by L. A. Morse
“Never heard of it. What is it?”
“A private club of some kind. Might be a sex place. Vice should know something about it. You probably won’t get too much, but ask around.”
“Sure thing. What’s this about? Important?”
“I don’t know yet. Should I come over tomorrow to see you?”
“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You know, you’re not exactly welcome around here after that Lafferty business.”
I knew. I had created a lot of paper work for the boys in blue and made them look pretty bad in the bargain. There had been a tot of screaming up and down the line over that one. They tried to make me the patsy and lift my license, and all they accomplished was to make themselves look worse than before. They didn’t have much use for me, and the feeling was mutual. Not that there aren’t good cops. I just hadn’t met many.
“Look, Sam, why don’t I ask around tonight, and I’ll stop by your apartment tomorrow morning before I come in.”
“Okay, see you then. It might be a good idea if you didn’t mention my name.”
“I know that better than you, old buddy. When you started the shit flying, more than enough hit me. See you tomorrow.”
I replaced the receiver and thought that it was cops like my friend Charlie that made the crime rate rise. Still, he’d get me what I wanted.
It was starting to get dark, or rather the sky was turning the brown-green color that passes for sunset around here. The daytime drunks were being replaced by the nighttime junkies, prostitutes, and assorted creeps and misfits. It was the other side of the coin, but it was the same coin.
I still had a couple of hours to kill, and I was starting to get hungry. Since I had to go to the Strip anyway, I decided on Fernando’s.
The restaurant was on one of those semi-crummy business streets off of Sunset Boulevard that go dead after 5 p.m. It was far enough away from the action to get none of the fashionable crowd, but the food was good and you only paid for the food, not some fancy address.
“Fernando” was a fat German who was just the right age to have been a Hitler Youth. He greeted me with enough oil in his voice to fry potatoes, showed me to a table, and took my order.
The lighting was low to hide the fact that the tablecloths were dirty, but I could see the place was doing good business.
The waitress brought me my drink. She was Fernando’s daughter, and looked like someone out of a German opera. She was large, but her flesh was solid. Her hips were so wide that they made her thick waist look relatively small. The off-the-shoulder Mexican blouse she wore accented her truly enormous breasts, which bounced in front of my face like twin Germanic basketballs as she bent over the table. One of these days it might be fun to give it to her on top of one of the tables, especially with Herr Fernando watching. He’d probably give me a year’s free dinners for the experience.
My dinner came quickly. As she leaned over my shoulder to serve it, she made sure that one of her tits pressed against the side of my face. I put my arm over the back of my chair and placed my hand on her ample rump. She started to wiggle it, but when I pinched her hard, she gave a small scream of surprise and hurried back into the kitchen.
My two-inch-thick porterhouse was good and cooked just the way I liked it—charred black on the outside and bloody raw in the center. They still remembered the time they served me a well-done steak and I threw it on the floor saying that was where shoe leather belonged. The service had been pretty good since then.
After I finished my second cup of coffee, I was feeling all right and beginning to look forward to what lay ahead that evening. I was going to have another meeting with my young witches or warlocks or whatever the hell they called themselves, and I had a feeling that this encounter was going to be far more satisfying—for me if not for them.
FIVE
I got into my car arid drove up to Sunset. As usual the traffic was hardly moving. Carloads of hicks were there to disgust themselves with the creatures that inhabit the Strip at night. Carloads of freaks were there to see and be seen by their buddies on the street. Past the pulsating discos, the chic coffee houses, and the not-so-chic porno palaces, the sidewalks were a solid stream of the stuff that feeds off and is fed to the Hollywood dream machine. Pot heads, coke sniffers, hash eaters, speed freaks, skag shooters, bikers, draggers, racers, pimps, pushers, prostitutes, religious fanatics who have been saved, homicidal maniacs who never will be, yogis, Krishnas, Buddhists, Maoists, urban guerrillas, neo-Nazis, drag queens, butch dykes, leather boys, chain-mail girls, starlets hoping to be discovered, has-beens hoping to be rediscovered, and those who are there because there’s no place else to go. All the scum of the city flowed down the street, and I was going to have to wade through it to get some answers.
