The old man saw that I was awake. "She'll be fine," he said. "I had to cut the poison out first, but soon she'll be ready to be whole again."
I looked away.
He ignored my disgust. "Feeling better now?" he asked.
I glared at him.
"Good. You can help me with Torito."
I climbed the stairs on my own. My chest still ached, but the pain had reduced to a dull throbbing and my heartbeat felt even and strong. I had no idea how long I'd been unconscious. I hoped it had been a very long time, because I figured the longer I'd been out, the sooner Gus's Vegas buddies would come to my rescue.
I didn't know what kind of trick the old man had pulled with the mesquite heart, but I was certain that what he'd done to Rosie wasn't an illusion. I followed him down the hall, my left hand sweaty on the grip of my snakeskin bag. Inside was a straight razor. It was too late to help Rosie, but I was going to make damn sure that the old man didn't try the same thing on Torito. I dipped into the bag with my right hand and came out with the razor. One quick slice across the jugular and it would be over.
I followed the old man into the bedroom.
A pistol came down hard on my wrist and I dropped the razor.
Another pistol poked under my chin, prodding my gaze to the ceiling.
Footsteps whispered across the carpet. I smelled expensive cologne.
"Well, well, this must be Richie." A deep voice, with just the slightest hint of an Italian accent. "Gus has told me all about you."
He was a thickset man with a fresh haircut and fashionably graying temples. He introduced himself as Jimmy Gemignani.
"So my friend Gus calls me," Gemignani said. "'Jimmy,' he says, 'we've got trouble out at Torito's. A good friend of mine is over there, and he's got the wrong idea. I'm afraid that someone might get hurt.'"
I started to rise from my seat, but Gemignani's two toughs dropped big hands on my shoulders and stopped me. "Look," I said. "I don't know what you know, but if you go downstairs and take a look at Torito's wife you'll see that you're roughing up the wrong guy." I pointed at the old man, who was examining Torito's swollen brow. "Get him away from Torito. Please."
Torito's father seemed amused by my concern. "Don't listen to him. He doesn't understand yet."
Gemignani nodded. "Then make him understand. I don't have a lot of time, and neither does Gus. He needs Torito for a press conference next week." Gemignani's lips curled in disgust. "And we can't use Toro like this."
The old man shook his head. "That wasn't the deal. I got a contract. It's very specific. Besides, nobody's paid me yet."
"You'll get your money," Gemignani said shortly. "Now, make him understand. If this thing's going to work, we're going to need his full cooperation."
Torito's father put the straight razor in my right hand, and then he raised my left and placed it over my heart. I felt it beating...
...pounding a staccato speed-bag rhythm. I felt the sleeping black sky stretching forever, dry sandpaper breezes scudding this way and that like indecisive ghosts, heat waves radiating from the highway in the middle of the night. The old man in the desert picking up a piece of mesquite, me knocking at Torito's door. The old man grinning. Me closing Torito's wounds. The old man carving. Flick flick flick.
I concentrated on the sound of the knife. In a few moments my heartbeat was even, steady.
I looked at Torito's ruined face. He tried to grin. "C'mon, Richie," he said. "It's the only way. You got to help me." He stared at the TV, watched himself fall under Barkley's fists. "I can't go out like that."
Gemignani's toughs moved away. Gemignani himself handed me my snakeskin bag.
"I guess everybody wants it," I said, as if I'd forgotten all about Rosie.
"He understands now." The old man winked at me. "We got a deal, you and me. We're in this together. That's the way it's got to be."
"Okay," Gemignani said. “Let's do what needs to be d one."
A smiling bellboy opened the limo door and Gemignani handed him my bag and a ten-dollar bill. The bellboy scurried away, whistling, his polished black shoes silent on red carpet. He slapped the marble knee of a statue of Hercules and disappeared through a revolving door. For a moment I heard the jingling music of slot machines, but then the door's rubber seals caught and I heard nothing.
Vegas. When it was quiet, it was nothing more than a piece of the desert.
