Wake Up and Dream (16 page)

There was a single sink on the way out. With the stains which drooled down its sides and the rusted steel mirror hung sideways above it, it made the one in Daniel Lamotte’s pad in Blixden Apartments look like the height of luxury, but he felt he had to use something to try to get himself to feel clean. Balling a handkerchief in his hands, he worked open the faucet, and was rewarded by a surprising gush of hot water. No soap, of course, but he gratefully rinsed his hands and took off the glasses to splash his face. This water was about the first good experience he’d ever had in City Hall. It cleared his head—almost shook something out—until he remembered April Lamotte’s half-beautiful corpse. Things she’d said came tumbling back to him.

I’m asking you not to leave, Mr Gable. More than asking
…

You’re not quite the hard-bitten cynic you like to think you are. You’re worse. You’re just an outright romantic
…

I sometimes wonder. I mean, even today
…
What the hell’s it all for?

People, when they first came here from back east to make movies, they said it was because of the quality of the light. What they didn’t talk about was the quality of the dark…

He could even hear the cadence of her voice. He spluttered and gasped. A sense of dread passed over him as he put the glasses back on and blinked into the lopsided steel mirror, but the face which peered back at him was still mostly his own. And the City Hall noises which he’d heard earlier—the echoing screams, the doors banging, that odd hissing sound—were louder here. Even in midst of death and all that, life went on… Still, it felt weirdly cold, as if a window had been pushed open, although this restroom was entirely enclosed. And that hissing sound… .He tried twisting the faucet off harder to see if that would make it stop. It didn’t.

Dark streamers seemed to be flapping behind him when he glanced again into the mirror. It was as if an invisible wind was blowing, but nothing actually seemed to be physically moving. Apart, that was, from the hairs on the back of his neck, and the skin along his spine. He turned, expecting—he wasn’t sure what… Nothing but filthy cubicles, and one of the striplights in the ceiling flickering on and off. That was what he was hoping for.

The clamor was louder now, bringing the hollow howl of voices, the flap and bang of doors carried through dark spaces. And it wasn’t coming from some other part of City Hall. He was certain of that now. His skin chilled. He felt giddy. Something sour and bad and airless was coating his tongue.

Then he saw it again. At first it was just a substanceless blur—like looking at the shimmer of a dust devil across a summer field. Then, and this was somehow more disturbing still, it actually started to
act
like a dust devil, and pluck up scraps of the wet mess over which it hovered and draw them up into a loose but increasingly defined swirl. It grew a shape of sorts, legs at first, and then a torso, and a gathering suggestion of arms. It no longer resembled a dust devil. If it looked like anything at all, flapping as it was with a mess of toilet paper, piss and ordure, it was like some schoolboy mixture of the mummy and the invisible man. But it was horrible—and the horror, as a face finally began to grow, had nothing to do with filth of which it was made. What it emanated was a sense of inexpressible pain. He got an impression of broken limbs, destroyed flesh, of mouths, eyes, faces, all differently distorted, but equally agonized.

“What the hell
are
you?”

He didn’t even realize that he’d spoken, but the shifting thing seemed to take heed of his voice. For a moment, there was a sense that the shapes fighting within it tensed, cowered. Then, in a shriek of light, they dissolved. Not so much vanishing as spreading out, slamming into the walls, leaving nothing but a shocked silence and the bathetic
plop
of sodden toilet paper to the floor. Sour ripples washed out to him. Whatever it was that he’d just witnessed, it had been real.

C
ITY HALL SMELLED ONCE AGAIN
of nothing but sweat and old coffee as he walked back along the corridor from the restroom toward the solidly unmistakable figure of Officer Doyle standing at its far end.

“You okay, fella?”

For lack of any better response, he nodded.

“May as well get you home. That place up in the hills?”

Erewhon’s glass walls. Its endless swallowing reflections. That medicine cabinet. April Lamotte’s bed. “I think I’d prefer to go back to Bunker Hill.”

“Not a problem.”

“What happens next?”

“I think that’s about it, Mr Lamotte. This of all times, I can’t thank you enough for being so cooperative. Just so as you know, it’ll probably be a few days before the Coroner’s Department release the body. You’ll need to get in touch with a chapel of rest.”

