Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) (11 page)

At least it was crowded, which would make it harder for someone to find me. Harder, too, for me to find Quinn. How the hell would I recognize him? Half the middle-aged men here looked like they’d had the life Quinn probably ended up with: gazes blunted by drugs or alcohol; gray hair, bad teeth, thinning ponytails; stained relaxed-fit cargo pants, Bob Marley T-shirts pulled over slack bellies.

I made a circuit of the room and ended at an indoor café with plastic tables and a take-out window. The old man in a cowboy hat had set up an electronic keyboard and was singing Roy Orbison songs. Not bad, either. I checked out the delicatessen area, which was big on food that looked like doggie chew toys—dried fish and the heads of quadrupeds in varying stages of decay. I passed on the free samples and made another loop of the market.

Most of the faces were familiar from my first go-round. Anxiety crept into my frustration as I considered the notion that Quinn and Ilkka’s killer were the same person, which would at least consolidate my growing paranoia. I paused at a bookstall whose proprietor ignored me to speak animatedly into his cell phone. To one side of the bookstall, a woman with close-cropped black hair presided over a makeshift grotto filled with carven animals, handmade leather pouches, and stones painted with runes. Beside her, two teenage girls hawked tie-dyed clothing to a man in an expensive-looking loden-green overcoat. He looked slightly out of place among all the schlubby jumble salers: expensively shaggy dark-blond hair, pinstriped trousers, nice leather shoes ruined by road salt. It was a second before I twigged that it was the same guy I’d seen standing at the bar in Viva Las Vegas.

He must have sensed me watching him: He turned and fixed me with the dispassionate gaze of a fox distracted from the hunt. I stared back. A mistake, but I’d never seen eyes that color before—not on a human being—so pale a brown they were almost topaz. He raised his hand as though to beckon me over.

“Hey,” he said. Good English, but not a native speaker. “Are you lost?”

I darted off, ducked behind a display, and kept going till I reached a crowded aisle. I stopped beside a long table and scanned the room but didn’t see him.

“Góðan dag.”
Behind the table, a young guy unpacked a cardboard box. He was very thin, with blanched white skin, a mass of silvery curls, and ruby eyes that glowed like votive candles behind thick-lensed glasses. An albino.
“Hvernig gengur?”

I looked to see what he was unpacking—eight-track tapes. Dagny had said that Quinn sold old vinyl. I picked up and then immediately dropped an eight-track of the Starland Vocal Band. The albino gave me a cursory smile, settled into a chair, and began tapping on an iPad.

Crates covered the table. I peered into one that held scores of vinyl LPs, some new, others old but still shrink-wrapped, all arranged alphabetically. I flipped through Rory Gallagher, Art Garfunkel, Marvin Gaye, Gentle Giant, pulled out Gong’s
Camembert Electrique,
sans shrink-wrap but in pristine condition. The albino nodded in approval.

“That’s the one Pip Pyle played on, before he split for Hatfield and the North. There’s some more rare stuff over there.…”

He pointed to the far end of the table, where a hand-lettered sign reading ESKIMO VINYL leaned against a tower of eight-tracks. “One with Elton Dean and Marc Charig, Lyn Dobson does some amazing sitar. Check it out.”

“I thought those guys never recorded with Gong.”

“It’s a live bootleg of a gig they did in Paris in 1971.”

He flipped through a crate of LPs as though it were a Rolodex, plucked out an album—plain black sleeve, no lettering—and handed it to me, pointing to a turntable. “You can listen there if you want.”

The turntable was a vintage Philips 312, the same model I had in my apartment back in the city. Not top of the line even back in 1976, but it got the job done. This one had been pimped out with Bose headphones, a Graham 1.5 tonearm with a tungsten arm, and a stylus so fine I barely heard it kiss the vinyl. The recording quality wasn’t great—you could hear background conversation and the clink of glasses—but it wasn’t as bad as some bootlegs I’ve heard.

Not my taste, though. I slid the record back into the sleeve and returned it the crate. The albino raised his eyebrows. “What’d you think?”

“It’s okay.” I debated whether to ask about Quinn, decided I’d hold off for the moment. “Not really my thing, that’s all.”

“What’re you into?” He picked up a dome magnifier and examined a packing list. “We have a lot of old-style punk. Bootleg of Johnny Thunders’s
L.A.M.F.,
live at Max’s. Joy Division,
Le Terme.
”

“Thanks, I’ve got those.”

