II
PRETTY LITTLE THINGS
There’s a devil waiting outside your door.
— Nick Cave, Loverman
FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER
“LUCY CRIED AS THE REVOLVER PRESSED against the side of her head, just behind her left eye,” the author reads aloud from an unfolded book on a lectern. “The metal felt cold against her skin and every time she paused to breathe, the rancid smell of gun oil burned her throat. It was a sweet scent, like rotten bananas soaked in gasoline.”
A poster-sized copy of the book cover rests on a tripod just left of the lectern. In the center is an eroded silver spiral with an extreme bevel effect to accentuate the gritty texture, giving it degraded metal appearance. PRETTY LITTLE THINGS is printed across the top in a narrow, Roman typeface with a flakey crimson hue, and along the bottom the author’s name is stamped in the same style: A.E. Dupin.
A nom de plume. Her legal name is Alexandra Emily Dumas, the retired city homicide detective who spearheaded several investigations into my father and played an important role in having him twice committed to an insane asylum.
A few years back she retired and turned her attention toward writing. Her first book, A Downward Spiral: the Story of Niels Gram and Jackie Moreau, was marketed as a non-fiction true crime novel and briefly appeared on the New York Times bestseller list before disappearing into obscurity. Still, it made her a local celebrity which is why this room is tragically over capacity. If a fire were to break out, we’d all die. Some from the flames and smoke, others trampled as animal-instinct sends a hundred people running for the door. One can hope. It would be more entertaining than what’s coming out of this woman’s mouth.
Alex continues, “The Nothing Man’s black eyes stared down the length of his right arm which was covered in a twisting nightmare of red and black pagan symbols and demonic faces, and then over the curve of his hand and past the iron sights of the nickel-plated snub-nosed .38. He didn’t just look at her. He looked through her, peering into the dark recesses of her soul.”
Put me out of my misery.
The Garden District Book Shop is a small little establishment but from what I read this morning it is well-known and beloved to the locals. It’s quaint. Is that the word? It doesn’t even smell like a proper bookstore. There is no musty paper scent hanging in the air or century-old shelves filled with hard-backed literary masterpieces. If you want to read Hawthorne, you must walk past display after display of cheap mass market paperback romance novels and the next young adult series to be adapted into a blockbuster Hollywood franchise.
I hate this place. Not as much as what’s being read to the thirty of us sitting in these uncomfortable metal chairs and the other fifteen behind us standing with their copies of the book clutched to their chests, but still. Most of the audience are middle-aged white women who likely harbor perverted fantasies of being captured and abused by the villain of the novel.
“His lips drew apart like curtains,” the author reads, “revealing two rows of stained-yellow teeth. A hideous laugh built in the back of his throat and burst out of his mouth like a noxious roar. His jaws spread apart as the guffaws vomit from his maw, forcing the scar tissue of his permanent Cheshire grin to nearly split apart like torn zippers up each of his pitted cheeks.”
The woman next to me leans over and says quietly, “Do you know the story about the man this is based on? I heard he was a real monster.” She’s probably married to a doctor or a lawyer, someone who can afford to buy her gaudy jewelry and designer dresses marketed to middle-aged housewives with bob cuts.
My eyes tilt downward and with an uneven smile I say in a thick faux Russian accent, “Oh, honey, you have no idea.” Then with a bend of my neck, I whisper just loud enough for her to understand. “A reliable source recounted to me a story about Spiral. Do you want to hear it?”
She hesitates but the curiosity quickly wins out and she gives a meak little nod.
“A woman, let’s call her Ruby, wanted her mother dead. She approached Spiral and requested his assistance. Much to her surprise, he said no. There’s not much sport in killing the elderly, you see. Ruby, not to be deterred, blackmailed him.”
The woman meeps, “She did?”
“Mhmm. So Spiral killed the old woman. Do you want to know how? Of course you do. He tied her to a bed and doused her in gasoline. The fire burned for two hours before it was just smoke and ruin. He then cut her head off, put it in a box and mailed it to Ruby’s house for her son to open.”
Her hand blocks a gasp as it races out of her mouth while her big eyes stare at me. Before she can say anything I stand from my aisle seat and excuse myself. “If I listen to one more paragraph of this drivel I might cut my own head off.” I run my finger across the throat, then add, “If you can imagine such a thing.” With my leather satchel slung across my body I follow the path between the two sections of chairs toward the back, ignoring the rest of Ms. Dupin’ horrible prose.
My escape leads me out of the bookstore and into the gallery of the shopping center. On either side of the concourse are local boutiques and emporiums that have already closed for the night. Their dark interiors and glass windows and doors are protected behind steel-barred gates. My woefully uncomfortable heels click-clack on the waxed floor on my way to the rear exit.
When I reach the door, my skewed reflection stares at me with a hacksaw grin. We’re wearing the same black Alice + Olivia mini slip dress with our cleavage exposed by its low swooping collar. Both of our faces are slathered in foundation and contoured with makeup. Is this what a woman is supposed to look like? See: the imperfections hidden under cosmedics. See: our skin exposed to flaunt our femininity.
