“Trust me? Didn’t I do that feather thing with the guy from Hell with you? Totally against every rule.” He stopped scowling. “What do you mean, disagreement?”
“All right, argument. To put it more clearly, Sam said I was a stupid, paranoid dick. I’ll tell you all the fun details some other time. I don’t think he’s given up on me, but I also can’t count on him right this moment. So I need you, kid.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know yet. But shit is getting serious. From now on, don’t talk to anyone in Heaven you don’t need to, and don’t talk about me to anyone—including Sam.”
“Really?” He looked very worried by this.
“No, Clarence, I’m just joking with you. We’re going to meet him at Chuck E. Cheese later on and play skee-ball. Yes, Sam. Until I know where he stands on Kephas, I have to play it very, very safe.”
Well, Clarence wouldn’t be satisfied until I told him the important facts about Kephas, that it was probably Important Angel Anaita who wanted my soul jerked out and fed to demon-alligators—although even if I was right that she was behind it all, I still had no idea why I’d pissed her off so badly in the first place. Yes, I had wound up with her feather, but I hadn’t stolen it, and I hadn’t wanted it. She didn’t have any need to go after me at first. Of course, after the whole thing went down with Eligor and Caz I probably knew too much to be left alone.
“Oh, Clarence,” I said, “one more thing. We’re friends now, in a weird sort of way. But if you’re not what you keep telling me you are—if you’re still working for our bosses somehow and you rat out me or Sam, I swear on the Highest I will make you wish you’d never met me.”
He was startled at the change in my tone and showed me hurt-puppy eyes. “That wouldn’t be anything particularly new, Bobby.”
“That’s because I’m difficult. Because I’m rude. But if I have to come after you, you’ll have entirely different reasons. Serious reasons.”
“Thanks for the good faith.” He scowled. “You give angels a bad name.”
“Not my fault. I’m just as the Good Lord made me.” Yeah, like I should automatically trust somebody who had started out as a fink for management.
I wasn’t feeling particularly enthused about seeing G-Man again, so I left Clarence still shaking his head in dismay and I started home. While I still had bars on my phone, I pulled into a parking lot and called Alice at the office to tell her I needed a longer, indefinite leave of absence. Alice informed me in her cheerful way that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in the Devil’s backyard that would happen, so I asked her to address the request straight to Archangel Temuel. I hoped the Mule would back me up, or at least delay the request long enough to give me some time before it was turned down. Too many things were happening at once now, and I couldn’t afford to be called to any surprise job reviews up at the Big Shiny.
While I was sitting at the curb I went back over Fatback’s latest information-dump about prominent local Persian-American women. The more I looked, the more I liked my candidate; she was wealthy, had no immediate relatives I could find, and seemed very, very private. I called George’s number and got the answering machine.
“Hey, hope the worm treatment is going great, and congratulations on that. Skip all the other people and just get me everything you can find—I mean everything—on this woman named Donya Sepanta. Fast, too, if you can tear yourself away from the mud saunas. Please.”
Back at Caz’s apartment, the Amazons had clearly been having a dress-up party. Oxana greeted me wearing a yellow Dolly Parton wig and a miniskirt that would have looked immodest on a ’60s stewardess. Halyna sported a sleeveless red leather pantsuit and an Afro wig, although with those muscles she looked more like Ike than Tina. They were both still wearing their combat boots and various spiked leather armbands and neck straps, though; the combination was somewhat unsettling.
“Luckily for you two I already have enough money, or I’d be pimping you out to the small but select militant-Nancy-Sinatra-bondage-dyke market,” I said. “No, you both look great, but I think we’ll tone it down just a touch when we go into action.”
“Not too much,” said Halyna, primping her wig. “This is most fun we have in America.”
“Our great nation has that effect on tourists,” I said. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”
As entertaining as it was watching two young women enjoy themselves getting in and out of clothes, it only made me wish Caz were there. I locked myself in the bathroom for a while so I could concentrate on my work. After all, Heaven wasn’t going to overthrow itself.
sixteen
letting it bleed
ONE OF those northern weather fronts had dropped down on us from somewhere in the neighborhood of Alaska, so as I drove across town I kept the defroster on and the windshield wipers at full speed. It was a cold rain, and I would much rather have been sitting in a warm apartment that still smelled like Caz (although with the Amazons each taking two steamy showers a day, the scent was almost gone). The Tierra Green Apartments had the oldest, most pathetic water heater outside the Third World, and its pilot light went out at least a couple of times a week. The women hadn’t had regular hot water in months, and they were taking full advantage of it now.
I was listening to Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones, a nearly perfect album both for rainy days and for considering the end of the world as we know it. Not that I was really planning to overthrow all of Heaven, just part of it—one certain, very powerful part of it, to be precise—but even so, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Love In Vain” seemed disturbingly appropriate.
I parked out on Parade along the waterfront, still hoping to keep my recently painted car hidden from prying eyes, and checked for people following me as I took a roundabout walk to the Compasses. My fellow heavenly advocate Kool Filter was huddled in the doorway of the Alhambra Building, trying to stay dry under the awning, but since the rain was blowing sideways he wasn’t doing very well.
