Wetbones

by John Shirley

  He found, instead, Orpheus. And all the time he was thinking of a third person. Mitch. Goddamn that little fucker. Mitch, his baby.

  Sometimes you walk along without thinking where you're going; your body knows the way, your mind is someplace else. Lonny had glimpses of the neighbourhood drifting by after he climbed up out of the ''river" and over the fence. Lots of little houses, some of them fanatically neat, with gardens and little fences; others strewn with hulks of cars and trash; clusters of small but noisy brown children who seemed to have been strewn themselves. The barrio cholos low-riding by, checking him out, seeing it was okay, that he had the right shoelaces and scarf for this neighbourhood, making with the power salute or just a nod. All the houses – neat or trashy – were small and cheap, hot little boxes cooking in the yellow brew of the Los Angeles air; most of them marked with graffiti.

  He saw all this like a scattering of polaroids. In his mind he was seeing Mitch; was hunching with Mitch under the bedcovers with a flashlight, the two of them seven years old, giggling and talking about where babies come from and then Lonny touching Mitch's hairless groin, showing him things… No. That wasn't Mitch; he was misremembering. It was Gavin, the little boy under the covers, years ago; Gavin, who was a hustler now on Santa Monica Boulevard, the shit-whore giving his ass away for dope to motherfuckers with big cars and small dicks. But Lonny remembered the two of them coupled on the top of Gavin's bunkbed, Lonny thirteen and Gavin only just eleven, never thinking of it as fucking then. Instead it was "just trying some stuff out"; hard to think of it as fucking even later because, if he did, then Lonny would be a fag.

  Mitch. More than once Mitch had let Lonny hold him, when he'd been hurting and needed comforting, or when he talked about his tucked-up parents, but

  Mitch had never let him do anything else, had never let Lonny try stuff out with him, and Lonny hadn't forced him, had just that once put his hand…

  Eurydice's place. He was here. Seeing the crackerbox plaster house with all the busted toys in the front yard where Eurydice and Orpheus and Aphrodite lived with their Holy-Roller aunt. She was an alcoholic, plus addicted to some kind of prescription cough syrup she got for "chronic bronchitis". Still, the woozy old aunt was better for Eurydice and Orpheus than their mom. They'd been moved in here by Children's Services because their mom had tried to sell their asses to get herself some hubba. Fucking crackpoofing cunt.

  Their dad was doing twelve in the San Q.

  Lonny walked up the concrete flagstones, paused at the bottom of the bowed wooden stairs to look at the yard. The toys in the dead grass and packed clay of the front yard were all grimy and busted, probably had been since the day after they came home from Toys-R-Us. Trucks with the wheels off; Hot Wheels cars embedded into the clay like fossils; splintered day-glo green and orange plastic squirtguns, and dried-up dogshit. And lying with a piece of yellow dried out dogshit nosing up to her head like some kind of giant killer worm, was a Barbie doll, with all its clothes gone and most of its hair ripped out and one arm missing. They were just dolls, but when he saw them like that they always made Lonny feel a little sick and sad.

  One of the kids came out onto the slanty wooden porch, Aphrodite, an eight year old black girl in dusty shorts and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt stained with barbecue sauce; she was holding a black baby's hand, the baby just old enough to toddle around. A cousin. Baby with shit-filled cloth diapers pinned onto her, nothing else. Lonny could smell the diapers from here, twenty or so feet away.

  "Orphy!" Aphrodite called, into the house. "That boy's here that Eury used to mess wid."

  Lonny winced in irritation. He'd never "messed wid" Eurydice. That was Mitch. It was Mitch in love with her, or told himself he was.

  Orpheus came onto the porch, a raspberry Bartles amp; Jaymes wine-cooler in his hand. He nudged Aphrodite and the baby back inside. He was a tall, skinny black teenager with a basketball player's muscles. Reeboks and jogging pants and a Lakers muscle shirt and a fake diamond earring in his left ear and a gold chain around his neck with the big gold-plated letters ORPHEUS in the middle.

  "Hey man, what'up," Lonny said.

  "Yo, Lonny, where's Eury?"

  "The fuck you askin' me?" Lonny said. "She's your sister…" Lonny felt a sinking in his gut. Eurydice was missing.

