The Dirty Streets of Heaven

by Tad Williams

  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.

  And could I even believe it myself? She was a demon, a minion of Hell itself. What could love truly mean to her?

  It didn’t keep me from hurting as I walked away, though. Didn’t help at all.

  After I found a cab I went to see Orban, not just because I needed to replace my lost gun, left somewhere at the bottom of the Redwood River, but because I owed him the courtesy of a face to face when I told him what had happened to the Bonneville he’d lent me. Also, the errand would distract me from what I’d just left behind. Orban wasn’t happy, of course. His accent got even stronger when he was in a bad mood: I have never been called a “deekhad” so many times in such a short span of time in my angelic life.

  “How could you do that? That is my favorite, that car! Do you know how hard I look for parts? Nineteen seventy-one! How expensive? Almost two hundred dollars just for one sun visor latch! You bring back my sun visor latches? You bring back anything?”

  Eventually he calmed down—in this case, “eventually” meaning after a half hour of fussing, fuming, and spitting, plus two glasses of Egri. I had one or two with him since it was lunchtime. I mean, why the hell not? I also promised I’d get the Bonneville back from impound and (somehow) pay for the damages, so eventually we changed the subject.

  Tapping out my bank account and letting him hold the pink slip to my beloved Matador allowed me to drive away from Orban’s in another loaner, this one a far less glamorous and slightly less well-armored old diesel Mercedes the color of shower caulk. More useful, at least under present circumstances, was an FN Five-Seven pistol, a Belgian automatic with a twenty-shot magazine. (Yes, I know, technically it’s spelled “Five-SeveN” with a capital “N” at the end, but I’ve got no patience with that kind of cute whoopty-doo.) I had also sprung for another hundred silver rounds, which Orban had made up for the original buyer of the Five-Seven.

  “That guy was too dead to pick them up when they are finished, so I let you have them
cheap,” he said. “You can get a kit to make a thirty-shot magazine for the Five-Seven, but I don’t trust. Too tricky. Stick with twenty. Twenty is plenty.” He smiled in his beard. “Ha! Orban makes a rhyme.”

  I left the poet of firepower standing behind his counter and headed back across town, bound for Five Page Mill in the huffing, rattling Benz.

  I’d been thinking about the things Caz had told me ever since I’d left her, and much as I wanted to trust her—much as I needed to believe what she’d said, since I’d broken so many rules being with her—I still had some nagging doubts, and I had decided to do some checking.

  I parked a few rows back from the front of Number Five, put on some sunglasses and an old Giants cap that one of Orban’s mechanics left in the back seat of the Benz, then settled back to watch who went in and out of Vald Credit. I saw Howlingfell pop out a couple of times like a cuckoo on a clock, always leading at least two other security guys, but I just stayed in my car and watched. The last thing I wanted was another shootout in Page Mill Square. Late in the afternoon I abandoned my surveillance long enough to drive to a nearby deli for a turkey sandwich and cup of coffee to go, then returned to the parking lot, ready now for a long siege.

  As five o’clock passed most of the Vald Credit employees and many other workers from the plaza’s buildings spilled out of the high-rises and headed for the street and the bus stops. Vald Credit had its own parking lot under the building, which also began to empty, but the public lot was still full of customers for the shops on the lower floors of most of the buildings, so I didn’t feel any need to move.

  At last, closer to seven than to six, my wait paid off: Howlingfell walked out of the building by himself and stood for a moment looking expectantly from one side to the other before a long, sleek car pulled up and he got in.

  I followed at a respectable distance, the tail made easier by the fact that it was getting dark, and the Camino Real was crowded with commuter traffic. When the car pulled into a place called Il Milanese, a couple of miles down the main drag, Howlingfell went in by himself and the driver stayed outside in the parking lot, just as I had hoped. I watched the driver put on the dome light to read a magazine, then I took a minute to scribble a note on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope, and pocket it before I went inside.

  It was an interesting place, full of swoopy modern decor and black and white photos of nineteenth century Italians, the men in high collars and the women mostly in voluminous black dresses, as if they had spent the entire century in mourning. The wall that fronted on the Camino Real was made of glass, and I wondered if the place might once have been a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. The counter with its roll of revolving stools confirmed my guess, but these days the guys in trucker hats had been replaced with young professionals eating bar snacks and drinking vodka and Red Bull.

  Howlingfell was in the restaurant’s back room, his low, animal brow furrowed as he surveyed the wine list. He didn’t jump or even look particularly surprised when I slid into the other side of the booth, but his hand slipped off the table, and I knew he was reaching for his gun.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Howly,” I said. “I’m just here to talk.”

  “Stupid?” He scowled at me, which made him look even more like something you’d find in your chicken shed with a limp hen hanging from its jaws. “You’re the one who just did something stupid.” He slowly lifted his hand and set it on the table so the flat black automatic he was holding lay sideways, pointing at me, with his finger still on its trigger. Then he carefully draped his napkin over hand and gun to hide them from the folks in the other booths. “Why do you want to spoil my dinner, Dollar? What’d I ever do to you?”

  “Less than I’ve done to you, to be perfectly honest. Remember when I stepped on your neck? Good times, good times. Ah, ah, ah, stay relaxed! I’ve got a big old gun of my own pointing at you under the table. Let’s not turn this into a contest to see how much silver we can put into each other.”

