“Can you think of any reason he might have gone off on his own?”
“You got a business card? You could be pretending to be Murphy.”
I showed her my credentials, which were way less impressive than hers. She looked at the card, took a swig of champagne, and said, “He was hired to steal something. I could tell it was a big job. He gets excited at a challenge. He came back all smug, so I knew he’d pulled it off. I went off to work. When I came back, he was gone.”
“My aching head tells me somebody else came looking for him.”
“Some thugs. They said he’d been well paid to steal ‘the box,’ whatever that is, and he’d better cough it up or else. They didn’t believe me when I told them I had no clue where he’d gone.”
I suppressed a grin. Enitan had put me on the right track after all. “I take it they tried to convince you.”
“They tried. I convinced them that wasn’t a smart move.”
“I’ll bet you did,” I said, rubbing my temple. “What did the guys look like?”
“Thuggy.”
“That’s not really narrowing down the field.”
“I’m not very good with faces.”
Alexis’s version of events explained something that had been bugging me. If this had been a straight ransom job, the thief would have left the note in the safe once he’d stolen the box instead of delivering it the next day. The original buyer had wanted it for another unknown purpose. Once Sebastian had either realized his prize was worth more than he’d thought or passed it on to somebody else who knew its true value, the ransom note had been delivered.
“Sounds like we have two possibilities. Your delightful boyfriend decided to keep the ill-gotten goods for himself, or he found himself a better-paying buyer. Either way, he made himself scarce, before the guy who hired him cottoned on, and left you to face the music.”
“Sure seems that way.”
“So why do you want to find him? Seems to me you’re better off without him.”
Alexis flexed her biceps. “I want to break every bone in his cowardly body.”
Sebastian had dunked himself in a whole septic tank of crap. Laureen, the unknown party who’d hired him, and now Alexis were all gunning for him. I didn’t know which one he should fear the most.
“Sounds like you have good cause,” I said. “Does he have any bolt-holes you know of?”
“No, otherwise I’d have gone there myself.”
“How about habits? Places he likes to hang out?”
“He’s a big gambler. We met in the Colosseum. He loves the fights. But he wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there if he’s got people looking for him.”
“Do you have a photograph of him?”
“I burned it.”
“How about a description?”
“Tall. Mexican by birth. Wears his hair long. Handsome and he knows it.”
“Any distinguishing features?” I was thinking if he was still around, he would most likely be in disguise. Plus her description was so vague, I could have picked out half a dozen wrong guys. I was beginning to wonder if she was shortsighted.
“His left pinky is missing above the first knuckle. He always keeps his fist clenched to hide it. Did I mention he’s vain?”
“You alluded to it. You don’t seem to like him very much.”
“I did like him. Until two days ago. Now I’ve realized he’s a louse.”
“Most men down here are. If he’s out there, I’ll find him.”
She crossed her arms. “I didn’t say I was going to hire you.”
“I thought you wanted to get your mitts on his worthless hide.”
“Normally I get paid to beat men up, not pay for the opportunity to do it. Forget it. He’s not worth five hundred a day. He’s not worth two cents a day. He’ll come slinking back when he thinks the coast is clear. Then I’ll mess him up. Sorry to have wasted your time.”
“You haven’t wasted my time. I enjoy being kicked in the head and sat on.”
The actor Alexis had killed, still in his pillow-stuffed dungarees, stuck his head in the door. From the way his voice dripped honey, he didn’t seem to hold his murder against her. “Hrag needs you back on set in a few, sweetie.”
“Be there in a minute,” Alexis said.
“I’d better leave you to it. You need to get back to work, and I’ve got a hunch to follow,” I said, nodding in the direction of the departing actor.
I left her sitting there, a smile on her face for the first time, and headed back to the car, feeling better than I had an hour before. I was bummed not to have doubled up on payment for the investigation, which meant I would have to dip into my savings to finance the operation, but now I knew for sure Sebastian had stolen the box. And while I didn’t have a lead on who’d hired him, that was okay. Laureen only wanted her precious box back, and if the trail on the original buyer led back to another Administrator, that could prove uncomfortable for yours truly. All I had to do was follow the breadcrumbs to the box, and Alexis had kindly dropped the next one for me.
