City of the Lost (16 page)

She points to the map on her wall. Multicolored pins jut out of it like a jilted lover’s voodoo doll. “There are over a thousand homeless in downtown. You know how many of those are addicts? There are worse things, tougher things to come by than heroin. Vampires are people, like everyone else. And they need help.”

I stare at her waiting for the punchline, but it doesn’t come. Then it clicks. Young, liberal sociology major. Nobody comes to Skid Row unless they’re down and out or trying to save somebody.

I laugh. “You’re running a homeless shelter for vampires,” I say.

She fixes me with a deep stare. “More than just vampires, but yes. More or less.” She leans forward to me, face intense. “You think tweakers are bad off, you should see a vampire gone a week without a fix. They get it where they can. Sharing needles, turning tricks. Most of them are HIV positive, or they’ve got Hep C. It’s like any addiction, only closer to needing oxygen than heroin. And they live a long time, regardless. They need help.”

“That’s great,” I say. “Very noble. The fuck does any of this have to do with me?”

“You specifically? Not much. Other than you’re looking for Giavetti’s stone.”

Aha. “He’s already got it,” I say.

“No,” she says. “He doesn’t.”

If she was trying to get a reaction out of me, she did a great job. “I’m all ears,” I say.

“He was spotted in Hollywood earlier today. He’s asking after it. Thinks people know where it might have gone to ground. I want it.”

If he doesn’t have the stone, then who the hell broke into my house and took it?

“You and everybody else. Sorry, I already got an offer on the table.”

“Neumann? Please. I don’t know what he’s promised you, but I can guess. And I can tell you he can’t deliver. And if he could, he wouldn’t. He’s leading you on.”

“Like I hadn’t figured that out already. But it’s the only offer I got, and I don’t see you ponying up to the bar.”

“Best thing you can do is get that stone to someone safe. Someone who won’t use it. Someone like me.”

“Yeah, and why’s that?”

Her brow furrows. My skin prickles. I don’t know what she’s doing but I can guess. Some magic crap. Whatever it is doesn’t seem to be working because she frowns like she’s just run into a knot she can’t untie.

“Nice try,” I say. I’m betting she’s used to getting her way with less talking.

“Can’t blame a girl,” she says, trying to pass it off as nothing. “Let me try a different tack,” she says. “Magic’s a complicated thing. It’s energy, everywhere, pools of it all over the place.”

“Connecting everything. Yeah, I get it. I’ve seen
Star Wars
.”

“No. It doesn’t connect a single thing. It just sits there. You want to use it, you tap into it, like siphoning off gas. But when you do that, it disturbs the pond. Makes ripples. Maybe a little splash. You take a little, but it comes back eventually. People don’t make a big splash. We’re just pebbles. Maybe at most a bowling ball.”

“And Giavetti’s stone is a bowling ball,” I say. “Big splash. Big fuckin’ deal.”

“More like a landslide. The well’s been getting dangerously close to empty since Giavetti got to town. Two nights ago it almost drained completely. Where were you at the time, Joe? I’m betting you were dead, and Giavetti brought you back to life.”

I start to say something, but she cuts me off. “I know he’s aging slowly,” she says. “How slowly I’m not sure, but he’s pretty old. And if he’s experimenting with the stone and using more and more of the local well each time, he’s planning on doing more than just keeping himself from dying. I think he’s trying to do to himself what he did to you but more so. Make himself younger, maybe? I’m really not sure.

“But I do know,” she continues, “that if he empties the pool it’s going to take a while to refill. Maybe a long while. Days. Weeks, even. There’s only so much in an area. Every time he uses it, the magic stops working for everybody else because the stone pulls so much from the pool and splashes so much out.”

“I’m still not seeing the point.”

“What do you think is keeping you alive, Joe?”

She’s got you there, Sunday. I try to light my cigarette again, forgetting for a moment she won’t let me. Put the pack away.

“Okay. So somebody uses the stone around here, and I’m fucked. What’s it to you?”

“Somebody uses that stone and a lot of people are fucked. You’re not the only one running off all that energy.”

“So you want the stone to, what, keep it from being used?”

