Acid Rock

How easy it would be now, if she alone were his target. One bullet. The million-dollar contract would be completed. But it was more complicated than that. That was for the million, but for Gu

And if the world needed a message that the Nilsson family did not take kindly to people interfering with contracts they had taken, well, then he would send the world that message.

Nilsson looked at the girl again. Her eyes still did not focus, and her body was slumped against the light panel. He walked casually across the stage. As he neared, he saw the girl's mouth was moving slightly, forming words to herself, «Gotta ball that Maggot. Gotta ball that Maggot.»

As he stood by the girl, Nilsson saw the man with the hat nod and turn away from the stage. Nilsson's body tensed instinctively. The man came toward him, then brushed past Nilsson without seeing him and headed toward a small stairway that apparently led upstairs to box-seats.

Nilsson waited a few seconds, then followed. At the top of the stairs, away from the protective muffling of the heavy fireproof curtain, the sound of the audience was deafening. The man had entered a small one-person box seat at the left-hand side of the stage, from which he would have an unobstructed view into the right wing backstage. The door to the box had a small glass panel in it and Nilsson could see the man seat himself, take off his hat, then lean forward on the brass rail, as if gauging the distance to the girl, whom Nilsson could see over the man's shoulder.

As Nilsson watched, he saw a flurry of excitement in the wings and then, wearing their satin suits from which hung steaks, chops, beef kidneys, and slices of liver, came what were obviously Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice. Their costumes were white and already the heat of the backstage lights was softening the cuts of meat and blood was begi

Despite his absorption with the man in the hat and Vickie Stoner, Nilsson had time to think to himself: Incredible.

Then there was a fanfare. The houselights dimmed, went up, dimmed again. The front curtains opened and out stepped the fat, wigwearing man with the loud clothes and black eyeglasses. A cheer went up from the audience, now jammed in, over one thousand strong.

«Hi, kiddioes. It's me, the Big Banger here,» he said into the microphone. «You all ready for a little musical banging?»

A cheer went up from the crowd, one thousand voices wailing and screeching. The man at the microphone laughed aloud. «Well, you've come to the right place,» he shouted in an accent that

Nilsson pondered for a moment, then placed as American Southern, not knowing that New York City disc jockeys always sounded as if they had Southern accents. The worse the music, the stronger the accent.

«We're all go

«We want Maggot,» screamed a voice. «Where's the Lice?» came another.

«They rot-cheer,» said Big Bang Benton. «They just carving up a few little pieces of meat among them. Lucky little pieces of meat,» he leered.

The audience laughed, the girls openly, the boys more self-consciously. Big Bang Benton seemed pleased that he had stopped the catcalls and the demand for Maggot but he did not want to put up with it again. It was demeaning to a star of his caliber. He cleared his throat, raised his hands over his head officiously, and said:

«Kiddioes. It's that time. Let's hear it for … the one … the only … the greatest ever since the world began … Maggot and the Dead Meat Lice.»

The theater erupted in sound. The lights dimmed even further and a giant spot hit the center of the stage curtain. As Nilsson had expected, the heavy man in the theater box leaned forward. Through the window, Nilsson saw the man's hand reach under his coat. Nilsson silently pulled open the door to the box and stepped inside. His shoes were noiseless as he moved down the carpeted steps toward the man. Big Bang Benton still stood framed in the spot of the light; the audience continued its frenzied cheering; the main curtains remained closed. Faint lights illuminated the wings of the stage. To the right, Nilsson could see the red-haired girl, Vickie Stoner, in the same spot. Now Nilsson saw a glint of metal in the fat man's hand.

Nilsson reached into his doctor's bag and pulled out his revolver. He looked past the fat man and saw Big Bang look up toward the box. The heavy man began to raise his pistol. Nilsson stepped behind his chair. In one smooth motion, he dropped his medical bag and slapped his left arm around the fat man's neck. He yanked him backwards away from the rail so that if the gun dropped, it would land on the carpeted floor of the theater box. The man struggled until Nilsson put the barrel of the .38 revolver against the base of his neck and fired down into his torso. The silencerequipped gun coughed faintly; the man shuddered and slumped in the crush of Nilsson's left arm. Dead. The man's gun dropped noiselessly at his own feet. Nilsson's bullet would remain in the man's body until police surgeons removed it but there had been no chance of it exiting and plunging into the audience.

The man was dead but Nilsson held his arm around the corpse's throat, feeling the power the murder had given him. How many years had it been. Twenty-five? Thirty? He had not raised a gun in anger. He had turned his back on a family history and what had it gotten him? A famous tradition with no one to carry it on, and a dead brother. As the man grew heavier in his arm, Gu

And there at center stage in his purple jacket and his black eyeglasses was the imbecile who had ignored Gu

Nilsson smiled. Big Bang would not use his voice again to offer someone a contract that the Nilsson family had closed.

Then Maggot hit a chord on his guitar, one heavy seventh chord that hung in the air of the theater and whose echo overwhelmed and quieted down the fans' noise. For a moment, the echo competed with the stillness of the audience and then over the silence was heard the plaintive haunting cry of the red-haired woman backstage:

«Gotta ball that Maggot.»

The sound was buried as the music began. Nilsson raised his pistol again, looked down its barrel and planted the tip of it against Vickie