“I can see it right here,” Blake says. His voice is even, but inside he’s seething. It’s taken him a few hours to find the holes in his accounts that Fitz left—for the most part the little weasel’s done a pretty good job cleaning up after himself—but there were enough gaps in everything that Blake started seeing a pattern. So he dug a little. And the holes just kept getting bigger and bigger until they were like a cave system made out of money. That sonofabitch.
When Blake got into producing in 1979, the #1 hit was The Knack’s “My Sharona,” proving once again that kids will listen to anything as long as it’s loud and slightly dirty. Disco was on the way out, rock was changing into something brand new and the sounds that would define the next decade were just beginning to be heard. It was a great time. Full of possibility, full of promise. Not bad for a balding, barrel-chested Jew from the Fairfax District.
He signed up four boys from New Jersey with feathered hair who all looked like Shaun Cassidy and dubbed them the Heartthrobs. Sure it was on the nose, but fuck, that’s what he was trying to make them.
It didn’t work. Oh, it started well. Debut album got mad airplay, they did an episode of Saturday Night Live, the Tonight Show, even the goddamn Muppets.
But then some tabloid asshole got a shot of them doing smack and blowing each other in the back of their tour bus and it all went to shit. Blake went into damage control mode. Got the kids into rehab, hid the fact that he was the one got them the drugs. But it wasn’t enough. The public could forgive the drugs—hell, they were rock stars—but they couldn’t forgive that they were gay. Funny how times change.
The backlash was quick and brutal and didn’t end until one of the kids stuck a gun in his mouth at a press conference in Vegas and ate a bullet.
“How much money did he steal?” Sam says.
“Near as I can tell, ten, twelve million? More? Fuck, I don’t know.”
“Where’d it all go?”
“I have no idea, Samantha. Please shut up while I figure this out.”
Blake hedged his bets next and started three boy bands, set up fake rivalries between them, and the press ate it up. For about a month and a half. But their debuts went nowhere, their songs unaired. He cut two albums each with them, hoping something would stick. Worked them around the clock until he was sure he had at least one hit on his hands.
The only way he could keep them going the long hours and crazy schedules was by feeding them a steady diet of cocaine. By the time he’d gotten what he wanted out of them, they were so burnt out there was no way any of them were getting onto a stage in front of anybody. And that was before three of them tried to rob a bank.
Blake tried it one more time. Broke up those bands before they even got off the ground, spent a couple years doing nothing but research, looking at demographics, analyzing sales. Saw an opportunity in the Latino market just waiting to be tapped.
So he sunk all his cash into some kids up from Mexico, called them Los Amigos, got studio time, some kick ass songs, all set to record.
And then Menudo happened.
Fucking Menudo.
At that point he figured the universe was trying to tell him something, so he packed it in and started looking for another career. Music wasn’t going to do it for him, but he just couldn’t let it go. He tried renting out studio space, booking acts, anything to stay in, but none of it paid the bills.
And then, when one of the kids from the Heartthrobs showed up on his doorstep with a wad of blood-covered bills looking to score some heroin, he had an epiphany. He might not be able to make a hit record, but goddamn did he know how to get kids high.
“He’s probably sitting in County on that drug charge. We can bail him out. Get that money back,” Sam says.
Blake is starting to shake, tiny tremors as his control slips. He thought he could trust Fitz, has known him for years, taught him everything, taken care of him, given him a purpose, a life. Blake’s treated Fitz like he’s his own son. And the little shit turns around and stabs him in the back.
“I don’t want the money back,” Blake says.
The money isn’t the point. It’s never been the point. It wasn’t the point when he tried to get those boy bands to hit it big, it wasn’t the point when he started selling drugs, it wasn’t the point when he moved from distribution and invested his cash in Mexican cartels, the Israeli ecstasy market, or Afghani opium farmers.
The point was to build a legacy. Something lasting, something great. He wanted, in his own way, to create an empire.
