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“Shit,” he says, and checks another pocket, coming up with his iPhone. He looks relieved. At least he can still text his buddies about his night with the wild people on the bad side of town.
He thumbs the phone on and says, “Please. So the night isn’t a total loss. Just one picture.”
“Get out,” says Carlos. “You don’t listen, so you can’t stay. Move. Now.”
I look at Richie Rich.
“Better do what he says or he’ll hit you with a coconut carved like a monkey.”
The guy gives up. Puts his phone in his breast pocket, sadder but wiser.
“I get it. Sorry to have bothered you. I’m going. Besides,” he says, “you look like hell.”
“Now,” says Carlos.
Richie starts for the door.
Carlos shakes his head.
“Some people couldn’t buy a clue with all the gold in Fort Knox.”
I hold up my glass, toast Carlos, and down my drink.
“Thank you, Doctor. I’m feeling much better now. How’s my eye?”
He looks and nods.
“It’s getting there.”
Then he looks up past me.
Someone throws his arm around me and clicks a picture. It’s Trump and his iPhone. I turn just in time to see him scrambling out the front door with my bruised face in his hand.
Perfect.
So, to sum up the evening. A Sherman tank with the brain of an angry hamster gave me a black eye, and now some college boy snuck up behind me and got my picture without me even knowing he was there. I think this is what’s known as a wake-up call. Something has to change. Starting with me.
“You have any food left back there tonight?”
“Some tamales with some beans and rice. You want some to go?”
“Could I get three?”
“No problem.”
He disappears into the back and reappears with a packed paper bag.
I sniff the food and smile.
“What do I owe you?”
“You know you always eat and drink for free around here,” he says.
“Not for the food. The advice.”
“All you owe me is not fucking yourself up anymore. Do that and we’re square.”
I set down the rag I’ve been holding to my eye and pick up the food.
“I’ll work on it.”
“You do that. And tell Chihiro hi for me.”
“You got it.”
I got out to the car and set the food on the passenger seat. Donald Trump is halfway down the block showing his phone to anyone who’ll look. Showing my face to strangers.
I start the car and gun the engine a couple of times. If he moves just a little to his right, I could pick him off without hitting anyone else. The front of this Catalina is solid steel. He won’t even make a dent. I can just hose him off when I get home.
But I don’t do it. It would be too easy. Too Koyaanisqatsi. Something has got to change and it will start with me not killing a rich kid who’ll go on drinking shit Scotch and stealing photos with people because he’ll never know how close he came to frat-boy Heaven tonight.
I pull away from the curb and head home.
“I KEEP TELLING you,” says Kasabian when I come in. “If you just buy the Girl Scouts’ cookies, they’ll leave you alone.”
“That gets funnier every time you say it.”
“It’ll be even funnier next time.”
Kasabian runs things day to day at Maximum Overdrive, the video store where I live with him and Candy. Him downstairs in the back and me and Candy in the small apartment upstairs. This arrangement is best for everyone if for no other reason than Kasabian doesn’t really have a body. I mean, he has one, but it’s not his. It’s a retrofit from a mechanical hellhound body I stole when I could still shadow-walk Downtown.
“Keep going. You’re going to talk yourself out of tamales.”
Kasabian holds up a mechanical hound paw.
“Witness me shutting up.”
The paw creaks a little as he says it. Sometimes he clanks when he walks. That’s the other reason he spends most of his time down here and not upstairs in our palatial penthouse. I set the tamales on the counter.
“Smart man. How’s business?”
“We’re doing all right. Still making bank off the special stash. But we haven’t had anything new in for a while. The requests are piling up.”
The special stash are videos a little witch named Maria gets for us through her ghost connections. Movies that don’t really exist, at least in this time and space. James Cameron’s Spider-Man. Sergio Leone’s The Godfather. Orson Welles’s Heart of Darkness.
“Do you explain that our movies come from another fucking plane of reality? It’s not like we’re rifling the bins at the Salvation Army.”
Kasabian lifts the edge of the tamales bag and looks inside. I close it and move the bag to the other end of the counter. He gives me a look.
“They’re customers,” he says. “They know what they want and they want it now.”
“Next time someone whines, tell them to fuck off home and watch Kindergarten Cop on Netflix.”
He slips a DVD into a case and holds it up in my direction.
