Hollywood Noir (Angel #6) by Jeff Mariotte

From the Publisher

At a Hollywood construction site, a decayed corpse is the harbinger of a supernatural evil, while at Angel Investigations, Doyle's latest vision leads him to a puzzling address. He, Angel, and Cordelia start tracking down the real McCoy: a cigarette girl named Betty McCoy. But they're not the only ones to do so. There's a new PI in town—Mike Slade—who dresses and acts as though entrenched in the era when lounge singers, swing dancing, and martinis first made the Hollywood night scene. The golden age of the silver screen. Tinseltown.

Still, Mike's agenda is thoroughly modern—he has a long-standing bone to pick with local officials. Now Angel and his team find that their research leads them directly to Slade, and some files that are strictly L.A. confidential. But what do a cigarette girl, a water commissioner, and a slew of disappearing demons have in common?

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Chapter One

Angel was restless.

He sat behind his desk in his inner office, staring into space. In the front office, Cordelia and Doyle were talking, laughing, moving about. Cordy was a stunning former cheerleader who had moved to Los Angeles from Sunnydale and created a position for herself in Angel's business. Doyle, half demon and half human, conveyed messages from the Powers That Be. They were both invaluable aides to Angel. But at that moment they were only at the periphery of his awareness, and he wasn't part of their conversation.

He thought about getting up, going out to the front office, sitting down on the couch, and taking part. He also thought about going outside to see if anything was going on in the city that he ought to be aware of. Each thing he thought of doing superseded the one he'd thought of before, and he ended up doing nothing.

What's the matter with me? he wondered

He stayed in his seat, gaze fixed on nothing in particular.

"What's Angel's problem?" Cordelia Chase asked. She twirled her long brown hair around two fingers as she spoke. "I poked my head in there a couple of minutes ago to listen for his breathing, just to see if he was still -- well, not alive, but you know what I mean. But then I remembered, there's no breathing either. Finally he blinked, though, so I guess there's no need for vampire CPR or anything."

"I reckon he's bored," Doyle said, running a hand through his black hair. "We were talkin' last night, and he said he thought it was comin' on again. Said he gets in these moods."

"Angel said that?"

"Well, you know, I had to read between the lines a bit."

"Well, we all get moods, but some of us can, you know, go shopping, or take Pamprin or something. Hasn't he ever heard of getting over it?"

"You've known him longer than I have, Cordy," Doyle replied. "But you gotta figure he's been around for, what, almost two hundred and fifty years now. Talk about 'been there, done that.' If there's anything he hasn't done, especially in the first hundred years or so of his misspent youth, I don't want to know about it. He said sometimes it just sneaks up on him, this feelin' of havin' done it all and seen everything."

Cordelia stood up from her desk and walked over to the couch where Doyle sprawled. His shirt was bright blue, making his piercing blue eyes seem to sparkle even more than usual. He wore a dark leather jacket, unbuttoned, and dark pants. He wasn't a bad-looking guy, and except for the fact that he never seemed to have any money, she might have let him ask her out sometime.

"Sounds like you two had quite the male-bonding session." There was more than a trace of sarcasm in her tone.

"Oh, we bonded all right," Doyle replied in his distinctive Irish brogue. "There was serious conversation, there were manly punches to the arms, there was even the consumption of liquids. Pig's blood, in his case, but still...There was everything except testosterone-fueled hugs at the end of it."

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Must have been quite the spectacle. Was this in a public place? I guess not, with the blood-drinking and all."

"The blood was only for him, I wanna remind you. My beverage came from a bottle, not a butcher."

"Right." She sat down next to him and continued in a hushed voice. "So with all this bonding and beverages, why is he still bored? I hate to say it, considering I wasn't invited along, but it sounds as if you had a fun evening."

"One night of carousin' with your chums -- or chum, as the case may be -- don't necessarily overcome a coupla hundred years of same-ol'. He said when we started the detective agency -- "

"You mean the one I pressured him to start," Cordelia said proudly.

