Kasabian looks up at me.
“What did we say about nicknames?”
“Sorry. You can’t really expect me to be Miss Manners overnight.”
He shakes his head, staring at the hound.
“Damn. You actually did it. And here me and your missus were making bets on whether you’d come back at all and how many more limbs you were going to lose.”
“Who won?”
Candy doesn’t look up from the movie.
“No one’s seen you undressed yet, so the bet still stands.”
“I’m calling Manimal Mike right now,” says Kasabian. He clamors to his feet and squeaks and grinds away to his room.
“Let me know when he’s coming over. I want to talk to him.”
I sit down next to Candy, take her beer off the table, have a sip, and pass it to her.
“How’s Brigitte doing?”
“You had someone you loved murdered, so you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Allegra and Vidocq took her to stay with them. I think seeing you burned and gutted like that scared Allegra a little.”
“She patched me up pretty good. I didn’t pop any rivets while I was gone.”
Candy turns and kisses me. I kiss her like maybe I was afraid I wasn’t coming back, which is how I always feel when I go to Hell. I hand her back her knife.
“So, I guess your plan worked out?” she says.
“Yeah. I have Traven stashed in the Room.”
She pushes away from me.
“That’s your master plan? Take him out of Hell so you can lock him in the attic like your crazy aunt?”
“I’m still working on the next step.”
“Which is what?”
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
I get up, checking the long slit the guard left in my coat sleeve.
“I need a shower. Will you call room service and have them send up some food?” I say. “A real spread. I just took one of the Devil’s souls. I might as well steal more of his food.”
I throw the coat on the pile of dirty and ruined clothes in the closet. At least it’s a slash and not bullet holes or blood. A slash I can get fixed.
I step in the shower and let the hot water wash the last of Kill City and Hell off me. I should turn on the news. I wonder what people are saying happened to Kill City. And about the strange people seen swimming from the sinking mall. Shit. Some of those pricks had cameras. With luck, they were just shooting the wreckage and didn’t get any shots of me. It might be about time to go totally Batman. Get a pointy mask and a cape. Maybe an hourglass-shaped muscle car. Call it the Sandmanmobile. That would really fox the cops.
The food is up by the time I dry off.
Lobster. Steak. Dim sum. Salads with vegetables they must have flown in from the dark side of the moon. Enough bread and desserts to give Canada a coronary. I love taking advantage of rich people.
I load up a plate with lobster tail and take it to the sofa. While I was in the shower they’ve moved on from Destroy All Monsters to Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla. Just another kaiju night at home with the kids.
Candy leans against my shoulder, eating dumplings. All might not be forgiven but enough is for now.
“In the attic under his Avengers collection,” I say.
Candy and Kasabian look at me.
“Your hoarder,” I say. “I found him in Hell. Dad’s gold coins are hidden under his Avengers collection in the attic.”
“Like TV–Mrs. Peel The Avengers or comic-book the Avengers?” he says.
“I have no idea.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want a piece of the business.”
“Don’t hold your breath for any more interviews with the dead. I won’t be welcome in Hell for a long time.”
“You had to get messy?” says Candy.
“Well, they didn’t give up Traven gratefully. I know you were pissed, but I’m glad you didn’t see me doing that.”
“What?”
“Murder.”
“Tell me about it later.”
“I’d rather not.”
“But you will.”
“Sure.”
AN HOUR LATER Manimal Mike is in the penthouse crouched by the hound, going over every inch of it, examining the details with a flashlight.
“She has a fair amount of corrosion, but nothing I can’t clean up.”
He nods, satisfied.
“This will work. I can fix Kasabian’s leg and use the frame to build a new torso, closer to human proportions.”
“How soon?” says Kasabian.
Mike frowns and shakes his head.
“I’ll have to get it back to the shop to be sure. Some of the joints are locked and I’ll have to clean and reseal everything.”
“How soon?”
“If I pick it up in the morning, I can probably give you a rough estimate tomorrow night.”
“Great,” says Kasabian.
Mike gets up and wipes his eternally grimy hands on a dirty rag he pulls from his back pocket.
“See you tomorrow,” he says, and heads for the door behind the grandfather clock.
I follow him over and cut him off.
“The other night at Death Rides A Horse . . .” I say.
He holds up his hands in apology.
“Sorry about that. I was in a bad mood and embarrassed that you caught me there.”
“You haven’t done anything stupid, have you? Pledged yourself to some bloodsucker or let one of them put their fangs in you?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Good.”
I reach into my pocket and take out a small bottle.
“Here’s the straight-up truth. I can’t give you back your soul because it’s not mine to give anymore. Never mind how or why, it’s just how things are.”
“Then I’m screwed.”
I hand him the bottle I got from the Cold Case.
“This is a clean soul. It doesn’t belong to anyone. It’ll substitute for yours when the time comes.”
He holds up the bottle to the light and shakes it. He gives me a doubtful look when he can’t see anything inside.
“Did you think you could shake up a soul and see it like salad dressing?” I say.
