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

  Well, now it seems to you that you lost everything

  Sometimes I feel like I lost it all too

  But, baby, what we got ain’t nothing

  What we got is nothing to lose

  We got nothing to be scared of

  And there’s nothing to regret

  Ain’t nothing holding us back

  There’s nothing that we can’t get

  No, there’s nothing that we can’t get

  Nothing that we can’t get

  Moog couldn’t help tapping along on the dashboard, his head bobbing rhythmically back and forth.

  Roll around this town, looks like a bomb’s been dropped

  But those who stayed, we ain’t going away and we can’t be stopped

  Because the Comeback City is still our home and it will always be

  And we’ll be back, baby, we’ll be back, baby, you and me

  ’Cause there’s nothing to be scared of

  And there’s nothing to regret

  Ain’t nothing holding us back

  There’s nothing that we can’t get

  No, there’s nothing that we can’t get

  Nothing that we can’t get

  Lincoln Mammett was a good man, he could slap that bass line down

  He hung with the Funk Brothers, he’s still knockin’ ’round this town

  Now Danny he’s so much like you, he’s a man that you should meet

  You’ll find him out there every night, ’cause he’s living on the street

  But he’s got nothing to be scared of

  And, Danny, there’s nothing to regret

  Ain’t nothing holding either of you back

  There’s nothing that you can’t get

  No, there’s nothing that you can’t get

  Nothing that you can’t get

  The track drew to a close with a flourish of horns and bass, guitars and drums, and then—BOOM—came to a sudden stop.

  “Detroit.”

  “What’s that?” Moog wondered aloud.

  “Detroit,” Daniel repeated, although he wasn’t sure why he had to. “Our next stop is Detroit.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “The song had a Motown feel to it, with all the brass and the tambourine keeping time like a drum,” he answered, as the first of a list of clues he was prepared to rattle off. “Detroit’s always been known as the Comeback City, but if there’s ever been a city that looks like a bomb’s been dropped on it—”

  “All right,” the big man cut him off so he could consider the argument. “Suppose we go to Detroit…then what?”

  “I don’t know.” Daniel shrugged. “I suppose we go looking for that man.”

  “What man?”

  “Lincoln Mammett.”

  “The name mean anything to you?” Moog wondered.

  Daniel shook his head. “The Funk Brothers were Motown’s house band. Like Booker T. and the MGs down at Stax.” He took a deep breath while he tried to put clues together, but there was nothing else. “I guess we’ll just have to go looking for him.”

  The big man smiled. “My gramma used to play all that Motown every Sunday when I was growing up. Supremes. Smokey. Marvin Gaye.” He took a moment to enjoy the memory and then got right back to business. “Man, I loved that shit.”

  The memory was interrupted by a tapping at the rear passenger window, right by Daniel’s head. He turned reflexively, expecting to find a disgruntled Rabidoso standing there, but found instead a stranger looking into the cabin longingly. “You got a dollar or two, mister?”

  Daniel was surprised by his appearance at the side of their stolen truck and could only respond with a bewildered, “What?”

  “A dollar or two?” The man was tall and lean, with an air and wardrobe that suggested he was a citizen of the streets. “Ain’t gonna lie to you. It ain’t for food.”

  “I understand.” Daniel pulled a handful of change out of his pocket and lowered the electric window so he could hand the offering out. “I do.”

  The stranger snatched the coins out of Daniel’s hand. “That’s mighty kind of you, mister.” He couldn’t help but turn the contribution over and smile broadly at Daniel’s grim face. “But if’in I was you, I’d keep my head down, mi key.”

  “What did you—” Daniel turned back to the window, but caught only a glimpse of the stranger running back up South Michigan Avenue. He might have thought it was an odd encounter, maybe even have called after the gentleman if his attention hadn’t been immediately diverted by the sight of another man advancing on the truck.

  “Get down!” Daniel screamed as he threw himself to the floorboards.

