Sandman Slim with Bonus Content

  I hold up my hands so they can see I’m not going for a weapon, and start for the door. There’s a pen on the counter. I use it to write down my cell number on a receipt.

  “She can call me at this number. Tell her a dead friend is back in town and that she better call him soon or he’s going to come back here and spank her.” I hold up the tanto to the girl in the ball gown. “You get this back when she calls me.”

  I walk out of the store and drop the knife into the sewer grating on the corner.

  I hear something over the noise of the traffic. Someone is calling my name. I turn around, thinking at first it’s one of the girls from Lollipop Dolls, but no one is there. It’s a man’s voice coming from across the street. I have to shield from eyes from the damned sun, but when I do, I get a good look at him. It’s Parker, not more than fifty feet away.

  Parker isn’t big. Parker is a Disneyland attraction. Lay some track across his back and shoulders and he could give the kiddies a wild ride. I go for him straight through traffic. Cars are zipping along Rodeo, heading for the green lights at both ends of the block. I hop across the hood of the closest car, drop down, and cut behind the next. Then I’m up on the trunk of another, but slip and end up on the hood of the car behind it.

  Everything is very calm and quiet inside my head. In the distance, halfway across the solar system, I hear squealing tires. Grinding metal. Shattering glass. People are yelling. But I’m back on my feet and moving. My blood is pumping and I feel a heat spread from my belly to my arms and legs. For the first time since I crawled out of the fire and back onto this rock, I feel like myself. Parker is dead ahead and I know exactly what I’m doing.

  On my left, a storefront explodes, knocking me off my feet. I make a nice dent in the front passenger door of a Cadillac parked at the curb. People are screaming. The store is on fire. I look up in time to see Parker tossing what looks like a flaming basketball from hand to hand. He throws it in my direction. I roll away from the Caddie, but Parker misses the car and hits a bus stuck in traffic. More broken glass. More screaming.

  I get to my feet and run at him. He backpedals down the street. Something is wrong. No matter how fast I go, Parker stays ahead of me. When he spins on the balls of his feet and really turns on the speed, I can’t come close to keeping up.

  By the time I’m on the next block, he’s gone. I keep turning around, like a drunken ballet dancer, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

  Something hot explodes against my chest and it feels like a bulldozer is trying to park on top of my lungs.

  Parker has thrown another one of his plasma balls, but show-off that he is, he missed by an inch and took out a mailbox. It’s snowing People magazines and liposuction flyers. The front of my jacket is scorched down to the Kevlar and a little voice in the back of my brain is telling me to let one of the fireballs hit me so that next time they won’t hurt. Only if one of them hits me, I’m not all that sure there will be a next time, so I tell the little voice to shut the hell up and go to Plan B.

  I spring forward from a crouch and slam my shoulder into a parking meter. The pavement cracks. Two more slams and the meter is loose enough for me to pry it from the ground. I creep along the sides of the cars, keeping below window level. Parker has disappeared again. I try to reach out with those weird, new senses that keep telling me people’s secrets, but I can’t feel him. He’s probably too powerful for something as crude as my kindergarten mind-reading experiments. Besides, I’m distracted by the smell of burning shops. The sound of crashes and women screaming.

  Then I see him, behind a Hummer two cars ahead. He’s juggling another plasma ball and the glow is visible under the parked cars. I sprint forward, hoping that I’m faster than he is at this distance.

  When he steps around the car to knuckleball the burning plasma, I’m already there. I swing the parking meter up and catch him square in the chest with the end that’s still hanging on to a nice chunk of concrete. Parker goes flying, smashing into the half-inch-thick glass of a bus kiosk, where he leaves a nice bloody spot on the shattered glass. I’m amazed, but he manages to crawl to his feet. That’s something new. The old Parker was tough, but there’s no way he could have taken a blow like that and lived, much less stood up. Then he surprises me again. He starts running away. Not as fast as before, but fast enough that I have trouble keeping up.

