Somewhere Beneath Those Waves

by Sarah Monette

The morgue staffer seemed to catch the mood, for she was silent as she led them to the autopsy table, and remained silent as she pulled the sheet back.

  Mick had to turn away. Even the mental images conjured up by the phrase ‘half a body’ had not prepared him for the reality: the raw, ragged edges of bone and skin; the way what remained of the internal organs spilled untidily out of the body onto the table; the way that one staring dead eye was somehow even worse than two.

  Jamie regarded the body for a long time, perfectly silent, then said in a level, almost uninterested voice, “Yes. That’s Brett Vincent. I recognize him, and he’s got the tattoo.”

  “Tattoo?” Mick said; his voice, unlike Jamie’s, was a wavering croak.

  “We went and got ’em together,” Jamie said, touching Mick’s shoulder to get him to turn around. He did, carefully not looking at the table, and saw that Jamie had rolled his right sleeve up, was indicating the bend of his elbow, where the Wild Hunt who rode in somber, frenetic glory the length of his arm broke like sea waves to either side of a design clearly the work of a different artist. For a moment, Mick couldn’t make sense of the lines, and then it resolved into a circle made of two snakes, each biting the other’s tail. Without knowing he was going to, Mick reached out and touched the tattoo gently, as if it might still be sore all these years later. His finger was shockingly white against Jamie’s dark skin, and they both pretended they couldn’t see how unsteady it was.

  Jamie said, “Anyway, that body’s got Brett’s tattoo right where Brett had it. It’s him.”

  “I’ll write up the report,” the morgue staffer said. “Thank you.”

  Jamie was unhurriedly rebuttoning his cuff. “And I guess we go see what Jesperson wants us to do now.”

  Jesperson wanted them to go to Electric Squidland.

  “Never thought I’d see the day when the Old Man would send us clubbing,” Jamie said when he picked Mick up that evening.

  “Never thought I’d see the day when the Old Man would send us on a date,” Mick countered, and was delighted when Jamie laughed.

  They left the Skylark three blocks from the nightclub and walked the rest of the way, enjoying the mild night air. At 10:07 p.m. (Mick noted the exact time from force of habit) they walked into the Kaleidoscope, the first level of Electric Squidland, mirrors and colored lights everywhere, and were greeted with a loud cry of, “Jamie! Lover!”

  Mick stared disbelievingly at Jamie, who winced visibly before turning to greet an extremely pretty young man who was making the most of his Hispanic heritage with a pair of pale blue satin toreador pants. Mick, observing the pretty young man with the eye of an expert, saw that he was not as young as he was trying to appear, and he would be prettier if he admitted it.

  “Ex-lover, Carlos,” Jamie corrected, but he let Carlos kiss him.

  “Oh, nonsense, darling. Once I let a man into my heart, he never leaves. But who is your Marilyn Manson here? This your new flame, sweetie?”

  Mick opened his mouth to say something withering about blue satin toreador pants, but Jamie’s abashed, apologetic expression stopped him. He swallowed his venom, said, “Mick Sharpton,” and endured Carlos’ cold fish handshake. He and Carlos understood each other very well.

  “Mick’s never been to Electric Squidland,” Jamie said, adroitly avoiding the issue of whether Mick was or was not a ‘flame.’ “So I said I’d show him around. Suzanne working tonight?”

  “Is it Wednesday and is the Pope Catholic?” Someone across the room was trying vigorously to attract Carlos’ attention. He said, “We’ll catch up later, sweetie. When you’re not so busy.”

  When you’ve ditched your gothboy, Mick translated and was not sorry to see the last of Carlos. “I’ll assume Carlos has hidden qualities,” he said in Jamie’s ear.

  “Me-ow,” Jamie said, and Mick felt himself blush. “C’mon. We won’t find what we’re looking for up here.”

  “What are we looking for, exactly?”

  “Gal who has the Wednesday night show in the Inferno.”

  “Oooo-kay.”

  Jamie grinned. “The two lower levels are Members Only. And I don’t think Jesperson’s going to let us put membership on our expense accounts. But Suzanne can get us badges, if she has a mind to.”

  “And will she?”

  “Will she what?”

