The Wrong Goodbye tc-2

by Chris F. Holm

  “Figures you’d kidnap the only oil exec on the planet that ain’t carrying a fat wad of bills. So fine, a motel’s out, but that don’t mean we gotta stay in a total shithole —I mean, they’re trying to sell these places, right? Which means they gotta have a model home around here somewhere. You know, with lights and AC, and running water so I could maybe take a shower? I mean, this place ain’t even finished —it’s like a fucking tent with siding.”

  “Yeah, but it’s out of sight, and it’s got a garage where we can stash the car. The model home was around front, near the ones where people live, and it didn’t have a garage —you think nobody’s going to notice if we move in?” I shook my head. “I’ll tell you, man —it’s a good thing you had a deal with a demon to fall back on, ’cause on your own you’re kind of lousy at being a criminal.”

  “Geez, Sam, didn’t nobody ever tell you words can hurt? Like, imagine for example I said, ’Funny, you talkin’ smack about how I do my job, ’cause from where I’m sitting, it looks like you suck so bad at doing yours that you had to come beg me for help’? That’d kinda sting, wouldn’t it?”

  “Cute,” I snapped. “Real cute. Now how about you work off that bag of Funyuns you devoured by getting that garage door open so we can park this boat inside, huh?”

  “Wow,” he said, hauling himself up out of the bench seat and trotting up the driveway, “sounds like somebody needs a hug.” Gio’s tone was pissy, but I caught the hint of a smile at the corner of his lips as he yanked up the garage door and beckoned me in. Despite myself, I wound up grinning back at him. Then he flipped me off.

  I drove into the waiting garage, shaking my head as Gio slid the door shut behind me.

  God help me, I thought, I’m actually starting to like this guy.

  “Looks like we’re clean,” Gio said. “For now, at least. Gotta say, Sam, in my line a work, I’ve swept for bugs a time or two —but before today never the creepy crawly kind.”

  I was sitting cross-legged on the bare plywood subfloor of our new squat, reading the copy of the Las Cruces Sun-News I’d picked up on our snack run by the light of the afternoon sun. Or, rather, that’s what I was trying to do. Gio’d barely given me a moment’s peace. Reading near Gio was like reading in the company of a dog —he couldn’t seem to comprehend that what looked like me just sitting there ignoring him was me actually fucking doing something.

  I’d kept him busy a few minutes checking the house for Deliverants —but it was a small place, and wide-open on the inside, so it didn’t take him long. The fact there weren’t any was heartening. I guess my buddy the bug-monster figured he’d give me a little latitude to go along with my marching orders.

  Not like that latitude was going to do me any good if I couldn’t find five quiet minutes to formulate some kind of workable plan. I’ll tell you, between Gio’s yammering, and Roscoe screaming his fool head off in the bathroom, it was a miracle I didn’t kill them both. I mean sure, I’m not strictly speaking supposed to dispatch folks willy-nilly, but it wasn’t like the water I was in could get any hotter.

  Least, that’s what I thought at the time. One of these days I’m going to learn that when I think to myself it really couldn’t get much worse, I am never, ever right. Much worse is sort of hell’s stock in trade, and I’m an idiot for forgetting that, even for a moment.

  “You figure this Danny jackass has got a plague of locusts on his tail, too?”

  I shook my head. “Crows.”

  “Come again?”

  “The creatures stalking Danny would be crows.”

  Gio snorted. “Gotta tell you, dude: you wound up with the shit end of that stick.”

  “You think?” I asked. “Seems to me, I’d rather run into a bunch of pissed-off insects than an equal number of angry crows. Those fuckers are smart, and nasty when pressed.”

  Gio fell silent then, for like a whopping ten seconds. I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.

  “So what exactly are you looking for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I snapped. “I’ll find it when I see it.”

  “This research shit would go a hell of a lot faster if you had an iPhone, you know.”

  “Phones should have cords,” I said, “not television screens.”

  “Next you’re gonna tell me a woman’s place is in the home, right? I know you’re older than you look, Sam, but you might wanna try gettin’ with the times —it’s a brave new world out there! Besides, everybody says print is dead anyway.”

