Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (27 page)

Very different than if he had made love to
Juli—which would only happen, he was sure, when and if they were
both absolutely straight and probably had just had a nice
vegetarian low-cholesterol dinner. She was trying so hard not to be
one of those unfortunate ballad women that she would hold him
absolutely accountable for every little word and action, every
little embroidery on the truth to make it a little easier for both
of them. The thought of how difficult women like Juli were was
almost enough to undo all the missionary work the Debauchery Devil
was presently doing in his lap. Part of her was female. Hungry,
lusty female.

And then almost against his own will he saw
himself taking her hand away from his lap and bringing it up to his
mouth. He kissed her hand and set it back on the steering wheel
without explanation. He'd just remembered that the thing about a
woman like Julianne was, she wouldn't give you some deadly disease
and then laugh about it afterward. The Debauchery Devil glanced
over at him and made a rueful face.

"Your loss, sugar."

"Let's just be friends," he said. "I don't
guess I'm up to the thought of the kind of competition I'd
have."

"Maybe not. You remind me of an old consort
of mine, though. But I can see you don't have any faith in me. I
don't suppose I can change your mind?"

"Not a chance in hell, darlin'," he said,
sounding much surer than he felt. She lit a Brimstone Light
cigarette without the benefit of a lighter. The glow from the
cigarette cast orange light on the cleavage created by her neon
pink tube top, on her bare shoulders and thighs.

"Well, at least I'm on home turf there. Why
not?"

"Lots of things. You'd probably all of a
sudden have your skin start meltin' off your skull or rot away to
dust right in the middle of everything or somethin', just for
kicks."

She gave him a death's-head grin and
blew a smoke ring in his face. "Oh yeah? You consider that kicks,
do you? Why should I do that when I could melt the flesh from
your
bones
instead?"

They rode together for quite a ways, and on
the way they . . . negotiated. The main problem for Willie was that
he was as free, more or less, as he'd been since the night Mark
Mosby died and left him the magic banjo. He no longer carried the
awesome responsibility as chief picker of Lazarus, didn't have to
protect the banjo or anybody else but himself now. He had regained
all the songs he had ever learned and then some, knew more about
music than he ever had in his life, and he had a mission. What he
needed, he explained to Torchy, was an agent.

* * *

Brose's approach to finding venues was
simple. He
thought
about
going into hospitals and volunteering to sit with the dying.
He
thought
about meeting some
of the people at the animal shelters and seeing if he could play
for fund-raisers. He
thought
about playing a lot of places. What he did was, he went back
to Grand Avenue, where a lot of fancy offices faced a lot of the
wreck of what used to be downtown Kansas City, and he sat down on
the curb and played the blues and figured he'd keep playing it
until some cop came along and offered him a venue in the city jail.
He was
sure
he'd find an
audience there.

He played sweet and smooth and with lots of
little pyro-technical doodads that showed he was no amateur. A
woman in a real nice outfit walked past him. Strong-lookin' woman,
dark-skinned, black-haired, wide hips, and big bust makin' a female
outfit out of a business suit. She walked on past him without
lookin'. Without even thinkin' about it, he started playin' "Baby,
Please Don't Go." She turned around, tryin' hard to make her smile
settle down and not take control of her mouth like it wanted to,
then she walked back, dug into her coat pocket, and threw two bucks
into his guitar case. He sang after her as if he were casting a
line with the words as bait, though his butt stayed right there on
the curb and his fingers stayed on the strings. After she was out
of sight, however, Brose sprinkled a little more of that ol' devil
fairy dust all over himself and hoped the next time he could get
his audience to stick around awhile and draw a few more.

* * *

The last few years had changed Willie
in a lot of important ways, but they hadn't overcome his dislike of
using the telephone or of dealing with business details.
Fortunately, nobody seemed to expect him to
be
in business.

