by Joey Ruff
“I’m…umm…I’m kind of, uh, busy…at the moment.”
“Right,” I said. I pulled a ten dollar bill from my jacket and tossed it at the girl. “Dance is over, Love. Go buy yourself a bigger cup size.” I turned back to Seven, noticed the erection he still sported, said “Put that thing away, you’re making me uncomfortable,” and thumped his cock head with my middle finger.
“Oh, Fuck!” He grabbed himself in pain, doubled over and scooted away from me. I had a feeling it was more for show, as all eyes in the room focused on us, despite Warrant’s Cherry Pie now being played over the speakers. From the corner of my eye, I saw Victor step just inside the entrance with a curious eye.
“Shit, Jono, you can’t be in here. If anyone sees me with you…”
“Too late for that, isn’t it.”
“I mean, seriously. A guy like me…I got a reputation to uphold.”
I smiled and waved to the blonde as she took her boa and stormed out of the tent.
“Why the fuck did you hit me in the pecker? What do you want from me?”
“Relax, mate. I’m not here to chop down your tree, just to shake the branches and see what falls out.”
“I got nothing to tell you, Swyftt.”
I cocked my head to the side, studied him for a moment. I slipped a hand into my pocket. He fidgeted more nervously than before and started to sweat. “You remember what happened last time you wouldn’t talk to me?” I asked.
“You fucking drug me behind your car in a noose, Swyftt. Jesus H., how the fuck can I forget that?”
“Then make this easy.”
“You don’t have a bumper to tie me to this time, and I got nothing for you even if you did.”
“Seven, I’ve been squeezing information from you for four years now. You think I don’t know by now when you’re shit-balling me?” I waited for an answer, but none came. “You really want to do this the hard way?”
I jumped at him, pulled the knife from my pocket. With a flick of my wrist, the blade smiled at Seven and bared its serrated jags of teeth.
I hit Seven in the shoulder and we collided together to the ground, but he didn’t seem to be worried about anything but the knife blade, the iron flashing scarlet as it neared his flesh.
“I don’t know anything, Swyftt. I swear to Zeus.”
“Seems like you should wait to hear what I’m asking about.”
I had the blade to his throat, barely touched metal to skin, and it smoked just a little. His eyes were huge as he watched it.
“There are these homeless guys and these children…”
“Ohfuckme,” he squealed. “Idon’tknowanything, Idon’tknowanything…” His voice went up three octaves as he writhed under me. From the reaction, you’d think I’d just plugged his nipples to a live car battery and shoved my knife in his arsehole.
His reaction caught me off-guard, and I let up enough for him to wiggle out from under me.
He stood, rigid and disturbed. I expected some recognition, but not this. It was more than a bloke could hope for. “Seems like you’re already telling me more than you meant.”
I heard the music stop then, and without directly looking, made out the hulking form of Victor making his way to us, saying, “Put the weapon away, Mr. Swyftt.” I pocketed the knife as the house lights came up.
Seven’s eyes were wild, a panicked look spread over every inch of his features. “Jono, shit, leave me out of this. I promise, I don’t know nothing!!! DON’T MAKE ME…”
I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this kind of reaction, not before being thrown out, anyway. “Fucking…. Calm down, Seven. Nobody wants to make a scene. Just tell me how to stop this. Tell me where to find the kids that are going missing.”
“LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS!!!! I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!!” He yelled and burst from the tent in terror, spilled onto the ground.
I stood, looked down at Seven where he twitched on the floor. “Get up, mate. You’re embarrassing yourself.” Any other moment, I might have been embarrassed, too, but instead was just pissed off. This wasn’t the way it should have happened.
“Swyftt,” came Victor’s strong baritone. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”
I looked up at him, smiled faintly, and noticed he wasn’t alone. Two more, roughly the size and shape of Victor had joined him. One had long black hair, the other a short, bleach-blonde mop; both wore small dark sunglasses, black t-shirts, jeans.
