California Bones

by Greg Van Eekhout

  Fenmont Szu said some words in praise of the Hierarch’s long-ago victory of independence, and then he announced the Hierarch. The silk screen at Szu’s back flared with red light, as though a fire had been lit behind it. And then, like a Balinese shadow puppet, a silhouette appeared, an almost skeletal figure. Servants removed the screen, and there stood a thing. It was hard to make out, exactly. Maybe it was the red light. Maybe it was the fog. Maybe it was because the Hierarch’s magic distorted perception. Even if he was sick and ancient, even if he was no longer human, even if he was mostly constructed of dead things, the Hierarch was still terrifying.

  He raised one arm in salute, the light died, and he was gone, and the Six returned inside the house.

  The partygoers clapped dutifully and returned to conversation and crudités in a nervous chill.

  “Well, that was anticlimatic,” said Apple, snatching a drink off a passing tray.

  “That wasn’t a climax,” Gabriel said. “That was a beginning.”

  SIX

  This time when Daniel went to see Otis, nobody put a hand on him. The muscle-slabs who’d bagged him at Farmers Market cut off their conversation about last night’s Angels-Padres game and tried to find something to do with their bandaged hands.

  “No hard feelings, guys,” Daniel said. And he meant it. He didn’t regret kraken-burning them, but they’d only been following Otis’s instructions.

  They nodded as though they understood.

  Daniel found Otis at his desk, working numbers with an abacus.

  “How’d your meeting with Emma Walker go?” Otis said, not looking up.

  “Why does she know about my mother?”

  Otis took off his glasses, deliberately folded the temples, and set them on his desk. “What are you talking about?”

  “I slipped her lamassu and ate her memories. They were of me. Of when my mom went North with the thing that looked like me. Who is she, and what’s she got to do with me?”

  Otis clucked his tongue. “You used lamassu. That’s tricky stuff. You probably tried to drink up her memories but ended up regurgitating some of your own. Brain magic is complex, Daniel. Memories get mixed up. Maybe you somehow picked up some of your mom’s.”

  “All of a sudden you’re an expert in osteomancy.”

  “I’ve been around it all my adult life,” Otis said, jollier than ever. “I’ve dealt it by the ton.”

  “Otis…”

  “Listen. Truth. This is what I know about Emmaline Walker. Born in London, came to California by way of Hong Kong, very quickly put her talents to use at the Ministry. For the last twenty years, she’s worked in the catacombs on special projects. She came to me eight months ago and asked me how to get into the Ossuary’s primary vaults. She provided intel, and drawings, and she has an intimate knowledge of the layout and protocols of the catacombs, and if you’re going to infiltrate the Ossuary, she’s the one who can get you in there.”

  “You trust her?”

  “Trust?” He rocked his hand in a fifty-fifty gesture. “I know she’s useful.”

  That meant something to Daniel. He knew Otis didn’t invest in jobs he couldn’t profit from. Nor in people.

  “What’s her score?”

  “From the Ossuary? She won’t say. And I worked her really hard on that. It’s not treasure. It’s something more personal. The good news is that she doesn’t want a cut of the basilisk fangs, so more profit for us.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Look, it’s not the fangs, it’s not the sword. There’s no job without her, so I’m giving her just that much privacy.” Otis moved a bead on his abacus. “My advice, Daniel? Use Emma. But don’t trust her. Build your crew around that idea. Take Cassandra. You know she’ll have your back. And take whoever else you want. Your father gave you osteomancy, and I gave you thiefcraft. But those aren’t your most powerful weapons.”

  “And what are those?”

  Otis didn’t hesitate to answer. “Your friends. Whoever has the skills, whoever you trust. Get Jo. Get Moth.”

  “You don’t like Jo and Moth.”

  “I don’t have to like them. It’s your call. And you know why?”

  Daniel waited.

  “It’s because I trust you, Daniel.”

  “Oh, shove it, Otis.”

