Blues Highway Blues (A Crossroads Thriller Book 1)
Praise for Blues Highway Blues
“Like a Muscle Shoals guitar lick that you can’t get out of your head, Eyre Price has penned a debut novel that you can’t put down. You’ll want to go down to the crossroads to finish Blues Highway Blues.”
—Rick Robinson, Grand Prize Winner at London Book Fair for Writ of Mandamus
“Eyre Price deftly weaves page-turning action, suspense, and humor into a top-notch primer on the history of modern American music. As a music lover and reverent fan of great storytelling, I thoroughly enjoyed the Blues Highway Blues thrill-ride, all the way through.”
—Laura Roppe, award-winning singer-songwriter and author of Rocking the Pink
“By turns heartbreaking, funny, and terrifying, Blues Highway Blues tells the story of a jaded music promoter whose fate is tied to a sadistic Russian mobster, a pair of mismatched hit men, and a mysterious old bluesman who is more than he seems. With pitch-perfect prose, Eyre Price weaves humor, horror, and a touch of magic into an epic adventure that keeps the reader wondering what lies at the end of the Blues Highway—redemption or damnation.”
—Jaden Terrell, author of the Jared McKean Mysteries
Blues Highways Blues is a musical road trip camouflaged as a great thriller. Anyone even remotely interested in the real history of Rock ‘n’ Roll has to take this ride. Not since Wyatt and Billy headed out to find the true America have I had half as much fun traveling her highways. Reading Eyre Price is like taking a road trip with a friend who knows music inside out and has an undeniable talent for sharing his knowledge.”
—Robert Pobi, author of Bloodman
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 by Eyre Price.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612183534
ISBN-10: 1612183530
For Jaime, my everything.
And for our son, Dylan, the love we share.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Writing is not a solitary pursuit. There may be only one name on the cover, but every book is a group project. I’d like to thank and acknowledge all of those who were instrumental in helping me put my name on this cover.
Thanks to my agent, Jill Marr, and everyone at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, and to Andrew Bartlett and everyone at Thomas & Mercer.
Dr. Mark R. Harris provided expert opinions on just how much mayhem the average man could reasonably endure. Steve E. Lewis offered equally expert advice on just how one might go about delivering said mayhem. Robert Pobi also needs to be thanked for the literary inspiration he’s provided me.
To my friend and collaborator, Tim Miller, who has worked to bring to life songs that would otherwise be confined to these pages. His album, Blues Highway Blues: A Novel Soundtrack, is the culmination of that shared dream.
On a personal note, I’d like to thank my mother and father. There would be no Blues Highway Blues without the love and support of my wife, Jaime. I am also indebted to my son, Dylan, who shared with me the trip of my lifetime: a music-filled road trip down the Blues Highway.
It takes more than two hundred million lights and over fifteen thousand miles of neon tubing to create the you-can-see-it-from-space light show known as the Las Vegas Strip. Against the ebony abyss of the desert night it twinkles and shines like God’s own Lite-Brite set.
And in all of Sin City, from Sunset Road clear up to East Charleston, there is no better venue for viewing this spectacle than from Hotel du Monde’s penthouse balcony. From this unique vantage point—the highest in the state—the lights below spread out in all directions and create a celestial tapestry that humbles the stars above.
Unless, of course, the view is all you can see while a muscle- bound wall of meat named Moog dangles you upside-down from said balcony by your ankles. In that case, the lights completely lose their incandescent beauty and all that strobing and flashing just intensifies the throbbing terror felt in each desperate heartbeat. From that perilous point of view, the garish glare only heightens the vertigo as a mad swirl of pulsating colors blurs into a bottomless vortex that seems to suck everything down, down, down.
“What do you want!” Daniel Erickson screamed frantically as he swung back and forth like an inverted human pendulum. “What did I do?” His confusion was genuine, but his headfirst predicament really shouldn’t have come as any surprise.
What he’d done was made a deal with a devil.
A year earlier he’d been seeking backing for a reality show project: a can’t miss, in-the-bag, “sure thing.” His concept—called Rock and Roll Redemption—was to follow the members of that once-great glam-metal band, Mission, as they struggled with sobriety during a career-resuscitating tour of state fairs and AA ballparks. Middle-aged sex, no drugs, and rock and roll. What was there not to love?
Opportunity may knock, but genius calls collect—and sometimes the charges to accept that call are more than a man can afford. Daniel had the concept but no coin. A costly divorce had drained him of all but his “rainy day” cash, and his personal implosion in its emotional wake had caused his business as a music promoter to come crashing down around him like a Malibu mud slide. The cumulative effect was a “Road Closed” sign across all of the traditional avenues of financing his project.
