The Dirty Streets of Heaven

  I was lying, of course. It’s nowhere near that simple, and one of the reasons is because a lot of what is commonly thought of as sinful is just being human. I don’t know how things used to be, but the judges don’t tend to put people away for minor infractions—they seem to be more interested in intent, although they can sometimes be sticklers for some of the classic old-school stuff; killing, adultery, like that. But what they’ll stick on and what they’ll let slide is a gray area as big as Heaven itself, and it takes years to learn how to maximize a soul’s chances at judgement. But I wasn’t even sure why the kid was here—I wasn’t going to try to teach him everything in one night.

  Howlingfell had been eavesdropping on our conversation. He laughed and swiped a long red tongue along his lips, showing a lot of pointy teeth. “You just watch, Dollar—Grasswax has got this bitch’s number. She’ll be flapping in the dark wind before you know it.”

  The kid flinched but he still wouldn’t look at the demon. “But some things are more complicated than that, aren’t they, Bobby? And she really hasn’t done anything wrong…!”

  “That’s not for you to decide,” I said, holding up a hand to silence him. “And to be honest, I’m not certain I’d trust the judgement of someone who’s never argued a case before. I had an Eagle Scout once who was run over while helping a man in a wheelchair across a busy street. Open and shut, right? Fit him for a halo. Except it turned out at judgement that when he was eight years old he smothered his baby brother with a pillow. Nice-looking kid. Youth pastor at his church. No reason we ever learned. Just didn’t like his little brother.” It had been another weird, complicated case that didn’t sum up easily, but I wasn’t going to talk strategy in front of our opponents—like I said, there’s a lot of gray area, and you have to learn it the hard way. Instead I cocked a thumb toward the recently deceased Mrs. Martino. “Don’t fall in love with a client, kid.”

  “In love…!” He looked horrified.

  “You know what I mean. Don’t make it personal.” Those were the most important words I knew—words that could save your afterlife.

  “Adultery,” announced Grasswax. “Repeatedly, and without confession. For years.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Sam. Actually he only mouthed the words, but I could read his lips.

  “A grave, grave sin against the Law of Moses,” Grasswax continued. “And no repentance, either. In fact, she had just met the lover for drinks before her accident tonight, so she died…unshriven, as we used to say. Am I wrong?”

  Sam hastily conferred with the woman’s guardian. “Mitigated!” Sam said. “Her husband has a mistress.”

  “Oh, but surely two wrongs don’t make a right, Master Sammariel.” Grasswax smiled. It looked like he had horse’s teeth crammed in his mouth. Wasn’t pretty. “This is not the husband’s judgement. As you know, she stands before a representative of God the Highest,” he said, gesturing toward the burning presence of Xathanatron. “She is not being judged by the kind receivers of the Children’s Host. She sinned and kept on sinning. Only death stopped it.” The prosecutor grinned even wider. The conviction was beginning to look, as my old mentor Leo used to say, like an Old Testament Cinch.

  “But I didn’t…!” Silvia Martino only got out the first few words before Grasswax turned on her and flicked his taloned fingers. The sound stopped coming. She struggled on for a moment before she realized the gift of speech had been taken from her.

  “No one asked you, whore,” spat the prosecutor, then turned back to Sam with a grin. “Well, Advocate? Any final words of summation?”

  The new kid was twitching beside me as if something was biting him. “Stop,” I told him. “Don’t attract attention. You won’t like it.” But it was no use.

  “How about Thou Shalt Not Steal?” the kid shouted. “Doesn’t that count?”

  “Oh, shit.” This time it was me saying it. Everybody turned to look at Clarence. Even Xathanatron the Principality seemed to pause, his fires darkening just a fraction.

  “He’s not supposed to talk!” barked Howlingfell, the ugly, coarse hairs on his neck and shoulders bristling. He started his move—he would have been all over the rookie with talons and fangs—but I kicked him hard in the back of the knee, then when his leg buckled I helped him to lie down with a swift jerk on his suit collar. The demon hit the ground hard—Outside is a real, physical place, it’s just outside Time—then I dropped to a crouch beside him to make sure he was all right. Okay, I might have kneeled on his windpipe a little.

  “Down, Fido,” I told him quietly, crimping his neck until he stopped struggling so hard. “Let the big boys settle this.”

