Killing Pretty (30 page)

“I told you what it was.”

“Yes, but I didn't think it would be so . . . this.”

“Neither did I. How do you feel about being in the field again?”

“I'd be more comfortable going after Drifters, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.”

“No, they can't. Did I tell you that Julie's building has a downstairs no one is using?”

She looks at me.

“Really? Do you think she'd rent it out?”

“It wouldn't be too bad an idea, a PI firm with a clinic right downstairs to take care of paper cuts and stubbed toes. Maybe Candy can ask her for you.”

“Why Candy?”

“Because she'll listen to me,” says Candy. “If Stark recommends you, she'll think you're running bootleg organs or a cut-­rate asylum.”

“Thanks. I'd appreciate it.”

“I'll ask her when we report in.”

Down in the ring, a ghost cleanup crew is swabbing the ectoplasm off the floor and putting the weapons back. I recognize a game-­show host and a one-­hit-­wonder singer in the cleanup crew. I guess even show-­biz ghosts can end up on the broom if enough ­people forget about them. They should have read the fine print.

When the ring is clean again, a pretty ring girl in a bikini made of less material than a cocktail napkin comes out. She waves to the crowd, blows kisses. They love her. She must be a regular at the scene, Miss Texas Chain Saw Massacre, beauty queen of the cannibal set. Soon she waves the crowd to quiet down and someone hands her a microphone. When she speaks it's with a full-­on Texas twang.

“I want to thank y'all for coming out tonight. And, as always, we'd like to thank the White Light Legion for their hospitality and lovely facilities.”

That gets a polite round of applause and whistles.

“And, of course, Evermore Creatives for the super-­exciting ring action. Remember their motto, ‘Death is no reason to lie down and die.' ”

That gets big laughs. The beauty queen eats it up.

“Anyone who wants information on wild-­blue-­yonder contracts, there are some lovely young ladies circulating through the crowd with brochures and preregistration forms.”

She manages to split the word
forms
into two syllables.

“And now we have an announcement from the Evermore itself, Mr. Lucius Burgess.”

Burgess gets some serious noise. The crowd knows the guy. He must be the Burgess David Moore talked about before he took a runner. The beauty queen hands him the mic.

“Thank you all for coming. Good evening to our first-­timers and to our longtime fans. A few of you veterans for our friendly neighborhood fight club have probably noticed a lot of old faces coming through the ring lately. I want to thank you for putting up with that. With no new dead to bring into the stable, I know there have been a lot of reruns lately. But I have good news. Many of you have heard about the boy in Tulsa and the woman in Brazil who finally shuffled off this mortal coil? Well, you'll be happy to know that six more ­people have passed over today alone. And we expect that number to increase every day from now on, so very soon we should see a lot of new talent coming through the door. Thanks again for indulging us during these reruns, and here's to the good times to come.”

Between the screaming and brain-­dead yahoos stamping their idiot feet, the walkway sways under us a little.

Vidocq says something to me, but I can't hear it over the shouting. He points to the other side of the walkway. I look, and who's there but Brigitte Bardo and an older guy with a suit sharp enough to cut your throat. The older guy chatters away. Brigitte smiles and nods at his patter, but the smiles look forced and tense. She glances away from him for a moment and our eyes lock. Without missing a beat she turns back to the guy in the suit. When he shuts up long enough to catch his breath, Brigitte leans over and says something him, then kisses him on the cheek. He scurries away like a rat to the bar. I push through the crowd, trying to get to her before Hugo Boss comes back with their drinks.

She turns when she sees me.

“What are you doing here?” she says.

“Why the fuck are
you
here?”

“I hate this place, but I can't talk now.”

She looks past me in the direction her date went, then across the way to nod to Candy and the others.

“We're going to Bamboo House of Dolls. Meet us there later,” I say.

“I can't just leave.”

“Tell Daddy Warbucks you have a toothache, whatever, just get there.”

“I'll try. Now you have to go.”

