Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (4 page)

00010
OLICE LINE DO NOT CRO

Marianne Hedison fled deep into the velvet-lined elevator, slipping into a space behind several people. She watched the open doorway warily, but the detective did not follow her. The handful of people faced front in doll-like silence as the doors slid shut. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the elevator wall. The sun design with its dark blotch kept exploding in her mind like the afterimage of a flashbulb.

That morning, when Marianne had followed the porter out of the elevator on her way to her room, she had laughed when she spied the ornamented wall. She knew that the emblem of the Sun King was copied from His Majesty’s very bedroom doors. Even then, another significance to that design had teased at her thoughts, but her attention was quickly deflected by the small demands of finding her room and settling in.

She had seen only one of the garlanded suns that morning, however. The other wall had been blocked with a screen.
Something gold. Yes, three gold panels with a crane and a bonsai tree.
One of the elevators had been out of service. And a yellow tape bearing the warning POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
had been stretched diagonally across part of the corridor, preventing access to the screen or the elevator. Marianne hadn’t found the tape particularly ominous—just a reminder that she was back in L.A.

But just now, the Japanese screen had been moved aside and a long strand of the yellow plastic tape lay tangled on the floor. Fragments of the message surfaced here and there among its coils …

… OLICE LI ... ROSS POLI ... INE DO NOT CRO ... OSS POLICE LI …

And now that police detective was standing there in the hallway. He had been staring directly at the stain—a stain that Marianne had not seen that morning. The larger splatter was placed across the garlands and the rays of the sun, the smaller splashes bloomed like terrible flowers on the face of the sun, and the line of a drip followed a curved edge.

That stain was exactly like …

But no. She wouldn’t complete that thought. The implications of that precise stain on that precise design were intolerable.

Marianne struggled to bring her thoughts under control. The elevator stopped at another floor, and two more people got on. At each stop, everybody on the elevator shuffled slightly backward. The rhythmic sliding of the doors, the familiar rituals of the people—their polite distances, their quiet apologies to one another, their contractions of boundaries to accommodate those whose presence they would not again acknowledge—these small protocols eased Marianne’s alarm. She couldn’t believe she had so nearly panicked right in front of that detective.

What did I think he was going to do, arrest me?

By the time she got off the elevator and found her way to the bar, Marianne was feeling steady again. Like the rest of the hotel, the King Louis Lounge was posh—although here the florid French motif gave way to a darker and more heavily upholstered elegance. Behind a well-polished wooden bar, an array of bottles glittered. Only a few people occupied chairs around the scattered tables. The room was shadowy, and Marianne couldn’t tell immediately whether the friend she planned to meet had arrived or not.

Then, in a burst of color and motion, a woman with wild, rust-colored hair scrambled out of a booth and charged forward, holding out her arms and calling Marianne’s name. Renee’s warm, chestnut-colored eyes momentarily startled Marianne. No one else she knew had eyes like that.

Surprised by a rush of emotion, Marianne realized how much she’d missed her friend. Her eyes stung with tears as she threw her
arms around Renee, who returned the embrace warmly. Marianne stepped back and saw that Renee, too, was laughing through tears.

“I can’t believe it’s been a year,” Marianne said.

“I can’t, either,” Renee said.

Then came a moment of pleasant confusion during which neither of them had the slightest idea what to say next.

“Love your outfit,” Marianne said at last, although she was sure that Renee’s tunic and slacks hadn’t started life as an ensemble.

“Don’t be sarcastic,” replied Renee pertly.

“Let’s just say you’ve got a knack for making me look stodgy.”

“You’ve made it so easy,” commented Renee with a little smirk. Marianne caught a sepia-tinted glimpse of the two of them in the mirror behind the bar. Her own sober tan reflection was practically invisible next to the crimson and purple one. Images came back to her, of the two of them in jeans and men’s shirts tied at the waist, or in long skirts, ethnic blouses, dangly jewelry, strappy sandals, and a bright scarf or two.

In those days, they’d been on more equal terms. Of course, they’d both gone through transformations during the past several years. But Marianne could see that Renee still maintained an air of exuberance, while her own look was now more premeditated.

