Shade City

by Domino Finn

  "She's dead."

  The large man snorted and puffed his chest out. "Time for you to go."

  His request was so abrupt that I didn't know what to do. My inaction didn't do me any favors. I was becoming increasingly aware of the man's poor attitude (and possible intention to do me harm) when a shrill voice interrupted us. Another man joined us in the hospital room.

  "What have we here?"

  He was a mousy man with wiry glasses. He had gray-brown hair on the sides of his head and a mustache, but his crown was just as bald as the Armenian's. This one, however, was clearly a businessman of some sort. He wore an old brown suit with a light blue shirt, no tie.

  "You said you were a friend of Aster's?" he asked.

  "Yes," I agreed quickly, "back—before..."

  The next instant found me at a loss of words. It would have been easier to lie about being a friend of Violet's in life if she had ever shared anything with me. The older man must have noticed my hesitation, because he cut in.

  "Yes, it was all very awful," he said. "It still pains me to think about it. I'm Mr. Glickman, the family attorney and agent holding Mr. McAllister's power of attorney." The lawyer handed over a business card with the announcement and I took a cursory look at it for show.

  "Who are you?" repeated the large Armenian man, as if it was my turn to repay the favor.

  "I'm Dante. I didn't know I'd be interrupting anything. I really just wanted to see how he was doing."

  The lawyer waved his hand in the air. "Oh, it's not a problem. Don't let Bedros here scare you. I'm a lawyer so I prefer to garner information through discourse. This oaf is a bodyguard so you can imagine his intentions."

  "I already have." Bedros grumbled like some kind of giant troll who'd been held back by a collar. "What use does a comatose man have of a bodyguard?"

  "Yes, yes, I know it's ridiculous," said Mr. Glickman. "Alexander was a kind man who didn't have enemies to speak of. His affairs in this matter, however, are ultimately his own. He continues to employ some associates through prior arrangements. It's his father's empire that follows him. Bedros here is a bit callous and will take offense at anyone besides myself or the medical staff approaching Mr. McAllister, but the whole thing really is quite harmless. Assuming, of course, that your business here is legitimate."

  I couldn't tell if the lawyer was threatening me or not, but I'd about run this thread as far as I cared to for the moment. I took another quick look at Alexander.

  "What's his outlook?"

  "He has the resources to continue paying for life support, if that's what you mean. He has been popping in and out of a coma for weeks now and the neurologists are confident he could theoretically function properly one day—that is, the damage he sustained has been mostly healed—but we simply don't know enough about the brain to understand what is preventing his recovery."

  Well, it wasn't a shade, whatever it was. Sometimes medicine was a mystery for purely scientific reasons.

  Mr. Glickman's cell phone chimed and he answered it with a deft motion. "Please excuse me for one moment," he said and exited the room.

  I took another look at his business card and slipped it into my pocket. Then I attempted to follow him out of the hospital room. Instead, Bedros stepped in my way.

  "What you want?" he asked in clipped English.

  "Now, now, Bedros," I chided, admittedly taking the situation lightly, "you heard the man."

  He put his bearpaw of a hand on my chest as I tried to brush past him. Immediately, I sensed the presence within him.

  Bedros was not Bedros.

  "What you want?" he repeated.

  The dude didn't have the common signs of the taken. He wasn't fiending for drugs or sensual pleasures. He wasn't sickly and diseased. By all accounts, he was a normal giant Armenian man in a track suit. I didn't really know how to deal with him so I did what came naturally to me in moments like these. I defended myself.

  I swatted his arm off me but he suddenly swung his other and connected with my face. As my head buckled, he rammed his fist into my gut. I fell backwards, reeling in pain. The blow would've had most people sprawled out on the floor but I wasn't most people. I could deal with his attacks, at least for a short time. The problem was, I didn't want to hurt him.

  The large man drove a knee towards my face that was meant to crush my skull. I sidestepped it and thrust upward, grabbing his thigh and pushing him up and off balance. I didn't want to harm Bedros but if he was a fighter then I would give him a fight.

