Bullets had grown too scarce for such haphazard killing. Authority was doing their best to enforce their ban. But as always, the Black Market picked up any slack the legislation created. The Black Market loved a ban--it drove the price.
I walked over creaking floorboards to a front desk that resembled a battered truck fender. Just behind it was a ruddy balding head with a mixture of black and gray hairs straggling from it like dying weeds.
"Good evening," I said to the cranium.
A pair of eyes peeked over the counter that were so deep and dark they seemed blurred as though hastily sketched on with a felt tip pen.
"What?" drawled a voice of gargled glass.
"Interesting how you can cut through all the semantics and see the pure essence of the matter," I replied glibly before continuing. "I'm looking for a woman--a massage therapist of the carnal kind, I believe. Her name is Miss, Ms. or Mrs. Jan Van Reydner. For that matter she could have been a Mr. with a taste for women's hormones and clothes."
"Gone!" Growled the eyes before they looked away. "Gone…" The voice mumbled.
"I can see they don't pay you by the syllable." I smirked behind my face paint.
Suddenly the eyes whipped toward me and flashed angry little egg-rings of white. A distant rumbling began. The eyes rose, followed by shoulders the size of an ox. His deep chest was covered with bear fur and heaved like an asthmatic's. He stood for a moment looking at me. The face perched high above me was scarred and dented. A baseball bat in one hand smacked the other with a dead meat abattoir sound.
"Fuck off!" he bellowed. My hair curled behind me in a garlicky breeze.
"I'm a detective," I said, watching the results of years of steroid abuse climb up and down his arms like Swedish mountaineers.
"Okay, fuck off, detective." I noticed for the first time that he had mastered the art of eye-socket dilation.
"I want to talk to her," I insisted.
"Did ya hear me, shithead? Or do you want me to cut you another ear. She ain't here."
"Excellent use of the rhetorical question, very good." I leaned toward him. "My name's Wildclown." I wasn't afraid, but for some reason my testicles were rattling around in my lungs.
He paused for a minute and clenched his craggy face. He was not beautiful. Under an ambiguous cherub nose was a scar where someone had tried to carve a smile across his cheeks.
"Wildclown..." he muttered, scratching his head with a bratwurst finger. "I heard'a you. You in good with Authority?"
It was a question with dubious implications. For all I knew it was Authority who had decorated his face. I gambled. "No. If Greasetown were an asshole, you'd put cream on Authority."
His face blanked while tremors churned his muscular arms. The bat, which had been tenderizing his palm, stopped with a final thwack! My hand slid along my belt nearer the gun.
He smiled and flung the bat behind him, then reached out a mammoth paw. "Fuckin'-A, Man." I slipped my hand into his and let him squeeze the marrow out of it. He gave it back and started talking. "Yah, fuckin' Authority!" He laughed, "You're okay, Wildclown. Not bad for a little shit in makeup."
He leaned heavily on the counter. His callused elbows were rough enough to cut glass. He rammed a finger in his nose in introduction. "I'm Douglas Willieboy, man. I'm from down south."
Now that he was using more than one syllable, I did detect a slight twang.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Willieboy. Can you answer a few questions?"
He laughed and slapped the counter. "Oh shit yah, for a price, Mr. Wildclown. There was a murder in her room up there, you know."
Usually, when a mountain tells you this, you prepare to part with a sizable sum.
"How much?"
He looked me up and down. "Authority is looking for that Van Reydner broad. They got her room closed up tight. I think I'd have to break a law to get you in." He rubbed his chin. "How much you got?"
"Forty?"
He laughed, "I'd a done it for twenty," Willieboy guffawed; his laugh was incongruously high and ladylike. "Forty it is!"
I pulled out Tommy's annoying plastic mouth-purse and after a short struggle, produced the forty dollars.
Willieboy cackled with glee after he had cast an eye over me. "Shit, you even got a gun, Wildclown! You're one soft touch."
I grinned along with him. Beneath my consciousness, I could feel an instinctive pang of anger from Tommy. Apparently his pride was wounded.
"Okay," I said as I watched the forty disappear forever into one of the sleeves of his T-shirt. "Where's her room?"
