The Rock 'N Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - a Spike Berenger Anthology by Raymond Benson Read Free Book Online

Manhattan in 1992. The front man is a guy named Theodore Ramsey, but he goes by the name ‘Reverend Theo.’ He’s from Jamaica but he married an American woman, Juliet Lacey, so that gave him the necessary right to stay in the country. As far as I can discern, the Messengers are just a bunch of harmless weirdoes. There are no blood sacrifices involved or anything spooky like that, as far as I know. They don’t say they’re aliens or anything like that. They have their own church, over on Tenth Avenue and West 44 th . No problems with the IRS, no problems with the city, nothing. But I’ll dig deeper. I’ll find out more about this Reverend Theo. He may have some skeletons in his closet, you never know.”
    “Seeing that he’s from Jamaica, do you think he might have any ties to the Jimmys?” Berenger asked. “Didn’t they start in the Caribbean?”
    “Nothing I’ve found out so far indicates that, but you never know. I’ll keep that in mind.”
    “Good,” Berenger said. “Remix, you keep doing what you’re doing, but if you get a chance, see if you can hack into the Messengers’ e-mail.”
    Remix looked surprised. “That’s not legal, is it, boss? I’ll get right on it!”
    “That’s all for today, folks. I’ll know more tomorrow after I talk to McTiernan and to Adrian. I’m also going to the reading of Flame’s will tomorrow afternoon.”
    “That should be interesting,” Briggs said. “You think someone’ll bring punch and cookies?”
    Berenger sighed and replied, “I just hope no one brings any weapons.”

5
Morning Has Broken

( performed by Cat Stevens )
    B erenger was up early the next day. Having a case that was as high profile as this one was invigorating. And it was a case , not some run of the mill security job. He didn’t particularly relish playing bodyguard for Elton John, which was the most exciting thing he’d done in the past few months. He accompanied the superstar across the Far East and Australia and was on call twenty-four/seven. Berenger liked Elton personally and was compensated well for the work, but he would rather have been ferreting out clues in a criminal investigation. It was what he was good at and what he was trained to do back in the army’s CID. Southeast Asia seemed like a century ago, but everything he had learned in the Criminal Investigations Division could be applied to nearly any situation.
    Now, here he was, working on what might be the biggest rock ‘n’ roll crime since Lennon’s untimely demise. Flame’s alleged murder was certainly being compared to that. The nonstop outpouring of sympathy and grief from fans all over the world had been overwhelming. It also made good press. Every day the second-tier papers in New York published some new angle on the case. Did Adrian Duncan really do it? Was Flame into drugs again? Was it a mob hit? Was it a government-sponsored conspiracy?
    Fans and family alike were upset with the details of Flame’s interment, yet another controversy that fueled the rumors. That morning’s New York Times , of all places, revealed that three days before Duncan’s arrest, Flame had been cremated and the ashes were given to none other than the Messengers, per Flame’s own instructions. Carol Merryman was already in the process of fighting this decree tooth and nail but until it was resolved, Flame’s urn was being kept under lock and key at the Messengers’ church on the West Side. If anything was going to give the Messengers fifteen minutes of fame, that was it.
    Berenger left his apartment at 68 th and Second Avenue—just down the block from the Rockin’ Security office—and picked up a coffee with cream and sugar and a chocolate-frosted donut from a street vendor. He then flagged a taxi heading downtown. The lawyer, Patterson, was supposed to meet him at the Sixth Precinct at nine o’clock. Berenger gave himself a half-hour to fight the traffic and get over to the West Village in plenty of time. The breakfast he