  “Here!” Suddenly rough, clawed hands were pulling at me. I wasn’t going to start a brawl in front of a heavenly judge so I let myself be tugged back onto my feet, although by the time I had my balance Grasswax had pulled my jacket most of the way off. “How dare you!” he snarled, but he didn’t sound entirely convincing—I think he was playing it up for the judge.

  “Easy, everybody,” said Sam, getting into the middle. He helped me get my jacket back over my shoulders, then patted me back into shape with a care that was almost fatherly. We’ve been through a lot, Sam and me. “Just a misunderstanding,” he said, glaring at the kid.

  Howlingfell was getting up now, too. He looked like he thought he understood everything just fine: his murderous scowl could have bubbled paint.

  “Misunderstanding?” Grasswax surveyed us all, a look of calculated outrage twisting his unpleasant features into something even less charming. “Did I misunderstand when I thought I heard an apprentice, unsworn and unnamed before this judge, interrupting an officer of prosecution? Or did it really happen…?”

  What Did He Mean? This from the judge, each word like a silver bell in a church tower, loud and vibrant, silencing Grasswax just as he was getting worked up to a grand, oratorical flourish. Xathanatron turned his faceless gaze toward Clarence. Speak, Child. I Give You Leave.

  “Her husband—he…he s-stole from her!” To his credit, the kid at least looked properly terrified at what he’d got himself into. “He stole her youth.”

  “What rubbish.” Grasswax wore the expression of a man forced to watch a long elementary school performance while standing outside in foul weather.

  Clarence turned to face the judge. “From the day they were married, her husband only made love to her one night a month, like…like it was a job. Without…foreplay, without kissing. Rolled off and went to watch television.” The youngster was scarlet, embarrassed. “Then, after their fourth child, he just stopped. Told her she’d let herself go. That she sickened him.” He looked over to the deceased, but Silvia Martino seemed lost in a memory or even a dream, her eyes unfocused. “That’s stealing, right?” he said at last.

  I knew I shouldn’t have let the kid talk to her. I felt like punching myself in the nuts for letting it happen. When did he get all that out of her? Even Sam looked as if it had caught him by surprise, and he’d talked to the guardian angel.

  When Clarence was not immediately changed into hot steam it seemed pretty clear the judge was going to allow his evidence. Sam knew better than to look this gift horse in the mouth any longer than he needed to. He quickly added a strong theme of tragic suffering to his summation and rode that nag all the way home.

  I still wouldn’t have wanted to put money on which way Xathanatron was going to go, but when a column of lavender light surrounded the late Mrs. Silvia Martino, and a look crept over Grasswax’s face that suggested some paralegal in Hell was going to get a horrible bollocking, I knew it was over and Sam had won.

  Suddenly the deceased was gone. Grasswax took off a moment later, silent and very unpleasantly angry. Howlingfell pointed a shaking, clawed finger at me. “You’re dead, Dollar!” he growled, but his voice was still a bit weak from my knee crushing his trachea. A moment later he followed Grasswax through the shimmering wound and then, except for the judge, it was just angels standing around in the frozen moment.
r />   “Congrats,” I told Clarence. “You’ve made your first batch of enemies today.”

  “What?”

  “And not just on the other team,” Sam said. “If you ever do that to me again, kid, they’ll never find all the different pieces.”

  “Pieces…?”

  “Of you.” He shook his head in disgust. “You get any more bright ideas, try ’em out on me or Bobby first.”

  I was watching Xathanatron, who to my discomfort seemed to be staring in my direction. I’d kind of hoped that scuffle with Howlingfell would have been beneath the high angel’s notice.

  You Are Wanted In The Celestial City, Angel Doloriel, the pillar of light told me. Sam and the kid didn’t hear it, but for me it came loud enough to make my cheekbones ache. Your Archangel Wishes To Speak With You. Then the big glow was gone.

  “C’mon,” Sam said to me. “Time to go back. I’m going to buy Clarence an ice cream. I mean, we did win the case.”

  Me, I was feeling thirsty—that’s just how I react to happy endings. But then I react to unhappy ones pretty much the same way.

  two

  my lucky week

  I ALREADY KNOW some of the questions you want to ask. The answers are:

  1) Yes, it’s pretty darn interesting being an angel.

