John Shirley - Wetbones Read online

  But then he felt the watcher. He turned, and no one was there, but he could feel the More Man watching him, and he could sense the hand of the Spirit poised over him. Waiting to punish.

  They'd never let him kill himself. He'd never be able to get the glass to his throat. The More Man would never let him get away as easily as that . . .

  5

  Culver City, Los Angeles

  "Hi - I'm Sargeant Sparks. I'm looking for Jeff Teitelbaum . . . ?"

  Even the cops here had the irritating California habit of making statements sound like questions, Prentice thought, looking up at the open living room door. So, like, I'm going into therapy tomorrow? And I've got all these abandonment issues?

  Well, Prentice always wanted to ask, do you or don't you?

  Prentice got up from his perch on the arm of the sofa and stood awkwardly trying to decide if he should let the guy in or wait for Jeff to come out of the bathroom. "Uh, yeah -"

  But then the bathroom door banged open and Jeff crossed to the front door. "Yeah, officer, right here," Jeff said, opening the screen door for the cop who stood there. "C'mon in."

  Officer Sparks was shaped like a bowling pin, narrow shoulders and wide hips. He wore thick-rimmed designer glasses and an air of weary authority. He had a sad, panda face. He came in carrying a clipboard.

  Every so often the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt muttered to itself and cleared its throat of static.

  "Have a seat, officer," Jeff said, rubbing his palms against the hips of his khaki shorts. He was nervous, working too hard at not actively hating the cop for being a cop.

  "We've been looking into your report about your brother Mitch Teitelbaum?"

  "Right," Jeff said "Mitch." He stood by the door as if ready to open it for the cop again as soon as possible.

  "And we've gone out to talk to Mr. Denver?"

  "You personally?" Prentice asked. He wasn't sure why it seemed important.

  "Hm? Yes sir, I went myself. Me and another officer. We came to the conclusion that the boy is not there and Mr. Denver doesn't know where he is. But maybe I should ask - have you heard from him?" He smiled with one side of his mouth. "We're looking for him, too. He's supposed to be in Juvie Hall. For all know he's in the next room sleeping it off."

  "He's not here and we haven't heard from him," Jeff said. His voice flat. "What do you mean, sleeping it off?"

  "He was doing some time for -" He glanced at his clipboard. "Possession of cocaine. Chances are, he's on a run somewhere."

  "He's not a drug addict, he's not 'on a run'." Jeff crossed his arms over his chest, then dropped them by his side, then crossed them over his chest again. "Did you guys search the Denver place?"

  "No sir, we didn't have a warrant and we'd need a lot more to go on than the word of a kid you talked to in Juvie Hall."

  Prentice considered bringing Amy into it. Her

  turning up dead, her connection to Denver. The credit card. The stories of the More Man. But it would seem irrelevant to the cop. One thing at a time, please. Just the facts. And it sounded kind of silly to Prentice, now, when he imagined explaining the connection.

  ''That guy Denver is up to some weird shit," Jeff said. "I know he is."

  "Seemed like a regular Malibu producer type to me," the cop said. "Which means he might be up to some weird shit, but probably not kidnapping. I get a feeling about these things, I learn to respect those feelings, you know? The kid is not out at the Ranch. That's my feeling . . . You have any evidence of kidnapping you haven't given us?"

  Jeff chewed his lip. Finally he said, "No. But -"

  Sparks scribbled on his clipboard, then glanced around, as if it had just occurred to him that they might be in "possession of cocaine" themselves, since Mitch had been. Thoughtfully, he said, "You have any evidence of kidnapping, best thing is to go to the FBI. One of their specialties." He looked at Jeff. "Do you think, sir, that Mitch could be hanging with some of his drug-using buddies? I mean - we have to assume, given his record -"

  "That's all. Forget it, man. We should have known better," Jeff said sharply, opening the screen door so hard its hinges squealed.

  The cop stood up, glancing around the apartment, stalling. "I was going to ask if I could use the phone -"

  "They got one at the donut shop," Jeff said, gesturing toward the door.

  The cop's jaws worked and his cheeks mottled. "This isn't a good way, sir, to get help from the police," he said, crossing the room.

  "Nothing from nothing is nothing," Jeff said, slamming the door after the guy. "Christ!"

