It was all a lie, Tarantula thought as he merged onto the Santa Monica Freeway. A complete hit job. The Arechigas didn’t own those other houses; their relatives did. But falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, as Jonathan Swift once said. A quote Tarantula knew well because those swift falsehoods were his bread and butter. But in this case, the folks who considered themselves true newspapermen, who sneered and grimaced at Tarantula when their paths crossed at events like this, were the ones who’d led the charge, smearing the poor Arechigas on behalf of the richest Angelenos, afflicting the afflicted, comforting the comfortable. Tarantula was so worked up over the memory, he didn’t notice the car that had been tailing him from the moment he left the parking lot.
Other than his bosses, no one knew where Tarantula lived. Hollywood Nightlife was owned by USA Media Inc., a subsidiary of Information Technologies Ltd., which itself was owned by a larger conglomerate. Tarantula’s abode had been purchased by a shell corporation owned by that bigger entity, incorporated in the Caribbean and run by Rosselli. Paychecks were sent to his work address.
The residents of his apartment complex, built in the 1950s, had no idea who he was. This thought comforted Tarantula every time he parked outside 301 Ocean Avenue, nondescript middle-class housing. The four dozen or so other tenants enjoyed their views of the Pacific Ocean and kept to themselves. An expectation of minding one’s own business came with the territory; at least half the tenants were women who earned their livings on their backs, almost always with a studio-boss sugar daddy paying the rent, though sometimes they had to be more entrepreneurial.
As he walked up the stairs to his apartment, Tarantula felt like someone was watching him. He looked behind him, then resumed his climb to the third floor, breaking a sweat as he always did, beginning to gasp for air. He knew that his disgusting appearance was an asset to his desire for anonymity. Folks didn’t want to know more about him and made every effort to forget his existence.
He opened the triple locks of the steel-reinforced door and stepped in. The television could be heard from the study. It sounded like religious programming. That was too bad; he should have done his guest the courtesy of at least putting the game on, even if the Reds were up. He peered into the study, made sure that his houseguest was still there, then waddled into the kitchen and grabbed a beer, an ice-cold Olympia, out of the fridge. After making two punctures in the top with a can opener, he plopped himself down on his armchair, took a sip, and nodded off.
Hours later, Tarantula awoke to the sounds of a bang and heavy glass cracking.
The window in his living room, with its panoramic view of the Pacific faintly lit by streetlamps three floors down, revealed no evidence of disturbance. He heard the smashing sound again; it was coming from the study.
He ran in. Sheryl Ann Gold was sitting where he had left her hours before, her hands and feet tied tightly to a chair, a dishrag gagging her. Her eyes were wide open, but she looked confused. That flustered him, since he had assumed she’d been up to something. But she hadn’t moved, so there was no apparent way she could have caused the sound that—
Crack!
Tarantula turned to the window overlooking the alley and saw cracks in the glass spreading like a spiderweb. He dropped to the ground. Was someone firing a gun? Throwing rocks? He looked back at Sheryl Ann, who was shaking her head at him: No, no, no.
She had been well behaved since the creeps from the church had brought her over. Once Tarantula had told his contact at the church that he thought Charlotte Goode was up to something, it had all happened so fast. After strangling Goode, they watched the house and saw Margaret and Sheryl Ann come and go from her basement apartment and then followed them to the Hollywood sign. And luckily, ever since Sheryl Ann had been taken, she had kept quiet. Didn’t act up when allowed to go to the bathroom or eat. He’d told her all she had to do was sit quiet and she’d be released as soon as Charlie and his wife gave back the docu—
Crack!
This time he saw what it was: an enormous black bird flying into the large bay window. It wasn’t like when dumb sparrows mistake a clean window for the sky and accidentally kamikaze into it; no, this seemed predatory, intentional. Tarantula scurried over to the huge safe where the tabloid stored the most salacious, exquisitely damaging photographs and receipts, the evidence that kept Hollywood, Manhattan, DC, and Chicago cooperative. Material far worse than what was in the files at work. He had a gun in the safe too, and he began spinning the combination lock: three times to the right to 35, twice to the—
The window shattered as the black bird burst through, sending shards of glass throughout the room.
Sheryl Ann looked away, but pieces of glass hit her arms and face, leaving behind a confetti of small cuts.
Tarantula managed to open the safe. He reached for the gun but failed to grab it before the raven flew at him. He fell on his back and tried to fend it off, and suddenly there was another raven, and another, and another. Sheryl Ann watched, dumbfounded, as a conspiracy of ravens—two dozen or so—dived at Tarantula’s face and body, pecking viciously. They left Sheryl Ann alone. Tarantula let out a high-pitched shriek as he tried to bat the birds away. It was such an insane spectacle,
