City of the Lost

by Stephen Blackmoore

  “We’re getting that fixed,” Peter says. “I guess it got shot out or something ? I’m really not sure.”

  There’s a guy waxing the marble floor in the foyer, someone else dusting the banister of the enormous staircase. The walls have been stripped bare, but there are patches where pictures were taken down. Considering the general gaudiness of the place, they could have been dogs playing poker as easily as Blue Boy.

  “Was the owner married? Have any kids?”

  “I know he wasn’t married, but I don’t know about kids. I think he pretty much had this whole place to himself.”

  “Lot of space for one guy.”

  “Yeah. Thank god for the rich. Guys like him keep me employed.”

  “Does a place usually move so quickly? Figured it would still be in probate.”

  He nods. “It would be. If he’d owned it.”

  “He rented?”

  “Not quite. I’m not really sure what the arrangement was. It’s owned by Imperial Enterprises. Again, I’m not sure what they do. Importing? Maybe high tech?” He shrugs.

  He takes me on a tour through the bottom floor. The bathrooms are bigger than some apartments I’ve had. We find a woman cleaning windowsills in a guest bedroom.

  “Angie,” he says. “Were you working here when Mr. Henderson was living here?”

  She nods. A small woman, purple hair with brown roots and a ring through her nose. Nineteen? Twenty? Her eyes look as if they’ve seen a lot more.

  “Yeah. Me and a few others. Why?”

  “Hi, Angie,” I say. “I’m with the LAPD. I was wondering if I could talk to you about something.” I pull out my little cop notebook and a pen, try to look official.

  “I didn’t steal anything.” She’s got the look of the accused. Like she’s been hammered for ripping off people that she never touched, never thought about touching.

  “Didn’t think you did,” I say. I remember being her age. Getting grilled by some fat fuck who thought he could mess with me just because I was young, or had a leather jacket, or a skateboard, or long hair.

  “I just wanted to ask you a few things about Mr. Henderson. Nothing’s gone missing, and I’m not here to talk about anything being stolen.”

  She narrows her eyes, not trusting me. “Okay,” she says.

  “Were you here the night of the breakin?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I left a couple hours before then. Nobody was home.”

  “Do you know if he had people over a lot? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

  She pauses. Trying to think. There’s something there. “Yeah,” she says, stretching out the word like taffy. “There was someone. But I—I don’t remember who.”

  I don’t get the vibe that she’s lying. Her face is turning a little red, like she’s thinking through a migraine.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” I say. That seems to calm her down.

  “I don’t know why I can’t remember,” she says.

  “You remember anything at all? Man? Woman? Short? Tall?”

  “Yeah. I know I do. I just … It was a man. No. A woman?” She shrugs. “Sorry.” I wonder if Frank had this problem. Probably.

  “Do you know anyone else who worked here at the time?”

  I talk to three people. Two women and a man who worked the yard. Calling it an interview is a bit of a stretch, though. If they remember anything they contradict themselves and each other. Same look on their faces like every time they remember, it hurts.

  I leave Peter at the front gate. Somebody was here, and nobody remembers who? The guy who owned the property didn’t, but he wasn’t renting it?

  More questions than answers. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it that way.

  Chapter 14

  Normally, I hit a brick wall, I’d hash things out with Julio, and we’d come up with what to do next. Not really an option anymore now, is it?

  I knew that one of these days somebody was going to punch one of our tickets. Always thought I’d be the first one to go. And a little more conventionally.

  I push the thought away. Getting maudlin’s going to do fuck-all for my problems.

  What I need is perspective. The only person left I can think of I might get that from probably doesn’t want to talk to me.

  Well, fuck it. Not much choice. I dial Carl, hoping he hasn’t shut off his phone. He usually turns off the ringer when he’s at the paper.

  I have a lot of apologizing to do. And, shit, I’ll have to tell him what’s going on. Not sure how he’ll handle it. Can I trust him not to lose his mind?