  He and Prentice looked at each other. Then burst out laughing. Prentice's laughter more genuine. "'They got one at the donut shop!'" Prentice repeated, shaking his head, laughing.

  Then he stopped laughing, and said, "Hey."

  Jeff was crossing to the kitchen. He paused and looked over. "What?"

  "He said, The kid's not out at the Ranch. That was the way that fat-ass cop put it. Like . . ."

  Jeff nodded. "Familiar, calling it the Ranch. Like he was using a nickname for it. Like he knew the place pretty well . . ."

  Los Angeles

  Ephram was tired. But'they were nearly there. It was eight p.m., just getting dark in the California summer, and the Porsche was flying along the Santa Monica Freeway, on its way to Venice. There were more palm trees, now, and the traffic had eased. The sky was going brown-violet at the horizon.

  He glanced at Constance. He felt the ache, again, that had been plaguing him. Her eyes were sunken. Why did this bother him? He knew it would happen. It always happened. Her expression was composed and happy. The way she kept it.

  Ephram shifted down as the traffic thickened, people up ahead rubbernecking a minor accident.

  She hates me, he thought.

  Then he thought: No, she doesn't. Because I have her soul in my hands, and I make it perform for me like a small, trained animal; I squeeze it and reshape it

  like gelatin. She feels what she is commanded to feel. And it certainly wouldn't matter, if she did hate me.

  The traffic slowed to a crawl; his attention was freed up. So he reached into her. Without even looking at her, no acknowledgement from him about what he was doing but a faint, smug smile on his lips; he reached into her brain with the 'plasmic fingers and squeezed her pleasure centre. She squirmed on her seat and moaned. He prompted her and, accordingly, she said: "I love you, Ephram."

  He looked at her. No, she didn't love him.

  He could make her mean it, though. He reached more deeply into her . . .

  "I love you, Ephram," she said, turning to look at him, her eyes glazing with devotion, with sentiment. But her voice betraying a hint of desperation.

  A black cloud swirled inside him. "No. you don't."

  He reached over and grabbed her hand and began to squeeze her fingers together, hard. She whimpered with pain. "Now you love me?" he demanded. "When I do this to you?"

  "Yes!"

  He squeezed harder. Could feel the bones in her hand on the verge of cracking. She cried out.

  He hissed, "Now you love me?"

  "Yes. Yes." No pleasure in her now, just pain and fear and the steel corset of his command: Tell me you love me.

  He let go of her hand, but reached under her skirt, grabbed her pubis, through the filmy panties and began to twist the soft handful of skin and flesh. "Now you love me?"

  "Yes. Yes. Yes!"

  She experienced no masochistic enjoyment of this whatsoever. He could see that clearly.

  He twisted her crotch again. Harder. "You hate me."

  "No, I love you."

  "Hate me."

  "Love you!"

  He could let go of her mind and see what she said. She'd probably still say she loved him, out of fear.

  "You disgust me," he said, letting go of her.

  Then he gave her a charge of pleasure, to keep her quiet. She made a low, humming sound and nestled deeper into the leather of the bucket seats.

  Maybe, he
thought, if I spent enough time at it, I could make her really sincerely love me, giving her no option but that. Enough pressure on the mind would bend it into any shape at all. And that would be sincere love, wouldn't it? What sort of ridiculous contortions did people go though - and put others through - to make people love them, in ordinary relationships? This was more honest.

  It would be real love. As much as there was such a thing as real love . . .

  He wished it were night, so he could see the stars, look for guidance in the secret constellations. The sunset was taking its languorous, smog-blurred time. The lights of the city were glimmering brighter in the twilight. The drug dealers would be out on the street . . . And some of Denver's people, too, would be there . . .

  Probably stupid to come to Denver's town. Could I be steering myself to self destruction, somehow? he wondered. Why did it matter so much what the girl felt today?

  What was wrong with him?

  He gave himself a small jolt of pleasure - something he was very cautious about doing, normally. Didn't want to bum himself out.

  But he felt better, almost immediately. The evening took on a different cast. It went from tragedy to comedy.

  When they drove up beside the traffic accident, they had a good long look It was worse than he'd imagined. There was blood and broken glass.

