The Devil's Music
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The Devil’s Music
(A Kilroy Mystery)
Stephen Mertz
The Devil’s Music
Stephen Mertz
Wolfpack Publishing
6032 Wheat Penny Ave
Las Vegas, NV 89122
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2019 Stephen Mertz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.
ISBN 978-1-64119-605-5
Contents
Prologue
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
A Look at Blood Red Sun
Also by Stephen Mertz
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About the Author
Dedicated to the memory of Michael Avallone
The Devil’s Music
Prologue
1966
Stomper Crawford wailed his blues.
Saturday night. 2:44 AM. Sunday morning, really, but Leon’s on 43rd St. was packed and sure as hell was rocking like it was still a Saturday night. No band in the city, maybe the world, could throw it down like the Stomp Crawford Blues Band. And tonight, they were throwing it down and burning it up!
The joint’s low ceiling seemed to make the music louder and hotter. Booths lined one wall with a bar that ran the length of the place along the opposite wall. There were tables between the stage and what they called a dance floor, which was nothing more than a cleared space near the end of the bar where folks could shake it on down.
The cigarette smoke was so thick you couldn’t see past the front tables, but Stomper didn’t mind because those front tables were filled with parties of pretty women, wild chicks hanging on his every word when he sang the old down-home blues. Then they’d start squealing like crazy when the band fired up for the up-tempo numbers like the one he was using now to end the set, “Baby Please Don’t Go.”
The owner of the place, Leon Miller, was all smiles where he could be seen drawing beers behind the bar. Leon was working the stick with the two barmaids. Customers were lined three deep at the bar and every one of them was thirsty and impatient. To Leon, that meant that he was making money and so he was glad to throw himself into the chaotic scene. He caught Stomper's eye and in the moment that they held eye contact, Leon on gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
That was good enough for Stomper. Keep the customers and the money man happy and the gigs would keep coming. And tonight, right now, everyone was having themselves a high, happy goodtime.
Stomper ripped off on a hot guitar solo.
His sweaty features glistened like polished ebony beneath the stage lights, twisting at times almost beyond recognition as his fingers moved higher up the neck of the guitar to bend the strings, eliciting a wailing solo that brought shouts and wails of approval from the crowded club. At the conclusion of his solo, Stomper sent a glance over his shoulder and gave Olga James the nod.
Olga, looking cool, calm and elegant seated there at her piano, commenced hammering out clusters of pounding boogie-woogie figures on the 88’s that drove the band with a dazzling ferocity.
Stomper delivered a few more verses. Then, signaling the band with a nod that none of them missed, he brought this third of four sets to a thundering, raucous conclusion.
The club erupted into thunderous applause.
Stomper stepped up to the mic, his gold-toothed smile beaming.
“Right now, ladies and gents, we’re going to take a short pause for the cause,” he announced. “We’ll take five, be back in ten.”
Everyone knew the band breaks were supposed to last fifteen minutes. If anything, this late in the proceedings a break might realistically last up to twenty minutes or until Leon gave Stomper the eye.
Olga and Shorty Long, the bass player, and the drummer, T.J, who was Olga’s husband, were already stepping down from the bandstand, morphing into the crowd.
Stomper took his time sweet time the way he did in most things, making sure his guitar was in tune before he made his way to the bar through the crowd of folks who wanted to pat him on the back and tell him how much they were digging the music. Everybody in the place was well-lubricated and feeling good. A few of the women he passed made that certain, special eye contact with him; one fresh broad even slipped a piece of paper with her phone number into his hand as he passed her.
The barmaid station at the tail end of the bar afforded him a slight break in the line of humanity lining the bar. Leon was waiting for him there with a freshly opened bottle of beer.
“There you go, my man.” Leon was by nature a hearty, robust man, always brimming with good cheer as he was tonight. “You’ve got yourself one topnotch band, Stomper, and that’s no lie. Man, in this here town, you’re the boss of the blues!”
He leaned back, flicked a switch on the jukebox relay and booming music from the jukebox filled the club. The atmosphere of the place reverberated to the mighty bass lines of James Brown’s latest hit.
