The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘This is a bit out of your way, isn’t it?’ Jed said.

  Mitch scowled. ‘Bike’s fucked.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Leave it here.’

  ‘You want a ride home?’

  Mitch looked at his boots. They were smeared in grease and spilt gas. A breeze shuffled through the nearby palms. ‘You could do that?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Mitch wheeled his bike to the back of the gas station and chained it to some railings. When he came back, Jed said, ‘You still living in the same place?’

  ‘I moved.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Rialto.’

  Rialto was out by the river. North of Mangrove, west too. It would have taken anyone else half an hour, but Jed knew the shortcuts. He drove it in fifteen minutes. If Mitch was impressed, he didn’t let on.

  As they turned on to Rialto Parkway, Mitch pointed through the windshield. ‘There it is.’

  Mitch was still using the sign he’d used on Central Avenue all those years ago, the old gold sign that made Jed think of circuses. He pulled up outside, left the engine running.

  Mitch shook his hand and opened the door. ‘Come round for a beer sometime. You know where I am.’

  When Jed drove into the parking-lot behind the Mortlake office the next morning, Vasco was standing on the asphalt, hands in his pockets, black hair shiny as a polished shoe, the beginning of a wide grin on his face.

  Jed leaned out of the window. ‘What’s so funny, Vasco?’

  ‘I hear you’ve been out with Carol.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Cunning son of a bitch.’

  Jed stared at him.

  ‘The chairman’s daughter,’ Vasco said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Carol. She’s the chairman’s daughter.’

  ‘The chairman of what?’

  ‘The chairman of what. The chairman of the whole fucking corporation. That’s what.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  But Vasco wasn’t being taken in so easily. ‘Of course you didn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Vasco didn’t believe him. ‘You cunning son of a bitch.’

  So he was a cunning son of a bitch. Well, all right. That was what he was then. ‘If you know so much,’ Jed said, ‘maybe you can tell me who else I saw.’

  Vasco frowned.

  ‘Come on,’ Jed said, ‘who else did I see?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’re not that good then, are they?’

  ‘Who aren’t that good?’

  ‘Your spies. Your vultures. Are they?’

  Vasco shrugged.

  ‘Mitch,’ Jed said. ‘You remember Mitch.’

  ‘Mitch?’ Vasco looked round. ‘Listen, Jed. How about you come for dinner tonight? You could see my house, meet the wife. We could drop in at Mitch’s on the way. I haven’t seen him for ages.’

  ‘What if Creed flies back early?’

  ‘I’ll take responsibility for that.’

  It was like the old Vasco talking. Jed agreed, out of a strange sense of nostalgia.

  They left the limousine in the parking-lot and took Jed’s car. After the Mercedes his Chrysler always felt so sloppy, it was like wearing shoes that were too big for you.

  Vasco scanned the worn interior. ‘Some car.’

  ‘You don’t like it,’ Jed said, ‘you can always get out.’

  ‘I like it, I like it. I just said some car, that’s all. Jesus.’ Vasco looked across at Jed. ‘You’re too sensitive, you know that?’

  And you’re not, I suppose, Jed thought.

  He drove fast. In less than twenty minutes they were in Rialto.

  ‘This is unhealthy, this part of town,’ Vasco said. ‘This is very unhealthy.’

  True enough. Rialto was a no-go area. Half black, half Hispanic. A pattern to the blocks: church club bar; church club bar; church club flophouse bar. A shooting every night. The signs on N.E. 139th Street told you everything: HOUSE OF JOY. Y-TEL MOTEL. LOU’S GUN HUT. EL FLAMBOYAN BAR. JESUS LOVE CHURCH. THE OASIS LIQUOR LOUNGE. BIG MAC’S SHOWGIRL REVIEW – TOTALLY NUDE – PROVOCATIVE. Mitch’s sign looked quaint among the stale neon. Jed reached the 11000 block and slowed. He couldn’t stop outside the tattoo parlour, so he took the next left, an alleyway, and parked in among a cluster of dustbins. This was where the Chrysler came into its own, in areas like this. Just another piece of scrap metal. Blend.

  Vasco was thinking the same thing. ‘Good thing we didn’t come in the limo. You leave a limo round here, they’d strip it bare in five minutes.’

