H
ades stood up and extended his arms out wide, groaning as the muscles between his shoulder blades stretched. It had been years since he felt stressed. For most of his life he’d had an inward calm and calculation so well-developed that he often appeared nonchalant
Until lately. He was anything but calm.
And that was because Adam White was out there watching him night after night. It was exhausting. It was belittling. It caused the old man to hear voices in his head.
I see you, old man.
Hades breathed through his teeth. Imagining what he would do to Adam White once the young copper had exhausted his search brought a bit of light into his ancient heart. Hades would have to make an example of Adam White. It would have to be something drawn out and humiliating, the way this was—something he would sit and watch with relentless, pressing eyes, something that would make the boy feel naked. He would probably see to it that the boy was, in fact, naked. That always made things interesting.
Hades went to the kitchen counter, topped up his scotch glass, drained it. He glanced down the hall to check the front door was closed before he went into the bathroom to wash his hands—they felt sticky and he didn’t know why. That was something that he’d begun to do. Checking the alarms. Checking the windows. Checking the phone. Checking his watch. He’d started keeping a gun on his thigh as he sat at the kitchen table, a heavy and annoying thing that wanted to slide off his jeans and onto the floor. Hades decided to make a note of it, the way it made him feel. Paranoid. He’d make Adam White feel paranoid for a while before he squished him.
Hades came back from the bathroom and found a man sitting in the chair by the door. He stopped, picked his scotch glass up from where it sat, turned and began pouring a drink.
“You don’t knock?”
“You know me, Hades,” the man said. “Generally my manners are meticulous. Princely. My mother did an exceptional job of them. Generally I take pride in displaying them, these princely manners.”
“But you don’t display them where they’re not warranted, Mr. Grey.”
“I do not.”
Hades didn’t know what Mr. Grey’s real name was. He didn’t even know when he started calling him Mr. Grey, if it had been the man’s idea or his own. It had probably been about the third or fourth time the man had come driving up the hill toward Hades’ shack in his sleek gray Beemer, the third or fourth time he’d extracted himself gracefully from the heated leather seats, the third or fourth time he’d offered the steel-hard hand that betrayed the softness and luxury and excess the rest of him seemed to want to make clear.
Like most of Hades’ clients, Mr. Grey was not what he appeared. The princely mannered, perfectly sculpted, hand-woven male beauty he was pretending to be was really a very messy man. Mr. Grey liked to peel skin. He liked to rip at organs with his fingernails. He liked to eat raw and red and throbbing parts. The first time he’d had a peek at Mr. Grey’s handiwork as he pried apart the expertly wrapped package the man had brought him, Hades had been shocked at just how messy Mr. Grey could be. Hades had thought as he waved the Beemer off that Mr. Grey was probably someone he should try not to annoy.
Though the dark-eyed stallion in the expensive gray suit was looking pleasantly at him right now, the pistol in his lap loose in his fingers and pointed at the floor, there was no doubt in Hades’ mind that Mr. Grey was annoyed. Hades sat down and sipped the scotch. Mr. Grey’s eyes followed him, took in the gun on the table where Hades had set it, now useless.
“You gonna let me explain?”
“I’d love for you to explain, Hades.”
“You tell me what you saw, and I’ll know where to begin.”
“I saw a man standing in the bush out there by the side of the road,” Mr. Grey said.
“Uh huh,” Hades said.
“On closer inspection I saw a man standing in the bush out there by the side of the road
filming
. Filming
you.
And when he’d finished filming
you
, he filmed
me
driving up here to your lodgings.”
“It’s not a good look, is it?”
“It certainly isn’t, old buddy.”
Hades sighed. Mr. Grey tapped his index finger on the side of the gun, counting seconds. It was a nice gun. A handsome thing covered in filigree and unnecessary little polished screws. Fitting for a man like Mr. Grey with his flawless skin and glossy nails. Not something Hades could have pulled off. He knew he looked good with a bat.
“This has been going on for some time?” Mr. Grey asked.
“Couple of weeks.”
“And what is the purpose of this jaunty little occupation?”
“To piss me off.”
Mr. Grey cocked his head. The clean lines of him, the jaw cut with glass and the bones in his neck made Hades think of a Doberman.
“Seems to be working,” Mr. Grey said.
“It is.”
“This is going to be bad for business, Hades. Very bad.”
“No shit.”
“It’s going to be bad for your business and mine.”
“No, it’s not.” Hades drank the scotch. “He’s not interested in you. He’s interested in me.”
“And you can guarantee that?”
“Lifetime.”
Mr. Grey kept tapping the gun like he was sending Morse code. He looked at the kitchen windows. It was the first time since he emerged from the bathroom that Hades got out from under the cannibal’s gaze. He rolled his shoulders again, tried to stretch out that twisted muscle.
“Why don’t I just do my favorite waste disposal technician a favor and settle this score right now?” Mr. Grey jutted his perfect chin toward the window.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“Look, because the boy might be on to something. Okay?”
“You’re allowing someone to threaten you, threaten me, because he might be on to something?”
