The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  “Research material, not for my personal amusement. I’m trying to find out anything I can about Warbucks for a job I’m working.”

  Paolo came out from behind the counter and led me down the narrow rows of DVDs, a thousand glossy covers offering me a peek at every kind of sex I could imagine and a few that hadn’t occurred to me. I’ve got nothing against porn, but the sheer amount of it on display, the rote titles and assembly-line feel, was numbing.

  “You wanna stay away from that guy,” Paolo said, working his way down the stacks as he hunted for a title. “I met him once. He’s got a screw loose.”

  “Yeah? When was that?”

  “Last year. I occasionally get some minor-league talent in here. They sign autographs, bring out some fans; I sell a lot of DVDs. It’s a win-win for me and the studio. Last summer, he comes out with a couple of his girls and we get to talking. You know, just passing the time. I think the guy’s movies are crap, but I don’t let it show, because business is business. I guess he started thinking we were some kinda kindred spirits, because he starts asking me about my store inventory, then about my personal collection.”

  “Like he wanted to see what you were into?”

  “Yeah,” Paolo said, “so I told him what I thought he wanted to hear. He’s asking me about ‘special orders’, like under-the-counter stuff, and I’m thinking he’s a pedo, right? Like he’s about to ask if I could hook him up with some kiddie porn. Then he tells me what he’s really looking for.”

  “What’d he want?”

  Paolo looked over his shoulder, making sure no customers were in earshot, and leaned close.

  “He wanted to know if I could get him a snuff movie.”

  6.

  Paolo sent me away with two DVDs wrapped in brown butcher paper and a fresh chill rippling down my spine. The store’s air conditioning gave way to the arid heat of the Vegas sun, but the chill stayed with me.

  “Kaufman is one of those guys,” Paolo warned me, “where you just know you’re gonna be seeing his picture on TV someday, with all his neighbors talking about how nice and quiet he was, and in the background they’re pulling bodies out of his basement. Just something wrong with him that you can’t put your finger on. Like you look in his eyes and there’s nothing really there.”

  I pulled into the drive-through at Burger King and then headed back to my place for lunch and a movie. The cinematic masterpieces Paolo had picked out for me were volumes seven and eight of Daddy’s Gutter Sluts. I’d never seen the first six, but something told me I wasn’t going to have any trouble following the plot. Loading the first DVD into my laptop, I noticed the company logo: a pair of linked steel rings and the name Second Circle Studios. Cute. The second circle of hell, in Dante’s Inferno, was for the sin of lust. Artie Kaufman knew his classics.

  Five minutes into the first DVD, I put my half-eaten burger aside. Fifteen minutes in and I felt like I needed to shower with bleach. There was no plot, no characters, just a tired-looking girl and Kaufman acting as his own cinematographer and star. He shot each scene on a handheld camera in one unbroken take, the lens acting as his point of view. He never showed his own face. The video rotated between eight or nine segments and featured four actresses. I immediately recognized Stacy. She wasn’t as pretty as her prom picture, not with the swell of a black eye and a fresh cut on her lip.

  She showed off her new tattoo in her first scene. It said “Daddy’s Girl” in swirling script on the small of her back. She stood in some filthy little hellhole—it looked like a truck-stop bathroom—and looked over her shoulder with a smile as she hiked up her pink tank top for the camera.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, the tinny sound echoing over my laptop’s speakers.

  “Come here,” a man’s voice answered, almost gentle. Had to have been Artie, holding the camera.

  She sauntered close, giving the lens a plastic smile. Then a sudden blur of motion as Artie backhanded her to the floor. The focus wavered when he lowered the camera, showing her on the grimy tiles. A boot slammed into her stomach, leaving her gasping for breath, curled into a fetal ball.

  “You’re not here to talk, you’re here to fuck,” Artie said in a monotone, the screen dropping to show his free hand fumbling with his belt buckle. “Don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”

  Things got worse once his pants came off. This wasn’t just rough sex. It was barely sex at all. Each segment was the same: Artie beating down and degrading his actresses while the camera zoomed in for close-ups. “Actress” wasn’t even the right word. They weren’t acting; they were genuinely terrified. I’d gone to an S&M club once, on a job. I saw some rough stuff going on there, but everybody was into it and nobody was getting any treatment they hadn’t willingly signed up for. The whole spectacle had felt more like elaborate play than anything else.

