Wrong City (17 page)

Sparky stared
at him. “No, Vish,” he said. “The knockout television star fell head over heels
for some caterer of her own accord.”

“Fuck you,”
Vish said. He’d never said that to anyone before, but it popped out on its own.
Felt pretty good.

“Careful,”
Sparky said. He raised an eyebrow, and though his amiable expression didn’t
change, Vish knew there was danger here somewhere.

He inhaled. He
still felt shaky with anger, but calmer. “If it wasn’t Troy, then who was it?”

“Just a rival,”
Sparky said. “Something very old, something that lives deep in the earth and
doesn’t like how much control I have over this town. After I cut out a niche
for myself in Hollywood, it decided it wanted in on that sweet action.” He
looked around the café. “I mean, for crying out loud, why would anyone come to
Los Angeles if they weren’t going to be in the industry? It’s not like this
place has much else to recommend it.”

“And your
rival?” Vish asked.

“Was jealous
about how much power I had. He wanted to take my place, but I’m too much for
him to deal with. I had that territory covered, and there was nothing he could
do about it. So he took over the beaches. Surf culture, crap like that. But he
still wants what I have, so he keeps nipping at my ankles every chance he can
find.”

“‘He’?” Vish
asked. “Is your rival an ‘it’ or a ‘he’?”

“Either works.
‘It’ is more accurate.”

Vish stared at
him for a while. “What is he—or it—really?” he asked.

“To the best of
my knowledge, he’s a big-ass earthworm.” Sparky grinned. “I’m not being
facetious. I’ve only seen him once in his natural guise, or what I figure is
his natural guise, but he’s this enormous wormlike thing. Ridges and all. Kind
of cool. Every time he comes to the surface, the earth shakes.”

“My neighbor
says there’s something living in the earth under my apartment. Is that…?”

“One of his
minions, my guess. He probably sent something to keep an eye on you whenever
Troy wasn’t around.”

The grubs under
his sink. “I was in love with… a giant worm?”

“Yeah, pretty
much.” Sparky winked. “Love is blind, right?”

Vish fell
silent. Sparky thought for a minute. “He’s been killing actors,” he said at
last. “Or his surfer cronies have, most likely. Under-the-radar actors,
probably writers too, maybe musicians or whatever, fringe people in the
industry. Los Angeles’ single greatest renewable resource.”

“Why?” Vish
asked.

“To annoy me.
It hits me at my power base. So he put together this band of thrill killers,
his little coterie of psychotic surfer types, and fueled their baser needs.
Sicced them on all those kids who come out here to be famous.” Sparky tilted
his head to the side, considering. “So it looks bad for me. I figure it’s my
responsibility to stop him.”

He glanced down
at the table, then began to snicker. “Yeah, that’ll help,” he said. “Going to
try smearing yourself with chicken blood and dancing naked in the moonlight
next?”

Vish glanced
down at the beaded bracelet on his wrist, the object of Sparky’s mirth. His
cheeks felt hot. “It’s not like wearing it could hurt,” he said. He sounded
defensive and petulant.

“That’s what
you think.” Sparky held out his hand. “Don’t fool around with things you don’t
understand.”

Vish hesitated,
then slipped off the bracelet and passed it to Sparky. Sparky turned it over
and examined it. He snorted. “Well, never doubt the power of suggestion, I
guess,” he said.

“The woman who
gave it to me was a friend of yours,” Vish said. “Isabella Madre.”

Sparky raised
an eyebrow. He stuffed the bracelet in the pocket of his suit coat. “You do get
around, don’t you?” he said. “Isabella. Outstanding. I’m surprised she helped
you. You’re not her responsibility.”

“What does that
mean?” Vish asked.

Sparky
shrugged. “Division of the city. I handle the entertainment industry, so I’m
responsible for you, more or less. Troy—we’re still calling him Troy, remember,
but that’s just shorthand—has the beaches. Isabella’s got the tired and poor,
the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

“Immigrants?”

