Sick City

by Tony O'Neill

  Cherry paused for effect.

  “Before I could even call for security he got grabbed from behind, and I guess Derrick knew who the dude was—because he was stuttering and apologizing . . . I mean, more to him than me! And boy, he couldn’t get his ass outta here quick enough. Derrick pulls out the bills for the drinks and tries to leave but the dude grabs him and then he gives Derrick this look. . . . Well, shit, then Derrick like totally empties his wallet out on the bar and splits. Left a hundred-dollar tip for two drinks. Derrick was scared of him, I mean really fucking scared.”

  “Who? Scared of Juan?” Trina asked, craning her neck to look at the door guy. He was sitting on his stool by the door, shoveling takeout pad thai into his face with a plastic fork. Manhandling a customer seemed out of character for Juan, who was a lazy motherfucker and only got the job because he was a cousin of the owner.

  “Juan? Please, girl! I’m talking about Pat! You know I heard . . .”

  Trina—and the other girls—leaned in as Cherry’s voice became barely audible over the music.

  “I heard he killed a man. Up in Frisco. Something to do with a robbery. Somebody tried to screw him on his cut and . . .” Cherry trailed off, and a look came over her face that suggested blood and vengeance.

  “No, no, that ain’t how it went down!” interrupted Foxy. “It was a debt. Pat’s a dealer. He got more niggas underneath him than the fuckin’ World Trade Center. He’s cold. Friend of my cousin worked for him. That motherfucker cut off one of his thumbs over some money shit. Kept it, too. They say he got a collection. Every motherfucker who ever dealt with that bastard got a story.”

  “I heard he collects teeth,” Cherry said, her authority suddenly undermined by Foxy’s cousin’s friend, “that he’s half Cherokee, and that it’s a tradition. A ritual. You know, back when those people useta paint their faces and scalp cowboys’n shit.”

  “Hush up,” Foxy said. “Speak of the devil. . . .”

  Pat was standing by the entrance, talking to Juan. Pat laughed, slapped Juan on the shoulder, and made his way into the bar. He had been making a daily pilgrimage to Crazy Girls for three weeks now. He appeared one day out of nowhere and insinuated himself into the daily workings of the club so seamlessly that it seemed like he had been there since the place opened. He was the only customer in living memory who’d ever received free drinks from the bartender. He’d come in at four p.m. and drink and flirt with the girls until seven. Then he’d check his watch, leave a pile of money on the bar and say “duty calls” with a crooked grin, and disappear until the next day. He had talked and flirted with nearly every girl in the place, but nobody seemed to know much about him except for the most gothic and outrageous of rumors. These were breathlessly passed around, minor acts of violence and criminality were added and elaborated upon until Pat took on an almost superhuman aspect. He was like some old god, full of implied wrath and vengeance, sitting there nursing his drink and furrowing his brow.

  · · ·

  “He’s handsome,” Trina said, looking over to Pat as he sat at the bar and ordered a drink. He was wearing a black leather jacket over his wifebeater, Levi’s 501s turned up at the cuff, and scuffed motorcycle boots. He looked casually over to Lupita as she danced and then to the girls, giving an easy wink to Trina when he caught her eye on him. Trina smirked at him flirtatiously, then looked back to the other girls. “I mean, handsome for an old dude. How old do you think he is?”

  Nobody had an answer for that. Lil Wayne had stopped singing. “Lupita! Lupita, ladies and gentlemen . . . give her a big hand . . . ,” the DJ roared before lining up another record, “Candy” by Cameo. Besides Pat and a lone Mexican well on his way to unconsciousness, the place was empty. The Mexican’s eyes were heavy as he sat in a booth, while a one-armed stripper called Little Five-O rubbed her ass against his crotch. Trina stood.

  “I’m gonna see if he wants to buy me a drink.”

  As she walked away, Foxy raised a plucked eyebrow and said, “Something about that combination don’t sit well with me. That bitch ain’t got no sense. She’d better be careful. . . .”

  The others uh-huhed, and drank their drinks, and looked sadly toward the light outside, which was becoming ever more abstract and unreal to them. In this place it was somehow always three a.m.