“Exactly.”

Interesting. Either she really is a do-gooder, or she’s just blowing smoke up my ass like everybody else.

“I still don’t hear you offering anything might make me want to find it for you,” I say. “That’s what you want, right? For me to find it? You haven’t said anything that solves my little rotting problem. I figure you already know about that.”

She nods. “I do. And yes, I want you to find it. Look, I can’t bring you back. From what I know, it can’t be done. I can’t promise to keep you from falling apart, either. I don’t know how to do that.”

“So what can you give me?”

“Information. Maybe some answers for you.”

“Maybe?”

“My source is . . . fickle.”

“Yeah? What source is that?”

“I’ve got a demon in the bar downstairs. Would you like to meet him?”

“He calls himself Darius,”
she says, “though that’s not his real name.”

“But he’s a demon? Like horns and a tail? Shit like that?”

“You’re really out of your element here, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m fine. Just wanted—” Hell, who am I trying to kid? “Yeah, actually. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on.”

“Fair enough. He’s a demon. He says he’s an incubus, but I think he’s just horny.” I have no idea what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.

She pulls the elevator door shut with a clatter, and we head down to the lobby.

“Okay, I’m gonna stop you here. What’s your piece in all this? Why do you care about the stone?”

“I told you,” she says. “There are over a thousand homeless—”

“No. You’re some kind of uberwitch running this—whatever the fuck this little empire is you’ve got. There’s more to it. There always is.”

Her mouth twists like she’s just bit into a lemon. She’s not used to explaining herself. She doesn’t like it.

“I bought this place about two years ago while I was working on my masters. My thesis was the effects of gentrification on homeless populations. Mostly I just wanted to get out here, help the people I knew wouldn’t, couldn’t get help. Just wanted to give something back, you know what I mean?”

“Not really,” I say. “So, how’d you get into this whole
Bruja
gig? Seems pretty sweet if you can make the gangbangers jump.”

“It’s more of a pain in the ass than you’d think. I was born this way. My family’s been doing this for generations in Mexico. My mom tried to get away from it by moving up here in the seventies, but when I started seeing things that others couldn’t, she finally gave in.”

“So, this
Bruja
act. It’s all real?”

She nods. “It is. I just took who I am and mixed it up with what I wanted to do.” She shrugs. “At heart I’m a social worker. It’ll get easier as I get older. Nobody wants to take a sorority girl seriously.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say. “I’ve seen some crazy shit in the last two days, but I think you might be the craziest.”

“Tell me about it. One day I’m picking through applications for jobs with the county, the next day I’m doing this.” Looking at her, I don’t take her seriously, either. But she’s got a disarming smile. There’s something about her that tells me I don’t want to play poker with her. She might look sweet and innocent, but there’s ambition and hunger behind her eyes, too.

The question I’m not asking is, Why is she telling me all this? I’m an outsider. I’m not part of her cause, one of her rescue cases. She says she doesn’t let a lot of people see her. So why me?

There’s more to this story. Has to be. No one decides to do this kind of dirty work down here unless there’s something personal in it.

The elevator stops, and I pull the cage open, four pairs of eyes stare at me.

“He ain’t dead,” one of her crew says.

“Last one didn’t die, either,” another answers.

“No, but his hair turned white, and he looked like he’d aged thirty years.”

I look over at Gabriela when I hear that. Was Carl here? Did she do that to him? Nothing in her face gives it away.

Gabriela puts a finger to her lips, mouthing, “I’m not here.” I decide to play along.

“Man, I’m dyin’ to know,” the backseat kid says. “What’s she look like? She as scary as they say?”

“Yeah. Face like a mule’s ass,” I say. Gabriela gives me a dirty look.

“Don’t go disrespecting the
Bruja
,” says the desk clerk. He sounds mean and pissed off. “I’ll kill you if you do that again.” He turns to her crew. “And you all. You question and you know what happens. You want to end up like that other? He was young when he came in, like you. She’ll put you into the ground as nothing but skin and bone.” He crosses himself.

