Company Town

by Paul Neuhaus

  Bowie was in the same room with the blinds drawn, but he wasn’t asleep this time. His eyes were low—about the level of the bed. He was sitting on the floor. In front of him were two burning black candles. With the musician’s peripheral vision, Quinn could see two more candles on the left and the right. Bowie was sitting inside a circle of tea lights. (A variant on Darren Taft’s painted circle?) In front of them, at the height of Bowie’s eyes was a swirling pattern like concentrated waves of desert heat. At the front of Bowie’s skull, Henaghan could feel the fear—like an animal pressing against the bars of a cage. Bowie was muttering. A spell. An incantation.

  Quinn pushed past the scrambling fear and left David Bowie through his eyes. Before she devoted her full attention to the spiral, she looked back at Ziggy Stardust. He was sitting in the lotus position between the window and his bed. On the ground around him was a ring of black candles, all of them burning. His lips moved and, painted on his forehead, was a golden sun. His hair was bright orange and shot off in all directions. His eyebrows were gone. She was looking back at rock and roll history. Ordinarily, she would’ve killed for a chance like this one, but the circumstances were not optimal.

  Then Henaghan turned her attention back to the spiral that had Bowie so frozen with fear. Now that she was free of the pop star, she noticed that the air around him was very cold. The cold seemed to emanate from the spiral. In itself, the spiral didn’t look like much. A visual anomaly spinning on the near edge of perception. However, it exuded a menace that surprised Quinn. There was nothing intrinsically scary about it, but it forced Quinn to fight off a wave nausea that, given her bodiless state, was more than odd. Alright, she was here. And what she planned for was already manifest. She thought she’d have to call to Reginald Verbic, get him to come, but here he was right in front of her.

  Henaghan made words the way she always did, summoning them up in her forebrain and urging them through the meat below. Since she had no meat, the words manifested in front of her, not as sound but as thought. “You can’t have him,” she said.

  The answering thought-speech felt warm as it washed over her. “You get no say,” was the reply. “We already have him.”

  It surprised her that the thought-waves had an accent. Chicago. She knew right away she wasn’t talking to Verbic. “Sato,” she said. The spiral said nothing so Quinn changed tactics. “Why’re you doing this? Leave him alone.”

  “Leave him alone? He invited us,” the spiral said, smugness seeping into its tone.

  Quinn moved toward him and Sato inched back. The same way he had outside the Friar’s Club. Was he afraid of her? She moved again and so did he. She forward, he back. If she’d had meat, she would’ve grinned. Here was an unexpected turn. “You’re frightened of me,” she said.

  A long pause during which Sato pulsed, radiating waves of what Henaghan took to be frustration. “I’ve taken apart little girls like you,” he said. “Their arms, their legs, their bodies. Maybe I’ll visit you. On Gower street. There you’re weak.”

  He was threatening to come to her in the world of the present. The world where she and he both had bodies. “How about if I save you the trouble,” she said, her own anger rising through her and radiating out as waves of heat and energy. Coruscating waves, invisible save for how they distorted what was behind them. Naked force shot out of Henaghan.

  The hot wave rolled over Sato, causing him to withdraw and slam into the wall. Quivering waves of pain rose on his indistinct surface.

  Her rage spiking, Henaghan pressed forward, struggling to understand and direct the energies she summoned. She knew there was more to the phenomenon than what she could understand. More waves shot away from her core, burning the ceiling and starting a small fire on Bowie’s bedsheets. The real-world impact of her intangible attacks shocked Quinn. If only she could get the waves to align at a forward point and interweave, she’d be able to atomize the cowering entity in front of her. The room smelled of burnt ozone.

  Ziggy Stardust’s candles all went out.

  Despite her lack of control, Quinn pressed forward still and Sato grew smaller. Her anger became her defining characteristic. So much so that it blinded her to what was above. A fissure opened below the ceiling’s center. Through it came another spiral, this one much larger and more menacing. A surge of heat struck Quinn from on high and she recoiled, slamming into the drapes without going through. Her entire being was pain. All trace of identity fled from her as she absorbed the hurt. She wasn’t Quinn; she was an animal. Like Sato, she shrank. Once the feeling receded enough for her to regain herself, she looked up toward the source of her anguish.

