Blues Highway Blues (A Crossroads Thriller Book 1) Read online

  “So you serve that bitch, Muerte, do you?” His words were seething and he punctuated them by spitting in Rabidoso’s face. The proud assassin—who’d killed more than once for a glance he’d thought was vaguely insulting—stood motionless as the spittle ran down his cheek, tracing a path against his raised scar. “Well, I’m telling you just the same as I’d tell her if she was here.” He spit again, this time on the ground where she wasn’t. “The pups are mine. Every single one of ’em. If I ever see you hurt one again, I’ll bring you to an ending that’ll make your fuckin’ head go boom!”

  Without another word, the old man gently touched the handle of his cane to Rabidoso’s head. Suddenly, the little man cried out in pain and fell to his knees; a trickle of blood ran from his nose and ears. He pressed his hands to the sides of his head like they were the only things keeping his cranium from exploding then and there. Moaning and whimpering, he rocked back and forth like he was praying as hard as he could—but his prayers were being ignored.

  Mr. Atibon smiled with satisfaction and then calmly walked over to where the stray dog had fallen. He stooped down and picked its limp body up into his arms. He brushed his hand over the furry contours of its head, wiping away the blood that had gathered there, and then began to walk purposefully down the Riverwalk and off into the darkness that lay beyond.

  As he walked off, he sung at the top of his voice.

  And she won’t come back

  To see me no more

  She won’t ever come back

  926 East McLemore

  Leaving by degrees

  Leaving by degrees

  Moog still stood like a statute. Rabidoso kept rocking back and forth on his knees, his pained howl fading to a soft mumbling.

  Neither of them raised their eyes to watch the old man as he walked away and so neither noticed the dog lift its head and adjust itself in the old man’s arms. “Good boy,” Mr. Atibon told the pup as the two of them slipped off into the darkness. “Let’s go check in on Miss Laveau, mi key.”

  Daniel woke with a start. And the unsettling feeling he hadn’t actually been asleep. Not for long, at least. He reached for the bedside clock. It read 11:44, confirming his uneasy suspicions and explaining the crushing sensation he felt in his temples and across his forehead.

  He tried to get comfortable between the clammy sheets he desperately hoped had been washed since the last time there’d been an occupant in Room 213 of the River Belle Hotel, the cheapest sleep in Memphis. He tried, but his fevered brain refused to let him slip off to the sweet refuge of sleep.

  Instead, he tortured himself with an endless parade of nightmare scenarios: The bloody fate that might have befallen Mr. Atibon. The sadistic price Preezrakevich would exact if the money couldn’t be recovered. The horrific end he would face if the musical scavenger hunt was nothing more than an elaborate and sadistic trap. And worst of all, what all of it might mean for his son.

  When he couldn’t bear his thoughts any longer, Daniel got out of bed and made his escape to the bathroom, gingerly crossing the disturbingly moist carpet. The room was exactly what he feared (and expected). None of the features had been updated since the Nixon administration and using them required concentrating on not thinking about who might have used them previously—or for what purpose.

  It was Tuesday morning. Just four days earlier he’d stood in the (much nicer) bathroom at the Hotel du Monde and looked into the mirror, praying the man he saw there might still have enough magic left over to sell his Rock and Roll Redemption pilot for a suh-weeeet syndication deal.

  Now he looked into a chipped, permanently smoky mirror and could barely recognize the hollow eyes, circled with dark rings of exhaustion, staring back at him. The magic to sell a television pilot? He didn’t even have the magic for a fucking toothbrush…or a razor…deodorant…not even a fresh set of clothes. He didn’t have magic for anything anymore.

  If he’d eaten anything in past twenty-four hours he might have sunk to his knees and vomited. Instead, he knelt in front of the rust-stained toilet praying that he could. When he finally realized not even that prayer would be answered, he got to his feet and stepped into the shower. It left him little more than wet.

