Killing Pretty

by Richard Kadrey

  “Seriously, what are we going to do?”

  “Vidocq and Allegra looked bored last time I saw them. Maybe they’d like a night out.”

  “Goody. I’ll call them.”

  “Tell Vidocq to bring some potions. I don’t know what the crowd is going to be like tonight. We might need to leave quickly.”

  “No arm cutting, please.”

  “I’m on my best behavior.”

  “Be better than best. Be super best.”

  “I’m going to need another drink for that.”

  I PICK ALLEGRA and Vidocq up and we head out to the address on the tickets.

  Turns out the space is in the old Warehouse District, which L.A. now insists on calling the Art District. I’ve never seen any art this way, but it makes perfect sense that the city would shove whatever artists it has left out to the land of hauling companies, cold-­storage facilities, and train depots.

  The address is a two-­story warehouse with several outbuildings off Sixth Street, across the L.A. River, near the viaduct on South Mission Road. There are railroad tracks on one side and a wasteland of faceless storage companies and trucks on the other. If there are any artists around, they’re keeping a low profile—­like subterranean.

  The warehouse has a large parking lot, but cars spill out all up and down the length of Mission Road. The cars are a mix of old numbers like the Crown Vic and spit-­and-­polished Caddys and Porsches. There’s even a Rolls-­Royce Silver Cloud, being babysat by a chauffeur with a bulge under his jacket like he’s got a grenade launcher in there.

  Outside the warehouse is a mix of methed-­up bikers and street punks with L.A.’s young, beautiful, and stupidly wealthy. The kind of ­people who open Fair Trade cupcake shops and art galleries with names like Paradigm. There are Sub Rosas in both the biker and artisanal asshole groups. I keep my head down and don’t meet anyone’s eye. Last thing I want tonight is to be recognized before I even get inside.

  My instincts were right about one thing: it was smart to leave my weapons in the trunk of the Crown Vic. Everyone going into the warehouse gets a pat-­down. A guy with tattoos on his face and a graying jarhead crew cut frisks Vidocq. When he hears something clink, he opens the Frenchman’s coat. Sewn inside are dozens of small pockets for the potions he always carries.

  “What the hell are those?” says the crew cut.

  “I have allergies,” Vidocq says.

  Crew Cut gives him a look, grabs a bottle at random, and sniffs it. He makes a face like a baboon just shit in his mouth.

  “What is that stuff?” he says.

  “Cobra bile,” says Vidocq. “Very good for digestion.”

  The crew cut gives him back the bottle and waves him through, saying, “You want to use that stuff tonight, you take it outside.”

  “Of course,” Vidocq says.

  Crew Cut has a good time giving Candy and Allegra a thorough going-­over. They deal with his bullshit without a word, but it’s obvious they’d like to pull out the guy’s guts with a boathook. I keep my eyes away from his while he gives me the once-­over. The fucker reminds me of someone, but I can’t quite place him. On the wall above the door is the White Light Legion sigil. The crew cut isn’t in uniform, but he has the Legion’s tattoo on his right arm. It makes sense. Hold the fights at the Legion’s compound. Let them work security and keep all the cash in-­house. They’ll skim from the profits, but letting them handle the muscle work leaves Evermore Creatives to deal with the talent and the public.

  It’s stiflingly hot inside. I don’t think the warehouse’s old air-­conditioning unit was meant to deal with a crowd this size. We’re on the top floor. There’s a walkway all around that looks down onto a large ring in the center. Down there, close to the ring action, the crowd is really packed in. There are good seats, up front, close to the ring, and cheaper ones behind, separated from each other by a tall barbed-­wire fence. Uniformed Legion members patrol the area. They keep the peace just by staring ­people down.

  They’re packed two deep against the guardrails up here. It’s hard to see anything, so we go around the walkway to check if we can get a better view. There’s a bar in the corner where the well-­heeled smart set can rub elbows with colorful ruffians and share a glass of watered-­down Jack. It’s a real meeting of the minds in here. The UN if it was run by sadistic morons.

  I get next to Vidocq and say, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think they’re observing the fire codes,” he says.