  Otis put his glasses back on and returned to his abacus, and Daniel made for the door.

  “The thing,” he said, before leaving. “The boy. The one my mother took North. You really don’t know what it was?”

  “What did I tell you, Daniel?”

  “You told me it got shot along with my mom when she was trying to cross.”

  “And it looked like you, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it made the Hierarch think you were dead, right?”

  Daniel didn’t say anything.

  “Then it doesn’t matter what it was,” Otis said. “It worked just as your mom and dad intended.”

  SEVEN

  Daniel asked around for the whereabouts of his friend Josephine, and the answer led him to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Or, more precisely, to Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s brass star in front of a yogurt shop on Hollywood Boulevard.

  Daniel edged near a group of pedestrians clustered around a man barking a sales pitch. Under a fedora that looked like it had been well chewed by a bullmastiff, his sun-speckled face showed evidence of many naps on park benches.

  “I can see you’re pooped by the way you droop and stoop! By the lack of pep in your every step! Well, what if I told you this: an opportunity you just can’t miss? A simple stone, a piece of bone, that you could have for your very own, that will give you something greater than wealth? A Peruvian carbuncle, to restore your health!”

  After suffering the pitch man’s rhyme, Daniel wanted a carbuncle to restore his sanity.

  Peruvian carbuncles were toadlike creatures whose heads grew deep red gemstones. The skull stones possessed osteomantic healing properties, and amulets made out of them were the thing among the Golden City crowd.

  Beside the pitch man, on a square of black velvet draped over a folding TV tray, was a copper bracelet set with some small red stones. He held it aloft and crowed, “Who wants to feel better right now?”

  A couple of hands went up. The salesman picked a drab-looking woman out of the crowd. Her sweater was the color of grass in need of fertilizer.

  “You, miss! Forgive me for saying, but you look like you could use a little magic.”

  The woman was jowly and turkey-necked, with bags under her eyes. When the pitch man stepped forward to take her arm, she made a show of demurring, but she relented without too much struggle.

  “Now, I’m too much of a gentleman to ask your age, miss—”

  “I’m thirty-seven,” she said, with a self-conscious giggle. Actually, Daniel knew she was only twenty-two.

  The hawker patted her arm. “And what do you do for a living?”

  “Well, I’m unemployed right now, but I’m a nurse.”

  “Always sacrificing your back and your arches and your sleep to take care of others. Well, maybe it’s time to take care of yourself. What do you say?”

  I bet she’ll say “yes,” thought Daniel.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose … Okay.”

  In a manner that was equal parts doctor and suitor, the pitch man took her slender wrist and clasped the skull-stone bracelet around it.

  “From the high mountain peaks to the lush rain forests of Peru, the indigenous men and women of that pure country keep magic close to the skin.”

  While he barked, the woman’s posture subtly changed. Her shoulders straightened. Her paunch vanished.

  “They bask in the radiance of native osteomancy, to heal their ailments, to thrive with the vitality of the ancients.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “How do you feel, miss?”

  “My skin is tingling.” She ran her hands over her neck and kneaded her cheeks and rubbed her eyes. “It’s wonderful.”

&nb
sp; “Now, some of your skull-stones, I am very sad to say, are little more than paint and epoxy. Don’t be fooled, people. Don’t part with your hard-earned wages and give your hope to charlatans and thieves. Demand evidence! Demand proof! And that’s what I’m giving you right now. What do you say, miss? Are you a believer?”

  Gently, he took her hands away from her face. The bags beneath her eyes were gone. The jowls were smooth, the flesh of her neck taut.

  As the hawker began struggling to manage the fistfuls of cash people thrust at him, the woman made her way through the crowd, out onto open sidewalk.

  Daniel followed.

  “So, you’re a thirty-seven-year-old woman now?” he said, drawing up even with her.

  “I’ve been a woman before.”

  “Well, okay, but last time I saw you, you were a sixty-year-old dude, so…”

  “You know me. Whatever the job requires.” A police cruiser puttered down the canal, and Daniel turned his face away. But Jo Alverado didn’t have to worry about being recognized. She could always change her face again.

