City of the Lost (9781101563137)

by Blackmore, Stephen

  As Archie drives, the midget peers at me over the top of the passenger seat. His skin is waxy, like it was carved from a block of resin. I resist the urge to go “Boo” at him. No telling what he’ll do.

  We cut west through Hollywood Boulevard, hookers and johns dotting the street corners, late night deals in front of the Chinese Theater.

  “He have a name?”

  Archie glances at me in the rearview. “Jughead,” he says. Got to wonder what Betty and Veronica look like.

  “I meant the doctor.”

  “Oh. Neumann. He’s a good man. You’ll like him. He can help you.”

  “So you keep saying. How exactly does he know me?”

  He shrugs, Jughead aping his movements. They’re weirdly in synch. “You’d have to ask him.”

  Jughead keeps staring at me. He’s starting to creep me out.

  “What’s the deal with the midget? You brothers, or something?”

  Archie laughs. “Or something. He’s harmless. Unless I tell him not to be.” Jughead smiles with that mouth full of lamprey teeth.

  I file that away for later. Something tells me I’m going to need it.

  The house, a three-story Spanish villa lit up like an airstrip, sits off of Mulholland, that winding spine of Los Angeles that slices the city in two. We hit a private road and enter the grounds through thick iron gates.

  Archie and Jughead escort me through a massive oak door that looks like it was hauled over on a Spanish galleon, wrought iron gas torches on either side of it casting flickering yellow light.

  The inside is an insane mash of art on every wall, every table. Banners in languages I don’t recognize hang from the banisters. Latin inscriptions on plaques, Greek carved into tabletops. Playing cards are stuck in every doorjamb. The place has an oppressive feel. Like a castle or a prison.

  “Nice place.” If you’re a fan of the Inquisition.

  “The doctor likes it.”

  The midget, now off his leash, is watching me with wide-eyed wonder. Like a feral child.

  “Does it talk?” I don’t know where along the ride I stopped thinking of Jughead as “him.” It’s not a label that fits.

  “No,” Archie says.

  Doctor Neumann is sitting at a reading table in a room that the word “library” simply can’t do justice to. The room is two stories tall with shelves to the ceiling. Books, scrolls, notebooks jammed into every nook and overflowing. Ladders every ten feet.

  Neumann’s a tall guy with high cheekbones. Older. Maybe in his late fifties? Hard to tell. He’s fit. Spry, I guess you’d call it. White hair, neatly trimmed goatee.

  “Mr. Sunday,” he says, all smiles. He stands up, crosses the room to grab my hand. Pumps it like he’s pulling up oil. “I’m so glad they were able to find you. I was worried.”

  He looks me up and down. “I see. They found you too late, didn’t they?” His face all grandfatherly concern. “I’m sorry for what’s happened to you. It must have been awful.”

  “I’ve had better days.”

  “I’m sure you have. Please, sit down.”

  The room is full of chairs, but most of them are covered with maps and books. Thick sheaves of paper and rolled vellum cover every horizontal surface. The smell of old books and dust hangs heavy in the air.

  He clears off a seat for me, dumping its contents heavily to the floor, then sweeps it all aside with a kick. I sit down, and he slides onto the corner of a desk.

  “Archie here says you can help me,” I say.

  “Oh, indeed I can,” he says. “But first, and please excuse my rudeness, but when was the last time you, ah, ate?”

  “I had a burger yesterday.”

  “That’s, ah, not quite what I meant.”

  “A few hours ago,” I say. “I killed a whore in Hollywood.”

  He nods. “Good, good. Then we have some time. And time is important. You ate her heart, yes?”

  That’s good? “Yeah,” I say. “Parts of some other stuff, too.”

  He looks thoughtful, considering something. “This is important,” he says finally. “What did you do with the body?”

  “I put a couple bullets into her brain after she started to chew on her pimp. Then I drove both of ’em to a gravel quarry and had them crushed into pulp.”