“What do I do with it?”
“First off, don’t lose it. Then keep it with you. When you die, your old soul will go in one direction, but you can ride this new one somewhere else. That’s assuming you don’t go completely Jeffrey Dahmer and stink the thing up. Do that and you’re on your own, man.”
“Thanks,” he says, still doubtful. But he puts it in his pocket.
“Forget it. Fixing up Kasabian so he quits whining about every little thing is doing me more of a favor than him.”
“I’ll come by with the truck tomorrow.”
“Park it by the garage entrance. I don’t want to carry the hound through the lobby.”
“See you tomorrow.”
After Godzilla, we move on to Rodan. Not one of my favorites, but there aren’t that many giant, supersonic flying lizard monsters around, so you settle for what you can get. I have my share of Aqua Regia and Candy settles into some red wine. Kasabian sticks to his beer, leaving crushed cans like autumn leaves all over the floor.
Sometime after midnight I hear someone or something scratching at the grandfather-clock door. I get a gun and go over to check it out. Find a folded piece of paper in hotel stationery lying on the floor. I bring it back to the sofa and set down the gun.
“Fan mail from some flounder?” says Candy.
I read it a couple of times to make sure I have it right.
“We’re being evicted.”
That gets everyone’s immediate and sober attention. Kasabian turns down the sound on the movie. He doesn’t turn it off, of course. That would be sacrilegious.
I read out loud, “ ‘The standing account for Mr. Macheath has been closed permanently. Please vacate the premises no later th
an noon today. There may be charges applied for each subsequent hour that the room is still occupied,’ blah, blah.”
Kasabian finishes his beer and throws the can at the flat-screen.
“I knew this was too good to be true. Is there anything we can do? What I really mean is, you do something.”
I hand the letter to Candy. She reads it over.
“I guess Mr. Muninn knows about the jailbreak,” I say.
“You do keep things interesting,” Candy says. “I never got the bum’s rush from a deity before.”
“How do you know?”
“Good point.”
“Where are we going to go?” says Kasabian.
“Where do you think?”
“Back to Max Overdrive? I can’t go back to that dump after tasting paradise. Besides, the upstairs is too small for three people. Hell, it was too small for two.”
“We’ll fix the place up. Did you really manage to scam two hundred grand of the vampire cash?”
Kasabian looks away, then back at me.
“I might have exaggerated a little. It’s more like fifty.”
“That’s enough to get started. Bag everything up and I’ll take it to Max through the Room. That way we won’t have to perp-walk through the lobby in front of everyone.”
“The first thing I want to spend some money on is a bigger refrigerator. I’m not letting all of this food go to waste.”
“Hell yeah.”
Candy tosses the note on the table and pours herself more wine.
“Damn, boys, you sound like my first girlfriend. She called herself white trash, but I didn’t really know what that meant until she moved out. Took all the canned food and toilet paper with her.”
“Take the toilet paper,” Kasabian says. “That’s a great idea.”
Everyone gets up, the good mood as dead as the lobster crumbs on my plate.
I start for the bedroom, when Kasabian says, “I was going to tell you tomorrow. I saw some other funny stuff when I was surveillance-droning in Hell.”
“Yeah? What?”
“That big-time priest down there, Merihim. You said he and the wild-thing nun, Deumos, were enemies.”
“And?”
“I saw them hanging around together. They didn’t look like enemies to me.”
That explains a lot.
“I was right when I said it. Now I’m wrong. No big deal.”
“Okay. I just thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
We both look at each other.
“That felt weird,” says Kasabian.
“It did. Let’s not do it again anytime soon.”
“Yeah. Let’s not.”
Candy is in the bedroom taking clothes out of the closet and piling them on the bed.
“Hold up for a minute.”
She turns and looks at me, upset but trying not to show it.
“Sit down,” I say.
She drops a couple of T-shirts and sits.
I go the living room closet and come back with a cardboard box about three feet long, like a tall, thin shoe box.
“Merry Christmas.”
“What happened to all that stuff about us making it to Christmas, so I had to wait?”
I put the box in her lap.
“It’s been a tough couple of days. I figure that we could all use a little something.”
“Yeah, I was kind of jealous when you bought Kasabian a dog and didn’t get me anything.”
“Open the box.”
She smiles and rips the tape along the sides.
“Hell yes,” she says, holding up the guitar.
“It’s a midseventies Fender Duo-Sonic. The guy said it’s a piece of shit, but it’s just like Patti Smith’s first electric guitar.”
She balances it on her knees and hits a chord. It’s horrible.
“I think you have to tune it first.”
I sit down next to her.
“How did you get it?”
“A guy owed me a favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“I didn’t break his arms.”
She leans over and rests her head on my shoulder.
“What are we going to do now?”
“Pack up. Go to Max and figure things out from there.”
“Saving the world is hard.”
“Yeah, but at least we’re not in Fresno.”
She elbows me in the ribs.
