The Dirty Streets of Heaven bd-1

by Tad Williams

  She looked away again. “I was convicted of murder, of course, and after much torture I confessed to witchcraft as well, because why else would a woman kill such a fine husband and then try to destroy his children, too, unless she was possessed by Satan himself?” She was winding down now, her head nodding like an exhausted child in the back seat of a car. “I was not treated leniently by the authorities, either in this world or the next-but that’s no surprise, is it? Count Pawel hadn’t done anything to me that most husbands do not do, in spirit if not in fact. If I’d had a clever advocate like you, perhaps I would have received a lesser sentence than eternity in the pits of fire. But I didn’t.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I realized I had been silent for long moments. “Nothing…there’s nothing….” I stammered. “You didn’t deserve…”

  “Hush.” She sat up a little and laid her finger against my lips. “It’s all over now. What did Marlowe write? ‘But that was in another country. And besides, the wench is dead.’”

  “Caz…”

  “Don’t. I told you, that wench is dead. Come and love this one…while we can still love.”

  And what else was left to me in my horror and my sorrow except to do as she asked?

  twenty-three

  assorted blasphemies

  We had fallen asleep, and again I woke first, or thought I had. I lay with Caz’s head pillowed in the crook of my arm and stared up at the ceiling. The light hadn’t changed but now the swirl of flame-colored draperies and the dim light behind them gave the space above me the feel of sunrise, even though outside, in the real world, it must have been much later in the morning than that.

  I took my phone off the bedside table and tried to call Sam again but couldn’t get a signal. It occurred to me that I might be missing a bunch of incoming calls; that I might be missing actual clients. Even worse, if I was missing calls from my bosses in the Celestial City, coupled with the damage the ghallu had done the night before, they might think my body was dead or critically injured, and only the Highest could guess what kind of crazy snafu might come from that. If I had possessed any sense at all I would have been out of Casimira’s hideaway hours ago and doing my best to reestablish contact with Heaven.

  I was about to put the phone down when Caz stirred. “You can’t use your cell here,” she said sleepily.

  “I figured that out.”

  “If you really need to call someone, use the landline. Just make sure you’re not calling anyone who’d want to trace the call.”

  Landline. I felt like an idiot. I found the slim receiver sitting on its stand on the desk.

  “You look good with no clothes on, Wings,” she said.

  “Thanks. I worked my way through angel college as a go-go dancer.”

  “Liar.”

  “Delivering obscene birthday-grams.” I was only half paying attention-I had got an actual dial tone this time. To my surprise, though, it wasn’t Sam who picked it up on the second ring.

  “Sam Riley’s phone.”

  “Monica? Is that you?”

  “Bobby? You’re alive!” She actually sounded pleased. “Where are you?”

  “Nevermind, how’s Sam? How are you, for that matter?”

  “Sam’s not good, but he’ll pull through. We’re here with him at Sequoia emergency-me and Jimmy and Annie. He got broken up pretty badly…”

  A pang of guilt and sorrow stabbed my gut. “I’ll come right over.”

  “No!” I could imagine all the other people in the waiting room turning at her loud exclamation. When Monica spoke again it was in a near-whisper. “Unless you killed the thing with the horns, somehow. Which I doubt.”

  “No such luck. It was all I could do just to get away.”

  “Then don’t come near here. The last thing anyone needs is to have that two-ton monstrosity come smashing through the hospital looking for you.”

  Which meant I was being ordered to stay away from my best friend’s bedside-my best friend who had been smashed up trying to help me. “Okay. I see the logic even if I don’t like it. Is Sam awake? Can I talk to him?”

  “He’s way, way under, Bobby. His brain was swelling so they induced a coma. I don’t know how the fixers from upstairs are going to explain this one-The Compasses looks like someone drove a train through it. On the fourth floor. Chico’s over there now, wrapped up in bandages like Claude Rains, swearing at the water damage. I was pretty proud of the hose, actually.”

