Nightlife

by Brian Hodge

  Origins? South American rain forest, that’s all he knew. Probably some sort of Indian drug. Wouldn’t be like the Bolivian and Peruvian farmers raising coca. So Indian, then, their version of North American Indians’ mescaline and magic mushrooms. Except, obviously, a whole lot more potent. Who knew what the Stone Age tribes down there believed in, what they practiced. And what actually went on in the jungles. Their magic. Tony had a not-quite-skeptic’s healthy respect for these things.

  Potency? Again, obviously strong. As he understood it, these six keys of skullflush, as he himself had coined it, were what was left after the raw stuff had been refined. Get rid of the impurities, just like distilling corn mash into white lightning that’s maybe ninety-five percent pure alcohol. Same principle. A dose of this would be stronger than an equivalent amount of raw powder. There was another influencing factor here as well: The stuff hadn’t been cut. Normally, cocaine was cut at nearly every stage of the game, from wholesalers to midlevel distributors to the lowliest dealers. With manitol, lidocaine, benzocaine, lactose, sucrose — the possibilities were legion. Dilute the purity and expand the powder base, and an already considerable profit margin is broadened even further. By the time it hit the street, the typical toot-head wasn’t buying but maybe fifteen percent coke, the rest filler. Skullflush, however, hadn’t been cut, and it would be a lot more difficult to do so unobtrusively, to come up with a mixer that same milky green color.

  How did it work? He hadn’t the foggiest. But at least he had an inside track as to what it felt like in the interim. A lovely lass who’d gone through a trial by fire and lived to see the next day.

  Be a bit jumpy to get rid of her this soon.

  “Go get her some breakfast,” he told Lupo finally. He stood, stretched his muscles. He’d been in that chair too long. Felt like an expectant father or something.

  “Breakfast?” Lupo clearly hadn’t expected this.

  “Breakfast, yeah. Anything. Egg McMuffins, I don’t care. Just get her some breakfast.” He peeled a five from the wad in his pocket and passed it over.

  “Breakfast,” Lupo muttered, and left up the stairs.

  Tony crossed over to the big iron door, rapped on it a couple of times, opened up. Stepped inside. Curled up in one corner, on her side, Sasha opened her eyes and looked curiously at him. Sleepily. As if she were waking up in his bed instead of some damp cellar floor in a room where day from night had no meaning. She groaned and sat up.

  “You feeling okay?” he asked. Ever the concerned gentleman.

  “I have a headache.” Very quiet, very soft.

  She rubbed her skull. Girl was a mess. Clothes twisted around, hair snarled. Slicked with grimy moisture, spotted with dried green snot.

  Tony squatted beside her, playing up his concerned eyes, touched the back of his hand to her forehead. Papa taking care of his wayward little girl. She didn’t jerk her head back, and he took that as a good sign.

  “I don’t suppose that’s ever happened to you before,” he said, then snickered. Then pulled on a suitably worried face.

  “What did that stuff do to me? What did you do to me?”

  “It was a big surprise to me too, baby. You scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what was going on any more than you.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You do remember. Don’t you?”

  Sasha looked at her soiled hands, felt her face. Expressed a certain relief that all was normal again. “Yeah.” Her voice was foggy, faraway. “I remember … changing. Tony, what was that stuff?”

  He shook his head. “I just don’t know, hon. I swear I thought it was some new kind of coke. You know I’d never have done anything I thought might hurt you.” Tony wished he could see his own face. Felt like he dripped with sincerity. “I’m sorry. Once it started happening, I figured it was better to keep you in here so you didn’t hurt anybody, or yourself.”

  She nodded weakly. Smiled up at him. Trustingly. This girl was too much. Had her eating out of his hand.

  “I got Lupo out getting you some breakfast. Feel like eating?”

  She pushed up to sit a little higher against the wall. She looked like a rag doll left out in the rain. “I’m a little hungry.”

  “Good girl.” A reassuring smile. “So what was it like when you were tripping? Did you know what was going on? Did you know who you were the whole time?”