  The phone rings four times before voice mail picks it up. I start to leave a message then hang up before I say anything. What the hell do I tell him? Give him the real story or feed him some bullshit and hope he doesn’t see through it?

  If I tell him the truth he’s either going to think I’m insane or just fucking with him. And then there’s how much truth. Sure, he knows I’m hired muscle. He knows the kinds of circles I run in. Hell, I’ve been feeding him scraps for the news for years now.

  He said he knows what I really do, but does he? The killings or was that just an educated guess? That’s one thing I haven’t been willing to tell him about.

  But I’ve known him most of my life. He’s my friend. Probably the only one I have left, in fact. Christ, I’m glad my parents are already dead. Imagine going to your mom with a story like this.

  It’s going to have to be the truth. All of it. I need more than just perspective. I need somebody I can rely on. And that depends on trust.

  I call him again, expecting the same tinny voice telling me to leave a message.

  Instead I get screaming.

  “Carl?” I say, trying to push my voice over the noise coming through the phone.

  “Help me,” he says in a voice like sandpaper. “Joe, please. Please, please. I need help.”

  “What the hell is going on? Where are you?”

  His voice descends to a whisper. “I fucked up,” he says. “I’m sorry, man. God, I’m sorry. Should have listened. Should have listened to you. Fucked up. Fuckedupfuckedupfuckedup.”

  “Carl, I need you to calm down and tell me what you did. What’s happening ?”

  “You told me. Told me to drop it. Leave it alone.”

  Shit. He did what any reporter would do. He dug. And I can only imagine what he found when the hole got deep enough.

  “Carl, listen to me very carefully. I need to know this. Are you still breathing?”

  That stops him. “What?” he says.

  “Are you still alive?”

  “The fuck? Of course I’m still alive. I need help, goddammit. I need, fuck I don’t what I … I need… .” His voice trails off. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Joe,” I say, my momentary relief that he’s not like me dissolving into a new worry. “You said you’re in trouble.”

  “Joe? I fucked up, man,” he says. “I should have listened.”

  “Yeah, we covered that.” I can’t keep having this conversation with him. I won’t get anything useful out of him over the phone. “Where are you?”

  “Uh … I’m in a hotel room. Yeah.” I hear stumbling, a drawer opening. “I’m at a Marriott. I think it’s the one by the airport.” He rattles off an address, gives me a room number on the fifth floor. “Why am I here, Joe? What happened to me? I can’t remember.”

  “Hang tight,” I say. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Afternoon traffic down to the airport sucks. An hour goes by before I pull into the hotel’s parking garage.

  The hotel’s lobby is spacious, done in soft yellows and deep reds. It’s got the generic feel of a shopping mall. As if you could step outside and be in Nashville or Newark just as easily as you could be in Los Angeles.

  I hurry to the fifth floor, slowing myself down so as not to draw attention. The hallway is deserted, anonymous doors stretching into the distance.

  Carl’s room is shoved into a corner, a DO NOT DISTURB tag hanging from
the doorknob. I knock.

  “Carl,” I say, head next to the door, voice low. Never know who else might be in the room next door. “It’s Joe. Let me in.”

  He pulls the door open a crack, only as far as the security stop will let it go. His face is hard to make out in the darkness of the room. He has the shades drawn.

  “Joe?” he whispers. “That you?”

  “Yeah, Carl, it’s me. Let me in.”

  “No,” he says. “She’s trying to trick me again. It’s not you.”

  “Who’s tricking you, Carl?”

  “Some guy,” he says, distracted. “No. Some woman? Joe, is that you?” His face presses against the crack in the doorway to get a better look at me, and I step back in alarm.

  It’s Carl, but not the Carl I know. His face looks like he’s been on the street for the last ten years. Drawn and weathered. He’s lost a lot of weight. He has a pillowcase wrapped around his skull and low on his forehead, like a bald cancer patient.

  “It’s me,” I say.

  Fear, confusion, and terror in those eyes. He reaches fingers through the door, and I take them in my hand. Tears are streaming down his face.

