Hidden Things (5 page)

Traffic had broken up somewhat by the time Calliope made it to the highway and headed back to her house. The difficulties she'd had during the drive over now made sense. What didn't was the fact that she'd forgotten the date, one of her favorite times of year. She wasn't really in the mood to go out, but as she pulled into her driveway and parked, she realized she wanted to spend all night alone and indoors even less; the thought of potential trick-or-treaters made her grimace. She sat in the Jeep, staring at the front door of her house for over a minute.

“I'm sorry.”

“Hey—”

She walked out of the kitchen. “Pack your things. I've got to go. I'm late.”

Calliope's jaw firmed and her lips drew together. “All right,” she muttered as she opened the door and climbed out. “Let's get a costume.”

It had been two years.

The wall of sound vibrated in Calliope's chest like an ultrasound turned up too high. She'd debated her outfit for over an hour, and it was well into the evening before she'd gotten to the club. The bouncer at the door looked her over, already moving aside the rope on the doorway. “You some kind of gangster?” he asked, looking at the gray, tailored suit she'd bought for rare court appearances on behalf of White Investigations, mismatched with a broad, striped tie of the cheapest polyester and topped with a broad-brimmed fedora.

“I'm Sam Spade, baby,” she replied, walking into the club.

The music vibrated up through the ground even outside the building. Inside, it was a physical object that pulled at different portions of her body like an animal that was mildly curious about how you would taste. A member of the staff was handing out earplugs just inside the entrance. Calliope had put in her own pair as she'd parked the Jeep.

Looking over the dance floor and catwalk-like levels that surrounded it, Calliope realized that she'd forgotten what Halloween could be like. The stage provided an anchor point at one end of the lowest level, a heaving mass of costumed dancers surrounding it. Angels, devils, vampires, ghouls, teddy bears, prostitutes, flappers, Egyptian queens, cheerleaders, and at least three Valkyries surged across the dance floor or leaned over railings on the levels above. Calliope felt the familiar buzz of sound and people merge into a sort of electric frisson that she always got in places like this. It was one thing she missed from what she thought of now as the “old days”, something that she'd avoided for the last two years.

The band's set was finishing up when Calliope arrived. She was both relieved and unaccountably nervous when she realized that the burly staffer blocking the backstage door was familiar.

“Toby, hi,” Calliope began. “I need to see Tom.”

The ebony-black man had arms the size of Calliope's legs, folded across his chest—the requisite staff costume of two small devil's horns on his smooth forehead seemed utterly redundant. The first expression to cross his face at Calliope's greeting was one of amused surprise. “No one is allowed backstage, miss.”

Calliope waited, silent, until the bouncer took a closer look. Slowly, annoyance and suspicion turned into surprise. “Calli Jenkins?”

Privately pleased at being recognized so quickly, Calliope tipped her head, covering a grin. “Yup.”

“
Hey,
I haven't seen you around here in forever,” Toby said as he engulfed Calliope's hand in his. “Are you singing tonight?” The hopeful expression on his face—weirdly at odds with his normal demeanor—filled Calliope with another wash of embarrassed pleasure.

“Umm . . . no, actually. I'm just here to see Tom.”

“Oh, right.” Toby hesitated. “You know I can't let anyone back there during sets.”

“I know.”

Toby looked as conflicted as anyone who could tear a phone book in half could probably look.

“How about you ask him if it's all right?”

The big man looked relieved. “Sure. Go ahead and wait at the bar over there. I'll be right back.”

Calliope moved as directed. The club was relatively quiet compared to when the band was playing, but the sound system and unrelenting dance crowd still meant she had to repeat herself three times to the bartender before she was understood. While she waited for either her drink or Toby to arrive, she watched one of the Valkyries order and collect a platterful of mojitos for her other Nordic warrior friends giggling in a booth.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

Calliope glanced away from the women. A man costumed as a rather unsavory circus clown was leaning against the bar on the other side of the space recently occupied by the departing Valkyrie.

“Excuse me?”

“You had a pretty interesting expression on your face just then, so . . .” He gestured with his glass. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“I was just wondering if it was possible to roll your mind's eye.” Calliope nodded toward the booth.

The clown glanced over his shoulder. “I know what you mean. I've never understood the idea of heavy-duty costumes.”

“Really?” Calliope made a show of looking over the spikes of green hair jutting from the man's head, the pale white face, and the odd distended-mouth illusion that his makeup gave him.