  “Have a mind to?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Jamie said, and there was a private joke in there somewhere. Mick could feel it, and it made him a little uneasy. But only a little. He trusted Jamie, in a way he’d never been able to trust a partner before. He’d wondered sometimes, the first two years he was with the BPI, why he kept torturing himself, spending his days—and sometimes his nights—with a series of agents who disliked him, distrusted him—some of them had openly hated him, and Mick had hated them back, fiercely and with no quarter given.

  He had expected Jamie to be more of the same, Jamie with his bulk and his heavy hands and his deceptive eyes. And he still didn’t understand what was different about Jamie, massive, gentle Jamie with his night-dark skin and his tattoos like clouds—didn’t understand why Jamie had decided to like him and made that decision stick. Mick was painfully aware that he didn’t deserve Jamie’s liking—ever a proponent of ‘hit back first,’ he had been unconscionably nasty to Jamie in the early days of their partnership, until Jamie had proved, immutably, that he would not be nasty back. So whatever it was Jamie was waiting to spring on him, he knew it wouldn’t be too bad.

  He followed Jamie obediently from the Kaleidoscope down the open corkscrew staircase that was the centerpiece of Electric Squidland’s second level, the Submarine. The Submarine was classier, the level for those who fancied themselves Beautiful People. No disco balls here, and the music was dark, very techno, very European. Mick bet the bar on this level went through a lot of synthetic absinthe.

  Jamie used their descent of the staircase to reconnoiter, and at the bottom, he grabbed Mick’s elbow and said, “This way.”

  “Your gal’s here?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is she drinking synthetic absinthe?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” By then, he could see the woman Jamie was aiming for, a petite woman with long plum-red hair, dressed in trailing, clinging black. The liquid in her glass was lurid green, and Mick moaned quietly to himself.

  She looked up at their approach. Her eyes widened, and then she said, with apparently genuine delight, “Jamie! A very long time, and no see at all!” And then she gave Mick a once-over, seeming to take especial note of Jamie’s hand on his elbow. “Are you attached to this delectable creature?”

  “At the hip,” Jamie muttered, only loud enough for Mick to hear, then said, “Sorta. I’m showing him around tonight.”

  “Well, you can just leave him to me.” Suzanne extended a hand, the nails as long and black as Mick’s own, and said, “Hi. I’m Suzanne.”

  “Mick.” He did not let Suzanne’s hand linger in his, although he knew he probably should have.

  “Sit down, please,” Suzanne said. “How have you been?”

  “Oh, fine,” Jamie said. “Listen, Suzanne, I really want Mick to see your act tonight.”

  It was hard to tell in the Submarine’s dim lighting, but Mick thought Suzanne blushed. “Jamie, how sweet of you.”

  Jamie kicked Mick’s ankle; resigned, Mick picked up his cue: “Jamie’s told me the most amazing things.”

  She was blushing. “He’s probably exaggerating. But . . . ” She looked at them, an expression in her eyes that Mick couldn’t read. But whatever she saw pleased her; she smiled and said, “I’d hate to let you down. Let me see what I can do.”

  She left with a generous sway of her hips, and Mick leaned over to hiss in Jamie’s ear, “She can’t think I’m straight.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t.” He shifted guiltily. “Suzanne, um. She has a thing for . . . ”

  “She’s a fag hag,” Mick said, several things falling int
o place; Jamie winced, but did not dispute the term. So that was Jamie’s private joke. Mick grinned. “You son of a bitch. And you want me to—”

  “Jesperson wants information. Of the two of us, I’m the one who knows where to look, which means you get to play distraction.”

  “But do I have to distract her?”

  “You can distract her. And if you’re distracting her, I can tell the bouncer at the Inferno’s side door I’m running an errand for her, and he’s likely to believe me.”

  “Your plan sucks,” Mick said.

  “It’s the only one we’ve got. And anyway, she’s coming back, so it’ll have to do.”

  “Your leadership technique also sucks,” Mick said and forced himself to smile at Suzanne.Suzanne had brought them two pin-on black badges, each saying Inferno in fiery letters. “I’ve got to run and get ready,” she said. “Sit where I can see you, and I’ll talk to you after, okay?” It was clear to both Mick and Jamie which one of them she was talking to, and Mick only barely managed not to sigh audibly.

