“I might have killed a demon every now and then, but it’s not like they have distinct personalities. They’re like bugs. Who remembers stepping on a bug?”
“Maybe the song was a fluke, but I doubt it. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
I look her in the eye, take a drag on the Malediction, and blow it out.
“I’m going to Max Overdrive and find an Andrews Sisters musical. Then I’m going to the hotel, put it on, and drink steadily for the rest of the day.”
I stand up to leave, but Vidocq grabs my arm. He might look old, but he’s been using his muscles for over a century. His grip is like a claw lifter at a wrecking yard.
“Give me the folder,” he tells Julia.
Sola pulls a beige manila envelope from a shoulder bag she’d left on the bar.
Vidocq pushes me over to the bar and pulls something out of the folder. It’s a picture of a teenage boy in a school robe. Maybe a high school graduation shot. He’s smiling at the camera. Straight white teeth and messy brown hair under the graduation cap. He looks like the kind of kid who’d be captain of the track team. I hate him. Healthy, happy, popular jock. My natural enemy in school. On the other hand, he’s not someone I’d pick to square-dance with demons.
Vidocq says, “This is the boy we’ve been discussing. His name is Hunter. He’s nineteen. The same age you were when you were dragged to Hell. Tell me, Jimmy, did that experience improve your life? I don’t think so. Are you going to walk away and let what happened to you happen to this boy?”
There’s acid in the back of my throat. A whirlpool of anger and fear in my head as the nineteen-year-old kid I keep buried under the floorboards in my head, way deeper in the dark than the angel, struggles up to where I can’t help but look at him. Total Nam flashback time and I’m feeling things I didn’t know I could still feel. The dry, brittle arms gliding out from under the floor in Mason’s house, wrapping around me and dragging me Downtown. Sensations of falling. Crashing onto a blood- and shit-stained backstreet in Pandemonium. Trying to clear my head and focus as a thousand new smells, sounds, and the perpetually twilight sky hit me. Then the slow realization of where I was and the gleeful looks on the Hellions’ faces.
I toss the photo back onto the bar.
Lying there in that Hellion street, I had a strange sensation, like some primal and essential thing inside me youg insidhad cracked and everything I ever was or ever might have been—my name, my hopes, Alice, my whole ridiculous life—was turning black and falling apart like rotten fruit. When it was done there was nothing left inside me but the numb hopelessness of a corpse. Not much to build a new life on but it was all I had when I realized the Hellions weren’t going to murder me right away. Maybe that’s why killing is so easy for me and why I’ve been hiding with a dead man in one room over a store since I crawled back here. There’s not enough of me left to do anything else.
I drop the rest of my cigarette into Sola’s coffee cup.
“I don’t like being manipulated. You fucked this thing up. You fix it.”
I get up and walk out.
I CROSS TO the other side of the street, where it’s darker and I can keep the sun out of my eyes. Candy just about catches up with me halfway down the block.
“Wait up, will you,” she says.
I keep walking.
She catches up and walks beside me.
“I sent Vidocq to the clinic and told him to take Allegra to breakfast. Want to have breakfast with me?”
“This is why Vidocq bought you, isn’t it. I’m the asshole who walks out and you’re the angel who’s supposed to bring me back in.”
“Of course. Is it working?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
She gets in front of me at the corner.
“Come on. Just have breakfast with me. We don’t have to talk about any of this.”
“No thanks.”
“Why do you have to make everything so hard? Let’s do something. Just us. We kissed that night at Avila and the timing has been so fucked between us trying to get to know each other ever since. But we’re here now and I don’t have to save Doc and you don’t have to save the world. Can we just try to be like normal people for an hour?”
“I thought not being normal people was why we got along. Monster solidarity.”
She puts a hand on my chest.
“Then we can pretend. A couple of wolves eating blueberry waffles among the sheep.”
“Keep your waffles. I need grease to kill this hangover. Lots of bacon or ham. Maybe a chickaybe a en-fried steak.”
