THE COLLECTORS UNDERGROUND

Version 3.6

Mike W McCoy

10/20/2018

<>2<>  Broken Furniture.

“This is your coat.”

The officer’s words echoed inside my brain, and the moment stretched.Seconds slid towards the edge of a suicide slope, and a silent ‘Gunslinger Fantasy’ grew between us in that pocket-sized crime scene.  Our eyes played footsie across a stench of murder inside Room 206.  Mine darted around, but his stayed glued to mine.  Our expressions talked without words; no, yes, it can’t be, is this real?  Below it all, the blood streaked leather coat laughed at us fools too late for the party.  

I figured out later that it was a private joke.  One that Mr. Death had thought a great deal about before suckering me in, hooking me like a struggling marlin.  The pull was just so strong that I couldn’t resist the offered hide.

“It’s yours isn’t it?” he added calmly.

I only half heard him.  My mind was convulsing on the most personal and perplexing puzzle piece of my miserable career.  I recognized the handwriting across the label, it was mine.  No more doubts.  Slowly I turned the heavy garment like a slice of meat, pulling and twisting the leather duster.  Then thrusting my arms through the sleeves, I felt the familiar weight I had worn a 1000 times to a 1000 different crimes.  It fit well, too well.  More than a glove, more than armor, more than just a second skin, the coat was a shadow of Mr. Death made material.  And I was its owner.

“Sir?” officer Perez tried again, but I was lost inside a stitch mark on the left sleeve.  I knew that tear.  It came with a memory of blood, pain, and a butcher knife thrust by a jealous woman.

“I remember this,” my fingers traced the fixed fabric.  “Twenty one stitches.  Two dead bodies.  That was…nine years ago.”

“Sir?” he tried again, louder.

“I remember-”

“Detective Thorn!”  The arrogant tone snapped me back.

“Yes.  Yes Officer Perez,” I relented and offered the offending evidence back as if it was a living thing that might bite. 

His hands had to pull it from mine, and his eyes went wide, all crossed with confusion and excitement.  Confirmation, he had just dealt his first hand in the game.

“Have the blood sequenced, yes?” he added feeling confident but cautious. 

My mouth couldn’t find the words.  The muscles were trying to work, trying to say something important, but my tongue felt swollen and forgotten.  What did he say?  Blood?

“Yes!”  The word blurted out like a gunshot. 

“Yes,” I slowed down enough on the repeat to release the tension.  “The lab girls can, but-”

“Keep it quiet.”  That practiced half smile, again.  Smart man, I was really starting to appreciate him.  “I got an angle on that, detective.  But, um...”

Hesitation was not his style, so I picked up the thread.  “But it’s cash only, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Take my end.”  I remember mumbling something like that while running the numbers myself.  Mr. Tuxedo was going to pick up the bill.  Too bad I only took his cufflinks. 

“Your full support?”  I questioned with a wink, and handed Perez a year at his salary, easy. 

“Sir, understood!” pocketing the prize.  “And about the-” indicating the bodies.

“Go ahead, call the office.”  I reached to shake his hand.  “Just keep it quiet for now.”

I left the other cufflink behind, doubling his cut.  The young man’s surprised look at being allowed on the case, especially alongside me, was almost amusing. 

“You suspect something big?”

“Always Officer Perez, always.”  I grunted back as he got busy, like he had it all planed out.  Doubtless did, while waiting for my arrival on set.

I stood there wanting to leave, but my feet wouldn’t move.  Wet carpet grounded me as if cold phantom hands reached up and pulled from the shadows.  Silently, I worked once again on my habit, and watched him lay another sheet over the slain ex-beauty queen.  Her blood made an ink blot test that a blind man could see was the signature of a brutal death.

The numbing Pacific Ocean is now swirling around my bruised broken body, cooling my dying flesh with a salty tingle, tipped with spite and suspense, but I’ll still bet the officer’s actions were the only thing planed out that night in Room 206.

