Hell's Detective

by Michael Logan

  I raised my head in time to see the creature pad out from the cloud. It moved slowly now, sated, giving me a clear view. The thing was black like the Torments, but otherwise it looked nothing like them. It had the head of a crocodile. The body of a lion. The fat haunches of some other beast. It was the monster Laureen kept penned up in the minitower. Like Hrag’s boys in their farcical uniforms, it should have looked nonsensical, even pitiful. Yet something about the remorseless way it moved, about the pitiless stare and black razor teeth revealed when it yawned, froze my blood.

  Motionless, I held my breath as it clambered up the slope. As soon as the gate creaked shut, the cloud spiraled outward and unfurled into a fuzzy column of dust. The wind whipped my hair as the sand blew past, dancing with the molten faces of hundreds of dust devils. I held my crouch until they had gusted along Arcadia Road and got to my feet. Where the sleepwalkers had been was now an empty clearing.

  Now I knew for sure what happened to the disappeared. Now I had confirmation of my nasty suspicion about where the dust devils came from, although I could never have guessed at the gruesome nature of the transformation. They were the shattered remnants of the residents of Lost Angeles, condemned to drift through the streets, plucking desperately at the flesh they’d once known. I didn’t know what those souls had done to deserve this next level of punishment, but I did know who was responsible: the Administrators. And I was working for one of them. I stared up at Avici Rise, my hands curling into fists.

  I made my way back toward Cajetan on shaky legs, so lost in thought that I barely noticed the city waking up around me. There was so much I didn’t get about Lost Angeles, and the more I probed, the less I understood. That was the problem with answers: they always led to more questions. One thing I was sure of, though: I was even more determined to work out what Laureen kept in the box. Everyone thought the Torments were punishment enough for their sins. Well, there was something worse. And what was there beyond what I’d seen? What other retribution did the Administrators hold in reserve? Kept, for example, in an innocuous wooden box?

  It bothered me that Laureen was allowing me to roam the city and peel back its layers. She must have known I would wander once my evenings opened up, that I would chance upon the sleepwalkers and follow to witness their fate. Maybe she wanted me to see the scene as a further warning: do your job and don’t ask too many questions or you’ll join the procession of the damned into the desert. More likely I was already destined to end up the same way one day—we all were—and she figured it didn’t matter if I knew what was coming. There wasn’t much I could do about it.

  When I found myself back on Providence Avenue, the brightly lit Colosseum visible above the rows of gambling joints, I tried to put aside the wider questions and popped into Benny’s. I was tempted to buy myself a nine-fingered Mexican and let the tequila broom sweep away the memories of what I’d witnessed. I restricted myself to a single Ward Eight. I still had a job to do, and doing that job was the best way to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  11

  I resumed my vigil in the Colosseum, attempting to focus on the task at hand. It wasn’t easy; I kept looking at the press of gamblers, wondering which among them would be next to take the one-way shamble into the desert and fearful that Sebastian had already bitten the dust, no pun intended. I needn’t have worried. After ten minutes, a tall man in a wide-brimmed fedora, wearing thick glasses and sporting a squinty Fu Manchu moustache, joined a queue in the middle. I cozied up behind him, zeroing in on the left hand jammed into the pocket of his yellow sports jacket. He laid down fifty bucks on each of the ten scheduled fights without batting an eyelid. When he turned to leave, I got a close-up of his profile. I didn’t need to see the missing finger to be sure I’d hit the jackpot.

  I tossed a buck at the bookie to keep my cover. “Give me Filthy Jack in the first fight.”

  He picked up my dollar and held it between his thumb and forefinger like a snotty rag. “Big spender, eh? That’ll land you exactly ten cents. Jack’s a stick-on winner.”

  “Then you should be grateful I’m not laying down a grand,” I said, keeping an eye on Sebastian as he bought some popcorn. “Write me the slip.”

