by Jason Ridler
“Pretty sure he was doing porno before he saw there was more money in hustling dope. Guy just . . . let’s just say I wouldn’t leave a girl alone with him, maybe even a boy. Has a big, creepy nose with a waxed moustache like some lost member of a barbershop quartet. Whatever, he bought me out good, and all my zombies belong to him. Which is a relief.”
“Gone? Do they have a junkie HQ or squat where they all hang at?”
“That’s just it. They did. All of the junkies dropped in on abandoned clubs downtown. But they got torn down so they could put in a few more tourist traps. I haven’t seen one of them since. It’s like they vanished.”
No one misses junkies when they’re gone. They’re just relieved. They don’t ask questions. “Addicts stick to where they’ve got access. Is Butler still hustling here?”
“If he is, it ain’t smack. Though word was he also had contacts in the Golden Triangle. Asian gangs and revolutionaries all too happy to sell dope to the USA to fuel their revolution against Uncle Sam.”
“Gods of war love irony. Where can I find this Mick Butler?”
“Don’t know, never asked, got no clue. Know he’s never around the Boardwalk. I wanted nothing to do with that creep once he bought me out.”
“Then who do the kids here buy drugs from?”
“Weed? Everyone’s got it. Man, you need to buy a clue.”
“I mean something stronger. Something like speed. What some call Black Lotus.” Billy pursed his lip as if to keep more words from spilling. “Your buddy Slumber Jack? Pretty sure he was enjoying a particular variety.”
Billy raised his hands. “Look, I never heard of Black Lotus till you mentioned it, man. It sounds like Spanish fly for those with an Asian fetish. If it’s something Jack is into, hey, bodybuilders and wrestlers were among my best customers, not for smack, but other shit. They’re all at the Muscle Beach Gym or the Olympic Auditorium, but that’s as far as I go and as far as I know, dig? Can I go now, officer?”
I nodded and he turned to leave, then looked back. “But if you go poking around Mick’s clients, be careful. He’s not just a creep. He’s tough. Not like Jack, not pretend tough. Carries a long knife and always smiles when he touches it.” He shivered. “Fucking with that dude is a funeral waiting to happen.”
“Thank you for another prophecy,” I said, and Billy tsked and left for the Boardwalk.
I followed him back to the Boardwalk and watched fans swarm around him as he proclaimed Kevin the winner. Jack was, incredibly, already on his feet, stumbling toward a toilet, tanned body covered with the grit of the Boardwalk like a pox. My tie around his ankle had slid off . . . and he wasn’t bleeding.
I hadn’t done that good a job. That wound had healed in minutes.
The wind had scattered the Bicycle deck like giant confetti. A few cards were still slipping and sliding, spinning and tripping. One came close to me and I snatched it between two fingers:
The Joker. I put it in my front pocket.
Kevin, riding on his board at the pace of the crowd, was grinning ear to ear, a dripping-wet bag of weed tucked in his jean shorts, hair soaked but skin quickly drying. I stepped out, waved. “Hail to the king of the Boardwalk!”
Kevin stopped and the crowd lurched forward. He was blocked from view until he silently communicated for them to part the way. “Not if you hadn’t been so good at chasing for last place.”
Everyone laughed, but only he and I got the joke. “Kid, I’ve been the last in line since before you were born.”
“Still, thanks, man. You ever need a place to crash, we have it for you at Tumbledown.”
“Much obliged,” I said, and Kevin and his bevy of fans wheeled and walked off down the Boardwalk, then turned and headed into the city.
With them gone, I strolled down the Boardwalk, and took inventory:
My feet ached from gripping the earth like I was on a balance beam above the River Styx. My nose was crusted with blood from joyriding for about two seconds; I was pushing myself toward the edge of the grave if I kept it up.
Black Lotus seemed to be tied to the Boardwalk drug culture and this scuz Mick Butler. Jack Lumber had used it, and the smell made me positive it was the same kind that got dropped at the Legion Hall. Jack was a wrestler as well as a musclehead. Billy Mars had sold to both and Mick Butler had taken over his clientele. If Mars was telling the truth, Black Lotus didn’t come into play until Butler was on the scene. Whoever put Cactus in the hospital was tied to Black Lotus and, as of now, that meant Mick Butler, wrestlers, and bodybuilders.
