“You look amazing,” I said in Dragon’s ear as we searched the crowd.
“I do,” she said. “You look like you paid someone in the kitchen a fifty to let you sneak in.”
“Charmer,” I said. She laughed. It was a magical sound.
Elextra was in the actual vault from the old bank, redesigned as a cozy little V.I.P. section with bottle service. It wasn’t all that hard to suss out that the majority of the folks in the vault section were in porn. A bouncer gave us a hard look as we walked up to Elextra’s table. Dragon made him get preoccupied with something else with a glance of her own.
Elextra Dare was a giggling, jiggling temple to surgery and drugs. Her face had been narrowed, her chin tightened. Her lips, puffed up with collagen injections, looked like deployed airbags. The skin around her glassy, unfocused green eyes was drum-tight and dead from Botox. Her age was difficult to determine due to the butchery, but I put her in her late twenties. Her boob-job made it impossible for her to have any idea what her feet looked like, but in the event of a water landing, they would act as a flotation device. She was in a too-tight, pink-and-silver-sequined minidress that left little to the imagination and matching shoes with skyscraper-like stiletto heels. Her hair was auburn, straight, and falling to mid-shoulder and breast. I saw at least one tat on her upper bicep, a variation on barbed wire with roses and thorns. The ink looked a little faded. She looked up at me and seemed to be trying to focus.
“I’m sho shurry,” Elextra slurred. “No autographsh right now.”
The guy Elextra was curled around in the booth, who was pawing her, was squinting at me with dark eyes glazed with simmering anger and numerous chemical libations. His body language told me he had no patience and thought himself the baddest cat in the jungle.
“Let me guess,” I said, snapping my fingers and pointing at the man, “George Wilde, right?”
“Auditions are Wednesday and Thursday at the fucking office,” he growled, “now fuck off.” George was in his late sixties, with his gray hair close-cropped to his thick face. He wore an expensive silk shirt, halfway open with a gold chain adorned with golden razor blade visible among the ash-colored chest hair. The Italian loafers he wore with no socks could pay the rent for a family in Encino for six months. Despite his expensive clothing, there was a cheapness to his demeanor. George had invested everything he was into this facade, and the paint was peeling. He had been hard once, maybe a middleweight boxer; given his career choice he was surely a little mobbed up, but you could see that soft had crept in at the edges, like flood water seeping under a door. To the average tonic-water-swilling haircut in this club, he was dangerous. To me, he was an old lion who hadn’t realized yet how many teeth he had lost.
“I need to speak with Elextra, George,” I said. “It’s about her old roommate, Crystal.”
“Oh shhit, Cshtal,” Elextra exclaimed as the name penetrated her drowning awareness. “How ish she?” George squeezed Elextra’s arm tightly, and the porn actress squeaked in pain and shut up.
“You don’t get shit but dead unless the three of ya get the fuck outta here right now,” George said, putting the best dangerous mobster look he could on his spray-tanned face.
“We got no beef, George,” I said, “but we need to talk to the lady. You hurt her like that in front of me again and we will have a problem. This won’t take long. We’ll be on our way before your little blue pill kicks in, promise.”
“Always did have a way with interviews,” Dragon muttered.
Wilde had been on a low boil before we even came into his world; now he was hot. He started to rise, his hand slipping into his baggy pants pocket. Vigil took two steps and clasped George’s wrist while still in the pocket. Vigil’s other hand rested under his jacket.
“You pull that .38 out, George, and I’ll have to shoot you in the gut, so don’t. Ease off the grip and take your hand out nice and slow.” George’s anger guttered a little, but not much. He removed his empty hand from his pocket and sat down, glaring. Vigil released his wrist and stepped back.
“He’s good,” Dragon said to me. I sat down opposite the porn producer, Dragon and Vigil at my back.
“I don’t know who you fucks think you are,” George began, “but you’re diggin’ your own fucking graves here. You’re not LAPD, I fucking know every one a’ the swinging dicks on the Pussy Patrol, so you’re not vice. Did Gregor send you? You tell that Vladimir-Putin-looking sonofabitch he’ll get his goddamned cut! I got production overhead! I got fucking Vegas up my ass for their cut too!”
