Hell's Detective

by Michael Logan

  I had no family to think of. I was an only child, my parents had died in the sixties, and Danny and I didn’t have any kids. It didn’t matter. Enitan, my friend, had people he cared about. If I made the wrong decision, I would be killing them along with everyone else. My own desire for peace meant nothing weighed against all those lives.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  I stared at the smoke swirling over my head and thought over my options. If Franklin was lying, I could give the box back to Laureen with a clear conscience. If he was telling the truth, it was too dangerous to leave floating around. If I didn’t act, I would be as good as handing it back. Laureen would take drastic action and get it one way or another. One certainty remained: I needed to get my hands on the box.

  “I’m going to break into Flo’s and get the damn thing,” I said, stubbing out my half-smoked cigarette and getting to my feet. “Then we can decide what to do with it.”

  20

  At eight on the dot, as the sun blinked out behind the hills and the Torments sallied forth, I picked up my clinking bag of tools and left the apartment. Even though I was on the clock—I needed to be out of Flo’s by eleven thirty to ensure I had enough time to return home and look like I’d never left—I took the stairs slowly. I wanted the Torments snuggled up inside their human hosts before I emerged. I lingered inside the street-level exit until the flapping of wings and entreaties for mercy had subsided. I opened the door and stepped over the legs of a prostitute slumped against the doorway, his eyes bulging like eight balls.

  I stayed alert as I drove the short distance to the Lucky Deal. Franklin had said he would leave me in peace, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a ploy to make me relax. Working in my favor was the fact that anybody doing anything livelier than lying on the ground drooling would stand out. Nonetheless, I kept snapping my head around at twitches of movement, which all turned out to be the spasmodic jerks of dreaming sinners rather than Franklin dogging my steps. I parked outside the casino, walked past the prone Sid, and tested the double doors. They gave slightly but remained closed. By the rattling sound as I shook the doorknob, I guessed that a hefty chain secured them from the inside. I took out the hammer and sidestepped to the plate-glass window. It took three blows before the tempered glass caved in. Shards tinkled to the pavement. I listened for movement, from either within or without, but heard nothing. I knocked away the remaining slivers and climbed in.

  The silence was oppressive where normally all was chaos: the chatter of coins cycling through hungry slot machines, the click of chips shuttling through nervous fingers, the rattle of balls on spinning wheels—above it all, the burble of voices calling for drinks and, more often than not, bemoaning their bad luck. Rows of empty baize tables flanked the carpeted central aisle, which bore an elaborate pattern of asymmetrical purple-and-green swoops. When the plastic chandeliers bristling with overly bright bulbs were on, the carpet was so eye-popping that it was hard to concentrate—which, along with free drinks for players, was a tactic to swing the odds further in favor of the house. I’d never understood the draw of gambling in casinos, unlike Danny. At least at the fights or the races, you could enjoy the spectacle while you threw your money away. In a casino, all you had to look at was a ricocheting ball or a slew of cards. Still the gamblers came to try to float on that elusive current of good fortune—a commodity in short supply in Lost Angeles.

  Tonight, muted side lights embedded low in the walls provided the sole illumination. They were bright enough to provide a small circle of decent visibility, but any farther than ten feet ahead of me, the room dissolved into gloom. It created the nagging worry that somebody, or something, was waiting to pounce from the shadows. I passed four insensible security guys on my way to the staircase, each one sitting in an armchair, weapons perched between splayed legs. They were there to ensure nobody could stage a lightning raid on the casino in the fuzzy-headed minutes after the city woke up. They were also another reason to make sure I was long gone before midnight. I’d already eaten more than my fair share of lead over the last few days. I wasn’t hungry for more.

  I jogged through the casino, taking the stairs past the private rooms on the first floor, where the big spenders threw down obscene amounts of cash on Texas Hold’em, and the second floor, where the bar, stage, and dance floor occupied most of the real estate. Another two floors—which held the counting rooms and recreational spaces for the staff—passed before I reached the final set of stairs ascending to Flo’s haven. Two guards lay on the floor at the top. I frisked them for a key, avoiding any contact with their skin in case the Torments sensed my presence. I came up blank. I was going to have to resort to a big bang.

