by Jason Ridler
The doctor turned back to me. “This man’s wishes are to be carried out, whoever you are.” He noticed the tube. “You took that out? Are you a doc—” He noticed the name embroidered on the coat. “What the hell? That’s MY coat. I’ll have you—”
Cactus’s eyes snapped open. “You touch that man,” he said in dusty gasps, “and I’ll have you up on charges of medical misconduct for letting an idiot like this anywhere near me. Now get out! GET OUT! I am alive and will kill you!”
He left.
Cactus’s body sagged. “I can’t believe it.”
“What, that you’re alive?”
“That you did it.” And for the barest of moments, Cactus smiled. “You did good, Brimstone. Now let me rest.”
I smiled. “You’re welcome, Sarge.”
I opened the door and he snickered. “And you’re right. You do have the worst taste in clothes for any man on two legs.”
“Ain’t that a fact.”
I exhaled a day’s worth of hellish worry, mouth so dry I could drink the Amazon without quenching my thirst. I dragged myself to the “quiet” room I’d been allowed to use, thanks to a sweet nurse.
Inside was a man in a blue double-breasted blazer with immaculate salt-and-pepper gray hair. “You must be Mr. Brimstone,” he said, annoyed and unimpressed.
“You must be Foster Carruthers. Alan’s big brother. The head banana at Caruthers and Caruthers Pharmaceutical.”
“Please make this short,” he said. “I was intrigued by the message you left with my secretary, about this case, but I’m a busy—”
“Yes. This case,” I closed the door. “See, I know it’s you who’s behind it all. Oh, not directly. Hitler never signed anything saying ‘I am the one behind the death chambers.’ Plausible deniability, and all that jazz. But your company is fucking around with something far more dangerous than you can imagine. And you’re using the good people of L.A. as lab rats. It stops here.”
“Your allegations are as ludicrous as your attire.”
“But no less honest,” I said. “I’m wearing the gear of a man’s whose heart exploded because of you. I rescued a bunch of kids who would have died under the supervision of your guy, Sonny. See, I asked Alan about his lighter. Really nice. He said people only get that if they’re long-term and loyal.”
“I suppose you have proof of this man having one of our lighters? Because, even if you did, it’s meaningless.”
“Oh, in a court of law? Absolutely. But I don’t do court cases. Too much ink. And no, Sonny’s arson left nothing to salvage but his bones and those of some of your victims. Couple of dozen in the basement, anyway. I’m sure there are more.”
“You are talking nonsense.”
“You did a fun trick with the attack on the veteran’s hall. Your operatives did a clumsy job of making it look like bikers were infiltrating the hippies. Using protests to cause havoc. That’s where the cops went, no doubt figuring they’d always be able to pin something on the Angels or the freaks.”
He stood. “You are a fool, talking idiocy, and wasting my time.”
The door behind me opened.
Kevin stood in it.
In his hands was a large desiccated root, or what was left of it. It stank of smoke. Black Lotus smoke.
Foster couldn’t disguise his recognition completely. His jowls shook.
“Now, I don’t know how you got hold of Black Lotus, let alone got it to California. Maybe somebody discovered it somewhere and sold it to your people. Maybe they stole it from Mick Butler, another man you murdered. It doesn’t matter, because it is gone. All of it. Every bud. Every leaf. Every petal. And we’re going to the incinerator in the basement to finish the job right.”
“You . . . you have no idea what you’ve done,” Foster growled. “We were . . . Alan was going to walk again.”
I swallowed. “Sorry. Your brother’s a good man, but his life shouldn’t be built on a pile of corpses.”
“Ants,” Foster said, reaching for the roots, then pulling back. “You people, all of you, you are ants. When the time arrives, you won’t even see us coming before we squash you out of existence.”
“Fleas,” Kevin said, catching the guy off guard. “We’re fleas, Mr. Carruthers, not ants. You see, fleas go where you can’t. You can’t really protect against us until you start scratching where we have bitten. By then it’s too late. We will have spread disease that we’re immune to. Try it again, Mr. Carruthers. Try using the people of Venice or Santa Monica. Try, and see how we bite back.”
Apoplectic, purple-faced, with eyes nearly spinning, Foster yanked open the door and stormed off just as Veronica arrived pushing Alan in his wheelchair.
“Foster?” Alan said. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ll talk at home,” he said, and shoved by his brother, then continued his storm, leaving with the kind of impotent rage that leads to an early heart attack—even if you’re not a wrestler.
“Thanks for the gardening work,” I said to Kevin. “Mind polishing it off?”
“They’ll never even find one ash,” he said. “I hope your friend is okay.” Kevin nodded at Veronica and Alan, turned a corner, and was gone. I felt a tad bit better about the future of the country.
“Friend?” Alan said. “Oh god, are we too late?”
“Easy,” I said. “Cactus woke up about five minutes before they were going to yank his cord.”
Alan smiled. “You must be relieved. Did you ever find out who was behind it? Is that why you called Foster?”
Veronica was in a lovely green outfit, including a designer scarf that covered the damage that I’d done to her neck. “No. Whoever did it was smarter than I was. Foster didn’t like hearing the confessions of a loser detective. Suspect he’ll pay someone far better than me to get to the truth.”