“A silent protest against the unfairness of the city’s smoking laws,” I said as I walked up.
Kool offered me a fist. We bumped. “Silent, hell. I’ve been bitching about it for years. But it doesn’t make much difference when nobody’s listening.”
“Our true condition in this world writ small.”
He gave me a look. “What’s that shit mean?”
“You know. We all work for shadowy forces, follow rules we don’t understand, and when we complain, nothing happens.”
“I don’t know what happens when you complain, man,” he said, grinding out his most recent cigarette in a puddle. “But I know when I do it, I get my ass kicked by the Mule.”
I liked Kool. He was a good guy, a straight shooter—my idea of an angel. “Did you ever think that maybe it’s all bullshit?” I asked.
“Yeah. And it is.” He paused and eyed me again. “Hang on, what are you saying, exactly?”
“That maybe the folks we work for aren’t as perfect as they seem. That maybe some of them are corrupt. That some of the things we’re doing aren’t just to help people or to bring glory to the Highest.”
Kool laughed. “Shit, boy, what’s got into you? Our bosses aren’t perfect? Some of what we do is bullshit, and the rest is dubious?” He lit another cigarette. “I’ve got only one thing to say to that: so what else is new?” He let out a cloud of smoke. “But it pays the rent.” He smiled. “In a metaphorical sorta way, anyhow.”
I left him there, huddled in the doorway, trying to keep the rain off his nice clothes. The thing is, Kool was probably right. Maybe all my co-workers, every angel in every city, had figured this all out already. Maybe I was just refusing to go along with the way things were. Caz had called me a romantic several times, and it hadn’t sounded like a compliment.
The Compasses was about what you’d expect on a Wednesday afternoon—so
me regulars and a couple of out-of-towners passing through. Pretty much every angel in the Bay Area knew where the good bars were, the safe bars where you could take off your halo and let your hair down, so to speak. I saw Jimmy the Table and several other familiar faces sitting at one table, and Monica at another with Teddy Nebraska. Monica waved. I hadn’t had much chance to talk to her lately, but Monica Naber is another one who falls into the category of “good people”—even if, like me and most of my friends, she’s not really a people.
I let Young Elvis corner me for a minute and tell me about what he’d done lately to his ’72 Camaro, a bunch of upgrades which sounded flashy, expensive, and pointless—just the way I like it. But having so recently put my beloved AMC Matador Machine on the block, I wasn’t really in the mood. I begged off with the excuse I needed a beer, which had the advantage of being true, then made my way up to the bar. Kacey the relief bartender was on duty while Chico was in the back doing inventory, so after she gave me a beer I headed to the stockroom.
The room back there must have been part of the original Masonic lodge, at least judging by the early twentieth-century floral wallpaper that still hung in strips where the wall was visible. Now most of it was covered by shelving racks, and although one side was taken up with freezers full of bar food, the rest of it was stacked with bottles. It was actually pretty fascinating, all the different bottles that booze came in, different shapes, different colored glass, with the one common factor that enough of what was inside would get you blotto. In previous days I would have happily pulled down a couple of the more esoteric ones for a test drive, but I was here on business. My own business, but business nonetheless.
I didn’t see any immediate sign of Chico, so I called his name. He stood up, wearing an apron with a bunch of pockets, looking like the sweetest Suzy Homemaker in maximum security prison. He glared as if he wasn’t thrilled to see me. I sometimes wondered if Chico and Alice from the office were secretly married, or at least long-separated siblings.
“Hey, Dollar. What you want?”
“Just a few minutes of your charming personality, which will give me the courage to make it through another gray day.”
“Hey, guess what. Fuck you.”
I love Chico. He’s the nicest angel I’ve ever met who doesn’t like anything or anybody. Except customers, and that’s only for their money. Other than that, he really hates them. Since he can bend an iron pipe in his bare hands and is a pretty fair shot, too, I can’t help wondering sometimes what very peculiar branch of Heaven spawned our bartender. Maybe that was the secret—maybe he and Alice had both come out of the same Counterstrike unit. “Right back at you, big boy. Actually, I need a favor.”
“Needing ain’t getting.”
“You know those silver salts you use in your shotgun?”
He looked at me as though I was standing on his foot and hadn’t figured it out yet. “Yeah?”
“Where did you find them?”
He shrugged and turned back to his inventory. “Friend of a friend. You know.”
“Do you think your friend could get me some?”
“It’s just silver nitrate powder. You can buy that shit on the internet. How much do you need?”
“I don’t know—fifty, hundred pounds?”
He laughed harshly. “Shit, dude, that’s going to set you back twenty thousand bucks or something—it’s fucking silver! You going big-game hunting in Hell?”
It would have been funnier if I hadn’t just got back a few weeks earlier. “No, man. But I got an idea I want to try.”
“Well, don’t tell me about it. It’s bad enough you brought that big demonic motherfucker here and tore up my bar, man. I don’t want to lose my license because you’re doing some crazy shit.”
