It was like cheating death.
Almost.
NINE
“WHERE YOU GOING?” Kelly said.
The Detective sat up in the bed, realizing that he wasn’t sure where he was going, or if indeed, he had anywhere to go. The question was vague, yet complex. It might have been the single most important question that he had ever been asked, or it might have been like the simple patter of raindrops on the corrugated iron roof of a rude hut somewhere up high in the jungle mountains. Thoughts were, after all, like raindrops, boisterous distractions to be examined briefly, but never acted upon or held onto too tightly. He had once heard that rich Victorians gambled thousands of pounds on the first raindrop to reach the window frame outside their lavish gentleman’s clubs, while the crazed poor starved on the streets outside. “Where are you going?” It seemed to Dylan that he was never travelling anywhere; like a good Buddhist, perpetually glued to the present moment, he had little sense of direction. At least not on a physical level, spiritually, he was afloat on a sea filled with man-eating sharks, his vessel little more than a plywood raft; one false move and he was fish food.
His mind was a nest of snakes, both poisonous and constricting, twisting to escape the confines of the crowded reptile conference inside his cranium. Sleeping with Kelly had been a mistake, perhaps a grave one. If the killer were to play with him like Jack had all those years ago, she would be in danger. That aside, he was now one of them. One of the devils that came to the city to get what they couldn’t get back home. The men who came East to get what they couldn’t get West. Yes, he could fool himself that this time it was different. That she actually liked him, he spoke her language, and he understood her pain, her background, her hopes, fears, dreams. In his mind, he could believe these things. However, the truth was different. The truth was that he was an abuser of a woman who was fifteen years younger than his thirty-three. Fifteen years was a long time. It wasn’t fifty years, but it wasn’t a two-year gap either. She was little more than a girl who had lived the life of a woman twenty times already. He was an abuser, he had sinned, yet The Detective had no religion, so who had he sinned against? What had he done wrong? Where lay the punishment? And what was a night with a bargirl in comparison with what was happening on the streets? Inside the bars and on the pool tables? The image of Tammy’s mutilated body flashed back at him like a television broadcast. Then, the image of Monica in the capital, another corpse, a lifetime ago came. It was a dangerous occupation. It was a dangerous occupation back in Jack’s day too. The deterioration was gradual and psychological, like a prison sentence or a terminal illness. He knew that many of the girls enjoyed the city and the scene as much as the men did. They were all aboard the same rollercoaster.
The men paid for the rides.
The whores won, not at first, but later, once their souls had been burned, and they were willing to take any sucker to the grave, physically, emotionally, financially. Kelly was almost at this stage in her career as a bargirl, she was willing to wound, yet, somehow still afraid to strike. She had learned that moments of kindness were often followed by episodes of cruelty. She was scared of kindness, wary of affection, like an abused puppy that cowers in the corner, too afraid to bite, and too scared to be stroked, fed, or loved.
She stood up. Her body was what artists painted and writers wrote about, yet somehow, she wasn’t aware of how to carry herself. She awkwardly navigated the distance to the vanity stool and gathered her belongings, her eyes gazed at the tiled floor and one forearm covered her generous breasts. The whole episode felt like a scene from inside a Russian novel, punctuated with sadness and foreshadowed by an impending doom; a doom that neither of them had the power or the will to stop.
“Where you going?”
“I have to move out of here. I’m sorry, Kelly. You have to leave. I have a job to do.” The Detective pulled on his shirt and jeans. He walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Returned to the bed and sat down on it. He thought about a shot, but then decided to wait for her to leave before revealing this other, perhaps darker, side of his character.
“Don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to end up like her?”
“Like who?”
“The girl on the pool table.”
“Tammy?”
“How did you know?”
“I just know.”
“You worked together.”
“Sometimes.” She looked at her face in the mirror, watching The Detective in the reflection behind her own. “Maybe you are him.”
“Maybe,” Dylan smiled eager for the shot, now wanting her to leave, willing her. “Maybe not.”
“She worked the bar same as me. We lived together. Sometimes we worked together, I’m scared, mister, real scared.”
“Well, whoever killed her will be found. I think they have him already. Don’t be scared. You are safe, for now.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you are bullshitting me. I think you lie. Maybe you are the killer.” Kelly stood up and dressed quickly.
“Maybe,” he repeated.
He began to think of the hit of junk warm and calming; yet to watch her body being clothed was the saddest thing he had ever seen. She didn’t ask the Detective for money. She didn’t say goodbye. She put on her clothes and left the room quickly and before she disappeared, Kelly silently turned and stared at the Detective like a tiger staring at a caged bird.
The Detective sat on the bed and thought about changing hotel rooms, knowing that she would probably be back, playing the long game. Bargirls were like cats; grey at night, and in the morning their true colors became known. If she wanted to play the long game, then he would let her play it, on his terms; she would have to find him.
He found his stash and cooked. He remembers the Old Sailor in Naked Lunch.
With veins like that kid I’d have myself a time.
He did.
