Premonitions

by Jamie Schultz

  “What’s Van Horn doing here?” Anna asked.

  “Depends what he needs, I guess,” Nail said.

  “I guess.” Still, it wasn’t quite in pattern. They’d found Van Horn and his creepy entourage three nights ago, and this was by far the lowest the group had crawled down the socioeconomic ladder. The last few nights, Van Horn had been visiting well-off criminals who were plugged in to the occult underworld in some way or other—one of them had, in fact, given Sobell the tip that had led the crew to Van Horn. Bobby was plugged-in, but not with the grade of crook that Van Horn or Sobell trafficked with. More like the kind of scum that grew on the rocks at the bottom of a lake.

  I hate this, Anna thought, again, but at least this time she kept herself from singing that refrain aloud and aggravating Nail and Gen with it once more. Bad enough that Sobell had them doing every odd shit job under the sun, but it was escalating. She’d thought she’d drawn a sharp line the first time he’d told her to act as a bagman—just this once, and then it’s back to business as usual, she’d said, her voice stripped down to a cold steel edge. He’d pretended to hear, or maybe she’d read acquiescence where none had existed, and then sent her out again the following week. The week after that, it had been another pickup job, except she knew it wasn’t, not really, not when Sobell strongly suggested she bring Nail and maybe somebody else along. That was how he put it: Far be it from me to instruct you in the finer points of your business, but I strongly suggest you bring that big fellow along. For the ride, as it were. And the pickup job had turned into a beatdown when Ernesto “Spaz” Rivera chose to live up to his nickname. He freaked right out when he saw Anna coming—evidently, he’d been short on the cash, but rather than talk it out, he’d gone for intimidation and violence. Nail hadn’t actually been necessary. Pepper spray, it turned out, was more than adequate for the likes of Spaz Rivera. That wasn’t the last beatdown, either, and there had been a couple of other unsavory demands sprinkled in as well. It barely came as a shock when Sobell upped the stakes to kidnapping.

  “I shoulda told him to fuck right off,” Anna muttered.

  “Who the hell is that?” Nail said.

  “Huh?”

  “There.”

  Anna followed his pointing finger to the barrels and tubs stacked against the side of the body shop. “I don’t . . . huh.” No, there was somebody there. Hard to see in the shadows thrown by the streetlight, but there were at least a couple of people lurking among the trash. As she watched, one peeked around the corner at Bobby’s place.

  “Here he comes,” Genevieve said.

  “What?”

  Nail looked over his shoulder down the sidewalk behind them. Anna angled the mirror until she saw the group leave Bobby’s and walk out into the street. A dozen people, at least, throwing long dancing shadows in front of them as they jumped and spun and collided with one another. Somebody fell down hard, and the first sounds of the group reached the car—laughter, high and hysterical. Seconds later, the whole group erupted in the same sort of frenetic, desperate laughter as well, making an eerie chorus that grabbed Anna’s spine at the base and twisted.

  There was a ripple of motion to Anna’s left as Nail actually shuddered.

  “You okay, tough guy?” Genevieve asked.

  He nodded. Anna studied his face for a moment, then slid down in her seat and resumed watching the mirror. It looked like the same drill out there as the last several nights. Van Horn walked in the middle, head down, fedora pulled low, hands in the pockets of his pin-striped pants. He wasn’t close enough for her to see his face or hear him well, but if the past nights were representative, he was either grinning like a fool or whistling some creepy waltzlike, music box–sounding tune. Around him, a shifting, spinning cloud of chaos. Maybe half a dozen men and half a dozen women, and a more motley assortment couldn’t easily be imagined. Two of them looked like Genevieve’s crowd—lots of black, trenchcoats despite the scorching heat of August in Los Angeles, and lots of piercings. The others, not so much. There was a skinny black kid in a basketball jersey. An old white guy with a mustache, wearing a black suit. He’d look like a slimebag attorney, if only he weren’t capering and shouting and stumbling down the street without any shoes on. A twentysomething hippie in what appeared to be a tie-dyed muumuu, tossing invisible handfuls of something at the group and laughing.

  It looked like the membership had dwindled again. Seemed like every day, one or two of Van Horn’s entourage disappeared. There had been fifteen or so to start with. Genevieve had joked that maybe the missing ones had been eaten by the others, and nobody had laughed. Anna had wondered if she and the crew could just wait until nobody was left and Van Horn was alone, but she eventually decided there was no guarantee that would ever happen, and Sobell was not a terribly patient man.

  The mob got closer, and the shouting got louder, and Anna slid farther down into her seat. Even Nail did his level best to make himself small. They hadn’t been noticed before, but Anna couldn’t help feeling that, if Van Horn’s deranged entourage ever did pay them any attention, a bad scene would follow.

  In the mirror, Anna saw the guy in the suit stop. He weaved unsteadily on his feet, waved his hands in the air, then pointed at a trash bin that had fallen over in the mouth of an alley.

  The trash ignited.

  “Oh, shit,” Genevieve said.

  Van Horn spun on the lawyer type and, in a sudden move totally unlike the easygoing, down-on-his-luck businessman he’d seemed to Anna all week, clouted the other man viciously on the side of the head, shouting something Anna couldn’t make out. The lawyer rocked, then fell back, tensed and half-crouched, and Anna could have sworn he was about to spring on Van Horn. She had the sudden crazy impression the man was about to attack Van Horn with his teeth, and then the rest of the entourage formed up, standing to Van Horn’s left and right. The lawyer’s legs uncoiled, like energy was leaking out through his heels. He laughed. Even from here, Anna could tell he was playing it off like a joke. “Hey, sorry, man. Just got carried away.” That kind of thing.

  Van Horn’s entourage wasn’t placated. They began spreading in a semicircle around the lawyer.

  “They’re gonna kill him,” Genevieve whispered.