“Point taken,” I said. “Okay, Roland Blue is mixed up in this somehow, so we need to put him on our itinerary, and now we’ve got a lead on Caern’s old boyfriend and employer. I think I should pay him a visit tomorrow.”
“We should,” Vigil said. Dragon nodded.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Dragon interjected, “this is now a Nightwise investigation into our old cold case. “If Roland may be involved, he’s my beat, and I got you those homicide files you gave to Grinner. So I’m in it now too, like it or not, Ballard.”
“Fabulous,” I said, walking to the jeep. “We’re a fucking TV show, the Bastard Squad.”
“I know a guy who knows a guy at a studio,” Dragon said. She fell into step beside me. “You should pitch it.” I shook my head.
Vigil was now on my other side. “Midseason replacement,” he said to Dragon, “at best.”
SIXTEEN
Brett Glide’s adult entertainment empire had its global HQ in a warehouse on Del Sur Street in the San Fernando Valley. The warehouses in San Fernando were once the major production studios for most of the pornography produced in Los Angeles. It gave rise to the nickname, Porn Valley, or, if you prefer, the San Pornando Valley.
The porn industry’s refusal to use condoms, apparently due to the disharmonious aesthetics of screwing on-camera with a rubber on, combined with new city and county ordinances requiring the use of condoms for any adult film shot in their jurisdictions, had most of the film production companies pulling up stakes and moving to other locales. Prop. 60, a statewide attempt to require condom use in the industry, got shot down, but Nevada and Florida were still both popular spots for shooting movies. A large portion of the industry still had offices, casting, distribution, and post-production facilities in Porn Valley. Brett Glide’s Red Hat Productions was no exception.
A little digging online by Grinner bore out that Glide was pretty successful and a fairly mainstream twenty-first-century pornographer. He owned numerous pay-to-view porn websites, each catering to a different fantasy or genre, but nothing too over the edge, as well as a legion of webcam performer sites. He owned sex clubs in Nevada and as far away as New Hampshire, a smattering of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, mostly with partners. Each adult enterprise had premium subscription content, pay-per-view events, and even fucking T-shirts and mugs you could buy. Glide paid his taxes and gave a living wage to his employees too.
“This guy gives smut peddlers a bad name,” I said as Grinner had given us an overview of his holdings.
“Hey, adult entertainment is big business,” Grinner said. “Legit business; it’s everywhere, and the stuff Glide finances is very, very mainstream. No mob connections I could find. Guy looks like he was born well-off, attended Harvard, picked up his MBA, and decided he wanted to make his own fortune off of people screwing. He’s done very well for himself with that.”
“Ah, the American Dream,” Anna said from a corner of the office, curled up with Dragon in a chair they were sharing.
“Ab-so-fuckin’-lutely.” Grinner nodded.
* * *
At Red Hat Productions, an office manager named Jennifer explained that Mr. Glide was on location for a shoot in Death Valley. Jennifer said she had been told to expect us to be coming by and that Mr. Glide could talk to us out there.
“How did Mr. Glide know to expect us?” Vigil asked.
Jennifer smiled.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she said. “I spoke to Mr. Glide this morning, and he told me then. I guess you can ask him when you see him.” She gave us the GPS coordinates, and we gassed up Dragon’s jeep and headed northeast for about four and a half hours into the desert park.
Dragon’s radio was playing a cover of “Stripped” by Shiny Toy Guns as the city slid away and was replaced by wilderness, mountains, painful blue sky, and then eventually pristine wasteland, occasionally marred by roadside gas stations, fireworks, and souvenir shops. Lots of plastic rattlesnake skulls, leering with fangs, to be had with your Slurpee.
“Reminds me of where I first woke up,” Dragon said. She had on her round sunglasses with the green-tinted lenses. Her long hair was tucked under a floppy campaign hat that snapped and jumped in the wind. She wore a tan, military-style tank top, ripped and worn jeans, and her boots.
