Kitabı oku: «Hollywood Dead»

THERE’S DEAD AND there’s Hollywood dead, and those are two very different things.

Dead is just dead. In the ground. Pennies on your eyes. A cold slab of meat with no slaw and definitely no dessert.

But Hollywood dead? That can be a lot of things. Yeah, you’re still a slab of meat, but now you come with curly fries and hot apple pie.

Hollywood dead is movie dead. When the director yells “cut” you get up and have a donut, and someone makes sure your hair is perfect. When you’re Hollywood dead you can die a hundred times and still come back for the sequel.

Hollywood dead is the dead everybody thinks they want because nothing is final, everything is negotiable, and you’ll even get a producer credit if you keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told. That last is the hard part. When you’re Hollywood dead it’s hard to sit still and take orders. Hollywood dead is party dead and you never want to hear last call. Hollywood dead is the best kind of dead and the worst.

Hollywood dead means you can go to the movies and have a smoke, but if you’re out in the sun too long you start to rot and stink. Hollywood dead makes you very careful about cuts and scratches because you don’t exactly heal anymore.

Hollywood dead gets you thinking about making everyone else regular dead. The good news is that if you’re lucky and you play your cards right, you might just get the chance to do it.

DON’T LET ANYONE tell you that shooting a gun in a bowling alley isn’t loud. It’s very loud. Incredibly damn loud. The noise bounces off the smooth paneled walls and rattles every nerve in your skull. Of course, everything down here under the mansion is soundproof, so my target practice doesn’t bother anyone else. But I should have brought some earplugs. The tissues I jammed in my ears are pretty undignified and I don’t have a lot of dignity left to spare. I mean, I was dead and now I’m alive, but I’m still sort of dead. Not pork-chop-dropped-in-a-parking-lot dead, but dead enough that Tinder is out of the question. That’s why I’m shooting the shit out of Eva Sandoval’s bowling alley.

There’s something very satisfying about seeing bowling pins explode when they’re hit with a .45 slug. But I’m annoyed with myself. I left an open frame on the right lane, only killing nine out of the ten. And yet that’s still better than the seven-six-ten split I left on the other lane. I need to practice. My body hasn’t moved in a year and I have to get it back in shape. Whatever Wormwood has planned for me, I’m definitely going to get punched and I’d like to be able to hit back harder than a marshmallow Peep.

Sandoval and her entourage come in while I’m reloading. She frowns and her lackeys cluster in back of her like confused ducklings. I’m not exactly sure why. I mean, I’m working for them. Maybe seeing a corpse loading a Colt .45 wasn’t in their day planner.

I say, “Take it up with HR.”

“Take up what?” says Sandoval.

“Whatever is bothering your Mouseketeers. They look like they just saw Lemmy’s ghost.”

When I’m done reloading, I hit a button and an arm slides out of the back of the bowling lane on the left, sweeps away the debris, and loads another ten pins in place. I raise the Colt and cock it, sighting on the one pin. But Sandoval walks over, puts her hand on the pistol, and lowers it.

“Exactly what are you doing?” she says.

“Target practice. I need to get my eye back.”

She looks around the alley.

“My grandfather built this. My father updated it, and I use it with guests.”

“Sounds great.” I raise the Colt and fire. The one pin explodes. Everybody except Sandoval cringes.

I say, “I’m a guest.”

“You’re an employee.”

“Independent contractor, if you want to get technical.”

I raise the Colt and she pushes it down again.

“If you needed weapons practice you should have told me. I would have arranged something less deranged.”

“I thought deranged was why you wanted me. Otherwise you could have hired any number of local knuckle draggers.” I smile at the people behind her.

“What I want is for you to have a basic modicum of self-control and sense of responsibility. If you can’t do that, we should part ways and void your contract right now.”

Ouch. She got me where it hurts.

“Anything else?”

“Yes,” she says, leaning in close to my ear. “I don’t like being fucked with.”

I give her a smile and slip the Colt into my waistband at my back.

“See, now we’re speaking the same language. Okay. You can have your alley back. If you give me your granddad’s name, I’ll write him an apology note. I’ve got connections in Hell, you know. They’ll get it right to him.”

She probes a shattered bit of bowling pin with the toe of her designer pump, clearly biting down what I’m sure is a clever retort.

