"Probably right." She fell silent.
"Do you have a place of origin for Cotton. I mean his home."
"Down past Vicetown on the coast, but surely you'd have that yourself."
"Just double-checking everything." I tried to push my smile through the receiver. "It's important to be certain of the facts. Listen, thanks for the help. If I can ever be of service-look me up. Just don't call me Shirley."
"Yeah, I will," she said. Then before she could bring her full faculty to bear, I hung up. Alan Cotton died the same night as the lawyer Billings. Unfortunately for Cotton, whoever had killed him had also destroyed his chance at an afterlife by destroying his body. I had heard of the bodies of syndicate snitches and both cooperative and uncooperative witnesses ending up that way. Sliced and diced. But why Cotton? If it was drug related, then it could have been punishment or retaliation from some rival faction. Still, Authority had clamped a lid on it. Maybe Cotton was being made an example of. Whoever did it wanted him silent forever. But Authority had slammed the lid on the case. Why? And the fire too. No sign of foul play. They hushed that as well.
I looked at Elmo. He sat across from me. His long arms were jackknifed like grasshopper legs to launch him out of his chair.
"Elmo, we might have a case here." My problem was getting somebody to pay me to investigate it. "Let's take a trip to Vicetown." I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair while Elmo slipped out to bring the car around front.
Chapter 23
The two-hour drive down the coast was uneventful. I was not surprised that Elmo had elected to come along. If there was still beauty in the world, you could find it on the drive down the coast. It had been a long time since the roaring waves had seen a sunset and the craggy cliffs a blue sky; but there remained a harsh gothic beauty. Whirling clouds of spray churned over the gray rock face where the sea ground its time-laden bulk against the coast. I had even noticed a flock of seagulls stoically facing another day of rain and storm. They stood along the guardrail like so many Heathcliffes baring their souls to the biting counsel of nature. Part of me wanted to join them out there-but I knew they'd go for my eyes. The highway wound in and around granite outbursts rising onto pedestals only in those areas that were near inhabited stretches. The Landfillers were less prevalent near the coast. A lively seabird population scavenged anything that crawled near.
We got to Vicetown at around six-thirty. I'd spent a good part of the afternoon digging through the remaining newspapers-the Greasetown Gazette had few competitors-but found nothing about any other murders at the Morocco. Vicetown had looked much the same as I remembered it as we drove under its flashing welcome signs. The city held about a million-and-a-half inhabitants, alive and dead. Its buildings were unique in the way they marched away from the highway, precariously close to crumbling cliffs. All told, the city sprawled along ten miles of coast. Inland, I saw the great Ferris wheel flinging its passengers tantalizingly at the sky, before terrifying them with a reckless descent. As I understood it, since the Change, Ferris wheels had become extremely popular. In fact, most entertainment of this nature had-at least among the living. Once dead, an individual had to learn new rules of existence and acceptable risk.
I had looked up the number for Alan Cotton in the latest phonebook, but found nothing. Some deeper research located him in a phonebook a decade old. I called, found his number had changed-was under his wife's maiden name, tried again, then reached his widow. She would be pleased to talk to me. I had her address, 333 Sea Heights. I told her it would be late in the day. She said that would be fine.
The neon drives you crazy after a while. Vicetown at night is a menace to the light sensitive. A steady drizzle fell. I complimented Elmo on his good sense. He had found time to get the windshield replaced since my engagement in the landfill with Pigface. Mr. Loxley at the Bonny-Vu had made a few dollars from us playing mix and match with the parts and pieces he'd mined from his collection. Water still managed to dampen my right sleeve through holes in the passenger door, but we were fairly seaworthy. The streets of Vicetown, I'm told, are reminiscent of a pre-Change town named Las Vegas. I didn't know whether Las Vegas still existed, but if it was like Vicetown in the old days, I could well imagine what had happened to it after the Change. Vicetown was a place to go if you wanted to have things emptied: bank accounts, pockets, over-stimulated imaginations, you name it. I had come down for the latter, when deep in the intoxication of my first possession of Tommy. I could remember a dark woman named Lorna, who had a well-knit frame and plenty of energy.
Those first days had been strange. I had pretty much awakened, fully sentient, whole without a past, floating over Tommy's head. I could remember the dizzying moments as I flinched mentally-expecting a fall. The following minutes were of extreme angst as I began to realize the unexplainable nature of my presence. I knew who I was, at least what I did, but I did not have a name. I had a sense of 'I', but I had no body. I knew that I existed, but I didn't know where I came from. This was incredibly depressing for a few weeks-I had begun to think I was in hell, following the clown from toilet to liquor store to toilet-then, the first possession happened. One day, I was floating over Tommy like a grumpy little rain cloud-he was cleaning his sinuses with his pinky finger-when he made a frantic phone call and ordered the car around front. We drove a few blocks before he told Elmo to stop the car and let him out.
I remember Tommy running up a flight of steps and into a hotel very much like the Morocco-I remember the terrifying speed with which I was impelled after him. He passed up another flight of steps and then along a hallway to a door. It was open-cigarette smoke hung in the air-jazz music squawked sour in my ears. A heavy-set woman leaned against the frame with exaggerated and somewhat elephantine coquettishness. She batted large fake eyelashes at the clown. The dialogue was depressingly average.
"How are you, big boy?" She ran her hands over her hips. The trip must have tired them out because they hung limp at her sides afterwards.
"How is my little mama?" Tommy had said as he reached out and fondled her breasts.
"Ooh," she cooed, pushing back against his hands. "Ooh!"
Tommy shoved her into the room onto a bed about a foot wide. I think it was an army cot. I floated overhead watching as he clumsily disrobed her and then mounted. There must be something innately voyeuristic about the human species, because I had to admit that floating overhead while all this was going on was very exciting for me-even though I had no body of my own. Perhaps it excited latent memories. I don't know. I just remembered the moment I made the startling realization that I could see through Tommy's skull. Inside was some sort of electrical activity that drew me. The actual transition happened fast. The next thing I knew, I was lying over this woman's heaving body huffing and panting. I could remember the strangeness of the physical sensations: the half-pain, half-pleasure of the spent orgasm, the cloying musk of my partner, the little nervous aftershocks I was receiving, and even the sad, dead feeling of her over-conditioned hair. I went from that room into a binge of sensation, the Epicurean at large. I became a wandering Hedonist avatar, drunk on the tangible. I ended up in Vicetown with both my wallet and my seminal vesicles empty; or, rather both Tommy's respectively.
"This h-here, Boss?" Elmo raised a thin arm to a road sign that said Sea Heights, and brought me from my reverie.
"Look for 333," I said and then mused gloomily.
Alan Cotton must have been doing a booming business selling cosmetics to the dead, because 333 Sea Heights was a sprawling white ranch house that perched incongruously on a tall narrow shelf of rock overlooking the sea. Incongruous, because the design of the building demanded acres of flat farmland around it, not a deep precipitous fall into the pounding surf on one side and a thick apple orchard on the other. Something with a crenellated tower would have fit the location better, and perhaps a low brownstone carriage house-even a second floor. As we drew near, I realized that what it lacked in height it made up for in width. Cotton's house must have been half a mile long. I pointed to a guesthouse, murmured something about guests then pointed to another. Cotton had done well.