Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) by Elizabeth Hand Page A
Authors: Elizabeth Hand
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standing at the bar in Viva Las Vegas.
He must have sensed me watching him: He turned and fixed me with the dispassionate gaze of a fox distracted from the hunt. I stared back. A mistake, but I’d never seen eyes that color before—not on a human being—so pale a brown they were almost topaz. He raised his hand as though to beckon me over.
“Hey,” he said. Good English, but not a native speaker. “Are you lost?”
I darted off, ducked behind a display, and kept going till I reached a crowded aisle. I stopped beside a long table and scanned the room but didn’t see him.
“Góðan dag.” Behind the table, a young guy unpacked a cardboard box. He was very thin, with blanched white skin, a mass of silvery curls, and ruby eyes that glowed like votive candles behind thick-lensed glasses. An albino. “Hvernig gengur?”
I looked to see what he was unpacking—eight-track tapes. Dagny had said that Quinn sold old vinyl. I picked up and then immediately dropped an eight-track of the Starland Vocal Band. The albino gave me a cursory smile, settled into a chair, and began tapping on an iPad.
Crates covered the table. I peered into one that held scores of vinyl LPs, some new, others old but still shrink-wrapped, all arranged alphabetically. I flipped through Rory Gallagher, Art Garfunkel, Marvin Gaye, Gentle Giant, pulled out Gong’s Camembert Electrique, sans shrink-wrap but in pristine condition. The albino nodded in approval.
“That’s the one Pip Pyle played on, before he split for Hatfield and the North. There’s some more rare stuff over there.…”
He pointed to the far end of the table, where a hand-lettered sign reading ESKIMO VINYL leaned against a tower of eight-tracks. “One with Elton Dean and Marc Charig, Lyn Dobson does some amazing sitar. Check it out.”
“I thought those guys never recorded with Gong.”
“It’s a live bootleg of a gig they did in Paris in 1971.”
He flipped through a crate of LPs as though it were a Rolodex, plucked out an album—plain black sleeve, no lettering—and handed it to me, pointing to a turntable. “You can listen there if you want.”
The turntable was a vintage Philips 312, the same model I had in my apartment back in the city. Not top of the line even back in 1976, but it got the job done. This one had been pimped out with Bose headphones, a Graham 1.5 tonearm with a tungsten arm, and a stylus so fine I barely heard it kiss the vinyl. The recording quality wasn’t great—you could hear background conversation and the clink of glasses—but it wasn’t as bad as some bootlegs I’ve heard.
Not my taste, though. I slid the record back into the sleeve and returned it the crate. The albino raised his eyebrows. “What’d you think?”
“It’s okay.” I debated whether to ask about Quinn, decided I’d hold off for the moment. “Not really my thing, that’s all.”
“What’re you into?” He picked up a dome magnifier and examined a packing list. “We have a lot of old-style punk. Bootleg of Johnny Thunders’s L.A.M.F., live at Max’s. Joy Division, Le Terme. ”
“Thanks, I’ve got those.”
I perused what appeared to be the world’s most complete collection of Cramps picture discs, including one that featured Poison Ivy in a a red velvet armchair, wearing a plastic tiara and not much else. This seemed more like what Quinn might have been listening to, circa 1979.
And the velvet chair reminded me of something. I shut my eyes for a moment, thinking.
Darkthrone was one of the bands Suri had mentioned. I found the crate holding the Ds. Between Danzig and the Dead Milkmen were several Darkthrone LPs and picture discs available in a range of colors, as long as you liked black. I selected one at random.
“Okay if I play this?”
The albino had clipped what looked like a pair of tiny telescopes onto his glasses and was examining a twelve-inch as though it was printed in cuneiform. He nodded absently. “Yeah, sure.”
Darkthrone’s lead
He must have sensed me watching him: He turned and fixed me with the dispassionate gaze of a fox distracted from the hunt. I stared back. A mistake, but I’d never seen eyes that color before—not on a human being—so pale a brown they were almost topaz. He raised his hand as though to beckon me over.
“Hey,” he said. Good English, but not a native speaker. “Are you lost?”
I darted off, ducked behind a display, and kept going till I reached a crowded aisle. I stopped beside a long table and scanned the room but didn’t see him.
“Góðan dag.” Behind the table, a young guy unpacked a cardboard box. He was very thin, with blanched white skin, a mass of silvery curls, and ruby eyes that glowed like votive candles behind thick-lensed glasses. An albino. “Hvernig gengur?”
I looked to see what he was unpacking—eight-track tapes. Dagny had said that Quinn sold old vinyl. I picked up and then immediately dropped an eight-track of the Starland Vocal Band. The albino gave me a cursory smile, settled into a chair, and began tapping on an iPad.
Crates covered the table. I peered into one that held scores of vinyl LPs, some new, others old but still shrink-wrapped, all arranged alphabetically. I flipped through Rory Gallagher, Art Garfunkel, Marvin Gaye, Gentle Giant, pulled out Gong’s Camembert Electrique, sans shrink-wrap but in pristine condition. The albino nodded in approval.
“That’s the one Pip Pyle played on, before he split for Hatfield and the North. There’s some more rare stuff over there.…”
He pointed to the far end of the table, where a hand-lettered sign reading ESKIMO VINYL leaned against a tower of eight-tracks. “One with Elton Dean and Marc Charig, Lyn Dobson does some amazing sitar. Check it out.”
“I thought those guys never recorded with Gong.”
“It’s a live bootleg of a gig they did in Paris in 1971.”
He flipped through a crate of LPs as though it were a Rolodex, plucked out an album—plain black sleeve, no lettering—and handed it to me, pointing to a turntable. “You can listen there if you want.”
The turntable was a vintage Philips 312, the same model I had in my apartment back in the city. Not top of the line even back in 1976, but it got the job done. This one had been pimped out with Bose headphones, a Graham 1.5 tonearm with a tungsten arm, and a stylus so fine I barely heard it kiss the vinyl. The recording quality wasn’t great—you could hear background conversation and the clink of glasses—but it wasn’t as bad as some bootlegs I’ve heard.
Not my taste, though. I slid the record back into the sleeve and returned it the crate. The albino raised his eyebrows. “What’d you think?”
“It’s okay.” I debated whether to ask about Quinn, decided I’d hold off for the moment. “Not really my thing, that’s all.”
“What’re you into?” He picked up a dome magnifier and examined a packing list. “We have a lot of old-style punk. Bootleg of Johnny Thunders’s L.A.M.F., live at Max’s. Joy Division, Le Terme. ”
“Thanks, I’ve got those.”
I perused what appeared to be the world’s most complete collection of Cramps picture discs, including one that featured Poison Ivy in a a red velvet armchair, wearing a plastic tiara and not much else. This seemed more like what Quinn might have been listening to, circa 1979.
And the velvet chair reminded me of something. I shut my eyes for a moment, thinking.
Darkthrone was one of the bands Suri had mentioned. I found the crate holding the Ds. Between Danzig and the Dead Milkmen were several Darkthrone LPs and picture discs available in a range of colors, as long as you liked black. I selected one at random.
“Okay if I play this?”
The albino had clipped what looked like a pair of tiny telescopes onto his glasses and was examining a twelve-inch as though it was printed in cuneiform. He nodded absently. “Yeah, sure.”
Darkthrone’s lead
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