Killing Pretty (38 page)

Vincent. What the fuck happened there? McCarthy was stronger than either of us thought. Or maybe it's just the nature of Death itself. Like the difference between big-­name whiskey and some of the better no-­name stuff. The off-­brand might not taste quite as good, but it will fuck you up just as well as the expensive. McCarthy might not have been Angel's Envy or Gentleman Jack, but he was high enough proof to stand up to an angel. Best-­case scenario, my lie isn't such a lie after all. Maybe Vincent really is hurt and just lying low until he's his old self again. Yeah. Let's go with that for now.

Candy takes pity on me. Brings me more tamales and donuts. Of course, Kasabian, nervous little fuck that he is, comes over and gobbles most of the grub, then heads back to his room to see if he can break the hotel's pay-­per-­view codes.

I fall asleep soon after that. I'm healing slower than usual from a ­couple of lousy gunshots. Normally, I'd be up and walking by now, but I still feel like shit. I should check the slugs in the Luger. Maybe Colonel Klink spiked his shells with poison, the clever little fuck.

When I wake up the next morning Candy is gone, but I actually feel a little better. My right arm is still stiff as hell, but my leg is mostly healed. I shuffle into the kitchen and turn on the coffeemaker, then go back to the other room to get dressed for the first time since I got back from the Tenebrae.

There's something white across the room. I go over and find an envelope someone shoved under the door. It's addressed to Mr. James Stark in fancy, florid handwriting, so it's not a kick-­out notice from the hotel. I open the envelope. Inside is an invitation about the size of an index card.

It's from Wormwood Investments. There's no address or phone number, just a message scrawled in the same ornate hand.

The presence of Mr. James Stark is requested at

3
P.M.
today at the La Cienega oil field. This invitation

does not come with a plus-­one. Come alone. Lunch will

be provided.

Regards,

Geoffrey Burgess

Just like the Augur's invitation, the card feels like it was written on the kind of paper you'd print million-­dollar bills with. Rich ­people sure love their precious invites. Maybe it's to disguise the fuck-­you nature of the so-­called request. Like someone wouldn't show up to drag my ass out to La Cienega if I didn't show? Is this Burgess part of the talent-­agency family? It would be a big coincidence if he wasn't. And his first name. Jeffrey spelled Geoffrey. Never trust a Geoffrey. Either they're pretentious pricks or bitter that the family spelled their name funny.

This has trouble written all over it.

I check the clock. It's already after two. In my current shape, I'm not driving anywhere fast. It takes a ­couple of minutes of struggling to get my coat on. I leave the SS dagger on the table. Don't want that on me if someone digs up my body in a few weeks. But I keep the Colt, the black blade, and my na'at. I'm tempted to take the Benelli, but they might consider that rude and I'm not sure I want to start out on the wrong foot with the kind of ­people I'll probably be meeting today.

As I'm locking up, Kasabian comes out of his room with an ice bucket.

“Where are you going? You look like shit,” he says.

“Just making a run to Donut Universe.”

He looks me up and down.

“You always go out strapped to buy fritters?”

“You never know. I might have to wrestle someone's granny for the last one.”

“Okay. You told your lie and we got that out of the way. Where are you really going?”

For a minute I consider telling him.

“I can't say. But if I'm not back by six, have Chihiro give this to Julie.”

I hand Kasabian the envelope. I sealed it, which was pointless. Kasabian will steam it open the moment I'm out of sight. But at this point, I can't worry about that.

“I don't know what you're up to, but if you expect me to give Candy your suicide note, fuck you.”

“I don't know what's going on either. I'm just trying to cover all the bases.”

“You're going off to get killed and leaving me and Chihiro to fend for ourselves. We don't even have the store to go back to.”

I head across the parking lot.

“I'll try to be back by dark. Just give her the note if I'm not.”

The Crown Vic is still parked by the Museum of Death. I forgot I left it in a metered spot. There are about fifty tickets and a tow-­away notice on the windshield. I throw them all in the gutter.

