She had a thought and instantly hid it away.
From the Journal of Ephram Pixie "for July the 22 199":
It's not enough, anymore. My use of proxie neural pathways to experience pleasures is not entirely protecting me from being used up myself. I have a sense that there is some aspect of the negative astrology, some variant of the hidden constellations that is hidden to me as well as to ordinary men. Something veiled. Could someone be veiling it from me, setting me up for a fall? Who? Denver? The Akishra?
Could it be they've lured me to L. A…?
No. I am Ephram Pixie, master of my destiny as no man else is.
Still, I am feeling enervated. Or at least rather ragged in my enjoyments, sagging in my appetites. Perhaps it is at last time to attempt Wetbones again. If I do, it will attract the Akishra. And that could be fatal.
Or will it – in particular? This is Los Angeles. They feed so widely and so well here. It could well be that the Spirit brought me here so to give me a smokescreen, a place of concealment, where the Akishra will not notice me in the general background of suffering and decadence. So very many emissions here.
It could be that I have lost faith, that I should be trusting the guidance of the Spirit more. It could be that the Spirit plans to exalt me, at last, in this place and that is why I have been guided here. He does seem to be guiding me back to the Engorgement Ritual. But oh! That Ritual is so very taxing. But oh again! How very rewarding it is, once the labour is done, ha ha.
There could be another reason the Spirit is prompting me to Wetbones. It might well be the ideal way to stop any search for Constance in its tracks. When she was twelve her father had her fingerprints registered; there was a police drive on for it, a way to help locate children if they turn up missing, and to identify their bodies if they turn up dead… I saw it in her mind as a hope, back when I allowed her hope. She doesn't need all her fingers to be of use to me. Not really.
I have made my decision.
Wetbones.
Downtoum Los Angeles
Garner had known what the police would say. The verbal shrug he would get. There were literally tens of thousands of missing teenagers in Los Angeles. Most of them were homeless addicts and prostitutes, living in cars and under freeways. Giving his report was just a way to get Constance's name on the LAPD computer.
Now he drove the van West, onto the freeway, glad he wasn't going East; traffic Southeast-bound, on the other side of the freeway divide, was thick as coagulated blood.
He'd spent five hundred bucks on a deposit for a detective agency, a cheap gumshoe who was just another warm body to go about asking have you seen this girl have you seen this girl have you seen this girl, anyplace she'd be likely to turn up.
Of course, he could be wrong about where Constance would likely turn up. And he could be wrong about it even being in this city. And even if it was in this city, the town was so fucking big.
But he'd learned to trust his intuition; he thought that maybe – along with the patterns of incidents and coincidences that made up the flow of life – pulses of intuition were God's Morse Code.
Or maybe he was kidding himself.
He had to stay busy. Had to. So he started on Hollywood Boulevard, showing a display cardboard taped with several pictures of Constance to anyone who'd talk to him. He wandered tirelessly but fruitlessly through Hollywood and the Fairfax and downtown L.A.. He talked especially to prostitutes, trying to get a handle on the local trade in chickens. Who was dealing in young flesh? Where were they?
It could be that the son of a bitch who had her would market her in those shadowy and seamy venues.
He walked the streets for two days, sleeping at night in his van to save money for bribes, before he began to hear the recurrent note. The rumours kept cropping up: The More Man. A rich movie industry sleaze who sometimes scattered largesse on compliant teenagers.
And then he began hearing about the murders. The kids on the street would try to sound knowledgeable about the murders. But all they really knew, apart from the condition of the corpses, was what to call them: Wetbones.
Culver City Los Angels
Prentice was trying not to think A universal skill, a widely applied survival technique: Sometimes you have to just close your eyes and just do what you have to do.
"Jeff – you know where Mitch probably is?" Careful,
Prentice told himself, leaning back in the desk chair of Jeff's office. You don't want to come off sounding like that cop that came over here. That'll turn Jeff against you in a hot second.
Jeff was sitting pensively on the edge of the desk. Afternoon sunlight came in dusty stacks through the cantilevered blinds. "Do I know where Mitch probably is? If I knew where the fuck Mitch was we wouldn't be having this fucking discussion," Jeff said.
Prentice thought: I'm helping him, I really am. This whole paranoid thing is just making a wreck of our lives. Both of us feeding on it emotionally – me because of Amy, Jeff because he feels bad about not taking care of Mitch.
The dreams Prentice had been having about Amy were enough to convince him he had some kind of morbid entanglement with her memory. Best all that were jettisoned..
"Mitch is probably deliberately letting you stew, man," Prentice said. Everything he said was an attempt to convince himself as much as Jeff – an escape from culpability. From the sense of something precious inside him rotting away because he was trying to play along with Arthwright. "I mean, think about it – Mitch is into rock'n'roll. Wants to be a head-bangin' rockstar. Chances are he's hanging out with that crowd on Sunset Boulevard, down by the Whisky, the other clubs down there. I mean – he probably was at Denver's, and then that didn't come to anything, and he split for town."
But what about Amy? Prentice asked himself. Her connection to Denver. Her death.
He squashed the thought. Sometimes you have to just close your eyes and…
"Maybe you're right," Jeff said grudgingly. "But that headbangin' crowd is big, man. How am I supposed to find him in it – if that's where he is.
"A private eye. Go on foot and ask people in the lines outside the clubs. Maybe even see Mitch there. I mean, if you…" He broke off. He was about to say, If you tangle with the Denvers in court you could lose a lot of money – and and make an enemy of Arthwright. But if he said that, Mitch might realize that Arthwright had put him up to this.
Prentice writhed inside. Wrongwrongwrongwrong. The word like a bell pealing in his mind. Wrong.
Jeff hugged himself wearily. "I'm fucking tired of thinking about this. I'll decide what to do tomorrow."
The desk phone rang. Jeff answered it in a monotone. "Yeah. Hello… Yeah, he's right here."
He passed the phone over to Prentice and left the room.
Prentice put the phone to his ear. "Tom Prentice here."
"Hi, 'Tom Prentice here.' It's Lissa."
Prentice's gut did another flip-flop. There was anticipation in it, and fear. "Hi. I'm glad you called."
"Listen – Zack wanted me to invite you to a party he's giving for some of his friends. He's giving it at their place, but he's setting it all up, I guess. Oh and I'm supposed to ask you – it was all very cryptic – how it's going 'with Jeff'? Whatever that's about."
"Uh. Fine." Could Jeff be listening on the extension? No, why would he? "It's taken care of."
"Good – I guess. I'm not in on that loop. Anyway – taking me to a party's a nice cheap date, don't you think?"
"I'd love to take you on the expensive kind." But he was glad he didn't have to, yet. He was veering dangerously close to flat broke. God, he might have to write that video. ''For that matter, I'd take a trip to Baghdad with you in an F-16."
"Good. I like an explosive date. But, in the meantime, Arthwright's party at the Denvers' is on Saturday -"