“This is your problem, Faust: you don’t appreciate the history of our art. A little study would do you good.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Bad Clarence was a nine-minute cartoon, drawn and filmed by one man, a failed stage magician and occult prodigy named Irving Abromovitz. It took him nearly thirty years to create. It was also an absolute bomb. It screened in a few art-house cinemas to thundering boos. I’ve never seen the whole thing, but it’s allegedly incomprehensible and very, very disturbing. Four students from a film club in Berkeley got their hands on a copy back in ’69 and watched it while dropping acid. The next morning, they were all found dead. Suicide.”
“This Irving fella,” Jennifer said. “He still alive? We might need to have a word with him.”
“Also suicide,” David said, “the week after the first screening. He tried to skin himself with a kitchen knife. He got pretty far before the shock and blood loss killed him. The man did not have a happy life. But if somebody’s using a print of the cartoon to create tulpas, they’ve got the right idea. That’s exactly why Irving made it. The whole thing is seeded with occult imagery and symbols to boost a magician’s focus. Mandalas, one-frame flickers of summoning seals…it was Irving’s life’s work. His magnum opus.”
“I assume we can’t just pull this thing up on YouTube,” I said.
“You are correct. Only four copies were ever made. After the student suicides, the Berkeley reel was destroyed, and another was chopped up to sell individual cels as art prints. One intact copy went up for auction about five years ago. I put in a bid, and it was down to me and one other customer, but I tapped out when the price hit a hundred grand.”
Jennifer eyed him over her whiskey glass. “You can afford that.”
“Sure,” he said, “but to be honest, the idea of watching the thing scares me a little. Some doors don’t need to be opened.”
“The winning bidder might be our guy,” I said. “Do you remember anything about him?”
“I’ve got a name and address,” David told me. He sipped his martini. “And as soon as I get my hat back, I’m sure I’ll remember where I wrote it down.”
* * *
The next morning, I met David on the edge of town. I gave him the top hat. He gave me a slip of paper.
It wasn’t a name. Well, not a person’s name: the buyer was a representative from Astounding Comics and Collectibles, just off the Maryland Parkway. I hadn’t set foot in a comic store since I was a kid. I was half expecting a dimly lit dump, packed with boxes of dog-eared comics and resplendent body odor.
What I got instead was a brightly lit emporium with wide, clean aisles and glass display cases, a shrine to geek culture. Blown-up comic pages lined the walls, signed by the artists and writers, and a small spotlight shone on a display of elaborately built Japanese robot models.
All the same, something didn’t quite ring true. It was an upscale store, but those robot models were the most expensive things on display at a few hundred bucks apiece. I didn’t see this place dropping six figures on a rare film print. I wandered the aisles, obviously a tourist out of my element, until a skinny guy wearing a store-logo polo shirt gravitated my way. He gave me a welcoming smile, his cheeks bristling with a scruffy proto-beard.
“Hey, thanks for coming in,” he said. “Can I help you find anything?”
“Possibly,” I told him. “Don’t suppose the owner is around?”
He pointed at himself. “That’s me. I’m Steve. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for a film—” I started to say.
“Oh, we’ve got you covered. Lemme show you our selection. We’ve got fantasy, sci-fi, horror, domestic and imports. Anime? No, you don’t look like an anime guy. We can also special-order anything we don’t stock. If we don’t have it, trust me, we can find it—”
“Bad Clarence,” I said.
His smile vanished.
He wavered on his feet and his gaze flicked to the door. Every sign of a man about to turn rabbit.
“I wouldn’t,” I told him. “The last guy I had to chase got hit by a car. And then his life really started to suck.”
“Are…are you with the IRS?”
“No,” I said, “but I bet there’s an interesting story behind you thinking I might be. Tell me all about it.”
34.
Steve put one of his worker bees in charge and we stepped into his office. A pair of cartoon gun bunnies in bathing suits flashed peace signs from a glossy poster over his computer. I grabbed a folding chair, sitting almost knee-to-knee with him in the cramped room.