“Anything you want.”
I take a step back from her.
“Let’s get one thing straight. You never play games like this or lie to me again. About anything.”
She nods.
“I promise.”
“Okay.”
She loops her arm in mine and pulls me down the street.
“Roscoe’s on Gower, then. They have fried chicken and waffles.”
Candy is a little shorter than me. I look down at her smiling in those stupid sunglasses. Sometimes just seeing a woman smile is like a knife in the heart. It hurts and it rattles your whole system, but against all your instincts you swallow the pain and keep looking. After a while you realize it doesn’t hurt as much as you thought it would.
“Okay. Roscoe’s.”
WE SIT IN a booth in the back of Roscoe’s, me with my back to the wall. It’s an old family habit after Wild Bill caught one in the spine back in Deadwood. Neither of us had to look at the menu to order. Roscoe’s specializes in fried chicken and waffles in a heroin-addictive gravy. You eat there because the food is great, and if you live in L.A. and aren’t going to flatline on a speed binge, you might as well check out with arteries the color and density of concrete.
I’ve been trying to ignore my arms all morning, but I can’t stand it anymore. I heal fast, but it’s just a fast-forward version of how everyone heals and that means almost-healed skin itches like hell. I lean back against the wall, scratch one arm and then the other. It feels great. I want to dig underneath the red skin and new scars and hack away at the nerves with my fingernails so they’ll shut up.
Candy says, “Have you been sleeping in pet-shop windows? You look like you have fleas.”
“A Gluttire demon made me his chew toy last night.”
“You have all the fun. I’ve never even seen one of those.”
“Unless you see it through binoculars from an air-conditioned bunker, you don’t want to. The bastard burned the hell out of my arms.”
“Let me see.”
I shrug off my coat and push my burned sleeves out of the way. (I really need to change clothes soon. It looks like I stole my clothes from a hobo arsonist.) I hope there aren’t any nice families looking over here riscrover heght now. They might have to bag up their chicken and finish it at home.
Candy leans across the table and pokes my raw red left arm.
“Hey. That hurts.”
“You big baby. It doesn’t look so bad.”
“I’ll send the next Gluttire to your place to give you a massage and a skin peel.”
Our drinks arrive. My coffee and Candy’s Coke. I haven’t eaten with her before, but I hear that Jades have a real sweet tooth.
In between sips of soda she says, “After breakfast we should see Allegra. She’ll have something to fix you up.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Even if it’s only something to stop this damned itching.”
Candy takes the straw from her drink and wraps it around her finger.
“Let’s start the job interview. Mr. Stark, what’s your favorite color? Your favorite movie? Your favorite song?”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“It’s called speed dating. You have five minutes to see if you like someone, then a permed-bitch control freak rings a bell and you have to move on to someone else.”
“You’re serious. You’ve done this?”
She makes a face and shakes her head.
“Hell no. But I want to see you squirm. And I have lots worse questions than those. If you were a tree, what kind would you be?”
Someone remind me why I came back to earth.
“Christ. Okay. Ask me the questions again.”
She gives me a wicked smile.
“Favorite color, movie, and song.”
I glance at the kitchen, willing our food to arrive so I can stuff my mouth and not talk.
“Hellion gray, Herbie versus Godzilla, and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”
“Okay. Now me.”
“If this is how speed dating works, I think I’ll stay home with Kasabian.”
“Go on.”
“Okay. Favorite car, movie, and way to use a knife.”
Our food arrives while she’s answering. Thanks to whatever monsters are watching over me. This will be over in a minute.
“Shelby Mustang and Evil Dead II. I’ve never used a knife except to cut bagels.”
“Wrong. The correct answer is a ’71 Impala Super Sport. Once Upon a Time in the West. And from behind, your right arm around the throat and an upward thrust with your left so the blade slips between the ribs and into the heart.”