“And that’s why you’re not allowed down here during business hours.”
“I have my own work these days. I don’t have to mingle with you rabble.”
He points at my eye.
“Your boss give you that for mouthing off?”
“It’s still noticeable?”
“Like a glazed ham at a bris.”
“Don’t say anything when you see Candy.”
I take the bag and head upstairs.
“Hey. What about the tamales?”
“No one eats until Candy gets home.”
“I admire her work ethic, but tell her to get a day job. I’m hungry now.”
“Didn’t someone say that suffering was good for the soul?”
“Only preachers and insurance salesmen.”
“We’re still waiting. I’ll put these in the oven to stay warm.”
I go upstairs, stash the tamales, and go into the bathroom. In the bathroom mirror, I stare at my face. Yeah. There’s no way she’s not going to notice the bruise. It will be gone by morning, but right now I’m fucked. For a second, I think about more ice, look at myself again, and see how stupid and desperate that is.
I take the angel’s box out of my coat and put it on the bedroom bureau. Maybe Vidocq will be able to tell me what this is. He’s an alchemist. Even if he doesn’t know what black milk is, maybe the box will be in one of his books.
What was it Abbot was talking about at the meeting? The end of the world. Climate change. Charities. Blah blah. Then through the memory of the headache it comes to me: Wormwood. Something is up with them. Those Wormwood creeps I met a few months back hinted they had a branch office in Hell run by Norris Quay. He used to be the richest man in California, but he was dumb enough to follow me into Kill City. Now he’s the richest corpse.
I go downstairs. Kasabian is still putting returned discs back in their cases. I go over and put a few in myself, but he takes them away when I mix up the DVDs and Blu-rays.
As casually as I can I say, “How’s your view of Downtown these days?”
He raises his eyes to me for a second, then goes back to putting away discs.
“You haven’t asked about Hell in a while. Since you went white collar, I thought you’d forgotten about the place.”
“It’s depressing not being able to see the place for myself.”
“You’re the only person who thinks it’s depressing they can’t see Hell. Why do you care all of a sudden?”
“I met an angel tonight. Karael. He said that Heaven is fucked. If it is, that usually means Hell is double-fucked.”
“That’s a distinct possibility,” Kasabian says.
“You still have access to the Codex and the peeper I gave you?”
The Daimonion Codex is basically Lucifer’s Boy Scout manual on running Hell. Once he let Kasabian look inside, he could sneak looks all over Hell. I gave Kas the peeper. It’s a magical eye you can look through and see remote places. Sort of Hellion security cams.
He scratches his nose with a metal claw.
“Your angel is right. Pandemonium is falling apart. Like Berlin after the blitz falling apart. Nothing works anymore but the sewers. The buildings are falling apart. Gangs of ex-Hellion soldiers and some of your less savory damned souls run protection and control everything from weapons to food. Basically, anyone who isn’t going Wild Bunch in the city is going batshit at Heaven’s gates. You said they’re supposed to be open, but I haven’t seen it.”
“I know. Goddammit. I wish I could see into Heaven.”
Kasabian raises an eyebrow.
“You never said that before.”
“I never had a reason. If I knew Karael was telling the truth and angels were fighting each other, it would make it easier to believe him about other things.”
“What do you care what some angel says? They’re all assholes.”
“I met a couple of okay ones over the years. Not many. One or two. Karael gave me something. And he said no souls would get into Heaven as long as the war lasted.”
“What did he give you?”
“No clue. I’m taking it to Vidocq tomorrow. Do you know much about Wormwood?”
“Only what you told me.”
“How about Norris Quay? Do you ever see him Downtown?”
“Now, him I’ve seen,” Kasabian says. “He’s a real player in Pandemonium. Got himself protection. A nice setup in an office building. Norris is doing fine, making bank on everything that goes down.”
“Any new souls hanging around with him?”
“They come and go. You know more Wormwood faces than I do. I just see creeps in tailored suits and limos with Hellion escorts.”
I pick a DVD of David Cronenberg’s Frankenstein and Kasabian plucks it from my hand, slipping it into its case.
“I need to get down there and see the place for myself.”
“I need a week in Fiji with Brigitte Bardot, but that’s not going to happen either.”
“You’re right about that.”
“I’m always right, but you won’t admit it.”
