Hex-Rated

by Jason Ridler

  Traffic slowed and denied me the whoosh of racing through air. The oppressive heat of the Valley sunk into me. Behind, an engine revved, the telltale sound of an annoyed citizen who will cut close to death to shoot an inch further than his sidesaddle companions, causing everyone else to stab their brakes. And he was coming up behind me. There was a gap on my right as someone pulled left. I looked back.

  A dirty white Chevy Nova revved up, aiming for my out-stuck head.

  I ducked inside Lilith to avoid getting lynched by their right-side mirror. “Where’s the fire, hero?” I said.

  Traffic dipped to a crawl.

  The Nova was packed with girls, hair big and wild, thick make up sliding down their faces. The one on the right had a frizzy perm and freckles, mascara bleeding down the side of her face as if auditioning for the Grand Guignole. They were clapping in unison and saying what I assumed was the title of the song, which sounded like “All Right Now” and made me wish for the subtle tones of Charlie Parker or the mad genius of Coltrane.

  “Hey, boy,” she said, “You got a date for the prom?” The entire car cackled.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I ride alone.”

  “Ooooh! So tall, dark, and mysterious. Then who beat up that face of yours?”

  “Nazis. Can you believe it?”

  “Damn!” she said, playing the hellcat, even if she didn’t look old enough to buy Cools without being carded. “We got a war hero here! Where you going, war hero?”

  “Nero Studios.”

  One of the giggling group in the back shouted. “That’s the porno place!” The car screamed as moved slower than piss up hill.

  “You a porno actor, war hero?” said the beautiful nightmare.

  I shook my head. I’d seen enough action on the circuit that nudie cuties, stag films or dirty booths and films held no attraction, though like everyone else I wanted to see Jane Russell in The Outlaw. “Going to visit a friend. You guys know the main hub for those people? My friend forgot to give me the address.”

  “You have friends who work there?”

  “Laura, don’t talk to the creep!” someone in the back said. But Laura was enjoying her command of the moment.

  “I do,” I said.

  “We’re all actresses.”

  Of course they were. “Really?”

  We edged across pavement as she laughed. “Don’t laugh.” I hadn’t. “Did a Coke commercial last year. My agent is getting me McDonald’s.”

  “Terrific, Laura. Stick with soda pop and burgers. My friend’s having a bad time in these pictures. I’m there to bring them home.”

  “Oh, fuck off!” she said, the flick-switch of her anger so loud and proud. “You’re some bible-thumping do-gooder telling a woman what she can and can’t do, right? Maybe your friend chose to be there.”

  “Oh, not this discussion,” said someone in the back.

  “Didn’t you read ‘A Bunny’s Tale’?” I said, curious where all this anger was coming from.

  “Gloria Steinem can kiss my ass!” Laura said. “She got paid to be a Bunny for at the Playboy Club, didn’t she? Now she’s telling me what I can and can’t do with my own body? If I make money doing what I want with it, who cares?”

  “Laura!”

  “Shut up, Mandy!” Laura said, then she jabbed her finger at me. “And you, don’t even think about dragging your friend from what she wants to do. Men always think they know better, so long as they’re the ones driving.”

  Just then the traffic picked up and the Nova peeled away while Laura gave me two barrels of her middle finger. “Fuck off, War Hero! Go kill some babies in Cambodia instead!”

  Honks blared behind me and I hit the gas with my toe as the girls of tomorrow peeled off into the future, leaving this stunned road kid from the Depression in their dust.

  The heat thickened as you rode in the valley, an invisible oppressor. Even if LA was the basin, San Fernando had a drag, as if civilization had forced itself on slumbering lands that did not want to awake. Cars zipped by without their headlights on, stray bullets of the 101 en route to becoming 90 mph caskets. So much life shooting forward as we removed ourselves from the cluster of shared misery in the traffic jam, the chances of meeting again far worse than those for dying alone. Drivers tapped on their yellow headlights in the wake of the stray bullets, as if they’d been a warning about the future accidents in our way. Accidents. Chance. Luck. These ruled the world far more than well-oiled blueprints. We searched for patterns in the wreckage. Reverse engineer from the point of destruction or disaster the construction of a life. There were two lives I was trying to reconstruct from a supernatural disaster. And I prayed they weren’t already destroyed.