“I heard the stories about you,” Vigil said. It was a rare occasion; he was dressed in a yellow body-armor tee that complimented his build and black basketball shorts that fell below his knees. He wore a pair of black-and-yellow Air Jordan 5 Low athletic shoes that cost more than Dragon’s old jeep. His eyes were hidden by a pair of very expensive sunglasses. “I think everyone in the Life has,” he continued. “I just didn’t think they were true. Are they?” Dragon smiled and nodded.
“Yeah,” she said. “A few of them anyway. Everything you hear in the Life has a slight seasoning of bullshit.”
Vigil glanced at me. I was slightly hungover, my old seventies cop-style sunglasses shading my bloodshot eyes, a burning cigarette dangling at the edge of my lips. I was in a wrinkled old black Pixies T-shirt I’d found at the bottom of my bag, faded jeans, and boots. My hair was tied back in a ponytail to keep it out of my face in the high wind of the interstate and now the desert. “So I have come to discover,” he said as he looked at me and then turned back to my old partner. “So you really are a … you know…”
“The D word?” Dragon said, enjoying this. “That word works about as well as any other. My natural form is big and reptilian, with wings and claws. I breathe fire. But the specific detail of what I look like seems to be based on the observer. I doubt you and Ballard would experience me the same way.”
“And you’re the last of your kind?” Vigil asked. I could feel Dragon stiffen a bit even though she gave no indication the question bothered her at all. “I’m sorry,” the knight said. I kept forgetting how good Vigil was at reading people. “I didn’t mean to offend.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “I’m not sure if I’m the last or not. I woke up in the deserts outside L.A. in 1946. I had a good sense of who and what I was but little memory of where I came from and how I had ended up here. I recall voices, two men, calling to me, some kind of spell or working, and a single word … ‘Babylon,’ but nothing else. I’ve never met another of my kind in all my years living among humans, but I like to think that I’m not the only one hiding in plain sight.”
“You’re not,” Vigil said, nodding. “The world sees what it wants to see and pretends the other inconvenient things away. It doesn’t make those unseen things any less real. I’m sure you’re not alone, Dragon.”
“Lauren,” she said. “I chose the name Lauren.”
“Pretty name,” he said. “It suits you.” Dragon smiled, and the sun came out from behind a cloud. We drove along for a long time to the sound of the radio and the desert wind.
It was late afternoon when we arrived at the filming location at the edges of Death Valley National Park. A motley collection of cars and trucks parked off the shabby secondary road we had followed for almost an hour told me we had arrived in the right spot. There were about a dozen crew and talent mostly hiding out under tent stands or coming in and out of an air-conditioned RV, busying themselves touching up makeup and tending to equipment while Brett Glide directed his performers, camera, and sound technicians. We waited near the sidelines while they got the shots they needed. Glide looked younger than me, but he may have just been living better. He shaved his head down to a fine black shadow, which included long sideburns. He wore a black goatee and mustache and looked to be in his thirties. He was lanky and tall, dressed in an old Tibetan Freedom Concert T-shirt and cutoff jeans shorts. He looked like he should be running a health food store instead of being a porn mogul. One of Glide’s assistants pointed us out to him, and he smiled warmly and waved to us as he walked up the rocky dune to meet us.
“Hey!” Glide said shaking our hands, still smiling, “I’m Brett. It’s r
eally great to meet you guys. You have a good trip out? C’mon, let’s get you guys out of this sun.” He led us back to one of the pavilion tents. A twentysomething production assistant with a trucker cap and a truly majestic hipster beard handed Glide a small bucket full of ice and bottled water. We joined Glide in folding director chairs in the shade. Glide offered us each a water, and I took one from him, careful to hold it near the neck and cap as I sipped it. Glide leaned forward in his chair, clasped his hands, and looked earnestly from one of us to the other. “So, you guys want to know about Crystal, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “How did you know to expect us?”
“Lexi,” he said, “Elextra. She texted me last night that you were like P.I.s or something, looking for Karen, Crystal. I’ll help all I can. I’ve often wondered what happened to her. I didn’t figure she would ever go home, so I kinda thought it was something worse. Nature of the business and the town.”