  A split instant later there was a thunderous blast outside and the rear window—with its decal murals of two skeletons gun-fighting under the name Ramirez—shattered into black-tinted shards as eight three-quarter-ounce lead pellets tore through the cabin of the truck and embedded themselves in the dash.

  Moog threw open the front passenger door and leaned out with his .50-caliber in his hand. There were three quick concussive blasts. Then the big man leaned back into the truck and slammed the door behind him. Though Daniel couldn’t see a thing from his hiding place on the backseat carpet, he figured the big man must have gotten his man.

  “Where the fuck is he?” Moog screamed at the empty driver’s seat.

  Figuring the coast had been cleared, Daniel’s head popped up like a meerkat surveying the savannah, only to catch with his peripheral vision the image of a black Escalade stopping traffic on South Michigan Avenue as it pulled up right beside them. “Moog!”

  The passenger-side windows on the Cadillac came down. A second later the driver’s side windows of the purple pimpmobile shattered in a hail of gunfire. Daniel tried to flatten himself even farther into the floor as the attack showered him in a blizzard of tinted glass.

  “Fuck!” Moog screamed, proving it was possible to hide a man of his size in the front passenger footwell. “I’m not waiting for that cocksucker any longer.” Without raising his head any farther than he had to, he fired off two shots from his hand cannon and then reached over with his left hand to turn the keys dangling from the ignition. The engine came to life. He reached up for the gear shift and pressed on the brake and then the accelerator with the long barrel of his pistol.

  The truck lurched backward and then rocked violently as it smashed into the Chevy minivan parked behind it. The truck was still rocking from the collision when Moog shifted again and this time the pimpmobile rocketed forward into the Celica parked there. “Fuck!” Moog screamed at the second collision. A second volley of gunfire poured in from the Escalade.

  Still pinned to the floor, Daniel guessed the problem. “You have to turn the wheel!”

  “You turn the motherfucking wheel!” Moog yelled, firing off two more rounds into the Escalade. He waited for Daniel, who’d taken the comment more as an angry response than an instruction. “Get your fucking ass up here and steer, motherfucker!” With that, the big man raised up and planted his size 14 on the accelerator while he emptied what was left in the clip into the Escalade.

  Daniel sprung up under the cover fire and grabbed the wheel, turning it as hard as he could to the left. The truck groaned as it struggled to push the Celica out of its way and then roared as it finally freed itself and shot out onto South Michigan Avenue, taking off the front panel of the Escalade as it did.

  Moog ejected the spent clip from the Desert Eagle, slapped in a new one, and immediately began to fire through the shattered rear window at the Escalade that was now in pursuit. Daniel leaned forward across the center console, trying his best to navigate through southbound traffic that was speeding to escape the shootout.

  “What the fuck, man!”

  Daniel looked over through what had once been the driver’s window and saw Rabidoso running at top speed beside the fleeing truck. “Stop the car!” he yelled to Moog.

  “What?” the big man asked over the deafening boom of his own pistol.


  “Stop the car!”

  Moog looked over and moved his foot from the accelerator to the brake. The truck screeched to a stop. The Escalade collided into the rear end. The jolt sent Daniel sailing up into the driver’s seat but couldn’t dislodge Moog, who suddenly had a close and steady target. Six shots fired in rapid succession and Daniel could tell from the cold, satisfied look in the big man’s eyes that he’d taken care of the problem once and for all.

  Daniel crawled into the backseat as Rabidoso pulled open what was left of the driver’s door and climbed back in behind the wheel. “What the fuck are you two doing?”

  The big man glared. “One more won’t make any difference to me right now, motherfucker.” For once, the psychotic Mexican was silent. “Now get us the fuck out of here. Now!”

  No one was surprised the Escalade did not resume its pursuit. Smoke poured out of its engine like blood flowed from its passengers.

  “Man,” Rabidoso interjected. “What do you think that was about?”