  I’d just wanted a PI license to pick up small change for a small life. I did not want to have one foot in the door of occult. If I had, I would have taken Edgar’s offer and run off into strange adventures of the mind-bending kind.

  Now I was stuck between.

  Between worlds.

  Like the ghosts said.

  When traffic cleared, I ducked inside Lilith, opened the glove compartment and tore out an eight track. Once it was shoved in the stereo’s maw, I craned my neck again with my head outside the car, and drove hard as Count Bassie and Nelson Riddle fought each other for supremacy and a part of my backside stiffened as I pulled off at Studio City, denizen of Hollywood power houses in tall buildings. You could tell because the cars in the Mobil and 76 gas station there were hot rods, limos, and Cadillacs being serviced by Latino youths whom the drivers barked at as if giving orders to a fresh batch of shave-tail recruits. Hating the rich was my natural pastime.

  I pulled into a 76 with a store attached and parked next to a burgundy Thunderbird, which denoted someone of much lower status than a director, producer, actor or attorney. Writer or stuntman was the spread. Near the diesel pump was a cherry red cabin for a long-haul truck, which always reminded me of a chicken’s head, freshly plucked, courtesy of the old geek trick I’d seen a hundred times from Zed the Pinhead, biting a chicken’s head off as a finale. It made chicken fights seem downright humane.

  In the rearview mirror, my hair was somewhere between Conway Twitty and Frankenstein’s bride. Vitalis and Pomade together couldn’t tag-team my mane into submission, so I patted it down as best I could and left Lilith to cool down in the dark.

  The track lighting sizzled like a diner’s griddle and Mr. Clean had clearly wiped the walls with all the grime of foot traffic, so everything was covered in the lemony haze of chemical cleaner. Refreshing. At the desk, standing before the rows of candy bars and packs of gum, must be the owner of the Thunderbird, as the man in the AC hat in front of the skin mags was, I deduced, the trucker. Behind the desk, a tired Latino in his fifties with steel-gray hair and an inch of fat on his body listened to the ranting from a youth who was barely old enough to shave and yet had hair down to his shoulders. He held a binder full of scripts, maybe three, as if he’d written Ben Hur II. “Come on, man,” he said to the Latino. “Just tell me if she was in here.”

  “Sir,” said the manager. “I don’t keep track of my customers’ whereabouts.”

  “But she said she’d meet me here.”

  “I can’t help you with that. You’ll have to buy something. This is not a recreation center.”

  The youth snorted. “I’ll fucking buy something. Give me two more weeks and I’ll buy this gas station with my royalties, turn this place into a bookstore, and fire your lazy ass.”

  The man chomped down his jaw at the insult and pointed at the door. “Go.”

  “No, I’m buying something now.” He grabbed a fistful of candy bars and smushed them on the table. “I want these ones.”

  “Fifty-five cents.” I tried not to whistle about the rise in prices.

  “Actually,” the kid said. “I’ve changed my mind.” He turned away and walked straight toward me. “What are you looking at, grandpa?”

  “A thief. You broke it, you bought it.”

 
He got close enough to smell the coffee and cigs on his breath. “You can’t break a candy bar.”

  “You can, you did, and you’ll pay the man.”

  “Or what, grandpa?”

  I lifted my chin. “Easy, hero. You and I both know you don’t get to ruin someone else’s property and walk away as if your shit don’t stink. You’re not one of the Warner Brother’s yet. Though I suspect you’re writing for them.”

  “Who told you?”

  “You did. You’d turn a gas station into a bookstore, which only a writer would think is clever. You mentioned royalties, which means you’re selling something,” and I pointed at the binder, “probably scripts. And your girl didn’t show up. Which means you’re not an actor. Now pay the man before I tell Mr. Warner and company about how some inky hands Underwood treats the staff at his favorite petrol station.”

  The writer shook for a second, then found his balls. “And who the fuck are you?”

