Killing Pretty (17 page)

“That's not something you have to hide from me.”

“There's just been so much craziness and now I'm not even me anymore. I don't know what I want.”

“I'm not about to stop you if you want to be with Rinko or anybody else. Just be honest with me.”

She frowns.

“Hey, why is this only about me? This was about you trying to get shot the other night.”

“I've been shot plenty of times. I'm not that afraid of it. Not when it's important.”

“What about me? I'm afraid. Do I get a say in you putting yourself out as a target all the time?”

The back of my neck itches. Can't tell if it's real or just nerves. I rub it with the palm of my hand, thinking.

“Okay. Point taken. I was just mad then.”

“You're always mad and then you can't think. That's what I mean. Maybe you should talk to Allegra about it.”

“Not now. Not when I'm being pushed. I won't push you about your secrets and you won't push me on this. All right?”

“Yeah. Okay,” she says quietly. “You
are
mad at me.”

“A little. Don't talk about me behind my back anymore, even if it's for my own good.”

“I can do that.”

Candy opens the laptop again and bookmarks the page on the screen, keeping her eyes down.

“Are you going to go out now?” she says.

“Why would I do that?”

“I don't know. This just seems like when you'd leave and go to Bamboo House for a drink.”

“We have booze here. I can drink fine at home.”

“You want to have a drink with me?” she says.

“Sure. I'll have a drink with you. But make it coffee. I'm on duty.”

She gets up and goes to the sink, takes a ­couple of cups from the drainer, and turns on the coffeemaker. She talks without turning around.

“You're always so ready to run away. It's like you still have one foot in Hell and you're ready to go back there forever. Just don't ditch me, okay?”

I walk up close behind her.

“I'm not going anywhere.”

She leans back against me as the coffeemaker gurgles, the noise mixing with the music coming from below. I put my arms around her. We stay that way for a few minutes, no one talking, just letting the sound hang around us in the air.

W
HEN
I
GET
to Bamboo House of Dolls, there isn't a single Cold Case inside, which is lousy. I was hoping to see them on my turf. Now I have to go to theirs.

When the young ones aren't slumming it at Bamboo House, there's only one Cold Case hangout in L.A. It's a West Hollywood club called simply Ibis . . . but not the word. On the front of the place is a skinny, stylized long-­legged bird in an Egyptian cartouche. You either recognize it or fuck you. It's funny. With their sharkskin-­suit aesthetics, I never thought about the Cold Cases as giving much of a damn about ancient mythology. Maybe they don't. The ibis and other glyphs on the façade are always a hot sell to spiritual tourists. Egyptians believed in five parts of the soul. I wonder how many Cold Case drinking games have been invented around that?

There's a line outside Ibis, even in the crushing afternoon heat. But it isn't like most L.A. club crowds. It's quiet and orderly. No pushing or shoving. No one harassing the doorman. Everyone is on their best Miss Manners behavior because no one wants to get bounced. These sorry suckers are all looking to buy a clean soul or to sell theirs, hoping it's untainted enough to be worth some filthy lucre. Most of the sellers will be turned away. The buyers, on the other hand, are always welcome. Metaphysical capitalism at its finest.

I park the car on La Cienega, facing south. In case things go sideways, I can jump in and hit the freeway. If there's a problem getting on, I can always keep heading down toward to LAX, all the way to the La Cienega oil fields. Maybe lure whoever is following me out among the derricks. Sure, there's a lot of traffic nearby, but no one ever goes into the fields themselves. It wouldn't be hard to hide a body behind the big pumps sucking dirty crude from the ground. But we're far from that right now, and anyway, I'm trying to play nice with others now that I'm a working stiff.

I walk back along Sunset and turn up a side street that lets me circle around behind the club.

From the back, the Ibis looks like any other drink factory. A blank back wall. Locked delivery door. A line of Dumpsters. Floodlights, turned off during the day. A fire escape leading to the second floor. The whole back area is covered by a ­couple of security cameras. The good news for me is that I only have to take out one.

