As the group was already slipping behind in their rehearsal, they decided to carry on with it as I conducted my investigation. As the guitar squealed out a series of painful shrieks, Chez flung himself at the mike and began to shout out the lyrics of the group's latest hit single, 'Graffiti':
I got your number off the men's room wall
My fingers trembled as they placed the call
You had no doubt that all I wanted was sex
I asked you out; you said yes
Graffiti brought us together tonight
Heard a four letter word and I knew it was lust at first sight
I rang your bell and then you opened the door
One look at you and I knew what was in store
I tried to picture you wearing some clothes
You were still naked, head to toes
Graffiti brought me to this rendevous
Together one night and we had broken every known taboo
Well, you looked much better in person than your
picture in the rest room stall;
But that particular view really didn't show me it all
We did it all night till the break of dawn
And then we tried it on the backyard lawn
A one night stand that I will never forget
One hellava tete-a-tete
Graffiti gave me a tigeress to tame
And I'd call you more often, but I simply can't remember your name
I turned to Aspen, who was listening intently to the performance.
"You tryin' to tell me that people actually dance to this noise?"
"We don't care what they do with it, as long as they keep buying the records!"
"Well, so much for art..."
Owing mostly to his winning personality, I decided to concentrate my initial investigation on Chez Arrie, the leader of the group. "Look, asshole, if I knew who was trying to kill me, I wouldn't need to hire an asshole like you to run around asking a lot of asshole questions..."
I reached my limit. The Uzi found its way up his left nostril faster than you can say 'obnoxious beyond belief'. This seemed to capture his attention.
"Now listen carefully, glitter brains - I've got a job to do, and the sooner you answer my questions, the sooner I can get back to enjoying some vintage Jerry Garcia. Now just sit down, relax, and tell me your story."
"Alright, alright, you don't have to go off half-cocked, dammit." He sat down on a $7000 sofa in his dressing room, popped a Coors, and started talking. "I grew up in a wealthy ghetto called Beverly Hills. My father was a lawyer, and my mother was a real estate agent. They had big plans for me - using their assorted connections, I was to become the biggest insurance broker on the west coast. I even went to college for a few years at Harvard to get a sufficiently impressive diploma to hang on my office wall. But then one day, I woke up and realized something - the whole bloody thing was a crashing bore! I started going to nightclubs and bars, getting drunk every night, trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life. So, in some seedy little club outside Boston somewhere, I stumble into a concert by this smalltime group called 'The Blechs'. Their music sounded like a cross between the Beatles and five or six garbage cans falling down a flight of stairs and landing on an alley cat. I suddenly realized that they were singing my life! The next day, I quit Harvard, buy a guitar, and start writing lyrics. The day after that, my father sends me a telegram telling me he's very disappointed in me, that he still loves me, but that he's disinheriting me. So, just to spite him, I made a point of making a success of my newfound carreer, and thank my father, by name, at the end of every concert for making me what I am today."
"Do you think your father is getting tired enough of that to consider murder?"
He smiled. "I don't presume to comprehend a lawyer's morality."
TO BE CONTINUED...