Killing Pretty

by Richard Kadrey

  “Let me ask you something straight. Do you trust this guy? He seems too good to be true.”

  “I thought so too when we first met. He does work hard to make a good impression, doesn’t he? But over the years I’ve learned that a few ­people are what they appear to be. Especially the ones with good hearts.”

  I look back the way we came.

  “But he’d still have a troublemaker killed if he thought it was for the greater good.”

  “Of course. Don’t take his good manners for weakness. He is the Augur, after all. But I don’t think you have to worry. I can tell he likes you.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I wouldn’t give Gentleman Jack to an enemy.”

  Tuatha looks at me more seriously than she ever has before.

  “Think about the offer. Really think about it. I think you two could do wonderful things together.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Fortune. Take care of yourself.”

  She goes back to the cabin and Abbot to talk about me. If I could still shadow-­walk, I’d come out behind the drapes and listen to what they really think. As it is, all I can do is speculate. Like, are they setting me up for something or is this a chance to get some real money?

  I walk past the bodyguards. They don’t show the slightest interest in me.

  Back on the deck of the burned-­out boat, I stand and look out to sea, playing the last few minutes over in my head.

  I don’t know what to think. I want to tell Abbot to fuck off and walk away, but I’ve played that game so many times before and where has it gotten me? Broke. Almost homeless. With no real prospects and less power than I’ve had since I went Downtown. Being an Abomination is one thing, but being a loser Abomination is really not acceptable. Still, I can’t get past the fact that the James Dean pretty-­boy prick was just too good to be true.

  I weigh the bottle in my hand. Cock my arm to throw it out into the harbor. I’m halfway through my swing when I stop.

  On the other hand, he could have poisoned me on the boat and dumped my body in the ocean where no one would ever find it. Even if Abbot is a snake, it doesn’t mean I have to take it out on an innocent bottle of good whiskey. And being on the outside so long is starting to lose its charm. What’s the saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? I don’t know who Tommy is, but maybe I should be the cave bird in his hand, just for a while. It’s something to think about.

  As I wander back to the Crown Vic, a stretch limo pulls up a few yards away. Four goons climb out of the back, two from each side of the car. They eye me like a Gucci SWAT team. Unlike the meat pies on the boat, these are Sub Rosa heavies, second-­rate magicians, but with big balls and a lot of dark, baleful magic tricks.

  I act like I don’t see them, open the car door, toss in the Jack, and slide inside the Vic like any good civilian heading home after a day at the marina. With my left hand, I adjust the rearview mirror so I can see them. I keep my right hand on the key in the ignition just in case. Once the wolves have decided the coast is clear, a squat, older man with a cane climbs out of the car.

  His clothes are so out of style, for a second I think he must be a vampire. Some of the slow ones lose track of the decades and fail to notice that not everyone wears zoot suits anymore. It makes them easy to hunt. This guy, however, is out in broad daylight, so he’s no shroud eater, meaning his look is deliberate.

  He has on a bright red leisure suit, white patent-­leather shoes, with a white belt, like the regional manager of a carpet-­cleaning company in 1974. I only get a glimpse of his face before the goons close in around him, but it’s enough.

  It’s Tamerlan Radescu, the necromancer. He’s not just a Dead Head, he’s the McDonald’s of Dead Heads, the only magician I’ve ever heard of who’s licensed his name to other magicians. Any competent but mediocre necromancer can buy a franchise, use Tamerlan’s name and “techniques,” and instantly double his or her income, all while kicking back a percentage to the home office. ­People say Tamerlan himself hasn’t done a lick of hoodoo in years. He just collects the checks and buys bad suits.

  Tamerlan lets himself through the gate I had to break into and heads down the dock for the Augur’s boat. Where else would he be going? Looks like Tommy is still getting acquainted with the local Sub Rosa heavy hitters. Have fun staring at that grisly suit for an hour.

  As I start the car I stare at all that money, feeling sorry for myself. Because I have to drive another hour back across town. If I end up taking Abbot’s offer, I don’t want a stipend.

  I want a jet pack.

  I’M BACK ON the 405, stuck behind a vegan bakery truck with a flat tire. It’s not their fault, but now I’m hungry for a plate of carnitas. As the traffic in our lane slowly merges into the next to get around the carrot huggers, my phone rings. I answer it and hit the speaker button so I don’t have to hold it.

  “Stark? It’s Julie. Where are you?”

  “Stuck in traffic on the dark side of the moon. Where are you?”

  “At the office. Can you get over here? I have some information.”

  “Me too. I just met the new Augur.”

  “Really? Wow. You’ll have to tell me about it.”

  “Not anytime soon. Seriously, nothing is moving. I’m going to be here for a while.”

  “Fine. We’ll do it this way. I have an ID on Death. Death’s body.”

  “Who is it?”

  “His name is Eric Townsend. A commodities trader at a boutique company called Yaa and Sons.” She spells it out. “It sounds like it might be China-­based. I’m going to check them out.”

  The guy behind me honks, an existential bleat in a concrete river of despair. I give him the finger. Fuck you, Jeff Gordon.

