Hollywood Dead

by Richard Kadrey

  One more thing to remember for the Fuck Wormwood ledger.

  They shove me into the van, bind my hands, blindfold me, and peel out. We drive for a long time.

  No one talks, but I hear a lot of grunts and moans. Probably from the shooters I torched. It’s small satisfaction, but I’ll take anything right now.

  Except for Philip, things are going pretty much the way I’d hoped. The faction snatched both me and the case. They could have just shot me, but they didn’t, so that means they want information, which I’m more than happy to give them. I just wish this blindfold wasn’t so tight and I could see something. If they’re wearing their balaclavas in the van it means they still don’t want me to see their faces, which means they’re not necessarily planning on killing me. At least not right away. I’m going to have to improvise from here. And I can’t use hoodoo because they’ll know I’m a ringer and that will blow my chances of getting any useful information from them.

  So I wait.

  The drive takes a long time. We’re not moving for a lot of it and when we are, it’s at about five miles an hour. That means we’re probably on a freeway. The closest one is the 405, but are we going north or south? And are we staying on that one route the whole way?

  I slow my breathing and try to relax. Theoretically that’s a good thing, but relaxing while blind lets my mind wander and the first thing that comes into my head is, I wonder what Candy is doing right now.

  Nope. None of that shit. That will make me crazy, distract me enough that I’ll miss clues, and maybe get me shot. No, anything is better than thinking about Candy right now. I move my bound hands around so I can touch my wrist and feel my pulse. Count to sixty and start again, trying to time the drive. It’s well over an hour. In most towns that would mean we’re halfway to Argentina, but in L.A. it means we could be circling the block looking for parking. Still, it keeps my mind off Candy.

  Finally, the van makes a sharp right turn. The tires crunch over something for a few seconds. Probably gravel by the sound. Then we’re back on solid pavement. When we stop, there’s the sound of a motor opening a large door. As it closes, the sound echoes. We’re probably in a warehouse. Now all I have to do is narrow it down from among the other ten thousand warehouses in L.A., while not getting shot. I hate multitasking.

  Someone grabs my lapel and pulls me out of the van. I stumble getting out and a couple of them grab me before I can fall. Good. They’re concerned about keeping me in one piece for now. I can work with that. Someone pulls my blindfold off and I feel even better. Everyone still has their balaclavas on. Good. They want me to live. Now I just need to give them a reason.

  One of the shooters drags me to a metal folding chair in the middle of the room. He’s limping and I look down long enough to see a burned pant leg.

  “I hope there’s no hard feelings,” I tell him. “I was aiming for the van.”

  He shoves me into the chair and cuffs me on the ear before joining the others behind me. I turn and look at him.

  “Ow. Fuck you.”

  A feminine voice from my other side says, “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”

  I turn back around. She’s tall. Long torso, legs, and arms. In her spare time she could be a fashion model or a basketball player. Smart. Tall is good for these situations. It lets the interrogator loom menacingly. She’s wearing the same suit and balaclava as the guys who snatched me. That’s okay.

  What isn’t okay is the cattle prod she’s holding.

  She takes her time coming over. Points at me with the business end of the prod.

  “Who are you?” she says.

  “I work for Eva Sandoval.”

  She moves the cattle prod back and forth like shaking her head no.

  “That’s not what I asked. Who are you?”

  Oh, right. A name. That’s the kind of thing I should have thought about instead of mooning over Candy.

  “Miles,” I say. “Miles Archer.”

  She pulls the cattle prod back and slaps it against her hand.

  “Mr. Archer, answer my questions and you’ll get to go home. Don’t and …”

  She shoves the prod into my stomach and gives me a good quick jolt.

  “Understand?”

  I look up at her.

  “I’m not sure. Can you repeat the question?”

  She jams the prod back into my gut and leaves it there longer this time. I’m a little out of breath when she takes it away.

  “I think I got it that time,” I tell her.

