“Why the hell…”
“Kunda is in one of the promo shots doing doggie tricks.”
“Say what?”
“Looks like it was a few years ago.”
“Okay, and then what?”
“I’m gonna squeeze her like a lemon.”
“Hmph, sounds good. Take it easy. Make sure she doesn’t file a complaint. Keep me posted. In fact, call me when you’re done. And when you do, don’t tell me you did anything I’m not going to like.”
Gus knows me like a brother and I love him for it.
•••
I KNOCKED HARD THREE times. Kunda must have been up, because I heard her moving around as soon as I knocked. She had to come from the back and it took her a few seconds to open the door.
“Detective, what are you doing here?”
“I’d appreciate a moment of your time. I come to you with questions.” My voice was strange in my ears. I was holding back, but my tone was forceful, insistent.
“Come in, come in. My, you dress different on your off time. I like that velvet-over-denim effect.”
I entered the dimly lit room filled with pastel-colored chairs. Traces of incense still hung in the air.
“I’m not here to discuss fashion.”
“No, of course not.”
It was so dark in there that several people could have been hiding in the shadows.
“You kept some secrets from me, Kunda.”
“What do you mean?”
“Turn up the lights, I can’t see anything in here. I want to see your face.”
“Okay, I have nothing to hide,” she said as she adjusted the dimmer switch. A warm golden glow filled the room. She gave me a nervous smile. “What is it, Joan?”
Goddess posters stared at me, their eyes holding me responsible. Kunda was dressed in white silk pajamas. Her face was blank, no pretense, no otherworldly bullshit.
“I want you to tell me everything you know about our friend, Autumn, especially her relationship with The Barb and the dark world of S&M. Just tell me now, because I’m gonna find out anyway so please don’t hold back even one detail.”
“Oh, dear. I didn’t realize.”
“Get comfortable.”
I pushed her down on the same pink chair she sat in the morning Gus and I first interviewed her. Her eyes took on a different look. No more pretense, no more airy-fairy. I paced back and forth to keep myself under control and even if she wasn’t psychic she could’ve picked up on that.
“I don’t know where to start. What do you want to know?”
I pulled out Dani’s picture for the third time that day and flipped it down on Kunda’s lap. It was strange how the ghastly photo looked against the pure white of Kunda’s silk pajamas.
“That’s Dani, she was Autumn’s best friend. She’s been murdered. We found this shot of you among her belongings.”
I flipped the postcard-sized photo of Kunda in her purple dog collar on her lap as well.
“Oh no.” She turned away from the photos as if from a harsh light.
“Oh yes. Why don’t you start way back at the beginning so we don’t get confused or miss any important details?”
“Okay. Please, take this back.”
I snatched the photos off her lap and put them back in my jean pocket.
“Let’s see, um, before I was a psychic I was an actress.”
“What name did you use?”
“Laura Donate. I did a few B films but before that I did, uh, sort of, the first music video. Glenn Addams directed it and The Barb produced it.”
“So, you know The Barb?” She nodded. “And you knew that he was involved with Autumn.”
“No, I had no idea. I swear.”
“Glenn Addams directed this music video? I thought he was a producer.”
“Not too many people know about it because, well, it was an S&M band and Glenn went by Spike back then and that’s what the credit says. It was, uh, sort of a subculture underground thing.”
“A Spike and Barb production.”
“Exactly.”
“The Barb. How’d he get his nick name?”
“He was fond of tying girls up in barbed wire.”
“Nice guy. What was the title?”
“Excuse me?”
“The film you did, what was the name of it?”
“Dying Love.”
“Where do people buy this film?”
“I’m sure Glenn Addams has bought the rights and taken it out of distribution by now. I didn’t think the promo still existed. You couldn’t really buy or rent it from the video stores.”
“A snuff film.”
She nodded. “But no one was really hurt,” she said. “It was all drama. Makeup and special effects.”
“Not one of your spiritual high points, I take it.”
