The Five Gates of Hell (22 page)

He buttoned his pants. ‘Where did I leave my car?'

She was lying on the carpet, the lips of her cunt, soft and blunt, pushing up through a mound of black curls. She shrugged at him, and he looked away. She was still lying on the carpet five minutes
later when he left the apartment. He saw her knees and calves through the half-open door.

‘Well?' she asked him, when he showed up again that night. ‘Did you find it?'

He scowled. ‘In the end.'

It had taken half an hour, the inside of his head fitting loosely, like a drawer in an old chest. He'd searched the streets around her house that morning. Streets scratchy with children, broken glass and weeds. He'd even searched the vacant lots. A trunk with burst locks. A drunk in a yellow armchair. Those things shouldn't've been there, for some reason they'd infuriated him. The night before he'd driven drunk. OK, so he'd lost his virginity (well, almost). But he'd risked losing everything else too. His licence, his job. His entire future. When he found his car he sat behind the wheel, gripping it so tight he could've snapped it.

‘I can't stay long,' he told her.

‘You better get those pants off then.'

‘What's that round your neck?' He'd noticed it the night before. A small leather pouch on a string. It was the only thing she'd been wearing that hadn't come away when they undressed.

‘It's nothing you need know about.'

His anger was still there, and he used it to break into her. He liked the way her eyes widened in alarm, as if he was forcing a lock, as if he was breaking and entering. It was the first time he'd ever slept with a woman and it felt like burglary.

That night, back in the Palace, the phone rang. He switched the light on. It was after two. He thought it must be Creed and said, ‘Yes, sir?'

‘Christ, you even crawl in your sleep.'

‘Who's this?'

‘Who do you think?'

‘Vasco. Where are you?'

‘I don't think I should tell you that.'

‘Creed's been looking for you.'

‘How about that.' Vasco's laughter sounded tight. ‘Listen, you've got to meet me tomorrow.'

‘I can't do that. You know what my schedule's like.'

‘Do this for me, Jed.'

‘I can't.'

Vasco hung up.

Towards morning Jed dreamed he was waiting at a bus-stop. When
the bus pulled in, hundreds of people pushed towards the door. He managed to force his way on. As the bus pulled away, he saw Vasco through the window. Vasco was trapped on the sidewalk. Vasco had been left behind.

That night the phone rang again. He didn't want to answer it, thinking that it might be Vasco again, but he couldn't afford not to. So he picked up the receiver and waited.

‘Spaghetti?'

It was Creed.

‘Yes, sir?'

‘I want you to pick me up.'

‘Where are you?'

‘A place called the Box. It's a club. You know it?'

The line was cluttered with background noise, and Jed had to ask Creed to repeat the address several times. At last he had it. 75 V Street. ‘I'll be outside in half an hour.'

‘Don't wait outside. Park the car and come in.'

‘Half an hour,' Jed said, and hung up.

Ever since that story broke in the papers, Creed seemed to be testing loyalties. Pushing those around him to the brink and saying jump. Jed thought he understood. It was like when his radios were thrown away. You could shrug your shoulders, put on a face that said you didn't care, but you did and nothing could ever be secure again. The next time security appeared as a possibility, you smashed it yourself. And went on smashing it. That, he was sure, was how Creed felt. And the people round him weren't jumping. Trotter had been away for two weeks. Something to do with that twisted arm of his. Meatball's sense of humour was fraying. He still told jokes, but they were the jokes of a man who couldn't see anything funny any more, the jokes of a man with one eye on the door. Vasco was nowhere. A voice on the phone at three in the morning. A dream in your head. Only McGowan had lasted. If Jed waited long enough, surely his moment would come. The days of liquorice were over. He'd started buying Iceberg Mints. They were clear and cool. They were how his thinking had to be.

He switched the light on and looked at the clock. Two-twenty. The smell of sex rose in a gust as he left the bed. Sharon didn't wake. He thought he'd heard of the Box. It was down by the old meat-packing warehouses. It was one of the hard-core gay clubs.

75 V Street was a black door with a small glass panel at head height where you could see your own face reflected. A two-way mirror,
presumably. The knocker was a nude male torso in brass. Jed took hold of the cold metal and knocked twice. The buttocks hammered at the door as if they were fucking it.

