Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel (5 page)

“Give me back my merchandise,” he says.

I’m halfway into a shadow, bent low, when the bomb goes off. The concussion blasts me the rest of the way out of the room.

I suppose I could have been a Good Samaritan. Run back for Garrett, knocked the gun out of his hand, and pulled him into the shadow with me. But it hurt when I bent down to steal his money clip and . . . well, the bastard did shoot me.

I
HATE GOING
through the Room straight into the penthouse at the Chateau Marmont. Whatever hoodoo keeps the penthouse hidden from both civilians and Sub Rosa makes me dizzy and nauseous every time I walk through it. That doesn’t matter this time. I’m already dizzy and nauseous.

I fall near where we keep the food trays lined up buffet style against the wall. At least I don’t have to worry about Candy being concerned about my belly wound. My half-blasted-off clothes will distract her. Plus, I have the cash. And the fake Qomrama.

I grab the edge of a table and pull myself to my feet with my prosthetic left arm. The explosion must have blown off the glove. The arm is ugly as Hell. It was given to me by a Kissi, an extinct race of mutant angels that lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. My prosthetic looks like a bug claw crossed with the Terminator, but it handles things like explosions pretty well, so I can use it sometimes when the rest of my body isn’t cooperating.

Before I know what’s happening, I’m being steered onto one of the leather sofas. I find half a cup of Aqua Regia on the coffee table and gulp it down. When I look up Candy is standing over me. She’s pulling off my shredded shirt, looking scared. And sees the bloody towel. Now her fear is mixed with annoyance.

“I let you out of my sight for ten fucking minutes,” she says.

My ears are ringing, so it takes me a second to understand what she said.

She pulls out the black blade I gave her and cuts off the rest of the shirt and towel. When she sees the bullet wound she looks at me hard.

Before she can say anything, I hold out the 8 Ball.

“Look, baby, I brought you a present.”

Then I pass out.

I
WAKE UP
in bed naked and wrapped in a sheet. There’s a stain where my blood and something else has soaked through. Candy sits beside me, playing a game on her pink laptop.

Vidocq is in a chair nearby, smoking, his feet propped on a corner of the bed.
Spirited Away
plays on the big screen. It’s what Candy always watches whenever she’s upset. A young girl sits on a train. Some kind of Japanese folk spirit sits beside her. White oval face. All draped in black.

“Where did that come from?” I say, nodding at the laptop.

She doesn’t look up from whatever she’s playing. It pings and pops. Plays a silly little tune.

“I don’t think she’s speaking to you at the moment,” says Vidocq in his smooth French accent.

I look at her. She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen.

“I guess not.”

I’m blistered from the explosion. I lean down and sniff the stain on the sheet. It’s a strange mild acid reek with something sweet. Maybe even a little Spiritus Dei. A complicated potion. I look at Vidocq.

“One of yours?”

He smiles and inclines his head in a little bow.

“Thanks,” I say.

“De rien.”

Vidocq is an alchemist and a thief. He’s also a hundred and fifty years old. You’d think after living in this country for a hundred years, he would have lost the accent. I don’t think he wants to. It’s all he has left of France. It’s not like he can ever go back. Where does a hundred-and-fifty-year-old thief and murderer—he killed a couple of guys way back when. Don’t worry. They deserved it—get a birth certificate? A driver’s license? A passport? Yeah, he could get fake documents like Garrett had in his room, but Vidocq is too proud for that. Unless he can go back as himself, I don’t think he’ll ever set foot in the old country again.

I glance back at Candy. She still won’t look at me. I put a finger on the top of her laptop and start to close it.

“Don’t,” she says. “I just got to this level and I’ll lose it.”

“Your computer is dead. Whose is this?”

“Mine. Samael said he’d get me a new one and he did. It’s a newer model too. Lots more memory and a faster processor. Good for games.”

I lie down on my back.

“So all in all a good day for you.”

“Shut up,” she says.

I move closer to her. Put my hand on her leg.

“This is going to happen sometimes. It’s how my life works. You can’t always come with me and I can’t dodge every bullet. Just remember that bastards tried to kill me for eleven years in Hell and almost a year up here and no one’s done it.”

She says, “That’s not true. You’ve died a couple of times.”

