The Last Days of Jack Sparks (20 page)

Despite her eleven-hour flight, Bex has that whole ‘just out of a relationship and determined to look extra-great’ thing going on. Flame-red hair more lustrous than ever. Make-up immaculate, not that she needs much. Pouting for Britain. Low-cut top, high-cut denim skirt. Even if she looked a total mess, mind you, I’d be happy to have her here. I’d forgotten how good her very presence feels around me.

Her bulging suitcase sits beside our table. After a day of overzealous security guards and denials from the likes of Blumhouse Productions, Twisted Pictures and Ghost House Pictures, I ended up having a few too many drinks to drive, so told her to get a yellow cab here from LAX. Which was a shame, as I missed out on a potentially romantic airport moment.

From the moment Bex sprang out of the cab for a big hug, she has been utterly enchanted with LA. This woman just stepped through a cinema screen into
The Wizard of Oz
(get out of my head, Sherilyn Chastain) at the precise moment it switches to Technicolor. The only words she’s said so far are ‘Amazing’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Fuck’, ‘Wow’ and ‘Yes, definitely a double.’

Not only has Bex just arrived in America for the first time, she must now endure the tragic tale of Translator Tony. Head trip, right? Except I can’t get her to listen. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she says after a while. ‘I just zoned out again.’ She drains her glass, ice clunking against her nose. ‘So you don’t actually
believe
you saw this dead guy in the record shop?’

‘It was just some guy who looked like him. Tony just has . . .
had . . .
one of those faces you recognised, you know? He was an everyman.’ Which is bullshit, given Tony’s monobrow and tombstone teeth, but it gets me off the hook.

‘An everyman who fiddled with his kid.’ She puts the glass down and looks around for a server. ‘My God, that was strong.’

‘They don’t mess about with spirits in LA,’ I say. ‘Unless they’re the Hollywood Paranormals.’ I follow this with a ‘Boomtish!’, knowing the joke will trigger Bex’s bad-joke face. She doesn’t disappoint me. ‘Tony hardly seemed the most stable guy when I met him,’ I add. ‘He was smoking his head off, scared of his own shadow.’

Bex is distracted again, ordering us more drinks, fumbling with dollar bills, peering at them to work out what’s what. It’s okay, I tell her: it’s on a tab, we pay at the end. My insides turn green as she eyeballs a passing long-haired guy who looks a lot like the rock guitarist Zakk Wylde. I start to wonder if my cape-swirling, moustache-twirling scenario to lure Bex to LA and exploit her break-up doldrums has been ill-conceived. For reasons best known to herself, she doesn’t see me in that way and she never has. All these girls I’ve gone out with, over-loving me to the point where I’ve had to let them down gently, and yet to Bex I am rubber-stamped ‘Mate’, ‘Flatmate’ and ‘Chopped Liver’.

When Bex realises I’ve stopped talking, her eyes flick back from The Man Who Might Be Zakk. ‘So, yeah,’ she says, vaguely. ‘Tony was a bit of a mess, then.’

Disheartening. When an incoming call buzzes my pocket, Bex greets my universal sign language for ‘need to take this call’ with nonchalance – she has a new drink and some eye candy. Guy candy. One drink into her holiday, I’m dispensable.

A male Italian voice fills the line. Not Cavalcante. And surely not any other detective, unless they’re somehow calling from the bottom of a lake.

This voice is angry and . . .
wet
. Each syllable
swims
into the next.

‘Jack. Jack, is that you . . .’

This guy sounds familiar in a way that creeps me out. ‘Who’s this?’

‘You know who. Tony, the translator guy.’

I don’t know what my face does at this point, but it wrenches Bex’s full attention back to me.

‘Jack, you bastard,’ says this alleged, supposed Tony. With a throat full of gurgling drain water, he says, ‘You screwed my
life
.’

Hand on heart, at first I think he says ‘
wife
’. When I ask him to repeat himself, it sounds no better.

The guy must be using some kind of voice-filtering app: every breath is a dripping sponge, clenching and unclenching. ‘I’m being punished,’ he says, ‘and it’s all because of you.’

My rationality finally snatches back the reins. ‘Oh, very good. The dead guy phones me up. Spooky! Well done, mate – you do sound like Tony. Not bad at all.’

His voice trembles as he says: ‘She can do anything, Jack. Anything. She can take you anywhere, any time she likes.’

