I was glared at like a husband who had just undermined his wife in a public argument. Eli returned his gaze to Luiz and I tried to repress the uprising of anger in my chest.
It must have taken them almost twenty minutes just to order drinks. Did they not think that the people working here had anything better to do?
‘“Trustworthy” seems to be a word that has different definitions according to different people—’
‘You trust me when you need help, but don’t trust me when I need a ride.’
I saw one of the girls in the group talking to a guy, maybe her boyfriend, whose eyes kept sliding downwards towards his screen. She’d be better off taping the thing to her forehead, I thought.
‘Trust…’
‘The idea of trust…’
‘Who do you trust?’
‘Why do you trust…?’
‘Trustworthy isn’t some fucking label…’
‘It has to be earned.’
I stood up.
The others didn’t watch me go. It was as if I was moving in the space between universes. The kids didn’t look up when I approached them, but then why would they? They barely looked up to interact with each other.
I picked up one of their phones and dropped it in a full pint glass.
Now they were looking.
Taking the pint glass and slapping my palm flat over the top, I shook the pint of beer and smartphone like a mixologist, before slamming the glass back down in the middle of the group.
There were no exclamations, not even a mild protest.
The bar went silent.
‘Cheers,’ I said, and left.
When we finally, thank fuck, got out of St Louis, Luiz was sat in the back of the car drinking energy drinks. I don’t recall them having another discussion about trust again, and no one talked about the smartphone pint.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Daisy
It wasn’t that I thought Noel would do anything stupid, like kill himself. But I knew how low-level depression could transform one day into a sudden tiredness with everything. In my experience the decision to end it all wasn’t a slow burner. It was a snap. Like walking out of a club and past a kebab shop and you’re vaguely aware of being hungry but then – bang – you’ve never needed food more in your life.
I’d walked Noel to an AA meeting that morning but he refused to go in, so we sat on a wall outside and smoked. I didn’t vocalize my disapproval; I didn’t feel able.
It was chilly.
Noel told me about a time he tried to kill himself in a sea cave and it didn’t work. He walked out of his family’s holiday home, into a cave a few miles along the seafront, and took as many pills as he could. By some stroke of fortune, either good or bad depending on how you looked at it, someone saw him and called the coastguard. By the time help arrived, Noel had thrown up most of the pills anyway. It was much harder to kill yourself than he had envisioned, he said.
‘I tried to kill myself once,’ I chimed in, as if we were acknowledging a mutual love of pasta or something equally banal. ‘When I was younger. It was a weird phase I went through. I totally meant it though, at the time.’
‘Did it work?’
We both laughed. For some reason that was always the first question people asked.
I relit the end of my cigarette. ‘It wasn’t even dramatic. I’d just…’
‘Had enough.’
‘Yeah.’
‘See, look, we’re talking about personal stuff.’ Noel spread his hands. ‘Who needs AA when we can just be each other’s therapists?’
‘You’d have to start paying me a butt-load more than you’re paying me now.’
‘You know, at my first meeting at AA our group leader, Si, he told us that some of us were gonna die. Straight out. No sugar-coating. I’m not sure parts of AA actually work, some of it is bullshit, but Si was always really in-your-face about things. I liked him for that.’
‘What did he say?’
‘First time I went, he told us all to take a look at the guy on our left, and then at the guy on our right. Then he said, really matter-of-fact, “Alcoholism kills one in three people who suffer from it, so only two of you are going to get out of this alive.”’
I grimaced. ‘Fuck. Harsh.’
‘Better harsh though. It’s all a bit…’ he waggled his fingers under his chin mockingly, ‘touchy-feely sometimes.’
We both looked over our shoulders at the church hall. I thought about calling Ronnie and maybe putting him on speakerphone.
But Noel asked, ‘So how did you try and kill yourself then?’