  I’d never blasted a door off before, but I didn’t have to be an engineer to guess that the weakest point would be the hinges. I patted down a healthy dollop of explosive putty on each, pushed in the contacts as per the instructions the salesman had doled out, and unspooled the connecting wires down the stairs and around the corner to the detonator. As I was about to turn the switch, I remembered the guards and returned to drag them down the stairs. I didn’t know what would happen if I blew them apart while the Torments were inside and felt that was one unanswered question I could live with. Once they were safely stowed, I detonated. The blast pummeled my ears, and fragments of plaster and metal blew out of the stairwell to ricochet off the walls. While the dust was still settling, I crunched through the rubble and inspected my handiwork. The door hung on its hinges, held in place by the lock. I jammed a crowbar into the gap between twisted metal and doorjamb and heaved. The door squealed in protest but capitulated enough for me to slip through.

  I emerged into darkness so deep that it seemed textured. Rather than rummage in the bag for my flashlight, I patted the wall until I chanced upon a light switch. Pale-blue lamps flickered into life along a long hallway, off of which half a dozen unmarked doors led. There were no paintings or decorations of any kind. The first room I tried proved to be a spacious and empty cupboard. I poked around for a fake wall. All seemed kosher. The second door led to a kitchen coated almost entirely in plain white tiles. Again I rummaged around to be thorough. Simple fare filled the cupboards and fridge, the kind of inexpensive staples the poorest of the city subsisted on. There was no alcohol. The next room proved to be a large and austere living room. There were no paintings on the walls behind which a safe could nestle. The few items of furniture clustered in the middle of the room—a functional gray sofa, a white wooden table—looked forlorn amidst all the space. I tapped every square inch of the floor, listening for the hollow echo that would indicate a hidden compartment. I heard nothing. The bathroom, next up, was even less interesting: a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and an old tub that, from the few flakes of paint still clinging to it, I suspected had once been purple.

  Flo’s den unsettled me. Considering he spent so much time in this space, I’d expected it to be a luxurious haven. Yet the man who raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars a day through his many concerns lived like a monk. There had to be a reason for such unusual behavior, but I couldn’t figure it out. I shrugged it off; Flo’s idiosyncrasies weren’t my concern. As long as he had what I’d come for, he could flush his fortune down the toilet as far as I cared.

  There were two doors left, and the first one didn’t budge when I pushed. I gave it a few experimental kicks to test its solidity. It didn’t seem like it would cave easily. I wasn’t as adept as Sebastian at safecracking and so needed to conserve my remaining explosives just in case. I tried the last door in the hope that I would find either the box or a key for the locked room inside. It opened into a bedroom. A four-poster bed, similar to Laureen’s, butted up against the far wall. White netting enclosed the bed, and the light from the lamp on the far side diffused through the gauzy material to cast gossamer patterns on the ceiling. Flo lay on his side in jockey shorts, his back to me. Something about the sprawl of his body, the way one hand pillowed his head, sparked a strange burst of familiarity.
I felt a strong desire to part the net and slip in beside him. I blinked hard to clear my head and put it down to the urge to take a look at the face of the city’s most elusive Trustee. I would sneak a peek before I left; first, I wanted to get the most pressing task out of the way. Apart from the bed, which at least demonstrated that Flo wasn’t completely immune to comfort, the room contained two walk-in wardrobes, a bedside table holding a framed photograph, a dresser, and a rocking chair by the open window that looked up the street toward Benny’s. The positioning of the chair made me wonder how much time he spent there, staring out at the district over which he exercised so much control but had withdrawn from.