  He looks surprised. “Oh. Oh, yes, that would do it. Very creative. Very imaginative. That’s an excellent sign.”

  “Okay, enough bullshit, Doc. It’s an excellent sign of what? And can you help me or not?”

  “Mr. Sunday, what do you know of your condition?”

  “I get a bad rash and an irrational urge to eat prostitutes,” I say. “And I’m dead.”

  “Yes, that’s about the size of it,” he says. “But there’s more, obviously. I’m sure you know about the stone?” I nod. “Good, good. I’d always heard that Giavetti couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

  “You know him?” I break in.

  “Know of him,” he says. “By reputation. Now that stone, in case you hadn’t figured this out already yourself, is the key to everything. It made you what you are, and you and the stone are linked, but it’s not perfect. To stay this way, you need to feed. Do you see where this is going?”

  “That’s how you knew I’d eaten,” I say. If they’d found me rotting this would probably be a pretty one-sided conversation. With a lot of “grr, argh,” from me.

  “Exactly. It was inevitable that you were going to kill someone tonight.”

  “So I just go around eating people, then, is that it?”

  He laughs. “You could, I suppose. Or we could do something about it. I can restore what’s been taken from you.”

  “Not sure I want to go back. Giavetti offered to make this stick. Didn’t say anything about hearts but said he could make it without all the messy decomp.” Which isn’t that far from the truth, even if I didn’t believe he could do it. “How about you, doc? Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I can do that. But there’s a catch.”

  “There always is.”

  “I can’t do anything without the stone.”

  I fold my arms. I’m keenly aware of Archie and Jughead in the room, and if they haven’t figured out where the stone is by now, they won’t like what’s about to happen. “Let me guess,” I say. “You want me to find it.”

  “Exactly.” There’s a startled noise from Archie. “My normal means of acquiring it have so far failed. Since you and the stone have, shall we say, an intimate relationship with each other, I thought you might be more likely to locate it.” He glares at Archie. “Not to mention more motivated.”

  “Sir,” Archie says. “I don’t think—”

  “Did I ask you for your fucking opinion?” The kindly grandfather disintegrates only to reappear in an instant when he looks back to me.

  “Knowing Giavetti he would have hidden the stone fairly well. Probably somewhere in that sanitarium he had you holed up in.”

  Wow. He doesn’t know Giavetti very well. Neumann’s already made up his mind about where the stone isn’t, and I don’t correct him.

  “What do you say, Mr. Sunday. Would you be willing to find the stone so I can make you whole again?”

  “Why do you want it?” I ask. If he knows what the stone can do, then he probably knows what Giavetti was trying to do with it.

  “I think you know,” he says, smiling.

  I make a show of thinking about it.

  “How do I know you can do it?”

  He cocks his head to one side, thinking. “About five years ago,” he says, “a book came up for auction in China. It was a set of German research notes from World War II. The stone was held by the Third Reich until the fall of Berlin when it disappeared.”

  “That’s nice.” I pull my cigarettes out of my jacket. I don’t see a no smoking sign, and I wouldn’t care if I did. But I left my lighter in my car, and I don’t see any matches.

  “Allow me,” Neumann says. Flames appear over his fingertips, and he lean
s forward to light my Marlboro.

  “Neat trick.”

  “It has its uses. The Germans were trying to understand the stone by experimenting on hundreds of Jewish prisoners. None of them were what you would call a complete success.”

  Jesus. Auschwitz must have been a walk in the park to what those poor fuckers went through. “And you have the book?”

  “No. I understand Giavetti purchased it. I rescinded my bid. I had an opportunity to inspect it and realized quickly that it was a fake. An excellent forgery, mind, but missing quite a lot of crucial information. Better to not have it at all than to try to follow its instructions.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask, already guessing at the answer and not liking it one goddamn bit.

  “Because I wrote it.”

  He doesn’t look old enough, but that doesn’t mean much in this crowd. I take a deep drag off my cigarette, blow the smoke directly in his face. He doesn’t cough.