I run down the alley next to the club. I'm fast when I have to be. Fast enough, I hope, to be not much more than a blur on the club's low-­res cameras. When I'm under the fire escape, I get out the black blade and throw it, aiming high up on the wall. I wait around the side of the building for a minute to see what happens.

When nothing does, I go back around the club and push a Dumpster under the fire escape. It's just tall enough that I can jump, grab the bottom of the ladder, and pull it down, all the while hoping that my aim was good and the knife sliced through the cable of the nearest security cam. No one tries to stop me as I climb, so I guess I got it. On my way up, I grab the knife out of the wall and climb onto the roof.

There's not much up here. Vents for the air-­conditioning. Some abandoned furniture and fixtures baking in the sun. A small satellite-­TV dish held in place with a ­couple of cinder blocks. On the side of the roof is a closet-­size structure with a metal door. My way inside.

None of this
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
cat-­burglar bullshit would be necessary if the Cold Cases didn't hate me quite so much. It almost makes me want to be nicer to them in the future. Almost, but not enough.

I try the knob on the door. It rattles in its collar but the damned thing is locked. It's not much of a lock, though. Who's stupid enough to climb up here when all the action is downstairs? I slide the black blade between the door and the frame and cut straight through the latch. Abracadabra, it opens, nice and quiet.

I walk carefully down a steep wooden staircase, trying not to make noise. I'm doing a pretty good job of it too, until some asshole comes around the corner carrying a case of champagne.

He's your typical pro bouncer/bodyguard type. A mountain of meat and muscle. The idea of a guy like this isn't to protect you or your property. It's to scare ­people stupid so they don't even think about getting out of line in the first place.

The beefsteak is wearing a parka, which seems a little odd until a breeze hits me coming up from the club below. Guess that means the stories are true. If I'm going to find out for sure, I'll have to get past Gorilla Monsoon here.

I reach for my na'at. He drops the champagne and pulls a goddamn machete out from under his parka. This fucker thinks I'm a baby seal. He smiles at me, but I can tell there's something wrong with him. It's all on his face. The guy acts normal enough, but his eyes are dead and glassy. He reminds me of some of the more pathetic souls I met Downtown. As he raises the machete I know that's kind of what he is.

This double meat patty is one of the truly desperate or epically stupid who've sold off their souls to the Cold Cases. I'd bet you a dollar he's working here cheap to get in good with the bosses, hoping they'll cut him a deal on a new soul. Not quite a person, not a zombie—­or a ghost or anything else you'll ever see on a normal day—­he's almost a living jabber. A sad husk clinging to a body because he has nowhere else to go. I'd feel sorry for him, except he's waving a machete for his masters down below, bastards every one of them, living off ­people's desperation and misery worse than any smack dealer or pimp in town. I'd like to cut this fucker down just on general principles, but a fight would be noisy and draw more chuck steaks up here.

He swings the machete hard at my head. I step back and bark some Hellion hoodoo. It freezes him in place, the empty-­headed creep. I take him by the arms and lower him to the floor, pull his parka off, and drag him and his blade behind the stairs. Stack a ­couple of boxes in front of him and leave him there to sleep off the hex. The parka fits fine over my coat. I shove the crate of champagne against a wall and head downstairs.

T
HERE ARE DARK
clubs and there are dark clubs, but this one is goddamn dark. I stand in the back of the place for a minute, letting my eyes adjust to the nonlight.

There's a good reason the Ibis is so cold and dim. Ever hear about those ice hotels in the winter in Sweden? This is an ice club. The bar, the chairs, the tables, the glasses, the low walls around the VIP booths—­all glass-­clear ice. And the only light in the place comes from glowing test tubes suspended in the frozen blocks.

Each of those shimmering tubes contains a piece of a person.

What I mean is, they're using human souls to light their love shack. I didn't think I could hate these assholes more, but they just hit a level of disgust a notch below where I'd consider locking all the doors and setting the Ibis on fire. But this isn't the time or place for a lecture on Buddha-­like compassion for all living things, and I'm not the person to give it. My meditation mantra for the next few minutes is “Ask some questions. Get some answers. And get out before I'm surrounded by a mountain of ground chuck and have to fight my way out.”

