Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

Genesis nodded, “What happened to him?”

  “Brain haemorrhage. Two years after we made it to LA I found him on the kitchen floor, laying in a pool of Jack Daniels. I guess he was about to fix himself a cocktail when it happened. Jack and RC Cola was his drink. Mama Z, the lady we’re going to see right now, she spoke to him. You know, after he passed. She told me that Adolfo didn’t feel anything. That he didn’t even know something was up until he’d already crossed over. It happened in seconds.

  “Later, when I heard my pop died and I made it back to Houston for the funeral, Angel pulled me aside in the church and told me that Adolfo had been one of his finest men. Said he killed at least seventy men for him, and never fucked up. He said that when Adolfo left with me, he’d considered sending some of his guys out to bump me off because I’d poached one of his top guys. Can you believe that shit? The only reason he didn’t was because he couldn’t be sure that Adolfo wouldn’t end up coming after him one day for revenge. Even big, bad Angel Caribe was scared of the idea of being on Adolfo Alarcon’s shit list. Still, I kinda felt that maybe he was warning me that I wasn’t welcome in Houston no more now that I wouldn’t have Adolfo to protect me. After the funeral I left Texas, and I’ve never been back.”

  “That’s a sad story,” Genesis said. “This world is a fucked up place, Lupe…”

  “It’s not so bad, Genesis. You just realize eventually that in the great scheme of things nothing you do really means shit. The world just carries on, regardless of how you feel or what you do. When you accept that, it’s a kind of freedom, you know?”

  They lapsed into silence as they drove on. After a few more miles, Lupita saw that Genesis had finally passed out, her head resting against the passenger window, mouth hanging slightly open. She let her lover sleep. She thought about Adolfo, and about Mama Z who she hadn’t seen in years. All of a sudden, it seemed, her past – which had long since been consigned to some dusty locked room – was flooding back; the incidents, the tastes, and the smells from back then as strong and potent as if they had just occurred. She reached over and turned the tape deck up a hair, not so loud as to risk waking Genesis. It was one of her favourite tracks, a slow, sultry swamp-blues number by Slim Harpo called Lover’s Confession. As the Eldorado screamed toward Los Angeles, Lupita envisioned herself and Genesis as avenging angels, battered and bloodied for sure, minus a finger and having somehow left a trail of four corpses in their wake… She was not crying anymore; her face was stoic with silent determination. She was feeling high and holy, her mind engorged with blood and methamphetamine. Lupita and Genesis roared on, a pair of outlaw lovers out for whatever kind of redemption they could get.

  TWENTY-SIX

  James Stein’s fingers rat-at-atted furiously against the keys of his MacBook. Depending on who you talked to, he was either a famous novelist or an infamous hack. Stein had been heralded on the covers of Esquire, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Book Review as the Next Big Thing, Spokesperson of his Generation, the enfant terrible of American letters, all before he was 27. Two decades later he was stooped over a desk in his suite at the historic Biltmore Hotel – which had once hosted glittering parties for the likes of Mickey Rooney and Shirley Temple – tall and cocaine-gaunt, wearing acid-wash Levis and an ill-fitting white silk shirt. His face was slack and eyes glazed over thoughtfully, the pose of a man who was Creating. Under the desk, an aging crack-whore called Missy slurped loudly and enthusiastically on the head of his penis. Also in Stein’s suite was Jacques Seltzer – who had been without sleep now for almost forty-eight hours – and a gaggle of filthy, naked homeless girls fixing dope on the enormous, king size bed. The combined smell from their bodies added an eye-watering element to the atmosphere in the room, which was already infused with the stench of illegal chemicals and drug-induced paranoia.

  The TV blared out a constantly shifting soundtrack of daytime soap operas, music videos, braying game show audiences, offers of rush delivery from home shopping channels, sober sounding newsreaders, stern TV judges and ranting televangelists. One of the girls, a pasty, overweight white girl from the Pacific Northwest who went by the name “Snoopy” was helping a young Chinese girl called Suzy to find a vein in the back of her knees.

