The scents are slightly faded, but essentially unchanged except for the additions of Hurley's and Tom's. The absences I had been so focused on when I got coldcocked have been lost as the other odors have drifted and diffused within the room. But the musk is still there, that disturbing sweaty aroma with its hint of sex and desiccation. But I'm not here for that. I'm here for the girl.
I leave the room and hunt around until I find a door leading down to the basement. It's black down there. I close my eyes tight and feel my pupils expand in response to the lack of light. I open my eyes and walk down the stairs into the complicated shadows below.
The smells are different here. Dust and damp concrete dominate with an undertone of heating oil, and rank human sweat laced throughout. A thin stream of light trickles in from the door above. Rough shapes emerge from the gloom. I skirt a pile of rotting cardboard boxes stuffed with molding textbooks, turn a corner and pass the open door of what was once the boiler room from which the oil smell creeps out. There are human smells here in thick, stale profusion. Some may be recent, but the chaos of odor keeps me from sorting them. The sweat stink I smelled on the stairs intensifies as I open a door into what used to be the boys' locker room. Most of the lockers have been removed, but in a corner I make out a dingy pile of what smells like cast-off jockstraps.
I would prefer not to announce myself to anyone lurking down here, but I'm going to have to use some light or this will take all night. From my pocket I pull a tiny Maglite. I close my eyes and switch the flashlight on, twisting the barrel until I know the light has reached its softest focus, and then opening my eyes to little slits. The illumination is sparse and gloomy at best, but to me it might as well be a flood lamp. I hold the light out away from my body so that anyone who might want to take a shot at me will blow my hand off instead of putting one in my belly.
With some visual cues to attach the smells to, it becomes easier to sort the old ones from the new. The gym smells of the boys' locker room get parsed from newer odors. I follow those fresher traces and find an abandoned shooting gallery in a storage room half-filled with broken desks.
The floor is scattered with used needles, candy bar wrappers, empty crack vials and sheets of flattened cardboard that have been used for mattresses. The scents here are fresher than those in the locker room. Chemical tang of heroin and crack, piss and crap in a corner, cheap tobacco from generic brand cigarettes, and dry blood. It's spattered on the floor in a couple spots, but that's not too unusual in a shooting gallery. The cop smells are here as well. They must have been down here when they searched the building. But something else. Hell, it's in here, too. I trace it to one of the cardboard mattresses: that rotting sex-musk from the goth shambler. Stronger here, as if some of the stains on the cardboard might be sexual in origin. As if this was the place where the living fucked the dead.
I catch a glimpse of something on the back of the door; I push it closed. It's a Cure poster. I take a closer look at the walls, and in a couple places I find tacks with the corners of torn-off posters still trapped beneath. I rummage in some crumpled paper stuffed into a bag that someone had been using as a pillow, and come up with a couple more tattered posters. The Dead. Morrissey. That tears it. Your average junkies and zombies aren't too big on interior decorating. Figure this was the same room the Horde girl and her friends were squatting in last year. After they got moved out, the junkies moved in.
I take another look at the blood. Couple days, maybe a week old. This could be where the goth shambler infected the fashion junkies she was with. Hard to say. Maybe she came down here, knew it as a hangout for squatters and campers and came here with some dull message in her brain telling her she could get food here. Maybe the junkies found her here and raped her and . . . No, it doesn't float, neither of them were carrying that smell. But something happened here. Something worse than the usual. And in a place like this the usual is pretty lucking bad.
Not that any of it gets me any closer to the carrier. Or the Horde girl.
Done with the school, I walk over to Tompkins and dig up Leprosy. He's hanging out in the corridor of benches claimed by the squatters. It runs between the kiddy park and the chess tables where most of the junkies hang out. He sees me and starts to bark at me almost before his dog does.
Dogs are amazing creatures, they can sense things, smell things that people never will. But they can't smell the Vyrus inside me, and Leprosy's dog can't smell shit. His nose is all smashed up from getting it kicked in. No, Leprosy's dog barks at me because he's a mean and vicious bastard that tries to tear the throat out of anyone who doesn't happen to be Leprosy himself.
