The Dirty Streets of Heaven

by Tad Williams

“Wait? How do I get in touch with you if I do want to talk?”

  “Ask for me on any corner downtown!” A couple of old black guys sitting on the front step of the apartment building next door laughed and pointed as they watched him prance past.

  So—yet one more weird detail to add to a large, dangerous, and very confusing picture.

  I had been thinking I would check my mailbox one last time before I left, but after meeting Fox I didn’t feel like going back inside the building. Not that it would have mattered—I never get anything but junk mail, anyway. I hopped in the car and went hunting for any sanctuary with cable TV and a working ice machine.

  I picked a place on the Camino Real because it had a parking garage—after all, a ‘71 Matador with the full performance package isn’t the most discreet car in the world. In fact, I haven’t even seen another one around Jude with the same copper paint, let alone my checkerboard interior, so no way could I leave it out in plain view. In fact, I would have to think about ditching it entirely until the heat had blown over.

  My phone continued to oblige me by not ringing, so I settled back to catch up on a few details that had been hanging fire the last couple of days. Fatback’s material on the late Grasswax (the real Grasswax, not his earthly “Grazuvac” identity) was interesting; I skimmed it and put it aside to reread later when I had less to do, but the main thing I noticed was that he’d been around longer than most prosecutors of his rank. The material on Edward Lynes Walker was more of the stuff I’d already seen: born in 1928, started first successful company in his San Judas garage in the early 1950s, riches and fame, blah blah, split and founded HoloTech when another company he had started got too corporate, blah blah, space program, contributed lots of money to ecological causes.

  All of this biographical crap reminded me I still hadn’t looked through the pictures I’d taken at the Walker house the afternoon young Garcia Windhover had threatened to bust a cap in my ass. The images were still on my phone, which had somehow managed to survive in my pocket while I was being tossed around by a horned, red-hot whaddayoucallit.

  There were a couple blurry shots of the Walker living room and one of Posie’s shoulder and part of the Mayan calendar, but most of the pictures were of the bookcases. I enlarged the images as much as I could and read down the spines of the books, Googling when I couldn’t get enough information from title and author alone. The late ELW’s collection was pretty much what I would have expected from the rest of the house, lots of coffee-table art books and big, expensive picture books about science, as well as collections of photography of the West, echoing the Ansel Adams prints on the living room walls. Among the ordinary-sized books, science and the arts seemed to dominate, although there were a few novels, some of them science fiction, like Carl Sagan’s Contact, others more mainstream stuff like Updike and John Irving. There was even a section of mysteries, the English village sort. I wondered if those had been his or his late wife’s. After what his granddaughter had told me I wasn’t surprised to see that Walker had no conventional religious books, although there were several volumes by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and even a hoary old copy of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian. All together Walker had over a dozen titles with a pretty clearly antireligious slant. Still, for a scientist that wasn’t much of a surprise. Stubborn bastards, those scientists.

  I was beginning to wish I’d found Walker’s music collection and taken pictures of that instead. You show me what someone listens to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)

  As I mentioned, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for on the bookshelves—I didn’t really expect to find anything titled, “Evading Heaven” or “How to Make Your Soul Disappear.” I was mainly trying to get a feeling for Edward Lynes Walker beyond the dry facts that Fatback and the ordinary internet had already provided, something that might help me get a handle on why, of all the deaths in the world, his had been so different. But judging by his books at least, Walker was pretty much like millions of others who had managed to show up for their own afterlives. I had all but given up when something caught my eye.

  I had enlarged a section of magazine-shaped objects that filled most of a shelf. Some of them were magazines, special year-end editions of things like Chemical and Engineering News, but most were stockholder’s reports for HT and some of the other companies in which Walker had been involved. Some of these dated from several years earlier, and the section in general looked like Walker might have stuck things into it but almost never pulled anything back out. But squeezed in right between reports for Littleton Bioscience and Metaware was a slender prospectus or something similar with the words “The Magian Society” printed on its spine in tasteful italics.