  Jed followed Vasco into Mitch’s place. He heard the buzzing of the needle-gun. Mitch was working. A Latin kid sat on Mitch’s green chair, his arm braced on a steel table.

  Without lifting his eyes, Mitch said, ‘Who’s dead?’

  Vasco grinned. ‘Nobody’s dead, Mitch. This is just social.’

  Mitch tipped his head to the left. ‘You want a beer, they’re over there, in the corner.’

  Vasco opened the fridge and looked inside.

  ‘How’s the bike?’ Jed asked.

  ‘It’s fixed.’ Mitch glanced up at Jed. ‘It was nothing. Just a plug.’

  Jed stopped his smile before it reached his face. Those few extra words, he knew they were the closest Mitch would ever get to thanking him.

  Jed and Vasco cracked open a beer each. They sat on a vinyl bench against the wall while Mitch worked on the Latin kid’s shoulder. Slowly a skull appeared, slowly a blue snake slithered out through one of the empty eyes and coiled, like a turban, on the crown.

  ‘Haven’t lost your touch,’ Vasco said.

  ‘Do me a favour, Vasco,’ Mitch said. ‘Just shut up.’

  Vasco glanced at Jed and shrugged. ‘Trouble with Mitch is, he works too hard.’

  The sun dropped in the sky, gilding the dusty glass of the storefront. The horns of passing cars sounded pinched and distant. Jed opened another beer. He could almost have slept.

  ‘This place,’ he said, ‘it’s just like your other one.’

  Mitch grunted. ‘Except I live here.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Jed looked round. ‘Where?’

  ‘Upstairs. Got a yard too. In the back.’

  Vasco yawned.

  More slow minutes passed.

  After Mitch had locked the store for the night, he took Jed and Vasco out the back. They stood on the cracked, tilting concrete, cans of beer in their hands, and let the day go dark. A darkness threaded with the silver of sirens, a darkness heady with alcohol, exhaust fumes, river-silt. Once Jed turned sideways and saw Mitch in profile, the stubborn nose and chippy eyes, the pigtail, like a kind of Chinaman, his fat hand round the can and resting on his belly, he was so firm on his two feet, rooted and content, he had the peacefulness of a tree, the dusty fig tree that splayed above their heads, that rubbed against the windows on the second floor. Then a woman’s voice called out, ‘You down there?’

  Mitch didn’t move or speak.

  ‘The guys’ll be here soon,’ the woman’s voice said.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Jed asked.

  ‘It’s his old lady,’ Vasco said. ‘He got married too, didn’t you, Mitch?’

  Mitch didn’t say anything.

  ‘Well,’ Vasco said, ‘I guess we’d better be going.’

  Driving through Euclid towards Highway 1 and the north-west suburbs, Vasco settled deeper in the seat, his head against the rest. ‘Sometimes I don’t understand that guy.’

  ‘What’s to not understand?’

  ‘All that dirt and grease all over, all that slow time.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t have any choice.’

  Vasco rolled his head on the rest so he was facing Jed. ‘You’re doing something, it’s because you’ve chosen it.’

  They didn’t speak again until they reached Vasco’s house in Westwood. It was a bungalow, if something that takes up half a block can ever be called a bungalow. Fake chim
neys, walls clad in big square slabs of ochre stone. The place looked like it was made of Peanut Brittle. You could’ve snapped a piece off the porch and eaten it. But it was real estate. No question about that.

  Jed peered through the windshield. ‘This all yours?’

  Vasco sat back with a crooked grin.

  ‘Christ,’ Jed said. ‘What’s your wife like?’

  She was like a woman with black hair that curved up and back from her forehead. She wore black high-heels and her tights hissed, but she walked stiffly, as if her hip joints needed oiling. She accepted a kiss from Vasco, and then she took his coat. She seemed too old to be his wife.

  ‘You’re Jed?’

  ‘Mrs Gorelli,’ he said, ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Oh no,’ and she waved her hand in the air, backwards and forwards, as if she was polishing it, ‘Vasco, he told me so much about you, when you were kids. You must call me Maria.’

