Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim)

by Richard Kadrey

  “I think I met her at Wild Bill’s place. You have any coffee?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I’ll have a beer.”

  He takes one from the mini-fridge under the desk and tosses it to me.

  He turns the sound back up on Across 110th Street and says, “Shit’s going to get weird again, isn’t it? You running around killing people.”

  “It’s already started.”

  He shakes his head and his half-full belly wobbles.

  “You ever going to tell me about that armor, Tin Man?”

  “Let me drink this, Old Yeller, and I’ll tell you a weirder story than you ever dreamed.”

  “If it’s about you I doubt it.”

  I’m back at the Beat Hotel when Candy calls around noon.

  “Want to get some breakfast at our place?” she asks.

  “We have a place?”

  “Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, stupid.”

  “How’s Carlos? Can I see him?”

  “Allegra worked him over pretty good last night. He’s sleeping it off. You can see him this evening.”

  “Cool. Let’s forget breakfast. Want to go with me and hassle people?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  There’s no way I’m taking the Hellion bike out in broad daylight. I use the black blade to pop the lock and ignition on a Porsche Boxster Spyder and pick up Candy at the clinic. When I open up the car on the 101 North I can’t help but smile. There’s something about driving a pretty girl somewhere potentially dangerous in a stolen car that just makes you feel good.

  We drive to the address in Chatsworth that Lula Hawks gave me. It might be a waste of time but it’s the only waste of time I have right now.

  The address is a grease-caked car repair place that’s such an obvious front they might as well put up a “Not a Real Garage” sign out front.

  “Before we go in, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you but it was never the right time.”

  “Let me guess. You’re the Lindbergh baby.”

  “I’m the Devil. Lucifer went back to Heaven and stuck me with the job. I’m the new Lucifer. I just thought you might want to know who you’re hanging around with.”

  She looks at me, her eyebrows slightly raised like she’s waiting for me to say something else. She cocks her head when I don’t.

  “You thought I’d have a problem with you being devilish? Do you know me at all?”

  “With things between us being complicated, I didn’t know.”

  “Come here,” she says, and gives me a good long kiss. “There’s complicated and there’s complicated. Wanting to kiss you isn’t complicated.”

  “Just everything else?”

  “Just everything else.”

  We walk over to the garage. When it’s clear we’re coming inside a couple of Lurkers drop their magazines and grab rubber mallets to start beating on the engine of a car that hasn’t moved in a good ten years. The Lurkers are vucaris, Russian beast men. Mostly wolves. They’re kind of like Nahuals, the local frat beasts. Like Manimal Mike’s half-assed front job these two look don’t look like much in the brains and ambition department.

  “Is Mike around?”

  “Who vants to know?” asks the taller of the two in a deep Boris Badenov accent.

  “The Devil.”

  Ivan the Terrible considers this for a minute.

  “He’s busy.”

  “Tell him I might be willing to do a deal where he gets his soul back.”

  Ivan stares but the shorter vucari stands on tiptoe and whispers something in his ear.

  “Vait here,” says Ivan.

  “That’s okay. We’ll come with you.”

  He weighs the rubber mallet in his hand but the little vucari says something else and Ivan backs down.

  “This vay.”

  “Why don’t you point to the door and we’ll make our own introductions.”

  Ivan points to a grimy door with plastic “Cash Only” and “Protected by Smith & Wesson” signs tacked on the front. I open the door quietly and Candy and I go inside.

  Manimal Mike is sprawled on a vinyl sofa with his back to the door. The sofa is patched with duct tape and smeared with enough grease to slick down the manes of all four presidents on Mount Rushmore. Across the room is a half-empty bottle of generic vodka on a worktable scattered with tools, gears, springs, and a sputtering half-finished mechanical python.

  Mike has a little 9mm Kel-Tec in his hand and a shot glass on his head. I take Candy’s arm and pull her over by a tire rack. It’s lousy cover but it’s better than nothing.

