Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel (21 page)

She perches on a heavy wood-and-gilt chair against the wall. Her secondhand throne. Delon goes over and sits in a smaller chair slightly off to the side.

Up here, the Mangarms look a little less like the
Texas Chain Saw
psychobillies I thought they were on the stairs. In here, with their patched robes and mangy furs, they look like sad, faded royalty. The bluebloods of a kingdom as long gone and dead as Atlantis.

“Tell me why you’re here,” Hattie says. “You didn’t come for potions since it’s clear you have your own. You’re not looking for sanctuary because . . . well, this isn’t the place for it and we aren’t the kind of people likely to give it.”

Diogo and the boys chuckle and elbow one another. They love their mom. I wonder how long they’re going to last when she finally kicks it. I give them six months.

“We’re looking for a ghost,” says Delon.

Hattie leans back on her throne and laces her fingers together.

“There are many ghosts in here. Are you looking for one in particular?”

“An old one. A little mad they say. He thinks he knows secrets.”

Hattie nods.

“Yes. The old Roman. I know of him. Why do you want him?”

Delon smiles.

“We want to know his secrets.”

Hattie glances back at us.

“There are six of you. That’s a lot of people for a dead man’s secrets.”

“Too many people, if you ask me,” says Delon. “I’d prefer to be doing this on my own.”

“Then you’re a fool,” says Hattie. “No one goes alone here. Especially to the old ghost. He’s at the very bottom of this castle keep, in the old baths in the basement.”

“You mean a spa?”

Hattie makes a face.

“No. Roman baths. Saltwater baths from the sea. Some lunatic’s idea of a health balm. Me, I’d rather bathe with rats than the fetid ocean that surrounds this place.”

Finally, Hattie and I agree on something.

The rest of us sit on the patched furniture across the room from Her Royal Highness. Diogo and his crew stand around us. One with close-cropped white hair has noticed Candy’s shiny backpack. He pokes at it with the tip of his sword. Candy pulls the pack onto her lap.

“We were hoping you might take us to the old Roman,” Delon says.

Hattie shakes her head.

“Can’t. It’s not in our territory. It’s the Shoggots’ and we don’t go in there. Hell, we don’t even like to trade with them.”

Diogo has noticed that Vidocq is still holding a vial in one hand. He points to it with a knife and Vidocq gives it to him with a smile. He shakes it and sniffs. Opens the top and gets a face full of acrid white smoke. We’re all choking and coughing by the time the idiot gets the stopper back in.

Hattie looks at our gagging group and says, “I was just telling this gentleman how we don’t like trading with the Shoggots, except some of the more gullible among us do, don’t we, Diogo?”

He waves away some smoke and smiles at her.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Those swords and knives the boys like to show off. Trust me, they don’t have the wit among them to make something like that. That’s Shoggot work. They’re good makers. Especially sharp things.”

“Maybe you could take us to meet them,” says Delon.

She raises her eyebrows.

“When I called you a fool earlier, I meant it figuratively. Now you’re making me think I might have a been a bit too generous.”

“But you know how to contact them.”

“Why would I do that?”

Delon reaches into his bag and pulls out another small bottle.

“Salt distilled from the River Gihon in Third Heaven, which cures all poisons.”

Hattie takes it from him and holds it up to the light. Satisfied with what she sees, she puts it in her pocket with the Tears.

“What else have you got in that bag?” she says.

“Nothing that would interest a lady like you.”

“Really? Why don’t I have my boys take it and chuck you all over the balcony.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I say.

Hattie turns to me.

“Which one of these assholes do you like the least? I’ll do you a favor and kill him first.”

Diogo takes a step toward me, but Hattie stops him with a short wave.

“This one looked like bad news from the moment I saw him. What’s wrong with his face? No one brings a man like that along who isn’t looking for trouble.”

“Not with you,” Delon says. “Sometimes we don’t get to pick and choose who we deal with, do we? Like you and the Shoggots. He’s my Shoggot.”

Hattie gives a short, snorting laugh that ends in ragged coughs.

“Here I was feeling sorry for us and you’ve got to haul around your own monster. Look at him. He’d like to put a knife into your back right now.”