My own
life
is more premeditated.

The two women settled into a booth Renee had already appropriated. The padded black leather seat curved halfway around a marble-topped table. Above the row of booths, beveled and leaded glass panels, some frosted and some clear, provided a striped view of palmetto plants and the main lobby beyond.

“Would you like to start with a drink?” a waiter suggested. He took their order and retreated.

“So, what do you hear from the old gang?” Marianne asked.

“There is no old gang anymore,” Renee said sadly.

“Don’t you hear from any of them?”

“Not a one. And you?”

“Me neither.”

“Surely you hear from Evan now and again.”

Marianne winced. “Only what I read in
The Village Voice.”

“Do I detect a note of bitterness?”

“Probably. I guess even an amicable divorce brings out a few hard feelings. Actually, he did call about three months back. He was ranting and raving, complaining about everything as usual. But he’s getting attention in the New York gallery scene.”

“He’s got to love that.”

“Oh, yeah, Evan loves attention. And God knows, he’s worked hard for it. I hope it lasts long enough to make him stinking rich. I hope he gets famous.”

“You don’t sound like you mean it,” Renee observed.

“Really?” Marianne asked. She was surprised. She
thought
she meant it. She knew the photographs printed with recent reviews were of Evan’s old work and that he was living on borrowed time and borrowed talent. For his sake, Marianne hoped he could rake in a fast fortune and rest on his laurels. His laurels were all he had left.

“I hope he does well,” Marianne said simply.

“Of course he will,” Renee said. “You know he’s brilliant. It takes genius to be that much of an asshole.”

Marianne laughed. “If that’s any measure of genius, he’ll probably get a Nobel.”

Renee went on talking—all about Evan and the gang. Marianne almost felt the presence of old friends, earnest young creators of images, sounds, words—her younger self among them. They had been a vital, hungry bunch, straining for a chance to show off their talents, to make their own statements to the world. But those memories didn’t quite hold the same allure for Marianne. During her six-year marriage, Marianne had watched Evan fall deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of booze and amphetamines, alternating them more and more rapidly, cranking himself down with alcohol and cranking himself back up again with meth, always in search of an increasingly elusive creativity.

She sighed deeply. Whatever creativity was, it had to be more than perpetual adolescence. She had divorced Evan two years ago and had moved to Santa Barbara to get away from the life they had shared.

“Have I been saying that a lot?” Renee’s voice snapped Marianne out of her reverie.

“What?”

“I keep saying that I miss those old days,” Renee said. “Don’t you?”

“Yes—I mean, yes, I think you’ve been saying that a lot.”

“Sorry. I keep forgetting that you might remember things a little less fondly.” Renee sipped her drink for a moment, then said, “You haven’t told me anything about life in the Golden Kingdom. What’s it like?”

“As far from bohemia as you can get.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it would bore you half to death.”

Marianne’s attention was caught by a figure outside the lounge, just visible through the glass above their booth. She leaned forward slightly to see better. Yes, it was that detective she had encountered upstairs. With a sharp intake of breath, she ducked back, hoping he wouldn’t look her way.

The man strode by without once glancing in her direction, his large form flickering through the stripes of plain and frosted glass as he walked along. Then he veered across the lobby and out of her sight.

Renee watched Marianne with interest. “And who was that?” she demanded.

Marianne didn’t answer. That awful dark blotch flashed in her mind again. And now the cop was right there in the lobby. What if he just popped in here during his break for a cup of coffee? Would he seize the opportunity to grill her again? What if she told him, as she probably should, why the stain had shocked her? Would he insist that she accompany him to the police station or the precinct or whatever the hell it was called?

“Marianne!” Renee said, more insistently.

“Renee,” Marianne said abruptly. “Let’s go someplace else.”

“Why?” Renee answered with surprise.

“I want to see your new condo.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You’re gonna hate my condo and you know it. Who’s that guy you were watching?”

“I wasn’t watching anybody,” Marianne said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Renee just planted her elbows firmly on the table. “Don’t give me that. I can tell when something’s important. I’m a radio journalist. I get paid for being nosy.”

