Nightlife (15 page)

Justin was going to have to revert from present to past tense.

Sasha reached up to lightly clutch his arm. He fought down the urge to yank himself out of her grasp.

“There’s another thing,” she said. “I almost forgot about this. When it was happening . . . it’s like I was aware of all these things I’d never have noticed if I wasn’t tripping. And it was like I felt somebody watching me.”

He rolled his eyes.
“I
was watching you.”

“Not you. Somebody else. But just at first. Somebody else was in there with me.” Sasha looked away again, seeking answers through mists and distances. “And then he went away.”

“He?” Tony Was all ears, sharp focus.

“Yeah. I don’t remember much, I just felt him. He was worried about me. Worried. Isn’t that just fucking precious?”

Precious indeed. You had to wonder, had to have your suspicions. Had she somehow yanked Justin along on her trip back through time? More strange side-effects of the drug? Maybe, maybe not. But better to assume the worst and plan for it.

Knowledge is power, and Justin knew too much. Even if he wasn’t aware of it. Dead man, for sure.

Tony stood, held his disgust in check, and pulled Sasha up with him. He’d never been so anxious to see somebody get cleaned up in his life. Have to throw a dropcloth across the Lincoln’s upholstery.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He started to lead her out of the room, back to the outer world. “Feel like hanging with me for a while? Play Queen for a Day or something?”

Her eyes gleamed from her smudged face. And she nodded.

“Good. We’re gonna be busy the next few days.”

They ascended the stairs, and already the ideas were starting to formulate.

The rest of that day and most of the next had seen precious little turning up in terms of Justin Gray. Trent’s apartment was vacant. Discreet inquiries turned up nothing helpful. No new phone listings for the guy, as Tony thought he might possibly have moved here. The way Trent had introduced them, this had been unclear. If it was just a visit, maybe the guy had gone back home to the Midwest after Trent’s death. Which would reduce the worry factor considerably, but would mean that the loose thread would be forever dangling, waiting to catch on something.

With no better alternatives, they went back to Apocalips the second evening. Early yet, so the crowd wasn’t wall to wall, as it had been the past nights. The ghoul contingent, hungry for cheap thrills, packing in to see where people had died. Sasha was getting off on the ambience of the place. Dancing by herself out on the floor, swaying to the amplified Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” lost in her own world. Head tilted up, arms wrapped around her thin shoulders.

You didn’t have to worry much about her running off with other guys while she was left unattended. True, she was a looker, especially now that she was once again cleaned up. And that pouty little mouth was the stuff of which fantasies are born. But most- guys got close enough, saw her dancing like that, saw eyes that looked into a slightly different dimension than they were used to—and they went off seeking better fortunes elsewhere.

Tony and Lupo patrolled the crowd, eyes peeled. Who knew, maybe if the guy was still around, he might come back to haunt the scene of the crime.

Luck turned around when they saw one of his crowd from the other night. At a corner table in another of the chrome corrals. Angel, she of the interesting good-’n’-evil signature. Looking hot tonight as usual, faintly steamy from a stint on the dance floor. He and Lupo invited themselves over.

They small-talked a bit. Shot the bull. Win that easy confidence. And then, without her even catching wise, he sunk the vital hook.

“Hey, I’m trying to find somebody, if he’s still around,” Tony said. “Met him Tuesday night in here, black-haired guy, friend of Trent’s—God rest his soul.” Tony crossed himself, a nice touch. “Justin Gray. Remember him?”

Angel nodded, took a sip of her drink. “Sure, but—”

“Guy didn’t know who to trust to sell him some good blow. I told him I’d fix him up. Can’t find him now.”

Angel was still nodding. “But he wasn’t Trent’s friend, you got that all wrong.”

Tony tried not to act too surprised. “No kidding?”

“Justin came down here to stay with Erik Webber until he gets a place of his own. Erik says they’re old friends from way back.”

Tony grinned big and broad, and every flashing tooth was genuine. “Well, fuck me! I been looking in all the wrong places.” He rose to leave, and Lupo followed suit. “Thanks a lot. I owe you.”

“Hope you find him. And tell him I said hi.”

“Oh, I’ll do that, for sure.” Smile and nod.

They collected Sasha from the dance floor and left the pulsing lights and gilt-edged reflections for the street. Dusk was perhaps a half hour away. On the roll, they used the Lincoln’s cellular to call GTE information, and that’s all it took to get Erik Webber’s address.

Next they switched cars, trading the Lincoln for an innocuous Olds that was sometimes used when they didn’t want to drive anything traceable back to the Mendoza name. The plates, paperwork, title—everything was a dead-end street. Next stop, Davis Island.

They had no trouble finding Erik’s building. A four-story place, tan stucco, Art Deco gone Minimalist. Lupo parked the Olds in the side lot, and they got Erik’s apartment number from the lobby mailbox after leaving Sasha in the car. Third floor. No elevator, so they hoofed it.

No answer at his door. Disappointing. Ceilings were high in the building, with transoms over the doors, but they’d been opaqued over so there was no point in Lupo’s boosting him to try peering in. They returned to the car. Defeat was unthinkable. This was merely a momentary setback.

“Can we go back to the club now?” Sasha said.

“Shut up,” Tony told her.

“Wait?” Lupo asked.

Tony nodded; no other alternative. He thought for a moment.

Smiled as he played with the shark’s tooth necklace.