At least I knew where to start. Maybe Orban could get me some kind of Weapons of Mass Destruction Discount on the stuff. “Cool, man. Don’t worry. I wasn’t even here. Thanks for the advice.”
“Hey, wait a second,” he said as I reached the door. He slid a couple of bottles back into a shelf and stood up. “I almost forgot. I got something for you.”
“Just for me? It’s a bit early for Valentine’s Day, Chico—it’s not even Christmas—but I’m touched.”
“You know why I like you, Dollar?” he said as he led me across the storage room and into the boxy little cubicle he uses as the Compasses’ office.
“Why?”
“Trick question. I don’t.” He reached in and picked something off the desk, handed it to me. It was a sealed envelope with my name on it—my earthbound name. “Some guy in a suit left it for you. Asked when you’d be coming in next. I told him, if it was up to me, not for years.”
I looked at the letter. I didn’t know what it was, but I already didn’t like it. “Are you really still pissed about that Sumerian monster wrecking the bar? It was Sam’s idea to come here, y’know, not mine.”
“Two assholes, one brain.” Chico led me out of the cubicle. “Don’t trust either of you.”
Back in the bar, I finished my beer and decided I could allow myself one more. I had a quick catch-up with Jimmy the Table, who wanted me to come in for the next Friday night poker game, now being changed to Thursday nights (although it was still apparently going to be called the Friday Night Poker Game) but I begged off.
“We never see you anymore, Bobby,” he said sadly. “Sam, either. You guys find some new place to hang out?”
“Don’t know about Sam, but I prefer to drink at home with my stereo, my collection of great books, and the two oversexed Ukrainian girls who live with me.”
“Kidder,” he said. “Well, don’t be a stranger.”
“No more than usual.” I leaned in and gave Monica a kiss on the cheek, thumped Teddy Nebraska on the shoulder in a comradely way (because I seemed to make him nervous, and I kind of enjoyed it) and then wandered out. I really wanted to open the letter, but I thought I should be a bit discreet. Half of what I was up to these days needed to be kept secret from Heaven, so the middle of the most popular angel bar in San Judas might not be the best place to read my mail.
The rain had slacked a bit, but I was still cold and wet when I reached my car. The good thing was, it was now a lot easier to see if I was being tailed through the nearly deserted streets. Still, I drove a circuitous route out of downtown just to be on the safe side, keeping my eye on my rearview mirror, but I didn’t see anyone tailing me.
I stopped to pick up a few sandwiches at a deli I like. I didn’t really know what Amazons ate, although so far the answer seemed to be “everything that isn’t nailed down,” so I just took my best shot. Then I headed back to Caz’s place.
It occurred to me as I pulled into the secure garage that since I’d sent a message back to Caz, or tried to, I was hoping to hear from her again. The problem was, I’d moved since the nizzic found me, and the new place didn’t have windows, so I’d have a hard time knowing when it found me again. Something else I’d have to think about.
To my absolute lack of astonishment, Halyna and Oxana were watching television when I got there, one of those horrible reality things where the host confronts people over paternity and infidelity. They seemed to be enjoying it, so I dumped several of the sandwiches onto a plate and slid it in front of them.
“When is something going to happen, Mr. Bobby Dollar?” Halyna asked, but I noticed she didn’t take her eyes off the sleazy boyfriend who was shouting back at the studio audience, “You don’t know nothing ’bout it! You don’t know nothing!”
“This man crazy,” said Oxana, amused as only the young can be to find out how stupid lots of people are.
“No, really. We want to help you,” Halyna said. “When can we help you?”
“Sooner than you’d like, probably, so enjoy the time off.” I took a pair of rubber gloves out from under the kitchen sink, then went to Caz’s desk where the light was better.
Most of the lamps in the main room were hidden behind gauzy draperies, so that the place looked more than a little like a bordello. I’d been a bit taken aback the first time I saw it, until I’d realized that Caz, however sophisticated she’d become over the course of several hundred years of afterlife, was still at heart a medieval girl. She had probably dreamed of living somewhere like this when she was young—some idea of Moorish luxury that would have been quite different from her cold home in Poland.
Once I had the gloves on I checked the envelope again, but it hadn’t been mailed so there wasn’t much information to be had, only my name—“Mr. Robert Dollar,” which was actually kind of funny—written on the outside in felt pen.
The inside was different, if only because the paper was fancy business letterhead, embossed with a familiar symbol:
Dear Mr. Dollar,
it read, clearly printed from a computer document in so-very-1990s Helvetica 14.
It has come to my attention that a truly unfortunate error has been made by some of my employees invading your privacy. I assure you that I personally would never have allowed it, and that when I heard that matters had gone so far as a physical encounter between you and my overzealous subordinates, I disciplined those responsible.
We are not enemies, Mr. Dollar, and we should not be enemies. I hope I can prove that to you. In fact, we have many goals in common and my organization could be helpful to you in reaching yours. I would very much appreciate a chance to discuss this and other matters with you. Please come to my office on Friday at 15:00 and let me explain.
I apologize for the unusual way of communicating with you, but you seem to have changed your address, and I had no other way to reach you.