Headhunter (25 page)

"Hang on," the woman said, and the four of them were moving.

Up ahead, Rabidowski took the corner in a skid and then fishtailed down the street. As Spann gained on him the van began a wide arc that led to the clubhouse door. Suddenly motorcycle hogs were flying in every direction and the brick frame dwelling where the Iron Skulls ruled loomed up out of the storm. The sound of the hit was deafening.

At just the last moment Mad Dog Rabidowski stepped on the brakes to hold back their momentum. The ram welded to the front of the van slammed the heavy-bolted door and threw it careening open. The police vehicle was seven feet down the entrance corridor and two feet into the meeting room before it screeched to a halt. The Mad Dog slid it into reverse and pressed the accelerator. Tires spinning, the vehicle came flying back outside just as the SWAT Team jumped out of the cruiser followed quickly by Spann. The woman's Smith and Wesson was gripped in her hand.

"Come on!" Rabidowski shouted, grabbing a Heckler and Koch from the seat and swinging open the door. Macdonald and Scarlett tumbled out. Then they all went running in.

The clubhouse was pandemonium.

In the center of the large room there was an eight-foot-high representation of a human skull made from welded and riveted iron plates. The room itself was in darkness, the only light cast by several Bosch headlamps which shone forward out of the eye sockets of the skull. The jaws of the Death Head were open and the teeth of the mouth, which were actually iron plates, bit down on the fuel tank of a 750 cc Harley Davidson that was half emerged from the throat.

The woman was tied facing the skull with each of her wrists roped to one of the prongs of the handlebars. Her clothes had been ripped down the center of her back and were now hanging off her in tatters. Standing behind her with one hand gripping her hair and the other clutching her waist was a man whose face was scarred by a dozen old criss-cross knife slashes. His hair was dirty and hung down in matted hanks, his body was naked except for a jean jacket with the sleeves torn off and a crest on the back which screamed
FEAR THE BARBARIANS
. His skin, in the light of the headlamps, shone with motorcycle grease and the man had an erection.

Not five seconds ago—before the police assault vehicle had taken down the door—almost thirty bikers had been seated on chairs drinking beer and watching the performance. These men had upper chests of ripcord muscle from years of pumping iron, and bellies bloated by floods of ale that now strained at their jackets. All of them had tattoos.

One second after the door came in not a man remained in his seat. For now they were running and diving for weapons and turning to meet the threat. Most were armed with baseball bats and pipes and axes and chains. The first biker to reach Rabidowski was armed with a tire iron. With one hand he reached out to grab the cop as the other arm raised high in the air to crack the iron down on his skull. The Mad Dog judo chopped him once and dropped the man to the ground. Then he pointed the Heckler and Koch up toward the ceiling and pulled off a rapid burst. Casings spewed out on the floor amid the sound of a US Fourth of July.

As chunks of wood fell down from the roof and the rain came dripping in, Rick Scarlett for the second time that day shouted: "Freeze! Police!"

And once again, luckily, everybody froze.

Ebony

10:12 p.m.

When they got to the London Calling, now in plain clothes, they walked into the fifties. The London Calling Ballroom had transformed itself over several decades. Built before the Second World War it had swayed to the big band era, then later it had jitterbugged, jived and Motowned up to the days of psychedelics. In the late sixties the club had been known as the Synapse Circus, and during the reign of President Nixon had been the home of Dare To Be Great. Now it was back to rocking with your English rock 'n' roll. English rock, that is, in the classic American style.

They had missed Voodoo Chile.

When they entered the club the lights were on and several roadies up on stage were dismantling equipment. The job was half completed. What caught the attention of both officers immediately was a trellis structure above the stage that held the lights and some of the speakers. The trellis was covered right and left with almost fifty voodoo masks.

"Want a beer?" Scarlett asked, looking for a table.

"Sure," Spann said. "This place makes me want to smoke in the school washroom and neck at the drive-in with James Dean."

"How about me?"

"Nope. You're not Marlon Brando."

"Don't be cruel," Scarlett said with his finest Presley sneer.

Two men were leaving a table so Spann quickly grabbed it. She sat down on one of the wooden chairs and slowly took in the club. A majority of the men had haircuts with short back and sides. Quiffs were slicked back with Brylcreem and Wildroot Oil. Some wore zoot suits with padded shoulders and thin, thin ties.

As the speakers cut in with a canned
Rebel Rouser
Spann surveyed the women.