  This was the polar opposite. The stream of abuse spilling from Artie’s mouth set my teeth on edge. He hated these women. The sex was just a tool to reach his ultimate aim: hurting them. Stacy’s scenes were the worst. For some reason, he’d singled her out. I fast-forwarded through a scene where he shoved her head in a toilet, something he’d done with a couple of the other actresses. Then he got creative and did something that sent me running for the bathroom before I lost what little lunch I’d been able to choke down.

  Wiping my mouth with a paper napkin, I loaded the second DVD. More of the same. Same actresses, same filthy bathroom “sets”, same abuse. I skipped forward five seconds at a time, not sure what I was looking for and feeling sick. My instincts told me there was something here, something to see, but what?

  “—go home,” Stacy said, cowering on the floor.

  I reversed the video.

  Her voice was soft and choked with tears. I had to play it four more times before I was sure what I heard her say.

  “Don’t want to. Want to go home.”

  Artie’s voice wasn’t any easier to make out. He lowered the camera, whispering to her in a threatening hiss.

  “Anytime, bitch. You think they’ll be proud, finding out what you’ve been doing for a living?”

  Stacy finished the scene, her tears leaving mascara trails down her cheeks. Artie’s quip hadn’t been for the audience. It was a genuine threat. I could only imagine how wholesome Stacy from small-town Minnesota would feel at the prospect of having her grandfather find out about her secret life as a porn star.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said to the screen. “You were blackmailing her.”

  Had she finally had enough? Did Artie find out she was leaving and snap? Paolo’s words lingered in the back of my mind: he wanted a snuff movie. Maybe he’d decided to make one of his own. Looking back at the last clip, I was starting to get a nasty idea of how Stacy might have really drowned. At the very least, Artie was a blackmailer and a rapist.

  Even if he wasn’t the one who murdered her, he still took her life.

  I put on my sunglasses, drove to the Value Lodge on East Tropicana, and knocked on Jud’s door. He squinted into the sunlight, still draped in a tattered bathrobe. Six empty cans of Coors cluttered his bedside table. I stood in the doorway.

  “Mr. Faust?”

  “You need to go home,” I told him. “Back to Minnesota. Tonight.”

  His face fell. “You’re…not going to help me?”

  I took off my glasses and looked him in the eye.

  “Artie Kaufman is going to have a terrible accident,” I said. “I don’t want you here when it happens. Go home. Watch the news.”

  “T-thank you! But I can help, I can—”

  “Go home,” I repeated calmly. “Watch the news. You’ll know when it happens.”

  He kept thanking me. I didn’t want his thanks. I didn’t even want his money. I just wanted Artie Kaufman dead.

  #

  This was going to be tricky. All the circumstances pointed to Artie being responsible for Stacy’s murder, but that wasn’t the same thing as hard proof. There was still the matter of the
two cops dumping her body in the storm drains. Some people might have the juice and the contacts to get that kind of service, but a small-time pornographer isn’t one of them. Everybody involved in Stacy’s death, one way or another, was going to pay for it.

  I still had to find out exactly how she died. Going by Corman’s story, it sounded like her soul was literally in pieces, keeping her from moving on. Freeing her was priority one, but I couldn’t even start to figure it out without learning all the facts. While I was enticed by the idea of laying a death curse on Artie’s head, or just showing up on his doorstep with a baseball bat, I had to keep a cool head and fight smart.

  Inspiration struck. I pulled into the nearest parking lot and called Paolo.

  “Thank you for calling the Love Connection, where you can make your love connection,” he said tiredly.

  “Paolo, it’s Faust. You still have Kaufman’s contact info?”

  “I’ve got a card somewhere, probably. Why?”

  “Make a phone call for me, and I’ll refresh those protective wards for free next week. Even trade. Deal?”