He seemed to realize what he'd said and gestured to his face. “Oh, yeah . . . this is—”

Someone tapped Calliope's shoulder. She turned to face Toby. His expression told her what she needed to know. She raised a hand before he had to say it.

“It's okay, Toby. I'll just talk to him later.” She smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “I guessed he might be too busy. It's no problem.”

Calliope was a very good liar. Toby smiled in response to her easy tone. “Great to see you again, Calli. Come back and sing sometime.”

Calliope winked and turned back to her drink. Toby hesitated, then walked back to his post.

“So . . . you sing.”

Calliope managed a half smile with no feeling behind it, but didn't look up at the clown-faced man. “I used to. Not tonight, though.”

“That's all right,” the man replied, taking a slow drink. He set down his glass and turned it slowly counterclockwise on the bar, as though it were a dial. The sounds of the club around them seemed to fade, allowing his quiet words to carry. “You should probably be working on that whole Joshua White problem anyway.”

Hearing it clearly for the first time, Calliope realized why the man's voice had seemed familiar. “You don't learn very fast, do you?” she asked. She turned back to her drink, her face blank.

“I usually do all right.”

“Right. How are your eyes feeling right now?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him shrug, his hand still on the glass. “Nobody's perfect.”

“Especially homeless stalker nut jobs wearing face paint.”

“It's Halloween. Everyone's in costume.”

“I was thinking ‘man clutching himself and crying' might be a better look for you.”

“You know . . .” The clown pivoted on his stool and glared at Calliope, his hand still on his glass. “You've kicked me in the chest and teargassed me. I may have startled you, but the only thing I've actually done is tell you I can help you. If I'm being persistent, then I'm either crazy for going anywhere near you, or it's really
important.
You don't lose a thing by listening to me.”

“I'd waste time,” Calliope said.

He sneered, his oddly painted mouth moving more than it should. “Yeah, sitting at a bar drinking black and tans—my mistake; you're hot on the trail, I'll just get out of your way.”

“Son of a bitch,” Calliope said through clenched teeth.

“I
dare
you.” His eyes were bright and wide. To Calliope they seemed like a doll's eyes; she couldn't see any whites, though she would have sworn she had only a few seconds ago. “I dare you to prove me wrong.”

Calliope filled her voice with the sneer she didn't bother to put on her face. “You're pathetic.”

His expression held, somewhere between triumph and anger. “You're afraid. Of me. Of what I know.”

She leaned in close enough to smell the stink of the street on him. “I will never—”

“Prove it,” he growled.

She searched his face through narrowed eyes and didn't like one thing she saw. Reaching back, she grabbed her drink and finished it off. “Right or wrong, I'm gonna kick your ass again before this is over. Pay the man.”

He stood, lifting his glass from the bar. The sound of the club flooded back around them as he drained the glass. Calliope walked past him toward the exit.

 

Calliope stood next to her Jeep as he approached. “Thanks for waiting,” he said.

“You've been following me for two days. I figured you could find the parking lot.”

“Yeah. We going to go or flirt on your back bumper all night?”

“Two questions,” Calliope said. “Or you can go to hell.”

He snorted. “Sure, whatever you want.”

“Name.”

“Vikous. Doesn't stand for anything.”

Calliope ignored that. “What did you do to Lauren last night?”

“Knocked her out.”

“How?”

“That's three questions.”

Her eyes narrowed and she turned to unlock the Jeep. “I'd advise you against trying that crap on me.”

He moved around to the passenger side. “That's cute coming from someone who suckered me with a can of tear gas.”

She yanked open her door and glared through the car at him. “You were expecting me to give up a hundred pounds and a foot of height and reach and fight fair?”

He blinked his black, shining eyes and grunted, regarding her through the passenger window. “Good point, I guess.” He pointed at the door lock. Calliope frowned and flipped it up. He climbed in. She didn't. Without turning, he said, “It's easier to make the car go if you're inside.”

“Did you kill Josh?”

He turned his head then, his ridiculous face solemn. “No.”

She watched him for a few seconds, then got in. “Where are we going?”

He slid the seat back. “White left you a message, told you to talk to somebody. Who was it?”

“No,” Calliope snapped and turned in her seat, suddenly angry again. “How do you
know
that?”

Vikous rolled his colorless eyes. “What difference does it make? I know things. I don't know everything. That's the way it is.”