  I made for the wardrobes first and slid the doors open. My nostrils flared as the scent, that indescribable odor of a specific human being, hit me and plummeted straight to my gut. I knew that smell, had greedily sucked it in so many times that the memory had lodged in my mind for all eternity. I hung onto the clothes rail to stop myself from falling, not to the ground but back into years of old memories. I failed. Images of Danny engulfed me: the first time I’d seen him, berating the judge from the witness box; his face filling my vision as we whirled around the dance floor in some half-remembered club; our last proper night together, his chest rising and falling in a postcoital daze as I traced patterns in the sweat on his stomach.

  I backed out of the wardrobe, not ready to look at the prone form on the bed, unable to believe what my senses were telling me. My gaze fell on the photograph. I picked it up with trembling fingers. It was a picture of me, taken by a long lens as I emerged from Benny’s. Taken from that very window. I walked around the bed as though in a dream. The hand that pulled back the net seemed to belong to somebody else. I looked in and confirmed with my eyes what my nose had already told me: Flo was Danny.

  21

  I stumbled backward, my vision dimming as the net swished back into place. The backs of my knees butted up against the chair. I sat down hard, setting the rocker in motion. My head lolled back and forth as the chair seesawed and the room spun. I felt like I’d spiraled down a whirlpool into yet another alternate world where nothing made sense. I stamped my feet on the ground to still the rocking motion and slapped myself hard in the face. The room swam partly back into focus, but it seemed to have shifted subtly—the edges blurry, every molecule charged with unreality. Everything was the same. Everything was different.

  I told myself the man on the bed couldn’t be Danny. I’d killed him all those years ago, and he’d done nothing to earn a place in this shithole—even if a hanging judge had sentenced him for some minor crime, we would have arrived at the same time. Our paths would surely have crossed during those confused early days in Desert Heights. Flo simply looked like Danny. But I didn’t believe my mind’s reflexive attempt to recoil from the truth. This explained everything: why Flo had overlooked any indiscretions on my part down the years, why he hadn’t come down hard on me when he realized I was after the box. Above all, the scent lingered in my nostrils, prompting a primal response I couldn’t ignore. Somehow, Danny had ended up in Lost Angeles, had assumed a new identity, and had risen to power without the slightest inkling on my part. The tiny selfish part of me rejoiced; the rest of me recoiled at the knowledge that he was suffering here instead of bathing in the peace I’d imagined.

  I fell to my knees and shuffled to the bed. I pulled back the net once more. His body seemed lifeless, and for a disorienting moment, I thought I was back in the motel. My hands plunged to his chest, searching for the wound so I could plug it and save him. When I found no hole, no blood—only warm flesh—I came back to myself. I didn’t want to look at his face again, not with the Torment still inside him, rendering his eyes curdled, black, and cold. I wrapped my fingers through his, not caring if his Torment reached out to suck me in. I rested my head on his chest and, entranced by the tremors of his heart, forgot where we were, what I’d done, all the things that would have to be said when he woke up. Time, already a loose concept in this city, lost all meaning. Finally, blissfully, I was with him again.

  The spell broke when he moaned and yanked his hand from mine. The pins and needles thrumming in my legs told me I’d been kneeling for hours; my head was slower to return to the actuality of the room.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be you,” he said.

  It all rushed back at me in a bitter wave. I knew then that he was in the Nimrod Motel, his life leaking out onto the grubby carpet. All those years, we’d been a few hundred feet apart, both living the same nightmare. But that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t sinned in that motel room. I had.

  The liquid gushed from his eyes like a geyser of freshly struck oil. The jet of black tar arced and formed a gravity-defying, swiftly expanding blob in the air. I retreated to the corner of the room as the Torment’s sleek body, blank face, and ribbed wings coalesced from the primordial soup. Springs squeaked as it put its weight on the bed and stepped over Danny, who groaned as its shadow blocked the light. Without a glance in my direction, the Torment leaped through the window and sailed off into the night. Danny raised his hands to his face and began to weep. I wanted to fold him in my arms but couldn’t move. How could I go to him when all he would see was the face of the woman who’d killed him moments before?

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice crushed with the weight of the years I’d longed to ask him to forgive the sin I couldn’t forgive myself for.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said.

