“So, we’re okay? The original deal stands? I can just walk away?” said Coop.
“Of course. We’re men and women of our word around here,” said Salzman, stacking the papers in his folder. “I assume you turned in your company equipment from last night’s escapade?”
“Yes. Last night before I left.”
“Very good.”
“I have a couple more quick questions. Will I get back any of the money I used to get Giselle and me out of that bar in Squid City?”
“Do you have a receipt?” said Salzman.
“No.”
“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Okay. How about getting reimbursed for the clothes Dick Tracy over there threw out of the van on the way over here?”
“Again, do you have a receipt?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well then, we can probably do something about that. Would one of you get him the forms to fill out?”
Giselle got up, went to a file cabinet in a corner of the room, and came back with some papers. She dropped them on the table in front of Coop without a word.
Nelson looked around. “So, that’s it? This guy does one little job and he gets to walk away scot-free after attacking me?” said Nelson.
“That is the way it looks,” said Salzman. He stood up, took the folder and the box under one arm, and held out his hand while Coop was filling out the form. “No chance of changing your mind?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Coop.
“Well, thanks for your good work. And a great personal thanks for the box.”
“Sure,” said Coop. “Glad to do it.”
Salzman walked out with Nelson trailing after him. Coop filled in as much of the form as he could, but was stumped by a question on the bottom. When he turned to ask Giselle a question, her chair was empty. She was gone. Bayliss shrugged when he looked at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “Come and find me when you’re done and I’ll make sure the form gets processed.”
She left and he filled in a few more lines. Then he wadded up the paper and tossed it in a trash can. He got up and left.
To anyone who didn’t recognize him as a hardworking angel with a malfunctioning Heavenly map of the world, Qaphsiel would have looked more than a little unstable. He wandered up and down North Gower Street staring at what to any mortal going by looked like a small tablecloth. He shook it. Folded and refolded it. Held it over his head. Turned it upside down. And occasionally whacked it against the trunk of one of the palm trees that dotted the street. Nothing seemed to make him or the map happy.
Qaphsiel spotted some shade ahead and stopped to sit on the front steps of an out-of-business deli. He was so close. The map had led him step by step to Gower Street, even flashing the face of the sandy-haired man, before turning to static again. He closed his eyes and pictured a man’s face. Qaphsiel knew he wasn’t far. Somewhere in walking distance, in fact. But Gower stretched dozens of blocks from the hills north of Hollywood down past Beverly. Thousands of people lived along the road. Was this a test from Heaven? Was he supposed to wander up and down Gower, knocking on every door, asking if they knew a blond man who held the fate of the planet in his hands? Qaphsiel shook the map again and rubbed his eyes. Evening was coming on, but the sun reflecting off the map all day had given him a headache. He heard a horn honk the moment he closed his eyes. When he opened them, an LAPD patrol car was idling at the curb. The cop on the passenger side waved Qaphsiel along. The angel got up, raised a hand in a weary greeting, and returned to his walk. The patrol car drove on. Everything felt like a test today.
He was studying a certain spot on the map as he stepped off the curb at Santa Monica Boulevard, right into the path of a car in the process of running a stop sign. It hit Qaphsiel broadside and he flew end over end a good fifty feet down the street. When he crawled to his feet, a little sore but basically intact, he limped back to the corner. The car that had hit him was demolished, the front end a pancake with a deep U shape in the front where it had made contact with the angel.
“Are you all right?” Qaphsiel asked the driver.
“Holy shit. How are you alive?” he replied. He was a young man in a UCLA T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes. “You flew like a fucking mile.”
Qaphsiel dusted himself off. He felt all right and didn’t want to waste any more time. Holding his hands straight out from his sides, he smiled broadly. “See? No damage done.”
The young man’s eyes went wide and he stumbled back into his pancaked car.
“It’s all right. Look. I’m fine,” said Qaphsiel.
“You,” said the young man. The young man pointed with a trembling hand. “You have wings.”