I perused what appeared to be the world’s most complete collection of Cramps picture discs, including one that featured Poison Ivy in a a red velvet armchair, wearing a plastic tiara and not much else. This seemed more like what Quinn might have been listening to, circa 1979.

And the velvet chair reminded me of something. I shut my eyes for a moment, thinking.

Darkthrone was one of the bands Suri had mentioned. I found the crate holding the Ds. Between Danzig and the Dead Milkmen were several Darkthrone LPs and picture discs available in a range of colors, as long as you liked black. I selected one at random.

“Okay if I play this?”

The albino had clipped what looked like a pair of tiny telescopes onto his glasses and was examining a twelve-inch as though it was printed in cuneiform. He nodded absently. “Yeah, sure.”

Darkthrone’s lead singer sounded like he’d taken vocal lessons from Hasil Adkins. Most of the lyrics were in Norwegian, but I suspected I’d have no trouble understanding them if I’d been a fifteen-year-old boy with anger-management issues. Whatever he was saying, he seemed to mean it. The guitar work sounded like an electric razor jacked on ice. I gave the band props for that before removing the album from the turntable.

“There’s some good Mayhem there, too.” The albino indicated another carton. “And we do special orders.”

Mayhem was another band Suri had mentioned. I got a good suss on their worldview from the song titles—“Chainsaw Gotsfuck,” “Carnage,” “Necrolust.”

“Here’s the original 1987
Deathcrush.
” The albino handed me an LP wrapped in Mylar. “By the way, I’m Baldur.”

“Like the Norse god?”

He grinned. “Yeah. A joke—in Norse, Baldur is called ‘The White One.’ There were only a thousand copies of that demo, all hand-numbered. See?” He pointed to the sleeve—number 666. “That was Necrobutcher’s own copy. That’s what I was told, anyway.”

I wondered if Necrobutcher’s mother had christened him that, but a guy named Baldur probably wasn’t the one to ask. “Can I listen to it?”

He shook his head. “Not that one. There’s a 1993 reissue on CD; we don’t have it, but it’s easy to find. I don’t even know why Quinn keeps that here. He’ll never let it go. Ozzy Osbourne’s manager offered us three thousand dollars, and Quinn said no.”

“Quinn.” I handed back the LP, trying to sound nonchalant. “So is he around?”

“Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. He’s been gone for a while. Excuse me,” he said, and turned to a girl holding a copy of
Astral Weeks.

I flipped through the rest of Mayhem’s oeuvre. Their fashion sense was early Nazgul—black leather, white corpse makeup, stringy hair. KISS for depressives. Quinn had always been more of a classic Chuck Berry, Rolling Stones, New York Dolls kind of guy, but maybe prison had changed his musical taste, or maybe he aimed strictly for the collectors’ market. After a minute I withdrew another LP:
Dawn of the Black Hearts.

The cover was a color photograph of a young man in a bloodstained T-shirt and plaid flannel shirt, lying on the floor. A shotgun pointed at a hand slick with blood, and lying across the gun’s stock was a blood-spattered carving knife. Blond hair swept back from a forehead that dissolved into a porridge of shattered bone and brain tissue. I squinted to read the logo on the bloody T-shirt.

I
♥
TRANSYLVANIA

Ilkka’s photographs hadn’t triggered my sense of damage, but this picture reeked of it. It was like walking into a room where there’s a gas leak.

“It’s a nasty picture, that one,” said Baldur, returning from his customer. “Especially if you’re not expecting it.”

“Seems like it would have limited commercial appeal.”

“Yes. It’s revolting. That’s another rare one Quinn doesn’t want to sell. If we put it on eBay, we’d get some good money for it. Which right now, we could use.”

“You don’t worry about someone ripping them off?”

“Oh, sure. But Brynja…”

He pointed across the room, and I saw the woman in the New Age grotto watching us. “That’s our guardian. My sister. ”

“She’s your sister?”

Baldur laughed. “Yeah, I know. We’re not a family of albinos. Just me.” He waved at the dark-haired woman, who fixed me with a thousand-yard stare before turning away.

“She doesn’t look too happy to see me.”

“She hates Quinn.” Baldur picked up
Dawn of the Black Hearts.
“Probably she thinks you’re one of his friends.”

“Why does she hate Quinn?”

“You know.” He shrugged. “So you’ve never heard
Black Hearts
?”

“Nope. But that’s a real photo, right?”

“Oh sure. It’s real.” He tapped the cover. “That’s Dead.”

