Max reached for the bourbon, decanting it from the cut-crystal bottle and into the squat tumbler at his elbow. He'd drained the last glass so quickly that the ice hadn't even started to melt yet. The rich, amber liquid burnt a path down his throat as he swallowed, thin lips pulled back in a grimace as he pushed the wire-framed glasses back up along the strong slope of his nose with a long finger.
'Can I tempt you with another?' he asked his companion, tilting the un-stoppered carafe towards the empty glass on the table. 'No?' he laughed, taking in the silent shake of the head at his question. 'Well, I'll certainly not say no.' For the third time, he topped up his own glass though he sipped more civilly this time. The ice clinked against the crystal tumbler as he leant forward and set his drink down, resting his elbows on his knees.
'Let me clarify the situation here,' Max leant back in his plush armchair, clearly uneasy. He crossed one leg over his knee, his loafered foot jigging as he caressed his smooth upper lip with a single finger, eyeing the man opposite him. 'You are planning to relocate to Santa Carla and you need my assistance in doing so?'
'I need your assistance only momentarily, my friend. Santa Carla has already become our home, I would like to say you're on to a good thing here. However, moving as we have done comes with great risk.' The tone was smooth and resonant, lilting with a delicate European accent – Italian, perhaps? It matched the stocky man's sleek, dark exterior. His narrow eyes, lending him a permanently suspicious air, took in Max's disquiet with silent amusement. 'Let me speak plainly, my friend. We need jobs.'
'Jobs?' Max laughed, relaxing a little, though the sound was edged with a shrill nervousness. 'Jobs I can do! I have perhaps one of the most extensive business profiles in all of Santa Carla. What kind of business were you thinking?' He drained his drink, setting the glass back down before he stood up and twitched at his sharply creased trousers, crossing the spacious lounge to open up a filing cabinet tucked away in a corner, beside his expansive marble desk.
Max was a tall man of middling age, his mousey brown hair flopping over his wide forehead and brushing the tops of his ears. His round, thin rimmed glasses often slid down his nose and the overall look, when coupled with his en pointe cutting edge suits, was too try-hardy. He began to flick through the manila folders suspended in the top draw as the shorter, darker man came to stand beside him. He was almost as broad as he was tall, his thick black hair which had been swept back gleamed in the light of the Tiffany lamp on the desk.
'Perhaps we should stick to stereotypical ideologies? In which case, a restaurant I think.'
Max chuckled and slipped a folder from its identical mates.
'I may have just the thing. A nice little tourist trap on the Boardwalk. Santa Carla is a hive for visitors all year round, not just the summer season. How long do you think you'll be with us here?' He handed over the folder to the other man, who flipped it open immediately and began to scan the business details listed there, lingering over the average turnover of covers per night.
'Ahh, we're in no hurry my friend. This seems a friendly place, full of the right kind of… custom.'
'The police are prominent here, especially on the Boardwalk. You'll need to exercise a great deal of caution,' Max warned, still feeling unsure. The other man laughed, slitted eyes glittering as he clapped his new partner on the back.
'I'd expect nothing less from the Murder Capital of the World,' he said. 'Makes life a little more interesting, more of a challenge I think, no?'
Max swallowed mirthlessly, wondering what the hell he'd just agreed to.
'You been down the Boardwalk again?' Marco nodded, raising his eyebrows at the taller, darker Dwayne, who was sprawled comfortably along the side of the fountain that stood centre stage in the room. 'Did you guys eat yet?'
'Yeah, we did. You?'
'Too right, bruh,' Dwayne retorted, shaking his long, black hair behind his shoulders as he leant over to clap Marco on the bicep as the younger boy passed. 'Couldn't hang around waiting for you two losers.'
The candle light flickered as Marco settled himself on the floor beside Dwayne, the flames dancing thin shadows across the marble inlay of the walls and floor. The Atlantis Hotel had once been the jewel of Santa Carla, sparkling decadently above the small coastal town, a recognizable part of the Hudson's Bluff skyline that was visible from the pier. Frequented by the well-to-do, who's-who of the West Coast, the self-indulgent clientele never left a room un-booked. Wild parties were thrown by the gloriously rich, champagne flowing like water beneath the crystal chandeliers that lit the expansive ballroom, as the flood of people flowed from bedroom to bedroom. The rooms were still full the day the earthquake shook the cove, plunging the hotel and all its guests straight into the San Andreas Fault. 1906 that disaster happened and still the bones of those unlucky visitors lay amongst the dusty, forgotten halls of that once grand hotel, robbed of flesh by insects long ago.
