The 8th Circle (9 page)

I
t was a long time since Danny had done the singles bar scene. It hadn’t changed. The music was still too loud, the dance floors too crowded, and the people too desperate.

He’d hit eleven bars already and had no luck other than a growing collection of women’s phone numbers and e-mails. When women recognized him, they snapped photos for Facebook or Twitter or WhoGivesAFuck. Nobody recognized the black-and-white card. Nobody had heard of the Inferno or any of the other names on Michael’s list.

Now he stood on the doorstep of Black Velvet, a club on the edge of Northern Liberties, with his new friend Ivy, a Goth princess in a leather bustier, a skirt of shredded black lace, and a cape that seemed to be made of rat fur. Not his type, but she said she knew Michael.

“My friend Zach can help you. He knows all the clubs. If he hasn’t heard of it, it doesn’t exist. I can’t believe you knew Michael.” Ivy gave him a sleepy smile and took a step closer. The wind whipped her long, black hair into her pale face. “You have really beautiful eyes. Are you a Scorpio?”

Danny shook his head. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’m not compatible with Scorpios.”

She had a stud in her nose, six rings in her left eyebrow, and four studs below her lower lip. A snake tattoo slithered up her neck. Christ knew what other surprises she had on her body. He didn’t want to find out.

A slim man in a burgundy velvet bodysuit admitted them into a dimly lit corridor that reeked of incense and a thick musk. He beckoned Ivy to come close. She handed him Michael’s card, and the two of them spoke in low tones for a couple of minutes before he turned to Danny.

“Four hundred,” the man said.

“Excuse me?”

“Cover charge. Four hundred. Each.” The man’s oily voice was threaded with steel. A black goatee rimmed his pointed chin; all he needed was a bifurcated tongue and horns and he would have made a fine devil.

“That’s a steep goddamn cover charge,” Danny said.

The devilman gave Danny a slow smile that didn’t reach his kohl-lined eyes. “I don’t know you, my friend.”

Danny handed over the cash. He’d come prepared because he figured from the onset that certain kinds of clubs didn’t take American Express. Michael had traveled to the land of white powder and kinky sex. Did Michael really hang out here? It wouldn’t be the kind of place you’d write about in an article on Philly nightlife unless you were into the seriously twisted. Still, Danny couldn’t picture Michael on the dance floor in a normal club. In this bat cave, he’d be right at home.

We’ve now entered the Twilight Zone
.

He heard voices and music to his right, but the devilman returned the card and then led them down a corridor to the left through a door he was careful to close and lock.

Pulsating electronic music vibrated from black velvet walls. The musk odor grew stronger until they came to a square room lit by red neon lights shaped like open mouths. Squashy looking couches and tables shaped like scarlet lips surrounded an ebony bar.

It took Danny a half second to realize that bodies slithering and squirming together filled the couches. It was hard to tell
where one body ended and the next began. Men with women. Women with women. Men with men. Combinations of numbers and positions.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Ivy said. “They’re so natural. Just like rabbits.”

Danny thought he was prepared for the sex club experience. He was wrong.

“We encourage our guests to use condoms,” the devilman said and slipped back down the corridor.

Ivy took Danny by the arm. “Zach is over here.” She pointed to the man behind the bar. He wore a black velvet G-string and had a tattoo of a flaming skull on his left shoulder. His light brown skin gleamed like it had been greased.

“Zach, my friend here needs something,” Ivy said.

Zach smirked and held up a glass. “A little liquid fortification? It can be a bit overwhelming your first time. Say, that’s a nice jacket. Is it Armani? I’d better get you a locker.”

“I don’t need a locker,” Danny said.

“Whatever, blue eyes.” Zach poured tequila into a shaker of crushed ice and followed it with a succession of clear liquors. He shook the mixture, poured it into a tall glass, and added a shot of grenadine that curled down through the alcohol like a bloody worm. “I call it a bloodsucker,” Zach said. He dropped in a maraschino cherry. “It’ll knock you on your sweet ass.”

Danny shook his head. “Thanks. I’ll pass.”

