13

EVERYTHING SLOWED. I FELT AS IF I WAS SWIMMING through molasses; the pain pierced through my skin and nerves like barbed wire. Edgar had warned me never to “travel to the ethereal plane that maps our own” more than a fistful of times in a life. I’d done what I call joyriding three times in the past month—once earlier today—and if this electric bone sizzle was any measure, I’d best stay the hell away from it until I was already dead.

Against the tsunami of agony, the Boardwalk stood awash in dark and moody colors thanks to a slice of cloud killing the sun’s rays, the darkened landscape dampened into a depressive reflection, almost a negative afterimage. I wondered how much the pain burning through me had to do with the tone of the joyride, but I didn’t have time for pondering.

My right foot hit the ground three times and I rushed forward against the near-static images of the Boardwalk, closing in on Jack. He had the pallor of a corpse and his whole body was shaking. The death-ash tang of Black Lotus oozed from his sweaty flesh.

I flicked out a card from the deck, an ace of spades, but I had no desire to drop the death card on Jack—who was many things, but not worthy of murder by my fine hands. Instead, I flipped out the queen of clubs, the Lucky Lady of Freedom and Movement, which seemed more apropos.

Blood began running from each of my nostrils as if a tap had opened, so I stopped the mental appraisal and let the queen fly with a snap of my arm and flick of the wrist. The card sang through the air, fast as lightning. Pain magnified behind my eyeballs like balloons made of broken glass being inflated in my brain.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright!

Chains of pain whiplashed my skull, knocking me back just as my grip on the board died. Left leg up in the air, head heading south, I shot out my arms to deaden the fall—totally forgetting the cards in my hand. Smacking the earth, the cards emptied from their pack as the pain of impact rumbled my bones. Then Jack Lumber’s scream reminded me of fates worse than myths.

“Argh!”

Everything felt like lead, and the Boardwalk’s planks were hotter than a branding iron. I brought my knees up to my chest, inhaling blood and snot before executing a perfect kip-up. A gaggle of heads wooo’d as I went from horizontal to vertical just in time to see Jack grabbing his bloody ankle, dancing on one leg like he was on a pogo stick. Then Jack was jumping in my direction with industrial-grade fists ready, the stink of Black Lotus billowing from him like cheap cigar smoke from the poor side of Hades.

“I’m gonna enjoy bashing your melon!”

Dizziness and exhaustion ate my equilibrium as I raised my guard, hands open and palms out as if in deference. “Easy, pal! You were going off the rails. No one gets bonus points for hitting women and old folks.”

“Rawr!”

The fists struck at me, clumsy and thick. I pulled a little wushu magic trick by inviting a punch to my face, then bending the momentum by twisting his wrist. Jack’s fist landed directly on Jack’s face. Goddamn, but that monster hand had speed and power. Add accuracy and he’d be dangerous.

Jack staggered back to the roar of laughter from the crowd, favoring his ankle, dripping blood and sweat all over my cards.

“Hah! He punched his own face!”

“This must be part of the Olympic Auditorium wrestling show.”

“Ah, this is fake! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!”

Calling these tough guys fakes was an invitation to trouble. The clarity of rage in Jack Lumber’s eyes confirmed it. He shot a hand out and grabbed some gawky teen, choked him, then lifted him in the air. “Call me a fake? I’ll be fucking your mom on your grave tomorrow, you goddamn rube!”

The crowd whistled, thinking it was all part of the show, but the kid’s purpling face spoke to the life being choked out of him by this musclehead. Enough was enough.

“Put him down, Jack,” I said. “Or can you only beat up kids a third your size?”

He jerked his head around, tossed the kid like a bag of rotten eggs into the crowd, and hobbled toward me. “You screwed my race! So now, I’m going to rip off your—”

I threw a spinning back kick to his face. Hit him right on the button, under the jaw, with the force of three uppercuts.

Jack shut up, then fell down, then was out for the one, two, three . . . thousand.

A roar of applause came from the crowd.

“This must be a new movie!”

“Where’s the camera?”

“Hey, mister, do you know Bruce Lee?”

I smiled. I did, but that story was for another day. “Show’s over, gang! Thanks for watching rehearsal for our new hit cop show, Boardwalk Beat, coming this fall to CBS right after Hawaii Five-O. But autographs to anyone who can fetch my wingtips from the end of the Boardwalk.”

A few of them ran off and I scrambled, feet burning, over to Jack.

He was out, but his body seemed to still be running like his foot was stuck on the gas, chest heaving like a bellows. The taste of magic was so bitter, it was as if it was coursing through his veins and its waste product pumping out as exhaust. In short, his body was a pollution factory, strong and deadly and working overtime to reach death.