  “Man,” Snoopy said, “You got all those fuckin little veins that roll whenever you try to get the needle in. Shit. Sorry Suzy, I don’t wanna make a mess of you…”

  “Nah, nah is cool honey, is cool. I’m so sick of muscling this shit. My ass feels like a fuckin pincushion, ya know? Take your time…”

  “Wait!” Stein called out, “What did you just say there?”

  Missy pulled his dick out of her mouth and looked up. “Wassat? I didn’t say nuthin!”

  Stein peered down below the desk. “Not you. You’re doing great. Carry on…” then, looking over to Suzy who was lying there on her belly, still absently flicking through the channels while Snoopy probed the backs of her legs with the syringe, “I’m talking to you. Somethin about muscles?”

  “Muscle-ing! Like when you shoot the dope into your ass cheek. When you can’t find a vein? It comes on slower, but it’s better than smoking it. Just look at my ass, though!”

  Stein peered cautiously at her pale, flat ass. It was covered in purple and yellow patches, craters of abscessed flesh, and angry, weeping sores.

  “Ah yes, I see,” he said. “Carry on…”

  As the girls continued to chatter absently while they got high, Stein typed furiously, recording it all as it went down in a garbled, free-form rush.

  Jacques, meanwhile, was standing in his sagging underwear with his ear pressed against the wall. Another street kid, a tall, gawky teenage punk with milky white skin who called herself Vio-Lette crept toward him, wired and antsy from the effect of a speedball. She smiled at Jacques, the many piercings on her face moving upwards in perfect synchronization.

  “Hey, man. Whaddya doin’?”

  “Shhh!”

  When Jacques turned to her with his finger to his lips, the look in his eyes was so crazed that Vio-Lette froze in her tracks with a startled look on her face.

  “They are taping us,” he hissed, “I can hear it!”

  He still had a crack pipe clenched in his trembling fist, and his jowly face was unshaven and flushed red. “I can hear everything! Whatever we say in here they… they record it somehow… then play it back… Listen, I can hear them talking about… her ass!” Jacques pointed accusingly at Suzy, “’When you shoot the dope into your ass cheek…’ I can hear her saying it again, as plain as day!”

  “Um, okay dude…” Vio-Lette muttered, backing away from the cracked-out Frenchman slowly, “Whatever you say…”

  “Got it!” yelled Snoopy, “Okay, don’t move! This vein is fuckin tiny, I don’t wanna blow it out. I gotta feed the shit in nice and slow…”

  “Take your time, girl. I haven’t had a decent hit in a week and a half…”

  Stein stopped typing suddenly and cocked his head to one side.

  “Wait… what was that? Did you say, ‘Feed the shit in nice and slow’?”

  “Um,” Snoopy muttered, brow furrowed in concentration as she worked on Suzy’s hit, “I guess.”

  “Hm. That’s not working for me. I wanna try something... different. Say, ‘I gotta feed the shit in… smooth as silk.’ Okay? Just try saying that to her.”

  Snoopy slid the needle out of Suzy’s leg, and Suzy felt the heroin hit. A rushing surge of negative pleasure washed over her. She murmured her thanks as a tiny red-black bubble of blood formed over the puncture wound.

  “Uh, okay man, whatever,” Snoopy said. In an inflectionless monotone, she repeated, “I gotta feed this shit in… smooth as silk.”

  Stein gestured to Suzy whose eyes were rolling back in pleasure. “And then she says, ‘Go for it’.”

  The writer snapped his fingers and resumed typing furiously. “Better!” he said to no one in p
articular, “Smooth as silk. That has a nicer ring to it.”

  Vio-Lette perched on the end of the bed next to Snoopy. “These dudes are hella bugged out,” she whispered.

  “No fuckin shit. But they got some great blow. I shot some coke like twenty minutes ago? I’m still jangling.”

  “The fat one is listening to shit through the walls. He thinks we’ve been bugged or somethin.”

  Snoopy shrugged. “They’re harmless, I guess. This one over here just sits around smoking freebase and typing bullshit. I think he’s just… writin’ down everything that we say. Told me he’s some kinda famous novelist. Yeah right. He keeps making me re-say things. Says I don’t sound authentic enough.”

  “What I don’t get is we’ve been here for an hour already. I mean, they told us to get naked, but have any of these guys tried to make a move on you? Every time I try to go over to fatso he starts rambling on about listening devices an’ shit.”