In the darkest of days, hope was as thin as a small-town girl trying to break into “the Business” and it seemed Daniel might never get the chance to exploit drug-addled, has-been rockers for a syndicated cable audience. He was “investing” his last hundred dollars of liquidity in a last-ditch “creative financing” venture when he happen
ed to meet a Russian entrepreneur right there at the craps tables.
Daniel had rolled boxcars on the come-out and the bank had taken that last Benjamin, but he and his new friend had a few drinks and shared a few stories. They had some more drinks and discussed investment opportunities in the exciting world of show business. They had even more drinks, smoked some cigars, and before the night was through, Daniel had all the cash needed to shoot and promote a pilot episode, “No prob-leem.”
Four hundred and fifty thousand bucks for a six-man film and sound crew for six weeks?
“No prob-leem.”
A hundred and thirty thousand for editing and studio work?
“No prob-leem.”
Two hundred and fifty thousand for this and that?
“No prob-leem.”
Everything was “No prob-leem.” Until, of course, there was a prob-leem; and then it was a big fucking prob-leem.
In the end it turned out that even by forgiving post-Soviet standards, the man at the craps table, the one who’d fronted all those expenses, could hardly be considered an “entrepreneur.” No, Filat Preezrakevich was a Russian mobster, through and through.
As the USSR collapsed, the former FSB directorate had made a seamless transfer of his brutal skill set from the Lubyanka to the burgeoning Russkaya Mafiya, shooting to the top of the Organizatsiya like a Kalashnikov slug. There was no shortage of men who were willing to do “whatever it takes,” but Filat was disturbingly eager to perform the twisted, unspeakable acts all those lesser sociopaths didn’t have the stomach for. His uniquely depraved brutality quickly made “the Raging Runt of Rublyovka” one of the most feared (and revered) men in the early days of the Wild, Wild East.
Give a rival’s young daughter her mommy’s head gift-wrapped in a pretty box with a bow as a Christmas present?
“No prob-leem.”
Drop a shipping container crammed with a hundred Chechen women who’d been promised “new lives in America” into the Golden Horn Bay just “to send a statement” back to their fractured homeland?
“No prob-leem.”
Escape his enemies in the Bratva and cover his tracks by setting fire to his own mansion—with his wife and five children murdered inside?
“No prob-leem.”
Filat Preezrakevich was notorious throughout all of the former Soviet republics and his murderous deeds were well known to the Moscow Times’ readers and viewers of RT, but his vast criminal empire never made it to the pages of Variety or Billboard and he never mingled at a Grammy or AMA after-party, so Daniel was completely ignorant that his funny little friend he’d made at the craps table was living as a self-imposed exile after amassing more enemies than even he could kill.
No, when they’d met on the casino floor Filat had been wearing fuchsia silk pajamas and a red silk robe. His salt-and-pepper Phil Spector hair shot straight out of his head like someone had dropped a Russell Hobbs toaster into his Cristal-filled Jacuzzi tub. Oh, the crazy had been on full public display all right, but under the cover of flagrantly displayed wealth, it seemed like harmless eccentricity. And if there was an advantage to be had, Daniel had been confident he could make it his.
Blinded by hubris and greed, Daniel had rushed straight into the fire without heeding the flames. If he hadn’t been so desperate to make that deal, if he’d only once looked into Preezrakevich’s eyes when their vodka-fueled conversation had turned from “How much you need?” to “When can I get it?” maybe then he would have been warned off, maybe then he would have seen the same soulless pits of black that stared down at him now as he hung helplessly from the balcony with nothing between him and the pavement but the cold night air.
But “ifs” and “maybes” don’t matter to the laws of physics. Or Russian mobsters.
The cold, hard facts were simple and few: Gravity is an unforgiving bitch. Daniel had taken Preezrakevich’s money—almost a million dollars of it. And now there wasn’t a goddamn thing to show the Russian for his investment except, “Points! I gave you points!”
“I don’t want points!” The Russian leaned over the railing so Daniel could see the cruel smile such a ridiculous suggestion brought to his face. “How do I spend points of show you cannot sell? How do I pay for all this with your fucking points?” Filat gestured over his shoulder toward the lavish suite. Inside, a party that had been intended to celebrate the deal Daniel had failed to close was raging on without anyone noticing—or at least acknowledging—what was happening to the guest of honor out on the balcony. “There’s reason they call it Cash Vegas, no?”
As the brisk February wind blew through his crazy hair, the Russian shook his head, amused by his own joke. “Droog, this world takes cash, not points.” His voice turned colder than the night. “And I want mine. Now!”
“We had a deal,” Daniel reminded him.
“And now you are hanging above Strip,” Filat countered matter-of-factly. “Things change.”
