Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel Read online

  I spot Candy waving to me on the opposite corner, near a Christian Science church. Samael has his hand to his ear, talking on his phone.

  Candy squeezes my hand when I reach them. She worries. It’s sweet. A second later Samael closes his phone.

  “Did you get him?”

  “He got himself. Strolled off the curb and kissed a bus.”

  “Why? You’re not that scary.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “If you say so.”

  “How much do you have to pay a guy to go out like that?”

  “You don’t. He chose to do it himself. It’s the mark of a true believer. In what, I don’t know and I don’t care. But you should.”

  I thumb on my phone and go to the picture of the shooter’s driver’s license. I read it out loud.

  “Trevor Moseley. Either of you ever hear of him?”

  I show them his picture.

  Candy shakes her head.

  “I took a lot of souls back in the day, but I don’t recognize his name or face,” says Samael.

  Candy beams at Samael.

  “Sam just called some people. He’s getting me a new laptop.”

  “Sam?” says Samael.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  He looks at me.

  “Just thanks? Nothing pithy or sarcastic?”

  “I’m capable of appreciating when someone does something nice for someone I care about.”

  Samael looks at Candy.

  “Good lord. What have you done to him?”

  “Shocking, isn’t it?” she says. “Pinocchio is almost a real boy.”

  I take a bite of my donut.

  “Fuck both of you.”

  Samael nods.

  “Ah. There’s the Jimmy I know.”

  He looks at his watch.

  “Look at the time. I should be getting back home before I’m missed.”

  “How are things Upstairs?” I ask.

  “Just don’t die anytime soon. You’ve seen Hell and right now I wouldn’t wish Heaven on anyone. Ruach is more paranoid every day. Imagine Josef Stalin with unlimited resources.”

  Ruach is one of the five God brothers and the current God sitting on the throne in Heaven. Unfortunately for both humans and angels, he’s the “troubled child.” A stone son of a bitch. Supposedly he’s cut a deal with Aelita to let her kill the other four brothers if she leaves him alone. She’s already killed at least one, maybe more. Aside from Mr. Muninn and Ruach, no one knows where the other brothers are.

  “At least he can’t send you to Tartarus,” I say.

  “There are worse things than Tartarus, I’m afraid.”

  “Like what?”

  Samael just shakes his head.

  “If you want to get in touch with me, go through Muninn. Don’t do it directly. Sandman Slim isn’t a name I want on my contacts list right now.”

  And he’s gone. Just blips out of existence. Interesting. With all the shit that’s happened—Mason Faim’s attempted war with Heaven, and God fragmenting into warring siblings—I’ve never seen Samael nervous before.

  A couple of people in the Donut Universe parking lot are pointing our way. I wonder if the cops have put together that the hero who chased a shooter from the donut shop is the same asshole that desecrated his corpse and jacked a biker a few blocks away. This isn’t the time to find out. I see a tasty shadow by the side of the church and pull Candy inside with me.

  We go through the Room of Thirteen Doors and come out around the back of the Chateau Marmont. Our digs these days. Really it’s Lucifer’s penthouse, but until they figure out that I’m not Lucifer anymore, it’s a room-service, clean-towels, and free-cable party.

  BACK WHEN I was still the Lord of Flies, I’d walk through the Chateau Marmont lobby like Errol Flynn back in the day. Now that I’m not, I creep through with my head down like a flea-bitten hillbilly trying to sneak out on a bar tab. Sooner or later word is going to get out up here. The local Satanists might be nouveau riche headbangers and trust-fund creeps with a grudge against the world, but they have some good psychics on their payroll. One of them is going to pick up Mr. Muninn’s vibes and start wondering how Lucifer is doing paperwork in his palace in Hell and ordering kung pao shrimp in his Chateau penthouse at the same time.

  Lady Snowblood is playing on the giant plasma screen in the living room. Kasabian is at the long table he uses for a desk, surrounded by dirty plates and beer cans. He’s naked, but it isn’t like ordinary naked. Kasabian is a disembodied head. I’m the one who disembodied him. He shot me, so it seemed like the thing to do. He used to scuttle around on a little wood-and-brass skateboard I conjured for him. Now he gets around on a mechanical hellhound body I brought back from Downtown. Only the body has never quite worked right. Manimal Mike is trying to fix that.