  Chapter Twelve

  Once his paperwork had been processed, Jeffrey hunkered down to undergo detoxification. As the dope worked its way out of his system, he sweated and twisted on the thin mattress and his dreams were vivid, full-color nightmares of piles of pure, white Chinese heroin, Bill’s shriveled-up old corpse dancing as if suspended on marionette strings, and rocks of crack the size and shape of boulders. Sleep came in fits and starts, but he underwent his withdrawal with the stoicism of someone who had been through this routine many times before.

  On the fourth day of detox, Jeffrey saw a ghost. Not an emissary from another plane, rattling chains and groaning. This one happened to be alive, but it was a ghost just the same.

  The nurse poked her head around the door to Jeffrey’s room and said, “It’s time for your meeting.”

  “Meeting?” Jeffrey groaned, twisted up inside of a sweat-soaked duvet.

  “We’re having a meeting. Out in the smokers’ lounge. Come on!”

  Reluctantly Jeffrey splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. By day three, the worst of the physical symptoms had peaked. Still, if he wasn’t on a large amount of drugs right now, he would be barely standing. Even with the addition of a cocktail of chemicals intended to mask the worst of his symptoms, Jeffrey still felt like shit. His asshole was burning and raw, from enduring endless bouts of violent diarrhea. He looked to have lost at least five pounds, and his skin looked an even paler shade of corpse than usual. His head felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton wool. He tried to brush his teeth, but the taste of the toothpaste made him retch.

  He shuffled out to the smokers’ lounge in his slippers, feeling like a little old man. Out here there were three nonpatients, sitting around the table, drinking coffee and chain-smoking. There were two other shell-shocked patients in their nightgowns, looking as miserable as Jeffrey was. Jeffrey was about to take a seat when he saw him. He was sitting there, lighting the butt end of a cigarette, trying to suck the last of the nicotine out of it. At first Jeffrey thought that this was some kind of flashback, a hallucination brought on by the effects of the withdrawal. He blinked his eyes, looked away, and then stared once more at the man who sat at the table.

  He had the vaguely handsome, bland look of a newscaster. His skin glowed with good living and wealth. He smiled, showing dazzling white teeth. With or without the leather Gestapo getup, there was no doubting that this was a sick fucker who went by the name of Brian Hammer.

  “The Hammer” was a longtime regular at Bill’s legendary “Extreme Halloween” parties. That was until the first Halloween that Jeffrey came on the scene. Catching sight of him, Jeffrey felt his asshole twitch, as if it had some kind of sentient memory of the Hammer’s brutal excesses that year.

  Just then the Hammer looked up and caught Jeffrey’s gaze.

  “Welcome!” he said. “Come—come! Sit down. We’re about to start.”

  Jeffrey stood there, frozen, his mouth flapping open a little. The others turned now—a well-to-do-looking black man in a suit and a red-faced ex-drunk with jug ears. They all smiled welcomingly and beckoned for him to take the seat next to the Hammer.

  Be cool, motherfucker. Be cool. He doesn’t recognize you. Not dressed like this.

  “Welcome, everybody,” the Hammer said. The voice was chillingly familiar. Nasal, dry, the hint of a Kentucky accent. Jeffrey felt his palms getting sweaty.

  “Now, normally we don’t do this, but I’m feeling particularly thankful to be here today. It’s my fourteenth sober birthday, and what better way to mark the occasion than by coming back to the place that saved my life? So if y’all don’t mind, I’d like us to join hands, bow our heads, and sa
y the Lord’s Prayer. . . .”

  · · ·

  Before he knew what was happening, the Hammer had slipped his hand over Jeffrey’s. His grip was powerful. The others, oblivious to Jeffrey’s discomfort, all bowed their heads.

  “Our Father,” the Hammer began, “Who art in heaven . . .”