Daniel tried not to struggle, but his body jerked in uncontrollable spasms. He took a deep breath and tried to focus, but cognitive thought was difficult to form and even harder to express. “That’s not how business works.”
“You explain to me how business works?” Filat snapped indignantly. “How about I explain to you how gravity works?”
The Raging Runt snapped his fingers and nodded at his well-dressed gorilla. Understanding his cue, the big man dipped Daniel as if he were letting him go. It was just a foot or so, but more than enough to create the sensation of what the other six hundred forty-nine feet would be like on the way down.
“Moog drop you. You fall. Whomp!” Filat smacked his hands together with delight. “Then you sidewalk borscht. That how gravity work.”
“No, God!” Daniel closed his eyes tightly. “Please, don’t!”
“I want my money!”
“I can get it!” Daniel screamed in a desperate gasp, terrified every syllable might be his last. “I swear to God.”
“God!” Filat sneered as he held his hands up to the pitch-black heavens like some psychotic Pentecostal preacher. “Unless He is paying debt for you, God mean as little to me as you do.”
If the life he was terrified of losing had taught Daniel anything in his short forty-seven years, it was that three little words make the world spin on its axis. Just three.
With his hold on life no better than another man’s grip around his ankles, he knew his only chance was to scream those three words as loudly as he could: “I. Have. Cash.”
“You have cash?” The little man was intrigued.
“I do!” Daniel felt his socks beginning to slip in the big man’s hands. “I do! I have it! Just pull me up!”
The Runt was intrigued but not necessarily convinced he wanted to call off the night’s zalupa-dropping festivities. “How much?”
“I have all of it!” Daniel shouted desperately. “I have the million!”
“A million?” A million dollars. Cash. For that kind of payout perhaps he could wait to see Daniel’s midair ballet. For a little while, at least. “Really?”
“I swear!” The big man’s arms were beginning to shake with the strain and Daniel knew he was running out of time. “Just pull me up! Please, just—”
“Where you get million dollars?” Rumors of Daniel’s financial collapse had circled him like buzzards above a fat man in a broken-down rental car in the desert outside Pahrump. “I hear you lose everything.”
“No. I just wanted my wife’s lawyers to think—” Daniel was fighting to remain conscious. An upside-down explanation of his personal finances was almost impossible. “I took a little.” His breaths were shallow and painful. “Here.” He wanted to vomit. “There.” His head spun. “For rainy day.”
“Rainy day?” the Russian repeated with a Grinchy grin. “Guess what? Dibble, dibble, dopp. It’s about to start raining… you!”
“No! I swear!” Daniel knew if the interrogation continued much longer, the big man was simply going to lose his grip and drop him. �
�Just pull me up!”
Preezrakevich considered the possibilities, scratching his butt through fuchsia silk pajama bottoms as he did. “Where is cash?”
“My. House.” Full sentences were too hard to form. “Malibu.”
“I know Malibu,” the Russian snapped. “I don’t give you money and not know where you live. Where in house?”
“Safe.”
The Russian was becoming increasingly frustrated. “Where?”
“Black. Velvet.” Consciousness began to roam around Daniel’s head like a bored guest waiting for the earliest opportunity to make a dash from a dead party. “Painting. Elvis.”
“And combination?”
“Won’t.” Each breath was harder to take. “Work.”
“Even man like Moog,” Filat said, patting the three hundred fifty pounds of muscle that was Daniel’s only tether to planet Earth, “has only so much stamina. Perhaps he—” He nodded at his henchman, who pretended to drop Daniel again.
“No, goddamn it, no!” The sensation of falling didn’t bring Daniel any montage of his life’s memories, only a clearer recollection of the combination. “Two…three…nineteen…fifty-nine.”
“Good.” The Russian smiled, obviously satisfied that the threat of extraordinary violence had once again proved the most reliable path to the truth.
“But. Won’t.” His words were little more than desperate croaks. “Work!”
Preezrakevich was not amused. “Why?”
With consciousness dimming, Daniel struggled to focus. “Voice activated. Need my voice—my live voice.”
Filat took a minute to consider his options. And to scratch his crotch. On one hand, he wanted to see the sniveling zhopa hit the sidewalk at terminal velocity and make a Jackson Pollock of flesh and broken bone all over the pavement. But on the other hand, a million dollars was…well, a million dollars. He scratched his crotch some more and decided he could wait to drop his human water balloon.
The Russian nodded and then grudgingly gestured toward the balcony deck.
The man mountain named Moog flexed his massive arms and pulled Daniel up over the railing, laying him on the exact spot he’d been shown. He took a step back and rubbed at the cramps burning his bicep. The worries of Daniel’s life over the last few years had whittled his six-foot frame down to a mere 175 pounds, but it was still a considerable weight to hold suspended for such a long time.