Black Lotus Kiss

by Jason Ridler

  “Catch me!” I screamed. “Please!”

  Kevin hollered something and the gang got their hands up as I threw out my arms.

  I launched myself straight into the crowd.

  Unlike my earlier airborne experience with Bikini as my launcher, this time I made a softer landing. Crashing into the kids, they partially collapsed but, amazingly, they all pushed back and up. I rose from the crowd to even more applause.

  “The main door!” I shouted and they caught on. I rode their palms as more gathered to help bear me away from the ring while Shemp watched from it, screaming so loud I thought he might explode. But his booming rant was swallowed in the mass of the crowd who’d seen a night of wrestling unlike any other and were moving their savior-killer toward the door, a leaf carried by a thousand ants, draining from the seats, ready to take him to the street for who knew what.

  I rode atop the wave of humanity and reminded myself that when the bout had started, they had worshiped Bikini and craved my blood. This is why victorious Roman generals rode through the streets of Rome in triumph accompanied in their chariot by a slave who continuously whispered, “Memento homo”—Remember you are only a man.

  As we approached the door, someone grabbed my hand from below: Margarita, wide-eyed in a trench coat.

  I got my disciples to lower me and held onto her hand as we continued up the aisle, on foot, as part of the crowd pushing its way to the door.

  “You are full of surprises, James,” she screamed in my ear. “Here.” She shoved a heavy canister in my hand, a scrunched-up telescope covered in dials. Watkins’ encoder. My divining rod to Black Lotus! “Find it! Bring it back!”

  “I will. And why the hell did you dose me?”

  She dropped my hand and laughed before being swallowed by the crowd. “There is a rumor you can’t be charmed, gringo. Another customer of mine was curious if it was true. Looks like it is, though you can be influenced. Hope you enjoyed your time at El Dorado.”

  I clutched the encoder to my chest along with Herc’s torn shirt as the crowd pushed me away from her, their sheer volume releasing the doors. Another customer? Interested in me? Edgar? Maybe. He’d made me immune, even to his own charms, but given his recent offer . . . Maybe he was looking to see if anything could break his own spell. Perhaps the petal wasn’t as precious to Margarita as she had made it out to be? Right now, none of it mattered.

  In the drained seats, I saw one couple before being pushed through to the concourse. A big guy—who clearly enjoyed Bud as much as dumbbells—was working his hand up a very familiar skirt as his mouth nuzzled the neck below a very familiar face.

  Veronica’s mouth was agape amid the spectacle of violence and mayhem. A dark part of me wondered if her closed eyes were filled with me.

  Damn it! She was my ride.

  My procession spilled out into the street. Two words ended my triumphal march and the abrupt stop tripped me up, landing me on my ass. Red lights swirled all around.

  “The fuzz!”

  31

  SANDALS, WEDGE-HEELS, BOOTS, KEDS, AND BARE feet stamped around me as I completed my rapid descent from messiah to possible pariah. Hitting concrete finished off whatever was left of my pop demi-godhood thoughts. If that artist Warhol was right, I still had about ten minutes of fame left, but not today. Remembering the dying man in the hospital and that the weight I carried was the Watkins encoder wrapped in a sweat-stained blue ref’s shirt—my way to find Black Lotus—killed any idea of godlike outrage at my demotion.

  A hand came out of the scramble as I wiped blood from my mouth with my forearm. Kevin smiled. “You are the coolest adult I’ve ever seen.” I took his hand, and he did a fair job in pulling me up to my feet.

  “Praise from Caesar,” I said. “Thanks for not letting me become a stain on the concrete, but we gotta go. This place is too hot for even the innocent. Any chance I could crash at your guys’ HQ?”

  “You want to come to Tumbledown?”

  Then everyone’s favorite wet blanket, Austen, showed up. “They took our boards!”

  “What the fuck do you mean?” Kevin’s attention was highjacked by the immediate emergency.

  “The cops, they just grabbed them from me and Garth. They thought we were Brown Berets.”

  “The Chicano activist group?” I said.

  Austen scowled. “The Berets were in the parking lot handing out flyers. We were helping them. Then the cops showed up and grabbed us, took our backpacks, our boards. We got no axles.”