I knew where to find the muscleheads: here on the Boardwalk at the open-air gym. It was time to find some denizens of the squared circle and maybe Mick Butler.
But first I needed to check how the wider world was doing.
Passing a shack selling crystals that would cure cancer with energy that had no “chemicals,” I came to a phone booth that hadn’t been busted or used as an outhouse. Plastered on one side was a poster.
FRIDAY AT THE OLYMPIC AUD! WRESTLING ACTION!
SEE THE MOST DANGEROUS MEN ON EARTH COMPETE IN THE RING!
PLUS, LOCAL ROCK SENSATION WITCHIE POO!
Scrawled across WITCHIE POO was the word CANCELED.
The picture featured a supermensch with a buzz cut crushing the world in his colossal hands and standing on tiny legs. Wrestling and rock and roll? Well, even without the music, I guess I knew what my Friday night was shaping up to be.
One dime and seven digits later, I had access to my message service. Which I was not looking forward to.
“Thump & Grind Burlesque Club and Review.”
“Hey, Lace,” I said. “It’s James.”
“Of course it is,” she said. “I just started my period and hadn’t had enough of a cramp in my gut yet, so you’re right on time.” And yet, all I could see on the back of my eyelids was the dynamic, buxom thirty-year-old bottled-scarlet whose command of beauty was second only to her ability to dance in high heels with fans, a combination that made every man in the room beg for more, knowing none could have her.
But they didn’t live in the storage unit of the Thump & Grind, where some nights a girl just wants to relax with a man who will treat her right and ask no more than to make her feel good.
When it came to dating, I was simply tragic.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry I had to cancel our dinner reservation, but I was—”
“On a case. You know what James? You are a case.”
“Lace, please, listen, you’re right. I sullied my honor as a gentleman and I’d like to make it up to you.”
“This better be good,” Lace said.
“The Bijou Lounge. Lobster. Champagne.”
“Keep talking.”
“Bananas Foster.”
There was a pregnant silence. “How did you know that was my favorite dessert?”
“Unlike most men, I actually listen when a beautiful woman talks to me.”
She snickered. “Okay, you’re out of the doghouse by a paw. Even though I know we aren’t going anywhere near the Bijou. Now what is it you really need?”
“What? No, Lace, I was—”
“You’ve buttered my muffin just fine, and you’ll be doing it all night to make up for abandoning me at Clio’s. What do you want, James?”
“I need you to see if there are any messages on my answering machine. If so, you need to play them and hold the receiver over the speaker so I can hear them.”
“You don’t mind me listening in on your business?” she was practically salivating.
“I trust you, Lace. Plus, this is important. One of my friends was almost killed today.”
I told her about the Legion Hall.
“I heard about it on the radio,” she said. “Protesters attacking veterans? I think I prefer the sixties, thanks.”
And I would prefer the future, since most of the sixties had me running around trying to stop Armageddon cults from turning the peace and love generation’s happenings into mass grav
es. “Will you help, Lace?”
“’Course I will. Call me back on your line.”
“But my door’s locked.”
“Oh, James, everyone has a key to your fucking office.”
She hung up.
I fished for another dime while an old man in a sunhat pulled down across his face circled the booth. He tapped on the glass. “How long you gonna be?”
“Can’t tell until I hear from the other side,” I said, vaguely mysterious, hoping he’d assume I was strange and not worth mucking with.
“Then can I make a call first?”
“Sir, on any other day, sure, but right now a friend of mine’s in the hospital and—”
“Oh, save your bullshit stories, James.”
The man raised his head and glared into my eyes. Any courage I possessed fled faster than a gambler from a bookie.
Edgar Vance’s face was ghost white with sun cream, his eyes black and red with magic that I could not taste because my mouth was dry with terror. “Dead men have no time for such tales,” said my mentor.