  “Good. What’s in the briefcase?”

  I look down and see it sitting by her feet.

  I shrug.

  “It’s financial papers. That’s all I know. They don’t tell me much.”

  “What do you do for Eva?”

  “Lots. I move things around. I talk to people. I take care of problems.”

  She leans in a little closer. I could probably snap her neck from here.

  “A fixer,” she says. “That’s my job, too. You ever kill anybody for Eva?”

  “No. That’s where I draw the line.”

  When she shocks me this time, it’s on the inside of my thigh, close enough to my balls to make them consider finding work elsewhere.

  “Okay. Yes. A couple of times.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Just some punks. One was selling company information out the back door. The other was a dog who needed to be put down.”

  “A liability.”

  I take a breath. “A big-mouth drunk and meth head. He was heading for trouble and taking the company down with him.”

  “What company is that?”

  “Southern California International Trade Association.”

  Another shock, this time back in the gut.

  “What company?”

  “Wormwood Investments.”

  “Good,” she says. “You might wonder why I’m asking you these particular questions.”

  “Actually, I was wondering when the sushi class started. I forgot my knife, but there’s tuna in the briefcase.”

  Another shock.

  I say, “Yeah. I was curious about the questions.”

  She gets closer, staring down at me like a buzzard sizing me up for lunch.

  “I’m just trying to establish a basis for trust. If you’re going to live, we have to trust each other.”

  “I’m all for that.”

  “Here’s my problem though, Miles. It seems to me that you’re very chatty for a man in your profession. If you are who you say you are, I’d expect a bit more discretion. And balls.”

  She points the cattle prod between my legs and I flinch just like she wants me to.

  I say, “You mean I should encourage you to torture me? When I can tell you already know the answers to most of those questions? No thanks. I’m not getting my teeth kicked in for that.”

  “I should ask you harder questions?”

  “You should untie me and I’ll spring for drinks at Chateau Marmont. Short of that, yeah. Ask me something fucking real.”

  “What’s the address you are going to?”

  “I don’t know. The driver did.” I turn around and shout at the guys behind me. “He could have told you, but one of these assholes shot him.”

  She shocks me in the ribs and I turn back around. I’m starting not to like her.

  “Focus on me, Miles.”

  “I don’t know the address. It was in Westwood.”

  “Was it a bank? A person? A café?”

  “A law office.”

  “All right. That’s something. And you say it’s just financial papers?” she says.

  “That’s what they told me.”

  She holds the cattle prod about an inch from my face.

  “Do you know who we are?”

  “I have a pretty good idea.”

  “Who?”

  “You’re the faction. The other Wormwood.”

  She moves the cattle prod like she’s going for my eye and this time when I fli
nch, it’s 100 percent real. Seeing that, she smiles.

  “You’re wrong. We’re the only Wormwood. The Wormwood you work for is sick. A bloated tick full of diseased blood.”

  “And who are you, the Salvation Army? You bring down companies like the other Wormwood. You fuck people over when they’re alive and you make money on their damnation when they die. I don’t see much difference between you two.”

  She opens her hands wide.

  “Because you’re part of the old system. All you see is the method. You don’t consider the reasons. The outcome.”

  “Okay. Convince me. What makes you so special?”

  She taps the prod against the palm of one hand like a teacher tapping a ruler.

  “If the old, diseased Wormwood gets its way, you’ll barely notice a ripple in the world. They want power, money, and influence in the afterlife. We, on the other hand, will overturn existence. When we’re through, this world and the next will be clean and pure. All the old, corrupt systems washed away.”

  I lean back.

  “Is that supposed to impress me? You sound like every supervillain in every comic book ever written.”

  She swings down the prod and gets me in the ribs. Holds it there for a while. This time when she stops I can hear the shooters behind me laughing.

  “Forgive me,” she says. “It’s a real problem in this line of work. Broad goals always sound a bit like hollow threats. It isn’t until you get to the specifics that you find the true vision.”