  He did so with bad grace and tossed it under the grate. I strolled after Sebastian, who was fisting salty snacks into his face as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Clearly he fancied himself a master of subterfuge as well as thievery. His confidence was misplaced. He looked like a walking advertisement for a mail-order disguise store. The only thing missing was the sandwich board. If I’d made him so easily, other interested parties could do the same. I hoped his double-crossed employer didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to show his face here.

  He headed for the turnstiles, which along with the concession stands detracted from the period feel. I doubted the real Colosseum had sold two-dollar rubber death masks, “severed hand” foam gloves, and “buckets of blood”—normal sodas jazzed up with a dash of red food coloring. I’d always found the period setting tacky, the kind of themed nonsense a casino owner with more money than taste would build in Las Vegas, but the customers lapped it up. Sebastian clicked through into the ringside seats. He’d obviously been well remunerated for his treachery: tickets for that area started at one hundred bucks a pop, way too rich for my thin blood. I elected to keep an eye on him from the cheaper seats and follow him once the fights were over. I took note of the section he was sitting in and made my way to the turnstile that would take me into the area overlooking his position.

  As I did so, my radar blipped again. This time I whipped around and caught sight of a slender figure ducking behind a hot dog stand. I took a circuit out wide and saw who’d been following me: Franklin. He hadn’t been in Benny’s the last two nights. I thought he’d taken the hint and gone off to pester somebody else. He’d clearly managed to get his hands on some cash, for he was decked out in new duds. They looked exactly like mine. He was pretending to conduct a forensic examination of the wilted buns, overcooked sausages, and crusted bottles of ketchup and mustard. I wandered over and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “So, what you having?” I said. “Hot dog, hot dog, or hot dog?”

  He rigged his bookish features into a look of surprise that wouldn’t have been out of place on the mug of one of Hrag’s execrable actors. “Kat, what a surprise!”

  “Cut the crap,” I said, grabbing his ear and yanking him off to a quieter corner. “Why are you following me? Like the look of my rosy butt cheeks?”

  “I’m not following you.” I gave his ear a healthy twist. “Ow! Okay, okay! I’m observing you.”

  “Same difference,” I said, letting go of his blushing earlobe.

  He rubbed the side of his head. “I’m watching you work. Trying to pick up some tricks. I want to be a detective like you, remember?”

  “How many times do you need me to tell you? You don’t have it in you. You should be a librarian. Maybe a bellhop. You’d look sweet in one of those cute hats.”

  He pouted, managing to make himself look even more like a sullen teenage boy who’d been told he had wrist strain and should lay off any jerky movements. “I happen to know I’d make a top-notch detective. For example, you’re obviously interested in the man in the hat and glasses.” He forked his fingers and pointed them at his eyes. “See? Powers of observation.”

  I poked him in one of his keen peepers. “How are those powers now? Listen, Franklin. I’m working a case and don’t need you screwing it up. Disappear now before I poke you somewhere more tender.”

  I walked away, expecting him to wander off with his tail between his legs. He had more balls than I gave him credit for. “You can’t make me,” he shouted. “I’ll keep following you. Maybe I’ll even solve the mystery first. Then you’ll look stupid. I bet that guy’s cheating on his girl. He’s probably in there right now, meeting his mistress. And you’re missing it.”

  People were looking in our direction, attention I didn’t need on this job. The le
ads were too frail and the stakes too high. I let him catch up before leaning in and speaking quietly. “Fine. You want to be a glamorous PI? I’ll give you some pointers. But not now. If I agree to meet you in Benny’s tomorrow afternoon at three, will you get out of here and let me work?”

  He nodded his head the way a spaniel wags its tail, a big shit-eating grin plastered over his face. Meeting him would be a waste of my time, but at least the promise would get him out of my hair without creating a scene. I would feed him a few clichéd lines, try to scare him off by sharing a few tales of torture and downright nastiness, and then hopefully be free of the pest. I turned him around, ready to give him a shove toward the exit, when I saw some more familiar faces amid the crowd: the monobrowed muscle and his two pals from Benny’s. I pulled Franklin into a corner, putting my finger to my lips when he started to protest, and pointed to the goons. His eyelid twitched, and he shrank behind my shoulder.

