She’s got a face, heroin thin, hair teased up like she’s auditioning for a Whitesnake video. She was pretty once. A long time ago. I roll down the window, and her scent hits me like a hammer. Like chocolate chip cookies, sex, and steak all rolled into one. Jesus.
“Hey, sugar,” she says.
“Hey.” I can barely talk. I just want to breathe in her scent. Awkward silence when I don’t say anything else.
“You, uh, you lookin’ for a party?” she says. I pull myself back.
“Yeah,” I say without thinking. “You free?”
She laughs. “No, but I am a bargain. Got a nice quiet spot out in the back if you’re looking for something quick.” She snakes her tongue around too red lipstick, over crooked teeth. “These lips’ll take you to a whole other world.”
“Not out here,” I say. “You got a place nearby?”
“That’ll cost you,” she says.
I pull a couple hundreds from my wallet and show her. “How’s that?” She’s almost drooling. So am I.
“That’ll work.” She plucks the bills from my fingers and gets into the car.
“What are you into, sugar?” she asks.
“This and that,” I say. Might be into a lot of things but this isn’t one of them. I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I can’t seem to stop myself. She steers me to a motel, and I pull into a darkened alley out of sight of the rooms.
“I get a lot of those,” she says and gets out of the car. I follow her to a room near the back, the walkway barely lit by broken lights. She’s got long legs and a slight limp. Like a wounded gazelle.
“Pretty quiet here,” I say. My voice sounds like gravel in my ears.
“Won’t nobody bother us, sugar,” she says. “You can make all the noise you want.” She opens the door, flicks on a light. It’s a small room. Bed, bathroom, green sixties carpet. Empty bottle of Stoli lying on the small table in the corner, a box of Trojans on the nightstand.
“So, how about we—” she stops when she gets a good look at me in the light. “Hey now,” she says. “You on something? It’s cool if ya are, but I don’t want no crazy shit here, understand me?”
I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about until I catch sight of myself in the mirror across from the bed. I look like hell. My face is gaunt, color a shade of pale one notch above fish-belly white. The skin around my eyes and lips has sunk in.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I just need a minute.” I go into the bathroom and shut the door.
I stare at myself in the bathroom for god knows how long and watch my face fall in on itself. It’s like one of those time lapse films they show you in high school of what happens when mushrooms grow.
My skin turns gray green, sags around the eyes, recedes from my fingernails. Blisters form on my face. Yellow pus beads on my skin. My cheek splits, oozing thick liquid.
Three weeks of dead man in two minutes flat.
My stomach twists into a knot. I double over. Christ, I could eat the fucking walls.
Or something else.
I have to get out of here. I have to get away from the whore in the other room or, hell, I don’t know what I’ll do.
The only openings in the room are the door or a tiny air vent over the toilet. No joy there. Maybe I can bum rush her, knock her out of the way. Get out before it gets much worse.
“You okay, sugar?” she calls through the door.
“Don’t come in,” I say. But it’s a wheezy rattle. My tongue is thick and slimy. One of my molars falls out.
She cracks the door open. I grab the handle, ready to run. She gets a good look at me and screams.
I flash back on Julio going after the bartender, how he was trying to rip through the guy’s sternum.
I want to run but I grab her instead. My fingers, the skin sloughing off to show bone underneath, dig into the flesh of her shoulders.
She’s not some down on her luck whore anymore. Some girl who does too much heroin and has to feed a bad habit.
I look at her, and all I see is meat.
There’s something warm and sticky on the bathroom floor, matted in my hair, soaked into my clothes. I feel like I’ve been shit through a rhino.
The room’s dark, and I pretend for a second that I’m just having a bad dream. I peel myself from the floor, not sure how much time has passed. A minute? An hour? I don’t hear breathing. Did she get away? Did I let her go?
My hand searches for the light switch and, when I find it, I get my answer. She’s propped up in the bathtub, empty eyes staring straight ahead, a hole in her chest you could cram a bowling ball into. Her sternum juts from cracked ribs, one partially chewed breast hangs by a scrap. Intestines drape in tattered loops from the bottom of the hole.