“No,” she said in a hoarse whisper.
“What else?”
“That’s all I know. I pretty much moved out of that orbit. I’ve evolved.”
“Good for you. Who are some of the lower life forms still in it, besides The Barb?”
“Oh, I don’t think The Barb does that sort of thing anymore. I’m pretty sure he wants to be on a higher level.”
“Like his old partner, Spike, who is now the big producer Glenn Addams.”
“Right. Um, there’s this one guy, a video editor. He’s older now, a big man, lots of health problems, corpulent, smokes, harmless really, but very much into all that, as I recall. A quiet, docile-type guy, but you know, there was that thing in his eyes. Gave me the shivers when he looked at me when ah… His name is Johnny Tyler.”
“Do you have a phone number, address?”
“No, but you should be able to locate him in the North Hollywood white pages under Johnny XXX Tyler. He got a lot of business under that listing.”
Johnny Tyler did indeed live in North Hollywood in what was once upon a time a nice neighborhood. The address was a thirties Spanish-style house that sat atop a hillock of dead grass and shrubs. I parked the Crown Vic right on the street from where it was clear that Mr. Tyler was obviously not someone who gave much thought to his landscape. Plant life was definitely on its own here. A steep flight of concrete steps went up to the wooden steps of a small covered porch. To the left of the porch was a large picture window with security bars and drawn sun-faded curtains. The bars struck me as a bit odd, since you would need an extension ladder to reach the window. A narrow, double-strip driveway ran up to a dilapidated wooden gate on the right side of the house. On the left side was a cinder-block privacy wall a few feet from the house. It was a quiet neighborhood where people mind their own business because it’s the smart thing to do.
I needed to check in with Gus before I went in to question him. I had just gotten my phone out when a huge black SUV pulled up to the curb in front of the house. I waited to see if Mr. Tyler was about to have company when I immediately recognized the hulking form of Hector Cardona walking up the steps of the house. There was a skinny young girl with him. She had to be around twelve or thirteen and armed with an affected street-tough attitude. She walked as if her shoes were made of iron. In the porch light, her straggly pink hair looked electrified which went well with her electric-blue hip-huggers. A tiny red halter covered her flat chest. Though I was on a diagonal across the street, I scrunched down and dialed Gus as Hector went onto the porch and turned to the girl who was still clumping up the steps. He said something to her about moving her ass and then knocked on the door. I saw a movement in the curtains in the picture window and glimpsed a pale face.
Hector and the girl stood on the porch talking. He put his hand on the top of her head and she knocked it off though she probably didn’t weigh much more than his arm. To my surprise, Hector left her there and went back to his SUV and took off, but not before I wrote down his license plate. The girl with pink hair stood on the porch and watched him leave. The door opened behind her and she went in. I didn’t like that. I dialed Gus.
“I th
ought you were going to call me,” Gus said. He was pissed.
“I’m calling you, I’m calling you. Listen, I’m in NoHo outside the residence of one Johnny Tyler. Hector Cardona just drove up and dropped off a young girl. She’s got to be a minor. Could be street. This guy Tyler is in the sleaze business. Kunda turned me onto him.”
“You’re late on the draw, dammit. Now you’ve got to call the watch commander, you need backup to contain the area. Do you understand me, Joan?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hector’s gone?”
“He dropped the girl off and split. She didn’t offer any resistance. In fact, she could have left. But I’m telling you, she’s a minor. Probably a runaway.”
“Okay, tell the watch commander you have a possible kidnapping. Keep an eye on ‘em. I’ll be right there.”
I gave Gus the address and called the watch commander with the situation and my location. I got out of the car, walked up the street, crossed to the house side, pausing behind a huge clump of pampas grass near the corner of the driveway. I was determined to have a look-see and was up the driveway before I had a chance to change my mind. The gate at the top was locked but was flimsy enough for me to slip through. There was a big boxy white van parked at the end of the driveway in front of a small garage that tilted to one side. The windows along this side of the house were covered with security bars like the front. The windows were too high for me to look through, but by standing precariously on the utility meters and holding on the security bars under the second window, I could see in.