  Kasabian is bouncing on the balls of his two rear hound feet. His balance looks good. Mike looks up as Candy and I come inside. He points to Kasabian, looking pale and hopeful.

  “Can I have my soul back now?” he says.

  I watch Kasabian.

  “I don’t know. Can Gimpy make it down the catwalk on his own?”

  Kasabian takes a step, teeters, and plants his ass on the side of the table to keep from falling.

  Mike slumps into a desk chair. Wipes his face with a dirty rag. It leaves a trail of grease on his forehead and cheek. He wheels himself over and uses a delicate tool that looks like a screwdriver crossed with a spider to make adjustments to Kasabian’s legs.

  Mike is a Tick-Tock Man. He builds mechanical spirit familiars for the Sub Rosa chic set. He might be a drunk and nutty and a little suicidal, but he knows his way around machines. He also owes the Devil a favor. The idiot sold his soul a few years back. Now he wants it back. He still thinks I’m Lucifer, so I’m making him work off the debt by fixing up Kasabian.

  While Mike works on him, I show Kasabian the dead man’s bloody photo on my phone.

  “Friend of yours?” Kasabian says.

  “He missed, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And now you feel guilty for offing him.”

  “That’s the problem. I didn’t. He did it to himself. And I want to know why.”

  I flip to the guy’s driver’s license. Kasabian squints at it.

  “Trevor Moseley. When did he die?”

  “Just now,” I say. “Like twenty minutes ago.”

  He shakes his head.

  “I won’t see him for a day or so. They’re not exactly state-of-the-art when it comes to sorting out the new meat Downtown.”

  Kasabian has a few useful skills. He’s a passable computer hacker, he has good taste in movies—he once ran a choice indie video-rental place in Hollywood. Also, he can see into Hell. It’s a gruesome little trick, but gruesome describes 99 percent of his life, so what’s one more percent between friends?

  The trick works like this: when I came back from Hell, I brought a jar of peepers with me. Peepers are eyeballs a lot like ours (no, I don’t know where they come from and I don’t want to know), only they work like surveillance cameras. I scattered dozens of them around Hell. Between the peepers and his ability to peek into Downtown through the Daimonion Codex, Kasabian can spyglass a good chunk of Hell. Entrepreneur that he is, he’s even turning his deadeye trick into a business. Setting himself up as an online psychic. When it’s up and running, he’ll track down any of your dead relatives and report back on them—as long as they’re in Hell. Seeing as how that’s where most suckers are headed, he should be in business until the sun turns this rock into one big overcooked s’more.

  “Let me know when you spot him. I might just go down and ask Mr. Moseley a few questions.”

  Candy says, “Can I go too?”

  I should have been ready for that.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Candy tosses down the magazine she was thumbing through.

  “We talked about this. If you leave me here and disappear down there again, you better stay down there because I
swear I’ll salt your skull and drink you like a daiquiri.”

  Candy isn’t exactly human. She’s a Jade. That’s sort of like being a vampire, only Jades dissolve your insides and drink you, kind of like a spider. I know it sounds bad, but she’s off the people juice these days. And it’s kind of sexy when she lets the monster out. I just have to be around to make sure it goes back in.

  “What’s the difference between true love and a murder spree?” says Kasabian.

  “I don’t know. What?”

  He shrugs.

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you lovebirds would have a clue.”

  He smiles, pleased with his half-assed joke.

  I say, “Go bite a mailman, Old Yeller.”

  Mike lets go of Kasabian’s leg. He flexes it and it looks like it’s working all right. Mike goes to work on the other one.

  “Well?” says Candy. She’s right beside me, her hands balled into fists. She’s not backing down on this.

  “You’re right. I promised. But this is only if I actually go. I’m not making any special trips down so you can take snapshots with Stiv Bators.”

  “Deal.”

  She stands on her toes and kisses me on the cheek.

  “I got it,” says Kasabian. “When it’s true love you know why you’re getting stabbed.”

