by Tad Williams
A part of me, of course, was reminding myself over and over and over again that I should never have tried to lie to the higher angels of the Ephorate. Hubris, the Greeks called that. “A dumbshit move,” might be a more contemporary way of putting it.
Then suddenly I was not alone anymore.
“Angel Doloriel,” said the light, in the voice of a sweet child. “God loves you.” It took me a moment to recognize the staggeringly beautiful radiance as Anaita, one of the five high angels who’d somehow been appointed to keep me in line, or perhaps to prepare the way for my removal. “I have been sent to deliver the Ephorate’s judgement.”
I braced myself for whatever was to come.
“But first . . .” she said, and as she hesitated her light dimmed and wavered just the faintest bit, as if she wanted to say something difficult. I’ve never seen a higher angel show any kind of hesitation before, but I didn’t have long to think about it.
“But first,” said another voice, “you realized you had to wait for the rest of the delegation.”
Karael appeared in a burst of golden gleaming.
And now Anaita’s presence definitely guttered. I think I was seeing surprise. That’s something else you don’t expect to see out of any of the higher angels. “Karael?”
“The Ephorate decided we should deliver the judgement together,” he said, becoming a little less of a glow and a bit more of a human shape, or as human as his heavenly form ever got. “But you left before they had completed their deliberations, Anaita.”
“I was . . . unaware.” She was flabbergasted was what she was, or at least I’m assuming that’s how it translated. It was a bit like trying to interpret the body language of a G-type star, but she certainly seemed taken aback. What was going on with these two? Was I witnessing a feud? Or something even stranger? It had certainly seemed like Anaita wanted to tell me something.
“No matter.” Karael spread his fire before me. “The Ephorate continues to be troubled by the events that involve you, Angel Doloriel, but of course the Highest wants only justice. Therefore your judgement has been delayed.”
I didn’t know whether to be outraged or relieved. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that we are still concerned, but that other matters are calling for our attention,” said Anaita. She didn’t sound happy about it either.
Normally I keep my mouth shut as much as possible when I’m in Heaven, and Heaven’s atmosphere of slightly dopey satisfaction makes it easy. But normally, I haven’t just been perforated in all kinds of painful places by some kind of zombie hitman and then jerked upstairs to be scolded. “Hey, I’m concerned too. I’m concerned with why it’s supposed to be my fault that these things keep happening to me.” The best defense and all that. Well, I figured it was worth a try. If they weren’t going to terminate my contract, I didn’t think I’d push them into it just by mouthing off, and if they were . . . well, I’d rather vanish from the universal scheme on my feet instead of my knees.
“Understandable,” said Karael. “That is why we have been given this matter for ephoral judgement, Doloriel, to be certain you are treated fairly. I know you want to go back to work.”
What I wanted was to be left alone to figure out what crazy shit I was up to my neck in this time, but what I said was, “Yes, of course. That’s just what I want.”
“But that is just what the Ephorate cannot allow,” Anaita informed me, “at least until we have had time to consider all the complications of this case . . . this . . . situation.” She was definitely putting a spin on it, but was it for my sake or Karael’s? “Your work involves you in too many areas we are still investigating, Doloriel.”
“So what does that mean, my judgement is ‘delayed’? Until when?”
“Until the time arrives,” said Karael in his most infuriating, you-don’t-need-to-know sort of way. Then his voice hardened. It sounded like a healthy echo of the Almighty Himself. “Until that time, Angel Doloriel, you are relieved of your duties as advocate. You may remain here or on Earth.”
I was more than a little shocked, but I knew better than to argue with them. It could have been worse, much worse, and at least this would give me some time to consider my next move. But I had to make a bit of a show. “That’s it? Just suspended or whatever? Until some time in the fuzzy future?”
“You’re too wrapped up in earthly things, Doloriel,” said Anaita. “Time is meaningless outside of mortality.”