  The last time Jeffrey had seen the Hammer was four Halloweens ago. Bill’s Extreme Halloween parties had been a strictly invite-only occasion and were famous among the perverts, drug fiends, and thrill seekers in Bill’s inner circle as the social event of the year. Hired help walked around with silver trays loaded with a brain-cell-massacring array of uppers, downers, and hallucinogenic substances brought in from every corner of the globe. The finest Peruvian flake cocaine and the purest Chinese heroin were among the more vanilla selections. There were vintage intoxicants from the LAPD’s seizure rooms, stuff that brought back memories of bell-bottoms and roller-disco, like PCP and Quaaludes. A priceless batch of original Owsley acid was dragged out of the freezer and handed out like party favors. There were a variety of rare pharmaceuticals imported from all over the world, including Diconal, Palfium, Eukodal, and temazepam jellies. The booze ran the gamut from a $100,000 bottle of 1947 Cheval Blanc to a case of original Ripple wine procured from a private collector for an undisclosed sum.

  That night Jeffrey was in a blood-splattered white dress and blond wig, with a shattered tiara on his head. Bill looked unrecognizable—his skin pigmentation had been professionally altered to give him a vaguely Middle Eastern appearance. A wig of tight black curls blended in with his head seamlessly. He was wearing a torn-up Armani suit, and was covered in blood. A piece of glass looked to be sticking out of his neck, and the coup de grace was a foot or so of intestine that snaked out of his belly and had been casually slung over one shoulder like a feather boa made of raw meat. This year they were Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed, back from the grave.

  There were eighteen boys rounded up by Bill to make themselves available to his guests. They were a mix of rent boys, junkies, and unfortunate kids who had run afoul of the LAPD and whose asses now literally belonged to Bill. Ever since his retirement from the force, a few of the prettier and more desperate of the LAPD’s young male victims were sometimes offered a free pass in exchange for one night’s work. For the older decadents still on the force, being able to rustle up some young boys too terrified to say no to being used as semen receptacles for Bill’s guests was powerful leverage in scoring an invite to the party. You could tell who the newbies were. They stood around, naked, huddling in groups, stiff and nervous when someone would sidle up to them to say that their services were required.

  Taking in the chaotic splendor of the party, Jeffrey found himself watching the Hammer as he went for one of the boys, grabbing his buttock like a man appraising an animal at market. Another of Bill’s guests, a wealthy California media mogul dressed as John Wayne Gacy, leaned in and whispered, “Who did your catering? You have some fantastic hors d’oeuvres. . . .”

  · · ·

  The Hammer, who never imbibed anything stronger than caffeine and tobacco, took his boy into a private screening room. There, while some of the most extreme Ukrainian snuff movies on the market played out on the sixty-inch plasma screens, he locked the door behind them with a dark smile on his lips. When he emerged from the room forty minutes later he looked slightly apologetic. Jeffrey noted the curious look on his face as the Hammer called Bill over, and both of them disappeared into the screening room. When Bill called Jeffrey inside, he knew from Bill’s expression that it wasn’t good news.

  The room had several rows of vintage red velvet cinema seats in it, all facing toward the plasma screen that dominated one wall. On-screen, a movie that Jeffrey had seen before: a gang of feral Eastern European youths riding around in a car with a handgun. As their digital camera rolled they pulled up next to a teenage boy on a bicycle, shot him in the face, and sped away laughing.

  “The kid must have overdosed,” the Hammer was saying. “He just stopped breathing!”

  Jeffrey looked down at the brutalized, twisted kid on the floor. He was nude and lying very still and very bloody on the floor underneath the screen. He was dead, no doubt about that.

  “What the fuck happened?” Jeffrey said.

  “Well, Brian says that he just stopped breathing. He was, uh, inserting something into the kid, and he had some kind of seizure.”

  “What the fuck were you inserting?” Jeffrey said.

  The Hammer puffed out his chest. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, kid? Watch your fuckin’ tone of voice with me!”

  Bill raised a hand and looked at the Hammer.

  “We’ll have none of that, okay, Brian? Now calm down. What happened?”

  “The kid—he kept telling me to stick it in his ass. He said he could take it. He kept telling me to put it farther in. More and more. The kid was a fucking screwball. He asked for it, so I gave it to him. The next thing I fuckin’ know he’s rolling around on the floor and twitching and shit. I slapped him around a little bit to bring him out of it, but . . .”

