“And what if I shoot and don’t pay?”
Coop took a step forward. “I’ll be aggravated.”
Morty squeezed Coop’s arm and held up a hand to Mr. Babylon.
“He’s just kidding, sir.”
“No, I’m not. Is it a deal?”
A blazing bolt of bloodred light exploded from the gun and hit Coop square in the chest. It passed through him and hit a room service cart by the wall, where it turned a sixteen-ounce porterhouse steak into a sizzling, bubbling mess that looked less like a steak than like oatmeal someone had left in a cyclotron. Mr. Babylon laughed and slapped his leg. He tossed the pistol back in the drawer and closed it.
Morty withdrew his hand from Coop and looked at it, like he was surprised it was still attached to his arm.
“Damn, that was exciting,” said Mr. Babylon. “I’ve never fired a gun at anyone before. I’ll have to try it again sometime.”
“Shoot me with curses all you want. As long as you pay.”
Mr. Babylon raised a finger in recognition.
“Your money. Yes.”
He pulled out an overstuffed wallet filled with cash. To Coop it looked less like something a normal person carried money in and more like a calfskin phone book. Mr. Babylon peeled off ten one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them over.
Coop tried to look cool when he put the money in his pocket, like letting strange men take potshots at him in upscale hotels was what he did whenever there wasn’t anything good on TV. He said, “Now that you’re done playing Annie Oakley, do you want to tell us what the job is?”
“Indeed I do. Sit down, please.”
Coop and Morty sat on the sofa as Mr. Babylon went to the desk phone and ordered another steak.
When he was done he said, “Would either of you like another drink?”
“I haven’t finished this one,” said Coop.
“Of course. Of course.”
Mr. Babylon dropped down onto the sofa across from them.
Morty said, “I hope no one is going to be shooting at us on the job, Mr. Babylon. I’m not quite as bulletproof as Coop here.”
“If things go well, no one should even know you were there.”
“Where is ‘there’?” said Coop.
“The Blackmoore Building. On display in a glass case in the office of a competitor. He has something of mine and I want it back. It’s been in the family for a long time and I consider it a personal insult that he acquired it by criminal means.”
“Which is why you’re hiring a couple of crooks to take it back,” said Coop.
“Exactly.”
“What is it?” said Morty.
“A box.”
“A big box?” said Coop.
“Not especially.”
“What’s in it?”
Mr. Babylon sat back. “I don’t think there’s any reason for you to know that.”
“I mean, is it dynamite and it’s going to blow us up? Is it gold and we’re going to need a crane to move it?”
“No, nothing like that. It doesn’t weigh more than a pound or two.”
“And it’s not going to explode?”
“In all its long life it hasn’t once.”
“That’s good enough for us,” said Morty.
“Not quite,” said Coop. “What kind of curses are on the box? I have to think that a man like you could buy anything from anybody or bribe someone in your competitor’s organization to steal it for you. What’s wrong with the box?”
Mr. Babylon shook his head.
“There’s no curse, spell, or plague on the box at all. But there is just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Mr. Babylon jammed a chubby finger into his leg as he talked.
“Under no circumstances are you to open it. It’s closed with a wax seal. If it’s broken, the deal is off.”
Coop and Morty frowned.
“What? Is it radioactive?” said Morty.
“Yeah. I’m not too keen on shoving a brick of plutonium in my pocket,” said Coop.
“It’s nothing for you to worry about,” said Mr. Babylon. “Just make sure the box remains closed.”
Coop sat and stared at his drink. He didn’t like anything about the setup. In his mind, he went over the obvious dangers of the job versus his options. It didn’t take long. Even with a thousand dollars in his pocket, his list of options was very short.
He said, “How much does the job pay?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
“And another hundred thousand if we do it before the new moon.”
Mr. Babylon nodded and said, “I can make it more if that would help.”
“Really?” said Morty.
“That’s all right,” said Coop. “We’re not greedy. You offered a hundred and we’ll take it.”
“Wonderful. Honest men indeed.”
Coop drained the bourbon and set the glass down on a coffee table. “The new moon is only three days off, so we’re going to have to work fast. We’ll need information. Blueprints. Layouts of spells and wards. Regular security and the hocus-pocus kind. Probably some equipment, too.”
“Naturally, I’m willing to pay your expenses, as long as they’re reasonable,” said Mr. Babylon.
“Reasonable. Of course,” said Morty.
Mr. Babylon reached around and took a green folder off a table behind him. He held it out for Coop. After his last encounter with a green folder he wasn’t thrilled to take it. But he did.
“Here’s some of what you asked for,” said Mr. Babylon. “Plans, lists of employees, the sorts of enchantments my competitor is partial to, those sort of things. If you need more let me know.”
There was a knock at the door. Morty jumped. Mr. Babylon got up and let in the waiter, who rolled in a room service cart.
“They’re fast with the food around here,” said Coop.
Mr. Babylon glanced at him as he signed for the steak. “They are for me.”
The waiter put the signed receipt in his pocket and went to get the first tray. When he saw the remains of the steak, he took a step back and carefully used a napkin to put the silver serving dome back over the melted meat. Mr. Babylon graciously held the door open for him as he pushed the cart out with his fingertips.