My right arm is still pretty useless, so I have to lean over and start the car with my left. I didn't take any of Allegra's pills because they'd make me too loopy to drive, which already makes me dislike Wormwood goddamn Investments.

I drive south, left-­handed all the way. Am I nervous or just on autopilot? The oil fields seemed to appear out of nowhere just a few minutes after I left the hotel, but I know I've been driving for at least half an hour.

I turn on Stocker Street and see an open gate to the fields. I'm not that stupid. I park on the shoulder of the road around the corner and go through the gate on foot.

Inside are a few sheet-­metal buildings, a ­couple of trailer offices, breaker boxes, and a scattering of porta-­potties. All around me, the oil pumps rise and fall like those stupid drinking-­bird toys. ­People don't think of L.A. as an oil town, but they've been sucking crude out of the ground for over a hundred years. More ­people have died for these fields than in all the gangland gunfights and hits in L.A. The Mob tried briefly to make a move on them. Oil was the only money game that managed to completely and utterly shut them out. That's how much muscle petroleum has always had in this town.

I come around a corner and into a scene I'd expect only Samael could pull off.

Food trucks are lined up in a semicircle. Mexican, Korean, southern, and a few others. At the end of the line are a ­couple of trucks that look like they're handing out desserts.

In the middle of the semicircle, on the packed dirt ground, is a long dining table set with crystal glasses, and expensive-­looking china and cutlery. Eight ­people, four men and four women, move between the trucks and the table. They're in suits and evening gowns. They all stare at me when I come around the corner.

A bald man with his jacket off and sleeves rolled up heads in my direction. Right behind him is a dark-­skinned woman pretty enough to make Salma Hayek blush. It's all plastic surgery, of course. The tightness of her face is a dead giveaway. The man has had work too. When he smiles, enough of his face doesn't move that I bet he has his own in-­house Botox Dr. Feelgood. Still, this is no time to get judgmental. With my limp, gimpy arm and dirty boots, what do I look like to them? A Victorian street urchin with his nose pressed against the window, hoping for some scraps of their Christmas goose.

“Stark,” says the man, extending his hand. “Thanks for coming. I'm Geoff Burgess. And this is Eva Sandoval.”

He's not the same Burgess I saw at the fight club, but there's a decent enough resemblance. I shake both of their hands and look around.

“This is quite a spread. You always eat like this?”

“Not at all,” says Burgess.

“Geoffrey is just showing off because we're having such an important guest,” says Sandoval. She takes my good arm and walks me over to the food trucks. I wonder if Sandoval got on my left out of old-­world charm or to make sure I can't reach the Colt. Burgess walks on my right. I'm surrounded. Politely, but still surrounded.

“I hope you're hungry,” says Sandoval.

“What do you recommend?”

She smiles at me.

“I hear you've developed a taste for Japanese. Maybe some sushi?”

A Chihiro joke. Great. We're already starting with the veiled threats. Or was that just a little rich-­­people humor to remind me that no one has secrets from shits with enough money?

I look over at the southern truck.

“How's the fried chicken?”

Burgess says, “Outstanding. That's what I had. Beer batter with enough cayenne to wake you up, but not send you to the emergency room.”

“That's for me, then.”

Burgess raises a hand, and when we get to the truck a leg and thigh are waiting for me in a paper tray. I take it and some napkins and follow my hosts to the far end of the dining table. Before I can sit down, the other lunch guests get to their feet and applaud something. I look around and realize it's me. The applause doesn't last long, but it's still unnerving. The last time anyone gave me a standing ovation was in the arena in Hell.

“Don't mind them,” says Sandoval. “They want you to know how happy we all are to finally meet you.”

I nod, spread out a napkin on my lap.

“About that. You said something about me being an important guest. You want to explain that?”

“Try the chicken first,” Sandoval says.

