Hell You Say

by Josh Lanyon

  “This is your usual business,” she said acidly. “I’m not stupid. I watch the news. The first guy you had working here was murdered by a serial killer. The next guy was a serial killer.”

  “But —”

  “Not only that, you’ve got reporters and detectives and police and all kinds of people asking questions about you.”

  “What kinds of questions?” I asked, distracted from my original argument.

  “Who knows! I mean, I can’t get anything done without some weirdo walking in here.”

  She was not rude enough to say so, but I had a feeling she was including me in that category.

  “Velvet,” I coaxed. “I know how it seems, but really, usually it’s not like this at all. Usually it’s so quiet you can hear the dust fall. Truly. Hang in for a while longer. Life will be back to normal.”

  She straightened, slung her bag over her shoulder, and gave me a long, level look. “No way. I don’t want to wake up dead one morning. Oh, and Adrien? Get some more help in here!”

  With that, she marched out.

  * * * * *

  So apparently Velvet White was just nosey and nervous — and maybe made more than her share of personal phone calls. I’d been wrong before. I’d no doubt be wrong again.

  I didn’t expect to be proven wrong quite so fast though. After a hellacious day of serving irritable and tired holiday shoppers, I closed up, went upstairs, kicked off my shoes, and dropped down on the sofa. I was drifting into an exhausted sleep, when the phone rang.

  I rolled off the sofa and dived to grab it before the machine kicked in.

  “Thought you’d want to know,” Jake said dryly. “Satan’s Grotto was a wash.”

  I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, trying to focus. “You didn’t find anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you —”

  “We tore the place apart. We sprayed with luminol. No blood stains of any kind anywhere.”

  I was trying to absorb this as Jake added, “And we dusted for prints. It’s going to take awhile to get the complete results on those, but so far none of the victims’ prints have turned up. Neither did Gordon’s.”

  “I see.” I didn’t though. Not at all.

  “Also there was no indication that anyone had been held prisoner there at any time.”

  “Oh.”

  He sighed. “So whatever your pet nutcase told you, it was a sack of shit.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I really thought there might be something to it.”

  “Yeah. Well. Now we all know there wasn’t.” He was silent for a moment.

  “Thanks for checking.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Right.”

  He hung up.

  I put the phone down.

  Don’t think about it, I told myself. You’ve got much bigger problems than that.

  If my position had been precarious before, it was all the more perilous following a police raid. Like all good sales people, Garibaldi believed in his product, and he had believed that I was in the market for that product; he had been sincere during our conversation. But now…I could always plead that I had, all unknowing, led the cops to their hangout, but I was pretty sure any doubts Garibaldi and/or the fifty-sixth Duke of Hell may have had about my dishonorable intentions were gone.

  I could come clean to the police, tell everything I knew, but it was so pitifully little. I had zero proof of anything. The proof I had been counting on hadn’t turned up.

  Did it even exist? Maybe I was letting my imagination run wild, reading threats into innocuous conversations, jumping to the same bigoted conclusions about what I didn’t understand, what didn’t fit into my preconceived notions of religion and spirituality.

  The phone rang again. I ignored it and went into the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten all day. No wonder I felt like something the cat dragged in. I opened the fridge.

  The machine picked up.

  Silence.

  I felt a ripple of unease, but then Guy spoke, sounding reluctant. More. He sounded grim. “Adrien, apparently I was wrong. Peter is not in Germany. I’d like to….” I missed the next word or two. “Call me. Please.”

  Dial tone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I called Guy. Unsurprisingly, he was out.

  I tried him again in the morning. No answer. On impulse I called the university, and was informed by an uncomfortable-sounding secretary that Professor Snowden was in his office. She put me through.

  “Snowden,” Guy said, sounding weary.

  “It’s Adrien,” I said. “I tried to call you last night, but —”

  “I was out last night.”

  He sounded like that was my fault.

  I said, “Well, one good thing. It looks like the university has cleared you of wrongdoing.”

  “Hardly. I’m here to clear out my desk.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Into the silence that followed his words, he said, “Look, I’ve reason to believe that Peter lied to me. I don’t know if that matters anymore. Angus has been released.”

  “Do you know where Peter lives?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t know how to ask. I was aware that Guy was torn over this apparent defection by Peter Verlane. Assuming that Guy was on the level.

  Instead I said, “Did you need help?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

  So I closed the shop and drove to UCLA. I found Guy in his office, surrounded by boxes and stacks of books.

  “Is this official?” I asked. “I thought you were on suspension?”

  “It’s inevitable,” Guy said, tying string around a stack of books. “I prefer the dignity of walking away as opposed to being put out to pasture.” He pointed to a stack of photos. “There are several snaps of Peter in there.”

  I sorted through the photos quickly. Most of them were of Guy and people I’d never seen in places I did not recognize. But toward the bottom of the stack were a couple of photos of a tall, thin, dark-haired boy of about Angus’s age. I recognized the flyaway dark hair and round spectacles.

  “This kid who looks like Harry Potter, is he Peter?”

