The Hollywood Spiral, Page 2

  I showed Stan Volga the door and I plugged into Grid. I used a dummy profile, rerouted through a subfloor where I could skip the simulations and commercials, all the noise, and ran facial recognition on the Polaroid. I sifted the caches and the unmined stacks, the cracks and corners in the system where information pretends to hide.

  An hour later I had nothing. That was unusual. Everyone leaves a trace of themselves, whether they like it or not. Everybody’s got a ghost on Grid. Even me. Not this Anna. She was nowhere.

  * * *

  Maybe I was rusty. It didn’t feel like it. There was more to it than that. Something about Anna I couldn’t place. That didn’t fit. I needed some background. I went to the source.

  Delia was a street kid when I met her, telling fortunes on the Strip, picking pockets when she could to make a living. Even then she had a look that could crack you wide open, so easy you weren’t sure if you’d given away all your secrets or she’d lifted them from you. She had the second sight, the third eye, all the stories in her deck of tarot cards. She also had a line to every doorman, hotel clerk, and bartender in the city. When they came in to get their palms read they’d tell her everything they knew.

  She’d tipped me off once that a hired gun named Jimmy Fitz was asking around town for me. I’d owed her ever since. No matter how long between visits she was never surprised to see me. Like she was always expecting it, like she knew.

  I took a walk up Normandie in the rain to a dilapidated strip mall on the corner of Fountain. On the second floor, in between a bail bond and a Burmese takeout, the sign above the door read ∴ with a yellow light behind it. A bell jangled as I went through the door.

  There was a round card table in the middle of the room draped with a green velvet tablecloth, a mobile of silvered wire ellipses suspended above it like halos orbiting at estranged angles. An altar sat in the corner, candles stacked on wax-strewn shelves, framed by feathered wings. Circular mirrors hung on the walls opposite each other, their reflections stretching to infinity. I caught sight of myself in the cross fire. Every one of me needed a shave.

  “Harrigan,” Delia said as she came through a curtain of beads along the far wall. “Long time no see.”

  She had a gold hoop in her nose and a tattoo snaking up her right arm of that painting by Klimt, Death and Life, all the sleeping people huddled together as a skeleton watches like it’s waiting to devour them whole.

  “How you been, Delia?” I said.

  “Busy,” she said. “Half the city’s lost their mind with this comet coming. The other half’s looking for it. I’m cleaning up on both sides.”

  I looked at her.

  “The comet?” Delia said. “The one passing directly over us next weekend? Brahe’s Reckoning? Next Sunday? At midnight?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “People are freaking out, Harrigan. Where’ve you been?” she said, shaking her head. “Forget it, I’ll find out. Have a seat.”

  She lit a candle on the altar in the corner, blew it out, lit it again.

  “I’m not here for a reading,” I said as she sat down.

  “But you’re getting one anyway,” Delia said. “It’s almost like fate, huh?”

  She nodded to the empty chair, pulled a purple-lined case from beneath the table and unpacked her implements. A deck of cards. A crystal decanter, half filled with rain water. A mason jar of weed. A squat, tea kettle glass bong. A wooden lighter with a Celtic knot emblazoned on the side.

  She drained the decanter into the bong. Unscrewed the mason jar, the dank scent mingling with the sandalwood and jasmine already floating around us.

  “This is Morrigan’s Dream,” she said, holding up a goldflecked bud like a jewel. “We’re all just passing through.”

  She sparked the lighter. Smoke swirled in the glass and climbed the neck of the tea kettle in a rush as she inhaled. She nodded to me and I cut the deck of cards before her. Then she exhaled, smoke crawling over the green velvet table, clinging like mist.

  “Now,” she said, instantly serene. “Let’s begin.”

  She turned the first card.

  “The Devil,” she said, flame rimming the leering face on the card. “The Demon.”

  “Hell of a way to start,” I said.

