Hell You Say

by Josh Lanyon

  I put that aside to consider later. “So what happens now?”

  He couldn’t meet my eyes. I said, disbelieving, “You’re walking away from this?”

  “What am I supposed to do? Getting myself killed won’t change anything. Gabe is dead.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  He looked up then. Though he shook with anger, I understood that the anger was not truly directed at me. “They couldn’t let him go. He knew too much.”

  “You don’t even know what it is he knew — knows.”

  “Whatever it was, it was too much.”

  “So you’re going to pack up and fly out of here and…you think no one is going to notice when bestselling author Gabriel Savant never shows again?”

  “They won’t find him, and anyway, I have the postcard. The police are the ones who decided he left by his own volition. I did what I could.”

  “Bob…” I gave it up as I read the stubborn fear on his face.

  He said, “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself.”

  * * * * *

  Monday was Velvet’s day off, and I was too busy dealing with the legions of shoppers to worry about the legions of evil. The holidays were great for art books like Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction 1949-1969, and audio books. We were having an unbelievably good Monday. By eleven o’clock I had sold Langman’s A Guide to American Crime Films of the Forties and Fifties, priced at over a hundred dollars, which had been sitting on the shelf for over a year, and three copies of Gunn’s The Gay Sleuth in Print and Film. One customer even tried to talk me out of the replica Maltese Falcon statue perched behind the counter.

  Then, like that, the rush was over, and the place was a boneyard. I washed down half a chicken salad sandwich with a can of cold Tab and was lugging coffee-table books the size of paving stones back to their shelves, when Jake walked into the shop.

  I smiled, then stopped smiling at his expression.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  I nodded. “We’re alone,” I said, turning toward the office, but he walked toward the front of the shop, so I followed. We stood in the alcove that faced the street. His face looked like granite as he stared out the window trimmed with the fake pine boughs he had helped me hang so short a time ago.

  Had he found out about my trip to Pacific Palisades? I’d realized that he might be pissed. But no… This was different. My stomach churned, waiting for whatever was coming.

  He met my eyes levelly. “I’m telling you first. Kate and I are getting married.”

  I had known it was coming, but that didn’t make it any less painful. My throat closed, so I nodded.

  He folded his lips tightly. “I want this marriage to work. I want it to be a real marriage.”

  “I figured.”

  Then he seemed to run out of words. We stood there. I was afraid my face would give me away, so I stared out the window at the cars flashing by down the street. Red, white, white, green….

  “I’m not going to try to explain or make excuses,” Jake said, and his voice sounded too loud, like if he didn’t speak strongly, it would shake. “This is my chance for a normal life. I’m taking it.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not going to apologize. You knew the score going in.”

  I lifted a shoulder.

  There were things I might have said. Maybe even things I should have said. But I knew they wouldn’t change the outcome, and I wasn’t sure I could say them and keep control of my voice and face. Right now, keeping control in front of him seemed like the paramount thing.

  “It’s not because of your health.”

  “I know that.” Hostility turned my gaze back to his. He looked away from me.

  “I know that asshole you were with in college —”

  “Can we leave that asshole out of it?”

  Please, gentlemen, one asshole at a time.

  He seemed reluctant to drop this tangent. “It’s got nothing to do with the way I feel about you,” he added, as though I were making an argument.

  But, after all, that was a stupid comment. I surprised myself by giving a sort of ironic laugh and saying, “Whatever.”

  “Whatever?”

  His eyes were so dark they looked black. I realized that he wanted to get angry, that anger would make it easier, and I didn’t want to make it easier. He didn’t deserve to have it made easy.

  So I met his gaze. Asked quietly, “What do you want me to say, Jake?”

  His face worked. His jaw clenched so hard, my own hurt watching. He shook his head fiercely.

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  * * * * *

  “Is everything all right?” Guy asked suddenly. The Miata whined as he downshifted to veer around a slow-moving dump truck materializing out of the darkness ahead of us.