  “What’s the angle?”

  “I want you to ask Kaufman,” I said, “if he’s still in the market for a snuff movie. Because you happen to know a guy who might be able to get him one, and you’d just love to introduce him.”

  Forget booze and drugs: nothing in the world makes a person more prone to stupid, reckless behavior than the pursuit of an unfulfilled fetish. If my hunch was right, I had the key to getting into Artie’s inner circle. Of course, I’d have to come up with a nonexistent snuff flick, but I’d cross that bridge when I got there.

  I had planned to go home and catch a quick nap before meeting everyone at the Tiger’s Garden to discuss our cambion problem, but the two bruisers hanging out in my parking lot—all gristle and fists squeezed into tailored, salmon-pink suits—had other ideas. They walked up to meet my car, waiting patiently while I killed the engine and got out.

  “Mr. Agnelli wants to see you,” one said, staring down at me from behind sunglasses the color of burnt onyx.

  “I don’t have any business with Nicky,” I said, trying to step around him. He moved to stand in my path, a brick wall of menace.

  “Mr. Agnelli,” he said pointedly, “has business with you.”

  They politely escorted me to their waiting Lincoln and put me in the back seat. I figured I was better off not trying to push them into not-so-polite territory. When Nicky Agnelli wanted to see you, you got seen. Besides, I was curious to find out what he wanted. Strange coincidence, being called to a sit-down with the most dangerous man in Las Vegas at the same time as everything else that was going on this week.

  Third rule of magic: there is no such thing as a coincidence.

  7.

  The Lincoln eased its way through the traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard, a white shark in a sea of yellow cabs. The monoliths of the Strip rose up on either side, from skybound twists of crystal and chrome to black art-deco pyramids. Come nightfall they would erupt in a riot of colors and flashing lights, but for now they slept, dusty and quiet, in the afternoon sun.

  We pulled into a parking garage halfway down the boulevard. Nicky’s boys flanked me as we walked down the ramp and out onto the street, pushing though a swirl of tourists. A woman dressed for tennis and clutching a digital camera did a double take, looking at the suited thugs and then at me as if wondering if she’d seen me on television.

  No, no, they’re not my bodyguards, I felt like saying. They’re just here to break my kneecaps if I run. Or maybe break them anyway. We’ll see how the day goes.

  The Medici was a slice of old-world class in the heart of the city, standing watch over an artificial lake where the waters danced in a syncopated ballet at the top of every hour. In the lobby, frescoes on scalloped walls depicted the beauty of vintage Italy, and crystal fountains murmured under the electronic clangs of distant slot machines. The thugs marched me across the casino’s zebra-striped marble floor. It was early still, just a few locals and older tourists sitting at the cheap slots, but not much real action in sight.

  “Let me guess,” I said to the suit on my left, “Nicky’s one guy short for a game of poker, and he thought of me. He’s a sweetheart, he really is.”

  No reaction. Hell, they didn’t even take their shades off indoors. They were the gangster version of the guards at Buckingham Palace. My eyebrows went up when we reached the door to Club Prive, the private salon at the back of the casino. The concierge at the door barely gave us a second glance.

  The Club was half casino, half spa—a gallery of private salons in gray velvet and mahogany wood. I smelled some faint, exotic spice in the air, like a warm cologne. It smelled the way old money feels. In Salon Tredici, a cozy little lounge wreathed in a haze of cigar smoke, four men huddled around a table and played mahjong like their souls were hanging in the balance. A small gaggle of onlookers clustered around them, dressed in outfits that probably cost more than I make in a year.

  “That’s the game, gents,” Nicky Agnelli said, flipping over a row of intricate ivory tiles on the aquamarine felt. His long fingers trailed over a string of flowers and Chinese characters, like a piano player warming up for a jazz tune. The other players groaned, handing over fistfuls of colored sticks and dumping over their own tiles.

  Agnelli looked like he should be sitting someplace a few hours west, in Hollywood, making movie deals over a three-martini lunch. He looked up and gave us a hungry smile. His ice-blue eyes were wolfish behind rimless, titanium Porsche Design glasses.