  “I don’t know,” Moog said sarcastically. “Maybe we shoulda asked Senior Ramirez why he was so upset about you jacking his fucking truck.”

  “I don’t know,” Daniel said, finding a seat on the back bench. “I don’t think that was Mr. Ramirez. The guy on the sidewalk was wearing a biker jacket.” Sirens grew louder in the distance. “Like the guys in New Orleans. Remember?”

  “What are you saying?” Moog wondered, although he was pretty certain he already knew what Daniel was trying to get at. And he didn’t want to hear it.

  “I think your boss has put a bounty out on us,” Daniel answered. “All of us.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” the big man answered defensively, though not with his characteristic confidence. “Mr. P. knows I got this shit locked down.”

  His partner didn’t say anything.

  “Right?”

  His partner didn’t say anything at all.

  They ditched the critically wounded pimpmobile at the valet stand at McCormick Place and tried their best to blend into the crowd of actuaries holding their annual conference there. They cruised through the gathering like sharks in a kiddie pool and then made straight for the parking lot behind the convention center.

  Moog chose the car this time: a beige Lexus. Without breaking a sweat, Rabidoso was inside and the car was started. But Moog held the driver’s door open and stared silently at the little assassin until he slunk out from behind the wheel and retook the shotgun seat to which he’d been permanently demoted.

  Knowing they couldn’t afford even the simplest run-in with the police, the big man drove careful and slowly. With traffic out of Chicago at rush hour (one of five rush hours, anyway), a cruising speed set at the posted limit, and a stop for something to eat at the Bob Evans at Exit 43A off 94, they didn’t make Detroit until well after dark.

  “We need a place for the night,” Rabidoso grumbled.

  “No time,” Moog advised without bothering to take his eyes from the road.

  “No time?”

  “Tick. Tock.” He pointed at the watch strapped to his tree branch of a wrist. “We gotta find that Lincoln Mammett guy. And we gotta find him soon.” Without another word he kept driving through Detroit’s largely deserted streets.

  They drove past the railway station that had long since been abandoned to the ghosts of a million joyous reunions and just as many heart-wrenching farewells. In silence they rolled down streets lined with shelled-out skyscrapers that made it seem history must have forgotten to add a war to its endless roster, and past tracts and tracts that had once been someone’s yard but were now just more patches in an ever-expanding quilt of wilderness.

  And every time they happened to spot a soul making his way along the lifeless streets, the zombified landscape, Moog would pull the car along upside and tell them, “I’m looking for a Lincoln Mammett.”

  Some thought the big man was obviously a cop. Others clearly suspected he was something worse. Most gave him a silent shake of the head or, if they could muster it, a simple no. There were a couple who cursed at him and more than a few who asked for money in return for information they couldn’t even pretend to have.

  Moog was just about to concede and call off the search when he spotted a man stumbling toward the ruins of the United Artists Theatre Building on Bagley Street. He pulled up to the curb and called out, “You know a Lincoln Mammett?”

  “I know him,” the man in the blue parka answered. “What you want with him?”

  “You let us worry about that.” His deep voice was colder than the night.

  The man considered his situation and options and must have concluded he didn’t have much left to lose. “I’m Lincoln Mammett.”

  The man was six foot, although it was probably a safe guess that he’d been taller before his body had been broken by a life on the streets. He had a blue parka, old and tattered, with the right sleeve pinned up at the elbow.

  “I’m not letting that old goat in the car,” Rabidoso complained. “We’ll have the fucking smell with us till we get back to Vegas.”

  “You won’t have to,” Daniel said calmly as he closed the door behind him.

  “Hey,” Moog called out after him. “Get back in this car.” It wasn’t clear whether he was being protective or if he just didn’t want to lose Daniel again.

  Whatever the case, Daniel ignored him and offered his hand to the man. “I’m Daniel Erickson.”

