City of the Lost (11 page)
Authors: Stephen Blackmoore
I file that away for later. Something tells me I’m going to need it.
The house, a three-story Spanish villa lit up like an airstrip, sits off of Mulholland, that winding spine of Los Angeles that slices the city in two. We hit a private road and enter the grounds through thick iron gates.
Archie and Jughead escort me through a massive oak door that looks like it was hauled over on a Spanish galleon, wrought iron gas torches on either side of it casting flickering yellow light.
The inside is an insane mash of art on every wall, every table. Banners in languages I don’t recognize hang from the banisters. Latin inscriptions on plaques, Greek carved into tabletops. Playing cards are stuck in every doorjamb. The place has an oppressive feel. Like a castle or a prison.
“Nice place.” If you’re a fan of the Inquisition.
“The doctor likes it.”
The midget, now off his leash, is watching me with wide-eyed wonder. Like a feral child.
“Does it talk?” I don’t know where along the ride I stopped thinking of Jughead as “him.” It’s not a label that fits.
“No,” Archie says.
Doctor Neumann is sitting at a reading table in a room that the word “library” simply can’t do justice to. The room is two stories tall with shelves to the ceiling. Books, scrolls, notebooks jammed into every nook and overflowing. Ladders every ten feet.
Neumann’s a tall guy with high cheekbones. Older. Maybe in his late fifties? Hard to tell. He’s fit. Spry, I guess you’d call it. White hair, neatly trimmed goatee.
“Mr. Sunday,” he says, all smiles. He stands up, crosses the room to grab my hand. Pumps it like he’s pulling up oil. “I’m so glad they were able to find you. I was worried.”
He looks me up and down. “I see. They found you too late, didn’t they?” His face all grandfatherly concern. “I’m sorry for what’s happened to you. It must have been awful.”
“I’ve had better days.”
“I’m sure you have. Please, sit down.”
The room is full of chairs, but most of them are covered with maps and books. Thick sheaves of paper and rolled vellum cover every horizontal surface. The smell of old books and dust hangs heavy in the air.
He clears off a seat for me, dumping its contents heavily to the floor, then sweeps it all aside with a kick. I sit down, and he slides onto the corner of a desk.
“Archie here says you can help me,” I say.
“Oh, indeed I can,” he says. “But first, and please excuse my rudeness, but when was the last time you, ah, ate?”
“I had a burger yesterday.”
“That’s, ah, not quite what I meant.”
“A few hours ago,” I say. “I killed a whore in Hollywood.”
He nods. “Good, good. Then we have some time. And time is important. You ate her heart, yes?”
That’s good? “Yeah,” I say. “Parts of some other stuff, too.”
He looks thoughtful, considering something. “This is important,” he says finally. “What did you do with the body?”
“I put a couple bullets into her brain after she started to chew on her pimp. Then I drove both of ’em to a gravel quarry and had them crushed into pulp.”
He looks surprised. “Oh. Oh, yes, that would do it. Very creative. Very imaginative. That’s an excellent sign.”
“Okay, enough bullshit, Doc. It’s an excellent sign of what? And can you help me or not?”
“Mr. Sunday, what do you know of your condition?”
“I get a bad rash and an irrational urge to eat prostitutes,” I say. “And I’m dead.”
“Yes, that’s about the size of it,” he says. “But there’s more, obviously. I’m sure you know about the stone?” I nod. “Good, good. I’d always heard that Giavetti couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”
“You know him?” I break in.
“Know of him,” he says. “By reputation. Now that stone, in case you hadn’t figured this out already yourself, is the key to everything. It made you what you are, and you and the stone are linked, but it’s not perfect. To stay this way, you need to feed. Do you see where this is going?”
“That’s how you knew I’d eaten,” I say. If they’d found me rotting this would probably be a pretty one-sided conversation. With a lot of “grr, argh,” from me.
“Exactly. It was inevitable that you were going to kill someone tonight.”
“So I just go around eating people, then, is that it?”
He laughs. “You could, I suppose. Or we could do something about it. I can restore what’s been taken from you.”
“Not sure I want to go back. Giavetti offered to make this stick. Didn’t say anything about hearts but said he could make it without all the messy decomp.” Which isn’t that far from the truth, even if I didn’t believe he could do it. “How about you, doc? Can you do that?”
“Yes,” he says. “I can do that. But there’s a catch.”
“There always is.”
“I can’t do anything without the stone.”
I fold my arms. I’m keenly aware of Archie and Jughead in the room, and if they haven’t figured out where the stone is by now, they won’t like what’s about to happen. “Let me guess,” I say. “You want me to find it.”
“Exactly.” There’s a startled noise from Archie. “My normal means of acquiring it have so far failed. Since you and the stone have, shall we say, an intimate relationship with each other, I thought you might be more likely to locate it.” He glares at Archie. “Not to mention more motivated.”
“Sir,” Archie says. “I don’t think—”
“Did I ask you for your fucking opinion?” The kindly grandfather disintegrates only to reappear in an instant when he looks back to me.