I turned to the horizon just in time to see a silhouetted figure run off the pier. Someone tossed what looked like a bag into the air and the shadowy figure snatched it like a hawk, then descended over the edge.

Panting on hands and knees a few yards from the edge was Billy Mars.

Kevin vanished over the edge of the Boardwalk, followed by a splash.

I smiled, took off my brown paisley tie, and tied a strong tourniquet around Jack’s cut ankle, tight enough to staunch the bleeding and to make sure it hurt with each step he took. I ran through his pockets, and found a joint, keys, and a twenty-dollar bill. At least he was solvent. Also, an empty dimebag that stank of ashes from a lost age.

Black Lotus had been in there. But how had he taken it?

The mob of kids from Tumbledown and other assorted spectators were now running, many of them cheering “Kev! Kev! Kev!”

I put back Jack’s belongings, then checked his pulse. It was tapping like a speed freak in detention. I pulled back his ruddy lip.

Between his stained yellow teeth and bleeding gums were flecks of black. One poked out and seemed thin. Dried. A petal that had been cultivated somehow or way.

“Kev! Kev! Kev!”

I let the huffing Jack’s lips fall closed and grabbed my board, careful to keep one eye on Billy Mars in case he, too, had some kind of magic, or perhaps a transporter like Star Trek, and would vanish from L.A. the moment he knew someone was onto him.

“Kev! Kev! Kev!”

Two girls approached, the bikini-top and Mickey Mouse duo. “You forgot your shoes,” Mickey said. “Much obliged.”

“We heard there was a reward,” said Bikini. They each playfully hid a shoe behind their back.

Ugh. I never understood men who liked young girls after they got done being young boys. Sure, these two were cute, but something grilled into me from the circuit always proved true: girls you need to teach, women will blow your mind, so don’t creep backwards. Go around the block long as I have and you realize the best women are a challenge, and the best challenge comes from experience.

I held out the board. “Trade! One, two, three!”

I tossed the board in the air. Both girls launched my wingtips, heels first, at my chest, all to the sound of Austen moaning, “That’s my board!”

The girls laughed and ran off; Austen chased after.

Shoes slipped on without socks, I turned and saw Mars running into the oncoming traffic, clearly tired of the spotlight without a championship belt.

Until he looked up and saw me.

I smiled. “Looks like we both lost.” He sneered. I walked toward him and nodded at Jack. “Sorry your insurance policy didn’t pan out. Nice way to rig things when you know you’re going to lose.”

“And what would you know about anything, square?”

“I know our friend Jack’s about one gram of salt away from cardiac arrest with your product in his mouth.”

Billy snarled, board shaking.

“And if you think you can swing and hit better than Jack, hero, be my guest. But if you’d like to avoid naptime with your friend, why don’t you and I get a Coke and you tell me all you can about Black Lotus. Or else, when the beach cops ride in here, I might remember your name as I report this sad little adventure.”

Billy Mars lips pursed. “Let’s get this over with. I can’t be seen hanging with the enemy.”

I smiled, and we headed for a burger shack called Caveman, which featured a dinosaur eating a burger made out of screaming cavemen, which I thought was a clever reversal. “Your treat,” I said with relish, because when it came to the smug, I always enjoyed adding insult to injury. Helped them learn humility.

Two lukewarm Cokes in hand, Billy and I walked off the Boardwalk and into the little maze of “backstage” areas for shacks and stands, where the sizzle of grills merged with the ocean’s roar and the cacophony of human banter.

“My prophecy came true,” he said. “The most deserving won.”

“Funny thing about prophecies,” I said. “You keep them vague and you can justify any outcome. Where’d you learn such hackwork? The Boardwalk?”

He snickered. “I’m in the Magic Circle!” He sat his Coke down on the wooden walk, then flashed his hands and did a series of junior coin tricks that would impress anyone who wasn’t me. “I’m not some back-alley carny fixing dice and doing the Paris drop for idiots. I’m legitimate!”

I raised my hands in surrender. “Sincere apologies. But I’d hate for that professional gang to think its main face on the Boardwalk was involved in illicit goods.”

His bravado retreated into an icy stare. “I don’t sell anything.”

“You mean ‘not anymore.’ Stop stalling, Billy. What do you know?”

His sour puss contorted more. Hoping to mask his reaction, he picked up his drink and took a slurp. “So, sure, I used to sell some. Still got friends in the concert world.” His brag indicated he was, apparently, a musician—and that I was supposed to be impressed.