Hit one on the wrist and lay back on the bed. Warmth rushed up the back of his thighs and then his spine radiated his entire body with warm relief. A rose garden at dawn, wild strawberries and a girl with freckles, her parents did something vaguely artistic and were on the elementary school committee. Years later, the sun setting over a carp filled lake. He heard the sad piano music that played in an empty house, a sudden memory of being alone in a dark room with a framed picture of a man with a beard, which terrified him as a child. He lay in bed at night. That beard, those eyes.
Later, he found out it was a picture of Christ.
When he awoke from the nod, he felt a sudden fear. A new fear.
Nobody was safe in the town.
Kelly.
He threw on some clothes and opened the door. He locked it behind him and jogged through the alleyway that led to the main street. He moved through suit pimps and shoeshine kids, a man with a python wrapped around his neck, past blind lottery ticket sellers and a crazed old transsexual naked from the waist begging outside an opticians shop. A woman dressed in rags sat crying in the street, or perhaps she was singing; either way it elicited coins from passing tourists. One tourist sat down and spoke with her, brokering a deal. His stomach turned as he walked through the Fun City streets. Everything could be had here for a price, but the ultimate cost was enormous.
He saw her walking along the road, that beautiful behind swaying. Kelly, in the bright morning light, looked like what she was – a prostitute, a whore and a stripper trying to hustle during the day. He followed her. He kept a distance of twelve yards. She took a left on Beach Road and then a left onto the Eighth Street. She walked up to a doorway and took a key from her handbag. She opened the door. The Detective walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, I can see that you’re scared. Can I come in?” Before she could answer, the Detective had pushed his way into the hallway. She looked at him directly and said:
“You’re crazy.”
A statement not a question.
He followed her in to a room
that was the size and shape of a prison cell. No windows. No air-conditioning. Two mattresses were on the floor, some plastic shelves holding clothes and a floor-standing fan. There were some soft cuddly toys; the type you win at the fair by throwing darts at balloons or hoops over pins.
Boxes, pharmaceutical medicines. One of the girls had some kind of illness, or condition. Christ, they all did. There were a few framed photographs and a cheap Mickey Mouse alarm clock. “I don’t like to sleep here alone,” Kelly said. “Not since, it happened.”
“Well, who sleeps there?” Joe pointed at the unmade mattress, speaking in the local tongue. He knew the answer instinctively. He wanted her to say it. He wanted to be sure.
“Nobody, not anymore. You speak our language well. Tell me, Joe, you believe in ghosts? I not mean the old stories you hear as a kid, I mean real ghosts?”
“Kelly, I believe that the human mind has a hard time accepting death, especially the death of somebody close to us. In a strange way, it is comforting to think that they are still out there somewhere looking over us.”
“Even if she die like that and she trying to tell you that the same thing will happen to you if you don’t listen, then...”
“Listen, Kelly, have the Boys in Brown been in here?”
“No. What do they care? She was a lady working the bar, just like me. People like us don’t matter. We don’t count. She had two rooms in the city and slept with three or four customer a week.”
“Where are the rooms?”
“The dark side of town.”
“Write it down,” the Detective handed her a piece of paper and a pen from his back pocket.
Kelly looked at the pen and then looked at the paper. “I can’t…”
“Don’t be afraid.”
“No, I mean, really I can’t”
“You can’t what?”
“Read, write.”
“Okay, tell me the addresses.”
She gave the names of some roads and he jotted them down.
“Did she have enemies? Was she frightened of anything?”
“She was not scared. She thought the tourists were stupid, she thought she could control them?”
The Detective crouched down next to Tammy’s mattress. There was a dirty glass, a packet of unopened condoms and a bottle of pills. He picked up the bottle, read the label and memorized it. There was a small pulp comic book and a half pack of chewing gum.
The Detective stood back up, dipped into his jeans, and pulled out his wallet. He handed Kelly two hundred dollars. “Take this. Get the bus out of town for a few days. Go back home, see your parents.”
“I don’t have any.”
“Any what?”
“Parents.”
“Well, see an aunt or an uncle then. There must be somebody.”
She shook her head. “There’s no one.”
“Everybody has at least one person. An old customer. The guy that sells chewing gum on the street. Go to the city. Go somewhere. Get away from the ghost.”
She took the money.
They always did.
TEN
FISH SPA.
A place to think.
Entrance to a massage joint.
A seat above a tank of water filled with hundreds of fish, two cms in length, these fish fed on dead skin and foot sores.
Verruca, they dug special.
Joe rolled up his pants.
Dipped in.
Nibble, nibble, little fish, nibble.
The Killer was working the nightshift.
The fish kept nibbling.
Kelly would not be safe, any bargirl on the seventh or eighth road hustling tourists were not safe.
Nibble, tickle, bite.
That’s it, callous, hard.
The Detective’s lack of judgment bothered him like an insolent child on the shared custody gig. Nibbled at him over the cheeseburger and spoke about uncle Dave.
Trips to Disneyland.
Nibble.
Sometimes instinct got in the way of responsibility, he reasoned; it was all part of the slip. The cigarette smoked over the pool table at Slim Jim’s bar, and the stash of China White that he kept chip, chip, chipping away at. He had to get off the train before it derailed.