  2) No, I haven’t met God. Yet.

  3) I can’t tell you which religion was right after all, because it’s not exactly clear.

  4) As to what Heaven’s like…well, bear with me and I’ll try to explain.

  First off, Heaven is…complicated. It’s not just a castle on a cloud or some paradise garden. It’s big, even though there’s only one city—the Celestial City itself. But that city is surrounded by what they call the Fields, which are lands that stretch on and on in all directions, seemingly forever, rolling hills and meadows and even forests full of souls that I’ve always assumed are the departed of Earth living the good life of Eternity. If you ask them, though, they don’t know any more about it than I do about my own pre-angelic life—they’re just happy.

  Usually when you’re summoned you go straight to the Celestial City. You don’t walk when you’re there, or even fly. Nothing that simple. Even calling it a city is a bit misleading, although there are times when it seems to be exactly that, when you catch glimpses of the enormity that is around you, towers and heights and shining walkways impossibly far above your head. Wherever you go shining presences surround you like the lights of a million happy cars on a busy but absolutely safe freeway, and each of those presences is an angel. And somewhere at the heart of it, a place you can never quite see but that you always know is there, a constant glow in the edge of your sight and sense and imagination, is the Empyrean, the innermost district of Heaven where they say the Highest dwells.

  Invitation only, needless to say.

  But all that doesn’t begin to describe Heaven, how it looks, feels, tastes. Do you remember the Electrical Parade they used to do at the Disney parks in the evenings, with all the gleaming lights and dancing characters? Well, it’s a bit like that, but only if you had a strong fever that also somehow made you feel secure and comfortable and like you never wanted to ask another question because it was just too much trouble.

  I got over the last part—a few of us do. Now I ask lots of questions, but mostly to myself.

  Another problem: the sights you see in Heaven, the look of the citizens, even the conversations you have there tend to be slippery in the mind afterward. I’m sure I’m frustrating you, but there really is no good way to explain quite what it’s like, because by the time you get back it doesn’t even feel the same to you, even though you’re the one it happened to. Like trying to remember exactly how everything worked in a dream. When you’re up at the House, as Sam calls it, you know how to get where you need to go, you know where you are, you see things and they make sense. But just try to draw a map afterward. Doesn’t work.

  I don’t think most of the angels in Heaven worry about things like this—certainly not the way I do. In fact, other than a few of my earthbound friends, everybody else in the angelic throng seems to believe that even wondering about how things work is a form of ingratitude. But I can’t help being this way. It’s just the way the Highest made me.

  Don’t get me wrong, though—I like Heaven okay, and I like being an angel. Beats the crap out of the alternative. Especially when you consider that the time-frame in question is eternity.

  You can think of the next part as taking place in Temuel’s office in the California building of the North American Continent Complex, although calling any structure in Heaven a “building” and any place in that structure an “office” is a gross oversimplification of a very strange, very shiny and floaty reality. Temuel was my special archangel—my supervisor, I guess you’d call him. Not my mentor, though, because I’d been in the department longer than he had. He was aware of that, so he shied away from the whole “boss” thing and tried to work the “older friend” angle instead, especially with me and Sam and the other veterans. We let him. It’s better when everyone knows, or at least thinks they know, where they stand.

  We didn’t tell him his nickname, of course. There aren’t too many good ways to spin “The Mule.” But nobody really disliked him. He was just the boss, and an archangel to boot, and that made real affection difficult. The higher angels are just too…distant to get chummy with, even the more approachable ones like Temuel.

  “Ah, Angel Doloriel!” he said with deliberate good cheer when I showed up. (You can’t always tell by looking at them, but some angels in Heaven are “he” and some are “she,” some are kind of both, and others are just “it.” Nothing personal on my end.) “God loves you. How are things in Jude?”

  If there’s anything that makes people from San Judas wince, it’s hearing people who’ve never been there call it “Jude,” but I was already feeling the mandatory cheerfulness of Heaven bubbling through me and doing my best to go with it. “Hello, chief. Things are fine, I guess. Of course the Giants spent all last year playing like they never heard of runners in scoring position, and they could use a lefty reliever something fierce, but hey, spring training’s just starting so there’s always hope.” Sometimes I talk about baseball just to annoy people who don’t understand it. It’s one of the many wonderful things about that game. “Oh, and speaking of training, Sammariel’s working with this new kid.”