  “Gentlemen, could I have the room please?”

  He kept his tone light, but it wasn’t a casual request. The game broke up without a word and the bystanders faded along with my escorts, leaving me alone with Nicky and his girls. They were twins, walking dreams in slinky black cocktail dresses, but I didn’t stare for too long. I knew them too well for that. They went by Juliette and Justine, but those weren’t their real names. I wasn’t sure if dubbing themselves after a pair of novels by the Marquis de Sade was their little joke or Nicky’s.

  The door slid shut at my back, leaving me caged in the tiger’s den.

  “Daniel Faust,” Nicky said, shaking his head and smiling. “What is this, you don’t call, you don’t write? I’m starting to think you don’t want to be friends anymore.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Thought I answered that question pretty definitively, last time we talked.”

  “Ancient history, it’s a brand new day. Sit down, would ya? You’re making me nervous.”

  He looked anything but nervous, but I humored him and took a seat on the opposite side of the mahjong table. Juliette glided over to a minibar, stiletto heels clicking, and opened a decanter of whiskey. Justine circled the table and stood behind me. I tried not to jump when she put her hands on my shoulders. She rubbed them, her slender fingers moving in light circles.

  “He’s very tense.” Justine’s voice dripped with amusement.

  “Oh dear,” Juliette answered, giggling, pouring two glasses. She smiled at me. Her eyes glowed yellow, like the edge of a candle’s flame. In private, Nicky and his crew didn’t have to pretend at being human. Their bodies flickered and morphed at the corners of my eye, illusions falling away in bits and pieces only to slide back into place back when I looked directly at them. “Do we make you nervous, Danny?”

  Before I could answer, Nicky shook his head and said, “Nah, sweetheart, he’s nervous because he’s flat fuckin’ broke and can’t pay rent on his crappy little apartment. My guys saw you on Fremont last week, Dan. You know what they saw you doing?”

  “Their mothers?” I replied.

  “Funny,” he said and turned back to Juliette. “This guy, this fuckin’ guy right here, doing a street act on Fremont. Not real magic, I mean, he’s got a crowd of tourists around and he’s pulling scarves out of hats and making coins disappear, and they’re pissing themselves, he’s so good. Daniel Faust. Best sorcerer on the West Coast, and he’s
busking for spare change.”

  “That’s so sad,” Juliette pouted, putting a crystal glass in front of each of us. I left mine untouched. The rich scent of finely aged whiskey mingled with the growing undercurrent of sulfur in the air.

  Justine leaned close, her lips inches from my ear, and stage-whispered, “See? Now you made my sister sad. I hope you feel bad about that.”

  “Mortified.” I sighed. “Nicky, what the hell do you want?”

  He flashed a mouth of fangs that could scare a great white shark and spread his hands wide. “I want to get the band back together, man!”

  “No,” I said flatly.

  “I want you on my team. I’ve got some work coming up that needs a light touch, real occult power, and hands I can trust. That’s you, buddy. And I’m not talking piecework, temp job garbage. I’m talking you, on my payroll, six figures a year plus perks.”

  Juliette walked to stand behind Nicky, her fingers draping across his shoulders, mirroring her sister behind me. “You’ll love the perks,” she said.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted. I’d been living hand to mouth for so long that a cash envelope like the one Jud gave me felt like Christmas in springtime. It wasn’t like I had a moral objection to working for a criminal, either. I am a criminal. Then I thought about what Nicky called “ancient history” and my stomach clenched.

  “I think you’re forgetting something,” I told him. “I think you’re forgetting that you got two of my friends killed. They were ‘on your team’ too, remember?”

  “Hey,” he said, his smile irrepressible, “you can blame me all you want if it helps you sleep at night, but it wasn’t me who fucked that job up. I think you know that.”

  “We’re done here,” I said and started to rise. Justine held my shoulders with the strength of a bodybuilder and shoved me back into the chair.

  “Sleep on it,” Nicky said. “It’s a limited-time offer, but sleep on it. There was one other thing. You met with an old guy the other day, Jud Pankow I think his name was?”