  "Mitch's you homie, that why. Lonny, you got you ass thrown in Juvie so you can chill with Mitch. You know where Mitch is, don't tell me no shit. Eury with Mitch."

  Lonny spat angrily at a wheel-less Tonka tractor. You get you ass thrown in Juvie so you can chill with Mitch. What was Orphy saying about him? "I came here lookin' for Mitch," Lonny admitted. "I thought maybe he'd be with Eury."

  "Was Mitch got Eury fucking with that old dude. Out the ranch. You know where that place is?"

  "The ranch? No. I thought maybe he went out there but then I thought, How'd he get out there? There's no bus out there. So I thought maybe he'd come here…"

  "You on probation?"

  "Yeah," Lonny lied.

  "Who you got for a P.O.? Bentley?"

  "No." He didn't want to talk about his Parole Officer. Because he didn't have one. "You think she's at that guy's place?"

  "Yeah. Denver. She be goin out there yesterday night. I don't know where the fuck it is… Mitch, he know."

  "Maybe. But he was in the hospital. Only he ain't there now, I heard. He cruised on it."

  The Ranch. Eurydice, now. And Mitch.

  Where was it? Where was the fucking place?

  West Hollywood

  Ephram had to bribe some guy fifty bucks at the door to get Constance in because she was underage but once inside it didn't seem to matter how old she was. A lot of the girls here, and most of the young gay boys, seemed like teenagers.

  She'd never been in a disco, if that's what it was. That's what Ephram called it. It was just a long white room with coloured track-lighting and four wall-video screens. Just now the screens showed Janet Jackson – no, Janet's video was just finished, now it was Taylor Dayne. There was a long, curvy, transparent-plastic bar – by some trick of the light it looked as if the people at the far end of the bar were leaning on nothing, on thin air – and there were a lot of tables crammed together, and a small dance floor at the far end. Mirrors on two sides of the dance floor made the room seem to extend onward like another car in a train. On the third side of the dance floor was one of the video screens so that a slightly larger-than-lifesize, two-dimensional Taylor Dayne was dancing with the half-dozen gay boys and hetero girls who rollicked on the dance floor.

  Constance was occupying herself with all the details – even the splatter of colours mixed into the black floor tiles – in order to keep from feeling the panic, the fear that came like a swarm of mosquitos, the bad feelings that Ephram punished her for. In order to keep from thinking about Daddy. In order to keep from thinking about the men they'd murdered, her and Ephram.

  Most of her mind, she knew, was locked away inside her, a mewling cat in a carrier-box. You had to ignore its muted yowling to get where you were going.

  She wanted to go to the bathroom but she was afraid – no, not afraid don't think that… She wanted to go to the bathroom but Ephram would mentally follow her in, and it embarrassed her.

  I have to follow you in. Otherwise you might wander off, out bathroom windows or back doors.

  Escape? She laughed and sipped her Coca-Cola.

  "We won't be taking any young men along with us, tonight, actually," Ephram remarked. "It happens that young ladies come here who work as rather expensive whores. They pick up the moneyed men at the bar here. We'll let one seem to pick us up. There are things I want to try… Best with a woman… A very young one preferably… Thank heaven for little girls, ha ha."

  Constance nodded. (Don't think, don't think, don't think).

  She sipped her Coca Cola. After a while, the video screen showed the band Poison, with their cockatoo hair and day-glo costumes and the cheap mystery of dry-ice clouds.

  Sh
e had a thought and instantly hid it away.

  From the Journal of Ephram Pixie "for July the 22 199":

  It's not enough, anymore. My use of proxie neural pathways to experience pleasures is not entirely protecting me from being used up myself. I have a sense that there is some aspect of the negative astrology, some variant of the hidden constellations that is hidden to me as well as to ordinary men. Something veiled. Could someone be veiling it from me, setting me up for a fall? Who? Denver? The Akishra?

  Could it be they've lured me to L. A…?

  No. I am Ephram Pixie, master of my destiny as no man else is.

  Still, I am feeling enervated. Or at least rather ragged in my enjoyments, sagging in my appetites. Perhaps it is at last time to attempt Wetbones again. If I do, it will attract the Akishra. And that could be fatal.

