The road, open and wide and alone in this expanse of desert, was in front of him. San Antonio was behind him. Delores, a human and not much to look at, (she had a good attitude and that was really what counted in the end, wasn't it?) was in the seat beside him, arms in the air and dancing in her seat. Full moon, convertible car, warm desert wind. Life, or as much of it as he still held onto, was good. Johnny Tu-Tone, a name he'd picked up during his rock-a-billy days back in the late fifties, was all smiles. Fangs and smiles. Tapping his toe inside his black and white shoe, the source of his namesake, Johnny opened his mouth and sang along with the King as he sang about how a little less conversation would make his particular situation that much more enjoyable. Toss in some more action and you got yourself a deal.
In his trunk was a guitar case filled with nearly a hundred thousand in cold, hard cash and though it wasn't necessarily his, one of the great things about America was that possession was nine-tenths of the law and wasn't that just jazzy? That bulbous, wannabe-cowboy, old neck-sucker back in dusty San Antonio wouldn't miss it at all. Well, not until he opened up that safe behind the huge picture of the Alamo in the second floor den. Until then, everything was groovy, jazzy, cool, keen, rad, and whatever other hype-word existed in Tu-Tone's particularly colorful vocabulary. Hell, he'd even admit that things were downright peaches, as Delores like to exclaim anytime things were good for her. An annoying word, but who cared at the moment. The moment right then had been reserved for laughing, singing along with the one and only Elvis, and with the right amount of encouragement, a little bit of lip-service from his woman in the passenger seat. What he had in mind didn't require her looking at him. Not in the face, anyways. Laughing to himself, Johnny tossed back his head as his usually perfect pompadour blew wildly in the rushing wind. This one would be one for the record books. Or at least a mention in a song or two, courtesy of Johnny Tu-Tone, rock and roll extraordinaire.
The mark had been an easy one. They usually were. When Johnny picked out the victims of his little grifts, he rarely misjudged. It was a talent. And in the years since he'd become one of the bloodsuckers (something called a Rav-ass or Ravnis or whatever the guy that had shoved his blood down his throat had called it) roaming the south, and presumably everywhere else, he'd learned that they were often his easiest hits. Their sense of superiority often made them blind to those they overlooked nightly. Especially the help. Or the entertainment, in Johnny's case. He was known well enough along the honky-tonk circuit. The REAL honky-tonk circuit, not this stuff that country music claimed was honky-tonk. The honky-tonk that was all about Roy Orbison, Jerry-Lee, the King. That popularity was what caused Johnny to meet his latest mark. Dogget was a foreigner with too much money, more than he'd ever know what to do with, who'd been in the oil business probably before there were even redskins running the desert in that area. An oil-baron in a ten-gallon white cowboy hat, a white suit and cowboy boots…complete with spurs. He looked ridiculous, but no one told him that. Not with the sort of money this Torrie-door, or something, tossed around. (Johnny never really cared to find out anything about these gangs of vampires. They weren't rock and roll and didn't pay him for being a member, so fuck them.) When this man Dogget decided to throw a little soiree for his friends on his expansive ranch just west of San Antonio, he sought out the best to provide the boogie music. He found Johnny Tu-Tone. Or rather Johnny Tu-Tone found him. Putting himself in Dogget's path was easy. The rest went without need of explanation.
One thing Johnny learned about vampire parties was that they were often spectacles unto themselves, with or without the feverish music Tu-Tone provided. This one was no different. Bodies all over, blood all over, moaning, screaming, the occasional midget…you name it, this one had it. His view from the stage was a good one, as always, and even though they all barely noticed the music being played, Tu-Tone didn't mind. He was being paid well enough, the girls were top-notch (aside from one particular fugly waitress who kept eyeballing him with her tongue hanging out. Her nametag said Delores, a horrid name. No way he'd touch her… (well, maybe a little) and he knew once his set was done and over he'd be bound for Laredo. Well, after a little pit-stop upstairs to collect what he liked to think of as a tip. A hundred thousand dollar tip, but a tip nonetheless. The night went without a hitch and only one thing bothered Johnny as he finished out the hour-long set. One person hadn't taken part in the festivities, aside from the at least twelve lap-dances provided him by at least twelve different girls. (A thirteenth had been quickly denied when a particularly ugly Nosferatu, Johnny had learned what they were called pretty quick after seeing them for the first time, in a bikini had approached the man.) There was nothing odd about his observer. Worn jeans, worn cowboy boots, white t-shirt under his duster, dark hair pulled back in a small ponytail. Nothing odd at all, though the gun belt on his waist was a bit alarming. This was shrugged off, though. Enough of these people came armed with a crazy variety of weapons. (He'd swear before Jesus himself that one girl had been dancing with a two foot purple dildo that had blades protruding from the ends. What she may do with that bothered Johnny a little.) This man, however, just watched. And got lap-dances. Nothing more. Johnny just played on, shook his hips at the right times, and winked and pointed whenever the women-folk would look his way. A good gig, in truth.
