Death & the City Book Two

by Lisa Scullard

  I bump into Animal Henson walking around the rear of the bar island area, closest to the shadow dancer screens, which does not come as much of a surprise.

  “Coop says if you see him doing a cash register run, just hold open the nearest Fire Exit and push him out of it,” Animal jokes. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

  “It’ll be all card transaction receipts,” I point out. “Knowing Cooper’s luck. How many Lottery tickets does he buy a week now?”

  Animal offers me a soft mint. I take it, wondering if he tried to get condoms just now, and had to make do with what was left.

  “You going back to The Plaza?” he asks me.

  “That’s what they told us in the meeting earlier,” I shrug.

  “I meant tonight, after work. Staff lock-in.”

  “No, I’ve got plans.” Two lots of plans, I think to myself.

  “No, you don’t. I know you.” Animal smirks, but I can tell he’s not so certain. “You’re one of those girls who just dashes off home to look busy and play hard to get. Come back to The Plaza with us and get sloshed for once.”

  “Last time I was sloshed with you lot, I ended up wearing your clothes,” I say, in a tone of voice that suggests it’s the least part of the event that I don’t want repeated.

  “It was you not wearing them that I was remembering,” he reminds me.

  Luckily, my phone interrupts with an MMS. I open it to view, trying to recall whose Caller I.D. is listed as Motion Sensor.

  It’s a five-second clip of shapes or shadows flickering against a brick wall. I play it twice, wondering what weird crap is turning up on my phone now, and whether head office is responsible for sending me more of Alice’s uploaded internet fantasy world.

  “Who’s that?” Animal asks, his eyes challenging. He still doesn’t believe I have such a thing as a life away from door work.

  “Boyfriend sending me random stuff,” I tell him, and my phone rings in my hand on cue. Awesome - even though I don’t recognise the number, I answer anyway. “Hello?”

  “It’s Yuri, Lara,” Yuri’s voice greets me. “Looks like a cat jumped on your car and triggered the appropriate security camera. What do you think?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I didn’t know what it was. Forgot all about those. Pretty cool.”

  “I’ll get the surveillance boys to filter out anything unimportant, so you don’t get interrupted by dead leaves and hailstones on your phone,” he says. “Glad it’s working okay, though.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Catch you later,” he says, and disconnects.

  I feel in my inside pocket. In a second or two I find the WXYZ Logistics business card with Warren’s phone number on. I check Yuri’s mobile next to it, against the number on Caller I.D. on my phone, before pressing Add To Contacts on the Options menu, typing his name in. Animal watches a bit slyly, but with a growing uncertainty around the edges.

  “He’s just got a new number, I hadn’t saved it yet,” I remark idly. “I should have known he would check up on me.”

  “He gave it to you on a business card?” Animal taunts.

  “I get a lot of business cards handed to me,” I reply. “Much classier than numbers scrawled in lipstick on toilet paper, like what you lot get. He didn’t want to be the one to miss out joining my card collection at the back of the kitchen drawer, so he got some printed.”

  True as well. I never ring any of the numbers on them. I don’t know how many are fakery, like Kaavey Canem’s supposed FBI/CIA Post Office print-machine fun card. All with intriguing job descriptions on, that sound like convoluted language to mean ‘glorified desk pilot.’

  Warren and Yuri’s job description I would have thought of as very Desk Pilot as seen on paper, but having met them, consider it more a case of camouflage by business-card language.

  “What does he do?” Animal demands.

  “Police officer,” I reply at once, nearly catching myself by surprise, with another blind stab at the truth of whatever my current situation is.

  Animal smirks.

  “You don’t have a boyfriend,” he says. “You’ve always been single, as long as I’ve known you. That’s a really contrived lie as well, coming from you. I’d have thought you’d say jungle warfare correspondent, or Russian Mafia accountant. No way would a boyfriend suddenly just appear like that.”

  I shrug, and walk away, unable to explain it myself.