Gemignani patted my knee. I could feel his wedding ring through my thin slacks. I wanted to shove his hand away, but I knew that would be a mistake.
"I never saw anything like that before," he said, a whisper of admiration in his voice. "I never did."
I got a cigarette out of my jacket pocket and planted it between my lips.
"We don't have a reservation in your name," Gemignani said. "Just tell the desk clerk that Jimmy G sent you. Torito's press conference is gonna be on Wednesday at noon—that'll give you three days to rest up. Check with the concierge on Wednesday morning and he'll give you the details."
Another pat, and then Gemignani's hand slipped away. "You do good work, Richie. I'm glad you're part of the team."
I climbed out of the limo and closed the door too hard; the slam sounded like a hammer blow. My lips quivered and I almost lost my cigarette. I waited for a scream of pain, but it didn't come.
I patted my pockets, searching for a match. Gemignani's driver offered a lighter, but I was shaking so badly that I could barely catch the flame.
The driver flicked his fingers against my chest. "Don't get too close. A man in your condition shouldn't play with fire."
I blew smoke in his face.
He looked hurt. "Just a piece of friendly advice," he said, handing me a thick envelope. "Here's some more: stay away from the roulette wheel, and never hit when the dealer is showing a six no matter what you've got in your hand."
I took the envelope and started up the red-carpeted stairway. Hercules stared down at me, a hunk of dead marble.
I thought about wood, dead and seasoned, smelling of muscle and blood. Claw hammers and carving knives stolen from Penitente men, adrenalin chloride 1-1000 and Enswell irons and vaseline. All the rotten pieces of Torito that the old man cut away and flushed down the toilet. All the surgical thread and bloodstained sandpaper and rusty nails. Rusty nailheads fading to cherry-red scars. Avitene and thrombin, whittled survey-stake ankles and knuckles made of ironwood. Slivers and shavings that writhed and died like worms on the green tiled floor; my cramping fingers fighting to grip a surgical needle slick with blood. I thought about wood that splits, and men with knives, and men who never see the punches coming.
And then I didn't want to think anymore.
My heartbeat was strong and even—mesquite is a damn tough wood—and I knew how to keep it that way.
The desert whispered behind me, but inside the hotel there'd be noise. I ditched the cigarette. Opened the envelope. I had three days of nothing, money to burn, and a new ticker that could keep the pace.
The rest I'd learn to live with.
I wasn't going to worry about the scars.
DEAD CELEBS
THE WOMAN WHO ANSWERED THE DOOR had on a wispy chiffon dress that reminded Ray of the gowns those busty bitches wore in those old Hammer horror movies. Ray loved all that stuff—big breasts and Hammer horror movies and women with chiffon dresses and pinched British accents—and he would have been really excited but for a couple of things that didn't seem right.
The woman's skin was blue.
The dress was cinched around her middle with a rope of seaweed.
Her blond hair was soaking wet and a dead crab was tangled in it.
And worse than all that, she didn't have an accent. She greeted Ray in a flat, whiny voice that reminded him of the time he'd spent the night in a Sioux City bus station.
"What kind of wood doesn't float?" she asked.
Ray's eyebrows squirmed like two perplexed caterpillars. "Huh?"
She looked hurt. "You don't get it."
<
br /> "Guess I don't."
"Natalie Wood. I'm Natalie Wood." She sighed. "Now do you get it?"
Ray squinted at her. This was some strange shit. This bitch wasn't Natalie Wood. Why, Natalie Wood was the wife of that guy who played that real cool TV crook who worked for the government. Ray remembered that, because that show was one of his rerun favorites, one of the best things to come off the Universal backlot in the sixties. And Natalie Wood had drowned years ago....
Ray laughed and tugged the rope of seaweed. "Natalie Wood!" He howled. "Shit. I get it! What kind of wood doesn't float!"
She looked him over, and it was her turn to look confused. "Who are you supposed to be?"
"Ray," he said, and he shifted the hatbox he was holding from right hand to left and shook her blue hand. "Raymond Meleski."
"Oh yeah?"
