Lorna had split faster than a lip in a barfight, and since Missing Persons wasn't interested in the description I'd given them (lips the size of two-by-fours, more curves than the Taconic Parkway), I decided to take matters into my own hands. I figured her apartment could stand another anonymous male visitor; besides, she'd given me the key the night she disappeared without ever letting me get to know her better.

I turned on the stereo as soon as I stepped inside, for a little investigation music, as it were. It appeared that she'd been listening to some free-jazz slop-- stuff that sounded like screaming toddlers being rubbed against steel-wool carpets. I thought even Lorna would be classier than this. The place didn't look like it'd been roughed up. There were a few pairs of cheap nylons on the ground, but it seemed more like a rushed packing job than a kidnapping. I went into the bedroom. She'd taken the sheets off a bed that sagged like my arches from the jackhammering it'd been given by one too many musclebound lugs. A few empty picture frames confirmed my suspicions: she'd grabbed what she'd needed and run.

I was trying to think of what could have spooked her like that when I heard the music again. It had come to resemble something listenable, but it was no less startling than before: guitars stabbed out from an oily rhythmic swagger, which was made even more ominous by slightly more upbeat, slurred horn lines. Then the whole thing turned staccato, like an entire riot squad banging on the door. I could see how this stuff could make even a tough broad like Lorna paranoid.

Another song started, this one moving faster, with sounds like doors slamming from down the hall and fingernails rasping against windows. Illegible saxophone scrawls blurted, and a few inexplicably creepy vibraphone hits jumped out from the chugging bassline. I took the CD case from atop of a pile of papers, and as the band dissolved again, I knew this Last Stop business was a message; Lorna knew she was being watched, and she cleared out.

I took the disc out with me that night to see Jimmy. He was a kid who liked to hang around an East Side record store that served as a front for the branch of the organization in control of that part of town. I slipped him a Sam Goody gift certificate across the bar and asked if he'd heard anything like this lately.

He mulled it over with a smug grin on his face for a minute before saying, "Yeah, I heard something like that. Sounds like someone's panting in the background, right? And there's this spooky little bassline, maybe like listening to Trans Am through a block of cement?"

"Sure, kid, that's 'Incident At.' Where'd you hear it?"

"Morty the Hammer's car, coming down Broadway, about three or four days ago."

Morty the Hammer. A low-level goon with a head the size of a watermelon. He'd be easy to find at his favorite hole-in-the-wall, and even easier to sock in the jaw. I had him down on the floor in a second, spitting out explanations and bloody teeth like seeds.

"Seriously, I just like the album! It has this, you know, noir-ish feel that suits my, um, choice of occupation. Perfect music to break-and-enter to, y'know? And I've always hated vocals; I didn't even have to gag these guys to make 'em shut up."

It didn't take much more pummeling to get him to talk. Big Tex had passed the album off to him, and Morty had broken into Lorna's apartment and left it in her stereo. I took off towards Tex's place out in the suburbs (address graciously provided by Morty), listening to Last Stop along the way. Morty had been upfront about one thing: this was good stuff, and it was growing on me despite the bad taste the jazz they played in the dives I frequented always left in my mouth. Even though the songs were simple as pie and strictly instrumental, the sounds these guys used suggested whole characters and conspiracies just slightly out of sight.

And it wasn't just depressing, either; "I'm Coming Straight Down," the least jazzy song on the record, built up an impressive momentum. Without resorting to the cheap grift of melody, it managed to lift me above the rain pissing down on my beat-up '72 Dodge. I was thinking about how the last track, "This Sound Will Break Your Heart," was pretty enough to live up to its name when cold hands closed around my Adam's apple. I swerved and thrashed back against the seat to see Fingers Payne sneering at me in the rearview. "Better listen a little closer, gumshoe," he snickered as everything faded to black.

I broke a lifelong promise the next morning. I woke up in New Jersey. For a second, it felt like all the music I'd heard at every bar I'd been to last night was echoing in my head all at once; then I realized that I was still in my car, in a ditch by the side of the road, listening to the middle of that Woe album. I shrugged and lit a cigarette; living in a bad detective novel isn't that bad, as long as the music's like this.

-Brendan Reid