  “Yes,” Guy said without pausing to glance at a photograph of himself, his arm around Peter’s slim shoulders. They were both laughing. I peered closer. There was a glint of silver on Peter’s chest — a star on a silver chain?

  “He was at Hell’s Kitchen that night.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t think he was involved?”

  The green eyes held mine. “That club was packed with kids interested in the occult who have absolutely nothing to do with this. Why would I instantly assume that Peter was part of this…this madness?”

  “He sent us there!”

  “The girl — Betty Sansone — that you wanted to talk to was there. He didn’t lie.”

  “He set us up.”

  “No one could have known you were going to walk out into that alley. They just seized the opportunity.”

  Yeah, safe to say Guy’s feelings on the subject of Peter Verlane were mixed.

  I said, “Guy, I’ve seen Peter with Betty Sansone a couple of times. He may not be involved in murder, but I’m sure he took part in the abduction of Gabriel Savant.”

  “Gabriel Savant!” Guy looked disgusted. “Please tell me you’re not a fan of that hack. If Savant was kidnapped, it was by socially conscious literary critics.”

  Literary snobbery, alive and well on the astral plane.

  “Fine,” I said. “Why don’t we go ask Peter?”

  He stared at me. “All right. Why don’t we.”

  Neither of us moved. Guy reached out and touched my jaw. I blinked.

  “Shaving cream,” he explained.

  “Thanks.”

  He looked past me. I glanced around. Detectives Rossini and Riordan stood in the doorway of Guy’s office.

  “Can I help you, detectives?” Guy asked frostily.

  Rossini eyed
me with open curiosity. Jake never looked my way. I could have been invisible.

  “Well, Mr. English, we meet again,” Rossini said cordially.

  “Always a pleasure,” I said.

  His smile was caustic. “We wanted to ask you a couple more questions, professor,” he said, turning to Guy.

  I said, “Why don’t I carry this out to my car?”

  Guy nodded.

  I lifted the nearest box, squeezed through the doorway past Rossini and Jake, who barely moved out of my way.

  * * * * *

  Half an hour later, I watched Jake and Rossini walking through UCLA’s Sculpture Garden, engrossed in animated discussion. They never noticed me sitting on the grassy hill.

  When they were out of sight, I got up and returned to Guy’s office. He had made a lot of progress in the last minutes. Practically everything was boxed or tied, ready to be moved.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “More of the same. I think their plan is to bore me into a confession.”

  We carried the rest of Guy’s stuff to my car, which was better suited to hauling boxes and a potted palm. I followed Guy over to his place. He suggested that we wait to unload the Forester until after we’d seen Peter, which suited me, and we climbed into the Miata to drive to Peter’s.

  * * * * *

  According to his roommate, Peter Verlane was not at home.

  Guy and I returned to the car.

  “We could wait?” I said doubtfully.

  Guy considered this. “We could have a long wait.”

  No lie, considering Peter’s active social life.

  We waited.

  A Miata is not the best vehicle for stakeout.

  We talked.

  “Are you hungry?” Guy inquired at last.

  I looked at the clock in the dashboard. Three. Yeah, I was sort of hungry. As hungry as I could get with that perpetual knot in my stomach.

  I said, “We’re liable to miss him.”

  “He may not come home this evening. He often doesn’t.”

  I glanced at him. Guy shrugged. “I’m fond of Peter, but there’s nothing serious between us.”

  “That’s good, because if I’m right, and you’re wrong, Peter is going to jail for a long time.”

  He stared out the windshield at the apartment house. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His mouth curved wryly. “That’s honest — if indecisive.”

  I said, “I want to trust you, Guy, because I like you. But I’ve been wrong about people before. I don’t want to end up with my heart carved out.” Literally or figuratively.

  We sat in silence for minutes more before Guy said abruptly, “We’re wasting our time. Did you want to grab dinner?” He started the Miata’s engine.

  Stakeout Rule #1. Bring your own car or rent your own car. Do not rely on other people and their dwindling patience for your ride.

  “Thanks, no,” I said. “I’ve got to get back.”

  There was another way to do this, I realized.

  * * * * *

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  I nearly dropped the can of salmon I was opening for my supper.

  The shop was locked for the evening. That meant my visitor was probably one of two people — and that didn’t sound like Velvet’s knock.

  I set the can on the counter, wiped the fish oil off my hands. I opened the door. Sure enough, Jake stood there. Clearly this wasn’t a social call.

  “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” he said, brushing past me.

  I was pretty sure he was not referring to the missing food groups in my evening repast. “Oh, come on,” I said. “Guy was just helping me —”

  “Yeah, I know what that faggot Snowden is helping you with. What part of stay the fuck out of it don’t you understand?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with your investigation,” I said angrily. Which was not true, although as far as I knew, Peter Verlane had not materialized on the cops’ radar so far, so technically I was not trespassing on Jake’s turf.

  That’s what I told myself, but it didn’t fly as well with Jake.

  “You’re not that stupid,” he said. “Then again, maybe you are. I go to the trouble of lying — of falsifying police reports — to keep you out of this shit, and you turn right around and walk back into it.”

