“Manson claims the Process is part of this too, that they were his patrons here in L.A. That fits with the seventies.”
“It does,” Grinner said.
“The Process?” Vigil asked.
“The Process Church of the Final Judgment,” Grinner said. “A cult, started by a couple of nut-burgers in England. They went international for a while in the mid sixties.”
“Their doctrine was often mistaken for Satanism because they worshiped three forces, including Christ and Satan, but it’s actually closer to Dugpa philosophy, embracing the negative to become a fully self-actualized human being. They folded tents under the Process name in the seventies.”
“Just in time for Red Hat Productions to open its doors here as the latest incarnation of whatever this fucked-up mess is,” Grinner said. “Nice.”
“God, Laytham,” Anna said, “is it possible something this awful could be operating here in L.A. for generations, shifting around like some dummy corporation or tax shelter, and the Nightwise never even had a clue?”
“They can be a clueless lot,” I said. “Cops like easy, neat solutions.” I didn’t know what else to say. That seemed off to me too.
“So what’s our play?” Vigil asked. Everyone looked at me, and I really needed a drink. I hoped it didn’t show.
“You and I have a date at the Iron Cauldron with Roland Blue, tonight,” I said to the knight. “It was pretty clear Glide and Blue don’t get along, so I’m hoping I can use that to shake something loose.”
“Unless Glide was lying to you,” Anna said. “Roland Blue wants you dead, Laytham.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” I said. “But I have an unlimited checkbook on legs with uncanny fashion sense and serious ass-kicking skills going in there with me.”
Vigil shook his head. “Don’t remind me.”
“I’ll keep trying to pry loose whatever I can on Red Hat Productions and Glide,” Grinner said. “And I’ll pack up to get the hell out of Dodge too.”
“I have an idea,” Anna said, reaching for her leather coat. “Give me that piece of a prescription pad you found at Elextra’s murder scene.” I handed her the torn slip of paper as she slid her on her coat and slung her messenger bag. “I’ll get back to you on this,” she said, examining the scrap.
“You be care—” I began. Anna silenced me with a finger over my lips.
“Shh,” she said. She kissed me. Her kisses tasted like sunshine flashing, brilliant, through cool rain. “You were about to say something stupid.”
NINETEEN
Westmont was in a stranglehold between Inglewood and Watts in South Central L.A. It was mostly Crips turf, which I never thought I’d be glad of, but MS-13 was nowhere to been seen around here, and that was good, because I can only deal with so many assholes at once. The Iron Cauldron was an institution of the Life in the city of angels. The Cauldron had been started as part of Roland Blue’s fledgling empire built on grotto. Roland pioneered grotto, the fusion of the supernatural with the sex industry. If gonzo porn was the extreme and dangerous edge of mainstream smut, then grotto was the Life’s version of gonzo, turned up to eleven.
The Trevita purred like a big cat on the hunt as we glided up Van Ness Avenue. The radio was playing Bishop Briggs’s “River.” I had less than three hours before I was supposed to be on a plane, or Gida was going to sic the most powerful, feared, and disciplined wizards in the world on my ass. I was driving, and Vigil was watching the streets slip by us, hungry faces, staring, washed in neon and ink.
“It never really changes,” Vigil said.
“Just the names on the jerseys,” I said, flicking away my third cigarette of the trip. “You good? You and Dwayne coordinated?”
Vigil nodded.
“Yeah. He’s got us covered outside. Man’s got his act together. Do I know him from somewhere? He famous or something?”
“He was huge in the MMA when he was younger, was going to be a world champion. Then this city started talking to him and he chucked it all to become a shaman. He’s the best hand-to-hand man I’ve ever seen.”
We pulled up on the street before the slumbering shadow of the Cauldron. The reason the Nightwise had never been able to shut it down was that Roland’s best friend and the Cauldron’s original owner, Dirty Fifi, had worked a powerful magic over the old warehouse. Besides being all TARDIS-y, bigger on the inside than on the outside, it also just vanished and reappeared at random around the city, usually when the Nightwise were close to finding it again. The club sensed your intent, took your measure—kind of an anti–Brilliant Badge. A man like Vigil would never have found his way to the Iron Cauldron in a million years, or been allowed inside alone. Welcome to my sewer.
