Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (19 page)

    
He’d
left the Avanti’s windows down to air out, but it still smelled of funk and
balm, so he opened the garage, kick-started his old BSA 450, and tore down into
Hollywood, heading east on Sunset toward Silver Lake. The night was cool, but
the wind in his hair felt like a baptism. By the time he’d crossed Hyperion
Avenue, his mind had cleared of the day’s fog, and he was ready to be sociable.

    
It was
Saturday night, after all.

    
At Club
Tantra, Raszer was greeted by a pretty but instantly forgettable blond in a
silk blouse who took his $20 cover and aimed him toward the strobe-lit dance
floor. The restaurant’s tables had cleared, but for a few stragglers lingering
over their vindaloo
,
and the
action—such as it was—revolved around the lanky DJ with a lantern jaw and hands
as large and agile as any Raszer had seen. His long, dusty brown hair was
chopped bluntly in a style that was defiantly retro and cool at the same time;
the gray in the sideburns and the deep creases in his leathery face spoke of
long years of late nights, but his blue eyes twinkled. Despite the Middle
Eastern moniker, he was, as his accent had suggested, as British as the queen.
Raszer liked him immediately, and liked him even more when he spun a dance mix
of Kula Shaker’s pop-raga “Govinda” and mashed it with a trippy M83 track. He
took a small table at the dance floor’s edge and ordered a Bombay gin and tonic
in honor of the empire.

    
The
restaurant smelled of garam masala and mint, but not much of dancers’ sweat.
There were perhaps thirty-five bodies in the room—mostly small, mixed parties
of people in their late twenties—and only five were currently on the dance
floor. The odd number owed to the fact that one of the dancers was working
solo. She wore purple sandals with three-inch heels, and looked to be
twenty-five and ageless at the same time. Her waist-length black hair reflected
blue highlights, and if she wasn’t either Tunisian or Egyptian, the movement of
her hips in perfect measure with the strobe’s pulsed flashes suggested she’d
picked up her tricks in the
rai
clubs
of North Africa or at private recitals for a Berber warlord. She was going to
be a distraction—women who danced well always were. Raszer half hoped she was
the DJ’s woman, and there did seem to be something between them, because every
so often, the sullen arc of her mouth yielded him up a smile.

    
After
finishing half his drink, Raszer took out his own business card, along with MC
Hakim’s, and cut across an empty quadrant of the dance floor to the DJ stand.
There were a few more dancers out now, as Hakim was into a propulsive trance
mix and another batch of drinks had made the rounds. The exotic woman’s eyes
were on Raszer all the way, like breath on his neck. It wasn’t an entirely
pleasant feeling, but it wasn’t unpleasant, either. He laid the cards side by
side on the stand, gave Hakim a nod and a little smile, and improvised some
sign language for
talk
.

    
When
break came, the DJ put on a CD of ambient jazz with a Coltrane-ish soprano sax
blowing Middle Eastern riffs, strolled over to the black-haired woman’s table
to exchange what looked like small talk, and then crossed the dance floor to
Raszer. His walk was easy and unhurried. He ordered a ginger ale from the
waitress, calling her “luv,” and then offered his hand.

    
“Harry
Wolfe,” he said. “It’s a pleasure.”

    
“Stephan
Raszer. The same. Still good for that quick chat?”

    
“Why
not, mate? All I’d do otherwise is smoke and flirt with the barmaid.”

    
Raszer
gestured to a chair, and the DJ folded himself into it.

    
“Just
out of curiosity,” said Raszer. “How’d you come by Hakim?”

    
“It
came with the gig,” he answered. “My first big date, back in ’84, the promoter
told me he couldn’t put me on the bill without a handle. I was carrying around
a book back then by this guy Hakim Bey, so I lifted his name and it stuck.”

    
“Hakim
Bey,” Raszer repeated. “The guru of punk. The poetic anarchist.”

    
“Right,”
said Wolfe. “Big influence on the early rave scene. When it was tribal. When it
was good. The whole TAZ thing.”