I zip up the parka and walk around, looking for any familiar faces. Of course, the only ones I spot are the Rat Pack that used to go slumming at Bamboo House. “Used to” because we had a disagreement and I sent them home from the club naked and broke. I also used a little hoodoo to make one of them think I was pulling his skin off. Like Candy said, sometimes I get mad and don't think. Anyway, the kid got a little bit of revenge. Turns out, he was the nephew of Nasrudin Hodja, grand CEO of all the Cold Cases on the planet. That's why I ended up with a hit out on me. Saragossa Blackburn calmed Hodja down, but I never formally made up with the nephew. I suppose now's as good a time as any.

I head over to their table near, but not in, one of the roped-­off VIP areas. I don't want to surprise the nephew and make him bolt. I get into his line of sight so he sees me coming. He starts to get up and his friends look around. I talk fast.

“Relax, boys. I'm not here looking for trouble. I just want to talk. I might even be able to do you a favor.”

“We don't want any favors from you,” says the nephew.

“Sure you do. You can't be moving many souls these days, not with ­people refusing to die. Inventory must be stacking up. I'm trying to change that. Come on, admit it. You love dead ­people. That's all I'm looking to do. Help ­people die again.”

“What do you think we have to do with that?”

“I don't know. That's why I'm here. Mind if I join you?”

I don't wait for anyone to answer. I pull up an ice chair and sit down. Even through the parka my ass starts freezing.

“So,” I say. “What have you heard? What do you know? Any ideas who's fucking with the dead? You have to have some theories.”

The nephew pours himself a glass of champagne I've never heard of. I'm guessing that puts it out of my price range.

He says, “Isn't it obvious? It's an attack on us. On our business. Hell, our whole way of life.”

“You think tens of thousands of ­people aren't dying just to spite you?”

“Think about it. When ­people aren't afraid of dying, they don't need new souls. Meanwhile, idiots come to us wanting to sell, but what are we going to do with the merchandise? We have souls going bad on the shelves.”

“Souls have an expiration date?”

“Everything has an expiration date.”

“What happens to a soul when it gets moldy?”

“I couldn't care less. All I know is it costs us money.”

“You think that's what this is all about? Money?”

“What else?”

“Revenge, maybe,” says one of the nephew's idiot friends. He's a creepy kid with a million-­dollar pompadour and a little John Waters pencil-­thin mustache. What works on an eccentric movie director just makes the kid look like an Arkansas pedophile.

I say, “What kind of revenge?,” reach across the table, and take the kid's champagne.

“What I mean is
you
. Some of us thought you were using your angel bullshit to get back at us for . . . you know.”

“Trying to shoot me and almost killing a friend of mine?”

“Yeah.”

The champagne is good, but, oops, what a clod I am. I splash some on the table and set the glass on top of it.

“Don't be stupid. If I was looking for revenge, I wouldn't involve thousands of innocent morons. Plus, I'd have cut all your throats by now.”

“Don't threaten us,” says the nephew. “My uncle would still like your balls on his wall.”

“Let him know that I'd be happy to come by and tea-­bag any furniture he wants, but that's a little off topic. Let's all concentrate on the real question. What's going on and who's doing it?”

The nephew opens and closes his fingers around the champagne glass.

“I don't believe you. You come in here claiming to want to fix things. So know what? Fuck you. The only one who's offered any real help is Tamerlan Radescu.”

“Radescu's been around? What did he want?”

“Like I said. To help.”

“The bastard,” mutters the pompadour.

“Shut up,” says the nephew.

“Why's he a bastard?” I say.

No one says anything.

“Boys, I have nowhere to be, so if you want to get rid of me, tell me something.”

“What Eddie means is Tamerlan drives a hard bargain,” the nephew says. “He wants a piece of our business.”

“A big piece,” says the pompadour.