‘Okay . . . who’s
she
?’ I say, feeling stupid for even playing along. ‘The cat’s mother?’

‘She left hospital, then came for me, to control me. To make me
do things
. . . oh my God. My own son. I had to free myself. But even now I’m not free, and this is all your fault, you
bastard
.’

I guffaw down the line and wink at a puzzled Bex. ‘So
Maria
turned you into a filthy paedo? I thought that was my fault.’

‘I saw you in the record store, Jack. Has that happened yet? And then the bathroom. It was cruel, but I had a chance to get even and I took that chance. What is the date?’

I gulp bourbon, the words ‘record store’ echoing around my skull. Bit weird, that. Either this maniac was there in the store, or it’s a lucky stab in the dark. Either way, I’ve had enough of him.

‘A big shout-out,’ I say, ‘to whoever ends up listening to a stream of this wacky prank. Check out Jack Sparks dot co dot uk and buy a T-shirt.’

‘Tell me what
date
,’ snaps the caller.

‘I’ll tell you to fuck off.’

A storm front of menace rolls back into his voice. ‘Better watch out, Jack. You gonna get what you deserve.’

‘Ooh, a speedboat?’

A bubbling inhalation, a saturated outbreath . . . and when he speaks again, the voice changes entirely. My ear fills with the deep, dark tones of Maria Corvi.

‘
In your dreams
, Jack Sparks.’

The phone line dies, taking her prickly laughter with it.

Bex drums the table, waiting for news. Two fresh drinks sit beside the others.

I can’t speak for a while. I light a cigarette, while trying to get this stuff straight, to work it all out. Finding myself at a loss, I settle for leaning back and blowing twin smoke plumes through my nostrils.

Bex raises her glass, solemn. ‘Let’s get hammered.’

So there’s a guy out there pretending to be someone who killed himself. A guy who threatens me, doesn’t know what day it is and does a nice sideline in impersonating Maria Corvi.

I knew this book would attract cranks, but on this level? It’s astounding what some people will do for a supporting role in a Jack Sparks book. For all I know, ‘Inspector Cavalcante’ and this latest joker may even be the same guy. Some wag who caught wind of the Italian exorcism drama and decided to have some fun. The stupidity hurts my head.

I nod furiously at Bex as we clink drinks. ‘What could possibly go wrong, Miss Lawson?’

Bex leans forward to whisper her reply. I want it to be ‘Well, we could end up in bed.’ Instead, of course, she says, ‘That guy over there – do you think it’s Zakk Wylde?’

Come 3.33 a.m., my head is a rotten melon with a machete handle sticking out of it.

I wake from the usual Maria dream, my surroundings monochrome.

Beside me on the bed, there’s a long black shape.

Bex is lying on her back on the crisp white linen, fully clothed. Just as I am.

Behind the air con’s churning whirr lies a different sound. Takes me a while to work out that Bex is snoring.

I clamber off the bed with a grimace, then pad through to the bathroom and stand in the doorway, flicking a switch. The sound of electrocuted flies heralds striplights blinking into life and scorching my retinas. Lumbering in, the vinyl-plank floor cool under my bare soles, I thank my past self for taking the time to stockpile potent stateside painkillers. I dry-gulp what I imagine the maximum dose to be.

As I perch gingerly on the side of the bath, willing the pills to work, a flashback montage rises up through the gallons of booze we sank at the Rainbow and beyond. Polaroid moments resolve themselves.

Me and Zakk Wylde both grinning dutifully as I photograph him with a delighted Bex on the patio.

Some guy in a white vest yelling along the Sunset Boulevard sidewalk because we left Bex’s suitcase behind on that same patio. ‘You wanna get your shit blown up, man?’ asks this crowned king of rhetoric.

Me telling Bex how Hunter S. Thompson lives on through me.

Bex telling me some stuff about Lawrence. God knows what. Both of us taking it in turns to ride a rotating mechanical bull at the Saddle Ranch restaurant. Howling with laughter as it hurls us on to the heavily padded ground. Beer after beer, always with a JD chaser. Because them’s the rules.

Me telling Bex how much I resent Hollywood using the video to hitch a free ride on my back.

Christ
. Hungry tongue-kissing on Sunset Boulevard, my back against a wall. Bex’s body heat radiating though me. Two adults regressing into drunk teens, the picture completed by my hands clamped on Bex’s denim derriere. A toothless old woman hobbles by, lugging carrier bags stuffed with junk. She says, ‘If I were you, I’d buy a gun first.’ Her strong Southern accent makes it sound like ‘If
ah
were
yoo
,
ah’d
buy a
gern
first.’