One fish floated to the surface.
OD?
He remembered the steps, to recognize the problem, to come to believe in a power greater than himself, and to hand over his self-will to that power. Hotel rooms were like prison cells when one had a habit. Fish spas better. They were a sanctuary and a sentence, hotel rooms. The cruel joke was that one needed to indulge in whatever poison that kept one in the prison to have the strength to venture outside. Some needed alcohol, some coffee, and some needed to smoke six cigarettes before venturing out into the day.
Some needed fish, nibbling.
The fish, hundreds, of them fed on his feet and legs. The spa, no picture of Christ, no memory, distant, troublesome memory hovering above.
Only fish.
The pill bottle was the best clue he had. At least the killer had a motive. Whoever was taking those pills was taking them for a reason and the reason wasn’t pretty. The drug was used in the early stages of the HIV virus. Tammy had been HIV positive, and had not been too vocal about it. The Detective figured that there were a few punters on the streets of Fun City who were in for an unhappy surprise sometime in the near or distant future. Most of the regulars that walked the Fun City streets were simply too scared to have themselves tested, and therefore let the virus grow until it mutated into the very thing that terrified them most.
On the wall a widescreen television hung above the tanks. Four cops led a tall very thin man away from the front entrance of an apartment block. Joe could make out the reporter’s language. She spoke clearly.
Name: Sebastian Bell.
Age: Twenty-three.
He had been seen with the deceased, Tammy, the night of her death, and was found to have disturbing pictures on his computer hard drive. The court had ordered a warrant to search his apartment. The news report showed some screenshots from the kid’s computer screen (murder victim’s photographs and images of road accident victims) some pictures from the crime scene. Tammy’s mutilated body spread across the pool table in Slim’s bar. A knife had been found in the apartment. The camera shot, a close up. Like a fifty-piece jigsaw puzzle, it was easy and convincing. However, there seemed to a piece that was missing, motive. Perhaps the kid was mentally ill, or perhaps he had caught the virus. The locals would buy the story until the next victim or until the kid bought his way out of the can. For now though, the story was neat and impressive, like imaginary wars, and Indian hustlers that told your fortune for a dollar on the street.
The mobile snapped him out of it.
“Hello?”
“Joe this is Hale.”
“Where are you?”
“In a bar.”
“That’s obvious, Hale. Which one?”
“It’s called The Corridor and does exactly what it says on the tin.”
“What’s that?”
“Limits your view on the world. Seventh Road.”
“So you’re calling me to tell me you’ve found nothing?”
“On the contrary, Sherlock. I found one of Tammy’s old, erm, lovers?”
“Lovers?”
“Well, customer, sponsor, spouse, spare part, loser, whatever you want to call it. You know the drill. His side of the coin was love and her side of the coin was the coin.”
“I’ll be there in ten.”
Frog-scratcher toweled his feet dry.
ELEVEN
LATE AFTERNOON.
The Corridor Bar.
The old customer was a bald-headed west country Brit named Bryan. Surprised that Hale had managed to track down one of Tammy’s customers, Joe sat on the bar stall next to them and ordered a soda water. He had heard these stories a million times before. Nowadays, it was an example of what happened when greed, vice, and money took over a beach and
pushed a country’s traditions and tolerance to the limits.
“She worked just over there,” the bald-headed man said, pointing to a Chinese laundry across the street. “She was there all hours God sent, I kid you not. She slept at her Aunt's salon nearby. A nice country woman in her mid-thirties, the aunt was. Spoke better English than she did. Tammy spoke hardly any English at all, just down from the countryside. A good girl, you know what I mean, Tammy. At least at first,” Bryan’s line of vision fell across the street.
“What changed her?”
“This place, I guess.” Bryan took a drink from a bottle with a green and gold label with the image of two elephants head butting each other. “I used to get me togs all cleaned by her. I’d stop and ‘ave a chat like. Her English wasn’t great, so I’d teach a little bit bilingually, like. Over the next few months, we got on really well. With help from the Aunt and myself, Tammy started to learn English. I learned she was from a small town up country. She’d worked in factories, had one son and an elderly mother and father, neither of whom can work. There’s one drunken brother whose son she also takes care of.”
Hale stopped him. “You believe this story. This story about the drunken brother and the son? And the auntie? I mean, you really believe it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, carry on, with your story.”
“Her mother fell ill and she had to go back home to help out.”
“Did the brother go too?” Hale asked with a grin.
“I don’t know. I never met the brother. She said he was a bad man, but what could she do? Same family. We kept in touch. About a month later, I had to go to the capital, get a new visa. I used to phone her from back home, like. I came back like and I ‘ad a phone call, like from Tammy, asking me to go to see her like in the bar she had started working at, like. She wanted to show me off as her English friend. She was so pleased when I turned up. Such a small bar. Loud pumping music, blacked out windows, a couple of poles for the dancing girls like. It was a sad day to see her working in a place like that but she needed to work to keep the son, her brother's son, and to help her parents, like. The laundry Tammy worked at before had closed, like. Her friend had told her of this bar and asked her down to work in it, like.
The White Flamingo Page 4