It was unlikely that Sebastian had realized the box could bring him more than cash, and he was the one trying to have his sins erased. He was a hired hand, nothing more. His employer wouldn’t have told him he was stealing from the Administrators—if Sebastian had any sense, that would have scared him off. More likely he’d double-crossed whoever had hired him. In that case, he would turn up. Gambling was an addiction like any other. If my guess was correct, the money would be burning a hole in his pocket. That was presuming the buyer hadn’t snatched him to keep him quiet, and he hadn’t disappeared like so many before him. I didn’t want to give that line of thought much credence; it would put me back to square one and force me to track down the muscle who’d paid Alexis a visit.
Maybe Sebastian would turn up at the Colosseum. Maybe not. Either way, it was worth a few hours to hang around and keep an eye out for him. If I found him and got him to spill the beans, I’d be one step closer to retrieving the box and getting the Torments off my back for good.
10
The next night, I hung around the Colosseum looking for a nine-fingered Mexican, which coincidentally was the name Benny had given to a potent tequila cocktail of his own devising. Even if Sebastian did show his face, spotting him would be as gargantuan a task as staggering home after indulging in a few of Benny’s eye-watering concoctions. The Colosseum was a near-scale replica of the Roman amphitheater of death. It held close to forty thousand bawling spectators when packed, as it often was. There was no way I could trawl the aisles in search of a deformed pinkie. Perversely, the scale of the task gave me hope that Sebastian would turn up. The huge crowds and frequent chaotic brawls in the stone bleachers meant he might feel comfortable popping in without any watchers laying eyes on him.
There was one place where I had a decent chance of catching sight of him—the narrow hall where the gamblers congregated to lay their bets. I hung around the bookie windows, scanning the punters’ hands. I saw a few tall, handsome Latinos, but they all appeared to be in full possession of their digits. An hour or so in, I got the strong impression I wasn’t the only one doing the watching. When you’ve spent as long creeping around as I have, you develop a sense for when somebody else is creeping around you. My neck kept prickling, but every time I turned, nobody was obviously looking in my direction. After two hours, Flo’s boys started to take an interest in me—they probably thought I was trying to spot big bets and catch a whiff of a fixed fight—so I called it a night before they started asking questions.
I spent the next day pondering who might have been spying on me in the Colosseum. The men who’d tried to strong-arm Alexis could have spotted me when I visited her and put two and two together. Perhaps they figured I was their best hope of pinpointing Sebastian and were tailing me. Alexis could have decided to look for him in the Colosseum; my lurking presence would have alerted her I’d been dishonest in our meeting. It was also possible Laureen was keeping tabs on my movements,
though I doubted it. She hadn’t answered my calls, so I’d sent her a note via courier in the morning to let her know I was following a lead. I’d found the best way to stop anxious customers from bugging me was to keep them informed. I chalked her silence up to her efforts not to draw attention to my investigation.
I knew she hadn’t abandoned me; my nightly visits were still suspended. Before my fruitless visit to the Colosseum, I’d stayed home, acclimatizing to the heavy vibe of the citywide torture. But hiding away meant I was squandering a golden opportunity to snoop around. If I was the sole human in the city free of the Torments, I had a four-hour window to go where I pleased. I intended to use the time to rifle Alexis’s dressing room, in case she’d been as economical with the truth as I’d been, and then see what I could see around town.
When I reached the studio, twenty minutes after the Torments had taken control, the doors were locked. I’d never gotten around to mastering the delicate art of lock picking, so I smashed a glass panel with the butt of my gun and undid the catch. It wasn’t like there was anybody compos mentis enough to hear me. Low moans and mutters filled the unlit corridors. Even though I knew I was the only one awake, I jumped every time a voice was raised or a flailing fist hit wall or floor. The beam from my flashlight flickered and wavered as I made my way to the dressing room, stepping over the bodyguard I’d bribed the day before.
