• Complain

Max Collins - Scratch Fever

Here you can read online Max Collins - Scratch Fever full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: New York, year: 1982, publisher: Pinnacle Books, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Max Collins Scratch Fever
  • Book:
    Scratch Fever
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Pinnacle Books
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    1982
  • City:
    New York
  • ISBN:
    978-0-523-41164-4
  • Rating:
    3 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 60
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Scratch Fever: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Scratch Fever" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Return of a femme fatale. Beautiful, homicidal Julie has one lethal solution for every problem. And now Nolan and his sometime sidekick Jon have gotten on Julies problem list. If a pair of out-of-town hitmen cant do the job, Julie will do it herself. Said the Cleveland Plain Dealer: For fans of the hardboiled crime novel this is powerful and highly enjoyable reading, fast moving and very, very tough.

Max Collins: author's other books


Who wrote Scratch Fever? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Scratch Fever — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Scratch Fever" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Max Allan Collins

Scratch Fever

1

1

JON, ON STAGE, sweating, singing, mouth against the wire mesh ball of the microphone, hands on the black keys of the keyboard, looked out across the underlit, crowded dance floor, smoke drifting like fog, and saw somebody who was supposed to be dead.

He blinked the sweat away and looked again.

She was gone.

But he had seen her. Recognized her. He shouldnt have been able to her hair was different, still long, brushing her shoulders, but streaked blonde now, heavily so and she wore tinted glasses with dark frames. Hed never seen her in glasses before, but she had the kind of face that a change of hair and the addition of glasses made no less distinctive.

It was mostly her mouth, he supposed: full lips that wore a faint, permanent pout, like Elke Sommer, but cruel, somehow. Smug. A feature that attracted and repelled, promised and threatened. As did that shape of hers big boobs, tiny waist, wide hips, perfect ass. She was a sexual exaggeration, a Vargas girl come to life. She was Julie.

Julie, in white skirt and jacket and black cardigan, looking like a businesswoman, coldly chic, talking to Bob, the club manager, a six-four former farmer who was sitting with her over at the bar, stage right, handing her a drink.

Only that had been before Jon blinked.

Now Bob was sitting next to an empty stool, looking toward the back of the room, the drink in his hand extended toward nobody.

Shit, Jon thought; she saw me, too, recognized me. He felt a chill, despite the heat of the stage lights, the row of alternating red/blue/yellow spots strung on a pole above him, the system the band carried with them.

No. She wouldnt have recognized him; she wouldnt expect to see him playing on stage with a rock band. She wouldnt know him with his hair cut off. He was just another musician, short, muscular, curly haired; there were hundreds of people who looked like him.

Yeah. Sure.

The song was over, he suddenly realized (Pump It Up, by Elvis Costello), and he should be introducing the next one, but he couldnt remember what it was. He glanced over at the list of songs taped to the monitor speaker next to his portable organ (an old Vox Super Continental double keyboard), but the salty sweat in his eyes kept him from being able to focus on it.

The rest of the band, Les, Roc, Mick, Toni, stood and looked at him, waiting, and there was one of those two- or three-second pauses that most audiences dont notice but seem an eternity to the people on stage, and then his eyes focused and he saw on the typed song list Accidents Never Happen just below Pump It Up.

Wed like to do one by Blondie, he heard himself saying, his voice echoing across the hall, featuring Toni. She isnt blonde, but shes more fun.

Toni did a little Debbie Harry salute/smile at the audience, and the faces out there smiled back at her, accompanied by a few laughs, and they went into the song.

The band which was called the Nodes did a lot of Blondie material, because Toni did resemble Blondies Debbie Harry just a little, though her hair was brunette (but then again so was Debbie Harrys, really), and she had a similar busty little figure and could mimic Ms. Harrys voice to perfection, as well as half a dozen other womens, from Ronnie Spector to Pat Benatar to Lene Lovich, which was no small feat. Toni was the most popular member of the band, and Jon didnt mind. But Les, Roc, and Mick did, and that was probably the major reason this was the bands last gig.