And that word punched my guts so hard. I wasn’t telling Alan and Veronica the truth about his brother’s evil or the nefarious deeds he’d ordered, but that wasn’t my job. There was another truth hanging around us like a bad smell. Looking at Alan in his chair, his face still bandaged from the shrapnel he’d taken, that I couldn’t help what happened next.
I went to one knee.
“Alan? I have something to tell you.’
He nodded, seriously, and Veronica clutched her scarf.
“I’m sorry.” I gulped. “I’m sorry for fucking your wife.”
His face went blank.
“Oh?”
I blinked. “Yeah. Uh, this would be where you punch me.”
He smiled. “She didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That she told me. It’s fine. James, really. You both almost died. You saved her life. Hell, if I was you, I would have done it.”
Veronica scoffed. “Don’t talk like that! He’s just trying to be modern about such things.”
He laughed. “Come on dear, we need to speak to the doctor about my physio.”
They rolled away, leaving me shattered, surprised, and unnerved.
Veronica looked back, once, sizing me up, then sighed as if bored with a toy she’d outgrown overnight.
I stood in the hospital hallway, what was left of Herc’s shirt falling at my feet with every move, Jack’s trunks and boots smelling riper than hell. I fell down laughing.
“You finally gone mad, Jimmy?”
Above me was Detective Dix, and I put out—well, up—my wrists. “How about some silver bracelets, Dicky? I think I need some time on the county.”
He shook his head and stuck out his hand. No handcuffs hung from his fingers.
“Get up. We need to talk. And not here.”
36
HALFWAY DOWN THE HOSPITAL ELEVATOR SHAFT, his thick finger punched the emergency stop. Bells rang until he pushed the button again, turning the alarm off.
“Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me who did it.”
“Why? Aren’t you the detective and me just a schlub in a b
arbequed outfit?”
Dixon positioned himself none-to-nose with me. Any closer and we’d be kissing. Not something I even wanted to consider. “The bikers were a ruse. They’re a dead end. They don’t have a political agenda. Plus, the other attacks we got solid leads on and they aren’t bikers or hippies. There’s a web here, but the spider keeps moving. Who pulled this operation and why?”
“If I tell you, will you do me a favor? Will you help me find my car?”
“Oh, for fucksakes, say it.”
I did. Dixon’s hard stare was Medusa-grade stony. When I
was done, he wiped his five o’clock shadow so slow I could hear the burn. “C&C? Dogtown? Exploding hearts? Black flowers?”
“Yup.”
He punched “G”, then muttered to himself. The door opened. “I can’t believe I bothered to even listen . . .”
“Hey! I am not lying.”
I followed him out past the gift shop and through some glass doors. His Belvedere was parked at the curb.
And right behind it was Lilith. Electric blue, pristine and pretty, untouched and unharmed, as beautiful as when I lost her yesterday. “Mercy!” I said. “That’s my car! Dixon, how the hell did you—”
His straight right fist hit my sternum and I dropped like a medicine ball, breathless and seeing spots. “Because I actually thought you might be good for something. You rattled some cages. There is someone behind all the . . . weird garbage going on, too weird even for L.A., and all roads are pointing at you. For a second, I thought maybe Jimmy Brimstone would be an ally, so I found an olive branch to offer. What do you give me in exchange? A cock-and-bull story so bad it wouldn’t make the third feature at a rural drive-in. So, thanks for nothing yet again, Jimmy. I so much as see you near anything weird, I’ll take you up on that offer of silver bracelets.” He yanked me up by the collar. He held my stare, but there was something in Dixon’s eyes.
Fear.
Beating me up, calling me a crap artist in public—nurses, patients, visitors used this these doors, several passing by during his performance—he needed to cover his ass.
Because behind the fear, there was something else.
Belief I was telling the truth.
“Watch yourself, Jimmy,” he said, then shoved me back to the sidewalk. Keys, tossed over his shoulder, landed at my feet.
Watch yourself, Jimmy. Dixon wasn’t talking about himself.
I scrambled out of the way of his screeching tires, then clawed my way back to Lilith.
I opened her door.
Knife wounds marked her leather innards, chunks of foam hung out of scars, and her radio had been yanked out, leaving nothing but green and yellow wires. Acrid smoke stained her. The barest hint of Black Lotus.
I laid one hand on the dash, hotter than an egg fried in hell. “I’ll take care of you, then get the butchers who did this,” I said, then gently, oh so gently, placed the keys in the ignition and made a silent prayer to the gods of fallen creatures.
I turned the key.
Wheezing emerged from the engine.
She was pretty, but gutted. And even though they abused her, she could still roll, still do what she could always do—get me home.
We pulled out of the parking lot, two wounded creatures, and I sang her a chanty about knights of the road as the afternoon sun shined over a city deepening with darkness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JASON RIDLER is a left-wing military historian, writer, and improv actor. He is the author of the Brimstone Files series, including Hex-Rated and Black Lotus Kiss. When not writing fiction and history, he is a Teaching Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and teaches creative writing at Google Arts through More than the Sum vendors. He currently lives in PARTS UNKNOWN, but you can catch him at Ridlerville on WordPress.