“Are you a cop?” he asked. “God, I knew something like this would happen eventually.”
“Steve, Steve, relax. I’m not a cop. What I am is an interested party seeking information. If you tell me everything I want to know, and if you tell me the truth, I’ll be a happy man. I’m very generous when I’m happy.”
“What…happens when you’re not happy?”
I leaned in, fixing him with a graveyard stare.
“Better that you don’t find out,” I said. “You won a copy of Bad Clarence at an auction five years ago. Tell me all about it.”
“Man, I had never even heard of the thing before that, and I know my animation, all right? Super obscure.”
“You were curious enough to drop six figures on it?”
Steve shook his head. “It was a commissioned job. See, I meant what I said: if we don’t have something in stock, we can find it for you. I’ve got a reputation in the collectibles industry for being a bloodhound. So this guy contacts me, says he’s heard I’m good, and wants me to find a copy of Bad Clarence. I got the impression I wasn’t the only person he’d hired, too. Threw down a cash retainer, five grand, no questions asked.”
“This guy,” I said, “what’d he look like?”
“All communication was from a throwaway email address. The cash? Sealed in an envelope and tossed through our mail slot overnight.”
“You didn’t think that was a little weird?” I asked.
“It was a lot weird,” he said. “It was also a lot of cash. And at that point I was too curious not to go looking for the film. I spotted it coming up for auction and, well…”
His voice trailed off. He wore his guilt like a hair shirt.
“This is the part,” I said, “that made you worried about the IRS.”
“He said money was no object. I mean, he literally said that. We agreed that I’d get a five percent commission on whatever the final price came out to, on top of my retainer. So I won the auction for a hundred grand and paid it out of pocket. Normally, a buyer would cut me a check at that point—in this case, for a hundred and five thousand.”
“But,” I said.
“No checks. He’d only pay cash. Didn’t want a paper trail. So I get another envelope through the mail slot. A hundred and five g’s in hundred-dollar bills. Unmarked, untraceable. And I realized, well, nobody could prove the copy ever changed hands. As far as anybody knew, I’d bought the reel as an investment piece and I still had it.”
I edged a little closer. The folding chair squeaked on the linoleum floor. My knees bumped against his.
“What’d you do, Steve?”
He cringed. “The store had a, um…small and unfortunate fire.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “So you collected an insurance payout on the film reel that ‘burned up.’ You’re a clever little criminal, aren’t you?”
“I’m…I’m not a criminal,” he said. “It was just the one time—”
“I’m not here to judge. So how’d you deliver the goods?”
“He sent me an address. A coffee shop in Boulder City. This woman shows up, dressed sort of like a nurse on her lunch break. Like, wearing those—” He gestured at his chest, wriggling his hands up and down.
“Scrubs?”
“Yeah. She sat next to me, I asked if she was the buyer, and she just gave me this look. Like I’d stepped in dog crap on my way into the shop an
d was too dumb to notice. She held out her hand, I gave her the reel, and she left. Never spoke a word.”
“So that was the end of it?”
He smiled, pleased with himself. “Not entirely. I followed her. I was just…too damn curious, you know? So I tailed her car to a warehouse about three miles outside town. Place was packed with moving trucks. Moving in. I saw guys bringing in film equipment, photo-processing stuff, projectors…and a hospital bed.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I got out of there.” His smile faltered. “The guys doing the moving? They had guns. And it occurred to me, you know—if there’s no trail of the deal, there wouldn’t be any trail if I suddenly went missing, either.”
“Smart move.” I pulled out my wallet. I took a pair of twenties, folded them around my fingertips, and held them up. “Now, to win the grand prize, you only have to answer one more question correctly. Where exactly can I find that warehouse?”
* * *
Boulder City was half an hour southeast of Vegas, a stone’s throw from the Hoover Dam. A lot of small-town charm with a big retiree population, not a lot of trouble to be found.
