“She’s the last,” Bambi said. “Crystal, she’s gonna be the last petal that gets plucked.”
“Where is she, Bambi? I need to know, I’ve got to get to her; I’ve got to stop them!”
The Pornoracle looked at me so wistfully, like she knew the saddest secret in the whole wide world.
“Try to remember, okay, Laytham? I know it gets hard with all the little cuts that you get moving through life, but please try to remember how you were a long time ago. Bye, the movie’s over. I’ll see ya around.”
The streetlights all went dark for a breath, and when they came back up they were their normal color again. Time had caught up to me, and Bambi was gone. Vigil burst through the lobby doors. I think he expected me to be long gone.
“How the hell did you get past me?” I shrugged. “We good?” he asked, his hand moving away from his gun under his jacket.
“Jury’s out,” I said. “But I’m done here. Come on, let’s go.”
FIFTEEN
We took Dragon’s jeep the following night to go find Elextra Dare, Caern’s old porn-star roommate. After a few hours of dead ends and cold leads, Vigil, Dragon, and I finally found the porn diva and her producer boyfriend in downtown L.A. at the Vault, a nightclub and lounge located in what used to be a bank.
Grinner had wanted to ride along too, but I’d said no. “I need you,” I said, “to watch a lot of porn for me. Anything and everything with Crystal Myth in it. I want to know who she’s worked with in the industry, what companies, what producers, directors, talent. I want as much intel as you can gather on all of them too.”
“Affirmative,” Grinner said. I handed him a cardboard document box. “What’s all this?”
“LAPD homicide files,” I said, “plus everything the Nightwise had on the same cases. Nine women over the last thirty-four years, all Jane Does, all cold cases.”
“What the hell does this have to do with your missing fairy princess?” Grinner asked.
“Can you use these photos of the victims and see if you can locate them online, make some IDs?”
“Yeah,” Grinner said, taking the box. He opened the cardboard lid and leafed through the folders inside. “I can mash up some military and intelligence facial recognition software with an AI program they’ve been developing to scan photos online … see if we can get some hits. You didn’t answer my question. What’s this got to do with what you’re working?”
“Nothing, I hope.”
The music, a cover of “Sweet Dreams” by JX Riders and Skylar Stecker, boomed as we moved through the line at the bar and skirted the edges of the dance floor. People knew on an instinctual level of self-preservation to give Dragon space and clear a path for her, despite her seemingly innocuous demeanor. She was dressed in a gold-and-black, leopard-print blouse, a black, leather coat that fell just above her knees, black leggings, and Dr. Martens. Her long hair was up, held aloft by two solid jade hairpins, both carved to look like Chinese dragons. I had given them to her a long time ago. Vigil was in a charcoal-gray Desmond Merrion suit, looking like he just fell off a GQ cover, and yours truly was slumming in a black-and-silver paisley button-up, black leather pants, and boots. I’d tripped over a razor and finally managed to shave too. I let my hair fall to my shoulders. Who says a country boy can’t dress up all dapper in the big city?
“You look amazing,” I said in Dragon’s ear as we searched the crowd.
“I do,” she said. “You look like you paid someone in the kitchen a fifty to let you sneak in.”
“Charmer,” I said. She laughed. It was a magical sound.
Elextra was in the actual vault from the old bank, redesigned as a cozy little V.I.P. section with bottle service. It wasn’t all that hard to suss out that the majority of the folks in the vault section were in porn. A bouncer gave us a hard look as we walked up to Elextra’s table. Dragon made him get preoccupied with something else with a glance of her own.
Elextra Dare was a giggling, jiggling temple to surgery and drugs. Her face had been narrowed, her chin tightened. Her lips, puffed up with collagen injections, looked like deployed airbags. The skin around her glassy, unfocused green eyes was drum-tight and dead from Botox. Her age was difficult to determine due to the butchery, but I put her in her late twenties. Her boob-job made it impossible for her to have any idea what her feet looked like, but in the event of a water landing, they would act as a flotation device. She was in a too-tight, pink-and-silver-sequined minidress that left little to the imagination and matching shoes with skyscraper-like stiletto heels. Her hair was auburn, straight, and falling to mid-shoulder and breast. I saw at least one tat on her upper bicep, a variation on barbed wire with roses and thorns. The ink looked a little faded. She looked up at me and seemed to be trying to focus.
“I’m sho shurry,” Elextra slurred. “No autographsh right now.”
The guy Elextra was curled around in the booth, who was pawing her, was squinting at me with dark eyes glazed with simmering anger and numerous chemical libations. His body language told me he had no patience and thought himself the baddest cat in the jungle.
“Let me guess,” I said, snapping my fingers and pointing at the man, “George Wilde, right?”
“Auditions are Wednesday and Thursday at the fucking office,” he growled, “now fuck off.” George was in his late sixties, with his gray hair close-cropped to his thick face. He wore an expensive silk shirt, halfway open with a gold chain adorned with golden razor blade visible among the ash-colored chest hair. The Italian loafers he wore with no socks could pay the rent for a family in Encino for
