scene to his inferiors. In half an hour that fair-looking lady reporter from L.A. Weekly would be awaiting an audience in his cramped office upstairs, and already Ralph was putting her through Penthouse pet poses in his brain. He wanted to appear firmly in control when he met her. He snorted some more coke off the edge of his hand. It tickled the backs of his eyeballs.

  Later, when the police were grilling him, all Ralph would remember about the cowboy roadie were the southern-fried accent and the eyepatch.

  ***

  "Are you Jackson Knox?"

  Knox straightened and evaluated the man asking the question. He said nothing because, as the Rockhound's headliner, he felt it should be obvious to the unwashed masses just who the hell he was. This better not be an autograph hound, not before the show could be talked about…

  The man had a few years on Knox. The beige-tan color of his hair reminded the guitarist of an attack-trained German shepherd he had once owned. He'd dumped it. Too much trouble to baby-sit a dog.

  "You've been looking for Gunther?"

  That lit Knox up. He'd been cursing Gunther Lubin's lineage for half an hour, wondering just where his number-one roadie had gotten to. He assumed Gunther was in the kip with some twelve-year-old; the roadie was known to prefer women small enough to revolve on the end of his cock.

  Knox's gaze fell on the Rockhound sticker on the man's bush jacket. He sniffed and looked around the stage where the instruments had been set up.

  "I'm Mason Kellogg," the man said, extending a hand. "I'm staff here."

  Knox shrugged. On tour, all staff in all the clubs looked exactly alike. This guy was more behind than most. The bush jacket, the styled mop of hair.

  "Gunther had some problems with the truck. Cops cited him or something. He phoned five minutes ago to say he's on his way in. That's all I know, but he said to tell you."

  Knox inspected the drum kit setup. It needed to be two feet farther back, to give him more gesturing room while he was wailing on his guitar. Dumb,
for him to get accustomed to having clones do all the setups for him. He must not get spoiled. He must remember his roots, and the dog days spent slogging through shithouse clubs before Whip Hand had made a good impression on a scout from Atlantic. On the other hand, plugging male jacks into female sockets didn't require a member of MENSA. Maybe his jumpiness was flop sweat, preconcert nerves. This was his comeback-his first California gig in two and a half years; what he hoped would be his triumphant comeback to the West Coast. More scouts would be in the audience tonight. Ralph "Sandjock" Trope had guaranteed it. Knox wanted to make a headline or two while he was in San Francisco.

  "Thanks," he mumbled. The staff dude in the bush jacket loped off into the maze of cable coils and spotlight racks that litter the offstage perimeter. You never could get to know them all. The faceless ones who did all the scut work so he could sleep late in the mornings, and abuse room service, and sign autographs, and make headlines.

  Knox raked his stool toward the lip of the stage. Right in front of him, tilted upward, was his monitor speaker. Its purpose was to give him true tones through the din of performance. The monitor obliterated the ambient band noise and the bounceback from the rear theater wall. The other amps and speakers, plus two columns of speakers forming the P.A. system, were directed toward the audience. During his shows, his anchors had always been Gunther and the monitor. The monitor did not lie to him. Gunther lurked backstage, poised to spring forth in case Knox popped a string or needed a quick drink.

  The foot switches for pedal effects were strapped to the stage by swatches of gaffer's tape. There was an archaic, accelerator-style foot pedal for the fuzztone and wah-wah. It was even foot-shaped, like the gas pedal in a surfer's Woody. It was Knox's sentimental nod to earlier days, when the fuzz and wah-wah were the nastiest effects talkin'. The pedal had seen a lot of miles on the road. Next to it were the high-tech boxes for the flanger and the digital sampler. There was a microsynthesizer patched in as well, its twenty slide pots preset to Knox's accustomed positions. In the background, the telltales on the amps winked green.

  Knox laughed to himself and spread his fingers out before him, palm flat. No tremors; not yet. Cool down just a hair. Get ice. Get control.

  Because of Gunther's absence they were running half an hour behind on the sound check. Gregor, the bassist, was sprawled in a ringside seat, his feet up on the scuffed club table, pulling slowly on a beer. Comet, the drummer, was MIA, probably sniffing for nookie. Knox could see his rhythm man, Fudge, holding forth at the bar, watching the stage in the back-bar mirror. Knox picked up the gray coil of wire and knotted it around his shoulder strap. It was live and buzzed when his thumb touched the contact. They weren't up to the status level of radio mikes and instruments. Knox liked feeling physically connected to his equipment. The knot on the strap was to keep the cord from yanking itself out if the wire was pulled during play. He plugged the silver jack into his agate-black Gibson and strummed a few wandering chords, warming up.

  At the sound of his guitar everyone came to attention. The gofers stopped what they were doing to look up. Faces appeared behind the glass of the crow's-nest, the sound booth of the Rockhound. Women were magically present.

  He got a few friendly catcalls when he picked out "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree." His E string was sour, and he tuned it carefully. He'd do the same regimen for his two identical backup Gibsons in just a second. People were now paying attention. It was better than any drug.

  Knox decided to rattle the rafters, just to wake everyone up and cut through the dense atmosphere of the Rockhound. He twisted the volume knobs on the Gibson to full and gave the strings a hard broadside. Give the people already waiting in line outside something to look forward to, he thought. The rich, evil croon of his axe filled up the chamber and drowned out everything else.