  Manimal Mike takes aim and fires at a steel plate mounted on the far wall. The bullet ricochets and hits an identical plate on the wall behind him. It ricochets again and hits the back of the sofa. This isn’t suicide. It’s Billy Flinch. A solo William Tell game where you try to shoot an apple off your head with a ricochet. I don’t think Mike is very good at it but you have to give him points for perseverance. There are at least a hundred holes in the sofa’s backside. Mike fires three more times without coming close to the shot glass on his brainless head. When the gun goes click click, Mike drops out the empty clip and reloads it from a box of bullets next to him.

  I say, “Hi, Mike,” and a handful of bullets go flying. The shot glass falls and shatters on the floor. He turns and looks at us with red hangover eyes, pointing the empty gun at us.

  So this is what someone looks like when they’ve sold their soul. His face isn’t streaked with dirty sin signs like other people. It’s a thick liquid black like someone held him down and painted him with hot tar.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he says in a high slurred voice.

  “The friend of a friend who said you know things about things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “To start with, what happens to little boys who sell their soul? You’ve had a good run, Mike. Now it’s time to collect.”

  I take off my glove and stick the Kissi index finger in the barrel of his 9mm. Lift it from his hand and drop it on the sofa. He falls onto his ass and crab-walks backward across the floor. It’s an impressive sight considering how drunk he is.

  “Twenty years! That was the deal! I’m just starting to break into the bigger markets.”

  Mike gets up and stumbles to his worktable. He picks up the mechanical python.

  “See this? It’s for Indrid Cold. A hot-shit demon wrangler. She came to me off a recommendation from another big shot. I’m starting to do for the high-and-mighties. You can’t take me now.”

  Mike might be a drunk but the snake looks like good work. Mike is a Tick Tock Man, the modern equivalent of what medieval Sub Rosas would have called a Raven Maker. Tick Tock Men and Raven Makers create spirit familiars. Raven Makers out of flesh and bones. Tick Tock Men out of wood and metal. The kind of Sub Rosa that use familiars aren’t usually the kind that has the money to have them built to spec. However, for rich witches and well-heeled Sub Rosa groupies, having multiple familiars is a status symbol. Like rich people owning summer and winter homes.

  Seeing as how I already have Mike against the ropes, there’s no reason to change my story.

  “I know the deal was for twenty years, but if this is the best you’ve done with your time, I might have to call in your soul early on account of you pickling the thing like a county-fair gherkin.”

  “No. Please. What do you want? You want a cat? No. A lion for someone as powerful and glorious as you. And maybe a puppy for your lady friend?”

  “A puppy?” says Candy. She picks up a wood chisel and points it at him like a knife. “How about I nail some wheels on you and ride you around like a toy horse. Would you like that, rummy?”

  I gently put my hand on her arm and lower the chisel to her side.

  “What my associate is getting at is that we’re in the soul market, not the low-rent bribe market. Do you have anything else to offer?”

  “You asked about information. What do you
want to know? Lots of people want familiars who can’t afford them. I trade them for info on bigwigs. Ask me anything. I bet I can help out.”

  I look at Candy. She smiles. I think she might like a puppy but she’d never admit it.

  “I’m looking for an angel. He was in town until recently. People say he killed the mayor’s son.”

  “Oh. That guy. Yeah, I heard about him. What do you want to know?”

  “Where I can find him.”

  Mike shakes his head.

  “If I tell you, I get my soul back?”

  “No, Mike. It’s not that easy. First, the information has to be real and worth my time. I won’t know that until I check it out. Second, you’re not going to get your soul for a lousy address. I got your address for nothing.”

  Mike takes a shop rag from his back pocket and nervously wipes his dirty hands.

  “What else do you want from me?”

  “Watch your tone, pony boy,” says Candy.

  Mike looks like he’s about to keel over.

  “Blue Heaven,” he says.

  “What’s Blue Heaven?”

  Mike shrugs and sits down behind the worktable. Picks up the bottle of vodka and takes a pull.

  “I don’t know a lot about it.”

