I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) (22 page)

“If I were you,” the old man leaned across
the table towards Boone. “I’d get out of town for awhile. Let this
shit play itself out. Tisiphone do her thing, get whoever she come
to get, she’ll go away again.”

“If she’s a demon, how do I kill her?”

“You’re not hearin’ one word I’m sayin’, are
you? You listen to me when I was divinin’ your cards? You don’t
just
kill
a demon, Mojo. It’s not as simple as a silver
bullet or cutting its head off. We’re talkin’ magic here son,
sorcery and what not.”

“And what do you know about that?”

“Not enough of anything to tell you, son. But
let me counsel you this: get out of the city for some. Head to the
shore or somethin’. Trust me.”

“Why? Tisiphone or whoever—whatever—she
doesn’t got it in for me.”

“Yeah, but you’re snooping ‘round now. Shit,
the Sisterhood thought enough to come lookin’ to you and your crew,
right?”

Boone thought about the women outside
Raheem’s and in the club last night.

“I appreciate everything you do for me,
Blin’” he told the old man.

“It ain’t nothing.”

“Nah, it is. That GH come in from China
yet?”

“You gonna have to give me a few more days on
that.”

“Sounds good.”

The Hellfire Club was an S&M club located
in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Bowie steered his A4 past the
line of Harley’s outside of Hogs & Heffers and started looking
for a suitable parking spot.

“There,” Boone said from the back seat.

Bowie pulled into the spot, next to a fire
hydrant.

Gossitch pulled back the slide on his 9mm,
chambering a live round. He put it back in its holster under his
jacket and tapped the ash from his smoke out the window. “Boone.
You wait here with the car.”

“Come on, Goose.” The mountain of muscle
protested, too large for the compact executive car’s backseat. “Why
do I always gotta wait with the car. I don’t even drive.”

“You want to go inside and say hi to the
trannies and other deviates, Boone?” Bowie asked. He knew the
answer. “Then man the fuck up and wait for us, huh?”

Man
the
fuck
up
,
mouthed Boone.

“You hear shots, bring the cavalry,” said
Gossitch. Bowie figured he was referring to the firepower in the
trunk.

Bowie looked back at Boone as he and Gossitch
walked away. The kid was leaning against the Audi’s hood, his
massive arms folded across his chest. He didn’t look too thrilled
to be left behind. Too bad.

Gossitch always seemed to have so much
patience with Boone. Bowie didn’t and he didn’t see how Gossitch
did. Bowie thought maybe he himself was just in a bad mood. He’d
been popping Tylenol all day for the headache that had been with
him ever since he woke up. Those fucks on his block. Had to draw
down on them in broad daylight in the middle of the street like
that.

There was a small line of people outside the
entrance to the club. Hamilton waved as they came closer and
greeted them. “The gang’s all here.”

“Except for two,” said Bowie, thinking of
Madison and Jay, then Santa Anna. “Make that three.”

“What’s going on Gossitch?” asked
Hamilton.

“You able to get in touch with Jay?”

“No.”

“We might have an issue here we have to deal
with.” Gossitch dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the
sidewalk. He coughed.

Young Big Mike was working the door.

“Ladies are free,” the bouncer told the
yuppies trying to get in. “Fifty dollars for you gents. Pay
inside.”

“I always get you and your cousin confused.”
Gossitch smiled and the bouncer shook his hand.

“Cause we’re both so damn good looking, that
it?”

“What, do you guys work at every club in the
city?”

“Only the good ones, till the Generalissimo
shuts ‘em all down.” Young Big Mike was referring to the city’s
mayor. “You here early, Gossitch. Party don’t really start until
after midnight. Madonna and her entourage come by last night.”

“Madonna, huh?” Bowie was impressed. If he
had seen her maybe he would have asked her for an autograph. For
his ma. She loved Madonna. Especially
La
Isla
Bonita
.

“Now’s as good a time as any for what we
need,” said Gossitch. “Where’s Damian?”

“Inside,” answered Young Big Mike. “Check the
bar.”

Bowie followed Gossitch and Hamilton followed
Bowie.

Gossitch stopped at the counter and paid for
the three men.

“Any of you guys want to check your
clothes?”

