Premonitions

by Jamie Schultz

Sobell had a good nose for trouble and, flamboyant personality notwithstanding, a good head for avoiding it. You didn’t get to be a few hundred years old otherwise, certainly not in his chosen line of work. He liked to keep it mysterious for the peons, but there was really no trick to it—you watched the details. People’s eyes told volumes, though they were tricksy buggers, and they lied to you more than you might expect. Not as much as mouths, but even so. When you walked into a room, what did people say? More importantly, how did the manner of their speech change? Even without a whisper of the content, there was much to be gleaned from volume, pitch, timbre—meta-information, he supposed they called it in this day and age, though he’d known those tricks since he was scrabbling for loose change in Amsterdam, literally centuries ago.

  Tonight, he had a wealth of details at his disposal, and they added up to nothing good. He’d walked several blocks since the motel debacle, Brown and company his unwieldy entourage, and he’d seen a number of things that set him to worrying. The junkies and the pushers left off their dealings and watched him walk by—not with fear, but with an eerie species of recognition, like not only did they know who he was, but they had been expecting him. One sore-raddled toothless meth addict gave him the very hairiest of eyeballs and appeared to consider jumping him right there on the street. That was offensive enough, but the obvious recognition on that lowly specimen’s face, the indication that he knew who Sobell was and dared to think such thoughts anyway, was truly worrisome.

  Sobell got the strong sense that, if it hadn’t been for the entourage, the guy would have gone for it, too. And he wasn’t the only one—Sobell was accreting a thin, straggling tail of lowlifes, too scattered and too short on numbers to be much of a threat right now, but growing.

  It was probably nothing to worry about, he reminded himself. Another couple of blocks, and he’d be at the rendezvous, whereupon his driver would pluck him from this shit-filled rat hole and whisk him back to the office. The entourage would have to take a taxi—such was the lot of minions and hangers-on.

  He passed a bail bondsman’s shop, stepped over a passed-out hooker in front of the police surplus store. A set of footsteps accelerated behind him, and Brown caught him up in front of a seedy music store with heavy-duty bars on the windows.

  “It’s unusually busy down here tonight,” Brown said.

  “I’d noticed.”

  “Employees?”

  Sobell raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Of mine? Hardly.”

  “We need to get out of here. I think this could get ugly.”

  “Ah, I guess that means we’ll need to cut the tour short. Pity.”

  Brown remained silent. Sobell wondered if he’d hurt the poor man’s feelings.

  “Don’t worry—my driver should be up ahead.” He kept an even pace, worried that moving faster would set off some attack instinct in the people behind them.

  Ahead, the street was empty save for a cracked plastic Starbucks cup. Sobell checked the signs at the corner as they approached and verified that he was in the right place.

  “Hmm,” he said. “How long ago did I call?”

  “Twenty minutes, at least. Maybe thirty.”

  “It might be advisable to start worrying. Luis should have been here by now.”

  “He could have gotten hung up in traffic,” Brown said. Sobell gave him a withering glare and offered no further comment. A glance behind them showed maybe two dozen of the area’s lost and forgotten strewn down the length of the sidewalk, standing in doorways, and looming in the mouths of alleys. Not one bothered to look away when Sobell looked back.

  “Hey, I think that’s your car,” Brown said, pointing. A pair of headlights turned onto the street a few hundred yards ahead.

  It certainly looked like Sobell’s car, a long black town car, but the sight of it stirred a faint tickle of fear inside him.

  “Too slow,” Sobell said. He started crossing the street, away from the approaching car, away from the drugged-out wolf pack behind. He walked quickly now, and Brown jogged to catch up.

  “What?”

  “Too slow. He’s more than ten minutes late and driving less than the speed limit. I don’t know who’s driving that car, but it’s not Luis. He wouldn’t dare.”

  The distant purr of the car kicked up a notch.

  “He’s speeding up now.”

  “Run.” Sobell followed his own instruction, breaking into an open run with his overcoat flapping behind him. The clacking shoes of the entourage picked up the pace, and the vagrants behind them began cutting across the street, angling toward Sobell.