“He wants an answer.” Hades sipped, swallowed. “It happens to be a thing I’ve wanted to know myself for a long time, since back in the old days when a pompous little fuck like you would have gotten your neck snapped for walking into the kitchen of a man like me without knocking first. And I’m getting to thinking that if I play the game just long enough I might get that answer I’ve been waiting for. I might return things to normal, so that I can go back to drinking my scotch in peace and you can go back to refining your princely manners.”
Mr. Grey laughed. Sat back in the chair he hadn’t been invited to sit in and laughed and laughed.
“Okay,” Mr. Grey sniffed. He wiped his eye with a pale blue handkerchief he tugged from his pocket like a stage magician. “All right.”
“All right.”
“Well, you let me know when you get your answer, old buddy. You let me know when I can come a-knocking again.”
“It’ll be soon. Don’t you worry about that.”
The man called Mr. Grey gave Hades a last look, a kind look, rocking the pretty gun off his index finger so that the aim swung up and down over the old man’s walls. Then he left through the front door, pulling it closed behind him.
When the cannibal was gone Hades stood and shattered his glass in the sink.
Victoria Krane had been running Icky’s brothel since her father died, and nothing had changed. She’d made sure of it. She had begun her life at Icky’s in the back room, heralded into the world by her mother’s swift and gurgling exit. Since then Icky’s had been her universe, the kitchen her solar system of rotating pots and pans and cans and bottles, the tears and cracks and holes in the papered windows her stars.
She was just about ready to lock the iron door and turn the red lamp out for the night when the boy lurched up the path and into the rose circle of light. He had the look of a creature who should be kept out, all bent over and broken, an arm locked across his stomach and the other gripping the handle of a leather bag. Vicky looked into the hollows under his brow and stepped back from the gate, knocked into the door with her hip. A devil has come to your door, Vicky.
“We’re closing, Mister.”
“No, you’re not.”
He stood in the red light of the porch. The glow was hitting a million raindrops in his hair and on his cheeks and on the shoulders of his coat, making him look like he was dusted in fire. He was wearing a man’s coat, far too big for him, and he had the squared shoulders and taut neck of a fugitive ready to pull a weapon—more of a spring pulled too tight than a man at all. Vicky glanced into the hall at the girls standing there. One of them caught her eye, knew what was needed.
“Should I get Mr. Parsons?”
The boy seemed to know there was no Mr. Parsons. But Vicky nodded anyway, shivered in her coat, pulled it around her to hide the things crawling under her skin.
“Perhaps you should, Amy,” she shouted.
“Open the door.”
“Maybe you’re deaf. We’re closed.”
The boy lifted his head and the light fell into his eyes, made them blaze pink like a rich girl’s diamonds. Vicky felt something move in her stomach. Her hand was on her throat.
“I’m Heinrich. Bear’s boy.”
“You,” Vicky was really shaking now. “You ain’t no Dogboy. The Dogboy’s dead and so is the Bear.”
The boy stood there.
In time, Vicky’s shaking hand raised with a will of its own and pulled the brass handle down.
“Vick—” someone cried.
Vicky yanked open the iron door. She didn’t know why she did it. It was like some kind of force had rushed up and over her—an anger, maybe, a horror, the same kind she’d felt when the men came running down the street two weeks earlier shouting that Caesar had cleaned house. Before she knew it the door was open and the boy was inside with her.
In the white light Vicky could see his skin had gone a kind of navy-boat gray and the eyes were just as pink as they had been in the light of the door.
“Now you listen to me,” Vicky said, low, so the girls wouldn’t hear. “You ain’t Bear’s Dogboy. Not today, not tomorrow. I don’t care what you say.”
“Right now I’m just someone’s been too long on his feet,” the boy said. “There someplace we can go?”
She led him to the back room, where a life had been given and a life had been taken away. He sat on the edge of the bed and she stood by the closed door and watched him. He smelled wretched. Like the loser of a fight. Didn’t seem to be wearing much but trousers underneath the coat. His bare feet were black like he’d painted on shoes and the bones she could see were purple.
The boy brought the bag to the bed beside him and unzipped it. He started placing piles of cash bound with paper on the faded floral bedspread. He laid out one stack of cash as high and as wide as a shoebox. He started another, half the size. Then he made a pile of notes twice as big as the two first piles put together. Vicky Krane stood by the door and felt sick. Finally he picked out a stack about as thick as a workman’s sandwich and put it on his knee.
The boy pointed to the first pile, and Vicky noticed that he was shaking but he didn’t look afraid.
“For the Les Girls, the Harpsicord, and Jenny’s on Taylor Street, split three ways,” the boy said. “I want them delivered in newspaper. Fresh newspaper. From the morning your girls deliver it. Tied with string.”
Vicky heard the girls whispering in the hall behind her. She shifted on her feet. The boy pointed at the second pile.
“For Chief Inspector Ronnie Redford, at the Watch House over near the Argyle. He’ll be there on Sunday. Sunday night.” The boy coughed hard, wiped his palm on a handkerchief he took from his pocket. “Senator Ted Lockett . . . He lives on Niall Street.”
Vicky could stand no more. She went to the bed and sat beside him and wrung her hands.
“And this one?”
The boy coughed.
“And this one?”