“He might.” Bowie nodded back towards
Hamilton.

Bowie had been in this club before. It used
to be called the Vault. Name changed a few years before, he didn’t
remember when. Same kind of clientele. The bondage and discipline,
sadism and masochism crowd. Good number of tourists. Always a lot
of guys, fewer women.

As they moved through the club, Bowie noted
the dungeon-motif was still going strong. They moved through a
series of interconnected rooms, some smaller than others. Techno
music blared out of speakers in some, hurting his head. Other rooms
were quiet enough to hear the voices of people in conversation. The
lighting was low in most.

They passed a few couches and Bowie thought
of a story he had heard. One night, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and
Boone had come to the club and hooked up with what they thought
were some chicks on these very couches. Penetration had been banned
with the AIDs plague, but mutual masturbation was still allowed.
The boys were going at it hot and heavy with the ladies, getting
their dicks pulled when—the story went—Maddy reached down between
the legs of his broad and found she had a bigger dick then he
did.

That had ended the make out session for
Maddy, Jay, and Ham. Boone had let the tranny he was with finish
him and then he’d joined the others at one of the pool table
upstairs. Or at least that’s what Maddy, Jay, and Ham had said.

Bowie looked over his shoulder at Hamilton.
If the guy was thinking about that episode it wasn’t registering on
his face.

The room they ended up in was larger and
better lit than the others they had passed through getting to it.
There was a lot of action going down in this room. A man and an
Asian woman were making out in a cage in one corner of the room. A
bunch of guys stood around the cage, watching. Most were jerking
off. A man with an enormous gut and a small, erect penis was flat
on his back on a wooden platform raised off the floor. His woman,
heavyset like he was and decked out in dominatrix leather, was
hitting him with a cat-o-nine-tails. Each time they struck and
brought temporary red welts to his skin the fat guy shuddered like
he was feeling the best thing in the world.

Bowie couldn’t imagine.

“Well, I know this isn’t a social call.” Like
Bowie, Damian was a tall, broad shouldered man. He had a lot of
blonde hair on his head, looked like a surfer transplant. He wore
an official black STAFF t-shirt and the meaty arms poking out of
the short sleeves were covered with tattoos from the wrist up.

“Damian.” Gossitch got along good with all
sorts. “How you been?”

Bowie knew something was up with Damian.
There was a sparkle in his eye, gave it away if you knew what to
look for. A demon? Fairy? Bowie always forgot exactly what.
Definitely not a vamp.

“Been worse.”

Bowie leaned against the bar, hands in his
Tommy jeans casual-like. He’d let Gossitch do the talking, look
around, see the sites. A man led another man past on a spiked dog
collar. Hamilton had wandered over to watch the woman whip her
husband.

Bowie listened to Gossitch and Damian make
small talk about Giuliani and his ban on sex video shops. Those
kids he’d confronted hadn’t come back to the corner all day. He
didn’t think they would, ever again. It would be bad for them if
they did.

There was a small group of leggy blondes and
brunettes. Bowie thought they looked like fashion-models.

Gossitch asked Damian, “You hear anything
about a porn director named Savage getting himself killed?”

“Course I heard about it. Bad news travels
fast in this city.”

“What’d you hear?”

“Heard it was a slaughterhouse. Heard they
were identifying people by their teeth.”

“You hear Stephanie Swallows was there?”

Damian looked genuinely surprised and
saddened. “Now that I didn’t know.” He sighed. “Steph was a good
kid, Gossitch. Came out here from the Midwest a couple years back.
She’d come around here on weekends with clients.”

“Clients?” asked Gossitch. “She was a working
girl?”

“Started out as. First blowjobs at the Port
Authority and tunnel. Met her man, she graduated to dancing at the
clubs and high price escorts.”

“Her man Duffy?”

“Yeah, that’s him. You’re pretty well
informed Frank.”

Two of the leggy models came over to the bar.
Bowie shifted over a step, making some room for them but not enough
to give them their space.

“Hey, are you Naomi Campbell?” he asked the
black one. He thought his mother might like this one.

“Know where I can find him?” Gossitch asked
Damian. The bar tender was fixing the women their seltzers. The
club didn’t sell alcohol but you could bring in your own
bottle.