    
“TAZ?”

    
“Temporary
Autonomous Zone,” said Wolfe. “A moveable utopia. That’s what we were after in
the Orbital days.” He chuckled. “The halcyon days.”

    
“I
remember,” said Raszer. “We didn’t get it over here the way you did in the
U.K., and the Ecstasy was probably never as good, but I did my share—”

    
Wolfe
made a movie frame with his thumbs and fingers. “Cut to twenty years later, and
now you’re a . . . ” He held Raszer’s business card at arm’s length. “ . . .
‘Specialist in Missing Persons.’” He dropped the arm languidly to his side.
“Who’s missing?”

    
“Katy
Endicott,” Raszer said, and took from his jacket the photo duplicate Aquino had
printed for him. He unfolded it on the small table. “Since the night of that
illegal rave up in San Gabriel Canyon a little over a year ago. I believe you
MC’d it.”

    
Harry
Wolfe kept his poker face and stole a glance at the photo—the group shot. “All
raves were illegal, mate. The good’uns, anyway. But I wouldn’t call what
happened up there a rave. The truth is, the vibes from that scene were so bad,
I haven’t taken an outback gig since. I stick to small clubs in the city these
days.”

    
His
ginger ale arrived, and he sipped it quietly, taking Raszer in.

    
“Did the
cops ever question you about that night?” Raszer asked, then laid his finger on
the photo. “Or about whether you’d seen her leave the dance hall?”

    
“The
cops, hardly,” Wolfe replied. “But the fucking FBI was all over me. Some wanker
with the face of a Pekinese and all kinds of wild theories about sleeper cells
and suicide bombers.” He jabbed his finger at the photos of Johnny and Henry.
“One thing those fuckers were not is ‘sleepers.’ They did everything loud, as
far as I could tell from what little contact I had with ’em. That’s probably
what got them killed.”

    
“They
did have guns,” said Raszer. “Apparently, lots of them.”

    
Wolfe
laughed out loud. “So does everyone in this bloody country,” he said.

    
“Did
Johnny Horn . . . personally hire you for the party?”

    
“The
sleazeball promoters hired me,” Wolfe said. “But I had to deal with Johnny
about the details . . . the music. He wanted all this agro shit. And Henry, his
strange little friend with the
cock-a-doodle-doo
hairdo, wanted these incantations. Rage and magic, man—a bad mix. I knew
something was going to go down. I should’ve taken a pass.”

    
As
compelling as the DJ’s narrative was, Raszer found his attention ineluctably
drawn to the dark woman sitting on the opposite side of the dance floor. She’d
been eyeing him with a combination of innocent animal curiosity and predatory
aim from the moment Harry Wolfe had joined him. Raszer shook it off and tried to
refocus, but the DJ was drinking ginger ale, not gin, and the exchange did not
get past him. He took a look over his shoulder, then offered his assessment.

    
“I think
somebody wants to be on your dance card, Mr. Raszer.”

    
“I
figured she was your private dancer, Harry.”

    
“She’s
nobody’s but her own,” said Wolfe. “We had a thing, but quite frankly, she
needed a brother more than a boyfriend.” He laughed wryly. “Now I just take
care of her. Pay the rent on her flat.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
”Upstairs.”

    
“Who is
she?”

    
“She is
the perfumed garden, mate,” said Wolfe, and smiled over the rim of his glass.
“Layla Faj-Ta’wil. Somebody should write a song about
her
.”

    
“Is
she Egyptian?” Raszer asked. “Israeli?”

    
“Syrian,”
said Wolfe. “Crossed with Persian.
Meow
.”
He leaned in conspiratorially. The slur in his speech would have been easier to
buy if he’d been holding a real drink. “You want to know about Johnny Horn,
talk to Layla.”

    
Raszer
went along with the
entre nous
routine and propped an elbow on the table. “How’s that?” he asked.

