by Jason Ridler
Night, glass, and tiny itches covered every inch of my skin, suit, and nerves. Distant sirens howled like coyotes. I reversed, spun Lilith into the right of way, and carried on toward Nero Studios. The lack of windshield was refreshing and the whole valley roared in my ears. The rush of wind pulled stray glass from my hair and shards caressed my skin before leaving. Sweat and small streams of blood mingled around my ears, and I could taste the gunfire. The foam from Lilith’s seat swirled in the roar of the outside world ramming through her as we shot forward to find answers, and I hoped the trail of blasted heads and broken glass didn’t come back to me. I mean, how many cops would think to look for a man who murdered a twice-dead corpse in the heart of the dirty pictures industry?
I exited the freeway and found myself quickly surrounded by suburban majesty. Van Nuys’ main drag was eerily quiet. Unlike the Strip, there were only street lamps to throw nets of light from their high reaches. The darkness was thick, but not oppressive, as kids in flares exited The Royal Times theater, laughing. The marquee said M*A*S*H. With no windshield, and Lilith purring at a low murmur, I strained but heard their laughter.
“Hawkeye is the best! I’ve seen this five times and he’s still the man, man!”
“Five times? Shit, you know this is about Vietnam, right?”
“Mitchell, it’s just a movie. Don’t turn it political.”
“Everything’s political.”
“To you, everything is about Vietnam.”
“Yeah, was Airport about Vietnam, Mitchell?”
“Airport was a gas.”
“Airport was shit.”
“Everyone’s a critic.”
“M*A*S*H was just dumb fun.”
I hit the breaks before I know it and the tires skid louder than chandelier crashing on a ballroom floor. I’m out the door before I can blink.
The gang of teens in flares and flannel and feathered hair of assorted lengths looks at me like the Frankenstein monster just ran off the Universal lot.
“M*A*S*H isn’t a comedy” I said. “It isn’t about Vietnam. And it ain’t the kissing cousin of Airport. It’s about Korea. You know? The Korean War? Of course you don’t. You don’t have enough pubic hair among you to make a third-rate beard. But before any of you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye, your older brothers and even your fathers were fighting off an invasion of North Korean and Red Chinese from a country that had just been born. Sound familiar? Well, that’s where the similarities stop. Those battles were frozen affairs, the kind of cold that would give an Eskimo pneumonia. This movie you saw? That’s about Vietnam. But the novel? Wait, did you know it was a book first? Did you read it? It’s a horror show and not a tepid warning. Did they excise the crucifixion scene? Did you see how they beat a man’s depression with attempted murder? Did you know that the crux of these theories and ideas were taken from a Holocaust survivor? Did you know that everything that made that book sage was pissed out to make a film that was easy to swallow since you’re all either indifferent or think everything is about you?”
There was red spit flying from my words thanks to a small cut on my lip.
I gazed into the wide eyes of these kids. Just kids. And I knew I was in shock. My adrenaline raged and soon would become empty. Fury shook me to keep me steady. I’d lost track of how many times death had come for me, but when they send a dead man to kill you, you tend to remember you’re alive not by dint of a divine plan so much as a cosmic accident, a celestial joke, a bad pun from an indifferent universe.
The teens of Van Nuys huddled together. Then, the girl with curled hair and razor thin frame tapped her cigarette. “Why the hell are you dressed like it’s the prom?”
The night filled with the cackle of shrill laughter as I pulled the door open and sank back in. The malicious joy of teenagers stabbed me in the back as I head for Stagg and Orion, sinking in deep long before the cross street comes into view. But I didn’t need to verify the signs. I passed Jaguars and Mustangs, preferred rides of the newly rich and aging powerful. Houses here were bigger than motels. Even still, looming at the end of the street was a massive structure.
Roman columns dominated the front. In the headlights the royal color of purple was radiant. The windows were blacked out like skull sockets, but within them I knew there were living things. I parked, grabbed the anting-anting. The two guns I collected looked like an insurance policy I was leaving behind. I scrounged for the pack of cards.
The Bicycle pack had caught a bullet.
