Dead Things

by Stephen Blackmoore

  I mull that over for a second. “Forgive me for saying this,” I say, “but that sounds unusually domestic.”

  She laughs, long and loud. Fucking scary though she might be, she’s got a beautiful voice.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” she says. “That’s only half of it, though. The reason they want their children to grow into strong and powerful men and women? So they can avenge their fathers’ deaths.”

  “That sounds a little more like it.”

  “At one time I watched over the Dead and brought their souls to Mictlan. Bathed them in sacred waters when they passed my tests, judged them, weighed their worth. And then the Spanish came.”

  “Things went downhill pretty fast, I hear.”

  “Almost overnight,” she says. “Instead of calling me to honor the dead, they called for vengeance. They didn’t want to sacrifice these enemies with honor, they wanted to slaughter them.”

  “This is all fascinating, Señora, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you telling me this?”

  “I know something of vengeance, Eric Carter. I know what you need to avenge your sister.”

  “Thanks,” I say, “but—”

  “I know who killed her.”

  My heart stops. She glides forward a few steps before realizing that I haven’t kept up and turns to me, that perpetual smile on her face.

  “You know who murdered Lucy?”

  “Yes. Would you like me to tell you?”

  There’s a catch here. There’s always a catch. Everything has a price and things like her don’t barter in cash.

  “It’s something I’d consider,” I say carefully.

  “You’re a rare breed, Eric Carter,” she says. “Not many can bend the dead the way you can. How many do you know who can even see them without the aid of powerful rituals?”

  “I’m nothing special,” I say, not liking where this is going.

  “On the contrary, you’re very special. You’re, how do they call it? A natural. And you’ve made quite an impression. You’re a topic of conversation more than you know. I hear Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte were very pleased with your work in Texas.”

  “I pride myself on customer service,” I say. “But I’ll admit, I haven’t really followed up with them the last couple of days,” I say. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

  The last thing I want to be is watercooler talk around the demigod offices.

  “Nonetheless,” she says, “you’ve built yourself quite the reputation over the years. I could use your particular expertise.”

  “You want to hire me.”

  “No,” she says. “I want to own you.”

  Chapter 8

  “Come again?” I’ve had weird job offers before but this is a bit much, even by my standards.

  “Do you know how many of my followers I can communicate with directly? How many I can appear to the way I’m appearing to you now?”

  “I wouldn’t even hazard a guess.”

  “None of them. My will comes to them in dreams, flashes of insight, a half-remembered whisper in a cocaine-fueled frenzy. Even my mages must perform rituals to hear me speak.”

  “Must make it a little hard to get them to do what you want.”

  “We get by. It’s the particulars that are a challenge. Detail and nuance.”

  “So you’re looking for a high priest?” I don’t know what the hell she’s getting at here.

  “No. Let the Catholics have their Pope. That’s something I don’t need.”

  I stop at a marble sarcophagus at the edge of the building and lean against it. Try to look nonchalant, but the truth is that I’m scared shitless. I’m getting the sense that this is one of those offers I can’t refuse.

  “Then what do you need?”

  “A courier. Someone to carry out my will.”

  “An errand boy,” I say.

  “No. An enforcer. A champion.”

  “You’re looking for a thug?” I say. “Considering most of your followers are murderers and drug runners, don’t you already have somebody better qualified for the job?”

  “Killers of men,” she says. “How many demons have you destroyed?” she asks. “Ghosts you’ve banished? Vampires, lamiae, ghouls? You’ve destroyed things almost as powerful as I.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “I have, as you’ve pointed out,” she says, “an abundance of murderers. But can they survive a Redcap? Face the Jersey Devil and live?”

  Things I’d rather forget. Things I’ve never told anyone. “How do you even know about that?”

  “As I said, you’re a topic of conversation. I’m truly not asking you to do anything you don’t already do.”

  I make a pretense of thinking about it. I already have my answer.

  “Say I sign on with you,” I say. “What do I get?”

  “You’re already a powerful mage. You have control over the dead. You see things that only a handful like you can. Now imagine my power coupled with your own. Imagine that power tenfold.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “With me as your patron I can enhance your already impressive abilities. And give you things you’ve never dreamed of.”

  Take what I already know and tack on what she can give me? The things I can learn. It’s tempting. Incredibly tempting. Only there’s a catch.

  “You own my ass,” I say. “You tell me where to go, what to do.”

  “More or less, yes.”

  “I’m nobody’s meat puppet.”

  “Which is why I want you for the job. I don’t need an unthinking drone. That would defeat the purpose. Your will is your own.”

  “So long as you keep me wrapped around your finger. Steep price.” I pull my jacket tight around me. The wind has picked up, chilling the already cold fall air. “No,” I say. “I don’t care if the job comes with full dental and a weekly blowjob. It was nice meeting you, Señora. Good luck filling that position.”

  “I can give you your sister’s killer,” she says. “Is your vengeance not worth it?”

  “And lose my freedom? Not by a long shot. I’m not one of your gun-toting narcos. With all due respect, being a gopher for a manifestation of violent death doesn’t really do it for me. I’ll find the guy on my own.”