‘Oh, pills, same as you.’ It didn’t bother me talking about it now. ‘You know I’m allergic to everything, antibiotics, penicillin and all that? Well, because of that I basically had a pharmacy in my room of these different medications I’d never finished. So I just took everything I had, put them in a bowl and started taking them in my room.’
‘Why did you put them in a bowl first?’
Of all the questions he could have asked, I found that one quite weird.
‘I don’t know. It just seemed neater.’
‘So what happened?’
I slid off the wall and stretched, pacing. ‘I’m not massively superstitious… but my mum lost her credit card the year before when we were on holiday in Spain and we never found it. She had to cancel her card days before we flew back and we just thought it had been pickpocketed.’
Noel was frowning.
‘No, trust me, this is going somewhere,’ I said. ‘I was opening this pack of painkillers with Spanish writing on them and this card just fell out right into my hand. It had my mum’s name on it, and then it hit me – it was her credit card that she’d lost on holiday, from a year ago. How weird is that?’
He nodded, slowly. ‘Pretty weird, I guess.’
‘What were the chances that, just as I decided I was gonna kill myself, this lost card reappears in my hand? I didn’t even register it was my mum’s at first, I had to read her name like four times, I thought it was just something that came in the packet.’
Did I sound manic? Probably.
I lapsed into silence and flicked my cigarette butt into the gutter.
‘So what happened after you found the card?’
‘Oh yeah. Um… I started laughing, like… mental laughing. Then I started crying. Then I just… snapped out of it. I couldn’t top myself after that, it would be absurd. So I went upstairs and threw up everything, then I went and told my mum I’d found her card – just coincidentally – and we had a laugh about it. It was like two in the morning and I just walked into her room and gave it to her. I don’t think she knew what actually went on.’
‘I always found it weird that someone got me out of that sea cave.’ He shrugged. ‘It was so remote. The chances of someone being there and seeing me go in, and then calling for help. It was nil.’
‘You ever thought about doing it again?’
‘Yeah… But then again, no. It didn’t work the first time. I don’t think I could cope with how sad another failure would be.’ He slipped down from the wall to lean against it. ‘What about you?’
‘Na.’
I started walking alongside him in the direction of the club, zipping up my jacket and wishing I’d worn tights.
‘It gave me this feeling like I wasn’t supposed to die yet,’ I said.
‘Thought you weren’t superstitious?’
‘I’m not. But I think that’s why I’ve never thought about it since. It felt like I was being told that I wasn’t meant to die yet. So I figured that when it’s my time to go, I’ll go.’
There was a silence.
I found myself frantically scanning the pavements now, looking into every face for Seven. I hoped that Noel didn’t notice. It didn’t occur to me right away that he was probably doing the same thing.
‘That’s why I’ve never tried again too, if it makes you feel any better,’ Noel said, sniffing. ‘Just seemed like too much of a coinci
dence. I’m not superstitious either but… well, maybe I am. Who cares really? Not like we’re religious or anything.’
‘Yeah, we just believe some higher power thinks we’re special enough to tell us it’s not time to die.’ I smirked. ‘I think that might be narcissism, eh.’
‘Yeah, it’s fucking weird. Let’s never talk about this to anyone else.’
‘Fine by me.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ronnie
I called everyone I knew in LA, everyone who could have owed me a favour, which came to a total of three people, and they all turned me down.
The closer we got to LA, to Cameron Hopper, to where Trent had apparently been most recently according to Melissa, the faster those forty hours flew by, and the more I started to panic. Luiz found less to talk about and it was no longer entertaining to sing along to the Proclaimers or something else clichéd.
I Googled Trent’s name on my phone in the car, and found nothing. Mostly links to articles about Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor. I Googled his name alongside Eli’s, and found one reference – just the one – to their magazine. There was a tiny photo of him, Eli, Love and Melissa, smiling for the same camera, and they all looked very young. Trent was wearing glasses, but that was the only distinguishable change.