The boys had cleaned up the parts of the Atlantis that were still accessible from the craggy walkway carved by salt-spray and erosion into the soft rock of Hudson's Bluff. A rusted, iron stairwell lay forgotten from the cliff-side, a relic of some crazy councillor's idea to revamp and reopen the hotel many years ago; an underground bar, a 'hip and trendy' place to tempt the tourists during one particularly dark and dangerous summer. The flaking, creaking steps led down into the cool, dim cavern that was once the main foyer of the hotel, the soft swoosh of the waves hitting the base of the cliffs rolled around the almost hollow chamber, rolling off the cracked marble of the walls and floor. A lopsided, slightly sunken, fountain – minus water – was the focal point of the room. The lip of its basin was wide enough to hold Dwayne as he lounged.
The room now boasted many creature comforts added by the boys over time, from the decorative hanging mobiles, made from various bits of sea-debris that danced in the slight draft to the thick, greasy candles that pooled their wax over almost every available surface.
'I don't know what's up with David, man,' Marco said, his tone hushed enough to be caught only by Dwayne beside him. Dwayne pillowed his head on one arm as he lay on his back, reaching up with his other hand to bat at the dried starfish that hung inches from his face. It spun wildly on invisible fishing line.
'He been searching them posters again?'
'Yeah,' Marco frowned, his leather jacket creaking as he rested his arms on his drawn up knees.
'Makes sense, I guess. Its round about this time he ran away. Stands to reason he's searching for someone who's searching for him,' Dwayne explained, quietly.
The lump of rock shattered over both of them, dust and pebbles sprinkling over Marco and Dwayne as it struck the reclining mermaid that resided atop the fountain.
'I didn't run away,' David's tone was murderous, but his icy eyes were darker as he loomed in the curtained doorway. The next minute, his hands were gripping the front of Dwayne's t-shirt, dragging him up off of his stone perch. Though the boys stood head to head, David seemed to have no trouble in lifting the more muscular Dwayne from the ground. His leather gloved hands gripped at the fabric as though his fingers really wanted to bury themselves in Dwayne's flesh.
'Paul,' David called, barely raising his voice from his usual gravelly drawl. He twitched his hands, almost tossing Dwayne to one side as he stalked away from the nervous looking Marco and turned to face the slighter figure that was now silhouetted in the doorway. The flickering light of some candles lit further down the corridor threw a shifting, orange glow.
'What's up?' Paul, looking a little bleary eyed, glanced from the nervous looking Marco crouched at the foot of the fountain to the ruffled Dwayne, who was smoothing down his crumpled t-shirt. Paul was taller than Marco, with straight blonde hair that was darker than David's. He wore it long around his shoulders, but shorter and teased up around the crown, like a cloud of cotton candy.
David laughed, a dry, irritated sound.
'What's up? We have some visitors in Santa Carla, a new family we need to extend our welcome to.'
Marco looked suddenly eager. His usually nervous expression relaxed into almost a smile. He was the youngest of the four boys, the last to be found and the newest to the life they had carved out amongst the sunken rocks and ruin of the Atlantis Hotel.
'Really? Are they coming here?'
'No, you dolt, they can't come here,' Paul admonished, leaping easily down the three rough-hewn steps and into the foyer.
'Why not?' Marco asked, looking curiously from one face to another.
'Because it wouldn't be safe,' Paul chortled and leant against the wall, causing a dangling creation of sea-glass and drift wood to jingle. 'We're quite a territorial lot.'
David sat down in his throne-like chair, resting his hands on the smooth wooden armrests.
'We've no need to be inhospitable, but we do need to make our expectations clear. With too many mouths to feed, Santa Carla will soon become as dry as the desert. A great deal of caution must be exercised by both parties before we move them on. This must become a pit-stop for them only, or everything we've worked for will be destroyed.'
Dwayne cracked his knuckles, his scowl as dark as his long hair. 'Let's do it!' he urged.
'Patience. We need to wait, learn to ride the wave before we can command it,' David said, the candlelight turning his almost white-blonde hair into orange flames and the blue of his eyes into steel.
Holding her breath Star pulled the door closed behind her as quietly as she could, turning the handle and waiting for the latch to snick closed before she loosed her grip.
'Ellora, tha'chew?' the whiney, nasal voice came from the lounge of their condo. 'Gemme 'nother beer, girl. Be quick 'bout it.'
'Yes, daddy.' Tension set in to every muscle, her heart starting to flutter like a tiny caged bird batting against the bars of its cage as she swiped a brown bottle from the refrigerator. Star had hung about Tozier's for as long as she could without overstaying her welcome, in the hope her father would have drunk himself into a stupor before she got back. Tozier had offered her a couch to sleep on of course, but she hadn't been home in three days and thought she owed it to her daddy to check he wasn't asleep in his own pool of vomit. She hadn't expected him to be awake, least of all on the soft stuff.