  “Kasabian, you romantic fool,” says Candy. “You just got ten percent cuter.”

  He smiles at her.

  “Kitten, I’ve got romance coming out my ass.”

  “And now the cute is gone.”

  Mike chuckles to himself. Kasabian shifts his leg, clipping him on the nose.

  “Learn to stop while you’re ahead,” I say.

  “I haven’t had much practice with women since you turned me into a carnival attraction.”

  “I’ll have you tripping the light fantastic in no time,” says Mike.

  As casually as he can, Kasabian says, “Stark, you still have Brigitte’s number?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not asking for a hookup, just an introduction.”

  “I’ve put Brigitte through enough. I’m not letting you loose on her.”

  “You won’t do me one favor, but you want me to look up your dead pal in Hell.”

  “Look, Mike gets your legs working, you can come down to Bamboo House of Dolls and ask her yourself. Maybe she’ll say yes just for the novelty of doing a robot.”

  “I think she might be seeing someone,” says Candy.

  “Who?” says Kasabian.

  “The King of Candy Land. Or was it Josie and the Pussycats?”

  “Great. Now she gets discreet. Forget it. Chicks only want one monster in their life and Stark got to Brigitte first.”

  Mike stops working and Kasabian tries to stand. This time he makes it. His legs support him and he takes a few steps like, well, a circus dog doing a trick for biscuits.

  I say, “You know, no matter how well you make his arms and legs work, he still looks like a mutt.”

  Mike sighs and nods.

  “To rework his whole body so it’s more human shaped, I’d have to cut it up with a plasma torch, lengthen and straighten his back legs, redo the spine, and rebalance and recalibrate the whole thing,” he says. “The only way to do that is for Kasabian to get off it.”

  I look at Kasabian, walking steady for the first time since I’ve been back.

  “Maybe he’s right. Maybe you should go back to your skateboard for a while and let Mike do his thing.”

  Kasabian looks panicked. He stumbles back against his desk, his hound legs giving way.

  “No way anyone is chopping up this body. I looked like a fucking bug on that skateboard. Now at least I’m mammal shaped.”

  “I’ve got all your limbs working right for the moment,” says Mike. “Maybe there’s some way I can do your legs without taking them off.”

  Kasabian sits down and slaps his computer keyboard. The screen lights up.

  “Yeah. You work on that. Right now let me get back to work building my site.”

  As Mike packs up his tools he looks at me.

  “I’m not getting my soul back, am I?”

  “Not today, Mike. But keep up the good work. You’re closing in on daylight.”

  I head into the big bedroom Candy and I share. Samael’s old clothes still hang in the closet. Custom shirts and suits so sharp they could cut you like a knife. I toss my jeans and T-shirt on the bed and change into a bloodred button-down shirt and black silk trousers.

  Candy follows me in and sits on the bed.

  I say, “Why don’t you stay here and see if Kasabian can pull up any information on Moseley when he was alive.”

  Candy doesn’t move.

  “I know you’re not dressing up for me, so who’s the lucky girl?” she says.

  I comb my hair in the bedroom mirror. It doesn’t help much. The neater I get my hair, the worse it makes the scars on my face look. There are donut crumbs on the glove that covers my prosthetic left hand, so I toss the glove onto a pile of dirty clothes and put on a clean one.

  “Brigitte was there when the Qomrama disappeared, but even if she wasn’t, I bet she’s not the one sending hit men after me.”

  “Then who is?”

  “I don’t know. But there were only two other people there when Aelita took the 8 Ball. Saragossa Blackburn and his wife. So, I’m off to see the wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

  THE SUB ROSA is the underground magic community that keeps the old practices alive and secretly runs a few pieces of the world. Saragossa Blackburn is our Augur, the president and holy high chieftain of the entire Sub Rosa freak squad in California. There’s no one bigger. With his heavy money Illuminati of politicians, corporate honchos, bankers, entertainment-industry lackeys, and law enforcement creeps, he’s the power behind the power, and when we don’t have a Sub Rosa governor running the state, Blackburn makes sure that Mr. or Ms. Civilian knows who’s really calling the shots.

