City of the Lost (6 page)

Like that’s going to happen. Must be reading my mind because he grabs my shoulder, leans in.

“Don’t skip out on me,” he says.

“Give me a reason.”

“Because you want to know what I know.”

Dammit.

I head home to my place near La Brea and Fountain. Bought it with cash about ten years ago. Little two bedroom Spanish cottage with bars on the windows. Not a bad place. Quiet neighborhood, all things considered. The only gunfire on my street happens during the holidays when idiots citywide decide that shooting in the air is the best way to celebrate Jesus being born.

I need to clean up, sure, but first I have to stash this goddamn stone. Pockets are a bad place for anything. Shit falls out, you forget it’s there. First thing I do is hide the stone in a safe in the back of my closet. Also not the best place to stash something. It’s not a great safe, hinges on the outside. A good couple of hours with a crowbar and the door will probably pop off. But until I can think of a better place, it’s what I’ve got.

I stash my clothes in a trash bag to burn later. Scrub the blood and gore off my body until the shower runs cold, though I barely notice the temperature. Spend a good hour afterward staring at the wall wondering what to do with all this jittery energy I’ve got. It’s been at least twenty-four hours since I slept last, but I’m not tired. Makes a weird sort of sense. I’m dead, right? Don’t need to breathe, don’t need to sleep?

Sitting around is not something I’m good at. I pull on some gym clothes, throw together a bag, and head out the door. I need to burn off some of this energy.

Friend of mine, Carl Reed, runs a gym out of a strip mall in Hollywood between a roach-infested Ukrainian restaurant and a Starbucks. Old world, new world, fighting in between.

Carl inherited the place from his old man, Chuck “The Hammer” Reed, a couple years back. Chuck fought heavyweight in the early seventies while Carl and I were going to high school together. Spent years brawling his way to the title until a detached retina brought all that to a halt. So he opened the gym and taught.

I give Carl a nod as I come in. I’ve been training here since his dad opened the place. In some ways I spent more time with his father than Carl did. Carl went off to college. Didn’t want to end up like his old man so he did the exact opposite. Got a degree in English and went on to be a reporter. Now he works at the
Times
. He has a guy run the gym for him, but keeps an office in the back. Doesn’t want to sell the place. Closest thing to a legacy he’s ever going to get.

Just a handful of guys in the gym going through their routines. I feel the need to beat the crap out of something. Carl comes over while I’m taping my hands, grabs the roll, and finishes it up.

“You always sucked putting this shit on,” he says, his deep bass rumble sounding just like his old man’s.

I give him a grin. “This stuff’s for pussies anyway,” I joke.

“Yeah,” he says. “Real men like busted hands.” He finishes the job, tightens the Velcro on my gloves.

“How’s the newspaper business?”

“Internet’s kicking its ass,” he says. “Not to mention the latest rich, white asshole who bought it. How’s the thug business?”

Now that’s a loaded question. I know what he’s really asking: “Is there anything you can give me?” Every once in a while I bounce some tidbit over to him that finds its way into the paper. I’m an official Anonymous Source. Carl’s known what I do for a long time. Mostly. I don’t talk about the killing. Just roughing people up. He doesn’t pry, just takes what I give him.

I wish I could tell him, but I don’t know where to start.

“Pretty quiet lately,” I say.

Carl’s got a military grade bullshit detector, and I know I just set it off. He cocks an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. “If it heats up, let me know,” he says. “Could use some fodder for the fish wrapper.” He leaves to go check on some kid who’s having trouble with a speed bag.

I head over to one of the heavy bags in the corner, let myself get lost in the sound of gloves on leather drowning out the sounds of boxing all around me. Guys in the ring, jumping rope, hitting the speed bag. Time goes by. How much I can’t say. I’m just hitting the bag.

Carl pokes his ugly George Foreman face around the bag. “Dude, what are you on?” he asks.

“What?” I hammer at the bag again, try to get back into my groove. The smack of leather on leather.

“I’m talkin’ about the Popeye number you got going here. You’ve been hogging this bag over an hour. You haven’t stopped moving. You on something stronger than spinach?”

I stop, step back. An hour? I glance over my shoulder at the clock, catch the weirded-out stares of the other guys. I hadn’t noticed the time.

“Fuck, man. I had no idea.”

“Yeah. You know, you’re not even breathing hard.” I take a breath, hope he doesn’t catch on that I wasn’t breathing at all. He swipes a finger across my forehead, shows it to me. “And you aren’t sweating, either. Fact, you’re as cold as ice. What’s going on?”

“Dude, you’re always worried about me. Just had a rough night’s all.”

Another ping on the bullshit detector. “Yeah, well, shake it up a little. Hit the speed bag, do some weights. This shit’s freaking out the paying customers.”

I nod. He’s right. I’m going to have to watch myself. Too much of this, and I’m going to get questions I can’t answer.

I do a circuit. My usual workout. Only there’s no strain. The weights are heavy, sure, but the only thing giving me a problem is the integrity of my bones and muscles. Not fatigue, not pain. When I think nobody’s looking I slide on some more weights and bench 500. My top’s 350.

The whole time I’m thinking about fitting in. I’m different now. No two ways about it. I can’t just go on like nothing’s happened, but I can’t let anyone know. Jesus, what would people do if they found out?

