Devil's Dance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  The David Spandau Thrillers by Daniel Depp

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Epilogue

  “Wet Eye” Director Dies in Car Crash

  The David Spandau Thrillers by Daniel Depp

  LOSER’S TOWN

  BABYLON NIGHTS

  DEVIL’S DANCE *

  * available from Severn House

  DEVIL’S DANCE

  A David Spandau Thriller

  Daniel Depp

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and 2015 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Depp

  The right of Daniel Depp to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  Depp, Daniel author.

  1. Spandau, David (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Private investigators–California–Los Angeles–

  Fiction. 3. Motion picture producers and directors–

  California–Los Angeles–Fiction. 4. Hollywood (Los

  Angeles, Calif.)–Fiction. 5. Suspense fiction.

  I. Title

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-07278-8433-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-542-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-587-1 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  PROLOGUE

  Chekhov’s rule about the use of plot devices is this: that if a gun is introduced in Act One …

  Captain Midnight said to the man,

  ‘Get that dog away from me or I’ll kill it.’

  MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, on a gray overcast afternoon in early spring.

  Deets sat on a bench by the pond eating a pastrami sandwich and looking out across the lake. His view of the downtown LA skyline was slightly impeded by that stupid geyser they’d put on the middle of the water. Deets hated that geyser, squirting like an old man with a lousy prostate, a reminder of things to look forward to. It was a shitty day but the park was still busy, Asians and blacks and Latinos milling around. Deets reckoned that at least half of them were there doing something illegal. The place was a goddamn supermarket for weapons and drugs, and the pond itself was like a night deposit for guns and body parts. Every now and then the police dredged it looking for someone gone missing. Deets wished he could be here one time to see it. It was the only reason worth coming.

  Deets was a big guy in a dirty rumpled brown suit and wore thick heavy-rimmed spectacles. When you first saw him he looked stupid, then you got closer and realized there was something strange about the eyes. You looked in there and you could see the gears whirring, but the machine itself was designed by Hieronymus Bosch.

  Deets had pulled his sandwich out of the greasy bag and was chewing on it, staring into space and dripping juice down the front of his jacket, when the faggot came over with his little dog and sat down on the bench next to him. The faggot was having one of those little mincing conversations on his cell phone, talking about what Ronnie did or did not do with Albert at the party Saturday night. Deets could feel his stomach turning. The dog sat in the faggot’s lap. It was one of those little dustmop dogs, one of those little yappy ones, the ones that make you as nervous as they are. The dog looked up at Deets and Deets looked down at the dog. The dog sniffed and smelled the sandwich and began to bark. The faggot made no attempt to shut the dog up, he just let it bark and talked louder into his phone.

  That’s when Deets threatened to kill it.

  The fag stopped talking and stared at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me,’ said Deets. ‘Get that yappy little shit-eater away from me or I’m going to pop its head off like a Christmas cracker.’

  The faggot just stared at him, his mouth opening and closing but no sounds coming out. Then he finally said,

  ‘You can’t say that.’

  ‘Why not,’ said Deets through a mouthful of pastrami and rye. ‘You going to call a cop? Go ahead. When was the last time you heard of anybody going to jail for threatening the life of a canine, hah? The constitution don’t extend to animals. I could kill your fucking dog and eat it in front of you and maybe, just maybe, I’d do six
months of soft time in jail. And that’s only if the fucking judge is a PETA member or something. You think the county of Los Angeles is going to spend the forty thousand bucks it would take to prosecute, house, and feed me just because I killed and ate your fucking little lice-ridden ankle-huncher?’ Deets took another bite of the sandwich. ‘No, I do not think so.’

  The faggot kept trying to talk, opening and closing his mouth, trying to form words. But nothing came. Tears welled in his eyes.

  ‘Timothy?’ said the cell phone. ‘Timothy, what’s wrong, what’s happening?’