—Fuck off, fuck face.
—Good to see you too, Lep.
The other squatters check us out. Some of them give me a little nod and some others drift away, hoping I won't notice them. As a rule I don't like squatters, but some I like a lot less than others and they know it. Leprosy jerks his dog's choke chain a few times.
—Shut the fuck up, Gristle!
He hauls on the leash until Gristle is standing on his hind legs, straining to get at me, his barks choked down to bloodthirsty growls. It's a pretty good trick on Lep's part seeing as he's all of five two and weighs in around ninety pounds, while Gristle is the product of some bizarre crossbreeding experiment that matched a rottweiler with a wolverine.
—I said fuck off, you're pissing off my dog.
—I don't know about that, Lep, I think I may be turning him on. Look, he has a hard-on.
It's true. Desperate to eat me, Gristle is still choking himself on the leash, clawing at the air with his front paws, his massive dog wood pointed straight at me.
—Down, Gristle! Put it away!
Some of the other squatters are laughing now and Leprosy is getting more pissed. He looks over at them and lets out some slack on the leash. Gristle lunges again, but this time it's at the squatters. They jump back and Lep gives a thin smile. Truth is they may be more afraid of him than of the dog. He's a scrawny little fuck, but he's probably twice as crazy and dangerous as the mutt.
—Stop fucking around, Lep. Tie the dog up and we'll take a quick walk and then the two of you can be back together.
He looks at me and glares, but he drags Gristle over to the fence, ties the leash to the iron bars and starts walking toward the kiddy park. I stroll alongside of him while the dog barks and whines in the background.
—I told you not to come around here anymore, Pitt, my dog hates you. You keep showing up and I'm gonna let him off that fucking leash one day.
—Your dog hates everyone, and if it ever gets off that leash and comes at me I'll kill it dead and you'll be out your only friend. Now tell me about this chick.
I show him the picture of Amanda Horde. He takes a quick look and passes it back.
—She's OK. I'd do her.
—Yeah, if she'd ever let your nasty ass near her.
—Shiiit. Goth chicks are ill for Leprosy. Goth chicks gotta have what Leprosy's got. Especially campers like that bitch. They gotta hit it with Leprosy. It lends au-then-ti-city to the squatting experience. As it fucking were.
—So you know her.
—Seen her around, she was camping like last fucking summer.
—You hook up?
—Naw. Camper bitches may crave what Leprosy has, but he denies them his shit. I take their money and drugs and might let one suck my dick, but Leprosy won't never luck one of them bourgeois fucking cunts.
—So what about this summer, you seen her around?
He stops walking. We're by the kiddy park now. We stand next to the sign on the gate: NO ADULTS ALLOWED! PARENTS AND GUARDIANS ONLY. This is meant to keep the pederasts outside the fence so they can only watch the action within. It's too late for kids now, but any number of the creeps drifting around the park might be child molesters. If only I could smell that.
Leprosy is staring at the empty playground equipment.
—I used to come here when I was a kid.
Lep is about
sixteen.
—Yeah?
—Yeah, before my folks moved us out to Long Island. I loved the park. That's why I came here when my dad kicked me out.
Lep ran away a couple years back to get away from his dad. You guess why.
—Hey, Lep.
—What?
—I look like a piece of toast to you?
—No.
—So stop trying to butter me up. You want money, tell me you want money.
He smiles.
—I want money, fuck face.
I reach in my pocket, dig out a twenty and give it to him.
—So you seen her around or what?
He frowns at the twenty, but stuffs it in his pocket.
—Maybe.
—Don't fuck with me, that's all the cash you're getting tonight.
—I mean maybe I saw her, but I'm really not fucking sure, OK?
—Tell me.
He leans against the rails of the fence and scratches himself under a T-shirt that might have said something once, but now is just the same washed-out gray-green of all squatter clothes.
