CHAPTER 21
After downing a bowl of flax cereal with almond milk and a banana, Gregory went looking for his young assistant the next morning. Knocking several times on Tony’s door down the hall, he received no answer, propelling him to go down to the ground floor to see the clerk. A fairly anorexic man about 60 years old with extremely pale skin and red hair was sitting at the desk playing holographic chess against a life-sized hologram of Phiona, the young, Ugandan chess phenom nicknamed Queen of Katwe. They were using a typical setup except the chess pieces were simply live images floating in the air about 6 inches off the board. Wearing an off-white, knee length tunic and pants, the PI couldn’t help thinking the ghostly clerk’s unlit matchstick look stood in sharp contrast to Phiona’s super-colorful adolescent gravity.
“Excuse me,” the PI interrupted, “can you do me a favor?”
“Sure,” the clerk answered. “What is it?”
“A favor?” Gregory asked. “It’s an act of kindness you render without recompense.”
“No,” the clerk smiled, catching the joke, “I mean, what favor?”
“Oh,” the PI said, “I’m trying to reach my buddy in 219 but he won’t answer his door. His name is Tony Lopez.”
“What’s your name?” the attendant asked him.
“Gregory,” the detective answered.
“I’ll give him a ring,” the ginger-haired attendant said, turning his game off, pushing it aside, and reaching for the intercom on the desk where he punched 219 on the interface. After seven audible rings, he flicked the hang-up switch on the intercom.
“Seems like no one’s there,” he stated.
“Hmm,” Gregory mused, rubbing his chin, “can you or the manager go up to his room just to make sure?”
“Do you think something happened to him?” the clerk inquired.
“Well, I don’t know,” Gregory suspected. “That’s what I wanted to find out.”
The unlit matchstick removed a blue card from beneath his desk and stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Thanks,” the PI said. “What’s your name?”
“Jim Carroll,” the clerk said, shaking his hand.
My goodness, Gregory thought, this guy has the grip of a butterfly. No wonder those chess pieces are holograms. “Who was your opponent?”
“Phiona, the Queen of Katwe,” Jim answered.
“She lives here?” the PI asked as they climbed the stairs.
“Not yet,” Matchstick Man replied. “The game gives you your choice of opponents.”
“So,” Gregory wondered, “if you wanted to play Bobby Fischer…”
“Well,” Jim clarified, “you wouldn’t need a hologram of him because he’s already here.”
Minutes later, both gentlemen were in Tony’s suite; it soon became apparent the saxophonist was nowhere to be found.
“As empty as a cannibal’s date book,” Jim stated.
“Thanks,” Gregory nodded. “I’ll check back later.”
Minutes later, the PI went strolling up to Cumby’s to get a cup of java. After pouring it himself, he approached the counter where Eddie Cochran was busy stacking organic cigarettes and similar items on a shelf.
"Hey, Ed,” Gregory began, “I’m looking for Tony. Is he with you?”
“Nope,” the young blond answered. “Haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. He was supposed to come by last night but I guess he got hung up on something.”
“Thanks,” the investigator said. “If you see him later can you tell him to give me a call?”
“Sure, Greg,” the clerk said. “Where are you going to be?”
“Just around,” the PI answered.
Eddie nodded. “No problem.”
After leaving Cumby’s, Gregory visited a few shoppes he hadn’t been to yet. He spoke to the clerks at the Love & Happiness Boutique, an emporium that specializes in all things porn which, to his surprise, actually existed in Heaven. He learned from a worker there that Heaven was not in the censorship business, so if he wanted a Steely Dan or Blow Up Barbie, who were they to judge? He then visited Miracle Cuts beauty parlor where two young rockers were getting their hair dyed in pink and indigo. No one there saw the young sax player, neither did anyone in Roll the Bones, a skateboard and scooter shop down the block from the hair cutting joint.
Strolling south on Broadview Road, he stopped and sat on a stump to rest his legs. It was only around 11AM but the fatigue of searching all over town for his lost ward was beginning to set in. I’m as tired as a pyramid slave, he thought as he yawned, returning to his room at the Inn to nap for a few hours. Looking up the road, he saw Tommy Bolin approaching in a huff.
“Hey, Tommy,” he greeted him, waving.
“Hiya, PI,” the hurried stroller said. “I’m late for work.”
Gregory thrusted out both of his palms. “Can I ask you something?”
“Come with me to the video store,” Tommy requested. “We can talk there.”