“Thanks, Shanks. I guess we’re even.” Now I was weaponless and needed trouble to find me.
I placed the anting-anting in one pocket, and figured I’d do what I had to if I needed another hand cannon. In the looming dark of the mansion, I felt naked without a gun or a deck of cards. But I closed Lilith’s door gently, shook off the worse of the broken glass like a shaggy dog coming out of the rain, and walked toward the mansion.
Embedded within the columns was a loot bag of Ancient Greek and Roman words, prayers, and poems, none of it connected, none of it linked.
Praise Bacchus!
Behold your secret name when speaking to the Goddess of love!
I came, I saw, I conquered!
But the one on the center was essentially a long tabella defixionis.
Those who enter the domain of Lady Octavia surrender their will to the demons of lust and enlightenment, and upon reading this are bound to serve the limits of ecstasy in the hopes of finding the bliss of the one true mind and experience resplendent pleasures and horrors within the prison of their hearts.
“Sure,” I said to no one. “Sounds groovy.”
I approached the black front door, an obelisk of opal, and rang the doorbell. Inside, there was thick silence. A hungry quiet. The kind that would likely swallow screams of pain or pleasure.
The door opened without so much as a squeak. No one was there, until I realized I needed to look down.
A tanned midget with a cigar who smelled like burning sand and had the thickest coke-bottle specs I’ve ever seen glared up at me with yellow teeth. “Yeah? What do youz want?”
CHAPTER 22
“I’M RICHARD GRAHAM,” I SAID. THE AC BLASTED ME LIKE AN arctic wind tinged with the scent of sex.
“And I’m Muhammad Ali,” he said, the Brooklyn accent thicker than the Century Sam cigar smoke he was puffing with every word. “Scram, head, we’re making a movie.”
“I’m Maxine’s brother.”
The words died in his mouth before he had time to crack wise, meaning he wasn’t stupid. “Maxine?”
“She’s an actress. Her roommate said she’d be here.”
He sniffed something in the air, then gave my clothes the once over. “You living in dat suit full time?”
My voice rose, face squinting with fatigue that was 70-percent dead-honest. “I left our cousin’s wedding on a red-eye Greyhound. I haven’t had food or a hot shower in two days and none of this matters just tell me, where is Maxine?”
“Shh!” said the midget. “We’re making movies here, kid. I don’t know where ya think your sister is but it’s— “
I stepped closer, so my foot was at the lip of the door frame. “You’re TV Smite.” If you’ve ever seen a fear-frozen midget, you know how hard it is not to laugh. My face was numb, my guts hurt, and tiny cuts across my body were too fresh and raw to allow me the chance to let loose and snort at the fear-locked munchkin. “You’re the writer. You wrote the script that’s going to make Maxine a star. She told me about you. And Octavia. Please, TV, it’s been a heck of a day.”
TV grimaced.
“Please?”
The door closed upon my face.
Rats.
The thick thud of TV’s orthotic shoes rattled off.
Playing family was a stretch, but the fact that I showed up meant I would bring cops if they didn’t accommodate, even if only for appearances and to finally get me out.
I was about to bang and scream, but I heard the faint tip and tap of hee
ls on a polished floor. I stood back. The door opened.
She was a vision in black and purple. Alabaster skin, raven hair minus a streak of white, eyeliner and shadow dark and sharp, lashes like Venus flytraps colored midnight. Lilacs and nightshade preceded her presence, and she tasted as good as that first cigarette in the morning. The purple sash over her shoulder crossed an ample bosom that pressed hard against a black dress. A slit ran from her inner thigh, revealing frighteningly thin legs ending in five-inch gold heels and exposed purple toenails. “Mr. Graham? I’m Octavia Bliss. I’m your sister’s producer.”
She offered me a hand older than her face or legs: the wrinkles around the knuckles meant she was roughly forty-five, but that didn’t diminish her flame by one watt. Across her index finger was draped a ring with the face of a woman and hair of snakes wrapping around her fingers in a silver band. A gorgon, one of three ancient sisters, most famous being Medusa, but something told me my Octavia bliss preferred the immortal firstborn, Stheno. Easier on the eyes.
