High Strung Read online

  “Walk briskly but carefully so I don’t trip, eight steps to the keypad. Done.”

  “Deep breath. Exhale and focus on the numbers. Done.”

  “Punch in my birthday numbers. Done.”

  “Wait to hear the wailing. Three. Two. One. Ah, silence. Done.”

  “Success.”

  Relieved, he left the door open as he went back to the car to get the flat of donuts. Now successfully inside, he closed the door behind him and locked it. He went directly up front and placed the flat in the center of the receptionist’s desk with a note he wrote on the top napkin: “Thanks for all y’all do. Love, Caf.”

  He thumbed through the yellow carbons of the telephone message pad for the last couple of weeks. That smell. The “press firmly” smell. He’d know it anywhere. The usual suspects showed up: singer wannabes, songwriter wannabes, intern wannabes, his accountant, salesmen, DJs, studio lions, and assorted calls from Bynum and him.

  But then there was one for Dangcat. The caller didn’t leave his name or number but said that he would see Dangcat later at the pancake joint by the hospital. That was the morning of the day Dangcat disappeared. The top portion of the message was not there, so Dangcat must have gotten it, Cafton thought. Maybe there’s more information about that meeting in Dangcat’s office.

  Cafton marched down the Victorian carpet runner in the hallway, past a listening room, the kitchen, a bathroom, a writing room, and into Dangcat’s office next to the studio. He went to the door that led to the studio and entered. The studio was actually two rooms. The control room was where the technical aspects of recording a record happened. It held the electronics and Dangcat’s board through which he adjusted every aspect of the music. The board was situated along the length of a long window that revealed the studio where the musicians played the music. Dangcat always sat at the board in a rolling chair so he could reach its various knobs, levers, and buttons that spanned about the length of the wheelbase of a medium-size car.

  Cafton entered the studio and moved to the center of the room to get the panoramic view. He stood in the center of the acoustically padded room and methodically observed all around, turning in place like a clay-footed ballerina. The studio’s usual accoutrements, clusters of microphones, stools, and a drum kit where the musicians and singers created the music that Dangcat perfected, waited mutely for their next gig.

  He could see through the wide window and into the control room, Dangcat’s dominion. This was all Dangcat’s creation. He had drawn the plans. He had painstakingly handpicked every piece of equipment, every cable, every mic, every jack. He had honchoed the construction, overseeing every nail placement and every piece of egg-crate foam. He had demanded, and gotten, perfection. He had checked and rechecked the acoustics and fine-tuned everything in the studio until everyone else around him became exasperated and left. He didn’t notice.

  Now it was all dark. Silent. Void of the life Dangcat breathed into it. They were just rooms, not places of magic, without Dangcat’s spiritual presence.

  Cafton knew Dangcat was gone. Not just not here; he was gone. His spirit was no longer here. It was no longer anywhere.

  He walked over to the side wall, picked up a padded stool used by the guitar players, carried it to the center of the room, and climbed aboard, facing Dangcat’s control room. He crossed his arms over his chest, hooked his heels on a rung, and closed his eyes. He just wanted to feel. Just to take in whatever nebulous, spiritual remnants of his friend might somehow be lingering in this world.

  Then he started to well up. Tears dropped between his knees onto the vintage burgundy, azure, and gold Persian rug. He felt overcome by a cold, sickening sadness. In the silence and solitude, he tried again to somehow connect with Dangcat. Tried to somehow divine what to do, how to find him, how to make things right again. “Talk to me, buddy. Give me a clue,” he begged Dangcat’s spirit. “I won’t let this go until I know what happened to you. Help me find out.”

  Although Cafton craved divine intervention to help, he didn’t dare ask for it or even know what to ask.

  Nothing came. No answer from anyone.

  He dejectedly replaced the stool as he had found it. Dangcat would want it placed back precisely as he’d found it and would have given him hell about it if he didn’t.

  Cafton wiped his tears on his hanky and continued his mission. He owed it to his friend to get to the bottom of his disappearance, and he was determined not to let his friend down.

  Dangcat was borderline OCD. He kept his domains orderly. Something askew would be very obvious. Everything seemed in place, now that Cafton had returned his stool. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  The whole building was quiet, but it was absolutely silent in the soundproofed studio. It’s kinda unsettling in here without any sound, Cafton thought, clearing his throat just to get his bearings without ambient sound to orient him.

  Could it possibly be more difficult to breathe in a soundproof room? He tuned into his own breathing. It was jagged. Jerky. Staccato. “Oh, yeah, that’s anxiety,” he softly reminded himself. Breathe: in through my nose, slowly blow out through my mouth like I’m blowing through a straw.

  The emergency room physician had taught him that technique a few years ago when he drove himself to the ER, dead sure he was having a heart attack. Not a heart attack but a full-blown panic attack had landed him there, much to his relief and embarrassment.

  After being poked, prodded, and tested like an astronaut, he was diagnosed with an anxiety reaction and told he had experienced a panic attack. Cafton was shocked. He acknowledged he was under stress, and admitted to some amount of anxiety, but he vehemently argued with the physician about the term “panic.” He was in no way panicked, he explained.

  After an enlightening discussion about what causes panic attacks, and some methods to ratchet down his internalized, subconscious stress, Cafton had since avoided any further episodes. But he was always keenly aware of the feelings that might lead to one.

  He had those feelings now. He felt helpless. Slightly out of control. Unable to maintain focus. Suffocating. Jittery.

  “Just breathe,” he again reminded himself, mechanically drawing in a long, slow breath.

  “I’m apparently more stressed about Dangcat than I realized,” he muttered. Cafton was a master at suppressing his emotions, but sooner or later they came out. They always came out, sometimes in ways that were out of Cafton’s control, like panic attacks. Never in violence, but more like an internal shutting down, a disconnect so he could reset and start fresh. Not often, but sometimes.

  He got his land legs back, left the studio, and entered the control room, closing the door behind him. He went directly to Dangcat’s chair at the sound board. He hesitated, slowly running his palm and fingertips over the inside of the chair back to somehow connect with Dangcat. A sense of dread was taking over. He felt like boiling, acid concrete had filled his solar plexus and was rising up into this throat.

  Then he gingerly lowered himself down into Dang’s swivel rolling chair and pulled it up to the sound board. This was the captain’s chair. Sitting in it was like manning the helm of a spaceship. From the chair, through the wall-to-wall window over the board, he again scanned every area of the studio. Underneath the window on the control room side was the board’s intimidating array of gizmos that Dangcat masterfully controlled like a maestro. “You sure earn your keep,” Cafton confessed to Dangcat, as if he were right beside him in the sanctuary.

  Cafton stretched his arms as wide as they would go. There were slides, levers, buttons, knobs, and meters from end to end, well beyond Cafton’s sitting reach—about twelve feet of technology that was totally beyond Cafton’s comprehension. The engineer’s microphone used to communicate with the artists in the studio hovered just over Cafton’s head. Behind him were banks of state-of-the-art audio equipment and miles of neatly looped cables and cords. It was as clean as an operating room suite.

  “He’s a flippin’ genius. How does he know whe
re to begin, what to do? There are infinite possibilities. What magic combination of buttons, slides, and knobs brings forth the best of each artist? And he does it on the fly as the artists are doing their thing,” Cafton whispered in awe.

  Cafton was always in awe of anyone who had immense creative talent. He was acutely aware that he possessed virtually no creativity in the arts. Somehow when the good Lord doled out his assortment of attributes, He didn’t provide Cafton with even a whiff of his mother’s talent. Sure, Cafton was smart, resourceful, had good manners, good taste, and was a very successful businessman, but he couldn’t sing, dance, paint, draw, sculpt, or act.

  He couldn’t even write a song. Ironic for someone who was a multiple Grammy-award-winning songwriter of the year.

  Okay, enough awe. He had work to do.

  He pulled a piece of paper out of his wallet. He had written down the code to the massive master vault that was built into the control room wall. Carefully dialing the code, he opened the steel, de-magnetized chamber. He was looking for the final mix cassettes of Jump Steady’s album. Dangcat probably had already made Jump Steady’s master even though he and Bynum had not heard the final mix tape and signed off on it. It would be a rare occurrence if Bynum or Cafton had anything but praise for Dangcat’s final mix, so the sign-off was usually just a formality.