  “You’re one evil fucking bastard,” I say.

  “So I’ve been told. The point of this story is that I know how to use that stone far better than Giavetti ever could. In fact, if he’s planning on doing with it what I think he is, he’ll end up in even worse shape than you.”

  That puts a new spin on things. Is Giavetti being set up? The more I think about it the more I realize I don’t know what the hell is going on.

  “That’s about all I can offer as credentials. But I do know that when I was experimenting with the stone, I got almost as far as Giavetti did with you. Unlike him, though, I also managed to reverse it in a few cases. Those subjects who weren’t so far gone that they couldn’t reason, for example.”

  “That why you think it was good that I was imaginative in getting rid of my corpses?”

  “Yes,” he says. “It makes the possibility of bringing you back or of, as you put it, ‘making it stick’ that much easier. I have to admit a grudging respect for Giavetti’s handiwork. Now, do we have a deal?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s a deal.” I don’t see how this would work out any different than if I’d agreed with Giavetti. There’s no proof that Neumann won’t just bring me back and kill me again, but I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.

  “Good.” He scribbles a number on a notepad, tears out the page to hand to me. “You can reach me at this number. I’ll want to keep updated.” He turns to Archie, still fuming at his replacement. “Take Mr. Sunday back. Safely.”

  Archie stalks out of the room, Jughead close at his heels. The midget throws a glare over his shoulder then disappears through the door.

  “One last question, Doc,” I say. “How long do I have?”

  “Before you need to feed? About a day.”

  A day? “You’re fucking kidding me. That’s it?”

  “That’s how it was in the camps. Some lasted longer than others. You’d be amazed how many Jews someone like you could go through in a week. And the emotional toll. Aren’t you glad you didn’t kill anyone close to you?”

  I used to think Evil existed. Now, I wonder if I’m looking right at it. I turn away, not answering him.

  He calls to me as I step through the library door. “Be careful, Mr. Sunday. I know I don’t have to tell you that you’re running on borrowed time. The sooner you get me the stone, the sooner we can fix this problem for you.”

  The drive back is faster. It’s about four a.m. and the sun is still a couple hours off.

  “Interesting guy, the Doc,” I say. “You like working for him?”

  Archie looks at me in the rearview mirror. I can feel him seething in the front seat.

  “I do,” Archie says finally. “I owe him a great debt. We all do.”

  “All?” Something tells me he’s not talking about the midget.

  “I’m not the only one who works for Doctor Neumann. He’s very well known in certain circles.”

  “I’d never heard of him. Guess I don’t run in those certain circles.”

  “Undoubtedly. L.A.’s a big place, Mr. Sunday. There’s more than just gangbangers, porn, and ingénues. A lot more.”

  “’More in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’?”

  “Exactly. I wouldn’t have taken you for a Shakespeare fan.”

  “Is that what it’s from? Heard it in a movie once.”

  So Neumann’s a big fish. How big is the pond? And what kind of sharks are swimming in it?

  I know something’s wrong the moment I see my front door. It’s closed, but the jamb is broken. My porch light is out. The door swings open at my touch.

  I step inside and flick the light switch. The lamp’s been knocked to the floor, casting eerie shadows through the room.

  Whoever broke in did a thorough job. Cushions are sliced open, stuffing on the floor. Books in a pile, pictures off the wall.

  I rush to the bedroom closet, throw it open. The safe’s sitting wide open. Nothing’s missing, not the cash, not the guns.

  Nothing except the stone.

  Chapter 12

  I sift for half an hour before giving up. It’s not here. Neumann said I’ve got some kind of link to it. Maybe if I close my eyes and wish really hard, it’ll call my name or something.

  I try it. No such luck.

  What do I know? I’m starting to panic. I can tell because I’m pacing. I only pace when I’m starting to lose it. I force myself to stop moving and think.

  Wherever it is, I’m not going to find it standing in a pile of busted CDs and overturned furniture. I start righting things, sift through piles of books and tossed through clothes.