  The spiral above Sato, Bowie and herself emanated nothing. No sign of emotion or even identity came from it. It was aloof and uncaring. Looking deeper into the swirl, Quinn thought she saw a face. Like an angular skull covered with tough gray flesh. Like one of the overlords from Aisling’s long-ago war.

  Before she could address Verbic, she was struck again. This time, by a shaped wave, a tool guided to force her backward toward Bowie. Spasming with hurt, she snapped back into the rock star’s head. Immediately, and through no design of her own, her anguish spilled over into the Bowie’s mind. His mismatched eyes popped open and he screamed. Another hit. This one struck him between his eyes and went through the golden sun on his forehead. The weapon was meant for Henaghan but Bowie was collateral damage. Again, the rockstar cried out. Quinn flew backward. It was like falling off the roof of a skyscraper through a black pane of glass. Shattering. Cutting.

  She fell for a long time.

  4

  Deeper

  The next day, still reeling from Reginald Verbic’s rebuke, Quinn showered. Looking in the mirror, she saw that the red had all but faded from her eyes. At the very least, she no longer looked freakish. She put on casual clothes, and collected a Capri Sun and a Power Bar from the kitchen.

  After a long stop and go drive, Quinn parked her Prius and began walking up Mulholland Drive. The sky was its typical October gray, but there’d be no rain.

  As she walked, she saw Jack Nicholson pick up the newspaper from his driveway. The actor waved and she returned the greeting. It was bizarre. There she was, minding her own business, when the Joker gave her a friendly wave. Most of Quinn’s celebrity encounters since arriving in Los Angeles were like that. Casual. No big whoop. She wasn’t one to harass, so generally there was little more than eye contact and a nod. If she’d been thinking, she might’ve asked Nicholson if he knew anything about Verbic, but that would’ve been weird. A scenario where she said, “Hey, Jack, do you know anything about a Reggie Verbic?” and Nicholson pepper spraying her ran through her head. A passing fancy. Jack didn’t seem like the pepper spray type (although he was, Quinn recalled, handy with a nine iron).

  A few houses beyond Nicholson’s, Quinn stopped, taking in a buzz of activity at a big Spanish style home. She looked down at the house number painted on the curb. “119”.

  Holy shit. There it was. And there was a car parked out front with the name Fleur-de-lys printed on its hood.

  Men in white coats came in an out of the two-story home, carrying white furniture coverings and generally freshening things up. Quinn watched the White Coats for a while and then made up her mind. She walked up the driveway and stopped at the first of the men, a short, good-looking Hispanic guy rummaging through a cardboard box. She said, “Excuse me. Do you mind if I ask a question?” It took her entire reserve of false bravado to approach him.

  He looked up. The fellow had an accent to match his appearance. “If you make it quick,” he said (sounding not at all neighborly).

  “Who lives in this house?”

  White Coat looked up from the box, taking stock of Quinn. He stood and was only slightly taller than she was. “What business is that of yours?”

  “None. It’s none of my business. We live nearby. We wanted to know who our new neighbor was. Me and Bill.” As she spoke, Quinn looked through the open front door and noticed a peculi
ar detail—in the living room were at least three tall birdcages, stocked with loud ravens.

  The man squinted at her. “What’s your name, niñita?”

  “Beverly,” Quinn said, annoyed at his descriptor. “Beverly Cleary.”

  White Coat cocked his head. “Ramona the Brave? That Beverly Clearly.”

  Henaghan hadn’t seen that coming. “Same name, different occupation. I’m a lawyer.”

  Bending down again, the man returned to his box. “Listen, Beverly Clearly the journalist, mind your own fucking business.”

  Quinn nodded as if he’d given her sage advice. “I will. I will do that,” she said. Then she turned and went back down the driveway.

  On the other side of the street, there was Chuck Sato mirroring her progress. As soon as she reached her car, he stopped and took a Bogart-esque drag from his cigarette.

