Killing Pretty Read online

  I gulp my coffee, thinking. Trying to poke holes in her argument.

  “I admit, the timing seems a little weird.”

  “You’ve dealt with God and the Devil. Why is it so hard to admit that when Death has a problem he might come to you?”

  I look back at the bar, wishing I’d taken that drink Carlos offered.

  “Because I thought I was done with that stuff. The Angra Om Ya are gone. Mason Faim is gone. The Room of Thirteen Doors is gone. I hoped that part of my life might be over for a while and I could just be a boring PI. Hunt down insurance fraud and lost cats.”

  Julie leans forward, her elbows on the table.

  “And we’ll do those things, but we’re going to solve Death’s murder first.”

  “You’re not getting it.”

  “What am I not getting?”

  I push the papers back across the table.

  “This thing you want to get into, you’re screwing around with bad angelic hoodoo. And if this guy really is Death, whoever dragged him into a human body and cut his fucking heart out is into some of the heaviest, darkest baleful magic I’ve ever seen.”

  Julie brightens, like a kid just remembering it’s her birthday.

  “And that’s why it’s perfect for us. Look, it can take years for an investigations firm to build the kind of reputation it takes to bring in the big jobs. We might bypass all that with a single case.”

  “Years? I should have stayed in the arena.”

  “I guarantee if we solve this case, the kind of clients we’ll have, there’ll be plenty of money for you and Max Overdrive.”

  I try to come up with an argument, but I can’t because she’s right. This is exactly the kind of case that would get the attention of every Sub Rosa, wealthy Lurker, and Beverly Hills magic groupie in California. Besides, Julie is ready to hand me money right now.

  And there’s the other debt . . .

  “All right. I’m in. Let’s do your Mike Hammer thing.”

  She raises a bottle of light beer I missed behind all the papers. I click it with my coffee cup. There’s just one more question.

  “So, we’re partners?”

  She shakes her head.

  “No way. I’m taking all the financial risks. It’s my company. You’re an employee.”

  “But I get stock options and you’ll match my 401(k).”

  “Tell yourself whatever story you need to get yourself out of bed, but as of now, you’re on the clock. Which means sticking to coffee during daylight hours.”

  “You know how to suck all the fun out of being sober.”

  “That’s a boss’s job.”

  My coffee is getting cold, but I sip it anyway. It tastes lousy. I mean, it doesn’t taste any different than it did a minute ago, but knowing it’s my only drink of choice all day, every day . . . Let’s just say that the romance is over.

  “I thought Chihiro would be here with you,” says Julie.

  I turn and scan the room for familiar faces, but don’t find any.

  “She’s out getting some new clothes and things. Since she got her new face, she’s been doing this bleach-­blond kogal look. You know, Japanese schoolgirl drag. She was having fun, but I went through the plaid-­skirt thing back with my old magic circle. A woman named Cherry Moon. She wanted to look like a junior high princess forever. After that, I don’t want anything to do with that Lolita stuff. So, she said she’d figure out something else.”

  “Sounds like she likes you.”

  “She just likes my movie collection.”

  “I’m sure that’s what it is.”

  A new song comes on the jukebox, a fifties cha-­cha version of “Jingle Bells.” I’m going to have to speak to Carlos about how his Santa fetish is curdling his taste in music.

  “I have some good news,” Julie says. “I think I found a real office. On Sunset, near Sanborn. It’s a little two-­story building that used to have a dentist on the first floor and a telemarketing company on the second. The woman who owns it left when the floods started. There’s some water damage in the lobby, but it’s not bad and she has insurance. Best of all, after all the craziness, she doesn’t want to come back to L.A. and will sell me the whole place for a song.”

  “That’s great. Congratulations.”

  Julie smiles.

  “I mean, it’s not much to look at. It’s between an El Pollo Loco and an empty garage, and across the street from a used car lot.”

  “A car lot? That’s convenient. I’m going to need to steal a lot more cars now that I can’t shadow-­walk anymore.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” says Julie, suddenly serious.

  “Fine. I’ll get around on a Vespa. See how much your clients like that.”

  “Can’t you ride your motorcycle?”

  “I brought it back from Hell. There’s no way it’s street legal and I’m not looking for any more run-­ins with LAPD.”

  “And you think stealing cars will help you avoid that?”

  I’m not a huge fan of other ­people’s logic.

  “Don’t worry,” she says, “we’ll figure out something. Just no stealing anything in the neighborhood.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “With luck I’ll sign the papers next week. I’m putting my condo up for sale. That will cover most of the costs.”

  “I’ll cross my fingers and toes too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Julie shuffles the printouts until they’re straight. She riffles through them one more time and puts them in a soft-­sided leather attaché case.

  “I really think we’re onto something,” she says.

  “I hope so.”

  I look at the last dregs of cold coffee in my cup.

  “I need another drink. You?”

  She drains the last of her beer. Shakes her head.

  “I’m good. You’re sticking with coffee, right?”

  “While you drink beer?”

  “I don’t have a drinking problem.”

  “You think I do?”

  She starts to say something, but stops, like she doesn’t want to get into it.