"The very one. Anyhow, he said that he thought it'd keep him interested. You know, each new person through the door'd be a new and different kind of case. He'd see the whole range of human existence, right here in his own foyer."

"Is that what this is, a foyer?"

"I'm paraphrasin', all right?" Doyle snapped. "But instead, his last three cases have been, what?"

Cordelia thought about it for a moment. "Let's see," she said quietly. "That runaway cat, Mr. Stripey. The guy with the hardware store who thought he was being overcharged by his suppliers -- paperwork, big yawn. Oh, and then Mr. Stripey ran away again." She glanced through the office window at Angel, still sitting in the same position, a glazed look in his eyes. "Okay, point taken. And maybe we should send Mrs. Finnegan a fake change-of-address notice, so next time Mr. Stripey runs away she won't be able to find us."

"That's what I like about you, Cord," Doyle chuckled. "Your utter lack of a conscience."

"I have a conscience," she protested, sounding somewhat hurt. "Well, when I want to. Anyway, I think they're overrated, unless there are talking crickets involved. I mean, look at Angel. Think he'd just be sitting there in his office letting moss grow on him if he didn't have a conscience? No, the old Angelus would be out biting, killing, maiming, having a great old time."

"Right," Doyle agreed brightly. "And he'd start with those closest to him -- like us."

"Another good point. Maybe he's better off this way. Better bored Angel than Angel amok. Still, I wish we could think of something that would pep him up, get him -- "

She stopped in midsentence. Doyle had suddenly sat bolt upright and clamped his hands over his head. "What is it, Doyle? Do you have an idea?"

But Doyle shook his head, writhing in what looked like incredible pain, and she knew it wasn't an idea -- it was a vision.

Doyle's visions, sent to him by the Powers That Be, were always of someone in trouble. Which meant there was something for Angel to do, she realized. Something to snap him out of his funk.

"A vision?" she asked. "Make it a good one, Doyle."

A moment later it passed, and Doyle released his head with a moan. "Oh, man, that hurts," he complained.

"Yeah, but could it have been any more nick of time-ish?"

Angel was suddenly in the doorway, looking at them.

"It walks," Cordelia said in a hushed voice.

"Did you have a vision?" Angel asked.

"A doozy," Doyle said. "Not a lot of detail, but plenty of background agony."

"I've rarely seen him looking quite so miserable," Cordelia added cheerfully.

"What's up?"

"I don't really know." Doyle massaged his own neck as he spoke. "Mostly what I got is a name and an address: Betty McCoy, 20047 Sunset, number 819."

"But you don't know what her problem is?" Angel asked.

"Not a clue," Doyle replied.

Angel glanced out the window and saw that it was growing dark outside. "Guess I'll go find out." He scribbled the address on a scrap of paper and stuffed it into his pocket.

"Anything you want us to do?" Doyle asked.

"Not till we know more about what's going on with Betty McCoy," Angel said flatly. "Just wait here. I doubt I'll be long."

He went out the side door and through his downstairs apartment to the carport where his 1968 Plymouth Belvedere GTX convertible was parked, and climbed in without opening the door.

At last, he thought, a goal. An objective. Something real.

Things had been quiet lately. Angel was torn between not wanting to wish something really bad on poor Betty McCoy, whoever she was, and hoping that her case was at least something interesting. Something to occupy his attention for a while. Even -- though he hardly dared to hope it -- something different.

He knew Doyle and Cordy thought he was bored. That wasn't the problem, really, but it was easier to let them think that than to try to explain what was actually getting to him. Sure, he was tired of the same old thing night in and night out. There wasn't much a person couldn't see and do in just over two hundred and forty years on the planet. The names and faces changed, and there was occasional new technology to spice things up, but for the most part, very little really changed. People still behaved in more or less the same old ways. Television was a modern variation on telling stories around the fire. Computer chat rooms were just a modern twist on the taverns and coffeehouses that had been around for centuries. The format was different, but not the real nature of the activity.