  “But you’re not going to share that with me.”

  “Do you want to die right here, right now?”

  “Goody. I get a choice?”

  “Yes, but the window is closing. Do you want to die?”

  “Not particularly.”

  She rests the cattle prod on my shoulder while she goes on.

  “If I let you live, will you deliver a message to Eva for me?”

  “That depends on what it is.”

  “It’s a warning. The last she or any of her people will receive. Will you deliver it for me?”

  “Like I said, it depends. If I think it’s going to get me killed, no.”

  “Fair enough,” she says. “Here’s the message: Dies Irae.”

  I look up at her.

  “Day of Judgment?”

  She smiles broadly and steps back.

  “Look at you, Miles. An old altar boy, I bet.”

  I shake my head.

  “Mom worshiped vodka and dad worshiped not being around either one of us, so not really.”

  She nods.

  “Then I’ll tell you: ‘Dies Irae’ is also ‘Day of Wrath.’ And that’s the message I want you to give to Eva. Judgment day is coming soon. Wrath will fall like fire from Heaven,” she says. “Eva and her people can join us or quit altogether. Just walk away. By this time next week, the Wormwood you know will be gone. There will be only us.”

  “And judgment and wrath.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think I can remember that.”

  She gives me a quick zap in the gut.

  “I’m positive I can remember.”

  “Good for you, Miles. You get to live for now. But just to make sure you don’t forget, the boys are going to help you remember.”

  She kicks me in the chest, knocking me to the floor. The shooters rush over and put the boot in hard. I curl up in a ball, taking their kicks when what I really want to do is peel off their skin and drag them down the Hollywood Freeway behind the van they brought me in.

  The things we do just to be alive again.

  After a few minutes, the interrogator says, “That’s enough.” A couple of the laughing boys pick me up and toss me back into the van. She sticks her head in after me.

  “What’s the message, Miles?”

  I get up and sit back down on the wheel well.

  “Two parts rye, half a part sweet vermouth, a dash of bitters. Add a cherry if it’s your birthday.”

  She nods.

  “Good boy. Now get him out of here.”

  The six creeps get back in the van. Two sit up front. One sits on either side of me on the floor. The other two are across from me, leaning on the door. The one on the right pulls the blindfold back over my eyes. Each of them has a distinctive bulge under the arm—aside from the rifles, they have pistols in shoulder holsters.

  We pull out of the warehouse, crunch across the gravel, and head who the fuck knows where. Goddammit. I need to get back in the warehouse before the interrogator gets too far away.

  A moment later I hear lighters flick and matches scrape. This is followed by the smell of cigarettes and weed. I hold my hands out and say, “Think I could have one of those? I promise I’ll keep quiet. And about the fire thing earlier, that was uncool and I’m very sorry.”

  There’s silence for a minute, then someone up front says, “If it will shut him up, give him one.”

  Someone takes a step toward me. From the sound of it, it’s one of the two across from me. I hold out my hands and he puts a cigarette between my fingers. I hear a lighter flick on and lean into it. My hands are still bound together with plastic cuffs, so this is really going to hurt.

  The moment I feel the cigarette spark, I grab his arm and pull him toward me. His head smashes into the side of the van hard enough that I hear his skull crack. I push him back against the far wall, then pull him down on top of me. I’m strong enough that I snap my hands out of the plastic cuffs. My prosthetic left arm doesn’t feel a thing, but it hurts like hell as the cuffs cut into my right wrist.

  Still under him, I get the pistol from his holster and fire blindly in every direction until the thing is empty. Then I drop it and yank off my blindfold. The other shooters in the back are all down on the floor. The guy in the passenger seat turns to take a shot, so I kick the guy whose skull I cracked into his face. His gun goes off into the roof.