"No one told me it was a costume party. Really. I'm here to see the man of the house."
She rolled her eyes. "C'mon in, Ray Meleski."
Ray followed her down a hallway decorated with posters from silent movies. Excellent color, no fading, only the slightest hint of age. Some of the damn things were worth a good piece of change. Ray made a mental note to ask Cardell's friend if he wanted to unload any of them, because Ray was acquainted with a collector out in Thousand Oaks who would go apeshit over a couple of the Charlie Chaplin posters.
At the end of the hallway, Natalie brushed past a potted fern that was big enough to be used for a prop in a jungle picture. Before Ray could follow, a fat guy stepped in front of him.
It was Elvis Presley.
Well, it wasn't Elvis. But the guy was done up just like the King circa 1976, long after Big E had discovered carbohydrates. Big pillow for a gut. Bushy sideburns. White jumpsuit.
The zipper of the jumpsuit was lowered to the man's solar plexus, and there was a fake autopsy incision glued to his sternum. It was a good makeup job, and Ray wondered if Cardell had done it. If he had, Ray would bust the big soul brother a hard one.
Ray had grown up in Memphis.
"That's sacrilegious," he said.
The man thumbed the gash. "The record shows, I took the blows," he sang, waddling up a staircase to the right. "The record shows, I'll snort some blow, and snort it myyyyyy wayyyyy...."
From the spacious living room, Natalie gave Ray the old come-hither with her index finger. "Everyone's out on the pier," she said.
She opened a smoked-glass door and slipped outside.
Ray shifted the hatbox back to his right hand. The prize that he had brought for the man of the house rolled around inside.
Probably should have bought some of that popcorn stuff to keep it from getting messed up, he thought.
But there hadn't been enough time. The meet had been arranged at the last minute, and that was okay with Ray because he wanted to get the damn thing out of his apartment, out of his life. The sooner, the better.
Ray thought about money and he thought about Cardell.
"Nobody told me it was a costume party," he said.
Cardell called them fartlicks, though he didn't know why. They were easy for Cardell, hard for Ray, and a daily ritual for both on the beach near Cardell's apartment.
Run from one end of the beach to the other, like a sprinter. Then walk back. Then sprint again, then walk again. Basically, that's all there was to the fartlick game. Ray didn't much care for the whole thing, but he knew that he had to keep trim if he ever wanted to break into the movies, and he didn't like the idea of giving up desserts.
Ray Meleski had met Cardell Word on a construction job, and they'd hit it off right away because they both collected movie memorabilia. Cardell wanted to get into the movie business too, but he wanted to work behind the scenes. Makeup. FX. All that gooshy stuff you see in horror pictures. His dad was a successful mortician back in Chicago, and Cardell had developed his skills the hard way, reassembling faces that had been battered against car windows, plugging bullet holes with mortician's wax, and worse.
Ray moved in with Cardell when housing starts took a downturn and Ray got laid off, and he hadn't forgotten Cardell's generosity during that tough time. He got back on his feet with a union job as a gravedigger at a Hollywood cemetery, and he did well enough between that money and the money he earned selling memorabilia to get his own apartment again. He worked from four in the morning till noon, and spent his afternoons answering casting calls. After that, he ran fartlicks with Cardell, ate dinner, and crashed out until it was time for work.
Things were clicking right along. Then the cemetery pink-slipped him. Two weeks' notice.
Cardell was sympathetic. He could afford to be. He'd sold a fully articulated Ray Harryhausen dinosaur to a well-known horror movie producer, and he was negotiating with the guy to do the makeup, prosthetics, and radio-controlled mechanicals for a TV series featuring one of the few movie monsters that wasn't suffering from Creeping Sequelitis.
"You sure he's not just giving you a song-and-dance routine?" Ray asked as they walked on the beach.
"I don't know. The guy is nuts, though. Might do anything. So I'm gonna wait around and see. And my chances might improve if I can help him get a couple of things for his collection. I've been stringing the bastard along with some slightly illicit bait, and I think I might have him ready to bite, big time."
"Yeah? What's he looking for?"