  It was Monday night, and we were on our way to Hell’s Kitchen. Guy had picked me up about fifteen minutes earlier.

  “Sure.”

  He was silent.

  The CD playing almost inaudibly in the background clicked over. I recognized the delicate opening chords to “Rain.” Instinctively I reached across to turn off the CD player.

  Guy glanced my way. “Patty Griffin. She’s sort of an acquired taste.”

  I made a noncommittal noise.

  He made another try at conversation. “I saw on the news that Angus and Wanda were denied bail.”

  I nodded. “Flight risk.”

  I’d had another visit from the defense team investigators late that afternoon. I’d told Best I had nothing more to say and shown him the door.

  I didn’t know if I was making life harder on myself or not. I just didn’t give a damn at the moment.

  We finished the rest of our trip across town in silence.

  There was no parking near Hell’s Kitchen. We parked down the street, Guy set his car alarm, and we hiked back to the club. From a block away we heard the music — the bass thudding against the heavy night clouds.

  Outside the building there was a short queue of Hammer Films extras waiting to get in. Guy and I were conspicuously underdressed, me in black jeans and a black turtleneck (which fitted my mood nicely) and Guy in black jeans and a black muslin Renaissance-style shirt with leather ties. The flock of femme fatales in black plastic and leather minidresses — hair lacquered about three feet high or arranged in Medusa-like dreadlocks — kept a prudent distance. There seemed to be a lot more girls than boys present.

  We paid the cover charge, wriggled our way through the crush of young bodies blocking the doorway. Once inside we were engulfed in smoke and purple mist. Strobe lights flashed, illuminating glimpses of the monster mash on the gameboard-sized square that served as a dance floor. Canned music boomed overhead. I felt the bass vibrating in my chest cavity. You make me want to La La…

  It really was the Devil’s playground.

  We stood there for a time, adjusting to the heat and noise and mass of people. The place had to be in violation of the fire code. That was probably the least of their violations.

  How were we going to find anyone in this hellhole? I could barely see six feet ahead of myself. Guy’s hand closed on my shoulder. I turned back and saw him indicate an abandoned table covered with empty glasses and spilled liquid.

  I nodded. We fought our way upstream, grabbed the chairs, and sat down. I stood up again. I’d sat in a puddle of beer. Jesus. I hoped it was beer. I grabbed some crumpled napkins and mopped the seat to the great amusement of the spiky-haired and very drunk couple next to us.

  A waitress, dressed in red sequins — not many of them — flitted by, but didn’t stop to take our order for drinks.

  I couldn’t see Betty Sansone, but it was difficult to make out anything through the combination of haze and bodies in motion. I became aware that Guy was trying to get my attention.

  I lip read his words. “Want a drink?”

  I nodded. I’d need a lot of drinks if we were staying long.

  He vanished into the mob
.

  I peered at the drunk couple at the table next to us. I realized they weren’t talking, they were singing the background soundtrack to each other, their faces about one inch apart. He had green spiky hair and rings in his ears and eyebrows. She had magenta spiky hair and rings in her eyebrows and her nose — and a gleaming stud in her tongue. I wondered if they had any trouble disengaging after a kiss. I watched her mouth the lyrics to her be-ringed swain across the unsteady table.

  “Save me from the nothing I’ve become…”

  Maybe that was what it was all about, I thought. Sure, rebellion was part of it, but maybe the fascination with the dark side, the flirtation with death and danger, was an attempt to pierce the isolation and alienation inherent in adolescence and young adulthood. Or maybe they were just the bored and pampered spawn of Satan and needed a good spanking.

  Guy was gone a long time. I watched the mob of dancers writhe and wriggle in tribal ecstasy, awarding them points for persistence. As I watched, a girl slipped and fell on her ass. No one seemed to notice, including her. She continued to gyrate from a sitting position.