  “Yeah, well so am I —and for that matter, so are you. So how about you make like it for a bit and clam up so I can read?”

  Gio raised his hands as though surrendering. “Hey, you wanna be a crotchety old fogy, that’s your business. I’m just saying a little Google access would make your life a whole lot easier.”

  “Hey, I’ve got no problem with technology, but a Google search can’t help me any if I don’t know what it is I’m looking for. And all I need to make my life a whole lot easier is a few minutes of peace and quiet.” I nodded toward the bathroom, where old Roscoe was shouting himself hoarse. “You think maybe you could shut him up?”

  “I ain’t about to whack him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “What are you, new? If I wanted Roscoe dead, I would’ve killed him myself back at the barn. I was thinking something more along the lines of bringing him a beer and a bite to eat from what’s left of our stash. And toss me that pack of smokes, while you’re at it.”

  “Aw, come on, Sam —you’re not really gotta light up in here, are you? Didn’t nobody ever tell you secondhand smoke kills? The last thing I need right now is lung cancer on account of your nasty-ass habit.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? You’re worried about lung cancer? Gio, you’ll be lucky if you last the fucking week —and if by some miracle you’re walking around in Mr Frohman’s body any longer than that, it’ll be your heart that gets you, not your lungs.”

  Gio looked nonplussed. “Still, dude, it’s all of our house. Can’t you take it to the porch or something?”

  “Gio, this house isn’t any of ours —and if I drag my ass outside to smoke, somebody might see me and call us in. You want to spend your last days on this earth in jail?”

  At that, he looked chastened. “I’m just sayin’ —a little consideration for your fellow housemates would be nice. Besides, it’s the twenty-first century —who smokes anymore?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Toss me my fucking cigarettes —I’ll crack a window, and blow the smoke outside, OK?”

  “You know what? Go ahead. Not like you give two shits about anybody but yourself.”

  He chucked the pack at me, and then sulked over to the bathroom door, a gas station burrito and a Santa Fe Pale Ale in hand. I unwrapped the pack and tapped out a cigarette. Then I fetched a matchbook from my pocket and struck one alight. But as I raised it to my waiting cigarette, I paused.

  Lung cancer? Seriously? Guy was off his fucking nut.

  I sat like that a minute, marveling at Gio’s unrelenting ridiculosity, the match flame a scant inch from my unlit smoke. Eventually, the flame guttered and died. I thought about striking another, but something stopped me.

  Ah, fuck, who am I kidding? Someone stopped me. That’s right —the bad-ass soul collector skipped a much-needed smoke to spare a damned man’s feelings. Least I hope that’s what it was. Better to admit that I’m a marshmallow than that I was swayed by the dumbest argument this side of the devil made all the dinosaur bones and stuck them in the ground to deceive us.

  Jesus, am I going soft? I mean, shit —if I want a smoke, I should just have one, right?

  Right?

  Eh, I thought. Maybe later.

  Then I shook my head and set the pack aside, cigarette and all.

  18.

  “I don’t get it,” Gio said, struggling to keep a grip on the local section of the newspaper, which was flapping like a flag in a hurricane now that the Caddy was on the open road. For the momen
t, it was just he and I —we’d left Roscoe tied up and screaming back at the squat. It was safer traveling without him, and not just a little quieter, too. Or rather it would’ve been, if Gio could’ve kept hold of the goddamn paper. “What exactly am I supposed to be seeing?”

  “Halfway down, under the thing about the fire.”

  “’Area Man Found Wandering in Desert,’” he read.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Yeah, but what about it? All it says is that this dude was found naked and babbling late Sunday night somewhere off of Canyon Point Road.”

  “He’s our guy.”

  “The hell you mean, ‘He’s our guy’? You think Naked Dude’s the demon dope-peddler you been looking for?”

  “No. But I think he can help me find him.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Because I’m pretty sure Dumas’s skim-joint is where he was coming from when they picked him up.”