Marianne sighed. “I saw something really weird on my floor. When I left my room and went to get the elevator … Renee, did you see Auggie’s animation? In the Snuff Room?”

“Oh, sure. I hardly ever miss his act.”

“Well, do you remember how it looked—that wall with a design on it? And then the blood? The red color splashing across it?”

Renee nodded.

“It was upstairs. On my floor. The very same scene. The same
design on the wall and the same pattern—exactly the same stain across the wall.”

“You mean he got the wall design from this hotel? Are you sure? I don’t even remember what it looked like. Some kind of round thing, right?”

“It was a circular garland with the image of a sun inside.”

“Well, you’d remember something like that.”

“Renee, I’m telling you the wall had a red splatter across it exactly like the one in Auggie’s snuff.”

“Fantastic!” Renee laughed. “Then Auggie, or somebody else—maybe a serious Insomnimania fan—is a midnight paint slinger! Or something.” Renee affected a low and melodramatic voice. “‘Late at night, while even the beautiful people sleep, a shadowy figure stalks the halls of the Quenton Parks, armed with a squeeze bottle of catsup.’”

“No!” Marianne protested. “It was a murder scene. A real murder. You know, the one in the papers yesterday.”

“You mean the guy who got slashed up late Tuesday night? And it happened here! In your hotel! That’s right, it said so on the news! Wow! Then Auggie gets his scenarios from real life!”

“How could he? Were there any pictures of the bloodstained wall? Do you think the hotel would have allowed that? How could Auggie have known exactly what it looked like?”

“Come on, there must have been pictures. He could’ve just checked the papers.”

“The man was killed in the middle of the night Tuesday. Auggie’s snuff was on Insomnimania the next night. He had to hear about the story, see the pictures, make the animation, and upload it. Doesn’t that sound like kind of a stretch?”

“Well …” Renee hesitated only for a moment. Then she grinned. “I’ve got it! I’ll bet Auggie is a cop.”

“Isn’t Insomnimania kind of expensive for a cop?”

“Oh, come on! Some of those guys rake in plenty. More than the monthly salary. Some of them aspire to the ranks of the wealthy, and I’ll bet some of them make it, too.”

“A crooked cop?” asked Marianne.

“Maybe. Just maybe. It would explain how he knew about the murder. Whoever he is, I’ll get him to talk to me. Auggie’ll tell me just about anything. We’re old buddies, you know.”

Marianne laughed. “Oh, sure. Great buddies—fights every night in Ernie’s Bar. You guys are part of the entertainment.”

“No, really. He confides in me a lot. And lately he’s been hinting he’s gonna show me some Insomnimania secrets. ‘I’ll reveal to you untold mysteries,’ he said. He keeps talking about some sort of subterranean region called the ‘Basement.’”

“Gothic.”

“Ain’t it, though? He calls it his ‘sanctum sanctorum’ and says he spends a lot of time there. ’Course, he could just be making it up. He does like to brag—and braggarts make for terrific interviews. God, I’d love to get this Auggie guy on the air.”

Marianne laughed, then stopped short. She didn’t like the hint of obsession she saw in Renee’s eyes.

This Auggie “guy”?

Auggie’s not a “guy.”

Auggie was only a computerized cartoon, just like all the others in Insomnimania’s garish world. True, Marianne had watched those cartoons quarrel, reconcile, have drinks together, have sex together, and even marry. But it was all make-believe, like some kind of virtual, real-time soap opera.

Or is it?

Renee had just spoken about Auggie as if he were an actual person. Was it possible that some users
believed
in it all, just like all those crazed and credulous fans who believed in professional wrestling?

The stain flashed through Marianne’s mind again, first as a ragged cluster of red spots, then as a brownish blotch of distinctly non-virtual, distinctly protoplasmic blood. She saw identical trickles of color follow identical curves.

Like the computer world somehow leaking into the real one.

But then Marianne shrugged off the thought as silly.

Renee suddenly slid across the bench.

“Where are you going?” Marianne hissed.

“Up to your floor. I want to take a look at the murder scene.”

Marianne held her friend’s arm firmly. “We’re not going back there. I almost got myself arrested.”