  He starts to offer me the bottle but takes another look at the generic label stained with greasy fingerprints and changes his mind.

  “All I know is it’s a bitch to get into. Like the most exclusive after-party in the universe. You have to know someone.”

  “Sounds like a good place to hide from killers,” says Candy.

  “Or the girl,” he says. “She’s killed like a dozen Sub Rosa. She tried to cut your angel. That’s when he disappeared. She’s scarier than anything else around here.”

  He smiles at me hopefully.

  “Except you, of course.”

  “Don’t suck up, Mike. Not until you’ve had a shower. You say the ghost tried to kill Saint James?”

  “If that’s the angel, then yeah. Went for him on Sunset in front of a whole tour bus full of witnesses. She got a piece of him too. The girl isn’t subtle.”

  “Why would she be? She’s dead.”

  I turn my back on Mike and whisper in Candy’s ear. Mike looks nervous. He takes big gulps from the bottle.

  “I’ve heard of poltergeists that can toss cups and saucers around, but never one that hacks people up like Jason Voorhees. Have you?”

  “No. I haven’t.”

  “Remember when the girl came into Bamboo House?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I tried to grab her and missed. She could have cut me but she didn’t. She said something funny.”

  “What?”

  “ ‘You’re not one of his.’ ”

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “Not a clue. Maybe Saint James? Maybe Blackburn?”

  “Maybe Colonel Sanders.”

  “Yeah. There’s an annoying number of possibilities.”

  Mike is on his feet when I look back at him, the vodka cradled in his arms like a newborn baby.

  “Let me get this straight. All you can tell me about Saint James is that he’s someplace you don’t know about and that you don’t know how to get to. A dead girl tried to kill him but you don’t know why or who the girl is or where she’s from. Does that sum things up?”

  “That’s everything, man. I swear. Can I have my soul back now?”

  “That’s not even a postcard, Mike. That’s not even a phone number scrawled on a cocktail napkin. Do you really think that’s worth a soul?”

  Mike shifts his weight from foot to foot like he has to go to the bathroom. By now he probably does.

  “Yes?” he says.

  “Wrong,” says Candy.

  “Wrong. It’s worth shit. The closest thing you can get to nothing without being nothing.”

  Mike shrugs.

  “Sorry. I mostly deal in gossip. Stuff like Blue Heaven isn’t my specialty. Hell, I didn’t even know how to get in touch with you to sell my soul.”

  No. A guy like Mike wouldn’t, would he? He’d have to go to someone. A name pops into my head.

  “Do you know Amanda Fischer?”

  “That Hollywood devil-worshipping bitch?” says Mike. “I mean. Sorry.”

  “Forget it. So you know her.”

  “I built her a peacock and a Persian cat. One of her crowd did my soul conjuration. It cost me a wolf.”

  Mike takes an anxious sip from the bottle.

  “I want to get in touch but I lost my address book. Do you have her number?”

  Mike goes to a desk as filthy as the sofa and as crowded with junk as the worktable. It reminds me a little of Mr. Muninn’s cavern, full of centuries of obsessive collecting. Mike finds an old gray metal Rolodex, pulls a card out of it, and brings it to me. It says FISCHER, AMANDA. Below that is a Beverly Hills phone number.

  “Nice work, Mike. You pulled things out there at the last minute. I thought I was going to have to feed your bones to my associate but you came through.”

  “So now I can have my soul back?”

  “Not a chance. But I’ll tell you what you can do to get it back. I have a friend, really just sort of a yammering bastard. He’s stuck on a mechanical body, only it’s not finished. You finish him off and you’re halfway home.”

  “What’s the other half?”

  “I need you to build something else. A Hellion-to-English translator. And it needs to read lips.”

  Mike sits on the sofa and sets the bottle between his feet.

  “Is that all?”

  “You do that and you can have your soul back.”

  He looks up at me. Big fat tears in his dumb, red eyes.

  “You promise?”

  I take out a pack of Maledictions and tap him out the last one.