Gabriela rolls her eyes, mimes picking up a telephone and dialing a number. The phone on the desk rings. Desk clerk goes back to answer it, his face turning white as Gabriela speaks, her voice an old crone’s cracked whisper.

“Let him into the bar. He’s not to be harmed. And if you threaten him again, I’ll have you skinned.” She hangs up her imaginary phone and waves me forward.

We pass the desk clerk shaking at the telephone, as if wondering if his flesh is about to be torn off. I’d pay money to see that.

She leads me to a dark oak door with leather paneling. They’re all watching me. None of them noticing her.

The door is the only thing in this sordid room that looks even remotely clean. I don’t remember it from when I killed the Armenian. It’s placed wrong. If I’m doing the math right, this should open out onto the street.

It doesn’t.

There’s a jazz bar where Skid Row should be. Be at home in Harlem in the fifties. Smoky red lighting, the bustle of waiters and waitresses, people drinking, laughing, and listening to a live quartet on the stage.

“This shouldn’t be here.”

“It isn’t.” She leads me to an empty table near the bar.

“I’m gonna ignore that for the moment. What happened out there? Why couldn’t they see you?”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “Don’t tell me you haven’t looked at my chest.” She points to her tee shirt where the words YOU CAN’T SEE ME are glowing.

“Didn’t think you meant it literally.”

“You should see what I can do with bumper stickers. It’s best if the normals don’t know what I look like. They wouldn’t understand.”

Normals. Everybody else. People like the gangbangers, the desk clerk. People like Carl. Is that why she’s telling me things? Is that why she’s showing me her face? Because I’m not one of them? Because I’m not normal?

“What was that they said about making somebody old?”

“La Eme,”
she says. “Mexican Mafia likes to mess with me from time to time. Thinks my men should be running drugs for them. Thinks I should be paying them off. I take threats seriously.”

Too bad Simon’s dead. He’d have loved her.

I’m not sure I believe her, but nothing tells me she’s lying. I file the thought away to chew on later.

“Where are we? And who are all these people?”

“Haven’t a clue. In fact, I’m not even sure this is really a place. More a state of mind. Technically, it’s not real. Not like
you
see reality, anyway. And the people? Most of them aren’t real, either.”

A waiter in a sharp tuxedo stops by our table to take our drink orders. Scotch for me. Rum and coke for her.

The band on stage is doing some smoky number, the kind to wind down a crowd before closing. It’s good just to listen to it. The customers are more into each other than the music, flirting with each other, laughing at each other’s jokes. We spend the few minutes listening to the music before the waiter returns with our drinks.

I take a sip. “Seems pretty real to me.”

“Real enough.”

“So, where’s this demon? He gonna pop out of the stage with horns and a pitchfork?”

“No. That’s him over there, tending the bar.” She waves at a massive black man with a thin goatee and arms like tree trunks. He’s chatting up a smoking hot blonde in a red dress and fuck-me pumps.

“Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

We make our way through the tables. I can hear the chatter. Most of it’s unintelligible—different languages, different accents.

“Darius,” Gabriela says, shouldering her way past the blonde, who gives her a dirty look.

“Go on, darlin’,” Darius says, deep voice a Barry White rumble. “We’ll catch up later.” She narrows her eyes at all of us and wanders off in a huff.

“Darius, this is Joe Sunday. Joe, Darius.”

“The Dead Man,” Darius says, grabbing my hand and shaking it furiously. He’s got a grip like an industrial crusher. “I’ve been watching you, Dead Man. You’re all kinds of interesting.”

“Glad to meet you, too,” I say.

“You should be. Darlin’,” he says to Gabriela, “you come to finally give me some of your sweet, sweet honey?”

“You know the rules, Darius.”

He rolls his eyes. “Rules are for pussies. How about you, Dead Man? Care for a ride?” He gives me a leer that would make a porn star blush.

“Like you said, I’m a dead man.”

“Doesn’t mean your equipment don’t work.” He grabs his crotch and rocks his pelvis at me. “Think about it. I’m always here.”

He pulls multicolored bottles from shelves, from under the well, pouring them into a shaker with ice.

“The lady here says you might have some information for me.”