Noir

Chapter Ten – Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock

His image flickered on the sad-looking TV screens in the window of the little electronics store on the corner. I watched, biding my time, studying my prey.

“So yeah. This is my inner sanctum, you know, where I can just go and chill and try out some new chords or whatever. Check this one out.”
The figure on the screen gestured at the room in front of them.
“This one is from the Ukraine, you know? Custom-made from guitar parts found in Chernobyl. It’s got special atom power, you know, like energy from the Sun, kind of savage nature hewn into the living wood.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” the presenter asked him. The figure waved an arm, the stub of a cigarette dangling limply between two digits.
“Yeah, well rock is dangerous, you know? Sometimes you don’t have the luxury of safety, you know, when you’re up on stage and your guitar is glowing – I mean literally glowing – from the intensity of the rock coming out of it. That’s some power there, man.”

“So this next song,” the interviewer continued, the bars on the radio dancing to the sound of his voice in the dying embers of the city’s twilight, “is called ‘Zen Master’.”
“Yeah,” the other voice continued, “a lot of my songs are inspired by Eastern philosophy, you know, it’s like there’s a kind of chi running through them. With Zen, you know, you can kind of go places where normal rock musicians can’t. It’s like – you know reincarnation?” He paused briefly, before continuing “yeah, well it’s like when you die you come back as some other life form, and the best people come back as like, kings or whatever. Well, when rock stars die they come back as songs, so this one is kind of Hendrix, come back in a song, like he’s speaking to me through the music. Another one I’ve got is the reincarnation of Palmer Cartney…”
“Palmer Cartney’s dead?” the announcer asked, shocked.
“Nah, well, you know, if he were, like…”
I grimaced as the drums started, and listened to the wail of the guitar fade out into the sound of the wind and rain as they rushed down 49th street.

I glanced up at the poster outside. A single figure, glowing as he hollered into a mic – either from backlighting, or from radioactive instruments. Not that I cared enough to study it closer. Peggle swam in front of my eyes, taunting me, and I coughed, my body trying to wash away its sins like a sailor on the Titanic trying to mop up the sea with a sponge. Instead, I slipped down an alleyway, into a back entrance, and out of the cold night and into the underworld of backstage rock ‘n’ roll.

“…sure plays a mean PEG-GLE”
The crowd was in ecstasy, a baying mob of faces and fists, the Eastern mysticism bullcrap on stage held back by a tide of thirst for the blood of the old gods, the gods of rock. The spotlight was on Hu, a single dot across the crowded auditorium. And, in the darkness… Bjorn? My, lady luck had waltzed into my office that night, wrapped in a ribbon and precious little else. I fought my way forward, entering the battle lines of the near-rioting herd.

The final chords were dying as I finally reached the front, my tattered coat drenched in beer and sweat and other fluids I felt best left uninvestigated. Green flares raced towards the sky as Hu’s warbling shriek finally reached its climax, shattering the Peggle blocks that swam around the amplifiers in a flush of noise and light. The crowd screamed as one, and it was over.

Outside, in the ravenous darkness and driving rain, I watched Hu and his entourage climb into a darkened limo. Waving down a nearby taxi, I leaned into the window, waving for the driver to follow the vast elongated slab of glossy junk they called a car. The face looked back at me, and a wave of recognition passed over it, and all the memories of lost fares with it. The cab drove off, a single birdie flipped for my benefit. I watched in despair as the limo door slammed shut, and the engine revving off into the stream of traffic flowing down the vast canyons of the city.

I turned, a horn honking behind me.
“Detective!” A leather-jacketed arm motioned to me out of the window. Quickly, I staggered into the passenger seat. A big buck-toothed smile flashed at me as we pulled into the road after the escaping limo.
“Since when were you a rock fan?” I asked my knight in shining armour.
“It’s like Hu says, my dear Turpentine,” Warren Rabbit said, overtaking a red hatchback as it wailed on its horn in futile protest, “Success comes with the purchase of not one, but two tickets to vengeance.”

Amen to that, I thought, as we raced after our quarry. In the distance, I saw the limo take a turn, and called out “Left! Hang a left!” to Rabbit, who swerved past a lorry as it roared in fury at being cut up. As we turned, I caught a glimpse of something through the limo’s tinted glass. Two bright, white eyes through the darkness and the rain and the blare of streetlights.
Could it be…?