  “Stunt man,” I said. “Hence the outfit. And I’ve got far more stroke with Jack Warner’s film world than you do. So, if you want to get out of here with a sliver of your career intact, apologize to the good man who did nothing wrong, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  There used to be days when all I would do, day in and day out, was lie about who I was, where I was from, and what I could do, whatever Edgar asked of me, in the Circus and out on his . . . projects, like Altamont. Lying was comfortable and fun when you vanished from people’s memory the next day. “Or you can start something you won’t be able to finish.”

  The writer scoffed. “Like a low rent stunt double can change my fate.”

  “Never said I’d do that. Said I’d help. Also, you’re about sixty seconds from seeing just how badly a low-rent stunt man can act.” I leaned with my left shoulder and he got flummoxed, so he didn’t see my right hand dart in and grab his binder.

  “Hey! That’s mine!”

  I slapped away his hands, shifted my weight, and jabbed his solar plexus like a staff-strike the chest. He crashed on his ass, slapping down a rain of candy bars.

  “Stay down,” I said. “Or I’ll toss this epic into the wind.” The rage of the artist was palpable, but not threatening, as I leafed through the pages. “Cyborgia? This a green-eyed monster flick?”

  “You wouldn’t understand it.”

  “Ah. It’s one of them art-films down at Nero Studios.”

  The kid’s face went white. “That fucking place? No way! I’m a writer, not some hack making pornos at that perv palace!”

  “Where is that, exactly?”

  “How the hell should I know? You some kind of stunt man for pornos?”

  “Something like that.” I shook the binder at him. “Now say you’re sorry to the nice man, buy what you broke, and get lost before I get unhappy.”

  After a short fume cash hit the desk and a “sorry” rolled out of his lips, so I tossed him his script. The hack fucked off into the great unknown.

  I collected the Paydays and Juicy Fruits from the floor when a voice above said, “Thank you, sir.” I stood, and the cashier relaxed his crossed arms.

  “Just sorry you have to put up with that nonsense.”

  “It’s part of the job. You asked about Nero Studios?”

  I lay down a pack of Juicy Fruit, the best part of my C-Rations in Korea. “I did.” I let the statement hang. Because anyone looking for Nero Studios would be damn humble and quiet about it, whether they were looking to be in a skin flick or to meet those who are already on dirty celluloid. But when the silence dragged I dropped a reason. “Supposed to pick up a friend of mine.”

  He nodded. “They moved to Van Nuys. Corner of Stag and Orion.”

  “Lots of people ask for directions?” I said.

  “Yeah. Bellezas perdidas. Young and old. Where else do beauties go when the studio is done with them?”

  I nodded. “Hell of a good point, friend.” I took out some change, laid it on the table. “For making a mess.”

  “But you cleaned it up! At least take some gum.”

  So I did.

  Chewing two sticks of sweet plastic, I drove Lilith over the LA River on Tujunga Ave, heading for the 170.

  That’s when headlights bit my ass.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE FRONT FENDER SURGED LIKE THE JAWS OF A ROTTWEILER.

  I ducked inside Lilith. The cracked window stared back like the sockets of a skull filled with cobwebs. Flying blind, I reached in my pocket for the anting-anting before—

  CRASH!!!

  I bounced forward, Juicy Fruit spat out, and the amulet dropping into the passenger side. Damn it.

  Lilith jutted forward into the unknown and jostled the madman behind me. Forward was now a one-way ticket to an early grave. And I’d had enough fun at cemeteries today.

  Left hand gripping the steering wheel, I pulled Lilith into reverse, then swung my right arm over the seat so I could see through the back window.

  It wasn’t the hack writer’s T-bird, but a red and black Lincoln Continental Sedan. Preferred ride of Alicia Price’s goon squad, and the pain in my chest from her hammer shot awoke from its slumber. Apparently, crashing a funeral, crippling my windshield, and attempting to break my neck wasn’t enough for the Pacific’s jilted Queen of Magic. Death was racing at 90 mph.

  So I hit reverse and stabbed the gas.

  Kar-RANG!