“Not like lying-there-getting-smelly kind of dead. Just technically dead.”

She hits the keyboard harder. She still won’t look at me. I really want one of Vidocq’s cigarettes.

“You’ve got to understand that if this is going to work between us.”

“I don’t want to,” she says.

“I don’t always either. But it’s how things are. ‘Death smiles at us all and all a man can do is smile back.’ ”

“Where did you hear that crap?”

“I read it in a book Downtown. It’s Marcus Aurelius.”

She nods.

“Quote a dead guy. Real smooth.”

I kiss her leg and get up. I stink from sweat and burned skin and need a shower.

On my way to the bathroom I say, “I’m going Downtown to see Mr. Muninn. You can come with me or you can stay here and sulk.”

I stand under the hot water for a long time, washing off the grime and dead skin. The wound has already closed, though I can feel the bullet inside me.

I put on a robe and go back into the bedroom.

Candy has closed the laptop. She and Vidocq are quietly watching the movie. I sit down beside her on the bed. She balls up her fist and punches my real arm.

“Ow.”

“I wasn’t sulking. I was mad. And not entirely at you.”

“I know. Trust me. If I could, I’d be the most boring bastard in the world.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” says Vidocq.

“Okay. Tenth most boring bastard.”

Candy says, “Sometimes you get worked up. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Really? How does stopping to grab money in the middle of an explosion count as careful?”

The fake Qomrama and the cash are lying nearby on the bed. I pick up the money.

“Did you count it?”

“It’s just shy of four thousand dollars.”

“Chicken-and-waffles money.”

Along the edges, the bills are as crisp and singed as I am. I show them to Vidocq. He chuckles and leans in closer.

He says, “That’s a strange design on the clip. It almost reminds me of the Golden Vigil. Though not entirely.”

The Golden Vigil. God’s Pinkertons on earth. They were a Homeland Security offshoot that Vidocq and I used to work for. The Vigil worked with a special group of agents using angelic tech, supposedly monitoring and policing nefarious hoodoo-related activity. Zombies. Rogue vampires. Demon attacks. Hell, they even put Lucifer on a terrorist watch list. Mostly, though, they were just another set of bullheaded cops in better suits. U.S. Marshal Larson Wells and, more importantly, Aelita ran the show. That’s until she went on her god-killing crusade and the government shut the Vigil down. Not a tear was shed.

“Not quite? You’re sure?”

Vidocq nods.

“I’m positive. Not the Vigil.”

“But still similar.”

“Yes. Similar.”

I toss the money back on the bed.

“I wish I could have talked to Garrett. All this cash. Passports. A mechanical familiar. Who the hell was he waiting for?”

“And who was the bomb for? Monsieur Garrett or the party buying from him?” says Vidocq.

“He had a familiar?” says Candy.

“Yeah; a good one too. I should have grabbed the asshole’s wallet.”

I can see Kasabian banging away on his own computer, building his Web site.

“Did Old Yeller find out anything on Moseley?”

Candy says, “Not much. He had a record but all minor stuff. He was kind of a religious nut. A couple of arrests for protesting outside abortion clinics. A fine for trashing a Scientology office and some Orthodox graves at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It looks like he’s been through every religion on the planet. There’s photos of him in a dozen getups from different religious sects and cults.”

“A lost soul in a hard city. A volatile combination,” says Vidocq.

“I got the 8 Ball and the cash,” I say to him. “You steal anything fun lately?”

He shakes his head.

“Jewelry here and there. A vase for the apartment. Helping look for your weapon puts too many temptations in my path and the old habits are the hardest to break.”

He puffs his cigarette.

“And sometimes stealing a bit helps. Not everyone who comes to the clinic can pay.”

Vidocq’s girlfriend, Allegra, runs a hoodoo clinic for down-and-out Sub Rosas and Lurkers. Doc Kinski used to run it with Candy taking care of the front desk. Then Aelita murdered him. That bothered a lot of people, myself included. Kinski was my father.

“How is Allegra?”

“Well. She has trained two competent assistants.” He looks at Candy. “She misses you working beside her.” He looks at me. “And believe it or not, she misses you.”

Allegra didn’t take it well when she found out that I’d become Lucifer. She accused me of all kinds of nefarious shit. Mostly Sunday school stuff, which I didn’t expect from her. We haven’t spoken much since.

