Smoke and Mirrors

I was cold and naked and bloody and alone. Ah well, I thought, it happens to all of us in the beginning. I just get it once a month.

I was painfully exhausted, but I would hold out until I found a deserted barn or a cave; and then I was going to sleep for a couple of weeks.

A hawk flew low over the snow toward me with something dangling from its talons. It hovered above me for a heartbeat, then dropped a small gray squid in the snow at my feet and flew upward. The flaccid thing lay there, still and silent and tentacled in the bloody snow.

I took it as an omen, but whether good or bad I couldn’t say and I didn’t really care any more; I turned my back to the sea, and on the shadowy town of Innsmouth, and began to make my way toward the city.

BAY WOLF

Listen, Talbot. Somebody’s killing my people,

said Roth, growling down the phone like the sea in a shell.

Find out who and why and stop them.

Stop them how? I asked.

Whatever it takes, he said. But I don’t want them walking away

after you stopped them, if you get me.

And I got him. And I was hired.

Now you listen: this was back in the twenty-twenties

in L.A., down on Venice Beach.

Gar Roth owned the business in that part of world,

dealt in stims and pumps and steroids,

recreationals, built up quite a following.

All the buff kids, boys in thongs popping pumpers,

girls popping curves and fearmoans and whoremoans,

all of them loved Roth. He had the shit.

The force took his payoffs to look the other way;

he owned the beach world, from Laguna Beach north to Malibu,

built a beach hall where the buff and the curvy

hung and sucked and flaunted.

Oh, but that city worshipped the flesh; and theirs was the flesh.

They were partying. Everyone was partying,

dusted, shot up, cranked out,

the music was so loud you could hear it with your bones,

and that was when something took them, quietly,

whatever it was. It cracked their heads. It tore them into offal.

No one heard the screams over the boom of the oldies and the surf.

That was the year of the death metal revival.

It took maybe a dozen of them away, dragged them into the sea,

death in the early morning.

Roth said he thought it was a rival drug cartel,

posted more guards, had choppers circling, floaters watching

for when it came back. As it did, again, again.

But the cameras and the vids showed nothing at all.

They had no idea what it was, but still,

it ripped them limb from limb and head from neck,

tore saline bags out from ballooning breasts,

left steroid-shrunken testes on the beach

like tiny world-shaped creatures in the sand.

Roth had been hurt: The beach was not the same,

and that was when he called me on the phone.

I stepped over several sleeping cuties of all sexes,

tapped Roth on the shoulder. Before

I could blink, a dozen big guns

were pointing at my chest and head,

so I said, Hey, I’m not a monster.

Well, I’m not your monster, anyway.

Not yet.

I gave him my card. Talbot, he said.

You’re the adjuster I spoke to?

That’s right, I told him, tough-talking in the afternoon,

and you got stuff that needs adjusting.

This is the deal, I said.

I take your problem out. You pay and pay and pay.

Roth said, Sure, like we said. Whatever. Deal.

Me? I’m thinking it’s the Eurisraeli Mafia

or the Chinks. You scared of them?

No, I told him. Not scared.

I kind of wished I’d been there in the glory days:

Now Roth’s pretty people were getting kind of thin on the ground,

none of them, close up,

as plump and curvy as they’d seemed from farther away.

At dusk the party starts.

I tell Roth that I hated death metal the first time around.

He says I must be older than I look.

They play real loud. The speakers make the seashore pump and thump.

I strip down then for action and I wait

on four legs in the hollow of a dune.

And days and nights I wait. And wait. And wait.

Where the fuck are you and your people?

asked Roth on the third day. What the fuck am I paying you for?

Nothing on the beach last night but some big dog.

But I just smiled. No sign of the problem so far, whatever it is,

I said.

And I’ve been here all the time.

I tell you it’s the Israeli Mafia, he said.

I never trusted those Europeans.

Third night comes.

The moon is huge and a chemical red.

Two of them are playing in the surf.