“ Oh, that,” Tom said with some of the tension visibly leaving his body. “I’m a collector and I’m working on a book about the history of the band, so it’s my business to know everything there is to know about Led Zeppelin. Bootlegs are a fact of life and an important part of the history of the band, and although some of them may sound terrible, you have to admit, they show what it was like to see Zep in their heyday.”
“ I suppose.” The big man sounded less like a collector every second.
“ Did you bring the tapes?” Tom asked.
“ Right here.” The big man tapped a coat pocket. “Gotta keep them out of sight. They’re pretty valuable.”
“ Hold on, we agreed on the price.”
“ I know and I’m not going to back out of the deal. It’s just that there’s someone else who is also interested.”
“ I assumed this was going to be an exclusive deal.”
“ I never said that.”
“ But it was a valid assumption. If you sell the tapes to somebody else, how do I know he won’t trade them around.”
“ I guess you don’t.”
“ That would make them worthless.”
“ He’s paying a whole lot more money than you are, so I don’t think he’s going to trade them. He’ll want them for himself, like you do.”
“ That’s good to know,” Tom said, relieved. Then he asked, “Who is this person?”
“ You wouldn’t know him.”
“ Try me.”
“ A guy named Rick Gordon.”
“ Jesus Christ,” Tom said through grinding teeth.
“ Got a problem with that?”
“ I’ll say. You sell them to him and I don’t want them.”
“ Why not?”
“ He’ll bootleg them faster than you can blink.”
“ I thought you didn’t have anything to do with the bootlegs?”
“ I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know who does.”
“ Well, I’ll put your mind at rest, Mr. Gordon is retired. He doesn’t make bootlegs anymore.”
“ Then why does he want the tapes?”
“ Maybe he likes Led Zeppelin.”
“ Not a chance. The only thing he ever liked about the music business was the money it made him.”
“ There is something wrong with money?” the big man asked.
“ There is if you make it on the backs of genuine collectors and fans who love the music for what it is.”
“ So what you’re saying is, it’s okay for you to make money on bootlegs, because you’re a genuine fan and collector, but not okay for Gordon, because he only cares for the money.”
“ Exactly, every bootleg I ever made-”
“ I thought you didn’t make bootlegs,” the big man interrupted.
“ I don’t. I might have. I mean I don’t anymore.”
“ Like Gordon doesn’t anymore?”
“ That’s not what I mean.”
“ What you mean is, you want my tapes to make bootlegs.”
“ What if I do?” Tom hated himself for being caught in his lie so easily.
“ Then I think you’d better plan on paying a little more money.”
“ I didn’t bring anymore with me.”
“ Are you going to bootleg them?”
“ I think you already wormed that out of me.”
“ In that case, I think we need a few moments of private conversation.”
“ Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of my wife.”
“ Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she can be trusted and I don’t mind if you tell her everything you and I talk about, but when discussing something of this nature, I prefer it to be on a one to one basis. That way if things should go sour in the future, it’s my word against yours, not yours and your wife’s. Do you understand?”
“ Not really.”
“ It’s okay, Tom. I left my purse in the car anyway,” Sylvia said. Then turning to the big man she asked, “Ten minutes be enough for you, Mr. Storm?”
“ More than enough.”
Turning on her heels, Sylvia walked down the corridor, slapping the circular supporting columns as she passed them. The slaps echoed like gunfire down the empty corridor, each sound less loud than the one before.
Tom stole a quick glance to the big man standing next to him and felt a pang of jealousy when he saw those steel eyes glued to his wife’s backside. Dirty old man, he thought, but then who wouldn’t steal a look at Sylvia if given half a chance.
“ If she’s half as sharp as she looks, you are a lucky man.”
“ She’s working on her Ph. D. in French Lit.”
“ Nice.”
“ She hates Led Zeppelin.”
“ Too bad,” the big man said. Then without warning, he shoved Tom in the chest, slamming him into one of the columns that supported the covered corridor. Then Storm grabbed him by the neck and rapped his head against the column, stunning him. In seconds he had Tom’s hands behind his back, arms around the column, hands handcuffed together.
Tom started to yell and the big man hit him in the stomach, winding him. Gasping for air, Tom’s eyes bugged out and he barely saw Storm remove a roll of gray duct tape from a coat pocket. The big man grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up until Tom was standing erect. Then he covered his mouth and started winding the tape, affixing his head to the column.
“ If you could only see yourself,” Storm said.
Tom moaned.
“ Yeah, tell me about it.”
Tom’s eyes widened.
“ Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t make you a bootlegger. You must have known that someday, someway, you’d have to pay for your crimes.” Saying it made it sound just, but Storm knew it wasn’t so. Since seeing Gordon in Tampico he had changed. Once a man who lived by the rules, he had turned into a man who lived by the gun. He’d become an old west sheriff bent on vengeance. Part of him reveled in the new Sam Storm, and part of him was repulsed, but he had gone too far to turn back now.
The new Sam Storm wanted the woman. He wanted her on the ground in front of her helpless husband. He wanted to feel the husband’s fear and anguish as he saw his wife raped, then tortured. He wanted to taste her blood, smell her fear, swallow her terror, but alas it couldn’t be, he was going to have to follow her out to the parking lot and do her there, after he finished with hubby. He had to kill the bootlegger and his wife and be gone, before they were discovered by a happy collector, looking for a safe place to do a line or smoke a joint.
As his helpless victim watched, Storm removed an ice pick from his coat pocket. Then he took a CD out of his shirt pocket. Tom started to squirm, fighting against the handcuffs as Storm inserted the point of the ice pick through the hole in the center of the CD.
“ Live on Blueberry Hill,” Storm said, indicating the CD.
It wasn’t fair, Tom thought, he was going to be killed and his favorite Zeppelin concert, the first Zeppelin bootleg, was going to be part of the murder weapon. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.
He felt a slight discomfort as the man inserted the ice pick into his left nostril, holding it with thumb and