“We’re not vice or with the Russians,” I said. “All we want is to know what Elextra can tell us about Crystal Myth. That’s it, then we’re gone.”
George sat and looked over to his girlfriend. Elextra was so out of it, I wasn’t sure she had comprehended the conversation going on around her. I placed a finger on her tumbler of scotch, smeared with her lipstick, and uttered a single word.
“Sobrii,” I said. The glass was now empty, and Elextra blinked several times and then winced as if she had been struck.
“Ow, fuck!” she said. “My fucking head! I think I’m gonna puke! It’s so fucking loud in here, Georgie!”
“What is this shit?” Wilde said, backing up a little. “You one of those gonzo freaks, those Satanists, whadda they call that shit, ‘grotto,’ or somethin’? You part of Blue’s crew? Buncha weird-ass fucks.”
Dragon leaned down to my ear. “Why the hell haven’t you ever used that to sober up?”
“Why the fuck would I?” I said and then leaned forward to Elextra. “Okay, Elextra, we’re looking for Crystal. We think she might be in a lot of trouble. Can you tell me anything about where she might have gone to, who she could be with?” Dare’s eyes were clear now, focused. She reached for a glass of water and nodded as she drank.
“Yeah, Crystal, Crissie, yeah. We were roommates back when I first came to L.A.,” she said. “She introduced me to Georgie.”
“Spooky fucking little bitch,” George said, nodding. “I worked with her for a while, but she thought she was fuckin’ Meryl Streep … shit, like I couldn’t buy twenty pieces of ass just as good, better even—”
“Georgie,” Dragon said, interrupting the pornographer, “shut up.” Wilde began to say something to Dragon, but she let a tiny sliver of her mask slip, and George paled, even through his orange tan. “Go, Elextra,” she said.
“Yeah, well, she was kinda … different, sad a lot of times, like she didn’t belong here, or anywhere. She was a good friend. One time this guy, he hurt me real bad, and Crissie, Crystal, she did some kinda witch stuff and she made me feel all better. Not just made the hurtin’ stop, she made me feel, I don’t know, special, safe, like when you’re a little kid, sleeping in the backseat of the car, y’know, and you just know everything is gonna be okay. You know what I’m talkin’ about?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“That loony cooz was into all kinds of witchcraft and shit. Thought she was too fuckin’ good to spread her legs and—”
“George,” Dragon said. “You’re doing that thing again that makes me want to nail your head to the table. Close your gassy trap. Go on, Elextra.”
“Well, she was into some weird shit. She told me she was like, not human, like a fairy or something. Oh, and Crystal wasn’t her real name…”
“We had our suspicions about that,” Dragon said looking at me and raising an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“Yeah, well, she kinda gravitated into the gonzo porn, y’know, all the weird kink stuff. It pays better, but I always kind of got the idea it wasn’t about the money for her.”
“What was it about?” I asked.
“I think she kinda wanted to die,” Elextra said, her eyes falling to the table. “I don’t think she had any family, nobody, y’know, real. If you ain’t got some kind of anchor, something real, away from all this … it will eat you up.”
“Oh, look who’s suddenly a P-H fuckin’ D,” Wilde said. “What the fuck would you
know about anything, tits for brains? You don’t get paid to think.”
“Vigil,” I said. “Would you please take Georgie outside and try to come up with a good reason not to shoot him?”
“At last, a real challenge,” Burris said as he pulled Wilde to his feet, his other hand once again on his gun under his jacket, and walked him out from behind the table. Dragon stepped over and grabbed a clump of George’s chest hair. The old man gasped.
“No, please, allow me,” Dragon said. “I’ll keep him company out front.” George looked like he was face-to-face with a cobra, and, truth be told, he’d have been better off if he was.
“Hey, l-look, I don’t want no trouble, okay?” George said. Vigil smiled and nodded to Dragon, gesturing toward the entrance to the bank vault. The knight and Nightwise escorted George away, and it was just Elextra and me.
“I miss him already,” I said. “He really brightens a room.”