  Gio frowned. “I thought you said this skim shit was only for demons and undead-types like you and me —that the living wouldn’t get nothing out of it.”

  “It is. Only those removed from the light of God’s grace are susceptible. The living would be unaffected.”

  “Removed from the light of God’s grace, huh?” His thick brow bunched with worry. “Is that what I am now?”

  I hesitated for a moment, then bit the bullet and told him the truth. “Yes.” What else could I have said?

  He swallowed hard and tamped down his emotions. When he looked at me again, he was a little drawn, a little pale, but once more calm and collected. “So what the fuck would Mr Richard Shaw of Chilton Drive, Las Cruces have been doing there?”

  I sighed, tried to explain. “When you’re out on a heist, you ever drive your own car?”

  “Hell, no —you’re on a job, you want something disposable. A car that, once you ditch it, it can’t be traced back to you.”

  “Exactly —and for a demon, it’s no different. See, skim-joints are strictly verboten in the demon world, because they rely on a steady supply of human souls to make their product —souls destined for hell, sure, but souls nonetheless. Now, ideally, the skimmer shaves off what they want and then passes the soul on to meet its ultimate fate, so nobody’s the wiser. But if there’s a fuck-up in the skimming process, that soul could be destroyed. The destruction of a human soul is a violation of the Great Truce between heaven and hell, and if either side were seen to be condoning such an act, the result would almost certainly be war —which means skim-joints are an affront to God and the devil both. So the last thing any demon wants is to get caught coming out of one. An easy way around that is to possess some unsuspecting bastard for a few hours and ditch him when you’re done —sort of the demon version of a getaway car. See, unlike me, all demons —be they the lowliest and most monstrous foot-soldiers, or the higher-ups that look like you and me —have bodies of their own, so when they possess someone, it’s more like remote projection. Snatching a vessel to hit a skim-joint means their true selves can be safe and sound half a world away. On the off-chance their vessel’s killed, they wind up right back in their own body —no harm, no foul. Only the hardcore skim junkies ever bother to show up in person; the way I hear it, the high’s better if you’re present in the flesh.”

  “Yeah, I gotcha —but if they wanna keep things on the DL, why wouldn’t they just kill the dude when they were done with him? I mean, what’s to keep the guy from blabbing?”

  “Well, for starters, demonic possession is pretty traumatic. The vessel usually doesn’t remember much in the way of specifics —just the odd image, scent, sensation. Besides, even if he did remember, who in their right mind would believe him? And remember —Dumas’s skim-joint would attract a fair bit of business, so this wouldn’t exactly be an isolated incident. If all Dumas’ patrons started killing vessels left and right, the white hats would be bound to notice, and that’s the last thing anybody wants.”

  “The white hats? You mean, like, angels?” Gio’s face had taken on the kind of inner light usually reserved for kids waiting up to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus.

  “That’s right. Only we’re not talking harps and feathers —these are more the angry Wrath of God types. Believe me,” I said, thinking back to my own tangle with an angel months before, and the swath of destruction across the length of Manhattan that had resulted, “angels are not to be trifled with.”

  That inner light faded, replaced by something closer on the reverence scale to fear. “Still, I don’t get why you’re so sure this Richard dude’s our guy.”

  I smiled. “Easy. Demons got themselves a nasty sense of humor. They’ve pretty much got their pick of living vessels, but usually they’ve got a reason for choosing the one they do. Sometimes, they’ll snatch a priest, make him speak in tongues at Mass to fuck with him. Sometimes, they’ll take some buttoneddown old schoolmarm and ditch her at a leather bar. Or sometimes, when they need to hitch a ride, they’ll pick a guy because they think his name is funny.”

  “What’s so funny about Richard Shaw?”

  “Nothing in particular,” I admitted. “But what do you want to bet he goes by Rick?”

  Richard Shaw’s home was a low-slung yellow brick ranch in a quiet residential neighborhood about a mile north of the university. A pair of live oaks on either side of the pebbled front yard shaded the house from the light of the afternoon sun. I pulled the Cadillac into the short concrete drive, coming to a halt beside a beige Buick LeSabre adorned with a Jesus fish and a sticker for the local Christian station (REJOICE in the Lord!). Looks like whatever smart-ass demon decided to take himself a ride in a Rick Shaw got a twofer in the fucking-with-mortals department.

