Penny Dreadful (39 page)

And now with the other hand, said McDaniel. Tickle her titties.

That’s enough, I said. Motherfucker.

McDaniel sighed. Oh, all right. This is just for fun. But I do want you to kiss her again, and this time please force her mouth open and take her tongue.

He doesn’t need to take it, said Eve.

Take it, said McDaniel.

My reflection was in fragments and part of me was enjoying this. If I had to come back from the dead to hurt McDaniel for this, I would try. But for now I bent and kissed her again, my mouth open. Eve allowed me to bite her tongue, and I offered my tongue to her. She bit it just enough to draw blood. I felt dizzy and realized my hand was still tucked against her crotch like a glove and the fingers were moving. I pulled away and McDaniel laughed, apparently satisfied. He hit the red button and we continued up to the sixteenth floor. I kissed Eve once more, for luck. I wanted to promise her I would come back for her but was afraid it would sound false and much too dramatic.

I hope you aren’t claustrophobic, said McDaniel.

Not at all, she said.

McDaniel motioned for me to remove myself from the elevator. I backed away from Eve and stood between the doors to stop them from closing. McDaniel placed the gun against Eve’s head to keep me from getting any funny ideas, then pinched her nose shut between his thumb and finger until she stuck out her tongue but he didn’t try to bite it. He laughed, and told her not to worry. He promised that he would be back for her. Eve closed her eyes and I threw my thoughts at her like furious hail. Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry.

I almost laughed.

Because one of us would be back and I was the only one armed with a blue notebook. But I did remember her telling me once that she had nightmares about open spaces, that in fact she loved to feel trapped. McDaniel roughly touched her ribs and belly with long white fingers, he was tickling her with unpleasant intimacy and now she lunged and squirmed away from his touch like an angry daughter. And before he disembarked the elevator, the fucker happily pressed all twenty-nine buttons.

Now he shoved me down the long yellow hallway, through the little waiting room and past the desk where the freakish and overtly sexual receptionist was not sitting, past the dark landscape of a drowning human brain and through the hissing doors to Griffin’s pale white lair. And Griffin, or more likely Major Tom, was napping restlessly on the black leather sofa where just the day before he and I had shared some very nice coke. I could use some of that shit now. My reflexes were fucking poor, my reflexes were impoverished and now McDaniel pushed me toward the sofa where Griffin lay sleeping.

Wake him, he said.

I kneeled beside the couch and looked into Griffin’s face. At first I thought he must be dead but his lips were much too rubbery and slick with drool. He wasn’t easy to wake up, though. I thumped his nose with the blackened nail of my middle finger. I spat into my hand and palmed his bare skull like a basketball. I tugged open one eyelid and blew hot air onto his naked eyeball and still he snored until McDaniel grew weary of this and kicked the glass coffee table over, shattering it. Griffin sat up with a foolish grin on his face while I rolled into a nearby corner to pick small bits of glass out of my skin.

Theseus, said Griffin. Welcome, welcome.

McDaniel rolled his eyes and gave a mock bow. He stalked the length of the office with the cool inner fury of a stage villain whose head is so ripe with mischief that he can’t begin to begin.

What can I get you, said Griffin. A drink, a cigar?

I would like a moist towel, I said.

Griffin sneered. Hello, Ray. Ever the prole, aren’t you?

The what? I said.

Proletariat, he said. The dull, wage-earning class. Haven’t you read 1984?

No. I did see the movie, though. David Bowie, wasn’t it?

William Hurt, you troll. McDaniel fairly snarled.

Whatever, I said. And I said it slowly, letting the word roll lavishly over my lips.

Excuse me? he said. His eyes like pinpricks.

Fuck you, I said. Fuck you, okay.

Griffin coughed and threw a pillow at me. Wipe your face, Ray. You’re a fright.

Thank you.

Griffin stood up, then. His arms out wide and his posture grossly servile. He moved close to McDaniel and began to grovel and kiss his hands and virtually lick at his genitals in such a way that might have been fashionable two hundred years ago, in a surreal French courtyard full of bursting flowers and castrated male servants. McDaniel primped and preened throughout and I had to wonder what I was doing with these two mad fuckers while Eve was handcuffed to herself in an elevator.

Let’s get this over with, I said.

Griffin literally purred as he helped McDaniel out of his jacket. He hung it up, careful not to crease it, and turned to look at me with disdain.

Your tone of voice is offensive, he said.

Offensive, I said. Are you serious?

Terribly.

I am not offended, said McDaniel. Yet.

Well, then. Who wants a cocktail? said Griffin. I have a pint of the Pale here somewhere.

I wasn’t sure if Griffin was high or just acting high. McDaniel exhaled through his nose and murmured that he was not thirsty. I did want a drink, however. I wanted two fingers of dead memories, served over ice with a wedge of lime and a splash of tonic, chased with a fat line of coke that would leave my jaw numb and heavy. I told myself to change the subject.

McDaniel cocked his gun now, and uncocked it.

I smiled as my education finally kicked in.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, I said. Isn’t that right? Theseus was the Duke of Athens.

McDaniel squinted at me. Very good. You are not quite the oaf I imagined.

I shrugged.

But did you know that the character of Theseus is generally played by the same actor who portrays Oberon, King of the Fairies? Both men are grand manipulators.