“You are going to see some sick, next-level shit in here,” I said, lighting another smoke. “I’m not talking about a bunch of Silicon Valley execs puking their unresolved traumas out over a hot cup of ayahuasca. This can get bad, and bad quick. It’s the place the jaded and the bored and the truly disturbed go to be surprised, so I need you to be cool, okay?” Vigil said nothing.
You couldn’t hear the music until you were up on the two fire doors around the back of the warehouse that acted as the Cauldron’s main entrance. The doors were flanked by seven-foot-tall bouncers. The two giants had skin like dried and cracking gray plaster. Tiny, intricate, Hebrew kabbalic cipher-symbols were painstakingly carved into their flesh in lines. They both wore do-rags that covered the prominent symbol on their foreheads, and they were dressed in dark Vivienne Westwood track suits, the hoods up, shrouding their faces. They didn’t carry weapons; they had no need for them. “Hey, Bartel, Adir!” I said as Vigil and I walked up on them. “Good to see you guys found work after Sal passed, god rest his soul.”
“What do you want, Ballard?” Adir asked. His voice was strangely melodic and well-modulated, not harsh at all, almost beautiful.
“Seems odd you’d be working for the guy that whacked your old boss, though,” I said, “Sal being your creator and all.”
“How about I rip your ugly head off your shoulders,” Bartel said, “shut that redneck mouth of yours once and for all?” Adir raised his hand, placed it on his brother’s chest.
“Don’t let him bait you, Bart,” Adir said. “What, Ballard?”
“Here to see the man,” I said. “No trouble, just conversation and spend a little money.”
Both Vigil and I allowed Adir to frisk us. We had no weapons on us.
“You bring trouble with you,” Adir said. “But Mr. Blue said you might show up, though, and he told us to let you in. Don’t give us a reason to break you and your friend, scumbag.”
I smiled my best Sunday-school-teacher smile. “You, ah, going to get the door for us?” Bartel almost came at me, but Adir calmed him and opened the doors for us.
“Here’s your tip,” I said. “Invest in Spackle, you’re looking a little crumbly.” We walked in, and I didn’t look back. The doors closed, and I could almost imagine Dwayne and Gretchen moving out of the darkness, closing on the two golems. I felt sorry for the stone men.
The music was like hitting an invisible wall. The DJ was on a nest-like stage of sorts overlooking the main floor. I recognized him. He went by the handle DJ Tamure and he was the reincarnation of a Polynesian sorcerer. I think I owed him money for some hash oil. He was playing a dance mix cover of Devo’s “Going Under.” We descended the winding staircase to the main floor below, and Tamure waved when he saw me and then gestured with his fingers to the side of his head for me to call him. I heard the undercurrent of conversation all aimed at me and saw the looks, from excitement, like they had just seen an A-lister, to heads shaking and worried looks at me just being here. It’s always good to have a diverse fan base.
“Well, another subtle entrance,” Vigil said, taking a few steps ahead of me and opening a wedge for us through the crowd.
“Look, everyone in here’s in the Life,” I said. “Supernatural beings, magicians, entourages, tourists, or wannabes. I’m,
you know, kinda famous with this demographic. What can I do?”
“Don’t tempt me to answer that,” Vigil grumbled. I saw more familiar faces at a corner booth. I had been wanting to chat them up since Meat had mentioned they might have some information about Crystal. I diverted toward them. The Weathermen were holding court and it was, as always, a beautiful thing.
Okay, a quick test: name for me one TV weatherman that isn’t a little … odd. Every weatherman I’ve ever known has had some sort of quirk, some kink, some weird-ass hobby, and, oh, they all love the booze and the drugs, all of them. You party with a weatherman, you best be at fighting weight or you’ll find yourself in a hospital ER, an adrenaline needle in you and having your stomach pumped. I guess if your life was all about standing in front of a green screen and pretending to be moving cold fronts around, you’d hit the sauce and the party favors pretty regular too.