“You're a whiskey man, right?” says Burgess. He goes to one of the trucks and comes back with a ­couple of glasses of amber liquid. I sniff mine.

“Don't bother,” Burgess says. “You won't recognize it. We have our own distillery and bottle it ourselves. Just for family and friends, you understand. Let me know what you think.”

I take a sip.

Holy shit.

“How did you come up with this recipe?”

“Why do you ask?”

“This is the best thing I've tasted next to Aqua Regia and I've never met anyone up here who even knows about the stuff.”

“I suppose that means we're not just anyone,” says Burgess.

“I suppose so.”

“Try the chicken and then ask your questions,” says Sandoval. “I suspect that you have a few.”

I take a bite of the bird.

“What do you think?”

“It's as good as the whiskey.”

“It is, isn't it?” she says. “Now, what's the first thing you'd like to know?”

“What are you ­people? What's Wormwood? Some kind of bank?”

Burgess nods.

“To some ­people. But really we're an overall investment entity.”

“What kind of investments?”

“Money, of course. That's what most freshman investors with us want.”

Sandoval sips her whiskey, then says, “For more discriminating clients, we handle specialized products. Physical commodities. Oil, obviously. Land too. In more exotic departments, human organs. ­People.”

Burgess wipes away a water ring on the table with his thumb.

“And there are our ephemeral departments. They handle items such as souls. Damnation. Salvation. Those are some of our biggest markets.”

I wipe the chicken grease off my fingers and push it away.

“I don't understand a single thing you just said. How do you invest in damnation?”

“Let me explain it to you,” Sandoval says.

“In as small words as possible.”

“Of course. When we said you were an important person, we were being quite sincere. Our investments in afterlife products were minuscule until you came along.”

“Try this,” says Burgess. “You're a profit center for us. We've backed a lot of your exploits.”

“Through direct investments and working the margins,” says Sandoval.

“I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even have a checking account.”

“Simply put,” says Burgess, “everything you've done since escaping from Hell has generated profits for us, both tangible and intangible. And everything you do in the future will continue to generate profits.”

I look at the two of them, then the others.

“The White Lights didn't want Death,” I say. “You did.”

Burgess brightens.

“Well, the Legion wanted Death for their reason and we wanted him for our own. Their blackmail operation was going to bring in some revenue, but we had bigger things in mind.”

Sandoval says, “Death can kill, but he can choose not to kill too. That was our first concern. We planned to live forever. We still do.”

“With Death on our side, we could nudge the ephemeral division in any direction we wanted,” Burgess says. “Some chaos is all right. Even useful. But too much randomness is bad for business. Unregulated deaths are too wet and messy. But with Death on our side, we can manipulate markets on Earth, as well as our Heaven and Hell departments.”

“Are we talking about money?” I say.

“Money, sure. But it's more than that. Those Cold Case merchants you dislike so much? Where do you think they get the majority of their souls? We collect all kinds of collateral and forfeited assets.”

“In the end, it's not about wealth, but about power,” says Sandoval.

“Why do you want that kind of power?”

“Only ­people with no power ever ask that question.”

“Have you ever read
Nineteen Eighty-­Four
?” says Burgess.

“I haven't even seen the movie.”

“There's a passage in there, a small monologue by a character named O'Brien. I'll try to paraphrase it for you. Wormwood isn't interested in the good or even bad of others. We don't have a political ideology. We're interested in power, pure power, because the object of power is more power.”

“For what?”

“It doesn't matter. For whatever we want,” says Sandoval. “Here or in other places of existence.”

Burgess chuckles.

“You know, we lost a lot of money in the damnation market when you convinced God to allow damned souls access to Heaven. I'll admit it. We didn't see that coming.”

“But we made it back when the angels barred the souls from entering,” Sandoval says.

“Exactly,” says Burgess.

“You see? In the end, anything you do enriches us.”

She looks at my plate.

“Your chicken is getting cold.”

“Fuck my chicken. Is Abbot, the Augur, part of Wormwood?”