‘Trent doesn’t sound very LA from how you’ve described him,’ I said, the endless desert outside my window making me feel as though I had sight problems. ‘He looks like a pale little geek. I mean, as leads go, the idea that he’s in LA is less than second-hand. It’s a rumour of a rumour.’
‘We’re going there anyway.’ Eli shrugged, flexing his fingers around the wheel. ‘Someone like Cam, he’d go there to make something of himself, become someone. Trent would have gone there to disappear.’
‘If you could sum up Trent in one sentence,’ I said, just for the hell of it, ‘what would it be?’
Eli frowned. ‘He was the sort of guy who would order the soup starter from a set menu.’
Luiz said, ‘What does that mean?’
‘Boring,’ I said.
I watched Luiz nodding in the overhead mirror.
‘Who are your friends in LA again?’ I asked.
‘Irish friend I know for years. His name’s Cathal. I’ve warned him we’re coming. He… how do you say? He knows the score.’
From somewhere upon his person Luiz had produced a pair of scissors and a hand-mirror. He was now hunched over and squinting at himself, trimming his beard and moustache.
‘Do you think Trent may have still been teaching in LA?’ he continued, blowing hair onto the floor.
‘It wasn’t as if he was charged with anything.’ Eli sounded hopeful.
‘Yeah, but he’d have a record after being fired.’
‘This may be a crazy idea,’ Luiz said, as if our journey up until now hadn’t been. ‘But we should check into Satanist groups, no? There must be Satanists in LA.’
‘Of course there must be, it’s LA.’
I took out my iPhone and typed, with as little conviction as possible, LA Satanist groups into a search engine. There were mostly descriptions of films being made, crackpot sites about Satanism in Hollywood, that kinda thing. It was only when I put some effort into it, now the radio was off and I needed to make progress just to alleviate the boredom, that I started to stumble across things.
‘Ever heard of the Cecil Hotel?’ I asked Eli.
‘No,’ Luiz said.
Eli, eyes narrowed, ‘Yes.’
‘Really?’ I looked at him. ‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Why?’
‘There was a murder there recently and there are a load of articles saying it was a Satanic sacrifice.’ I scrolled down. ‘Girl was found dead in a water tank and it was passed off as a suicide even though she was naked and there was no water in her lungs. Everyone at the hotel was drinking and showering in cadaver water for two weeks before anyone found her.’
Luiz grimaced. ‘What does it have to do with your man?’
‘Well, it’s not just that murder. The Cecil apparently has a reputation for attracting drifters… Been loads of murders and suicides. A lot of nutcase sites claim it’s a Satanist hotspot. If Trent was into that, he’d probably have checked in at some point. It’s called Stay On Main now and it’s been refurbished a bit, but maybe some of the old staff are still there.’
‘Worth a look, definitely.’
I glanced back and exchanged a look with Luiz. Neither of us looked thrilled.
‘Where is it?’ Eli asked.
I saw Luiz cross himself and it reassured me somehow.
When we finally hit LA, it was an oppressive blot of identical houses that had the same colour scheme as the desert; yellow and beige, yellow and beige. Cathal’s house, when we reached it, was one of those impossibly large ones that only seemed to exist for fictional families on cable TV. Why did they all need so much goddamn space?
I sat up from where I’d been lying across the back seats, feeling a hundred and fifty years old and like my body had been drained of fluid. ‘Are we there yet?’
Eli had slumped into an uncomfortable angle in the passenger side, and only managed to shake his head to indicate any response.
Luiz – who had been driving the last hour – beeped the horn.
‘Fuck, hell…’ Eli mumbled as he almost slid into the footwell.
‘Man, hello!’ Luiz didn’t acknowledge either of us as he got out of the car.
I opened the back door, the one that I was leaning against, and didn’t so much exit the vehicle as fall out of it.
I righted myself and peered through the windows at the man Luiz was hugging.
‘Come! This man has food and beer!’
I could smell the food.