“Maybe we ought to keep it that way,” I say. “Whenever we get near each other, someone says something stupid.”

“Someone?” asks Candy.

“Okay. Me.”

“And yet her desire to see you both remains unchanged,” Vidocq says.

I toss him Garrett’s cash.

“Give her this.”

He nods and puts it in the pocket of his greatcoat.

“We both thank you for this.”

Candy says, “Can I have the clip?”

I say, “Why? We don’t have any money.”

Vidocq takes the clip off the cash and hands it to her. Her eyes light up.

“I just like it,” she says. “It’s shiny. I’ll find something to do with it.”

I take off the robe. The bullet wound stings a little, but the blisters hurt like a son of a bitch. I put on my leather bike pants and boots. Find an old Maximum Overdrive video-store T-shirt that’s not covered in bullet holes or blood and put that on too.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider taking me along,” says Vidocq.

“To Hell? I don’t want to take her. Why would I subject you to it too?”

“I’d like to see the afterlife. With my condition it’s doubtful I’ll ever see it legitimately.”

A hundred and fifty years ago Vidocq made himself immortal. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t trying to do it. Just one of his alchemical experiments took a wrong turn and left him with a condition most people would kill for. Me, I’d rather have X-ray vision. At least it would be fun at parties.

I say, “Forget it. Allegra would truly kill me dead if I took you.”

He sighs, knowing I’m right.

“And she’d be right, of course. You’re a terrible influence on us all.”

He nods to me and blows Candy a kiss. He holds up the cash.

“And thank you for this,” he says before leaving through the grandfather clock, the real entrance to our secret hideaway.

“He’s right. You are a terrible influence,” says Candy.

“I thought that’s why you stuck around.”

“There’s also the free food and movies.”

“Free computers too.”

“And getting blown up and shot at.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to work on my ducking skills.”

“Please do.” She doesn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “So, we’re really going?”

“You’re the one who wanted to.”

“Yeah, but now I’m a little scared.”

“Good. That means you’re sane.”

“So, we just go there? No spells? We don’t have to sacrifice chickens or pray to any hoary overlords of the deep or something?”

“You can dance naked around a maypole if you want. Me? I’m just walking in.”

She gets up.

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Don’t wear anything you really like.”

“Why?”

“You’re won’t be springtime fresh when you get back and I’m not sure the stink of Hell comes out in the wash.”

I
WENT
D
OWNTOWN
when I was nineteen. I was thirty when I came out. I’ve only been back on earth for around eleven months. Sometimes it seems as long was the previous eleven years.

Another magician, Mason Faim, sent me to Hell in a deal to supersize his hoodoo power. He also wanted me out of the picture. We were a pair of Sub Rosa golden boys. Way too clever and powerful for our own good. The difference between us was that Mason had to work and study his ass off to stay on top of the hoodoo heap. Me? I could always improvise a spell or hex and have it fly. That was my angel half at work, only I didn’t know that at the time. When Mason got rid of me he was top dog in L.A. He murdered my old girlfriend, Alice. He tried to take over Hell and start a new war with Heaven. You have to hand it to the boy. He knew how to dream big. So I killed him.

But in a way, Mason won. He wanted to destroy me, and the one who went to Hell sure isn’t who came out. I was James Stark going down but Sandman Slim when I left. Eleven years of torture and fighting in the arena to entertain monsters will alter your perspective on life.

Most nights I still dream about Hell. I can feel it inside me. It’s in the stink of my sweat. Flashing on the place even for a second makes me furious and sometimes afraid and sometimes ashamed of both those things.

On the plus side, I got up close and personal with the killer inside me. I learned I was good at taking lives. Doc Kinski called me a natural-born killer, so now it’s what I do. But I don’t always like it, and when I do, I don’t always like myself for liking it. That’s what Hell is. It’s the shithole bottom of the universe, but it’s a place where you’ll learn more about yourself than you ever wanted to know.

I
GET A
pack of Maledictions from a box under a table in the living room. Maledictions are the most popular cigarettes in Hell. The only brand I really like. The taste is, well, unique. Like a tire fire in a candy factory. With luck, the angel part of me is immune to cancer. If it isn’t I’m going to be a solid two-hundred-pound tumor.