by L. J. Greene
Incubus
A noir
L. J. Greene
This is a work of fiction.
Product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks referred to herein are the property of their respective trademark holders. All trademarks remain the property of their respective holders.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
© L. J. Greene. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author.
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Edited by Mary Novak at www.msnovakedits.com
Author’s Note
Incubus is intended for mature readers who enjoy the darkness and moral ambiguity of noir stories.
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It is high heat, twisted, and not for the faint of heart.
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All characters in this novel are over the age of eighteen.
Contents
I. The Stranger
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
II. The Third Man
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
III. Murder, My Sweet
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
IV. No Way Out
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
V. In a Lonely Place
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
VI. Night and the City
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
VII. Shadow of a Doubt
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
VIII. D.O.A
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
IX. Night of the Hunter
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
X. The Killers
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
XI. Dark Passage
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Afterword
Writing as Leighton Greene
Writing as LJ Greene
About the Author
The thrill of noir is the rush of moral forfeit and the abandonment to titillation.
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The social importance of noir is its grounding in the in the big themes of race, class, gender, and systemic corruption.
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The overarching joy and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun.
James Ellroy
Part I
The Stranger
Chapter 1
I should’ve known it the first time I looked into his eyes, that this one would be the death of me. I should’ve seen it in the way he swung his long legs around the bar stool; should’ve seen it in the way he glanced at me with all the promise of an unholy night. I should’ve known it right then.
But I didn’t know it. I was too charmed right off the bat, and too willing to help. That’s always been my problem: too willing to go all-in when someone’s got angel eyes and a sinful mouth. And just look where it got me, that Boy Scout nature.
Bleeding to death in a Bel-Air mansion.
I guess that’s just the way things go for schmucks like me.
It was at Chateau Marmont I first saw him. I was trying to shake off a clingy bad mood, so I headed to the Chateau to unwind with a bourbon. My rent was past due and I had a loan shark circling, waiting for me to start bleeding before he’d move in for the kill. But there’s nothing finer than Kentucky bourbon for making a fellow forget his troubles, and nothing finer than drinking it at the Chateau. Overpriced, maybe, but you can’t put a dollar figure on atmosphere. As it turned out, that yen for luxury was what skewed me off my happy path into a side-street Fate put on the map just for kicks.
I smelled him before I saw him; some woodsy cologne that I knew a broad must’ve bought for him. The bar was empty, but he sat right next to my stool like he wanted my company or was looking to sell his own. You never can tell at the Chateau; sometimes it’s a little of both.
“Hello, friend,” he said. His eyes were molasses pooled on cedar, and the gaze he gave me was definitely more than friendly. “You look like you could do with another.”
I’ve got two rules: never turn down a free drink or a free fuck. So I let him buy me a drink and hoped maybe he’d give me a reason to follow my second rule too. We sat without chitchat, giving each other the up-and-down in the dingy mirror behind the bar. He was a looker, alright, and suave as Mephistopheles. Dressed up to the nines with lapels too skinny to be anything but European. Manicured was the word that sprung to mind, from the dense but disciplined thicket of his brows to his buffed nails. He maybe had some Italian in him. I decided I wouldn’t mind some Italian in me if it came down to it.
“You done?” he asked, once we’d downed another bourbon each.
“Sure,” I told him. He put a room key on the bar and I picked it up for him. “You’re out of luck if you’re looking for green,” I said. “Just so we’re clear.”
His teeth, when he laughed, were whiter than I’d seen for some time on the people around me—or maybe it was his sun-burnished skin making them seem that way. “Do I look like I need it? Leave it five, then meet me there.” He walked out of the bar without a look back.
I grabbed up my hat and followed him five minutes later. A man’s got to stick to his rules, after all.
He was staying within the secluded grounds of the Chateau, in one of the new bungalows on the hill. It was the furthest from the main hotel, so I had some time to think about what I was doing as I walked, but of course I didn’t think about it. Why should I? When I let myself in through the maroon lacquered door the radio was playing cool jazz, slow with a smoky percussion. He’d taken off his jacket and let his suspenders down around his waist. He stripped to his undershirt as I watched, twisting my hat in my hands, and then he strolled over to the bar. He was lean and ropy like a panther, and when he turned to raise a tumbler glass at me I got an eyeful of his chest hair poking over the neckline of his undershirt, bushy and black.
