“I don’t like being kicked.”
“Something else you’d prefer?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“You bet. And I’m good at it, ask Jackie here.”
“You’re a thug.”
“Tell me about Karen.”
Powell looked uncertain and flicked his eyes at Bella, but her helpful switch was off.
“She was a donor.”
“And?”
“And she was my daughter’s lover for a time.”
“What exactly was it made that time end?”
“These things run a natural course. I assume they tired of each other. What are you driving at?”
“I’m driving at her turning up dead after she sold her kidney to you, you old fuck.”
Ryan’s voice got louder, he leaned forward in his chair like he was having trouble not jumping on Powell. I figured it must have been an interrogation technique, it seemed out of place otherwise. Powell looked a little frightened.
“She was healthy enough and the operation was performed successfully. It would not have resulted in her death.”
“I know losing her kidney didn’t kill her, fuckhole. I’m talking about what happened later, that second operation where you took out everything that was left then dumped her in the park.”
Powell started to get out of his chair. Ryan pushed him back down.
“Uh-uh, pops, we got a way to go yet.”
“Bella …”
Bella’s voice corroded the air about her. “He knows what you did. I know what you did. You couldn’t bear to see me with someone else, so you killed her.”
“Bella, darling, what are you saying? You know I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Karen and my mother. You killed them both, you sick bastard. Now tell him what he wants to know.”
“I was jealous of the girl, I admit that, but I didn’t kill her. And your mother … Haven’t you forgiven me for that?”
“Never. And I’ll never forgive you for Karen. You cut her up like one of your dogs and threw her away as though she were so much garbage.”
“Bella, no!” Powell was fast becoming distraught. “You know about the dogs, they don’t mean anything. Tell him. They don’t mean anything.”
When Bella spoke next her face was cast in steel, like she was daring him to defy her.
“If it wasn’t you, who was it?”
Powell worked his mouth, but closed it without saying anything and Ryan took the reins again.
“I’ve got proof.”
“That’s impossible.”
Ryan lurched out of his chair and stood over Powell, breathing heavily, his fists balled.
“Why? Because you did such a good job? You figure with all her guts gone nobody’d know she’d had an operation? And if nobody knew that, they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to you? Is that what you’re telling me, motherfucker? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Powell swallowed his fear and spoke calmly and clearly, making an effort to appeal to Ryan’s rational side. Too bad no one had told him Ryan didn’t have one.
“I’m telling you it’s impossible you have proof, because I didn’t do it.”
“Really. Let’s talk about home movies. One in particular—Karen doing a turn with a dildo. Nice angle on her ass. Taken, coincidentally, in your apartment.”
“I know the one.”
“You oughta. You fucking made it.”
“I copied it from one of Bella’s. She’ll tell you.”
“What Bella tells me is she never had a tape like that.”
Powell looked past him at Bella.
“Bella, please … The man is trying to crucify me. Tell him it was your tape.”
“It wasn’t my tape.”
“Oh my god, I see what’s happening. Please, he can’t have any proof either of us is involved. It’s a bluff. Don’t say anything. I promise you, we’ll be all right.”
Bella stood and left the room. When Powell called after her his voice broke, but she didn’t stop or even look over her shoulder. The door closed behind her and I felt vaguely frightened. Everything now seemed irrevocable, a string of events charging like a locomotive toward some unknown, but unalterable destination. And I had set it in motion.
Ryan chuckled.
“It don’t look good for you, pops. But you got one last chance. Roll your sleeve up. You got any usable veins left?”
“What are you going to do?”
Ryan took a syringe out of his jacket pocket, twisted the cap off.
“I want some blood to DNA against what we found in the body.”
“You found something in the body?”
“Are you going to cooperate or not?”
“Of course I will. The test will prove I’m innocent.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He sucked blood out of Powell’s right arm, then capped the syringe and put it back in his pocket. Powell rolled down his sleeve and made a move to stand, but before he could get upright Ryan produced a pair of handcuffs and locked his arms behind his back.
“Until I get the word on your blood, Daddy-o, I want you where I can find you.”
Ryan and I half walked, half dragged him down to a storage room in the basement. The door didn’t look particularly strong so Ryan took the cuffs off, looped them behind an exposed pipe, and put them back on again. Powell seemed to have retreated. When we left he didn’t look up from where he was crouched at the base of the pipe, and he didn’t say anything.
On the ground floor. I walked with Ryan to the front door.
“That was pretty brutal.”
“If a thing’s worth doing …”
“Handcuffing him and locking him up isn’t going to look good when you get him to court.”
“You let me worry about that side of things.”
“Are we just going to leave him down there?”
“What do you want to do, suck him off?”
“He’s a junkie.”
“A few days ago fucking him up was your mission in life, don’t start acting like a pussy now the shit’s coming down. If you’re that worried, give him a shot.”