  “See why it’s not a good idea to play in Mom’s office?” I said. “Sneak out before they see you. And for God’s sake, get yourself some new clothes.”

  I left him cowering in the corner and sidled to the turnstiles, keeping my gaze on the bully boys. They didn’t glance over, instead going straight to the same ringside seat turnstile Sebastian had entered. I frowned. That didn’t scan at all. Where did a couple of low-level dunderheads like those three get the cash to rub shoulders with the big boys?

  I grudgingly paid twenty bucks for the next level up from the high rollers. I would have preferred the ten-buck nosebleed seats, where there was no chance of a stray eyeball whizzing out of the ring to plop into your beverage, but it would have been too easy to lose Sebastian sitting up there. I pushed through the turnstile into my section and entered the Colosseum proper. Glaring floodlights studded the high wall that rose from ring level to the first row of seats. In the real Colosseum, the wall’s main purpose had been to stop competitors trying to flee; here the aim was to stop fights spilling over into the VIP section. The big spenders paid for a close-up of the action, not to have their heads bashed in by an errant mace. Even with a night breeze circulating, the Colosseum stank of caramel popcorn and beer. The arena would smell a whole lot worse when guts began spilling. The oval roof was open, and the moon hung in the middle like the silver pupil of some great black eye. I wondered if God was up there, watching and disapproving of the savagery being carried out in the name of entertainment. If so, it seemed a bit rich. If humankind truly was made in his image, then all this was his damn fault.

  I edged along the busy row and squeezed into a spot directly above and behind Sebastian, sandwiched between a lanky guy in a Filthy Jack T-shirt and an elderly woman waving a Colosseum-branded foam axe. Monobrow and chums were sitting in the row behind Sebastian, about forty feet to his right. They weren’t perving on the scantily clad cheerleaders who flipped and tumbled around the ring, instead scrutinizing the faces of the spectators. They were looking for somebody too, although surely not Sebastian. At one point, they seemed to look straight at him, and even that triumvirate of twits could have seen through his disguise. When Monobrow swiveled his neck in my direction, I sank farther into my seat.

  With nothing better to do for the moment, I checked out the reserved Trustees’ sections to see who was in. Hrag wasn’t there, presumably still directing his masterpiece, but Yama sat ramrod straight, surrounded by bodyguards. The drug lord looked deceptively harmless. He wore a sober black suit, and his graying hair was sculpted into a tidy side-parting. Yama was a diminutive man, and the wire-frame glasses he wore gave him the look of an accountant. I knew the only thing he liked counting was the number of enemies chained in his dungeons. Yama was a man I’d made a big effort not to cross. Sure, he couldn’t kill you and make it stick, but languishing in a cell at the mercy of his torturers was a damn sight worse.

  The other Trustee present was Adnan al Kassar. He lounged on the red cushioned chair set aside for him, one chubby arm around a voluptuous blonde, the other around a tall woman with a sculpted afro and a dress that plunged to the curve of her lower back. He was slurping a jumbo soda through a curly blue straw, pausing every now and then to let the blonde feed him peanuts. His saggy jowls wobbled as he crunched. He walked his hairy-knuckled fingers down the spine of the woman in the skimpy dress. She snuggled closer. Although not handsome—his nose resembled a squashed tomato, and his skin was as pockmarked as the predesert scrublands—Adnan was a ladies’ man of the highest order. It wasn’t power that made him attractive, though it helped. He had more charisma than a Hollywood leading man and, according to the rumors, enjoyed nothing more than employing his vast repertoire of sexual techniques to bring about screaming multiple orgasms in his belles of the hour.

  I knew Adnan well. He’d offered me a full-time job when I’d helped him track down a gang that was ripping off his weapons. I believe he ripped off their arms in return. Repeatedly. When I declined his proposal, he didn’t hold it against me. He respected a woman who knew her own mind. I was about to get up and invite myself to join him—his section was closer to Sebastian—when a fanfare trilled and the cheerleaders cartwheeled to the side of the ring. A short, bald man in a toga and laurel wreath bounded to the center of the arena, waving his hands over his head and egging on the applause.