“Right.” I was ready to offer grudging acceptance now. “I suppose—”
“There is no suppose,” said Karael. “The Ephorate has decided. We will summon you when it is time. Until then, know that God loves you. Farewell.”
And just like that it was all gone—Karael, Anaita, the Hall of Judgement, the shimmering complexity of the Paslogion. And yours truly was back in his flawed earthly form, which happened to be lying in a hospital bed with a bad case of Smyler Kicked My Ass.
I had been sentenced to freedom. At least for a while.
eight
old friends
I DIDN’T STAY in the hospital long. Sequoia Medical is short of beds as it is, and since angels heal fast, once they saw how quickly I was getting better they didn’t argue much when I checked myself out. I did get a lecture from one nice young doctor about refraining from active sports and strenuous activity for a while. It wasn’t me she needed to tell, of course, it was the guy with the piranha mouth and the very, very bad attitude.
The police interviewed me about the attack too, but since they thought I was a private investigator working a major insurance fraud, they didn’t kick up too much fuss. Heaven is good with bureaucracy, and I’ve kept my concealed-carry permit active since my Harps days, so I even got my gun back, which I filled with silver as soon as I could get to the rounds I’d left in the Datsun.
Instead of going back to my apartment (Smyler obviously knew about it, since he’d been waiting for me outside) I disposed of the now-petrified burger and fries I’d been bringing home the night of the last attack, and then drove down the Bayshore.
I parked in Southport and limped out to the ruins of Shoreline Park, because I didn’t have any other way of getting hold of Sam and I was getting desperate to talk to him. I had taken a roundabout route to make sure I wasn’t followed, and I kept my eyes open as I walked carefully through the filth and wreckage, between walls of corroding tin and broken plywood covered in fading paint. When I reached the Funhouse, I left a message on the mirror that Sam had shown me. I wasn’t stupid enough to write anything obvious. It just said, “Where we ate lunch, 7pm.” Sam would remember the little Southeast Asian place, I knew, and it would be up to him to get there without being followed. The question was, when, if ever, would he find this note? It looked like I was going to be eating Burmese food for the next few nights, but there are worse things to do, believe me.
I didn’t have to explore the menu all that much—Sam strolled through the door of the Star of Rangoon just as I finished ordering, looking very Robert-Mitchum-ish in his wrinkled coat and big, baggy face.
“Did you get me the pancakes?” he asked.
“You want the pancakes, order them yourself, you lazy bastard.” It was good to see him. He looked good, too, with a relaxed smile on his wide face.
He shoved into the booth, called the waitress back and ordered for himself, then looked me up and down. “Few new bruises, I see. Did Karael and some of his militant angels work you over?”
“I wish.” I told him who had given me all these new cuts, scrapes, and puncture wounds.
“You’re shitting me.” His ginger ale arrived and Sam drank half of it at a swallow, as if the long trip from Third Wayville had made him thirsty. “Leo bagged and burned that little creep.”
It was strange how easily it all came back together, as if Sam and I hadn’t been through all that craziness, as if he had never lied to me. There was, however, a little hollow place deep inside me, even if I was ignoring it. “Tell me abo
ut it. But it was Smyler. It is Smyler, and he’s still out to get me. I think Eligor put him on me.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, the closest he’ll let his good-old-boy persona come to showing actual surprise. “Eligor? Why would he do that? You’ve still got the magic golden feather, don’t you?”
My old chum was the one who had hidden it on me in the first place, trying to protect me from an infernal double-cross. With one thing and another, though, he hadn’t bothered to tell me about it until much later, which was one major reason I had almost died about eleventy-thousand times in the previous weeks, in many, many interesting ways.
“Yes, I’ve got it,” I said, “or at least I assume I do, since I can’t actually touch it myself. And if Eligor was smart he’d just leave me alone. But I think the whole thing goes a bit deeper than common sense.” I took a breath. “I have to tell you something.”