“I made little mints here and there selling grass, uppers, coke, even H.” Then his nostrils flared. “But junkies, man, they’re like leeches. They’ll follow you around. I’d be doing my prophet routine and they’d be jonesing in the crowd, scaring away my daylight patrons and generally being a drag. God, that drug is going to ruin our good time, you know?”

I thought of the jazzmen I’d met, black musicians who were gods on the chitlin’ circuit, and how dope infected their lives and careers. So many dead from a drug that helped take away the sting of a world that said they were lesser men, of an America that enslaved their grandparents, then dropped the chains of the plantation and put on of those of Jim Crow. Heroin was another form of slavery. And this little putz was talking about his good time getting ruined? “Save the philosophy for the acolytes. You were slinging dope.”

“Yeah, until those zombies kept creeping me out. So, I sold my end of the business to another candy man.”

“Who?”

“A cat named Mick Butler. He’d been a roadie for the Pretty Things but was finding night work groovier. Man, what a sleaze.”

“What earned him that epitaph?”

“Pretty sure he was doing porno before he saw there was more money in hustling dope. Guy just . . . let’s just say I wouldn’t leave a girl alone with him, maybe even a boy. Has a big, creepy nose with a waxed moustache like some lost member of a barbershop quartet. Whatever, he bought me out good, and all my zombies belong to him. Which is a relief.”

“Gone? Do they have a junkie HQ or squat where they all hang at?”

“That’s just it. They did. All of the junkies dropped in on abandoned clubs downtown. But they got torn down so they could put in a few more tourist traps. I haven’t seen one of them since. It’s like they vanished.”

No one misses junkies when they’re gone. They’re just relieved. They don’t ask questions. “Addicts stick to where they’ve got access. Is Butler still hustling here?”

“If he is, it ain’t smack. Though word was he also had contacts in the Golden Triangle. Asian gangs and revolutionaries all too happy to sell dope to the USA to fuel their revolution against Uncle Sam.”

“Gods of war love irony. Where can I find this Mick Butler?”

“Don’t know, never asked, got no clue. Know he’s never around the Boardwalk. I wanted nothing to do with that creep once he bought me out.”

“Then who do the kids here buy drugs from?”

“Weed? Everyone’s got it. Man, you need to buy a clue.”

“I mean something stronger. Something like speed. What some call Black Lotus.” Billy pursed his lip as if to keep more words from spilling. “Your buddy Slumber Jack? Pretty sure he was enjoying a particular variety.”

Billy raised his hands. “Look, I never heard of Black Lotus till you mentioned it, man. It sounds like Spanish fly for those with an Asian fetish. If it’s something Jack is into, hey, bodybuilders and wrestlers were among my best customers, not for smack, but other shit. They’re all at the Muscle Beach Gym or the Olympic Auditorium, but that’s as far as I go and as far as I know, dig? Can I go now, officer?”

I nodded and he turned to leave, then looked back. “But if you go poking around Mick’s clients, be careful. He’s not just a creep. He’s tough. Not like Jack, not pretend tough. Carries a long knife and always smiles when he touches it.” He shivered. “Fucking with that dude is a funeral waiting to happen.”

“Thank you for another prophecy,” I said, and Billy tsked and left for the Boardwalk.

I followed him back to the Boardwalk and watched fans swarm around him as he proclaimed Kevin the winner. Jack was, incredibly, already on his feet, stumbling toward a toilet, tanned body covered with the grit of the Boardwalk like a pox. My tie around his ankle had slid off . . . and he wasn’t bleeding.

I hadn’t done that good a job. That wound had healed in minutes.

The wind had scattered the Bicycle deck like giant confetti. A few cards were still slipping and sliding, spinning and tripping. One came close to me and I snatched it between two fingers:

The Joker. I put it in my front pocket.

Kevin, riding on his board at the pace of the crowd, was grinning ear to ear, a dripping-wet bag of weed tucked in his jean shorts, hair soaked but skin quickly drying. I stepped out, waved. “Hail to the king of the Boardwalk!”

Kevin stopped and the crowd lurched forward. He was blocked from view until he silently communicated for them to part the way. “Not if you hadn’t been so good at chasing for last place.”

Everyone laughed, but only he and I got the joke. “Kid, I’ve been the last in line since before you were born.”

“Still, thanks, man. You ever need a place to crash, we have it for you at Tumbledown.”

“Much obliged,” I said, and Kevin and his bevy of fans wheeled and walked off down the Boardwalk, then turned and headed into the city.

