City of the Lost (9781101563137)

by Blackmore, Stephen

  “So,” I say, finally, making them jump. “You want to tell me why you’re following me?”

  Nothing.

  “Or I can just shoot one of you. Pretty sure the other two’ll tell me what I want to know. I’m good either way.”

  “Dude, we’re just supposed to watch you,” the backseat kid says. “Report back what you do. Where you go. That’s it, man.” He looks at the floor. “Fuck. Weren’t supposed to get caught.”

  “You working for Neumann?”

  The baffled looks on their faces tell me that’s a big no.

  “The Bruja,” the driver says. You can hear the capital letter.

  The others are staring holes into him. He’s probably just committed a major faux pas.

  “Go on,” I say.

  “She wants to know what you’re doing, where you’re going,” he says.

  “What the fuck’s a Bruja?”

  “Shut up, man,” the backseat kid says. I point the gun at him, and he takes his own advice.

  “You were saying?”

  “She’s a witch. She’s THE witch. You don’t fuck around with her, man. She tell you to do somethin’, you fuckin’ go do it.”

  Interesting. Whoever she is, she’s got them all freaked out. Maybe a little more than I do. “She wants to know what I’m doing?”

  The driver nods.

  “Well, how about I tell her in person?”

  “You don’t see the Bruja,” the backseat kid says. “She sees you.”

  “Today,” I tell him, “I think we can change the rules.”

  First guy I ever killed was an Armenian bagman who’d pissed off a jewelry wholesaler downtown. The bagman was holed up in this broken-down brownstone in the Nickel, on Skid Row, called the Edgewood Arms, with bars on the windows and carpet worn thin from forty years of high-heeled whores, cigarette burns, and bad luck.

  Guy had two of his cousins in the room with him. I shot one of them in the leg. The other one tackled me. I beat him to death with a table leg.

  Of course, by then the Armenian was running. I caught up with him in the lobby downstairs just as he was heading out the door. I shot him in the back, and gave the guy at the front desk fifty bucks to forget me.

  “You believe in coincidences?” I say as we pull in front of the Edgewood Arms.

  The driver looks at me. “The fuck you talkin’ about?”

  “Probably nothing.”

  The Edgewood’s cleaned up its act. At least as much as any Skid Row flophouse can. Same carpet, same tattered couches. I can’t tell if the stain where I shot the Armenian is still there. There’s too much competition. The thing that’s missing are all the whores and junkies shooting up in corners, but there’s something new in the air. Something I don’t recognize.

  The driver walks up to the front desk, whispers something to the guy manning it. He’s looking back and forth between us. Not happy.

  The phone rings, and the desk clerk picks it up, says a few things I can’t hear, and when he hangs up he’s even more shaken.

  “She wants to see you,” he says.

  I don’t see any cameras, but I’ve got a gut feeling the Bruja didn’t need any to know I’m here.

  “Fourth floor,” the desk clerk says, pointing at the elevator.

  “Don’t ya want to take my gun?”

  “Nah,” he says, laughing like he’s sending a Christian to the lions. “Won’t do you any good anyway.”

  A rickety cage, the elevator creaks with the sound of metal too far gone for the task demanded of it. It stops with a brassy lurch a few inches short of my stop, forcing me to step up onto four.

  This floor’s a little cleaner but not by much. Half the lights are out, and a couple of the rooms are boarded over. There’s a girl at the end of the hall, Latina, maybe nineteen or twenty, long black hair, tight jeans and boots. A camouflage T-shirt that says YOU CAN’T SEE ME in white letters. Her arms are crossed in front of her, the universal signal for pissed-off teenager.

  “Come on in,” she says, voice flat.

  I follow her into the room. Done up like an office with a desk, computers and phones, a large map of downtown L.A. on a wall, a bank of filing cabinets. It looks more like a law office than a witch’s room.

  Like Neumann’s place, though, there are symbols on the walls, playing cards stuck in doorjambs and windowframes. Must be a theme.