“I haven’t said anything to anyone, but when we were swimming away from Kill City, I think I saw one of the Angra.”
Candy pushes away from me.
“It’s loose in the city?”
“No. She got sucked back into the mall. But it means they’re closer to getting out.”
“Goddamn.”
“Sorry. I needed to say something to someone. Don’t tell anyone else.”
“Okay.”
“We should start packing.”
“Okay,” she says. “Thanks for the guitar. I notice you didn’t get me an amp.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Coward.”
“Damn right.”
AN HOUR LATER I’m moving things over to Max Overdrive by hand through the Room. I do it all myself. It would be too strange to have Candy and Kasabian marching through and seeing Father Traven every few minutes. I apologize to him every time I come through. I bring him some pillows and a blanket. It’s not like he’s going to get cold in the room. The temperature never changes. But they’re normal things. Things that will let him feel human in a pretty inhuman situation. I look around for a book I can give him, but all I can find is a month-old issue of Entertainment Weekly.
“I’ll get some of your stuff from Vidocq soon. I promise.”
“I know,” he says. He’s so fucking sincere it can just break your heart.
Downstairs in Max Overdrive, it’s still a maze of drop cloths and empty paint cans from when repairs on the place stopped after the zombie riots. At least the upstairs living quarters are in decent shape. Almost like a person lived there. There’s a not too small bed-sit area complete with actual windows that get sun, and an adjoining bathroom. Of course a couple of video monitors for movies. They seem small and pathetic after the drive-in-theater-size flat-screen at the Chateau. First thing we need around here is a bigger refrigerator. The second is bigger monitors.
Candy and I outvote Kasabian, so we get the upstairs room and he gets the sales floor area to himself. He can camp out on the mattress we stole from his bedroom at the Chateau. It’s better for him downstairs anyway, with his hinky leg. We’re just thinking of his welfare.
“We’re going to have to be careful of the furniture in here, you know,” I tell Candy. “It’s not like we can call down to the front desk every time we break an end table or bureau anymore.”
“That will just make things more challenging.”
“We could cover the whole room in bubble wrap.”
“And you’ll finally have the padded cell you’ve always wanted.”
Allegra knocks on Max Overdrive’s front door around noon. Candy lets her in.
“I went by the hotel but they said you weren’t there anymore. They asked if I knew a forwarding address. I guess some linens and furniture are missing from the penthouse.”
“Come upstairs and I’ll show you our almost new sofa,” says Candy.
Allegra sighs.
“The penthouse was nice but I guess nothing lasts forever.”
“Just scars and library fines,” I say, carrying a pretty little Tiffany lamp over to Kasabian’s bed. Allegra gives me a tense little wave when she sees me.
“Hey, Stark. Can I talk to you in private?”
Candy raises her eyebrows at me.
“Sure. Let’s go out on the lanai.”
I take her out the back door to the overflowing Dumpster.
She gets a good whiff of the thing and makes a face.
“I guess you need to get some services tur
ned back on.”
“There’s still water and electricity. That’ll do for now.”
“I wanted to talk to you about Matthew.”
“He’s the boyfriend.”
“Ex-boyfriend.”
“Right. Sorry.”
She takes a deep breath.
“He’s at my old apartment. He’s moved in like it’s his.”
“Is there anything there that would tell him where you are now? I don’t mean the apartment with Vidocq. That’s still invisible to civilians, right?”
“Yes.”
“How about the clinic? Could he track you there?”
She thinks for a minute.
“I keep some supplies there but nothing with an address. Aside from that, there’s some old tables and chairs. Some of Eugène’s chemistry equipment. A few books.”
“How dangerous is this guy? Will he be packing when I see him?”
“Probably. He’s hurt people. I know that. I don’t know if he ever killed anyone.”
“Okay, but that still means if it comes to it, it might be him or me. You understand?”
She touches the side of her head. Brushes some hair out of the way.
“I know it’s a lousy thing to ask, but please don’t kill him.”
“Didn’t you just hear me? If he draws down on me, I might not have a choice.”
She takes a step toward me. Gropes for words.
“You know how to do these things. Trick him. Use all that strategy you learned in the arena.”
“Why don’t you want me to hurt him?”
“I didn’t say don’t hurt him. Hurt him all you want. Just don’t kill him. I’d feel so guilty. He’s here because I stole his money. If he dies, it will be my fault.”
“I get it. I understand buyer’s remorse when it comes to killing. I’ve had it myself. Okay. I can probably handle this without making it a terminal situation, but I need your permission to make a mess.”
“As long as he doesn’t die, I’ll trust you with whatever you need to do.”
I think the scene over. I sort of remember the layout of her apartment.
“I’m going to need you to get some things for me.”
She calls up an empty note on her phone and types as I talk.
“A large painter’s tarp. Waterproof. Make that two. A gallon-size jug of dishwashing soap.”
“Got it. Is that all?”
“No. Glasses or empty bottles. Lots. When you think you have too many, that will be half of what I want.”
Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel Page 29