  My heart slipped into heavy, slow punches against my rib cage. “Give me a break,” I said. “You didn’t lie to protect me. You lied to protect yourself. You never asked me what I wanted. And I sure as hell never made you any promises about what I would or wouldn’t do.”

  His finger jabbed the air, punctuating his words. “Stay. Out. Of. It. Or this time, bad heart or not, I will throw your ass in jail.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to risk anyone discovering the connection between us.”

  His face changed, grew ugly, dangerous. “Are you threatening me?”

  I hadn’t been, but like an ember in dry grass, a self-destructive impulse flicked to life in my mind.

  “My existence threatens you.”

  He shoved me back, hard. I crashed into the hall table, knocking it over, smashing the jar of old marbles I had collected. Glass balls skipped and bounced along the corridor. I landed on my back, my head banging down on the hardwood floor.

  I lay there for a second, blinking up at the lighting fixture, taking in the years of dust and dead moths gathered in the etched-glass globe. The silence that followed was more startling than the collision of me and the table and the floor. I heard Jake’s harsh breathing and a marble rolling away down the hall — which seemed pretty damned appropriate, since I’d apparently lost all of mine.

  He bent over me. Probably safer to stay submissively on my back, but I got up fast, knocking his hands away. It was a protective instinct and maybe not a wise one. I hadn’t had time to inventory what, if any real damage, I’d sustained.

  Weirdly, neither of us spoke. There was plenty to say, but no words.

  Jake stared at me. In his eyes, I read the urge to knock me down again, to punch, to kick, to silence, to destroy. His hands were clenched by his side. I felt light-headed with anger and outrage — and yeah, maybe a little fear. He could probably kill me by accident. My heart was tripping in my throat.

  I was afraid if I tried to speak I would cry. From rage.

  He swallowed once, dryly. He looked sick.

  “I won’t tell you again. Stay out of it.”

  He went, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “I’m not comfortable with this, Adrien,” Chan said when he returned my phone call early Tuesday morning. “Why exactly do you want this information?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Why wouldn’t you ask Jake to nose around, if that’s all it is?”

  “First of all, because he doesn’t have time for it. He’s too busy with his big-league cult-murder case. Secondly, as you probably know, the situation between us is awkward these days.”

  A lot more awkward than Chan knew.

  But he said gruffly, “Okay. But promise me you’re not planning to do something stupid.”

  Like he thought I actually planned ahead when I wanted to do something stupid? I said, “Paul, it was just curiosity. Jesus, if it’s that big of a deal, don’t tell me.”

  He sighed. “No, I got the intel for you. Oliver Garibaldi owns a second home in Bel Air. Do you have a pencil?”

  I stopped doodling little devil faces on the pad in front of me, and took down the address.

  “Thanks, I owe you one.”

  “You can pay me back by not misusing this information. Jake will have my balls if you get into trouble.”

  “He’ll only find out if you tell him,” I said. I thanked him again and rang off.

  One last try, I thought. One last effort before I gave up and took my lame-ass story to the cops and let them try to sort it out — wh
ether it compromised Jake or not.

  * * * * *

  The house, located in one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious neighborhoods, was a gated, pseudo-English Tudor mansion on a nice chunk of manicured real estate. It could have modeled for cover art on The Dain Curse.

  I parked far down the shady street and prepared to wait, sitting low in the Forester, baseball cap pulled over my face. When there were no cars or people around — which was most of the time — I used my binoculars to watch the front of the house — not that there was anything to see. Trees effectively blocked most of the windows.

  I listened to Rufus Wainwright’s Poses a couple of times. After the fourth time, I wished I’d brought some other CDs.

  No one came, no one went. No sign of life anywhere. The neighborhood was a quiet one, reminding me of Lisa’s home in Porter Ranch, though here there was no pretense at being rural. The houses all sat well back from the street behind tall gates and vigorous foliage.

  After a couple of boring hours that knotted up my back and gave me way too much time to think about things I didn’t want to think about, I drove to a gas station, used the restroom, and stocked up on bottled water, chips, Ding Dongs, and mini doughnuts. The tune from “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” was playing in my head as I paid a small fortune for my repast. Like Rufus, everything I liked these days seemed a little bit strange and a little bit deadly.

  When I drove slowly past the Garibaldi estate, the iron gates were wide open. A blue sedan was parked in the circular front court. I kept on driving, parking far down the opposite end of the street. I pulled out my binoculars.

  Total void. I couldn’t see anyone. I swore. Talk about the world’s worst timing…

  Was there a back entrance to the estate? The problem with one-man surveillance was that I didn’t dare leave except when the call of nature got too loud. And I wasn’t quite dedicated enough to the cause to try pissing into a bottle.

  A cleaning van roared up, blocking my view of the house. I started the engine and drove still further down the street, parking on the opposite side this time. I knew I was pushing my luck. If I stayed positioned on this street much longer, the cops would be checking me out. Even if the cops didn’t bother with me, I couldn’t afford to attract my target’s attention. The afternoon wore on. My patience wore out.