  Besides the girl and me, there’s no one else here. I didn’t come all the way out here to talk to the Bruja’s secretary.

  “So, where is she?” I ask.

  She stares at me, hands on her hips, says nothing. After a moment of those soft, brown eyes trying to intimidate me, I figure it out.

  “You’re fuckin’ kidding me,” I say. “You?” The hard look on that fresh face doesn’t fit. The Bruja’s a little kid trying to look mean. It makes me grin.

  “You have a problem with that?” she says.

  Whoever she is, she’s got the guys downstairs scared shitless. She’s got some weight. And she obviously knows something about me. Best way to play this isn’t to intimidate her. That will just make things a bigger pain in the ass.

  “No. I’m good,” I say. “But seriously. You’re not exactly scary.”

  Something in her eases. She shrugs and sticks her hand out to me to shake. “Gabriela Lupe Cortez. I’m the Bruja.”

  I take her hand. It’s warm, and she’s got a good grip. She might not look mean, but there’s more here than just some little girl playing grown-up.

  “You already know my name, I suppose?”

  “Joe Sunday. You’re a leg-breaker for Simon Patterson. Recently deceased.”

  “Yeah, he had some bad luck.”

  “I meant you,” she says.

  Her stare down might need some work, but her confidence sure as hell doesn’t. I outweigh her by a good seventy pounds at least. She’s got to know I’m packing. But she takes it all in stride and throws that at me. This little girl’s got brass balls.

  “You’re just full of surprises.”

  She slips behind her desk, flopping onto the office chair like it’s a beanbag.

  I take the chair across from her, pull out my cigarettes and lighter. Conspicuously flash the Glock in the shoulder holster. If she notices she doesn’t seem to care.

  “I’d rather you not smoke,” she says. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say. “These things’ll kill ya.” I flick the lighter, but before I can bring it to the end of my Marlboro it goes out. I try it again. Same thing.

  “I said, I’d rather you not smoke.”

  “Fine,” I say, putting the cig and the lighter on the desk. If Neumann can give me a light, I suppose she can put it out. Don’t see much point in fighting it.

  “I suppose you want to know why my men are following you,” she says.

  “Men? Those kids should still be running around in Underoos. Where the hell did you dig them up, anyway?”

  “Locals. I have a reputation around here.”

  “So I gathered.” Somebody whose reputation alone can get these little psychopaths to work together has got to have something to back it up. Impressive. Especially from a kid.

  “How old are you, anyway?” I ask. “Sixteen?”

  “Fuck you. I’m twenty-five,” she says. “And I’ve got a masters from USC in sociology.” She says it like I should be impressed.

  “Congratulations. Since you brought it up, why are your ‘men’ following me?”

  “What do you know about magic?”

  I can tell she doesn’t mean fancy card tricks or guys in tuxedoes pulling doves out of their asses. It’s a word I haven’t let myself think this whole time. Even with Neumann’s tricks, Giavetti’s Lazarus routine, I just can’t. Sure, I can’t explain a goddamn thing, but magic? I’d rather think a virus or a drug or, fuck, something else, even though that all makes even less sense.

  But now that she’s said the word, now that it’s in the open … no, I still can’t wrap my
brain around it. The fuck is it? Might as well have said orgone energy, crystal healing, or angels. It’s just another word for Fucked If I Know.

  “At the moment,” I say, trying to light another cigarette, “All I know is that it’s really fucking with my nicotine habit.”

  Her face breaks into a girl-next-door smile. Her whole face lights up. This is the woman who’s got gangbangers shitting their pants when she’s not happy? If I were twenty years younger, I might make a play for her on her looks alone.

  “It’s a lot more common than you might think,” she says.

  Giavetti and Neumann dance in my brain for a second. “I’m starting to get that, yeah. That how you know my name?”

  “It helps.”

  “All right, you’ve been following me. Obviously you want something from me. What is it?”

  She’s playing it off like she planned my coming here. And who knows, maybe she did. “Listen,” she says. “There are a lot of people out there like you, you know. Well, not like you exactly. Others. Paranormals, monsters, whatever you want to call them.”