Minutes later, while Tommy was getting Woodstock Video ready for business, Gregory busied himself by perusing a couple of DVD titles on the shelves. Unlike traditional plastic cases, all the titles were stored in printed cardboard sleeves. Some of the movies he’d seen before, but because WV specialized in foreign titles, underground films and documentaries, most were unfamiliar to him. Particularly impressive, he noticed, was the African content on display as there were rows and rows of films from Nigeria, Lagos, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Lesotho, Madagascar and elsewhere. One Senegalese title about disaffected youth, Touki Bouki, caught his eye.
“You’ll like that one,” Tommy said, approaching the PI. “It’s pretty raw. It’ll remind you of Wake in Fright.”
“I’ve never heard of that one,” Gregory admitted.
“It’s Australian, from 1971,” Bolin said. “They don’t make films like those anymore.”
“What’s in it?” the PI quizzed his new friend.
“I don’t want to ruin it for you,” Tommy said. “Let’s just say there are things in there you won’t see in mainstream films. So, you wanted to ask me something?”
“My partner didn’t come home last night,” the PI admitted.
“Your partner?” Tommy asked, a slight smile forming on his face.
“Well, not my partner-partner,” Gregory corrected. “My assistant.”
The clerk nodded. “Oh.”
Just then, three customers arrived and began perusing the shelves.
“I know there’re lots of places to play around town, places to practice,” Gregory said as Tommy placed the DVD titles on the shelves near him in alphabetical order. “I figure you’re a guitarist; you might know something.”
“You know,” Tommy said, “when you told me you’re a PI, I gotta say, I was a little shocked. By now I’m sure you know where you are. The question, though, is why are you here?”
“Amy Winehouse,” the PI answered, nary missing a beat.
“Oh, that,” Bolin said.
“Did you know her?” Gregory asked him.
Tommy shook his head. “Not really. She came in here a few times but that was pretty much it. She seemed pretty cool, though. I’d play in her band.”
“The crazy thing,” the PI revealed, “is her soul is missing.”
Bolin looked shocked. “It is? Really? How can that be?”
“It is,” Gregory swore. “The angels used some ancient machine they’d dusted off from the archives to discover that.”
“So, who extracted her soul?” Tommy asked. “And how?”
“We don’t know,” the PI said. “That’s the problem.”
“You know,” Tommy realized, “I was just about to ask you why are you asking me all this, but this actually sounds a little familiar to me.”
“What do you mean?” the PI wondered.
“I’ve been in Heaven for 40 years now,” the musician said. “A lot of my time wasn’t spent here in R&R. I like experimenting as a guitarist so I visited Blues Heave
n, Jazz Heaven, spent some time over in Classical with some of those guys. Never again, though, because they’re arrogant.”
“Who’s arrogant?” Gregory asked. “The classical musicians?”
“All those guys,” Tommy stated. “Mozart, Vivaldi, Haydn, Wagner, Beethoven…they really, really look down on us modern six string slingers, like what we played was just bastardized, gutter versions of their worst work. You can’t please everybody, you know? Anyway, it was cool meeting those old-school guys. They had a lot of stories to tell, and if there’s one thing they loved more than wine and women is a good tale. One myth I heard them mention was about a soul stealer. His name was K’Hassat, or something like that.”
“What’s the story?” the PI asked.
“K’Hassat was a demon on the first level of Hell,” Tommy said, straightening the shelves. “He learned how to manipulate time, space and dark matter from banned literature the angels thought had long been destroyed. In reality, it was just buried in an unknown crypt on Level I where nobody could find it, or so they thought. Anyway, he did, then he was captured and banished to the 4th circle of Hell for eternity because he’d led an insurrection where billions of souls died. Obviously, I don’t know if this is true or not because it happened millions of years ago. But, you know, now that I think about it, I don’t see how one of us could’ve taken Amy’s soul.”
“You mean you think a demon did it?” Gregory asked.
Bolin shrugged. “Could be.”
“Can K’Hassat be interviewed?” the PI wondered aloud.
“You want to go down to the 4th level of Hell?” Bolin asked, taken aback by the PI’s bold request. “Good luck. It’s inaccessible, and even if it wasn’t, it’s the 4th level. You ever heard the phrase ‘walking through hell in gasoline drawers’? That’s where it came from.”
“Thanks, Tommy,” the PI said. “You’ve been helpful.” He then held up the Touki Bouki DVD. “I wouldn’t mind checking out this movie but I don’t have a computer or DVD player.”
“We have some players you can borrow,” Bolin assured him.
Gregory nodded, smiling. “Sweet.”
“Just leave your soul at the desk,” Tommy grinned.
“You got jokes,” the PI waxed sarcastically.