Qaphsiel looked over each shoulder. When he’d skidded on the asphalt he’d torn his Windbreaker to shreds. Now, his wings were sticking out straight from his back.
“Oh, crap.”
The young man got closer. “Are you like a mutant?” he said.
Qaphsiel cleared his throat. “What’s your name?”
“Hansen.”
“No, Hansen. I’m not . . . Well, I’m . . .”
“You’re an X-Man, aren’t you? I knew you were real. I read about it online.” He pointed at Qaphsiel, bouncing up and down excitedly around his wrecked car. “I found this site that proved that all the movies and comics were government propaganda, getting us ready for when they admitted you were real.”
Qaphsiel looked around nervously, worried about other witnesses.
He wanted to agree with Hansen, but that would be lying and against the rules. All he could think to say was “Whatever I am, can you keep my secret?”
Hansen already had his phone out and was snapping pictures of the angel’s exposed wings. “Keep it secret? Sure. No problem.”
Qaphsiel reached out and touched the phone. It emitted a single massive spark and the screen bubbled and melted.
“What did you do, man? My mom is going to kill me.”
“Never lie to an X-Man,” said Qaphsiel. “Especially when you run a stop sign.”
Hansen looked around. “Dude, I’m so sorry. Please don’t call the cops. What can I do to fix things?”
Qaphsiel shrugged out of his torn Windbreaker. Honestly, it felt good to be unfolding his wings, to look and feel like an angel again, even if it was only for a minute. “Do you have a jacket I could borrow?”
Hansen dragged a UCLA letter jacket from the crumpled front seat of his car. He brushed off some broken windshield glass from the front. “That’s my lucky jacket, man. A chick magnet.”
“A chick magnet. Exactly what I’ve been looking for,” said Qaphsiel.
“Keep it, man. It’s yours.”
The angel folded his wings against his back and put on the jacket. It was a little large and gave his wings more room to move around, so at least he got one thing out of the disaster.
“Oh, man,” said Hansen. “No one is going to believe me that I met an X-Man.”
“Remember our bargain. We’re keeping keep this to ourselves, right?”
Hansen looked at his ex-car. “What am I going to tell my insurance company?”
Qaphsiel thought. “Act of God, perhaps?”
“They won’t pay for that!”
“Then I can’t help, other than to suggest you get better insurance, Hansen. But thanks for the jacket.” Qaphsiel walked a few steps. When his knee started to ache he thought of something and went back. He grabbed the boy by the shirt and looked deep into his eyes. “Beelzebub. Is that you in there?”
Hansen didn’t move or try to squirm away, but he looked like if he could have slid out of his skin like a snake, he would have gladly run down the street, just a bunch of wet muscles and bones. “Dude, I don’t know any Beelzebub. Is he another X-Man?”
Qaphsiel gritted his teeth. “Leviathan?”
“Please, man. I just want to go home. Take my jacket. Just don’t Wolverine me.”
“Sorry,” said Qaphsiel. He let go of th
e boy and smoothed down his shirt. “I just had to check.”
It was dark now. A crowd was beginning to gather around the wreck. Qaphsiel limped back up Gower. He opened his map. The lines of force were there. The stars. Best of all, a spot on the map pulsed with light, and it was just a few blocks away. Qaphsiel laughed and waved. “Thank you, Hansen,” he yelled, holding up the map. “It’s working again.” No one in the crowd waved back. They were too busy posing by the wrecked car and puffing out their muscles like the Hulk.
Qaphsiel looked up toward Heaven, more sure than ever that today had been a test of his resolve. To get so close, then having a broken map and a traffic accident. If it was one of Lucifer’s little Job scenarios, someone in Heaven had been looking out for him. Raphael? Sure, maybe someone in the crowd had snapped a photo of his wings, but the world was full of crazy Photoshopped images. No, the accident and photos weren’t important. Not with a working map in his hand. Qaphsiel tried running to the glowing address, but his scraped leg refused to comply. Screw that. Patience might be a virtue, but he’d been virtuous for a long time. If he had to bunny-hop all the way to Fountain Avenue, he’d do it.