“They won’t hurt him, will they?” Elextra asked. “He can be a jerk, but he’s really sweet sometimes and he takes good care of me. He spent a ton on surgery to make me prettier.”
“Did you think you needed it?” I asked. She shrugged.
“It’s a tough business,” she said, “always someone with firmer tits or a nicer ass. Someone younger. Georgie, he’s just trying to help me keep up, y’know?”
“I think I do,” I said. I realized in that moment I could spend the rest of my days trying to save Elextra Dare and a legion of others just like her. I washed my hands of it and hoped that the old bastard said something to Dragon that got him eaten. “You were saying about Crystal?”
“Yeah, she was like a fairy, like Tinker Bell or something; she tried to explain it to me a few times when she was really drunk and high.”
“Didn’t that freak you out?” It was obvious that Elextra and George were not part of the Life, and her aplomb surprised me.
“Honey, I’ve had Guatemalan little people shit on me while I was dressed up like Lady Gaga, gettin’ fucked by the Easter Bunny. You think I’m gonna lose it over someone telling me they’re a fairy? Anyway, she said she couldn’t go home no more, she didn’t have a home no more. She had that ‘girl next door’ thing going on, and that got her lots of good gigs in the business. Nobody wants to watch a whore screw, but they will line up with their dicks in one hand and their cash in the other to see Little Mary Sunshine fuck. So she had plenty of jobs, but she started going down the slide, y’know?”
“How so?”
“You ride this train too long, sweetie, and it runs you over, one way or another, unless you got something real in your life, like I said. Some people in the business spend all their cash like they’re real fucking movie stars, others it’s booze or blow, or some other drug. Then there’s people like Crystal, who go further and further out into the gonzo shit, the kink, the real meatball bullshit. You work without a net in this business and sooner or later you just … disappear. I think that’s what might have happened to her. She was working more and more of that grotto stuff. Y’know grotto?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I do. She working for anyone in particular? Roland Blue?” Elextra nodded.
“Yeah, he pretty much owns the grotto scene in L.A.,” she said. “Georgie figured you and your crew for some of Blue’s guys. You got that whole Army of Darkness vibe goin’ and that weird way you sobered me up.”
“We don’t work for Blue,” I said. “I’m working a private investigation.”
“Ohh,” Elextra said with mock awe. “A shamus, a gumshoe … a private dick. Those are rare in my line of work.”
“Shamus?” I said. “Nice. So Crystal was getting into the real extreme end of the weird shit? Started taking bigger risks?” Elextra nodded. “For Roland Blue?”
“Yeah, mostly. I think Brett tried real hard to get her back into mainstream stuff, but she was pretty determined. It was like she was on a mission to destroy herself, to let herself be degraded, ’til there was nothing left of her.”
“Brett, who’s Brett?”
“Oh, Brett Glide, he’s a producer, director. Real sweet guy, even for this sewer of a town. He was one of Crystal’s regular employers when she got started out here in the business. Brett’s got a real good eye for finding talent that’s different. That’s how he made his money. Anyway, he and Crystal went out for a long time. I think he might have ended up being her one real thing, y’know, her anchor, if she had just let him. She up and left me holding the bag for rent and utilities when she moved in with Brett, didn’t even come back for her stuff. That was probably the last time I saw her, about two years ago, except at a few industry parties and stuff. We just hugged and said hi, said we’d hook up. We never did. She and Brett were pretty serious, but I heard she dumped him, maybe six months after she moved out, about a year and a half ago.”
“You don’t seem too pissed she left you holding the bag,” I said. Elextra smiled; it was pretty and genuine, and I wanted to take a crowbar to George Wilde for convincing her she needed to mutilate herself for him.
“Yeah, well, she was always sweet to me, kinda lost. I could see how she might not be from this world. I’m a sucker for love stories. I hoped she got a happy ending.”
I looked at Elextra Dare, a train wreck, a caricature of a porn queen, and I wanted so much to take her the fuck out of this fun house mirror of a city, get her back to where she had been before all this. Someplace safe and free, somewhere that George Wilde or any of a hundred other scumbag jackals just like him couldn’t find her, couldn’t hurt her, couldn’t destroy her soul a tiny slice at a time. The moment passed, and the ice water of reality hit me, reminding me of how things work—predators and eager, stupid prey.