“For half of Icky’s,” the Dogboy of Darlinghurst said, looking at her eyes for the first time. He breathed, turned away from her. Though he was turned she could see the gray skin of his temple bunch as he fought out the pain.
“Not half. Forty-nine percent.”
“Forty-nine percent.”
The Dogboy panted. Vicky licked her lips.
“We keep the name.”
“Of course,” he coughed, “we do.”
Vicky stood and looked down at him. Watched him fumbling at the buttons of his coat, exposing cloth, reams of cloth underneath. She helped him get down to the last button, and the coughing stopped. He licked blood off the corner of his storm-colored lip. She went to the door and he watched her go, fanning his damp face with the sandwich pile of notes.
“This here is for the girls,” he said as he tossed the stack to her. “Tell them to be gentle with me.”
E
adie arrived back at the farm before the sun had risen. It was Sunday. The night before had been a big one for the few left behind. She could tell this from the burned things. A black washing machine drum filled with charred sticks in the breakfast area, a Coke bottle melted over the innards thrown in as the flames were dying. There were cigarette butts everywhere. Out near where the pigs were kept the real bonfire was still smoking, sending a weak trail up just before the sprawling dry grasslands, as close to danger and death as a fire could be.
There was one other human moving on the farm and that was Pea. The movement was only to lift a cigarette to her lips as she watched Eadie walking through the gates. Her shoulders were hunched, bunching fat at her belly, her heavy breasts sitting like melons sagging on a shelf. There was no choice but to walk right by her, within six or seven meters. Eadie hitched her bag on her shoulder and nodded as she walked by.
“Morning,” she said.
Pea said nothing.
She saw what had been done to the van only as she rounded the corner of the long wooden fences. The spray-painted letters were red and as high as the tiny rounded windows rippling over the corrugated sides of the cabin.
DYKE PIG.
Eadie took in the handiwork and then went over to the van and pulled open the door. The doorstep was wet and reeked of urine. They had pissed at the bottom of the door and flooded the carpet in the hall. The whole caravan reeked of it. She opened all the windows, stripped down to her underwear, and climbed into the bed. She was thinking of getting up again and drawing the curtains when she heard it, the pattering of Ugg boots across the dirt. The door burst open down the narrow hall.
A weight slammed into the bed. Eadie hid her face in the pillows.
“Pull the curtains before you get comfy.”
Skylar leaped from the bed again. It rocked and bounced.
“Someone prettied up your van.”
“They perfumed it as well. How nice.”
“You can come sleep with me and Jackie. ’
“It’s all right. The smell will go,” Eadie said.
“Where did you go? What did you do? Tell me everything.”
“Nowhere. Nothing. No.”
“Oh come on, Eadie, please!”
“I went to a friend’s place. Ordered a pizza. Had a few joints. Watched a movie. It was all very tame.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m really not.” Eadie rolled over, faced the girl. The girl spasmed, kicked her legs.
“Stop lying to me. You’re turning this caravan into a house of lies.”
“What do you reckon I did, if you know so bad?”
“You drove into the city, stayed in a flash hotel. Drank champagne. Dressed up. Went to a club. Danced on the stage. Raised the roof, baby, raised the fucking roof.”
“That’s a good list. Is that what you’d do if you were me?” Eadie asked.
“Maybe.”
“You never stayed in a flash hotel? Danced on a stage? Raised the roof?”
“Maybe a couple of times.” Skylar rolled over, jutted her butt into Eadie’s hips, forced a spoon.
“What’s stopping you?”
“Oh, Jackie’d lose his shit if I went into the city.”
“Lose his shit, would he?”
“Yeah, man. He spent a lot of years doing that himself so he knows how bad it is.” She sniffed, wiped her nose on her hand. “Lotsa bad people in the city. Rob you and mug you, kick your head in for no good fucking reason.”
“Why don’t we go to the city?”
“I couldn’t go with you,” Skylar snorted. “You’d take me to some dyke club. Everyone’d think I’d been turned. They’d spray my van next. Piss on my nice carpet. I just vacuumed.”
“And you just do what people tell you, do you? I’d just make you kiss a girl. Make you cut all your hair off. Wear a flannel shirt and wraparound sunglasses. You’d be hypnotized.”
“Maybe.” Skylar rolled back over, nose to nose. Eadie could smell the girl’s breath. Raspberry toothpaste. Kid’s toothpaste. “You think you can turn a person like that? Make them go over to the other side?”
“I don’t think so, babe.”
“I heard about churches in America taking boys outta the clubs, putting them in vans, smacking the fag right outta them. It was on the news. Sometimes their parents take them to these places to get them fixed. Have, like, a full invention on them.”
“An intervention.”
“Yeah, man, one of those.”
“That’s a shame.”
“What would you do if someone tried to beat it outta you?”
“Is that a threat?” Eadie rose up on her elbow, pulled the blankets back. “Is that a fucking threat?”
It only took a push, hard and steady with the ball of her foot in Skylar’s stomach. The girl grabbed, screamed, rolled, flopped into the space between the bed and the dressers. Breathless laughing, turning to snorts. Eadie pulled her legs back under the blankets and curled up again.