Her heart’s gone.
The bathroom is dripping with gore. Blood streaks the walls, pools on the floor. I can’t figure out where all the meat that’s been scooped out of her chest has gone, and I can only come up with one explanation.
Not only am I dead, I’m a cannibal. One more reason to kick the shit out of Giavetti.
I wipe enough of the blood from my face to see myself clearly. Not only have I stopped rotting, but it’s like it never happened. Skin’s the right color, teeth aren’t feeling loose in their sockets anymore. This is Giavetti’s idea of immortality?
“Holy fuck,” I whisper and nearly jump out of my skin when the whore’s head moves to track my voice.
So this is what a horror movie looks like from the inside.
A maid’s cart is a killer’s best friend. Bleach, mops, extra towels. If you can’t clean a room with it you can light the damn thing on fire. I find one down the hall. It takes a couple of hours, but by the time I’m done with the bathroom it’s cleaner than before the gorefest started.
I find some men’s clothes in the closet. The pants hike up about three inches above my ankles, but they fit well enough around my waist. A trenchcoat covers me up but the shoes are a lost cause. Toss my own blood-soaked mess into a trash bag and hope to hell I can get everything finished before whoever’s clothes I’m wearing comes home.
Go over the checklist in my head: bathroom’s cleaned, clothes are changed, I showered to get most of the blood and mess off of me. Only thing left is to figure out what to do with the whore’s body.
On the one hand, moving her should be a snap. Most of her blood is down the drain, and I’ve got the hole packed with half a dozen towels. Could just walk her out to my car.
On the other hand, what do I do with her then? Put a bullet in her head like the movies or is she enough like me that that’ll just heal? The hole in her gut hasn’t, so maybe not. But what the fuck do I know about this stuff?
I look her over, trying to understand what’s happened to her, what I’ve done to her. The spark in her eyes is gone. She’s got the same cold fish look I got from Julio before he choked the life out of me.
God help her if she’s still in there.
I’ve kept a pretty good hold on the whole situation so far, treating it like any other job, if a lot more bloody than most. But that thought does it, and the whole fucking thing finally hits me. I start shaking, dry heave over the toilet.
A few minutes later I pull myself together. Everybody gets the shakes sometimes. But I need to be done with it now. It’s not helping.
A jacket from the closet goes over her shoulders. I’ll get her in the car and see where we go from there. Take it one step at a time.
Stand her up, walk her over to the door. The sound of keys jangling in the lock stops me. I draw my gun just as the door opens to a wiry Asian guy in a Dodgers cap and a gray hoodie. He barely glances at me, but his eyes lock on her.
He jabs a finger at her, yelling in a shriek that smacks of English-asa-second-language, “Where the fuck have you been? This asshole better fucking be the last in a long line of blow jobs tonight. You were supposed to be on your goddamn corner over an—”
I grab the back of his head and shove his face into the
butt of my pistol, breaking his nose with a loud pop. Throw him onto the bed, kick the door closed behind him. It’s a slight change in plan, but not a problem. Plenty of room in my trunk for him, too.
I turn, ready to take care of him just as the whore does it for me.
She leaps on him, growling. Clamps her jaws tight around his neck. He doesn’t have a chance to scream before she tears his throat out. Blood spurts as she hits the carotid. He thrashes, beats at her head, kicks the air. Nothing helps.
“Goddamn it, cut it out,” I say. She’s making a mess of the room. I pull on her, but it’s like trying to dislodge a tick. I can’t get her off him. I pistol whip her hard enough to crack bone. Grab the bedside lamp, smash it down onto her head. Does fuck all to her.
Hope she was right about how much noise somebody could make around here. Blow a hole into her skull with my Glock.
A chunk of brain the size of my fist flies across the room. Her left arm twitches. She stops a moment. Just when I think it’s over, goes back to chewing his head off.