Eli and I both managed to raise weak hands and mumble, ‘Hi.’
My shirt was stuck to my back.
*
It became clear very early on, before we had even polished off our first helpings of pasta, that Cathal wasn’t someone we were expected to use euphemisms with. Luiz told him our entire story within twenty minutes, and Cathal nodded with an expression of mild interest, but nothing more.
He looked almost Italian in ancestry – though he assured us there was nothing in it – with a heavy brow, thick but meticulous beard, and overly defined mouth. He could have been handsome, if not for his small teeth and hippy style of dress. He also had a lazy eye, I noticed. His left eye didn’t move in sync with his right; it stayed eerily stationary.
‘Well, you’re both welcome to stay here,’ he said, with no trace of an American accent. ‘Anything you need.’
His living room was vast. Even though he claimed to have a wife and three children, who were staying with her parents for a fortnight, there was no trace of them. It was as if he had expunged all evidence of their existence as soon as the front door clicked shut. I looked everywhere for a photo, maybe something childlike, but it was a four-bedroomed bachelor pad and, yeah, he was wearing a wedding ring but it looked awkward on his finger.
I didn’t trust him.
‘You collect art?’ Eli asked, casting his eyes across the walls.
Any free space was crammed full of images and paint, oil, canvas, prints, record sleeves, and old photos.
‘I collect loads of things: art, coins, antiques, furniture, books, shoes… I have more pairs of shoes than my missus!’ He laughed. ‘When I was young and we lived in Ireland I used to collect dead things.’
‘Er, dead things?’ I glanced at Eli, but he wasn’t looking at me – he was chugging his beer.
‘Yeah, roadkill,’ he elaborated, like that was totally normal. ‘I used to cycle around picking them up from the sides of the roads and put them in a basket on the front. Then I’d bury them at home and leave a little number marking where I found them, so I could match their grave in the garden with where they died.’
‘Parents must have been worried, eh?’ Luiz laughed, getting up and slapping Cathal’s knee.
In the kitchen, we could hear him helping himself to more food.
‘Er, have you heard of a place in LA called the Cecil Hotel, by any chance?’ I asked, getting out my phone and realizing I didn’t know his Wi-Fi password. ‘By Skid Row.’
‘I have actually. I remember reading about that girl they found in the water tank, horrible, fucking horrible, man. I mean, to not find her for that long, it…’ He put a hand to his chest like he was having trouble digesting. ‘You don’t wanna think about it, it’ll put you right off your lunch. What do you guys want with the place? You following a lead?’
Eli shrugged, putting his bowl on the floor. ‘It’s unlikely he’ll be there any more. But he might have been, that’s the important thing. It’s not a lead as such, more of a—’
‘Hunch,’ I finished.
Luiz leant against the living room doorway, face full of pasta.
Cathal leant forwards. ‘I was a bit obsessed by that hotel when the story came out. If you like I can show you all the stories I found on it. I made a timeline, it goes back to the nineteen twenties. Richard Ramirez stayed there and Jack Unterweger in the nineties. Hell of a place. Really, a hell of a place.’
Eli only hesitated for a moment. ‘Er, yeah, OK.’
I noticed he had taken out his notepad and pen at some point and started scribbling things down. One of his to-do lists.
‘You guys can head upstairs and take a nap in any of the kids’ rooms if you like, don’t worry. I’m not gonna keep you awake.’ Cathal got up and stacked our bowls. ‘Just let me get you my scrapbook. You’ll love it, eh.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Daisy
From what I could tell, it had taken literally no time at all for Ronnie to go from indifferent and sarcastic to full-on fucking crazy town. Noel and I had only been on Skype with him in his office for half an hour and I felt like we’d fallen down a rabbit hole of weird.
‘So let me get this straight,’ Noel said, sneaking a look at me that said Wtf? ‘You’re following one of your friend’s business associates to a haunted hotel in LA?’
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