“He wasn’t at the scene? Thanks ladies.”

“If he was they haven’t I.D.’d him yet,” said
Gossitch. “If they had, I would have heard about it.”

Bowie watched Danny the Pony Boy come
gamboling by, a woman in the saddle on his back. Her bachelorette
friends followed in their wake.

“Yeah, I know where you might be able to find
him, Gossitch. Duffy never was too smart. But it’s gonna cost
you.”

“What kind of price are we talking about
here, Damian?”

“See, when you walked in here, I thought you
were here to ask me about your boy—what’s his name, Jay?”

Bowie perked an ear up, leaning back on the
bar. The woman whipped her husband and he spontaneously ejaculated
a foot into the air. Somebody clapped.

Gossitch had nodded so Damian continued. “I
thought you were coming in here to ask me about Jay and
Tatianna.”

“Yeah, I was.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that wouldn’t have made you
the first ones. Had some ladies came by last night inquiring.”

“Ladies by the name of Emmanuela, Daniella,
and Isabella? The Sisterhood?”

“That who they told you they are, the
Sisterhood
?” Damian considered it. “Well, listen, they want
to find Tatianna too. And they’re willing to pay for information
that leads to wherever it is she is.”

“Pay what? A bounty?”

“They don’t want to hurt her Gossitch. They
want to keep her from being harmed.”

Gossitch and Damian stopped their
conversation long enough for the latter to fix an old naked man a
drink.

Bowie wondered about Jay’s woman. Gossitch
had told him about the murder scene. If she’d been involved, much
less responsible, who could hurt her? Hurt her how?

“Who would want to hurt her?” asked
Gossitch.

Looking across the room, Damian said, “These
guys here.”

Johnny Spasso and Sully walked across the
room to the bar. Johnny wore his microfiber raincoat and Sully
chewed on a toothpick.

Gossitch and Spasso greeted one another by
their first names. Sully nodded towards Bowie and Bowie returned
the gesture.

“Our paths been crossing often these days,
Johnny.”

“An auspicious sign, Frank?”

“Too early to tell.” Gossitch smiled.

“You already questioned the psycho,” Sully
announced none too delicately. Bowie saw the look that crossed
Damian’s face.

“Yeah, I’m talking about you, kook.” Bowie
was reminded why Gossitch had left Boone outside by the car.

“Sully.” Spasso said it firmly. “Go.”

The gangster walked off towards the cage. “I
apologize, Damian,” said Johnny. “We’re on the cusp of the
twenty-first century, but old prejudices persist.”

“Yeah” was all the bartender said.

Bowie knew Gossitch had some questions he’d
like to ask Damian about Jay and Tatianna, but he also knew Damian
wasn’t going to answer them with Spasso around, much less after
being insulted by Sully.

Damian yelled across the room at a patron,
“Hey! Take that out of your mouth! None of that in here!”

“Damian tell you anything we can act on?”
Spasso asked Gossitch. “He’s reluctant to talk to my kind.
Understandably.”

“He was about to tell me where we might find
a suitcase pimp.”

Spasso looked intrigued and turned to Damian.
“Do tell.”

Danny the Pony Boy passed back through the
room with a different woman on his back. Bowie thought about how
his mom would be turning sixty in a couple of years. Maybe he’d
throw her a big party, rent out the VFW hall, hire Danny to give
his mom and Sarafina and all their friends rides. Bowie wondered if
Danny could carry his mother.

“I don’t know Gossitch,” the bartender was
saying, suddenly guarded.

“Johnny,” Gossitch shifted his eyes back
towards the exit.

“We’ll wait outside for you guys,” said
Spasso, then called out to Sully.

“Hey, Johnny,” Bowie heard Sully say around
his toothpick as the gangsters walked off. “Those women on the
couches look suspicious to you?”

Damian waited until they were out of earshot.
“Gossitch, you, Bowie here, your guys, I got respect for. Spasso,
well, he never done me wrong, but the company he keeps? It does
nothing to endear me to him, understand?”

“I do,” Gossitch assured the other. “You tell
me where we can find Duffy, I’ll promise you this. We find Tatianna
first, we’ll let you know where she is. You can call Emmanuela or
whoever and collect, okay?”