14
EDGAR RAISED A MELTING ICE CREAM CONE TO HIS leering mouth. The cone almost duplicated the deformed shape of his never-noble Roman nose. “I see you can take the kid out of the Boardwalk, et cetera. Prithee, James, what pathetic problem are you calling a quest now?”
When scared to the bone, try banter. “Thought you liked playing dead. Alicia Price is still sending out goons for your skull.”
He licked his lips. “Ah, she is a feisty piece of ass, is she not?”
“Whatever floats your boat, Edgar. What do you actually want?”
“Same thing as before.” His eyebrows raised. “My offer still stands.”
It wasn’t an offer. It was a death sentence, complete with indentured servitude that didn’t end until I wound up splattered in some mage war I didn’t care about. Edgar had freed me from my previous bondage when I helped him fake his death. Now, for the second time since his “death,” he was trying to get me to volunteer myself back into slavery.
“No,” I said. Not brave and bold, but clear and terrified.
“You know, James,” he said, then took a long lick of vanilla ice cream with his cratered pink tongue. “Mmm. Vanilla. The most boring of flavors to those who crave novelty every second of their life. But there are layers of flavor in vanilla, a flavor that stretches back in time to the days of . . . well, you tell me, my charge.”
“I am not your charge,” I said as politely as my fear and anger would allow. “And vanilla is rooted in Mexican and Mesoamerican culture and traditions.”
“Full marks, but do you know what you must do to make a flavor this profound and deep?”
“Is this question rhetorical?”
His gaping grin hitched higher, and I knew my smart mouth had overplayed my anxious hand. “It must be done in stages. First, you pluck the young flower from its home.”
“You mean kill it.”
“Then you sweat it until it reveals to you all the power and flavor it has.”
“Charming.”
“Then you dry it. Force it to become the best it can be.” “I’m seeing a pattern here.”
“Then you condition it to be even better than its potential.” He took another lick. Lace was waiting, but if I fucked up here, I’d be dead, or worse. Edgar would take great joy in ruining everything in my life just to make me suffer. “You’re wasting your time. I could help you catch those you seek.”
My lungs froze, not wanting to breathe the same air that carried Edgar’s promise. “How?”
“Oh, I forgot, you are a lousy detective. You barely solved the riddle of those rocket-ship sex idiots. Really, James, picking up coins on cases involving that idiot Crowley? I raised you better than that.”
“Those aren’t who I seek,” I said. “You’re bluffing.”
Again, the words fell faster than my common sense could grab, and this time I saw the cinder in Edgar’s eye flare.
“Careful, my charge.” He tapped a yellow talon on the glass. “I could hex this box into a first-class ride to the nethers and leave you on burning sand littered with the eyes of those mad enough to cross me once upon a time. Does that sound like a bluff?”
All hydration in my body vanished. “No.”
“Good boy. Now, about the Indian who’s fading into the Pale. Oh, fine, I can read your face. The Apache warrior whose back is now a slaughterhouse buffet of blood and guts. You want those who did this to him? Fine. I’ll take you to them. I’ll help you stop them. And if Geronimo falls, well, maybe I know a trick or two to drag him back into his carcass, though I suspect he’ll find a way to kill himself because of the pain of being a cripple. Anywho, that’s what I’m offering.”
“What’s the price, Edgar?” I said.
His finger cut a single line in the glass. “One day in my service. One day doing real magic, not this dimestore variety which, I must say, you’re even getting worse at. That ‘joyriding’ nose bleed was pathetic.”
“Why so little time?”
“Because you know that’s all I need to convince you that you really want the Big Time. One day, and you’ll volunteer the rest of your life. I’ve plucked, sweated, dried, and conditioned you, James. You just need a taste of the Big Time . . . then you’ll forget about these rubes, marks, and civilians.”
If he’d stopped at Big Time, he might have had a deal.
“No.”