The curtains were closed, but the window was open a few inches at the bottom. It was enough for me to squeeze my hand through the bars and open the curtains a couple of inches for my first unforgettable view of Johnny Tyler in a Barco lounger. Sweat darkened his Hawaiian-print shirt and his pants were pulled down to mid-thigh. He was casually masturbating. I couldn’t see the screen of the large television in front of him, but the sounds emanating from it strongly suggested something of a prurient nature. The girl with the pink hair was sitting on the floor next to the chair and it took me a moment to realize that there was a rope around her neck. The fat man held the end of the rope and jerked in rhythm with his whack hand. Tears streamed down the girl’s face as she fought to loosen the rope with her free hand. Her other hand was handcuffed to the metal bars that held up the leg rest on the Barco lounger. A blinding black red rage possessed me. I gripped the security bar as if to rip it from the side of the house.
I ran to the back door of the house, trembling with effort to keep control, to think clearly, to not make a mistake. I unholstered my gun. There was an enclosed storage area with an unlatched screen door. To my amazement, the back door was unlocked. I opened it cautiously and found myself in a kitchen that smelled like garbage. There were two doorways off of the kitchen. Through the one directly in front of me I could see a room with a dining table, and beyond that part of the living room and the front door. I opened the door to my right and checked out a bedroom. I crossed through. A door from there led to a bathroom. I listened at the door but could hear only the television and the caged drumbeat of my heart. Not another sound. He was alone.
Then I was in the living room moving fast from one end to the other, sighting down on Johnny Tyler.
“LAPD! Drop the rope!” I shouted. I pointed my gun at his pasty bloated face for emphasis. “Now!”
He did as he was told. The girl pulled the rope off and gasped for air.
“Where are the keys for the cuffs, you son of a bitch?”
Disassembled mannequins, the plastic body parts of women, were placed around the room and hung from the ceiling like human mobiles. Several half bodies leaned against the walls and sat in chairs. There were no faces. In fact, there weren’t any heads at all. Just the plastic body parts. For some reason this affected me in a strange manner. I felt a slipping and sliding beneath me and the room closed in on me. I put my gun to Johnny’s head. Johnny cringed but took the keys from his shirt pocket.
“Are you okay?” I asked the girl.
“Get me out of here,” she wailed.
“Okay, take it easy. Everything’s going to be okay.” I moved around to be directly in front of Johnny. “Give her the keys,” I ordered. “You so much as belch, you scum, and you’re dead. Got it?”
He did. The girl frantically uncuffed herself, whimpering the whole time.
“You’ll be okay,” I reassured her. “Help is on the way. Wait over by the front door.”
She ran out of the house like a shot. I was hoping she wouldn’t go too far, but I had to scare the fat man first.
“You, down on the floor. Face down and pull your damn pants up! Now! Down! Put your hands behind your back.”
He grunted like a hog as he did what he was told. I suddenly recognized him from somewhere.
“I’m not well,” he whined. “Don’t hurt me, I’m in fragile health.”
I put a knee in his back and slapped the cuffs on. They were barely large enough for his wrists. It was then I found myself looking directly at the huge television screen in front of me. There was Dani. She was strapped to the same chair we found at the murder scene with gaffer’s tape. Her arms were covered with cigarette burns. On screen, a big hand with a hammer took a swing at Dani and caught her on the cheek. It was disturbing how exact it was to what I had imagined. Then two huge hands, exactly the same as the ones I had just handcuffed, were around her neck. She struggled and died before my eyes. It was then that I smelled something rank, like bacon when it goes bad. Too late, I sensed a presence behind me, but before I could turn, the back of my head exploded with a fire and a bright light burst behind my eyeballs. Then there was only a brief gray static like when the television signs off, then black. There were sharp voices from far away at the end of a long inky black tunnel.