  Timothy picked up the little yapping dog. It snapped and snarled at Deets. Timothy tried to clamp his fingers round the dog’s snout but it broke free and bit him, went on snarling at Deets, who just sat there and stared into space and chewed his sandwich. Timothy was crying in earnest now, shaking, trying to keep the dog from leaping out of his arms.

  ‘Timothy? Darling? What is it, what’s going on?’ said the phone.

  Timothy wrapped his arms around the struggling dog, crushed it to his body, walked away sobbing.

  Captain Midnight took another bite of his sandwich, drank some of his cream soda.

  Malo had been sitting on a bench farther down the path. He was a large black man in a well-cut suit and expensive shoes. He carried a folded copy of Time magazine. He got up, walked over, and sat down where the fag had been.

  ‘You still just as much of a people-person as ever, huh, Deets.’

  ‘I got tired of you sitting over there like a fucking idiot waiting for him to leave.’

  ‘Suppose he comes back with a cop?’

  Deets gave a kind of pastrami-muffled chortle.

  ‘There’s two guys over there been dispensing dope all afternoon like they was the fucking Walgreens. Over by the water fountain there’s a bloodstain where some cholo got offed last week with an AR-15 in a drive-by. If we sit here long enough, somebody is liable to try and steal one of our vital organs. You think the police are going to put all that stuff on hold while they investigate a threat of grievous bodily harm on some faggot’s terrier? Anyway I fucking hate dogs. Fucking filthy beasts.’

  ‘You a cat person, then?’

  ‘Nah, I fucking hate them too.’

  Deets ate the last of the sandwich, drained the can of cream soda. He wadded it all up, dropped it on the ground next to him, took out a filthy handkerchief, and wiped his hands.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘You can do the Marmont, right?’ Malo asked him.

  ‘Stevie Wonder could do the Marmont,’ said Deets.

  ‘It’s a simple B and E. Guy will be out all evening, you got plenty of time. You can do the key card?’

  Deets snorted. This sort of question was beneath contempt. He was fucking Captain Midnight, for fuck’s sake.

  Malo ignored the snort and went on.

  ‘Inside there’s a laptop computer somewhere, I don’t know what kind. On the computer there’s a manuscript, or parts of one. Somebody’s memoirs. You’ll be able to tell. I want you to copy the thing and then I want you to leak it to the press. You’ve done this often enough, I don’t need to explain it. Use them friends of yours.’

  ‘It’s not blackmail?’

  ‘That don’t concern you. You leak the info a little at a time. I want you to stop I’ll tell you. When I do, I better fucking hear skid marks, you understand? I hear you going all entrepreneurial on me and they going to find your head bobbing in that water over there and your ass somewheres up in Bakersfield feeling lonely. Whatever you make on the deal you get to keep.’

  Deets eyed Malo suspiciously. Smiled, said,

  ‘This don’t sound right. You want me to steal this shit, sell it, and then keep the money. Excuse me if I’m worried about getting fucked.’

  ‘Man I work for ain’t interested in the money. He just wants it out there.’

  ‘And anybody traces the source it comes back to me?’

  ‘That would be your problem,’ said Malo. ‘You old enough to hold your own dick and you ought to know who you can trust and who you can’t. Anyway we both know you clearing enough to make it sweet so don’t ask me for no motherfucking tea and sympathy.’

  Deets made that snorting noise again.

  ‘In and out, no fucking around like last time. No cute little tricks. No silver bullet. You go in, you get what you got to get, then come out. Yes?’

  ‘You de boss,’ said Deets in his sambo accent.

  ‘Don’t you get funny on me, Deets. After that little trick last time, only reason we called you is we can’t find nobody else this late.’

  Deets laughed.

  ‘Only reason you called me, baby, is because I’m the only fucking one who can do the job and we both know it. I’m Captain Midnight, remember. You go take your pickaninny shuck and jive and play it for some other guilty honky. I know what I’m worth.’