  Though the day was bright and clear, and the temperature a balmy seventy-five degrees, every window in the house was closed, and the blinds were drawn as well. Three days’ worth of newspapers sat untouched atop the stoop, and the letterbox beside the door was overflowing.

  I scaled the porch steps and knocked.

  Nothing happened —unless, of course, you count me and Gio shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot in our filthy funeral suits like the most unlikely, bedraggled missionaries ever while we waited for the door to open as something happening.

  I knocked again. Still nothing.

  “Mr Shaw?” I called. “I was wondering if we could have a moment of your time.”

  Inside I heard a scuff of feet on tile. A twitch of curtain revealed a glimpse of darkened living room as Shaw appraised us from inside. “Go away!” he cried, his voice plaintive and unsteady.

  Gio looked from the door to me and back again. Then he patted his prodigious stomach and smiled. “You think maybe if I do the Truffle Shuffle, he’ll let us in?”

  “You’re not helping,” I replied under my breath. Then, louder toward the door: “I assure you, sir, we’ll only be a minute; we just have some questions about what happened to you the other night.”

  “I told you people a dozen times already —I’m not talking to reporters! Why can’t you all just leave me alone? Isn’t it enough you ruined my life, you… you… bunch of jerks!”

  Bunch of jerks. My, but that one stung.

  Time to try a different tack.

  “My associate and I are not reporters, Mr Shaw —we’re Federal Marshals.”

  Gio looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “We’re what now?” he muttered.

  I shrugged my best roll with it shrug. Gio responded with what can only be described as a harrumph.

  There was a thunk as the deadbolt disengaged, and the door opened a crack. The chain was still set, and Shaw peeked out under it, wary but hopeful. He was a slight, small-boned, thirty-something man in a pink polo shirt and iron-creased jeans over off-brand tennis shoes of gleaming white. His features were delicate bordering on feminine, and he had wide, pale blue eyes that, from the lack of lines surrounding them, appeared unaccustomed to the doubt that now darkened his face. “Federal Marshals?”

  “That’s right,”
I replied. “I’m Marshal Hutchinson, and this is my associate, Marshal Starsky. Now if you would please let us in, I believe we could shed some light on what happened to you Sunday night.”

  “But how do I know you’re real Marshals, and not reporters pretending to be Marshals so I’ll let you in?”

  I sighed and dug Ethan Strickland’s wallet from my inside coat-pocket, flipping it open and waving it at him as though it meant a damn. When he reached for it to take a closer look, I yanked it back. “Mr Shaw, attempting to handle a law officer’s badge is a federal offense.”

  “Oh. Of course,” he said, withdrawing his hand as visions of prison time danced in his head. “And please, call me Rick.”

  As Shaw closed the door, and disengaged the chain, Gio leaned in close, a grin plastered on his meaty face. “A federal offense, huh?”

  “Hey, it could be.”

  “You’re a fuckin’ piece a work, you know that? And Starsky? Really? Why the hell couldn’t I be Hutch?”

  The door swung open once more, this time all the way. “Please, come in.” We complied. Once we entered, Shaw ducked his head outside, casting furtive glances left and right before shutting the door behind us. “Sorry about the mess.”

  I looked around. Aside of a smattering of cellophane candy wrappers on the coffee table, the Spartan living room was immaculate. A floral couch sat beneath a simple wooden cross. Two royal blue recliners faced it from across the coffee table. No knick-knacks, no TV, and not a speck of dust in sight.

  “Please, sit down,” he said, disappearing into the kitchen around the corner. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Beer, if you have it,” Gio said, as we both settled into the recliners.

  “I do not. Alcohol is the devil’s gasoline, and I for one like to keep the great deceiver’s tank on E. Besides, I thought officers couldn’t drink on duty?”

  “That’s only in the movies,” I replied, and shot Gio a look that could’ve shattered glass.