  I turn my back to her, walk away. Ignore her. Which is pretty much the biggest insult I could toss at something like her. Whatever. If she wants to take me out there’s not much I can do about it, anyway.

  “A favor then,” she says behind me, “for a clue.”

  I slow my steps, come to a stop. Still not facing her I say, “What sort of favor?”

  “Something small that fits with your particular expertise. I would like you to kill a man.”

  “To ask me to do this must mean he’s not just any man.”

  “He isn’t. He’s a powerful mage. Here in Los Angeles. There is no hurry, though sooner rather than later would be preferable.”

  “What’s he to you?”

  “Nothing,” she says. “I merely want to see if you can succeed against him.”

  “No time frame?”

  “That wouldn’t be much of a challenge,” she says, “would it? Let us say, in a week’s time?”

  Tracking this guy down, figuring out his weak spots. It’ll take time, pull me off focus. But a clue from La Flaca herself? That’s worth considering.

  “I’m not sure I’m up for an assassination,” I say.

  “Come, now,” she says, her voice chiding. “Is this so different from Charles Washington? That was an assassination.”

  “That was a rescue.”

  “And yet, Mr. Washington is dead.”

  “I don’t have anything against killing,” I say. And I don’t, not really. With powers like mine, my relationship with death isn’t exactly the same as everybody else’s. “But murder’s never really at the top of my list.”

  “Would it help if I told you he was a very bad man? Would that soothe the hypocrisy of your conscience?”


  “It might,” I say.

  “Then he is a very bad man,” she says.

  I think about it for a minute. If I accept there’s not much wiggle room. Deals with things like her are deals carved into your soul.

  “This clue,” I say. “It’s not something I already have. And I get it now, not in twenty years. And it’s useful.” One has to be explicit about these things. The simplest contracts are the most easily twisted.

  She laughs. “Of course,” she says. “Death keeps her promises.”

  It’s a tough call. But what’s one more dead mage?

  “What’s his name?”

  “Benjamin Griffin.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it to.”

  Kill a stranger, get a clue. It’s just another job with a slightly different payment. I turn back to face her and step back startled. She’s right behind me.

  “Deal,” I say. There’s a pop in the air that’s more feeling than sound and the contract’s set. I owe her a dead mage, she owes me a clue.

  We’re both bound to the pact now. Breaking this sort of contract leads to Bad Things.

  “Look for the ghost of Jean Boudreau,” she says.

  Not what I was expecting. “Boudreau didn’t leave a ghost.”

  I know this for a fact. I know this because when I killed him, I tore up his soul into little pieces and tossed them out like chum. I’d have pissed on them if I could have.

  “You’re very sure of that,” she says.

  “I am.”

  The scent of smoke and roses grows to an overwhelming stink. I start to gag, my eyes water. After a moment, the scent disappears as thoroughly as though it had never been there.

  And so has she.

  —

  “Fuck me.” I slam my hands on the Caddy’s steering wheel, slam the horn at some old lady walking across Los Feliz just because she’s there. She flips me the bird.

  My mind is bouncing around like monkeys playing ping-pong. The fuck did she mean look for Boudreau’s ghost?

  I’ve been played. Only I couldn’t have been. But I have to have been. The information had to be useful. It was in the contract. Which means she couldn’t lie to me.

  But she could be cryptic. And I thought this was going to be a step forward.

  Now I have next to fucking nothing and I have to kill a guy in the next week.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Goddammit. Here’s me being clever. Here’s me being a fucking idiot.

  This is amateur hour stuff. This is not the kind of mistake I make. I know how to deal with her kind. Lucy’s death has me spun so much I don’t know which way is up.

  I need to get a better read on Santa Muerte. I don’t trust her agenda, can’t trust her agenda. But I don’t know enough about her to see what sort of play she might be making. What I need is some dirt.

  Baron Samedi or Maman Brigitte might know, but they won’t talk. They’re in the same club, or near enough for the difference to not matter, and they don’t tend to narc on each other. They’re not gods, they’re not spirits. They’re somewhere in between. They keep to themselves and though they might gossip with one another, they’re not prone to talk to outsiders.

  I pull onto the 5 Freeway, merge with traffic. Feels like a game of Frogger. One more thing about this town I didn’t miss.

  Who to talk to? Who do I still know in L.A.? Who’d even talk to me after all this time? The dead would be useless, though they might help me track down Griffin. The living even less so. My contacts at the higher levels aren’t going to talk. I’d just waste my time and burn their goodwill.

  Hang on. Maybe I don’t need to ask someone who knows her now. Maybe I can ask someone who knew her way back when.

  —

  The doors move.

  Last time I found one was behind a dumpster on the alley wall of the Roxy on Sunset. Before that was next to the telescope at Griffith Observatory. These doors led to nowhere good.

  There are large doors and there are small doors. Sometimes they’re traps. Sometimes they’re opportunities. They’re hard to find but they’re always where the people are. No point in having a door if there’s no one to go through it.

  The particular door I’m looking for now I haven’t seen in a very long time. But I know it’s around.

