Devil Said Bang (25 page)

“So just another night in Wonderland for you.”

“You didn’t tell me Saint James murdered a
kid.”

“Oh. That.”

He puts down the beer. Before getting the
hellhound’s body Kasabian was just a head. We stuck a bucket under him when he
wanted to drink beer or eat. Now he has a hellhound stomach and that’s both good
and bad. It’s less messy than emptying the bucket but it means I get to watch
the skin sack swell as he fills it with beer and donuts. I don’t want to know
how he empties it.

“I didn’t think you’d believe me. Who told
you?”

“The four guys who shot up Bamboo House of Dolls
and almost killed Carlos.”

“Damn. That’s verging on rude.”

“Tell me you didn’t know there were shooters
looking for Saint James. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Why the hell would I do something like that?”

“If I was dead, you’d have all the money.”

“I already have all the money. Even I wouldn’t do
that shit to you. I might be a bastard but I’m not a complete asshole.”

Kasabian is harder to read than live people. He
doesn’t breathe or have a heartbeat. But Lucifer’s senses would catch him in a
lie.

“I believe you. This would have been a lot easier
if you were trying to get rid of me.”

“I am trying to get rid of you, just not kill you.
And thanks for the vote of confidence. You’re back for a day and you’re already
starting with the hostile attitude. I’m starting to miss the choirboy.”

I set the duffel bag on the floor.

“Look, I didn’t think it was you but I had to ask.
I’ve got something with me that might interest you. A peace offering because
looking over my shoulder all the time is giving me cramps.”

“What kind of peace offering?”

“A better look into Hell.”

“And why would I want that exactly?”

“Because I’d pay you for the info.”

“I think we’ve already established that I have all
the money.”

“And we both know I could take it back if I really
wanted but I’d rather take money from uncool people.”

“Like who?”

“King Cairo for one. I had to spank him in front of
an audience tonight.”

Kasabian shakes his head. Nervously taps one of his
hellhound claws on the desk.

“I knew you freaks would go at it eventually. You
two need to get a room and hug it out.”

“Do you want a new superpower or not?”

“How does it work?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure it will. But I’m
guessing since you can already see into Hell this will be like souping up a
Camaro with a nitrous injector.”

“Do I have to do anything?”

“Just sit still.”

“If you say ‘trust me,’ I’m climbing out the
window.”

“You don’t have to trust me. You just have to not
move.”

He flinches when I set the jar of eyes on the desk
and mumbles “Oh shit,” when I take one out. He reaches for my arm. I pop out one
of his eyes and he freezes. I put in the peeper. When I let go of him he wails
like a scalded banshee.

“What did you do to me, you fucking freak? I’m
fucking blind. Christ. For one second I let you get near me and this happens.
Fuck!”

“Hey, don’t forget who got you that body.”

“And don’t forget who made me need it.”

“Quit whining and tell me what you see.”

“Nothing. You took my eye, you crazy
motherfucker.”

“I just swapped it. If this doesn’t work you can
have it back. Relax and tell me if you see anything.”

Kasabian sits rigid in his chair with his eyes
closed, turning his head from side to side. He holds onto the seat with both
hands. His legs pump nervously. Then they stop.

“Oh man.”

“What do you see?”

“All kinds of stuff. It’s like a bee’s eye. Like
there’s a million little lenses and each one sees something different.”

“Good. I left peepers all over. That means you can
see through a bunch of them. Try to zoom in on one and tell me what you
see.”

“It’s like a jail. There’s cells and
. . . No. Wait. It’s pens. It’s like a kennel. Oh shit, there are
hellhounds.”

“How nice. A family reunion.”

“Shut up. I’m trying to concentrate. I’m in that
library of yours. I can see all over inside. The big front doors are open a
little and kind of burned. Like someone tried to slip you a hotfoot.”

“Sounds like someone tried to get in after I left
and stepped in one of the hexes. That’ll keep busybodies out for a while.”

“Man. I’m on a goddamn guided tour. There’s
soldiers and crowds and market stalls.”

“Anything else?”

“I’m low. Like I’m a midget.”