"I'll take you," he grunted as he wrenched up a section in the counter top and moved his bulk toward the stair. Keys jangled from a chain at his thin waist. His battered denims, with the remnants of bleached out numbers at the cuff, told me of a Southern jail less one prisoner.
"C'mon." He gestured with a large hand. "The elevator's fucked. We'll have to hoof it!" He walked to a wide stairway covered in moldy purple carpet--he began to stomp up.
I stomped after him. "What floor?"
"Twelfth," he mumbled, laughed, and then lit a cigarette.
"Twelfth," I echoed, searching my pockets for my own.
Chapter 6
I was gasping and claustrophobic beneath my makeup by the time we reached the twelfth floor. Tommy didn't get to the gym very often. Upon arrival, Willieboy daintily removed the strip of Authority caution tape from the doorframe. He smiled as he did it. Then he wrestled with the lock and key. "C'mon, bastard," he growled. The name-calling worked because the door swung open with a hollow warped sound. Willieboy clawed and slapped at the wall inside until a light flicked on. A single dim ceiling lamp lit the room. The light from it etched a dirty yellow star above us.
"There, man." Willieboy gestured for me to enter with a quick snap of his head.
I walked onto dull brown wall-to-wall that had long since forgotten its original color. Two armchairs framed an ancient television and a tattered sofa bisected the room.
"Thanks," I said. "Mind if I look around?"
"Nah," he grunted. "Just don't take nothin'. We're holding her stuff until she comes up with the rent she owes."
"Did you know her?" I asked, idly gazing around the room. My guts jumped as I made out a large dark stain in the middle of the rug. I moved toward it.
"Nah," he mumbled as he flung the chain of keys from hand to hand. "I only saw her the once or so. Great lookin' piece with red hair. Her tits was out to here!" He made an exaggerated motion with his hands. I hoped he was exaggerating. "I just started here a couple of weeks ago. She dressed real fine and had an ass she could roll cigarettes with, I'll bet. She was kind'a snooty though--didn't have the time of day for me--or nobody else who didn't pay."
"Didn't pay?" I said as my fingers probed the sticky darkness that smelled of must and old pennies.
"Sure, she was a go-girl, you know. Oh shit, she might'a said she was a professional massage therapist or whatever, but I know she was a PRO-something else." He winked. I think he winked. I couldn't tell. His eyes were two bony caverns in the overhead light. I winked back anyway. It was one of those man-things.
"She just left?" I said absently, peering into a doorway that opened at the back of the room. There was a bed in it.
"Yah, so far as I know--course, I didn't see her go. I was off that night. Hard to figure her leggin' out without her silkies and stuff. Anyway, if you wanna talk more, see me at the desk. I been havin' a shit-load of trouble lately with dead punks in the neighborhood. Jesus, those fuckers are hard to kill and they think they own the place!" His bulk moved from the doorway, a glassed picture of a schooner glinted on the wall outside.
"Lock up when you're done!" He barked over his shoulder.
I nodded and walked into the bedroom. The bed was unmade and I could just detect the sour reek of baby oil. I moved to the closet--the door hung open. On the floor, a small travel bag grimaced at me with brass teeth. I pulled my mini-flash out of my pocket and quickly probed the fl
oor with its fairy light. Beside the travel bag, a rectangle of wheel marks in the carpet told me a larger companion suitcase was missing. Farther in, shoes, purses and belts: the normal tangle you find on the floor of a woman's closet. My flash winked across the shoulders of a line of dresses. I brushed them. They swayed like the Supremes.
Van Reydner was about medium height, if the dresses told me anything, and she wore a particularly flowery perfume. There were enough gaps on the rack to make me think a dress or two could be missing. I shrugged at the heaviness growing in my shoulders, then pulled the chair out from under the vanity and sat on it. I had to be careful now that I had been in Tommy's body for a few hours. There was a tendency to get overwhelmed by sensation at first, followed by bouts of anxiety and introspection as the emotions piled up.