  But I might. “Okay, help me get around the building and I’ll help you guys get home, deal?”

  “Not this guy!” Austen said. “I’d rather go to the joint than deal with him.”

  “Speak for yourself, Austen!” Kevin’s loyalty was, no doubt, inspired as much by the lack of any alternative as by trust in former demi-god me. “Guys, form a square.”

  With that I was escorted around the building by seven kids of varying ages, who hugged the wall as I donned Herc’s shirt, the flaps hanging out to further disguise my trunks and tights. While they kept the coast clear, I examined Watkins’s device.

  It was the kind of craftsmanship I’d only seen in the archives of Edgar’s mansion, a well-dusted collection of assorted baubles, charms, and esoterica from around the world of the arcane. Trinkets and amulets carved and polished by patient hands: pre-industrial, pre-colonial, pre-historical, a range of lost relics and specimens of immense influence. All I could do was watch and dust and listen, because for Edgar wielding magic was something for grown-up sorcerers, not their adepts.

  The Watkins Exposure Meter—or so the encoder was engraved—was cool and modern, a casting of iron and bronze with a compass on top, sheathed in glass, the needle to the compass missing. This was where I was supposed to put a leaf of Black Lotus. A combination of nature and industry created by a nineteenth-century antiquarian who believed that ley lines were the markings of aliens who also built Stonehenge and the pyramids before ditching our rock for parts unknown.

  I flexed my ankle to feel my wallet against my wrestling boot. We turned the corner to find a bunch of cops and Latinos arguing near a squad car. Placards reading “Stop the Illegal War,” “Peace is a Method,” and “Kill the War Machine” lined the ground because all of the non-cop hands were restrained behind their backs.

  “We have a right to protest!” said one man with hair down to his shoulders. “All we did was show up with signs to inform the public. How much of a threat is the free exchange of ideas?”

  The cop had no response until he saw us. “Hey!” said the sweaty patrolman. “Where do you think you’re going? Didn’t I see you guys earlier?”

  “What?” I said, glad my shirt was now buttoned. “Officer, sorry my son and his friends were making hoopla for you. I had to use the washroom and there they went—causing mischief. Well, no ice cream for them when we get home.”

  “What’s that in your hand?”’

  I raised the Watkins Exposure Meter. “Oh, to see from the stands.” I put it to my eye and looked through, face distorting. “The kids love to zoom in on the guys in the ring.” I was glad that my trunks and tights were covered up by the shifting and restless feet of the crowd.

  The cop viewed us askew. “Where’s your car?”

  I thumbed around the corner. “I won a chance to meet Bikini Atoll, so they said we could use the backstage parking lot.”

  “Is that your Lincoln back there?”

  “Yes, sir.” Good. As I had expected, Mick’s car was still here. Which begged the question: Where was he?

  “Fine, go.”

  “Hey, gringo!” The protestor who had been arguing his First Amendment rights wanted my attention.

  “What did he do, sir? He has a right to protest.”

  “Don’t need help from you, just remember what I looked like before you turned away. Take a picture, gringo. Take a picture of what a police state looks like.”

  The cop winced, then saw all of us—witnesses, white a
s milk—looking at him. “Let’s all calm down here.”

  “I know a lawyer,” I said to the young Chicano. “I can call him on your behalf.”

  The Brown Beret leader snickered. “We got lawyers. What we need are witnesses.”

  “I’m one,” I said. “My name is James Brimstone. Private investigator . . . and loving father. Officer? This was a peaceful protest. If you arrest these folks, there’s going to be a lot of paperwork. Save yourselves, your bosses, everyone all that work by giving these kids a break?”

  We all stood there, the cop weighing my logic against the indignation of being told what to do by a civilian. Just then, I noticed the deepening color on my right sleeve—blood from the match was soaking through.

  Time to leave.

  One of cops approached to his senior. “What you want, Sal?” he asked?

  Sal exhaled, looking at the sweet innocence of my cult family.

  Another cop, one with some umph in his voice, said “Let ’em go.”