Ryan split to give the blood sample to whatever police lab technician he had leverage with. I went upstairs and fucked Bella, we didn’t mention her father. When she fell asleep I sat in front of a TV and watched cop shows until I passed out myself.
Around three in the morning I woke and went to check on Powell. The storage room was puke free, he hadn’t reached that stage yet, but the place smelled bad with his sweat and it looked like leg cramps weren’t far off. He told me where his stash was. I got it from his suite and cooked him up a shot. After the smack had taken hold he tried to talk to me, but I didn’t stick around to listen. I didn’t want to know anything more than I already did.
Upstairs again I looked in on Bella, but Ryan had come back and was grunting away with his head between her legs. I found a bed somewhere else in the house and lay awake wishing I could take something. But I was shooting in the morning and I couln’t afford to oversleep.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lorn had a friend in Hawaii who sent her ice sometimes—totally cool that morning, as my fucked-up sleep the night before had left me less than chirpy. We smoked it in a glass pipe that looked like something out of a chemistry set. An amphetamine variant that lasts and lasts. Enhanced brain speed, pumped up physical performance, improved concentration. An excellent drug that hadn’t spread well because it was too cheap for dealers to make anything like they would on crack. They say you start to hear voices if you do too much, but then they’ll say anything.
James moaned that we were rushing when we got in front of the camera so we had to balance things out a little with a lude or two. By lunchtime we were faking normality pretty well—on an open-air bus that took tourists around various Hollywood death spots. We asked the driver questions and generally fucked around in the style demanded of presenters on that type of show.
At the end of t
he day Lorn wanted me to go with her to some Korean bathhouse she’d discovered. The thought of floating around naked and pretending nothing existed but her body and the heat and the water was enticing, but I couldn’t do it. Things at Malibu were approaching critical mass and I couldn’t risk being away too long. Also, I felt kind of responsible for Powell and I knew if I didn’t give him his shot no one else would.
Driving back I thought about Rex. Right then, sitting stoned in a dark room with the TV on twenty-four hours a day seemed like a reasonable response to the nineties when you compared it with the anxiety generated by most other ways of living. Of course, you’d have to be careful which shows you picked to watch. Documentaries, nature programs, shows about poor people—they’d be okay, you wouldn’t be confronted by any great difference between your lifestyle and theirs. But you’d have to stop yourself thinking about what great lives the producers had, and the directors, cameramen, presenters … And you’d have to be majorly careful not to flip onto anything from Spelling or Starr.
I called him on my mobile but it sounded like he’d been disconnected. Not much of a surprise, considering.
Back at Malibu I got Powell’s dose together and went straight to the basement. He had a strip of duct tape across his mouth now, but apart from that nobody seemed to have done much for him. Parts of his suit jacket were dark with sweat and there was a pool of piss over by one wall, as far away as he’d been able to squirt it from where he was cuffed. I thought about giving him some water, but I didn’t want to take the tape off, so I just fixed him and went upstairs.
They were waiting for me, sitting at a round walnut table in a room that had a view of forest going vague in the twilight. It looked like they’d been there some time.
“Jackie, we were just talking about you. You were right all along. DNA makes Powell our man.”
“You got the results?”
“A half hour ago, he matches the spunk. Me and Beauty here been deciding on an appropriate course of action.”
“Arrest him, of course.”
“That’s not our favorite option.”
“What are you talking about? You have to.”
Bella cut in.
“Jack, things are complicated. For all of us. I admit, having him arrested was my first thought too, but it’s not something we can do. He’s too closely connected to me.”
“But you didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
“Of course I didn’t. But certain of my interests would not be looked on favorably by the police. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”
“What she means, Jackie, is she’d end up getting busted as well. Karen’s death is linked to the kidney operations too tight for them not to come out, and they aren’t something anybody’s going to turn a blind eye to. Plus, you can never really figure which way an investigation’s going to go. Even if it starts off everyone’s for Powell on the murder, things could get twisted around. Maybe Beauty being rich pisses some cop off, maybe a piece of evidence gets interpreted different from how I see it. Who knows? What’s for sure is if we go with the law, all of us’ll get fucked one way or another. Beauty’ll do time for her operations alone, and the best you can hope for is withholding evidence—and they won’t have much trouble upscaling that to accessory after the fact. Not to mention that with Bella gone you could hardly expect to maintain your current lifestyle.”
“Not to mention that any investigation would turn up your blackmailing.”
“Good, Jackie, you got a handle on things—we’re all in it together.”
Bella put her hand on mine and spoke gently.
“It sounds ghastly, but there really is only one thing we can do.”
She paused and shook back her hair as though she was trying to be very brave. “We have to kill him.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. There’s no other way.”
“You honestly want to kill him?”
“You’ve seen what he does to dogs. I’m sure Ryan can describe what he did to Karen if you want. He’s unstable. What do you think he’s going to do if we don’t deal with him? He won’t have a choice, he’ll have to kill us all.”
“I thought you didn’t want to go to jail.”