I finally reached the place I was looking for, Scorpio Rising, and managed to find a parking place in front. A red neon scorpion sprawled across the black exterior of the building. The heavy double doors were black leather and decorated with astrological signs formed out of brass studs. Each of the innumerable places on the Strip had its own gimmick. Scorpio Rising’s was the occult.
I went inside and my nostrils were immediately assaulted by the odor of unwashed bodies, booze, incense, and the sickly sweet smell of burning grass. The feeble lighting emanated from plastic skulls mounted on the black walls. A transvestite band filled the small room with the sound of a jet engine as they exploded smoke bombs.
A few people writhed on the dance floor in the center of the room, but most sat around tiny tables, unmoving, unseeing, unhearing, wrapped in some inner fantasy.
I moved through the room, roughly pushing bodies out of my way, but the bodies did not even notice.
At the back of the room was a door marked Private. I started to open it when someone grabbed my arm.
“Can’t you read? It says ‘private.’ That means you cant go in.”
It was the bartender. He was a head shorter than me, but must have weighed 250 pounds, with the build of a weight lifter gone to fat. His immense beer belly hung over the top of his pants.
“Thanks for the explanation,” I said, “but I’m expected.”
He moved in front of the door.
“I don’t think so.”
“I do.”
I moved suddenly and caught him by surprise. A short quick punch into his protruding belly. My fist sank in up to the wrist. He just stood there. His face turned bright scarlet, then white, then green. I pushed him aside and he crumpled to the floor, a trickle of vomit starting to ooze from his mouth.
I looked around. No one had noticed. I opened the door and went in.
There were six of them sitting around a table in the center of a room that had strange signs and markings scrawled on the walls. Up against one wall was an altar of some kind, surmounted with an upside down cross. I don’t know if they believed all that black magic bullshit, but they sure seemed to have all the props.
They were all about the same age—nineteen or twenty. There was one girl among them—at least I thought it was female. Anyway, they all looked the same with long, stringy, dirty hair; yellow, pimply complexions; and dull, sneering eyes sunk in dark sockets. Most of them I had seen before. Two of them were passing joints, and one of them was snorting up a spoon of cocaine. This was apparently my lucky day—the coke sniffer was George Lansing II.
One of the ones I had met before, who seemed to be their leader, had turned around when I entered.
“What the fuck do you want? Can’t you read? This is private. Get the fuck out of here!”
It was the voice of a spoiled, rich brat who was used to getting his way instantly.
“After I get some answers to a few questions.”
“Oh, it’s the private pig. Hello, Mr. Private Pig. Oink. Oink. Georgie, this is the oink that was asking questions about you.” Georgie raised his dull eyes, but showed no greater interest. The spokesman continued, “Now, Mr. Oink, you have no questions to ask, and we have no answers to give. Yo
u are trespassing, so get the fuck out of here!” His voice had risen to a shrill scream.
I stood, not moving, staring hard at him. My knuckles were starting to itch, and I had that metallic taste of expectation in my mouth. I was going to enjoy this. I kept my voice even.
“Who is Domingo?”
“You no longer amuse us, Mr. Oink. You amused us once, but you no longer do. So you had better leave while you still can.”
“Who is Domingo?”
“Mr. Oink.” It was the girl speaking. “Why don’t you lick my cunt, motherfucker.”
I stared at her until she turned away. I knew what was going to happen, and it would be a pleasure.
“If Mr. Oink insists on staying, we might as well have some fan with him.” It was the spokesman again. “Jimmy, lock the door.”
One of them got up and threw two bolts across the door. Better and better.