One night at a very insane party, four L.A. weathermen discovered over a case of bourbon and a kilo of Peruvian flake that they had something in common besides a love of soothing baritone voices, a perverse sex act called a “monkey face,” and El Niño; they could do magic together. I’m talking real, powerful, high-order magic, and they could do this miracle as easily as cutting a ribbon at the opening of a new Dollar Tree. Thus, one of the Life’s oddest cabals was born. Oh, and don’t mention Ron Burgundy around them; they are really sensitive about that shit.
I hung at the fringes of the crowd surrounding the Weathermen’s table. They had groupies, and their parties were legendary, so they attracted lots of lampreys. Stan Sweetenburg, the oldest of the Weathermen and the reigning U.S. quick-draw pistol champion, was telling a story about literally running into his idol, Johnny Carson, in the middle of an LSD-fueled daisy chain at a swingers party in Burbank, circa 1979. Most of the kids in the crowd had no idea who the fuck Johnny Carson was, but Stan didn’t let that get in the way of a good story.
“So there I was,” Stan said in his best broadcasting voice, “with the king of late-night television’s balls right in my … Sweet Mary! Laytham Ballard, you old salty dog! Get over here! Guys, it’s Ballard!” I waved at Stan and his fellow Weathermen and moved through the parting crowd to embrace the snow-white-pompadoured gunslinger.
“Still getting mileage out of Carson’s junk, I see, Stan,” I said as I hugged him. “How you guys doing? This is Vigil Burris.” Vigil nodded but kept scanning the crowd. Stan laid his palm out to give Vigil five, but the knight frowned and left the old man hanging. The seventy-five-year-old reddened and refocused on me.
“How long you in for this time? We’re having a little camping trip set up for this weekend, and Clive found some primo mescaline. We’re going to trip balls, open a gate to the Chinvat Bridge, and do a little limbo dancing. It will be cra-cra, man!”
“It’s good blue cap, Ballard,” the wooden ventriloquist dummy on the lap of a redheaded, bushy-mustached man said. The dummy was dressed like and had the same hair and mustache as the redhead. The ventriloquist’s name was Chet Webley, KTLA Action News Team chief meteorologist, who always did his broadcast with the help of his constant companion and wooden doppelganger, Clive Owen. Chet insisted that he had given Clive his name long before that johnny-come-lately actor showed up and saw no reason to change it.
“I wish I could, guys, but I’m on a clock,” I said as I sat at their table. Vigil remained standing and kept scanning. “I wanted to ask you a question about one of your parties.”
“Fire away, Laytham,” Red Blazer said. Red was big, balding, and black, the only one of the cabal that wasn’t painfully white. Red, of course, was wearing his trademark fire-engine-red sports coat. He was a Gulf War vet and his thing was Mongolian throat singing.
“You had an industry girl at one of your do’s a few years back,” I said. “She goes by Crystal Myth. I’m looking for her. I’d owe you guys a solid if you could help me out.”
“Oh, yeah!” the final member of the cabal, Gustav “Gus” Gilwaski, said. “I remember her. Sweet little PYT. She was Fae, one of Roland’s party girls, just breathtaking. You guys remember her! It was at Juan’s speculum and fondue party.”
The other three Weathermen and Clive Owen all said, “oh, yeah.” Gus smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. Gus was unhealthily skinny and had a thick mop of prematurely gray hair and equally thick, shaggy, black eyebrows. Gus was the closest thing the cabal had to a leader. He was well known locally for his inexhaustible repertoire of card tricks and his devotion to animal rights causes. He was equally well known in the Life for being the most powerful tyromancer on the planet.
“She was dating some porn producer as I recall,” Gus said. “Smarmy son of a bitch.”
“Glide,” I said, “Brett Glide.” Gus and the others nodded.
“Yeah, sounds right,” Gus said. “I remember them because of the big dust-up. It kind of dimmed the otherwise festive mood.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“She came out of a room with a party guest,” Stan said, picking up the story, “and she was crying. I saw her try to get to the head, but there was a line, and she got sick, really badly, all over the carpet.”
“I helped her outside,” Red said. “She got sick again. She was really upset and scared. She said she thought she was pregnant again.”
“Again?” Vigil interjected.
Red nodded. “That’s what she said. Then she got hysterical. Asked to use my phone, so I let her, and she apparently called a ride. She really didn’t want company, especially after I told her shooting up with a bun in the oven was awful.”