  ‘One of these days, Deets,’ Malo said as evenly as he could manage, ‘I’m going to kill you, you sick, fat-assed racist motherfuck.’

  ‘You ain’t going to do shit as long as you need me. And since I’m the best, that’s going to be a while yet. That just frosts those big black balls of yours, don’t it, Malo? God, I love that. Now that you done give me ol’ massa’s message, you can go back off to the cotton fields and fuck your sister or something. By the way, you goddamned nappy headed Arkansas porch monkey, don’t you ever threaten me again.’

  Malo shook his head, gave a bitter laugh, stood up.

  ‘You forgetting something, sambo?’

  Malo looked at the folded magazine in his hand. Deets smiled. Deets held out his hand and Malo started to give it to him, then changed his mind, went over and dumped it into a trash can, walked away.

  ‘You stupid black cocksucker!’ Deets called after him.

  Malo gave him the finger over his shoulder and kept walking.

  Deets cursed and mumbled to himself and went over and stared down into the trash can. It was filthy, there were bees and flies all over. God knows what he could catch. He stuck his hand in and fished around. An old Korean woman walked by, stared at him.

  ‘What the fuck are you looking at, you ignorant slope,’ Deets said to her.

  Deets pulled out the envelope, now soaked in god knows what. He opened it, took out the money, wiped off the individual bills, then tucked them into his jacket pocket. He was cursing Malo and thinking about that so hard he stepped in dogshit. He yelled, jumped into the grass to do a little foxtrot trying to wipe it off. Back on the sidewalk he tried to kick a fat pigeon who was just asking for it, but he missed and nearly fell down.

  It was that sort of day.

  ONE

  The Chateau Marmont is maybe the last hotel in the Western hemisphere to still use keys. Real keys, the metal kind, the kind where you want to break into somewhere you make a copy in a bar of soap or something, or, what the hell, you just pick the bastard. There was likely a master key somewhere in his bag, but it wasn’t worth looking. Deets stuck in the picks and thought about a late-nite breakfast at Canter’s when he got finished.

  A fucking blind coon piano player could have done it, so he couldn’t feel particularly proud. Malo could kiss his pale and dimpled ass, Deets was going to treat himself when he went in. It took him less than five seconds with his mind primarily on a bagel with cream cheese, lox, and onions.

  This of course is why he got the Big Bucks.

  He was a fucking super hero, no question about it.

  Captain Midnight went into the dark hotel cottage. He closed the door, took a small flashlight from the messenger bag he carried, shined it around while he hummed ‘New York, New York’. What he was looking for, the laptop briefcase, was over near the desk. He zipped it open, took out the computer, sat it on the desk. Checked his watch. He was okay on time.

  He turned on the computer, waited for it to boot. It asked for the password. Fuck that, I laugh in the face of passwords. He got out the notebook file containing a couple of dozen of his very own sp
ecial start-up disks. He selected the right one, slid it into the computer, rebooted. It shut down, hummed, woke up. Now, rather than some asshole start-up program, it circumvented all that crap and shot him directly into the system files, and from that a list of every file on the computer.

  ‘Hurrah,’ said Captain Midnight. ‘I am clearly a god among common mortals.’

  Captain Midnight searched the computer screen desktop, leisurely glanced through a few files. It didn’t take long to find it. He plugged in a flash drive, downloaded the file onto it. It took just a few seconds and he was done. He ran a quick file check to see if there was anything he’d missed.

  ‘This is just too easy. Where is the challenge, I ask you? Where is the poetry?’

  Checked his watch again. Still good.

  ‘Let’s have a little fun then, shall we?’

  He took out a large Snickers bar, unwrapped it, chewed on it while he leisurely browsed through files.

  ‘Boring … boring … boring … Aha!’

  Photos. Captain Midnight opened the file. Some old family shit, lots of photos of some bozo with curly blond hair and a beard. Captain Midnight thought he remembered the guy from somewhere. Then Captain Midnight found some photos of nude women. He brightened up.