  Alarm bells—hell, air-raid sirens—went off in my head. Because I had just heard about Magians, and not from just anyone, either. Somebody had asked me if I had heard anything about Magians—an archangelic somebody named Temuel, my supervisor.

  I did a quick, fruitless online search for Magians. I found a lot of jabber about the Three Wise Kings but nothing about any “society,” so I phoned the Walker house. Posie Walker picked up about the twentieth ring, just when I had resigned myself to the answering machine.

  “Hello?” She sounded a trifle baked again. I introduced myself, and she eventually remembered me. “Right. That writer guy.”

  “Exactly. Listen, I was curious about your grandfather’s interest in the Magian Society.” I said it like everybody knew who that was, although I had already discovered nobody on the internet seemed to have heard of them.

  “Never heard of ’em,” she said, on cue.

  “That’s okay. I noticed he had something of theirs when I was there, a folder—maybe you could find it for me.” I gave her the bookshelf coordinates, which was a bit like trying to teach a marmoset to play chess; I doubted that she’d spent a lot of her time perusing her grandfather’s books. I told her I was happy to wait.

  She came back a few minutes later. “Nope. There’s nothing like that.”

  I stifled a curse. “Did you look carefully, Ms. Walker? Between Linson Bio—”

  “Yeah, just like you said. It was there, probably, ‘cause there’s a space, but it’s not there now…” She trailed off, considering. “Maybe one of the cleaners took it.”

  Oh, yeah. The Mighty Maids just happened to borrow the one thing in the entire bookshelf I wanted to see and take it back to their office for special cleaning. “Look, could I drop by sometime and take a look around? Sometime soon? Just in case it’s been, I don’t know, misplaced or something. It would really help my article if I could find it.”

  Somebody yelled something in the background on her end. It sounded like Garcia the Gang-banger.

  “I guess,” she said. “Sure. But not now. Somebody’s over. Later.”

  She hung up without waiting to hear my reply.

  Despite a powerful urge to drive over there right now and break in and look for myself, I decided not to. If it hadn’t been stolen from the shelf it was just misplaced, which meant it would still be there tomorrow, but breaking and entering the Walker place tonight might have dire consequences. Like I might accidentally walk in on Posie and her idiot boyfriend having sex.

  It was a nice enough evening, and I would have loved to swing by The Compasses for a drink and some comradely bullshit, but it had only been twenty-four hours since the attack, and I wasn’t going anywhere that my pursuer might be watching. Also, to be honest, I wasn’t really in a hurry to see Monica either. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I wanted to avoid her—I just wanted to avoid having a conversation with her. I hadn’t had time to figure out what falling into bed with Monica the other night was going to mean. Also, when I had been having the occasional moment of arousing thought, it wasn’t about Monica but a certain stunning blonde Hell-creature, and that was even more confusing. But I wouldn’
t want you to think I was a complete moral coward, so I would like to make clear that the main reason for not going to The Compasses was as follows: Not wanting to suffer horrible, painful attack of the murderous-demon variety.

  I had emailed Fatback to see if he could find me anything about the Magian Society or the name “Kephas,” but hadn’t heard from him yet because midnight was still hours away. I was getting hungry, so I walked from the motel to a Mexican place I had spotted on a side street. Considering it wasn’t anywhere near the worst part of Jude I felt surprisingly unsafe. Every movement at the edge of my immediate frame of vision yanked my head around, and sudden noises didn’t do much for my nerves either. It wasn’t just the thought of getting attacked by the ghallu that had me worried, either; if I was now a hot commodity that meant other people were probably willing to shop me for profit even if they didn’t have anything personal against me, so suddenly it wasn’t just eight-foot demons I needed to keep an eye out for but anyone who might be looking at me funny. On the streets of San Judas that can tire you out real fast.