The door was ajar. I nudged it open and stepped inside. My light crawled across the shining black eyes of Alexis sprawled in her chair. Her robe had fallen open to reveal her naked body. I folded the lapels over her breasts, which burned with a feverish heat, tuning out the words flickering across her lips. I rifled her drawers and turned up the picture she’d supposedly burned. I could see why she hadn’t destroyed it despite her professed loathing for Sebastian. Charm oozed out of the photograph. He had the kind of face even women who knew better could fall for. With ruggedly handsome men, women got what they paid for. With guys like Sebastian, all soulful eyes and delicate features, a girl could kid herself his dick wasn’t hardwired to his brain. I didn’t have to meet him to know he traded on this misconception to get laid. I committed his features to memory, returned the picture, and searched the rest of the room. I found nothing of use.
When I emerged from the dressing room, a door clicked open behind me. Footsteps dragged along the concrete. My heart skipped a beat, and I ducked back inside, extinguishing my flashlight as I did so. The steps echoed my way. No other humans could be up and around; it had to be an Administrator—possibly the inside guy having come to the studio with the same idea as me of turning over Alexis’s dressing room. There was nowhere to hide. The wardrobe was too small. Ditto the space beneath the dressing table. All I could do was squeeze behind the door and hope for the best. I drew my gun and held it flat against my side. I doubted the weapon would do much good against a demon, but it was the only talisman I had. The steps were close now, and I could hear the wheeze of laboring lungs. I tensed, ready to fire and run for the hills if discovered, but the feet trudged past. I waited for a count of thirty and chanced a look outside. I thought I saw a stoop-shouldered figure turn left, heading for the exit. I slipped off my shoes and tied a hasty knot in the laces. I slung them around my neck and followed in stockinged feet.
By the time I reached the door, it was flapping open. The figure was moving away, illuminated by the streetlights. The pillow that served as his hunchback stuck out from a pair of grubby dungarees. This wasn’t the same guy Alexis had killed, but he was clearly playing the role of one of the axe-wielding clowns of the movie title. My first thought was that Laureen had made a deal with another sinner, but something about the way he walked gave me pause. His legs were barely lifting off the ground, and his arms hung limp by his sides. His hip bumped off the purple fender of Hrag’s pimpmobile parked inside the studio compound. He looked like a sleepwalker.
I could have left it alone and gone home to rest up before spending another night combing the Colosseum. That morning, I’d returned to the apartment at five AM and snatched a few hours’ sleep before the heat of the day woke me sweating. Fatigue was calling me bedward, but curiosity tugged me into the actor’s wake. This nighttime stroll was new to me. I’d always returned to myself in the park, with no indication I’d moved during my sojourn to the Nimrod. Even though the actor was clearly unaware of his actions, he—or the Torment controlling him—appeared to be headed somewhere in particular. He turned left at the end of the street, traveling north along Plastic Avenue, where the surgeons who sculpted the sex workers into more marketable commodities plied their trade. They were the only doctors working in Lost Angeles. If you broke your back in a fight or contracted a weeping disease of the nether regions, all you had to do was kill yourself and wake up good as new. Death lost its power when you knew it wasn’t permanent, and suicide was a better solution than paying some quack for treatment or waiting months for your body to heal. It also meant the plastic surgeons did a roaring trade. Any time one of the modified sex workers had a deadly mishap, they had to get their surgery done again.
Deciding there was no further need for stealth, I popped my shoes back on and caught up with the actor. His face was slack—eyes sheathed in black tar, lips mumbling. I trailed him north, out of Astghik and into the outskirts of the Seven Gates. The full moon that always lit the Lost Angeles skies at night rode high above the multistory superstores, shining off the metal signs bearing images of automatic weapons. He carried on at the same shuffling rhythm, paying no attention to his surroundings. Something stirred in an alleyway, sending me sprinting for the cover of a doorway. Another sleepwalker emerged, a bum with a tangled beard and grime caked under his eyes. He didn’t exactly fall in behind the actor. Rather, I got the feeling that they happened to be meandering in the same direction. We picked up more along the way, jerky marionettes spilling out of houses, shops, and side streets. By the time we crossed the river in Diyu, more than two dozen drifted along in loose formation—all shambling, black eyed, and muttering. I could see no unifying factor to the crowd beyond their somnambulism: they were men and women, young and old, some of them in the uniforms of the Trustee gangs, some of them in civvies.