And I did. I told him the whole thing about me and the Countess of Cold Hands, the whole bizarre, tabloid-headlines story: Angel Loves Demon, or I Sold Out Heaven for a Roll in Hell’s Hay. Although, the only people actually disadvantaged in any way by our relationship were Caz and myself. Oh, and Eligor, of course. The grand duke definitely counted himself as an injured party.
Sam didn’t say anything for a long time after I finished. He signaled for another ginger ale, and the proprietress brought it over with the good grace of a camel trudging through a sandstorm. He took his time pouring and then rolled it around in his mouth like a wine critic about to hold forth on this year’s Beaujolais nouveau.
“Well, B,” he said. “I have to admit, you have lifted fucked-up to an entirely new level.”
I laughed in spite of everything. “I have, haven’t I?”
“I’ve got no problem with you shtupping a dybbuk, particularly.” Sam liked to use Yiddish sometimes. Maybe he thought it made him sound intellectual, maybe he just knew it was funny when an angel who looked so Boston Irish started dropping Brooklyn Jewish. “But you definitely could have picked one who would have been less trouble than Eligor’s main squeeze. So what are you going to do?”
And that was the problem: I didn’t know. As far as I could tell, Grand Duke Eligor had just decided he didn’t want to wait until I made it to Hell the usual way—he was sending me an express invitation. “It’s got to be Eligor trying to get me, right? You and I saw the bagmen take Smyler. Leo burned him! How else could he be after me now?”
“Yeah, somebody powerful does seem to have it in for you. What happened to Walter Sanders, by the way?”
“He’s still not back yet. No news. Which now that you mention it is pretty strange.”
Sam had a last paratha, ladling up the curry sauce like a canal dredger, then polished off his ginger ale. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
We walked to Peers Park, then settled on a bench. The lights were on and the park was full of parents and kids enjoying the spring evening, which made me feel slightly less vulnerable to being attacked by a twice-dead guy with a bayonet, but Sam himself was on Heaven’s Most Wanted List, so I wasn’t exactly relaxed.
“Okay, first off,” Sam said as we watched a guy trying to get his obviously brain-damaged dog to fetch a tennis ball, “only a butt-hat says, ‘my enemies are trying to kill me, so I’d better make it easier for them by going over to their place.’ Trying to sneak into Hell is the dumbest thing you’ve ever thought of in a career of pretty amazingly stupid things, Bobby. You know that, right?”
“I don’t know what else I can do, Sam. I can’t just leave her there. And it’s not like Eligor’s willing to leave me alone either. Obviously.”
He grunted, the Sam Riley version of a long-suffering sigh. “Knew you’d say that. But how would you get in there? Or get her out of there? Shit, even if a whole pile of miracles sort of happened one on top of the other, and you actually got away with it, where would you hide her from Eligor once she’s out?”
“Yeah, I admit there’s a ton of questions. I was kind of hoping you might help out with some of them.”
He grunted again. It was like sitting next to a hippo wallow. “Man, you’re way out of my area of expertise here. But we agree that Bobby Dollar walking into Hell is a stupid idea, don’t we? Good. Because you wouldn’t last ten seconds.”
“What about the bodies you have access to? You Third Way guys?”
“Kephas, whatever he or she might be, only gave me access to a body to help make the whole Magians thing look legitimate.” The Magians were the group of renegade angels, like Sam, who had recruited souls for the Third Way—the neither-Heaven-nor-Hell afterlife. “You wouldn’t do any better trying to waltz into Hell dressed as the Reverend Mubari than wearing your own ugly mug. This is Hell we’re talking about, Bobby, not Disneyland.” He gave me a look that should have sent me home crying. “And even if you find a body to wear, how do you get in? There are lots of gates, but there are even more guards. Bored, mean guards who used to be murdering psychopaths when they were alive, but haven’t even got the threat of Hell hanging over their heads now. Because they’re already there, right? And they’re in charge!”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Don’t rub it in, Sam. I’ll think of something.”