  “We don’t know as much about him as we think we do,” she said. “Lucifer means ‘light bringer.’”

  Her pupils expanded. Her face took on a subtle slant.

  “I was too big for the Bible,” she said, a smile flitting quick across her lips and disappearing. “They had me slither in the Garden and tempt the usurper in the desert. Bit parts for the Morning Star. But they left my story to be told by a blind man, in fucking English. Blasphemy.”

  She raised her left hand, two fingers and thumb extended.

  “Give me the sophistry of Greek,” she said. “The fire of Aramaic. The forked tongue of Babylon.”

  She closed her eyes, let her head tip back.

  “Babylon,” she whispered again as the halos above us converged, tracing a conical shape in the air, a glittering tornado that immediately dispersed.

  She turned the next card.

  “The Paladin,” she said, a figure on horseback, armored in chain mail. “A knight errant. A knight of faith. Charged by their code, cast by their quest. Theirs is a calling. Theirs the response. Theirs the calamity ensuing.”

  Her head swung back and forth. She touched the tattoo on her shoulder.

  “Sorry for that last bit,” she said. “That was still the Devil talking. Once he gets going it’s hard to shut him up.”

  She turned the last card.

  “The Fool,” she said, the jester in a belled cap, dancing, arms in the air.

  “Him I’ve met,” I said.

  “You’ve met them all, Harrigan. And you will again,” she said. “The trick is remembering what they tell you, when they show themselves to you.”

  “What about him,” I said, pointing to the card. “What’s he got to say?”

  “He’s a tough one,” she said, staring at the Fool. “She’ll do anything for a laugh. Say what he has to, be who she must. A smoke and a joke, a juggle and a mug. But they’ve got a blade in their belt, same as anyone else.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

  “That’s two hundred for the reading,” Delia said, replacing the cards and shuffling the deck. “Unless there was something else.”

  I pushed some of Stan Volga’s money across the table, along with the Polaroid.

  “She’s pretty,” Delia said, looking her over. “What’s her name?”

  “Anna,” I said. “She’s Danish.”

  “You stalking her for yourself or someone else?” she said to me.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I said. “Ever seen her around?”

  “No,” she said. “Her I’d remember.”

  She thought for a second, made up her mind.

  “There’s a place on Argyle called Lekare. Corner of Selma,” she said. “It’s a character’s club. Might be her kind of crowd.”

  “What’s a character’s club?” I said.

  “Same as anywhere,” Delia said, smiling sort of wearily as she folded the bills I’d given her. “Everybody’s playing someone else.”

  * * *

  It had been raining all week, all month, all year. The water rushed in a gully down the street to the backed-up sewer grates, clogged with garbage, leaving every intersection a fetid reservoir. I followed the sidewalk as the robo cabs rolled past, silent and sentient, running their routes. Stayed under the overhangs where I could find them, kept my head down. Turned my face from the Zodiac cams on every corner. They were always watching. Didn’t mean you had to make it easy for them.

  I saw a hooded figure coming towards me, a long gray robe glistening like seal skin under the streetlight. As they passed a hand held out a pamphlet. I took it, watched them recede, dragging a gray garbage can behind them. I looked at the pamphlet.

  Are you ready to begin ag
ain?

  Φ

  Free the selves. Unveil the self.

  fvrst chvrch mvlTverse

  There is no I. There is no U.

  All r welcome. All r 1.

  6765 Franklin Avenue.

  I pocketed the pamphlet, kept going. Went over the freeway with its traffic clotted underneath. I turned on Argyle, walked the Selma block twice before I found it, after two spindly kids came out through a hidden door in a wall of blacked-out glass.

  “Lekare?” I said to one of them, his face smeared white with powder.

  He hissed at me, showed me his vampire fangs under his too-long bangs as the other one wrapped his arms around his chest, holding him back in a loose embrace.