  “What?” said Sal. “But we—”

  “Just let them go, Weiss. We don’t need the paperwork. And you?” he said to me. “Get your kids out of here. Stop wasting your time with this fake wrestling stuff.”

  “I quite agree,” I said stoically. “Children, to the car.”

  We shuffled off around the corner and the kids started laughing while I tossed a glance back at the Chicano leader. He massaged his hands, free of silver bracelets, then nodded. If I read him right, he’d said: Thanks, but don’t think this squares a hundred or so years of being thought of as sacks of shit by white Americans.

  I nodded in silent agreement, then hustled the kids around the corner.

  The Lincoln was there, all right. Achilles was, too. Lying on the ground near the backstage door right next to Mick Butler, both dead as dirt.

  32

  “RUN,” I SAID, QUIETLY. “DON’T STOP UNTIL YOU GET to the car, then get in the car and wait. Go, now, move it!”

  They bolted as I ran to the two dead men.

  Each had thick bruises around their necks. Strangled where they stood, dead when they dropped. I rifled through their clothes, but nothing, and no taste of magic, either. They were killed and stripped clean of anything useful. As if someone was cleaning up a trail I’d been finding.

  “Hey!”

  Sal the cop stood staring at a guy wearing a dress shirt and wrestling tights hunched over two prone bodies. “Uh. Whatever this looks like, officer, I assure you you’re wrong.”

  His hand slapped his holster. “Stop!”

  I raised my arms, Exposure Meter in my hand. “Easy!”

  Vrooooomm!

  Tires squealing, engine gunning, a one-car drag race was coming straight at me.

  I turned. The Continental blasted forward, Kevin behind the wheel. “Jump!” he screamed. I stuffed the Exposure Meter in my trunks as I leapt, crashing onto the hood, and rolling toward the windshield. I gripped car’s frame before the impact could break the glass. I’d driven Lilith with cracked glass, and I wasn’t about to revisit my past so goddamn soon.

  Sal the Cop screamed and the gang starting forming a thin blue line as the Lincoln’s headlights blinded them all. Kevin—speed demon on any type of wheels, it seems—roared forward like a bowling ball hoping for a strike.

  “Move!” I screamed. “The brakes don’t work!”

  That malarkey tipped the scale as Kevin kept his game of chicken with the cops going, his crew screaming and hollering. The thin blue line went from 3D to 2D as they jumped out of our way. The car skidded, fishtailing so our lights cut across the Berets. The protestors, seeing the pile of cops on the ground, took off—cuffed or not.

  Although I enjoyed the L.A. evening breeze from my al fresco seating on the Continental’s hood, wrestling boots sliding to and fro, I shouted, “Might be less conspicuous if I was in the car!” just as another fishtail pulled us around the front of the Olympic.

  “No time to stop!” Kevin said. “Those Belvederes will be on us in no time.”

  Honks and steady gas drove people away like citizens avoiding Godzilla’s foot. “Then one of you leaders of tomorrow better open the goddamn passenger door!” We swung onto West Washington Boulevard.

  The passenger door was opened and the window rolled down. I flipped my body over so I was splashing the windshield, my sack sticking out so I didn’t crush the Watkins Exposure Meter, which I was quickly coming to view as the Watkins Pain in the Ass Contraption. The kids screamed with wild smiles. “I got an idea.” I pulled myself to the left and grabbed the window frame of the Continental, climbed onto the frame—hand over hand— thanking the gods for the nights and days of slinging elephant shit and grabbing fire, because as bad as the pain might have been, my calluses had caught bullets and I’d lived to tell the tale.

  “How is this better, narc?” Austen said.

  I smiled, then said to the girl in passenger seat. “You’re going to want to get in the back seat, kiddo.”

  I lifted my knees to my chest, the Watkins device stabbing into my already-sore abdomen like a sharpened skeleton key. The kids gasped as my legs shot out straight and I looked like a human triangle holding on to the door.

  Kevin jetted forward at fifty miles an hour, and I sprang out from the car’s frame like a career acrobat, swung in the open window, and let go before the momentum closed the door behind my ass—an ass now snugly in the passenger seat, albeit sharing it with the girl with auburn braids.