  “Friends, Lost Angelenos, countrymen. Welcome to the Colosseum,” he bellowed into a microphone. “Are you ready for blood?” The crowd roared in the affirmative, tossing popcorn into the air like confetti. My neighbor bopped me on the head with the axe in her enthusiasm. “Then blood you shall have, by the bucket! To the mayhem!”

  He ran through the program quickly: ten fights over two hours involving weapons ranging from knuckle-dusters to swords to chainsaws—with a short intermission to allow replenishment of snacks and the purchase of more merchandise. Tonight appeared to be single combat. On other evenings, they ran Roman-era battles, teams of gladiators hacking each other into bloody chunks; old West–style gunfights; death races (the cars were packed with explosives, which detonated in the losing vehicles when the winner crossed the line); and even an amateur night—when the loudmouths who fancied themselves better than the pros could sign up and watch their flying teeth glitter in the floodlights.

  When the mob was suitably inflamed, the compere climbed to his position in the main tribune. Then the festivities began. Filthy Jack, a rangy brawler with unkempt red hair, lived up to both his name and his short odds—biting, gouging, and, when he was done messing around to please his fans, snapping the neck of his opponent. Even if I got nothing out of Sebastian, at least I was ten cents up. The next fight was between two women in bikinis carrying flick knives. I was glad of the extra distance my seat afforded as they set about each other at close quarters until one of them succumbed to multiple stab wounds. The weapons grew larger as the bouts went on; soon the ring was piebald with patches of bloody mud. I watched Sebastian as the fights continued. Filthy Jack’s victory aside, he didn’t seem to be doing well. His shoulders slumped ever lower, and by the time we reached the final fight, a pile of crumpled betting slips sat on the wall in front of him.

  The chainsaw duel was the big finale, and it looked to be a horrendous mismatch. The competitors were dressed in brown leather loincloths and gloves. The first one in the ring stood nearly seven feet tall and introduced himself by juggling the whirring weapon—at one point lying on his back and catching it with his feet as the blade buzzed inches from his nose. The other guy was a midget by comparison; he looked like a dweeby drone dressed up as Tarzan for the office Christmas party. He dragged his chainsaw as he came into the ring, leaving a furrow of sand in his wake.

  As the compere dropped his arm to signal the start of the bout, the little guy was still yanking on the pull cord. The big lout rushed in, holding the chainsaw aloft in one hand as if it were a novelty balloon. He swung, and the little guy ducked at the last minute, losing a lock of hair. He took advantage of his opponent’s slow recovery to back off, finally getting his chainsa
w going. They circled each other, saws spitting out a stuttering buzz.

  “Stick it up his scrawny ass!” my neighbor bawled, again getting too frisky with her axe.

  I leaned to the right to avoid the foamy swish, keeping half an eye on Sebastian. He was leaning forward, right hand splayed across his forehead, watching the fight through his fingers. It looked like he’d taken what must have been long odds on the little guy, who was darting glances left and right in a futile search for escape routes. Once the fighters were in the ring, the gates slammed down on the tunnels, and he was too small to leap up and get a handhold on the perimeter wall. His one way out was to get sawn up.

  Minigladiator seemed to realize he was on to a loser, for his shoulders slumped, and the tip of his blade dipped. The beast spotted his chance and gunned his saw as it honed in on the smaller combatant’s stomach. The crowd, sensing the fight was about to reach a gory conclusion, thrummed. At the last possible instant, the little guy spun counterclockwise with a grace he’d clearly been concealing. The thrust sailed harmlessly past as he swung his own weapon in a downward diagonal arc. The chainsaw whined as blade met flesh in the back of the big man’s thigh. A roar went up, drowning out the screams of pain, and the spectators jumped to their feet. I followed suit reluctantly, not wanting to lose sight of Sebastian. I rose in time to see gobs of meat splatter off the whirring saw as the hustler finished the job.