The alley I’d suspected but not seen was hardly more than a dark line between two empty buildings, one place that looked like a Laundromat, its windows soaped over, the other maybe a grocer’s, years ago. Neither looked like it’d seen occupants in ten years or more, but things had a way of falling apart pretty quick in this corner of town and maybe it’d only been that many months.
I stepped into the alley and started along it, studying the shadows in front of me, the vacant windows on the floors over my head, my elbows just about brushing both walls as I walked. If someone decided to ambush me here I was pretty well cooked—no cover, no place to run except in a long, straight line. Made me appreciate that old chestnut about shooting fish in a barrel in ways I never had before. I pulled my piece and held it down at my side, somewhat hidden in the folds of my coat, but ready if I needed it. I really hoped I wouldn’t need it. I didn’t care to think too much about the last time I’d fired it. It bugged me to shoot a girl, even one who wanted to rip my throat out.
Up ahead, the alley dead-ended in a wall as straight and skinny as a chimney, and for a second I wondered where the hell Ferryman and Miss Night could’ve gone. Then I spotted the subtle outline of a door set in the wall to the right, painted black so it looked like nothing but another shadow until you got up close.
A red circle about as big around as a dinner plate had been painted on the black, right at eye level.
I slipped up beside the door and held my breath a minute, listening for movement, voices, whatever.
Nothing.
I gave the door a push. It didn’t move. I looked for a handle and didn’t find one. Didn’t find a keyhole either, for that matter. I tipped the muzzle of my gun up and gave the door three quick raps, the way I’d seen Damia Nyx do on that other door.
Again, nothing.
Hell with it, I thought, and threw my shoulder into the door. The tiny alley didn’t give me much room for a strong start but I didn’t really need it. The door was thin and the wood was old and the frame splintered on my second hit, dumping me into a deeper darkness than what I’d had to put up with in the alley.
I swept my gun across the blackness, but no one was there to greet me, at least, no one I could see. Still, I didn’t relax my trigger finger just yet.
I felt my way down a corridor roughly as wide as the alley I’d just put behind me, the fingers of my non-weapon hand wandering over a rough terrain of rotten plaster and naked lathing. The place smelled of neglect and decay, and again that something else I couldn’t quite put a name to. Best I could tell, I was alone there.
Once or twice as I walked I thought I felt rats scurry over my shoes, but I managed to suppress the urge to take a few pot shots at them. Every fifteen feet or so I stopped and listened, making sure I didn’t have any other company. At some point the passage bent at a right angle, then again, and then descended a short staircase, and another, and a third. I had no idea now where the hell I was in relation to the buildings on either side of the alley, or my morbid getaway car. I didn’t much like the feeling of being lost, but I was getting mighty used to it. And anyway, as long as I hadn’t missed any doors or branches, I was still on the track of Evelyn Night and the chauffer.
The next time I paused, I could hear noises up ahead somewhere. I inched forward until I could make out voices, and music. Familiar music. Even now it made my skin crawl. A bit of wayward light spilled in a few feet further along and I crept toward it. Another sharp bend led me into a hallway full of cigarette smoke and dim reddish light and that god-awful music, some kind of jazz written with snake venom and played by madmen on diseased instruments. I tightened my fingers on the Harpe’s grip and stepped out into the half-lit room, knowing where I was even before I looked around.
Club Erebus.
It didn’t make any damn sense—we’d parked at least a half-dozen blocks from this dive, and I would’ve bet a month’s rent I hadn’t been walking that long, even with all the twisting and turning. So how the hell had I ended up there? But there was no mistaking the place—the dark patrons, the smell, that damned music. It was either Club Erebus or its evil twin.
I surveyed the room carefully, trying to get my bearings. No sign of Evelyn, no sign of the chauffer or Mister Dapper and the harem. No sign of the thug doorman, either—Jimmy Porter, my client had told me during her brief lucidity, better known to his friends as the Doberman. Just the usual milling lowlifes and cocktail girls. I seemed to recall that the last time I’d visited this place, I’d found Radamanthus and his girls at a table not far from that poisonous jazz combo, so, despite the way that music drove nails into my brain, I stashed the .38 away and walked toward it, hoping I could remain somewhat anonymous in the smoke and shadows. I wasn’t ready to deal with the Doberman, not yet, and for that matter didn’t know how I’d handle Radamanthus or Ferryman if I stumbled over them.
One thing at a time.
I couldn’t say why, but that infernal music got under my skin worse this time. The off-color moans of the sax, the sickly pulse-throb of the bass, the insipid broken-glass plinking of the piano … it slithered over me the way a python slithers over its prey, slowly squeezing the breath out of me. I watched the faces of the patrons floating like party balloons over their tables, all hollow smiles and bright empty eyes, and wanted to shout curses at them—how could they put up with that grinding-gears clatter? I bit my lower lip and walked on, forcing myself to ignore the music—and the itch waking up around my left eye. All at once the damn thing was worse than ever. I tried to sell myself on the idea it was because of the smoke and the cheap perfume and stale-booze stink in the air, but knew better.
