the syncopated beating of their hearts. When the tide of ecstasy
crested and ebbed, in the stillness that followed, the words “I love
you” were superfluous but nonetheless musical to the ear, and cherished.
That April day, from first awareness of the morning light until
surrender to sleep, had been one of the best of their lives.
Ironically, the night that followed was one of Hatch’s worst, so
frightening and so strange.
By eleven o’clock Vassago had finished with Redlow and disposed of the
body in a most satisfying fashion. He returned to the Blue Skies Motel
in the detective’s Pontiac, took the long hot shower that he had
intended to take earlier in the night, changed into clean clothes, and
left with the intention of never going there again. If Redlow had made
the place, it was not safe any longer.
He drove the Camaro a few blocks and abandoned it on a street of
decrepit industrial buildings where it might sit undisturbed for weeks
before it was either stolen or hauled off by the police. He had been
using it for a month, after taking it from one of the women whom he had
added to his collection. He had changed license plates on it a few
times, always stealing the replacements from parked cars in the early
hours before dawn.
After walking back to the motel, he drove away in Redlow’s Pontiac. It
was not as sexy as the silver Camaro, but he figured it would serve him
well enough for a couple of weeks.
He went to a neo-punk nightclub named Rip It, in Huntington Beach, where
he parked at the darkest end of the lot. He found a pouch of tools in
the trunk and used a screwdriver and pliers to remove the plates, which
he swapped with those on a battered gray Ford parked beside him. Then
he drove to the other end of the lot and reparked.
Fog, with the clammy feel of something dead, moved in from the sea.
Palm trees and telephone poles disappeared as if dissolved by the
acidity of the mist, and the streetlamps became ghost lights adrift in
the murk.
Inside, the club was everything he liked. Loud, dirty, and dark.
Reeking of smoke, spilled liquor, and sweat. The band hit the chords
harder than any musicians he’d ever heard, rammed pure rage into each
tune, twisting the melody into a squealing mutant voice, banging the
numbingly repetitious rhythms home with savage fury, playing each number
so loud that, with the help of huge amplifiers, they rattled the filthy
windows and almost made his eyes bleed.
The crowd was energetic, high on drugs of every variety, some of them
drunk, many of them dangerous. In clothing, the preferred color was
black, so Vassago fit right in. And he was not the only one wearing
sunglasses. Some of them, both men and women, were skinheads, and some
wore their hair in short spikes, but none of them favored the frivolous
flamboyancy of huge spikes and cock’s combs and colorful dye jobs that
had been a part of early punk. On the jammed dance floor, people seemed
to be shoving each other and roughing each other up, maybe feeling each
other up in some cases, but no one there had ever taken lessons at an
Arthur Murray studio or watched “Soul Train.”
At the scarred, stained, greasy bar, Vassago pointed to the Corona, one
of six brands of beer lined up on a shelf. He paid and took the bottle
from the bartender without the need to exchange a word. He stood there,
drinking and scanning the crowd.
Only a few of the customers at the bar and tables, or those standing
along the walls, were talking to one another. Most were sullen and
silent, not because the pounding music made conversation difficult but
because they were the new wave of alienated youth, estranged not only
from society but from one another. They were convinced that nothing
mattered except self-gratification, that nothing was worth talking
about, that they were the last generation on a world headed for
destruction, with no future.
He knew of other neo-punk bars, but this was one of only two in Orange