So, the rest was history. The set ended and Johnny left the guitar he'd bought earlier that evening on the stage as possibility of him coming back to play some more for those of them that weren't currently chewing/fucking/sucking/eating/eviscerating each other. Besides, his favorite guitar was in the cherry convertible Cadillac in the parking lot. The safe on the second floor was cracked with ease and Johnny hit the road. After, though, a make-out session with that Delores girl, who, with the right encouragement (she was a suggestible girl, wasn't she?) decided to come along with him. The road was long and he could use a suck…err, snack.
God Bless America and fat, stupid, foreigners with too much damned money.
As the King broke into the chorus, demanding whoever he was singing for to shut the hell up and get to the action because he needed satisfyin', something hit his ears that was just a little out of place. The guitar…the guitar was playing the wrong chords. Hell, the guitar wasn't even playing chords at all. It sounded like someone was just banging on the damned thing in the song. Johnny had listened to this song a hundred thousand times if he'd listened to it once and this wasn't part of the song. When a CD got scratched, it skipped. It didn't fucking start butchering chords on the recording.
"Johnny baby…who's your friend? He's cute." Johnny raised a brow and looked from the stereo and to Delores as she started to climb into the backseat. He started to reply, but was cutoff from a voice from the back. A very surprised voice.
"Jesus, Joseph, and cocksucking Mary, didn't I tell you before that I didn't want a goddamned lap-dance! And weren't you wearing a bikini?" This drew a confused look from Delores, but Johnny never saw it. He was too confused himself.
The voice was strange one. The face in the rear-view mirror, though, wasn't. Those staring eyes from back at the party were accompanied by a wide grin and wink as he pointed at Johnny, a direct copy of Johnny's trademark sign-off motion. Where in the hell had he come from? And how the hell had he got his guitar?
"Turn it up, Johnny my man. Lemme see if I can get this right." Johnny simply stared as the man in the backseat…who had his fucking guitar….stood up on his white leather seats and began to dance, sing, and bang crazily on his guitar as Delores, undaunted, stood up beside him and began her pathetic version of every sexy dance in the world. Elvis would be rolling over in his grave if he were dead. A tone-deaf cowboy bellowing along, out of tune and time, as Johnny's sympathy-fuck/meal writhed like a Down's child beside him.
Johnny considered the usual responses to the entire weird scene going on in his car. He could scream at the man, use the proper expletives…maybe several…and demand that he put down his guitar and get the fuck out, after pulling over, of course. This seemed to be the course of action that was going to be the best idea until Johnny remembered one thing about this man. Something he had seen before and saw now as he looked back in shock at this man who was singing the chorus even though the song was in the verse. That gunbelt wasn't just for looks. The sandalwood grips of the seemingly enormous revolvers on his hips, and the grips of what looked to be two magazine fed pistols in the shoulder holsters under his arms, changed the equation a little. With no warning to the man or Delores, Johnny practically stood on the brakes. The Cadillac's tires locked after several moments and the car decreased it's high speed by leaps and bounds and only by the grace of God and whoever else was watching at that moment did he manage to keep the car under control. The laws of physics, the bastards they are, demanded that the man and woman standing in the backseat vacate the premises of the car. And they did just that, with gusto. Tumbling over the front seat the two of them went, guitar and all, and on over the edge of the windshield. They both clipped the front of the skidding Cadillac, taking Johnny's hood ornament in the process, and would have become much like that rabbit he'd hit a few miles back had the Caddy's brakes decided that they'd had enough of this moving shit and locked down the whole process, stopping the car and letting Johnny's backseat flesh-missiles hit the pavement with a sickening smack. They both rolled and flopped, smashing his prized Gibson (may the gods of guitars not strike him down) into smithereens as they skidded down the road and finally stopped, some forty feet away.
Johnny sat in silence, wind-blown hair wild about his head, breathing hard (even if he didn't need it, it was a hard habit to break), and knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could. The imprints of his fingers would remain on the steering wheel's outside for as long as it existed. And as the King sang on about conversation and the like, Johnny stared at the streak the splattered head of what had been his future meal had left (which was a shame since he hadn't even gotten any of that action Mr. Presley had been talking so much about) and the limp body of his unwanted passenger in his headlights, unsure as of what to do now. He stared now, in horror, as the man began to move and, as the King moved into the final chorus, stood up with the broken neck of Johnny's guitar still in his hand.
No, no, no. This just wouldn't do.