  Her eyes narrowed as she dredged mind and memory. Upstairs, somebody cranked the ghetto blaster. Basslines thumped through, no melody. Happy hour started early in this house. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “Did I really change?” she whispered. “Or was that all in my mind?”

  “You really did. I saw it.”

  Her eyes glowed, awestruck. “Intense.” A strange smile. “I knew who I was, all along. I just felt … different. Stronger. Almost like I was immortal. It didn’t really hurt too bad at first, or feel uncomfortable, so much as it was just scary ‘cause I didn’t know what was going on at first. I think I had presence of mind, enough to know what I was doing. But it wasn’t like I was thinking like me anymore either. I was, and I wasn’t. Does that make sense?”

  He nodded. “As much as anything does.”

  Sasha looked at her hands, the torn lace glovelet hanging from one. The other lay on the floor a few feet away. She flexed her fingers, where once there had been claws.

  “I liked it,” she said after a while. “Once I knew I wasn’t going to lose my mind. I thought I might die at first, but that was okay. It was like I kept going back, and back.”

  “Back where?”

  “Through time. Through evolution.” She looked him straight-on, head atilt. Weird smile. “People could do that, thousands of years ago. Some of them could, at least. Change. You understand that while you’re in there.”

  Tony felt prickles of excitement running through him as he listened. What have I stumbled onto here?

  “Everything was so much more vivid too. I could smell you. Smell your fear. Smell the smoke upstairs. I could hear better. Tony, when can I have some more?”

  “I don’t know, babe. Gotta be safe first. This isn’t the kind of thing you can do just anywhere, you know.”

  She nodded. “This stuff had something to do with what happened at the Apocalips. Didn’t it?”

  How much should he tell her? No more than needed. The experience hadn’t freaked her, and this was good. No need to worry about her running into the long arms of the law, crying about how Tony Mendoza had turned her into the big bad wolf. Still, no reason to get loose-lipped. Tell her only enough to keep her interested.

  “I think maybe it did. I was there that night, gave some to a guy. Didn’t know that had anything to do with it, though.”

  “But you saw me. And now you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tony watched her grow increasingly self-conscious over the state she was in. She wiped at the grime, the snot.

  And now I know. But what, exactly? That he had something the free white world had in all likelihood never experienced before? Something like that. With only a very few people privy to the secret. Knowledge is power, if you know how to use it.

  And he was sitting on a powderkeg.

  Except there was still one untidy loose end that was looking better off trimmed. Justin Gray. Guy had sniffed enough to give him a taste of this stuff. Maybe he hadn’t gone all the way in, but it had probably been enough to give him a notion as to just how potent the stuff was. The look on his face Tuesday night, as he hung on to that railing, had said it all.

  Justin was going to have to revert from present to past tense.

  Sasha reached up to lightly clutch his arm. He fought down the urge to yank himself out of her grasp.

  “There’s another thing,” she said. “I almost forgot about this. When it was happening … it’s like I was aware of all these things I’d never have noticed if I wasn’t tripping. And it was like I felt somebody watching me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I was watching you.”

  “
Not you. Somebody else. But just at first. Somebody else was in there with me.” Sasha looked away again, seeking answers through mists and distances. “And then he went away.”

  “He?” Tony was all ears, sharp focus.

  “Yeah. I don’t remember much, I just felt him. He was worried about me. Worried. Isn’t that just fucking precious?”

  Precious indeed. You had to wonder, had to have your suspicions. Had she somehow yanked Justin along on her trip back through time? More strange side-effects of the drug? Maybe, maybe not. But better to assume the worst and plan for it.

  Knowledge is power, and Justin knew too much. Even if he wasn’t aware of it. Dead man, for sure.

  Tony stood, held his disgust in check, and pulled Sasha up with him. He’d never been so anxious to see somebody get cleaned up in his life. Have to throw a dropcloth across the Lincoln’s upholstery.

  “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He started to lead her out of the room, back to the outer world. “Feel like hanging with me for a while?”