“I mean, it’s not, like, Photoshopped or—”

“No—his name is Dead. Or was, until he killed himself. Then Dead was really dead. His Christian name was Per Ohlin. He was Mayhem’s lead singer—not the first, but he did the vocals on
Black Hearts
. Their lead guitarist, Euronymous, owned a record store in Oslo, and that’s where Dead pulled the trigger—after he used the hunting knife. Euronymous found the body. He ran out and bought a camera, then rearranged the body to make it look prettier, and took a photograph—that photograph. A few years later it showed up as the cover of this bootleg.”

“Christ. Nice bunch of guys.”

“Yes, very nice.” Behind their thick lenses, Baldur’s ruby eyes glittered. “Dead used to carry around a dead raven in a plastic bag. He liked the way it smelled. He’d bury his own clothes in the dirt, then wear them when he sang onstage. He was in love with being dead: That was his romance.”

“Looks like it was consummated.”

“He was not the only one. Euronymous was murdered by someone in his band. Then there were all the church fires, and some other stuff, too, stuff you never heard about. Very bad shit.”

I stared at the grisly photo, thinking of Ilkka’s sequence and what Suri had told me about the Oslo music scene. Not that Europeans have a lock on that kind of stuff. In rock and roll, the fine line between showbiz and psychosis can be summed up in two words: Phil Spector.

I said, “I guess that would be some very bad shit. This stuff big in Iceland?”

“There are fans, but no one takes it seriously. And there are no murders here in Iceland, even by black metal singers.” He laughed. “Iceland is very safe, very tolerant. They are very anti-Christian, those Norwegian bands. That’s why they like the old gods, Odin and Thor and Loki. And me! Baldur the Beautiful—that works good to pick up girls, you know?

“Here we have almost as many heathens as Christians, but nobody gets too worked up about it, you know? And the Satanists are ridiculous. Even the black metal bands know that. Now they are mostly heathens. Some Viking metal is very good, but the rest—songs about human sacrifice, Gorgoroth impaling sheep’s heads onstage—it’s too much. My sister says we should get rid of their albums, not just Mayhem—all those bands. And sometimes I think she’s right, but it’s worth too much money.”

“What does Quinn think?”

“Quinn? Nothing like that bothers him. That’s why they call him Quinn the Eskimo. He’s a cold one.”

He slipped back behind the table. I hung around for a few more minutes, hoping Quinn might materialize, but finally gave up and left. As I passed her stall, Brynja turned to stare after me, her eyes narrowed and lips mouthing words I was glad I couldn’t hear or understand.

*   *   *

Before leaving the market I invested in a secondhand Icelandic sweater that was way too big but about a hundred bucks cheaper than anything else, then went to find a bar. Outside, the wind nearly knocked me over. I headed away from the center of town, trudging up one gray street after another, trying in vain to escape the gale. The sun showed fitfully, revealing shreds of sky that glowed a brilliant, lacquered blue before they were extinguished by scudding pewter clouds. I stared into passing cars and shop windows, slowed down at street corners, always hoping to recognize Quinn.

But everyone I saw looked nineteen: walking arm in arm, singing snatches of songs in Icelandic or English; huddled in doorways, smoking. I felt like a ghost in the Land of Youth. The few places that looked like they’d serve alcohol were shuttered or, in many cases, closed for good.

After about an hour I reached a desolate stretch of black gravel in the lee of more unfinished construction—high-rises surrounding a square pit filled with rust-colored water. The place was a dumping ground for bashed-in fuel tanks and discarded tires as big as wading pools. Three old men stood beside a fire in a metal bin, smoking cigarettes and watching me with reddened eyes. One shouted something in Icelandic. The others laughed. I kept going.

Up ahead, a heap of soiled mattresses had been pulled beside a row of abandoned box vans, minus their 18-wheelers. Flames leapt from a tower of huge radials, accompanied by plumes of greasy black smoke. I covered my mouth, coughing, and glanced back.

The three men were gone. A solitary figure strode quickly across the vacant lot, a tall man in a loden-green overcoat, blond head down against the wind, as incongruous here as he’d been in the market. He lifted his head to gaze at me, teeth bared in a smile, and reached for his pocket.

I turned and sprinted for the abandoned trailers, blinded by acrid smoke. A sudden gust sent me reeling. I caught my balance, saw a gap in the smoke, and staggered toward it. I’d gone only a few steps before someone grabbed me by the throat. I kicked out, but my assailant elbowed me so hard I doubled over, gasping. My knees gave way as he dragged me across broken asphalt, up a set of metal stairs, and into the black interior of a box van. My head struck the floor, and the darkness took me.