  “Not here,” he said, licking the side of his pale face. “Not yet, my pet.” He stretched a crooked finger to the glass. “Lekare, if you are willing.” He licked his face again.

  I left them on the sidewalk to howl at the moon, went through the glass door into a black light and a twitching strobe, figures moving like spiders all around me. I made my way past replicants and droogs, a cemetery Dorothy in onyx shoes. A clutch of space pirates were slung on low couches, sucking on a hookah. A strung-out Snow White and a derelict Alice both leaned against a statuesque Carmen Miranda, withered fruit piled high on her head, cheeks blue like she’d been left out in the cold.

  I went to the bar, where things made more sense.

  The bartender had torn angel’s wings and a black eye. She poured me a double and I left a big tip. Sat there a while before I showed her the Polaroid of Anna. Her eyes glazed over before she shook her head, moved down the bar.

  I watched the room behind me in the mirror over the top-shelf bottles as it showed in freeze-frame strobe flashes. It was giving me a headache. I was halfway through my second drink when somebody leaned into my ear.

  “Do you like this music?” he said.

  He was in a black vinyl trench coat with Wellington boots, a Polaroid camera around his neck.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  From the speaker above a woman was wailing like she was plummeting to her death while some robots smacked a synth with hammers.

  “They are Vektor,” he said, leaning into my ear again. “She is a ghost on a ledge, haunted by technology.”

  There was a halt in his voice, a slight hitch. He was from somewhere else, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe Denmark.

  “I know the feeling,” I said. “You take a lot of pictures?” I nodded at the camera.

  “It is a passion of mine,” he said. “One of many.”

  He puckered his lips at me.

  “I hold the photo between my fingers as it develops,” he said, flittering his hands in the air like palsied butterflies. “I never shake it. Never. It is important to touch—to feel—as it blossoms in my hand.”

  The tip of his tongue darted like he was licking a crumb from the corner of his mouth. He left it there, peeking out. A half-eaten slug, trying to escape.

  “You take this one?” I said.

  I showed him the picture of Anna. He looked it over, pulled his tongue back in.

  “I take so many,” he said, backing away from me, dragging his fingers over his face like veils. “Who can know?”

  He danced around as he backpedaled before disappearing into the crowd. I looked for him in the mirror, didn’t see him again. Didn’t feel like following, wherever he went.

  I finished my drink, headed to the bathroom. The fluorescent lights overhead were too bright and too steady after the twitching strobe, the floor too filthy. I stood at the urinal, waited for my head to clear.

  I heard the door open behind me, the harsh music swelling, then choking off again as it closed.

  When I turned there were three of them, blocking the door. The one in the middle had a blond mohawk, so blond it was almost white. Blue eyes like a husky and a studded black leather band up his forearm. The other two were in black leather pants with too many zippers. Torn T-shirts ripped into scars, sutured with safety pins.

  I went to the sink, washed my hands. Took my time drying them.

  I watched them in the mirror. They hadn’t moved.

  When I went to slide past the blond one put his hand on my chest, pushed me back.

  “You go nowhere,” the blond one said, the same hitch in his voice as the Polaroid guy. “It is very late for you.”

  “What’s this about, fellas?” I said, as the other two fanned out, flanking me.

  They didn’t say anything. My hands were out. My back was to the wall.

  It’s never a fair fight. That’s what makes it a fight.

  When the blond one took a step towards me I dropped my shoulder, hit him in the jaw as hard as I could. He staggered back, still blocking the door. I turned to the one on the left just in time for him to punch me square in the face. My head snapped back and the light changed like he’d knocked off my sunglasses. I wasn’t wearing any. I kept my legs beneath me, caught him with a hook before the other one crumpled me with a kidney shot. I bent and the blond one wrangled me into a headlock, jerking at my neck, choking me before I rammed my hand up between his legs and crushed, then twisted.

  “Mine testikler!” he cried.