Victor was a big guy on his own. I was touched he thought he needed backup on someone like me. I was six foot, 190 pounds, and no pushover by any means, but this bloke was three times my size.
Seven’s cries had muted as the attention moved away from him and onto me. He saw me watching him, made sure Victor couldn’t see what he was doing, and winked at me. The fucker winked at me. And I kicked him twice, once in the stomach, the other in his bollocks.
He curled over instinctively, screamed louder, and shook and rocked and throbbed. Seven was an arsehole, and I hated myself that in times like these I relied on anything he could tell me. There was a time I didn’t need anyone or anything, could solve any case in three days flat. Maybe I needed a little assistance from time to time, but Ape was still wrong; I wasn’t slipping.
That’s how I knew the blonde bodyguard was circling around behind me, giving me just enough time to side-step his punch. As I moved away from Seven, the bloke toppled forward with the follow-through momentum of his own body weight, his size-thirteen combat boot striking Seven in the gut.
Seven screamed, lurched, and I took so much joy in watching him thrash about, I didn’t see Victor charge. I took his fist to the back of the neck and fell forward, collided into some chairs at an empty table.
Dazed, I didn’t quite have time to find my bearings, or my feet for that matter, before someone lifted and tossed me effortlessly toward the stage.
I hit the floor with a loud, flat noise, landed on my nose, felt a warm burst and a hot searing pain across my face. Everything went black for a second, but I managed to roll onto my back in time to see the Genie staring down at me. I might have been delirious with pain, but somehow still smiled at her.
Maybe it was instinct, seeing Genie shrink back suddenly, maybe it was just I’m that damn good, but I rolled to the side just as a chair shattered where I’d been lying. The legs and back splintered, cushion shredded, white fluffy fabric spilled down on me like snow.
I threw a quick kick to the man’s knee, heard a heavy grunt, saw the long-haired guard topple forward. I pulled my knife, spun and stuck him in his huge, thick neck. He grimaced and squeezed his thick fingers around my neck, lifted me into the air. I kicked and kicked, but he didn’t even flinch. Just squeezed harder until my head threatened to pop off like a dandelion.
It must have been Victor that said something, but I couldn’t hear what as my head spun, ears rang. Then the vice squeezing my windpipe relented, and just when I thought it was over, I was sideways and spinning through the air.
My side erupted in horrible pain, my back popped and crunched. Metal rang out. He’d flung me into the stripper pole, and my body twirled around like a fucking pinwheel. Then I was falling.
Everything else faded into blackness.
7
Four years ago, I got a call from Kevin Douglas, the First Mate of an oil tanker out of Sacramento called The Crow’s Nest. They were en route to the Alaskan pipeline and only stopped off a day in Seattle when three of the crewmen didn’t return from leave.
Naturally, they’d seen it on their way down the Sound, as was meant to happen, and the flyers and signs all over Elliot Bay and the rest of the docks only reaffirmed what they had seen: Naked women, booze, buffalo wings.
Kevin Douglas came to my office, told me his story, and paid half up-front. I’d never been to the Siren’s Song before, but knew about it – at least by reputation. So I packed up my gear and headed up the coast, expecting some psycho-bloodthirsty, scary-topless monstermutilation action.
I was a little disappointed. Apart from the caricature of a bodyguard, the club itself was pretty standard: overpriced liquor, nice-looking dancers. Back then, the décor wasn’t as nice, but it was on the level.
The patrons of the Siren’s Song, however, were anything but average. Had I been a virgin to the world of the Midnight, I would have thought I’d walked in to a cantina in Star Wars. There was a table of eight or nine ghouls near the stage. At least a half dozen Satyrs playing a serious game of cards in the corner with a pair of Hobs and what looked like a garden gnome statue. Everywhere I looked, goblins. The place was busy, crowded even for a Saturday. Every table full, the lights low, the energy high. Yet the most bizarre thing was the dancer: wrapped like a mummy, slowly twirled and unraveled her bandages to a chorus of hoots and catcalls as The Monster Mash thundered through the house.