“I know you. You’re that reporter dude what used to be such hot shit. You wrote about Huey Newcomber—that kid got killed for stealin’ a pack of dental floss? That was some righteous anger you stirred up, man. What you looking for here?”

Zach watched with curious eyes as Danny tried to dredge up the story. The memory flickered at the edges of his mind and shut off at once when Ivy leaned over his arm and he realized she had unlaced her bustier. Christ, her nipples were pierced and a chain extended from one to the other. A red crystal heart dangled in the middle.

“He’s Michael C’s friend, Zach. He’s doing an investigation,” Ivy said.

“I’m just trying to find out what happened to Michael,” Danny said, and tried to judge Zach’s reaction. There wasn’t one.

“Michael was a strange dude. He didn’t like to participate. He liked to watch. Is that your scene too? We have some private observation rooms. That’s extra.”

Danny felt a tiny jolt of unease, though he knew Michael always stood on the sidelines with his camera. Watching.

“Do you have a lot of watchers?” he said to Zach and looked around. His flesh felt cold and exposed.

Zach shrugged. “To each his own.”

“Did Michael ever bring anyone here?”

“You mean like a date?” Zach laughed. “Michael came by himself to forget his problems. Besides, he was seriously twisted about someone.”

“He ever say who?”

Zach shook his head. “No. Might not have even been human. He was always talkin’ bout demons and shit. Creeped me out.”

That wasn’t what Danny wanted to hear. Who knew what was going on in Michael’s messed-up head?
He wanted to tell you
. Danny shut off the voice in his own head.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“A week or so back.”

“Did he seem upset? Worried?”

“Nope. Just went to his observation room like always. He did leave early though. That was unusual.”

Danny pulled the black-and-white card out of his pocket. “You ever see one of these before?”

Zach took a step back, and his face twisted into a scowl. “Where the fuck you get that?”

“I guess that answers my question.” Danny slid the card back into his pocket. “What kind of card is it?”

“Reporter Man, that’s the kind of card you want to leave home without.” Zach pushed the drink toward him. “Have this instead.”

“I don’t want a drink. I want to know what that card is. It’s got to be a membership of some kind. Ivy used it to get us in here. Is it just for here, or does it work at other places? You don’t have to take me there.”

“Anyone can get in here if they got the green, and I couldn’t take you there if I wanted—which I don’t.” Zach rested his elbows on the bar and leaned close. “Listen. There’s special clubs. Then there’s special clubs. The Inferno ain’t like this club here.”

“Are you saying this is a membership to the Inferno?”

Zach looked around the room. “Low level, but yeah.”

Danny’s heart jolted. “The Inferno is real.”

“It’s real enough, but it ain’t a club—not like this. It’s like management. It operates clubs, and depending on your level of membership, you get access.”

“Access to what?”

“Access.” Zach licked his lips as if the memory gave him both pleasure and pain. “To services. The higher your membership, the more access you get.”

“What kind of services?”

“Look, sweet ass.” Zach straightened and put his hands on his hips. “You may be the hottest thing walked in tonight, but I’m working, and you ain’t buyin’. Get my drift?”

Danny thought he got Zach’s drift pretty well. He knew he wasn’t interested in stripping down to frolic with the rest of the patrons. He slid a twenty to Zach. “What do you know about the Inferno?”

Zach eyed him with disdain. “Twenty? What’s it really worth to you?”

Danny shrugged as if he didn’t care. “I don’t usually pay sources.”

“I bet you got a hard-on right now for this.”

“And I bet you owe at least two months’ rent or you wouldn’t be serving up drinks in a G-string.”

Zach shrugged and shifted his weight back and forth. “Look, man, I can’t talk about it now. I get off at four. There’s a diner down on Spring Garden. You meet me there at four thirty. Buy me breakfast, and we’ll negotiate proper. Deal?”

Danny tossed another twenty on the bar. Ivy’s hand caressed his ass. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of you ’til then. Don’t you think he has beautiful eyes, Zach?”

T
he clatter of silverware startled him, and Danny jerked up his head. Five thirty. Where the hell was Zach?