  “Right,” I say. “The vampires are coming for ya, kid. Bleaah.” I cross my eyes and waggle my fingers.

  She sighs. “They’re not like you’d think.”

  “Wait. Seriously? There are vampires?”

  She points to the map on her wall. Multicolored pins jut out of it like a jilted lover’s voodoo doll. “There are over a thousand homeless in downtown. You know how many of those are addicts? There are worse things, tougher things to come by than heroin. Vampires are people, like everyone else. And they need help.”

  I stare at her waiting for the punchline, but it doesn’t come. Then it clicks. Young, liberal sociology major. Nobody comes to Skid Row unless they’re down and out or trying to save somebody.

  I laugh. “You’re running a homeless shelter for vampires,” I say.

  She fixes me with a deep stare. “More than just vampires, but yes. More or less.” She leans forward to me, face intense. “You think tweakers are bad off, you should see a vampire gone a week without a fix. They get it where they can. Sharing needles, turning tricks. Most of them are HIV positive, or they’ve got Hep C. It’s like any addiction, only closer to needing oxygen than heroin. And they live a long time, regardless. They need help.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “Very noble. The fuck does any of this have to do with me?”

  “You specifically? Not much. Other than you’re looking for Giavetti’s stone.”

  Aha. “He’s already got it,” I say.

  “No,” she says. “He doesn’t.”

  If she was trying to get a reaction out of me, she did a great job. “I’m all ears,” I say.

  “He was spotted in Hollywood earlier today. He’s asking after it. Thinks people know where it might have gone to ground. I want it.”

  If he doesn’t have the stone, then who the hell broke into my house and took it?

  “You and everybody else. Sorry, I already got an offer on the table.”

  “Neumann? Please. I don’t know what he’s promised you, but I can guess. And I can tell you he can’t deliver. And if he could, he wouldn’t. He’s leading you on.”

  “Like I hadn’t figured that out already. But it’s the only offer I got, and I don’t see you ponying up to the bar.”

  “Best thing you can do is get that stone to someone safe. Someone who won’t use it. Someone like me.”

  “Yeah, and why’s that?”

  Her brow furrows. My skin prickles. I don’t know what she’s doing but I can guess. Some magic crap. Whatever it is doesn’t seem to be working because she frowns like she’s just run into a knot she can’t untie.

  “Nice try,” I say. I’m betting she’s used to getting her way with less talking.

  “Can’t blame a girl,” she says, trying to pass it off as nothing. “Let me try a different tack,” she says. “Magic’s a complicated thing. It’s energy, everywhere, pools of it all over the place.”

  “Connecting everything. Yeah, I get it. I’ve seen Star Wars.”

  “No. It doesn’t connect a single thing. It just sits there. You want to use it, you tap into it, like siphoning off gas. But when you do that, it disturbs the pond. Makes ripples. Maybe a little splash. You take a little, but it comes back eventually. People don’t make a big splash. We’re just pebbles. Maybe at most a bowling ball.”

  “And Giavetti’s stone is a bowling ball,” I say. “Big splash. Big fuckin’ deal.”

  “More like a landslide. The well’s been getting dangerously close to empty since Giavetti got to town. Two nights ago it almost drained completely. Where were you at the time, Joe? I’m betting you were dead, and Giavetti brought you back to life.”

  I start to say something, but she cuts me off. “I know he’s aging slowly,” she says. “How slowly I’m not sure, but he’s pretty old. And if he’s experimenting with the stone and using more and more of the local well each time, he’s planning on doing more than just keeping himself from dying. I think he’s trying to do to himself what he did to you but more so. Make himself younger, maybe? I’m really not sure.

  “But I do know,” she continues, “that if he empties the pool it’s going to take a while to refill. Maybe a long while. Days. Weeks, even. There’s only so much in an area. Every time he uses it, the magic stops working for everybody else because the stone pulls so much from the pool and splashes so much out.”

  “I’m still not seeing the point.”