The two of us laughing about the old woman all the way back to the hotel, the lust spell broken.

Shrieking at traffic, jaywalking outrageously. Furious horns parp.

That’s where my memory pinholes shut. We must have crawled up here and passed out.

‘Jack . . .’

An urgent whisper from nearby. I fully expect the bathroom door to frame a confused Bex, her hand outstretched for painkillers . . .

Instead, the doorway remains a static rectangle, framing only the wall outside.

I step out of the bathroom, still expecting to bump into Bex.

But she’s still in bed. Still snoring.

She said my name in her sleep! Surely a good sign, along with all that kissing.

‘Jack . . .’

That same whisper. An icy shard of sound, cutting through the air con. Or is it actually part of that endless drone? A sonic quirk, cheating my ears? Fools call me self-obsessed all the time, but am I really so far gone as to hear my own name whispered by an air-con unit?

‘Jack . . .’

Well, I’m now sure about one thing.

I’m facing the bed and yet the whisper came from behind me.

I swing around and home in on a sickly strip of yellow light. The one that runs beneath the entrance door.

Two telltale black smudges interrupt the yellow. Two giveaways that someone is standing right outside my door.

Our door.

I picture Maria Corvi out there. Can’t help it. The deranged, starry-eyed Maria Corvi, whispering my name.

I saw her in Hong Kong, so why not in LA?

Connections, connections
,
so disturbingly plausible
.

Behind me, Bex’s fragmented breath.

Above me, cool air rushes from slatted vents.

Before me, that door, still with those smudges beneath it.

With a head this sore, I’m in no mood for nonsense. I soon cover the short distance to the door.

And yet . . . and yet I hesitate to peer out through the spyhole embedded beneath the Fire Emergency map.

‘Jack . . .’

My name flits through the wood at me. Yes, through the wood for sure.

Is this another hallucination, waiting to happen? When I look out through the spyhole, will Maria Corvi’s yellow eye glare back at me, wide, glinting, accusatory? She’s missing and could even be dead. Is this my guilt resurfacing? And if so, could I really still feel guilty about a double murderer? I know what Dr Santoro would say . . . basically any old balls to back up his pet theory.

Oh, fuck this
.

I shove my eye right up against that tiny brass ring.

Nothing and no one stares back through the fish-eye lens. This room’s at one end of an empty corridor, which stretches away, lined with doors, the straight lines curved. All that downlighting on the walls may seem pleasantly subtle and boutique-stylish in the evenings, but it now looks downright sinister.

I try to remember how tall Maria Corvi was. If she was standing outside, right up against the door, would I be able to see her?

Maybe not.

I step back from the door, far enough to review the yellow strip.

Two smudges, still there.

An involuntary shiver gets the better of me. Now, I don’t
believe
Maria Corvi is standing out there, dead or alive. It’s just that steeping yourself in supernatural concepts makes these thoughts rise from primeval depths. You find yourself fearing what countless ancestors feared before you, ever since the first ambiguous shadow was cast upon a cave mouth’s wall.

The irrational fear gene lives on in us all. It’s irritating, but these things need to be handled the same way as when you’ve taken a bad drug. Simply tell yourself how these crazy thoughts and anxieties are just down to the drug, nothing else.

Then arm yourself, just in case.

Damn all those airport security scans that rid you of potential weapons. The best I can muster right now is a full bottle of room-service Cabernet.

Moving in slow motion, I grip the smooth doorknob.

I’m torn between opening the door fast, which might wake Bex, or taking a more gradual approach, which would give a homicidal teenager more time to decide exactly where to skewer me with a rusty nail.

With one hand, I make a caveman club of the wine bottle. With the other, I twist the doorknob.

There’s a heavy-duty grinding sound as I swing the door open.

No one’s outside. Why yes, I do feel stupid, thanks for asking, but at least Bex is still asleep. I put the bottle down, then step outside.

Closing the door hushes the room’s air con, leaving a stark silence out here. Only TV talk-show murmurs can be heard from one of the other rooms.

What am I doing? I’m still drunk and really should be sleeping it off. I suppose I want to find an actual real-life person who, for reasons best known to themselves, has decided to whisper my name through my hotel room door.