The Caligula Club is situated right on the very edge of Uptown, as though the area is embarrassed or ashamed of it. It’s the kind of place where the floor show consists of a sweet young couple setting themselves on fire, then having sex, where the house band consists of formerly dead musicians, some of whom were dug up as recently as that night, and the management have their own private exorcist on speed-dial. Do I really need to tell you that the Club is strictly members only? And that membership is by invitation only? They wouldn’t have me on a bet, so I was looking forward to taking my first look around inside.
Uptown—where the neon come-ons are bigger and brighter than anywhere else but no less sleazy. Hot music hammers on the cool night air, insistent and vaguely threatening. Club doors hang alluringly open, while their barkers work the crowded pavements with practiced dead-eyed skill. Getting in is easy; getting out again with your money, wits, and soul intact is something else. Buyer very much beware, in Uptown. Here be entertainment, red in tooth and claw.
Men and women paraded up and down the streets, in the very latest and most outrageous fashions, out and about to see and be seen. Making the scene, no matter how dangerous it might be, because if you didn’t, then you just weren’t anyone. High Society has its own obligations and penalties, and the very worst of them is to be ignored. Gods and monsters, yesterday’s dreams and tomorrow’s nightmares, bright young things and smiling Gucci sharks, were all out on the town and on the pull, come to Uptown to play their vicious games. And Devil take the hindmost.
None of them looked pleased to see me, but I’m used to that. Without quite seeming to, they all made sure to give me plenty of room. I play too rough for their refined tastes.
I stopped outside the Caligula Club and studied it thoughtfully from a safe distance. Big bold neon crawled all over the front of the high-tech edifice, glowing multicoloured graffiti on a steel-and-glass background. A lot of it depicted stylised sexual positions and possibilities, some of which would have made the Marquis de Sade lose his lunch. Cruelty and passion mixed together, to make a whole far nastier than the sum of its parts. You don’t come to the Caligula Club for fun, or even excitement. You come to satisfy the needs and tastes no-one else will tolerate.
And somewhere inside this den of sweaty iniquity and furious pleasures…was William Griffin, father of the missing Melissa.
The front door was being guarded by a satyr of the old school. About five feet tall, handsome in a swarthy and entirely untrustworthy way, with a bare hairy chest, furry goat’s legs, and curling horns on his forehead. Half human, half goat, and hung like a horse. He wasn’t shy about showing it off, either. I hate these demon half-breeds. You can never tell how dangerous they are until they show you, usually in sudden and unpleasant ways. I strolled over to him like I had every right to be there, and he smiled widely at me, showing off big blocky teeth.
“Hello, sailor. Welcome to the Caligula Club. Looking for a bit of adventure, are we? Afraid it’s members only, though, and I do mean members. Are you a fine upstanding member, sir?”
“Knock it off,” I said. “You know who I am.”
“Well of course, heart face. Doesn’t everyone? But I have my orders, and it’s more than my job’s worth to let you in, not even if you was the queen himself. Management is very strict, and that’s how most of the members like it. I am Mr. Tumble, and nothing gets past me.”
“I’m John Taylor, and I’m coming in,” I said. “You know it, and I know it, so do we really have to do this the unpleasant and probably extremely violent way?”
“Sorry, sweetie pie, but I have my orders. You couldn’t be any less welcome here if you was a health inspector. Now be a good boy and run along and irritate someone else. It’s more than my job’s worth to let you get past me. You wouldn’t want to see an old satyr down on his knees and begging, would you?”
“I represent the Griffin in this matter,” I said. “So stand aside, or I’ll have him buy this place and fire your fuzzy arse.”
“Threats don’t bother me, sailor. Heard them all, I have.”
“I could walk right over you,” I said.
Mr. Tumble grew suddenly in size, shooting up so fast I had to step back to keep from being crowded. He topped out at ten feet tall, with broad shoulders and a massive chest, and powerful arms ending in viciously clawed hands. He smelled of blood and musk, and it was obvious from what was now bobbing right in front of my face that he was getting quite excited at the prospect of imminent violence. He grinned down at me, and when he spoke his voice rumbled like thunder.
“Still think you can get past me, little human?”
Something large and trunklike twitched in front of my nose. So I reached into my coat-pocket, took out the mousetrap I keep there for perfectly legitimate reasons, and let it snap shut. He howled like a foghorn, grabbed at his pride and joy with both hands, and collapsed onto the pavement before me. He shrank quickly back to his normal size, unable to concentrate through the pain, and I did the decent thing and kicked him in the head. He sank gratefully into unconsciousness, and I stepped past his weakly kicking hooves and on into the Caligula Club.
You just can’t talk to some people.
The reception lobby was big and echoing, with white-tiled floor and ceiling. Presumably so they could wipe off stains and spills more easily. There were no fittings or furnishings, only a simple reception desk with a bored-looking teenager stuck behind it, completely engrossed in that week’s edition of the Unnatural Inquirer. The lobby clearly wasn’t a place you sat around waiting. It was somewhere you hurried through, on your way to whatever awaited you. I stood before the desk, and the receptionist ignored me. The headline on her paper said Tribute Princess Diana to Tour Nightside. And at the bottom of the page, in somewhat smaller type: Keep Your Queen Mother Sightings Coming In. We Pay for Photos!
“Talk to me,” I said to the receptionist. “Or I’ll set fire to your tabloid.”
She slammed her paper down on the desk and scowled at me through her various piercings. The one through the left eyeball had to have really hurt. “Welcome to the Caligula, sir. Walk all over me, that’s what I’m here for. I don’t have to do this, you know. I could have been a doctor. If I only had a medical degree. Did sir have a particular service in mind, or would sir like me to recommend something particularly horrible?”
I got a bit distracted as a door opened on the other side of the lobby, and a crowd of mostly naked people paraded past the reception desk, not even glancing at me. From their animated chatter it seemed they were leaving one party and on their way to another. Some had patches of different-coloured skin grafted onto their bodies, and I had to wonder what happened to the donors. Others had patches of fur, or metal. Animal eyes looked out of some sockets, swivelling cameras out of others. There were those whose legs had three joints, or arms in sets of four, or faces on the back of their heads as well as on the front. Some had both sets of genitals, or none, or things I didn’t even recognise as genitals. Bunch of show-offs, basically. They hurried on and disappeared through another door on the far side of the lobby. I looked at the receptionist.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said.
“Aren’t we all? Soon as I get my claws into a decent sugar daddy, this place won’t see my pink little botty for dust. Did sir have a particular person in mind?”
“William Griffin.”
“Oh, him,” The teenage receptionist pulled a face. “He’s long gone. Never comes around anymore. Seems we weren’t extreme enough for him.”
I had to admit, I boggled slightly at the thought of tastes so extreme that even the Caligula Club couldn’t satisfy them. What the hell could William Griffin be into that he couldn’t find it in a place like this? I was still considering that when a final party-goer emerged from the far door and came over to join me at the desk. William’s wife Gloria was dressed in a blood-red basque studded with razor blades, thigh-length boots of tanned human hide, and a black choker round her slender neck bristling with steel spikes. An unusually large snake coiled around her shoulders and draped down one long dark arm. As she came to a halt before me, the snake raised its head and looked at me knowingly. I gave the head a brief pat. I like snakes.