  “Just stick to coffee for now.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  I head back to the bar. Carlos sees me coming and has the coffeepot ready.

  “How’s the sober life treating you so far?”

  “It’s been ten minutes of sheer hell.”

  “I hear it gets better.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Carlos puts a hand to his ear.

  “Sorry. I can’t hear you over the music.”

  I give him the finger as he moves on to other customers.

  “You heard me just fine.”

  Someone says, “Drink up, cowboy. I’ll get the next round.”

  It’s a woman’s voice, but when I look there’s no one there. Someone taps me on the shoulder. I have to turn to see her.

  She’s wearing shades. Round and deep black, so her eyes are invisible. Her hair is buzzed to maybe an inch long and dyed cotton-­candy pink. Black lipstick and a bomber jacket over a “Kill la Kill” T-­shirt. Black tights with thigh and shinbones printed in white down the sides. Shiny black boots with pointed studs on the toes and heels.

  “So,” Candy says. “Different enough?”

  “Plenty. Perfect. Still got your knife?”

  She opens her jacket and shows me where she’s had someone at Lollipop Dolls sew in a leather sheath.

  “Think my lunch-­box gun will go with the ensemble?”

  “I think you’d look naked without it.”

  She grins and gets a little closer.

  “Naked. I like the sound of that. I checked out my reflection on the way in. I’d do me. How abou
t you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Careful. Out here in the world we’re still getting to know each other.”

  She purses her lips and pulls the jacket around her.

  “You’re goddamn paranoid. You should see someone about that.”

  “I tried, but she kept writing things down. It made me more paranoid.”

  Candy looks away at the bottles behind the bar.

  “I went to all this trouble and I can’t even kiss you.”

  “Grab a drink and come back into the corner. Julie and I are just about done with our meeting.”

  “Fine,” she says.

  I can hear the disappointment in her voice. She went way out of her way to change her look and all I can do is nod and smile like a tourist admiring the view. Truth is, even before Candy became Chihiro I’d been feeling funny about the two of us. When she was locked up in a Golden Vigil jail cell for attacking a civilian, she said some things. Like I was using her. Like I thought she was sick. Later, she said it was just poison talking after someone spiked her anti-­Jade potion. She said it made her crazy and suspicious. Maybe. Because some of what she said hit close to home and I’ve been wondering about it ever since. There’s a lot of unspoken stuff between us. I used to think that was a good thing. Now I’m not so sure.

  When I get back to the table, Julie says, “Who was that?”

  “Guess.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “You’ll see for yourself in a minute.”

  Candy comes over with a shot of whiskey. I swear I can smell it all the way across the bar.

  She takes off her sunglasses and hooks them over her shirt. Grabs a chair and sits down at our table.

  “What do you think?” she asks Julie.

  “I can’t believe you’re the same person.”

  “That’s the idea,” I say.

  “Admit it, I look like a superhero, don’t I?” she says.

  “I don’t know many pink-­haired superheroes,” said Julie. “But if there are any, you’ll be stiff competition.”

  Candy looks at me.

  “See? She likes it.”

  “I told you. I like it fine. We just have to be cool.”

  Candy rolls her eyes.

  “He thinks if I stand too close to him we’re going to get nuked.”

  “He might have a point,” says Julie. “About playing down your relationship.”

  Candy sits back in her chair.

  “You two should start a band. The Buzzkill Twins.”

  “Julie is going to have a new office soon,” I say, trying to change the subject.

  That gets Candy’s attention. She sits up.

  “Cool. If you’re hiring this scaredy cat, can I have a job too?”

  “What are your skills?” says Julie.

  “I was afraid you’d ask that.”

  I say, “You used to run the office for Doc Kinski.”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “I might need a receptionist at some point,” Julie says.

  “Swell.”

  I look at Candy.

  “You really want to be a receptionist?”

  “No,” she says. “I want to kick down doors like you, but apparently I’m not allowed.”

  “I never said that.”

  I want a drink and a cigarette. I want zombies, dinosaurs, and flaming giraffes to come crashing through the door so I don’t have to talk anymore.

  “Look,” I say. “Maybe I am being a little paranoid. It’s just, we faked your death once. I’m not sure we can get away with it again. What do you think, Julie?”

  “I think the U.S. Marshals Ser­vice isn’t dumb,” she says.

  Candy sips her drink.

  “So, I should hide out at Brigitte’s forever and learn to knit?”

  I take her shot glass, drink half, and hand it back.

  “It would probably be okay if we partner up, but you have to do it as Chihiro, not Candy. Pretend it’s the first season of X-­Files.”

  Candy leans back and smiles. The black lipstick with the short pink hair looks good. But I’m not sure she gets that I’m as frustrated by all this clandestine crap as she is.

  “A Scully and Mulder thing? Yeah. I can handle that,” she says. “Does that mean I get to move back home?”

  Julie gets her bag and stands up.

  “This is getting a bit personal. I think I’ll go.”

  “So, can I have a job?” says Candy.

  Julie thinks for a minute.