  “As you should be-that was a nifty idea. Don’t worry about the cover story too much. They can say a single-engine plane crashed into it-probably already have. I’ve seen them use that one before. The Clean-Up Squad keeps smashed-up plane and car parts and all kinds of useful shit like that in a warehouse in Millbrae.”

  “Like they say, my Father’s house has many mansions.”

  “And you’re really okay, Monica? Really? Not too badly hurt?”

  “I’m a bit bruised, but I’ll live. How did you get away?”

  “I’ll tell you another time. At the moment I’ve got stuff to do. Like in the movies-‘Now it’s personal!’ Or something like that.”

  “Just don’t do anything stupid. I…we were all worried about you, Bobby. I thought…”

  I didn’t want her to say anything she’d regret later, especially not with the Countess lying naked in bed behind me, listening. Not that Caz would hear what Monica said, but it just seemed wrong somehow. “Thanks, but I’m okay.” I changed the subject. “How about Clarence? Has he been in? Does he know about Sam?”

  “How could he not know, Bobby? The Compasses has a hole in it, and the whole block is knotted up in crime-scene tape.”

  “Okay. If you see the kid before I reach him, tell him I want to talk to him. Give everybody my best-and my apologies for getting them into this shit. I’ll stay in touch. And take care of yourself.”

  “You too, Bobby.”

  I made one more quick call, this one to Alice at the office. Other than what happened to poor Sam, my luck had been very good: I hadn’t missed a client while I’d been offline, although I did have a message from my superiors telling me that I needed to speak to a minister (the official name for a fixer, as you may remember) about the events in downtown the previous night. I said I would (and I was telling the truth-you don’t dodge one of those) then I asked her to steer any clients to one of the other advocates for the next twenty-four hours while I recuperated. I got off the line before anything else came up.

  It looked like Caz had fallen asleep again, but as I climbed in next to her she said, “You have to go, don’t you?”

  “Before too long, yeah-I probably do.” I stared at the gleaming oval on its chain around her neck, then reached out and touched it gently. “Is that it? Is that the locket your husband gave you?”

  She opened her eyes. “Yes. It’s all I have left of little Anna, my maid. She was only eleven when that bastard killed her.”

  “It looks like it’s made out of silver.”

  “It is.”

  “But doesn’t it burn you? I thought silver…”

  She reached up and pushed the locket to the side. Where it had rested, an angry red mark disfigured Caz’s white skin. Even as I watched it began to fade.

  “Does it burn?” she asked. “Every moment of every day. That helps me remember.” And the way she said it gave me chills all over again. Her voice turned softer. “Do you have to leave right now, Bobby? Or do we have a little more time…?”

  I wanted to-God, how I wanted to-but first things first: I had made a decision while I was on the phone. It scared me, but I was determined. “Listen, I have a couple of questions to ask you.”

  “Be my guest.” She reached down and began to play with my wedding kit, as Leo used to call it. Very distracting.

  “Not when you’re doing that. I can’t concentrate. Come on, stop tha-ouch!” She had wickedly sharp fingernails. “Bad girl!”

  “Well, duh.”

  “Look, I’m going to do something firs
t that’s probably really, really stupid. I’m going to tell you the truth.”

  Suddenly she became very still. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Here it comes. I have never, from the beginning, known what you took from Eligor. I told you that before. That was true. What’s also true is that I still don’t know. I found out it was a golden feather-how I found out doesn’t matter-but I have no idea what that means. I can’t imagine one of Hell’s major players gets worked up over any mere piece of jewelry. He must be able to get his hands on all the gold he wants. It has to be something more.”

  She was lying on her side facing me. Her hand slid up to her own throat as if for protection. “Go on.”

  “So what is this thing? I’m tired of bluffing, Caz. You’ve been straight with me as far as I can tell. I’ve been wandering in the wilderness for a long time. What’s this about? Why all the fuss over a feather?”