  “I’m just jealous?” Animal calls after me, as if prompting me with a line I’ve missed out on telling him myself.

  “I’d say Yakuza boss,” I mutter to myself, in retaliation. “A French-speaking one.”

  I should have known he’d be cocky towards me. Likes to think he’s the only one who’s managed it. It’s not as if I was expecting any respect or special treatment, just that I thought – hoped - he’d still consider me to be the human being and colleague we were before anything happened. I guess not. I might not be the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to that sort of thing, but I did have some sort of concept that it didn’t change anything.

  So this is what it feels like to be wrong about someone, I think. No great loss, anyway. Except it is, in a way. I used to enjoy his sense of humour and anecdotes. Now it just feels like I am one of the latest anecdotes he’ll refer back to in future, entertaining others with his witty views on life.

  I go to check the toilets, and find Pascaline sitting on the edge of the sinks, texting.

  “Comme ça va?” I greet her, without consciously thinking that she doesn’t know the extent of my French. But she doesn’t seem to react in surprise and just nods, replying in English.

  “I have problems with my Brazilian,” she tells me, opening a whole new topic of conversation I’m not sure I need information on.

  “What kind of problems?” I ask, wondering if itching or a rash is involved.

  “I met her at Lesbian Speed-Dating,” Pascaline explains, to my relief. “She is very beautiful. And quite rich, which is nice. But I think she is a fraud. She isn’t a real lesbian.”

  “What, you think she might be just curious?” I ask, perching on the opposite sink unit.

  “No, I think she is looking for something else. Like maybe she is a reporter. Or a novelist doing research. But more sinister. I keep thinking - maybe a cannibal, or she is looking for black market human organs.”

  “That does sound sinister,” I concede. “Do you get many creepy folks at Lesbian Speed-Dating?”

  “Sometimes even men dressed up,” Pascaline nods gloomily.

  “Really?” I do a bad job of not laughing. “That sounds kind of dangerous. Sounds like you should report this Brazilian to the police if she’s acting strange.”

  “She says it is just a little vampire fetish,” Pascaline tells me. “But I’m not impressed. Too many women trying to be different, like more exotic than everybody else. It all becomes normality. Like if you read magazines, every woman is a little bit lesbian now. No surprises any more.”

  “Must make life quite dull,” I agree. “But why would a heterosexual pervert, or fraud, target lesbians? Unless that was her perversion specifically?”

  “I think she needs something obtainable only through intimacy with other women,” says Pascaline. “When I find out what it is, I will report her if it is illegal.”

  I don’t feel adequately qualified to pursue the subject any further.

  “Good luck with that, anyway,” I sigh, sliding off my perch, and doing the rounds of the cubicles, checking for slumped bodies against doors and suspicious movements. “Hope it’s nothing too serious.”

  “Ah, comme ci, comme ça,” Pascaline grunts, returning to her messages. “Relationships are complicated for you too, I imagine.”

  “Really?” I ask again, curiosity about this new assumption too enticing to dismiss. “In what way?”

  She looks back up at me, as if for the first time making a connection between the conversation, and who she’s talking to.

  “Oh, of course,”
she says, vaguely. “I forget. You don’t have a relationship yet. I always get you confused with, what’s her name, Jade. The other door woman with blonde hair, at Manifesto.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot,” I grin at her.

  “I make sure I remember you properly. You are Laura, she is Jade.” Pascaline nods to herself, satisfied, engrossed in her phone again.

  Still can’t get my name right, fake or otherwise. I smirk to myself, leaving the club toilets. Here I am, working under the impression that my colleagues are familiar enough with my face, but all they register is a blonde ponytail and I could be any one of several Barbie-doll door supervisors. From thirty-one-year-old mud-wrestler Jade at R&B hip-hop venue Manifesto, to twenty-two-year-old Carlynne (with the piercings and tattoos) at fetish club Xcite, to Czec Sam, only a year younger than me, who left door work at Sin Street four years ago - to open Pole-Ka-Doodle-Doo as owner/manager. It’s a mistake I experience regularly from customers - although I’m still not sure who, exactly, the guy that always says he wants to see my trapeze act thinks I am. But so far I thought most of my co-workers knew me easily as Lara, the single mum who stays single. Pascaline might be winding me up, deliberately forgetting me, and still getting my name wrong. I’m not ranked as anything of importance on her radar. I’m just a blip with a badge and a radio, getting on her nerves when she wants to be the only female on a team.