  Snoopy nodded her head toward Missy who was still slurping on Stein’s cock. “Nope. Weird isn’t it? He didn’t even ask her for head. This bitch just crawled under the desk and started sucking; I don’t even think the writer dude noticed at first. You know how that ho gets when she’s high.”

  “Shhh!” Jacques hissed, “I can hear something!”

  The girls groaned. Snoopy decided to help herself to some more of the coke, careful to put Suzy’s syringe out of the way. The last thing she needed was a HIV chaser to go with her already virulent case of Hep C. She eyed the pile of cocaine, heroin and downers on the desk.

  Jacques froze again. This time everybody heard it. A hard, insistent knocking was cutting through the room.

  Immediately jerking out of her nod, Suzy barked, “Who the fuck is that?” Even Missy heard this time, pulling Stein’s cock out of her mouth in surprise.

  “I dunno,” James said, shooting an uneasy glance towards Jacques. The Frenchman’s eyes glistened with rampant paranoia.

  “It is the fucking police, James! Someone has informed on us!”

  At the mention of the word “police” the girls all jumped to their feet, and started desperately pulling on their filthy clothes. Missy nearly cracked her skull on the heavy oak writing desk in her rush to get out from under there. James leapt to his feet, trying to pacify them. “Relax! Cool down, it isn’t the fucking cops, okay? Chill…”

  Stein fanned the air futilely with his hand, doing little to dissipate the fog of crack, heroin and marijuana smoke that hung in the air, thick as molasses. He crept toward the door, and put his eye to the peephole. He started laughing.

  “It’s that bald asshole who works for you!” he announced.

  Jacques cursed furiously in French and then stormed toward the door. Leaving the chain on, he opened it a crack.

  Standing in the corridor with a bunch of legal papers under his arm, Gibby saw Jacques’ bloodshot eye bulging out from the crack in the door.

  “What IS it Gibby? We’re working!”

  “I called you…” Gibby said, “This morning, remember? You said to come over here. It’s about this whole Randal situation, and the new guy he wants to introduce you to.”

  “Yes, yes. So? Spit it out, man.”

  “Well as I mentioned on the phone there are some… conditions… that he is insisting on being met in regards to…”

  “Yes! Okay. Tell him yes to everything. I don’t care, Gibby. It’s not as if it is my fucking money. Tell him yes. Is that all?”

  Gibby crept a little closer to the door.

  “Well if you’re sure… I mean I took the liberty of having the relevant papers drawn up by Gilles back at the Paris office… if you wanna sign… I can send it back to him by the close of business today.”

  Jacques’ meaty hand reached out and grabbed the papers. The door closed. Gibby heard furious scribbling on the other side. A moment later the door opened a crack and the papers were roughly shoved back into his hand. Gibby glanced at the pages. Despite the fact that he had taken the time to place red stickers on each sheet at the places where Jacques was required to sign, his client had simply scrawled his initials in a childlike hand across a third of the necessary pages. Rather than ask Jacques to try again, Gibby decided to say nothing. It seemed easier that way.

  “Thanks, Jacques. So, uh, before I go…. I wanted to ask… how’s the, uh, script coming along?”

  The door slammed shut again. Gibby heard the lock being scraped back moments before the door was flung wide. He was suddenly confronted by the sight of Jacques standing there in his white silk boxer shorts, holding a burnt-black crack pipe in his hand. He was red faced and shiny with chemical sweat. Behind him was a gaggle of semi-naked, filthy-looking street kids, passing around a square of tin foil that they were apparently smoking drugs on. Next to them, with a champagne flute in his hand and his semi-hard pecker hanging out of his unbuttoned Levis was the bestselling author James Stein. Gibby looked back at Jacques. The director’s eyes burned with a terrifying over-intensity.

  “The SCRIPT?” he said, white flecks forming around the corner of his mouth. “The fucking SCRIPT? WE ARE WRITING THE SCRIPT RIGHT NOW, GIBBY! How are we supposed to CREATE with these constant DISTRACTIONS?”