I shove the barrel through the hole in her skull and pop off another round. It blows through the front of the guy’s face, spraying their brains across the bed.
She convulses and flops down hard onto the body of her dead pimp.
Jesus fuck. Even Julio wasn’t this hard to slow down.
The room’s a mess. I can’t risk the time to clean it up. I start to wrap them up in the bedsheets, thinking I can haul them out over my shoulder and get out fast. Then the pimp tries to sit up.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” No way in hell he could be alive. His head’s barely hanging on. I grab the top of his skull and yank, snapping his neck. He shakes like an epileptic, falls back down onto the bed.
I finish wrapping them up in the sheets. This part of town cops’ll look it over, chalk it up to one more L.A. tragedy.
Getting them out is easier than I expected. A window leads to the alley. My car’s got a big trunk, and I’ve got a plastic drop cloth. Never know when you’re going to need one of those.
I hit the freeway. There’s a gravel quarry off the 605 in Monrovia. Guy who runs it, Pedro, knows me from work I’ve done for Simon. Owes me a couple favors for not squawking about his selling bodies for organs to a Chinese buyer in Gardena.
I give him a call. He’s just woken up, but when I tell him I’ve got a delivery he tells me he’ll be there to let me in.
Pedro stares at my outfit when I get out of the car, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Helps me haul the wrapped up bodies and trashbags out of my trunk. He’ll use a forklift to run them over to the loading bin of a rock crusher and let it pulverize them.
The two corpses fall heavily onto a wooden pallet and the sheets open up, the whore rolling out onto the gravel. The wad of towels stuffed into her chest falls out. Pedro gives a little yell and crosses himself.
“The fuck happened to her?” he asks.
“Shit,” I say. “Shit happened.” I roll her back onto the palette, pull the sheets back over her. “Come on, gimme a hand here.”
He steps back. “I’m not fucking touching her. What does that to a person? That’s not normal. Nothing normal does that to a person.”
I grab him, shove my Glock into his face. “Shut up,” I say. “Shut your goddamn mouth and maybe you won’t go in there with her. Got me?”
He eyes the gun, nods.
I throw the rest of the cash I have at his feet, about five hundred dollars. “Take the money. Do your job. Forget about this.”
“Looks like a monster did this,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say and leave.
Chapter 9
I lit a guy on fire once.
He thrashed around a good twenty minutes before he died. Screaming the whole time until the smoke from his own body choked the air out of him. Then he just gurgled as his skin turned black and crackled like old paper.
I used a nailgun to pin his wrists to a chunk of new drywall at a construction site outside of Bakersfield so he wouldn’t roll around. Then I lit him on fire, and I watched him burn.
Until tonight that was at the top of my Worst Things I’ve Ever Done list.
I scrub myself raw. Brush my teeth until my gums shred. Go through two bottles of Listerine. I’m not sure it’ll ever be enough.
It’s almost midnight. I’ve been dead almost twenty-four hours. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
I’m still not tired. Guess that’s not really a surprise. Been going all day like I’m buzzing on a tank of coffee. Not feeling any signs of slowing down. So much for resting in peace.
My cell rings while I’m getting dressed. Danny calling from Simon’s club. Guess it’s his now.
“Yeah,” I say.
“You’ve heard, right?” Danny says, a thudding techno bass line in the background. “Tell me you’ve heard.”
“I heard,” I say. “This afternoon. It was on the news.”
“Shit’s moving fast, man. I got calls in from the Armenians, the Israelis, some guy I think is Yakuza. I can barely understand him. You gotta come in, man. We need to have a heart-to-heart.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“The future. The future that’s happening right the fuck now. Simon’s gone, man. What, you want to work for the fucking Armenians? ’Cause that’s what’s gonna happen if we don’t have a powwow and get our shit together.”
“Christ, Danny, the corpse isn’t even cold, yet.”
“That’s my point,” he says. “The buzzards are out in force, and I need to establish things now.”
“What do you want from me? It’s over, Danny. All things considered I’d just as well hang it up. I got other shit going on.”