"Don't you worry about a thing, sugar,"
Torchy said. "I've been in touch with the current scene while
you've been overseas gallivantin' around. I know where it's
happenin' these days." They had been sitting in her car looking at
the power boats cruising the polluted Town Lake in Austin. Torchy
reached into the glove box and pulled out a cellular phone and
dialed a number. Willie, who hated phones, got out of the car and
paced for a while.

Once she called out, "Willie, sugar, how
would you describe what you do?"

"Strong heart songs, darlin'," he said
without hesitation. "Strong heart songs."

"Great," she said, and talked into the phone
some more. Finally she flung open the car door and wiggled over to
him, all sorts of things bouncing around in her short-shorts and
halter top as she teetered across the gravel on four-inch red spike
heels. "It's all set, sugar. I got you the gig."

"Great. Where is it and when?"

"Well, it's as soon as you can get there at
the newest Temple."

"What's that?"

"Why, only the latest, snazziest,
expensivest health clubs in the state. There are Temples in Austin,
Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas, Corpus Christi,
and
Galveston, and they're planning
one for Amarillo. If they like you at this one, you can tour the
others. This is only for tips, of course, since they've never tried
live entertainment before, but—"

"You're a genius. How did you do it?"

"Oh, it wasn't too hard. Lulubelle Baker is
a major stockholder."

"
Lulubelle
and a
health
club
?" Willie asked, remembering the establishment
where he had first met Torchy in her Lulubelle Baker guise,
Lulubelle Baker's Petroleum Puncher's Paradise, which had to
be
the
sleaziest, nastiest,
kinkiest, most degenerate lowlife whorehouse, dope den, and bar he
had ever been in—and he'd been in some doozies.

The Debauchery Devil patted his cheek.
"Diversification, darlin'. I haven't spent all these centuries
listenin' to that blessed accountin' devil maunder on about the
treasury report for nothin'."

"Thanks a lot, darlin'."

"
De
nada
, sweetie, but just remember, you owe me. I'll
give you a lift, then you're on your own for a while. I have
simultaneous appointments in Paris with the the wife of a
third-world dictator tor a shopping trip, and with the dictator and
his mistresses for an orgy. Busy, busy, busy. I have to make sure
vice and debauchery don't fall on such unprofitable times
everywhere as they have here. I'm happy to help you, but I do have
my own career, you know."

* * *

James Francis Farnham wiped the knife on the
skirt of one of his victims, stuck the knife back into its sheath,
and casually abandoned the stolen van in the flea-market parking
lot. The flea market was held in an old warehouse. The van and the
bodies were unlikely to be discovered until he'd had a chance to
obey his voices and generate some new corpses.

He caught a bus to downtown Kansas City,
Missouri, though there was not much in the heart of downtown now
except slick new buildings and loony street people. Fucking
psychos. He hated that kind of scum. He noticed a mottled-looking
mulatto talking earnestly to a bunch of them, and that disgusted
him even more.

Not all of the street people were men. There
was a skinny blond girl with bad skin who held a baby to her flat
chest and a snotty-faced two-year-old by the hand. One old bag with
a shopping cart sat beside the mulatto. Then James Francis Farnham
noticed that there was a guitar case open on the other side of the
mulatto and knew he'd come to the right place. The voices had told
him about the others. He could take as many as he wanted, though he
only wanted the women. Maybe he could kill off the women till the
mulatto told him what he wanted to know. Then maybe he could kill
some more. He hadn't killed a man before, but a mutt like that
wouldn't hardly count.

His jeans were full of holes by now, and his
shoes ragged and dirty, his coat, stolen from one of his victims,
struck the right note—too big, not the right style, and obviously a
castoff from a person of the wrong sex. He fit right in with the
crowd in the street.

"Say," he said. "Any of you know where
there's a likely dumpster? I haven't eaten in three days."

"Sorry, bro, but they been emptied for the
day," another man said unexpectedly politely. "But we just ordered
pizza, and you're welcome to share."