  “Let me in, Carl,” I say. “Let me in, and I’ll take care of you.”

  Carl’s been babbling for half an hour in the darkened room. I turned on a light, but he started screaming. His speech is disjointed. Events don’t flow one into the other but jump around like a spastic grasshopper. Like somebody broke him into a thousand pieces and then glued them back together in the wrong order.

  Eventually I piece together that after our fight the other day he went looking into what happened to Simon and all those corpses they pulled out of the canyon. Burned the midnight oil, pulled some leads together in record time. He was going to meet someone and then— And that’s all he can remember before finding himself in this room. He has no idea who he was going to talk to. If it was a man or a woman. When he tries to remember I can see the pain in his eyes, like he’s fighting through a migraine. I know that look. It’s the same look the housekeepers in Bel Air had trying to remember who else had been at the mansion.

  “And then I was here,” he says. He’s lucid at the moment. But he’s been lucid four times in the last thirty minutes and I know it won’t last. “I tried to leave, but I can’t.”

  I look at the door. Nothing keeping him in. Nothing kept me out. “How come?”

  “It hurts,” he says simply.

  “Like the headaches?”

  He shakes his head. “No. That’s nothing. Like I’m on fire. Deep down into my soul. Never felt so much pain before. Every time I try to walk out that door.”

  “What if I carried you through?”

  His eyes go wide, and he shakes his head. “No. God, no. They tried that when they came for me. I screamed, and they hit me. Kept hitting me. Hurt less to be hit.”

  “Whoa, back up,” I say. “Who is this? Somebody came here before I did?” I check to make sure the security stop is back in place, check through the peephole.

  Carl laughs. “They’re not out there,” he says. “They don’t need to be.” He touches the pillowcase wrapped around his forehead. “Two guys and a child. Came by this morning. Kid looked like he was raised by wolves. Had him on a leash.”

  “Was one of the guys about my size? Other one old?”

  “Yeah. You know them.”

  “Old guy’s named Neumann. The others are Archie and Jughead,” I say. Carl must have gotten close enough to what was going on to grab Neumann’s attention, and they tracked him down here.

  I pick up Carl’s emaciated wrist. It’s covered in liver spots. He must have lost thirty pounds and gained thirty years in the last day. “Did they do this to you?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I was like that when I came to in here. They just asked me questions. Wondering who I was, what I was doing. When I didn’t give them what they wanted the old guy said he’d keep an eye on me.” He barks out a laugh. The craziness in that one sound chills my spine. It lingers in the air for too long.

  “They ask about me?” I say.

  Carl looks startled. “No,” he says. “Why would they do that?”

  “No reason. What’d you tell them?”

  “Just what I told you,” he says. “That I was looking into that murder in the Santa Monica Mountains and then I woke up here. Why’d they come here, Joe? Why’d they want to know?” He starts to rock back and forth in his seat.

  It’s a child’s question. I know this lucid period is over, but I need more information.

  “I need you to focus,” I say. “Did they do anything else? Ask anything else?”

  He stares at me, and I know he doesn’t remember who I am. He points to the pillowcase on his head. I untie the knot in the back and lift it off.

  A single, oversized blue eye sits in the middle of his forehead. I stare at it. It stares at me. I blink first.

  Neumann did say he’d keep an eye on him.

  I put the pillowcase back over his forehead and cinch it up tight.

  Carl starts to babble some more. Wanting his mommy, asking for ice cream.

  I don’t know what to do. Try to take him out of the room? Get him really drunk, knock him out, and drag him downstairs? And what happens when he wakes up? Would that even work?

  His babbling is becoming more incoherent. Numbers and random words. He starts repeating himself. And then I realize he’s saying an address.

  I grab a pen and paper from the nightstand and write down what he’s saying. I’m not sure, but it looks like it’s somewhere downtown.

  “What is this, Carl?” I say. But all I get out of him is more of his Rain Man impression.

  I listen some more but nothing else makes any sense. Finally, I can’t stay any longer.