“Want another?” he asked.
“Sure.” I hung up my hat on the hook near the door, and did likewise with my jacket. It was getting threadbare around the elbows.
“I don’t stock bourbon. Scotch?”
“On the rocks. And soda.” It was only mid-afternoon, and I hadn’t known the fellow for long. I wanted my wits about me.
I glanced around the joint while he put together the drinks. It was modern, sparkling chrome around the wall of windows and the sliding door that led from the living room to an enclosed garden. The sofa was the latest model, thin legged and stylish and a vivid orange that warmed up the whole room. In front of it stood a cherry wood and glass Noguchi coffee table, wit
h a heavy ivory ashtray sitting neatly in the middle. A single cigarette burned in it. The end wall of the room was open red brick, with a built-in fireplace; the other walls were cream-painted plaster and bare aside from a large round mirror and an incongruous print of the New York City skyline. All in all, it was light and sleek and fashionable.
I could see why these new bungalows were the talk of the town. I’d heard Bogie stayed in the poolside bungalows sometimes, and I could see him here too, mixing drinks and making nice with a sultry Lauren Bacall draped across the sofa.
I wondered what the bedroom looked like.
“Ellwood,” he said to me, handing me my whiskey. He gestured with his own drink around at the walls. “Craig Ellwood. The hotel got him in to design this bungalow after he did his Case Study House in the Hills. It’s actually modeled after that house. But then I guess a guy like you wouldn’t know architecture.”
I didn’t take the bait. Some fellas like to big note themselves. “Maybe I should be asking you for cash,” I said instead.
He took a sip of his drink while he looked me over, and then shrugged, licking neat scotch from his upper lip. “If you like.”
“Depends,” I said, and tossed back my drink in a few swallows. I gave him a grin and set my glass down. “Let’s see what you’ve got, first.”
He set his own glass back on the bar with one hand and grabbed my tie with the other, pulling me to him. This close up I could see the black tones in his iris, smudged and inky.
He wasted no time undressing me, and the way he crouched to unlace my boots and wriggle ’em off like I was royalty made me think for a minute that I’d read him slightly wrong. But no, once he’d got me naked to his liking it was clear he considered himself the top dog.
Rich fellows, they always act the same. Lucky for him I liked it that way.
He clung to me where he was kneeling, wrapping his arms around me and rubbing his face into my thighs, mouthing at my balls. I ran a hand through his hair, but he grabbed at my wrists and held them secure behind my back. Alright, I thought. I didn’t mind that show.
It was the greedy way he suckled at my prick that really took me by surprise, like a man starving for it. He kept it up without a break until I finished, as though he was just getting the formalities out of the way, and then he pulled me down to the floor next to him.
“Give me your ass,” he said, his voice rough. He was still dressed, but he kicked off his trousers as I turned over obligingly. He left the room for a moment to bring me a pillow and arranged it under me to cushion my tender parts from the carpet. Considerate, I thought, until I realized it also gave him more recoil when he was fucking me. He wasn’t gentle; he slathered me with Vaseline and used some oil on himself too, but there was no easing into it. If anything, he seemed to like the way I cursed him out when he drove home, inch by thick inch.
I don’t know what it was about him, but I enjoyed it. There’s a perverse part of me I guess likes to be treated shabbily. It gives me the opportunity to feel altruistic. But in truth, I got pleasure out of it as well, having him slam away at me there on the floor, the new carpet still stinking of glue as he pushed my face into it and sighed deviant things about how good I felt to him. I’d never had it quite like that before, both more frank and more sensuous than my usual bathhouse fumblings.
He even did me the courtesy of leading me to bed and having me for a second time on clean sheets. The bedroom, I discovered, was as modern and fashionable as the rest of the bungalow. The furniture was wood and glass, funny-shaped puzzles, like the side tables preferred to be art instead of useful. The bed was sturdy and plush, with a deep auburn-blushed wood frame and soft red velvet quilted to the headboard.
It all seduced me as quickly as my new friend had.