“A what?”

“Chapel of rest’s what a lot of the undertakers in this city like to call themselves now.”

“Right.”

“’Fraid we’ll have to keep hold of your wife’s car and possessions for a while as well until the Coroner delivers his report. The car’s in the pound. Still works okay as far as I know, but you might need to show it to your insurers. Her other stuff’s all bagged up—her clothes and things. It’s evidence until the case is formally closed, although we can let you have the money and keys and so forth. You want that sorted now?”

He hesitated only fractionally before he said yes.

He could tell the old cop was switching off, the way he was left alone with a mailbag stuffed with April Lamotte’s belongings. But he’d never felt comfortable about the part of his work which involved going through other people’s clothing. Especially if they happened to be dead. But here it all was; the things any woman would probably wear if she went out for a morning drive into the hills, although the labels were more than averagely expensive. Bra and panties. Socks and shoes. Slacks with a good press in them. A linen blouse which still felt laundry-crisp. Everything reeked of carfumes far more strongly than her body had, and he had to draw his hand away when he touched a crust of drying vomit. His vision swayed. He looked around the little room—at a broken chair, at a notice board pinned with dates for the Vice Squad Sea Fisherman’s Club which petered out back in ’38—daring anything to come, anything to happen. Nothing did.

He made himself feel in April Lamotte’s pockets. Found only a handkerchief, keys. He checked them against his own keychain. Apart from the ones which belonged to the Cadillac and Blixden Apartments, they were the same. There was a small purse. He unclipped the clasp. A clip of about thirty dollars, a silver lighter, a spare handkerchief, the same sunglasses she’d worn when she picked him up, and a silver holder for a half dozen of those pastel cigarettes. That, and a pencil. The point was still sharp—used for no more than a few lines. Wherever April Lamotte had been planning on going, she’d sure been traveling light. That pine lodge? But why would she choose to stop and write those things and kill herself on the way?

Heavy footsteps along the corridor; Officer Doyle returning. He closed the purse and felt quickly around the bottom of the mailsack. He got an
aha
! surge when he found what felt like a sheaf of paper, but it turned out to be only a Sunaco fold-out map of Los Angeles and the surrounding district of the sort that gas stations gave out for free if you took a full tank. It looked barely used, but it felt oddly sandy, gritty… For lack of anything else, he stuffed it into his inside suit coat pocket.

Officer Doyle grumbled about life in the manner of all old cops as he drove Clark back through the city.

“Time was, we’d spend our days arresting felons. But now there are these Youth Vigilantes the Governor’s got sworn in in those mass rallies. Wander round the streets in those uniforms like they own the place. I mean, if there’s some lowlife needs the crap beaten out of him, I’ll do it myself…”

“I guess.”

“… Spend so much time trying to track down pinkos and fairies and abortionists and every other kind of freak, there’s hardly any left for the real villains. And what’s this three strikes and you’re out crap? I mean, what the fuck has crime got to do with baseball, if you’ll pardon my French. And the Comstock Act! Just don’t get me started. An’ you only have to drive along Vine round about midnight if you
really
wanna see lewd and lascivious, but the pastors and the League of Concerned Housewives an’ all the rest don’t give a damn about that. Just last week we were supposed to be raiding this socialist bookshop, but when we get there the fire department’s beat us to it.” He chuckled disappointedly. “Some Liberty Leaguers had already burned the place down. I tell you, live and let live, but good old fashioned police work’s gone down to nothing. All that’s left for us to do is hold back the crowds…”

A filthy barefoot woman wearing a ratted fur coat and what looked like some kind of tiara was pulling an old luggage trolley laden with her possessions up past Angles Flight. A sign at a taxi rank said
NO LOITERING NO NIGGERS
. A Rolls Royce swished heedlessly by, its windows a magic lantern filled with hopelessly beautiful faces. A Champagne bottle struck the blacktop in a shower of green sparks as it took the corner. Clark wondered if this city really was changing, or if it wasn’t becoming more and more of what it always was.

“We’ve got this new project. Chief says they’re gonna put them receiving Bechmeir things—what do you call them?”

“Iconoscopes.”

