As I’m locking up, Kasabian comes out of his room with an ice bucket.
“Where are you going? You look like shit,” he says.
“Just making a run to Donut Universe.”
He looks me up and down.
“You always go out strapped to buy fritters?”
“You never know. I might have to wrestle someone’s granny for the last one.”
“Okay. You told your lie and we got that out of the way. Where are you really going?”
For a minute I consider telling him.
“I can’t say. But if I’m not back by six, have Chihiro give this to Julie.”
I hand Kasabian the envelope. I sealed it, which was pointless. Kasabian will steam it open the moment I’m out of sight. But at this point, I can’t worry about that.
“I don’t know what you’re up to, but if you expect me to give Candy your suicide note, fuck you.”
“I don’t know what’s going on either. I’m just trying to cover all the bases.”
“You’re going off to get killed and leaving me and Chihiro to fend for ourselves. We don’t even have the store to go back to.”
I head across the parking lot.
“I’ll try to be back by dark. Just give her the note if I’m not.”
The Crown Vic is still parked by the Museum of Death. I forgot I left it in a metered spot. There are about fifty tickets and a tow-away notice on the windshield. I throw them all in the gutter.
My right arm is still pretty useless, so I have to lean over and start the car with my left. I didn’t take any of Allegra’s pills because they’d make me too loopy to drive, which already makes me dislike Wormwood goddamn Investments.
I drive south, left-handed all the way. Am I nervous or just on autopilot? The oil fields seemed to appear out of nowhere just a few minutes after I left the hotel, but I know I’ve been driving for at least half an hour.
I turn on Stocker Street and see an open gate to the fields. I’m not that stupid. I park on the shoulder of the road around the corner and go through the gate on foot.
Inside are a few sheet-metal buildings, a couple of trailer offices, breaker boxes, and a scattering of porta-potties. All around me, the oil pumps rise and fall like those stupid drinking-bird toys. People don’t think of L.A. as an oil town, but they’ve been sucking crude out of the ground for over a hundred years. More people have died for these fields than in all the gangland gunfights and hits in L.A. The Mob tried briefly to make a move on them. Oil was the only money game that managed to completely and utterly shut them out. That’s how much muscle petroleum has always had in this town.
I come around a corner and into a scene I’d expect only Samael could pull off.
Food trucks are lined up in a semicircle. Mexican, Korean, southern, and a few others. At the end of the line are a couple of trucks that look like they’re handing out desserts.
In the middle of the semicircle, on the packed dirt ground, is a long dining table set with crystal glasses, and expensive-looking china and cutlery. Eight people, four men and four women, move between the trucks and the table. They’re in suits and evening gowns. They all stare at me when I come around the corner.
A bald man with his jacket off and sleeves rolled up heads in my direction. Right behind him is a dark-skinned woman pretty enough to make Salma Hayek blush. It’s all plastic surgery, of course. The tightness of her face is a dead giveaway. The man has had work too. When he smiles, enough of his face doesn’t move that I bet he has his own in-house Botox Dr. Feelgood. Still, this is no time to get judgmental. With my limp, gimpy arm and dirty boots, what do I look like to them? A Victorian street urchin with his nose pressed against the window, hoping for some scraps of their Christmas goose.
“Stark,” says the man, extending his hand. “Thanks for coming. I’m Geoff Burgess. And this is Eva Sandoval.”
He’s not the same Burgess I saw at the fight club, but there’s a decent enough resemblance. I shake both of their hands and look around.
“This is quite a spread. You always eat like this?”
“Not at all,” says Burgess.
“Geoffrey is just showing off because we’re having such an important guest,” says Sandoval. She takes my good arm and walks me over to the food trucks. I wonder if Sandoval got on my left out of old-world charm or to make sure I can’t reach the Colt. Burgess walks on my right. I’m surrounded. Politely, but still surrounded.
“I hope you’re hungry,” says Sandoval.
“What do you recommend?”
She smiles at me.
“I hear you’ve developed a taste for Japanese. Maybe some sushi?”
A Chihiro joke. Great. We’re already starting with the veiled threats. Or was that just a little rich-people humor to remind me that no one has secrets from shits with enough money?
I look over at the southern truck.
“How’s the fried chicken?”
Burgess says, “Outstanding. That’s what I had. Beer batter with enough cayenne to wake you up, but not send you to the emergency room.”
“That’s for me, then.”
Burgess raises a hand, and when we get to the truck a leg and thigh are waiting for me in a paper tray. I take it and some napkins and follow my hosts to the far end of the dining table. Before I can sit down, the other lunch guests get to their feet and applaud something. I look around and realize it’s me. The applause doesn’t last long, but it’s still unnerving. The last time anyone gave me a standing ovation was in the arena in Hell.
“Don’t mind them,” says Sandoval. “They want you to know how happy we all are to finally meet you.”