I shove my way back into the crowd and go all the way around the walkway to hook back up with the others.

“Everyone seen enough?” I say.

“Much too much,” says Vidocq. Candy and Allegra agree.

We leave the same way we came. I keep my head down on the way out.

Cars come and go from the parking lot and the sides of the road. When I see the chauffeur with the gun under his jacket, I whisper some Hellion hoodoo. A trash can nearby explodes in flames. When he runs over to investigate, I key the Rolls-­Royce.

C
ANDY CALLS
J
ULIE
in the car. She makes it to Bamboo House an hour after we do. The four of us have been doing more drinking than talking.

The funny thing about the ghost killing was that you couldn't smell anything until the fight was over. Then we all got a stinging whiff of ozone as Dash's spectral body dissolved into nothing. The smells of the arena downtown were intense and maybe that's why I can't get the warehouse scene out of my head. It feels like a scene from Hell, not a recent memory but one that's been sitting in the back of my brain so that the details start to fray. Like the lack of smell. It makes the fight feel more real, like I'm down there, part of it. With each drink, the sensation lets up a little. But I know I won't be sleeping much tonight.

“I followed the car out to a warehouse off Sixth. There was a party or some kind of gathering going on inside. I got photos of some of the guests. Not a savory crowd,” Julie says.

“That's hysterical. That's a goddamn Hallmark card,” I say. “We were inside. We probably just missed each other.”

“Too bad. I wish I'd been able to get in there.”

“You're better off using your imagination. You don't need that shit in your head for the rest of your life.”

Julie quietly grunts, not convinced.

Candy says, “It's the White Light Legion's headquarters. There was a show going on. A kind of fight club, only it wasn't ­people fighting. It was ghosts.”

“Those were the tickets Tykho gave you?”

“Yes.”

Julie takes a sip of her martini. On the jukebox, Esquivel is doing “Limehouse Blues.”

“Did it occur to you that if Tykho is mixed up with these ­people, she might have called ahead and had God knows what waiting for you? And your friends.”

Candy looks at me, then at Allegra and Vidocq.

“No. It didn't occur to us.”

“Tykho is smart and doesn't let things slide,” I say. “If she didn't sell us out, it was for a reason.”

“What?” says Julie.

“Maybe she's as sick of the White Lights as I am. What are they into? Money crimes to keep their white-­power playpen stocked. Maybe they're into Tykho for something. Like protection money? Aiming us at them might have been her way of trying to get them off her back.”

“The Legion does have a reputation for extortion. Tell me what else you saw and heard.”

We run down the whole thing. The crowd. The fight. The bets. Mr. Burgess talking about new deaths and promising fresh blood soon.

Julie turns her glass around with the tips of her fingers.

“Burgess was telling the truth. There are reports coming in of deaths all over the world. It was up well over a hundred by the time I got here. It's causing as much chaos in Washington as when the deaths stopped. ­People at the top still think it's all terrorism related. The craziness is even hitting the world stock markets.”

“Wall Street doesn't like a mess,” says Allegra.

­“People in power never do. They feel insecure. It reminds them of their own mortality,” Vidocq says.

Julie sighs.

­“People exhaust me sometimes.”

I finish the Aqua Regia and wave my glass at Carlos for another round. He gives me a thumbs-­up.

“Does Evermore Creatives have overseas offices?” I say.

“Yes,” Julie says. “Europe. Russia. Asia. What's your point?”

“There could be fight clubs all over the world. Tykho says this thing has been going on since World War One. Get out your calculators and count how many disappearances, John Does, Black Dahlias, and gangster hits there have been since then. That just covers the D-­list ghosts. What about the ones like Dash tonight? Now throw in every high-­profile disappearance and murder. Look at a guy like Bugsy Siegel. Technically, he was killed because of how he handled the Mob's money in Vegas. But what happened to him afterward? He'd be a headline act. Tickets would go for a fortune if he was part of the show. Or Johnny Stomp. He and Lana Turner's daughter could replay his murder every night. How many blue-­yonder contracts have been sold since the war? Between crooks like Eddie Nash, who set up the original Wonderland murders, and psychos like Manson and the Hillside Strangler, you've got a ghost factory ready-­made for pricks like Mr. Burgess.”