We decided to bring our own trouble with us.
Two unmarked panel vans set out on Interstate 515. I was behind one wheel, Jennifer behind the other. Each ride had a full load; eight hard-eyed hitters from the Cinco Calles who had volunteered to earn a little combat pay. One sat beside me in the passenger seat, playing with one of the industrial-strength Maglites we’d passed out to the entire crew.
“What are we supposed to do with these things? Whack ’em over the head?”
“You see any weird shit, train your beams on it until it pops.” I glanced at the GPS. Almost there. “Save your bullets for anything flesh and blood.”
“Whatever you say, ese. You’re the guy, after all.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I’d asked people to stop calling me that. I had not been successful.
Outside town, the target loomed in a cloud of rolling dust. It was a plain beige brick of a warehouse, no windows, no sign out front, and the loading bay doors sealed up tight.
“Thirty seconds,” I said, glancing in the rearview. “We’re gonna hit that side service entrance. You got the key to the city?”
One of the Calles held the police-issue battering ram, three feet of black steel with a pair of handle grips, between his knees. He gave it a solid whack with his open palm.
The vans screamed up to the warehouse, pulling in tight, side doors rattling open before we’d even come to a stop. The two hitters with the battering ram led the charge. They swung the steel back, then slammed it against the service-entrance door. The door buckled open under the second hit, lock snapping, and they jumped out of the way while the rest of us streamed inside.
Pitch darkness warred with flickering light, my vision blurring as I struggled to come to grips with what I saw. The warehouse was a maze of film screens of all different sizes, standing on tripods, forming cloth walls, while projectors played copy after copy of Bad Clarence on an infinite loop. Insane giggling boomed over ceiling-mounted speakers, rock-concert loud, accompanying disjointed piano music. On my left, the hippo-man was sawing his own skull open, giving the camera a dopey grin, while behind him, a shining sun with an agonized face wept fountains of tears. Ahead of me, at a skewed angle, the clown’s head bounced on its jack-in-the-box spring. On my right, the rat with the knives was coming in fast and—
That wasn’t a screen. I turned and brought up my Maglite.
“To the right!” I shouted. “Get lights on it!”
A half dozen beams fixed on the rat’s face. It shuddered, wavered, and burst, splashing goo across a rippling movie screen.
We spread out, two columns winding through the maze. I heard a scream behind me, and a screen ripped in half as the hippo charged through, mallet swinging. The hitter in his sights went with his instincts and pulled his gun instead of his flashlight. The bullets billowed through the hippo’s gut as the mallet whistled down.
The kid’s head exploded in a spray of blood and splintered bone. His corpse fell at the animated monster’s feet. The hippo was next to go, blasting apart under our flashlight beams. More gunshots, off to my left. More screams, and the sound of a projector clattering to the concrete floor. There were too many angles, too many corners, not enough light. Ahead of me, an image of the hippo opened his mouth wide. His front teeth sprouted anguished faces, crying and trying to force themselves out of his gums with tiny arms.
I had to get to the center. I shouldered a screen aside, forcing my way through the maze, and stopped dead in my tracks.
A hospital bed stood at the heart of the labyrinth, flanked by softly beeping life-support equipment. The withered figure in the bed, hooked to IV drips and tubes and a catheter, made my stomach clench with revulsion.
He had been a man, once.
His legs had been amputated at the knees, leaving cauliflower stumps. One of his arms had no bones in it. The skin hung limp at his side, his hand and fingers like an empty, fleshy glove. On the other hand, the flesh of his fingers had melted together. His face was wrapped in gauze, all but his lipless mouth and one staring, lidless eye, but from the mass of third-degree burn tissue along his neck and chest I could only imagine what he looked like underneath. The gauze was wound flat. No nose to get in the way, just the lump of an oxygen tube.