I took the hand, half-expecting it to bite. When it didn’t I clasped hers with mine. “It’s great to finally meet the lady who will make my sister a star.”
“Too kind,” she said, accent pure Georgia peach and ramped up for effect. I half-expected a black manservant to be at her beck and call. She had the bearing of a queen. Lipstick tarred to her face for a well-practiced smile, the kind worn by all women who grew up pretty and used it to maximum advantage in an unfair world run by men. “And we’re all very excited about her debut. But we’re shooting—”
“Oh,” I said, interrupting with nervous excitement. “And I won’t get in the way. I’m just so late to the party I rented a car once I got into Los Angeles and drove up here to see her. We can have it be a surprise
“That’s wonderful!” !” She mimicked my idiotic excitement. “What I meant to say is that we’re shooting on assignment. Maxine isn’t here just now, but will be back soon. And, sadly, we can’t have you go to the shoot because of liability issues. Only cast and crew. You know, city hall!”
I laughed. “Oh, don’t get me started on municipal politics! The fat cats in Madison are my public enemy number one.”
She laughed. “Then you know my pain! We’re still shooting another part of the film, so —”
“Of course, I’ll just wait here until they return! Just stick me in the wing of the mansion where I won’t get in the way.”
She gripped my hand and pulled me inside. “I wouldn’t have it any other way! TV?”
The clunk-clunk of his feet announced his arrival before he puffed smoke so hard he might as well have been the Little Engine That Stank Like Diesel. “Yeah?”
“Why don’t you escort Mr. Graham to the apartments?” She turned to me. “We call them that because we have so many night shoots, people just have a nightcap and stay put rather than drive into the city.”
“Wow, bed and breakfast as well as a movie studio. You’re an impressive woman, Ms. Bliss.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she said with a cattish note. “Forgive me, Mr. Graham.”
“Richard.”
She smiled, in total control. “I can’t recall what line of business you were in.”
“I sell used office furniture in downtown Madison.”
I savored the look of horror and boredom in her smile. “Fascinating. Now, I must get back to our shoot here.”
“You shoot movies in this mansion?”
“That’s why I had it constructed. But I promise, Mr. Graham, we won’t abandon you to walk the halls. You will have every possible comfort. And, when Maxine returns you will be the first to know.”
She lifted her hand. I kissed it with the full bow of a Confederate gentleman, since that was clearly what she wanted. “TV, take him to the west wing.” Then she turned on her heels and I enjoyed the show of her taut ass leaving down a dark corridor to the right.
“So,” I said, looking down at TV, who was chewing his cigar in his yellow teeth. “You must get this a lot, but—”
“I ain’t a goddamn munchkin,” he said, thick finger pointing daggers at me. “Now follow me. I got a script to rewrite.”
Octavia’s mansion was a white-walled warren of epic proportions. TV led me down the same corridor she took, but hung a left. I could smell spices. Old BBQ and fresh stew. The walls were lined with pictures of doves, drawings of doves, mosaics of doves. The bird of Aphrodite, or Venus, to use her Roman name. Fitting for her house. Not for the Nazi magic I came here to suss out. If Maxine or Nico were still alive, the clues to their existence were here.
“TV? You’re a writer?”
“Meh,” he said, grunting along as if handling the jobs of a manservant were beneath him. Perhaps he had a point. A scriptwriter handling the door means this house was not in order. They’d have a bodyguard or something. That means the grounds were weaker. The “shoot” she mentioned was probably her sending all resources out to find Fulton, Maxine and Nico. Because if there stars and director were gone, who were they filming?
“Would I have seen your work?”
He snorted. “Howz do I know what you’ve seen, Mack?”
“It’s Richard, not Mack.”
“Says youz.”
“Do you just write scripts?”
He craned his neck to see me. “Who wants to know?”
“Me. Richard.”
“You ask a lot of question for a used desk guy.”
“I’m a people person, TV. Talking to people helps me help them help themselves.”
He snorted. “You’re a salesman. You don’t make anything.”