  His words were slurred, his movements sluggish. He was still halfway between the recurring nightmare and the real world and hadn’t realized I was actually here. He was talking to the dream Kat, not the real one. All the same, his words thawed my limbs, and I clambered to my feet. He heard the rustle of movement and sat up. His gaze fell on me, a shadowy figure in the recesses of the room.

  “What are you doing in here!” he yelled. “Nobody comes in here. Get out!”

  Heavy boots ran up the hallway, voices raised in alarm. The guards had noticed my dramatic entrance and heard him yell, but I didn’t care.

  “It’s me, Danny,” I said, stepping into the circle of light around the bed, my hands raised. “It’s Kat.”

  He grew still. Our gazes locked, and I read the shock in his dilated pupils. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not ready.”

  “I didn’t know it was you,” I said, words I’d said before, which now had a double meaning: I didn’t know it was you when I fired; I didn’t know you were Flo, or I would have come sooner. I now understood why he hadn’t come to me. He wasn’t ready to forgive me. But I couldn’t leave, even though I was sure he wanted me to. I had one chance to make him understand the grief, sorrow, and regret that the twitch of my finger on the trigger had brought into my life. I had to let him know I would do anything to take it back.

  “I never would have—”

  That was as far as I got. The door hammered against the wall as the two guards burst into the room. I didn’t reach for my weapon, didn’t even look at them. All I saw was Danny lifting his hand, the word “no” framed on his lips, before their bullets slammed into me, and I fell to the ground.

  When I opened my eyes, I lay on the floor with my head in his lap. A single tear dropped into my open mouth, the salt mingling with the iron taste of blood in the back of my throat. The guards were gone.

  “Danny,” I said, “I . . .”

  This time, an unexpected kiss stopped the words. It was like all the years of anguish had been erased. I wanted it to never end and craned my neck upward as he broke the kiss and pulled back to look at me. Then I saw his face, distorted with pain. I curled up like a withered leaf and buried my face in his stomach.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, my voice muffled. “I didn’t know. You understand, don’t you? I didn’t know.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly, even as his warm hand pressed the nape of my neck. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “Please, don’t ask me to leave. I need to explain.�
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  He said nothing for a long time but didn’t let go. I let the silence stretch out. All I wanted to do was bury my nose into his flesh and drink in his scent, feel his stomach—so much smaller than it had been—swell against my face with the warm breath of his existence. Finally, he pushed me off his lap and got to his feet. I would have grabbed at his ankles, but he walked to the window.

  “You shouldn’t be here, not yet. But you are, and you need to know,” he said, almost talking to himself.

  “I’m so sorry. I killed you, Danny. I deserve to be here. I deserve every ounce of punishment they’ve given me, and more. I have no right to ask you to forgive me.”

  His head dropped, and his voice grew so soft that I could barely hear it. “Oh, Kat. You mean you don’t know? I thought you’d have figured it out by now. All these years, you’ve been blaming yourself. I need to ask for your forgiveness, not the other way around.”

  My head was buzzing with the conflicting emotions, like a boxer pummeled left, right, and center by dozens of invisible opponents. I couldn’t make sense of his behavior, of what he was trying to tell me. “I don’t understand.”

  “What do you think I was doing in the motel that night?”

  “Hiding.”

  “And why do you think I shot as soon as the door opened?”

  “You were protecting yourself.”

  He looked over his shoulder. The ghost of a smile brushed his lips, although it contained little humor. “Some tough nut you are. Most people hold others to higher standards of behavior than they do themselves. You’re the other way around. You cut everybody else slack, but not yourself. You always did. You saw the best in me, and it blinded you.”

  I opened my mouth to speak. He held up a hand. “For once, and I know this is going to be damn near impossible, I want you to keep your mouth zipped.” His voice was still soft, but it now contained a hint of the old drawl. “I’ve got a story to tell, and you need to be quiet until it’s over, no matter what I say, no matter how it makes you feel. If you understand, nod your head. It’ll give you some practice for shutting the hell up.”