He stared at his notes, which trailed into an indecipherable scrawl down the page. It didn’t matter. If Zach was right, Kevin was wrong. The Inferno wasn’t a sex club. It owned clubs.

Danny rubbed his eyes. He signaled the waitress and stared at the fat, red plastic elf that sat propped against his menu holder. It leered at him through beady eyes and held up a sign that read, “Happiness Is a Holiday Heart!”

Danny looked up when the waitress approached with a pot of coffee. Her Santa cap jingled with each step, and he wondered how any human could maintain a holiday facade at this ungodly hour. She gave him a cheerful smile.

“Y’want anything else, hon? A donut for the road?”

“No, but thanks. Hey, nice hat.”

She winked and slapped his bill on the blue Formica table. “Have a great day.”

*

Clammy, warm air greeted him when Danny walked out of the diner and up toward the side street where he parked. In three hours, the temperature had risen thirty degrees. Thick fingers
of mist curled around the lights and floated in ribbons of gray across the rain-slick street. A few cars and trucks passed up and down Spring Garden. In the murky darkness, their headlights glowed like lidless eyes.

He glanced around and wondered if Beth ever watched him from wherever she was. Sometimes he thought he could feel her with him in the darkness. A whisper he couldn’t quite discern, her hand almost brushing his. Or maybe the memory of love was strongest, most bittersweet, when love itself was irretrievably lost.

He reached the Jeep and hit the keyless entry button. Nothing happened. The lights didn’t blink. The car sat, silent and dark. What the fuck was this?

He took a step closer and saw the doors were unlocked. Maybe it worked after all. Christ, he was more out of it than he thought.

Danny yanked at the handle and swung open the door. The overhead light snapped on, and he stared down at his seat. It took a second for his brain to process the lump of tissue congealing in a gooey mass before Danny took a step back. The keys slipped from his fingers and clinked onto the road.

On the driver’s seat, wrapped in a black G-string, sat a human heart.

“H
e’s clean,” the first tech said. “Not a trace of blood.”

Danny looked at his hands and refrained from making a smart remark. He was too exhausted. The CSU folks had recorded the temperature of the heart and bagged it, and the cops had verified his statement with the waitress at the diner. He’d told his story four times.

“It’s still warm,” the second tech said of the heart. “Bet that scared the shit out of you.”

Danny gave him a wan smile. He tapped out a text message to Andy and hoped he was lucid enough to read it.

“Might be arrested for murder. Will be at Center City Division soon. Please help.”

*

“Where are you, you little shit?” The monster banged the wall.

Danny edged back into the winter coats. He knocked against the open boxes of mothballs, and they spilled onto the floor. Conor pulled at Danny’s arm. Fear pinched his white face, but he clutched his blue lightsaber. “Hurry, Daddy.”

He shoved Conor into the darkness. “Run!”

Danny tried to push through the coats, but something clamped him by the shoulder and wouldn’t let go. In the flickering blue
light, he could see her. The delicacy of the butterflies and dragonflies, the twisting vines and flowers painted on her smooth, pale skull, a hideous contrast with her hollow eye sockets. Jane Doe One touched his face with her mutilated hands.

Danny tried to move, but she held him tight.

She started to shake him, and her voice grew harsh and deep.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Goddamn it!”

Danny jerked backward. His head banged against something with enough force that his jaw snapped together. When he opened his eyes, he lay on the floor of the interrogation room. Kevin loomed over him. Christ, he thought he might puke.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Kevin said.

Danny tried to stand, but Kevin put a casual foot on his chest and exerted enough pressure to keep him on his back. He was a bug pinned to the floor by his brother’s size fourteen Florsheims.

“How about you tell me what the fuck is going on, Danny?”

“How about you let me up before I sue your ass for police brutality?” Panic made his voice crack. Why couldn’t they stop this crap? Who’s the biggest asshole?

Kevin smiled and pressed harder. “Assuming you get to a phone.”

If he moved fast enough, he might be able to knock Kevin off balance, but his hands shook. He couldn’t show weakness though. Danny began to tense, and the pressure on his chest eased. Kevin stepped back. He picked up the chair and pointed to it. “Don’t get any ideas. Sit down.”

