I OPENED AND CLOSED the door without much noise, and I was in an elegant stucco passageway with an arched ceiling. There was an old wooden door to a closet and next to that was a gold umbrella stand with two wet umbrellas in it. One of the wet umbrellas was white and feminine, and the other, your standard black umbrella, was long and pointy. Sebastian may have had company.
I closed my stubby, cheap umbrella and quietly placed it in the bucket.
Seemed like the polite thing to do.
At the end of the passageway, which was covered in a Turkish rug, there was a mirror and a piece of antique furniture with a glass bowl for dropping off keys or mail. And as I cat-footed along the rug, I saw myself in the mirror and it wasn’t a pretty picture: a soaking-wet madman in a black watch cap, with a gun in his white-latex hand.
Not seen in the mirror was the smell of hard-boiled eggs coming from my wet pants, courtesy of the dumpster juices I had bathed in, but it wasn’t overwhelming.
The music got louder as I progressed down the hallway, and I recognized it as a song from Buena Vista Social Club, an album I loved, which I hadn’t heard in years, and it bothered me that Sebastian would be playing it. Then the hallway turned to the right, like an elbow, and opened up to a large, dimly lit living room, which had a vaulted stucco ceiling. It also had dark-wood floors and plenty of rugs, and sitting on a leather couch, in the middle of the room, was a beautiful woman, a brunette, staring at her phone, which glowed like a bar of light.
She was in a slinky black dress and her very long legs were crossed, and in front of her, on a coffee table, was a full glass of red wine. The lighting was hushed, romantic, augmented by candles, and through the music, I could hear a shower going somewhere in the apartment, off to the left, and the woman, sensing something, looked up from her phone. Before she could scream, I was on her, my gloved hand over her mouth.
When I thought she was calm enough, I whispered, “I’m not going to hurt you,” and I removed my hand. “He’s in the shower?”
She nodded, mute and frightened. She smelled good and looked very expensive.
I said, “Has he already paid you?”
She glared at me with anger, her composure returning. My comment hadn’t really insulted her but brought her armored shell to the surface, which was good. Meant she wouldn’t scream for help. “They always pay first,” she said, hard-boiled.
I took out my wallet and peeled off ten large, a thousand bucks. I handed it to her. She hesitated but took it. “Get out of here,” I said.
She stood up, and I followed her to the hallway, watched her get in a raincoat and grab the white umbrella. Then she was out the door, fast. A high-priced survivor. I didn’t think she would call the cops or do anything. In her position, the best thing to do was to just disappear.
I went back to the couch and took her seat. The shower was still going.
My hand was throbbing, and I quickly googled Are rat bites serious?
I wanted to know if I was in danger of dropping dead imminently, and what came back was a lot of information about something called, rather explicitly, rat-bite fever, which sounded terrible, but until I presented symptoms—a rash, a high fever, my throat closing—there was nothing to be done.
So I put the phone—and thoughts of the Black Death—away and picked up the prostitute’s glass of wine. Wanting to be a little medically proactive, I rolled back my glove halfway and poured some of the red wine over the wound, to clean it, and then I rolled the glove back and sipped the wine. It was delicious. Hearty. Hints of the stable. Manure. Life.
And I needed it after falling into that bog.
So it was a perfect red for a cold, rainy night, when you’ve been bitten by a rat, and in my right hand was the .38 and in my left was the wineglass.
Maybe from nerves, I felt a little giddy and like a big shot: wait till Sebastian, that bastard, stepped into the room and saw me sitting there, drinking his wine.
Across from me, on the other side of the coffee table, was a large leather chair, and just beyond that was a partially open door, which appeared to lead to the master bedroom. It was from there that the sounds of the shower emanated, and I pointed the gun at the door to be ready.
While I waited for him, I glanced about, taking in my surroundings, and the living room I was sitting in was elegant in a masculine way: plenty of heavy old wood and leather, with the candle-glow ambiance of an expensive steak house. Everything was as tasteful as the music and the wine: he was a killer with style, spending daddy’s money.
Behind me was a dining room area and a kitchen, and out the large lead-paned windows was a southward view of Los Angeles. But the city was invisible: the impenetrable mist was green from the El Royale sign, and the streaks of rain lashing the windows, also illumined by the sign, were emerald-colored and quite beautiful.
I drank about half the glass, going too fast; then the shower stopped.
A minute later, Sebastian, half naked, a white towel wrapped around his middle, came into the room. His blonde hair was wet and his knees literally buckled at the sight of me, the shock of it, and he certainly was a handsome lad: he had his mother’s coloring, his father’s face, and the build of an Adonis. His finger, which I had broken, was in a metal splint, and I waved the gun at him and said, “Sit down, let’s talk.”
He looked at me, stunned, then he knew who I was, even without the beard. His blood sugar was acting funny—his face in the hushed lighting was pale, and I thought he might faint—and he said, his voice a little trembly, “I thought you were dead. I thought you drowned that night.”
I waved the gun at the leather chair on the other side of the coffee table and said, “Sit down, Sebastian. You don’t look so good.”
He stared at the gun in my latex hand and the glass of wine in my other hand and sat down. Regaining his front, he said, “Where’s the whore?”
“Don’t be rude.” I took a big gulp of wine, then put it down on the coffee table and removed my phone. Keeping the gun on him, I played with the phone and got it into record mode and put it on the table between us.
I said, “I want you to tell me about Frances and why you killed her. And I also want to hear about Half Moon Bay. And how you and your father killed that girl.”
His eyes widened when I said that—I had struck on something—and I knew that the recording would never stand up in court or anything like that, but if I got it into the right hands, they could start digging and put Sebastian away. Maybe his father, too.
His face reassembled quickly from his shock. Became cold. He was a cocky bastard. “You think I’m going to talk,” he sneered. “I’m not going to tell you anything. You’re a little man. A nothing man.”
“True enough,” I said, “but I think you will talk,” and I lifted the gun and pointed it at his head, to let him know I was serious, but then the gun felt awfully heavy, wildly heavy, and I thought, What the hell is going on? Is it the rat bite?
Then I couldn’t hold up my arm, it fell to my side, the gun dropping from my hand, and the room was starting to distort and get dim around the edges, like a fun-house mirror, and I saw Sebastian smiling at me—beautiful white teeth, such a handsome boy—and then I tried to stand, to get away from him.
But all I did was fall off the couch, I had no control over my limbs, and as I tumbled down, I saw the three-quarters-empty wineglass on the coffee table, and it hit me: he was going to roofie the prostitute, that was his thing; it was why he took his time in the shower, so she would drink the whole glass…
Then I was on the floor, and he was standing over me in his towel, a half naked, evil god. He was smiling with ridicule. “You’re a fool,” he said.
I am, I thought.
I said, barely a whisper, “Why did you kill Frances?”
“Because I wanted to.”
Then he put his foot on my throat, to play with me, like a child sadist with an animal.
Then the Rohypnol took me away, a sudden black curtain.