  She raised herself higher on the pillows. The blankets slid away from the upper half of her slim torso like waves retreating from a beach. Even if it was an illusion, she was so beautiful that it was all I could do not to reach out and pull her to me.

  “You’re right, Bobby,” she said slowly, her hand still at her throat. “Gold and jewels don’t have much meaning to…to people like us. In some rare cases, the value could be sentimental.” She lifted her hand away, revealing the locket. “Like this has meaning to me. A few dollars worth of silver but I’ve worn it for five hundred years. Would I raise a ghallu to get it back? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m strong enough-but I’d consider it, I swear I would.”

  “Eligor doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type.”

  “I’m just saying that there can be other reasons to covet something.”

  “So the feather has some special meaning to Eligor?”

  “To anyone who knows what it is-really, to anyone who sees it. It’s hard not to recognize it when it’s in front of you.”

  “I’m not following, Caz.”

  “Then you’re being a bit slow, Bobby. Where does a feather come from?”

  “A bird.”

  “Now you’re overthinking. Simpler. Where does a feather come from?”

  I gave it a moment, then took a breath as it came to me. “A wing,” I said at last.

  “And what has wings? Birds and bees and…?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not here on Earth. Not in the real world. Look, Caz, I should know, I’m an angel myself. We don’t have wings here.”

  “You don’t, Bobby. Because you’re Earthbound. You’re minor-league, if you’ll pardon me for saying-a foot soldier. But when the higher angels manifest here…well, they keep their heavenly attributes. If they’re important enough, that is. If they’re high enough up the ladder.”

  I felt like she’d punched me in the face again. “So you’re saying that what Eligor had was a feather from an important angel? You really believe that?”

  “Believe it? I held it, Bobby. I stole it out of Eligor’s safe and smuggled it out of the building-with a little look-the-other-way help from some bribed security guards. And if you’d seen the feather, you’d know I was right about it.”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t seen it-and that’s the problem. Everybody thinks I have it but me. And eventually that’s going to get me killed.”

  Her face changed then, blue eyes widening in such a convincing display of guilt and sorrow that for the first time in a while I wondered again whether I had been a fool to trust her at all. “I honestly didn’t mean this to happen to you, Bobby. It was my play, but it went wrong. I trusted Grasswax-not very far, but far enough for him to betray me, as it turned out.”

  “Explain.”

  “I had to get rid of it-I told you, I was being watched. And followed. As soon as Eligor knew his prize was gone, he knew what I’d done. He knew that I had it, and that I wouldn’t be afraid to use it against him.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look, you don’t just pluck a feather out of one of the Powers or Principalities,” she said. “And they don’t molt, either. Eligor had that feather for a reason.”

  I was beginning to see the light. “A pledge, or a marker. And I’m guessing that somewhere in Heaven someone’s got something of Eligor’s stashed away in a desk drawer, too, which would prove to Eligor’s side that he’d been messing around making deals he wasn’t supposed to make. That way if either one betrays the secret, he goes down as well. All the way down.” I saw how it fit together, but I still had an awful lot of questions. “So one of my bosses and the grand duke must have made a bargain…but a bargain about what? What secret would be worth that kind of risk?”

  She shrugged. “If I knew-or if I even had the feather-I wouldn’t be hiding out right now.”

  “Because if that gold plume belongs to one of the higher angels, the rest of the higher angels could probably tell who it came from.” I whistled. “Man, this shit is bigger and crazier than I even guessed. Tell me the details about Grasswax. When did you give it to him, and when did it go missing?”

  “I gave it to him the day before he died.”

  “The day Sam and the kid opposed him over that Marino woman.”

  “I suppose. And the next day he told me he’d hidden it-that he’d let me know where it was when we could talk in private.” A startled look crossed her face. “You were there! When he told me that, I mean.”

  “At the Walker house? When we all found out about the missing soul? Seems a bit weird that would be a coincidence-the two biggest things to happen around here in years both going on at the same time.” I paused to chew things over. “Is that when Grasswax told you he’d got rid of the feather?”