But how
do
I fit in? It feels like trying to walk drunk. All those little balance moves your body just does and you never think about. And then you get hammered and have to think about them. Can I make my heart beat? I can breathe, but my lungs are just windbags.

The big things are easy to hide, but people pick up on the little things. How many of those little details am I missing? I throw in some grunts as I hit the bags, but I’m not feeling it, and if nobody notices that I’d be surprised.

I catch a view of myself in the mirror. I look all right, if a little haggard. But then I’m getting old. I always look haggard. Not sweating, not getting tired. What else am I missing? My head starts to spin with all the things I’m forgetting. After a while I just stop. No point in getting more worked up. Not like I can do anything about it.

I stow my gear in my bag, pretend to wipe sweat off my face with a towel, and head to the door. Carl’s shadow looms behind me.

“Hang on, he says. “You and me have to talk.” He takes me back to his office, closes the door. Flicks on an old RCA sharing space with a bamboo plant on top of his filing cabinet. Staticky picture, a local channel, comes up with some talking head going off about the Middle East. Dude really needs to get cable in here.

“You’re not gonna show me your homemade porn movies again, are ya? I can only handle seeing your johnson so many times.”

“Only way you’re seeing my meat’s when I’m stone cold dead, and you know it. You want a sausage fest go down a couple blocks on a Saturday night. Now shut up and wait for it. Big news. Just saw it. Bound to come around again.”

We watch. The usual horseshit. Oil, fighting, genocide. Gangbangers shooting up kids in parks, home invasions getting grannies killed. It’s depressing shit. Why I stopped watching TV years ago. A couple commercials go by. Makes me wonder why Giavetti was so fired up about living forever. It’s not like the world gets any better.

“Here we go,” Carl says, turns up the volume.

LAPD cars, yellow tape. A canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. And a picture of Simon.

“Fuck.” Of course it would make the news.

“You knew about this?” Carl asks.

“What? Fuck no. When did it happen?”

Carl is silent a moment longer than he should be, and I know I’ve been made. “Cops found them this morning. Whole slew of bodies. Like some Jonestown shit or something.” Interesting angle Frank came up with. Crazy cultists gone bugfuck. Something for the press to chew on.

“Jesus.”

“Looks like you’re out of a job.”

“Looks like.”

“You don’t seem too broken up.”

“What? Hell, man, it’s kind of a shock. Gimme some time to sort it out.”

“Horseshit,” he says.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “You think I’d be here if I knew this had gone down?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he says. “I know you do more than just rough up people who don’t pay. I’m not stupid, Joe. I know how to put facts together. I’m a fucking reporter. It’s my job. I think you’d just go about your day like you always do. Now, what the hell happened?”

“Don’t ask me this, man,” I say. “I don’t need more shit in the paper than what’s already in there.”

His face twists in anger. “Jesus. I’m your friend, you asshole.”

“And what, nothing’s gonna end up plastered on the front page? I’m not stupid, either.”

He stands, more pissed off than I’ve seen him in years. “Fuck you,” he says. “This is too big to just go on your fucking day with. You didn’t hear the first part. They found more than twenty bodies in there.”

“Don’t,” I say.

He gets into my face. “Why not? You gonna take me out? Is that what you’re all freaked out about? You kill those people? I got a fucking mass murderer in my gym today?”

I don’t even think about it, I just throw a punch and pop him in the jaw. I don’t think I put a lot of force into it but it knocks him back into the door, a spiderweb crack appearing in the wired glass where his head hits.

Carl steadies himself, shakes it off. Blood is running down his chin, his split lip already fattening. He makes to come at me, but stops himself.

“Get out,” he says.

“Carl, I—”

“You don’t want to tell me,” he says, cutting me off, “that’s your business. I’ll find out on my own.”

“Man, you do not want to—”

“I said get out,” he screams. He throws the door open and steps aside to let me pass. The gym is silent, everyone watching me as I walk out.

If they didn’t notice me before they sure as hell do now.

I spend the rest of the day driving around town. Not wanting to go home and look at that goddamn stone again. It’s like it wants me to pull it out and stare at it.

Everything looks different. Colors are a little sharper, sounds a little more clear. And the smells. Jesus. I can smell everything. I didn’t notice it until after I left the gym, but I’m starting to smell people like they’re bags of meat.

And I’m getting paranoid. Keep seeing this black Escalade popping in and out of traffic behind me. This is L.A., everybody’s got a fucking black Escalade. After awhile I settle down, stop seeing it.

My phone rings. It’s Carl. I turn off the ringer. I’m going to have to talk to him soon, though. Tell him something if only for damage control. With Frank covering for me I should be good with the cops for the moment, but I’m going to have to do something to keep Carl from digging too much into this thing.

Wish I hadn’t lost it back there. Now it’s just going to be that much more difficult to keep a lid on things.

I finally drive to the coast, up along Pacific Coast Highway, past Malibu, toward the crime scene. News vans are crowded a good mile from it. I hang farther back. Far enough away to be another looky-loo, close enough to maybe actually see something. I strain to see past the crush of reporters. I can see the police, the ambulances. They’ve already hauled the bodies away, but it’s going to be awhile before they’re done here. Coroner’s going to be busy tonight.

I watch them until the sun goes down and everybody but the hardcore has gone home. I don’t take a breath for four hours.