“If you’re through playing the idiot, let’s go upstairs and talk business.”

“Sure. But remember. I might be an idiot, but you’re the idiot who hired me. You have to expect a certain amount of breakage.”

Sandoval looks me up and down and says, “And put a glove on that grotesque hand. It makes me sick.”

I flex my prosthetic left hand. I can’t argue with her on the ugly part. The hand was a present from a monster. Really, my whole left arm looks like something that belongs on a mechanical insect. It’s still good at giving the finger, but I restrain myself now.

While I slip on my glove, she leaves with her entouragein tow. I give them a few seconds before leaving the bowling alley. I might be an idiot, but I know they need time to cool down. Just like I know I have to keep pushing them. If they get pissed or flustered enough, they might drop some useful piece of information. But I can’t go too far too fast. Sandoval could have their necromancer pull the plug on me and I’d be right back in Hell with no body and a pack of new enemies. I’ve got to play this right. Dance around the edges of being a complete asshole.

The problem is, I’m not the best dancer.

On my way out, I flick off the bowling alley lights. Too bad they found me. I kind of like it down here. Especially the soundproofing. It would be a good place to play the monster and slap the shit out of one of them until they told me what’s really going on.

I MEET UP with them in Sandoval’s office, where I woke up yesterday. It’s a nice room. Nice furniture covered in pretty silks and leather. A nice pool table. A nice TV the size of Kansas. It’s all so fucking nice it’s like a museum. I halfway expect a stuffed grizzly bear and maybe some wax Neanderthals in the corner. No such luck. It’s the same six assholes I’ve been staring at since I got back.

Sandoval is the boss, that much is clear. Black hair, a deep tan, and a dress cut low enough that you could autopsy her and never touch the edges. She’s pretty, she knows it, and she isn’t above using it. It’s tedious just looking at her.

“I take it that you’re feeling better today,” says Sandoval.

I glance at the other idiots in the room.

“Better is a relative thing. I feel better than dead, so, yeah, I guess I’m feeling swell.”

“It looks like your motor functions are coming back, too. That’s good. You’re going to need them,” says Barron Sinclair. He’s the only other one who talks much. He’s heavyset. Long gray hair and perfect little beard. He’s one of those guys born with an old face. He could be fifty or seventy. He’s also sick. I can smell the drugs in his system. Metallic and bitter as lemons. Sinclair tries to look calm, but he’s scared. Whatever he has, it must be bad if he can’t find any magicians who can cure it. He’s worried about what’s waiting for him in Hell, especially since I wiped out Wormwood down there. Good. That’s more incentive for him to want me alive.

“Eva keeps telling me that, but she won’t say what I’ll need them for.”

“That’s what this meeting is about. I think you’re coherent enough to discuss your mission,” she says.

I look at her.

“My mission? That sounds so noble. Am I going to rescue your kitten from a tree?”

“Not quite,” she says, shooting me a feral smile. “You’re going to kill someone.”

“Probably a lot of people,” says Sinclair.

“That’s what I figured. Who’s the lucky guy or gal?”

She points to one of the other cockroaches that follow her around. A young, cocky guy with a face built for punching.

“Roger here can give you the details. Roger?” says Sandoval.

I hold up a hand as Roger opens his mean little mouth. He closes it again.

“Is Roger going to be giving me orders? Are any of these other idiots?”

Sandoval crosses her arms.

“I suppose not.”

“Can any of them help me stay in my body?”

“No.”

“Then fuck ’em.”

Roger and the other roaches’ heartbeats spike. I smell sweat. Roger starts to open his mouth again. I raise the Colt and point it at his stupid face.

“Hush, Roger. Grown-ups are talking.”

He clamps his mouth shut. I put the Colt in my waistband at my back. Okay. Enough of that stuff for now. Everyone is nice and rattled. Let’s see if someone says something interesting.

Sandoval stares at me, wondering if she made a huge mistake. When she doesn’t say anything, Sinclair steps forward.

“It’s not exactly a hit,” he says. “Though I suspect there will be a considerable number of casualties. What we need you to do is stop an event.”

He coughs wetly and wipes his mouth with a monogrammed hankie. When he’s done I say, “What kind of event?”