The door opened about six inches. A strong man with a beard stared down at him.

‘I'm with Mr Creed,' Jed said.

The gap widened and he passed through. He paused inside, adjusted his top hat.

The strong man was still staring. ‘Like the outfit.'

Jed stared back. One thing he'd learned how to do. Learned early on and never forgotten. ‘I'm a chauffeur.'

‘That's what they all say.' The strong man lit a cigarette. It looked too frail for his hand. They looked like King Kong and Fay Wray, that hand, that cigarette. There was a movie going on right under his nose and he didn't even know. The guy had about one brain cell and he was doing time in it.

‘Where is he?' Jed said.

‘In the back.'

Creed was sitting in a booth. McGowan on one side of him, a young blond guy with cheekbones on the other. Creed told Jed to sit down. ‘This is Ollie.' He meant the blond guy. ‘He's a tourist. You know McGowan, of course.'

Jed looked at the tourist.

‘I'm pleased,' the tourist said, ‘wery pleased.'

Jed was still looking. Weird stuff.

‘Sit down,' McGowan said. ‘Have a drink.'

‘I'm driving,' Jed said, ‘remember?'

‘Have some of this instead,' and McGowan passed Jed a brown vial. ‘We'll get home quicker.'

Jed took the bottle. ‘What is it?' Though he already knew, of course. That little bottle with the plastic spoon attached, it had just taken him back about five years.

‘It's powder,' McGowan said, ‘for your nose.'

The tourist laughed.

Jed felt Creed's eyes on him. He had two spoons, one for each nostril, and handed the vial back.

‘Good boy,' Creed said.

‘You know Gorilla pretty well,' McGowan said, ‘don't you?'

‘Kind of.'

‘You're a friend of his,' Creed said.

‘I used to be. It was years ago. We were kids.' It was so strange
talking to Creed like this. They never talked like this. He felt as if all his teeth were stones.

‘You been seeing much of him recently?' McGowan said.

‘Only in dreams.'

‘Only in dreams,' Creed said, and laughed.

‘I'd keep it that way, if I was you,' McGowan said.

‘Why?'

‘He's been a bad gorilla.' McGowan swallowed the rest of his drink. ‘He got a bit greedy. Too many bananas.'

‘That's right,' Creed said. ‘He's been a bad gorilla.' And he stared at Jed for a moment, then he smiled slowly.

Jed looked at McGowan, but McGowan was looking somewhere else. Riddles.

The tourist wanted to go to another club, but Creed insisted on a drink in his apartment. ‘You're on vacation. Relax.'

At last the tourist gave in. Maybe he thought he was on to a good thing.

They took the scenic route back to the Palace. Down through the old meat-market streets, into the tunnel with its rows of lights like neon stitching and its shiny cream tiles, up into Venus, then round the western edge of the harbour and back over the bridge to C Street. The sliding glass panel was open for the first time ever.

‘He's a romantic,' Creed said. ‘He wants to see the sights.'

‘We'll show him the sights,' McGowan said, and he leaned back and laughed, and the city lights on his mirror shades looked like gold zips that had come undone.

The tourist laughed along with them. In his rear-view mirror Jed saw the vial being passed round. The tourist was sitting in the middle. He was getting twice as much as anyone else. No wonder he was laughing.

Slipping down into the parking-lot under the hotel was like being swallowed, the entrance a dark throat with the tongue cut out. Loyalty is silence. The tyres squealed as they braked, the concrete smooth as skin and slick with fluids that had bled from other cars. Jed parked next to the service elevator. He opened the doors.

And then Creed's voice soft against his back. ‘Why don't you come on up with us?'

Jed turned. ‘I ought to get some sleep,' he said, but the coke had taken hold, it was lifting him, and he had such a good seat at the circus, he didn't really want to leave.

‘Come on up,' Creed said. ‘We should get to know each other better.'

The wallpaper in Creed's lounge looked like zebra skin. The curtains, so blue that they were almost black, were drawn against the view. Creed gave Jed a drink. ‘After all, you don't have to drive to get home any more, do you?' and then he went and sat down next to the tourist. The tourist was talking about his homeland.