I nod, spread out a napkin on my lap.
“About that. You said something about me being an important guest. You want to explain that?”
“Try the chicken first,” Sandoval says.
“You’re a whiskey man, right?” says Burgess. He goes to one of the trucks and comes back with a couple of glasses of amber liquid. I sniff mine.
“Don’t bother,” Burgess says. “You won’t recognize it. We have our own distillery and bottle it ourselves. Just for family and friends, you understand. Let me know what you think.”
I take a sip.
Holy shit.
“How did you come up with this recipe?”
“Why do you ask?”
“This is the best thing I’ve tasted next to Aqua Regia and I’ve never met anyone up here who even knows about the stuff.”
“I suppose that means we’re not just anyone,” says Burgess.
“I suppose so.”
“Try the chicken and then ask your questions,” says Sandoval. “I suspect that you have a few.”
I take a bite of the bird.
“What do you think?”
“It’s as good as the whiskey.”
“It is, isn’t it?” she says. “Now, what’s the first thing you’d like to know?”
“What are you people? What’s Wormwood? Some kind of bank?”
Burgess nods.
“To some people. But really we’re an overall investment entity.”
“What kind of investments?”
“Money, of course. That’s what most freshman investors with us want.”
Sandoval sips her whiskey, then says, “For more discriminating clients, we handle specialized products. Physical commodities. Oil, obviously. Land too. In more exotic departments, human organs. People.”
Burgess wipes away a water ring on the table with his thumb.
“And there are our ephemeral departments. They handle items such as souls. Damnation. Salvation. Those are some of our biggest markets.”
I wipe the chicken grease off my fingers and push it away.
“I don’t understand a single thing you just said. H
ow do you invest in damnation?”
“Let me explain it to you,” Sandoval says.
“In as small words as possible.”
“Of course. When we said you were an important person, we were being quite sincere. Our investments in afterlife products were minuscule until you came along.”
“Try this,” says Burgess. “You’re a profit center for us. We’ve backed a lot of your exploits.”
“Through direct investments and working the margins,” says Sandoval.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even have a checking account.”
“Simply put,” says Burgess, “everything you’ve done since escaping from Hell has generated profits for us, both tangible and intangible. And everything you do in the future will continue to generate profits.”
I look at the two of them, then the others.
“The White Lights didn’t want Death,” I say. “You did.”
Burgess brightens.
“Well, the Legion wanted Death for their reason and we wanted him for our own. Their blackmail operation was going to bring in some revenue, but we had bigger things in mind.”
Sandoval says, “Death can kill, but he can choose not to kill too. That was our first concern. We planned to live forever. We still do.”
“With Death on our side, we could nudge the ephemeral division in any direction we wanted,” Burgess says. “Some chaos is all right. Even useful. But too much randomness is bad for business. Unregulated deaths are too wet and messy. But with Death on our side, we can manipulate markets on Earth, as well as our Heaven and Hell departments.”
“Are we talking about money?” I say.
“Money, sure. But it’s more than that. Those Cold Case merchants you dislike so much? Where do you think they get the majority of their souls? We collect all kinds of collateral and forfeited assets.”
“In the end, it’s not about wealth, but about power,” says Sandoval.
“Why do you want that kind of power?”
“Only people with no power ever ask that question.”
“Have you ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four?” says Burgess.
“I haven’t even seen the movie.”
“There’s a passage in there, a small monologue by a character named O’Brien. I’ll try to paraphrase it for you. Wormwood isn’t interested in the good or even bad of others. We don’t have a political ideology. We’re interested in power, pure power, because the object of power is more power.”
“For what?”
“It doesn’t matter. For whatever we want,” says Sandoval. “Here or in other places of existence.”
Burgess chuckles.
“You know, we lost a lot of money in the damnation market when you convinced God to allow damned souls access to Heaven. I’ll admit it. We didn’t see that coming.”
“But we made it back when the angels barred the souls from entering,” Sandoval says.
“Exactly,” says Burgess.
“You see? In the end, anything you do enriches us.”
She looks at my plate.
“Your chicken is getting cold.”
“Fuck my chicken. Is Abbot, the Augur, part of Wormwood?”
They both laugh.
“No,” says Sandoval. “Wormwood is only for important people.”
I remember a man I once met. They said he was the richest man in California.
“I bet Norris Quay was part.”
Burgess picks up his whiskey and sniffs it.
“He still is. Our man in Hell, scouting for new investment opportunities.”
I copy Burgess and finish the rest of my drink.
“So, all the White Lights killing people, Vincent and McCarthy, Tykho’s crazy Nazi past, the battle for death, all those poor semidead slobs caught in limbo, all the ghosts destroyed in the club—all that meant nothing?”
Sandoval picks pieces off my chicken with her fingernails. Swallows them.