“Shooting up heroin?” Vigil said. I gave him a dirty look; he gave me one back.
“She said it didn’t matter,” Red said, “then she told me to fuck off and I did.”
“Anybody see who picked her up?” I asked. Gus drained his absinthe before he replied.
“For like two seconds,” he said. “There was drama out on the porch. Her boyfriend, Glide, was grabbing at her, and he seemed pissed, but still really chill. It was weird. This kid pulled up in his car and tried to get her away from the boyfriend. He ended up pushing Glide back and pointing a gun at him. Crystal looked like she was nodding pretty hard by this point. She went with the kid and they peeled out. End of amusing anecdote.”
“Gus, you remember what the kid looked like, his car? A tag?” The Weathermen laughed as a collective.
“Ballard, this was just before our GHB period,” Clive Owen said, speaking for Chet. “You’re lucky they made enough of an impression to still be clinging in our cerebral cortexes.”
The waitress brought another round. Stan had ordered me his favorite, a Dark and Stormy, and I wanted it so fucking bad. I held the cold glass, licked my dry lips, and set it down. I wanted to scream and punch a fucking wall. “Thanks guys, but I’m working. Like I said, tick-tock. Anything you can give me would be a huge help.”
“I could do some divination,” Gus said. “See what I can pull up. I got some fresh Gouda bubbling in a cooler in my basement. I’ll need time, some dark, and quiet.” I gave Gus my number. I also asked Red if he’d mind if Grinner tried to track that number Crystal had called from his phone records.
“Sure,” Red said, scribbling down his old cell number on a napkin, “but that was like three phones and two phone companies ago, but go for it, man.”
“Incoming,” Vigil said. I glanced over my shoulder. Two of Blue’s pit bosses and four of his muscle, all dressed fashionably in Vigil’s hand-me-downs, were moving through the ring of Weathermen groupies.
“Thanks, guys. I owe you,” I said and stood.
“Fight the power, Ballard,” Stan said. Chet raised Clive Owen’s tiny fist in solidarity. Red tipped his scotch in salute, and Gus gave me his trademark thumbs-up. Vigil and I turned to face our welcome wagon.
“Mr. Blue’s been expecting you, Ballard,” said one of Blue’s old crew chiefs, a greasy guy with bad skin who I vaguely recalled was a were-rat named Joyce. “This way.”
TWENTY
The music in the club was In This Moment’s “Blood” as we made our way toward an old cage-style elevator hidden in the smoke and shadow at the edge of the main floor. Vigil and I were surrounded by our escorts in the cage. The elevator jerked and rose as we headed past the antique tin ceiling tiles of the main floor. Where we were headed was by invitation only. I gave Vigil a quick look, trying to convey “Be cool.” As usual, he was sphinxlike.
The second floor was less elegant, more functional. There were rising bleachers upholstered in leather, ringing a round stage encircled by an ornate wrought-iron cage. Directly at eye level for the stage were large Gothic Baroque high-backed chairs, for the clients who didn’t want to miss a single nuance of the performance and could pay for that. The bleachers held about a hundred people and were pretty full; the chairs in the front were sold out. The crowd looked rich and bored; that’s why they came to Roland Blue, for the things money couldn’t buy. There was no music up here. The stage was miked so every sound, every utterance was audible to the crowd. Staircases led to the rafters, where our “guides” were taking us, and I counted at least four men on the catwalk above us with AK-47’s slung. I was pretty sure there were more, and I knew Vigil had scoped out every single one.
“C’mon,” Joyce muttered as he led us to the stairs. The lights dimmed, and the crowd grew still. “The twelve-fifteen show is starting. Keep quiet.”
There was a creaking of the stage floor as a man in a leather zippered “gimp” mask led an animal onto the stage. At first I thought it was a horse; then I heard the gasp slip from Vigil’s pursed lips, and I knew, and even my stomach turned a little. The unicorn’s hide was dingy. Once pearlescent, it was now mottled with gray patches, scratches, stripes from whips, brand marks, and dirt. The iron collar covered with runes of binding and negation had rubbed a raw spot on its neck. The creature’s alicorn was almost three feet long and still shimmered like it wasn’t entirely real, not trapped in this world like its owner.
The Night Dahlia Page 26