“Why would she never consider heading back home?” I asked. I felt an odd shiver in my Ajna, my third eye. I glanced to my old partner, and Dragon nodded slightly to me. I narrowed my eyes and studied Glide as he took a swig of water and then replied.
“Your accent’s cool, man. What is that, North Carolina? Y’know you could totally get work out here just on your voice.”
“West Virginia,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind. Why would Karen never want to go home?”
“Her mom was dead, and her dad was an asshole,” Glide said. “I know that sounds way judgmental, but he was always busy with work, and it got worse after her mother passed on. I think he may have tried to … y’know, abuse her somehow.” I looked to Vigil and saw the knight’s jaw set, his eyes darken. “She didn’t want to talk much about her life before L.A. I’d be really shocked if she had gone home. You guys, you aren’t working for her old man, are you?”
“No,” I said, and I could tell Glide sniffed the lie on me, but he nodded and kept smiling. Far out, man.
“How much did you know about what she was getting into?” Dragon asked.
“You mean the gonzo work?” Glide said. “The grotto stuff? Yeah, I knew. That was near the end of the time we were together. I tried to get her to take more healthy gigs…”
“Healthy?” Vigil broke his silence. “You think any part of this business is healthy for a kid who may have gone through the ordeal she suffered?” I saw a flash of something hard in Glide’s eyes, just for a second. It read like anger. I shut up for a change and watched.
“Tell me, friend, what’s your name again?”
“I didn’t give it to you,” Vigil said, “and you are not my friend.” Glide nodded and held up his palms.
“Okay, okay, it’s cool. I know this is a messed-up business. I’ve been in it since I was a kid. It does chew you up, and it changes you. But, hey, isn’t that life? I’ll bet if you took away all the pain and the struggle from your life, you wouldn’t be the man you are now. You like the man you are, right?” Vigil was silent and Glide continued. “The folks who stay, who survive and thrive in my world, they make it by being professionals, by doing the job, getting the check, and putting most of it in the bank. That wasn’t Crystal. I think she saw this as some kind of ordeal, a trial. That if she could handle the worst the beast could give her, be broken down by it and still endure, still survive, she would be … purified … reborn?”
“That’s a real poetic way to describe using damaged people to make yourself rich,” Vigil said. “There’s nothing noble in suffering; ask anyone who’s really done it. You don’t learn from it; you learn in spite of it. I think you, your ‘industry,’ and all your buddies are a bunch of parasites.”
“The parasite has its place in nature too,” Glide said. “Look, I won’t try to defend our business. I can’t. All the freedom of speech and expression arguments aside, this is a high-stress, high-risk industry, and it does tend to attract damaged people. I do what I can to help the people who come into my orbit, and I even end up loving a few of them. I loved Karen. I wanted to help her. Some people don’t want to be helped.” He turned his sincere gaze from Vigil’s sunglasses to me. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr.…”
“Ballard,” I said, “Laytham Ballard.” I saw the surprise and recognition dart across Glide’s face and then quickly vanish. “I’d agree with you that there are a lot of folks in this world who are more than happy to show you their throats. It doesn’t make it right to open them up. Tell me, how much do you know about grotto porn, Mr. Glide, and the Life?”
Glide leaned back and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Enough to try to stay the hell away from it,” he said. “Roland Blue has extremely bad karma, right? He saw Karen at some industry thing, a party, whatever, and wanted her. Son of a bitch practically licked his chops. By then, Karen was already using way too much—molly, blow, lots of booze, lots of weed—and Blue got her onto smack. Like I said, this business isn’t full of Sunday school teachers, but some of us have a line we don’t cross, and that’s one of them for me. He recognized that Karen was … special, you know all that, right? I’ve heard of you, Mr. Ballard, and you have the same kind of reputation as Blue, not very savory. Blue recognized Karen’s potential for grotto, the kind of clients and audience she could attract. I mean how much would you pay to watch a faerie princess get busy, right? Blue runs a freak show, a carnival of occult sexual oddities—”
“Not ‘freaks,’” Dragon interrupted, “just different, still thinking, feeling, beings, locked up in a world too dogmatic and frightened to even try to understand them, let alone accept them.”