  He slid through a nasty, fret-melting solo, then teased the guitar into a simple but impressive A-E-C riff. After one repetition he kicked in the wah-wah on the pedal board and began to twist the progression into a new shape.

  Then his faithful monitor exploded.

  With a flashbulb pop of searing blue fire, the front of the monitor speaker disintegrated, blowing out steaming metal shrapnel that put three dozen large holes in Knox's body even before it tumbled backward off the stool and hit the stage floor in death. Superamplified feedback screeched up and up, pegging everyone's ears. The breakers blew and chopped oft the sound. Knox was spread-eagled on the stage, wide eyes gaping at the empty space where the monitor had been. His mouth was locked open, speechless. Pieces of his beloved Gibson were sticking out of him. The last thing he saw was his picking hand, quivering spasmodically, spattered with his own blood. Then his eyes fogged and he was dead.

  The prep man and other band members had hit the deck in panic. Now some of them conquered fright and jumped to smother the chunks of flaming wreckage that littered the stage. Aabel hurdled one of the P. A. columns, which was lying on its side. He had a fire extinguisher. Foul yellow fog blotted out the flames.

  ***

  Ralph "Sandjock" Trope and the woman reporter from the L.A. Weekly ran out onto Ralph's private office balcony, the vantage point that the Rockhound employees called the Spyhole. Ralph immediately broke for the stairs. The reporter fast-drew a Leica from her sling bag and began speed-snapping pictures on 400 ASA film as a crowd formed around Jackson Knox's ravaged corpse. From the Spyhole, it looked as though someone had pushed the guitarist through a tree shredder. He was framed in a widening pool of blood. The people below milled around, stepping gingerly to avoid soiling their shoes.

  The photo proof sheets would later reveal Ralph "Sandjock" Trope, trapped in individual frames like the main character of a nickel "flicker," dashing to the center of the gawkers, slapping his hand to his head in theatricalized shock, then turning away to toss up some very genuine vomit into the bowl of the upended bass-drum. The drum kit was in an alphabet-block scatter all over the stage thanks to the force of the concussion, which had also blown out the back-bar mirror and the soundproof glass of the crow's-nest. The light wrangler got away with superficial lacerations; he had been able to drop his smoldering joint and shield his face as the glass of the booth imploded.

  The reporter continued snapping pictures with total dispassion. She did not care for Jackson Knox's music. Ugly pictures could provide years of photo royalties. The dumb luck of being in the right place at Jackson Knox's particular wrong time was the sort of chance upon which entire careers could be founded. She was able to ignore the carnage below and fantasize picture credits in Rolling Stone.

  She also knew that Ralph Trope's final response to this unscheduled surprise would be anger. Anger at having to cancel four sold-out shows, at having to refund ticket money to disgruntled rock'n'rollers. That particular task could be assigned to a lackey, but Ralph himself would have to primp for the TV news crews and try to squeeze out a quotable sentiment for the record. Quickly, with admirable skill and sure hands, the reporter dumped a film roll and screwed on her zoom lens. Ralph Trope had his hand over his mouth and was facing Knox's bloody body. That was the tableau shot she wanted. "Call me Sandjock," he'd insisted, all the while feeling her up with his eyes. Now she'd have to ask him nicely for a portrait shot-something that could be boxed, mug shot style, next to an exclusive depicting Ralph onstage, a sort of before-and-after effect. She had no doubt she could sweet-talk him into one more pose. Right now, she had to keep shooting until the guys with the body bags showed up.

  The early birds loitering outside had been scared by the boom. When police and ambulance units responded, the tight little rock 'n' roll army did their best to impede those who would disrupt their squatter's domain on the sidewalk. It was a great opportunity to harass uniforms.

  At last, the component remains of Jackson Knox were carted out. The crowd oohed and aahed. The vinyl body bag was mercifully opaque. It drooped in ways a human body could not normally bend.

  Gunther Lubin was discovered in a garbage dumpster owned b
y Rico's, a pasta parlor three doors down from the Rockhound. Despite the bulging, purplish-yellow egg growing behind his left ear, he was arrested and charged with murder one. His semi had been located five blocks away, devoid of evidence, its wing mirrors broken off by a sloppy exit from the alley. Several shining gashes decorated both sides of the truck. The only prints inside were Gunther's.

  In the following weeks it would become a measure of rock status in San Francisco to claim membership in the brotherhood of the waiting line outside the Rockhound on That Evening. The club experienced a brief spurt of attendance caused by the desire of various ghouls to touch the place where one of their minor guitar gods had been sacrificed. Ralph "Sandjock" Trope found it wise not to clean up all evidence of the explosion.

  Less than three hours after Knox's death, Ralph watched himself on the news. Squinting under the bar of lights held high by a camera assistant, he expounded at length to fill up the holes of commentary left by the paramedics, who would not make statements about the condition of the corpse; the police, who would not make statements about anything; and the bomb squad boys, who would only say that a "high-velocity fragmentation device" was their best guess. Ralph, wearing an expression of woe that might have been peeled off a dime-store monster mask, grandly compared Jackson Knox's death to the assassination of John Lennon.

  Naturally, Ralph was quoted in all the write-ups.