  The man took it with his left hand. “Lincoln Mammett. You have to excuse the hand,” he looked down at their awkward attempt at a shake. “I only got the one.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Mammett said, his breath heavy with booze. “My own goddamn fault.” Without explaining anything more, he turned and started walking slowly down the street.

  Daniel followed. “You don’t seem surprised we’re looking for you.”

  “They said you’d find me.” He looked around at the devastation that surrounded him. “I told ’em it was damn near impossible to find a single man in this ocean of decay, but they said you would.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Did they give you a name?”

  “Nope.”

  Daniel was desperate to narrow the list of suspects. “Do you remember what they looked like?”

  Lincoln considered the question. “White guys,” Lincoln said with a shrug. “Skinny white guys with long hair.”

  That didn’t narrow Daniel’s list that much.

  “I remember they was musicians, ’cause we talked about music for a long time.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said you was a musician too. Guitar player,” he said brightly.

  “I used to be.” Daniel found it hard to explain. “I was in the music business.”

  “I played once or twice with the Funk Brothers,” Lincoln said, still proud of that.

  “I heard.”

  “You know, they recorded more number ones than Elvis and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. All of them put together. They recorded more number ones than anyone.” What he’d begun as a boast left him feeling sad.

  “The guys who told you I’d be coming—”

  “It wasn’t always like this,” he offered apologetically. “The city.” He shook his head. “Or me.” He took a step and then another. Daniel followed.

  “There was a time when Detroit was as fine a city as you find west of New York. Folks from Chicago will tell you different, but what the hell do they know. Chicago was bigger, but Detroit was always finer.”

  Daniel nodded that he understood the distinction.

  “That was the thing about Motown. Mr. Gordy always told everyone, you’re what the whites are going to see. And when they look at you I want them to see royalty.” His eyes sparkled with the recollection. “And that’s what we was.” He straightened his bent back and puffed out his chest. “Royalty.”

  Daniel got a sense of what that had once meant to the man. An
d smiled.

  “But then Mr. Gordy upped and moved everything out to Los Angeles.”

  “And you stayed here?”

  “Shit, no. I ain’t stupid.” He laughed a hoarse, hacking laugh. “I packed my bags and got out of Detroit—are you kidding me?” He had another laugh. “But Los Angeles—that was something else.”

  Daniel couldn’t tell whether it was an expression of melancholy or wonderment. Either way, Daniel understood.

  “Man, the women…” Lincoln let his voice trail away before correcting himself. “The woman.”

  Daniel nodded again.

  “Her name was Lola.” Mammett chuckled to himself. “You woulda thought I’da known better than to mess around with a woman named Lola.”

  Daniel understood that part too. “You lose your head when you’re in her arms, don’t you?”

  “Ain’t that the damn truth.” He coughed again. “Anyway, we was happy—more or less—for a couple years at least. And then—” He shook off the memory. “People always go on about musicians living that life: partying and drinking and chasing all the skirts. What everyone always forgets is that while you out at your gig doing your thing, your old lady is back home all alone.” He took a couple of steps in silence. “Or she’s not.”

  Daniel could nod to that one too.

  “I took it bad. Thought I’d show her how much I loved her, thought if I convinced her I’d die without her…” He walked some more. “I took an overdose. Heroin. Only I didn’t die. Got an infection. They took my arm. I came back to Detroit and we’ve been falling apart together ever since.”

  It wasn’t that Daniel was unsympathetic to a story that reminded him of his own, but he had to find the money. And he was running out of time. “The men who talked to you about me—”

  “They gave me this.” Lincoln pulled an envelope out of his coat and offered it to Daniel before pulling it back. “They said you’d pay me for it.”

  Daniel shook his head with regret. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything right now.”

  Mammett thought for a minute. “Here, you take this anyway.” He put the envelope in Daniel’s hands. “Whatever it is, you must need it bad or you wouldn’t be out here with me.”