What in hell was I doing? It just wasn't like the old days. What old days? I couldn't remember them, any better than one remembers a childhood dream. Memories did come at me like shadows sometimes; but they were familiar feelings without a narrative, unrecognizable faces and places, nothing more. I just knew that life had been simpler then. Bodies stayed dead, and detectives possessed their own bodies. Impulsively, I tried to remember a time before I knew Tommy, before my death if that was what had happened and immediately felt the usual sharp pain. It always happened. For some reason, what was left of me refused to remember what I was before. The only thing I knew for sure about myself was that I was a detective. At least that was something. I had to get up, get working, get moving. That was something too.
I pulled the chain on the lamp that rested atop the chipped enamel surface of the vanity. It didn't work which didn't surprise me. Nothing worked anymore. Instead, my mini-flash's dollar coin light scanned the wrecking yard of new and used makeup and creams scattered around it. In an ashtray was the crumpled black nub of a cigar among a host of lipstick-stained cigarette butts. It was a cute little thing really--nothing big and Cuban about it. I pulled it out. It smelled like coffee or Irish Cream. I pocketed it, then opened the single drawer and snooped inside--more makeup--a card for Simpson's Skin Tanning Salon for the Deceased. I almost thought that was strange, but matches of the kind were common. Advertising for afterlife products was an aggressive business. Flipping the matchbook over I found five numbers written in a strong hand. I put that in my pocket too, then rummaged a little more. She must have had an appointment book. Of course, if she were on the run, she would have taken it with her.
I froze when the floor creaked in the outer room. I clicked off the flash and whipped out my gun. Dropped to one knee, I waited. Another board creaked, followed by the sound of cloth rustling. Edging forward quietly, I pushed a sliver of my eye around the doorframe.
Three dead men fidgeted in the doorway--the hall was a curtain of black behind them. One of them carried a double-barreled shotgun. He was very old and decrepit. His skin looked dry and cracked, and was heavily stitched with green shoelace around the jaw. Hair like weak spider webbing trailed at his shoulders. From his movements, I could tell he was the leader. The other two were in equally bad shape and dressed the same, in filthy knee-length overcoats. One had dark green lichen or mold on the left side of his head; the other was missing a shoe. A mangled foot showing yellow bones protruded from his ragged pants leg.
I listened.
"Dis da' room, now dammit. We do wadda boss wants. Dis da' room I knowed it," the leader hissed. "Horley, got da jooze man?"
Automatically, I ran an inventory. They were obviously derelicts--the smell that tortured the air in the room gave that away--likely hired on a one-shot deal. I was positive all three were dead--which was bad. Eight bullets wouldn't guarantee a take down on any one of them. I knew I could take the head off the leader, but that would leave me with a scratch and claw finale with the others. My guts told me the dead men wouldn't respond well to a calm discussion. I watched the machine-like clasping of their withered hands. Their muscles would be like woven leather--hard to rip or cut. I took a bead on the leader's head.
"Okey," he garbled in a guttural lipless slur, teeth clicking like a typewriter. "Doot!"
A flame flared in the hands of one of his cronies and a glass bottle of gasoline appeared in the hands of the other. The rag atop the bottle burst into flame and for a moment they stared wide-eyed. The dead feared fire. Their bodies go up like tinder. I knew this. With all the preservatives and oils they used they burned like torches. I'm glad I knew this because when the dead leader took the bottle and raised his arm to pitch the cocktail, my gun roared once. The bottle disappeared in a ball of flame--so did the dead men. The shotgun blazed, and the wall came away over my head.
I glanced in and saw all three doing a fiery dance. They were screeching, staggering and rolling--setting the whole room on fire. The outer doorframe burst into flame along with the hallway outside. They must have splashed a lot of gasoline around. In a moment, I knew the whole building would go up.
I turned; the only way out was the window. Twelve stories down--no net. That was the flaw in my plan. I slipped my gun away, and tore the sheets off the bed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the vanity mirror. In the eerie red light, I looked like some terrified clown in Hell. I knotted together the sheets and a blanket, then kicked the window out. Above me, I could see the fake Arab minaret hanging drunkenly over the street. It was about fifteen feet above me, but its wooden supports looked inviting. A quick climb up onto the roof, and down the fire escape. Easy.