“That's . . .” Calliope squinted as though he'd gone out of focus. “ ‘That's the way it is'? That's your explanation? You're out of your goddamned mind if you think—”

“Listen,” Vikous said. Calliope started to speak again, and he rubbed at his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “
Listen
.” He waited to see if the silence would hold, then took a breath. “What's going on right now—this thing you're caught up in—it's happened before.”

Calliope tilted her head, as if she'd misheard him. “When?”

“Lots of times.” His expression was grim beneath the makeup. “Point is, it always happens the same way. Always.”

Calliope's face felt cold, colder than it should be, even at night in late October. Josh and she had, through sheer dumb luck, never worked on a missing person case that had turned out to be anything more than a rebellious teen, parole jumper, or inconstant spouse, but the potential had always been there. “And you know about how it—about what to do?”

“As much as anyone living,” he said. The low rasp had dropped out of his voice, leaving behind a sincerity Calliope found herself wanting to believe, despite herself.

“You can help?”

“I can try,” he replied. “Doesn't always work out. Sometimes it does. Best I can promise.”

Calliope tried to meet his gaze, but his eyes were lost in the shadows of the harshly lit parking lot. She turned back to the steering wheel. “He said I should see the fat man.”

Vikous let his head fall back against the seat. “Lovely.”

She glanced at him. “What?”

“I know him.”

“And?”

“You're not going to like it.” He motioned to the street. “We should go.”

6

COLD AIR WHIPPED
through the cab of Calliope's Jeep as they drove along the freeway, headed for downtown. Vikous glanced over, his face expressionless. “What's with the open window?”

“You smell like a beach full of dead birds.”

“Not a lot of bathing opportunities in my simple life.” He pulled out a mangled but mostly intact cigar from an inner pocket and pointed at a passing road sign. “Turn here. Mind if I smoke, since we're gonna die of pneumonia anyway?”

“Could you just shoot yourself in the chest instead?” She took the exit he'd indicated. “I can tear out your trachea with my bare hands and rub asphalt on your tongue afterward if that would help you get the buzz. Maybe I could leave your body lying on a pile of burning tires.”

He stared, then tucked the cigar away. “Most folks just say no when I ask. You've got some confrontation issues. You know this?”

“It's been mentioned,” she replied, her expression sour. “Where am I going?”

Vikous pointed down the street. “Park down there. We'll have to walk the rest of the way.”

“Where are we going?”

“You haven't been there.”

“How do you—” She stopped at his closed expression, her own face tight. At the next block, she pulled the Jeep over and parked. They were downtown, but nowhere near the more popular clubs; the street was quiet and mostly abandoned.

“What should we—” she began as she climbed out of the vehicle, but Vikous was already walking away down the street, lighting the cigar as he went. Calliope watched him, her face carefully blank.

“My foot,” she muttered to herself. “My foot, kicking your ass, very soon, I swear.” She checked her jacket pockets once and went to meet the fat man.

 

Their route took them east three streets, over a glass-enclosed pedestrian overpass and, inexplicably, through a construction site. Vikous shuffled along in his ridiculous, oversized shoes, passing through the automatic doors of a glass-fronted executive high-rise. At the security desk he paused, his hands jammed in his coat pockets, the cigar leaking a thin line of smoke into the air from the corner of his mouth. The guard eyed them both suspiciously.

“Business?” he asked.

“Top floor. The party.” Vikous looked bored.

“Invitation.” The guard leaned forward, hand extended. Vikous just looked at him. The guard settled back in his seat, his eyes hooded. “How do you know there's a party if you don't have an invitation?”

Vikous watched the guard, black eyes shining under the fluorescents. Like a great cat lowering itself to the ground before pouncing, he pulled his gloved right hand out of his pocket, laid it on the counter, and leaned toward the guard. “Well, there would have to be a party, wouldn't there?”

Calliope couldn't see Vikous's face clearly from that angle, but something in the guard's face seemed to give way for just a moment, leaving his eyes showing white all the way around as he looked at Vikous.

“Second elevator on the right.” His voice was barely audible. Vikous pushed himself upright and turned to the elevator banks without another glance at the guard. After pressing the call button, he put his hand back in his pocket and watched the LED display on the wall descend to 01.

Once the doors had opened and closed behind them, Calliope spoke. “Was that like the thing with Lauren?”

Vikous was watching the display above the doors climb. Neither he nor Calliope had touched any of the buttons inside the car. “What?” he said without looking at her.

“With the guard. What did you do to him?”

He looked at her, his painted face expressionless. “I suppose you could say I scared the devil out of him.”

“How?”

