The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(6)
The apparition loomed from the darkness and froze. It wavered in the air, radiating confusion, then slipped back into the shadows.
I hunched over, bracing my hands against my knees until I could breathe again. The flashlight beam traced the powder line, letting me touch it up with the remainder of the pouch’s contents, just to be safe. The powder was Mama Margaux’s personal recipe. I knew it was mostly red brick dust and purified salt, but she guarded the rest of the mixture’s contents like it was Colonel Sanders’ eleven herbs and spices. All I knew was that anything not made of flesh and bone was instinctively repulsed by the stuff; as long as the line stayed unbroken, the Stacy-thing would keep her distance from the tunnel mouth.
I staggered back up the tunnel, soaked and aching, my throat sore and my stomach in knots. Eric’s laughter greeted me as I reached his lean-to.
“You didn’t wanna go back there, man. Told you so.”
“That tunnel,” I gasped, “what’s on the other side? Where does it lead?”
“Nowhere fast. Junction goes off to a culvert about two blocks east, but it’s sealed with a grate and padlocked. Nobody goes in or out from there.”
I nodded. “Good. I’ll be back. Until then, stay the hell out of there. Don’t let anybody else go back there either.”
“Don’t gotta tell me twice. Told you, I’ve been down here seven years. Learned that the best thing to do when you see weird shit is to stay far away from it.”
I could still hear him snickering as I walked away. Tourists.
I emerged from the tunnel into a warm Vegas night, the starless black sky lit with an electric glow. A blazing shaft of light from the Strip fired upward in the distance, slicing the air like a neon stiletto. I drove home, stripped off my sodden clothes, and jumped into the shower, cranking the water just a hair shy of scalding as I scrubbed my skin raw.
Stacy was murdered, no doubt in my mind, and her body dumped just ahead of a thunderstorm the weatherman predicted a week ago. It would have been a perfect cover-up, if the storm hadn’t been a little late or the coroner hadn’t been thorough. Who would want to kill a porn star, and why were a couple of cops involved? Corruption was one thing, maybe a little graft or looking the other way on a petty rap, but dumping corpses was an entirely different level of bad news.
The more pressing problem on my mind was trying to figure out what the hell Stacy had become. The thing in the sewers was no harmless spook show, and I’d never encountered anything like it. I needed a little help to work this out. Fortunately, I knew just where to get it.
Four
Every big city has its own refuge for the occult underground, a place for our crowd to mingle and swap vices away from prying eyes. There’s Dashwood Abbey in New York, the Salon Rouge in New Orleans, and the Bast Club in Chicago. In Las Vegas, we had the Tiger’s Garden. There were no dues or secret handshake, and membership was based on one simple test: the Garden had to want to let you in.
Scrubbed and changed, a fresh deck of cards in my pocket, I made my way to Fremont Street. The pedestrian mall shone under a canopy of dazzling lights. Cameras flashed and drunken tourists milled between open-air bars advertising dollar margaritas, while street musicians and blaring speakers clashed to create a whirling cacophony. Snatches of song faded into one another, drowned out by the din of conversation and distant engine sounds. A street performer with his face painted silver caught my eye as he juggled pins strapped with LED strips, smearing the air with swirls of color. Just off to my side, a skinny street rat doing the meth-head bop moved in on me with his eyes locked on my hip pocket. I gave him a look that could cut glass, and he found someone else to be interested in.
The air smelled like cheap cigars and spilled beer. I took a deep breath, letting the music and the commotion move me, falling into step with the churning crowd. I became one with the traffic, one with the street itself, giving in to the chaos.
A heartbeat later I stood in a narrow vestibule on a worn rubber welcome mat, the crowds and the flashing lights ripping away like tearing a bandage from a wound. Door chimes jingled softly behind me. I couldn’t remember how I got there.
That’s the Tiger’s Garden for you. If you look for it, you’ll never find it. You could map out every inch of the street, every nook, cranny, and doorway, and it simply wouldn’t be there. Clear your mind and go with the flow, though, and if you belong here—and if the Garden wants you—you’ll find your way inside.
I walked across the shabby, cigarette-burned, orange carpet, past the coat-rack and the decor that went out of style in the seventies. A few windows lined the sea-foam green walls, covered over with heavy wooden lattices. Nobody had ever seen those windows open, and nobody wanted to tempt fate by having a peek. I inhaled, savoring the smell of fresh Indian cooking, the air teeming with spices and secrets.
“Look,” a grizzled voice explained from around the corner, “I’m not saying the Loa aren’t objectively real—”
“That is exactly what you said,” a disgruntled Mama Margaux snapped. “Own your words, boy.”
I knew exactly what I’d see before I rounded the bend. Margaux, holding court in a florid tent dress and nursing a rum punch, squaring off with Corman at their usual corner table. Corman was in his late sixties and built like a retired prizefighter. He wore a rumpled tux with the bow tie undone and draped around his neck. Bentley sat next to him, silver haired and dressed in a funeral suit, reed thin to Corman’s stocky. Between the three of them, there were enough empty glasses on the table for a couple nights of heavy drinking.