  It echoed off the grimed walls as I broke free, but before I could straighten up they hit me from either side, knocking me to the floor. I was on my hands and knees when one of them kicked me in the ribs, rolling me over until I was sitting up against the stall, dazed. The one closest leaned down and mashed his hand into my crotch as I sat there, baffled.

  “I took his testikler as well,” he said, showing the others his open hand, evening a score that really didn’t need to be settled.

  “Well done, Sig,” the blond one said. “Tor?”

  “He has had enough, Brand,” the one against the far wall said, his eyes soft.

  Brand stood over me, smirking. “You will know trembling. You will know pain. You will know fear,” he said, running his hands through his mohawk. “Brahe’s Reckoning is upon you. The past rises to devour you whole. Los Angeles will fall. The beast is awoken. The hour is nigh.”

  “Nothing good about that,” I said.

  Brand reached his hand out to me and flame leapt from his leather armband. I ducked under the fireball as it scorched the wall of the stall.

  “Tell Charlie Horse, Anna works for him no longer,” Brand said. “Soon none ever will again. Quite soon. Very quite. The end has come for all of you.”

  I sat there as they filed out, one after the other. Brand first, Sig following. Tor, the one with the soft eyes, looked back at me as the door closed.

  I picked myself up off the floor, looked in the mirror for a while. Spit some blood into the sink.

  friday

  Why didn’t you tell me she’s a hooker?” I said.

  “Anna’s not a hooker, she’s a hostess,” Stan Volga said, sitting at my table. “It’s about companionship, not sex.”

  People said the same thing about cocker spaniels. I didn’t believe them either.

  “You met her at Fatales,” I said.

  Stan Volga looked down into his glass. His hand shook as he lifted it, took a gulp. He was ragged when he came in, wearing the same suit as the day before. He had that wobble in his eyes, the one you get at the tail end of a bender, right before you hit the skid. A drink helps. I was having one myself.

  “How much do you owe?” I said.

  He looked at me. “Owe?” he said. “I don’t owe anybody anything.”

  “You ever heard of Charlie Horschetti?” I said.

  Stan Volga shook his head.

  “They call him Charlie Horse,” I said.

  He’d made his name blowing peoples’ kneecaps off whenever they owed him money or looked at him funny or for no special reason at all. Or maybe his name had made him. It was hard to say which came first. Nobody cares about chickens or eggs when they’re hopping around on a prosthetic leg.

  “Fatales is his place,” I said.

 
“Does he know where Anna is?” Stan Volga said.

  “She doesn’t work there anymore,” I said.

  “Well maybe he knows where she went!” he said, getting excited. “I’ll go with you. I’m not afraid of any—”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Stan,” I said. “Neither am I.”

  “What?” he said, spilling half his drink down his chest. “But we have to. You have to find her. Eddie Lompoc said—”

  “Eddie Lompoc likes to run his mouth,” I said. “So do you.”

  He looked at me for as long as he could stand it before turning away. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said quietly.

  “I asked you where you met Anna when you came in yesterday,” I said. “You told me you didn’t know. What else aren’t you telling me, Stan?”

  He smoothed the front of his stained, wrinkled jacket, took another drink.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, fingering his wedding ring. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was embarrassed.” He looked at the table, brought his watery eyes up again. “I know how it sounds, falling for a hostess. I know it’s stupid. I know that’s what you think. But it’s different with Anna. It is. I haven’t felt this way since—”

  He looked away, dragged his hands over his face like he was shuffling a deck with all the good cards missing.

  “You have to find her,” he said, his voice small. “Eddie Lompoc said you would.”

  “Go home, Stan,” I said. “Sleep it off. Or start it up again. Either way, go home.”

  He reached inside his jacket, came out with another wad of bills. Smaller than the day before, but it was still a roll. “Take it,” he said, laying it on the table. “Take all of it. Just find her.”

  His chin was quivering. He couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Anna’s all that matters,” Stan Volga said.