“That matters to you?”
“In dis world, there are builders, facilitators, and sheep.”
Builders . . . TV was either a libertarian, or a Freemason, or both. “That doesn’t sound very nice.”
“Nice has nuthin’ ta do with it. If you made those chairs and desk, you’d be a builder. You make something for others. If you buy a thing, and don’t build something on your own, you’re a sheep. If you just move the work of others into the hands of sheep, you’re a facilitator. You don’t retain substance beyond da slick slap of cash in your hand, profiting off da guys who make this world.”
We approached a patch of light from an open door, and the sweet smell of hickory and fried onions made me salivate like a demon tasting his first kill. “And what does that make you, TV?”
“Builder. Writers make things.”
I enjoyed this bizarre game of libertarian chess, so I focused on the questions as we pass by the patch of light on the right. The kitchen. A black man in a red-splattered apron was cutting ribs on a stainless steel table with what appeared to be a culinary hacksaw. He took no notice of us, consumed with his work. “But everyone can write. Wouldn’t that make us all builders?”
“Ha!” TV said. “You can write words. Scribble your name on a check. You ain’t got the stones for real writing.”
“What’s real writing, TV?”
“Blood, sweat and tears, Mack. Taking someth’n out of your skull and making it real. Dis . . . movie is out of my head. Sure, Octavia made it her own. She’s a hell of a skirt. But I was da one who went to the library, read Ovid, read Marcus Aurelius, read enough dirty Roman theater to make a bathhouse fag blush.” He chomped down on his cigar, realizing he was overplaying his hand by trying to win this baloney argument. As far as TV knew, I thought Maxine was in a real moving picture, not a dirty porno flick. I swallowed the juicy taste of BBQ from my mouth and carried on like the Midwest idiot that everyone in California believed existed between Nebraska and Ohio. “Well, I can assure you, TV, that I also give blood, sweat, and tears when selling my customers the best possible deals to set up their own businesses. These builders you mention need materials. Desk, chairs, lamps. And spend most of my days on the road between St. Paul and Milwaukee hunting for the treasures to help their dreams come true. I help the builders build.”
“Keep telling yourself dat, Mack.” He stopped midway dow
n the west wing of the Apartments at Nero Studios, took out ring of keys, and found the one for the door. “Sit tight. I’ll be back with some snacks. You a teetotaler?”
“Only when my clients are.”
He grunted. “Facilitators. Each one of ya is a different slice of vanilla.” He pushed open the door and waited for me to enter.
I did.
“Light’s on the left.”
I flicked the switch.
The single mattress and nightstand lay before me. The room’s colors of smoky red carpet and amber walls made me think of a bloody honeycomb. “Sit tight, Mack,” TV said. “Back soon.” The last word was punctuated with enough velocity for me to get the point. He closed the door behind me. The lock’s tumblers dropped with an ominous click. The anting-anting in my pocket was downright taunting me now. I was in a locked room at a dirty movie studio where bad magic had scared a beautiful girl.
I waited until TV’s footfalls were distant.
American Express in hand, I worked the lock with the plastic edge and prayed this wasn’t the kind of sexhouse that had dungeons.
Bending for my life, the lock slid open. The darkness outside was pregnant with silence and my wingtips made sounds so soft they’d only wake a church mouse. Darkness is a vocabulary all its own, a feel . . . I can see fine in it, but reading what it’s telling me has always been a chore. It’s like staring into a well of clear water that the wind just rippled, distorting the message of what’s inside even when you’ve taken the plunge.
But I tasted it. A hint of magic. Just like when I met Nico. It wasn’t the house. Those hexes and curses outside were for show. New spiritualism was pretty much a shell game for gurus making a mint off distorted images of the East, selling them to rich white folks whose Catholic upbringings made being a capitalist success story a guilty pleasure they had to assuage with crystals, mantras, and the poorly understood workings of Zen . . . They didn’t taste like anything, not even the greasy remains on hamburger wrapper. Magic, though, real, honest to goodness magic, was like a slap of bad candy in your mouth.