  The thing it leads to hasn’t moved since Cabrillo came over from Spain almost five hundred years ago. If it had, I’d have heard.

  People have been looking for it since before he got it off an Arabian trader in Barcelona and lost it somewhere in Southern California in 1542

  I park the Caddy in the lot at Union Station on Alameda. It’s gotten busier since I saw it last. Thousands of people pass through this place every day. Now I guess they have local trains and a subway? Jesus. When did L.A. get a subway?

  The main terminal is a hall of Spanish tile, twenty-foot ceilings, enormous chandeliers. Light slants in through the massive windows. The footsteps of commuters echo through the hall. They wait for buses and trains, talk and text on their cell phones. Oblivious wanderers.

  I’ve spent the last two hours looking for this door. There was one in the Doheny Library on the USC campus once, and I found one at the back of a porta potty in a park in Compton.

  Neither of those is there, anymore. I found one here in the eighties and one on the ceiling of a house on Catalina Island. I’m hoping this one is still here. The boat ride to Avalon always made me sick.

  I buy a ticket for the Gold Line to get to the trains, duck into the men’s room. I wait a few minutes for the handicapped stall, latch the door behind me, pull out a piece of chalk.

  I press on the tiled wall of the stall, close my eyes and feel for any magic that might indicate the door is still here. With so many people passing through, Union Station has become thick with it and it’s hard to feel past all the background noise.

  I taste the smoke and ash in the local pool of magic. Hints of lumber and steel. Oil, blood, stolen water. Subtle notes of so many cultures it’s dizzying. This is L.A.’s magic condensed. Thick and cloying.

  I think I have it a couple of times but it slips away. It takes me a few minutes but then I catch the taste of a history far deeper than anything Los Angeles has produced. Touches of the Middle East, sex, lots and lots of alcohol.

  I hang onto it, make sure I have a good grip, then I draw a rectangle in the wall with a handful of symbols I’ve memorized but never learned the meaning of. When I draw the spell inside the rectangle I know the cursive’s as crude as an epileptic third grader’s, but it’s the intent that matters.

  I finish the last character and the chalk lines blaze into light. There’s my door. I knock on it, hope I’m not intruding, not that that’s ever stopped me before. Shove it open.

  The chalk lines glow brighter beneath my hands. There’s a hiss of escaping air and the wall slides in to a space that isn’t really there. When it gets in about six inches it stops, slides to one side. I step through.

  And I’m immediately assaulted with music.

  The room I’m in is a 1940’s jazz club. Smoky, dim. A smoking hot Asian woman in a green dress so tight it looks painted on sings “Stormy Weather” to a full house. A large black man in a bow tie and an apron stands behind the bar, cleaning shot glasses, looking at me.

  “As I live and breathe,” he says as I step up to the bar. His voice is deep, melodic.

  “You don’t do either one,” I say, stepping up to the bar and sliding onto a stool.

  “Anybody ever tell you you’re too literal?” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “You. It’s good to see you, Darius.”

  “And good to see you, too. I was wondering if you’d ever come back. I heard about your sister.”

  I notice he doesn’t give me condolences, say he’s sorry. Darius is never sorry. He has his own agenda. Does things for his own amusement. Can’t blame him. He’s got to be bored. He’s been stuck in here for a very long time. Gods willing, no one will find
his bottle and he’ll be stuck even longer.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Yeah, I thought I’d go back a couple years. The punk scene was getting stale.”

  When I first met him he was trying to recreate CBGB in New York. Somebody told him about it in ’74 and he was intrigued, but didn’t really know what it looked like and he couldn’t go there. I headed out that way for a week and came back with a ton of pictures and recordings. I never asked for anything in return and I’ve always paid for whatever he’s given me. So he still owes me.

  He looks me up and down. “You’ve gotten bigger,” he says. “A lot bigger.”

  “Same size I’ve always been,” I say, not sure what he’s talking about.

  He laughs. “Okay. Have it your way. What can I get ya?”

  I dig out a twenty and lay it on the bar. “The usual, barkeep,” I say.

  He pours a dozen colored liquids into a shaker. I have no idea what they are. But as long as I have a hold over him I can trust him. More or less.

  “I know you didn’t just pop in here to say hello,” he says.

  “You cut me to the quick, sir,” I say. “Yeah, I need some information on somebody you might have run into a while back.”

  “I’ve run into a lot of people.”

  “Santa Muerte.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “Huh. Man, I haven’t talked to her in a long time. She’s done pretty well for herself, you know. Used to be Aztec.”

  “Mictecacihuatl,” I say.

  “Yeah, what you said. Man, I can never pronounce that Aztec shit. Used to just call her Miki. Guardian of the dead, but I guess you already know that.”

  “That, yeah. But I don’t know her.”

  “Short version or long version?”

  “What’s the price?”

  “Short version’s on the house.”

  “Let’s start with short and see where we go from there.”

  “Okay. Short version is she is one batshit crazy bitch.”

  He pours my drink into a martini glass and hands it to me. I take a couple of sips. One second it tastes like a Tootsie Roll. Another it tastes like an Islay single malt.