“I think that’s it for now, gentlemen,” he said. “I didn’t get to sample my previous meal and now I’m famished.”
Coop and Morty got up and headed for the door. Mr. Babylon walked the other way.
“Sure. Enjoy your dinner,” said Coop.
“Enjoy your thousand dollars,” said Mr. Babylon. “Maybe we’ll play William Tell again sometime.”
“Just let me know in advance next time. And bring your wallet.”
Coop didn’t bother waiting for a reply. Mr. Babylon was already cutting into his steak. He and Morty let themselves out.
When they were in the elevator, Morty let out a long breath and laughed nervously.
“Holy shit. The way you talked to him, I almost had a heart attack.”
Coop shrugged. “He pulled a gun. It was upsetting. This whole place is giving me a rash. Let’s get out of here.”
Morty only had a couple of dollars on him when they got downstairs, so when the jester attendant brought the car around, Coop had to tip him with one of the hundreds. The attendant seemed genuinely confused when Coop asked for change.
EIGHT
IN A WIDE DARK ROOM, TWELVE ROBED FIGURES LIT only by red candles stood around an altar covered in eldritch carvings and ancient runes. A silver tray lay in the middle of the altar with five black triangular hosts arranged in the shape of an inverted pentagram. A robed priest at the head of the altar held up a host he plucked from a nearby bowl, which was also covered in a fearsome scrawl and glyphs of birds with what looked like pig heads. Plus, a kitten sticker someone’s kid had put on it that they’d never been able to completely scrape off.
“Hear me, O Caleximus, thundering archfiend, master of the sky throne, creator and destroyer.
Accept this offering of the flesh of your chosen beast. A gift to you from us, your unworthy followers.”
The priest was dressed in a robe so dark that it looked like his head and hands were floating in the blackness.
“Give us your ear, dire Caleximus. We have such tidings to share with you.”
He placed the host on his tongue and swallowed. Or tried to. At first he just coughed. Then he made a gagging sound like he was trying to gargle a porcupine. The priest collapsed to his knees before the altar. A low cry went up around the room. He was down on all fours. Everyone froze, wondering what he’d done wrong to piss off their cantankerous netherworld deity. Some people began edging toward the exit.
Finally, the priest coughed the host onto the floor. He got to his feet slowly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked around at the other robed figures.
He said, “Jerry? Were you in charge of putting together the offerings?”
The room was silent.
“Jerry?”
“Yes?” said someone quietly.
“Were you in charge of the offerings?”
“Yes.”
The priest walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Are these the fried flesh of a black boar sacrificed with the eagle-headed blade on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm?”
Jerry shook his head.
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? What are they, then?”
“Blue corn chips.”
An angry murmur went around the room.
“Corn chips. That’s not really even in the same ballpark, is it?”
Jerry shrugged.
“What kind of chips were they?”
“What?”
“What brand of chips?”
“Monsieur Crunchero.”
“Don’t you mean Señor Crunchero?”
“No. Monsieur. They’re Canadian.”
“Because when we think of Mexican food we think of Saskatchewan,” said the priest.
Jerry pushed the hood of his robe back, revealing a young man’s face, pockmarked and with an overly optimistic slash of red hair on his upper lip.
“They were the only ones left in the store.”
The priest sighed.
“That’s not really the point, Jerry. What happened to the black boar?”
“It ran away.”
“It ran away?”
“You try holding a full-grown boar in a thunderstorm. Everything is wet and slippery. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. I cut myself with the damned knife. It just happened. I’m sorry.”
A grumbling went through the group. A couple of people muttered “Dipshit” and “Clueless.” The priest sighed.
“I don’t know what to do here. You buy some off-brand potato chip . . .”
“Blue corn chips . . . so they’d be the right color.”
“Points for you, Jerry. You try to slip corn chips past us like maybe Caleximus, who’s a goddamned god, wouldn’t notice. And now you say you lost our boar. Do you know how much boars cost these days?”
Jerry shook his head.
“No.”
“A lot,” someone shouted.
The priest said, “A boar would be the equivalent of a metric ass-ton of corn chips. Did you buy a metric ass-ton of corn chips?”
“No. Just the one bag.”
“Here we are, sending up smoke signals to Caleximus to give him good news, and now there’s none to give him.”
Jerry looked around the room at the other robed figures.
“I’m really sorry.”
Steve, the priest, pushed back his hood. Like the boy’s, his hair was red, but he was older, his face lined and creased. “I don’t know what to do here, son. It’s like you don’t even take the Apocalypse seriously.”
“But I do.”
“Do you want those Abaddonian shitbags in Burbank to invoke their false god and set off their Apocalypse first?”
“No, sir,” said Jerry. “I hate those pricks.”
“Good boy. Because our Apocalypse is the only real Apocalypse and no one gets to offer up the Earth and its nonbelievers but us. Right?”
“Fuck the Abaddonians,” shouted a woman from the back of the room.
The group nodded and mumbled. “Fuck the Abaddonians.”