CHAPTER 20

"I want to try working the streets with you,
Brose," Dan said one day shortly after they arrived in Kansas
City.

"I thought you was off learnin' Cambodian
music or somesuch," Brose said.

Dan shook his head sadly. "I forgot that
this has been going on for seven years. No matter which
neighborhood you go into, you can't hear any music but Duck
Soul—even translated Duck Soul. Maybe there's some of their real
music at parties or something, but so far I haven't been able to
wangle an invitation. I'm just another big Caucasian with funny
ideas that may get them into trouble."

"And you think the streets will be easier,
huh?" Brose asked.

Dan put his arm around Brose's shoulders.
Since Dan stood about six foot four and had a reach like a gorilla,
this was no problem for him, even though Brose's shoulders, like
the rest of Brose, were pretty broad. "At least we'll be together,"
Dan told him.

Brose gave him a disgusted look, but Dan
just hugged him tighter for a moment and said, "Brose, it's worse
than just bad—it's dangerous. It's like Sir Walter told us about
the English burning harps and harpers and hanging bagpipers—music
from other cultures is being completely dominated by the prevailing
attitudes of the mainstream. The worst thing is, these people are
either too new to the country or too young to realize that's not
the way it's supposed to be. So I think maybe if I help you get
English-language music back to the people, it will encourage the
people in the other cultures to revive their own music before they
end up having to return to their old countries—and in some cases,
that would mean getting killed—to retrieve it, the way you guys did
with the ballads."

"Okay, kid, just let me tell you, though,
that it ain't easy. I get a tip now and then, but mostly folks is
in too big a hurry. Sure ain't gathered no huge following to pass
music on to."

"That," said Dan, "is why you need me. And
maybe a better spot."

Brosc just grunted. He wasn't sure about the
kind of notice Dan would attract. Brose thought of himself as old
and fat and funny lookin' enough to draw attention, but at least he
had the sense to be paranoid about it, and trouble would have a
hard time sneaking up on him.

Dan was different, though. He was kind of
like a big puppy dog who thought everybody, even the dogcatcher,
was his friend.

However, Brose soon found that like a lot of
people who simply assume that trouble will not bother them as long
as they mean well, Dan had no problems at all—at least not with the
street people. The police were another matter.

"That's where I've been hangin' out," Brose
said, pointing to the corner of Fourth and Grand Avenue. "You get
ahead on out and see if you can find someplace better. I'm gonna
park. Don't get hit over the head."

Dan grinned and waved, then strolled
nonchalantly up the icy street, hunching his shoulders against a
knife-sharp wind cutting along the sidewalks and through the
streets, straight as the lines between the patches of WPA-laid
brick that broke through the cement here and there around the
manholes. "Damn fool," Brose said, drove a hundred yards or so
farther, then pulled into a parking place, put money into the
meter, and pulled his guitar and Dan's hammered dulcimer from the
back of the van.

He found Dan talking to a bag lady, helping
her pick up her shopping cart full of trash while she smacked at
his hands, afraid he was going to steal her loot. As Brose watched,
two younger people, a raggedy-bearded man with long unkempt hair
and a skinny blond girl with a baby in her arms and a toddler
clinging to her leg, closed in on Dan, joining the woman in her
shouts. Dan was speaking soothingly. "It's okay. Really. Just a bit
of an accident."

He towered over them all, his prematurely
gray head bobbing earnestly. Two rat-faced teenagers, one Hispanic
looking, the other with greasy sandy hair and volcanic-looking
eruptions all over his face, joined the pack.

Brose came to the rescue, whether of Dan or
the street people he wasn't sure, shouting, "Hey, buddy, here's
your instrument! You gon' do a street concert for these folks, you
gon' need your instrument!"

Dan beamed calmly and stepped away from the
group, shedding the more menacing members with an "Excuse me" as he
reached for his dulcimer. Brose was glad that musical instruments
didn't have much monetary value anymore.