Stella
“This is like, ‘Beam me up, Scottie’. Fuckin’ cool!” Leo shouted.
Leo was staring at my alarm panel and video monitor as if the concept of home security had been invented twelve seconds ago and I was on the cutting edge.
“Gee-zus, but Mace sure don’t mess around,” Pong added, flipping the door down on the panel and starting to press buttons randomly.
Visions of a dozen police cars and shiny black Explorers screeching to a halt in the driveway, spraying gravel, officers and hot Nightingale Investigation Team members alighting with guns drawn and shooting everything that moved flashed through my head.
I leaped forward and slapped Pong’s hand.
“Pong, don’t do that!” I snapped.
“What?” Pong asked, looking innocent (or trying and failing).
“No pressing buttons on the state of the art alarm system that cost Mace the moon and the stars and the promised enslavement of his firstborn children,” I answered. “Clue in, Pong, this is serious business.”
“Jeez, take a chil pil , Stel a Bel a,” Leo said, laidback even in the face of imminent danger (likely because he’d just smoked a doobie) which the band had its share of even before Linnie was murdered and I was scratched onto a hit list. We could just say that we’d seen more than our quota of bar brawls, we’d broken up way too many possible statutory rape scenarios between Pong and/or Hugo and underage groupies and Leo had been found in possession of il egal substances on more than one occasion.
I looked at the ceiling briefly. When I noted that instructions on how to deal with idiot band members were not written by the hand of God in fancy gold script on my ceiling (as they never were), my gaze shifted to Floyd.
Floyd grinned, knowing my thoughts instantly (as was his way) and shook his head. “Whatever the time, you don’t want to do it.”
Floyd was probably right. Perhaps I shouldn’t kil Pong and Leo.
Stil , maybe I wouldn’t get into too much trouble if I roughed them up a bit. Anyone would understand. I was under a lot of pressure and my defense attorney could make the jury sit in a room with Pong and Leo for an hour.
After that, they’d let me off, no doubt.
The entire band was over to pick up the equipment for the gig that night. Swen and Ulrika let us keep it in an unused room on the second floor. Usual y I helped with the lugging and lifting but seeing as I was on some faceless crazy criminal’s hit list for once I was going to be saved this chore.
“Al right, boys. Let’s get loaded up so we can set up.” Floyd, thankful y, decided it was time to get down to business.
“They real y gonna pat down everyone that comes into the gig?” Hugo asked me, ignoring Floyd.
“They’re going to wand them,” I explained.
Hugo nodded then said, “They go for the pat down, I’m in.”
New visions crowded my head. They were visions of Hugo patting down every female who came close to the door. Visions of Hugo’s brand of pat down made me shiver and not in a good way but in the kind of way I shivered every time I had to phone the bail bondsman, whose number, just for your information, was on my speed dial.
“I think they’re gonna stick with the wands. They’re more accurate at detecting… stuff.”
I was making this up. I had no idea which was more accurate.
“I could be pretty accurate with a pat down,” Hugo offered.
Sheesh.
“Me too,” Pong put in.
Good grief!
Hugo turned to Pong. “We could lose the sax. Half the time I’m playin’ the fuckin’ tambourine and workin’ the crowd. If anyone’s gonna get to do the pat downs, it’s me.”
“Drums aren’t that important. They do that MTV
Unplugged al the time with just guitars,” Pong told Hugo then turned to me. “You could go unplugged tonight. Shake it up a bit.”
Unplugged?
Shake it up a bit?
Okay, enough.
I put my hands on my hips, narrowed my eyes and leaned in. “We are not gonna go unplugged and you two are not gonna do any patting down of anyone. Do I make myself understood?”
“Shit, mama. Be cool,” Hugo said, putting his hands up, palms out.
“Man, I thought you gettin’ back together with Mace would mean you’d be gettin’ it regular again and you’d go back to bein’ Sweet Stel a Bel a not Stel a-on-the-rag,” Pong added.
I turned to Floyd but kept my hands on my hips. “Floyd, hit the red button on the alarm panel,” I ordered.
“Now, why would I do that?” Floyd asked, stil grinning.
“Because it’s a panic button and the police wil come immediately. I figure they’d appreciate the novelty of being cal ed before a crime occurred,” I answered.
Floyd just kept grinning. What he did not do was hit the panic button.
Whatever.
“I think that’s our cue to go,” Buzz, for the first time since they arrived, spoke.