“All right. Quiet,” said Steve. “The old-folks’ home has a spaghetti dinner going next door. No need to ruin the codgers’ appetites.”
People laughed. Steve Sallis, the priest, turned back to the boy and shook his head.
“Okay, Jerry. You’ve got a lot to make up for.”
“I know.”
Steve looked out at the other worshippers. “For those of you who got here late and missed it, the good news is this: we think we’ve got a line on the Vessel of Invocation, meaning we can finally bring Caleximus to Earth—right here, right now—to us.”
Another murmur, a happier one this time.
“It’ll be a dangerous task to retrieve it, though. I’m looking for volunteers,” said Steve.
Someone shouted, “I volunteer Jerry.”
Jerry looked around.
“Fuck you, Tommy.”
But Steve was looking at the boy.
“What do you say, Jerry? Are you ready to make up for this Crunchero fiasco?”
“I guess,” he said sullenly.
“Damn right you guess.”
Steve pointed at the group.
“The boy can’t do it alone. Any other volunteers?”
Not a single hand went up.
“Nice, everybody. Really nice. Caleximus is very proud of each and every one of you pussies, pardon my French. That’s it, then. Everybody goes. Got it?”
Whispers of “Oh man” and “You pay for the damned sitter” could be heard.
Steve unzipped his robe. On the back was a sequined lightning bolt and eagle with a boar’s head. Susie had made it for him on their third wedding anniversary.
“I think we can officially call the invocation over for the night. Someone hit the lights.”
Fluorescents flickered on in the double-wide trailer parked on a construction site in Glendale. The desks and filing cabinets had been pushed back against the walls to make room for the ceremony.
As Steve folded his robe he said, “Jerry.”
“Yes, Dad?”
Steve upended a couple of hard hats and poured in the rest of the chips. “I swear to Caleximus that if you bought chips and you didn’t get guacamole and salsa, I’ll skin you alive myself and we’ll eat you at the next meeting.”
From the look in the man’s eye, the kid wasn’t so sure if he was kidding.
“They’re in the car,” he said.
“Go get them.”
Steve looked around until he saw his wife. “Susie, darlin’, break out the Bud. That’s it for now, people. Can somebody take down the candles? The Apocalypse can hold on for a couple of days. As long as we’re ready by the new moon we’ll be fine.”
The others started disrobing, too. From across the room, Jorge—Steve’s partner in the small construction firm—called, “So, where’s the Vessel of Invocation?”
“In an office downtown. We’re going to break in and take it.”
“How are we going to do that?”
Tommy, who’d heckled Jerry earlier, said, “My brother-in-law is a janitor there. He can get us in.”
Steve raised his arms to the ceiling. “To Caleximus and the destruction of mankind.”
“To Caleximus and destruction!” shouted the rest of the group.
Steve smiled. “These suckers aren’t going to know what hit them.”
“And they’re not going to know it for very long!” said Jorge.
Everybody laughed happily as they moved the furniture back into place.
Susie came over with the beer and ruffled Steve’s hair. “Don’t be too hard on the boy, dear. He tries his best.”
“I know. It’s just that sometimes he doesn’t have the sense of a s
ack full of squirrels.”
“I know.”
Steve took a long gulp of his beer.
“Remember not to drink too much tonight,” said Susie. “You promised to help me with my pie for the bake sale.”
Steve took a breath. “Yeah. About that. Do you still want to go through with it? I mean, there isn’t a store in town that will let us sell outside. They all say the Apocalypse is bad for business.”
Susie sipped her beer. “I know, but I want an excuse to make one more apple pie. I’m not going to the fiery depths of the underworld without showing up that bitch Randi Huston and her damned lemon squares.”
Steve put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Okay, honey. One more sale.”
Susie gave Steve a loving peck on the cheek, then wiped off the lipstick with her thumb. “Hail Caleximus,” she said.
NINE
THE STRANGER SAT ALONE IN A BOOTH INSIDE LARRY’S Large Lad diner in Red Bluff, a California town about five hundred miles north of Los Angeles. The day was sunny, and from his booth he had a view of both the I-5 freeway and the Sacramento River. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about rivers. He liked the flowing water, but they were all crooked and bent at funny angles. Too meandery, he thought. Maybe something needed to be done about that.
Around the diner’s ceiling were pictures and knickknacks from Red Bluff’s early days as a Gold Rush and then a railroad town. Directly over his table was an autographed photo of Leo Gorcey of Bowery Boys movie fame.
The stranger was tall and slender, with the kind of dramatically sculpted cheekbones that you only see on Greek statues and rich people who’ve paid a surgeon to make them look like statues. His shoes were expensive black Oxfords, but badly stained with road grime. Though it was warm outside, he wore a long coat that in another, more nervous locale would have made people, well, nervous. Like he might be hiding something, which, in fact, he was. When he took off his sunglasses the stranger revealed his most striking feature: that he had one deep brown and one glittering blue eye. In his opinion, it made him look dashing. A great number of other people often thought it made him look like he needed medical attention or perhaps a good burning at the stake.
He took a menu from the holder on the side of the table and opened it with the reverence befitting a Gutenberg Bible.