“I gave eyes to some of the hounds. You’re probably
seeing through those.”

He nods, smiling for the first time since I got
back.

“This is cool. What kind of information do you
want? I can’t hear anything.”

“Learn to lip-read.”

“Half these ugly fucks don’t have lips. And they’re
probably all speaking Hellion.”

“I forgot about that. Let me see what I can do
about it.”

“Okay. You’ve got a deal. How much are you going to
pay me for information?”

“The going rate.”

“You’re not really going to pay me anything, are
you?”

“No, but if I didn’t lie you wouldn’t have that
nice new eye. It seems like a fair trade.”

“I’ve made worse.”

He takes a swig of his beer and discreetly closes
the laptop.

“So what are you doing now? Mugging old ladies for
pocket change yet?”

“They run too fast. I stick to Girl Scouts and
nuns.”

“I’ve got pizza coming if you want to hang around.
After this I was maybe going to watch
Devil Girl from
Mars
.”

“I think I met her at Wild Bill’s place. You have
any coffee?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I’ll have a beer.”

He takes one from the mini-fridge under the desk
and tosses it to me.

He turns the sound back up on
Across 110th Street
and says, “Shit’s going to get weird again,
isn’t it? You running around killing people.”

“It’s already started.”

He shakes his head and his half-full belly
wobbles.

“You ever going to tell me about that armor, Tin
Man?”

“Let me drink this, Old Yeller, and I’ll tell you a
weirder story than you ever dreamed.”

“If it’s about you I doubt it.”

I
’m
back at the Beat Hotel when Candy calls around noon.

“Want to get some breakfast at our place?” she
asks.

“We have a place?”

“Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, stupid.”

“How’s Carlos? Can I see him?”

“Allegra worked him over pretty good last night.
He’s sleeping it off. You can see him this evening.”

“Cool. Let’s forget breakfast. Want to go with me
and hassle people?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

T
here’s no way I’m taking the Hellion bike out in broad daylight. I use
the black blade to pop the lock and ignition on a Porsche Boxster Spyder and
pick up Candy at the clinic. When I open up the car on the 101 North I can’t
help but smile. There’s something about driving a pretty girl somewhere
potentially dangerous in a stolen car that just makes you feel good.

We drive to the address in Chatsworth that Lula
Hawks gave me. It might be a waste of time but it’s the only waste of time I
have right now.

The address is a grease-caked car repair place
that’s such an obvious front they might as well put up a “Not a Real Garage”
sign out front.

“Before we go in, there’s something I’ve been
wanting to tell you but it was never the right time.”

“Let me guess. You’re the Lindbergh baby.”

“I’m the Devil. Lucifer went back to Heaven and
stuck me with the job. I’m the new Lucifer. I just thought you might want to
know who you’re hanging around with.”

She looks at me, her eyebrows slightly raised like
she’s waiting for me to say something else. She cocks her head when I don’t.

“You thought I’d have a problem with you being
devilish? Do you know me at all?”

“With things between us being complicated, I didn’t
know.”

“Come here,” she says, and gives me a good long
kiss. “There’s complicated and there’s complicated. Wanting to kiss you isn’t
complicated.”

“Just everything else?”

“Just everything else.”

W
e
walk over to the garage. When it’s clear we’re coming inside a couple of Lurkers
drop their magazines and grab rubber mallets to start beating on the engine of a
car that hasn’t moved in a good ten years. The Lurkers are vucaris, Russian
beast men. Mostly wolves. They’re kind of like Nahuals, the local frat beasts.
Like Manimal Mike’s half-assed front job these two look don’t look like much in
the brains and ambition department.

“Is Mike around?”

“Who vants to know?” asks the taller of the two in
a deep Boris Badenov accent.

“The Devil.”

Ivan the Terrible considers this for a minute.

“He’s busy.”

“Tell him I might be willing to do a deal where he
gets his soul back.”

Ivan stares but the shorter vucari stands on tiptoe
and whispers something in his ear.

“Vait here,” says Ivan.

“That’s okay. We’ll come with you.”

He weighs the rubber mallet in his hand but the
little vucari says something else and Ivan backs down.

“This vay.”