  “I have to go,” I say. “Sit tight. I’ll figure something out.” I open the door to leave. Carl’s voice stops me.

  “If you can’t help me,” he says, lucidity back for who knows how long, “promise me you’ll kill me. I can’t go on like this.”

  I stand stock still at the door. I can’t look at him. He’s the only friend I have left.

  “I promise.” I close the door and leave him alone in the dark.

  Chapter 15

  Instinct’s an important thing for a guy in my line of work. My gut tells me to duck, I duck. Never done a goddamn thing for my choice in dates, but it’s kept me from getting shot more than a few times.

  So when I pull out onto Century, merging with a sea of early evening headlights, and it tells me something’s hinky, I listen.

  I don’t notice the Escalade until I’ve turned onto Sepulveda, heading north. At first I don’t think anything about it. It’s the low rent choice in gangbanger transportation. Everybody’s got one. The ones who can’t afford a Mercedes, that is.

  Then I remember thinking that the Escalade I saw the other day was following me.

  I’ve been with Carl most of the afternoon. Rush hour traffic hasn’t quite started yet, and traffic is lighter the farther we get from the airport. I slow to a crawl forcing the Escalade to match speed, even though it’s in the next lane and two cars back. Horns blare behind me for the sin of me not speeding.

  I gun the engine and cut a right into a side street, losing the Escalade if only for a minute. I hang another hard right and watch it pull around the corner after me. If I wasn’t sure before that it was following me, I am now.

  We continue this dance for a couple of blocks. I gun the engine, take a turn, let the SUV catch up. Gun the engine again.

  Three runs of this, and I change the pattern. I turn onto a quiet side street, the only sounds the hum of nearby traffic. I pull in front of a row of pre-war houses and gentrification Pottery Barn clones. There’s no sign of the car yet, but I can hear it peeling down the street trying not to lose me.

  I get out of the car, duck behind a Lexus parked in front of me, and wait. It doesn’t take long. The Escalade takes the turn too fast, tires squealing, car shud
dering over a speed bump. I figure with that much mass and that much speed, they’re not exactly able to stop on a dime.

  So, I step out in front of them.

  I know what’s going to happen next. Know it won’t hurt. Doesn’t make it any easier to keep my eyes open, make sure I’ve got a good grip on my gun.

  The windshield’s got a tint, but not so much that I can’t see the look of panic on the two guys in the front. The driver hits the brakes and spins the wheel. The guy in the passenger seat looks like he’s screaming. He grabs the wheel, too. Pulls it the other direction. I love teamwork.

  The car careens, clipping me with its front fender. I roll off the hood, bounce off the windshield. Feel a bone crack. It doesn’t last.

  The car rocks to a stop. I pick myself up from the pavement, torn skin filling back in. Limp around the side of the car, feeling bone knit with each step. I watch the guys inside have their minor freak-out.

  They’re too busy untangling themselves from their seat belts and air bags to notice me at the window until I tap on it with the barrel of the Glock.

  I motion them to roll down the tinted window. When it’s all the way down I get a really good look at them.

  Three Latino kids in the car. Can’t be more than seventeen. Two in front, one in back. The kid in the back tries to pull a piece tucked in his waistband.

  He stops when I press the barrel to his temple.

  “You gonna let me in,” I say, “or do I need to make room?”

  “Unlock the fuckin’ door, man,” he says to the driver. “Let him in.” The locks pop, and I swing the door open, slide onto the seat next to him. I take the kid’s gun, drop it at my feet, stretch out my legs.

  “Roomy,” I say. “Been thinking about picking one of these up. What’s the mileage like?”

  They don’t say anything.

  I press my gun to the back of the driver’s skull. “I asked what the mileage is like.”

  “Pretty crappy,” he says, quietly. The smell of piss fills the car.

  “Yeah, well. Cadillacs are crap.” I sit back, light a cigarette. We sit in silence for a long few minutes.

  “So,” I say, finally, making them jump. “You want to tell me why you’re following me?”