  At the corner, he cuts left onto Wilshire and blows down the street at his inhuman pace. I’m fast at short distances. My reflexes are quick enough to snatch a knife out of a moppet’s hand or yank the eyes out of a Hellion’s head. But I’m not a marathon runner. Parker is a receding dot. I’m losing him.

  Desperate to keep him in sight, I do the only thing I can think of. I grab the knife and slam the blade down as hard as I can lengthwise on the street. This one block of Wilshire shudders and an inch-wide crack slices the sidewalk in both directions. It’s not exactly ten-point-oh on the Richter scale, but it makes Parker stumble. He looks back and, for the first time, seems a little nervous. He takes off running across the street to a tall, glass-and-chrome office building. I take off after him, but stop in the middle of the street.

  When Parker reaches the office building, he doesn’t go inside. He doesn’t stop running or even break his stride. He takes one big leap and goes from the street up the side of the office building and keeps running. He doesn’t crab up the side like Spider-Man. He sprints standing straight up, like the Flash.

  My brain might have been cracked at the beginning of the fight, but now it breaks. I lived in Hell for years, and I never saw anything like this. I stand there as the traffic flows around me. Horns honk. Drivers give me the finger. Bus drivers scream at me to get out of the street. I crane my neck as Parker, the Human Fly, skitters up the side of a building, getting away.

  My brain explodes like ice dropped in boiling water.

  I sprint forward and get right under him.

  Fuck magic.

  I pull the Colt Peacemaker from under my jacket and blast all six shots into Parker’s back. As each bullet hits, he slows down. When the last of the big .45 shells slams into his spine, I can see bones through the hole in his back. He stops running, stands drunkenly on the side of the building for a couple of seconds. Then his body goes limp. He starts to fall.

  I step far enough away from the building to avoid the splatter when he hits. I have the knife out, ready to drive it into his heart to make sure he’s really dead.

  As Parker falls, his body seems to drift away like smoke. He becomes transparent. Two floors above the street, the last of him blows away like morning mist. I keep the knife out, ready for a trick. Nothing happens.

  I walk back to the front of the building, looking up, hoping that Parker has somehow scrambled around to another side. He’s not there. He’s gone. I hear someone laughing nearby.

  Across the street Mason is leaning against a lamp pole. The sun shines on him. A slight breeze blows his hair. He’s smoking a cigarette. He doesn’t look at all like the dark god of Los Angeles. He looks like Mason. A smug, handsome rich kid, but entirely human. A shadow slides from behind the lamp pole and joins him. It’s Parker. His clothes are perfect. His shirt is pressed and clean. His bones are back inside his body. Both men are laughing at me. Mason points his index finger at me like a gun, and then snaps his thumb down as he pulls the imaginary trigger.

  I take a step forward as two crows dip silently toward the street. When the birds pass, Mason and Parker are gone.

  I HEAD BACK to Max Overdrive to change my scorched party clothes. I’m an Evel Knievel doll that a kid lit on fire and tossed on Dad’s barbecue. Good thing I bought the motocross jacket with Brad Pitt’s money. Otherwise, I’d be really pissed off. At least my boots are all right. And I still have the silk overcoat. Thanks, Brad. Hope Avila’s security goons didn’t confiscate your stun gun.

  Going through the door at Max Overdrive, even the back door, usually feels good. It’s boring and normal. Burned up like this, I don’t bother. I st
ep through a shadow and straight into my room. For the few seconds I’m in the room, there’s noise coming from behind every door, especially the thirteenth. Something seismic is rippling through the aether, giving the universe indigestion. Good.

  I take off my ruined clothes, toss them into the far corner of the room, and dig out a hoodie and pair of black jeans that I picked up with Muninn’s cash. Then I walk the few steps through a dark patch in the wall to Vidocq’s apartment.

  I knock and let myself in. Allegra is holding an old book that looks like it weighs more than she does. Vidocq is reading it over her shoulder, with a couple of potion vials in his hands. They look up when I come in. Allegra doesn’t say anything. Vidocq turns back to his worktable. I don’t need super magic sense to figure out that something isn’t right. He takes a set of keys from his pocket and hands them to Allegra.