He blinked and the eye turned molten before returning to its “normal” green hue. “As my hearing is perfect, I take it that declining my offer had something to do with my disdain for your clients. Really, James. The world is made of those who rule and those who serve. The better quality the servant, the much greater the ruler.” I kept my lips shut as he shoved the entire cone into his large, gray mouth. He crunched down, almost giving me brain-freeze by proxy. “Suit yourself,” he said, chewing through his food and words like a slob. “But as I told you before, you’re a terrible detective. When your Injun friend dies because you were too stupid to find his killers, my offer will have expired.” He swallowed, then held out his finger as if to flick the glass. “And your guilt will eat you alive.”
He flicked the line he’d etched in the glass and the entire panel shattered around my feet.
Edgar was gone.
I kicked the debris off my wingtips, though being sockless meant I had to take each shoe off and shake out glass ground to powder. Passersby gave me the stink-eye and families pulled their kids closer as I fetched another dime, grateful that no one wanted to harass the freak who’d destroyed public property and then stood in its remains. I started to dial Lace.
. . .dies because you were too stupid to find his killers . . .
I stopped, my finger still stuck in the dial.
Edgar had said that if I didn’t find the villains who had attacked the vets, Cactus would die. I would help cause his death.
Me. Responsible. Whatever Edgar knew, whatever secret fate he implied I was tied to, was gnawing at my courage and moral code.
The answers I needed were hidden middle of a Black Lotus-flavored, three-layer magic shitcake and, so far, I had barely even tasted the frosting.
I finished dialing with a quivering digit.
Three rings. Four. Five.
Click.
“I swear to Christ, if you hold me up any more than you already have I will take it out of you in flesh.”
“Even angry,” I said to Lace, “you sound sexy.”
“Oh, you’re not getting any action that easy.”
“Lace, you’re absolutely right. A woman of your quality needs better. And I aim to give it to you. As much as you want.”
“What I want is to get back to my book.”
“What novel you reading these days?”
“Not that you care, but it’s a short story book.”
“I should have figured you for a more refined reader.”
“Keep the compliments coming and maybe I won’t tear
your head off. Some guy named Beaumont. God, so creepy. Used to write for Twilight Zone. You finish one story, and you need to read another to get the scare out.”
I’d had enough scares to last me a lifetime; didn’t need to chase it in books. “Sounds great. Say, are you near the machine?”
“I’ve been sitting at your desk for ten minutes while you were jerking off in that booth.”
“Great. Is there a—”
“Flashing light? Yeah, it’s brighter than the Bat-signal.”
“Great. Hit rewind.” The reel-to-reel whizzed in the arcane manner of machines talking backwards until there was a click. “Okay, now, hit the big blue button.”
Thunk.
A hiss.
Then a scratch before a voice I wasn’t expecting.
“Mr. Brimstone? James? This is Veronica Carruthers.”
“Who?” Lace said, but I shut up and listened.
15
“I . . . WANTED TO SPEAK TO YOU, PERSONALLY, BUT I understand if this is the best way to do so.” Her velvet voice sounded as if it had marinated in a flask of gin and seasoned with one long Pall Mall. “Alan has been doing as you asked, and from what I’ve heard they’re all blaming the . . . hippies who were outside the place.”
“What a witch,” Lace said.
“But that’s not all. I went to the hospital to check up on your friend, the Indian fellow, Cactus? Our families are donors, so I hope you don’t mind that I asked some questions. Now, normally I’d never do such a thing, but your friend saved us all. Just like you saved me.”
“Oh god, James,” Lace said. “Is this your latest twist?”
“She’s a client,” I said. “Now, please, shhh!”
Lace groaned.
“It appears he’s in a coma. They’ve stopped the bleeding, given him a lot of blood, removed the shrapnel, and stitched the wounds up. He has not regained consciousness. He’s on an IV for hydration, medication, and nutrition. One lung has collapsed, so he’s on life support for now. But, well . . . there’s another complication.”
She paused like she was preparing to deliver bad news.
She delivered it. “An attorney showed up with some legal documents. They stipulate that if Sergeant Hayes is in a coma for more than a day, according to his wishes, they are to take him off all medication and life support. That would be tomorrow morning. It’s all quite legitimate and the hospital doesn’t dare go against such documents. I’m . . . I’m sorry, James.”