  He dried himself with a towel that was no cleaner than he was and put his filthy clothes back on. He took a last look at the forlorn character in the mirror and tried to pretend he was ready for a new day. “Magic!”

  Daniel sat in the Kia’s driver’s seat for a long time. He was ready to roll, but there was no particular place to go.

  The old man had told him to go to Memphis and, though he still wasn’t entirely sure why, Daniel had gone straight there. But the River City comprises more than three hundred square miles and he didn’t have a clue as to where he should start looking in first. Even if Mr. Atibon had been right about where the song was sending him, that didn’t mean the fractured clue still didn’t lead straight into a stone wall.

  “Goddamn it!” Daniel hit the steering wheel in frustration. He hit it again because it felt good. Again. And again. Each blow he delivered was stronger and more furious than the last, until finally he set off the car alarm.

  Aaaaaawww-aaaaawwww-aaaaaawwww-aaaaawwww!

  Car alarms haven’t been an effective theft deterrent since the days when cars had their own phones. Nobody stopped to help someone who might be in distress or to stop a could-be thief. Pedestrians passed by, scornfully looking at him from the corners of their angry eyes with a mix of annoyance and amusement as Daniel desperately pressed buttons trying (and failing) to silence the siren. He pushed the button on the key fob and punched the steering wheel some more. Nothing worked. Everybody else went about their business, shaking their heads at that asshole.

  And how could he help but join them all in laughing at him? As soon as the alarm cried itself out and finally fell silent, Daniel recalled teaching Zack to drive. His son had lost his nerve when he’d stalled and had become enraged whenever speeding Angelinos cut in front of him. It was all understandable, but it was also the worst mistake a driver could make. Over and over again, Daniel had told his son that “behind the wheel” was no place to get emotional. Ever.

  The same was true now too. The only way to approach his problem was to think it through. Calmly. Rationally. He took a deep breath, cleared his head, and tried to take the problem step by step.

  If the next location was Memphis then the logical place to start looking was…he didn’t have a clue.

  He sighed. And then started over. The clues never sent him just any place. The underlying theme of the twisted lil’ game show was: music.

  So then the most logical place to look…in Memphis…that had something to do with music…was…

  He thought about it for a second or two, but not any longer than that. He shook his head, refusing to believe he could’ve been so stupid as to overlook such an obvious destination. Memphis, after all, was music’s Mecca.

  Daniel started the Kia. This time he knew exactly where he was going.

  In 1939, Dr. Thomas Moore built a colonial-style mansion on a parcel of property his wife had received as a gift from her aunt, Grace, in Memphis’s Whitehaven community. And for more than twenty years they lived there quite comfortably and without any notoriety at all.

  Then one day—completely out of the blue—there was a knock on the Moores’ door. It was a middle-aged couple asking if the house was for sale. The inquiring pair was clearly from poor and rural origins—hillbillies would have been an impolite, but not inaccurate, description—and their offer was initially taken as some kind of practical joke. Until they informed the Moores they had $100,000. With them. In cash.

  The satchel of money had been given to them by their only son, who’d sent them out on that lazy Sunday afternoon to buy him a house. Any house they liked. And that’s just what they did.

  In a nation with hundreds of tourist attractions, Graceland is a shrine. People take family vacations to the Grand Canyon and visit the Statue of Liberty, but
they make pilgrimages to Graceland.

  It’s Graceland, after all.

  And Daniel saw every bit of it. At least those parts left open to the tour.

  He took the bus through the iconic “Music Gates” and craned his neck with the rest of his group to see into the living room and the music room. He meandered through the dining room and the kitchen and listened while a guide read a list of all of the food items the King demanded be kept on hand at all times. He pretended to marvel at the television room with the three TVs that could be watched simultaneously. And kept his opinion of the Jungle Room to himself.