Stomper lifted his bottle of beer, acknowledging the complement, not even bothering to raise his voice so to be heard above the blaring soul music. He took a long slug of the beer. It felt good going down. At 43 years of age, he could still work a room with the best of them but more and more these days, cool relief to a throat parched by a lifetime of blues shouting was beginning to bring to him awareness that maybe he wasn’t everything he used to be.
He was unintentionally jostled from patrons to his left. They bumped him into patrons standing to his right at the bar, nearly causing his beer to slosh over the front of his stage shirt. He couldn’t very well make a deal over somethin
g like that in this atmosphere, and anyway, everyone around him was high so no one seemed to know he’d even been jostled.
It was time for some fresh air.
Stomper managed another slug from his beer bottle without any trouble. He gestured once again to Leon with the bottle to indicate that he was leaving, but Leon was already busy. Patrons who had been working up a thirst on the dance floor were descending on the bar now that the band was on a break. The barmaids were swamped and so Leon was pitching in.
Stomper eased around the end of the bar. He made his way down the short hallway lined with beer cases that he found there. He pushed open a metal door and let himself out into the alley that ran behind the club. The alley was a dark, dank place but the night air smelled okay to Stomper after the smoky, close atmosphere of the club.
He hugged the deepest shadows he could find. Stomper Crawford was known to be a cat who enjoyed a good time. But he enjoyed taking a break now and then too. He fired up a cigarette, leaning back against the wall. The peace and quiet he found out here allowed him to give some thought to things.
Tonight was a cooking Saturday night, yeah. But was fate to spend the rest of his life playing in ghetto joints like Leon’s?
He’d been plying his trade as a musician for eleven years now. Was he supposed to be satisfied with where he was in life? Well, he wasn’t. Oh, he done all right professionally on the local level. Even recorded a CD that sold it from the bandstand and people who listen to it, they liked it.
But Stomper was getting restless.
Things were starting to break for a few of the blues singers back in Memphis and Chicago like B. B. King and Muddy Waters. They said the blues was just beginning to make inroads into the lucrative white market that included university gigs and working the touring the emerging hippie ballroom circuit, places like the Fillmore. Stomper wanted a piece of that action. The trick, of course, was: how to go about it...
His train of thought was derailed when someone opened the alley door from inside the club. The rabble of the good-timing crowd and music from the jukebox spilled into the darkness of the alley.
A woman’s voice said, tentatively, “Stomper... are you out here?”
He said, “Over here, Jenna.”
She was a wisp of a thing, somewhere in her early twenties. Black as the ace of spades but topped by a bright splash of blonde hair, clipped short. A curvy little number decked out to show plenty of cleavage and leg. A wide, fresh smile. In the dim light of the alley, she was a knockout.
She said, “I’ve been looking for you, baby. Leon said he didn’t know where you disappeared to. Sure is busy tonight, huh?”
“Sure is,” said Stomper. “Just grabbing me a breath of fresh air and a butt.”
She sidled up against him. The heat of the club clung to her with the scent of her Walgreen’s perfume.
“Feel like grabbing my butt, sugar?”
He rested his hands on her nicely rounded hips. There was a muscular firmness about her. She’d only started using smack a few months ago. The beginnings of dissipation, the first minuscule hint of lines around the mouth and eyes, were only evident up close. Stomper eased her away.
“Maybe later, baby. It’s almost time for the Stomper to hit that stage again and do his thing.”
She gave a cute pout.
“Aw, come on, daddy. You saw how busy Leon is. He won’t mind you having a little quickie. Let’s do it.” She tried to snake her slender body against him again, attempting to position him against the building. “Let’s you and me ball the wall, daddy.” Her words came lewd and breathy. “You know I’m the best and I’m cheap.”
Stomper’s hands tightened on her hips, resisting her, holding her in place.
“I said no, Jenna. I know you’re cheap.”
“Hey, is that a crack?”
“No, baby. Ol’ Stomper’s just feeling tired, is all.”
“Aw, you’re not old.”
“Thanks, honey. But a man’s got to keep his mind on his business when he’s working.”
“You’re not sore, are you, Stomp? I’m working too, y’know. A girl’s got to make a living.”
“I’m not sore, Jenna.” He delivered her a solid, affectionate slap on her shapely butt. “I’ll see you inside, okay?”