  If he'd been here at the time, he could have made the victims of the traffic accident enjoy the crash, the mangling. Have to try that sometime. That'd be funny. A little auto-motive psychic tampering. That'd be a gas, ha ha.

  The bitch hates me.

  The San Fernando Valley

  "I'm sorry, sir, we were told invitations only. You got to have a printed invite." He was a stocky, gum-chewing kid of about nineteen in a Burns Security uniform, with walkman earphones pulled down around his neck. He'd stopped them walking up the drive to Arthwright's place. It was a long, circular drive leading to a modern, jutting house with as many round windows as square ones. In the balmy evening, soft red and blue "Malibu" lighting painted blush and eyeshadow on the house's facade. The drive was ornamented with a cactus garden and miniature palms. Jags and Rolls-Royces and BMWs and Corvettes and the occasional Volvo lined the drive, nose to tail. "You can stay, sir," the security guard was saying to Jeff, "but -" He looked apologetically at Prentice and shrugged. "Sorry.''

  Jeff said, "This is bullshit, this guy is my partner and he's a good friend of Arthwright's -" Both exaggerations. "- and Arthwright's gonna be pissed if he doesn't get in. He didn't know Tom was in town -"

  "Forget it, Jeff," Prentice said. This was typical of Jeff - and of Prentice. Jeff was a pusher, a don't-take-no hustler; Prentice was a more cautious angler.

  The guard was squaring his shoulders and shaking his head, when Jeff spotted Arthwright stepping out the gate to say goodbye to someone. Arthwright's voice came to them distantly. "I just wished you coulda stayed longer, Sol - it's so great to see ya -"

  "Hey Zack! Zack!" Jeff fairly shrieked it.

  Prentice winced. "Christ, Jeff, forget it!"

  Arthwright was about to go back through the gate - he looked up, spotted Jeff, and strolled over, one hand in a pocket of his casual dinner jacket - worn with jeans - the other scratching the back of his head. "What's the problem - um, you're Jeff, right?"

  "Yeah, man. Jeff Teitelbaum. You know my buddy Tom Prentice here - we're having some trouble getting past the Gestapo -"

  The guard heaved a theatrical sigh. "You told me no invite no entrance, Mr. Arthwright."

  "That's okay, Billy, I got this one covered. Keep at it." Arthwright waved for Jeff and Prentice to follow him.

  "Look, I don't mean to crash the place, Zack," Prentice began. "Jeff seemed to think since he had an invite it was for two -"

  "Sure, sure, no prob," Arthwright said, leading them in through the wooden backyard gate. There was a TV camera mounted on a pole above the gate post. Prentice could feel its cold lens watching the back of his neck as they went in.

  "Make yourself to home," Arthwright said, in a mimicry of a generic country accent, "and I'll get you a drink." He stepped up to a small, portable bar that

  had been rolled in on casters, spoke to the bartenders, good-looking Mexican fellows in white tuxedos.

  Prentice looked around. Jeff had said it was a Pool Party, but no one was in the pool. No one was even in a swimming suit. They milled about the ornamental-tile verge of the pool with cocktails and little plates of mesquite grill, or sprawled in aluminium loungers, in the soft rippling of reflected chlorine-tinted pool-lights. Soft Mexican music played from hidden speakers.

  "Our special Sangria," Arthwright said, returning with a frosted glass in each hand. He passed them to Jeff and Prentice, winked, and said, "Party hearty." And vanished into the house.

  "He wasn't pleased," Prentice said, feeling humiliated by the whole episode. "We probably pissed him off. And I'm trying to get a deal with him."

  "He's probably embarrassed you didn't get an invitation," Jeff said. "Don't worry about it."

  "Last thing you want to do is embarrass a guy like that." He forced himself to add, "But thanks for getting me in."

  "You hungry?" Jeff asked. "I'm starved. But I don't like this mesquite stuff. Trendy bullshit. They had catered Dim Sum at the Studio's release party -"

  "And Dim Sum's not trendy? You must be kidding. It's like Sushi. Most Americans can't stand that stuff but they choke it down -"

  "Hey I fackin' love Sushi, man. God, check out that platinum blonde. Holy shit. God, do the legs never stop on her? Be still, my heart."

  "Your heart's not the organ in question."