But there was more to his current mood than he'd let on to Doyle. He was starting to feel that he wasn't making a difference. Angel had spent the last hundred years trying to make up for the bad things he'd done in his first hundred and forty or so, but the harder he tried, the less sure he was that he could succeed. He'd saved countless lives -- but maybe that was the problem. Saving the lives of people he knew was all to the good, but when one factored in the lives of people he'd never even met, people who would never even know they were in danger from some horror or other, the head count got a little vague. When he weighed the totality of his time on earth, it still looked as if the evil he'd done outweighed the good. And then there was the other concern -- that it didn't really matter. That if he vanished from the planet tomorrow, before long those who had known him would have died off and he'd have left no mark at all, for evil or for good.

It was a disheartening revelation, and this, more than the boredom Doyle believed he felt, was responsible for his ennui. Boredom could be cured by activity. But what could he do about the other? How did one make an impact?

He could not worry about it tonight, though. He had Betty McCoy to worry about. He made it to Hollywood and hung a right on Sunset. Traffic was flowing smoothly, but Sunset had a lot of traffic lights and he seemed to get caught at every red one. I hope Betty's problem doesn't involve any immediate deadlines, he thought.

When he reached what he thought was the address that Doyle had given him, he tugged the slip of paper from his pocket and checked it again. He was in the right place. He glanced up and down the street. He was definitely on Sunset.

With a shrug, he climbed out of the convertible and stood on the sidewalk in front of the wrought-iron gates to the Hollywood Peaceful Rest Cemetery.

Doyle's vision couldn't be wrong. The Powers That Be just didn't make that kind of mistake. Doyle could have recited the address wrong, transposed a couple of digits, but that seemed unlikely. The name and address were the whole vision, Doyle had said. They had still been fresh in his mind. He wouldn't have mixed them up.

Angel tried the gates. They were unlocked and swung open with a squeal that could have come straight from the sound-effects library of an old-time horror-movie studio. He passed through the gates, onto the cemetery grounds. A small guardhouse, near the entrance, appeared to be empty.

Row upon row of headstones dotted a vast grassy plain that sloped gently uphill away from the entrance. Here and there larger or sculpted stones rose over the more standard ones, and occasional mausoleums towered over those. The cemetery was dark, only the moon and the faint light spilling over the tall fence from streetlamps on Sunset illuminating the grounds.

He didn't see anyone who looked like Betty McCoy. He didn't see anyone at all. He started walking.

After a couple of minutes, a figure did come into view. But it wasn't any Betty McCoy, unless Betty was a fiftyish security guard with a gut that hung out over his belt buckle. This man was carrying a flashlight, and a billy club hung from his Sam Browne belt.

"Excuse me," Angel said hesitantly, when he drew close to the guard. "Is this place open?"

"Don't seem right to keep folks from seeing their loved ones," the guard replied. "We stay open till nine. The place is guarded around the clock, though."

Angel glanced at his watch. Just after seven-thirty.

"You looking for someone in particular?" the guard asked him.

"Betty McCoy," Angel said. "Number 819."

"Oh, Betty," the guard repeated with a smile. "She's right over here."

He knows her, Angel thought. That'll make this easier.

This was a strange place to find a woman in trouble, but people in trouble did some odd things.

He followed the guard up the path to where it crested a hill, and then down the other side. Three rows down, the guard turned off the main path and began walking across the grass. Angel continued to follow.

Then the guard stopped before a stone. Angel caught up to him. The guard clicked on his light, shone it onto the headstone. The stone was a small one with no unneccessary words on it.

"Elizabeth McCoy, 1939-1964," it said.

"Here's Betty," the guard told him. "Space 819. A guest of the state, looks like. You pay your respects. I'll be back toward the gate if you need anything."

"Thanks," Angel said.

The guard wandered away. Angel stood in front of the headstone for a few minutes, wishing that just once, one of Doyle's visions would be clear and simple.

Finally, he reached down and touched the cool stone with his fingertips. "Just let me know what you need, Betty," he said softly. "And I'll be there."

When she didn't answer, he headed back to his car, and home.

Copyright © 2001 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.