There were those trying to look like Brenda Lee in red satin dresses with crinolines showing all leg and no breast. Others had close-cropped hair dyed every hue and shade—blue, orange, yellow, purple, chartreuse—while their bodies were hidden beneath men's shirts with the shirttail hanging out. There were paste-skinned girls in miniskirts with black-circle slut-lined eyes. There were women with bobbysocks and ponytails, most of them smoking cigarettes holding their fingers on top and their thumbs underneath, one or two with a steady's ring on a chain around the neck.

"Jesus," Scarlett muttered, returning with the beer. "You should see the bar. It makes you want to thumb your nose and cruise for chicks and try to cop a feel. There's nothing but muscle and mouth. There's a toilet on top of the counter filled to the brim with matchbooks and I saw this one dude chewing on a toothpick and practicing through-the-teeth spitting. What a madhouse."

"What's this?" Spann said after tasting her mug of beer.

"They've got English draught on tap, warm and flat as it should be. The place even honors English pounds."

As the woman placed the mug down on the table she saw that its wooden surface was carved. Back in the sixties some freak had written in a fine classic script: "People are strange, but people are nice." More recently someone had scratched over it: "Fuck you and your mother."

"The door to the left." Scarlett said. "That must be the place."

Spann looked back to the stage. By now one roadie had collected all the voodoo masks and placed them in several cartons. He had carried the boxes one by one off to the left of the platform. As the woman watched she saw him knock on a door to the left of the stage. When it opened she caught a brief glimpse of a tall black man wearing a yellow suit. The roadie took in the boxes, then left, and a guard came out of the room to stand in front of the door.

"That cat looks like Rackstraw. He fits Tipple's description."

"Let's wait till the second act comes on and they kill the lights. Then let's pay a visit," Rick Scarlett said. He wiped some beer foam off his mouth with the back of his hand.

While they waited out the intermission and the roadies set up equipment, Scarlett busied himself by trying to place what was coming out of the speakers. Most of the old ones he recognized—Carl Perkins and Johnny Horton and Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. Most of the new ones he did not. It was during a souped-up version of
Up a Lazy River
that a
woman at the next table offered a joint to Spann.

"No thanks," Katherine said. "I'm already flyin'."

"Suit yourself," the woman replied, and she shrugged her shoulders vaguely.

Spann said: "We missed the first act. Were they any good?''

"You like voodoo rockabilly? The Cramps? That sorta thing?"

"Some," the cop said.

"Then you might like Voodoo Chile. They use two drummers and a standup bass. Not my cup of . . .”

The lights were killed suddenly and she cut off the sentence. Around the club, people began to stomp their feet. There was hooting. There was yelling. There was whistling. Then a single spotlight lit up a high-school blackboard up on the stage. Scrawled in chalk across its surface were the words: "Erase the Blackboard Jungle!"

An announcer's voice cut in. "Tonight, live from London, England by way of the USA. May we have a warm Vancouver welcome for the one and only . . . RAW-T!"

With the shout that delivered his last word, a man's arm burst out of the dark onstage and into the stab of the spotlight where—before anyone could cover their ears—four black-painted fingernails scraped across the surface of the blackboard. The amplified screech that followed shredded a nerve or two. A microphone nearby magnified the noise about seven trillion times. As Scarlett gritted his teeth and Spann's neck-hairs stood on end, the lights onstage exploded and a born-again Buddy Holly ripped into
There's Good Rockin' Tonight.

"Let's go!" Scarlett shouted.

They abandoned their beer and the table and made for the far left wall.

As they approached the door to the left of the stage, Spann began to play the drunk and leaned on Scarlett's shoulder. As soon as she was within distance the woman fell into the arms of the guard. For a second or two the man took a peek down her neckline and in that moment of distraction Scarlett dashed for the door. With a crash he swung it open—and interrupted a party.

In the center of the small room a black man and a white man were leaning over a tabletop mirror covered with chopped cocaine. As one man took a snort from a spoon Scarlett said: "It's the police." Involuntarily, in surprise, the man inhaled the powder into his lungs by mistake and abruptly began choking and coughing and wheezing. The cocaine on the tabletop rose like a cloud into the air.

"Hey, what's this shit?" Yellow Suit said as Spann also moved in through the door.

He snapped a glance at the worried guard who came running in behind her. Turning, the woman kneed the man in the groin and dropped him to his knees. As she kicked the door shut RAW-T was just beginning the Big Bopper's
Chantilly Lace.

"Let's all take it easy," Scarlett said calmly, "so no one else gets hurt."

