Now, in the hot L.A. night, I thought of Joey, the shooter from the school, of the parents of all his victims. I wondered how many Sonnys were camped outside their doors, waiting to lap up their tears. Let’s get this straight, right now—I am a very evil man. I have done wrong to so many people, damaged so many lives for my own selfish purposes. It may be hypocrisy of the highest order to judge a man like Sonny Brozo, but hey, like I said, I’m a bad guy.
“Small fucking world, huh?” Sonny said. “I’m with TMZ now! What you doing, man, you checking out the club? Meeting someone? Got another caper going? You still dating that fetish model? Stepping out on her? What?”
“Aren’t there leash laws in this town?” I said, smiling and patting Sonny on the shoulder, palming a few greasy hairs in the process, and kept walking. I lit a fresh cigarette and muttered under my breath, “Si me imago, novissima erit umquam,” burning the hairs in the fire of my Zippo as I wove the working, a good, old-fashioned curse; it didn’t need much juice other than my animus.
Sonny’s pack had caught up to him. I heard the chirp of digital cameras, the panting of excited scavengers at my back.
“What’s up! What’s up! What you got Sonny-boy!”
“This guy get some hits? Who’s he sleeping with? Gay? Straight?”
“I think he was in some band, wasn’t he? He looks like he was in a band somebody OD’ed in!”
“Name’s Laytham Ballard,” Sonny said, “some kind of occult asshole. He’s good copy; shit follows him everywhere!” I slowed and began to turn.
“I’m ready for my close-up,” I said. Cameras beeped, clicked, and whirred; my face, in their viewfinder, on their camera screen, was the last thing any of them would ever see. The screams began. Sonny pulled his face away from the camera. Thick, ugly calluses of skin had grown over both of his eyes. The calluses leaked blood from painful, inflamed cracks in the thick skin. The other paparazzi who had taken pictures of me had the same deformity.
“Shit!” Sonny screamed, one voice in a chorus of terrified shouts from his companions. He clutched at his face, dropping his very expensive camera on the sidewalk. “I’m blind—my eyes, my fucking eyes! Somebody help me!” Other paparazzi who hadn’t shot me or had stayed back by the club entrance now descended on the chaos and began to shoot pictures of Sonny and the others, surrounding them. I kept walking, pleased with myself for blinding these men for life. The sounds of the feeding frenzy diminished behind me.
A few blocks down from the Sayers was another Hollywood institution, but it was a much more exclusive club than the Sayers. The building looked like a generic warehouse; an office section jutted out of the front with two black-tinted glass doors and a large two-story featureless structure beyond. A shiny, stainless-steel plaque was affixed next to the doors with two words stamped into it: HARD LIMIT. There was a driveway beside the building with a ramp descending into the underground parking deck. I pushed open the black glass doors and stepped in. “Acquainted” by the Weeknd was pulsing through the speakers hanging high on the walls. I could hear the music echoing through the building. The “office” was an entry foyer. The furniture was all black leather and chromed steel. The walls were dull steel scratched and scoured by steel wool. A lovely young lady, looking like an executive office manager, approached me as soon as the doors shut. She had blond hair swept back and flesh-colored lipstick.
“Good evening, sir,” she began. “Welcome. Is this your first time with us?” She glanced over to a large, muscle-bound Asian gentleman in a Valentino suit who stood with his massive arms behind his back, his hands clasped. I hadn’t noticed him there, mistaking him for one of the walls. He scanned me and did a threat assessment. I looked more like a street person than their usual clientele, but they had to be sure before they threw my ass out that I wasn’t some shabbily dressed billionaire.
“Actually, no,” I said, “I was kind of a charter member. I’m here to see Lady Anna, or maybe Dragon, if she’s still here.” The attendant looked surprised, and maybe a tiny bit offended, like holy words were coming out of the mouth of an infidel.
“Sir, Mistress Anna does not accept clients, and I would have no idea who ‘Dragon’ is. Good evening. Malcolm can see you out.”
Before the wall could put a hurting on me, I lifted my shirt and pointed to a mark on my left flank. It was a brand, a ragged circle of raised flesh, once seared with three scars like claw tracks intersecting it. “You recognize this?” I said. The girl gasped, and I lowered my shirt and lit a cigarette. “I’m here to see Anna and Dragon. Now where the fuck are they?”
“What?” Malcolm asked the attendant, stepping toward me, unlimbering his arms.
“He has an owner’s mark,” the girl said, “like the ones they have.”
“Where are they?” I asked again.
“Mistress Anna is in the Akari room,” the attendant said, then added an uncertain “… sir.” I nodded to the girl and walked past her, pushing aside gray drapes covering the doorway.
“I’ll find my way,” I said.
I walked down a claustrophobic hallway of cracked mirrors of every imaginable style, age, and shape. “Acquainted” shifted, mixed, and became “Way Down We Go” by Kaleo. The hallway opened into a great cavernous room, dark, with walls of stone like some ancient castle. The illumination came from blue low-watt bulbs, covered by industrial cage fixtures. There were more leather couches, mostly occupied by beautiful, wealthy people; some wore masks, others didn’t. There was a bar of surgical steel, edged in fluorescent tubing. Behind it, bartenders in leather pants and harnesses served more masked patrons.
The main attraction in the room was a
