Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel Read online

  Samael’s silk shirt is ruined. I’m hard on clothes. It’s like my body declared a jihad on everything I wear. At least this shirt wasn’t mine. But I kind of liked it. Candy isn’t going to be wild when she sees my blood soaked through.

  I take the bottle and limp back to Garrett. I turn out his pockets but they’re empty. I pull my knife out of the floor and put it back in my waistband. Nothing to do now but wait for the guest of honor to wake up. Under other circumstances I’d dump water or a bucket of ice on him to get his ass moving, but I’m just as happy to have a few minutes of me time.

  A phone on the coffee table rings. It’s not Garrett’s cell. It’s the hotel phone. I go over and pick it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Garrett?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the front desk. A package has arrived for you. Would you like me to send it up to your room?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  I hang up.

  I can’t answer the door like this. Garrett’s closet isn’t any help. He’s a lot bigger than I am. I’d look like I was wearing a tepee in one of his shirts. I toss the bloody towel in the bathroom and grab the hotel robe off the back of the door. I look at myself in the mirror. I’m pale and sweating, but I look more hungover than gut-shot. I set the pistol on the coffee table and drag Garrett to the bed, toss him on top, and cover him with blankets. The raven flutters over and stands on the lump that’s Garrett’s soon-to-be-kicked-around-the-room carcass.

  There’s a gentle knock on the door. I grab the money clip and peel off a twenty.

  A young, freckled woman in a hotel uniform stands in the hall.

  “Mr. Garrett?”

  “Yes. Thanks for bringing it up,” I say through my weak hangover smile.

  “Of course.”

  She hands me the box. There’s nothing on it but a tag for a local courier company.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” she asks.

  “No. This is fine,” I say, and hand her the twenty. I didn’t get all the blood off my hands. There’s a line of red along one edge of the bill. But it looks more like ink than anything else. And let’s face it. This is an L.A. hotel. It can’t be the first time someone handed her bloody money.

  “Thank you,” she says, and I close the door. That’s enough social interaction for now. I can feel my side starting to leak through the robe, so I carry the box to a larger table by the wet bar and set it down. I get a new towel from the bathroom and tie it tight around my waist. It burns like a son of a bitch, but it ought to stop all the annoying fucking blood for a while.

  With the black blade I slice open the courier box. Inside is a leather brief bag, something like an oversize attaché case that lawyers carry. There’s another case inside that. Plastic, but heavy and substantial. Almost like a gun case. I slide it out of the brief bag, push that onto the floor, and set down the plastic one. I take a quick peek at Garrett to make sure he’s not going to sneak up on me. The raven is still standing guard over him. I pop the latches on the case and push back the lid.

  Lying packed in a snug black foam liner is the Qomrama Om Ya.

  Color me the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet. I grab it to make sure I’m not seeing things.

  Wait. Keep the son-of-a-bitch part but forget the lucky. The 8 Ball is like the bird. A fake. The real 8 Ball radiates heavy magic that you can feel through your skin. This thing looks good, but it’s as magic as loaded dice.

  Whoever made it isn’t a complete idiot. It gives off some minor hoodoo vibes, enough to feel real if you’ve never handled the real Qomrama. It’s like how Russian gangs sell kindergarten terrorists radioactive junk and tell them it’s plutonium. The morons think they’re going to build a nuke, but all they get is cancer-therapy scrap.

  The only other thing in the case is an old book. It’s full of diagrams of the 8 Ball along with what look like instructions, but it’s in a language I’ve never seen before. I put the book in my back pocket. Father Traven might have some fun with it.

  In the bedroom, the raven squawks and flutters back to the chair. Garrett sits up. His eyes go wide when he sees me with his courier box.

  “That’s not for you!” he yells.

  “Finders keepers.”

  He starts feeling around the bed, knocking his passports and cash onto the floor. He’s looking for the gun, but it’s over on the coffee table. When he can’t find it, he swings his legs onto the floor and stumbles to his feet.

  Just to be a dick about it, I take the fake Qomrama from the case and toss it from hand to hand like a basketball. I don’t see the blinking light right away. It’s down at the bottom of the compartment that held the 8 Ball. When I do notice it I have a pretty good idea what it is and I start running. So does Garrett, but the other way. He makes it to the coffee table, snatches up the pistol, and levels it at me.

  “Give me back my merchandise,” he says.

  I’m halfway into a shadow, bent low, when the bomb goes off. The concussion blasts me the rest of the way out of the room.

  I suppose I could have been a Good Samaritan. Run back for Garrett, knocked the gun out of his hand, and pulled him into the shadow with me. But it hurt when I bent down to steal his money clip and . . . well, the bastard did shoot me.

  I HATE GOING through the Room straight into the penthouse at the Chateau Marmont. Whatever hoodoo keeps the penthouse hidden from both civilians and Sub Rosa makes me dizzy and nauseous every time I walk through it. That doesn’t matter this time. I’m already dizzy and nauseous.

  I fall near where we keep the food trays lined up buffet style against the wall. At least I don’t have to worry about Candy being concerned about my belly wound. My half-blasted-off clothes will distract her. Plus, I have the cash. And the fake Qomrama.