  “What do you think is keeping you alive, Joe?”

  She’s got you there, Sunday. I try to light my cigarette again, forgetting for a moment she won’t let me. Put the pack away.

  “Okay. So somebody uses the stone around here, and I’m fucked. What’s it to you?”

  “Somebody uses that stone and a lot of people are fucked. You’re not the only one running off all that energy.”

  “So you want the stone to, what, keep it from being used?”

  “Exactly.”

  Interesting. Either she really is a do-gooder, or she’s just blowing smoke up my ass like everybody else.

  “I still don’t hear you offering anything might make me want to find it for you,” I say. “That’s what you want, right? For me to find it? You haven’t said anything that solves my little rotting problem. I figure you already know about that.”

  She nods. “I do. And yes, I want you to find it. Look, I can’t bring you back. From what I know, it can’t be done. I can’t promise to keep you from falling apart, either. I don’t know how to do that.”

  “So what can you give me?”

  “Information. Maybe some answers for you.”

  “Maybe?”

  “My source is … fickle.”

  “Yeah? What source is that?”

  “I’ve got a demon in the bar downstairs. Would you like to meet him?”

  Chapter 16

  “He calls himself Darius,” she says, “though that’s not his real name.”

  “But he’s a demon? Like horns and a tail? Shit like that?”

  “You’re really out of your element here, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m fine. Just wanted—” Hell, who am I trying to kid? “Yeah, actually. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on.”

  “Fair enough. He’s a demon. He says he’s an incubus, but I think he’s just horny.” I have no idea what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.

  She pulls the elevator door shut with a clatter, and we head down to the lobby.

  “Okay, I’m gonna stop you here. What’s your piece in all this? Why do you care about the stone?”

  “I told you,” she says. “There are over a thousand homeless—”

  “No. You’re some kind of uberwitch running this—whatever the fuck this little empire is you’ve got. There’s more to it. There always is.”

  Her mouth twists like she’s just bit into a lemon. She’s not used to explaining herself. She doesn’t like it.

  “I b
ought this place about two years ago while I was working on my masters. My thesis was the effects of gentrification on homeless populations. Mostly I just wanted to get out here, help the people I knew wouldn’t, couldn’t get help. Just wanted to give something back, you know what I mean?”

  “Not really,” I say. “So, how’d you get into this whole Bruja gig? Seems pretty sweet if you can make the gangbangers jump.”

  “It’s more of a pain in the ass than you’d think. I was born this way. My family’s been doing this for generations in Mexico. My mom tried to get away from it by moving up here in the seventies, but when I started seeing things that others couldn’t, she finally gave in.”

  “So, this Bruja act. It’s all real?”

  She nods. “It is. I just took who I am and mixed it up with what I wanted to do.” She shrugs. “At heart I’m a social worker. It’ll get easier as I get older. Nobody wants to take a sorority girl seriously.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I say. “I’ve seen some crazy shit in the last two days, but I think you might be the craziest.”

  “Tell me about it. One day I’m picking through applications for jobs with the county, the next day I’m doing this.” Looking at her, I don’t take her seriously, either. But she’s got a disarming smile. There’s something about her that tells me I don’t want to play poker with her. She might look sweet and innocent, but there’s ambition and hunger behind her eyes, too.

  The question I’m not asking is, Why is she telling me all this? I’m an outsider. I’m not part of her cause, one of her rescue cases. She says she doesn’t let a lot of people see her. So why me?

  There’s more to this story. Has to be. No one decides to do this kind of dirty work down here unless there’s something personal in it.

  The elevator stops, and I pull the cage open, four pairs of eyes stare at me.

  “He ain’t dead,” one of her crew says.

  “Last one didn’t die, either,” another answers.

  “No, but his hair turned white, and he looked like he’d aged thirty years.”

  I look over at Gabriela when I hear that. Was Carl here? Did she do that to him? Nothing in her face gives it away.

  Gabriela puts a finger to her lips, mouthing, “I’m not here.” I decide to play along.