The Kill Riff by David J. Schow

been made.
        Sapping the dude with the marine corps buzz cut had been child's play. Lucas had checked the guy's wallet to get a useable name, ditched the unconscious body, and pulled a perfect fakeout with the effete club manager. The eyepatch, cowboy hat, bush jacket, and all other props were knotted into a neat bundle on the seat beside him. In the center of the bundle was the sap. And the backstage pass, folded carelessly into quarters.
        He had looked right into the eyes of the enemy.
         Are you Jackson Knox? You've been looking for Gunther?
        The enemy had even identified himself. Egomaniac. If he had known that Mason Kellogg's handshake had been his final chance to beg for his own life, he might have been more polite, less the rockstar. Courtesy was an almost nonexistent idiom in the rock scene. Perhaps if Whip Hand had ever stopped to consider the safety of their fans, Kristen would be alive now.
        But then, so would Jackson Knox.
        Knox might have begged harder, too, if he had known just what degree of damage could be done by a directional antipersonnel mine. They were designed to be unforgiving. The only touch-and-go part of the whole operation had been slipping the mine into the monitor cabinet and wiring it to the pedal board. The device was a crescent of steel with the detonation works on the back. Stamped into the metal was the most basic instruction of all: FRONT TOWARD ENEMY. The alligator-clip connections had been quickly made. Things had to be done quickly and quietly in the jungle. There had been time for a fast costume change (no one had noticed that "Mason Kellogg" was wearing "Gunther Lubin"'s pants) and a final, tasty gloat.
        Mission accomplished.
        There was a phone carrel outside the Licorice Pizza store at the intersection closest to the Rockhound. Lucas pretended to converse with a dial tone for fifteen minutes. He hung up when he heard the muffled boom half a block away. And when the vehicles with the flashbars converged on the Rockhound, he bought a can of Pepsi from a machine and took his leave. Specifics he could get from the news. There was no rush, now.
        Back at the cabin, all was tranquil and ordered. It was late, but Lucas decided to grill a steak after cleaning up the hand-built brick barbecue outside the rear door. He added a delicious ash-baked potato and six bottles of Dos Equis. Again, his almost ravening thirst surprised him. When he had checked in at Olive Grove, he had certainly had nothing approaching this sort of passion for the brew. It seemed the perfect complement to his food. It seemed just the right amount. Everything was extremely balanced.
        He burned the bundle of clothing after dousing it with gasoline. The burning gas smelled like napalm. Then he tossed in the cardboard jackets of Jackson Knox's two solo albums. The shrink-wrap hissed and shriveled. The vinyl discs smoked and sagged down into a topographical mimic of the pile of coals. The record labels blackened and ignited. The polychloride plastic bubbled hotly, releasing evil tendrils of carbonized waste floating into the air like fibrous black snowflakes from hell. Maybe the crackpot fundamentalists could use that. When you burned the cursed records, black demons fled into the air, momentarily visible, like a spirit relinquishing possession of a Haitian. Like a soul or animus departing a human corpus at death. That ought to be good for at least two newspaper articles full of ignorant outrage. And free publicity for folks like Ralph Trope. As an employee of Kroeger Concepts, Lucas never failed to consider the publicity angle of anything. Perhaps this knowledge might be used in some way back in L.A. The very idea almost prompted a tolerant little laugh. Lucas wanted no truck with religious nuts or their devils.
        The records dissolved away to black puddles of plasma on the coals. One down.
        

7
        
        THE KNIFE WAS A