  Her eyes gleamed from her smudged face. And she nodded.

  “Good. We’re gonna be busy the next few days.”

  They ascended the stairs, and already the ideas were starting to formulate.

  Chapter 10

  F-WORDS

  The rest of that day and most of the next had seen precious little turning up in terms of Justin Gray. Trent’s apartment was vacant. Discreet inquiries turned up nothing helpful. No new phone listings for the guy, as Tony thought he might possibly have moved here. The way Trent had introduced them, this had been unclear. If it was just a visit, maybe the guy had gone back home to the Midwest after Trent’s death. Which would reduce the worry factor considerably, but would mean that the loose thread would be forever dangling, waiting to snag on something.

  With no better alternatives, they went back to Apocalips the second evening. Early yet, so the crowd wasn’t wall to wall, as it had been the past nights. The ghoul contingent, hungry for cheap thrills, packing in to see where people had died. Sasha was getting off on the ambience of the place. Dancing by herself out on the floor, swaying to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” lost in her own world. Head tilted up, arms wrapped around her thin shoulders.

  You didn’t have to worry much about her, running off with other guys while she was left unattended. True, she was a looker, especially now that she was once again cleaned up. And that pouty little mouth was the stuff of which fantasies are born. But most guys got close enough, saw her dancing like that, saw eyes that looked into a slightly different dimension than they were used to, and they went off seeking better fortunes elsewhere.

  Tony and Lupo patrolled the crowd, eyes peeled. Who knew, maybe if the guy was still around, he might come back to haunt the scene of the crime.

  Luck turned around when they saw one of his crowd from the other night. At a corner table in another of the chrome corrals. Angel, she of the interesting good-’n’-evil signature. Looking hot tonight as usual, steamy from a stint on the dance floor. He and Lupo invited themselves over.

  They small-talked a bit. Shot the bull. Win that easy confidence. And then, without her even catching wise, he sunk the vital hook.

  “Hey, I’m trying to find somebody, if he’s still around,” Tony said. “Met him Tuesday night in here, black-haired guy, friend of Trent’s — God rest his soul.” Tony crossed himself, a nice touch. “Justin Gray. Remember him?”

  Angel nodded, took a sip of her drink. “Sure, but—”

  “Guy didn’t know who to trust to sell him some good blow. I told him I’d fix him up. Can’t find him now.”

  Angel was still nodding. “But he wasn’t Trent’s friend, you got that all wrong.”

  Tony tried not to act too surprised. “No kidding?”

  “Justin came down here to stay with Erik Webber until he gets a place of his own. Erik says they’re old friends from college.”

  Tony grinned big and broad, and every flashing tooth was genuine. “Well, fuck me! I been looking in all the wrong places.” He rose to leave, and Lupo followed suit. “Thanks a lot. I owe you.”

  “Hope you find him. And tell him I said hi.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.” Smile and nod.

  They collected Sasha from the dance floor and left the pulsing lights and gilt-edged reflections for the street. Dusk was perhaps a half hour away. On the roll, they used the Lincoln’s phone to call GTE information, and that’s all it took to get Erik Webber’s address.

  Next they switched cars, trading the Lincoln for an innocuous Olds that they sometimes used when they didn’t want to drive anything that was traceable back to the Mendoza name. The plates, paperwork, title — everything was a dead-end street. Next stop, Davis Island.

  They had no trouble finding Erik’s building. A four-story place, tan stucco, Art Deco gone Minimalist. Lupo parked the Olds in the side lot, and they got Erik’s apartment number from the lobby mailbox after leaving Sasha in the car. Third floor. No elevator, so they hoofed it.

  No answer at his door. Disappointing. The building had high ceilings, with transoms over the doors, but they’d been opaqued over so there was no point in Lupo’s boosting him to try peering in. They returned to the car. Defeat was unthinkable. This was merely a momentary setback.

  “Can we go back to the clubs now?” Sasha said.

  “Shut up,” Tony told her.

  “Wait?” Lupo asked.

  Tony nodded; no other alternative. He thought for a moment.