“Stupendous,” says Sandoval. “Cataclysmic.”

“Can you narrow that down a little?”

“No. All you need to know is that something awful will happen on Sunday unless you stop it.”

“And if I do I get put back in my body for good, completely alive?”

She raises her eyebrows a fraction of an inch, even as she says, “That’s the deal.”

The silk slippers they gave me are absurdly comfortable. I wiggle my toes in them, telling myself that this pack of jackals is going to keep its end of the bargain.

“I’d still like to know what kind of event.”

“I told you. No.”

“You see, it would help to know what I’m walking into. Am I knocking over a quinceañera or stopping a nuke launch? You get my meaning? It’s about preparations, appropriate tools, and my general attitude.”

“Maybe we should tell him,” says Sinclair.

“No,” says Sandoval. “It’s a trick.”

I look at Sinclair, then back at Sandoval.

“I know it has to do with the Wormwood bunch that broke away and opened their own lemonade stand without you.”

“No,” says Sandoval. “You do what we say and you get your body back. That’s all you need to know.”

I don’t say anything long enough for the room to get uncomfortable. Sandoval gives me the stink eye and I give it right back.

“I think we should tell him,” says Sinclair.

Eva shakes her head.

“No.”

I wait, wiggling my toes. Not saying a word.

Finally, Sinclair blurts, “It’s a ritual. A magic ritual.”

Sandoval whirls around and slaps him hard enough to leave a mark on his cheek.

I say, “What kind of ritual?”

Sandoval stares at Sinclair, breathing hard. Sinclair touches his face where she hit him. Despite things, he says, “When you joked about a nuclear launch you were closer than you realize.”

“The other Wormwood has a bomb?”

“They might as well have,” says Sandoval. She turns from Sinclair and looks at me. “The splinter faction are in possession of a ritual that will utterly destroy Los Angeles.”

Sinclair says, “It will trigger similar destruction all over the world. Berlin. Tokyo. Sydney. Anywhere we, the true Wormwood, are concentrated.”

“They hope to wipe us out in one massive action,” Sandoval says.

I listen to their hearts. Check the microtremors on their faces. They’re telling the truth.

Well … fuck.

I say, “With all due respect to Berlin, Tokyo, and wherever the fuck else, I don’t care. Let’s talk about L.A.”

“They’re out to destroy our entire infrastructure,” says Sinclair.

Sandoval says, “Then they can pick off the stragglers one by one.”

I look over at the roaches.

“Any of you have a cigarette?”

“There’s no smoking in the house,” says Sandoval.

“I wouldn’t think it matters, seeing as how you’re all going to die.”

“What do you mean?” says Sinclair. “You won’t take the job?”

“Not if you keep lying to me.”

He frowns.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re Wormwood. Why do you need a dead man to do your dirty work? You’re global and yet you can’t find one single asshole who can handle this job for you?”

“I think you might overestimate us at the moment,” says Sandoval quietly.

“The other faction took many of our best and brightest,” says Sinclair. “Or killed them.”

“Besides, you have a unique set of skills,” Sandoval says.

It’s making more sense now.

“That’s why you gave me back the Room of Thirteen Doors. You don’t just need someone who can stop the ritual. You need someone who can get to it.”

“Exactly.”

“That means you don’t know where it will happen.”

“Correct.”

“But you’re absolutely sure it will happen Sunday.”

“On the new moon, yes,” says Sinclair.

I look at them both. They’re still telling the truth.

“What day is it now?”

“Wednesday evening.”

“Wednesday? Why didn’t you bring me back sooner?”

“You don’t just snatch a soul from the afterlife willy-nilly,” says Jonathan Howard, their necromancer. “It needs to happen at the right time.”

He’s taller than me. British, with wire-rim glasses. He carries the weird smell of death that all necromancers have. Rotting flesh. Nasty hoodoo potions. They try to cover it up with cologne, but that just makes it worse.

I walk over to him.

“What about fixing my body? Does that need to happen at some super-special time too?”

He leans back from me a little.

“No. That can happen anytime.”

“You sure?”

“Completely.”

I pat him on the arm.

“You better be, Johnny, ’cause I’m not going back to Hell alone.”

I turn back to Sandoval.