  Or will it – in particular? This is Los Angeles. They feed so widely and so well here. It could well be that the Spirit brought me here so to give me a smokescreen, a place of concealment, where the Akishra will not notice me in the general background of suffering and decadence. So very many emissions here.

  It could be that I have lost faith, that I should be trusting the guidance of the Spirit more. It could be that the Spirit plans to exalt me, at last, in this place and that is why I have been guided here. He does seem to be guiding me back to the Engorgement Ritual. But oh! That Ritual is so very taxing. But oh again! How very rewarding it is, once the labour is done, ha ha.

  There could be another reason the Spirit is prompting me to Wetbones. It might well be the ideal way to stop any search for Constance in its tracks. When she was twelve her father had her fingerprints registered; there was a police drive on for it, a way to help locate children if they turn up missing, and to identify their bodies if they turn up dead… I saw it in her mind as a hope, back when I allowed her hope. She doesn't need all her fingers to be of use to me. Not really.

  I have made my decision.

  Wetbones.

  Downtoum Los Angeles

  Garner had known what the police would say. The verbal shrug he would get. There were literally tens of thousands of missing teenagers in Los Angeles. Most of them were homeless addicts and prostitutes, living in cars and under freeways. Giving his report was just a way to get Constance's name on the LAPD computer.

  Now he drove the van West, onto the freeway, glad he wasn't going East; traffic Southeast-bound, on the other side of the freeway divide, was thick as coagulated blood.

  He'd spent five hundred bucks on a deposit for a detective agency, a cheap gumshoe who was just another warm body to go about asking have you seen this girl have you seen this girl have you seen this girl, anyplace she'd be likely to turn up.

  Of course, he could be wrong about where Constance would likely turn up. And he could be wrong about it even being in this city. And even if it was in this city, the town was so fucking big.

  But he'd learned to trust his intuition; he thought that maybe – along with the patterns of incidents and coincidences that made up the flow of life – pulses of intuition were God's Morse Code.

  Or maybe he was kidding himself.

  He had to stay busy. Had to. So he started on Hollywood Boulevard, showing a display cardboard taped with several pictures of Constance to anyone who'd talk to him. He wandered tirelessly but fruitlessly through Hollywood and the Fairfax and downtown L.A.. He talked especially to prostitutes, trying to get a handle on the local trade in chickens. Who was dealing in young flesh? Where were they?

  It could be that the son of a bitch who had her would market her in those shadowy and seamy venues.

  He walked the streets for two days, sleeping at night in his van to save money for bribes, before he began to hear the recurrent note. The rumours kept cropping up: The More Man. A rich movie industry sleaze who sometimes scattered largesse on compliant teenagers.

  And then he began hearing about the murders. The kids on the street would try to sound knowledgeable about the murders. But all they really knew, apart from the condition of the corpses, was what to call them: Wetbones.

  Culver City Los Angels

  Prentice was trying not to think A universal skill, a widely applied survival technique: Sometimes you have to just close your eyes and just do what you have to do.

  "Jeff – you know where Mitch probably is?" Careful,

  Prentice told himself, leaning back in the desk chair of Jeff's office. You don't want to come off sounding like that cop that came over here. That'll turn Jeff against you in a hot second.

  Jeff was sitting pensively on the edge of the desk. Afternoon sunlight came in dusty stacks through the cantilevered blinds. "Do I know where Mitch probably is? If I knew where the fuck Mitch was we wouldn't be having this fucking discussion," Jeff said.

  Prentice thought: I'm helping him, I really am. This whole paranoid thing is just making a wreck of our lives. Both of us feeding on it emotionally – me because of Amy, Jeff because he feels bad about not taking care of Mitch.

  The dreams Prentice had been having about Amy were enough to convince him he had some kind of morbid entanglement with her memory. Best all that were jettisoned..

  "Mitch is probably deliberately letting you stew, man," Prentice said. Everything he said was an attempt to convince himself as much as Jeff – an escape from culpability. From the sense of something precious inside him rotting away because he was trying to play along with Arthwright. "I mean, think about it – Mitch is into rock'n'roll. Wants to be a head-bangin' rockstar. Chances are he's hanging out with that crowd on Sunset Boulevard, down by the Whisky, the other clubs down there. I mean – he probably was at Denver's, and then that didn't come to anything, and he split for town."

