Secondhand Souls (11 page)

“How did you know I was looking for something?”

“How many people that you meet are surprised when you can see them, Inspector?”

“I’m asking the questions here,” said Rivera, feeling stupid for having said it. He remembered Charlie Asher having a similar reaction once when Rivera had spotted him up on a roof about to brain a Russian grandmother with a cinder block. Charlie had known then that Rivera was going to be a Death Merchant, long before the
Big Book
showed up in the mail.

“Oh, I understand. I work in a hospice. There is always a vessel close here, so much of the time I have to whistle or sing while I am working or people will run into me.”

Rivera decided to drop the pretense. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already gone against the
Great Big Book of Death
’s warning about contact with other Death Merchants before this.

“You are one of us and you work in a hospice? Seems kind of easy. Lazy.”

“Me? You are a homicide detective and I am the lazy one?”

“I’ve never collected a vessel from one of my cases.”

“Seems like a waste of coincidence. Maybe you are just not very good at finding things. The
Big Book
says it is very bad to miss a soul vessel. Very bad indeed.”

“I could be better at it,” said Rivera. “I didn’t pick it up right away. I only started a little more than a year ago.”

“Me, too,” said Baptiste. “The book came in the mail a year ago and my wife opened it. I thought it was a joke until people started running into me at work and I began to see the soul vessels’ red glow. I have never met another person who does this.”

“There are a lot of us. I don’t know how many, exactly.”

“But you have met others?”

“Yes. A couple. Many in the city were killed a year ago. All of them shopkeepers. I think you and I must be their replacements.”

“Killed? What do you mean they were killed?”

And because to keep the secret would have been unfair to the point of endangering him, Rivera told Baptiste about the darkness rising, about the Morrigan, about the Underworld somehow expanding itself into the sewer system of San Francisco, about the battle under the city, and of how Charlie Asher had sacrificed himself to put things back in order. Baptiste, already well adjusted to this soul-selling world, actually seemed pleased to have some dimension put on the responsibility that had been dropped on him from his mailbox.

“You said these Death Merchants were all shopkeepers? You and I are not shopkeepers.”

“I have a bookshop on Russian Hill. That’s how I knew that the soul vessel would be a book. Probably, anyway. If you don’t have a shop, then how—”

“My wife sells them on the Internet.”

“You sell souls on the Internet?”

“It’s not always the Internet. Some Saturdays she will take them to the swap meet at the Cow Palace parking lot and sell them off a blanket. People pay a lot of money for the silliest things. We may be able to buy a house soon.”

“How do you know the right person gets the soul?”

“How do you know in your bookshop?”

Actually, Rivera didn’t know. While he had several soul vessels in his shop, he had yet to sell one. But when he did, there was no way to verify the right person was getting it. According to the
Big Book,
each soul would find its right person. He shook his head and they both looked into the gutter. Rivera had a million questions for the orderly, and he guessed that Baptiste felt the same toward him, but there was a feeling of wrongness to it, like somehow they were cheating on a test.

Finally, Baptiste said, “How long? For Helen?”

“Three days,” Rivera said. “But you know, the number isn’t always how long they have to live, only how long we have to collect the soul vessel. So probably less. I’m sorry.”

“Why do you suppose I did not get her name in my calendar?”

“I don’t know,” Rivera said.

“I should probably get the Proust book for you, then.”

“I would let you collect it, but I’m afraid I may have already set things out of order by falling behind on my calendar.”

“I understand,” Baptiste said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Rivera waited, closed his eyes, and just felt the chill wind biting through his light, worsted wool suit. In a few minutes Baptiste came back out of the front door, moving quite a bit more quickly than he had gone in.

“It’s gone,” he said.

“Did you check all the drawers?”

“I checked and I asked the shift nurse, who said that Helen had her check on it this morning. It was there then, she said.”

“Did Helen see anything?” Rivera asked.

Baptiste just looked at him.

“Sorry. Did she
hear
anything?”

“Rats. She complained of the sound of rats scurrying in the room. She rang for the nurse after we came out here.”

“Rats?”

“Her hearing is very good.”

They just looked at each other and there was a lull between gusts of wind when the leaves that were skittering around in the street slid to a stop. A woman’s voice whispered, “Meeeeeeeeat.” A woman’s voice that seemed to be coming from under an Audi wagon parked on the curb across the street. They both looked and did a slow, synchronized deep knee bend until they could see under the car, where there appeared to be nothing but leaves and a candy wrapper.

“Did you hear that?” Baptiste asked.