“Let’s hit the fucking road. Where do we go? Who do I kill first?”

“I have no idea,” she says. “We thought we’d leave that up to you. You seem to have a knack for these things.”

I look at Sinclair.

“Is she serious? You don’t have a where or a who?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Okay. How do you contact the faction? A phone number. A name.”

“They’ve hidden themselves well. We don’t have anything.”

“Fuck.”

I look over at the roaches. They’re no help. Not a flicker of intelligence anywhere in the bunch.

“Here I was expecting Lex Luthor and what I get is a bunch of runaways picking pockets at the bus station.”

Sandoval looks at her watch.

“The clock is ticking, Stark. Your body is already starting to break down.”

“A cigarette would really help me think.”

“Tick-tock,” she says.

I take a breath and lean back on the pool table.

“Then we have to make them come to us,” I say. “Make them think you have something they want so they’ll come after it. Maybe a counter-spell that can blow up their ritual. Now, here’s the hard part. Someone’s got to take that fake spell and stroll out of here with it. Let themselves get kidnapped, then bring one of them back here for questioning. Any volunteers?”

I glance around the room knowing the answer but hoping Roger might be enough of a suck-up that he’ll raise his hand.

No such luck.

“I think you win the coin toss, Stark,” says Sandoval.

“I had a feeling I would. I wish you’d told me all this earlier in the day. I can’t really get started until tomorrow, Thursday. That’s cutting things close.”

“I told you. We couldn’t bring you back any sooner,” says Howard.

“You’re lucky you brought me back at all. I was one hot second from being double dead.”

Howard frowns.

“Dying in Heaven?”

“Being murdered, technically.”

“You do find trouble everywhere,” says Sandoval.

“I was just looking for the buffet line.”

“Is there anything we can do to get started now?” says Sinclair. There’s the slightest edge to his voice. He doesn’t like all this chitchat. Yeah, he’s scared, but he knows something he’s not telling me. Probably what’s really going on. I believe that these creeps don’t want to get blown to rags, but I wonder what they do want. I’ll put beating information from Sinclair on my to-do list for tomorrow. For now, I just talk to him.

“Do you have a rat in your organization? Don’t answer. It was a rhetorical question. For things to be this out of control, of course you do.”

“They’re worse than you think,” says Sinclair.

“What do you mean?”

“Assassinations,” says Sandoval. “Slow, but steady.”

Sinclair chimes in.

“Mostly the heads of other offices. Pieter Holden in Vienna was first.”

Sandoval holds up one finger, then two.

“Megan Bradbury in Chicago and Franz Landschoff in Cairo are the most recent.”

I look over at the roaches, then back to them.

“You’re sure it’s the faction doing it?”

“There’s no question,” Sandoval says.

“Not just a rat then. A great big rat.” I go to Sandoval and stage-whisper, “Eva, do you think it’s one of these assholes?”

She looks over at her mute bugs.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I trust all of these people with my life.”

“Good. ’Cause if it’s one of them, we’re completely fucked.”

“What’s your idea?” says Sinclair.

“Put the word out to all of your people. A courier is taking something life-or-death important across town tomorrow afternoon. Make it to one of your other offices.”

“You think the faction will try to intercept the courier?”

“They better or you can relax and eat finger sandwiches until they blow your asses up.”

“And you with us,” says Sandoval. “I take it that you’re going to play the courier?”

“Since none of you stepped up, I guess so.”

She looks at the roaches.

“All right. You know what to do. Spread the word about the courier to all of your subordinates.”

“Make sure they know I’m the only thing between their ass and the next coal cart to Hell,” I add.

“Go,” says Sandoval. “Start making calls.”

I hold up a hand.

“Not yet.”

Everyone looks at me.

“If someone doesn’t give me a cigarette, the deal is off.”

Roger reaches into his jacket and tosses me a pack of Shermans.

“Got a lighter?” I say.

“I thought you were Mr. Magic. Light it your-fucking-self,” he says.

“Thanks, Rog. You’re a pip.”

They all file out.

“We’ll be working tonight, Stark. What will you do to occupy yourself?” says Sandoval. “And keep in mind that you’re barred from the bowling alley.”

“Then I’m going out.”

“Where?”