Danny sat.

“Goddamn it, what in the Good Christ is going on?” Kevin’s bloodshot eyes squinted at him from folds of skin that looked like wet dough. Danny bet he’d gone through at least two six-packs and half a bottle of Johnny Walker Red last night.

“I found a heart in my car. I believe you know that already.”

“And you have no clue who it belongs to?”

“It didn’t come with a name tag.” Danny slouched back and gave Kevin a bland smile as if he were relaxed.

I found a heart. No big deal, though the G-string made it a little weird
.

“So you just happened to be sitting in a diner in Philadelphia at five thirty in the morning, and you came out and found a fucking heart in your car?”

“You’re very quick on the uptake.”

He should’ve told Kevin what he was doing last night, and he would’ve if Kevin hadn’t started off by acting like a prick. Now they stood on opposite sides of the wall. As always.

“Stop lying to me, Danny.”

“Is this the part where you beat a confession out of me for a murder I didn’t commit? Do you honestly think I would have called the cops if I came downtown and hacked someone’s heart out of his body?”

“It’s this Inferno, isn’t it? You won’t let it go. Goddamn it, I wish I’d never opened my mouth. I never should have given you the old man’s shit.”

Danny looked away. He was in dangerous territory. He was pretty sure he knew who the heart belonged to, but he also knew better than to admit it, especially since no body had turned up.

“What were you doing in that diner?”

“Having coffee.”

“For two hours?” Kevin leaned close. He rested one hand on the table and the other on the back of Danny’s chair. His chin jutted in Danny’s face. It was almost like Kevin wanted him to make a move, so he would have an excuse to beat the crap out of him. Danny could smell the fury oozing out of Kevin’s pores along with the whiskey.

“What were you doing last night?”

Danny gave Kevin his best smartass smile. “You got me. I’m a fucking vampire.”

“You think this is funny? I can hold you here.”

“For what? Finding a heart?”

“For suspicion of murder.”

“Where’s the body, Kevin? The blood? Don’t you think I’d have gotten a little bloody cutting out a heart?”

Kevin slammed both hands down on the table. It used to scare the hell out of Danny when the old man would do that
on the kitchen counter because it had always signaled the start of a whipping with a belt or a fist—or sometimes a nightstick. It depended on the old man’s mood and whatever was handy. Danny sat very still and tried to will his heart to slow.

Kevin said nothing for five minutes, and Danny watched the hands on the clock crawl forward. Finally, Kevin stepped back. “You look like shit. Did they get you anything to eat?”

Danny blinked. “I’m okay.”

“Why didn’t you call me when they brought you in?”

“I figured they’d get around to it.” Danny didn’t mention that he’d alerted Andy. Kevin would find that out soon enough, and he’d be furious. Andy Cohen was never a favorite of the Philly PD, thanks to his paper’s frequent and pointed criticism of the department.

“You must have some idea why someone would leave you this kind of calling card. What were you really doing last night?”

“I was at some bars. I told that to the other detectives. I gave them the names of people I was with.” Danny hoped that the alcoholic haze engulfing most of the women would keep their sense of time fuzzy. He didn’t want to tell Kevin he wrapped up his evening at a sex club with a Goth princess whom he’d last seen stripping down to plunge into a sea of naked bodies. Not yet.

“Did you run those licenses?”

Kevin blinked. “Licenses? Jesus Christ.” He pulled out an envelope and slammed it on the table. “Not a lawbreaker among them. So if you hassle any of them, I’ll have you brought in. And don’t give me bullshit about your car.”

Danny shrugged. “What about the address?”

“All right. That’s weird. Technically, it belongs to a John Smith, but I can’t find any information about John Smith. Still, the house was bought legally, and the taxes are paid every year. There’s never been a complaint filed about the property, but I’m still checking.”

Danny heard urgent voices outside. A blond detective entered and motioned to Kevin, who followed him out of the room. He didn’t completely close the door, and Danny heard someone say, “You’ve got to turn him loose. Right now. His big-shot lawyer’s here, and he’s raising all kinds of hell.”