After seven very successful months theyd been playing the Wisconsin/Iowa/Illinois club circuit and pulling down $1500 a week, which for a band without a hit record was good money the Nodes were going their separate ways. Or at least Les, Roc, and Mick were going one way, staying together as a trio, while Jon and Toni went another, to a tryout in St Paul, next week, with a new band. Girl singers and keyboard players were always in demand.

Besides, there was a split in musical tastes among the band. Jon and Toni both liked new wave rock, like the Elvis Costello and Blondie numbers that dominated the song list; but the rest of the band (who had been together for years under various names, among them Eargasm, Fried Smoke and Deep Pink) were into heavy-metal rock, and it was at their insistence that material like Aerosmith and Ted Nugent stayed on the list, much to Jon and Tonis distaste.

The club they were playing was called the Barn, and it was in the country, between two cornfields, ten miles outside Burlington, Iowa. Part of it actually was a barn, or had been before it was turned into a restaurant, with the rough wood and red and white checkered tablecloths and barbecued ribs youd expect of a restaurant that used to be a barn. A huge tin shed had been erected next to the restaurant and in this, still in a rustic manner, an Old Town setting had been created, with fake storefronts lining either side of a big dance floor. Between storefronts and dance floor were more tables with red and white checked cloths, and there was a bar on either side, plus another in back, in the area that connected the restaurant and the club.

The audience here was a young one, teens to late twenties, with enough people in their thirties to make it a difficult mix for a band to please. The drinking age was twenty-one, but fake I.D.s were more common than real ones in clubs like this one. The manager, Bob Hale, insisted that the bands he booked in play nostalgia, which meant fifties and sixties rock, and the Nodes carried plenty of songs in that area. And the band dressed like a British sixties group: sportcoats and skinny ties and short hair. Even Toni had a Beatle haircut and wore a skinny tie with her white shirt of course, the white shirt and tie were all Toni wore, that and pantyhose, the shirt hitting her mid-thigh, like a mini-skirt, which was Jons idea of nostalgia.

Jon knew that to exist as a band in the Midwest it was necessary to cater to slightly crazed club owners, like Bob, who wanted bands that could appeal to everybody. The Nodes tongue-in-cheek clean-cut look helped accomplish that, and the songs by the Stones, Kinks and Beatles, plus sixties camp like 96 Tears, Dirty Water, and Woolly Bully, pleased the patrons in their thirties as well as the eighteen-year-olds.

At the end of Accidents Never Happen, tall, skinny lead guitarist Roc went into Cat Scratch Fever. Several male voices, out in the smoky crowd, yelped and hooted. It was a popular song. It was also Jon and Tonis cue to step offstage for a break; neither her vocals nor his keyboards were required on that opus, and besides, they hated it.

There was a little room off to stage right, behind one of the fake storefronts, where he and Toni went to wait out the song.

He could hear Rocs toneless voice echoing out there: Make her pussy purr...

Why do they like that shit? Jon asked.

Toni was sitting on one of the hard black flight cases a guitar amp was carried in; her short, nice legs were crossed as she unscrewed the cap of a bottle of Cutty Sark.

You mean Les and Roc and Mick, she asked, or the crowd?

Both.

Beats the fuck out of me, she said, and took a swig of the whiskey; her little-girl face lit up as it rolled down her throat Then again, this is Iowa, she added.

Out in the other room, Rocs guitar whined; people whooped.

If Iowa sucks so bad, he said, whyd you leave New Jersey?

It was a question hed asked many times these past months.

The answer he got hed heard before: 1 thought maybe Id stand out in a cornfield.

He usually laughed at that, but this time he didnt. He was thinking about the woman hed seen in the white skirt and black sweater. He was thinking about Julie.

Something on your mind, Jonny?

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Scratch Fever»

Look at similar books to Scratch Fever. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Scratch Fever»

Discussion, reviews of the book Scratch Fever and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.