  “That was some circus shenanigans,” said Braids.

  “I come from circus people,” I said. “Thanks for the chauffeur service, Kevin,” I said.

  Kevin smiled. “Wrestling. Skateboard. Circus stuff. What don’t you do, man?”

  “Can’t sing, can’t dance, but I’d be grateful for your hospitality until the heat dies down.”

  “No way, Kev,” Austen said from the back seat. “No way. You know the rules. He’s not one of us.”

  “Let’s see,” Kevin said. “He saved me from losing because he stopped Jack in the race. He came in third while you came in nowhere. And he put on two wrestling shows for us while you were losing our boards, and then he helped us find this ride to escape back to Tumbledown. I’d say we owe him the benefit of the doubt.”

  It was egotistical as hell, but Kevin reminded me of me. A younger, smarter, more charismatic, leadership-oriented, friendly, and handsomer version of me.

  With the others agreeing, and asking me a hundred questions about the circus, we carried on into the night. For them, it was exciting. Wrestling got real. They’d faced down their enemies. Seen how the Latinos of this city are treated by their mutual foe. They’d lost their boards but were high on adrenaline and some cloying artificial bubble gum that smelled like a strawberry built by DuPont.

  What they didn’t see was the split jaw of a good man.

  Crowds that worshiped spectacle like a god.

  The three men whose lives I’d touched and who were now dead: one by his own undoing. The other two clearly murdered to keep the trail cold.

  I still had no real clue where it would lead, except that it would not be a ma and pa operation.

  As quietly as I could, I reached into my trunks, yanked out the encoder, and made a prayer to the gods of the ancient world that I hadn’t crossed these fires to be given the Golden Fleece, only to find it destroyed by my acrobatics.

  But the little cylinder was intact. No glass broken. The small compass area reflected my tired eyes back to me.

  “You were wearing a bong?” Kevin said, turning us at a dead light and heading north toward Santa Monica. “Man, that’s a trip.”

  All the kids stuck their heads over the seat to see an old man with a bong. I couldn’t say it, but Kevin had given me the best possible cover for the world of the unexplainable. “Yeah. Was made by an old wizard friend of mine. It got banged up being chased by L.A.’s finest, but it still makes a pretty good telescope.” I raised it to my eye. “Will try and fix it before we get to you
r HQ.”

  As we drove into Santa Monica, I fiddled with the compass’s screws, little brass fasteners I could barely angle with my thumb and started counting all the places where my body was aching. After fifty, I gave up. The adrenaline had fallen away from the gang in the back, who spooned each other to sleep as Kevin drove, a picture that was both sweet and troubling. These kids were being trained for something. I hadn’t forgot about the cults of Venice.

  Whatever I’d find at Tumbledown, it was closer to the truth I needed than anywhere else.

  “You’re a detective?”

  A twist of the thumb, and the barest of movements, the screw began to loosen. “Beats working.”

  “For real? Far out. I didn’t think people actually did that kind of stuff.”

  “You’ll find that when you open your eyes, and see beyond the horizon of your own experiences, the world has every possible kind of work. I’ve done a hundred different kinds of jobs, and also begged for my supper.” I bared my teeth as I delicately massaged the screw back and forth. “Ditch digger. Tent pegger. Short-order cook. Low-rent prize fighter. Sold dictionaries. Sold puppies. Bunked with the army, though I recommend joining when they aren’t dying by the thousands for no conceivable goal beyond our president’s ego.”

  “You’re anti-war?”

  The screw gave, then jammed. “No. I’d have signed up for the Polish army in 1939 when Hitler and Company thought it was a good idea to run the world from Berlin. And I still think we did more right than wrong in Korea.”

  Kevin snickered. “So, you are like the rest. A good soldier if the war is good.”

  “Kid, I just spent all day on skateboards or in a wrestling ring, do you think I made a good soldier?” I went back to the screw, adding a little more heat. “How about you? Tumbledown your home?”

  He shrugged. “It feels right. Like the place I was meant to be. All those jobs you worked, was that in L.A.?”

  “Sometimes. But I’m what you call a retired knight of the road.”

  “Knight of the road?”