‘It's not, you know, it's not like here,' and he waved a hand around to include the zebra-skin wallpaper, his new friends, the small brown vial on the coffee table. ‘It's more like,' and his face lit up as he remembered the word, ‘like a willage.'

Jed turned to McGowan. ‘Willage,' he said.

McGowan tipped his head back. ‘He's a long way from home.'

‘Maybe too far.'

Now McGowan turned to look at Jed and Jed saw his own face twice. ‘You don't know how right you are.'

‘Don't I?'

They stared at each other for another ten seconds, then McGowan smiled. There was nothing humorous or well-meaning about the smile. McGowan had simply chosen it from among a number of possible reactions.

‘You know something?' Jed said. ‘I've never seen you without those glasses on.'

With one swift motion McGowan reached up, took the glasses off and tucked them in his pocket. His eyes seemed pinned wide open. Too much white. The irises looked oddly suspended.

Jed nodded. ‘Now I know why you wear those glasses.'

‘Oh yeah?'

‘You'd frighten too many people with them off.'

McGowan liked that. He liked it so much that he decided to laugh. Jed laughed with him. He looked at Creed. Creed had just produced a pile of leather stuff and dumped it on the coffee table. Handcuffs, harnesses, ankle-holsters, studded chokers, and a mask with no eyes and a zip for a mouth.

‘Uh-oh,' McGowan said.

Reaching forwards, Jed picked up a see-through zip-lock bag. Inside was an assembly of metal rings and leather straps. The label said THE FIVE GATES OF HELL. Five? Why five? he wondered. Wasn't one enough? And then he put the bag back on the table.

Creed was showing some of the pieces to the tourist and explaining how they worked. His tone of voice objective, dispassionate, as if they were kitchen implements or gardening devices. Then, without altering his voice, he picked the handcuffs up, snapped them on the
tourist's wrists, and flipped the key through the air to McGowan.

‘Uh-oh,' McGowan said again.

‘Hey,' the tourist said, ‘you guys are choking, right?'

Creed didn't appear to have heard. He was looking at McGowan.

‘Choking,' McGowan said. ‘We're choking.'

‘Hey, come on, you guys,' the tourist said. ‘Get me out of this, OK?'

McGowan reached out and picked up the mask. He dangled it from one finger, swung it slowly backwards and forwards in front of the tourist's eyes. ‘Only if you put this on.'

Creed was nodding.

The tourist was well built, stronger possibly than either Creed or McGowan, but there was a pleading look in his eyes now, like a dog that knows it's going to be kicked. ‘OK,' he said. ‘I put this on.'

Jed left the room to go to the bathroom.

When he returned, the lounge was empty. He walked down the hall and stopped by a door. Through the crack he saw McGowan holding the tourist down on a bed. The tourist was lying on his stomach, his face twisted to one side. He was naked, except for the mask. McGowan had a gun in his hand and he was pushing the muzzle through the zipper and into the tourist's mouth. Creed sat on a chair by the window, gloved hands in his lap, one wrist resting on the other. His face had switched to automatic. He looked up and saw Jed standing in the doorway.

‘Want some?'

The tourist might've been cake. Jed shook his head.

Creed smiled. Not so much a smile, perhaps, as a slackening around his mouth.

‘That guy,' and Jed nodded at McGowan, ‘he's a psychopath.'

‘But he's loyal,' Creed said. ‘He's very loyal.'

Jed turned. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.'

Suddenly Creed was standing next to him. So suddenly that Jed jumped. He wasn't sure how Creed had covered the distance between the window and the door.

Creed slapped Jed on the shoulder, a gesture straight out of the boardroom. ‘Get some sleep. I don't need you till eleven.'

It was seven-thirty when Jed climbed back into bed. Sharon was still asleep. There was shine in the wings of her nose. Her breath came in puffs, ruffling her top lip. He lay down under the single sheet and closed his eyes. Sleep slipped through his fingers. His body itched
where the cotton touched it. He had to keep scratching. Always a different place.

‘Where've you been?'

His cock tightened at the sound of her voice. ‘I had to drive somewhere.'

‘What time is it?'

‘I don't know. Eight.'

‘Christ.' Both her eyes were still shut. One dark breast spilled sideways across the sheet.