“Yep. She
picked that for herself. She might be the only soul in the city who genuinely
doesn’t give a crap about Hollywood.” He pursed his lips in thought. “Could be
she has a soft spot for you. Your parents weren’t born here, right? Maybe that
was close enough to count.”

“Is she related
to you?” Vish asked. “Madre, Mother?”

“‘Mother’ is a
very common last name,” Sparky replied stiffly and, to the best of Vish’s
knowledge, wholly inaccurately. “Does it seem like we’re related?”

Vish shrugged.
“It could be. You don’t look entirely unlike her.”

Sparky didn’t
say anything. He stared at Vish, a self-amused smirk dancing on his lips, and
finally Vish made the connection. “This isn’t what you look like either, is
it?”

“Not even
close,” Sparky said.

“Are you a
giant worm, too?”

“I assure you,
no. I’m just as good-looking in my natural form.” Sparky leaned forward over
the tiny table. “We’re not related, Isabella and Troy and I, but you can think
of us as siblings, if you like. There’s a few more of us in the city, too.”

“Where’d you
all come from?” Vish asked.

“None of your
business.” Sparky smiled. “Your role in this is almost wrapped up.”

“Almost?”

“Just one more
thing I need you to do for me.”

It occurred to
Vish far too late that something was wrong inside him. A numbness in his
throat, a burning in his stomach. The soup…

“When you look
back on this day, you’ll realize giving me this wasn’t your finest moment.”
Sparky held up the bracelet. “Did it never occur to you that Isabella gave you
this to protect you from
me
?”

Vish stared at
him. “What have you done?” he asked.

“Really, Vish,
have recent events suggested I’m someone you should trust?”

Vish couldn’t
think of anything to say. Sparky looked nonchalant. “The Troy-creature is still
out there, you know, now that he’s left your ersatz girlfriend.” He shrugged.
“He used you to draw me out and attack me, now I’m using you to do the same. It
seems appropriate.”

He leaned
across the table and patted Vish lightly on the cheek. “See you around,” he
said, and strolled out of the coffee shop.

Vish rose. His
chrome stool scraped across the tile floor. At the table next to his, a willowy
young Korean woman in dark jeans and a green fur jacket looked up from her
phone and scowled at him. He didn’t know what she could see in his face, but
she quickly looked away.

The restroom
was in the back of the restaurant, down the short hallway that led to the
kitchen. It was unlocked and unoccupied, thankfully. Vish locked the door
behind him and forced himself to throw up, as quietly as he could. His
esophagus felt like it had been scorched.

He was dumb.
Goddamn, he was dumb. Trusting Sparky, listening to Sparky, giving his bracelet
to Sparky… His vision blurred. Cold pools of sweat collected on his stomach and
in the small of his back; his legs shook and his face felt hot.

Awesome.

He guzzled tap
water from his cupped hands, then sponged down his face and his back and chest
with wet paper towels. He stared at himself in the mirror. He gripped the sides
of the sink to keep himself on his feet. He looked okay. A little manic, maybe.
His pupils overwhelmed his irises.

A knock on the
door. “Hey, man, everything okay in there?”

“Sorry,” Vish
said. “Just a minute.” He dried his hands and opened the door.

A young man
stared at him. Korean, early twenties, jeans and Converse and a green hoodie.
“Are you all right? You ran in here pretty fast.”

“I’m fine.
Sorry. Getting over the flu,” Vish said. “Sorry.”

“Sit down.” The
man led him to a bench in the hallway. “You look like you’re about to pass
out.”

Vish sank down
onto the bench and leaned his back against the cold concrete wall. He closed
his eyes.

“As soon as the
guy you were with left, you looked really freaked out. I thought he’d said
something to upset you.”

“He did,” Vish
said. “But it’s okay.”

He took a deep
breath and composed himself. He got to his feet. “I should go.”

“I’ll walk you
to your car,” the young man said. He looked like a slightly old college kid,
maybe a grad student at UCLA or USC.