Apart from the two cops there were six black men in the room along with the single white. All the blacks wore leather jackets and had their hair straightened, swept back in pompadours like Little Richard. The white looked like an extra from
Rebel Without a Cause.
Yellow Suit didn't fit in. He was standing over near a bench along which several voodoo masks were set out. The blank faces of the masks seemed to stare up at him as if waiting in anticipation for the confrontation that was coming. There were guitars and drums scattered everywhere.

"What do you want?" Yellow Suit asked as cocaine settled like snow throughout the room.

"We're looking for John Lincoln Hardy." Scarlett took out his shield.

"Well, he ain't here. That's obvious."

"Who are you?"

Yellow Suit paused a moment, then said: "Rackstraw. Steve Rackstraw."

"Who's he?" Scarlett asked, indicating the coughing man.

"Ask him."

"I said, who is he? And I expect an answer."

"One of the drummers," Rackstraw said. "Didn't you catch the show?"

"Where's Hardy?"

"I've no idea. I'm not the man's keeper."

"Would you rather talk about the dope?"

Rackstraw didn't answer.

"Kathy, how much stuff do you think is floating about the room?" "Perhaps an ounce and a half."

"That's PPT, Rackstraw. And trafficking's the big one."

"You got nothin' on me, man. I'm leaving to call a
lawyer,"

"The coke's in the room. You're in the room. That's enough for me. You can make your call downtown."

"That ain't sufficient evidence."

"You tell that to the judge."

For several seconds the man stood still, contemplating his position. Rackstraw wore his hair in a tight Afro and sported rings on every finger. His cafe-au-lait complexion contrasted with the suit. It was hand-tailored and pulled in at the waist. Beneath the concern that showed in his eyes he had a pencil-thin moustache tailored to his lip.

"Okay," Rackstraw said finally. "Can you and I talk in private?"

"Where?" Scarlett asked.

The man indicated a washroom off to the right. They left the room. Once inside the toilet, the black man closed the door and the white man leaned on the wall. Rick Scarlett waited.

"What do you want Johnnie for? You know the man's my cousin?"

"I know," the policeman said.

"So what's goin' down?" Rackstraw sat on the edge of the sink with one foot on the floor.

"One of his girlfriends got herself iced by a psychotic killer. We're trying to trace her movements. We think Hardy was her pimp. Perhaps he lined up a john."

"I see. You open to a suggestion?"

"Try me," Scarlett said.

"Okay. You leave me alone, and the boys alone, and I'll put you in touch with Hardy. But it'll take a couple of days."

"Where is he now?"

"Not till we got a deal."

The policeman thought a moment. In effect this was the exact same trip as Winalagilis and his fix. Same game, different players.

"All right," Scarlett said, "here's what I can do. We'll take the two on the mirror plus the stash of cocaine. You we let go. You produce Hardy and we'll reconsider the charge. If not we pick you up."

"Come on, man. Have a bit o' heart. I own these niggers and honky, lock stock and barrel. Next month we start a tour of over forty cities. They gotta practice. They can't be in the can." The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a tour schedule. "Here, look at this. Even John my cousin ain't worth a forty-city circuit. How am I gonna welsh if you know where I am?"

Scarlett glanced at the paper. "Okay, a compromise. No arrests now but we take the powder. And I want a ransom. Give me one of those masks."

Rackstraw frowned. He was puzzled by the suggestion. "You don't know what you're askin'," he said. "Those masks are antiques. Each one is more than a hundred years old."

"Good. Then I'll take two. You see, my man, I want to check if you got customs clearance. Those masks are not from here."

"I don't need customs clearance. They're antiques."

"That means you don't pay duty. They still got to clear."

Rackstraw sighed.

"Where's Hardy?"

"LA."

"What for?"

"Scoutin" a record deal."

"When's he back?"

"Don't know. Depends how long it takes."

"Okay, you produce Hardy and we kill the charges and give you back the masks. You don't produce Hardy and we drag both you and your band off stage on a warrant. A deal?"

"Shit," Rackstraw said. "Yeah, it's a deal."

The two men left the washroom and returned to the larger room. Scarlett and Spann took down the names of all those present and as best they could collected up the scattered powder. Scarlett then found an empty box and walked along the row of masks set out on the bench. He stopped beside a black Demon's Face with a curled protruding tongue. As he picked it up, the voodoo mask slipped from his fingers and tumbled toward the floor. Scarlett managed to catch it just before it smashed.

"Jesus!" Rackstraw shouted. "Can't you be more careful? That's my people's culture. And that ain't just any wood."

I know.
Rick Scarlett thought.
It's carved ebony.