  Holding him by the leg, I summoned all of my strength and swung him around. I spun in a half circle and released him, sending him flying into the building window that spanned the entire wall. His back hit the large pane of safety glass so solidly that it visibly rippled and still, unable to fully absorb the blow, cracked in a single line from the ceiling to the floor.

  The man seemed to be embedded in the glass and remained motionless, watching me as I withdrew a sage cigarette from my pack and threw a pessimistic glance at the smoke detector above my head. Bedros smiled. He was curious about me.

  Hospital rules on smoking weren't the only thing bothering me. Soren had defied me as well, but in a panicked sort of desperation that showed his fear. Bedros was calm and collected. Even inquisitive. What had I gotten myself in the middle of?

  As I got closer and exhaled in the Armenian's face, it only seemed to amuse him and incite him out of his sloth. He broke out into bellowing laughter and made a heavy fist.

  "What are you doing?" we heard a nurse demand from the door. "You can't smoke in hospitals, asshole."

  We both stood there and absorbed her reproach like schoolkids. I quickly extinguished the cigarette and tried to mount a defense. "I—"

  "Get out before I call the police," she said.

  I took her up on her offer before Bedros could object.

  * * *

  I held the cold bottle of beer against my swollen cheek. The pain wasn't too bad. With any luck, the bruising would be minimal. But Bedros had certainly given me enough to remember him by.

  I had decided that I had enough to do without poking into a little girl's private business. At least for today. Sunday was half over and I needed to get home to finish some programming. On top of that, I still had that promise to take care of. So I exited the Red Line in Hollywood and found myself at a little pizza establishment, having a crappy slice and a Heineken.

  Let me back up a bit. It wasn't the yellow tiles or red tables that I was looking for, nor was I seeking company with the sort of miserable patrons who went to a subpar pizza chain in Hollywood on Sunday afternoon. This location was interesting because it was only a block away from Mel's Diner—a connection which I didn't make until this morning. And it was a specific person I was after. Perhaps an employee. So after the kid at the counter handled the last customer and found himself standing idle, I grabbed my beer and approached him.

  "Nice shirt," I said, pointing to the Dos Pizzas company logo that emblazoned the kid's chest. "Do all employees get them?"

  "Perk of the job," he answered in a sardonic monotone. "You can buy one, if you want."

  "Why the hell would I do that? You don't actually sell those awful things, do you?"

  He kind of chuckled, just enough to show that he didn't care about anything too much, and said, "Not really."

  I nodded and smiled. "Hey, I think one of my friends works here. Do you know a white dude with thick, mangy dreads? He always wears this worn down trench coat made of—"

  "Flannel," he said, laughing. "That's Sal. Yo, that dude is crazy."

  "I know, right?" I shook my head at the imaginary antics I pretended to recall. "Sal's so random. Does he work here? Like, maybe in the kitchen or something?"

  "Yeah right. He takes a shit here, if he's lucky."

  I raised an eyebrow at the confusing turn of conversation. I wasn't sure if we were both making stuff up or what, but somehow we had moved on to bathroom habits.

  "Does he eat a lot of p
izza or something?"

  "Dude," said the dude, waving his hand as if it was obvious, "he doesn't eat a lot of anything. He's not an employee, he's a bum. He lives around here, in the back alley. He cleans the area up, and in return we let him use the bathroom and give him some pizza and—"

  "T-shirts," I finished. He was a fucking Hollywood alley rat. What did he have to do with Soren?

  "We can't take responsibility for the plaid, though," said the kid, chuckling to himself as he turned away to wipe the counter.

  I held the bottle and what was left of the warming beer to my cheek again. If Sal did live on the streets then he could be anywhere right now. But there was a good chance he was close-by, in the back alley, maybe even tidying the place up. To be safe, I did quickly check the bathroom. Ironically, it was the last place I had seen him in, albeit in a different establishment. Maybe he had the same deal with Mel's. In fact, that would explain how he had been able to skip the line. I doubted that homeless people were practiced in the art of greasing palms.

  I left the abomination of crust on my plate and headed straight for the door. The kid at the counter spoke up.

  "Uh, you can't take that beer..."

  I didn't hear the rest because the door closed and I was outside. The rushing of cars flooded my ears as I checked the street. I was just a block south of the Mel's parking lot now, right where the man had disappeared. If I looked hard enough, something might turn up.

  I had to hand it to Sal. There was less piss behind the Dos Pizzas than other parts of the alley. Aside from that observation, I went up and down the asphalt and saw no activity. I emerged from the north end, right next to a grand Art Deco building, and found myself beside Mel's Diner. The other back streets proved just as fruitless. If Sal did live around here, he was nowhere to be seen at the moment. I had to settle for the virtue of patience today.

  Still, as I walked back towards the subway, a thought came to me. Sal and Soren were linked. I didn't know how, but it was a fact. To get to one, I could find either, and whereas Sal was an unreliable drifter, Soren was much more predictable. I didn't know where he lived. But what did he say... DJ Ingress? He had a residency at the Echoplex tomorrow night. That set me up perfectly for a quiet Sunday night coding.

  Monday

  Echo Park is the new Silver Lake, which was the new Los Feliz. That is to say it's east of Hollywood and newly gentrified. Once one neighborhood fills up with cool, look for another adjacent to take the crown. Really, Echo Park is already getting a little expensive, but you can't go farther east without crossing a giant park, a couple of highways, and what people swear is a river despite the fact that it is molded out of cement and often devoid of water. I don't even know what's on the other side of all of that, and I'm not the type to ask questions.

  New vegan hotspots and wine bars crop up left and right in neighborhoods like this. Almost weekly. Yelp has a field day with these communities. But this seedy neighborhood had its own seedy establishment that had been around before cool was cool. The Echo and the underlying Echoplex always had a cutting edge music scene that featured local artists. Some might have called the line-ups pretentiously hipster, but anyone who walked inside would take that back. We may have been Hollywood Freeway adjacent, but there wasn't a whiff of that crowd in this club.

  I felt bad for flaking on Trent a couple of nights before so I gave him the heads up tonight. It was a Monday night so we didn't get out too late. Trent was perhaps overdressed in his long sleeve button-up. I just did my usual jeans with a bright-colored T-shirt. Since anyone out in LA could be a star or, at least, rich, dress codes were only used by some establishments in passively racist attempts to curtail trouble. This may have been a bad neighborhood but it was a friendly crowd, and the Echoplex wasn't the type of place to ask people to do more than necessary.

  There was no line to get in and the sprawling basement had empty spots between the bar and the dance floor, but those two areas were packed. And it was hot in here. Pushing, shoving, and thrashing were the perfect recipe for sweating. So was the fact that this place hadn't had a working air conditioner in years.

  The music was... interesting. I might've said cool if I'd wanted to impress a girl, but I've had stringent tastes for years now and I was just as well-off without post-mod-whatever-bullshit. But mostly, people in the Echoplex didn't care too much about anything at all and just laughed and drank and had fun. I couldn't knock that.

  First stop was the bar. It was always the bar. Most times I couldn't have fun in a club if I didn't have a drink in my hand. It wasn't simply the state of drunkenness that I liked. That was great for certain occasions, but really, just the act of drinking was pleasing enough. Tonight I wasn't on the hunt anyway; I was fact-gathering. So I had brought Trent along and decided I was allowed to enjoy myself.

  Trent squeezed by some confused people to get a place at the bar while I scanned the room. It was an eclectic crowd. Lots of different types of people wearing lots of things: cool, funny, crazy, sexy. You'd have a hard time pegging this crowd into any single type, but you could at least get away with saying "low-key."

  I didn't see any familiar faces until I noticed that Soren was the one on stage spinning the minimalist beats. That was good. We were a little early, but that was better than missing him. When Trent came back and handed me my Sailor Jerry and coke, I knew we could chill out for a while.

  "Check out the muscles on the bartender," he said.

  I peeked and the girl was a bit short like a gymnast, maybe in her late twenties, but her tank top showed off biceps that were bigger than mine. "Holy shit. I wouldn't know what to do with that."

  "Shit, I would. Imagine what her ass looks like."

  "Already did," I said. "Shit would break my dick off."

  We clacked our plastic glasses together as was common with the first drink of the night and moved to get a closer view of the crowd. It wasn't long before I found her.

  "Pam." There was a brief look of confusion on her face before the recognition came. Then she smiled and jumped up and down in her flats.

  "Oh my God! You came out!"

  She hugged me and Trent had an impressed look on his face. I have to admit, I didn't mind her boobs pressing in to me, but Pam was engaged to Soren and wasn't really my type anyway.

  "I forgot your name," she spit out quickly, as if pulling the band-aid from the wound cleanly were best.

  I laughed. "It's Dante. Yeah, you weren't all there the other night."

  Her cheeks flushed under the manic lights. "Sorry about that. Medical kush always does that to me."

  "Heh." I generally thought the stuff was too strong too. She was wrong about it being why she passed out, of course, but I let her believe the charade. "This is my buddy, Trent."

  "Nice to meet you," he said. "How do you guys know each other?"

  "She's the DJ groupie," I answered.

  "Stop," she said, playfully slapping my chest. "He's my fiancé. I could introduce you to him and his friends, if you want."

  "Actually," said Trent, raising a single eyebrow and gulping the last of his vodka Red Bull, "I'd rather meet your cuter friends."

  Pam pulled us both onto the dance floor as the music kicked up.

  We met a pack of their people. A few girls. Some hot, some not. Trent went to work on them but I tried to lay back. There was the odd boyfriend or two as well. Then there was Greg, a good friend of Soren's who fit in with us pretty well. He had a way with meeting girls so Trent took to him. I think, personally, that an entire arm sleeve of tattoos is cheating. But the dude was chill enough.

  Four drinks and two Michael Jackson remixes later, we cooled our sweaty bodies on the outside patio seats. Well, they weren't seats so much as a small set of metal bleachers, and it was really more of a parking lot cordoned off with steel guardrails than a patio. But it certainly was outside, so it had that going for it. The night air felt downright cold against my skin.

  It was just me and Greg from the group for a while. Aft
er his set was done, Soren came out to meet us. The rest of his friends were at the bar or in the bathroom. It had worked out for me that Trent was hitting on one of Pam's friends. That left me time to investigate.

  "Thanks again," Soren said, shaking his head, "for taking care of Pam. I was so wired that night that I don't even remember any of that. I mean, I vaguely remember smoking a blunt with you outside and that is it, man."

  It was a relief to confirm that he didn't want to kick my ass. I could tell by his demeanor, but it still felt good for him to spell it out. It was what I had expected, of course. Banishments were almost never remembered, usually wiping out the surrounding moments before and after.

  "What the hell happened to you? Pam said you had to get stitches."

  "I don't know. I must have passed out and hit my head on the toilet in the bathroom." Soren exploded into laughter. He tried to cover his outburst with his hand but failed miserably. "I woke up with the bathroom attendant yelling at me that he was going to call the cops!"

  "Holy shit! Did he?"

  "No way, man. I booked it."

  Greg cut in. "I tell you, I'm supposed to be the crazy one. Growing up, Soren always had to talk me down. You know? But the stories with this guy lately." He shook his head and laughed. "Can I use your light?" I passed my lighter to Greg for the third time tonight. After giving it back to me, he continued. "It's too bad I'm never around for the truly crazy nights."

  Soren nodded. "Sorry man. Maybe I shouldn't let you leave my side. Keep my head on straight."

  "Hey," said Greg, offended. "Don't start treating me like the responsible one."

  I had already checked out Soren and Greg and all their other friends. None of them were possessed. With any luck, the shade was just a hiccup in Soren's life and he could start putting the pieces back together.

  "So I was bloody but fine," he said. "I had the presence of mind to wash my head off, but I was kind of dizzy and I didn't really know where I was or where I was going."