  “Would you take the car and get us some lunch?”

  I walk into the room. “You own a car?”

  “I own and do many things you don’t know about. You don’t know anyone anymore. You don’t listen. You don’t care.”

  Allegra walks to the door.

  When she passes I ask, “Cat got your tongue?”

  She turns to me. “You fucked up good, man.” When she leaves, I look over at Vidocq, but he won’t look at me.

  Quietly he says, “You and your cowboy bullshit. There’s no excuse for what you did today. It was too public and too reckless. You could have been killed. You could have killed others.”

  I sit down on the arm of the easy chair. “Right. It’s all my fault because Parker was being so careful not to hurt civilians.”

  “You should never have gone after him, Mason, or the others like this.”

  “If I didn’t, which one of you was going to? You were a detective once. Why didn’t you track Mason down?”

  Vidocq shakes his head, turns away, ands flips pages in the book that Allegra had been holding when I came in. “I tried for a while, but I saw things. I heard things. Don’t ask me what.”

  “You people have had eleven years to deal with Mason and, as far as I can tell, you haven’t done a goddamn thing. You think he grabbed all that magical power so he can retire? You should be on my side, trying to snuff him.”

  “People were here earlier. Representatives from the Sub Rosa.” Vidocq finally looks at me. “They came to me because they know that you and I are close.”

  “Are we still? I can’t tell lately.”

  “They’re done with you over that debacle. There were so many people. So many security cameras in the stores and on the street. Tourists with more cameras. There’s only so much they can do to cover it up.”

  “They have a story yet?”

  “A publicity stunt for a movie. Equipment malfunctioned. There are many Sub Rosa in the film industry. They’ll pay any fines and lawsuits this time. But they won’t next time.” Vidocq makes a face like he can smell two-week-old garbage from the apartment next door. “In this matter, no one is on your side.”

  “Are they going to kick me out of the magic union? Take away my 401?”

  “This isn’t a joke.” Vidocq slams the book closed. “These are powerful people. Medea Bava was here. She left this for you.” He hands me a small white linen bundle tied with horsehair. Crow feathers inside. And wolf teeth spotted with blood.

  “An Inquisitor? That’s a fairy tale. They don’t exist.”

  “That lady sure existed,” says Allegra. “Her face was more messed up than yours.”

  Vidocq says, “These people can hurt you.”

  “Let them try.” I get up and go to the door. “Tell those Sub Rosa and their meter maids that they have three choices if they want me out of L.A. They can help me. They can stay out of my way. Or they can kill me.”

  Out in the hall a guy with two overflowing bags of groceries stops dead in his tracks, his key halfway to his door lock. With Vidocq’s apartment being invisible to civilians, it must have looked like I appeared out of thin air.

  “Oh. Hello,” says the guy.

  “Good-bye,” I say, and disappear through a shadow right in front of him.

  CARLOS HANDS ME a plate of rice, beans, and enchiladas in a thick mole sauce. I tear right into them. I’m starving after the fight, and Carlos’s food is so good I want to marry it.

  “You been doing your ninja thing again?” Carlos asks.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “One side of your face and your hands are all red, like a burn.”

  I look at my hands. They’re scraped and raw-looking, like I’ve been juggling cinder blocks. “No big deal. They’ll be fine by morning.”

  “I have aloe in the back if you want some.”

  I shake my head. “Thanks anyway. Another scar or two isn’t going to ruin my pretty face.”

  “Right.”

  “Carlos, are you being polite? That’s not what I come here for. I know I’m not Steve McQueen.”

  “My lady is totally in love with him. Lucky for me he’s dead or I’d be in trouble.”

  I hold up my glass of Jack Daniel’s in a toast. “Here’s to all the guys better looking than us. May they all die first.” Carlos picks up his glass, clinks mine, and we drink.