  “Anything else? Come on. You’ve been around and seen some shit.”

  “We had places like this in Paris in the old days. There were dog fights. Men would fight. Even women. I once saw an exhibition where a disreputable sideshow impresario set his charges against one another. Men with no legs fighting men with no arms. Bearded ladies and . . . what’s the word? Pinheads? It seemed like a vision from Hell.”

  “Did you do anything about it? Tell the cops?”

  “Who do you think kept the peace during the exhibitions?”

  Allegra stays close to Vidocq, her arms wrapped around one of his. When we find an open spot along the rail, I let Candy get in front.

  There are three ghosts in the ring downstairs. Two of them are working over a third. I recognize the duo act from some old books. Manny King and Joey Franco. A ­couple of enforcers back when Bugsy Siegel was still big man on campus in the forties. They’re going at the other guy with heavy wrenches and baseball bats. I suppose it could be worse. One side of the ring is like a murder wholesale house. It’s full of heavy tools like you’d find in a garage—­chains, crowbars, and even some torches. Kitchen knives and cleavers in another area. Old weapons like something from the Crusades. Swords, morningstars, bell hooks behind them. With all the blood in the ring, it’s hard to remember that all three of these guys are already dead. Yeah, ghosts have a kind of ectoplasmic blood. You cut them just right and they gush like anyone alive. They can even die. Blip out of existence like they were never even here.

  It seems like the fight has been going on for a while. The crowd is getting restless. The guy on the floor won’t die and the two bully boys can’t or won’t finish him. The loser is flat on his stomach. Manny, with the pipe wrench, stands over the guy’s back with the weapon over his head, going for a kill shot. Before he makes him move, the guy on the floor finds a small cleaver and swings it back into Manny’s leg. Manny lets go of the wrench and falls over. Now he’s the one screaming. Joey laughs at him and kicks the guy on the floor over on his back.

  It’s Dash, Maria the witch’s lost ghost. His face is a pulpy mess, but I still recognize him. So does Candy. She grabs my hand, pulls it down to her side so that no one will see her reacting.

  I still dream about the arena Downtown, though not as much as I used to. But I don’t go for more than a day or two without recovering some tasty bit of memory in which I’m either slaughtering or being slaughtered. Unfortunately, it’s usually the second thing. I don’t twitch and punch the air like I used to, but I remember what every blow felt like. That kind of thing never leaves you. But I made it out alive and sane, more or less.

  I don’t give Dash such good odds.

  The kid has shed more than a few pints of ectoplasm all over the ring. His eyes are almost swollen shut and one of his legs is bent like something that would look better on a flamingo. He punches and grabs at Joey’s legs as he stands above him. But the blows are marshmallows. Joey lets him punch himself out. When Dash gets so tired he can’t lift his arms anymore, he drops them. He doesn’t move or make a sound. He’s a man who’s seen the future and can’t wait for it to come. Joey doesn’t make him wait long.

  He lifts the bat over his head and brings it down hard. It only takes one shot from the Louisville Slugger to crack Dash’s skull. They crowd goes wild. They can’t get enough of this shit. I’m not sure even Hellions enjoyed watching us beat each
other bloody as much as these assholes.

  Joey raises the bloody bat in the ring—­King Arthur pulling the sword out of some poor slob’s brains. He does a turn while Manny struggles to his feet. Him stumbling around gets big laughs, but the big cheers go to Dash as his spirit goes transparent and fades away, like an image on a dying TV set. A lot of cash changes hands when he’s gone. Joey helps Manny to his feet. There are necromantic physicians backstage who’ll patch him up so he can do it all again tonight or tomorrow, whenever Evermore Creatives and the White Lights want to see those particular monkeys dance again.

  I won’t be telling Maria the witch about any of this. She doesn’t seem the type to take it well. Honesty can be very overrated, while a good lie can give someone peace of mind when there isn’t a goddamn thing they can do about the awful shit at the center of the truth.

  “What did you bring us to, Stark?” says Allegra.

  “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.

  CANDY CALLS JULIE 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 loo
ks 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.”