  Sobell turned right and headed for an alley, running full-out now for the first time in years. It was as disagreeable an experience as he’d remembered, and in addition to his rough breathing and the general strain on his knees, he developed a stitch in his side almost immediately.

  The sound of screaming tires echoed through the canyon of brick and stone, followed by a sound Sobell had grown exceedingly tired of in the last hour or so—gunshots. Somebody fell. Sobell found reserves of speed he’d been unaware of and dashed forward. Brick exploded on his left, but he made the alley unscathed, Brown close behind with the surviving members of his security detail.

  “Fucking shoot them!” Sobell snarled. Brown reached for his gun, and Sobell grabbed his wrist. “Not you.” He pulled a small folding knife from his pocket and opened it.

  “Hold still,” he said. “This is going to sting like crazy.”

  “Are you—ow!” A red gash appeared in Brown’s palm, blood flowing heavily forth. He tried to yank away from Sobell’s grip, but Sobell squeezed more tightly. Red droplets ran down Brown’s fingers and spattered the dirty pavement.

  “Hold still,” Sobell repeated. Brown seemed to pull together his will and keep from coldcocking Sobell, but it looked like a close thing.

  Sobell pulled Brown down to a kneeling position. He drew several quick lines in the dirt, then smeared his finger in the blood running from Brown’s palm.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Brown asked.

  “Shut up for a moment. I need to concentrate.” The gunfire was bad enough—tough to tell who was winning, but there was an awful lot of shooting. Again. Sobell dabbed the lines with blood in several spots, returning to his grisly inkwell a couple of times for a refill. Brown watched, either baffled or appalled, but at least he’d stopped complaining.

  Sobell finished and stood. “Come on.”

  Brown pushed the corner of his shirt into his wound and pressed.

  “Quickly.”

  Some of the entourage backed into the mouth of the alley, still firing. They were down to a mere handful now, the others having fallen to bullets or the depredations of the descending horde of low-rent criminals that had taken such sudden interest in the group.

  “Guys!” Brown shouted.

  “They’re fucked,” Sobell told him quietly. “It’s called sacrificing the rear guard. You can stay here and get violently introduced to the afterlife with them, or you can live. Your call.”

  Sobell fled down the alley without checking to see if Brown followed. The man was a soldier—he’d understand. If not, he’d go down fighting and be assured a place in Valhalla or whatever. Not my problem.

  At the alley’s end, Sobell crouched to the dirt.

  Brown was right behind him, face twisted in grief and anger.

  “Are you with me, Mr. Brown, or are you here to exact revenge for your fallen comrades?”

  Brown stared at Sobell, glanced over his shoulder, and looked back. Anger turned to disgust, but he nodded. “I’m with you.”

  “Good. Give me your hand.” Another quick sketch, a line across the width of the alley, and a few more dabs of blood.

  “Uh-oh,” Brown said, and Sobell looked up to see the last of the entourage fall. The alley filled with an angry, weapon-wielding mob. So
bell was surprised to see his driver among them, but he didn’t stop to think about it much, as the man started shooting at him.

  He shoved Brown out of the alley and followed, ducking around the side of the building. Counted to three, peered back around to see the mob clawing its way toward him. He reached out, pressed his hand against the line in the dirt, and uttered a few words in a long-dead language.

  A long stretch of ground convulsed with an enormous cracking and rending sound, heaving up under the feet of the oncoming mob. Shouts of alarm turned to cries as the walls of buildings on either side skewed, slumped, and finally collapsed inward. The air filled with choking black dust.

  “Keep moving,” Sobell said.

  Brown stumbled as he looked back at the wreckage.

  Sobell pushed him along. “Careful, you’ll turn into a pillar of salt.”

  “What?”

  “Kidding. But move, would you? I doubt I got all of them.”

  Brown’s eyes were wide with a familiar type of shock. Of course, there were rumors about Sobell’s occult pastimes, but they were all just stupid stories until you saw him in action. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing a stick of dynamite wouldn’t have done better. Now come on.”