Vish shook his
head. “I took the bus.”

The man
hesitated. “Do you need a doctor? I could call an ambulance. I don’t think you
should go on the bus.”

“Thank you.
I’ll be fine,” Vish said. “I just need to get home.”

“Where’s home?
I’ll drive you.”

“I’m at the
beach. Venice,” Vish said. “Thank you, but don’t bother. It’s too far away.”

The young man
took his arm and guided him toward the back exit. “I’m parked in the back lot.
It’s no big deal. I have stuff I can do in Santa Monica anyway.”

The offer
seemed to be in earnest, and Vish was in no shape to turn it down. “Okay. Thank
you,” he said.

“No problem.”
The young man guided him over to his car. “I’m Philip, by the way.”

“Vish.”

“Nice to meet
you, Vish. Sorry, my car’s kind of a mess. Is it faster on the 10 this time of
day, or should I just take Wilshire?”

“I couldn’t
say,” Vish said. He shifted an empty water bottle and a stack of thick medical
textbooks from the passenger seat to the floor, then settled in the car and
rested his head against the back of the seat. It felt good to close his eyes.
He wanted to explain that he didn’t have a car and thus didn’t know much about
the flow of traffic on the freeways at various times of the day, but that would
take more energy than he had available, so he kept quiet.

“I still think
we should go to a hospital,” Philip said. He turned onto Wilshire and headed
west. “You seem kind of out of it.”

“No, really,”
Vish said. “It’s not as bad as it seems. I just need to get some rest.”

Philip drove in
silence for a while. Then: “Why’d he poison you?”

Vish opened his
eyes. “I’m sorry?”

“You know who
I’m talking about,” Philip said. He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Sparky.
I thought he was protecting you.”

Vish stared.
“Who are you?” he asked.

Philip smiled.
“Oh come on, Vish,” he said. “After all the time we spent together, don’t you
recognize me?”

Vish
straightened up in the seat. His hand closed around the passenger door handle.

“Hello, Troy,”
he said.

“T
roy.” Philip smiled. “That’s not really
my name, you know.” He gestured at the door handle. “Stay put. You’re in no
shape to be on your own right now.”

“What do you
want?” Vish asked.

“For starters,
I’m interested in finding out why Sparky turned on you. And here I thought you
two were close.”

Vish laughed.
It sounded high-pitched and demented, and it scared the hell out of him. “I
really couldn’t tell you,” he said.

“You’ll tell
me,” Philip—Troy—said. “You’ll tell me everything, starting with why you’re so
important to Sparky.”

“But I’m not,”
Vish said. “I haven’t ever been. I’ve been a decoy.” It stank to say it out
loud like that. “He was trying to lure you out, so he gave me his phone number,
knowing you’d be on to me as soon as I called him. And now that I’m not any use
to him, I guess he decided to get rid of me.”

Philip looked
at him. “Huh,” he said at last.

They drove in
silence. Vish was okay with that. It was difficult to concentrate, what with
the way his head kept swimming. He kept his hand on the door handle, and at
every red light, he considered swinging it open. He’d leap to the curb, make a
break for it, find a cop or anyone who could help him.

No. Bad plan.
He was sick and weak. He’d conserve his energy and choose the right moment to
make his move, whatever that might turn out to be.

He looked at
Philip. “Why’d you choose Troy?” he asked. “Why her?”

“Chance. I made
a fast decision when you first encountered her,” Philip said. “The original
plan was just to stick with you, but I figured Sparky would never show his face
if he knew you were…” He stopped and appeared to mull over the correct way to
phrase it.

“Possessed?”

“Possessed, or
compromised, or hijacked, or however you want to describe it. Anyway, I thought
it’d be more interesting for everyone concerned if I used Troy. I hope you’re
not complaining, because you were awfully happy with her. With me, I should
say.”

“You seemed to
know me pretty well,” Vish said. “You knew exactly how to manipulate me.”