“Not nothing,” she says. “They were each a factor in an investment decision. Think of it this way. There is war in the Middle East and there are pirates in Somali that seize oil tankers. They both affect the price of oil, but that’s all. There’s always been war and there will always be pirates. No one particular thing is special. But if you understand the markets, there’s always profit and power to be had no matter who wins.”
“The simple point is, Stark, there’s nothing you can do or not do that won’t benefit us,” says Burgess. “Live. Die. Fight for truth, justice, and the American way, put down a zombie hullabaloo, or drown in a bottle. Your actions since your return have made you an investment factor. Even showing up here today made me a few shekels. Kominsky over there thought we’d have to send a riot squad after you.”
Burgess shouts to someone down the table.
“Here he is, Pieter. Don’t forget to pay up.”
Pieter, a fat young man in a Caesar haircut, looks up.
“Don’t bother me. I’m eating.”
The crowd laughs quietly. I don’t.
I say, “But Vincent killed McCarthy. You’re not going to live forever.”
“Please,” says Sandoval. “We’re not naive. We hedged the hell out of that fight and came out fine.”
“Because we always do,” say Burgess. “And there are other roads to immortality that we’re exploring.”
“Why are you telling me all these things? Did you bring me out here to kill me?”
“Of course not. You’re much too valuable. We just thought it was time for you to know who you’ve really been working for all this time.”
“You’re not part of the Golden Vigil, are you?”
“Who knows?” he says.
“No. You’d tell me if you were. You’re fucking with me to see what will happen.”
“We just want you motivated and interesting.”
“Did you have anything to do with Mason killing Alice or sending me to Hell?”
“I wish we’d seen that one coming.”
“When you lived . . . well, it’s our job to spot a good investment,” says Sandoval. “We’ve had our eyes on you for almost twelve years now. Your exploits in the arena did well for us.”
Burgess says, “Of course, we had to adjust our strategy when you kept winning.”
“I hope you don’t mind that we rigged a few of your fights. I mean, you had to lose sometimes to keep people betting. But don’t be too mad. We were the ones who suggested to Azazel that he give you the key to the Room of Thirteen Doors. You weren’t his first choice.”
“So really, you owe us,” Burgess says.
“You sicced the county on us, didn’t you? The fucking eminent domain.”
Burgess holds up his hands.
“Guilty as charged.”
“You were getting too comfortable. The market was slumping,” says Sandoval.
“And we’re the ones rescinding county’s order, so calm down. You did enough for us getting Vincent and McCarthy together.”
“Rescind Julie’s order too.”
“Of course.”
My head hurts. I wonder for a second if they put something in my drink. No. They said they weren’t out to get me, and as insane as they are, what profit would there be for them?
“Do either of you have an aspirin?”
Burgess calls down the table, “Does anyone have an aspirin?”
Lots of shrugs and shaking heads.
“Sorry,” he says. “We don’t really get sick.”
Sandoval says, “Technically, we do. But we have people who do it for us.”
“A sort of Dorian Gray situation,” says Burgess. “Surely you know that story.”
“That’s a movie I’ve seen.”
“Excellent.”
I look around at Geo
ffrey Burgess and Eva Sandoval, at their friends, the food, and oil pumps. All the miserable trappings of their astonishing power and wealth. I haven’t eaten much today. The whiskey is dancing around in my stomach.
“Thanks for lunch. Can I go now?”
“Of course. No one is keeping you here,” says Sandoval.
“Okay. Then I’m going.”
I get up and start walking.
“Safe driving,” she calls.
“Yes. Remember to take your vitamins,” Burgess yells. “We want you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
Before I go around the first set of oil pumps, I turn and give them all the finger. More laughter and applause.
Black smoke coils up into the sky and blows down Stocker Street. I walk to the shoulder of the road.
The Crown Vic is on fire. Fully engulfed. Don’t bother calling an ambulance. The patient cannot be resuscitated. I stare at it for a couple of minutes.
It’s a mild day. In the midsixties. My head and my arm hurt. I wish I’d brought some of Allegra’s pills along. I start walking to Hollywood.
I’m not more than a few hundred feet down the road when some genius starts honking at me. I flip him off and keep walking. He honks again. I reach under my coat. Maybe I can scare him away with the Colt.
I turn and sitting a few feet away in a red 1960 Ferrari 250 GT is Thomas Abbot. He’s as young and handsome and posh as ever. I want to hate him, but I’m too tired.
He rolls down his window.
“Need a lift?”
“How did you know where I’d be?”
“Wormwood isn’t the only one keeping tabs on you. Get in.”
I consider it and decide that if Abbot wanted me dead too, he could have just run me over.
I go around to the passenger side of the Ferrari and get in.
“Nice wheels.”
“Awesome wheels,” he says.
He rolls up his window and hits the accelerator. The car takes off like a rocket and he pilots it like someone who’s been doing it for a while.
Killing Pretty Page 32