  Still, after an hour of looking at collections of gold records and gold lamé jumpsuits, gawking at pink Cadillacs and Convair jets, Daniel still hadn’t found anything to lead him on to the next step of his musical quest. He was confident he hadn’t overlooked anything and so he examined every new display and exhibition with desperate interest as it was presented.

  Despite the thoroughness with which he reviewed the mansion museum, by the time the tour guide was directing all the guests to the conveniently located gift shop, Daniel still hadn’t found the next clue. But he wasn’t at all surprised there’d been nothing to find there.

  The game Daniel was being forced to play was all about music. The mansion he’d just passed through, however, had damn little to do with music.

  It was a shrine, but only to outlandish displays of wealth and the dead-end street of unchecked hedonism. Product had been developed on the site, but music hadn’t been made there. As far as Daniel could tell, the only thing actually created on the grounds was the grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich.

  No one could deny the power in the man’s performances. Daniel had been a lifelong fan and nothing he’d seen on the tour had lessened his admiration for that showman. But standing there on the garish grounds led him to the inescapable conclusion that no matter how dynamic the performance, there was something disturbing behind the idol and the cult that had grown up around him.

  There wasn’t much more than a hundred miles between Graceland’s garish gates and the Delta shotgun shacks and juke joints where the music that paid for all of that excess had been birthed and nurtured, but it was just about as far as a soul could get. One was a place that brought a young, awkward boy to life and the other was the crypt where he’d come to die.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” The middle-aged woman with the question had taken note that Daniel didn’t seem to be experiencing the same sort of rapture as the corn-fed faithful who were enthusiastically pawing through souvenirs, everything from aprons to Zippos. It bothered her.

  “What?” Daniel looked around, wondering what he’d missed.

  “All of this,” she answered with good-natured determination, her overly made-up eyes bulging with enthusiasm. “It’s just a life-changing experience, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose it has been.” It was the truth, but Daniel knew it hadn’t changed his life the same way it’d changed hers.

  “To think he was just a truck driver from Tupelo who went into this nothing, little recording studio to record some songs for his momma and POOF!” She said the word like she could actually see it—and it was covered in glitter. “He creates rock and roll.”

  Daniel knew he should just wish the woman well and walk away, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “First off, that’s not what happened.” The jowls wagged when her face fell. “And even as a creation myth, that’s not very rock and roll, is it?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, although it was clear she’d already dismissed him as a heretic.

  “I mean, rock and roll is meant to be the soundtrack to rebellion. It kind of loses something if it all started with a love-song-singing-momma’s-boy, doesn’t it?”

  If he’d sprouted cloven hooves and a pitchfork right there, the woman in her XXL “ELVIS LIVES” T-shirt wouldn’t have regarded Daniel any differently.

  “And it wasn’t a nothing, little studio. Sam Phillips had already tapped into the Delta’s musical mother lode. He’d recorded artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Parker, B.B. King, Little Milton.”

  Her doughy countenance morphed from distress to contempt as her eyes registered an unspoken, “Oh, so that’s what this is all about.”

  “When your truck driver walked into Sun, rock and roll had already been born. It was alive and kicking ass mightily. But Sam Phillips was pragmatic and knew if he wanted to sell that new music to people with the money to buy records he’d have to put it in a different package. And that’s what your truck driver was: a good-looking cardboard box.”

  It was clear from the fire in her eyes she wanted to make an impassioned retort to put the blasphemer in his place, but all that came out was, “You’re an asshole!”

  Finally, something they could agree on. Daniel turned and started off toward what he hoped was the exit.

  “If you love all that so much,” she called after him angrily. “You shoulda gone there instead.”

  And then it hit him. Maybe Graceland had given him a clue after all.

  There was a group of tourists standing in the driveway connecting Union Avenue to the cramped parking lot behind the red brick building. Some of them were busily snapping pictures of the oversized portrait of “The Million Dollar Quartet” plastered across the side of the building. Others were animatedly recounting the “energies” they’d felt throughout their tour of the building. None of them, however, paid any attention to the little gray Kia until it was almost right on top of them.