And yet we all have roles to play, even me, and tonight I have a very specific character in mind. I adjust the black wig covering my tightly packed blonde mop and exit through the door.
Outside, the sun is low on the horizon, having dipped behind the buildings but not yet given in to the creeping night. The August heat has been tempered by a light drizzle and in the distance the dark clouds flicker with lightning, followed by a low, soft rumble of thunder. As the rain pitter-patters on the parked cars and the water gathers in the divots in the road, I take a single hand-rolled cigarette from the ornate, silver case fetched from my bag and place it between my lips. Then with the matching lighter I strike a flame and apply it to the tobacco flakes wrapped in black rice paper.
As the smoke trails into the air I return the case and lighter to the front pocket of my satchel, then open the top flap to search inside. I can smell the mink oil as my hand pushes aside a plastic-wrapped notebook and grabs my copy of Pretty Little Things, which I was forced to buy in order to attend the reading and the book signing to follow. I take the cigarette between my fingers and start flipping through the pages, stopping occasionally to read a paragraph or two.
It’s bargain bin garbage; a poorly executed fictionalization of my father that heavily borrows from every staple of the serial killer genre. Of course outside that room, I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who has read it, as it’s yet to achieve the same level of success as her previous work. The people here are locals who remember the rumors and innuendos of my father’s exploits in New Orleans, most notably murder, with a little bit of mayhem sprinkled in for flavor.
These sheep think my father shot his departed wife because someone wrote it in a book. That’s the easy explanation. However, like so often is the case, the truth is much, much worse. He told me the things he did to that woman. Shooting her would have been a mercy.
I flip the book over and look down at her face in the promotional photo. Some might have called my father an evil man, but at least he was authentic. He never pretended to be anything but a monster. This woman is a liar, and liars don’t deserve second chances. I take my cigarette and put it out on her face, singeing the plastic-coated paper and smearing ash across her features until she’s unrecognizable. That’s more like it.
Behind me the door opens and at once the dull echo of shuffling feet and muted voices comes spilling out. A handful of people excuse themselves past me mid conversation about how great the plot is before turning south at the sidewalk and continuing off into the night.
The book and cigarette get dumped into the trash bin on my way back inside. The corridor is flanked by darkened storefronts until I step into the blocks of lighting being cast through the front glass of the bookshop. Another handful of women stream out, clucking with praise and spouting off pseudo-intellectual comparisons to authors like Patricia Highsmith or Jo Nesbo. The last one holds the door for me. Proper etiquette demands a thank you from me before I slip inside.
The reading has concluded. Now a long line has formed, starting just inside the front door and snaking its way around shelves and displays to the autograph table where Alex sits with a marker in hand, scribbling her signature and any requested remarks on the inner page. I walk down the line, earning several scowls and angry complaints under breath from the fat piggies waiting for their turn at the trough.
At the table I step in front of the next person. A few people mutter their objections. The sow directly behind me says sharply, “No cutting,” earning a few mumbled squeals of praise from the other animals. I look back at the obese woman with her rippling jowls and yellowed eyes and say, “You will die alone and there will be no one to mourn you. The question is whether it’s a year from now or tonight.” Her eyes bulge from her skull but her rotten breath catches in her throat before it can fuel any words of outrage.
Alex doesn’t acknowledge the disruption, either because she’s more engrossed with whoever she’s texting to on her phone or just doesn’t care that I skipped the line. After a few seconds of typing the phone is put away and she grabs the marker while holding out her left hand for my copy of the book, ready to jot her name down for another fan.
“I threw that in the trash where it belongs,” I say while reaching into my satchel. The former police officer leans back in her seat, craning her neck backward until she can look me in the eye.
“What the fuck did you say,” she asks with a less appreciable accent than what I’ve heard from others in the city since I arrived, leading me to believe she has delbierately tried to lose it.
“I said I threw it in the bin because that’s where garbage goes.”
She fires up from the chair to order me out, likely to be followed by a roar of applause from the mouth breathers, but when her eyes see my hand lay the black spiral notebook flat on the table her body sinks back into the chair. Her shaking hand reaches to brush across the protective plastic, along the center white block where the contents are dated from 05-20-2009 to 08-04-2009.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“Yes,” I say simply.
“Who are you?” She takes it out of the plastic and opens it up about midway through with a surprisingly gentle touch, as if she were handling some ancient manuscript discovered in a cave or hidden away in an archive.
I lie. “My name is Nadezhda Alyokhina. I represent a Russian businessman who you may have heard of before—Maxim Gorodetsky.”
Gorodetsky was Tibor Petrov’s boss. He ran The Circuit.
“I have,” she says while pursuing the hand-scribbled lines my father wrote all those years ago. It’s a wall of text on every page with no paragraph breaks, broken up only by dates at the top of each page. Occasionally the words are wrapped around some grotesque picture or a doodle. “Though businessman isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe him.”
“And what word would you use?”
“He is a high ranking member of the Russian mob, last I heard.”
I force a smile. “In Russia, mobsters are businessmen.”