“Get the car!”
“No, I don’t want to go out.”
“Mary, we have to go out! We have to!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I SURFACED FROM A deep-sea bed where grotesque skeletal fishes glowed and other various primal creatures meandered and swam around me. I heard a far-off groan. A groan that I realized was my own and the impossible pain rolling around in my head like a loose cannonball was because someone had a hold of my hair and was shaking my head like a rattle. They must have tired because they suddenly stopped and my head fell forward, my chin on my chest. I could smell cigarette smoke and as the darkness closed over me again I thought I could use one myself.
I came to again. This time my brain was working a little better. Through the pain throbbing in my head and jaw, my brain gave me a clear message not to move. Not to do so much as blink. Take inventory, it said. Someone still had a tight grip on my hair. A slimy liquid flowed from my open mouth and it tasted a lot like blood. Okay. I’d been roughed up. I was sitting on a seat, a back seat of a vehicle.
I listened to the wind around me and knew we were moving along at a pretty good clip. A freeway. An uncongested freeway. Judging by the creaks and wind rush, I was pretty sure that I was now in the back seat of the white van I had seen parked in Tyler’s driveway. There had been somebody else there. And I had missed them. Damn, curses and double damn. I should have searched more carefully. Or maybe they came in afterwards. What did it matter? I knew I was in a world of trouble and it was not going to improve unless I did something. I hoped that I was not too badly damaged. They must have hustled me out of there fast, before backup or Gus arrived. Gus would be extremely disappointed to say the least.
I opened my eyes a slit. The front of my velvet turtleneck dress and the knees of my black jeans were covered with lines of blood and my hands were cuffed together on my lap. My own cuffs. A massive body pressed against my left side. It had to be Johnny. Smoking a cigarette. We hit a bump and I let my head loll a little, hoping to take a quick inventory. Johnny sat beside me with a cigarette between his lips staring right at me with a decidedly sinister look in his pale piggy eyes. He blew smoke in my fac
e and I realized with a start that he had huge breasts. That hadn’t registered on me before. He must be a hermaphrodite. His hair was much longer and he’d put on a blue denim shirt. I let my head fall forward but not before I looked at the driver and saw that it was also Johnny. Twins!
In that moment I remembered where I’d seen these faces before. They were the two lumps I’d noticed at the bar in De Sade’s Cage. Right. Female Johnny was the one who had knocked out my lights in the bathroom. Female Johnny pressed herself against me and grabbed my hair, lifting my head. The bad bacon smell she gave off was intense and I thought I might vomit. “She’s coming to,” said Female Johnny.
“Good. It’s no fun otherwise,” said the male, adjusting the rearview mirror so he could get a look at me.
Still holding my hair, Female Johnny reached around with her other arm and clamped a massive hand covering my face and squeezed. I realized in an instant whose hands I’d seen around Dani’s neck.
“You’re a little old for the part,” she said, “but we’ll try to make you look as good as we can.”
“Yeah, movie magic,” Johnny said.
I took a dive emotionally, I mean, I had really messed up—and worse, I couldn’t breathe. Was this part of their fun? I was going to have to pass on this party. I started to struggle against her and though I could raise my hands, I couldn’t budge her. I soon discovered that my feet were bound together with silver gaffer’s tape. She suddenly released my face and I gasped for air while she blew smoke in my face. Between exaggerated coughs, I noted that on the floor, beside Female Johnny’s feet, next to a pair of bloody pliers, a claw hammer, a screwdriver, and a jar, was my badge. Next to that was my gun. That brightened my hopes considerably.
Female Johnny studied my face, her mouth twisted into a sneering grin.
“You’re a disgusting mess, you know that, smart bitch?” She smiled and blew smoke in my face.
For some reason, maybe it was because of a concussion I was pretty certain I had, I thought odd thoughts. Like what if someone took a picture of this scene?
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