Seemed like I wandered for hours in that place, a rat lost in some scientific-sadist’s maze, one room leading to another, then another, and all the time that rotten excuse for music ebbed closer but not close enough. I managed to duck two waitresses in fishnet stockings and no one else in the joint seemed interested in me at all. Next thing I knew I stood looking over the bar at old cue-ball, the tight-lipped hoochmaster I’d gotten nothing but careless glances from last time. I kept my hat low over my eyes and my back to the fella in case he hadn’t warmed to me any since our first meeting. At the same time, I wondered how the hell I’d ended up at the damn bar—I would’ve bet dollars to doughnuts I’d been headed away from this room. I scratched at that clawing itch and stared around, discrete as possible. Four different doors out of here and my sense of direction was shot. How was a man supposed to think straight, anyway, with the smoke in his eyes and that music in his head? I picked a door at random and wandered through.
Somewhere not far off I caught a sound, a tattered shred of laughter, familiar but not familiar, a sound about as cheerful as nails down a blackboard. I seized on it and headed where it came from, trying to puzzle out how I could know it so well without knowing it at all.
Then it struck me I’d never heard her laugh before. That was the thing. And even though I knew her voice, I felt sure all the way down to my shoes that the woman I knew as Evelyn Night could never make a sound quite like that one.
I poked my head around the next corner and spotted an empty room. But the sound came again and I chased it, around another bend, down a narrow hallway with art deco sconces that cast no light and carpet the color of freshly spilled blood. The hall ended in a beaded curtain, faux-rubies the shape of teardrops. I slipped up, quiet as a fog, and peered through the swinging gaps between the strings.
Radamanthus sat in the middle, same as last time, probably the same as always. On either side, the girls fawned and flapped their painted eyelashes and cooed like doves. And there, right next to him, sat my client, giving him her long pale throat to nibble on. He indulged himself between swallows of wine. The pug-nosed .38 in my pocket whispered to me, but I fought off the urge to pop the fella between the eyes, not for the way he was looking at Evelyn but for the way he wasn’t looking at her, even when he had his thin lips all over her skin. I didn’t want to think about what he was doing with the hand that didn’t have a wine glass in it, the one I couldn’t see beneath the table, but the blond on his right had her eyes closed and her head thrown back, so I could imagine.
Everything inside me went cold.
The blond with the bedroom eyes. I knew her, would probably see her in nightmares for the rest of my life. The gashes she’d left in my skin still itched.
I admit I was never the best shot on the firing range, and a short-barreled gun like my .38 is worth nothing for accuracy past ten paces or so, at least not in my hands, but I’d taken two shots at that girl. Two at close range. I was sure I’d plugged her with both of them—I’d seen them catch her in that sexy shoulder of hers, and that shapely thigh. Even if I hadn’t opened any major arteries and she hadn’t bled out down there in the dark, she should have been out of commission for a good long time, not out and boozing it up with her pals. But there she sat, a trembling smile pasted on her delicate lips, her slender body swaying like seaweed in a tide. The table and her stylish jacket hid any hints of her injuries.
My head swam. Had I hit her at all? I’d been drunk, sure, and who knows what else had been swimming in the whisky, floating in the strange-smelling smoke? Had I hallucinated the whole damn thing? The gashes on my wrists insisted I hadn’t, to say nothing of the love nip on my neck and the slashes on my stomach and shoulder. And I’d checked the gun in Doc’s car as we jostled our way to my office, to make sure I’d gotten it right. Two chambers empty.
So that much had been real, too.
All the same, there she sat, smiling and fawning, having a fine old time.
My stomach lurched like I might bring up lunch. I gave a moment’s serious thought to finding that band and kicking some teeth out just to shut them up, or to maybe clawing my left eye out to stop that itch. Suddenly those two ideas seemed about as rational as anything I was dealing with in the world.
Familiar eyes flickered my way. I slipped back into the hall out of sight, hoping against hope the girl next to Damia Nyx hadn’t actually seen me.
I don’t know how long I stood there, slouched against the wall just inside that bead curtain, trying to pull my head together. It seemed like an hour or more but for all I know it was only a few minutes. Finally I sucked up some little bit of courage and spied through the dangling ruby teardrops again.
The room was empty.
I didn’t take time to wonder how they’d slipped out without my hearing a sound, but stepped right in and had a good look around. Theirs was the only booth in the alcove; on the other three walls hung musty-smelling red velvet curtains. The door was behind the one opposite the booth. The red circle on it looked a lot like it had been scrawled there with something other than paint.