  “You call this a job?” Daniel said, once the cruiser turned onto Vine. “Why are you hanging around a low-rent grifter like that anyway?”

  “You don’t have to insult Fargo.”

  “Mr. It-Slices-It-Dices? Nothing against him, but with your talent, you should be doing jewelry stores and banks. Hell, you could be stealing real skull-stones.”

  “How do you know they’re not real skull-stones?” she said, stepping around Shirley Temple’s star.

  Daniel tapped his nose and sniffed conspicuously. “Look, I didn’t come here to question your life choices. I have a job.”

  “Oh?” She looked up at him, curious. She’d given herself a very cute nose and a sensuous mouth, and Daniel reminded himself that the last time he’d seen her, she was a dead ringer for W. C. Fields. “Lucrative?”

  “Remember the warehouse in Rosemead?”

  “With all the griffin claw?”

  “That’s the one. This job is worth, oh, sixty times that.”

  She stopped dead on Alan Ladd.

  “It’s not an Otis job, is it?” she said.

  “What if it is?”

  “I don’t work for Otis anymore. I’m not one of his.”

  Daniel smiled his most confident, convincing smile. It was the one she’d taught him. “And that, Jo, is exactly why I need you on my crew.”

  * * *

  Tommy’s, Big Tommy’s, Original Tommy’s, Tom’s Number 5, Tomy’s, Big Tomy’s. And there were more, spread all over Los Angeles and beyond, from Simi Valley to the San Gabriel Valley, all the way down to San Diego. The burger joints shared two things in common: the oddly compelling generic meat flavor of the chili, and the ubiquitous presence of his friend Moth, whose lifelong meal plan consisted of a circuitous pilgrimage to every one of the Tommy’s variants.

  Daniel caught up to him near closing time at the Big Tomy’s in West LA, at Pico and Sawtelle. Moth was just about to tuck into what was probably his third or fourth or seventh chili burger of the day when he saw Daniel approach and rose to engulf him.

  “Man, I’ve missed you,” Moth purred, like the lowest note on a cello. “But you gotta fuck off.”

  “Well, aren’t you Mr. Hot and Cold. What’s up?”

  “I’m meeting people in ten minutes. Working a deal.”

  “Here? What happened to not shitting where you eat?”

  “Not here, here,” Moth said. “But close enough I don’t want you around.”

  It was then that Daniel noticed the plastic lunch cooler on the cracked tile floor.

  “What’s in the box?”

  “Ah, you don’t want to know.” Moth wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Moth? What’s in the box?”

  Moth blew out a puff of air. He looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. “Okay, fine, it’s a kidney. I’m selling a kidney. Are you happy?”

  “Please tell me it’s not your kidney?”

  “Well, fuck, who else’s kidney would I be selling?”

  Daniel buried his face in his hands.

  He’d first met Moth on an asphalt basketball court at Venice High, a school neither of them attended. They’d been on opposite teams for a pickup game, and Moth had used his superior size to foul Daniel on every possession, whether or not Daniel was driving with the ball or stopping to tie his shoe. When Daniel finally had enough, he charged Moth with fists windmilling in a suicide bid for vengeance. Moth easily absorbed Daniel’s blows and sent him sprawling on his ass. But he was impressed by Daniel’s recklessness and declared that he was switching teams to Daniel’s side. He’d been on Daniel’s side ever since. They’d had a lot of good times, Daniel and Cassandra and Moth and Jo and Punch, graduating from junior-varsity store break-ins and home burglaries to warehouses and secure storage facilities and jobs that could properly be called heists.

  But at the end of those years, things were different. Daniel and Cassandra were no longer a couple, Jo was out of the business, Moth was changed on a cellular level, and Punch was dead.

  “Moth, I shouldn’t have to keep saying this: It’s just not healthy to be selling your own kidneys.”