“How to make
you fall in love with me, you mean?” Philip smiled. “I’m a quick study.” He
reached out and touched Vish’s jawline. Vish flinched away. It was a gesture
Troy would have made, before she woke the morning after Kelsey’s party to
discover some… creature… had been occupying her body for the past month.

No wonder she’d
thought Vish was evil.

The scenery
along Wilshire flew by. Miracle Mile blended into Beverly Hills, which blended
into Westwood, then Brentwood and Santa Monica, and finally Vish could see the
ocean. Philip headed north on the Pacific Coast Highway, past Pacific
Palisades, and from there Vish lost track of where they were. This was one of
those areas people without cars couldn’t easily reach, out where the Santa
Monica Mountains ran into the sea.

Philip turned
onto a side street and drove up into the hills, then pulled onto the shoulder
and parked. They were at the top of a bluff, a couple hundred feet above the
PCH and the sandy beach just beyond it. “Get out,” he said. Vish tried to obey,
but realized he didn’t have enough strength in his hands to get the door open.
His chest and stomach burned when he tried to move.

He tried again.
Damn it, if he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t escape.

Philip huffed
out an impatient sigh, then stormed around to the passenger side and opened the
door. He grabbed Vish by the arm and yanked him out. Vish tumbled to the gravel
and landed on his shoulder. Didn’t hurt much. He wasn’t feeling much of
anything, which was surely cause for alarm.

Philip kicked
him in the chest once, hard. Okay, he felt that.

“Get up,”
Philip said. “Move it, or I’ll really hurt you.”

Vish stared up
at the sky, white from the marine layer. This was one of the things he’d liked
most about this city when he first moved here, how the beaches looked so
beautiful and desolate sometimes, apocalyptic in their wide emptiness, the
ocean and sky so obscured by that strange white haze that it was impossible to
see where one ended and the other began.

Another kick to
his ribs yanked him out of his thoughts. Philip reached down and grabbed the
back of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.

“We’re going
down the cliff,” Philip said. He gestured at a dirt trail leading down through
the rocks and dry grasses. “If you can’t walk on your own, I’ll drag you.”

“I can walk,”
Vish said. Might even be true. In any case, hiking to the PCH wasn’t a bad
idea. Plenty of traffic, plenty of people. Whatever Philip was going to do to
him, he’d be hard-pressed to try it in such a public spot.

Philip gave him
a small shove. Vish headed down the trail. It was steep and slippery with loose
rocks and dirt, but he could manage it. He moved as quickly as he could. Philip
was right behind him, within tackling distance, but maybe he wouldn’t dare to
attack him with so many potential witnesses around.

He’d never get
a better chance than this. Vish picked up the pace. Legs felt unsteady, and he
was dangerously close to falling on his ass, but it felt better being in
motion. He’d make it to the highway and flag down a motorist. He’d be saved.

He heard Philip
shout something, and then a body slammed into him from behind. Vish tumbled
forward; someone grabbed his hair and yanked him upright. Vish turned his head
and found himself looking at a familiar face. Not Philip. Tommy.

“Going
somewhere?” Tommy asked.

Philip slid
down the bluff to join them. “Sparky poisoned him. He’s dying. We need to find
out what he knows first.”

“My pleasure,”
Tommy said.

Tommy had come
from nowhere, materializing out of the ether. He hadn’t been at the top of the
bluff when Vish and Philip had arrived, and yet he’d attacked Vish from behind.
Even as Vish stared at him, though, the mystery cleared up. A head of shaggy
fair hair poked out of the side of the bluff, and then another surfer joined
their motley little group. “Hey, you got him, huh?”

He’d emerged
from a cave in the side of the hill, a small hole, the entrance obscured by
scraggly bushes and an outcropping of rock. Tommy marched Vish through the
opening and shoved him to the ground. One more surfer was inside, seated
cross-legged on the sandy floor. Four against one. Not great odds.