Not sure why, but I walked back to Mr. Tuxedo.  My eyes focused hazily on the overall shape and disturbing beauty of the blood and brains self-portrait coloring the drab textured wallpaper.  In that moment, one of Perez’s men started flashing a camera, throwing up shadows on the wall.

Swell, I now know why that memory stuck.  Why I couldn’t shake it away even with clamped eyes and hard rubbing. 

I’ve seen the gray-black nothingness outlined on that wall many times.  It was always slightly different, but still clawed inside me with the same tone of depth and matter-of-fact determination.  Behind Mr. Tuxedo, the shadow that existed for only a microsecond up over the blood decorated fresco was Mr. Death’s.  And it was my shadow too.

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Being a witness on myself from the ‘Outside & Inside Moratorium’ gives me the creeps.  That remembered moment was a split of reality, a splinter off the Now, it must have been, and I was being judged. 

For some reason, unimportant now, I didn’t go home or to the office.  I vaguely recall running down a surviving gas station somewhere south of the 405’s ‘Orange Crush’, and having a pissing contest with the nursing Korean mother behind the armor-glass box over a bag of Soylent chips and a six pack.

I thought it was my bronze LAPD badge that made her start the pump, but that’s wrong.  It was the smell, the greasy sticky murder stench that hovered around me.  It had changed her channel.  Just another one of the small perks of this line of work, I suppose.

I remember it was a classic morning over the greater Los Angeles basin.  Kind of like a prehistoric-swap diorama with dull low ground cover haze, and a forest of tall palm trees marching across the frame like exclamation points.  Above them, the inescapable insect buzz of drone aircraft covered the slow crawl of traffic.

A handful of meds, power bar, and two beers had calmed my heartbeat into something resembling a human norm.  I stayed parked in the gutter lane on the highest point of the antique 105 to 110 freeway overpass, and just sat.

All around and below my ancient gas hog, a strong stream of commuters slid by my hazards and police tags with hardly a glimpse beyond the graphic idiocy streaming across their car dash or smart-glass windshields.  The Computer Control Net drove their small wheeled coffins towards the downtown sprawl, and only a rare crazy rice-rocket lane-split wildly, with a loud whine humming between the accordion-shuffle of the traffic. 

On my Cadillac’s bench seat alongside me, were strewn the clues of a murder.  I had small color photos with lines, arrows, and cryptic notes on the back.  And from my coat pockets, yeah my coat, was a confused eclectic collection.  Electronic business cards, receipts all printed in Chinese, a matchbook, the butt of that half smoked cigarette, and there was also the hand lettered price tag dangling like a noose from a strand of cheap brown twine.  I spread the bits, playing the negative space between them.

It’s only now, double-plus later, that I understand the term.  My being dead again helps.  Sorry about the mental drift, but my brain feels wet.  Ao, back with the party of Room 206, back to my blood fringed coat, and back to that twisting puzzle.

Parked on the overpass my head started to clear.  The 110 freeway was stretched out far below me as a giant cement shaft towards the confusion of downtown.  I was ten plus stories above the commuter ground clutter.  High enough to avoid the usual traps, but it felt as if I was already snared like a coyote, leg inside a steel jaw, unable to decide on biting off its own limb, or lying down and dying.  The angry thoughts of ‘Indecision’ had made an appearance.

The clutter of clues, cards, and photos looked upwards at odd angles, but it was the matchbook that clawed for my attention.  A cantina from the Omni Millennium Hotel, the OMH as it proclaimed in shifting stylized electric letters on the impressive black background.  It was a mirror into nothingness, and the next step on the yellow brick road.

At the hotel I handed my keys to the parking valet, and realized just how un-impressive the overbuilt recycled plastic brick building looked.  I didn’t trust claims of a 400 year lifespan before structural bio-degrading became an issue.  I give odds of 3:1 the 68 story tri-tower only makes to a century mark before it starts dropping off side panels like wet toast, or has the floors pancake with the next mid-sized earth boogie of 4.2 or better.  Bets anyone?
 