The waiter is laying out the plates when I answer. He freezes for a second then puts down our cutlery and glasses of water. He turns and walks away slowly, like from a rabid dog, trying not to draw its attention or piss it off. What a pro. I’m leaving him a massive tip.
“How are the waffles?”
“Perfect. How about your chicken?”
“Smoothing over this hangover like a road grader.”
We don’t talk for a while. Just eat our food like a couple of civilians who haven’t killed enough people to populate a small city. It’s been six months since that night at Avila when we were both in monster mode, ripping our way through some of L.A.’s most elite millionaires and politicos, all of them Mason’s accomplices as he tried to open the gates of Hell. Candy and I did kiss each other that night. A hard, long kiss while we were covered in other people’s blood, a couple of monsters who recognized each other and weren’t afraid of what they saw. And then nothing. Candy went back on the wagon, taking Doc Kinski’s potion to keep from turning back into a killing machine. Then the Drifters invaded. And someone was looking to kill Doc, so she went on the road with him. I don’t know if there’s anything between us really, but it sure as hell feels like someone sprinkled mayhem and saltpeter all over creation to make sure we never find out.
I feel a little guilt bubbling up in the back of my mind. It’s the same feeling I always get when I look at a woman who isn’t Alice. But like Candy said, we’re here now. Let’s just see what happens. I can’t live in the shadow of Alice’s absence every moment of my life. I don’t push her away, but let her drift back where she was. Not forgotten, but not making me wish I was dead. I don’t let the picture of the Sentenza kid get to me either. Julia found one exorcist, so she can find another. Hell, I could point her to some Sub Rosa demon hunters.
My phone buzzes. A text comes through.
The girl is delicious. You’re right to be with her.
Leave anyan>Lthe case alone. Forget you heard about it.
Stay with the pretty girl.
I push the plates away and get to my feet, storming through the restaurant looking for anyone holding a phone. A guy in blond dreads and a sleeveless T-shirt is looking at his. I’m across the room in two long steps and snatch it from his hand. A woman’s voice comes out of the speaker. He’s listening to his voice mail. I slam the phone on the table and stomp out of the emergency exit, setting off the alarm. There’s no one on the street. A dusty station wagon and a VW Bug pass each other in the road. Only one passenger in each and neither of them has a phone.
I push back into Roscoe’s through the front door. Everyone in the place is looking at me like they’re expecting the crazy man in the coat to set off the bomb he’s obviously hiding.
I go to the table and show Candy the message.
“Tell me this isn’t you or Vidocq. Or something one of you set up with Julia.”
She shakes her head.
“Vidocq wouldn’t and I didn’t,” she says. I look at her and let the angel out for a second so he can look, too. He sees what I see. She’s telling the truth.
I take a couple of the hundreds I grabbed from my stash of vampire money last night. Drop the money on the table and nod for Candy to follow me out. We double-time it back to Hollywood Boulevard to get lost in the tourist crowd before one of the solid citizens back at the restaurant dials 911.
I say, “Do me a favor.”
“What?”
“I’m a little agitated and don’t want to have to explain anything. Do me a favor and call Vidocq. Tell him I want in on the case. I don’t like threats and I hate crank calls.”
Candy puts her robot glasses on.
“At least whoever it was thinks I’m pretty.”
“Even assholes can have good taste.”
THERE’S A PARKING lot less than a block from the Beat Hotel. Vidocq hates riding in stolen cars, so I look for one that will make him the least unhappy and settle on a brown Volvo 240, one of the most boring cars in the world. No one, especially a cop, will look twice at a Volvo, especially one the color of a Swedish turd.
I leave Candy in the idling car, go into the room at the hotel, and ditch my burned shirt for a clean one. I always heig. I alwave the knife and na’at with me, but on the way out I grab the Smith & Wesson .460. You don’t have to shoot an elephant with a gun this big and powerful. You just hit it on the knee with the butt and the elephant will give you all of its lunch money. When he sees me slip the gun into my coat pocket, Kasabian shakes his head, which, in his case, is his whole body.