  “Silver. You think I’m afraid of silver? You tried that already.” His lip curled. “You missed my balls by a couple of inches, but it’s still going to take me weeks to heal down there, and I heal fast. My girlfriends are all pissed at you. Not to mention that it really fucking hurt. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to listen to any of your bullshit—I think I’m just going to blow your face off!”

  “Don’t. I’m not threatening you with silver this time, pal. I’m threatening you with something a lot worse.” I looked up. The waiter was coming toward us. I hoped nobody got startled.

  The napkin over Howlingfell’s gun hand twitched a little, but for the moment everything stayed in place. “Worse? Like what?”

  “Like your boss. Hang on.”

  The waiter took two waters off a tray and put them in front of us. “Hi, my name is Eric, and I’ll be your server,” he said with cheerful disinterest in whatever weird vibe was going back and forth between us, which he couldn’t have helped but notice. “Can I get you gentlemen anything?”

  “Vodka rocks for me,” I said. “I’ll just have some breadsticks, but my friend probably wants dinner.”

  “I’ll order later,” Howlingfell snarled. “Just bring me a glass of Chianti. The Castello dei Rampolla.”

  As the waiter glided away I smiled at my unwilling host. “So, have you really learned to like fancy wines? Pretty good for a kid who grew up on the scorching sidewalks of the Via Dolorosa, Howly. Or do you just like to put anything in your mouth as long as it’s wet and red?”

  “Shut up, Dollar. You have something to say about my boss, then say it fast. I’m sick of your face.”

  “Okay, fair enough.” I took a breadstick and crunched off the end of it, my other hand still out of sight beneath the table. “I’m going to tell you a little story. About how your boss’s ex-girlfriend ripped him off. And how you helped her do it.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” He half stood and the napkin over his gun started to slide, but after a moment he controlled himself and sat down again. A few people turned to look at us. “You lying cocksucker!” he said in a loud whisper. “I didn’t know anything about that!”

  I was taking a big risk that he might just start a firefight right there in the restaurant, but the last, small part of me that still had any sense needed to know that Caz had been telling me the truth. Outside of the Grand Duke, Howlingfell was the only person still around to confirm her story, and I already knew that threats weren’t going to make him talk to me—after all, here he was in a restaurant less than twenty-four hours after I had put a couple of silver slugs into his pelvis, inches from his jewels, so obviously he was one tough bastard. The only thing he was scared of would be the same thing that scared me—his pissed-off, crazy, murderous boss Eligor.

  “Honestly, Fuzzy,” I told him, “for your own sake, don’t do anything stupid ’til you hear me out.”

  He showed me lots of teeth. “The stupid thing would be letting you walk out of here.”

  I smiled back. “You can decide for yourself, but here’s what you need to know first. My information says that if the Grand Duke catches up with the Countess she’s going to say the two of you were in it together; that she only walked out with Eligor’s…personal property”—I had a sudden attack of discretion because I didn’t know whether Howlingfell knew what had been stolen—“because you deliberately looked the other way.”

  “Lying whore!” I thought he was going to pop a vein. His face began to take on the color of a zesty marinara. “I didn’t know anything about it! She got to one of my crew….”

  “So it was just a coincidence that the grand duke’s chief of security was slumming as a mere prosecutor’s bodyguard?” I affected a superior laugh. “Right. You were keeping an eye on your investment.”

  “Fuck you, angel. Eligor was the one who put me on Grasswax in the first place! I was watching him because the boss knew he was in it with that bitch, somehow.” Howlingfell was beginning to lose control. The idea of
his boss blaming him for the theft really scared him, and he wasn’t thinking carefully, which was what I had been hoping. “This is all made-up crap. Do you really think this is enough to get you off the boss’s shit list?” The napkin was definitely moving, which meant his hand was twitching as he got a better grip on his gun.

  “Ah, ah,” I said. “You don’t really want to make all that noise in here, do you, Howly? You like this place, remember? Not to mention that after you miss me several times and I get away, you’ll have to explain to the police why you accidentally shot all these nice people.”

  Howlingfell picked up his butter knife and ran his thumb down its smooth edge, his hairy hand trembling ever so slightly. “I don’t need my gun to do you, angel. I could kill you just fine with this. Or my bare hands.”

  “I don’t know why nobody wants to hang out with you, Howly. You’re fun.” I stood up, then—carefully, so as not to alarm him—and took out the note I had written before coming in. “I’m going to be on my way now. Before you call for reinforcements, or even decide to try to butter me to death on your own, I strongly suggest you read this. But only if you value your continued torture-less existence. As you keep pointing out to me, your boss is a bad character to cross.” I set the envelope down on the edge of the table as I turned. Seems I wasn’t too careful and the envelope fell onto the floor. As he watched me, eyes almost glowing with hatred, I headed for the door. I confess that my muscles were tensed since I was half-expecting to get shot in the back.

  I looked back and saw him lean down to pluck the envelope from the floor so I hurried out of the restaurant. As he tore it open and read the words, “Stay away from the osso bucco, I hear it’s not very good tonight,” I was climbing into my car.

  By the time Howlingfell burst out the front door of Il Milanese with his gun out and a face like an enraged, shaved pit bull, ready to blow me to tatters, I was already speeding away down the Camino Real.

  My dangerous due diligence performed—so far Caz’s story about Grasswax and the feather was holding up—I got on with the rest of my list. First I phoned Clarence. I still had my doubts about him, but I’d thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone.