“Man!
You left my bass out there on the street … my bass, my new bass guitar! We need
to go back.”
Todd
was serious … and angry.
“Are
you crazy, man? Are you freaking crazy?” Denny growled. “You can always get a
new bass ... I’ll buy you a new bass, but in case you hadn’t noticed, those
were real bullets. They were trying to kill me. Maybe they were trying to kill
us both.” Denny kept turning back to see if anyone was following them.
“Why,
what did you do?” Todd asked.
“I
didn’t do anything … they killed somebody.”
“What
… you mean somebody was there, in that car?”
“Yeah,
like somebody died. There was freakin’ blood all over the place.”
They
sped down the road, away from the parking lot, toward nowhere. It was beginning
to sink in. Denny was sweating, tense. His adrenalin pumped. He could barely
breathe.
He
sat in stunned silence for a moment as they sped down the dark highway. He
couldn’t make sense of it. Why were they
shooting at me? What’s up with the guy in the old Beater car? Were those people
dead?
“This
is just too freaking weird for me,” Denny told Todd.
“Shit,
man ... I thought you were just messing with me. What’d you do anyway?” Todd
said. “Somebody must be like totally ticked off at you.”
“Damned
if I know. Let’s get out of here. Just drive, man. I mean it. Just drive. Let’s just
get the Hell out of here,” Denny said, fidgeting more with each passing minute.
“We
should call the cops,” said Todd.
“Later,
can’t you drive this bucket any faster? I’m freakin’ spooked, bro.” Denny
clenched his fists around the door handle and the edge of his seat in
white-knuckled fear. “It just ain’t safe here, not anymore, not now.”
“I
hear that,” Todd said. “This place is freakin’ nuts. That was my new bass, too.
You don’t think those guys wanted my bass, do you?”
“No
… no bass guitar’s that important. Not enough to kill for it,” said Denny.
“Maybe
they were after something they thought we had. I don’t know, maybe they thought
we had something, you know ... money … drugs, whatever?” said Todd.
“Who
knows? One thing’s for sure ... I ain’t hangin’ around to find out. Let’s go
out to Eric’s. We can just chill for a while.”
Eric
Johnson was a drummer and recording engineer. He migrated to the United States
from his native Nova Scotia, by way of Los Angeles, before landing in the
Pacific Northwest. His home studio was humble by professional standards but a
comfortable retreat from the craziness of the city. There, Denny and Todd told
Eric their wild story.
"Somebody
has to know something about this,” said
Todd.
“Yeah,
but like … who?” Eric asked.
“I
don’t know,” said Denny.
“Well,
maybe you guys should just stay here for a while,” said Eric, “just to be safe.”
They
trusted Eric. His studio was the only place they thought might, in fact, be
safe for them. Eric tried to keep a low profile, especially concerning his studio.
“Yeah,
let’s just chill. I’ve had enough stress for one day,” said Denny.
“So
it’s alright if we just hang with you for a while?” asked Todd.
“Sure,”
Eric said, “… but you’ve got to call the cops. Somebody’s been wasted, and you’re
both witnesses.”
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