And now Fitz has shit on it. It’s not like Blake doesn’t have plenty of money. He’s set for life and then some. Ten, twelve million—hell, even twenty million would only set him back a month or two, if that. But a man lives and dies by the people he surrounds himself with, the trust he has for his associates and family, and Blake trusts very few people.
Sure, he has a lot of people working for him, but only two in his inner circle. Only two who know the full extent of his world, what he does and what he’s done to get there.
And now one of them has turned out to be a fucking backstabbing Judas.
“So what do you want to do?”
“We get him out of jail, we bring him back here and then I peel his skin off like a fucking banana.”
“But—”
“There a problem with that, Samantha?” Blake looks up from the computer. “Because if there’s a problem with that, then you’re not the woman I thought you were, and I’d hate to have to hire somebody to take you out, too. Maybe one of those crazy fucking Russians. Or that guy up from Mexico you tussled with last year. How about I bring him on board, give him a nice, fat salary to serve me your goddamn liver on a plate, because you wouldn’t nut the fuck up and do what I fucking told you?”
Sam stares at him, eyes like stone. Blake thinks maybe he’s gone too far. Sam and Fitz are like salt and pepper. Friends for life. Loyalty is a fickle thing, a fragile thing. Like a soap bubble. One false breath and it pops.
“You didn’t know about this,” Blake says, his voice quiet, gentle. “I know that. It’s one thing for him to not tell me, but you? How could he have kept this from you? He betrayed you, too.”
Sam blinks. “I’ll make some calls,” she says, pulls her phone from her pocket and goes into the other room. Was that the right move? Is Sam on his side? Blake can’t tell.
“Of course she is,” says a man’s voice behind him, thick and deep, one that oozes power and confidence.
Blake spins around in his chair, but there is no one there. “Who’s there?” he says, feeling like an idiot. Maybe he’s going senile. Maybe Fitz’s crazy is catching.
“I could tell you,” the voice says, behind him once again, “but then I’d have to kill you.”
Blake leaps out of his chair, spins around looking at the room for shadows, for someone hidden around a corner, for goddamn ninjas. “Where the fuck are you?”
“You okay?” Sam says, poking her head back into the room.
“What? Yeah. Course I’m fucking okay. You make those phone calls?”
“I’m on hold with a detective. You sure you’re all right?”
“I fucking told you, didn’t I? Now leave me the fuck alone. I got work to do.”
“Yeah, sure.” Sam looks at him like she’s not sure if he’s having an aneurysm. She goes back into the other room, leaving Blake alone.
Well, not completely alone.
“She’s a good egg,” the voice says. “I see why you keep her around.”
“I’m going insane,” Blake says. “Aren’t I?”
“No idea, but I can tell you I’m not a delusion.”
“What do you want?”
“Same thing you do. Louie Fitzsimmons.”
Blake sits back down. When he was a kid his grandfather came down with dementia. He was completely off his nut, but he coped by talking to himself. Part of him was still sane enough to tell him out loud that what he was doing was wrong.
“Merle,” he’d
say. “You ought not to set yourself on fire,” to which he would always reply, in a voice more hazy and distant than the voice he told himself things with, “Ayup.” And then everything would be fine.
He was crazy, but it was a crazy he could use.
Maybe Blake is going crazy the same way.
“I’m listening,” Blake says. He keeps his voice low, hoping Sam can’t hear him in the next room. This might be crazy he can use, but it’s still crazy.
“You want Louie Fitzsimmons,” says the voice. “I want Louie Fitzsimmons. Together we can make that happen. I have resources. Friends. Allies. How would you like to form a merger?”
“What kind of merger?”
“The kind that gets you to your goals faster than if you don’t do it. What do you say?”
“What’s the catch?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking that, but this voice is making him wary. It doesn’t sound like he’s talking to himself the way Grandpa Merle talked to himself. There’s an undercurrent to it that he doesn’t like.