'Hey, daddy,' she said, handing him the beer and perching on the arm of the chintzy chair beside the matching sofa, upon which Hank Stephens sprawled.
'Where'ya been, girl?' Hank asked, slurring his words despite the fact, Star noticed, there were no liquor bottles in sight, only an array of empty beer bottles.
'At Tozier's place,' she said, shifting her rich, brown curls from her eyes, bangles jangling on her wrists at the movement. 'Just piercing ears for the tourists, daddy.'
'S'long's that's all ya'll doin'. I'll wager Tricky Timmy's got summin' else in store for you, ya'll see if he don'.' Hank took a swig from the cold beer, leaning back into the cushions at his back as The Doors washed over them both with their scratchy lyrics from Hank's record player.
'…People are strange, when you're a stranger, faces look ugly when you're alone…'
Hank turned his haggard, hang-dog eyes to his daughter, blood-shot and weary.
'New jewels, Ellora?' Her name in his mouth made her shudder with repulsion. Star, she told herself firmly, my name is Star, and he can't hurt me.
'Whores dress themselves in such finery. You a whore, now?' he smirked, taking another long drink from the bottle. 'Bet Tozier's got ya'll workin' the clients in the back room, am I right?' Hank heaved himself up to a sitting position to get a better look at the girl who tried to shrink away out of his view.
'..Women seem wicked when you're unwanted, streets are uneven when you're alone…'
'No, daddy.'
Hank Stephens had once been a fine looking man, standing just over six foot tall with tight, defined muscles he'd worked hard for in the gold mines that had never made him rich, but had robbed him of the hearing in one ear during a minor disaster. His hair had been black and gleaming, swept back from his proud forehead, matching the neat little moustache he wore on his top lip. Time, and sorrow, had turned his muscle to fat and etched sagging worry lines into his once handsome face. Hank would only ever dress himself when life necessitated him stepping foot outside the condo – a lack of alcohol or smokes tended to be such an occasion – and the rest of the time saw him lounging about in his underwear, his ever-growing gut spilling out over the top of his stained briefs.
'You better not be screwin' around, you little bitch, daddy'll whup your prissy lil' ass if I ever catch ya'll doin' somethin' like that,' he leered, spewing his ugly words out around the butt of a cigarette he'd just shoved between his teeth and chased with a match. 'Do I gots'ta whup your ass, Ellora?' Having successfully caught the end of his cigarette with the flame, Hank extinguished the match with a single flick of his wrist and heaved himself up off the couch, still clutching his beer bottle in one hand. Star stood up automatically too, taking a backwards step towards the doorway as her father stumbled for a moment before regaining his balance.
'Where ya'll been then?'
'I told you, daddy, at Tozier's tattoo place. I've been piercing ears.'
Hank took a long, deep drag on his cigarette, squinting his dark, piggy eyes at his daughter as he let the blue smoke stream from his cruel, leering lips. 'Like hell you have. Jus' look at the state of yous, all dolled up like ya'll been turning tricks with ev'ry Dick an' Tom who'n make eyes at'cha.'
Star was on the balls of her feet, balanced like a bird ready to take flight, her dark and watchful eyes never left the bloated, half naked form of her father.
'That's not true,' her tone was low, level and weary. This was a conversation she was used to having and she was sick and tired of repeating herself. This time though, this time, she would leave before it escalated. At least, that was her intention.
'I'll not have any daughter of mine make a mockery of me. I'm not a man to be laughed at,' Hank roared suddenly, lunging at Star as the cigarette fell from his lips. The girl was quick thinking enough to reach a foot out to swiftly grind the hot cherry into the stained, dirty carpet before it could do any real damage. That thoughtfulness, however, cost her the manoeuvrability that her sober state gave her, as the step forward carried her into her father's line of fire. Hank swung a meaty fist at her face and though she turned fast enough to avoid the crash of his knuckles against her cheek, his fat fingers tangled in her long, loose hair and wrenched her head back as Hank stumbled again, carried over by the momentum of his swing.
'No, daddy, please,' Star urged, reaching up to stabilise the hand in her hair as she was dragged in closer proximity to the huffing, sweating man.
'Think you're too good for livin' under my roof, huh?' Hank asked, backhanding Star across the face and causing her to spin as she tried to dodge beneath his arm, silver bangles sparkling on her wrists as she held her hands up to deflect the blow.
Outside, the summer shower that had been threatening to fall all afternoon finally escaped the heavy clouds. The thick, fat droplets, warm on the bare flesh of the holiday makers still making the most of the night on the Boardwalk, began to thud hard and fast on the windows of Hank's condo, drumming out the sound of flesh striking flesh.
The needle on his '79 record player stuck, scratching away at The Doors.
'…when you're strange. Faces come out of the rain, when you're strange… when you're strange… when you're strange…'