The lobby however was impressive yet slightly ostentatious for the decade, oozing a TV-game show feel.  The background soundtrack was of a sparse distracted population tuning out reality one commercial brake at a time.  Only a few steps inside, and I knew the staff was spooked.  It was all the little things; the suddenly hushed conversations, the sideways glances, and the half formed ‘Company Smile’ that never quite reached their eyes.

But mainly it was still the smell which lingering on me thick as burnt beans and dead flies.  The aroma was not enough to gag on, and only gave the necessary amount to confirm I was more than a bear sized man inside a department issued charcoal gray suit.  Everyone’s eyes said they knew I was more than average LAPD bronze, more than a Cop.  They didn’t know what, nor did anyone really want to. 

I gave them a break, and slipped straight past registration, angling for the OMH cantina.  The entrance was sidestepped from the lobby, masking an excellent backdoor getaway not far from the underground parking.  My shadow slid down the shallow steps leading into a car showroom sized floorplan.  The stone gave way to thick noise softening Iranian carpet, suitable for a mosque, kneeling impressions and all. 

Inside the cantina, the walls and lighting were done much more conservative than the flamboyant new glitz of the lobby.  Electronic 3D glass walls ran the length of the long axis, and half-again as much on the ceiling.  Currently they were tuned to an 1880’s Gentlemen’s club channel, heavy on natural wood and thick creases of shadow. 

Towards the back of the deep L-shaped room a large crystal chandelier bathed a stage slicing into the band seating.  Despite the mid-morning hour, three dozen patrons and a quarter as many staff, stayed spaced out on square footage big enough for ten times that.

I landed my bones on a surprisingly comfortable wooden stool made for a man twice my 240 lbs., and got a clearly queer grin from the well-worn bartender. 
 

I said nothing beyond the body language of loosening a limp tie, and cracking my suit wide enough for my badge and the black holster.  The flash was enough. 

“Haven’t we met before?” the bald old man inside pressed whites and red corduroy vest, murmured while pushing a fresh drink closer.  “Outside of here, I mean.”  

His purring sound stung me sharp, just like another paper cut across the trigger finger.  I drained the glass searching his ‘Veteran Visage’ for more beyond the mechanical replacement parts. 

After a slow swipe behind my sleeve, I felt his eyes and mine make that quick and hard connection of a shared different reality.  You know, getting it without overstanding a How or a Why.

“Doubt it,” I finally grumbled.  “Everybody I know is either dead or about to be.”  I must have answered with just a touch of something I was holding onto from Room 206. 

“Wow, tough gig.”  His augmented metal hand released another glass of the same without asking.  “Maybe it’s just a ‘Ghost Culture’ thing?”

“Sure.”  The sound drowned under the suddenly bitter drink.“Something like that.  It doesn’t matter anymore.”

I felt his grin examine me, but if he was about to add something it never came.  Instead a slight cool breeze, not from the hotel’s AC, chilled my neck like the icy whisper of a lover’s caress, or a cold metal gun barrel.

I ignored it, and time flew down the line until more empty glasses dotted the bar top.  They framed the compass points on the pile of photos.  I loosely remember twisting and turning of the crime scene, repositioning the pictures in a weird game of dead man’s solitaire.

I smelled her before I saw her.  She had slid up sideways like the deadliest of snakes do, and paused in a practiced poised position two stools off my right-flank.

At first I couldn’t tell where the dress ended and her flesh began.  The shades matched so closely that anything other than 18-volt chameleon would be unlawful. 

When I did figure the edge she looked expensive, way beyond my budget.  That wasn’t a deal breaker in her eyes.  I overstood that when both blue Bio-farmed orbs met mine above her thin smile.  It showed just enough perfect teeth to appear dangerous and alluring.

“My name is Felony.”  The sound was a single slow song, a beautiful bird call.  It must work on the ones she normally hunts.  I was rude. 

 “Furniture?”  Her teeth hid at that word.  “House or independent?”

This time, after the dress shifted colors to anger, when her lips parted, exposing the gleaming white fangs, the song took on a definite professional edge.  “Yes, a little of both actually.”

