Devil City

by Gestalt Publishing

  Take my seat in Hondo's. No one looks up. Waitress comes over as I'm setting up in one of the apparently many dark corners in the joint. Someone's playing Duanne Eddy on the Jukebox. Order a drink and, because I have literally zero dollars on me and no time to see Lin, hex her into thinking I gave her a tip.

  Watch the tough guys work each other. Two guys, one who'd gotta go six nine, play pool, talking low. I hear two other guys talking.

  'What kind of work do you do?'

  'All kinds.'

  'Close body work?'

  'All kinds.'

  A woman trying hard not to cry slides an envelope under a napkin across a bar and the rat-faced man she's with snatches it up. A little guy with a bad moustache flirts awkwardly with a woman with a shaved head. Go figure.

  Mr. Goya is pouring drinks behind the bar, keeping his mouth shut. Like always, a Hawaiian shirt. Hair back. Even has a gold tooth in there, case you don't get the point. Neat goatee. Can't see it but there's a nickel-plated snub nose strapped to his back. Arms tattooed with roses, cards, hula girls, portrait of Sinatra.

  Surf guitar comes over the jukebox.

  Snaps me out of the watching.

  My eyes are clear and I look, carefully around the bar. The Aos said Hondo's, so what's the deal? She drink here?

  Look carefully. There on a wall by the head. Sure enough, there's a regulars board up there. Spelled up, my eyes pick it out right away. Hondo, no tattoos on his arm, hair in a pomp, his arms around a girl. Her hair is big, angled, spiked. Pink tanktop. Bad time for anything but post punk music, the ‘80s. Fashion is just one way they went wrong back then but... yeah. It's her.

  Ava. She's saluting the camera with a bottle of tequila.

  Not aged a day.

  Okay.

  Look around again and there it is. Over the bar.

  A portrait. Photo portrait. One gets you ten it wasn't there just a second ago.

  Ava.

  ‘40s style. Victory rolls. Good girls pose. Fishnets. Up on the stools of the bar, posing in front of the same mirror they still got there today. Hips tilted back, holding a martini glass and winking all saucy at the camera man. Risqué shot for those days. Lots of negative space in the shot. Unusual for a portrait. Almost like there should be someone else in the shot but it's clearly a tease pic.

  It's her. It's Ava. Just no doubt though. It's her.

  Move to the bar. Goya's flirting half-heartedly with a woman who looks like she's seen a thing or two. Hard lines on her face. Amber eyes turned mean with life. Bad dye job in a dress that's not flattering her. Knock on the bench, get myself a drink. Wait a while and by around four, the bar starts to thin out and I've gone through three quarters of a pack.

  Goya check his watch. He won't shut it down till sunlight.

  'Same again?'

  'Sure. Say. What's the deal with that picture you got up against the bar?'

  Hadn't had six whiskies, I would have caught the sudden, tiny start he gave. But I have, so I don't. Finishes pouring and looks back, all casual.

  'Some friend of my grandfather's, back in the day. Alright, this one's on the house ,my friend.' Big double.

  Hondo's isn't the place to give you too many free drinks. Trying not to think about Bettina's eye and obsessing about the woman who’s ninety if she's a day. I don't think to be suspicious when Goya excuses himself, makes a phone call, comes back and engages me in small talk. We talk music and girls, though I'm looking to ask more about that pin up. Don't even notice the bar is empty.

  The cigarette smoke starts to rotate the wrong way. The ice in my drink melts in seconds. Time I see the omens, they're already on me. Two bruisers playing pool step up behind me.

  'Hands on the bar. Don't fuck about.'

  Turns out Mr. Goya was just playing for time.

  Place like this, they want to kill me, they'd have just taken me upside the head with a pool cue and got me out of the joint, into the harbour I go.

  So this is something else. Hands on the bar. Pat down. Find a fetch on me but that's about all. Check my cigarettes, throwing them on the bar. Two roll into water. Ruined.

  Minute later, an old guy comes in. You can see it in his face, the handsome man he was, but he's long past those days. Good suit. Cigarillo. Sits next to me. Slowly, hands shaking a little, he starts to put my last few smokes back in the pack. Boss man.