I shrug.

“Nothing personal. I always want to stab someone.”

“This motley crew looks like more trouble than they’re worth,” says Hattie. “Give them to the Shoggots. May they choke on each other.”

Hattie gets up and starts down a hall with her boys.

“You wait here while we prepare. Don’t steal anything. I’ll know if you do.”

She points to a hotel surveillance camera that hasn’t worked since disco was king.

Delon comes back to where the rest of us are sitting.

“Do you trust them?” I say.

He shrugs.

“What choice do we have?”

“That’s not what I asked. Does the family keep its promises?”

“Tykho said yes, but you’ll notice that she’s not here.”

I turn to the others.

“Keep your weapons handy but don’t get itchy and start shooting at shadows.”

Vidocq looks at the hall that the Mangarms went down.

“I’d love to know more about their potion making. When this is over, maybe I’ll come back and do some trading of my own.”

“You do and I’ll tell Allegra,” says Candy.

Vidocq narrows his eyes.

“God does not love snitches does he, Father?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Traven. “We’re no longer on speaking terms.”

Hattie and the boys come back, but seeing them doesn’t fill me with confidence. They’ve left the robes and furs behind and have armored up in a garbage-dump combination of shoulder pads, padded hockey pants, hard hats, and football and baseball helmets. Diogo is looking particularly proud of his mall-cop shirt and badge. They’ve left their swords behind and are carrying axes and baseball bats.

“I don’t believe we dressed properly for the party,” says Brigitte.

“Anyone with second thoughts can still go back,” I say. “After this, I’m not so sure.”

Candy punches my arm.

“Stop playing Nick Fury. We’re all on board.”

“I just want to make sure everybody knows.”

Brigitte looks at Candy.

“He’s so funny when he’s playing Dad.”

“Isn’t he just,” she says.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m more used to doing these things on my own. Not as part of a school field trip.”

Vidocq says, “Consider that for once you’ll have people to watch your back.”

“You’ll need them,” says Hattie, and puts on a wired-front hockey helmet. “Let’s go.”

We walk the twelve floors back to street level. I have a feeling they have the rope-and-pulley system rigged to get up and down faster but they don’t want us to see how it works. At the bottom, Hattie and her crew lead the way with lanterns and we head deeper into the mall.

There’s rubble everywhere, but we’re not in the worst of the wreckage. The big concrete slabs were probably dumped there during the time when the construction crew was looking for bodies. In the dim light, the random piles of stones make the place look like a haute couture Pompeii. We’re moving in a single small pool of light. Our footsteps echo off the walls. Insects buzz around our heads.

We go through a food court the size of a football stadium. The place hasn’t been looted. It’s been ripped to pieces by people looking for every spare corn dog and chicken wing they could find. Farther on are the dried remains of an old water park. Slides, fountains, and indoor surfing with an artificial wave machine. Nails and hooks have been driven into the walls, and clothes, all rotten now, hang in the dark. Crushed cans and plastic bottles litter the floor. People used to wash and haul water to their little fiefdoms from here. A desiccated body lies in the bone-dry fountain. The skull is crushed. Dried blood spray on the fallen concrete and in patches on the floor. I bet this was where they used to hold bazaars and where someone broke the truce big-time. I have a bad feeling I know who did it and we’re strolling right to them.

Paper crunches under our feet. Images torn from books and magazines are glued to the floor in patterns. The pages have bubbled up, are slick in the humid air, but a clear path is laid out through them. A long straight line, then a tight turn to the left. The path doubles back on itself several times in smaller and smaller curves. The pattern stretches out all round us in a circle thirty or more feet across. It’s a complex maze with a kind of cloverleaf at the center. A labyrinth. A meditation path, like you see in some old churches. The path of this labyrinth is paved with photos of the world outside Kill City. Hollywood. New York. Paris. Mountains. Someone doesn’t want to forget where they came from. The world as a holy relic. It’s funny to think of L.A.’s short con streets as some poor slob’s idea of Heaven, but there it is.