“Oh, okay.” She started back toward the door, putting a little something extra into the hip action of her walk. “If you change your mind...”
It was impossible not to watch the undulations beneath her tight-fitting dress.
“If I do, sugar, you’ll be the first to know.”
And she was gone.
With a sigh, Stomper leaned back against the wall.
Yeah, he needed to get his act together.
Not just professionally, but his private life could use some straightening out too. The club scene where a musician had to work to earn a living was just too damn full of temptation for a man with a wife and two kids at home. Little Lucillee and Isaac deserved better, and so did their mom.
Day labor during the week and playing the clubs, singing the blues on the weekend, was starting to wear thin. If love wasn’t nothing but a business going on, he was going to have to do a better job of looking after that business.
Aw the hell with it, thought Stomper. Time to get back to work.
He started from the shadows, toward the door.
Movement.
Someone, more than one person, could be heard coming down the alley from the direction of the street, unseen as yet by Stomper due to his position. There was the shuffling of shoe leather scuffing along the pavement. It sounded like a struggle.
Stomper drew in a deep breath and held it. He returned to the deeper shadows against the wall. This was a rough part of town. You learned early as a kid running these streets, especially if you grew up to be a black man, to mind your own business. Especially in a dark alley at 2 AM.
It was a scuffle, all right
He got the impression that the two men had entered the alley together and it was not until they were well removed from the street, back here among these inky shadows, that one of the men assaulted the other. The first man was resisting frantically but ineffectively.
It all came to Stomper as impressions. He couldn’t see where the towering walls of the alley blocked faint moonlight and the lights of the city from beyond the alley. But the sounds in those shadows told the story. There was not much of a struggle. The one who began it established physical dominance almost immediately.
“What’s the idea!?” gasped a voice that held suddenly mounting awareness and hysteria. “Come on, man. Is this some kind of joke?”
The voice was not that of a fighter. It was a victim’s voice.
The other said, “If it’s a joke, punk, you’re about to die laughing.”
Then a figure joined them. Stomper wasn’t sure but he seemed to semi – materialize from the direction of the street. Maybe, maybe not. Stomper didn’t care. It was all happening so fast. What the hell was going on? He felt as if the slightest movement, his slightest sound, would draw attention. The only thing he could hear was the savage breathing of the man who had ceased struggling in the grip of the other.
It happened fast.
There was the impression more than the actual sound of an outburst of violence. A savage, brutal movement. An exhalation of breath of one who then abruptly stopped struggling and breathing. The sound of something like a sack of potatoes dropping to the pavement.
The one who had taunted the victim about laughing gave a coarse chuckle.
“Done,” he said. “That was easy.”
No more words. The other had already withdrawn. When he realized this, the accomplice also withdrew.
Silence reclaimed the shadowy gloom as if had never happened. The faint sounds of the sparse 2 AM traffic along the street fronting the club filtered back but in the alley, nothing stirred.
Stomper left his shadows. He knew what he should do. Down deep in his gut, he knew what had just happened
. But he seemed unable to stop himself from making his way, slow and careful step-by-step, across the alley until his feet made contact with the body. He almost tripped over it but managed to steady himself just in time and kept from falling.
Damn!
Turn around, Stomper told himself.
He needed to get gone. But the curiosity that killed the cat had him in its sway. He glanced around to ensure that he was still alone there in the alley. Then he brought out his cigarette lighter, flicked it and in the golden glow of its flame, he looked down into the wide-eyed features of a dead man. He almost dropped the lighter.
The victim had been a black male. His throat had been cut ear to ear. He had died with his features frozen in an expression of disbelief that he was dying, the mouth open to form a scream that would never come.
Sound came to the alley.
Someone opening the club’s alley door!
He extinguished the lighter. The flame disappeared. The alley was again plunged into complete darkness that lasted only for the brief seconds it took for the door to swing open.
TJ, the drummer, stood in the doorway, peering out. The splash of light from the door, spilling across the alley at an angle, left Stomper and the thing at his feet remaining in the dark. T.J.’s eyes couldn’t make out much, glancing around the impenetrable gloom of the alley from inside the noisy bar.