Vish squinted
in the darkness at his surroundings and saw craggy rocks and damp sand. Philip
crouched in front of him. “Can you move?” he asked.

Vish sat up.
Slowly, because everything swam and spun and shifted at every motion. Standing
was beyond him, so he leaned his back against the cave wall. The cold dampness
seeped through his shirt.

Philip leaned
forward and examined him. “You’re dying,” he said. “But before you do, you’re
going to tell me all you know about Sparky.”

Vish tried to
laugh, but it hurt his chest. “Already done,” he said. His voice was thin and
wobbly, no power behind his words. “There’s nothing more to say.”

He took a deep,
painful breath. “Sparky wanted to use me to figure out what you’re up to.
That’s all.”

“Did he, now?”
Philip sat back on his heels and examined him. “Tommy, why don’t you show Vish
what we’re up to?”

Tommy grabbed
Vish by his upper arms and hauled him to his feet. “This way,” he said. Vish
found himself half-pushed and half-dragged down a short, sandy tunnel at the
back of the cave.

Before he could
see anything, the stench hit him first, a combination of decay and something
worse, and Vish knew without having ever smelled this particular odor before
that the chamber was filled with corpses.

Philip lit a
match, a spark of bright light in the darkness, and touched it to a torch
jammed into the sand. Glittering lights dazzled Vish’s eyes. Thousands of
sparkly polished stones set into the cavern walls formed intricate mosaics,
violent images of great beasts and gigantic figures flickering in the
firelight, scenes of some long-forgotten mythology, about which he’d never know
more than what could be gleaned from these fragmented glimpses. There were
answers here, clues to the true nature of Troy and Sparky and Isabella, and
Vish wished he’d never seen any of it.

And then there
were the bodies, close to two dozen of them, all in a pile, limbs tangled,
sprawled in a careless heap on the sandy floor. Some recently killed, some
nothing more than browning bones draped in rags and scraps of rotting flesh.
The missing actors, the ones who’d disappeared, this was where they’d ended up.
This was what Philip—Troy, or whoever he really was—had done to spur Sparky
into action. Maybe Diego Xavier Gonzales was here, or maybe he’d simply cut his
losses and left town after deciding stardom wasn’t in his cards. Maybe Carlotta
was here, too, that cheerful and friendly actress who’d been so happy about her
bit part on
Interstellar Boys
. Collateral damage in some tiff between
Sparky and one of his many enemies.

“Why?” he
asked. He wanted to say more than that, but there was no power in him.

Philip smiled,
cold and fleeting. “Which answer would be better?” he asked. “That I enjoyed
it, or that I didn’t care?”

He gestured
with his chin toward the surfers. “Their doing, most of it,” he said. “They had
the enthusiasm. I gave them free reign and told them I could protect them if
they got caught.”

He nodded at
Tommy. “Care to finish what you started?”

They were on Vish,
kicking and grabbing and groping and tearing, and Vish could do little more
than lie there and take it. He tried to crawl away or, failing that, protect
himself as best he could, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t coordinate his muscles
and get his brain to send the right messages to his body.

Then, as
suddenly as it began, it stopped. The blows ceased. The surfers froze. Vish
raised his head.

“Oh, hey.”
Sparky stood in the entrance to the cavern. “Looks like I finally found you
guys.” He nodded at Vish. “Thanks, Vish. How are you holding up?”

Vish couldn’t
answer. He concentrated on taking normal breaths. His chest hurt in an ominous
way.

Sparky didn’t
seem to expect an answer from him. He turned his attention to Philip. “You
seemed hell-bent on luring me out of my comfort zone. So here I am.”

“This isn’t
your territory, Sparky,” Philip said. “Coming here was a bad idea.”

Sparky just
smiled. He glanced at the pile of corpses in mild interest, then turned to look
at Tommy and the surfers. He didn’t move, or do or say anything. A smile tugged
at the corners of his lips.

A rush of air,
like an errant gust of wind, and then the surfers burst into flames.