“Right, right,” Glide said nodding, “of course, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that big old judgmental hammer down. That’s not my scene at all! I’m just trying to say that if you want to know what finally became of Crystal Myth, my best guess would be to ask Roland Blue.”
Glide stood, and a few of his production people barraged him immediately with questions and clipboards. He politely stepped through them to shake our hands again. Vigil refused, and Glide steepled his fingers and bowed slightly to the knight, seemingly not disturbed in the slightest by the snub. “If I can be of any additional help to you, please, reach out,” Glide said as he accompanied us to the edge of the pavilion. “If you find her, please give her my love.”
“We’ll be in touch,” I said. “Thanks for your time. Have a nice day.” Glide ignored my smart-ass remark. He looked past me out to the landscape behind me, as barren as an alien world. The sun was beginning to dip, and the shadows lengthened across the land, cut and shaped by the rocks into skeletal fingers reaching, grasping.
“I love it out here,” Glide said, talking less to us and more to himself. “My grandfather found great spiritual enlightenment in this place. He used to race dune buggies out here when he was young. It’s so pure, so … beautiful in its annihilation, and yet life clings to death, almost like a parasite, thrives at the edges, in the cool shadows. The place fills up your soul even as it tries to destroy it.” Then he looked back to me, his eyes focusing again. “Safe journey back, Mr. Ballard. I hope you find your answers.”
* * *
The sun died in majestic 3D IMAX as we headed back for L.A., bleeding out across the horizon in currant, orchid, and fire. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” was playing on the radio. Dragon was the first to speak.
“What do you make of him? Glide?” she asked.
“He’s covered in more slime than a Nickelodeon game show, but he thinks he’s Gandhi,” Vigil said. “Smug, self-righteous, believes because he does yoga, drinks fair-trade coffee, and contributes a little of his blood money to benefits for the Dalai Lama, he’s clean.”
“Not an unfair assessment,” I said. “He may also be a wizard of some stripe or other. I felt a little current coming from him.”
“Really?” Vigil said. Dragon kept her eyes on the road, but she nodded.
“I got a little sizzle off him too,” she said. “It could just be he’s a dabbler in mysticism who’s go
t some natural aptitude. I’ve run into my fair share of those out here.”
“Could be,” I said. “He knows more about the Life and grotto than he’s letting on, though.”
“He hates Roland Blue,” Vigil said. “That much was pretty obvious.”
“Lots of people do,” I said, “for all kinds of reasons, but in Brett’s case, maybe he’s the one who fed Crystal to Blue, once he realized how valuable she could be for Blue’s business.”
“Maybe things got out of hand with Blue, and Glide’s pissed he lost his meal ticket,” Vigil said.
“An old-school motive,” Dragon said. “Greed. How novel. Usually, these cases involve sacrifices to elder gods, ancient Armageddon-causing artifacts, or reincarnated lost loves, that sort of thing. I think I understand why cops like simple answers.” I said nothing. “You obviously are not a fan of simple answers,” she said, glancing at me in the rearview mirror, “you never were.”
“Just a feeling.” I held up the plastic water bottle, still holding it by the neck. “Let’s swing by Elextra’s place and see what she’s got for us. Then I want Grinner to run Glide’s prints off of this and see if anything interesting pops up.”
I tried calling Elextra Dare, aka Peggy, several times on the scrambled phone Ankou had given me. No answer. Finally, she responded to one of my texts around nine, saying that she and George were home and to come on over. She misspelled a few words, used abbreviations, and ended her text with a little smiley face and a heart emoticon. She signed the text “Nancy Drew.” I couldn’t help but smile and shake my head. We made it back into town around nine-thirty and pulled into the drive of the porn diva’s ranch home close to ten. The headlights of Dragon’s jeep caught the back of George’s dark green Porsche coupe, including his vanity tag HRNDAWG. Classy. We parked and headed up the walkway to the front door of this normal home in this very quiet, very upper-class neighborhood. About five feet from the door, I almost puked as I felt a wave of stabbing agony and nausea hit me hard. It felt like someone had poured hot grease into my skull.
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