  Cafton flipped through the boxed tape master reels standing on their side on the shelves until he found one marked Jump Steady. A cassette marked Jump Steady 3 was beside it. He pulled the cassette out and shut the vault, spinning the lock to ensure it couldn’t be inadvertently opened. He tucked the cassette into his fleece pocket, left the control room, and headed down the hallway.

  Next door to the studio complex was Dangcat’s office. Cafton hesitantly opened the door, half expecting to have to apologize for walking in on Dangcat without knocking. The room was dark and smelled vaguely of eucalyptus or Vick’s Vapo Rub. He was not sure which. He flipped on the light to his left and quietly closed the door behind him. He surveyed the room, leaning back against the door to get the full vista.

  “No Dangcat. Nothing seems out of place.” Cafton almost wished something, anything, looked unusual, something that would indicate what had happened to Dangcat. It looked so homey, so orderly, so ready for Dangcat to come back and resume business as usual.

  This was Dangcat’s second home, not the office of someone who was unhappy or who would just quit and walk away. He had nested. Photos were everywhere. A relaxed, comfy pillow beckoned from his loveseat where he took cat naps while pulling overnighters. A pair of well-worn Nike running shoes were tucked under his antique secretary desk. His AA and NA sayings covered half of his cork board. A little heater to keep his feet warm in the drafty, vintage building was nestled beneath his desk at the back. His pens and well-chewed No. 2 pencils, points up, filled his ASCAP coffee mug on his desk. A motorcycle chain ashtray on his desk was filled with wrapped peppermints. His camel, spy-looking raincoat rested on a coat hanger on the closet door.

  “It’s like the Rapture took him,” Cafton said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  Most importantly, Dangcat’s beloved shard of Ginger Baker’s drum stick he scored in 1968 from Cream’s Farewell Tour date in Atlanta was still sitting in its small glass box on his desk. He had climbed the fence around Chastain Park’s amphitheater the morning after the concert since he couldn’t afford a ticket to see it up close. He didn’t miss the concert, though; he and many other kids listened to it from just outside the chain-link fence around the park. He had clearly heard the entire concert from the opening act, the Terry Reid Group, through Cream’s final, explosive Toad finale, sitting on a blanket in the chilly October evening air, sharing everything that was being passed around through the crowd.

  The next morning, he returned. His mission was to get on the stage, just so he could absorb the vibes and stand where Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker had been. He crawled over the fences, scrambled down the rugged stone stairs, and hopped onto the stage. He reverently touched the holes in the stage, where they had nailed Baker’s double bass drums to the floor, like they were archeological findings. He stood in the exact spaces that each player had occupied just hours earlier. He played air drums where Baker had beaten the hell out of his drum kit. Off to the side, about twelve feet away, he spied the tip-end of a drum stick. He took it, feeling like he had discovered a lost treasure. Dang had cherished that rock relic since he was fifteen years old. It was his Holy Grail. Even when he was strung out and someone offered him a hit for it, he wouldn’t let go of it. He wouldn’t leave that behind. No way.

  Dang didn’t intentionally go away, Cafton dejectedly told himself. Looks like he didn’t even know he was going away at all.

  Wait! Check his lists! Dang made lists. A lot of lists. And sticky notes. Years of pot, hash, and coke use had taken a severe toll on his short-term memory. He joked that he had a memory like a steel sieve. He had developed specific habits to almost OCD level to compensate for his memory loss. It was more of a functional OCD tool than a psychological OCD dysfunction.

  He made lists and plastered sticky notes everywhere. You could almost track him by those reminders. There, taped to the phone, was a list of typed phone numbers: Cafton, Bynum, his wife’s work, equipment supply house, Blue Plate Restaurant take-out, his AA and NA sponsors, and one hand-scribbled, unlabeled phone number at the end. These would be the numbers he used the most. Cafton grabbed a sticky note and jotted down the scribbled last number, then put it in his pocket.

  Sticky notes on his desk: bread, milk, eggs, apples, dog food; softball practice 8:30; 3-mix. Nothing unusual or alarming.