  I spin around to find the other door shooter with his pistol a few inches from my face. I move my head just as he fires. My ear goes deaf, but I get my hands around him so when he tries to fire at me, he ends up spraying the back of the van. The moment he stops shooting, I roll, pull his arm across me, and break it. His pistol falls and slides away. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the goon who was sitting on my right try to get a shot at me. I can’t reach the fallen gun, but the shooter I wrapped around myself has a knife in his belt. I pull it and use him as a battering ram, stunning him and pinning the other shooter against the wall. He tries sneaking an arm around his pal to get a shot at me. I grab the hand. Lean in and jam the knife into his throat, twisting the blade. When I pull it out, arterial spray jets onto the wall and he twitches like a dying bug. My human shield has been working on my back and sides with his one good fist and elbow. I slit his throat and push him at the other shooter on my left. But he’s flat on his back with a bullet in his head. Someone got lucky. Hope it was me.

  I grab the pistol that slid into the back of the van. Dive on the floor as the passenger up front fires at me. One of his shots grazes my side and I empty the pistol into the back of his seat. When he falls, he bounces off the dashboard and lands on the driver. The van swerves and slam into something. In the back it’s a water park of blood. The crash sends me Jet Skiing up front. I crash into the passenger seat as the van comes to a stop.

  The airbag explodes in the driver’s face, knocking his head back. I hurt like I just climbed out of a cement mixer, and the shot that grazed my side burns like hell. But I don’t have time to whine right now.

  I slap the driver until he wakes up. When he sees me, he lurches back against the door. I let him get a good look at the bloody mess in the back before putting the knife to his throat.

  “Take me to the warehouse.”

  The van is resting against a stop sign on a service road. He doesn’t say a word but hits the ignition. The engine grinds. I press the knife harder.

  “You better hope it starts or I’m going to carve off your face and make you eat it.”

&
nbsp; He tries it a couple more times before the engine catches and holds. In a few seconds, we’ve turned around and are running back the way we came.

  While he drives I take the pistol from his shoulder holster and put it in my waistband. The rifles are tangled up in the meat market in the rear of the van and it takes a few seconds to pull one free. I check it to make sure it’s loaded, then jam it into the back of the driver’s head.

  “How much farther?”

  He points with his free hand.

  “Around that corner up ahead.”

  “Don’t go all the way to the warehouse. Stop where I tell you.”

  When we’re about thirty yards from the warehouse driveway I tell him to pull over.

  I move around the seat and put the rifle in his face.

  “Did you shoot the limo driver?”

  He shakes his head. Hooks a thumb at the mess in back.

  “It was Bill.”

  “Bill a friend of yours?”

  He shakes his head again. “No. He was a real asshole.”

  “When we run into each other in Hell, tell me how it feels to die for an asshole.”

  I pull the trigger once and toss him in the back with the others.

  As I step out of the van, blood flows out the door in a mini-waterfall—think an elevator–in–The Shining level of blood. I look at myself in the van’s side mirror. In my bloody suit, I look like the maître d’ at a Texas Chainsaw cookout. My shoes squish with each step as I limp to the warehouse. For a second I think about going back to the van and digging around for someone’s cigarettes, but they’re probably as soaked through as my suit.

  At the end of the driveway I hunker down, trying to stay out of sight of any security cameras. Every part of me hurts. If I could be anywhere else right now, my first choice would be in bed with Candy. My second choice would be in the closest ER that has hot tubs in the rooms. They have those, right? Hot-tub hospitals? I should Google that. I might just have a million-dollar idea. Maybe Sandoval will back me if I don’t kill her. Scratch that. I’d rather shoot her and Sinclair. I’m just not gentry material and killing them sounds like more fun than a mansion.

  I’m still mourning my hot-tub millions when the warehouse door slides open and a Mercedes coupe drives out. I can’t see who’s behind the wheel, but the car has to slow when it reaches the gravel at the end of the driveway. That’s when I step in front of it and open up with the rifle.