  I don’t know if her insecurity and arrogance is part of the job to her, or founded in her sexuality. I’ll never understand it, I reckon. It’s not like I’m her competition for dates. If lesbians are so good at sussing out non-lesbians, then there’s no mystery to them about my ongoing singledom and what it might mean.

  I look at my watch, which says 00:14, and just as I look up again, register two firemen passing me via the front lobby. Some women wolf-whistle on their way to the toilets, but I’ve recognised Zack from Red Watch, and they’re not male strippers. It means Evac drill is imminent.

  So I loiter around the entrance to the Ladies’ conveniences, waiting for the inevitable alarm, as both servicemen go in through an office door behind the box office.

  Pascaline looks bemused at the noise, and hasn’t moved from the sinks when I go back into the toilets to holler all the customers out. As I’m holding the door and directing them to the main entrance, which is the nearest designated Fire Exit, she gives me a competitive glare, as if I triggered the alarm myself or somehow failed to defer to her with an early warning. Which I guess I could have done, but if she hadn’t been sitting in there skiving off, she wouldn’t have needed it.

  The customers, in their day-glo plastic platform clubbing shoes, muddy fake tans and variety of hair and nail extensions, totter outside like herded sheep, exclaiming about the alarm, voicing concerns about the occurrence of a real fire, and generally squawking and protesting like seagulls. Mgr Stacie is commandeering the radio channel to remind everyone that all staff have to report to the bus stop across the road at Pittarama for roll call after evacuation, while out of the corner of my eye I see Cooper running around checking all links and staff-rooms, ranting that he wishes she would shut up as he can’t call the Fire Exit checks in while she’s hogging the channel. There isn’t even a gap in her air-hostess announcement voice in which to get the others to switch over to a separate one. I’m sure it’s going to feature quite prominently in his feedback in tonight’s meeting. If he hasn’t already decided to cut his losses on that, and go find a use for his condoms instead.

  “Pascaline, take over from Lara on the door,” he calls out, as she eventually emerges from the toilets, looking unimpressed behind the last two customers to exit their cubicles. They waddle after the others, in too-tight satin corsets and hot-pants. “Lara, come round with me and do final checks. Make sure there’s nobody left in the venue.”

  I follow him on the rabbit-run around the venue, checking cloakroom, bars, toilets, storage cupboards, the stage, the D.J. capsule - which Crank has locked, evidently wishing to protect his music collection - and the cellar, chasing out any last customers or staff members we find. Stacie finally stops her radio announcements, and Coop immediately cuts in.

  “All security staff on Fire Exits report in, please,” he orders over the radio, pointing me towards a door at the end of the stage which hasn’t been checked yet. Looks like the performers’ dressing-rooms.

  The others call in their site positions, and current status regarding Fire Exit clear, or still moving customers outside. In the meantime, I go and try the last door. It’s locked, but I conclude it’s a deadbolt, meaning locked from the other side. I bang on it and give it a boot as well for good measure with the reinforced toecap of my work Docs, hoping that whoever’s on the far side isn’t doing anything stupid. Would be just my luck to catch Animal Henson in a compromising position with a shadow dancer during Evac.

  The door opens, and it’s fireman Zack, who had been standing with his foot against it from the inside.

  “Well done,” he says, deadpan. “Just checking your thoroughness on final checks.”

  “Funny,” I reply, nodding, not really bothered if it’s true, or if he was just rifling through some stripper’s underwear. “Anyone else in here with you?”