  I grab the edge of a table and pull myself to my feet with my prosthetic left arm. The explosion must have blown off the glove. The arm is ugly as Hell. It was given to me by a Kissi, an extinct race of mutant angels that lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. My prosthetic looks like a bug claw crossed with the Terminator, but it handles things like explosions pretty well, so I can use it sometimes when the rest of my body isn’t cooperating.

  Before I know what’s happening, I’m being steered onto one of the leather sofas. I find half a cup of Aqua Regia on the coffee table and gulp it down. When I look up Candy is standing over me. She’s pulling off my shredded shirt, looking scared. And sees the bloody towel. Now her fear is mixed with annoyance.

  “I let you out of my sight for ten fucking minutes,” she says.

  My ears are ringing, so it takes me a second to understand what she said.

  She pulls out the black blade I gave her and cuts off the rest of the shirt and towel. When she sees the bullet wound she looks at me hard.

  Before she can say anything, I hold out the 8 Ball.

  “Look, baby, I brought you a present.”

  Then I pass out.

  I WAKE UP in bed naked and wrapped in a sheet. There’s a stain where my blood and something else has soaked through. Candy sits beside me, playing a game on her pink laptop.

  Vidocq is in a chair nearby, smoking, his feet propped on a corner of the bed. Spirited Away plays on the big screen. It’s what Candy always watches whenever she’s upset. A young girl sits on a train. Some kind of Japanese folk spirit sits beside her. White oval face. All draped in black.

  “Where did that come from?” I say, nodding at the laptop.

  She doesn’t look up from whatever she’s playing. It pings and pops. Plays a silly little tune.

  “I don’t think she’s speaking to you at the moment,” says Vidocq in his smooth French accent.

  I look at her. She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen.

  “I guess not.”

  I’m blistered from the explosion. I lean down and sniff the stain on the sheet. It’s a strange mild acid reek with something sweet. Maybe even a
little Spiritus Dei. A complicated potion. I look at Vidocq.

  “One of yours?”

  He smiles and inclines his head in a little bow.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “De rien.”

  Vidocq is an alchemist and a thief. He’s also a hundred and fifty years old. You’d think after living in this country for a hundred years, he would have lost the accent. I don’t think he wants to. It’s all he has left of France. It’s not like he can ever go back. Where does a hundred-and-fifty-year-old thief and murderer—he killed a couple of guys way back when. Don’t worry. They deserved it—get a birth certificate? A driver’s license? A passport? Yeah, he could get fake documents like Garrett had in his room, but Vidocq is too proud for that. Unless he can go back as himself, I don’t think he’ll ever set foot in the old country again.

  I glance back at Candy. She still won’t look at me. I put a finger on the top of her laptop and start to close it.

  “Don’t,” she says. “I just got to this level and I’ll lose it.”

  “Your computer is dead. Whose is this?”

  “Mine. Samael said he’d get me a new one and he did. It’s a newer model too. Lots more memory and a faster processor. Good for games.”

  I lie down on my back.

  “So all in all a good day for you.”

  “Shut up,” she says.

  I move closer to her. Put my hand on her leg.

  “This is going to happen sometimes. It’s how my life works. You can’t always come with me and I can’t dodge every bullet. Just remember that bastards tried to kill me for eleven years in Hell and almost a year up here and no one’s done it.”

  She says, “That’s not true. You’ve died a couple of times.”

  “Not like lying-there-getting-smelly kind of dead. Just technically dead.”

  She hits the keyboard harder. She still won’t look at me. I really want one of Vidocq’s cigarettes.

  “You’ve got to understand that if this is going to work between us.”

  “I don’t want to,” she says.

  “I don’t always either. But it’s how things are. ‘Death smiles at us all and all a man can do is smile back.’ ”

  “Where did you hear that crap?”

  “I read it in a book Downtown. It’s Marcus Aurelius.”

  She nods.

  “Quote a dead guy. Real smooth.”

  I kiss her leg and get up. I stink from sweat and burned skin and need a shower.

  On my way to the bathroom I say, “I’m going Downtown to see Mr. Muninn. You can come with me or you can stay here and sulk.”

  I stand under the hot water for a long time, washing off the grime and dead skin. The wound has already closed, though I can feel the bullet inside me.

  I put on a robe and go back into the bedroom.

  Candy has closed the laptop. She and Vidocq are quietly watching the movie. I sit down beside her on the bed. She balls up her fist and punches my real arm.

  “Ow.”

  “I wasn’t sulking. I was mad. And not entirely at you.”

  “I know. Trust me. If I could, I’d be the most boring bastard in the world.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” says Vidocq.

  “Okay. Tenth most boring bastard.”

  Candy says, “Sometimes you get worked up. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  “Really? How does stopping to grab money in the middle of an explosion count as careful?”

  The fake Qomrama and the cash are lying nearby on the bed. I pick up the money.

  “Did you count it?”

  “It’s just shy of four thousand dollars.”

  “Chicken-and-waffles money.”