  They sat down to eat almost immediately. The dining-room was crowded with dark furniture. Sofas of velvet and leather, high-backed chairs of ornate, carved wood. The walls were hung with textiles, nudes in clumsy gilt frames, hand-painted plates. A colour TV stood on the sideboard. Every now and then Vasco reached out and changed channels with the tip of his knife.

  ‘There’s a remote,’ Maria said.

  ‘I don’t like remote.’ Vasco looked at Jed. ‘You like remote?’

  ‘I haven’t got a TV,’ Jed said.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Vasco said to Maria. ‘He hasn’t got a TV.’ And changed channels again with his knife.

  They talked about old times. Past facts were much easier, it seemed, than the ambiguities of the present. The past, it was so distant, they’d been different people then, they could point at themselves in astonishment, disbelief almost, they could view it all without becoming too involved, like some TV drama. It was clear that Maria knew next to nothing about Vasco’s activities. Nor had she any desire to know. So long as the money came in, she was happy. As to where that money came from, it was neither here nor there, it was geography, and geography, that was such a boring subject.

  ‘He was so bad in those days,’ she said at one point, lovingly, ‘so bad, weren’t you?’ her hand sliding across the lace tablecloth, covering his.

  ‘The things I did,’ and Vasco shook his head. ‘Jed too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ and Jed, too, shook his head.

  After dinner Maria left them alone. Vasco moved to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a tumbler of brandy. He swallowed half of it standing up. Then he sat down in a maroon velvet armchair and began to chew his big square fingernails. He’d been drinking steadily throughout the meal, but he now seemed tenser than ever. Jed waited for Vasco to break out of his silence. He watched as Vasco’s rings threw splinters of rich light against the wall.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me,’ he said finally.

  Vasco almost jumped at the sound of Jed’s voice. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

  Jed waited.

  ‘It’s about the job I got you,’ Vasco said. ‘I’ve been thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ Jed said. ‘It’s a good job.’

  ‘I don’t know. I may’ve got you into something.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Vasco swirled his brandy around. ‘Creed,’ he said. ‘He’s doing some pretty weird stuff.’

  ‘That’s nothing new, Vasco. We’ve always done –’

  Vasco cut him off impatiendy. ‘I’m not talking about that kind of weird stuff.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Him and the Skull. They’re in it together.’

  ‘What kind of weird stuff, Vasco?’

  ‘It’s pretty sick.’ Vasco stood up. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, I just wanted to warn you, you understand?’

  ‘Oh sure,’ Jed said, ‘sure. I understand.’

  But Vasco wasn’t listening. He’d gone to the window and parted the curtains with one hand, and now he was staring out, out into the darkness of the garden.

  Jed drove home that night feeling like a man who’s been told he’s going to die but doesn’t know when.

  Hard Water

  Nathan had only been living in town for a couple of months when he met India-May, but he’d seen her around and he knew what they said. She smoked too much grass, she slept with black men, she wore a silver chain round her ankle that tinkled like the bell-collars you put on cats to stop them catching birds, but it had never stopped her catching anything, that was what they said. The town was called Tomorrow Bay, which was a strange name for a town that didn’t seem to have a future. But it was also the reason why Nathan was there; he’d seen the name on a map and liked the sound of it. So one afternoon he walked into a bar on the south side, one of those dive bars where the air smells singed and all the stools are painted black and smoke curls through their legs as if a dragon’s just breathed out, and there was India-May with her hand round a double gin and when she lifted the glass to her lips the rim hit her teeth and her bangles spilled down her freckled arm and her pale hair dripped into her eyes. She looked reckless and weary. She looked as if all the stories about her were true.

  One of the stories happened to be standing right next to her. An old black man whose name, if Nathan overheard it right, was Twilight. He called himself Twilight, he was saying, because that was about where he was in his life, and she stood up and threw her arms around him and told him he was the fine high sun of noon to her, and he just looked at Nathan over her shoulder and rolled his eyes, much as to say she doesn’t know what time of day it is at all.

  Twilight left soon afterwards, though she didn’t seem to want him to, and as she turned back to her gin she caught Nathan watching, and called across to him.

  ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’

  ‘Coke.’

  ‘You want a real drink?’

  He smiled and shook his head. He told her he drank beer now and then, if he was thirsty, but that was about it. Mostly he stayed clean.