  He’s a scryer, a seer who gets glimpses of the future. All Augurs are scryers and Blackburn is supposed to be a good one. On the other hand, he didn’t see me coming the last time I paid him a visit, but I was still Lucifer back then. Now that I’m just another asshole, chances are he has me right on his radar.

  And here comes the proof. Men in shades and dark Brooks Brothers suits pile out of a line of blacked-out vans. The last time I dropped by, Blackburn was so sure of his untouchability that he didn’t bother with security guards. He had enough wards and hoodoo mantraps around the place to hold off King Kong but not the Devil.

  I don’t like this. It feels too much like the bullshit I had to put up with when I worked for Larson Wells and his holy brown shirt army, the Golden Vigil.

  A marine type with a blond crew cut and steroid shoulders the size of baby bulls puts his hand up.

  “Excuse me, sir. Do you have an appointment?”

  It’s not the “excuse me” part that gets under my skin. It’s the “sir.” Procedures. Protocol. They’re all civilized masks for contempt. I can deal with that, but I like my hate straight and up front. And these boys radiate hate like Tijuana blacktop in August. They know who I am and that I put a massive hurt on the last bunch of Sub Rosa security goons that braced me like this.

  But I learned a bit of the protocol dance myself when I was playing Lucifer. Sometimes civilized is the best play. The feint they’re not expecting. Besides, I’m decked out in silk and shiny shoes like Louis the Sun King’s jester. Unless I crack someone’s head and eat their brains, I couldn’t scare a Brownie.

  “I’m here to see the Augur. My name is James Stark.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but if you tell Blackburn I’m here, I’m sure he’ll see me.”

  Mr. Shoulders smiles.

  “The Augur is a busy man. If you call his secretary and make an appointment, we’ll be happy to make sure you get inside. I can give you
his secretary’s phone number.”

  “Yeah. You see, I kind of saved his wife’s soul, so he owes me a favor. Plus, someone tried to shoot me today, so I’d like to see the Augur right fucking now, pretty please with ice cream on top.”

  This is what Shoulders and his friends have been waiting for. An excuse. His heartbeat is going up. Microtremors in his face and hands are sure signs he’s waiting for me to make a move. And if I don’t do something soon, he’s going to work himself up to where he’ll make a move for me.

  A few months ago I would already have had half of these merc fuckwits on their backs, bleeding and crying for their mommies. But I’m trying to cool some of that these days. Go with the advice Wild Bill Hickok gave men in Hell and pick and choose my fights.

  “I’d really appreciate it if one of you gentlemen could call the house for me,” I say. I follow it with a big, sunny smile.

  Shoulders is one second from Tasing me when his phone rings. A funny, chirping ring tone. He relaxes. It’s not conscious. It’s reflex. He’s been trained to stand down when he hears that particular tone. Besides, he has six other roid-rage behemoths behind him ready to stomp me to apple butter if I scratch my nose. But that’s not going to happen. I can already see it in his body language. His shoulders are slumped. His voice is calm and low. His heart rate is dropping back to normal. When I see flat-out disappointment on his face, I know whose funny ring tone just saved my nice creased slacks.

  Shoulders slaps his phone closed and sticks it back in his jacket pocket. It takes him a second to get the words out.

  “Mr. Stark, I’ve been told that you’re authorized for a visit with the Augur.” Then comes the really hard part. “I hope you’ll forgive any inconvenience the new security measures might have caused you.”

  “I forgive you,” I say, “but I’m not bringing a piñata to your birthday party. You’ll have to get your own goddamn candy.”

  In grand Sub Rosa tradition, from the outside Blackburn’s mansion looks like something a wino coughed up after a night of Sterno and generic, nonfilter cigarettes. In this case, it looks like an abandoned residency hotel on South Main Street. The first floor is boarded up, covered with cryptic gang graffiti and stapled flyers for bands and strip clubs. The second and third floors are empty, burned-out shells. It’s all just hoodoo, of course. Inside, Blackburn’s place is a Victorian wet dream. Hell, it’s so real he probably has opium addicts and lungers planted in the guest rooms to add a little more color to the place.