Swell, an attitude.  “The name is Thorn, I’m bronze.”

“I can see that,” her phrase indicated my exposed police badge.  “You won’t pinch me, will you?”  She said it all seductive and serious.

Suddenly I felt an urge to re-evaluate the young woman as one professional to another.  Native Hawaiian, no doubts, and she held a mixed hint of Samoan hardest on her cheekbones and curved jaw, a hinged trap that looked deadly and inviting.  She kept slim by the gym, and tan from the sun.

The silence between us lasted a few awkward smiles until it became clear I wasn’t going to arrest her for working without a license.  Maybe she had a contract, maybe not.  It didn’t mind to me, that was a vise work order and I was all about homicide.

Without asking she slithered a stool closer while ‘White Corduroy’ from the corner dropped off another glass and a cranberry something without a sound.  I didn’t mind the familiarity of the scene.  Her feminine curves caressing my eyes, crowded down the crimson cross images of death and desperation. 

Her delicately nailed fingers moved the photos across the flattop bar seemingly uninterested.  But I saw the slight hesitation with the last one.  It was a sanitized head shot, chin and up, closed eyes, and the lips twisted with a Smile induced grin.

“You know her?”  Blunt and rude, me all over.

“Um, no.  Not personally.  It’s…”

“What?”  I grunted behind a sip of beer.

“She reminds me of someone I saw at a party once, weeks ago.  Here in the hotel.”

“What kind of party?” 

Her eyes studied mine for a heartbeat longer than necessary. 

“You know,” she slithered out the sounds slowly as her hands moved to leave.  “A party.”

Oh yeah, I knew.  We both did, but I kept it civil.  We sat in silence for a long moment, letting the room’s ambient low volume music swim around the corners of our eyes.  The Furniture kept smiling politely, imaging the desirable eye candy role she practiced, it was torture. 

I gathered all the photos, shuffled like a casino dealer, and laid them alongside the other glasses. “I need a fresh set of eyes.  Tell me what you see.”

They aligned neat and straight but still shimmered with ugly.  When the photo of the dead girl turned the river, the Furniture’s eyes did a double take again.

“You know something more don’t you?”

Her dress changed colors again, matching the cranberry stain on her lips.  “No, I know nothing.  Please don’t be mad.”

That caught me by surprise.  “Why would I be mad?”

“I’m sorry, I need to go.”  My grip stopped her without really trying, and I was rewarded with much more than 18-volts.

“No, wait.”  Damn I was a sucker.  “Felony, please.”

She scowled with the deadly teeth again, and stopped pulling away.  My now numb hand fumbled inside my pocket for the elegantly lettered price tag.  Her smile vanished a breath later, replaced by wide eyes of fearful wonder.

“You know this?”

Her answer hesitated between sips of cranberry.  “I’ve seen some before.” 

“At the party?”

“No,” fast and frightened.  “At a different place. This…” she added gently touching the price tag and my scarred fingers.

“This belongs to the exotic women.  Very expensive.  Very special.”

I tapped the sanitized photo from Room 206.  “Was she one of these women?”

The Furniture pretended to study the harsh image.  But her revised eyes showed the lie before she denied any knowledge of the girl.  “I’m sorry officer, I don’t know.”

I reached into my pocket again for the slit throat chum shot. “This is what happed to her.”

“Oh God,” choking the words as her dress color went ashamed and shocked.  “Yes!  Yes, she was one among the clouds. Who…who could do this?”

“I don’t know.  But I’m going to find out, and kill him.”

I must have put the graveyard voice on the backend of my little speech.  It happened during one of those rare moments when the whole soundtrack of the OMH cantina was suddenly silent, and everyone heard me.  

“Ms. Speed,” she offered quickly, now believing in me.  Her eyes stayed locked on the sanitized photo.

“What?”

“I saw here talking with Ms. Speed, at her art gallery during a party once.  It’s in the Valley somewhere.” Then her voice colored the words with a sweetness of pain that only victims understand.

“I’m sure Ms. Speed would know her.”

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