  Daniel stomped on the brake and then endured the wrathful stares of the picture-takers and storytellers. When they finally cleared the way, he pulled through to the parking lot and found a spot.

  If the near collision had been his fault, Daniel didn’t pause to apologize as he rushed past the group and hurried toward the modest storefront that had once been a “nothing, little recording studio.” The winter sun was sinking in the late-afternoon sky and with little time left in the day, he threw open the door beneath the giant guitar sign and walked in. A bell rang to announce his entrance.

  What had once been the front office for Sun Records, Sam Phillips’s musical empire, had been converted into a gift shop, with rows of T-shirts and stacks of CDs and books for sale. A few tables and booths had been set up to take full advantage of the tourist trade with a Sun Studio Café.

  The walls were covered in photos of Elvis, undeniably its most famous artist. He was joined by Jerry Lee Lewis. Randy Perkins. Johnny Cash. Roy Orbison.

  But Daniel was struck that the only reminder of the blues artists on which Sun had been founded, who’d sustained and nourished the studio and arguably given Phillips the millions of dollars to give to that quartet was an eight-by-ten of a smiling Howlin’ Wolf. A framed photo of the man about whom Sam Phillips had said, “This for me is where the soul of man never dies,” was mounted just over the entrance to the restrooms.

  Along the north wall, near the front door, was a long glass counter and behind it, a woman who looked old enough to remember the place before it was nostalgic. “I’m sorry.” End-of-the-day fatigue made her voice sound like a telephone recording. “The last tour’s already started. We close in ten minutes.”

  Daniel hoped it would be enough time. “I’m looking for—” He stopped, suddenly aware he had no idea: What was he looking for?

  She smiled officiously, but the hour was too close to five for her to care what he wanted. “We open again tomorrow at ten.”

  There was no more time for tomorrows. “No!”

  The clock-watching clerk was understandably taken aback by Daniel’s unintentionally forceful response, so Daniel repeated it—softer this time—hoping a gentler phrasing would reassure her. “No.”

  In her head, she wondered why the nutcases always seemed to wait for the end of the day to make their appearances; outwardly, she forced another smile. “I’m sorry, sir.” She kept her voice as calm as she could, cautious not to let on just how much his erratic behavior d
isturbed her. “We’re just closing up now. If you could come back tomorrow.”

  “No, I can’t come back tomorrow.” How could he hope to make her understand? There was no way to make it sound reasonable so he just asked, “Were there some men in here recently? Or a man? Someone who might have left something behind? An envelope with a CD in it maybe?” They all seemed like pertinent questions as he asked them, but as soon as he’d heard them aloud, the crazy they contained came through loud and strong. He sympathized with her completely and understood the reason for the worried look in her weary eyes.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” It was almost dark out and she was alone in the store. Without taking her eyes off Daniel, her wrinkled hand inched slowly beneath the counter for whatever it was that was kept under there to deal with the “problem” customers.

  “No, wait!” A thought came to Daniel and he held up his hands, asking for just one more chance. “Maybe someone came in here to record recently. Maybe a song that mentioned me by name? Danny?” Even to his ear, it sounded like an odd question, but it didn’t stop him from continuing. “I go by Daniel, actually. But all these songs keep referring to me as Danny for some reason I don’t understand.”

  “Sir—” She was terrified now.

  And he understood he was the reason for her anxiety. “I’m just leaving,” he assured her before she could say anything else. “I’m just leaving.”

  She didn’t respond, but her eyes were grateful to see him slowly edge to the door and then close it behind him.

  Daniel had been certain that Sun Studio was his Memphis destination. But as he walked back to the Kia, he couldn’t help but wonder whether Mr. Atibon hadn’t made a mistake in sending him there. Perhaps the old man had told a lie or had made up a destination intending only to get Daniel as far away from the dangers of New Orleans as he could. Maybe there wasn’t even another clue to be found at all.