  Smiled as he played with the shark’s tooth necklace. Looked at Sasha. Crotchbait.

  And he leaned over to pop the latch for the Olds’s hood.

  Justin and April had spent part of the early evening walking along Bayshore Boulevard. Downtown to the west; bay to the east, just beyond an endless concrete balustrade whose columns looked vaguely Grecian. She told him that this was the longest stretch of uninterrupted sidewalk in the world, and he was suitably impressed. For a moment he thought of the top of the Great Wall of China, but no, that probably didn’t qualify as a sidewalk. Anyway, this place was better. It would remain historic to him as the site of their first hand-in-hand contact.

  They were within walking distance of a raw bar called Pearl’s and sat at the bar itself while behind them, in the window, the place’s name shone in a script of pink neon. They quaffed bottles of Sol beer from Mexico, very light and fresh, and ate raw oysters and clams on the half shell, and peel-and-eat shrimp.

  “I need to start job-hunting next week,” he said after a half-dozen oysters had gone down the hatch.

  “What do you want to do?”

  He shrugged. “I’d probably better stick with advertising.”

  She perked up. “Agency, still?”

  “Yeah. If one would have me.”

  “I could make some calls on Monday.” April poked the lime wedge down through the neck of a fresh bottle. “I do some freelance work farmed out from a couple of agencies. Connections are everything, you know.”

  “Or we could form our own. I write the copy, you do the layouts and artwork. Gray and Kingston, Limited. What do you think?”

  She frowned, threatened him with her tiny oyster fork. “I think Kingston and Gray has a better rhythm.”

  He nodded, had to concede.

  “Did you ever do anything notable?” she asked. “I mean, any print or broadcast on a national level?”

  Justin thought for a moment, speared oyster number seven free of its shell. “I did most of the introductory campaign for Longhorn Beans.”

  It had been one of his favorite accounts, a new brand of beans catering to the Tex-Mex craze. All the spicy stuff — chili powder, onion, garlic, green peppers, brown sugar — already mixed in.

  “I was proud of that, especially that first commercial where—”

  “Where the surly cowboys shoot the pot of plain old pork and beans!” she finished, excited. “I loved that! That was yours?”

  He nodded, beaming.

&n
bsp; “And that magazine ad, where the Longhorn can is standing on the grave, and the tombstone says ‘Pork N. Beans’ — those were fantastic!” April pressed her palms together and bowed slightly from the waist; Japanese heritage coming through. “I truly am in the presence of greatness.”

  He grinned shyly. It had been a long time since he’d heard much in the way of praise.

  “You know, if I didn’t think you were kidding, I really would like to work with you.”

  “Do you have room in your office for another setup?”

  She nodded eagerly. “Oh, sure. That’s the great thing about lofts. There’s always room for something else.” Her face seemed lit up brighter than the neon Pearl’s in the window. “Are you really serious about this?”

  He told her he was, halfway. Something to think about, at least. Maybe he could work some part-time job for a guaranteed income while giving the partnership a shot. They clinked bottles, toasting the beginning of a potential co-op effort in the making. A few minutes later, though, her eyes darkened.

  “I wasn’t going to ask you about this, because it’s your business.” April frowned, hesitated. “But yesterday Tony Mendoza came by asking about you. Where to find you. Urn, he said you might be wanting to buy some coke from him or something.”

  Justin felt a cold pick stab his heart. Unease, seeds of fear. Mendoza’s interest seemed wrong. He was almost afraid for her to continue.

  “He thought you were Trent’s friend.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I lied. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t trust him. I told him I didn’t know anything about you. And I didn’t set him straight about you and Erik. The less said, the better, as far as he’s concerned.”

  “Thank you.” Justin hunched down a few degrees on his barstool. “Because I never made any kind of arrangement with him. At all.”

  “Just forget about him.” April dismissed all with a flip of her hand. “He’s a sleaze, and I don’t want him ruining this evening. Okay?”

  Justin nodded. She was intensely resolute about this. No love lost between her and Mendoza, that was obvious.