—So, like a week or two back we got a little beer bust going at a squat on C. You know, bunch a us pooled our change for some forties, and Fat Stinky Pete had a sack of hay and we were just getting all fucked up. So you know Yankee Dan, right?
—The skinny Cuban kid always has the Mets hat?
—Yeah, guy loves the Mets like life so we call him fucking Yankee. Pisses him off. Anyway, Yankee is kind of a weasel and nobody can really stand the fucking shit bag and now here he shows up un-in-fucking-vited and he's towing these fucking campers with him. I mean, they got all the right shit on and their hair is five different colors and their lips are pierced, but the clothes are from Urban Outfitters and their piercings are too clean and the dye jobs are two-hundred-fucking-dollar-a-pop deals from some Upper East Side fag salon. So we know what's up even if Yankee is a fucking retard. Like the standing policy on this shit for any self-respecting punk is to stomp these pieces of shit, but we're pretty fucked up and feeling all mellow and besides we're out of beer and campers all have cash. So we give Yankee and these turds a bunch a shit, but we let 'em stay after they go out and grab some more forties and another sack.
—The girl, Lep.
—Yeah, I'm fucking getting to her.
He feels at his pockets for cigarettes that we both know aren't there. I pull out my pack of Luckys, pass him one and we both light up.
—So Lep is feeling good. And one of these camper chicks, she's digging his vibe and starts rubbin' up against it and shit. Now, like I said, these sluts from Uptown are gluttons for the real thing. They want to fuck in the dirt and get come on and shit so they can go back to fucking prep school and tell their friends about all the freaky shit they got into. Like they can all buy whatever the fuck they want, so having the latest Britney Spears CD or this year's Porsche means shit. But fucking some scabby squatter in a basement with ten people watching, that's a fucking social coup. So Lep, he's not gonna give this bitch the satisfaction, but she's pretty hot and I ain't had it for a bit so I tell her she can suck it, and down she goes.
—I can't tell you how charming this is. Now how about the girl, was it her?
He shakes his head.
—No, not that slut, but maybe her friend.
—Her friend?
—Yeah. See she finishes her job and Leprosy does his business and she's still into it, but Leprosy is not, and I repeat, not going to stick it in this cunt. So she says, what if it's her and her friend. Well, Leprosy has been around, but this piques his curiosity. So I ask her what friend and she points to one of the other camper chicks in the room. Well I check out that chick and she's OK, but Leprosy has his principles and I let this slut know it and tell her if she wants to set up a three-way or pull a train there are other guys around who don't have Leprosy's moral fiber. But at the time I think to myself that the other chick, she looked familiar. And now you show me that picture, I'm thinking to myself that that might be it, that chick might be the one in your picture.
—Might.
—Well, the hitch here is that the chick in the squat, she didn't have any makeup on. Now the chick in the picture, I saw her last year no doubt, and she always had all that ghoul shit all over her. But this chick in the squat? Not even nail polish. So it might have been her, but you see my fucking problem.
I nod.
—If she's around and it's the girl from last year, there are people who would know, right?
—Sure.
—Find out, Lep.
He raises his eyebrows.
—How fucking much is it worth?
—It's worth a lot. It's worth saving me a lot of hassles. Which means it's worth keeping me happy and keeping you from getting hurt. So find out for sure if it was her and then call me at Evie's bar. Now go get your dog before it kills itself or eats someone.
I turn and walk away and Leprosy shouts after me.
—Sure thing, Pitt. Hey, me, I'm at your fucking beck and call, right, fuck face? Hey, I got an idea, why don't you go check out Realm? I hear all the hot young goths hang out there.
He laughs and I keep walking. Leprosy is a little fuck, but he'll do as I tell him. He'll do it because he owes me. He remembers the time his father came cruising in here from Long Island to get him. Comes rolling up in his stockbrokers' standard-issue Lincoln Continental and storms into the park like he owns it. Leprosy spots him and tries to run, but his dog gets off the leash and goes after the bastard. Dad doesn't even break stride, that dog runs up and he smashes the toe of his wingtip right into its nose, which is how Gristle lost his sense of smell. The dog drops, bleeding all over the concrete, and dad starts after Leprosy. Me, I'm sitting on a bench smoking, like I do, and maybe this is none of my business, but I got involved anyway. I beat the fuck out of the ass-raping son of a bitch, made his nose match the dog's. I did that for free, but it doesn't mean Leprosy doesn't owe me.
