Fun City Punch (Joe Dylan Crime Noir, #5) Read online

  “It’s like I don’t know her anymore. She disappears every night.”

  “Where?”

  “Not sure,” he shrugged, “just into the night.”

  “You didn’t consider joining her?”

  “I hate this city.”

  “Oh,” I looked at the client directly. “Any idea where she is now?”

  “Trixie’s at the bar with a trombone player named Blue.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I checked her life-enhancer account.”

  “Sure you need a detective?”

  “I told you already, Mr. Dylan, the Punch won’t take her back. Some new policy...”

  “You sent the picture?”

  “Sure.”

  I checked the life-enhancer, model e56, and lo and behold, there inside was a photo of Sloane and Trixie. She was beautiful in an obvious way. She would have gained a few pounds and lost a couple of yards of pace since the shot, but basically, people never changed. Back in ’07, I solved a missing person case using a twenty-year-old photograph that had been spun through the washing machine. I figured Trixie Sloane would now have the kind of hair that had been dyed so many times the original color was as undeterminable and as distant as a forgotten dream. Perhaps she did not know the color herself. Facial features were unremarkable, like an incomplete sketch by a minor artist on a bad afternoon. I tagged her as having spent her life in the bowels of some administrative hellhole, a reinsurance technician perhaps, or a legal secretary specializing in maritime law somewhere in the Central Business District. Her eyelids were perhaps painted the dull depressing purple of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Her lashes were synthetic, the rest of her somehow incomplete, distant, lonely, wanting, needing something more than the obvious hand that had played her the husband at home, and the trombonist in the jazz bar.

  “Are you both the same age?”

  “She’s ten years younger.”

  “Oh, so what you want me to do, Mr. Sloane?”

  “Just get the evidence so we can intervene or at least threaten to.” I figured that, with the right fee, I could spring myself from the City. Anywhere but Fun City sounded great. I named a figure below what I needed to leave, and Sloane agreed to it.

  “Yup.”

  “And, Mr. Dylan, is it true that you have been known to use, um, narcotic substances?”

  “Well...”

  “This is difficult for me.”

  “What is?”

  “Well, with my Punch program.”

  “Sure, but look at it. Fun City is a hot place for dark people. I’m trying to help you, Mr. Sloane. It seems to me I might be able to win her confidence if I play around with the giggle juice just a little and maybe blaze the devil’s cabbage to stir the memory. You credit me up front and I can afford the moral deficit. Who knows, I might even turn her around.”... and myself, I thought.

  “Perhaps, get close to her, see what she is using. Scopolamine is what I suspect.”

  “It is still legal here, Mr. Sloane. One of the last highs left in the city. Scopolamine is the latest craze. I use the word craze with the true meaning of the word.”

  “I need evidence that she is leading a devious life, Mr. Dylan. It seems to me that you are perfect for this assignment. Record her and send me the recordings.”

  “Sure, I’ll see which way the rabbit runs. I’ll record some audio and film some still shots. Cost will depend on the time it takes me to get them. I’ll need a payment down now. Anything over that amount, I will bill to your account. I’ll need some details. Fill out this form.” I passed over the form, a simple declaration to pay the set fees, along with a ballpoint.

  “How long will this take?”

  “If, as you say, Trixie is out nightly, it shouldn’t take long. You have any children?”

  “No, we tried but...”

  “I see.” And I did. Sloane didn’t have kids in him, but then again, thus far, neither did I. A child gave you a credit score of 1000. The poor were breeding, but the poor always did. I took the completed questionnaire and payment forms from Sloane and slid them under the scanner, and then checked my Fun City credit score and confirmed that I was at 107 points. Enough for a good time and enough for the case.

  “Well, let’s get started, shall we?”

  I stood.

  Checked my two clips.

  One was a 2i2 Red-eye that recorded film, and the other a Whisper2000 that recorded sound. Both clipped to the underneath of the belt along with my life-enhancer e56.

  The client stood and tried not to notice the rat scurrying beneath the bar globe. I opened the door and ushered him back out into the tunnel where he disappeared, walking sheepishly into the darkness. It wasn’t pity I felt for him. It was more a kind of awkward trepidation. He was going to get screwed whichever way the fortune cookie crumbled, and I would be at best, a spectator in the whole, sorry mess.

  I moved on into the night towards the bar. A pair of women in high heels and leopard skin clothes went by.

  The youngest of the pair said to the other, “Look at his shirt. The kind of shirt only a drunk would wear.”

  Well, a private detective had to look the part, slipping through the oily tunnels and alleyways like a common Fun City drunk breaking into the next disaster.

  Grace Jones walked in the rain through a smoke-stained open window as my feet moved towards the Neptune in Leather, Trixie Sloane, and the darkest flower in town.

  The flower they called the Devil’s Breath.

  TWO

  SEEK AND you shall find.