“Why don’t you point to the door and we’ll make our
own introductions.”

Ivan points to a grimy door with plastic “Cash
Only” and “Protected by Smith & Wesson” signs tacked on the front. I open
the door quietly and Candy and I go inside.

Manimal Mike is sprawled on a vinyl sofa with his
back to the door. The sofa is patched with duct tape and smeared with enough
grease to slick down the manes of all four presidents on Mount Rushmore. Across
the room is a half-empty bottle of generic vodka on a worktable scattered with
tools, gears, springs, and a sputtering half-finished mechanical python.

Mike has a little 9mm Kel-Tec in his hand and a
shot glass on his head. I take Candy’s arm and pull her over by a tire rack.
It’s lousy cover but it’s better than nothing.

Manimal Mike takes aim and fires at a steel plate
mounted on the far wall. The bullet ricochets and hits an identical plate on the
wall behind him. It ricochets again and hits the back of the sofa. This isn’t
suicide. It’s Billy Flinch. A solo William Tell game where you try to shoot an
apple off your head with a ricochet. I don’t think Mike is very good at it but
you have to give him points for perseverance. There are at least a hundred holes
in the sofa’s backside. Mike fires three more times without coming close to the
shot glass on his brainless head. When the gun goes
click
click,
Mike drops out the empty clip and reloads it from a box of
bullets next to him.

I say, “Hi, Mike,” and a handful of bullets go
flying. The shot glass falls and shatters on the floor. He turns and looks at us
with red hangover eyes, pointing the empty gun at us.

So this is what someone looks like when they’ve
sold their soul. His face isn’t streaked with dirty sin signs like other people.
It’s a thick liquid black like someone held him down and painted him with hot
tar.

“Who the fuck are you?” he says in a high slurred
voice.

“The friend of a friend who said you know things
about things.”

“What kind of things?”

“To start with, what happens to little boys who
sell their soul? You’ve had a good run, Mike. Now it’s time to collect.”

I take off my glove and stick the Kissi index
finger in the barrel of his 9mm. Lift it from his hand and drop it on the sofa.
He falls onto his ass and crab-walks backward across the floor. It’s an
impressive sight considering how drunk he is.

“Twenty years! That was the deal! I’m just starting
to break into the bigger markets.”

Mike gets up and stumbles to his worktable. He
picks up the mechanical python.

“See this? It’s for Indrid Cold. A hot-shit demon
wrangler. She came to me off a recommendation from another big shot. I’m
starting to do for the high-and-mighties. You can’t take me now.”

Mike might be a drunk but the snake looks like good
work. Mike is a Tick Tock Man, the modern equivalent of what medieval Sub Rosas
would have called a Raven Maker. Tick Tock Men and Raven Makers create spirit
familiars. Raven Makers out of flesh and bones. Tick Tock Men out of wood and
metal. The kind of Sub Rosa that use familiars aren’t usually the kind that has
the money to have them built to spec. However, for rich witches and well-heeled
Sub Rosa groupies, having multiple familiars is a status symbol. Like rich
people owning summer and winter homes.

Seeing as how I already have Mike against the
ropes, there’s no reason to change my story.

“I know the deal was for twenty years, but if this
is the best you’ve done with your time, I might have to call in your soul early
on account of you pickling the thing like a county-fair gherkin.”

“No. Please. What do you want? You want a cat? No.
A lion for someone as powerful and glorious as you. And maybe a puppy for your
lady friend?”

“A puppy?” says Candy. She picks up a wood chisel
and points it at him like a knife. “How about I nail some wheels on you and ride
you around like a toy horse. Would you like that, rummy?”

I gently put my hand on her arm and lower the
chisel to her side.

“What my associate is getting at is that we’re in
the soul market, not the low-rent bribe market. Do you have anything else to
offer?”

“You asked about information. What do you want to
know? Lots of people want familiars who can’t afford them. I trade them for info
on bigwigs. Ask me anything. I bet I can help out.”

I look at Candy. She smiles. I think she might like
a puppy but she’d never admit it.

“I’m looking for an angel. He was in town until
recently. People say he killed the mayor’s son.”