“Mr. Oink, you’re a very hacky man. You’re going to get to take part in our ceremony. You’re going to be the star attraction.” Someone giggled. “A little pig’s blood is just what we need. Slit the pig!”
With that, Jimmy and another of them pulled switchblades and started advancing toward me.
I felt the total calm I always get in situations like this. My reflexes were tightened to the point where I could move with lightning speed. Even though my gun was under my arm, I wouldn’t show it because that would scare them off, and I wanted them to come on. I wanted to feel their skins rip and their bones snap beneath my fingers.
I backed up against the door trying to make myself look scared so as to encourage them.
Jimmy came forward. His lips were parted and a drop of spittle fell from the corner of his slack mouth. He made a short thrust with his knife, expecting me to jump back. Instead, I grabbed his arm and slammed his hand against the wall. The knife fell to the floor. Twisting his wrist, I straightened his arm and rammed the heel of my palm into his elbow. His arm snapped like a matchstick. Before he could scream I drove my elbow into his ribs and felt them crack. My fist came up and caught him square in the jaw, shattering it, the force of the blow causing teeth to fly out of his mouth as he fell to the floor.
The other one moved at me. His eyes had the crazy gleam of the meth shooter. They showed sadistic pleasure. He rushed, the arm holding the knife straight in front of him. I sidestepped, caught his wrist and slowly bent his arm back toward him. I covered his hand so that he could not let go of the knife, and as the blade moved closer to his head, the look in his eyes changed to terror. I let the knife blade rest on top of his ear for a second so that he would be sure to know what was going to happen. He started to scream as the blade cut into him, and as the ear was severed, warm blood gushed over my hand. He fell to his hands and knees, whimpering, and I brought my heel down hard on one of his hands, crushing it. I rotated my heel before lifting it.
The girl threw a heavy ashtray at my head. I ducked and it broke against the wall. As I was standing up, someone jumped on my back and tried to put his fingers around my throat. I backed into the wall as hard as I could. That knocked the wind out of him, and he let go of my neck. I turned around and hit him in the solar plexus. As he doubled up, I gave him a chop across the back of his neck and he collapsed on the floor.
I looked up and saw their fearless leader frantically trying to get the door open. I pulled him around so that he faced me. Terror showed in his face. His mouth worked but no sound came out. A stench hit my nostrils and told me he was literally scared shitless. I laughed. His face contorted and he tried to kick me in the groin. I caught his foot and flipped him on his back. Still holding his leg straight up, I said, “Is this what you tried to do?” as I buried the toe of my shoe in his crotch. Yellow foam frothed out of his mouth.
The girl came at me, screaming wildly, looking like the witch she pretended to be. She had picked up one of the fallen knives and was holding it over her head. She tried to plant it in my chest, but I grabbed her skinny arm with one hand. My other hand grabbed a tit and twisted it until she dropped the knife. She was glaring at me, spitting like a wild animal. She might have been the worst of the lot.
I put my hands at the top of her dress and ripped it off her. She wore no underwear. Naked she was even worse-looking than before. She was very thin except for full breasts that seemed out of place on that bony frame. She was dirty, and her skin was covered with welts and scratches and insect bites. She stared at me defiantly.
“Now what should I do with you?” I said.
“Eat me, motherfucker! Eat me!”
I was suddenly tired of all this. Before she had a chance to react, I hit her on the point of her chin. Her knees went rubbery and gave way as she slumped down, unconscious.
I looked around. There, in the corner, was George Lansing II.
“Well, Georgie, here we are. Just the two of us.”
“Leave me alone. I don’t know you. I don’t know anything.”
“But Georgie, you must. You’re the reason all this happened.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything. Don’t hurt me.” He sounded like an eight year old.
Someone groaned and I looked around. When I turned back to Georgie he had a small gun in his hand. No matter what he sounded like, he had tried at least once to kill his father. He was unpredictable, and I figured I had to act fast.