I took a seat at the bar and was greeted almost immediately by Noelle, whose dark eyes and long, wavy black hair seemed to me like an oasis in a desert. “Haven’t seen you in here before,” she half-shouted over the din in a well-seasoned bar-voice.
I smiled. “First time.”
“What are you drinking?”
I told her, and she got me a frosty bottle which I sipped right away. She just watched me, smiled curiously. Moved down the bar, refilled drinks, but stayed near and watched me from the corner of her eye. It’d been some time since I’d talked with a reasonably attractive woman that wasn’t hiring me to find her husband or missing kid, so I wasn’t sure if what I thought I saw was real or not, but couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her shorts and low-cut tee were as tight as a Chinese finger trap. Oh, my thoughts were dirty, delicious things: finger trap, indeed.
When my beer was almost gone, she sidled back my way and slid me another. “What brings you in here?” she asked.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said.
Her smile broadened. “Everyone in here is, sugar.” She winked at me, and I felt the warmth of her charm for the first time, though didn’t think much of it, didn’t know what it meant.
Douglas had given me photos of the missing crewmen, and I withdrew them from my jacket, slid them across the bar. “Do you remember any of these men?” I asked. “I have reason to believe they were in here last night.”
It wasn’t exactly a scowl that she gave me, but close. Almost as soon as I’d spoken, her smile vanished, her eyes narrowed curiously. “You’re human.” She shook her head, but kept staring at me, intently.
I tapped the photos on the bar, realized she hadn’t even tried to look at them. “They would have arrived,” I said, “sometime between eight and nine. Were you working last night?”
She turned away sharply, ignored me, and said, “I have to call my manager.” She picked up a phone on the back of the bar, said a few words, and hung up. She didn’t even look at me again.
I slid the photos back into my jacket and shrugged. Turning back to the room, I scanned the crowd for anyone that looked willing to talk and tried not to think about what I’d said wrong.
I didn’t see her come up, but when I glanced to my left, a red-head in a sequined evening gown smiled at me warmly and batted her large, dark eyes. “Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.
Heat – not warmth – swept through me in a wave like I’d never known. I took a long pull from my beer and touched the cold bottle to my cheek.
I noticed the curious way she looked at me and said, “It’s hot in here. Are you the manager?”
“I am. How can I make your dreams come true tonight?” Her eyes didn’t leave mine as she brought a martini glass to her lips and sipped something pink and fruity.
I don’t think the corniness of the line occurred to me, I was too busy trying not to imagine my dreams and her fulfilling them. As I fought to keep a cool head, I drained the last of my beer, set the empty bottle on the bar. “I’m looking for someone.” I retrieved the photos. “Three someones, actually. They were reported to have been entertained here last night. They’ve been missing since.”
She took the photos in her free hand, studied the faces for a minute. Then she set the photos and her drink down on the bar, and her fingers found the zipper on my jacket. She was mindfully moving it up and down, ogling my chest as she said, “Are you a police officer?” Her eyes looked up at me, though her head was still down, and she looked so innocent and so dangerous.
“I’m in the private sector. I was hired to find them.”
Her smile must have lit the room. “So you’re a private dick?”
My cheeks flushed, warm and bright enough to color the walls. She really laid it on thick, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be embarrassed, flattered, or a little of both. Between the heat and her flirting, I was distracted and really had to fight to concentrate.
“Good,” she said. “I don’t like cops in here. But I like…dicks.”
I took an audible gulp and used the last reserves of willpower to pick the photos from the bar and hold them up in front of her. “Maybe you remember them leaving with someone? A goblin, perhaps? Maybe they all got pissed off their arses and drove home after closing? Should I be looking for them in a ditch…?”
Her smile was cool, her answer slow. “Maybe.”
She was humoring me, but I was getting annoyed. My gut told me she was hiding something. Once again, I pocketed the photos and extracted a business card, set it on the bar in front of her. Sure, she was beautiful, but she wasn’t helping. “I guess that’s where I need to be looking then. Call me if you can remember anything.”