I scratched a phantom itch along the side of my neck and thought it small consolation that McDaniel had taken his name from a comedy.

No. I didn’t know that.

And what is your given name? he said to me.

Phineas Poe.

I thought so, he said. The wife-killer from Internal Affairs.

The blood does not actually boil. It’s a useful, if somewhat exaggerated expression. My skin was not even hot but I was sick of cool good-byes and reluctant eyes and while I would let this comment pass for the moment I was pretty fucking sick of this nursery-rhyme explanation for my wife’s death.

McDaniel held the gun on me and I bit at my tongue.

Griffin himself looked fairly sickened. He sucked air through his teeth and I wondered if he now was my friend or McDaniel’s toady.

McDaniel grinned at me. What is your intention? he said.

Excuse me?

You called me this morning, he said. Do you remember?

I don’t know, I said. I’m making this up as I go along.

As am I, he said. But why did you not bring Jimmy Sky?

Jimmy was naked and suicidal on somebody’s roof this morning, I said. He’s probably in the hospital by now. If he’s lucky.

McDaniel sniffed the fingers of his left hand.

Did you hear me, I said.

What does your hand smell like, he said.

What? I said.

I wonder if it smells like Goo, he said. I imagine she has a stinky package.

I sighed. He was definitely going to have to shoot me before I would discuss the smell of Eve’s panties. Griffin went over to his desk and began to fiddle with the controls of a police scanner. He reached for a set of headphones.

Moon was a friend of mine, I said.

McDaniel waved the gun. Detective Moon was officially dead yesterday, he said.

Tired. I was tired of his face, of his snotty accent.

You fucker, I said.

I created Jimmy Sky, he said. And just when I have a good role for him, he’s gone mad.

What role was that?

His eyes flickered yellow. Two cops have been found dead and mutilated in the past two days. Three, if you count Moon. I was planning to package Jimmy as the killer. Major Tom there was going to tidy up the legal side. But then you came along and confused things.

I confused things, I said. That’s hilarious.

When did you arrive in town? he said.

I nodded. Two days ago.

Perhaps you would like to be the killer.

I would love to help you, I said. But your killer is already turning green in a Dumpster behind a Burger King on West 17th. He was just a guy named Christian.

McDaniel either didn’t believe me or didn’t care. He raised the gun.

Whoa, I said.

On your knees, he said.

Griffin turned off the scanner. A naked gunman was shot and killed by police an hour ago, he said. Identified on the scene as Detective Walter Moon.

That can’t be, I said. That can’t be right. Moon is riding the crosstown bus with no shirt. He’s on the bus. In fact, I’m expecting him to walk in here any minute and start taking names.

McDaniel smiled a crooked smile and even Griffin looked as if he felt sorry for me, because I was so ignorant. And I chose that moment, for good or ill, to pick up a little straight-backed chair made of steel and chrome that looked very uncomfortable and throw it at McDaniel. He ducked under it easily and the chair bounced off the massive window behind him like it was made of rubber. The same window that I had seen fall from its frame and glide down to earth the other day like the hand of God. The chair landed almost at my feet and McDaniel grinned like a cat, his lips turning purple. He took a step forward and I knew he was going to shoot me.

Easy, said Griffin. Everybody take it easy. This carpet is Egyptian silk and cotton, okay. And it’s white. It cost two thousand dollars per square foot.

McDaniel snarled out of the side of his mouth and the veins in his forehead bulged nicely. He had a very long nose, I noticed. He looked like a pale, sickly dog-man. Half man and half dog and not quite civilized. He turned now and stared intently at Griffin, as if he might just shoot him for practice. He stared and stared and the air between them became elastic. I touched my forehead and found my skin cold, rubbery. The skin of a frog. I had a hangover, I think. This was withdrawal or something. I wanted a shot of the Pale and I was operating on fumes.

Griffin sat down abruptly, on the floor. He was trembling.

Don’t look at me, he said. Don’t look at me like that.

McDaniel stared at him.

I was beginning to wonder if I might just slip away when Goo walked into the room. She wasn’t Eve. I knew this without quite understanding it. Her face was different, colder. Her eyes were far away. She wore nothing but a black bra and underpants. There was a smear of blood across her stomach and she held the rest of her clothes away from her body as if they stank.

These aren’t mine, she said.

No, I said. Dumbly. They’re Dizzy’s.

She didn’t know me. She looked at me without comprehension. But she veered toward me and dropped the clothes at my feet and I saw that her hands were bloody. I reflexively kicked the clothes away from me, as if they were diseased.

McDaniel beamed at her like a proud papa and I knew he was thrilled by this little distraction, because he wouldn’t have to think for a few minutes.

But then, neither would I.

Meanwhile. Griffin still sat on the floor, his face blank as a scarecrow’s. He was having a private little meltdown, an identity crisis. He had chosen the worst possible moment to crack apart and to be honest, I was tempted to sit down beside him but now Goo was drifting around the room in a slow, disintegrating figure eight, her bloody wrists held out away from her body. She had wriggled out of the handcuffs, somehow. I wasn’t terribly surprised, when I thought about what she had been doing for a living the past few months. But I knew how tightly I had cuffed her. She held her hands out like a child, like she was shocked by the blood. But that wasn’t it. Her hands were fucked up, I saw. I stepped in front of her and took her by the wrists, gently.