  'My grandson, he runs the bar for me. I give it to him, free. It's his. But the day I give it to him, I tell him these thing: One, I get to live upstairs until and I die and two. Anyone asks about the portrait over the bar, he tells me. Right away. No matter what is going on, no matter what else, he tells me.'

  He looks over to one of the big guys behind me.

  'Hey, you, tell this man about the portrait over the bar.'

  The two legbreakers just look at each other, nervous.

  'Just tell it true.'

  One of ‘em coughs and says 'We don't see no portrait, Mr. Goya.'

  Goya Senior, he looks over at his heir. 'And you, son?'

  'I never saw a portrait in the fifteen years I work here. Always wondered what the hell you were talking about that first day.'

  'But you see it, don't you? What's your name?'

  'Lark.'

  'You see it.'

  Reckon I do. Describe it.

  'She's beautiful, isn't she?'

  Yeah. Yeah, she really is.

  'So, Mr. Goya. Who is she?'

  'I used to date her. She used to be my dame.'

  'But here's the thing, Mr. Goya. I met her about a week ago and that date of that picture in 1947.'

  The old man goes quiet. 'Mix us up some drink and leave the bottle, Freddy. Are you gonna do something stupid here, Lark, or do you want to talk about the old days?'

  'Didn't come down here for static.'

  'Maybe you got it, anyways. Let's talk and see.'

  The hardcases back off and Freddy cleans his station and leaves and it's just the two of us, in the bar. Freddy, knowing his grandfather's moods, puts on some Count Basie on the way out. Blues in the dark. Old strange horn sounds kicks up and there's just the two of us, the bottle, and the music.

  'I won this place in a card game from Hondo's grandson. That was a mean man, you know. Eventually, this isn't right away, I had to stick him. His body, it's still down in the basement somewhere. We used proper barrels back then so it wasn't hard to make him vanish. Those were good times. I learned how to read, got the place up and running. The war ended about three weeks after I got this joint and everyone was in the mood to celebrate. Then around the middle of summer, she walks in.'

  His eyes are far away and very bright.

  'Ah, man. In those days, we danced a lot. Proper dancing, took some skill, not like these days. So it's late and it's hot and everyone has a buzz on and in she walks. You ever seen a woman, got the refinement?'

  But he's not listening.

  'She was ice cold though she looked ready to, ready to ignite. She walks in, red heels and those fishnets. Wore a little veil under a pilbox hat. I remember that. Sits down and all the guys in the place, go cartoon wolf in a zoot suit. She goes to light a cigarette, five flames come at her face. She orders a Manhattan and sips it through a straw.'

  He shakes his head. 'She waits, finishes her drink and says to me, I'm working the bar, says what do you think a girl has to do to get asked for a whirl around here? Caz Dimico, he goes to move in but I give him a look, might as well have signed a death warrant with it. I come out behind the bar and ask her because, by then, I'm already in love.'

  Nod. Sure. I understand.

  'So we dance and the dawn comes up. I ask her to stay the night with me. She says no but tells me she'll come see me. I liked that. In those days, girls worried about reputations and all that. It was all classier then. But the next time, she does come back and she does spend the night. She comes around a lot. We start spending time. We go see a film, she's crazy for the pictures. We go see bands and dance like crazy, go to clas
sier joints than mine. I went on a picnic with her. I never went on another ‘til after my grandkids were born.

  She picks up work as a model. She sings back up one some numbers. Nice earners. That one there, above the bar though... she has that made just for me. I felt that, in my heart. Just for me. And all the time she tells me, I'm not staying in town long. You got to know that.

  She tells me enough, I get mad. You got another guy? You in trouble? You just wasting my time? I've got my mother out looking for rocks ‘cos I'm gonna ask this skirt to marry me and she's telling me she ain't gonna stay? No way. I ask her one final time, stay, and she looks at me. I remember this. She was putting on her stockings and the sun outlined her. She says to me, there's another guy. We split but he's not letting me go. But he's bad news, Goya. Stay and he finds me.