“Out. I want to smoke. I want to see things. I want to have a drink with people I don’t hate.”

She doesn’t believe me.

“Calm down, Eva. Where am I going to go? I’m in hock to you. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Just make sure your cherubs do their jobs.”

She checks her watch and says, “Two hours.”

“I’m going to need some money.”

“Why?”

“Unless things have changed in the past year, liquor isn’t free.”

She stares at me.

“I don’t carry cash.”

“Of course you don’t, your highness.”

I look at Sinclair.

“How about you? You too good to touch filthy lucre?”

He pulls a wad from his pocket enclosed in a gold money clip. Peels off a twenty.

“Don’t fuck with me.”

He peels off another.

“Keep going. I tip big.”

I stop him at a hundred dollars. He holds the bills out like I might bite his hand off. It’s tempting.

I walk to a shadow and put the bills in my pocket.

“Don’t wait up.”

“I don’t want you coming back drunk,” says Sandoval.

“Don’t worry. I’ll look pretty for class pictures tomorrow.”

One more step and the shadow swallows me.

I know those two are going to fuck me over, but I don’t know how, and until I do I’m going to have to dance their dance, take my lumps, and smile the whole time. Howardis the one I need to keep an eye on. The necromancer is the Blue Fairy to my Pinocchio and I want to be a real boy again. If things go sideways, the others can fry. Howard though? I won’t let anyone touch a hair on his stinking head.

I step out of the shadow onto Hollywood Boulevard a few blocks west of Las Palmas and Maximum Overdrive, the video store where I live. Or used to. Who knows now? Up ahead, Donut Universe shines like the Virgin Mary doing barrel rolls over Lourdes, so I head over.

BEFORE I GO inside there’s the matter of Roger’s cigarette. There’s no one on the street I can bum a light from, which leaves me with one option. I put the smoke in my mouth and cup my hands around it. Whisper some Hellion hoodoo. A small flame flickers up from my palm, just big enough for me to spark the cigarette. It’s a relief, and I don’t mean just getting to smoke. I haven’t done any hoodoo since coming back and I didn’t want Sandoval and Sinclair to see me in case I blew it. Now I want to try something bigger, but what I’m best at is breaking things, so I’ll wait until there’s something I want to see in pieces.

The Sherman is a decent smoke in its own way, but it doesn’t have the bite of a Malediction, the most popular cigarette in Hell. I had a whole box stashed upstairs at Max Overdrive. Wonder if they’re still there. More important, I wonder if I should even go near the place again. What if I run into Candy? The last time she saw me, I was dying with a knife in my back. I’ve been gone a year. What’s her life like now? A year is long enough to move past whatever grief she might have felt back then. The good news is that I saw her outside Max Overdrive the night I came back from Hell, so I know she and the store are still around.

The truth is, I want to run inside and see her right now. But what if things don’t work out with Wormwood? It’s almost Thursday and I could be gone again by Sunday. Is it fair to stumble back into her life when I could just as easily stumble out again? The answer is simple. Seeing her now wouldn’t even be close to fair. So, for the moment I’ll keep to myself and see how this insane fucking situation plays out. It’s a lonely feeling, but I’m almost used to that.

What’s really getting to me is that as much as I missed her in Hell, it’s a hundred times worse being back. My perfect, beautiful monster. During my last look at her she was in her Jade form, tearing Audsley Ishii apart. That’s how you know someone really likes you. Anyone can give you chocolate and flowers, but when they’ll disembowel someone for you? That’s true love.

I crush the Sherman under my heel and go inside Donut Universe.

The smell that hits me is almost overwhelming. Familiar and alien at the same time. Hellion food tastes like what a butcher shop throws in the trash and then a hobo sleeps on it for a couple of days. But what’s on the shelves in this shop …

If I have to die again, let it be in Donut Universe. Bury me in old-fashioneds and éclairs. Burn me in the parking lot and let me drift up to Valhalla on a wave of holy sugar and grease fumes.

When it’s my turn, I step up to the counter, where a pretty young woman asks me what I want. Like the rest of the Donut Universe staff, she wears little antennae with silver balls on the end. The balls bop gently as she speaks. My friend Cindil wore antennae like that when she worked here. Back before she was murdered. I can’t ever come in here without thinking of her. But I brought her back from Hell and now she has a pretty decent new life. She even plays drums in Candy’s terrible band. Or she did a year ago. Where is she now?