  The light outside my window goes from black to gray. I clean the house up best I can, but the thief did such a thorough rollover, the place looks like hell no matter what I do.

  By the time I’ve got things at least livable, the sun’s poking over the palm trees.

  As I’m sorting through a pile of random crap, I find something I know I’ve never had before. It’s a broken piece of a blue card. Like a credit card, but a hole punched in one corner and the words LA COUNTY DE in raised letters. A library card? I pocket it, not sure what to do with it.

  So, how do I find the stone? I don’t know where to start.

  The best person I know at finding stuff out is Carl. But after our fight in the gym I doubt he’ll talk to me.

  Besides, he’ll want to know why I’m looking. What happened to my house. What happened last night. I can’t pull him into this. He’s my friend. Was my friend, at least. Now, I don’t know.

  I push the thought aside. Focus. People, I know how to find. You ask a bunch of questions, break some fingers. Go to the last place they were seen.

  That gives me an idea.

  I find my toppled computer. It’s dented, and the side’s been torn off, but other than that it works fine. I run a quick internet search on the burglary in Bel Air that started this whole mess.

  In a few minutes I have the name of the guy who owned the stone, Kyle Henderson, and his address.

  Henderson took a bullet during the burglary. Went into Emergency with a sucking chest wound, went out in a body bag. He hung on long enough to tell the cops that it was three guys and was able to give a description of one of them.

  The police have thoroughly gone over the place. I don’t doubt that. I don’t know if he was married, had children, or anything else about him. If I’m lucky maybe I can get someone to talk to me, maybe a neighbor. See if maybe there’s something anyone might not have asked.

  Of course, Bel Air people don’t usually talk to folks like me. Roughing up a rich soccer mom with private security a minute away doesn’t appeal, but I’ll figure something out.

  With a place to start, my mind calms down enough to think about things a little. Who’d want the stone? Anybody who knew about it, that’s who. And that list keeps getting longer. Neumann, Giavetti, Frank. I look over the card Samantha gave me, wonder what her role is in all this.

  No time like the present. I wonder if she’s an early riser. I dial
the phone, get her voice mail.

  Before I can leave a message someone starts hammering on my front door.

  I hang up, pull the Glock.

  I smell him before I get there, but I don’t need to do that to know who it is. I know that knock. It’s a cop knock.

  “Goddamn you wear a lot of aftershave,” I say, opening the door. Frank looks like shit. I doubt he’s slept much. “Is that the same suit you were wearing last night?”

  “Fuck you,” he says, elbowing his way in. He looks at the gun in my hand, ignores it. He’s got a pair of Samsonites under his eyes, hasn’t shaved. I’m wondering if the reality of what’s going on is finally sinking in, and he can’t handle it. I don’t blame him. I keep wondering when it’s going to really hit me.

  “By all means, come on in.”

  “I don’t have time to—The fuck happened in here?” He’s in shock, looking at the shambles of my living room like he’s never seen a burglary before.

  “Wild night. What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “We’re going to the morgue.”

  “Thanks, but I already have a place to stay.”

  “It’s Giavetti.”

  “Yeah?” I say. “He finally walk out of there?”

  “Dunno,” he says. “Somebody sure as hell did.”

  The main morgue for L.A. County is across the river on Mission. It’s a sad little neighborhood. Everything covered in a fine layer of gray from the nearby rail tracks and the car smog from the 5 Freeway. I can see the sun rising hazily over the city as we wend our way through early morning traffic.

  “I thought you kept regular hours,” I say. “Why so early?”

  “Not like the morgue closes.”

  “No, but you do.”

  “Since when do you worry about me?”

  “Since you’re the one who’s keeping me out of the massacre at Giavetti’s.”

  “Yeah, well you don’t have to worry about that anymore. The place burned down last night. Any evidence you might have been there went up with it.”

  “Accident?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Any leads?”

  He glances over at me, his cop stare coming out for just a second. “Besides you? Where’d you go last night, anyway?”