  Bad news I can handle. Let him come. I got a bar. I got boys now. But she just shakes her head. Not this one, she says, like she's sure I can't handle some nut. How you take it, Lark, how you take it if your woman tells you straight, you can't protect me'?

  I light up. 'That would drive me wild.' But I'm thinking I wouldn't mess with a woman can't protect herself but that's a different conversation.

  'Me too! But not this time. I just look at her, and I see she's telling the truth. I call some knives around me and have her tailed. No one, we turn up no one. I figure, whoever this desperado is she's got on her tail, he's not coming. I start to relax.'

  Goya Senior, he looks over at me and there's hurt in his eyes. He pours us both another shot and we slug back.

  'One night, the last night we're together. We're alone in the bar after closing. We're dancing. Slow, cheek to cheek. I'm getting ready to ask her. When the door opens and in comes the man in the black coat. Tall and with a presence. There's something wrong with the light outside. He looks like he's walked out of fire. Shadows and flame.

  I yell at him to be out of my joint, we're closed, but he just ignores me. Talks to my girl in a language I don't know. Bad sound that, I never forgot it.'

  He starts to make choking sounds and I figure he's fixing to die a minute before he's useful. No. He’s imitating the language and it's fucked up.

  'I go to fix this guy. Got a slugger under my bar and I go to open his head up but just one look, one look from him and my legs turn to water. They talk and my baby, she yells at him to leave me alone. This shames me but really, I'm just glad she's saved me. She pulls me away. He holds out a hand and she nods. She's crying. But she says yes to him. This hurts me but... this man, he isn't a man. He has fear all around him.'

  I know.

  'She comes over and kisses me and she whispers... she whispers that she can't let them remember her. Says she won't remember me. But how she loves me and she thanks me for letting her pretend to be a woman for a while. I beg her not to go but she says This man, he owes me. Maybe he's just playing games but he might also be making good on a promise. Be good Goya. I hope we don't meet again. At the time, she hurt me with that more than anything but I have an idea what she meant now.'

  Yeah. More whisky.

  'The next day, no one remembers her. She's like a dream. No one can hear her songs or see her photos. Normally, I think I'm getting my leg pulled. But then I remember the man in the black coat and the fire on the street, though, you know, there never was any. I know I brushed up against something.'

  'You know who he was, don't you, Mr. Goya.'

  'I've had suspicions, seventy years.'

  'I can -'

  'It was el diablo, wasn't it?'

  There's no such thing as the Devil.

  'Yeah.'

  'Do you know who she was? My Ava?'

  I think so.

  'She was el diablo's woman. What else matters?'

  He's looking up at the picture. Goddamn she looks good. They knew a thing about how to look good back then.

  'El diablo's woman. I should have known...'

  'Thanks for the drink, Mr. Goya.'

  Try something I'm no good at.

  'She surely was something, huh?'

  'Hey, did you see her?! Is she back in town?'

  Dunno what to say to that. Just put my jacket on.

  'If you see her, you tell her I said hello. She can come see me, if she wants. If she wants, we can dance. But you tell her I asked after her.'

  Sure, Mr. Goya.

  Sure.

  iv

  The Devil's girlfriend. Alright. Ava, the girl the Devil promised something to.

  Demon? Nah. I would have picked that up straight away. Spirit? Maybe. I need to talk to Pizzalgo. He knows all the hellfire stuff back and forth, which baron leads which legion and whoever the prime minister of hell is and who's Satan's valet.

  Then a man gets on the bus and my hand goes for that fetish. This cat is making no move to disguise himself.

  He's wearing one of them long overcoats, decorated with vodou veves. His skin is darker than any other black man I've ever seen. He wears a dozen medallions around his neck and he's grown his fingernails long. Blood spatters his face. He's short but that doesn't take a damn thing away from his presence.

  Quick sharp gestures, he fans his empty hands. He opens the coat. No weapons. Coming to talk.

  Don't let go of my fetish.

  He sits down in the bus seat in front of me, looking forward. French accent in a deep voice. Caribbean.

  'You were at the Hollow's lair. I watched you. I saw your woman. She gonna make it?'

  Take me a second to find a reply. 'Yeah. She'll make it. Lost an eye.'

  First time I said that.

