The Hell Yo - lanyon Josh - Страница 64
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She nodded primly. Tucked a long strand of shiny hair beneath one small ear.
I had no idea what to say to her. She didn’t seem much for small talk. I shook the ice in
my empty glass. “Can I buy you a drink, kid?”
She giggled.
Chapter Twenty-four
The holiday garland stretched across the empty street was unraveling in the wind
when the taxi let me off in front of the shop at three a.m. I let myself in, sliding back the
ornate security gate, pausing in the darkness and silence. The Christmas lights twinkled like
little colored stars amidst the bookshelves. Tired, but too wound up for sleep, I went back to
the stock room and logged onto the computer.
Nothing interesting in e-mail. I yawned, scratched my bristly jaw.
On impulse I logged into blackster21’s e-mail, and found a message from
[email protected] Wasn’t aeternus Latin for everlasting or eternity?
Hmmm. You’ve Got Hell!
I clicked on the e-mail, waited, wincing, for my computer to lock up. The e-mail
opened.
Dear Blackster21,
Those that have a common quality ever seek their kind.
6:00 a.m. 9182 Hobb Street.
Six a.m. on a Sunday. These people truly were fiends. I connected to the Internet and
plugged in the address. It brought up a list of references to a Satanic Grotto, but when I
clicked on the URL, the web page came up as unavailable.
I dug out my Thomas Guide, searched for Hobb Street.
East LA. Wow, it really was Hell. I glanced at my watch. I could grab a couple of hours
sleep before I’d need to head over to the Mondrian to retrieve the SUV.
I typed a note to Jake, offering my theory and telling him where I was going. I saved it
in my e-mail drafts folder. Then I went upstairs and dug out my Grandmother Anna’s gun.
After two uneasy hours of sleep, I got up, pulled on Levi’s and a bulky sweater, and
phoned a taxi, which let me out in front of the hotel.
West Hollywood looked like a ghost town. I got into the Forester and pulled onto
Sunset. No sign of a red Corolla; hopefully, Jean had abandoned tracking my real-life
adventures. Either that, or she wasn’t so dedicated to stalking me that she was willing to
sacrifice beauty rest.
The sun was up by the time I got across town. The wind blew hard; trash swooped and
cart wheeled along the street as the Santana scoured the city.
I slowly cruised Hobb Street, keeping an eye out for 9182. Graffiti marked the walls
and sides of buildings.
I spotted the building from down the street. It was an old structure painted a vivid
purple, probably a nightclub at one time. There was a startlingly well-drawn, life-like
painting of Baphomet, the winged humanoid goat symbol used by Satanists, on the parking
lot side of the building. The windows were all boarded and covered with iron bars.
Interestingly, though just about every flat surface on this street was covered in graffiti,
the grotto had not been defaced by so much as a pen mark.
There didn’t appear to be a sign of life on the entire block. An abandoned doughnut
shop stood on one side, and on the other, an auto body repair place surrounded by a tall
fence topped with rolls of barbed-wire. A disgruntled rottweiler paced along the fence.
I tucked the gun into the waistband of my Levi’s beneath the bulky sweater, got out,
and went around to the front of the church. I tried the door. It opened. I stepped inside.
The deep gloom was broken by a candle on the ledge of a boarded window. A black
candle. This must have originally been the front lobby. I went through to the main room,
following the trail of flittering candles.
I saw that the walls of the building were covered in ornate artwork, but I couldn’t
make it out, although there were several sets of eyes painted in phosphorescent colors. It was
cold and stank of pot and incense and bad plumbing.
There was a stage in the front of the main room. A chair was placed in a giant
pentagram. Black candles burned on the outermost points of the pentagram.
Oliver Garibaldi sat on the chair. As I made my way toward him, he smiled. It was an
uncanny smile.
“Ah. As I expected,” he greeted me. “I am never wrong about these things.”
I’m never wrong? Who besides Republican presidents and evil masterminds can say
that with a straight face?
“Thanks for the invitation.” I looked around myself curiously. “Not sure why I thought
it would be more…plush.”
“Humble beginnings.” He smiled again, the candlelight throwing shadows across his
rough features.
“Humble beginnings? Is that what it’s about?”
“What do you wish it to be about?” He shook his head. “Persistence such as yours
deserves reward, but I’m afraid you will be disappointed with the truth.”
“Try me.”
“What did you wish to know? Ask me whatever you like. We have nothing to hide.”
“Then why the cloak and dagger stuff?”
He laughed. “But you love the cloak and dagger stuff, as you call it. Everyone does.”
“So there’s no penalty for betraying secrets?”
“There is a penalty, of course. Not the penalty you seem to imagine. We don’t kill
people because they choose to abandon their faith. To find themselves on the outside is
usually punishment enough.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the deep shadows of the room. I
realized that we were not alone in the room and felt a tingling at the back of my scalp.
Into my distracted silence, Garibaldi added, “Surely you understand the need for
discretion. Death is often the price for nonconformity in our society.”
“Speaking of death,” I said. I made an effort not to look into the crowded shadows. The
gun was a comforting weight against my back.
He laughed with genuine amusement. “When your delightful mother informed me that
you wrote mystery novels, I at once understood both your inquisitiveness and your
conviction that a dark and deadly secret waited to be revealed.”
I’ve never understood why in TV crime shows the sleuth makes a point of arguing with
the villain and revealing all the reasons why he thinks the bad guy is guilty. I thought my
best bet of walking out of there in one piece was to allow myself to be convinced of
Garibaldi’s blamelessness. I took it as a positive sign that he was bothering to chat.
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