  “Ah, yes, young Haraheliel.” He nodded. “How does he look so far?”

  “Like a pig in a bikini. But I’m sure he’ll improve.” Or he’d run his mouth again at a bad time and get us all yanked out of Jude and demoted to an eternity of making pointed suggestions to minor sinners in Purgatory. “Where’d he come from, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  The bright visage of Temuel clouded the tiniest bit. He lifted his shining hand in a gesture of calculated vagueness. “Oh, Records, I think. He was transferred to us as a favor to one of the higher-ups.”

  There were so many things about that sentence that scared me that I didn’t dare say a word.

  “Anyway, that was really what I wanted to talk to you about,” the Mule went on.

  “What? You lost me.”

  “The new one. Sammariel’s trainee. I want you to keep an eye on him.”

  That was even weirder. Why would anybody, let alone an archangel, be interested in a Junior Woodchuck like Clarence? “Isn’t that supposed to be Sam’s job, boss? Since he’s training him?”

  The vague, gleaming gesture again. “Yes, certainly. But Sammariel doesn’t notice things the way you do, Doloriel. That’s why I’m asking you. You’ve got the eye.”

  Ordinarily having a supervisor say something like that would make a guy feel good, and you’d think in Heaven it would make you feel even better, but even buoyed by pumped-in happy I was less than thrilled.

  “Of course,” was what I said, having not been stupid either before or after my lamented passing. I’m hoping it was lamented, anyway, although personally I can’t remember
it.

  That really did seem to be all that the Mule had wanted, which made the whole thing even stranger—he had never been one for small talk, and even when he made some it was in an awkward sort of way, so you felt like you were keeping him from something more important. The truth is, I kind of liked the guy, or as much as you can like someone you don’t understand. He’d always seemed to like me too, or at least tolerate me, and that was a difference from most of the other archangels I’d met. But a boss is a boss, and since I was up at the House anyway, he made me file a bunch of reports I’d been avoiding, stuff I should have turned over days ago to Alice, our office assistant back on Earth (another angel, as far as I know, but just based on attitude, she might be a rehabbed demon.) If the road to Hell is paved in good intentions, a friend of mine used to say, the road to Heaven is paved with bullshit and busy work.

  Who was this Haraheliel kid, anyway? Who had pushed buttons to get our young Clarence out of Filing and into Operations—and why? Did he know too much about something there? Or was he supposed to be someone’s spy in the Advocacy Division? Whose attention had we attracted? And why had they selected such an obvious outsider?

  Wow, I can hear you saying, spies in Heaven? Suspecting your literally angelic bosses of trying to shaft you? You sure have a bad attitude, Bobby Dollar. Well, just stick with me a while before you make up your mind. That’s all I’m asking. I’ve been right more often than the haters like to admit.

  I had a little time to kill before going back—my earthbound body was still in my apartment in Jude getting its seven hours of sleep—so I wandered away from the North America Building, following the climbing Avenue of Contemplation past the mansions of the blessed. As I said, one of the strangest things about Heaven is that there are no maps. If you haven’t been invited to where you’re going or don’t already have access to that particular spot, you probably won’t find it, although you’ll find a thousand other beautiful sights. You could stroll, or float, or whatever it is we do there (I’m still not sure after all these years—it just doesn’t stick in my head when I leave) for a decade and never reach the specific place you were looking for—but as I said, I wasn’t looking for anything, just wandering. I spent some time watching the Fountain of Stars and thinking big but formless thoughts. I even walked out onto Pilgrim’s Bridge, although I hadn’t meant to, and stopped in the middle of the span to look down on the great city and its sparkling, jostling crowds of inhabitants, thousands and thousands of souls, millions even, each one dedicated to order and love, each one happy with his or her place in the big plan. Beyond them all, at the top of the highest of Heaven’s hills, lay a glow like the most gorgeous sunrise—the Empyrean, the seat of the Highest. Still, being me, I couldn’t even look at that wonderful spot, the center of the Cosmos, without wondering why it was hidden away from the rest us.