Father Traven’s light dips as he trips and almost goes down. Brigitte, right beside him, grabs him before he falls. I should have looked him over better when we got out of the van. He might be sleep-deprived, coming off the booze. Also, this is a pretty odd place to drag someone who’s spent his life in libraries. Was it a mistake bringing him? Brigitte never gets too far from him and I don’t think she would have let him come if she thought he couldn’t handle it. Still, I need to keep my eye on him.

I move the beam of my small LED flashlight over the empty storefronts as we move beyond the food court. They look ancient. Like caves for Neanderthals. This is the part of town the Flintstones don’t come to after dark.

Sofa cushions lashed together are makeshift beds for whoever lived there. Pits for cook fires are gouged out of the linoleum floors. Gray piles of ash dumped outside the folding-glass doors.

Scuffling sounds and a whisper come from a derelict high-end stereo store. Something glitters inside. Eyes. I look around at the other stores. Lots more eyes in there. I pull the Colt and cock the hammer, holding it up so everyone can see.

“Sit back and watch the show, folks. Do nothing more.”

We walk for over an hour, sticking to shadows when we can. We only move out into the open when there’s no other way around piles of rubble. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can hear footsteps keeping pace with us one or two floors up. I walk closer to Hattie.

“Friends?”

She shakes her head.

“No one to be worried about. A mongrel Lurker pack. Bunch of softies. We’ve put them in their place before.”

Diogo and some of the other boys throw stones up into the dark. They bounce off the walls and shatter already broken windows. You can tell from the sound that they never hit whoever’s following us.

One of Hattie’s other sons, a tall boy she called Doolittle, drops his pants and moons the upper floors. A second later, a stone flies down from the dark and hits him in the ass. He screams and curses. Hattie cuffs him on the ear.

“That’s what you get when you act a fool.”

Up ahead comes the unmistakable sound of skin slamming into skin. Boots colliding with something soft. Heavy, short breaths. Three gulping air hard. One grunting and coughing as each kick threatens to collapse bruised lungs. I run toward the sound.

The three on their feet look like extra-hard-luck street people. Layers of filthy coats and patched pants give them the look of bears in wino costumes. Whoever is on the floor is trying to fight back, throwing kicks and punches, but from that angle they don’t have enough power to make the grizzlies back off.

Still running, I kick the closest one in the small of the back and he goes down on his face, teeth or something else important clattering across the tile floor. The one on my right swings a wedge of scalpel-sharp glass mounted on the end of a chair leg. I punch him in the throat, take the homemade hatchet, and slam the wooden grip into his knees, knocking him off his feet. The last of the guys is smaller than the other two. He has a butcher knife, and by the way he moves, it looks like he knows how to use it. I point the Colt between his eyes.

“Put it on the ground.”

He does it.

“Now scoot before I get a finger cramp and this thing goes off.”

He backs away slowly until he’s out of the light. I hear someone running away and put the gun back in my pocket.

Whoever was taking the beating is still on the floor, but at least his eyes are open. He’s skinny. Young-looking and small. Not much bigger than a kid. He’s dressed from head to toe in dirty, loose gray clothes that look like heavy pajamas.

“You okay?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t think they’ll be back for a while. You can get up.”

The kid struggles to his feet, holding his left elbow tight to his side. His face is bruised and bloody, his upper lip swollen.

“You got a name?”

He moves slightly to his right. Hesitates. That’s when I see the sword lying a few feet away. The kid dives for it, rolling more gracefully than I would have expected with his injuries. The blade is beautiful. Perfect, polished steel. It glints in the harsh LED light. Maybe the kid knows that. He flashes it, making several passes, light shining from the flat of the blade and leaving trails in the air. For a second I’m blind and I put my hand in my pocket for my gun. By the time I can see again, the kid is gone. Quiet little bastard. I didn’t hear a thing.

From behind me Candy says, “Friend of yours?”

“Apparently not.”

“Maybe instead of your blunderbuss you should use your na’at. Shoot the gun once and everyone in the Lower Forty-eight will know we’re here.”

“Yeah, but no one in Kill City knows what a na’at is, so it doesn’t help to flash it. A gun is like love. The universal language.”

“I can’t decide if that’s poetry or a desperate cry for help.”