  Head down a block or two. Stop to let off a drunk guy, who hasn't even noticed the kids waiting to wolfpack him at his stop.

  'You Lark?'

  'Yeah.' No point hiding. Announce yourself then do a hit? Incompetent or stupid and if he's here, he knows who I am. Probably been eyeballing me, my stealth wards are fine.

  'Yeah. You used to be the bull.'

  Tense up, grabbing at the dead scorpion I've filled up with poison magic. Part of a twinned set I made a long time ago.

  He throws up his hands, like a man surrendering. Still hasn't turned his head.

  'I'm not here to throw down. We have no beef, man. There's nothing between us. Relax.' His accent stretches out his vowels.

  'I never saw anyone at the Hollow's.'

  'We are wise men here, Mistah Lark. Let's not pretend. I came to see you, no weapons, no blood. Do not start with disrespect and pretending. I hid in ways people like us hide.'

  Sure. I wait.

  He turns to talk to me. Piercing through the nose. A long sharp bone. Daring people to say the obvious. Ears pierced a dozen times each. Samedi-brand on his cheek. Teeth filed.

  'You're going after the Hollow. Alone. I walked in with six of my hommes. Bad men, you know?'

  'I saw.'

  'But you and your woman, you walked out.'

  'Not that simple.'

  'No. But still, here you are. Not many men can do that. Walk away from the Hollow.'

  'No...'

  'Yet here we are, you and me. Alive. Perhaps we have things in common. An interest in the Hollow and a talent for surviving it. So perhaps, you and me, we have things to say to each other after all.'

  No point dragging this out.

  'I want to get rid of the Hollow. But I don't want to kill him to do it.'

  'But that's the simplest way, no?'

  'Simplest isn't best.'

  He tells me a phone number. Makes me repeat it. I get it.

  'My name is Aristide. You let me know if you're trying again. We both needs some friends to deal with this bad spirit, I think. '

  Bus stops.

  He's gone without a word.

  Need to write down this number. Pen but no paper. Back of my hand, cursing -

  The recording spell, with the quill. Never checked it.

  Stay on the bus and get back to Lazlo's around four. They're all asleep. Find the quill.

  I've got the Hollow r
ecorded but the spell was scanning everything. Including the Devil.

  Hold it in my hand, flip the notebook. Let's see what's we have. The quill writes itself, I just need to give it a hand. Trance writing. Hit the Gnosis and let it go.

  v

  Story about a girl, who caught the Devil's eye. Beautiful. Confident. But her mother gets one over on the Devil. Traps him for a while, in a key hole.

  Alright.

  But the girl, she's not afraid of the Devil. She kills her father, Holofernes wretched husband. Then, this is the clever bit, she grabs his foot and follows him all the way down to hell. Far as she's concerned, she's still engaged.

  Devil's impressed by that. How often you meet a girl who walks into hell - he falls in love all over again. Be my bride, that deal.

  But this girl, she's smart. I know you and my mother didn't get off to a good start but I still need her blessing. Besides, the girl isn't stupid. Her mother's job is to organise the bride price. In those days, marriages needed collateral. Deal is done. Girl is set up to be the queen of hell. Nice gig.

  That's where the story ends.

  My quill starts writing again and it's a hand that surely isn't my own.

  Girl keeps putting him off and putting him off, though. Devil wants to get his end away but the girl, she figures, Devil gets what he wants, that's it for her.

  He'll get bored with her by the time the sun ends the wedding night.

  How I be a good queen of hell, I don't know your kingdom? I don't know anything of the world.

  Good call. Devil gives her immortal life, gives her a horn to blow she needs him and a map back to hell. Off she goes and wanders the earth. She lives a hundred years. Five hundred. Always moving. But here's the thing. Five hundred years is a long time. Too long for a regular human type.

  She forgets. She remembers. She forgets.

  The Devil is the Devil. He thinks this is funny. Plus, she's still just a human. She's not ready to be Queen of Hell. On and off, he terrorises his fiancé. Sometimes to make her forget. Sometimes to get her to remember. Plus it toughens her up. She'll need to cope with worse than a stalker, she wants to rule hell.