  But what about Amy? Prentice asked himself. Her connection to Denver. Her death.

  He squashed the thought. Sometimes you have to just close your eyes and…

  "Maybe you're right," Jeff said grudgingly. "But that headbangin' crowd is big, man. How am I supposed to find him in it – if that's where he is.

  "A private eye. Go on foot and ask people in the lines outside the clubs. Maybe even see Mitch there. I mean, if you…" He broke off. He was about to say, If you tangle with the Denvers in court you could lose a lot of money – and and make an enemy of Arthwright. But if he said that, Mitch might realize that Arthwright had put him up to this.

  Prentice writhed inside. Wrongwrongwrongwrong. The word like a bell pealing in his mind. Wrong.

  Jeff hugged himself wearily. "I'm fucking tired of thinking about this. I'll decide what to do tomorrow."

  The desk phone rang. Jeff answered it in a monotone. "Yeah. Hello… Yeah, he's right here."

  He passed the phone over to Prentice and left the room.

  Prentice put the phone to his ear. "Tom Prentice here."

  "Hi, 'Tom Prentice here.' It's Lissa."

  Prentice's gut did another flip-flop. There was anticipation in it, and fear. "Hi. I'm glad you called."

  "Listen – Zack wanted me to invite you to a party he's giving for some of his friends. He's giving it at their place, but he's setting it all up, I guess. Oh and I'm supposed to ask you – it was all very cryptic – how it's going 'with Jeff'? Whatever that's about."

  "Uh. Fine." Could Jeff be listening on the extension? No, why would he? "It's taken care of."

  "Good – I guess. I'm not in on that loop. Anyway – taking me to a party's a nice cheap date, don't you think?"

  "I'd love to take you on the expensive kind." But he was glad he didn't have to, yet. He was veering dangerously close to flat broke. God, he might have to write that video. ''For that matter, I'd take a trip to Baghdad with you in an F-16."

  "Good. I like an explosive date. But, in the meantime, Arthwright's party at the Denvers' is on Saturday -"

  "It's where? " Unable to hide his startlement.

  "At the Denvers'. You're supposed to not bring you know-who. Can you pick me up?" She gave him the time and her address and they exchanged a few more vague innue
ndoes and he hung up.

  Telling himself, This way I can clear up the question of Mitch being out there…

  Then asking himself, What are you so scared of?

  West Hollywood

  "First time I saw a Wetbones body, I didn't want to believe it used to be people. If I believed that, shit, I'd have to puke," Blume said. "Eventually, I did have to puke." He was six inches taller than Garner, but slumped in his chair almost to the same height; he had bushy hair receding with clown-like frontal baldness. A tired, cynical face built around a long, thin nose; the nondescript clothes that private detectives wear. He took another long pull on his beer. "You sure you don't want a beer or something?" he asked Garner. "I don't like to drink alone."

  Garner was tempted. He ached for a drink, sometimes, to put out the smoldering anguish of fear for Constance. But he wasn't going to throw away all those years of sobriety for anything so sickly as a mere temptation.

  Garner shook his head. "Naw. I'll have a Seven-Up though, if that helps." They sat in a corner booth under a buzzing Felix The Cat clock. Garner wished they'd sat nearer the door. The tavern stank of old beer and a piss-choked bathroom.

  "How many of these bodies have you seen?" Garner asked.

  "If you can even call 'em bodies… Two."

  Blume heaved himself abruptly out of the booth and went to the bar. He came back moments later with a double tequila in one hand and a fizzing glass of soda in the other. He sat down, passing Garner the glass. "They didn't have Seven-Up. Sprite."

  "Great. Fine. You were saying…"

  Blume knocked back the double tequila in one swallow. Blew out his cheeks. Then shook his head sadly. "If there hadn't been a skull, you wouldn'ta been able to tell it was human. Too much of a mess. Just a lot of… wet bones. Broken up wet bones. Wet with blood and… gunk. Piss and phlegm I guess. Even shit from the busted intestines. Busted bones and guts in the middle of a puddle of blood. No clothes around. It didn't look like it was dug up, neither. Too fresh. Not like somebody'd messed with a grave. You could just see these bones were new. And in one there was this busted skull, and the eye – well, one of the eyes was intact. But no lids…"