With them gone, I strolled down the Boardwalk, and took inventory:

My feet ached from gripping the earth like I was on a balance beam above the River Styx. My nose was crusted with blood from joyriding for about two seconds; I was pushing myself toward the edge of the grave if I kept it up.

Black Lotus seemed to be tied to the Boardwalk drug culture and this scuz Mick Butler. Jack Lumber had used it, and the smell made me positive it was the same kind that got dropped at the Legion Hall. Jack was a wrestler as well as a musclehead. Billy Mars had sold to both and Mick Butler had taken over his clientele. If Mars was telling the truth, Black Lotus didn’t come into play until Butler was on the scene. Whoever put Cactus in the hospital was tied to Black Lotus and, as of now, that meant Mick Butler, wrestlers, and bodybuilders.

I knew where to find the muscleheads: here on the Boardwalk at the open-air gym. It was time to find some denizens of the squared circle and maybe Mick Butler.

But first I needed to check how the wider world was doing.

Passing a shack selling crystals that would cure cancer with energy that had no “chemicals,” I came to a phone booth that hadn’t been busted or used as an outhouse. Plastered on one side was a poster.

FRIDAY AT THE OLYMPIC AUD! WRESTLING ACTION!

SEE THE MOST DANGEROUS MEN ON EARTH COMPETE IN THE RING!

PLUS, LOCAL ROCK SENSATION WITCHIE POO!

Scrawled across WITCHIE POO was the word CANCELED.

The picture featured a supermensch with a buzz cut crushing the world in his colossal hands and standing on tiny legs. Wrestling and rock and roll? Well, even without the music, I guess I knew what my Friday night was shaping up to be.

One dime and seven digits later, I had access to my message service. Which I was not looking forward to.

“Thump & Grind Burlesque Club and Review.”

“Hey, Lace,” I said. “It’s James.”

“Of course it is,” she said. “I just started my period and hadn’t had enough of a cramp in my gut yet, so you’re right on time.” And yet, all I could see on the back of my eyelids was the dynamic, buxom thirty-year-old bottled-scarlet whose command of beauty was second only to her ability to dance in high heels with fans, a combination that made every man in the room beg for more, knowing none could have her.

But they didn’t live in the storage unit of the Thump & Grind, where some nights a girl just wants to relax with a man who will treat her right and ask no more than to make her feel good.

When it came to dating, I was simply tragic.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry I had to cancel our dinner reservation, but I was—”

“On a case. You know what James? You are a case.”

“Lace, please, listen, you’re right. I sullied my honor as a gentleman and I’d like to make it up to you.”

“This better be good,” Lace said.

“The Bijou Lounge. Lobster. Champagne.”

“Keep talking.”

“Bananas Foster.”

There was a pregnant silence. “How did you know that was my favorite dessert?”

“Unlike most men, I actually listen when a beautiful woman talks to me.”

She snickered. “Okay, you’re out of the doghouse by a paw. Even though I know we aren’t going anywhere near the Bijou. Now what is it you really need?”

“What? No, Lace, I was—”

“You’ve buttered my muffin just fine, and you’ll be doing it all night to make up for abandoning me at Clio’s. What do you want, James?”

“I need you to see if there are any messages on my answering machine. If so, you need to play them and hold the receiver over the speaker so I can hear them.”

“You don’t mind me listening in on your business?” she was practically salivating.

“I trust you, Lace. Plus, this is important. One of my friends was almost killed today.”

I told her about the Legion Hall.

“I heard about it on the radio,” she said. “Protesters attacking veterans? I think I prefer the sixties, thanks.”

And I would prefer the future, since most of the sixties had me running around trying to stop Armageddon cults from turning the peace and love generation’s happenings into mass graves. “Will you help, Lace?”

“’Course I will. Call me back on your line.”

“But my door’s locked.”

“Oh, James, everyone has a key to your fucking office.”

She hung up.

I fished for another dime while an old man in a sunhat pulled down across his face circled the booth. He tapped on the glass. “How long you gonna be?”

“Can’t tell until I hear from the other side,” I said, vaguely mysterious, hoping he’d assume I was strange and not worth mucking with.

“Then can I make a call first?”

“Sir, on any other day, sure, but right now a friend of mine’s in the hospital and—”

“Oh, save your bullshit stories, James.”

The man raised his head and glared into my eyes. Any courage I possessed fled faster than a gambler from a bookie.

Edgar Vance’s face was ghost white with sun cream, his eyes black and red with magic that I could not taste because my mouth was dry with terror. “Dead men have no time for such tales,” said my mentor.