  For the first time since I’ve had it, my cell phone rings. I don’t even know what it is at first. It feels like a rat is having a nervous breakdown in the pocket of my hoodie. When I get it out, it takes me a second to remember which button to push to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me. Cherry. I heard you were at the store. I didn’t believe her.”

  “So, you called someone you didn’t think was alive?”

  “I called because if you were alive, I need your help.”

  I don’t answer for a minute. I eat a forkful of enchilada.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”

  “What should I call you?”

  “The guy you helped send to Hell for eleven years of torture.” I get up and walk over by the jukebox, speaking quietly. “The guy who is seriously thinking about redeco-rating the inside of that store of yours with your guts.”

  Now it’s her turn to not talk.

  “I know you must hate it.”

  “Hate doesn’t come close to it.”

  “I heard about your fight with Parker.”

  “Everyone has, apparently.”

  “Did you know Jayne-Anne is dead?”

  “When?”

  “Last night. Parker did it. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  “That’s why you need my help. I go after Jayne and Parker kills her because she probably has information that could lead to Mason. TJ and Kasabian are already out of the picture. That just leaves you.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Give me a reason.”

  “I know where Mason is.”

  I walk back to the bar and away from the music. I don’t want to miss any of this. “I don’t believe you.”

  “The reason no one can find him is that he isn’t in this reality. He’s somewhere else. But I guess that if you got back here from Hell, you can find a way to get to him.”

  “How do I know that Mason isn’t standing next to you right now, telling you what to say?”

  “How do I know you won’t shoot me in the back like you did Parker, once I’ve told you where Mason is?”

  Mason or Cherry. If she’s telling the truth, it isn’t much of a choice. Especially after today. I wouldn’t mind giving bloody noses to some nosy Sub Rosa hall monitors, but with Parker and Mason dogging me, it’s dumb to go begging for unnecessary trouble.

  “Okay,” I say. “It’s a deal. When and where should we meet?”

  She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Someone’s coming. I’ll call you later.”

  I put the phone in my pocket and go back to my food. Carlos has already refilled my glass.

&
nbsp; “Let me guess. You were talking to a woman. I don’t need to hear the words. It’s all in the tone,” he says. “They call when they want something, then they’re the ones who cut you off.”

  “It’s not women. It’s humans. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t kill ’em all.”

  I go back to my food, and wonder about Cherry. Her breathing sounded nervous on the phone, but I can’t be sure. I guess my new Spidey senses don’t work over wires. But if she’s setting me up, wouldn’t she have suggested a time and place to meet right away? I can go round and round like this forever, looking for secret meanings in every syllable and pause in the conversation. If I am being set up, I want to go in with an edge so I don’t end up eating one of Parker’s fireballs. Normally, about now, I’d go and ask Vidocq for advice or maybe a protection charm. Today doesn’t seem like the day for that.

  It takes me a minute to notice that the music has changed. It’s shifted from tiki drums and bird calls to something more somber. All slow bass and breathy sax. Then a singer.

  “It’s dreamy weather we’re on

  You waved your crooked wand

  Along an icy pond with a frozen moon

  A murder of silhouette crows I saw

  And the tears on my face

  And the skates on the pond

  They spell Alice.”

  I go to the jukebox to see what’s playing.

  “Set me adrift and I’m lost over there

  And I must be insane, to go skating on your name,

  And by tracing it twice, I fell through the ice

  Of Alice . . .”

  “Who put this song on?” I turn and look at the room. It’s early enough that the place isn’t packed yet. There are maybe a dozen people scattered at different tables. “Who put this song on?” Not a word. My heart is pounding. I go back to the bar, keeping an eye on the room, not sure what to do. I want to start throwing furniture and people, but two sets of civilian casualties in one day is probably two too many.

  I ask Carlos, “Did you see anyone by the jukebox?”

  “Sorry, man. No. I didn’t even know we had the song. Never heard it before. The ser vice guys change the tunes every now and then, when they come in to empty the coin bins.”