When the macabre parade reached Arcadia Road, they veered right. The silhouettes of many more walkers dappled the silver asphalt, swaying and slapping their feet on the ground. My skin crawled. This was no normal evening for them. The Torments were puppeteers, twanging on ligaments and muscles to herd their human vehicles toward an unknown destination. My nerves screamed at me to return home and pull the covers over my head. I had a horrible feeling I was about to receive confirmation of something I’d long suspected. I wasn’t sure I wanted this knowledge. I’d never been brave. My wiring just made my curiosity stronger than my fear. So I followed, tucking myself in amongst the pack and giving it my best shamble in case any Administrators were watching from the looming walls of Avici Rise.
About a hundred feet before the road began winding up toward the demon compound, the sleepwalkers cut left. Here, countless feet had tramped the scrubby grass flat. The path curved through a defile between the steep hill sloping up to Avici Rise on the right and the sheer brick walls of the warehouses of Il Terzo Livello on the left, until it terminated at the fringes of the desert. I halted as the procession continued out into the blasted landscape. The sucking sand slowed their progress, but still they slugged on. I was pondering whether to follow—a brief flower of hope let me imagine they were being led to the mountain range, where some secret pass led them out of the city—when the first of them stopped before the folded ridges of a dune. The others followed until they stood in a loose knot perhaps a few hundred strong. I noticed then that the area they stood in was flat. They had passed through an opening in a low wall almost the same color as the sand. The words “holding pen” came unbidden to my mind.
The wind picked up, and dust began to swirl around the sleepwalkers, who as one raised their heads toward Avici Rise. The tornado, contained to the area bou
nded by the wall, built in speed and height until it obscured the crowd. I heard the squeak of rusty hinges and looked up. The hill leading to the gated community was at its steepest here, a hard scrabble for even the most committed intruder, who would then have to find a way over the high wall at the peak. At the base of the white stone fortification, I could make out a shadowy recess. As I narrowed my eyes, peering into the gloom to search for a gate, a dark shape darted out. My first instinct was to run, but I knew the movement could draw attention to my presence. Instead, I hunkered down, doing my best impression of a boulder. Whatever it was, it moved with frightening, liquid speed—too fast for me to make out details. I could tell the creature was big—at least the height of a man and three times as long. It bounded over the rocks on four legs, launched itself into the air, and sailed into the dust storm.
A few moments of silence followed; even the murmuring voices propelled outward by the whirlwind stilled. Only the hiss of shifting sands continued, fizzing in my ears like a detuned radio. Then a long moan rose across the desert, as if somebody had snapped the channel onto a station. Another followed, and another, and another, until hundreds of throats sang out a dipping and soaring wail. It echoed back from the hills, delayed and amplified so that the eerie chorus thrummed through the air. Every hair on my body stood on end, sparking chills along my hands, neck, and scalp. I forced my way into a bush, burrowing so deep that thorns dug into my flesh. I barely felt them. Through the jagged lattice of leafless branches, I stared at the vortex. There was movement within: dark figures writhing, threshing, and fading as a hulking shadow stalked back and forth. It took a long time, but slowly the wail decreased in intensity, the voices seeming to grow more distant rather than quieter. The shadow pantomime grew ever less frantic until silence returned.
I jumped when, from the top of the cloud, Torments burst out in a shadowy swirl, framed for an instant against the backdrop of the moon. They flew fast and low, passing so close overhead that I could see their blank faces and make out the creases on their wings. I’d never known a Torment to give off a scent, but my nostrils tried to seal up as a jumble of odors assailed them: burnt hair and gunpowder, dried shit and perfume, blood and lollipops, fear sweat and laundry soap—and beneath it all something so corrupt that vomit rose in my throat. When they were gone, I spat until my mouth was parched and the foul taste had receded.
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