  Along the edges, the bills are as crisp and singed as I am. I show them to Vidocq. He chuckles and leans in closer.

  He says, “That’s a strange design on the clip. It almost reminds me of the Golden Vigil. Though not entirely.”

  The Golden Vigil. God’s Pinkertons on earth. They were a Homeland Security offshoot that Vidocq and I used to work for. The Vigil worked with a special group of agents using angelic tech, supposedly monitoring and policing nefarious hoodoo-related activity. Zombies. Rogue vampires. Demon attacks. Hell, they even put Lucifer on a terrorist watch list. Mostly, though, they were just another set of bullheaded cops in better suits. U.S. Marshal Larson Wells and, more importantly, Aelita ran the show. That’s until she went on her god-killing crusade and the government shut the Vigil down. Not a tear was shed.

  “Not quite? You’re sure?”

  Vidocq nods.

  “I’m positive. Not the Vigil.”

  “But still similar.”

  “Yes. Similar.”

  I toss the money back on the bed.

  “I wish I could have talked to Garrett. All this cash. Passports. A mechanical familiar. Who the hell was he waiting for?”

  “And who was the bomb for? Monsieur Garrett or the party buying from him?” says Vidocq.

  “He had a familiar?” says Candy.

  “Yeah; a good one too. I should have grabbed the asshole’s wallet.”

  I can see Kasabian banging away on his own computer, building his Web site.

  “Did Old Yeller find out anything on Moseley?”

  Candy says, “Not much. He had a record but all minor stuff. He was kind of a religious nut. A couple of arrests for protesting outside abortion clinics. A fine for trashing a Scientology office and some Orthodox graves at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It looks like he’s been through every religion on the planet. There’s photos of him in a dozen getups from different religious sects and cults.”

  “A lost soul in a hard city. A volatile combination,” says Vidocq.

  “I got the 8 Ball and the cash,” I say to him. “You steal anything fun lately?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Jewelry here and there. A vase for the apartment. Helping look for your weapon puts too many temptations in my path and the old habits are the hardest to break.”

  He puffs his cigarette.

  “And sometimes stealing a bit helps. Not everyone who comes to the clinic can pay.”

  Vidocq’s girlfriend, Allegra, runs a hoodoo clinic for down-and-out Sub Rosas and Lurkers. Doc Kinski used to run it with Candy taking care of the front desk. Then Aelita murdered him. That bothered a lot of people, myself included. Kinski was my father.

  “How is Allegra?”

  “Well. She has trained two competent assistants.” He looks at Candy. “She misses you working beside her.” He looks at me. “And believe it or not, she misses you.”

  Allegra didn’t take it well when she found out that I’d become Lucifer. She accused me of all kinds of nefarious shit. Mostly Sunday school stuff, which I didn’t expect from her. We haven’t spoken much since.

  “Maybe we ought to keep it that way,” I say. “Whenever we get near each other, someone says something stupid.”

  “Someone?” asks Candy.

  “Okay. Me.”

  “And yet her desire to see you both remains unchanged,” Vidocq says.

  I toss him Garrett’s cash.

  “Give her this.”

  He nods and puts it in the pocket of his greatcoat.

  “We both thank you for this.”

  Candy says, “Can I have the clip?”

  I say, “Why? We don’t have any money.”

  Vidocq takes the clip off the cash and hands it to her. Her eyes light up.

  “I just like it,” she says. “It’s shiny. I’ll find something to do with it.”

  I take off the robe. The bullet wound stings a little, but the blisters hurt like a son of a bitch. I put on my leather bike pants and boots. Find an old Maximum Overdrive video-store T-shirt that’s not covered in bullet holes or blood and put that on too.

  “I don’t suppose you’d consider taking me along,” says Vidocq.

  “To Hell? I don’t want to take her. Why would I subject you to it too?�
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  “I’d like to see the afterlife. With my condition it’s doubtful I’ll ever see it legitimately.”

  A hundred and fifty years ago Vidocq made himself immortal. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t trying to do it. Just one of his alchemical experiments took a wrong turn and left him with a condition most people would kill for. Me, I’d rather have X-ray vision. At least it would be fun at parties.

  I say, “Forget it. Allegra would truly kill me dead if I took you.”

  He sighs, knowing I’m right.

  “And she’d be right, of course. You’re a terrible influence on us all.”

  He nods to me and blows Candy a kiss. He holds up the cash.

  “And thank you for this,” he says before leaving through the grandfather clock, the real entrance to our secret hideaway.

  “He’s right. You are a terrible influence,” says Candy.

  “I thought that’s why you stuck around.”

  “There’s also the free food and movies.”

  “Free computers too.”

  “And getting blown up and shot at.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to work on my ducking skills.”

  “Please do.” She doesn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “So, we’re really going?”

  “You’re the one who wanted to.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m a little scared.”

  “Good. That means you’re sane.”

  “So, we just go there? No spells? We don’t have to sacrifice chickens or pray to any hoary overlords of the deep or something?”

  “You can dance naked around a maypole if you want. Me? I’m just walking in.”

  She gets up.

  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  “Don’t wear anything you really like.”