Cardell stopped and gazed at the ocean. "Look, man, we can both make some money off this guy. You know that you can trust me, and if everything works out the deal might lead to some acting work for you. But I'll be straight with you, Raymond. We have to get this business done real soon, and if things go wrong, you'll be the one taking the heat."
"I don't much like the sound of that."
"Yeah. But how do you like the sound of five hundred grand, tax free?"
Ray stepped outside. Five hundred grand. Tax Free. And that's just my cut.
Ray walked across the deck. It was built to look like an old pier, real rustic, with lots of fishing nets and harpoons and petrified starfish and those glass floats used by Japanese fishermen. Beyond the pier, the sun was glinting off the waves. Ray reached into his pocket and got his sunglasses.
They were out here all right, just like Natalie had promised. Over by the railing, a blue-skinned Marilyn Monroe danced to a Jim Morrison tune with a man dressed in a Clark Gable Gone With the Wind outfit. Clark was pretending to have a heart attack at the very sight of her gyrations. Behind them, a guy in a Superman costume shimmied and shook with a battered Jayne Mansfield clone. Supes pulled a cap pistol from the band of his tights and gave himself a couple of good pops in the head.
Jesus. Cardell hadn't been kidding about the producer being a quart or two low. Ray could just imagine the party invitations; COME AS YOUR FAVORITE DEAD CELEBRITY. TASTEFUL RECREATIONS DISCOURAGED.
Ray got a beer from the bar and looked for Cardell, but his friend was nowhere in sight. He elbowed his way to the railing, set down the hatbox, and stared out at the surf. The tide was coming in. Not much beach left in sight.
Ray didn't know much about architecture—his construction experience was with hammers and heavy equipment, not blueprints—but he could see that the pier was more than just a clever decoration. It helped support the house. The entire structure was up on stilts, and at high tide the water was most likely directly underneath. It reminded Ray of a couple of restaurants he'd visited when he'd done a sportswear commercial up in Monterey.
He imagined the equipment they'd used to sink the big pilings. Must have been something to dig so many deep holes. And then he thought about the cemetery and all the goddamned holes he'd dug with the big yellow backhoe, and as he shook away the memory he knocked his beer off the railing.
It fell to the beach.
A wave kissed it.
Shit. At least it wasn't the hatbox.
Get a hold of yourself, Raymond.
Ray picked up the box and went for another drink.
At the bar, a guy wearing a pin-str
iped suit and a black fedora poured Stolichnaya into a tall glass jar. The jar contained a huge dildo, so long that it had been folded over in order to fit inside. He toasted Ray and took a big gulp of vodka.
Ray laughed. "John Dillinger, right?"
"On the first guess," the guy said.
Dillinger elbowed past a couple of guys disguised as the Kennedy Brothers. Shiny suits and lots of blood. Ray almost expected to see Cardell standing behind them, impersonating Martin Luther King.
But Cardell wasn't there.
Ray helped himself to a South Pacific Lager, found an opener, and popped the cap off the green glass bottle. He headed for the railing, then turned back when he realized he'd forgotten the hatbox.
Natalie had it. She saw him and dodged through the crowd and into the house.
Laughing.
"C'mon," Ray said. "Open the door. I really need to have my box back."
"What's the password?" Natalie giggled.
Ray shook his head. First Cardell, who'd obviously come to the party disguised as the Invisible Man. Now this shit.
She said, "You haven't gone away, have you?"
The door opened an inch, just enough so Ray could see her smile.
Just as he considered ramming the door, it opened a little wider.
Blue skin. Lots of it.
"You're not mad at me, are you?" She glanced at the hatbox which sat on the corner of the bed. "I mean, I had to lure you up here somehow."
Ray smiled. Sky-blue breasts. Navy-blue nipples. Hell, even her trim was dyed as blue as a sapphire.
"Everyone's out on the pier," she said, stepping back from the door.
Ray moved forward and cupped a breast with his left hand.
Cardell wasn't around.
The hatbox was safe.
Bad Intentions Page 6