  “Be glad she brought two badges,” Jamie said, then hesitated. “Suzanne’s really not that bad. She’s like a lot of the kids here—thinks it’s exciting and sexy to work in a nightclub with a reputation. She doesn’t know what goes on in the Neon Cthulhu.”

  “And you do? What did you do, when you worked here?”

  “Chief bouncer for the Inferno. Adler called me Cerberus and thought he was being funny.”

  “You must’ve been good at it. Why’d you quit?”

  Jamie smiled widely, mirthlessly, the same smile he’d had when he’d confessed to knowing Brett Vincent. “Because they were gonna give me a promotion.”

  “Most people,” Mick said, cautious now because he didn’t know this mood on Jamie, didn’t know which way Jamie would jump, “don’t find that offensive.”

  “They wanted to put me on the door of the Neon Cthulhu, the lowest level. And I wasn’t stupid enough to be interested. Inferno’s bad enough, and it’s really just play-acting.” He held up one broad palm, anticipating Mick’s objection. “Nothing illegal in the Neon Cthulhu. Leastways not out in the open. It’s all consensual, and they got a license for public occultism. But it is nasty shit. I was only down there once.” And he shuddered, as if even the memory made him ill.

  “Jamie?” Mick said uncertainly. “You okay?”

  Jamie shook his head, a weary gesture like a bull goaded by flies. “Don’t like it here,” he said. “Lot of real crappy memories.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mick said helplessly, and was relieved when Jamie smiled at him, even if the smile was thin and forced.

  “Not your fault, blue eyes. C’mon. Let’s go to Hell.”

  Suzanne, it turned out, was a class eight magician; her act was very good, very smooth. She had a rather pretty young man as her assistant, and looking at him, looking at Suzanne, Mick saw his own twenty-year-old self and understood what Jamie had been trying to say about Suzanne. So eager to be wicked, but with no clear idea of how to go about it, so ready to admire anyone who seemed to have the secret information she lacked. He was able to relax a little, though, more confident that she would not turn out to be the sort that would try to get him into bed.

  After her curtain calls, Suzanne came and sat at Mick and Jamie’s table, instantly making them the cynosure of all eyes; she preened herself, and Mick felt his patience with her slip another notch. Jamie, with his customary talent for evading the spotlight, went to get drinks, then muttered something about the restroom and disappeared.

  Leaving Mick alone with Suzanne and several dozen interested spectators, including her seething pretty boy. Mick knocked back a generous swallow of his screwdriver, and offered the first conversational gambit, asking a simple question about how she accomplished one of the effects in her act.

  An hour later, he was wishing Suzanne’s pretty boy would just go ahead and slip strychnine in his glass, because it would be less excruciating than this. The boy was hovering, green with jealousy; Suzanne, well aware, was flirting with Mick in a way he could have put paid to with a few pithy words, except that he was supposed to keep Suzanne distracted until Jamie got back, and where the hell was Jamie anyway?

  Shouldn’t have let him go running off to play James Bond on his own, Mick thought, while acknowledging ruefully that there was nothing else he could have done. He smiled at Suzanne—a little too hard, but she wouldn’t notice in the dim light—and choked on his screwdriver when she asked, a trifle too nonchalantly, “Have you been Jamie’s partner long?”

  The coughing fit was merciful; by the time he recovered, and Suzanne was saying, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he’d realized what she meant. She thought he and Jamie were lovers; her curiosity was prurient, not professional.

  “You just surprised me,” he said. “I didn’t realize you . . . ” and as he hesitated, trying to decide what he ought to say, whether he ought to play along, or whether he ought to tell her about Jamie’s girlfriend, the image crashed into his mind, brutal as an SUV through plate glass—blood, black in lurid green light, and the harsh scent of cedar incense.

  “Shit!” he said, setting his glass down hard enough to slop orange juice and vodka onto the table. “Jamie’s in trouble.”

  Suzanne looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to be offended or alarmed. “What, are you psychic or something?”

  “Yeah, actually. Three-latent-eight.”

  She and her pretty boy stared at him with identical wide-eyed expressions.