  Fresh bruises blossomed in my guts, as tires burned asphalt and generated enough smoke to choke a dragon. My body turned to iron. I refused to let Lilith give any quarter. The exhaust and burning tire smoke blurred any chance of seeing the driver. Cars whipped by in the passing lanes as we fought each other for the title of Champ of Going Nowhere Fast, until Lilith, in her glory, lurched forward, and the ground beneath the car started to give more and more. There was no way out with me putting my head out the window. Horns blared in my ear as dozens of two-ton bullets shot past this insane duel I was losing, the anting-anting laying in the foot space of the passenger side like a candy bar out of reach. Another lurch forward and Lilith screamed at being shoved. She was being pushed around, and I didn’t like it. I reached for the glove box.

  BANG!

  Broken glass filled the back seat. I coughed, acrid smoke filling the car, popped the glove box, and grabbed. The back window was a jagged maw of shards and teeth. I gripped the handle of a revolver, hoping to hell it was Fife’s pistol and not Juan’s bullet-less .38.

  I dropped into first, shot off into the passenger lane blind. The cracked window before me was a map of cut glass with all roads leading to death. Honks and screeches followed as I’d hoped. I caused a minor traffic jam while pushing Lilith to 100, cars filling in the space between me and the Continental. I gunned it forward, gazing into the rear view. The Continental was wedged behind two cars. Horns blared and then shots fired. But it gave me enough time and distance to execute my only possible move.

  I gunned it forward, head out the wind, fishtailing Lilith until she was leading with her rear, and the Continental was facing me, grill to grill. I stabbed the accelerator and drilled it forward and fired one shot. Glass shattered, and the air was nothing but shivs and shards. I kept the pistol trained and focused and fired at the windshield of the Continental. In the heartbeat before I squeezed off another round and filled my nose with the pungent cobalt flavor of gunshots, I saw my assailant.

  Bald, wearing a tux with a bowtie, and wearing shades while driving in the dark, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a Beretta 70. That smile was pure rictus from ear to ear. Skin the color of milk with a hint of piss. Bow tie around his neck. A neck with a speaker embedded in its folds.

  Shanks. Shanks smiled with the visage of a skull. Shank nodded, as if to acknowledge that I’d killed him before, and he’d remembered. Shanks was Alicia Price’s favorite heavy. Because she kept Shanks’ brain in a jar and bought him a new corpse to animate. Yet with that smile, you always knew it was Shanks.

  “Hello, Brimstone!” he said without
moving his lips, voice cackling and crackling as if he was shouting through a drive-in speaker, the sound emanating from his bow tie. His head tilted. “Lady Alicia Price sends her regards!”

  Four more shots rang out as I ducked. Foam from the seats flew in the air. Lilith was being gutted from the inside.

  “If you would ever be so kind as to tell her the spell for opening Edgar’s casket, I will stop turning you into human shrapnel!” Then Shanks laughed with the cadence of a man gurgling barbed wire and napalm.

  Our engines gunned it at each other. I counted to three, then snapped off another slug. Shanks ducked, awkwardly, and my headshot went into his shoulder before he popped up again like a whack-a-mole. “Nice to see you, Shanks!” I yelled, then fired again, blowing off more of his shoulder. “But I’d rather eat a bullet than give her Edgar’s brain!” He popped up again and I ducked. He fired once and my rearview mirror landed in my lap. Shanks was able to control bodies from vast distance. But good God, he was rather mechanical when it came to surprises. Fast as hell, but mechanical.

  “Oh, I know, Brimstone!” Shanks said.

  I twisted my wrist so that the pistol stuck out at 80 degrees.

  “The request is on her behalf.”

  I grabbed the mirror and lifted it until Shank’s rictus was in sight and I’d calculated just where I had to lift to squeeze off a bull’s eye.

  “Your death is on mine!”

  I snapped off a round. My wrist flared with pain from the awkward kickback.

  But we were lurching forward! Lilith was driving that Continental back. I dropped the mirror, grabbed the wheel, and dared to pull myself up and hit the brake.

  Shanks head ended with his bottom jaw. The rest was splashed across the back seat. And yet, that bow tie screeched at me. “Not again! Not again! You will pay for this, Brimstone! I will make it a slow death! I will eat your eyes while you watch! I will defecate into your toothless mouth! I will—”

  I fired a fourth bullet into his throat. Static squealed out, voice getting higher and distant, the threats more volatile and file than the last, but whatever Shank had left to share was lost to all but dogs and cats who were tuned to his frequency.