  I made it to the restaurant without incident, and to my pleasant surprise it turned out they made carnitas that actually tasted like something you might get in Mexico, and I mean that in the best possible way. It looked like the kind of establishment where they’d have a DJ on weekends, but on a weeknight it was almost deserted and quiet enough to think. As I ate I knocked back a couple of Negra Modelos and looked over the research material. I discovered some interesting things about the late Edward Walker I hadn’t known, including the fact he was a member of American Atheists and had even spoken at a few of their conventions. It still didn’t get me any closer to what had happened, of course—as far as Heaven is concerned, an atheist’s soul is just like any other nutbar’s. If they lived a decent life, we take ’em.

  I also did a little more searching for Magians online. Turns out the term doesn’t just mean the guys out of the “We Three Kings” song but also covers Zoroastrian priests from Persia. Either way, though, it seemed to have too much to do with religion to interest someone like Walker. Could the name “Magians” have some other meaning, I wondered—alchemical or something? Could it be some kind of fraternal organization of scientists? I Googled as I worked my way through dinner but didn’t turn up anything.

  Somewhere during my second beer I looked up and noticed that a guy sitting at the bar was watching me, but he glanced away when he saw me looking back. He appeared to be an ordinary working guy in work boots and a trucker cap, probably Mexican or Central American by ancestry. At any other time I would have figured he’d just been looking me over out of idle curiosity, but tonight I was thinking about things differently. I caught him staring again a couple of minutes later and gave him a hard glance in return. He dropped his eyes quickly, but I could see a tiny sheen of sweat on his neck. He didn’t look like someone who thought I was kind of cute. He looked like someone who’d recognized me, and that probably didn’t mean anything good. That’s the downside of having friends in odd places—other people who hang out in those odd places start to recognize you.

  If I stayed long enough I felt pretty sure he’d find an excuse to step outside and call someone, so I beat him to the punch, finishing my beer with a long swallow and leaving my money on the table. As I headed for the door I swung wide to the bar and caught the guy by surprise. As he stared up at me I leaned toward him and whispered, “If anyone’s coming after me, they better come hard and strong, got me? Duro y fuerte. Porque yo soy un ángel de Dios.”

  I left him staring, his mouth hanging open. I had either given one of Hell’s helpers fair warning or scared the crap out of some guy who’d developed a little crush on a stranger.

  I walked back with my eyes wide open just in case he’d informed someone of my whereabouts before I noticed him, but I got back without incident. As I reached the motel my phone rang.

  “Is this Mr. Dollar, yo? It’s G-Man—remember?”

  “G-Man as in Garcia? As in, I took away your piece and rapped your skull with it? Yeah, I remember you, chummy. What do you want?”

  He sounded like he’d really psyched himself up for this. “You said…you said maybe I could get my strap back?”

  “Gun, Garcia. A Palo Alto kid can’t call it a ‘strap’ without sounding like a total douche. You got some information for me?”

  Now he just sounded hurt. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. If I tell you something, can I get my—my gun back?”

  “I don’t know. What do you want to tell me?”

  “Well, Posie…I was talking to Posie…she’s my girlfriend, right? And she said when you came over you were interested in some African guy her grandfather knew?”

  “Yeah, I am.” Although this Magian thing was what really had my interest now. “So? Did you find out his name?”

  “Sort of. But even better, man—he was here.”

  “What? What are you talking about? Where?”

  “Here at Posie’s house—I mean her granddad’s house. That African guy was here. She didn’t know he was coming or anything, he just showed up. He hung around for a long time, talking to Posie and stuff. She made him tea, even. He was here when you called before. Anyway, he just left a few minutes ago.”

  “He was there when I called?” It was very difficult not to shout, but I was on a public street. “And you waited until now to tell me?” I had a sudden, very strong suspicion about why this African gentleman might have dropped by and also why Posie hadn’t been able to find the folder. “Jesus, why did you wait so long?”

  “Hey, man, I didn’t want to give anything away! Like that you were looking for him! I know all about this private detective shit, yo. So I waited until he left.”