He glanced at her sidelong for a moment, one eyebrow raised, then turned back to the opening elevator doors. “I guess clowns scare some people.”

Noise flooded the elevator as the doors opened. Calliope followed Vikous out of the car and into a room that looked like a private club, almost a miniaturized version of the one where Tom had been playing, although Calliope had to admit that the costumes here were much better. Succubi and dark-suited G-men with gray skin circled pale, silk-clad vampires and cat people on the dance floor. There were definitely no angels or middle-management Valkyries. A young, androgynous man in a sleek suit—his face shaped by what had to be movie-studio-level makeup and prosthetics into something that looked like a cross between Legolas and an insect—moved to meet them, arms positioned in a way that, to Calliope, said “security” rather than “host”.

“Here to see himself,” Vikous said.

Without shifting his gaze, the guard seemed to indicate Calliope.

“She's clear,” Vikous said.

The guard's glistening eyes flickered over her for moment, appraising, before he turned to lead them across the club.

The office they entered was spacious and utterly soundproof once the doors had been pulled shut. The fat man glided across the thick plush carpet to greet them.

His was not the firm sort of fat found in those who are forced to be active against the trend of their predilections. Parts of him—his cheeks, chins, limbs—shook as he moved, jiggled with each step despite the apparent ease of his gait. His torso was a broad, taut teardrop that extended to his knees; his arms, also quivering, were flat wide sacks that swung ineffectually at his sides in counterpoint to his movements. Puffed lips pouted beneath bright eyes that had been forced into a permanent squint by the flesh that pressed in from above and below. He was dressed in a garish Oriental silk gown that only emphasized the rolling motions beneath. His black hair had been slicked back on his head and was possibly the only portion of his anatomy that didn't constantly move.

“Vikous, it's quite a surprise to see you.” His voice, although cultured and calm, seemed to be coming from the throat of a man drowning in butter. He turned to Calliope. “And you've brought a guest. Charmed, my dear. Quite charmed.” His face seemed to be making an attempt at a smile as he extended a fleshy pink starfish of a hand. Calliope left her hands in her pockets.

Vikous's glance flickered back to her for a moment; he moved past their host and farther into the room. “You know her, Gluen.”

The hand seemed to falter and with it, the smile. Gluen's eyes flickered over Calliope; they were the only part of him that seemed to move quickly. “I do? I think I would remember meeting such an”—his lips twitched—“enchanting creature.” He inclined his head to Calliope, giving himself three additional chins in the process.

Vikous turned away from the windows that overlooked the city. “I didn't say met. I said you know her. This is Joshua White's friend.” His smile was confident and encouraging if it wasn't examined too closely. “He told her to come see you.”

The fat man frowned, shaking his head and by extension the flesh of his neck and upper torso. “Joshua White? That doesn't sound like one of my clients, I'm afraid.” He gave Calliope another smothered smile. “I'd love to help you, my dear, but my hands are tied.”

“That'd be some rope.” Calliope's voice and eyes were flat.

Gluen's smile vanished beneath the sea of pulpy flesh. “I'm sorry?”

“Obviously.” Calliope turned to Vikous. “You said he'd heard something. I can't even see his ears. I'm leaving.”

The bulbous man's eyes narrowed to nothing but shadowed slits in his face. “You question my ability to gather information?”

Calliope looked back at him as though she'd forgotten he was still there. “Honestly, I'm surprised you're not on display somewhere, washing yourself with a rag on a stick.”

His eyes widened a fraction, and he pivoted toward Vikous in accusation.

The shabby vagrant laid a gloved hand across his chest and chewed the stub of his cigar to the corner of his mouth. “I just brought her, Gluen; you let her in.” His black eyes locked with Gluen's pig-eyed glare.

Calliope waited, smothering the instinctive repulsion that had driven her initial exchange with the fat man only because Vikous had said Gluen might know something about Josh. Something about Gluen made part of her—a primitive core with deeper memories but fewer words—want to crawl away and hide, mewling, in an abandoned corner. Perversely, her more conscious mind responded to that fear with aggression. It was a classic cockroach reaction:
crush
and
cringe
surging in equally powerful waves.

Gluen stare-squinted, smiled, and clapped his hands together. His arms rippled within their sleeves. “Well, I suppose I must prove my worth.” He inclined his head to Calliope. “Shall we discuss payment?”

Before she could reply, Vikous said, “You've already been paid, Gluen, and now you're wasting
my
time.”