  At last Guy returned with two glasses of blood red liquid. It could have been poison or Kool-Aid. I didn’t much care.

  “Love Potion No. 9,” he shouted.

  I nodded, made my stiff lips smile. I knocked mine back. Cheap red wine.

  Guy’s brows drew together. He said again, “Is everything okay?”

  I pretended I couldn’t hear him and turned away in time to see Betty Sansone stalk through the front entrance with a coterie. I recognized one of her companions, the kid from the Biltmore who looked a bit like Harry Potter. The rest of Team Wicked was unknown to me.

  I reached for Guy’s arm, nodded toward Betty.

  He nodded back. Then he did a kind of double-take. I couldn’t tell what had startled him; the next time I looked his way, his face was expressionless.

  We watched Betty and the gang appropriate a long table across the room. Two of the minions rose and shoved their way onto the dance floor to join the other thrashing bodies. Harry Potter headed for the bar — and who would blame him?

  Guy’s hand closed fleetingly on my arm, and we abandoned our table, making our way through the carnival of souls toward our target. Guy was ahead of me. I saw him raise his hand in a cursory greeting. Betty smiled, looked past him, saw me. Her pug features twisted into disbelieving anger.

  She made an aside to her compadres and pushed away from the table. There was a shuffling of chairs and bodies, and a couple of scraggy youths rose to block us as Betty made her way to the dance floor. I broke off from Guy and moved to intercept her.

  The music blasting above our heads changed again, a driving beat that seemed to ricochet off the black walls. I caught flashes of Betty in the lightning strikes of the pulsing strobe.

  She plowed her way through the dancers, but I was catching her up fast. Belatedly, I wondered if she was armed — this was LA, after all.

  Narrowly managing to avoid falling over three more downed dancers squirming and rolling on the slick floor like earthworms on crack, Betty scooted past the DJ, darted around the corner, and disappeared down a cramped hallway.

  I plunged after her. A single bare bulb cast stark shadows over the graffiti-covered walls. She paused at a doorway, turned back to me. I thought she was flipping me off, but instead she made this funny flicking gesture with her hand. Had she given me the Evil Eye, or was there something my hairdresser should have told me?

  She wheeled and disappeared into the room optimistically labeled Ladies.

  “Damn!”

  “Where’d she go?” Guy yelled into my ear. I hadn’t realized he was right behind me.

  I pointed to the restroom. He shook his head, apparently indicating game, set, and match.

  “It’s an old building, there’s probably a window.”

  He shook his head again, apparently not understanding.

  I indicated that he should stay and watch the door. I continued down the hall and out through the back exit.

  The dented door swung shut. I found myself in a long and badly lit back street. A low wall separated this alley from an adjoining parking lot. The businesses on the other side of the wall were all dark, though the parking lot was packed. I guessed that patrons of Hell’s Kitchen were parking over there and then dropping over the alley wall.

  I skirted along the outside of the throbbing building, looking for a window. After a couple of minutes, I found one. It was unlit, the glass frosted, so that I couldn’t see inside. Was this an office or was it the restroom? Was it the right restroom?

  There was another window several feet down. It was also dark, but it stood open about a foot. The screen appeared to have been kicked out.

  Of course, she might have been hiding inside with the lights off, pretending she had split.

  If she had crawled out, where did she go? I looked up and down the alley. She had a couple of seconds’ head start. How had she totally disappeared?

  She had to have gone over the wall.

  At the other end of the alley a car’s engine roared into life. Headlights flashed on. The glare was blinding.

  Oh, shit.

  I started toward the Hell’s Kitchen back door.

  With a screech of rubber on pavement, the car hurtled toward me. Zero to sixty in less than a minute; I couldn’t believe how fast it traveled. I was never going to make it….

  I zigged across the alley, jumped for the wall and swung myself up as the car charged past. I felt the car’s exhaust like hot breath on my back. I struggled to pull myself over the top, lost my balance, and fell. I crash-landed on the hood of an already battered Toyota truck, bounced off, and hit the asphalt — hard.