  “Yaa isn’t Chinese. It’s an old Indian name for Los Angeles. And I mean old. Like five thousand years old.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m a magician. We know lots of funny things. And sometimes Kasabian watches Jeopardy!”

  “Anyway, that’s an interesting name for an investment company.”

  “No shit. You have anything else?”

  “A lot. From all accounts, Eric Townsend was a very upstanding businessman, one of his company’s best. That’s before he disappeared six months ago.”

  “Any idea what he’s been doing for all that time?”

  Brake lights flash like fireflies up ahead.

  “Listen to this,” says Julie. “That tattoo he had lasered off? It’s the same emblem that was on the shirts of the three men you and Candy saw on Wonderland Avenue.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s the insignia of the White Light Legion. Ever heard of them?”

  “Aren’t they some freaky skinhead group? Like religious Nazi assholes?”

  “You’re partly right, but they’re much stranger than that. The Vigil has a whole library on the White Lights and the Silver Shirts.”

  “Now, the Silver Legion I’ve heard of. Local Hitler groupies back in the thirties. They were kind of a big deal at one point.”

  “Their leader was a disgruntled screenwriter named William Dudley Pelley.”

  “Leave it to a writer to go nuts and think he can take over the world with his Dungeons and Dragons crew.”

  “It goes much deeper than that. Pelley didn’t want to take over the country. He wanted to pave the way for the Führer in the U.S. when he won the war in Europe. Pelley started the Silver Shirts on January first, 1933, the day Hitler became chancellor of Germany. But he wasn’t a run-­of-­the-­mill fascist. Yes, his group attracted the usual bullies and thugs you find in those groups, but Pelley saw himself as a spiritual leader. Call it New Age fascism.”

  “What does that mean?”

  A Caddy cuts off a plumbing truck to move farther left, so I cut off a Prius to do the same.

  “In 1928, Pelley had a
‘clairaudient’ event. A kind of out-­of-­body experience that later, in an article, he called ‘My Seven Minutes in Eternity.’ He said he was hit by a shaft of bright white light that took him to another plane of existence where he heard voices. He talked with the souls of the dead, even God and Jesus. Along the way, he gained special psychic powers.”

  “This guy is starting to sound like every snake-­oil salesman I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Not quite. Pelley was special. The Silver Legion had fifteen thousand members at one point, three thousand in California alone. But Pelley didn’t want to just be a fascist. He saw himself as a great religious leader and that the beings he met on his out-­of-­body journeys had picked him to bring about a spiritual revolution in America.”

  “What kind?”

  “Pelley had psychic experiences for four years after the first one in ’28. According to him, they unlocked his mental powers. Some accounts say he claimed he could levitate. He could speak to ‘secret masters’ that lived on other planes, and it was his job to teach others what they taught him. He even had his own metaphysical magazine, the New Liberator, where he published general spiritualist articles and his own teachings.”

  We come to a complete stop again. A pickup truck and a Maserati almost sideswipe each other as they wrestle for an exit ramp.

  “What does any of this have to do with Townsend? He wasn’t a Silver Shirt. You said he was in another group.”

  “Yes, the White Light Legion. They were split off from the Silver Legion in the late thirties over some kind of metaphysical dispute. They didn’t think Pelley’s teachings went far enough. They weren’t practical enough. If Pelley could levitate and communicate with dead souls, they wanted to do the same. Their leader, Edison Elijah McCarthy, thought Pelley was holding out on them.”

  “A Nazi must have loved having a name like Elijah.”

  “By the time he legally changed his middle name to Monroe, it was too late. Enough ­people knew his real name. He spent years trying to cover it up.”

  “What are you saying? Those White Lights guys slaughtered a whole houseful of ­people on Wonderland because someone knew their leader’s real name?”

  “I doubt it, but it’s hard to say exactly what the White Lights want. We know they demanded access to Pelley’s most esoteric teachings, but there’s no way of knowing if they got it. They had their own publications, but they destroyed them all in the early sixties when an FBI agent briefly infiltrated the group. Since then, all their teachings have been by word of mouth and no other plants have gotten close enough to the inner circle to learn their most important beliefs.”

  Julie is on a roll. I don’t want to stop her, but I’m going crazy sitting here. I dig the Maledictions out of my pocket and light one up. It’s a small victory.

  She says, “We know that Edison kept in touch with some of Pelley’s contacts in German fascist and metaphysical organizations. But we don’t have much information about that either. What reports we have say he did have dealings with the Thule Society.”

  “I’ve heard of them. Dark-­magic dilettantes and trying to prove Aryans were the master race, tracing them back to earlier made-­up civilizations. Atlantis and other cheap fantasies.”

  “Right. Apparently he was in touch with other groups too, but there are no records of which ones.”

  “So really, all you know is that this Townsend, a straight-­arrow banker type, was a member of a group that wanted to ascend to higher planes and turn themselves into Nazi X-­Men. Do I have that right?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Guess he didn’t ascend fast enough. But why is Death walking around in his skin? And what happened that made him burn his association with the White Lights off his body?”