  Found the Neptune in Leather like a tequila hangover. Crimson wallpaper bled into a lounge with stairs to the left, and straight ahead, a jazz band played. The trombone player blew his instrument beneath a shock of tightly curled hair. Signet paperback edition of On the Road poked unobtrusively out of his denim jacket pocket. Gibbon hung from a ceiling rafter languidly masturbating above a terminally bored scarlet macaw. The bird was hopping from one foot to the other as if the perch was aflame. A holy man sat at the bar wearing a white hemp safari suit, drinking mojitos with a docile puffin perched on his shoulder. Outside, the sound of tires screeched as a drum solo collided with a sudden blast of brass. A cheetah-skinned barmaid approached. “Soda water, no ice,” I told her.

  A suit sat in the far corner looking at a copy of the government pamphlet they called the Fun City Express. Somewhere, a cockroach died. Slowly, painfully, the man with the newspaper sat staring at the print, not reading it, just staring at it. Nervous and slim, he couldn’t sit quite still and he had nobody to talk to, so he talked to himself, moving his hands to illustrate his outrage at whatever article had strangled his attention.

  The bar was a nest of pariahs, most of them incurably damaged by the life that brought them here. They existed for the night, the first rays of sunlight signaling the end of the boulevard. Day was simply an interruption of night for those, who like vampires, returned to their twenty square foot urban coffins and shook away the day until the evening came around, arousing them to set foot on the concrete once more. These solitary night crawlers were running low on credits and knew that the Eye just might not catch them wallowing in the rubble. They were motivated by wants disguised as needs: the drink, the woman, the cash, the stash, all simply props in that bizarre performance, sadly with no dress rehearsal, and probably their final act. Few of them could survive the Punch. A vague military uniform dragged his body away from the bar and towards the exit. Swaying drunkenly from left foot to right before deciding which course the night should take him, and then, like an ice pick, plunged right into it. The Eye would catch his movements as he stumbled to the next den of gin, the hourglass of credit running slowly but ever so surely down like the drinks that followed.

  Then I saw her.

  Like the image through the lens of a camera, she slipped in and out of focus before I finally closed in and realized what a mistake my client had made, or not made, depending on which way you held the camera and how you
weighed what you saw through the viewfinder.

  Trixie’s hair was held up in a bun with an artist’s pencil. Her eyes were large and brown framed with long lashes. She wore patent leather strap-up boots and a once white blouse stained with time and gossip. Dress blacker than a raven’s heart. Glasses perched on her sculptured nose like an artistic afterthought. Her lips were full and welcoming, and her marriage had been a mistake. Sloane didn’t have what it took to keep a woman like this and I figured she was about to find out the trombonist didn’t have it in his repertoire either. To be honest, and with hindsight, neither did I.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’ll tell you,” she said in a vaguely French accent, “if you promise me you aren’t heat.”

  “Not as hot as you,” I said. “Do you have a name? Or do I just invent one for you?”

  “You are free to invent whatever you like, but I’m not being party to any of your dirty little freelance recording. Are you heat?”

  I opened my suit jacket to show her the pockets were empty. “I’m cool,” told her.

  “My name is Trixie Sloane,” she smiled and for a moment, her face lit up her eyes like a little girl lost at the fair, “and yours?”

  “Dylan. Joe Dylan.”

  “You know, Dylan, I think I have a trust deficit.”

  “A trust what?”

  “Never mind, strangers make me nervous. Do I know you from somewhere? I recognize that face.”

  “No,” I said. She was a little drunk, excusably so, given the time and the place.

  “Good. Strangers are strangest when they know you from somewhere. You know, like when you meet some strange guy on the train and he says that he knew you as a child?” Her eyes widened with what might have been fear or adventure, or a shotgun wedding of both.

  “I’ve come to believe it’s the ones you know really close who are the most dangerous... Statistically, people are killed by those that they know, and love.”

  “Maybe, but I just don’t like people. The man who sells fruit at the market, the bartender. You know, there comes a point where you realize you hate everyone you’ve ever known?”

  I nodded. I knew the point that she meant, been to it, been through it, tried to pretend it didn’t exist. “The human is an ugly animal.” I’d read that somewhere. It sounded kinda smart. “But you’re pretty.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “I don’t do compliments. I do truth, and while we are on the subject of truth, can I tell you are smart too?”

  “No, you guys just say things like that. I don’t have room for this kind of talk. I used to be an equestrienne, an expert in dressage.”

  “Is that so?”

  She smiled as if she had just solved a riddle that had been puzzling her for years.

  “What do you do here?”

  “A property speculator,” I lied. “Thinking about turning this joint into a shopping mall; one of those large soulless air-conditioned ones.”

  “You’re not...”

  “No, I’m, not. I lied, sorry. I’m a writer. Working on something that will buy me the hell out of here. And you? Looking for another lonely heart breaker?”

  “I’m with the band,” she said. I followed the line of her gaze to the trombone player.

  “Looks like a keeper. I’d like to pay my respects.”

  “But he isn’t...”

  “Not yet.”

  “You like jazz?”

  “No, I’m here mostly for the pseudo-bohemia and chicken wings.”

  “The cynical type?”

  “Only when you get to know me.” I held out a finger to catch the barmaid’s attention. “Care for a gin fizz, Trixie?”

  “Daddy told me not to accept gifts from strangers.”

  “Didn’t we meet already?”