“So many terrible situations have begun with those exact words, B, but I suspect this one will be special even by your famously screwed-up standards.”
Sammy-boy stood up, gave me the number of a safe phone so I could leave him messages without having to hike all the way out to Crackhouse-by-the-Sea, then took his leave. I sat for a while, thinking as I finished my beer.
Helpwise, I had struck out with both Sam and the Sollyhull Sisters, so if I was really going to try to sneak into Hell, I’d have to find another way. I supposed the Broken Boy might have an answer to that, but the problem was that I already needed to ask him a costly question about Smyler, because I was likely to get stabbed in the eye long before Sam’s psychopathic Hell guards would ever get their chance to beat me into jelly, and I couldn’t really afford to pay the Boy to answer two questions.
Either way, though, it was painfully (and expensively) obvious where I was going next.
nine
ectoplasmic boogaloo
I LIKE TO drive. For one thing, I find it just distracting enough that it leaves my mind free for deep thinking. If you ask me just to sit down and think, all I think about is how I’m tired of sitting down, but behind the wheel of a car I just turn the driving over to the lower functions and let my thoughts loose. Also, with the exception of my bosses trying to get hold of me, or the occasional hellbeast trying to disassemble me, when I’m driving I’m safe from interruptions. I knew my phone wouldn’t ring because I was on suspension, and unless Smyler had got hold of something faster than his old VW van, he wasn’t going to trouble me on the freeway. So I drove north, thinking.
Sam was right, of course: the whole idea of trying to sneak into Hell was so stupid that nobody in his right mind would even bother with it. There was a reason we’d been fighting these guys for a million years or more, and it wasn’t because we didn’t like their national anthem. They wanted to destroy us and did their best to accomplish that every damn day. Breaking into the place—well, that would be like a Jew breaking into Buchenwald. You might accomplish it somehow, but what would you do when you got there?
But my alternatives were few. And even if I didn’t go, I’d still have to find a way to deal with Smyler, which, despite his comparatively small size and up-close choice of weaponry, had already proved pretty damn difficult. I mean, how do you kill someone who’s already died twice?
With cheerful thoughts like these in my head, and the fabulous slide work of Elmore James rasping and clanging from the car’s speakers, I drove north through the no-man’s-land of smaller communities strung along the peninsula between San Judas and San Francisco, until I reached the industrial ruins at the edge of the Bayview district in South SF. I didn’t know exactly where I was going to find the Boy, but I knew he’d be somewhere under concrete in t
hat not very nice part of the world. Bayview was where all the black shipyard workers settled, only to be kept there by economics and prejudice after the dock work dried up. It was a poor community, defined more by what other people thought about it than anything else, a refuge for the old and vulnerable. Which, I suppose, is why the Broken Boy had never left.
I spotted the first piece of telltale graffiti on a concrete stanchion, something that looked like a vertical row of letter “D”s, or an aerial view of a pregnant chorus line:
They weren’t Ds, of course, but Bs. Two of them, for the Broken Boy, which meant I was in the right area. It’s his obscure way of advertising. He doesn’t have many customers, but the ones who need him need him real bad, so he hangs out his shingle. I parked my car, locked it, checked to make sure I’d locked it, then set out on foot to see if I could find a greater concentration of BB-tags.
Eventually, somewhere north of Bayview Park, I spotted three of the tags on the same corner under the freeway. More importantly, an African-American kid of about ten or eleven years old was sitting there on a chunk of concrete and rebar, pitching pennies by himself against a pillar. He watched me from the corner of his eye as I approached, plainly trying to decide what kind of threat I was.
“Hey,” I said when I was about ten feet away. “I’m looking for the Boy.”
The kid gave me a quick you-ain’t-much look, then went back to flicking pennies against the cement. “So?”
“I’ve got five bucks if you can take me to him. I’m an old friend of his.”