“Georgie, that’s just stupid,” I said, and keeping my eyes on his face, I suddenly went low and threw a roll block at him, hoping I would be able to come in beneath his gun. He fired as my shoulder slammed into him. I felt the heat as the bullet passed just above my back. The second time I bounced into him he dropped the gun.
I kicked it across the room. Georgie was looking as though nothing had happened. I studied his face. His nose was running and he had the frozen upper lip of the chronic coke sniffer. His eyes were vacant and imbecilic. All that showed was viciousness, and the only way to get the truth out of him was the threat of pain.
“Who’s Domingo, Georgie?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave me alone.”
“Who’s Domingo?” I asked very quietly.
He turned his face away, bored.
“WHO’S DOMINGO?”
I shouted into his ear and at the same time reached up between his legs and grabbed his balls hard and squeezed.
He screamed and turned to look at me. I finally had his attention.
“Let me go! Let me go! You’re killing me!”
I squeezed harder.
“Who’s Domingo? Tell me quick or I’m going to crush your balls.”
“I don’t know. I never heard of him. Please let me go.” He was starting to sweat and roll his head.
I squeezed harder still.
“The truth. Tell me the truth.”
“Stop! Stop! That is the truth. I swear. I swear.”
I let up the pressure. He relaxed a little.
“What about that big gorilla you sent to scare me off?”
“I didn’t send anyone. Honest.”
I jammed my hand hard up his crotch.
“Honest. I don’t know anything about it. Let me go.”
I relaxed my grip. I believed him. Very few men can lie under those circumstances. Georgie wasn’t likely to be the exception to that rule.
“You know your father hired me, Georgie?”
“What for?”
I squeezed again.
“Because he doesn’t want to be murdered by you. I think he should have killed you or put you away at long time ago. But that’s his affair. My affair is to see that you won’t send him any more presents or do anything stupid like try to kill him again.” I squeezed very hard. “Understand?”
His face was white and covered with sweat. He was close to passing out.
“I understand. I understand. Please stop.”
“Because if I hear that he’s received any more funny packages, or any threats, or he has any kind of accident, you better believe that I’m going to come after you,
I’m going to rip your balls off, and I’m going to smash both of your knees, and both your ankles, and both your elbows and both your hands. And every minute you live after that will be nothing but pain—ask your friends about it. You better believe me, Georgie. Do you believe me?”
I shoved my hand up hard one more time, nearly lifting him off the floor.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
I let him go and he crashed to the ground, clutching himself and crying in pain and fear.
I went to the door and drew the bolts. As I opened the door I heard that the band was still playing. That was good. They were so loud I could have set a bomb and no one would have been the wiser.
I went into the main room, pulling the door shut behind me. Directly in front of me stood Fat Belly, a wicked-looking sawed-off shotgun cradled loosely in his hands.
“Okay, tough guy. Let’s see how tough you are now.”
I noticed that he didn’t even have his finger on the trigger. Obviously he was not used to guns and thought the sight of it alone would be enough to put me out of business. He would be easy to take, and I doubted if I would ever get a better opportunity than I had.
He was still smirking, thinking about what he was going to do to me, when I ripped the gun out of his hands. Surprise showed on his face, and then fear, and then pain as I jammed the stock a good six inches into his stomach. He doubled up, and, holding the barrel like a baseball bat, I clubbed the side of his head. I put my foot on his fat ass and pushed him toward the wall. He hit it face first. Blood poured from his broken nose as he fell backward to the floor. He was out cold, spread-eagled. I shoved the business end of the gun down into the front of his pants. If he wasn’t careful when he came to, he might do himself some more harm.
As I left the place, I looked at my watch. Hardly five minutes had passed.
I went to my car and saw that some burly biker was sitting on the front fender. He was an ugly son of a bitch with a shaven head and an earring in one ear. His torso was bare except for an open, sleeveless denim vest. He was heavily tattooed with snakes and skulls, and he was busy impressing a couple of teeny boppers with how tough he was.