  Jeffrey looked at the kid’s bloodied nose and busted lip.

  “Yeah. You did a good job of slapping him around, all right. What did you use—a tire iron?”

  “I’m warning you, Princess—one more fuckin’ word out of you and we’ll be dumping two bodies tonight.”

  At this, Bill turned and grabbed the Hammer by the throat. The Hammer immediately started trying to wiggle away, but Bill’s grip was iron. Despite his age, Bill was strong. He pressed the Hammer against the wall, slowly choking the air out of him.

  “You don’t fuckin’ talk to him like that, okay? He’s mine. Nobody fuckin’ talks to him like that. If I have to dispose of a fucking extra body tonight it ain’t gonna be HIS. You got me?”

  He let go, and the Hammer started coughing and gasping for breath.

  “Shit! Bill! I’m sorry, man! I’m just . . . I’m just a little freaked out is all!”

  · · ·

  “What were you sticking in his ass?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Uh, the dildo. The dildo.”

  “Well . . . where is it?”

  “Well . . . right before . . . you know, the seizure . . . I guess I shoved it too hard or something, but it just . . . It fucking disappeared. Schluup! It vanished right up there. All fourteen fucking inches of it.”

  “Aw, Christ,” Bill said. “It’s inside of him? Anything else we should know?”

  “Yeah . . . ,” the Hammer said, “I need it back. It’s traceable. The fucking thing is custom-made. Monogrammed. I—I had it modeled after my own, you know. That’s why they call me the Hammer. The head is kind of . . . well, I guess you’d have to see it. . . .”

  He smiled a kind of aw-shucks grin. Bill looked around. “We’d better lock up this room until afterward. We’ll figure out what to do once the guests clear out. So one of the boys goes missing. No big deal. Brian—you’re staying. I ain’t getting that fucking dildo out. That’s on you.”

  Jeffrey looked at the corpse, and then back at Bill, shell-shocked. “So you’re just going to dump the body? Where?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Bill said, “I know a good spot.”

  “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the group chimed.

  “Well,” the Hammer said, addressing the group, “I guess I’ll get this started. Fourteen years ago I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. Today I have a job that I love, a beautiful wife, and two gorgeous children. Today I no longer look at myself in the mirror and wonder who that son of a bitch is. Clean and Serene gave me a second shot at life, a chance to feel like a worthwhile human being. And for that, I am truly grateful. I’d like to introduce you all to Roman, who will be sharing his story with us today. . . .”

  After the meeting, Jeffrey went straight back to his room. He lay down on the bed, his guts churning. The nurse peeked in at him and asked if h
e was all right.

  “Yeah. I’m just feeling tired. I need to rest. . . .”

  “Well, if you need anything, I’m right out here. . . .”

  He lay like that for a while. When the Hammer and Bill had left after the party to dispose of the body he had done something similar. He lay alone in bed until four a.m., when he heard Bill’s steady footsteps outside of his door.

  “You awake?” Bill said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You freaked out by what happened?”

  “Yeah. That was some fucked-up shit. He was eighteen. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  “Nobody deserves to die,” Bill said, “but they do. We’re just animals, Jeffrey, and we do what we do because of instinct. Nobody mourns for a fucking gazelle that gets eaten by a lion. You don’t need to mourn this kid. He was born to die. We’re all dying from the moment we’re shat out into this world.”

  “Did the Hammer get his dildo back?”

  “Yeah. It was messy, but he got it.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Look, kid, if it makes you feel better I’ll keep him away next year. That motherfucker has just about used up all of my good graces already. We’ll get some fresh faces next year, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now I gotta explain that one of these kids is AWOL and make sure nobody stole the silver. Get some sleep. Good night, kid.”

  On the thin institutional mattress Jeffrey turned on his side, pushed the scratchy blanket to his face, and muttered into it, “Good night, Bill.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the way back from lunch, Randal stopped by his room and pressed his ear to the door. Thank Christ, there was no music. Randal had come to regret his initial comments that he didn’t care what kind of music Levi played in there. After a week of nothing but reggae, loud, repetitive fucking reggae, Randal couldn’t take it anymore.