The second time he was more leisurely, like his frenzy had been tamed. He maneuvered me into a three-quarter, facedown position, shifting my limbs until he was satisfied. It all felt staged to me, the exactness of it, but there are some men who know what they want and won’t settle for a hair out of place. I supposed he was one of them.
“Leg,” he said briefly, and slapped at it until I bent it up and out of the way.
“You could just ask,” I told him over my shoulder.
“I did,” he said, and breached me before I could say another word. It took him longer this time to build to a climax, his strokes slower and drawn out. He kissed me across the shoulders and licked up the side of my face, pressing his teeth into my cheekbone.
I didn’t usually go for that kind of thing with pick-ups, because I’d had trouble in the past when teeth got involved, but with him it was different. I got the sense he wanted to eat me all up, like I was Little Piggy number three and he might not have been able to blow my house down yet, but he was sure as hell trying. And I didn’t mind, not one whit.
He said filthy things in my ear, things I’d never realized I wanted to hear, but now I’d heard ’em, I wanted to do ’em. Or rather, I wanted him to do them to me. I’d heard a lot of dirty talk before, but it never did much for me. This was different. Maybe it was his voice, slippery and syrupy and strangely accented, sticking over some of the vowels like he was reciting a sorcerer’s incantation. He bewitched me then and there.
All my senses were full of him: the scent of our coupling as it built between us, the sound of his breath gusting by my ear, the taste of him on my lips. He’d wrapped my mouth shut like I’d threatened to shout out all his secrets. It just made it hard to breathe in the end, his fingers sliding higher and over my nose as we went on, and his other hand wringing out my prick.
I ran out of air just before I reached my peak and pulled at his wrist, seeing stars, but he only let go when he felt me convulsing and my release sprayed his fingers. It didn’t take him much to finish after that, deep as he could get, like he wanted me wet inside and out.
Maybe it should have alarmed me then, the way he liked to love. But there seemed no reason to bellyache about it. I’d known from the start he’d be rough trade. I guess he’d seen something compliant about me, too.
Chapter 2
“Well, well,” I panted. “That was something.”
“Something, alright,” he agreed. “No complaints?”
“I won’t be asking for a refund, if that’s what you mean,” I said with a grin.
We smoked in bed; he had Gauloises, of course, stored in a silver cigarette case, and I had one of his and another whiskey. There were initials inscribed on the case, but they were too curlicued to make out.
Inside, though, the declaration was clear: All my love forever, Alice.
I lay down and balanced the drink on my chest, a cold hard circle to set an example for my heart. He set the ashtray on my gut. Nice to be able to serve, I thought. He slid down in the bed on his side, propped up on one elbow to look at me. He’d reapplied his cologne—to cover the smell of us? I wondered—and it flooded my nose, wiping away the scent of French cigarettes.
“What do you do, friend?” he asked.
“Why, I sit around Chateau Marmont waiting for good-looking men to buy me a drink.”
I expected a rise, but I didn’t get it. “And what else?” was all he said.
“I’m a writer, since you ask. Scriptwriter. B-films here and there, whatever pays.”
“Anything I might have seen?”
“I doubt it. I did a few romances. And I got fired offa that Robin Hood remake, did you see that? No? Well, you didn’t miss anything. Anyway, I’m through with the movies.” The truth was, the movies were through with me. My agent wasn’t returning my calls and I couldn’t get a look-in even from my oldest friends in the business. “I’m working on a novel, next, but it’s hard to write when you’re worrying about your next meal.”
He fished out an ice cube from my whiskey and rubbed it on my nipple, studying the response. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of squirming, but other parts of my body weren’t so obedient.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
<
br /> “City of Angels, born and bred. You?”
“Back east.”
“That explains a lot,” I muttered.
“What’s that mean?”
“Old money.”
He gave an odd smile, his eyes hooded. “Good to know I pass, at least out west. I’ll have to tell Alice. She’ll laugh.”
“Tell your old lady about your conquests? Haven’t heard that one before. Give her all the details, do you?”
He said nothing. I’d known there was a dame since I saw him at the bar, but I still didn’t want her pushed in my face. I pictured her dowdy: stringy hair, adenoids and bunions maybe. Maybe his elegant fingers had to rub her feet nightly. The thought made me feel better.