Now the fat man truly did smile, pushing deep crevices into his wreathed cheeks and revealing small sharp teeth. “I have been paid to deliver a message only, my dear Vikous.” He swept a heavy arm toward Calliope. “This one wants information as well; for that I have not been recompensed, and I shall be.” He raised his eyebrows at Calliope, deep wrinkles furrowing his brow. “Miss?”

Calliope pushed her fedora back and shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “How much?”

Gluen smiled without showing teeth. “I require only an exchange of information, my dear.”

“I don't know anything about what's going on.”

He shook his head. “Nothing like that. I want you to tell me something about . . . food.”

Calliope hesitated, sure that somehow, in the stillness of the office, she'd heard him wrong.

Gluen turned away from her and moved smoothly back toward the center of the room. “We are, all of us, tied to the idea of consumption. It is the heart and soul of everything we are, everything we do. It is, really, not just how we live but
why
we live. I want to know something interesting about you and that which you have consumed.”

Calliope stared at him. “And then you tell me everything I want to know.”

He bowed his head graciously, his neck folding in loose rolls.

“That's it?”

“My needs are simple.” He smiled.

She looked at Vikous, who gave her no hints. “I don't have any . . . stories like that.”

Gluen shook his head again, even that small motion sending echoes throughout his body. “Let's not be coy, my dear. In my experience, everyone has ‘stories like that', as you say.”

She stared at his broad back as he stood at the window. “I . . . choked on a chicken bone once, when I was a little kid.”

Gluen's broad smile was a dim reflection in the floor to ceiling windows. “Ahh . . . go on.”

Calliope frowned. “There isn't much more to say. I was sitting at the table with my family—we all had a specific seat where we'd sit—my dad was on the right of me where he could see into the living room and to the TV. Mom was on the left where she could get to the stove and the refrigerator, and my sister was across from me. I sat against the wall of the kitchen and I could look out of the kitchen window into the branches of the cottonwood tree outside of our house.” Calliope shifted her stance, but fought the urge to pace. “Dad farmed and Mom kept chickens, for meat. We raised cattle, but we ate chicken a hundred fifty times a year.”

“Why do you mention such a particular number?” Calliope couldn't be sure, but it seemed that, in the window's reflection, she caught the tiny pink point of Gluen's tongue dragging across his lips as he spoke.

“That's . . .” She blinked as her memory filled in the answer. “That's how many chicks she got each year. A batch of broilers, she called them.”

She shook her head and continued. “Anyway, one weekend—it must have been a weekend because it was during the middle of the day but we were all there—one weekend I started choking on a bone or something. I didn't know what was happening. My dad picked me up—lifted me right over the table and carried me to the sink that was right under the window I always looked out of, bent me over it, and pounded on my back until I coughed the bone out.”

“Were you frightened?” Gluen turned back toward her, but his eyes were glistening and far away. “Frightened you might die?”

Calliope shook her head. “It was over too fast to really get scared. I was more scared by my dad pounding on my back. Mostly”—she frowned—“mostly I just remembered that while I was choking, I'd been the center of attention. Everyone was paying attention to me and nothing else. That didn't happen very often.”

There was silence in the room for a moment.

“What happened after that?” Gluen seemed on the cusp of some sort of revelation; his face was turned toward the ceiling rather than Calliope, his eyes half closed, his mouth partly open.

Calliope narrowed her eyes at the fat man and looked away. “For the next few weeks I pretended to choke on bones every time we ate chicken.”

“Why?”

Calliope's face was a mask. “I wanted them to pay attention to me like that again.”

Gluen's eyes closed fully, and his mouth opened farther in something like a perverse rapture. “Thank you, my dear. Thank you very much.”

The look on Gluen's face made Calliope feel as though she had shared a much more familiar intimacy with him. Confusion and resentment flared in her chest, along with something close to self-disgust. She had no idea why she had told that story—she hadn't thought about it or anything about her old life for years. Some compulsion had almost seemed to draw it out of her.

“Consumption,” Gluen said, his breath a bare rasp of pleasure. “Not just of food, certainly, for you have built a culture of consumption, gluttony.” His eyes slowly focused and shifted to Calliope. “We all crave more than what we currently have, do we not, my dear? Force another bite down, angle for more time with a loved one, squeeze yourself into the spotlight just one more time: that is the nature of . . . things.” He blinked sleepily, in an almost postcoital languor. Again, his sharp pink tongue, far too dexterous for the rest of his body, flitted over his lips.