As he went he thought that after he destroyed the world, there were things he was going to miss. Sunsets. Pangolins. Spats (admittedly, he hadn’t seen any of those for a while, but he remembered them fondly). Continental drift and photosynthesis. Spaghetti and banana pudding (no, Qaphsiel didn’t eat, but he liked the smells). Muscle cars. The color plaid. He thought for a moment. Was plaid a color? Whatever it was, he liked it. Also, those fizzy mountains that made such pretty colors. Volcanoes.
Yes, he’d miss those.
As he limped to Fountain he wondered how he might be able to get one of those disposable cameras they sold in the shops along Hollywood Boulevard. It would be nice to have a few snapshots to take home with him. Maybe the sandy-haired man could help him with that. One more reason to hurry.
Morty was out with a DOPS agent named Zorya Vechernjaja, whom he described as a “crazy Russian babe who works the night shift and doesn’t go out during the day, but isn’t a vampire,” which to Coop sounded exactly like he was dating a vampire but didn’t want to admit it. Morty had met her the evening of the Babylon job. While Coop was busy bruising his knuckles on Nelson’s nose, Morty was chatting up a Slavic beauty, and Coop never even noticed. While she wasn’t quite human, Morty assured him that she didn’t have “hooves or fur or gills or anything.” How Morty was so intimate with her anatomy so quickly baffled Coop, but then most things that had to do with human interaction baffled him these days. Finding Giselle gone that morning had hit him hard. Hard enough that he was alone watching Forbidden Planet for the five hundredth time and waiting for a Meat Lover’s pizza, all on his own. No girls or boys or things that go bump in the night allowed.
At a little after eight, someone knocked. Coop took out a couple of twenties and went to answer the door. The disappointment he felt when he saw it wasn’t the pizza man was quickly replaced with a whirlwind of dizziness, confusion, and the mild vertigo he always experienced whenever his heart tripped over its own feet and banged its head into the furniture.
Standing in the doorway was Giselle.
He looked at her for a moment.
She looked at him.
Eventually, she raised her eyebrows. “You have to do something, Coop. Throw me out or let me in. There are mosquitoes and muggers out here.”
“We don’t have mosquitoes around here,” he said.
“All right. You caught me. I lied about the mosquitoes. Does that mean I have to go?”
“Nah. You can come in. But no more bug talk. I’m still having tarantula nightmares.”
“Tarantula Nightmare. You could start a band with that name.”
“No, thanks. Phil’s the singer around these parts.”
Coop stood aside and let her come in. She was still in conservative work clothes, but looked like a million bucks in heels.
“Morty’s place hasn’t changed much,” she said, making a circle of the room.
“Yeah. I’ve been a little busy working to find my own place.”
She shrugged. “It’s not so bad. Kind of seventies retro. I like it.”
“I’m not sure it’s retro so much as it’s what came with the place and Morty’s taken good care of it.”
“Smart boy,” said Giselle. “Not every crook is so good at taking care of his things.”
“Is that a shot at me? Can you at least wait for my pizza to get here? I don’t like to be insulted on an empty stomach.”
“Ooo, pizza. What kind? Can I have some?”
Coop paused Forbidden Planet. An invisible creature was busy stomping the spaceship crew to death. “You’re staying that long? I thought you’d be off with your DOPS pals stealing the Scarecrow’s brain.”
She sat on the couch and shook her head. “No, we don’t invade Oz until next week. The Munchkins are going on strike and we want to hit ’em while they’re down.”
Coop sat on the other end of the couch. “So, why are you really here?” he said.
“When you handed in your DOPS gear, you forgot the American Express card I gave you.”
“Oh, right,” he said. He went to his room, looked through his keys and wallet, found the card, and brought it back to her. “There you go.”
“Did you end up getting any new clothes?” she said.
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t like anything they had, but I charged a cab ride back here. Think Nelson is going get me for larceny?”
“I’m good at fiddling expenses,” Giselle said. “He won’t know a thing.”