  "Oh, listen to Mr. Sensitive. Boy, you stupped so many of these bimbos -"

  "Not these, I'm sorry to say. You think maybe

  that one's had surgery? Her breasts are too perfect."

  "Not necessarily. There're more beautiful girls - oh God look at that one, half Japanese and half black. That's, like, the most beautiful combination - uh, anyway," Jeff went on, after breathlessly gulping his Sangria, "there really are more beautiful girls in Los Angeles. It's the movies, they draw 'em like a magnet. For seventy some years now. All that money, all that glamour draws 'em, and they come here and get married and they have kids and there's a whole gene pool of incredible women here -"

  "And guys who look like that one." Prentice nodded toward a tanned, muscled young Adonis in a muscle shirt and loose, fashionable, San Francisco tie-dye pants. He strolled by, talking about His New Project with an anorexic model-who's-really-an actress.

  "Guys who look like that make me sick and they should all die," Jeff said, joking but with a spice of real envy.

  "Half of these people probably had cosmetic surgery, man. Five years ago all these L.A. Jewish Princesses had their noses clipped and straightened - now it's fashionable to have a prominent nose with a little bump so they're having the bumps put back! I'm serious!"

  Jeff and Prentice wandered slowly through the crowd, catching bits of conversations, checking out the Looks. A group of tanned, muscletoned people with elaborate razorcuts were passionately arguing about the benefits of free weights as compared to Nautilus machines. Another group advised one another on where to get Sushi without any worms in it. There were trendy punks too, the Beverly Hills variety with all their rebellion acquired in expensive Melrose shops; there

  were a great many people in white peon shirts, with raw crystals on thin gold around their necks. At least half the crowd drank Perrier and Calistoga instead of cocktails and Sangria and the Mexican beer. Only once did Prentice spot two people disappearing into the bathroom together. "Hardly anyone does cocaine anymore," Prentice said, "And that's good, and health is in so a lot of people don't drink, and that's okay, but it's like they all replaced it with Narcissism. Even the women are body builders."

  Jeff nodded. "I'm getting back into working out myself. Hey, we sneer about it cause we're in bad shape. I'd love to look like Mr. Perfect over there, I admit it. But no way I'm gonna give up drink
ing. I'm gonna get that bartender to put a big shot of tequila in this thing."

  "I'm with you, man."

  They went to the bar, stiffened their drinks, and ran into a few of Jeff's friends and a line producer Prentice had worked with. A couple of drinks later, Prentice began to relax. The Mexican music was replaced by another trendy appurtenance, a House Music DJ who played mostly hip-hop mixed with 60s Motown classics. A dozen couples danced self-consciously beside the pool. Arthwright waved cheerily at Prentice as the producer threaded through the crowd. This time Arthwright seemed genuinely friendly. Maybe this was the moment to hit him up about commissioning the script. Or at least get some kind of feedback.

  No. Chances were Arthwright hadn't read it yet and, though lots of Business was done at parties, it wasn't initiated by a guy lower on the pecking order. Talk of business at a social event had to be among equals, or initiated by the holder of power; the one clinging to the higher rung. Anyway, Arthwright had

  gone from view, now, sucked into the social vortex.

  But he reappeared minutes later with the platinum blonde in tow. She was a tall, busty, blue-eyed woman, tanned and leggy, very much the California girl except for the black lace see through corset under her open red shorty jacket; the black lace corset was more of a New York club-scene look. She wasn't wearing any crystals, at least. She had ceramic Mexican Festival of the Dead ear-rings shaped like happy skulls, and figured-silver snake bracelets with little emerald chips for their eyes, and a rather cryptic tattoo on one shoulder. He couldn't quite make out the pattern . . .

  "Tom, this is Lissa," Arthwright said, grinning like one of the Mexican skulls. "She wanted to meet you - she's a fan of Broken Windows!"

  "Really? A woman of rare taste," Prentice said, "especially if you actually bought a ticket in the five minutes before it went to video." Trying for charming self deprecation.

  She smiled. There was a ruby in her one of her incisors. "Oh yeah. I bought a ticket and everything."

  Arthwright had drifted away and Prentice felt at a loss for a moment. She looked at him with finely tuned expectancy. He went for it. "You one of the 12-step crowd that only drinks mineral water, or can I get you a drink?"