  “You can work with him as an unpaid intern. We’ll see from there.”

  “Awesome.”

  Julie slips the bag over her shoulder and looks at me.

  “I’ll call you. Keep an eye on our guest.”

  “My guest.”

  “Call me if anything changes.”

  “Bye. Thanks,” says Candy as Julie weaves her way through the crowd.

  When she’s gone, Candy finishes her drink.

  “Seriously,” she says. “We have to talk about some kind of timetable for me coming back to Max Overdrive. I love Brigitte, but I can’t live without a plan.”

  “Trust me. I know how you feel.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. I wasn’t sure for a while there.”

  She pushes her leg against mine under the table. I look around, making sure no one can see. I think we’re okay and she feels good, so I don’t try to stop her.

  “Look,” I say. “If we work together we’ll see each other all the time. Aside from that, give it until the later part of the month before you come back. Okay? Maybe by then I’ll have Sleeping Beauty out of the store.”

  “Can I come over now?” she says. “Seeing as how we’re colleagues, I should have a look at the dead man.”

  “I don’t see why not. But we can’t leave at the same time. I’ll go. You go and order another drink. Take off in, say, twenty minutes.”

  She picks up the shot glass and rolls it between her palms.

  “Twenty minutes is a long time to be all on my own. What if someone asks me for a date?”

  “Do what you think is best, but remember that your guitar amp is still at Max Overdrive.”

  “What do I have to do to get it back?” she says.

  “Awful things. Depraved things.”

  “You bad man.”

  I get up from the table.

  “Forget twenty minutes. Make it ten.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”

  She heads back to the bar. I go out the door.

  LOS ANGELES IS a busted jukebox in a forgotten bar at the ass end of the high desert. The city only exists between the pops, skips, and scratches of the old 45s. Snatches of ancient songs. Lost voices. The jagged artifacts of a few demented geniuses, one-­hit wonders, and lip-­synching frauds. Charlie Manson thought he was going to be the next Beatles and we know how that turned out. This city is built on a bedrock of high crimes and rotten death. The Black Dahlia. Bugsy Siegel. The Night Stalker. We’ve buried and forgotten more bodies than all the cemeteries of Europe. Someday the water is going to run out and the desert will strip this town down to its Technicolor bones. Even the buzzards won’t want it and the city knows it. Maybe that’s why I like it.

  It’s not a long walk back to Max Overdrive and I can let my mind wander.

  It’s funny to be thinking about the desert when there’s still so much water around, cutting off streets with blocked sewer drains. Signs of the weird floods that nearly drowned the city at Christmas are fading fast, but not completely gone. L.A. doesn’t have the luxury of hundred-­year flood warnings. We don’t have that kind of relationship with water or the past. And this flood wasn’t anything to do with global warming or
El Niños. It wasn’t real weather. It was the symptom of a disease. An organism worming its way into our world from another.

  The Angra Om Ya were old gods. Older than the God most good little girls and boys think about. That God, sneaky bastard, stole the universe from the Angra and walled them off in another dimension. When they broke out and headed back into our space-­time, they brought the floods with them. One long golden shower of hate. I fought the Angra, if fight’s the right word. I danced around until I foxed them into the Room of Thirteen Doors and locked them in forever. If you live in this universe, you’re welcome, and could you spare some change for a fellow American who’s down on his luck? Okay, Bogart said it better than I did, but you get the idea.

  The city was still underwater when we killed Candy. No choice. The feds were trucking Lurkers out into the Mojave to a hoodoo Manzanar. So, Julie helped us out. We staged a scene where it looked like she shot and killed Candy. What was another Lurker stiff to the Vigil jackboots? And now I owe Julie and will be working off the debt until she dies or I die or the oceans turn to Jell-­O and Atlantis rises.

  You’d think after that, things might smooth out a little. What could be worse than your city underwater, pissed-­off elder gods, and killing your girlfriend? Nothing, you’d say, but if you bet me the farm on it, I’d be asshole-­deep in cotton. You see, a bum wandered into my life around New Year’s. He called himself Death, and who was I to argue? Someone had ripped out his heart and he was still walking around. He wasn’t a zombie because I destroyed all of them (seriously, how about that spare change?) and he definitely wasn’t an ordinary angel. The fucker, who or whatever he is, came to me specifically and asked me to find out who killed him. Me. Like I need more bullshit in my life. Between BitTorrent and video streaming, Maximum Overdrive is about dead. Now I have to drop all that to wet nurse another supernatural shit heel because why?

  Because I’m a freak. A nephilim. Half human and half angel. Heaven hates me because I shouldn’t exist and the world hates me because, well, I’m really good at killing things. Yet for some reason, the schmuck asleep in my storeroom thinks I’m a Good Samaritan. When he wakes up, despite what Julie wants, I’m going to skate his ass out the door as fast as I can. I simply do not need crap like this in my life.

  What I need is a drink, a week in Mexico with Candy, and tickets for Skull Valley Sheep Kill when they reopen the Whisky a Go Go. I’m not betting on the last two, but I can magically conjure up the first by reaching into my pocket and taking out my flask.