“I’m sure Ryan has the necessary expertise to avoid anything like that.”
“He’s going to do it?”
Ryan put his elbows on the table and leaned toward me. “Sure I am, Jackie. For another million bucks, who wouldn’t? Besides, I got my own reasons.”
“You’re getting another million dollars?”
“Beauty’s promised it for services shortly to be rendered, and I don’t have a problem trusting her. But what we really need to discuss, Jackie boy, is your part in the action. See, I’m gonna need a little help.”
“No fucking way.”
Ryan put a surprised expression on his face. “Why, Jackie, don’t be churlish.”
“You don’t need me. You could do it better by yourself.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I do need you. See, I don’t want you walking away from this thinking you’re all uninvolved, and maybe a few years down the line getting an uncontrollable urge to talk. Nope, I’ll feel a whole lot more comfortable with you nice and tied in. And it ain’t only that. You’re sucking up rewards left, right, and center—a house here, a car there, your own little TV show—and I’m fucked if I’m gonna carry the load for your life as well as my own. It’s time to make a contribution, boy.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to pull the trigger, just be there to help, hold him down if he gets feisty, that kinda thing. It ain’t exactly difficult.”
“Ted, perhaps you’d give us a minute alone.”
When I heard Bella use his first name I knew I was fucked. Ryan left the room and she moved closer to me.
“You have to think this through, Jack. We can’t have Powell running around now that we’ve gone this far. Sooner or later he’d destroy me. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Of course it does.”
“And you do agree he has to be punished for what he did to Karen?”
“Well, yeah, but murder … Look, you cut kidneys out and wank with them, and Ryan thinks killing is one of the perks of his job. But I’m just a guy. I’ve never done this kind of thing. You can’t ask me to waste someone, for Christsake.”
“But I am, Jack. Like Ryan said, you need to make a contribution. Just go along with him. He only wants you to watch.”
“But being there will be just as bad if we’re caught.”
“Jack, I’m asking for some evidence of your love. I’ve given you a lot, but that can’t continue if it doesn’t work both ways.”
“What about Ryan? He’ll never go away after this.”
“He’ll go away and things will be better for us than they’ve ever been.”
“I don’t think he will. I think he’ll stay forever, fucking you and taking your money.”
“He’ll go away.”
The second time she said it I started to believe her. There was something in her voice that would have been frightening if it had been directed at me.
So … Bail on watching someone get whacked and say goodbye to my piece of paradise, or tough it out and get even more—that was the message. Not really a choice. So I said yes. I guess I’d been moving toward something like it ever since Karen’s death—from selling my ass, to wanking over pictures of dead people, to doing it with a dead chick in the morgue. Taking a ride with Ryan wasn’t really such a leap. Not when you considered what was at stake.
Ryan came back into the room and the rest of the evening went into fast-forward. I felt ill and cold.
We set off in the Jaguar around eleven. Ryan and I wore plastic spray jackets and over-trousers he’d bought earlier in the sporting section of a department store. We had the hoods over our heads. Powell sat uncomfortably in the passenger seat, hands cuffed behind his back, a few extra strips of tape on his mouth. Ryan drove, I was
in the back. The black glass shielded us from the eyes of the world, which was just as well because two guys dressed for a monsoon on a mild Californian night and another one with his mouth taped shut might have attracted attention.
Ryan wanted it to look like a queer trick gone wrong, and he wanted a place where cooperation with the authorities wouldn’t be overly forthcoming. So we made for the drag. I could see the side of Powell’s head, he looked drained of self-will and immensely tired. Twenty-four hours chained to a pipe and much less heroin than he’d ordinarily take couldn’t have done him much good, but it was more than that. He knew what was going to happen and he knew there wasn’t anything he could do about it. I turned my head away and counted palm trees.
We cruised. Past the whores and on into faggot territory. We did it a couple of times so that if anyone remembered the car it’d look like a john out for trade. I knew each pass along the street was bringing us closer to going active and I had an almost uncontrollable urge to piss. I pressed my thighs together and held my knees. My hands sweated inside the dishwashing gloves Ryan and I had accessorized our plastic ensembles with. I’d expected surgical latex, but that ripped too easily. Apparently. The knowledge Ryan had was chilling, but his obvious experience gave me a bizarre kind of reassurance. I guessed if anyone could get away with murder, he could.
We turned off the drag about the middle of where the boys hung out and worked our way into the warren of vagrant hostels and warehouses that made up the southern flank of the area. Most of the streetlights didn’t work and there wasn’t anyone walking around. Ryan guided the car off the road, into the loading bay of some abandoned Mexican food company. Plenty of shadow, no windows overlooking.
Ignition off, park-brake set. Time to deal. Time to deal and hope to fuck I could maintain afterwards.
Ryan twisted in his seat like he was about to engage Powell in conversation, but he wasn’t wearing his conversation face. In fact, the fat white circle in the center of his tightly drawn hood looked like something made from putty.
High Life Page 32