  She came closer and spoke into my ear, “How do I know you’re not a thief or a rapist, or one of those Gamers?”

  “You don’t know that, but why would a thief or a rapist be offering you a drink? They would just take what they wanted in a back alley and to hell with it. Do I look like a Gamer?”

  “How would I know what those vermin look like?”

  “I’ve lived in the city a while.”

  “Yeah, so what are you doing in here?”

  I let silence answer that one and watched the band play. She seemed cool with that. The notes drifted through the lounge like leaves through a windy forest.

  “So, let’s say you’re not a rapist. Maybe that makes you a thief.” Trixie stared into my eyes deeply before throwing back her head and laughing, her full lips widening. “Maybe you’re a thief with style. Perhaps, you are a Gamer... ”

  I touched the back of her head to keep her eyes close to mine and said, “I guess this is as close to romantic as two people can get in Fun City? Figuring out who is trying to take advantage of whom, exploring and finding each other’s weaknesses. I guess that is all that any relationship is: a series of minor victories and bitter stalemates. Sometimes, I wonder if the whole dance is worthy of the prize, or if the holy man sitting at the bar with the seabird on his shoulder has the whole game figured out. Maybe he loves that bird. Maybe the bird loves him. Maybe two creatures are never designed to love each other, just tolerate each other in the misguided notion that the other isn’t just tolerating them?” Trixie let the thought dance, shook herself from my loose grip and took a tiny sip of her drink. She answered with a quick tight smile. “Perhaps not playing the game is the best game in town,”

  It was good enough a start.

  She smiled as she watched the band play.

  I figured her and Sloane had definitely cancelled the happily ever after gig. The city tested relationships, opened them up and turned them inside out. Threw them on the grill and watched them sizzle. I turned to Trixie and touched her lightly on the hand. “Trixie, let me tell a story.”

  “Wow, a story teller? You tell stories?”

  “It’s what I do, some of the time. No need to get too excited.”

  “So tell it...tell it, please, please,” she squealed.

  “Trixie, baby, if we are to be friends, you have to understand I love sarcasm. Do you want me to tell this story or not?”

  She took control of herself, stopped squealing, looked into my eyes and nodded sagely. “Okay, stranger, what’s the story?”

  “Well, there’s this girl Susan, she’s into exotic pets. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before... You know in Fun City, credits are awarded for the ownership of pets?”

  “Really?” she replied sarcastically, “I often wondered what those strange fluffy wuffy creatures were doing in the durty wurty street.”

  “Well, the more exotic the pet, the more elaborate the points. An endangered animal scores high on the credit scale and not too many questions are asked where it came from. There are talks of government breeding centers, wild cats and reptiles bred and sold into the community. Export overseas for exotic pet markets and fancy medicines. There are loopholes, but basically, the more exotic the pets, the more credits are gained by the handler.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Susan wasn’t into it for the points. Wild animals made her feel exotic and extraordinary. She took pictures of her reptiles and posted them on her life-enhancer page. She had a blog named Susan’s Lizard Love and it gained a solid life-enhancer following. She starts out with lizards, iguanas, newts and tree frogs. Soon, she progresses to larger reptiles until one day she sees the creature slithering and sliding in a pet shop window.”

  “Was it big?”

  “Yes.”

  “And long?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it, was it, DANGEROUS,” her eyes widened like a distant fading star from the auteur movement, said, “Grande?”

  “Yes, Trixie. It was a Burmese python. This creature, you know, albino with big beautiful yellow eyes, they use one of these in an erotic dance show on Happy Street. They look great under the right nightclub lighting. You’ve seen
the yellow and white albinos?”

  “Maybe,” Trixie’s mouth opened and then snapped shut. “It is very big, no?”

  “Yes, Madame, five foot long.”

  “Too big to handle?”

  “Depends on the handler.”

  “Oh.”

  “She would sleep with her on the bed each night looking lovingly into her eyes.” Her gaze was direct now. “She thought this was cute at first and started having the most wild and lucid dream about the snake as the snake was sleeping there right next to her in the bed. Who says reptiles have a cold heart? But the snake troubled her. It would not eat a thing she gave it. She tried mice, both frozen and live. She tried other small mammals, rodents, birds, but the snake refused to eat a thing. ‘Won’t you just eat, you lazy creature’?”

  “It is just a simple fussy serpent, is it not?”

  “Well, that’s what she thought at first. She studied reptile handler’s guides, joined internet forums, nothing helped. Then she visited the vet and told him about her poor snake on hunger strike. The vet leaned back on his chair, massaged his temples with bony fingers and gave it to her. ‘Buy a cage for that snake and without delay. Failing to buy a cage may be the last thing you do. Each night that the snake lies next to you, it is sizing you up for the kill. Those loving eyes he shows you are predatory eyes of greed. And as for the not eating, well that snake is making sure that when he reaches a certain size that there is room enough inside to fit all of your beautiful body inside his. Buy a cage, Trixie, buy a cage.’”

  “You think I’m the girl, right?” Trixie smiled.

  “Maybe it’s just a story?”

  “Well, if I’m the girl, just who is the snake?” She smiled.