“Daniel Faust,” he rasped from under his bandage mask, his accent faintly refined, English. I stepped closer to the bed to hear him over the booming piano and mad laughter from the speakers overhead.
“You’ve been trying to kill me,” I said. “So you know why I’m here.”
“Wasn’t trying that hard.” His attempt at a chuckle became a hacking cough. “Part of me hoped we’d meet. My name is Dustin Hall. I used to be quite the professional life-taker. Then…this happened, and I had to find another means of returning to my old practice. The world’s first quadriplegic assassin.”
“The tulpas,” I said.
He nodded, just a little, wincing at the movement. “It’s important, the doctors told me, to stay mentally active. I took them at their word. Five years, it took me, and almost all of my money. Five years of lying in this bed, drinking in every detail of that damned creation twenty-four hours a day without cease, living it until it became part of my soul. My will. You were my very first post-retirement bounty.”
I looked him up and down, still not sure how he managed to go on breathing with his body mangled and broken.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
That coughing chuckle again.
“Caitlin,” he said. “Caitlin happened to me.”
35.
More gunshots echoed off to my left. Caught the sight of Maglite beams straying dizzily across the warehouse roof. “Go back to back,” Jennifer was shouting. “Don’t let ’em box you in!”
“They keep coming!” one of the Calles screamed. “That fucking rat, I killed it three times alre—”
His shout ended in a high-pitched shriek of pain. I looked to Hall.
“Call them off. Now.”
Hall’s head lolled on his pillow. “Can’t. Literally can’t. They’re a part of me, Mr. Faust. They’re my friends, and you’ve invaded my home. They want to protect me.”
I needed to end it. Needed to end him. The tulpas were fueled by Hall’s brain. All the same, I wavered on my feet.
“What do you mean, Caitlin happened?” I demanded. “How do you know her?”
“The same way you do. We were lovers. Did you think you were her first human plaything? You’re just the latest member of a very sad and exclusive club. And soon she’ll use you up, break you, and toss you away just like the rest of us. She’s…hard on her toys.”
“No.” I paced beside the bed and pointed at him. “You’re lying.”
“Oh, it was grand at first. I’d never been so deeply in love, so fast. It wa
sn’t until later that I realized she was controlling my thoughts. Playing with my emotions, with every touch of her fingertips. I resolved to break it off. Drove to her penthouse with every intention of dumping her. Two hours later I was down on one knee, proposing marriage.”
Hall’s laugh was a bitter, choking rasp.
“She said no. She wasn’t ready. Can you imagine that, Mr. Faust? The sick, sadistic bitch actually made me propose to her, just so she could turn me down. Then, just to make sure I wouldn’t stray again, she kissed me. The real kiss, the heroin kiss, the one that turns your insides out and makes you willing to knife your own mother just for one more hit.”
“Danny!” Jennifer shouted. “Where are you? We’re cornered back here and we need help now!”
“Oh, the things I could tell you about your dear, beloved Caitlin,” Hall hissed. “The filthy secrets I could share—”
“Danny, please!” Jennifer screamed.
I yanked the pillow from under Hall’s head and shoved it into his face. I leaned in with all my weight, smothering him, as his body bucked and shook. It wasn’t hard. He couldn’t fight back, not with his tortured flesh, not anymore. He gave one last twitch and fell still.
The gunshots and the screams went silent.
* * *
It was quiet on the ride back to Vegas.
We’d raided Hall’s hideout with sixteen men. We were coming back with twelve. Three of them were in the other van, critical, being rushed to Doc Savoy’s for a patch-up job. After the things we’d seen in that warehouse, nobody was in the mood to talk.
That suited me just fine.
I dropped everyone off, ditched the van, and headed home. There was something I had to do, and I didn’t want to do it.
Circe was watching television. She looked over as I came through the front door. “Victory?” she asked.
“Pyrrhic victory,” I said.
I walked into the bedroom and opened my top dresser drawer. Found what I was looking for, right where I’d tossed it.
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