  Cafton slinked around like a diamond thief. Feeling rather guilty for snooping and for his tiniest shred of doubt, he dutifully searched for contraband, making sure that he left everything exactly as he found it. He meticulously searched desk drawers and filing cabinets. Nothing incriminating, just the customary office supplies, including sticky notes—several packs in different sizes and colors—filled the middle drawer.

  Right top drawer: soy sauce packets, salt, straws, horseradish sauce packets, chocolate candies, cinnamon gum, a half-eaten box of chocolate mint candies, pizza coupons, ketchup packets, Valentine’s Day card from his wife, souvenir ball point pen from Graceland, dental floss, and Band-Aids.

  Other drawers and filing cabinets revealed nothing out of the usual. Just several years of typical workplace odds and ends.

  Now to the less obvious hiding places. Cafton grew up with an alcoholic father who hid booze from his mother. As a kid, Cafton had mastered finding and then pouring the hooch down the drain, much to his volatile father’s vociferous consternation and punishment: beating with a leather belt until young Cafton was bruised and had angry welts across his back, backside, and legs.

  Cafton checked between and under Dangcat’s sofa cushions, in the toilet water tank, inside boxes, candy boxes, film canisters, inside shoes, coat pockets, planters, and everywhere else a junkie could hide his stash.

  No needles or syringes. No tie-off or heating paraphernalia. No pills. No mysterious powder or plant matter. No alcohol. No breath mints or spray. No roach clips. No rolling papers.

  Dangcat was squeaky clean.

  Cafton was relieved. Not only did it appear that Dangcat was clean, that also minimized the possibility that a drug deal that had gone bad or him being in debt to a dealer instigated his vanishing.

  But now what? What happened? “Where are you? Gimme a sign, buddy,” Cafton pleaded helplessly.

  Tears rolled down his face as he turned to leave. A sticky note on the door jamb: pancakes 5:30.

  Chapter 6—Head Case

  “This head case is one for the ages,” muttered New Orleans’ top homicide detective, Captain Jake Ketchum, smiling at his pun while he scrutinized two sets of photos spread across his desk. They showed a severed, toothless head found on the Arthurian float the day after Fat Tuesday. Just a head. No body. Just a head.

  He
leaned back in his army-green desk chair that creaked under his 300-pound, rotund frame. He wearily grunted as he hoisted his legs to the desktop, propping on the desk his flat feet cocooned in their black orthopedic shoes. Decades of occupation by his ever-expanding ass had molded the seat to fit his butt like a glove.

  “Alrighty. Let’s take a closer look-see at this fella. How the hell does someone not just get killed but get beheaded? Someone must really despise you, buddy. This is personal. Back-alley thieves don’t behead folks,” he pondered out loud. Ketchum talked to himself a lot. He worked alone most of the time, and he lived alone, so more often than not he was the only one he could bounce ideas off. His inner circle was very small. He had a multitude of acquaintances, actively avoided unless he had business with them, and less than a dozen people he respected enough to consider them friends.

  Ketchum fanned out the first pack of fourteen eight-by-ten photographs like a poker hand in front of him, looked them over, shuffling one behind the other for a better look, and grimacing like he’d stepped in dog crap. This set of gory photos was taken by the homicide squad technicians responding to the scene after a krewe member went back to the float to search for his lost wallet and found a head instead. Those photos showed the head in situ, in place, as found. The head in the barrel from every grisly angle.

  His thick legs dropped to the floor with a thud and he leaned forward to inspect the other photos on the desk. His cumbersome, beer-and-burger belly rolling over his strained, worn belt kept him from leaning directly over the desk, so he arranged the photos in four rows, six across, closer to the edge near him. He strained to reach across the desk to adjust the cocoa-brown aluminum gooseneck lamp to better illuminate the gruesome spread.

  When he first came to the New Orleans Police Department as a major crimes detective—not a homicide detective—he would have spontaneously vomited all over his shoes at such gore. In Nashville, his detective work had usually entailed white collar crimes, bank robbery, embezzlement, counterfeiting, car theft, corruption, hijackings, larceny, burglary, and missing people. Victims and suspects all had their bodies still attached to their heads.