  “And I mean it,” Mick said. “Jamie is in serious trouble. Will you help me find him?”

  “But where would he . . . ?” She twisted around, and only then seemed to realize that Jamie was not lurking anywhere nearby.

  “Fuck,” Mick said between his teeth. But Jamie needed him, and he knew he’d never find his partner without help. He gambled on the truth. “We work for the BPI. We’re investigating the death of Brett Vincent, who was found out in Sunny Creek this morning.”

  “BPI? Jamie Keller went to work for the BPI?”

  Mick wondered tangentially what Jamie had been like when he had worked here, and if that was why he’d been so unhappy to come back. “Yeah.”

  “And Brett?” Her eyes had gone even wider, and under her makeup, she’d gone pale. “Brett disappeared a week ago. Adler said he’d taken vacation, but Brett hadn’t said anything about it, and that’s not like him.”

  “Jamie identified the body. It really was him.”

  Suzanne thought a moment, her teeth worrying her lower lip, then turned to her pretty boy and snapped, “Give him your Cthulhu badge.”

  “But, Suzanne—”

  “Do it!”

  Pouting, frightened, the boy unpinned the badge—black like the Inferno badge, but with Cthulhu written on it in lurid green black-letter.

  “Trade,” Suzanne said. “Nobody wears both.”

  Mick did so quickly, lucky to avoid stabbing himself to the bone with the pin.

  “Good. Come on.”

  “You don’t have a badge,” Mick said, getting up to follow her.

  “I’ve worked here for years. They won’t stop me.”

  Neither the bouncer at the top of the stairs, nor the bouncer at the bottom seemed at all inclined to argue with Suzanne. This was the job Jamie wouldn’t take, Mick remembered and showed his Cthulhu badge. The bouncer waved him on with no further interest, and Mick felt a pang at how completely Jamie would have been wasted on this job.

  He got out, he reminded himself fiercely. And you’ll get him out again. Get him out and not come back.

  Then he got his first good look at the Neon Cthulhu. Mick was no stranger to S&M, and although he was not himself a magic user—and had no desire to be—he had been trained to recognize the more esoteric byways of the various disciplines. But the Neon Cthulhu still rocked him back on his heels—almost literally—and it took him a moment to realize Suzanne looked as shocked as he felt. He remembered Jamie sa
ying she didn’t know about the Neon Cthulhu, and it appeared that had been the truth.

  “Stop looking like you’re about to puke,” he said, low and fierce. “C’mon, Suzanne. Pull yourself together.”

  “God,” she said. “I mean, I knew it was a heavy scene down here, but—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, resisting the urge to shake her. “Help me find Jamie, and then you can get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath and said it again, more firmly, “Okay. But where . . . ”

  Mick looked around, a quick, comprehensive glance. “That door,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward the only other door that had a man on guard. “Can you distract the bouncer for me?”

  “Can I . . . ”

  “For Jamie,” Mick amended hastily, and that seemed to steady her. She nodded. “Good. Then pretend like this is all part of your stage act, and let’s go.”

  That got her spine straight and her face, finally, settled, and they stepped away from the door together.

  Having gone through all the stages from raw newbie to elite inner circle at more than one goth club, Mick knew perfectly well that the second most obvious sign of a tyro—after the wide-eyed gape—was the overdone look of blasé nonchalance. The trick was to look appreciative but not shocked, and he could manage that if he pretended strenuously to himself that the occult signs and mutterings and bits of ritual were just exceptionally impressive window-dressing for the S&M scenes being enacted in cages and on altars at various points around the room. He also reminded himself that Jamie had said Electric Squidland had a license for public occultism, and thus nothing going on here was illegal.

  They stopped by a cage in which an ecstatic young man was being flogged by an Asian woman whose long braids snapped around her like another set of whips, and Mick pretended interest while Suzanne sashayed over, all hips and sex appeal, and engaged the bouncer’s attention. Mick ghosted forward, aided by a sudden rapturous scream from the man in the cage that turned everybody’s head for a split-second. Then Mick was at the door, wrenching the knob with clammy fingers, and then he was through, the door closed behind him, feeling his way down a much darker staircase, the bite of the cedar incense almost enough to make him cough. And he knew Jamie was close.