  The two men ran.

  * * *

  “All done,” Genevieve said, wiping her hands as she stood. “It will take a miracle to find us now, unless the devil himself is looking.”

  “You think he might be?” Nail asked. He wasn’t even sure whether he was joking. He raised his voice loud enough to be heard from the living room. “Hey, we cool?”

  “Yeah, we’re good,” Anna said. “Good enough, anyway.”

  “Cool.” Nail went into the living room, pulling a chair after him. He flipped it around so he could lean on the back. Genevieve edged around him and sat, legs folded, on the floor next to Anna’s chair. Karyn still sat on the couch, head down and hands over her eyes.

  “So,” Nail said. “Eventually we’re gonna run out of peanut butter. What’s the plan?”

  Karyn lifted her head, though she still didn’t open her eyes. “You didn’t eat that, did you? I think it’s been in there since I was four.” That got a couple dry chuckles from around the room, but it didn’t put Nail any more at ease. There was a phony note to it, one that had to be obvious to everybody.

  “What about we skip town?” he offered. “Feels like we stick our heads up anywhere around here, we’re asking for a world of hurt to come raining down on us.”

  Anna tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “You serious?”

  “Dead serious,” Nail said. “Enoch Sobell’s gunning for us, we know that, and those jackasses from the Brotherhood followed us with an army all the way here from Topanga Canyon. And if Anna’s right, Greaser’s got his own little thing goin’ now, and it’ll be a whole lot better for him if we’re dead. Ain’t nowhere in L.A. safe, except maybe right here. And like I said, we’re getting pretty goddamn low on peanut butter.”

  “I don’t know,” Anna said. “Took me ten years to get in with some of the guys I’m in with. I don’t want to do that all over again.”

  “Beats the hell out of picking your own guts out of your teeth. These guys are maniacs. They scare me, and you know I ain’t scared of much.”

  “I don’t know if it matters anyway,” Genevieve said.

  “How’s that?”

  “You said it yourself—Enoch Sobell’s looking for us. You think a little thing like geography is going to make him forget all about us?”

  “That all depends on how much geography we’re talking about.”

  Genevieve shook her head. “There’s isn’t enough,” she said, and the despair in her voice surprised him. “They’ve been to Anna and Karyn’s place, so we’re fucked. All he needs is a few hairs off somebody’s hairbrush, and he can track them to the ends of the goddamn earth.”

  “The Brotherhood isn’t gonna give up, either,” Drew added, drawing a stare from everybody in the room. “Like you said, they brought an army after you. You think they’re going to pack up and go home when they can’t find you in a few days?”

  “How did you get here, again?” Anna asked. “I get it, you saved my ass, but what the fuck are you still doing here?”

  He gave an irritated sigh. “I’ve been through this with—well, with everyone by now. I couldn’t just leave. Tina’s the only family I got, and the only people I know are here. So I changed my mind. Thought I’d keep my head down, stick it out. Then I ran into your friend here when she was, uh, having some kind of episode.”

  Anna stood up and took a step toward him. He backed up, despite having five inches on her. “That so?”

  “Yes, it is,” Karyn said. “He’s cool, really. I can tell.”

  “Yeah. And Nail might have made that shot. Remember what I said, about not shutting our brains off?”

  Drew still held his hands up at about shoulder height, and now he pushed them a little higher. “Damn it, I told these guys where to find you! You think we just showed up by magic?”

  “Around here, you never know,” Nail muttered.

  “I don’t know,” Anna said. “Seemed like everybody in the goddamn universe turned up there.”

  “Told you,” said Genevieve. “All it takes is a hair.”

  Anna balled her hands into fists and stared at Drew. “That’s great. Well, I’m saved. Karyn’s saved. You’ve done your job well, hero; now how about getting the fuck out of here?”

  Drew didn’t move. Nobody did.

  “Ah, fuck,” Nail said. He really didn’t want this to be their problem, but . . . “He can’t.”

  “What was that?”