“Look,” he says. “I get it. The old man was your friend, we’re all buddy-buddy, but all I’m asking is that you come in, and let’s have a conversation. Face-to-face. Is that too much to ask?”
I haven’t thought about my job prospects. Had more pressing things on my mind. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll swing by.”
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” I can hear the relief in his voice.
“Sure. That it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “No. Wait. Some guy came in looking for you. Something about a stone. Said it was important. I told him to fuck off but he said he’d be by later. This something I should be worried about?”
I think about that for a minute. Somebody’s looking for Giavetti’s stone? I’m not sure if this is good or bad.
“Yo, earth to Sunday. You there?” he asks.
“It’s cool.” I say. “Side gig. Didn’t know I’d get a caller at the club is all. He say who he was?”
“No,” Danny says. “Didn’t leave a name. So, this isn’t some leftover job for Simon? Because if it is … .”
“No. Personal. He say when he was coming by?”
“Just later tonight.”
“All right. I’ll be out there before you guys shut down.”
“Thanks man. I owe you.” He hangs up.
I figured somebody else had to know about the stone. Some shit you just can’t keep secret. And if they know about the stone, maybe they know how to use it.
I reload the Glock, slide it into its shoulder rig. I’m pretty sure I can convince them to tell me.
I make it up to Hollywood Boulevard in a few minutes. It’s a weird place at night. Homeless guy pissing on Marilyn Monroe’s star, Scientologists waving their pamphlets around and screaming at people about their engrams. Simon’s club is off a side street between Highland and Vine.
There’s a line outside the door that stretches twenty feet down the block. From the crowd I’d say it’s bondage night. The name changes based on the theme. Tonight it’s Bête Noir.
The crowd is mostly tourists looking for a thrill and a few in the scene. The club is legit, but that’s not where it makes its money.
Lots of leather. Corsets, thigh-highs, the latest in latex evening wear. A floor show to keep things interesting. Pretty boys and g
irls tied to crosses, bent over racks.
As long as there aren’t any nipples or bush, and nobody’s actually fucking on stage, the vice squad leaves them pretty much alone. It helps that half the officers who come in are on the take.
I cut to the front of the line, flag down Bruno, one of the bouncers. Built like a Russian wrestler with a nose flatter than a tire on a bed of nails. I’ve worked with him when we needed a little more firepower than Julio and I could pack. Good in a fight, but I’ve never been entirely clear on who paid him—Simon or Danny.
Bruno nods, pulls back the black velvet rope for me. A group of girls, push-up bras and overdone makeup screaming jailbait, are all bitched off until Bruno picks a couple to come on in. A woman in purple leather and thigh-high boots escorts them to the back like they’re VIPs.
Smart money says they’ll be somebody’s private floor show before morning.
The club is a converted warehouse. Three main rooms, each with its own bar. Cement floors, exposed ducts. Wired glass in the louvered windows, all painted over black.
I see the floor show the minute I walk through the curtains in the foyer. Muted spotlights make the stage glow in the center of the main room. A redhead with a back tat of wings and black tape over her tiny breasts lies blindfolded over a padded sawhorse, ass in the air.
The dom’s a guy in a tux and a carnivale mask, teasing her with a riding crop. Plays it across her ass, flicks it against her crotch, then brings it down with a crack I can hear over the music hammering through the speakers.
The scent of the place is overwhelming. Alcohol, sex, the sharp sting of X and coke in the air. I can smell the fucking in the private rooms upstairs, the bathroom stalls in the back.
All that humanity. Meat and sweat. Easy to get overwhelmed. Dizzying. It makes me think of barbeque.
I shake it off. It doesn’t take long to find Danny. He’s tending bar in the back, chatting up the two girls Bruno let in, making them feel special, important. At heart he’s a salesman. They don’t realize they’re the product.
His eyes flick to me as I step up behind them. He continues as though I’m not there. All smiles and free drinks. He says something to them, points at the woman who brought them over. They nod, excited, go off with her.
City of the Lost Page 6