  “God save me.” I headed for the stairs down to the motel garage. “Stay there, both of you. I’ll be right over.”

  “Well? Do I get my piece back?”

  “Oh, I’m going to give it to you, all right—same way I did last time. I’m going to smack your dumbass head with it.” I hung up on him and climbed into my car.

  twelve

  black windows

  AS I hurried toward the Palo Alto district I thought about all the questions I still didn’t have answers for. I needed to know more about the Magians for one thing, a lot more than I could find on my own, but it was hours too early to call Fatback unless I just wanted to listen to him grunt and squeal. (I’ve already got plenty of friends who can do that for me, especially if I catch them before they’ve had coffee.)

  Still, things were moving fast enough that I was beginning to think I needed to go visit one of my other sources. Fatback was very good at what he did, so he was usually my first choice, but there were others in and around San Judas with a different and maybe deeper insight into what went on in the Opposition camp. The Broken Boy and the Sollyhull Sisters sprang to mind, but the Broken Boy was expensive, and hard to work with at the best of times—he had problems that made my new friend Foxy Foxy seem as together as the head of the local Rotary Club—so I decided I’d give the sisters a try first. Not now, though. Now I was back on University Avenue again, turning onto Walker’s quiet, expensive side street. I was beginning to get sick of the smell of stately old trees and trimmed hedges.

  “Wow,” said Posie, opening the door. She was wearing a baggy caftan, the kind of thing hippy chicks used as sleepwear back in 1973. Posie had clearly missed her natural era. “He really did call you! I didn’t know you and G even knew each other!”

  “Yeah, we’re practically white soul brothers. I understand the African gentleman you mentioned before, dropped in for a visit tonight.”

  She nodded as she led me down the hall toward the living room. “He just showed up. He’s nice. I never really talked to him before.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Oh, he wanted to thank us for a contribution my grandpa made to his charity. They’re building some kind of school or…or hospital or something.” She flapped her hand. “I didn’t really catch all of it. G was ti
ptoeing around like Super Spy Squad. It was really distracting.”

  “Shut up,” said Garcia, appearing from the kitchen with a box of Cheez-Its in his hands and crumbs in his little chin beard. “I was helping Mr. Dollar—right? I was, wasn’t I?”

  A little more help like his and I’d be demoted to appearing to nuns in visions. “Did your visitor say anything else, Ms. Walker? Did he leave any literature, anything? What was his name?” There was a chance the guy was perfectly legitimate—I never had anything on him in the first place except that Posie remembered him coming to visit her grandfather—but his timing was a little suspicious, showing up the same night I found out the Magian Society folder was gone.

  “Mubari or Nabari or something,” said Posie. “Something weird.”

  “With all due respect, you’re killing me here,” I said. “Did he give you a card or something else that might have a name, an address, anything?”

  “Not this time. I think G scared him—he kept asking the poor guy all these stupid questions.”

  “They weren’t stupid!” Garcia was full of righteous indignation. “I just asked him what his deal was.”

  I winced. If the poor guy was legit he couldn’t have enjoyed that. If he wasn’t…well, let’s just say he was now definitely aware he was under suspicion. “Hold on, slow down. Ms. Walker, a second ago you said, ‘Not this time.’ Does that mean he gave you a card or something another time he was here?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  I did my best to remain calm. “Any possibility it’s still around? That you could find it?”

  “It might be in the crud drawer. That’s where the rubber bands from the newspaper and, like, twist ties and all the useless stuff like that goes.” She smiled beatifically, as if this breakthrough in domestic order was hers and hers alone.

  I smiled back as charmingly as I could manage. “Any chance you could go see if it’s there, Ms. Walker?” Because if this guy was a ringer he obviously wouldn’t have left anything tonight. He had probably come just to vacuum up the Magian Society folder and any other loose ends, and he wouldn’t be coming back, either. “It would really help my article on your granddad.”