  When Quinn got home, it was about lunch time, and Annabelle Grindle was standing on her front porch. In her hand, she held a brown paper bag. In her other hand, she had a giant bottle of Dr. Pepper. “Oh,” she said. “Did you go out? You never go out.”

  “I’m trying to broaden my horizons,” Quinn said.

  “About fucking time,” Grindle replied. “Did you drink that bottle of Jack?”

  “Haven’t touched it yet.”

  “Do. You’re tighter than a chastity belt.” The older women held up the bag. “I’m glad you came home when you did. The other night, you got dinner. I got lunch.”

  Henaghan unlocked the door and opened it. She let Grindle pass her then she too entered. She shut the door and set the deadbolt and the chain.

  Annabelle noted the action. “A little spooked by the crime scene in our back yard?”

  Actually, that wasn’t the reason for high-security mode, but Quinn didn’t want to get into that. “Yeah. What’d you get?”

  “Barbecue. From Paulie’s Pit.”

  “Good Christ,” the girl said, entering the kitchen to grab some plates and glasses. “Did you pencil in a four-hour nap afterwards?”

  “I’m old. I got nothing else going. Is it too much food for you, though? You’re not gonna puke fire, are you?”

  “I’ll let you know…” Since Quinn had no tables (either dining room or coffee) the two women made do with the couch and the floor in front of it. As Henaghan drizzled sauce onto a smoked chicken breast, she said, “You know the Silver Lake Doll case pretty well, right?”

  Grindle couldn’t talk since she had a spare rib in her mouth like a popsicle. She nodded.

  “What if I told you Rosebud is carving messages into his victims?”

  Annabelle spoke around a mouthful of pork. “How do you know that? There hasn’t been anything about that in the press.”

  Quinn knew her answer would appeal to the older woman’s journalistic sensibilities. “Unnamed sources,” she said.

  Grindle nodded. “Alright. What kind of messages?”

  Henaghan took a bite of the chicken and chased it with Dr. Pepper. “Sanskrit messages.”

  Annabelle stopped cold with the spare rib halfway to her mouth. “Fuck you,” she said, creeped-out.

  Quinn wiped sauce from her fingertips with a napkin. “Hand to God.”

  Grindle looked away then back, shocked. “So, seventy years later, we’ve got ourselves a copycat?”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple,” Quinn said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? It can’t be the same guy. He’d be pushing a hundred.”

  “Maybe he’s spry for his age.”

  “If you’re gonna tease me, I’m gonna take my ‘cue and go home.”

  “Tell me more about Charles Sato…”

  “Chuck,” Annabelle said. “You read the book?”

  “Not cover to cover. I hit the index like you said.”

  Grindle sighed. “I’m not sure I can give you any more past what’s in ‘Devil’s Garden’. Verbic and Sato are a big goose egg before getting off the train in Los Angeles. Verbic’s the biggest mystery. Everyone says he had a cultivated Mid-Atlantic accent so he could be from anywhere. Sato at least had the Chicago thing going but I couldn’t find any record of him there before the teens.”

  “What about serial killings in Chicago? Before the teens?”

  Annabelle shrugged, the bone still in her right hand. “That’s outside the scope of the book. At least I thought it was. Do you know something I don’t? Is this more from your unnamed source?”

  “No,” Henaghan said, putting down her plate and pouring herself more Dr. Pepper. “I’m working a hunch. Chuck Sato’s kind of gotten under my skin.”

  “Well, don’t dive too deep down that rabbit hole. There isn’t a single anecdote about him that doesn’t point to his being a twisted fuck. Did you read the part about Gladys?”

  “Gladys? I did not.”

  “Gladys is a made-up name. They kept her real one out of the press. I could’ve found out who she was, but I didn’t out of respect for the probably-dead. Gladys was a waitress at Siesta del Mar, a restaurant and club Verbic owned in Venice. This would’ve been like ’44 or ’45. Sato was there a lot and the girls were all scared shitless of him. Justifiably. Anyway, Gladys was new and didn’t know the ropes. When Sato offered her a ride home one night, she took it. Silly girl. That naïveté pretty much destroyed her life. She went missing for three weeks and everyone assumed she was dead. Following an anonymous tip, the police found her. She was being held at Reginald Verbic’s house. The one on Mulholland. After they liberated her, she disappeared. Supposedly, she went back to where she came from and lived a full life. I don’t know. I did, however, track down a reporter who interviewed her for one of the defunct L.A. dailies. I talked to him in the nineties. He was older then than I am now. He said that, not only were no charges ever pressed against Sato or Verbic, they killed his story.” Annabelle paused to take a sip of soda.

