Perpetual Motion (10 page)

This answer seemed to mostly mollify
Karl.

“The thing is – it’s been a couple of days
since she checked-in and I’m a little worried she’s not answering
her phone. If the Mob found out about her….Well, I don’t want to
think about that.” Cynical squished up his face like he was looking
at a messy crime scene. He cut his eyes toward the ceiling. “She
could be up there, hurt, or worse. Is there any way you could check
it out for me?”

Karl’s expression went from concerned to
conflicted, “Oh, I don’t know sir-”

“You have a master key, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m not supposed to go into an
apartment without permission.”

“Karen wouldn’t be able to give you
permission if she’s up there bleeding to death, would she?” Cynical
cut Karl off before he started to answer the rhetorical question.
“What about an emergency? Aren’t you allowed to go in then?”

“Well, yeah - ”

“Well, if this isn’t an emergency, I don’t
what is.” With the guard on the fence, Cynical gave him one more
little push. “Look, I don’t have to go in. All you have to do is
check it out. Just make sure she’s okay. That’s all.”

The idea of a girl’s death on his permanent
record seemed to be tipping the scales. Slowly, Karl rose with the
key ring in hand. “One quick look.”

Karl didn’t object when Cynical accompanied
him to the elevators for the short ride to the third floor.
Rattling his keys, the security guard ambled down the hallway to
#315, the private eye staying close to his side. At the door, Karl
held up his fist in a gesture to wait behind him. This guy had seen
his share of cop shows, Cynical thought.

“Ms. Norton?” Karl knocked hard on the door.
“It’s Security.”

When there was no answer, he thumbed through
the keys, selected one, and inserted it in the lock. “I’m coming
in!” As the dead bolt clicked, Karl turned to the x-detective. “You
stay here.”

Cynical nodded obediently from the hallway as
Karl slipped inside the apartment.

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, Three
Mississippi, Four,” Cynical mumbled before sneaking a peek past the
cracked door. From what he could see, it was a quant, slightly
messy living room. Karl had already made his way through the living
area and was securing the back bedroom.

“Clear!” he heard Karl shout from the other
room. Way too many cop shows.

Slipping inside, Cynical scanned the sparse
furnishings: futon/couch, a particle board desk with a computer;
shelves of books that contained a biochemical theme.

On the kitchen bar was a blinking answering
machine. Bingo. Hitting the play button, the voice of a young woman
came on. “Hey, it’s Lorisa. Haven’t seen you in like, forever.
What’s up with you?” she asked with a note of concern.

Karl came running out from the back of the
apartment. “What are you doing? I told you to wait outside!”

Pushing the pause button, Cynical looked at
the poor kid who seemed utterly astonished that his authority had
been usurped.

“You need to leave, right now!” Muscles
flexed, Karl came closer, ready to physically remove him from the
premises.

Cynical raised a warning hand, stopping the
kid from advancing. “Look, Karl, I appreciate you have a job to
do,” he said calmly, staring the young man dead in the eye. “So do
I.”

Although angry, when push came to shove, Karl
wasn’t willing to mix it up with a seasoned ex-detective who looked
like he could brawl with the best of them.

“You can’t do this!” he barked. “I’m calling
the cops. The real ones!”

“Call them,” Cynical said. “Tell them you
obstructed my investigation.”

“We’ll see about that!” And with that, Karl
left the apartment in a huff, slamming the door behind him.

Frankly, it was a relief to be left in peace.
Hitting the forward arrow, Cynical listened to the rest of Lorisa’s
message.

“So, a few of us are going to the Boom Boom
Room tonight. I’ll look for you – You better show up too. No more
excuses.”

There were no more new messages, so Cynical
went back to search for any older ones that might have been kept
for posterity’s sake.

“Hey, it’s me.” It was the soft, thoughtful
voice Cynical recognized as Michael’s. “Vegas is off. I’ll tell you
about it later.” An anxious edge came through. “People are after
me. At least now I know I’m not going crazy.”

A pause was followed by, “I’ll call you as
soon as I find a safe place.” Another long pause, and then a
heartfelt, “I love you.” Just before hanging up, he added, “Oh,
tell Fernando I have Mary with me.”