  In the distance, I heard the scrape of a car chassis slamming down on pavement, and then the squeal of tires vanishing into the night.

  For a moment I lay there, gulping in the smoggy night air, waiting for my achy breaky heart to blow up.

  I must be out of my mind, I thought. Angus isn’t worth this. No one is worth this. What am I doing?

  I stared at the rafters of black rain clouds. Felt a bit of wet on my cheekbone.

  Let’s recap, I thought. How did I get from dropping a word in the right ear to chasing teenage thugs down alleys? Maybe Jake had a point after all. Was Angus any better off for my interference? Was I?

  From the other side of the wall I heard the surge of music. A door slammed. Guy called quietly, “Adrien?”

  I opened my mouth, then didn’t speak.

  Not to be unduly paranoid, but what the hell took him so long? What was the deal with that stricken look he had given Betty and her blithe spirits? This field trip had been his idea. Had he led me into a trap?

  But how could anyone predict that I would run out the back exit?

  My mind was spinning — only partially due to hitting my head on the pavement.

  Guy called again, louder this time. I listened to the crunch of his feet on gravel as he walked along the alley.

  Was he looking for my body?

  Or was he — naturally enough — wondering where I’d disappeared to?

  I sat up carefully, drew a couple of experimental breaths. My heart, though still in overdrive, showed no sign of slipping out of rhythm. I pulled myself up. No bones seemed to be broken, although I was going to have a set of colorful bruises by tomorrow.

  The car alarm in the Volkswagen parked next to the Toyota went off, splintering the stillness.

  Definitely not my night.

  At the mouth of the alley I spotted Guy. He ran toward the sound of the alarm.

  A lot more slowly than the first time, I climbed back over the stone wall.

  “Adrien!” exclaimed Guy. “What the hell happened?”

  I dropped down, and he reached out to steady me. I pulled away from him, and we stepped back from the shrieking alarm system.

  “What happened? Where did you go? Why are you limping?”

  I finally had my bre
ath back. “Where’s Betty?”

  “She must have gone out the back. A couple of girls went in, and the bathroom was dark. You didn’t see her?”

  “No.”

  “What happened? Why are you limping like that?” He wrapped a hand around my elbow.

  I pulled away. “Somebody in a blue sedan was waiting for me in the alley.”

  Guy stopped walking. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “That’s impossible. No one could know you were going to walk into that alley.”

  “Did you tell anyone we were coming here tonight?”

  “Of course not!” I couldn’t see his features in the dark alley, but I knew that tone.

  “You’re lying.”

  He gasped. “Are you nuts? I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “But?”

  His lips parted, but no sound came out.

  “Come on, Guy, there’s more.”

  Slowly, he said, “I spoke to a friend. I asked if he knew of a club where kids involved in the occult scene might hang out.”

  “Who was this friend?”

  “What does it matter? You don’t know him. He’s not involved in this. Look, I didn’t tell him we were coming here, let alone that we were coming tonight. He gave me the name of a couple of clubs.”

  But the news that Betty Sansone could be found at this particular club on Monday nights had been communicated during that conversation, so how hard would it have been to guess that this would be the night Guy and I would show up?

  Guy said, “Did you get the registration plate of the car that tried to run you down?”

  “Did I —?” I sputtered, “Well, no, in my rush to stay alive, I failed to note the license number. It sort of looked like a Mercury Cougar, but I wouldn’t want to testify to that. Does your friend happen to drive a blue sedan?”

  “Not that I know of.” He glanced back at the club; the walls seemed to be vibrating with the din from inside. “What do you want to do now?”

  I wanted to talk to Jake. Since that was impossible for a couple of reasons, I wanted to go home.

  “I don’t think there’s any point hanging around here now.”

  “We could try to talk to the others.”