  She seemed to be gathering him with her eyes, and then she took a spare strand of her pale hair and threw it over her shoulder, like it was salt or something, like it was lucky.

  ‘You’re unbelievable. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty. Almost twenty-one.’

  ‘Most people your age, they haven’t even started getting dirty yet,’ she said, ‘and here you are, clean as a goddamn whistle. Unbelievable.’

  ‘I’m not that clean.’ He moved up the bar, took Twilight’s stool. He told her that he’d been so drunk once that he’d almost lost his teeth. He showed her the scar on his top lip where it hit the streetlight. She bought him another Coke.

  India-May wasn’t her real name, it turned out. Nobody in that place seemed to have a real name. She’d changed it to India-May when she was seventeen. Just another way of leaving home, she said. Just another line drawn down the past. Talking of lines down the past, he said, he’d drawn his own. He told her about Moon Beach. How he’d left a year ago. How that place was dead for him. How it looked like a heap of rubble to him now.

  She watched him with those blurred eyes of hers. ‘Where are you living?’

  ‘In town. A few blocks east of here.’

  She began to tell him about a house she owned, it was an old farm, out past Modello. She said she had a spare room on the third floor. ‘If that’s any use to you.’

  He hesitated. ‘Past Modello?’ Modello was north-east of Tomorrow Bay, about twenty miles inland.

  ‘Way past. You interested?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He’d been sharing an apartment with a surfer and the surfer’s girlfriend. Everything was like, totally intense. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take of it.

  ‘That black guy you saw, he stays there sometimes. A lot of people stay there sometimes, I guess.’ Then she seemed to tire suddenly, all the light and muscle spilling out of her, and she folded round her drink.

  Soon afterwards he sa
id he had to be going. She told him to think about it. Even gave him a number to call. He thanked her and walked out into heat and sunlight and stood laughing on the street. He’d forgotten it would be like this. So hot, so bright. Sometimes one world’s so new, it wipes the old one out.

  Ten days later he called her and asked if the offer was still good.

  ‘I don’t say things I don’t mean. When d’you want to come out?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  She didn’t miss a beat. ‘OK, this is how you find the house. It’s like I told you. It’s in the hills, north-east of town. Get on the highway going north, then drop down on to the Modello road. It starts off straight, then it gets to twist a bit, but there’s no cars and it’s real dreamy on the right, like you’re the only one alive. Just real dreamy. How are you coming?’

  ‘Bike.’

  ‘OK. Look for a tight bend about seven miles out of Broken Springs. You’ll know it when you see it because there’s a white cross there with BABY BOY SOPER painted on it. Some kid blew a tyre on the hill a few years back, the car flipped over, caught on fire, there was only his teeth left and a ring he’d just bought for his girl. So the story goes. Anyway. So right after the cross there’s a couple of trees. One of them’s deformed because of Baby Boy’s car tore a lump out of it on the way down. The track’s right there, no sign, just a track looking like it’s going nowhere. And it sort of is.’ She laughed from deep down in her throat. He thought she was probably stoned. ‘Five miles along that track you’ll see a grey roof. It’s the only house around. Kind of tumbledown. But there’ll be smoke in the chimney and beds with springs and dogs to keep the bogeyman away. But look, babe, you sure it’s what you want? It’s lonely as a grave out here and only the wind moaning and moaning all the time and you look like a city boy to me.’

  City boy.

  He rode up the next day, salt leaving the air as he climbed into the hills. Once he left the paved road he saw nobody. The track bucked and coiled through a landscape of smooth white boulders, grey pines, and cactus that twisted in the dust like a nest of snakes. After five miles – curiously enough she was accurate where he least expected her to be – he saw the house, crouching at the end of a ridge, just at the point where the track dipped down and hid. All loose tiles and cracked windows and walls patched up with sheets of tin, it used the colours of the land it stood in, grey and brown and yellow, so it had the look of a creature that should’ve been extinct, a creature that had only survived because it had a good disguise. It used to be a farm, he remembered her saying, and it still breathed like one. When he pulled into the yard, chickens ran off in straight lines through the dirt and dogs began to bounce around his tyres like ping-pong balls and people came round corners and leaned on things.