Johnny did have a gun. It was under the passenger seat, but as far as he knew the thing wasn't loaded. Not right then. And he had a feeling if this fella could just stand up, albeit a bit wobbly, from a slam like that, the pea-shooter he had under the seat wouldn't help him much. No, this situation called for one thing and one thing only. Good, old-fashioned vehicular homicide. Shifting into gear, Johnny laid on the gas as hard as he had the brakes moments earlier and sent the tires into a scream as they began to spin, looking for traction. Give Johnny a few seconds and this guitar smashing, Elvis butchering sonuvabitch would be just another smear on the road.
Johnny didn't see the man draw. He didn't even hear the reports, small twin thunders that echoed further across the desert than the roaring engine of Johnny's car. The only thing that Johnny Tu-Tone saw was the last thing he ever saw in his life. Two flashes of fire, the marks of a gun being fired, and the world went black. Screaming, amazingly in tune with Elvis, Johnny let go of the wheel and pressed his hands to the holes in his head that had been his eyes moments ago as he thrashed in the seat. The car had never even found it's footing, nothing more than a light jerk and roll forward as Johnny let off the gas and rolled up and over the door to fall to the pavement, still screaming. The car eventually came to a stop just off the road and, as Johnny lay on the moonlit asphalt, groaning with his hands over his ruined eyes, he heard the music stop. For the few seconds of silence that washed over his ears until the sound of cowboy boots on hardtop started, Johnny was aware of one thing. He was so scared of that moment that he'd kick started his heart. Only a few, measly beats, but they were there. It'd been ten years since he'd felt or heard it and well, it bothered him as much as the sound of the hammer of a gun being drawn back.
"Hold fucking still, you piece of shit…" Boom. Boom. Boom. Johnny felt his kneecaps go, obliterated by the heavy, fast-moving piece of lead that tore from the barrel of the man's gun. The third shot, though, was somewhere that would have been a bit more precious had he been alive. Hell, he liked it just as much now that he was technically dead. Had hoped that Delores would have liked it too. Johnny screamed again as blood poured from the holes in his tight jeans…knees and crotch, god bless him. The boot pressed against his windpipe made screaming an impossibility, just like the two more bullets that roared from the gun and blew his elbows apart made moving his arms anywhere from there down just as hard. He had a feeling that this lonely stretch of road between San Antonio and Laredo, a stretch of road that would be hard-pressed to see any more visitors before morning rolled along to cook Tu-Tone where he'd been left, would be the last place he'd ever see….or feel. Whichever.
"I try to sing you a fucking song and you sling me from your goddamned car." Cole spoke with a hiss to his words, pressing hard enough down on the man's throat to crush his windpipe. Johnny Tu-Tone had sung his last too. It wasn't exactly a manly thing to have your last words be girlish screaming. Crouching down next to the writhing man as he made choking sounds and spit blood from his mouth, Cole sighed. "I was even going to cut you a break, y'know? I was just going to shoot your bitch and let you go after taking the money. Dogget wanted you dead but I thought that you were actually a pretty decent act. That it'd be a waste to let the buzzards have you. Teaches me to be a music lover." Looking at the neck of the guitar in the hand not holding an empty revolver, Cole just shook his head. "Though I have to say you should have worked on that hip shake a little more. You just ain't got the snap Presley did." In one swift move, the wooden neck of the guitar was rammed into Johnny's chest and through his heart, causing the spasming man to suddenly go still.
Holstering the heavy Colt, Cole pressed his hands against his knees and stood up as he tossed glances up and down the long, empty stretch of highway. It'd be hours before anyone ever came along, sunup at least, and all they'd find would be the slightly headless body of Delores the wannabe groupie. Grabbing one of Johnny's legs, Cole began to drag the paralyzed body of the man off the road and onto the hardpan of the desert, finally stopping some twenty yards from the asphalt. Pulling Johnny's black and white shoes from his feet, Cole clacked them together and looked down at the body. "I know you can hear me, man. I've been in your situation before. I just want you to know one thing." Leaning down as he crouched on one knee, Cole came in close to Johnny's ear before whispering.
"Elvis sucks."
It was a two-hour ride back to San Antonio, but it was a nice night and even with windshield a little cracked from where Delores' head had glanced off the rim of it, it was still a nice car. The hood ornament, a winged bird/man deal, slightly bloody now, was laying in the backseat along with Johnny's black and white shoes. The silver thing had found a home lodged in Cole's side as he and his flying partner had taken a trip over the car. Painful, but not much more than annoyingly painful. Dogget would be pleased to know Tu-Tone was dead, though less than pleased to find that the girl that'd left with his hired bard had ran off with the money before Cole even showed up. Such a shame.
Driving down the highway back towards the city, Cole looked up at the line of discs in their little visor holder above his head. It was entirely too quiet. But, with a glance over of all the music there, Cole decided that Johnny had at least got one shot in.
All Elvis.
Picking a CD at random and ejecting the one already in the stereo, Cole cursed under his breath as he jammed it into the CD player and tossed the other into the seat next to him. Was two hours enough to become an Elvis fan? Only time would tell.