“You’re like her,” she said.
“What?”
“Sad. You hide it good; she did too, especially for the cameras. Like you ain’t got a home to go to no more, no anchor.”
“Anchors can pull you under,” I said, “drown you.” Elextra smiled a sad, almost pitying smile at me.
“You’re already under, aren’t you, sweetie?” She touched my hand briefly, squeezed it. “It takes one to know one.” We didn’t say anything for a minute. Just listened to the music and the crowd.
“You said she left her stuff with you,” I said. “You know what happened to it?”
“Yeah, I kept a lot in storage,” she said. “I had to, y’know, sell some of it to make the rent, but all of her personal stuff, it’s in boxes in me and Georgie’s storage. I could get it for you tomorrow if you think it would help?”
“That would be terrific,” I said, “and could you tell me how to get in touch with Brett Glide?”
“Sure!” Elextra said. “Y’know, I was up for a legit part when I first got here. It was like a plucky college girl detective pilot for a TV show. I didn’t score it, obviously. I always wanted to be a plucky girl detective.”
“Okay, Nancy Drew,” I said, “you got your first case. Find me Crystal’s old stuff and think up anyone else who might have an idea where she is now.”
I walked Elextra out of the club, and she gave me the name of Glide’s production company and her and Georgie’s address out in Laurel Canyon. I found Vigil outside on the phone. He finished his call, hung up, and walked over.
“Where’s Georgie and Dragon?” I asked. Vigil smiled.
“She took him around the corner for a heart-to-heart,” the knight said. “I heard an ‘eek.’”
“A what?” I said, beginning to walk toward the corner, a little afraid of what I’d find.
“An ‘eek,’” Vigil said, “the sound, a terrified ‘eek.’”
“Oh, that’d be Georgie,” Elextra said. “He ‘eeks’ sometimes when he’s scared.”
As I was about to round the corner, Dragon walked into view, a look on her face I knew all too well.
“All done?” my former partner said. “Great! Let’s be on our way then.”
“Where’s George?” I asked. “What did you do?”
; “Nothing,” Lauren said, still grinning at her own secret joke. She handed a wallet and car keys to Elextra. “Here you go, dear. George said he’d meet you back at the house. Here’s his wallet and the keys to the Porsche. He said he wanted to walk and reflect on a few things. He’s a very deep guy.”
“Georgie?” Elextra asked. “He hit his head or something? He takes the car to pick up the newspaper at the end of the drive.” She turned to me and hugged me. She smelled of honey and menthol cigarettes. “Nice to meet you and your angels, Charlie,” she said. I laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, and I’ll have anything that will help together for you.”
“Thanks, Elextra,” I said.
“Peggy,” she said, “my name is really Peggy. It sounds weird to say it after so long.”
“It’s a real pretty name, Peggy,” I said. “I like it. Thank you.”
“See ya!” she said, smiling and waving bye to all of us. She walked half a block down, got into her car, and drove away. I turned back to Dragon, standing with her arms crossed.
“Okay, fess up. What did you do with George?” She smiled wider, showing some teeth, but said nothing. “Oh, man! Tell me you didn’t…”
“Eat him?” Dragon said. “Of course not! You know I hardly ever eat meat anymore, Ballard. I’m very careful about what I put into my body, unlike some people, thank you very much! Who knows where that filthy old degenerate has been?”
“A vegetarian dragon?” Vigil said. “Yeah, this is Cali.”
“So where is he?” I asked.
“Probably trying to find a clean pair of pants on his walk back to the canyon,” she said. “I just had a little chat with Georgie in private, told him to rethink some of his attitudes and behaviors, especially when it comes to … Peggy. I may have allowed him to get a glimpse of me, the real me, when I was doing that, and I may have sort of implied that I was … the Devil.”
“The Devil?” I said. “Really?”
“Don’t get that tone with me, Laytham Ballard,” Dragon said. “If there is any person on this planet that should not give me attitude about the Prince of Darkness, it would be you.”
The Night Dahlia Page 21