Who were Fernando and Mary? Cynical pondered
the two new people as he went into the bedroom. Was he working
Vegas with a partner? Had Mary picked him up?

On top of the dresser he found a picture of
Michael and a cute girl he presumed to be Karen. Michael had held
the camera at arm’s length to snap their slightly askew close-ups;
all eight eyes glinting in the sunlight.

While he would have liked to snoop around
longer, he knew he couldn’t linger. Slipping the photo into his
jacket, he went back through the apartment, closing the door behind
him. Skipping the elevator, he jogged the three flights down.

As he walked through the front lobby, Karl
glowered at him from behind his desk. “The cops are on their way,”
the security guard hissed.

“Good,” Cynical said. “You’re the one that
let a stranger into a tenant’s apartment.” With a look of genuine
disappoint, he added, “And you wanted to be a cop.”

With at least eight hours to kill before he
could check out the “Boom Boom Room,” Cynical headed to the last
known physical address of Michael Dexter: 154 Alpha Street. He was
pretty sure it was just south of downtown but, to make sure, he
pulled out his weatherworn Thomas Guide. Even though he had GPS, he
wanted to know where he was going before he actually got there.

His suspicions confirmed, he headed into LA
on the 10 and got off at Alameda, where he began zig-zagging
through the warehouse district. He stayed to the west of the
railroad tracks where the produce was off-loaded that fed LA. Just
over the tracks was the “LA River” that once provided the city with
water before it became a flowing cesspool of urban run-off.

154 Alpha was small compared to the other
football field size buildings that crowded in around it. With
broken windows and a bent roof, it was also one of the homelier
contestants in an ugly pageant. Resembling an over-sized garage
with a warehouse off the back, Michael had certainly not blown
Mancuso’s money on office space.

To avoid running over shards of glass in the
empty lot, he parked his car a few feet away. Walking around the
broken glass and a busted padlock on the ground, he approached the
front door. It swung open on a broken hinge, which Cynical took as
an invitation to go inside.

The office had been stripped down to the
barest essentials: a chair, desk, and the shell of a file cabinet.
Cynical went over to the desk and rifled through drawers, where he
found a broken pencil, an outdated desk calendar, and dust bunnies
galore. Underneath the bottom drawer, he caught the corner of a
piece of paper. Pulling it out, he blew off the dirt and held it up
to the light.

A company named ‘Dynastar’ had invoiced
‘O-Motors’ for neodymium magnets. “60 18 lbs SuperMags, N85UR,
black nickel coating.” At sixty one thousand dollars, that was a
serious chunk of change for a serious chunk of magnets.

Moving on to the room adjacent to the office,
he found a warehouse with a concrete floor and cinderblock walls.
In the middle of the cavernous room was a giant twisted ring of
metal. For several minutes, Cynical simply stared at the
“centerpiece,” as if he was trying to decipher a modern
sculpture.

The object was about the size of a
‘roundabout’ on a playground; the large metal discs that kids spin
around on until they get sick or fly off; only this tangled machine
had three foot tall walls around the edges that had been blown
outward. Lying across the top was a heavy-looking misshapen
bar.

Eventually, Cynical came to the conclusion
that he was looking at what was left of Michael’s grand experiment.
The kid’s story continued to check out; the contraption had clearly
been blown up. Although it was hard to be sure, it looked like the
epicenter of the blast had been underneath the center of the
wheel.

What he didn’t know was whether the
contraption had overheated and exploded, or if had some help to
reach the ruined state it was in. If this were back in his days as
a real detective, Cynical would have simply called in the bomb
squad for a post-blast analysis. Since that wasn’t going to happen,
he launched his own investigation, which consisted of kicking loose
scraps of metal and looking for something unusual.

As he got closer to the bulk of the
structure, he felt a strange attraction that seemed to pull him
toward the strangely alluring big black bars. Weirdly, it was
almost as if the tugging sensation came from his mid-section. Was
he sexually attracted to the chunks of mysterious metal? That
seemed kinky, even for him.