“That’s it. Put them ico-copes in all the interview cells. The DA’s got shares in one of the companies that makes them, so you can work out the rest yourself… An’ as if we needed some dumb new machine to show us that criminals lie. See, what you really need to do good cop work is brains.” He tapped the top of his cap as they took the turn into Blixden Avenue. “That’s one thing that’s never gonna change.”

Officer Doyle pulled the car in at the far end of the street, and stepped around to let Clark out. “By the way, what you said about those kids damaging your vehicle. I’m guessing those were the same little street rats who were out here this evening. I’m sure I can put in a word with the beat officer, make sure they ain’t so cocky next time.”

“No, no—it’s okay.”

“You
sure
?” He laid a fat hand on Clark’s shoulder and gave it a momentary squeeze. “But just take it easy, will you? You’re a good guy. If there is a heaven, I’m sure your wife’s up there, smiling down on us poor suckers right now…”

Clark stood and watched the cop’s car backlights fade. Then he noticed that an old gum wrapper had been stuck on the Delahaye’s windshield. He lifted the wiper to take a look.

SoRRie bout you

WIF MisTa Lameout

Fom Roger

Even in the dark, he now knew how to avoid the creak on the first rise of Blixden Apartments’ stairs. It was only when he’d closed the door on room 4A and peeled off his shoes and socks that it occurred to him that he could have driven back home to Venice. Or simply found a cheap hotel. But he was back here now, so deep in over his head that he didn’t know where the surface was, and he’d never felt so tired in his entire life.

Although nothing had been obviously changed or moved, the room looked in an even bigger mess that it had this morning. The empty tins. The bottles. The cheap scraps of furniture. Those windfall heaps of notebooks and papers. Blundering around it all, he laid the snubnose Colt down on the table amid the scattered drafts by the typewriter, then went to the window and rocked it open to let in some air. Looking down at the street, he thought he saw a figure standing at the furthest edge of a pool of streetlight on the opposite sidewalk, outside the collapsed house. It seemed to be looking right up toward him. Then, as if sensing his attention, it dissolved.

He stayed leaning out of his window in room 4A of Blixden Apartments, doing nothing but breathing in the city scents of dust and garbage and eucalyptus, nothing but listening to the everyday night sounds of cats yowling, dogs barking, the soft rise and fall of faraway traffic, then a siren’s brief wail. Finally he racked the window back shut, pulled across the flimsy curtains, and dragged off the rest of his clothes.

Naked, he clicked off the light and lay down on the rucked mattress with no anticipation, tired though he was, of anything resembling sleep. He rolled over, turned back. In dark waves, the room pulsed and closed itself about him. Whispers of voices past, trust betrayed, and opportunities lost, came to him. Then he heard the sea, and bright edges of laughter, and saw all the lost faces of those he had once loved.

M
ORNING. HALF IN AND OUT OF SLEEP.
All the old times, all the old faces. The big cars and the publicity shots and his name in
Variety
and boozing till dawn at the Marmont. Success not waiting around the corner, but right there in front or him, lying in his hands. Soft as a puppy. Warm and clean and bright as this Californian sunlight. And driving his lovely Pierce-Arrow in midnight blue.

Clark smiled. He turned over. A hot blaze spilled into his face. He grunted. Raised an arm to shield his eyes. Saw light surrounding a silhouette like the glittering aura of a saint.

“Who the hell
are
you?” A woman’s voice demanded. “And what exactly are you doing here?”

“Me?” His bare back sticking to the wall, he eased himself up. His penis, aroused from all those dreams, chafed sorely against the sheets.

“You remember who I am?” she asked.

He nodded. He was remembering a lot of things now. “You’re Barbara, uh, Usher.”

“Eshel. It’s Barbara Eshel.”

“Right.”

He watched as she leaned back on the chair which she’d drawn from the desk. Watched as she kept the snubnose Colt which he’d left there trained in the middle of his chest.

“And
you
are?”

“I told you yesterday. My name’s Daniel Lamotte. I thought—”

“You must think I’m really stupid. But I guess the only stupid thing I’m doing is sitting here and asking for explanations when I should just call the police.”

“How did you get in?”