Goddammit. Memory is such a bastard when you don’t know if any of it’s true anymore. Candy. Cindil. Max Overdrive. L.A. That’s hard to lose and maybe harder to get back when you don’t know if you can keep it.

“Sir?” says the antennae girl. “Do you want a donut?”

Fuck me. How long have I been standing here? I can’t even interact with actual humans without looking like a lunatic. Take two.

“I’ll have an apple fritter and a cup of coffee.”

She rings them up and tells me the price. I hand her one of the twenties and when she tries to give me change I say, “Keep it. I’m just happy to be back here.”

She smiles and says, “Welcome back,” like she means it, and it kind of breaks my heart. She’s nice. I forgot what that’s like. I try to smile back at her, but I’m not sure I’m getting it right. I mean, my face does something. Whether it’s a smile or not is up to her.

The good news is that when she brings me my order she doesn’t pepper-spray me. That’s a beginning. I feel like a kid on his first date, proud he didn’t spill whiskey on his girlfriend’s dress or puke on her when he drank too much.

“Come back soon,” she says as I pick up my stuff.

“If I’m still alive next week, I’ll buy out the whole damn store.”

She laughs and says, “It’s a date then.”

I nod and get out before I blow the moment.

More than I already have, I mean.

At the corner, I take a long sip of coffee. It’s funny. I remember what they served at Donut Universe as being pretty good, but I can barely taste this stuff at all. I unwrap the apple fritter and take a bite. It’s the same thing. I feel the dough in my mouth, but I can’t taste anything. Another sip of coffee and another bite of fritter. I chew until I can’t stand it anymore and spit the fritter into the gutter. It’s not the food. It’s me. I can’t taste it. Another side effect of being only half-alive. At least the cigarette had a little kick. And I could taste bourbon the other night. This half-alive situation is getting on my nerves. I’ll do whatever it takes to get right again.

If cigarettes and liquor are all I can handle until I’m fully alive again, there’s only one place I can go. I head for Ivar Avenue and Bamboo House of Dolls. And it better be there. I swear if it’s gone, Wormwood won’t have to worry about the faction.

I’ll nuke L.A. myself.

FORTUNATELY FOR EVERYONE, I don’t have to drop even a single bomb. As soon as I spot the neon, my whole body relaxes. I need a drink more than ever to wash the last mealy remnants of the fritter out of my mouth. But I don’t want anyone here to know I’m back, including Carlos, the bartender. I step into an alley and throw on a glamour so no one will recognize me. There are still eighty dollars of Sinclair’s money in my pocket. That should be enough to get decently horizontal.

But I don’t go inside right away. Instead, I stay on the street letting the moment soak in. A day or so ago, I was standing at the pearly gates. Just a few hours before that, on the road for a year with a dog pack of psycho marauders tearing up the Tenebrae, killing and burning everything in our path. Standing here now, just a day later, all that feels like a bad dream. Mouthfuls of dust, road rash, and the kind of burning fear that’s indistinguishable from anger. But here and now it’s just cigarette smoke, couples whispering to each other, and the sound of bird chirps and horns as Martin Denny spins on the jukebox. It’s a little overwhelming, but in a good way. I take one last gulp of L.A. night smog and go inside.

At first glance, not much has changed inside. It’s still the best punk tiki bar in existence. Old Cramps and Germs posters hang on the walls. Plastic hula girls and coconuts carved like monkeys are lined up behind the bar. And Carlos is there, solo as usual, doling out beer and whiskey to the rabble. What’s changed is the crowd. It’s still a mix of fanged and feathered Lurkers and civilians, but they’re quieter than I remember. Bamboo House of Dolls used to be shoulder to shoulder any night of the week. Tonight you could fire a cannon in here and not hit anything but the wall. Over in the back corner is a minuscule stage where Carlos has installed the death knell of any good bar—a karaoke machine. It’s good to be back inside, but the state of the place is depressing. Most of the stools by the bar are empty, so I take one at the far end away from the door. Yeah, it’s quiet now, but I’ve had enough things creep up on me in here that I know I won’t be able to relax with my back exposed like that.