“No catch,” the voice says. “It’s very simple. Like I said, a merger. We can work more closely. You, me, some people I have on my payroll. It’s all very above board.”
As sales pitches go, he’s given himself better. Hell, he’s given other people better. But if the voice is him, and he can’t imagine what else it would be, he doesn’t see the harm in indulging himself.
He shakes his head. This is crazy. He’s clearly going nuts. But, hey, it worked for Grandpa Merle. Well, until the disease finally went too far and he walked naked into traffic on Fairfax where he got run down by a dump truck. Took them days to figure out it was him. He was just one long smear of naked old man bits.
Blake drums his fingers on the arm of his chair. Give in to the crazy or fight it and... what? Keep hearing voices? He looks at the spreadsheets in front of him. Millions of dollars stolen right out from under his fucking nose.
By, and let’s be clear on this, a crazy man.
It’s hard to remember that sometimes. Fitz is lucid most of the time, even when he’s on the drug du jour. He passes for normal surprisingly well. Fitz is insane, even if nobody can pin down just what kind of insane he is.
“All right,” Blake says. “Deal.”
“Excellent!” the voice says. “So glad to have you aboard. I’m sure you’ll find the benefits package meets industry standard.”
“Industry stan—” Blake stops mid-sentence as an icy pain seizes his chest and squeezes. The voice thunders in his ears, drowning out the world around him, the sounds of his blood pumping, his heart beating.
“Oh, yes. Everyone who comes aboard gets the same package,” says the voice. “Did I say merger? I misspoke. I really should have said hostile takeover. Goodbye, Mister Kaplan. It was so nice working with you.”
“I GOT HOLD of that detective,” Sam says, stepping into the room and closing her cell phone. She’s been on the phone for the last twenty minutes, bouncing around from person to person, waiting for confirmation. The news is not good. The detective out of Hollenbeck, a customer of Blake’s with a thing for Chinese prostitutes and Bolivian cocaine—as if he even knew where Bolivia was—is telling her things she doesn’t want to hear.
Either Fitz is dead or he’s flown the coop. Neither outcome is likely to make Blake happy.
She’s not sure how she feels about the situation. Blake’s right, of course. Fitz did lie to them, and if he could lie about this, what else has he lied about?
But Blake wants to kill him. Is probably going to make Sam kill him, or at the very least beat the shit out of him, maybe cut off some fingers. If it were anybody else, Sam wouldn’t care. But this is Fitz. She’s known him for years. They’ve been through some shit.
She remembers a time when Fitz saved her life. Blake sent the two of them out to get a couple thousand bucks off a guy in Venice. He’d rented out some twink from Blake’s stable and didn’t pay up. Fitz was supposed to do the talking, Sam was supposed to do the leg breaking.
It didn’t go well.
They went to his condo and instead of paying up, the jackhole decided to pull a revolver and put two into Sam’s chest. The shots went wide and one of them winged Sam before she could pull her own gun.
Would have been over for both of them if Fitz hadn’t picked up a big lamp off a table and bashed the fucker’s head in. Kept hitting him until his skull was just a mess of red paste.
If nothing else, Sam owes him for that.
If Blake wants her to kill Fitz, she’ll just have to figure out if she’ll do it when the time comes. Burn that bridge when she gets to it. She takes a deep breath, steels herself. She’s not sure which possibility is going to bother Blake more: that Fitz is dead or that he might have gotten away.
Probably that there’s no solid answer either way.
“I got something,” she says, stops when she sees Blake sitting at his computer and staring into the distance. “Blake? You good?”
Blake slumps a bit in his chair; Sam rushes to him, but he waves her off. He straightens, seems to grow a couple inches. Sam can hear a strange crackling hum for a second, and then it’s gone.
Blake spins his chair to face her, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. Not the kind of smile she’s ever seen on Blake’s face. He looks wrong somehow, like he’s not quite fitting in his own skin. Like his eyes aren’t quite his own. Younger, tighter. His hair has more of a sheen.