  “I said he can’t. Think about it. If the Brotherhood saw him, they’ll think he’s with us. They’ll turn him inside out. Besides that, one of Sobell’s guys saw him, too. He’s also gonna think homeboy here is with us.”

  Drew shrugged, gave an apologetic nod.

  “That is not our problem.”

  “Maybe not, but a little gratitude might be in order,” Drew said. A note of frustration had finally worked its way into his voice. “Besides, I know those assholes. I know who they are, how they work, what they want. I can help you.”

  “It’s not like he’s coming on a job with us,” Genevieve said. “We’re all in the same boat, trying to get unfucked together.”

  Anna held off on the retort Nail expected, closing her mouth tightly and crossing her arms. She stepped forward, almost touching Drew, and glared up at him. Then she turned her head toward Karyn. “He’s cool, huh?”

  Karyn pressed her hands to her eyes. “Yeah. I mean, I think so. I haven’t got a bad vibe off him this whole time.”

  Anna sighed, and it felt to Nail like half the room’s tension bled away in that breath. “All right, then,” she said. “What now?”

  Chapter 25

  “What are you?” Brown asked. Sobell regarded that as something of a miracle—the two of them were hustling down back alleys as fast as their tragically unfit flesh could carry them, and Brown wanted to get into philosophy for probably the first time in his life. Sobell ignored him and took the next left, huffing and puffing, and then another right. His shoe slipped in something greasy and unidentifiable, but he kept his footing. He cast a glance behind, saw nothing, and slowed to a walk.

  “What are you?” Brown repeated as they emerged onto the sidewalk. The street was moderately busy, filled with passing cars, and a handful of pedestrians, orange in the streetlights, wandered by on their errands.

  Sobell took a few deep breaths before replying. “I’m an old man, Mr. Brown, and I lost interest in that question a long time ago.” Another lungful of air, sweet despite its rank odor. “I lost interest in discussing it even before that, so I recommend you simply think of me as your employer, and leave it at that.”

&nb
sp; “Back there—what did you do?”

  “You already asked me that. Do you think you’ll get an answer more to your liking this time?”

  Brown looked down at his bloody hand. “This whole thing is fucked up.”

  “I could not agree with you more. Luis has been my driver for ten years. I’ve given him Christmas bonuses—sizable ones, I might add—presents for the kids, reasonable working hours and conditions, and I’ve had nothing but good service from him. Yet I believe he just tried to shoot me dead. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  “I don’t know about Denmark, but it looks like everybody and his dog is out to waste you.”

  Sobell nodded. “And more horrifying still, it appears we will have to take a common taxi back to the office. Would you mind?” He raised his eyebrows and gestured toward the road.

  Brown gave him a brief, incredulous glance, then stepped wearily to the curb and flagged down a cab. He even opened the door for Sobell when the cab stopped, which Sobell regarded as a thoughtful touch.

  Sobell pulled his coat around him and sat. The space was tight, but the cab didn’t smell nearly as bad as he would have guessed, and he’d certainly ridden in worse conveyances over the years. It wouldn’t do to be seen in this thing, but the ride was serviceable enough.

  He paid little attention when Brown got in next to him and gave the cabbie the address of the office building. The car jerked forward with Sobell still staring, unseeing, out the window. Over the last couple hundred years, he’d worn a dozen faces, run a thousand scams. He’d been a con man in London, an enterprising snake oil salesman in the American West. Near the turn of the twentieth century, he’d done a brisk trade selling deals with the Devil, and never mind that he’d had to fill in for the part of Old Scratch himself. The trick was convincing the marks that the Devil had run down on his luck and preferred cash instead of souls, at least for the current run of business. Once you’d gotten them to that point, it was amazing how far you could stretch a few cheap tricks. He’d learned, though, that only the most hard done by would readily deal with the Devil, and the most hard done by rarely had the cash to foot a decent bill. He’d changed the horns in for a Bible. In the thirties, he ran a traveling tent revival—a satisfyingly ironic business effort, and a surprisingly lucrative one in a time that had been lucrative for very, very few.