The dead men were silent, and the heat of the flames was growing intense accelerated by the tough old flesh and ratty clothing. I turned back to the room to attack the vanity chair. In moments, I had it apart and had fashioned a crude grappling hook from its chromium legs. I knotted the sheets to this and leapt to the window. The flames were already licking the frame of the bedroom door. I glared down at the street below. News of the fire had traveled fast. A crowd had gathered. They chanted, "Burn, burn, burn!"
I tested the weight of the hook in my hand and swung it upwards. It lodged in the wooden framework on the first try. Doing my best to grin like Captain Blood, I tugged twice on the sheets and launched myself into space.
There wasn't even a single sound of protest as the whole structure came off the building. Not a creak of wood, no groan of tortured nails, it just came off of the building like it had been balanced there awaiting the exact addition of my weight to upset its ancient equilibrium.
I think I screamed once as I fell toward the street with the strange, crumbling structure. I clung tight to the sheets. I really didn't have anything else to do. I remember a sharp, searing jolt to my shoulders, and a powerful tearing of wood. Then falling again. Then another jolt, a wild swing and a tooth chipping slap into bricks. More falling.
I tasted blood--there was another crash of wood and bricks and human--then a darkness that was complete. Which was strange.
Chapter 7
I awoke with a dizzy, sickening sensation. Strange, because since I had become what I am, incorporeal, a spirit, whatever, I had never lost consciousness. In the two years since my emergence from utter blackness, I had never felt any sensation that could be termed physical when dispossessed. I could hear and see--nothing else. Now nausea. I floated over Tommy's body where it sprawled across the back seat of the Chrysler.
"He g-going to be all right…" Elmo's muttered to himself behind the wheel. His worried eyes appeared in the rearview mirror. "Yeah, he going to be f-fine."
The closest thing I ever had to sensation when in my nonphysical state occurred during the process I used to prepare for possession. To take over, I had to link up with the pleasure center in Tommy's brain. I don't know if that's what really happened, but I seemed to have some ability to excite his lower brain functions and trick him into an internal world of fantasy. I would begin by broadcasting provocative sexual images until I felt or saw their echoes mirrored in the nervous activity of his brain--tiny motes of light appeared like fireflies. At the right moment whatever force separated us seemed to disa
ppear and the vacuum created sucked me into the driver's seat. The odd time I could sense Tommy's soul flit past me like a shadow before it disappeared. Most often I experienced nothing more than a moment of transition, of null space and it was done.
As I struggled with this impossible nauseous echo, I listened.
"Jesus, Boss, that was somethin'--shit!" He glanced quickly over his shoulder. "Swingin' down like a j-jungle man."
I looked Tommy over and saw that he was breathing; though his body was peppered with cuts and bruises. On his left temple, an ugly gash oozed pink into his makeup.
"Holy Moses, Boss." Elmo almost hooted. "You're the luckiest man I ever met. If that p-power cord didn't slow you down--you'd be as dead as me--but flatter!" His laugh was like dry leaves rustling.
Tommy moaned menacingly below me.
"Shit--sorry, Boss--ress, ress!"
As Elmo focused on driving, I tried to concentrate on my problems. I'd been possessing Tommy's body for about two years now and had never lost consciousness. The closest I came to that was a strange hallucinogenic trance I experienced in the wee hours of the morning. I thought of it as sleep, but the images I saw in these trances occurred within my field of vision, overlapping reality and would cease the moment I wanted them to. In the past, if I got into a scrape and Tommy was knocked out, I was simply expelled from his body. There was some slight disorientation of transition, but nothing more. Transition. That was the way it always happened.
I looked down at Tommy and chased all thoughts of possession from my mind. I had no desire to feel his pain. Egocentric of me, but I had to think. Who had sent the arsonists? They were looking for the room, so either they were there to get me, or just the room. I couldn't imagine that it was an old score being settled. No one could have known I was there. If they came to get the room then Billings' murderer had hired them to hide evidence. Unfortunately, there would be nothing left of them to question after the inferno.
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