The word that comes to Sam’s mind is hungry.
And also feral.
“Samantha,” Blake says, his pupils widening and shrinking down to pinpoints before settling into something that looks almost normal. “I have never felt better.”
Something about that look, about those words. Sam has never been more terrified in her life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FITZ COMES TO slumped on a wooden chair in the middle of some kind of Greek temple with a high, curved ceiling, walls of blue-green marble interspersed by stone columns, the floor a complex mix of yellow, white and green tiles. Marble statuary lines the walls, women in classical poses, many of them missing limbs, noses, pieces of carefully carved clothes.
One in particular, a woman in robes holding a snake or something in one hand—Fitz can’t tell—and an egg in the other with a little angel baby at her feet, takes up a space at the front of the room. The statue is much larger than the rest.
His vision is blurry, his head pounding. He pulls himself up straighter and his chest screams in agony. He checks and sees that one of the Taser barbs is still stuck in his flesh, straight through his shirt. The skin is singed where the barbs went in, a dark circle of burnt flesh around nasty, puckered wounds like he’s been attacked by pissed-off hornets with flame throwers.
He plucks at the remaining barb the way he might a splinter, grits his teeth and manages to work it out of his chest. It hits the floor with a tinny ping that echoes throughout the chamber.
“You’re awake.”
Fitz turns in his chair, his back getting in on the pain orchestra, and winces. A tall man with dark hair and a goatee, purple robe, gold decoration at the hems. A glass of dark red wine, in a hand covered in rings. He steps through a door at the back of the room. Behind him, Fitz can see another room in the same style, more marble statuary lining the walls. To the side is another door heading into a similar room.
“That’s a word for it. Who the fuck are you?”
“I am very glad you asked that question,” the man says, stepping further into the room and sipping at his wine. Two of the yoga moms who chased Fitz down step in behind him.
Eyes wild, hair sticking out in manic tufts, their bodies vibrating like an engine running too hot and straining at the bolts keeping it under the hood. They stand stock still, breathing shallow and rapid, eyes bouncing around in their sockets like ping pong balls. Fitz isn’t sure they can actually see anything.
“Don’t suppose you’re gonna give me an answer?”
“In time. Right now I’m more inte
rested in the fact that you don’t already know.”
“‘Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name’?”
“Quite,” the man says. “When you encountered Medeina in the hospital, how long did it take you to know who she was?”
There’s something about this man that’s pricking the back of his mind, and now that he knows what he’s been dealing with—even now he has a hard time saying god—he knows what it is. Did he feel that same thing with Zaphiel? He thinks back to the hospital parking lot, to the warehouse. Yes. It wasn’t enough for him to notice it, then, but yes, it was there.
“Not long,” he says. Fitz’s instinct is to lie, keep his knowledge to himself, but this guy already knows what happened at the hospital, or at least some of what happened there, and if he’s a god, Fitz can’t imagine he won’t have other ways of getting the information he wants.
He looks at the two yoga moms. Their clothes are torn, spotted with blood from where they’ve scratched themselves. Their fingernails are cracked and torn, blood all up and down their hands.
He’s seen crazy up close and personal, and this is the kind of crazy that gets you a Thorazine drip and a straitjacket. For all the insanity in their eyes, he gets the distinct sense that they’re drunk.
“You hear voices? Have trouble coping with life? It all gets a little too busy?”
“Yeah, I heard this bit already,” Fitz says. “And if you know about me then you know that that’s all true, too. So how about we cut the bullshit, you tell me who you are and what you want and I’ll be on my way.”
The man laughs. “Well, I’m sure I can accommodate some of that. You want to know who I am?” He takes a sip of his wine. “Let’s see what you can do with this.”
Fitz doubles over in agony. More pain than he’s ever experienced. Like having his head smashed in with a bowling ball over and over again. Images, sounds, memories, knowledge. Too much to process, too much to understand. It’s all a blur, but over a few seconds that seem to last an hour, one thing becomes clear.
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