“Great,” said Coop. “I guess now that you got what you came for you’ll be disappearing again. So . . . have a nice time saving the world. Say hi to Bayliss for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a movie to watch.”
“What’s the movie?”
“Forbidden Planet.”
She looked around him at the screen. “We watched that together once. You liked Anne Francis. I liked Robby the Robot.”
“Yeah? I don’t remember,” he lied. He remembered practically everything they’d done together. He went back to the beanbag chair and sat down. “Be sure to close the door on your way out. I hear there’s mosquitoes.”
Giselle stayed on the couch. “Goddammit, Coop. You don’t make anything easy, do you?”
He swiveled around awkwardly in the chair. “Easy? You know what’s easy? You disappearing. If you count this morning, it will make two times. Add tonight and it’ll be three. It’s like you get a star every time you walk out on me and if you do it enough times you’ll get a free sandwich.”
She played with a bit of frayed fabric on a sofa cushion. “I didn’t walk out on you today. I just went back to my office. I was right there if you wanted to find me.”
“Right. Just like old times. You disappear while I’m not looking and it’s my fault. Some people actually say things. You know? Like ‘Good-bye,’ or ‘See you later,’ or ‘Sorry I’m ripping your heart out, but have a nice day.’ Stuff like that.”
Giselle shook her head. She opened her hands to take in the apartment. “Why didn’t you take the job today? So you could come back to this? So you could go back to jail?”
“I don’t like being kidnapped and I don’t like ultimatums. And I don’t like Nelson or Salzman.”
“Hello? What about me? It’s like I told you right at the DOPS. You don’t have to do everything on your own. I can help.”
“Until I do something you don’t like. Then you’re the Road Runner. A dot on the horizon.”
Giselle shook her head and stood up. “It was stupid coming here. I’m sorry I hurt you, Coop. I was hoping we could try and maybe get past it, but I guess it’s too late for that.”
There was a knock at the door. “Dinner,” said Coop. “And just in time.”
“Are you at least going to invite me to have some pizza?”
Coop shook his head. “Not tonight.”
“All right. I tried,” she said. “Remember that when Anne Francis flies off with the spaceship captain and you’re all alone. Remember I’m the one who gave it a shot.”
Coop got out his money and Giselle trailed him to the door. When he opened it, he took a step back from the gun leveled at his face.
I’ve got to stop just opening doors for people.
Giselle bumped into him and gasped. Coop took a slight step over, getting between her and the grizzly with the gun.
“Hey, Coop,” said Fast Eddie. “Who’s your friend?”
“The cleaning lady. She just finished the drapes. Why don’t you let her go and we’ll talk things over in private?”
Eddie, who towered over Coop, looked past him. “She doesn’t look like a cleaning lady. She all dressed up and stuff.”
“It’s a special service. Formal maids. Costs a little more, but it makes Morty and me feel like Fred Astaire.”
Eddie pushed his way into the apartment. Coop stayed in front of Giselle as they took a step back. “Where is Morty?” said Eddie.
“Out. He had a date. You probably haven’t heard of those. They’re something people do.”
Eddie shut the door behind him. “Sit,” he said and motioned with the gun barrel for them to sit on the couch. Coop and Giselle went over. This time, instead of heading to other ends, they sat pressed up against each other.
“Don’t I know you, lady?” said Fast Eddie.
“Nope,” said Giselle.
“Yeah. You were there that night. You’re a Marilyn, aren’t you?”
“Leave her alone, Eddie,” said Coop.
Eddie stepped forward and put his boot down on Coop’s foot so he couldn’t move. “You try to fog my mind, sister, and I start shooting. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Giselle.
Eddie sighed. “Before I kill you—and you, too, cleaning lady—I’m going to ask you some questions.”
“Why should I tell you anything if you’re going to kill us anyway?”
“’Cause I’ll kill your cleaning lady first.”
Coop put up a hand. “Don’t get all hasty. Why don’t we take a moment and be friends. You want to know about the other night at the Blackmoore Building.”