    
“She was
Johnny’s squeeze for a bit. I don’t think the arrangement was made in heaven.
It was more she was on loan to him.”

    
“On loan
from who?” Raszer asked, and hailed the waitress for what he’d already decided
would be his last drink.

    
“On that
subject,” said Wolfe, pushing back his chair, “you’ll have to query her. All I
can tell you is that night—after the bodies were found and the whole thing went
to hell—she came home with me and didn’t let go of me for a week. I don’t think
she wanted to go back to her keepers.”

    
“Were
they also Johnny’s killers?”

    
Wolfe
shrugged and stood up from the table. “There’s only so much you can get from a
woman of her culture,” he said. “Whether she wears a burka or a slit skirt.
They have their own version of
taqiyya
,
if you know what that means.”
 

    
“Concealment,”
said Raszer. “Although it’s usually to keep the enemies of the faith from
knowing what you’re up to. Do you trust her?”

    
“Beauty
of that sort can’t be trusted. But we connect.”

    
“That’s
worth a lot.”

    
“Well,
there you go,” said Wolfe, and offered his hand. “And here I go. Back to the
platters. It’s a pleasure, Mr. Raszer.”

    
Raszer
gripped MC Hakim’s oversize hand. “Same here. You’ve got my card. Call me
anytime you feel like talking . . . and don’t be surprised if I call you.”

    
“I hope
you find your missing girl, Mr. Raszer. I wish I could tell you I knew what
happened that night, but I don’t.” He finished his ginger ale and set the glass
down on the table. “But do give Layla a spin, won’t you? I’ll play something
dreamy. She’s a lonely girl . . . and the way she smells alone is worth the
price of a dance.”

    
Raszer
smiled noncommittally and sat back down.

    
Harry
Wolfe began to walk away and then turned. “Funny thing I just remembered,” he
said. “Back in the day, when everybody was luv’d up on X and we thought we were
making a revolution in our heads, the pirate-radio DJs in the U.K. used to call
the raves a ‘collective disappearance.’ As if we’d all go to the chosen
potter’s field and dance our bodies away until there was nothing but spirit,
and then . . .
whoosh!
We’d all find
ourselves someplace far better. Maybe that’s where your Katy is.”

    
“I doubt
it,” said Raszer. “But it’s a nice thought—unless you mean
dead
.”

    
Harry
Wolfe cocked his head and turned, taking a detour en route to his station to
exchange a few words with Layla. Raszer began to feel like the apex of a
triangle.

    
As MC
Hakim resumed spinning and intoned, “Let’s go to Goa, party people,” into his
microphone, Raszer allowed himself an extended glance at the exotic animal
seated across the strobe-lit dance floor. To no real surprise, she was waiting
for his eyes. Raszer didn’t flinch, except internally. Her beauty was of the
bruising sort, and he couldn’t help but feel that, somehow, she was being
proffered by the DJ. Maybe it was a tender sort of pimping. Maybe she
was
a “lonely girl” who came downstairs
to dance and mate under the protective eye of her platter-spinning patron. Or
maybe he was trying to get a monkey off his back and onto Raszer’s. In any
case, the transparency of the setup did not seem sufficient reason to forgo a
dance, or to wave off an encounter that might yield such potent information. It
was clear from the DJ’s rap that Layla Faj-Ta’wil might be, in some sense, a
direct link to Katy Endicott’s abductors.

    
While
Raszer’s mind mapped out a rationalization for crossing the dance floor, his
body was already there. She sat with her chin languidly propped on her palm,
bejeweled fingers curling back around the fine line of her cheek, dusk-colored
nails tapping softly on the cheekbone. Left leg was crossed over right, the
drape of her gauzy skirt falling to the side, and the open toe of her spiked
sandal aimed in his direction. Her hair was parted on the side, pinned back
from one eye and falling over the other, and at the part it went midnight blue.
Something disturbingly erotic occurred when Eastern women adopted Western dress
and body language. Something that implied the most recondite of secrets. And
that was the crux of it, after all—the secrets.