“Consider also that seeing what happens to errant citizens would help keep discipline among the White Light Legion's members,” says Vidocq.

“You think that's why they chose Townsend for the ritual? He wanted out of the group, so they used him for a sacrifice?” Julie says.

“It makes sense.”

“I wonder if his spirit is in their murder stable?”

“Wouldn't surprise me,” I say. “He was probably the last guy on the planet to die before Vincent lost his job.”

“I keep coming back to one thing,” Julie says. “What does the White Light Legion want with Death? Yes, he's a powerful entity and you could use him as your own personal killer, but that seems like a lot of work when they were killing ­people so efficiently before.”

Candy says, “There's something missing. Something we haven't figured out yet.”

Allegra stares at her drink, then blurts out, “I thought I'd seen enough blood and violence at the clinic, but this is on a whole new scale.”

Everyone looks at her. She shrugs and looks at Julie.

“Stark told me about your new office.”

“Yes, it's coming together slowly, but nicely.”

“I heard you have a downstairs you're not using.”

Julie nods.

“For now. I might rent it out to help with the mortgage.”

“Why not rent it to a new clinic? I could give you a good rate on any medical ser­vices you need.”

Allegra gives Julie her brightest smile.

“Allegra would be a great choice,” says Candy so that I don't say anything and maybe jinx the deal.

Candy continues. “She's worked on humans and Lurkers. She can fix anything.”

Julie gets up to get another drink.

“I'll give it serious consideration,” she says.

“Thank you,” says Allegra.

As Julie walks to the bar, Brigitte comes in. Julie sees her and points her in the direction of our table.

Brigitte comes over and sits down, still decked out in the evening dress she had on at the fights.

“Good evening for the second time,” she says.

No one says anything. I lean across the table at her.

“What the fuck were you doing tonight? Have you been to that slaughterhouse before?”

She shakes her head.

“No. And I hope to never go again.”

“Who was that guy and how did he talk you into going?”

“Someone from the old country. A producer acquaintance wanted me to show him the sights. It sounded like fun. I haven't been home in a year. I don't often get to speak my own language.”

“How did you end up at the fight?” says Candy.

“He knew about them. He'd been to something like it in Vienna.”

“Did he tell you what you were going to see?” I say.

“No.”

“Why didn't you just leave when you saw what was going on?”

“He's a financier of some kind. A powerful man with powerful friends. He could make trouble for me with my visa if I didn't stay with him.”

“He said that? He flat-­out threatened you?”

“He didn't even say it as a threat. It was a game to him. He wanted me to sleep with him, but I left. You have to draw a line somewhere, isn't that right?”

“Yes,” says Allegra.

Candy says, “Damn straight.”

“Give me his name and hotel and I'll have him on the first plane out of town tomorrow,” I say.

“Don't bother,” says Brigitte. “There was another reason he took me to see the fight.”

“What?”

“Do you remember Simon Ritchie? The friend who helped me come to America last year?”

“Yeah, you were supposed to be in his Lucifer movie.”

“Yes. That's him. He did something else for me. He said that all of his wealthy friends had done it. That it was common practice in Los Angeles.”

“Shit. Please don't tell me.”

She wipes a finger under her nose, stifling tears.

“Yes. I have a wild-­blue-­yonder contract. That man tonight. He wanted to show me where I'd end up if I didn't let him do what he wanted to me.”

“Okay, then. He's dead. Tell me where he is. I'll go right now.”

“I left him at the fight.”

Candy squeezes my hand, trying to calm me down. It doesn't work.

“Are you going somewhere, Stark?” says Julie, coming back. She heard my tone and her question has the ring of a warning. I stay put.

“I was thinking about it,” I say.

She sets a glass of Aqua Regia in front of me and sips a new martini.