I reached for the knob.
Someone big came out of nowhere and grabbed my shoulder. He spun me around and I found myself face-to-face with Jimmy the Doberman. Looking at that mug of his, I could appreciate his nickname more than I cared to.
“Where you think you’re goin’, pal?”
That voice, thick as a slab of lard. Last time I’d heard it, the big Bruno had been standing over me in the dark of my office. I could hardly imagine he wouldn’t recognize his own handy work stamped all over my face, but on the other hand he didn’t come across as all that bright. I gave some thought to the piece in my coat, and whether or not I could pull it and fire before this lug clobbered me. I hoped I wouldn’t find out.
“Isn’t this the john?” I slurred my words some so maybe he’d get the impression I’d been tying it on for a while.
“I think I better show you the street, pal.”
He started to lead me away; the hand on my shoulder pinched like a vice.
“Now it doesn’t have to be like this between us,” I said as he took me into the next room, back toward the bar. “How’s about I buy you a drink?”
“Zip it, Mac, and I won’t snap you in half before I toss you out.”
I caught a break just then, managed to grab the elbow of one of those half-dressed cocktail girls. “Bourbon for me and a scotch for my friend here—Hume and Culloden, if you got it.” I gave the big man a nod. “Best brown plaid you ever swallowed, trust me.”
The goon faltered. The bargirl raised an eyebrow at him. He slung me into a chair and crouched on the one opposite me. “Make it a double,” he told the girl.
She nodded and slinked off into the cigarette haze.
“I don’t usually drink with the customers, ’specially when I’m about to evict ’em,” the Doberman explained, none of the hardness leaving his granite voice. “But I s’pose I can make an exception one time.”
I nodded, touched the brim of my hat at him. Seemed Evelyn had gotten this much right, the fella was a sucker for Hume and Culloden. Pricey stuff, but if it’d grease my way through that secret door I’d buy a round for the house.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere, pal?”
The Doberman was squinting at me and twitching his big nose. I drew away some, despite myself, thinking of my .38 again. Was this goon actually sniffing at me, trying to get my scent? A fella could take his nickname too far, I thought. But then, the deeper I got into this twisted game, the less all the strangeness surprised me.
“Could be,” I said, clinging to the dwindling hope that he was the kind of fella who forgot a face as soon as he’d finished pounding on it. “I been in here once or twice.”
“Uh-huh.” He smirked, cocked his head at me. I think it was on his mind to say more but just then the girl came and put our drinks in front of us and took a wad of cash off me.
“Here’s gas in your tank,” I said, raising my glass before the goon could put another two thoughts together.
“Whatever you say,” he agreed, not bothering to lift his glass to mine. We drank. He put it away fast, exactly like I’d counted on. I tried to think about getting to Evelyn on the other side of that door, and not about how this lug was gulping down what little money I’d wrung out of this case so far. Time was when the money would’ve concerned me a lot more than the woman beyond that door—more than any woman, for that matter.
I watched him settle his seventh glass on the table, moving with the great and painstaking care only drunks have, and knew I was getting close. The Doberman was a big fella but that was a lot of booze for anyone’s blood and he was sinking pretty quick. I ordered another round for him, nursing my third bourbon. I could’ve taken a good deal more but I was determined to keep some kind of edge on the man.
“Ah, hell,” the Doberman said, plucking his fresh glass off the barmaid’s cork-lined tray and swallowing half at a go, “I remember now where I metcha before. You’re that dumb sap I put the lights out on in that office across town. Sure. That, uh, private dick.” He downed the rest of his scotch. “Prob’ly you shouldn’t oughtta be here.”
“How about I buy you another one of those?” I asked, thinking how much I wanted to put a slug in the fella’s midsection … or maybe just a shade lower. It would’ve been quite a kick, putting some hot lead into the goon who’d made such a mess of my face. But I figured gunfire would be a bit too conspicuous even in this place.
The Doberman shrugged his meaty shoulders. “Sure,” he muttered.
The ninth Hume and Culloden put him under the table, lights out—a gentler method than he’d used on me, but ultimately as effective, and pretty sure to leave him regretting whatever he could remember of our little tête-á-tête whenever he came to. I dropped a couple bills on the table to cover the tip and slipped away back down that hallway, around into the private room behind the bead curtain. I tugged the red drapes aside and tried the door. Locked, as I figured. Time now to find out if my little hunch would work as well as the other trick Evelyn Night had taught me, plying Jimmy the Doberman with H and C.
I slipped the red-black ring I’d clipped from Damia Nyx around my third finger and grabbed the knob again. I couldn’t feel what slot the ring’s thorn slipped into, but it had to be something like that because the lock tripped and the door yawned open.
I didn’t especially care for the odor drifting up out of that dark passage, but I went inside anyway.