"Bela Lugosi's Dead." It's like their theme song. I'm hip-deep in Realm, watching crowds of black-garbed teenagers with pasty faces "dance" to Bauhaus. Back in my day goths were all these mopey, alienated, semi-suicidal kids. Pretty much your average teenagers, just dressed in black. Back then they were mostly hooked into the music: The Cure, The Smiths, Bauhaus, The Damned, a little Depeche Mode. Now it's gotten all tangled up in fetishism and S&M. So here's what it's like inside Realm. Over here you got your video screens showing clips from Nosferatu intercut with scenes from some tape of people getting their genitals pierced. Over there you got your brass chandeliers scavenged from junk shops around the Tri-State area, draped in black cheesecloth and illuminated with red lightbulbs. Along the walls you got your innumerable mirrors, brass framed and also draped in black cheesecloth. In point of fact, most everything here is draped in black cheesecloth, including half the patrons. Up on that stage you got your fetishist couple performing a rather tame S&M act. He's strapped to a big rusty steel X, wearing nothing but a black leather G-string. She's in the obligatory thigh-high boots and corset, and is sticking alligator clips connected to a car battery onto his nipples, shocking him when he fails to call her "mistress." Which is most of the time. Hot, right? Could be, except they're both middle-aged, seriously overweight and balding. Nonetheless, they're drawing a pretty big crowd, so who's to say their booking agent doesn't know what he's doing.
Over by the stage you got most of the new school goths favoring latex and studs. On the other side of the room, grooving on the music and the bootleg bottles of absinthe they scored from some guy that just got back from Brazil, are the old-school crowd. These folks lean more toward velvet and lace with a healthy dose of leather thrown in. And worn close to the heart of each, you'll no doubt find a treasured, autographed copy of Interview with the Vampire. This is the vampire crowd, the ones who really get into the whole undead experience. Half of them have their own coffins and the other half are saving up. These are the ones who think getting turned into a vampire will be ju
st like The Hunger. Lots of hot sex with Catherine Denueve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie followed by a centuries long, lingering, tragic, but ultimately poetic death, which is also filled with lots of hot sex with Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and David Bowie. And that's what makes these people such easy pickings for your average bottom-feeding Vampyre, because so many of them dream of being turned. But they don't know shit about the Vampyre, and what a pain in the ass it is to be one.
I grab a beer and eyeball the crowd. If Lep is right, Amanda Horde may have dropped the goth look. I push away from the bar and take a pass through the room. A couple chicks in full goth
Kabuki-face have the right build, but a closer look tells me they're not my girl. I hang out for another half hour, keeping a close eye on the door. No dice. This is a waste of time. It's not like I can flash the girl's picture around or hang up flyers. That would pretty much go in the face of the discreet job Predo and Marilee Horde want. I'll check the basement and blow.
Realm's basement is a dark warren of small rooms, each with its own ambience, as it were. There's the Victorian Room, crammed with old sofas and cast-off end tables, all of it illuminated by oil lamps. Next to that is the Murder Room, decorated like a suburban kitchen, but with fake blood splattered across the walls and ceiling, and body outlines taped on the floor. There's the Dungeon Room and the Padded Cell and the Mad Scientist Room. I stick my head into each, take a quick look at the inhabitants and move on. Suburban goths from Long Island are sitting around the Formica-topped table in the Murder Room playing quarters. The Dungeon Room is hosting an impromptu panel discussion on spanking. And so on. I duck out of the Padded Cell, where a guy is being strapped into a straitjacket by one of his buddies, and head for the stairs. Time to get out of here.
I catch a flash of white out of the corner of my eye, turn to see what it is, see nothing, turn, and then he's right in front of me, blocking the stairs.