“Fair point,” she says while carefully turning a page. She then takes her reading glasses that were dangling from the collar of her loose-fitting blouse and slides them up the bridge of her nose and over her ears.
“July 21st,” she reads from the date at the top of the page, then scrolls her eyes down until something catches her attention. She covers her mouth for a moment at the horrible scene he describes, before narrating it to everyone within earshot.
“A puddle of urine spread out beneath her on the hardwood floor. Its unmistakable odor filled my nose and drew a grotesque half-smile across my lips. As I write this entry, I can still smell it, as if the stench has permanently burned itself into my olfaction. Her features relaxed, apparently mistaking my expression for one of sympathy, perhaps even mercy. So I leaned down and dug my teeth into her nose…”
The shock draws sharp hisses from the people behind me but Alex doesn’t react in kind. From what I can tell she’s studying the journal with the passivity of a scientist who has discovered the personal writings of Vlad Tepes on the pros and cons of impalement, or Nero’s musings of Rome as it burned.
She continues reading after skipping a few lines, “In that moment, everything made sense. The hunger inside of me boiled over and for the first time I finally understood what it wanted… What it needed…”
She closes the book and even returns it back inside the protective cover before looking up. “How did Maxim get his hands on this? I thought everything Spiral owned went to his and Jackie’s son? Nathan, Legion or Jack, whatever he’s calling himself these days, the fucking psycho.”
Sounds like she’s met the bastard. Interesting. “Not everything,” I say as the notebook gets slid back into my bag. She watches it longingly until the last sliver of it disappears out of sight. “His house here in New Orleans was sold at auction, along with all its contents. There are hundreds of notebooks just like this one, perfectly organized. There are records and other personal possessions, as well.”
It wasn’t sold at auction. It was left to me, unbeknownst to my half-brother. Jack might have gotten the fortune and the mansions, but I was given the things my father actually cared about. He entrusted me to preserve his legacy and left me with everything I needed to do so, including a list of names. Names of those who only still breathe because the cancer killed him first. Her name is second, right after Tibor Petrov which I crossed off last year.
She stands abruptly and motions me off to the side before promising to finish signing the books of everyone in line. We walk away from the table and around a corner to stand next to a shelf full of self-help books for morons who need their hands held through life.
“So,” she says quietly, “what do I have to do to see the rest?”
Fish meet hook. It takes a lot to not laugh in her face.
“That depends.”
She tilts her head. “On what?”
“Denʹgi.”
“Money,” she says knowingly.
“It’s like your Liza Minneli said. ‘Money makes the world go round.’”
She chews on a fingernail for a moment as the numbers through her head before throwing out an offer. “I can get you two thousand tonight.” Her eyes flutter as they turn upward to meet mine again. “Is that enough?” Her mouth makes a little pout while she anxiously pushes a lock of hair behind her ear.
A little grin creeps its way across my face. I reach for her cheek. She doesn’t move as I run my fingers down the side and along her jawline to her chin. There are a few pinched wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and fine creases that roll together when her eyebrows climb her forehead, none of which she has attempted to hide under cosmetics.
According to her Wikipedia entry she is fifty two years old but looks a decade younger. My thumb brushes across her naked bottom lip and I can see her face getting flush. A bend down, till the heat of my words dance across her ear. Goosebumps pucker along the back of her neck.
“Two thousand will be enough,” I say, then slowly pull back until our eyes can meet again. Her features soften from relief, but I’m quick to add a stipulation. The hook must not be so obvious as it tempts her ambition.
“For a week. Any longer and we will have to negotiate a new price.”
“Okay,” she quickly agrees. “That will be no issue. The moment my publisher sees what I can write using those notebooks, they’ll pay me an advance big enough to keep your boss happy. Hell, maybe I’ll buy the whole lot, if Maxim is willing to sell.”
“I’m sure he could be persuaded, for the right price,” I muse, then let my hand drop from her face. “But for now, there are rules to be followed. First, everything stays in the house. You may come and go as you please, but take nothing with you. I will search your belongings before you leave. Second, Maxim does not want to attract attention to the property. Tell no one about our arrangement. If I find out you have—”
“I won’t,” she says immediately without hesitation.
“Good. I wouldn’t want a little thing like that to get in the way of what will be a very fruitful relationship for both of us.”
“Me neither,” she says in a breathy voice that hisses through her teeth.
My hand finds the back of her neck, coiling within her short, curly brown hair, and then pulls her into me as my head dips down. Our lips press together. It’s a kiss for the ages. Is this what love feels like? Fireworks explode all around us as our tongues dance together and our bodys grind into one another. I take her bottom lip between my teeth and bite just hard enough to draw a bit of blood. She pulls away and touches the cut with her fingertips then looks at the watery red tinge. When she looks at me again, I see fire in her eyes.
“Midnight,” I tell her. “On the dot. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
She nods once like a good little girl, then I turn and make my way through the bookshop, past all the fat women with their angry, jealous eyes, envious for the short little time I had their darling author all to myself in that dark corner. I don’t say anything as I walk toward the exit. I don’t have to because I’ve already won.