  “Yeah, Gibby,” Stein chipped in, “No offence man, but you’re totally interrupting my flow… I mean we thought you were the hotel security or something.”

  He emptied the glass down his throat. “I can’t write now, my nerves are fucking shot,” he added, ruefully.

  The grimy-looking girls tore their attention away from the drugs on the foil long enough to stare disapprovingly at Gibby. In the ghostly half-light of Stein’s suite they seemed particularly ominous to him; their pale, hungry faces reminded him of some hideous cross between the Brides of Dracula and Macbeth’s witches. He backed away from the door. There was a choking air of 3am desperation in that room, repellent and overpowering, despite the civil hour. The blinds were drawn and to Gibby it looked as though the sunlight had not penetrated that grim cavern for years. He opened his mouth, but the door slammed in his face just as he was about to stammer out an apology for interrupting.

  He gathered the paperwork, and thought about Kenny Azura again. What the fuck could he show Kenny? Getting close enough to even see what Jacques was working on was out of the question. The man was in the midst of a fully-fledged bout of drug-induced paranoia. He would have to be treated with kid gloves. Besides, there was obviously no script to speak of. As for the papers, the signatures were useless. This was a minor worry, because on many occasions Jacques had often been so drug addled that Gibby had resorted to signing papers on his behalf, so replicating his client’s signature was almost second nature by now.

  As he pondered this, an idea came to him that seemed to offer a way out of the Kenny situation regarding the script. But it was risky… very risky. Putting the thought out of his mind for the time being, Gibby reluctantly made his way toward the elevator.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Mama Z’s place was a run-down bungalow with a weed-choked front yard on Electric Avenue and Hampton Drive in the Oakwood section of Venice – an area so desolate after sundown it was referred to locally as Ghost Town. It was a tough, crime-ridden part of the city, an economically deprived enclave surrounded by million-dollar homes. Although it was only seven blocks from the beach it exuded the grit and the dust of the inner-city. After dark – if you had the right kind of face – you would be practically berated into buying low-grade ghetto crack from the ever-shifting population of users and dealers who simultaneously fed and controlled the local drug trade.

  The two main street gangs that dominated the neighbourhood, The Venice 13 and the Venice Shoreline Crips, had negotiated an uneasy truce in the 1990s after a particularly bloody gang war left dozens dead. In those wild frontier days, bullet-ridden cars and bloody corpses splayed in basketball courts were a common sight. While the ceasefire held the cra
ck trade flourished, despite the ever-encroaching threat of gentrification to the area.

  Stinking of booze and old blood, Lupita’s Eldorado crept down the unlit streets while she peered out, looking for the correct house. Genesis was dizzy, her hallucinatory state brought on by a combination of blood loss and intoxication. As they crept toward this maze of projects and tumbledown wooden shacks, she’d noted the sinister change in the streets. Heading down Lincoln, shadowy figures lurked in the alleyways watching their car crawl by with steady, suspicious eyes. Glass crunched underneath their tires as they drove over a discarded bottle of Cisco. “Here we are…” As they pulled outside the house, an old crackhead in a filthy, shit-stained suit staggered down the street spitting up foul yellow bile and cursing incoherently to himself.

  They hurried up to Mama Z’s door and rang the buzzer. The porch light flicked on. Behind the door a deep voice barked, “Whozat?”

  “Lupita. I’m here to see Mama Z.”

  “You say Lupita?”

  “Yeah.”

  They could sense someone moving about behind the door, checking them out through the peephole. Then the heavy sound of four deadbolts being scraped back. The door opened and a mountain of a man stood on the other side. He was about six-two, with a face prematurely hardened by correctional institutes and hard living. There was a crude crucifix tattoo on his neck. His eyes darted between the two women. A huge grin slowly spread across his face, revealing a row of gold teeth.

  “Fuckin’ God-DAMN. Momma said you wuz comin’. You know Momma – she wuz talking with the spirits and they tole her you wuz in trouble, girl. Come on in…”

  “Jesus Christ, Sonny!” Lupita said, “You’re all grown up.”

  Sonny leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Good to see you, Lupita.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  Lupita shook her head. “You was, like, fifteen years old the last time I saw you. You look good, Sonny. This here is my girl, Genesis.”