  “Yes, when I showed up. I was in a foul mood about the whole Walker thing because I thought Grasswax had done something stupid to draw attention to himself at exactly the time we didn’t need it. I didn’t realize how much bigger it was than that. And I didn’t get a chance to talk to him again before they killed him.” Her mouth pulled into a grim line. “He was a nasty, treacherous bastard who was going to rip me off, but even he didn’t deserve to go that way.”

  “Are you sure he was going to betray you? Maybe he just didn’t get the chance to tell you where he stashed it before-”

  “He had a perfectly good chance. I tried to have a private talk with him just afterward-I still had the excuse of debriefing him on the Walker thing, so it wouldn’t have attracted attention. But he shined me on, told me he had something crucial to take care of, making sure the feather was safe. Really he was going to offer it to Sitri, I’d bet now, to buy himself out of his gambling debts. But Eligor must have got to him first.”

  I did my best not to dwell on the ugly memories this brought up, of Grasswax’s remains unstrung and festooned across Edward Walker’s backyard. “So that means the missing feather isn’t just Eligor’s problem, is it? Whoever it came from has to be just as worried about it as he is. Maybe even more. Any idea at all who it might be? A name Eligor might have mentioned?”

  “In front of me?” She was scornful. “He wouldn’t take that risk. Where I come from nobody trusts anyone, with good reason. I only knew he had something important in the safe because I eavesdropped on one of his conversations.”

  “And that conversation…?”

  “Part of one. It was a few weeks ago. He was on the phone, and I heard him say, ‘I don’t care. I’ve still got your boss’s voucher in my safe, and we’re going to do everything just the way we agreed. If anything goes wrong I can blow you all up so completely even the Highest won’t be able to find you.’”

  “‘Your boss’s voucher’…so he was talking to an underling. Which means our mystery angel has at least one person working for him or her-or herm, I guess-down here on Earth.”

  “You have a look in your eyes I don’t like,” she said, quite abruptly. “Like you’re about to leave.”

  “My best friend is in the emergency room, Caz. Damn near dead because of Eligor’s pet nightmare. And I’ve
just realized that everything I’ve said to any of my comrades here or in Heaven may have already got back to Eligor’s secret partner, so who knows how much damage I’ve caused that way? I need to think.”

  “But when you leave, we’ll never have this again.”

  “What do you mean, Caz? Do you think I’m just using you for information?” I looked at her, tried to make out the secrets I could see hiding in the depths of her gaze. “Don’t you believe this means something to me, too?”

  She shook her head as if it were too heavy for her slender neck. “I don’t know, Bobby. I’ve never been in this situation.”

  “I haven’t either.”

  “Then just stay a little longer. One more hour.” She reached out, touched the tips of her fingers to my naked chest, then dragged her nails ever so gently down through the curls of hair toward my belly. “Give me just a little more of you, a few more memories. The nights are very long sometimes, even here in the real world, Bobby. It’s better than…than other places I’ve been, but the centuries have been lonely.” She got her arms around my neck and pulled herself up so that her dry, cold skin slid over me like a chilly breeze, making pretty much everything stir and stand on end.

  “Ooh,” she said, lifting her face close to mine. “Feel that-Lazarus has risen.”

  “Don’t blaspheme,” I said, then kissed her cool lips until they parted, and her hot tongue touched mine. “We’re above that now.” And I meant it.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  twenty-four

  slumber party

  Caz was still sleeping when I left. Gently detaching myself from those slender limbs while ignoring her half-conscious murmurs of protest, climbing out of that warm bed that smelled of our sex-it truly was one of the hardest things I ever did. When you leave, we’ll never have this again. Was she right? If we both survived, would we spend the rest of our lives regretting this or wishing it could happen again? Could it happen again? I didn’t even want to think about what the penalty might be for consorting with the enemy in such a very, very specific and (as far as my bosses would be concerned) objectionable way.