I got up. As I started to walk away, I heard, “Jonothan Swyftt.” She strode forward holding my card. “My name is Lorelei. The Song is mine.”
“So now you want to talk? What was that other stuff? Sexy, play-time bullshit?”
She nodded, looked perhaps a little embarrassed. “I have a part to play,” she admitted. “I must say, though, I am quite impressed by you, Mr. Swyftt. Most men find it…” She bit her lip; it looked tasty. “…very difficult to resist my charms.”
“I’m not most men.”
“No. But you are a man.” She tossed back the rest of her drink and set the empty glass on the bar. “Which means you have needs.”
“I have one need right now,” I said. “To find these missing sailors.”
“I respect a man for doing his job, Mr. Swyftt. Unfortunately, I cannot help you there. Last night was a very busy night. I am afraid I cannot recall if they were here.”
“Do you mind if I ask around?”
She put her arm in mine and walked with me toward the door. “No offense, but I do, actually. I am sure you are a very gentle…dick…but this is an entertainment club. The people that come here do so to be entertained. I cannot have anyone putting bad vibes into the air.” She held a finger straight up. “Bad vibes means less excitement, less excitement means…” Her finger began to droop slowly, and then curled in on itself. “Very bad for business, you understand.”
I nodded. That was it then. And she ushered me back out into the night.
Just after lunch the next day, she called. Said she remembered something, asked me to come by around four, before the club opened. Better to talk that way without all the music and excited guests.
So I showed up, the only car in the lot, and knocked three times on the side door, per her instructions. After a moment, the door opened, and a girl no older than sixteen greeted me. She was dressed only in a modest silk robe and her straight brown hair framed her face like a wedding veil.
“Mr. Swyftt?” she asked. When I nodded, she stepped aside, allowed me to enter.
The door opened onto a narrow hallway, which looked more like the hall of a nice hotel, including the floral-print carpet and the wall-sconce lamps. She led me past several rooms in silence and stopped about halfway down, knocked three times on a door.
“Lorelei is expecting you,” she said and opened it.
I stepped into a dark antechamber, maybe four-foot square, and as the door closed behind m
e, the only light peeked under the lip of the heavy curtain that stood before me. While the hallway had been cool, this new room had a distinct, warm humidity, like an indoor swimming pool. I stood there a second longer before I heard, “Come in Mr. Swyftt.”
I pushed the curtain to the side and entered, not a pool, but a large bath chamber. In the center of the room, raised only slightly higher than the floor, was a large Jacuzzi, bigger than any I’d seen. Wooden benches sat against the walls, and there was a rack of fresh, clean white towels. The air hung heavy and thick with heat and mist and something else I couldn’t quite identify.
She was alone and smiled when I walked in. I was dressed in my usual – dark denim, t-shirt and jacket – but it was so warm, I took my jacket off immediately and stood holding it. “I am glad you came, Mr. Swyftt,” she said. “Or can I call you Jono? That is what your friends call you?” She sat in the water, hair up in a bun, her bare shoulders exposed. The water was cloudy with bubbles and steam.
I found a seat on one of the benches and sat facing her. Because I knew nothing of Lorelei, I couldn’t hide the surprise on my face as I asked, “And how do you know that, love?”
“You are a prominent figure in my realms of influence. It was not hard to find a half-dozen familiar with you.”
“So what are you?”
With the expression she gave, I couldn’t tell if she was being playful or mocking insult. She put a hand on her chest and said, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“C’mon, Love. Last night you had a room full of spellbound Korrigan. You can’t fool me for a minute to make me think you’re human. That crowd would have torn you apart.”
“Where would you prefer that crowd to be, Jono? Out on the streets? Stalking innocents?”
“That’s not what my question was.”
“No, but you imply to the effect that I must be something dark and sinister to keep those types of creatures so thusly cowed.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “A lady takes great insult at that.”
“Is that my answer then? A lady?” I laughed.