  “Let me guess,” Quinn said. “The rest of this story is all puppy dogs and sunshine?”

  “Um, no,” Grindle said. “This guy, this reporter, told me Gladys said she was kept drugged out of her mind the whole three weeks and, almost every night, she had… visitors.”

  “Visitors?”

  “Men. Dozens of them. Or the same ones over and over. She couldn’t be sure. Gladys didn’t know to call it rape since she was drugged beyond the ability to grant consent, but I wouldn’t call it anything else. Anyway, she says that a night or two before the police raid, she gave birth.”

  “She was pregnant when Sato kidnapped her?”

  “No,” Annabelle said. “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Okay, so, what? In three weeks, she became impregnated, brought a child to term and delivered it?”

  “I’m telling you what I was told. Of course my reporter friend didn’t believe a word of it, but he said talking to Gladys gave him the willies. You wanna know what’s weird though?”

  “What?”

  “My guy was retired when I talked to him but he worked into the early ‘80s—and had friends in the biz long after. He said there were other Gladyses. None of them well-documented like his Gladys, but still… Similar stories with similar outcomes.”

  “Well…” Henaghan said. “That’s creepy as fuck.”

  The two women remained quiet for a time. Eating and deep in thought. Finally, Quinn said, “I was up there today?”

  “Up where?”

  “119 Mulholland.”

  Grindle’s eyes narrowed. “Shut the fuck up.”

  “There were guys there. In white coats. Unpacking boxes and removing tarps from the furniture.”

  “Good lord. Why?”

  “I asked. The guy told me to mind my own fucking business.”

  Annabelle put down her spare rib. “You know, I think that’s really good advice. I know you dig a mystery, but minding your own fucking business might be a great idea.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Quinn said with more confidence than she expected herself to have.

  “Yes, you will. Becaus
e you’re gonna mind your own fucking business. Pass me the sauce.”

  At six A.M. Quinn’s phone rang. 6 A.M. on a Monday morning. “Hullo?” she said, still unsure of where she was. Part of her panicked because she thought she needed to go to work. Then she remembered her paid leave of absence.

  “Meet me at the store in an hour.” It was Darren Taft, sounding much more awake than she was. “Lesson number two.” He hung up without waiting for an answer.

  “Fuck,” Quinn said quietly. She couldn’t quite face the idea of a shower right away so, after several moments of staring at her dormant television, she picked up the remote and hit the power button. It was on the local station. Local news. The Gower Street victim was positively identified as Heather Quail. 27. Native Angeleno. Police were cautious, but they believed Quail was Rosebud’s latest kill. As usual, they weren’t releasing what the perpetrator had gouged into the girl’s flesh—or that there had been any gouging at all.

  Inanities followed. Quinn wasn’t against some inanities. Making a Baked Alaska with a West Hollywood chef. Studio boss Ephraim Zilberschlag having his contract renewed (little wonder since he’d shepherded Celestial Pictures to a record-breakingly profitable year). A press conference in Westwood. Henaghan perked up when she recognized Super Agent Barry Faber cutting the ribbon on a new breast cancer treatment center. Quinn liked his speech. Faber referenced old Hollywood Women’s Directors—guys like George Cukor, and King Vidor—and said he tried to do as an agent what they did as filmmakers. That’s why his entire roster was female. And now it was time to give back. In some ways a standard spiel, but nice.

  Finally, she threw off the comforter and showered.

  Quinn parked her car in front of Taft’s Books shortly after seven. Darren was standing in the open doorway. “You’re late,” he said.

  Henaghan looked at her watch. “It’s seven-oh-four.”

  “I know. Which means it’s not seven-oh-oh. Get in so I can lock the door.”