Glancing at his belt buckle, he rummaged in
his pocket and pulled out the invoice he’d found in the office,
along with his car keys. A thought came to him. Dropping the keys,
they took an abrupt turn a foot and a half from the floor and flew
through the air, sticking to the side of the closest black block.
Magnets.

Leaning down to retrieve his jumble of keys,
he noticed a burnt wire below a chunk of metal lying on its side.
Near the middle of the ruble pile, he rummaged around a bit more
and came up with the top of a nine bolt battery. While these little
items could have been a part of the original machinery, they also
could have been a part of a bomb that was set to go off with an
electronic pulse.

Extracting himself from the wreckage, he
walked a few paces away and, turning around, noticed ‘the big
picture.’ A large, twenty foot by twenty foot, design had been
painted on the grey cinderblock wall by the entrance. The drawing
appeared to depict a big broken circle; one end slightly wider than
the other.

Stepping closer, he saw that little lines
came off the main circle with cryptic notations beside them. Even
though Cynical couldn’t decipher the meaning, he could appreciate a
certain elegance and symmetry to the nautical shape.

It occurred to him that the intricate design
was a schematic for the now misshapen metal frame that lay in the
middle of the room. Could he be staring at a perpetual motion
machine, at least before it had been blown into a thousand pieces?
Whatever it had been, it was perpetually immobile now.

Not listed in any public directory, Cynical
had to do some checking around to locate the underground club
called “The Boom Boom Room.” He ended up calling a young man he’d
helped out a few years ago, who called his younger brother, who
made a few phone calls to his friends. Eventually, he received a
text with an address.

Signs that advertised acupuncture, human
hair, and green corn tamales represented an area of mixed
ethnicities. Among the small businesses and older homes, a pink and
black plaster palace took up half a block. A dirty white cursive
neon sign blinked “Boo” over and over again. Maybe the “m” was
missing. Either way, the scary looking club with the thunderous
beat was appropriately named.

Parking below a Korean sign on an unlit side
street, Cynical locked up, double-checked he was locked up, and
then walked back toward the club. Along the way, he passed by a
heavyset young woman in a black dress with white make-up and a stud
in her cheek. Goth. Taking a drag on a cigarette, she tossed her
but on the sidewalk in front of his feet.

“That’s not good for your health,” Cynical
mentioned as he stepped on the filter.

The woman shot him a glowering look and
muttered an expletive.

Approaching the clubs, he saw a couple of
figures loitering under the striped canopy awning. Perhaps spying
him too, they drifted inside, providing Cynical with an opening.
Not waiting for an invitation, he drifted inside the smoky
cavern.

Figures passed in front of his eyes as the
loud, heavy noise that passed for music battered and bruised his
sensibilities. His eyes were having trouble adjusting to the thick
fog of darkness, but he could make out a light he recognized as the
bar.

A man on a mission, he worked his way through
the crowd, which was comprised of more macabre looking kids all
trying to out-scary the others. The bartender turned out to be a
scrappy little girl with a shaved head who immediately looked
warily at the geezer saddling up to her watering hole.

“Pabst,” he yelled, having been surprised to
see a few of the familiar labels floating around.

In one motion, the punkified chick grabbed a
bottle out of the cooler, snapped the cap off and dropped it in
front of Cynical. She lingered for a moment as he coughed up a
twenty.

“Keep it.” Now the girl looked even more
suspicious. “I’m trying to find either one of these guys,” Cynical
said as he took out the photo he’d swiped from Karen’s apartment.
The cute girl in the photo did not look like she belonged in a Goth
dungeon, so he was surprised when he caught a glimmer of
recognition. “I’m not a cop,” he quickly reassured her. “They’re
missing and could be in trouble.”

The bartender squinted at him. “You look like
a cop.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he said, as he
handed her his business card with another twenty dollar bill.

She studied the card for a couple of seconds
before pocketing the bills and looking up at the x-detective. “I
don’t recognize him, but I’ve seen her before… not for a while
though.” She tapped at Karen in the photo. “I think one of her
friends is a regular. If I see her, I’ll point her out.”