  “I’m sure the two are connected, but I don’t know how. Maybe killing and mutilating Townsend was punishment for leaving the group.”

  “Sounds right for bully boys like that. They don’t like quitters and they’d probably see anyone who wanted out as a potential rat.”

  “This is all assuming that the White Lights have anything to do with this at all. We don’t even know if the White Lights are the ones who killed him. And even if they did, it could have been another group that used him as a vessel for Death.”

  “Like Dead Heads?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I saw Tamerlan Radescu headed to the Augur’s place when I left just now.”

  “That’s interesting, but again, we don’t have any concrete connections.”

  “Maybe we should look for them.”

  “Maybe. We need to talk to Death about this. He might have heard or remembered something.”

  “Have you found anything about the abandoned building where he said he woke up? Sub Rosa like trashed buildings where they can hide their mansions inside.”

  Like a miracle, traffic begins to open up. I can touch the accelerator without feeling like a storefront preacher praying for rain.

  “I’m working on that now. I have some ideas, but I need to do more research.”

  “This is all too strange. I like my Nazis young, bald, and dumb. I don’t like clever fascists. I knew one once. His name was Josef. He did a lot of bad things to nice ­people.”

  “Is he still around? Maybe I could talk to him.”

  “Good luck. I cut off his head.”

  The line goes silent and I wonder if the call dropped. Then I hear Julie’s voice.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you’re kidding.”

  “Of course I’m kidding,” I say, but I’m not. I burned Josef and his skinhead dogs out of their clubhouse, and when he came for me, I took the fucker’s head off with the black blade. It wasn’t a hard choice. Josef was a Kissi. But Julie would never understand that, and sometimes a little white lie saves a lot of time. So I just say, “Josef really is dead. There was a fire at his group’s compound and I heard he went down with the ship. Besides, he was smart. He’d smell the cop on you and laugh in your face.”

  “You’re probably right. Stop by the office when you get back to the city. I want to hear about the Augur and Radescu.”

  “I should be there in less than an hour. We’re finally moving. Cross your fingers it stays that way or you’re going to be there till the Rapture.”

  “I’ll light a candle for you. Get here as soon as you can.”

  “You got it.”

  As the road opens up more, it occurs to me that I’m an idiot. I had the perfect opportunity a few minutes ago. I mean, if anyone could get me brass knuckles it would be the Augur. Now I’m going to have to ask for knuckles and a jet pack.

  IT’S PAST ONE when I get back to Julie’s office. She didn’t have anything new on Death’s case, but she was plenty interested in the Augur and his floating mansion. I couldn’t tell if it was professional curiosity or if she’s just fascinated by the idea of the Sub Rosa world because she’s never been quite so close to it before.

  It’s two before I can pry myself loose and head home. The whiskey at Tommy’s place is coming down on me. I’m out of practice morning drinking. I need coffee and food and bed, not necessarily in that order.

  But things never quite turn out the way you want, do they?

  I find a spot across the street from Max Overdrive and park the car. Waiting in front of the store, in a pressed suit probably hand-­stitched by archangels, is Samael.

  Samael has his back to me as I cross the street. He’s staring at the word KILL painted on the window. I go over, take out a Malediction, and light it with Mason’s lighter.

  Samael makes a rectangle with his fingers and looks at the paint job through it like a pretend movie director.

  “Your work?” he says.

  “No. It was one of your creeps.”

  “And what did you do to him?”

  “Just spanked him a little. No more than he
deserved.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Samael gestures at the store.

  “How is the little lost lamb?”

  “Stick your head inside and see. He’s right there.”

  He waves a hand dismissively.

  “No thanks. Frankly, he gives me the willies.”

  “When did you get so sensitive?”

  “Death isn’t any more popular with angels than he is with mortals.”

  “That must make company picnics awkward.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “What’s the story with Mr. Muninn? Why is Death still here? Why hasn’t he sent an army down here to bring him home?”

  “Can’t. Politics,” he says, nods at my cigarette. “May I have one of those? I forgot mine.”

  I take out the pack and offer him one. Light it for him.

  “You were saying politics.”

  He nods.

  “Many angels object to Father opening the gates of Hell the way he did. They don’t want to allow those damned souls into Heaven. Some, the younger, angrier ones, want to expel the souls already there.”

  Unfortunately, shutting down Hell and opening the gates for both souls and Hellions was my idea.

  “You’re saying I made everything worse.”

  Samael leans against the wall. I bet his suit doesn’t even get dirty. It wouldn’t dare.

  “No. Father made it worse by following your advice. But yes, it was your idea. Still, you aren’t the daddy of this particular rebellion.”

  “But I’m its uncle.”

  Samael smiles.

  “No good deed goes unpunished. You should know that by now.”

  “I don’t do good deeds. I do pragmatic.”

  “You keep telling yourself that.”

  We just smoke for a minute while I think. How could things be even worse than before? There was a civil war in Heaven, and Hell was coming apart faster than a gelatin Harley.

  “Who do you think could have put Death in a body?”

  “No angel is that stupid. Even Hellions. It had to be a human magician.”

  “What about all the ­people who are half dead?”