  “If you can’t trust a man who gives you his last cigarette, who can you trust?”

  He takes the smoke and I light it with Mason’s lighter. Mike nods.

  “What choice do I have?”

  “None. I’ll be in touch with the details.”

  Candy starts out. I follow but stop at the door to put on my glove.

  “What’s the story with the vucari out front?”

  Mike shakes his head. Wipes the tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  “My cousins. From the old country. Fucking Cossacks.”

  “But you’re not a Lurker.”

  “It was a mixed marriage,” he says.

  “I see why you made the deal. If I had to work with family, I’d prefer Hell too.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I’ll sell you my soul back,” he says. Then quickly, “I’m only kidding.”

  “I know, Mike. I know.”

  We go back to the Porsche. Mike’s cousins beat on the dead car, smiling at us like they’re tenderizing steaks for our dinner.

  I get out my phone and dial Amanda Fischer’s number. She answers on the fifth ring.

  “I don’t recognize your number. How did you get this one?”

  “Don’t you know me, Amanda?” I say in my spookiest Hail Satan voice. “It’s Mr. Macheath.”

  The line goes quiet. I hear breathing, then, “This doesn’t sound like Mr. Macheath. How do I know it’s you?”

  I try to remember what happened when I met her and her Devil toadies at the Chateau Marmont with Lucifer 1.0.

  “I have the lovely pyx you gave me on the mantel in my library.”

  “Master!”

  “New rule. Don’t call me ‘master.’ Lucifer will do.”

  “Yes, Lucifer. What can I do for you, Master?”

  This shit again. Why are all Hellions and devil worshippers bottoms?

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “It’s quite all right. Now I need you to do some things for me. I need some information.”

  “Yes, Lucifer. What kind of information?”

  “I want everything you can find about a place called Blue Heaven. Where it is. How you get in.”r />
  “I didn’t think anywhere was barred to you.”

  “You’ll notice that part of the name includes the word ‘Heaven.’ All Heavens have a waiting list to get in and my name is at the bottom.”

  “Of course, Lucifer. Sorry.”

  Candy looks bored. She gets out of the car, goes back to the garage, and starts talking to the shorter vucari. By her body language she’s flirting.

  “What do you know about this ghost girl running around town?”

  “Our mediums say she’s a hungry ghost. A spirit that will never be satisfied no matter how much she devours. She’s killed a lot of people.”

  “I know. A lot of Sub Rosa.”

  “Not just Sub Rosa. Ordinary mortals too. In fact, she’s killed members of our temple. When I knew it was you, I was hoping you’d returned to save us.”

  Now Candy is flirting with the taller vucari. She glances over her shoulder at the shorter one and she and Ivan laugh together. The short vucari isn’t pounding on the car anymore.

  “Of course I’m here to save my followers. But I have to know which of my flocks are worthy of saving. Yours isn’t the only temple in California, Amanda.”

  “Of course. We’ll prove ourselves worthy of you.”

  I doubt that.

  “I’m sure you will. I’d like all information you can find as soon as possible. Let’s say tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? That’s hardly any time at all.”

  “Then you’d better get started.”

  Candy steps out of the garage, running her hand down Ivan’s arm and holding his pinkie for a second. She blows the short vucari a kiss and comes back to the car.

  I put my hand over the receiver when she gets in.

  “What was that all about?” I whisper.

  “Watch,” she says.

  In the garage, the vucari cousins are shouting. The little one pokes Ivan in the chest with the wooden handle of his mallet. Ivan swings and clocks the little guy. But he doesn’t go down. He crouches and slams his shoulder into Ivan’s belly. Ivan falls on the shorter vucari and they end up in a pile of flailing fists and feet, rolling around the garage floor like a spider having a seizure.

  I mouth, “You’re evil.”

  Candy shrugs and mouths, “I was bored. And I love messing with dumb guys.”

  “One more thing, Amanda. I’m going to need guns. Pistols. I’m not sure what I’ll be in the mood for, so bring an assortment. Like teacakes to a party. All right?”