  “No,” he says, holding the door open. “Could use your help, though. Is there an alarm re-set control panel or fuse-box in here? Someone’s cocked up the alarm system installation, they’ve got the new one and old one both wired up. I need to find the old circuit-breaker to disconnect it.”

  “Wouldn’t be in the basement where the toilets are, or something like that?” I query.

  “According to the old theatre plans it was backstage, so around here somewhere,” he muses, scratching his head under his helmet, before pulling it off, exposing his dark crew-cut hair with the long zig-zag scar diagonally across his scalp. Which everyone assumes is a fashion statement, instead of bothering to find out was the fish-tank falling on his head when he was a toddler. “This was a proper theatre in the old days, before it was a cinema even. I bet it’s boxed in behind one of these new stud walls.”

  The dressing-room is full of toiletries and shadow dancers’ cosmetic cases, changes of clothes, and even changes of hair scattered around. It’s newly-whitewashed, with faux leather furniture, large illuminated mirrors, and a cheap white tiled shower and toilet. Sockets by the mirrors have hairdryers and straightening irons plugged into them. Looking around, Zack runs a finger along the surface of the counter-top experimentally, and looks at it.

  “Is cocaine usually orange and sparkly?” he asks me idly.

  “That’s probably blusher or bronzer,” I reply, looking underneath for any panels. “But I couldn’t tell you what else might be in it.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me if they were snorting or injecting it,” he says, still with his typical deadpan expression. “Trying to fake tan themselves quicker from the inside out. I bet it’s behind one of these mirrors they’ve screwed to the wall, or they’ve tiled over it.”

  “There’s a door here,” I tell him, looking around the far side of the shower cubicle. “No handle, and a star key lock. Might be storage.”

  “Could be the old stage door,” Zack remarks, taking a huge bunch of keys from his pocket and finding a star key of the right diameter, inserting it and jiggling it open. The door swings outwards, and reveals a dirty undecorated corridor and a musty smell, a harsh contrast to the fresh white paint on this side. “Yeah, the undeveloped maintenance area, leading to the disused Fire Exit, or stage door, as it used to be called. They’re supposed to get permission if it’s ever used, because it’s not covered under the rest of the Health & Safety for the new development. Mostly because it’s all glass recycling bins outside at the far end now, and Subway’s garbage skip from next door. So if you notice they’re letting the dancers use it, or letting celebrities in and out to avoid the front door, they’re not insured for use as an entrance or exit - it’s maintenance only. It’s down here somewhere.”

  He flicks a
metal ball-pin light switch, and old non-energy-saver light-bulbs pop into life.

  “Doorman Lara, what’s your location please?” Cooper calls me over the radio.

  “Just doing final walk round with the Fire Service, locating old alarm panel fuses,” I reply into the microphone.

  “Okay, report to Evac point outside Pittarama soon as you’re done, please.”

  I follow Zack into the corridor, where a few doors lead off into weird cupboards and closets, containing all sorts of things - from what looks like a post-War mop and bucket collection, to a giant tarnished copper-coloured defunct water-tank, stacks of empty film reel tins, and grubby rolled-up ancient film posters and flyers. I would have loved a rummage, looking for anything of original STAR WARS value. But the only one I recognise at a brief glance is a mouldy Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, which has been half-eaten by rats or mice.

  “Here we go,” Zack opens another door with his star key, on the left into a larger room, and flicks on the light switch. “Wow, this is old. Found the electrics, though.”

  “What’s all this stuff?” I ask, trying to rub the dust off the door’s old plaque to read it, as he opens the panel. Consuetudo Et Proprietas. More pretentious pigging Latin…

  “Looks like the old thespian’s theatre costume and props department,” Zack grunts. “Shouldn’t keep this old stuff in here with the electrics. Health & Safety would do their nut. I’ll make a note for our report recommending they bin it.”

  I open a warped and dusty trunk. A carnival of masks glitter and sparkle at me, like a serial killer’s Christmas present.