“Knowing Giavetti he would have hidden the stone fairly well. Probably somewhere in that sanitarium he had you holed up in.”
Wow. He doesn’t know Giavetti very well. Neumann’s already made up his mind about where the stone isn’t, and I don’t correct him.
“What do you say, Mr. Sunday. Would you be willing to find the stone so I can make you whole again?”
“Why do
you
want it?” I ask. If he knows what the stone can do, then he probably knows what Giavetti was trying to do with it.
you
want it?” I ask. If he knows what the stone can do, then he probably knows what Giavetti was trying to do with it.
“I think you know,” he says, smiling.
I make a show of thinking about it.
“How do I know you can do it?”
He cocks his head to one side, thinking. “About five years ago,” he says, “a book came up for auction in China. It was a set of German research notes from World War II. The stone was held by the Third Reich until the fall of Berlin when it disappeared.”
“That’s nice.” I pull my cigarettes out of my jacket. I don’t see a no smoking sign, and I wouldn’t care if I did. But I left my lighter in my car, and I don’t see any matches.
“Allow me,” Neumann says. Flames appear over his fingertips, and he leans forward to light my Marlboro.
“Neat trick.”
“It has its uses. The Germans were trying to understand the stone by experimenting on hundreds of Jewish prisoners. None of them were what you would call a complete success.”
Jesus. Auschwitz must have been a walk in the park to what those poor fuckers went through. “And you have the book?”
“No. I understand Giavetti purchased it. I rescinded my bid. I had an opportunity to inspect it and realized quickly that it was a fake. An excellent forgery, mind, but missing quite a lot of crucial information. Better to not have it at all than to try to follow its instructions.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, already guessing at the answer and not liking it one goddamn bit.
“Because I wrote it.”
He doesn’t look old enough, but that doesn’t mean much in this crowd. I take a deep drag off my cigarette, blow the smoke directly in his face. He doesn’t cough.
“You’re one evil fucking bastard,” I say.
“So I’ve been told. The point of this story is that I know how to use that stone far better than Giavetti ever could. In fact, if he’s planning on doing with it what I think he is, he’ll end up in even worse shape than you.”
That puts a new spin on things. Is Giavetti being set up? The more I think about it the more I realize I don’t know what the hell is going on.
“That’s about all I can offer as credentials. But I do know that when I was experimenting with the stone, I got almost as far as Giavetti did with you. Unlike him, though, I also managed to reverse it in a few cases. Those subjects who weren’t so far gone that they couldn’t reason, for example.”
“That why you think it was good that I was imaginative in getting rid of my corpses?”
“Yes,” he says. “It makes the possibility of bringing you back or of, as you put it, ‘making it stick’ that much easier. I have to admit a grudging respect for Giavetti’s handiwork. Now, do we have a deal?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a deal.” I don’t see how this would work out any different than if I’d agreed with Giavetti. There’s no proof that Neumann won’t just bring me back and kill me again, but I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.
“Good.” He scribbles a number on a notepad, tears out the page to hand to me. “You can reach me at this number. I’ll want to keep updated.” He turns to Archie, still fuming at his replacement. “Take Mr. Sunday back. Safely.”
Archie stalks out of the room, Jughead close at his heels. The midget throws a glare over his shoulder then disappears through the door.
“One last question, Doc,” I say. “How long do I have?”
“Before you need to feed? About a day.”
A day? “You’re fucking kidding me. That’s it?”
“That’s how it was in the camps. Some lasted longer than others. You’d be amazed how many Jews someone like you could go through in a week. And the emotional toll. Aren’t you glad you didn’t kill anyone close to you?”
I used to think Evil existed. Now, I wonder if I’m looking right at it. I turn away, not answering him.
He calls to me as I step through the library door. “Be careful, Mr. Sunday. I know I don’t have to tell you that you’re running on borrowed time. The sooner you get me the stone, the sooner we can fix this problem for you.”
The drive back is faster. It’s about four a.m. and the sun is still a couple hours off.
“Interesting guy, the Doc,” I say. “You like working for him?”
Archie looks at me in the rearview mirror. I can feel him seething in the front seat.
“I do,” Archie says finally. “I owe him a great debt. We all do.”
“All?” Something tells me he’s not talking about the midget.
“I’m not the only one who works for Doctor Neumann. He’s very well known in certain circles.”
“I’d never heard of him. Guess I don’t run in those certain circles.”
“Undoubtedly. L.A.’s a big place, Mr. Sunday. There’s more than just gangbangers, porn, and ingénues. A lot more.”
“’More in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’?”
“Exactly. I wouldn’t have taken you for a Shakespeare fan.”
“Is that what it’s from? Heard it in a movie once.”
So Neumann’s a big fish. How big is the pond? And what kind of sharks are swimming in it?
I know something’s wrong the moment I see my front door. It’s closed, but the jamb is broken. My porch light is out. The door swings open at my touch.
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