Looked at Sasha. Crotchbait.

And he leaned over to pop the latch for the Olds’s hood.

Justin and April had spent part of the early evening walking along Bayshore Boulevard. Downtown to the immediate west; bay to the immediate east, just beyond an endless concrete balustrade whose columns looked vaguely Grecian. She told him that this was the longest stretch of uninterrupted sidewalk in the world, and he was suitably impressed. For a moment he thought of the top of the Great Wall of China, but no, that probably didn’t qualify as a sidewalk. Anyway, this place was better. It would remain historic to him as the site of their first hand-in-hand contact.

They were within walking distance of a raw bar called Pearl’s and sat at the bar itself while behind them, in the window, the place’s name shone in a script of pink neon. They quaffed bottles of Sol beer from Mexico, very light and fresh, and ate raw oysters and clams on the half shell, and peel-and-eat shrimp.

“I need to start job-hunting next week,” he said. This after a half-dozen oysters had gone down the hatch.

“What do you want to do?”

He shrugged. “I’d probably better stick with advertising.” She perked up. “Agency, still?”

“Yeah. If one would have me.”

“I could make some calls on Monday.” April poked the lime wedge down through the neck of a fresh bottle. “I do some free-lance work farmed out from a couple of agencies. Connections are everything, you know.”

“Or we could form our own. I write the copy, you do the layouts and artwork. Gray and Kingston, Limited. What do you think?”

She frowned, threatened him with her tiny oyster fork. “I think Kingston and Gray has a better rhythm.”

He nodded, had to concede.

“Did you ever do anything notable?” she asked. “I mean, any print or broadcast on a national level?”

Justin thought for a moment, speared oyster number seven free of its shell. “Well, I did most of the introductory campaign for Longhorn Beans.”

It had been one of his favorite accounts, a new brand of beans catering to the Tex-Mex craze. All the spicy stuff—chili powder, onion, garlic, green peppers, brown sugar—already mixed in.

“I was really proud of that, especially that first commercial where—”

“Where the surly cowboys shoot the pot of plain old pork and beans!” she finished, excited. “I loved that! That was
yours?”

He nodded, beaming.

“And that magazine ad, where the Longhorn can is standing on the grave, and the tombstone says ‘Pork N. Beans’— those were fantastic!” April pressed palms together and bowed slightly from the waist; Japanese heritage coming through. “I truly am in the presence of greatness.”

He grinned shyly. It had been a long time since he’d heard much in the way of praise.

“You know, if I didn’t think you were kidding, I really would like to work with you.”

“Do you have room in your office for another setup?” She nodded eagerly. “Oh, sure. That’s the great thing about lofts. There’s always room for something else.” Her face seemed lit up brighter than the neon
Pearl’s
in the window. “Are you really serious about this?”

He told her he was, halfway. Something to think about, at least. Maybe he could work some part-time job for a guaranteed income while giving the partnership a shot. They clinked bottles, toasting the beginning of a potential co-op effort in the making. A few minutes later, though, her eyes darkened.

“I wasn’t going to ask you about this, because it’s your business.” April frowned, hesitated. “But yesterday Tony Mendoza came by asking about you. Where to find you. Um, he said you might be wanting to buy some coke from him or something.”

Justin felt a cold pick stab his heart. Unease, seeds of fear. Mendoza’s interest seemed wrong. He was almost afraid for her to continue.

“He thought you were Trent’s friend.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I lied. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t trust him. I told him I didn’t know anything about you. And I didn’t set him straight about you and Erik. The less said, the better, as far as he’s concerned.”

“Thank you.” Justin hunched down a few degrees on his barstool. “Because I never made any kind of arrangement with him. At all.”

“Just forget about him.” April dismissed all with a flip of her hand. “He’s a sleaze, and I don’t want him ruining this evening. Okay?”

Justin nodded. She was intensely resolute about this. No love lost between her and Mendoza, that was blatantly obvious.

“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we pull an all-nighter tonight?”

He paused in middrink. Eyed her a second over the bottle. An all-nighter? He wondered if oysters perked up female sexuality the way they were supposed to perk up male.

“Sure,” he said. Ever cautious. You don’t want to pursue one supposed meaning when the lady’s intent is altogether different.

“I was thinking we could hit some blues clubs until they all close down, then go to my place and fix some kind of picnic breakfast, and then go to the Davis Island beach to watch the sunrise. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

He nodded. That it did. A lot better than vegetating on the couch, watching endless videos unspooling while waiting to catch a couple hours of fitful sleep before morning. Oysters or not, he was happy to take her up on it.

A few minutes later, Justin took a trip to the rest rooms, designated, rather than
MEN
and
WOMEN, SPEARFISH
and
CLAMS
. A public phone hung on the wall between the two doors, and he fed it a quarter. Dialed Erik’s number. Suffered through the twenty seconds of outgoing message before leaving his own.

“Hi, sweetie, it’s your freeloading roommate. Don’t wait up for me. Sorry to disappoint, but I got a better offer. April’s going to show me some more of the area’s natural wonders, and it looks like it’ll take all night. See you in the morning.”

He hung up, turned away smiling as a couple of obvious newcomers to Pearl’s suspiciously eyed the cryptic rest-room doors. He thought of the sunrise, of sitting on a beach and sharing it with April.

The dawn of a new day that he was actually looking forward to. A day whose light showed that life was really worth living again.