  Moth sat back down and took a massive bite out of his chili burger. “I know, but my ‘Hey, there’s a finger in my soup’ scam is played out. And a man’s gotta earn a living.”

  “Not this way. I have a job for us.”

  Moth chewed. “What is it?”

  “Let’s get out of here, and we can talk about it.”

  Moth made a paper napkin translucent by wiping orange grease off his lips. “First I finish my deal, and then we can talk about it.”

  “Who’re you selling to, anyway?”

  He hunkered down, as if by doing so he could make his broad, six-foot-six frame less noticeable. “Sawtelle Boys.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Daniel whispered. “Because the Sawtelle Boys are.”

  “Aw, they’re not so bad, once you get to know them.”

  “I am never going to get to know them.” The Sawtelles were leeches. They acquired bones and organs and corpses of magic users and leeched whatever osteomantic residues they could recover for resale. Daniel really, really didn’t like these guys. “Moth, listen. The job. It’s the Ossuary. It’ll pay way better than whatever the Sawtelles are paying for your kidney. Let’s just go. I’ll take you to Original Tommy’s, I’ll lay out the details, we’ll—”

  Moth jiggled the ice in his soft drink cup and slurped on his straw. “I’m receptive. But I have to finish this little deal first. Because I said I would. So, how about I meet you at Original Tommy’s in an hour, and you can give me the whole pitch. I gotta go now.”

  Daniel wanted to scream.

  “Fine,” he spat. “Fine. Sell your stupid kidney if you have to, but I’m coming with you.”

  They had a good, long stare-down. Moth’s stare was definitely more frightening than Daniel’s, but Daniel wasn’t going to let Moth deal with the Sawtelle Boys without backup. In the end, Moth said nothing. He picked up his cooler and headed out the door, and Daniel followed.

  They walked several blocks beneath the 405 flumeway without talking, the sounds of rushing water and boat engines mixing into a white-noise roar over their heads.

  The Sawtelles had sent five guys. They slouched around a support column in their red bandanas and voluminous khakis. Dirt crunched beneath Moth’s and Daniel’s shoes as they approached.

  “Who’s the gristle?” one of them said, tilting his chin at Daniel. He was short and pudgy, and his sleeveless T-shirt revealed little muscle. Nothing about him suggested leadership qualities. But since he’d spoken first, Daniel decided to watch him closest.

  “Just a friend,” Moth said, clearly annoyed at Daniel. “Is it a problem? ’Cause you got four other guys with you, so.”

  Short-Pudgy grinned jade teeth and laughed as if something funny had just occurred. “I don’t care, everyone needs backup, and we’re
all carrying.” There were a lot of hands in pockets. “You got the meat?”

  Moth set his cooler on the ground and popped it open. Short-Pudgy took a couple of steps forward and leaned over. Sealed in a plastic sandwich bag and packed in ice was a bloody purplish shiny thing, shaped like a flattened potato.

  “Okay,” Short-Pudgy said.

  Moth shut the cooler and began a sentence that was probably about the money when the guns came out and the shooting started.

  The Sawtelles were such fuckers.

  Daniel didn’t see much, because Moth had thrown him to the dirt. He landed facedown, and when he rolled over onto his side, it was a storm of muzzle flash and gunshots. Daniel screamed as a spray of something struck his cheek, but it was only gravel from bullets striking the ground. Moth wasn’t so lucky. Blooms of red appeared in his side and back as bullets tore through him, but the gunfire tapered off as he reached the shooters, and then the sounds became high-pitched screams and snapping bones. Moth laughed hideously, which meant he was hurt and in pain and also really angry, and by the time Daniel managed to reach for smell-memories and bring a fuzz of kraken electricity to his fingers, the five Sawtelle Boys were sprawled on the ground, cradling broken limbs. Short-Pudgy shrieked like a tropical bird and stared at the white, splintered bone emerging from his calf. The shrieking died in a gurgle of pain as Moth jostled him, searching his pockets for money.