“Did you?” asked Rivera.

“No,” said Baptiste.

“Me either,” said Rivera.

11

Crocodile Tears

L
ily let herself into the empty storefront that had once been Asher’s Secondhand and later the location of Pizazz, the pizza and jazz place she and M had opened. The sight of the sign, leaning in the corner, and the idea that she’d let the Mint One talk her into that name made her want to start cutting herself again, something she’d indulged briefly when she was fifteen but had quickly stopped because it hurt. The space filled the entire ground floor of a four-story building at the corner of Mason and Vallejo streets, where the North Beach, Chinatown, and Russian Hill neighborhoods met like slices of an international pie.

All the booths and tables were gone, as well as most of the restaurant equipment. Only the oak bar and a great, brick, wood-burning pizza oven remained. There was still a storeroom with a staircase that led up to Charlie Asher’s old apartment (now Jane and Cassie’s), but now it contained only a walk-in refrigerator and a few bar stools and chairs instead of the collection of knickknacks that had filled it when it had been Charlie’s store.

Lily dragged some stools out to the bar and sat down to wait in the diffused daylight from the papered-over windows. This would be weird, but she found she was excited at the idea of seeing Charlie again, even if he was a wretched little carrion creature now.

Soon there was the silhouette at the door of a woman who apparently had a crescent-moon-shaped head and Lily hurried to the door to let her in. Oh yeah, this was going to be weird.

Audrey, wearing yoga pants, a sweater, and sneakers, stood on the sidewalk holding a cat carrier shaped like a Quonset hut. It was made from heavy nylon embroidered in blue and orange swirls, heavy mesh halfway down on either end.

“Hi,” Lily said, stepping out of the way so Audrey could come in. They’d met once before the debacle, when Lily had been the one with the postmodern hair. “Where’s Asher?”

Audrey lifted the cat carrier.

“Well dump that little fucker out,” Lily said. “Let’s have a look at him.” Charlie had described his new body on the phone but she wanted to see him for herself.

“Hi, Lily,” came a voice from inside the luggage.

“Asher!” Lily bent down and tried to look into the cat carrier, but beyond something dark reflecting two points of light—eyes, she guessed—she could see nothing.

Audrey swung the cat carrier away from Lily. “He’d prefer you didn’t see him this way.”

“Oh, hell no,” Lily said. “I agreed to meet you here where all my PTSD began, I get to look at the little monster.”

Lily tried again to squint into the cat carrier. Audrey swung it around the other way.

Charlie said, “Audrey, if you keep swinging this thing around, I’m going to be sick.”

“Please,” Audrey said to Lily. “He’s really sensitive about his looks.”

Audrey put the cat carrier on the bar and sat down at one of the stools. Lily sat and squinted through the carrier’s mesh, trying to see something. Still just points of light.

“Asher, is it really you?”

“It’s me now.”

“I feel like I’m talking to a tiny priest in a tiny confessional. But you can only hear my tiny sins.” She affected her
bowed-head-of-deep-contrition
look, which was new to her, so she wasn’t confident in it. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I once drank the last of the milk and put the empty carton back in the fridge. I drew pubes on my Barbies and posed them in a threesome with a Ninja Turtle. I sometimes wish that dicks were mint flavored. I won’t say what made me think of it. I never wished that you were dead, Asher, but when I worked here, I sometimes wished that you would fall down the stairs and land in a cake. I don’t know how the cake gets there, it’s just a fantasy.”

“I don’t think any of those things are sins,” Charlie said.

“What do you know? You’re not a priest.”

“Although he
is
wearing a beautiful wizard’s robe,” said Audrey.

Lily gave Audrey what she considered her, withering
, silence, worm!
look.

“How about I run out and grab us some beverages?” Audrey said. “Give you two a chance to catch up.”

“Skinny latte, please,” Lily said, flashing her,
I am cute so all my prior bitchiness must be forgiven
smile. “Here, my treat.” She took a bill from her purse and handed it to Audrey, who, having spent years as a monk begging for her daily meal, accepted it without protest.

“I’ll get your usual, Charlie,” Audrey said, and she was out the door.

As soon as the door closed Lily said, “Asher, you fucker!” She slapped the top of the cat carrier. It took the hit and sprang back.

“Ouch!” said Charlie. “Hey!”

“How could you do that to me? You fucker! You fucker!” Lily was crying now, as if she’d been saving it all for when Audrey was no longer in the room, which she had. “I thought you were dead! You let me think you were dead! You fucker!”

“Stop saying that,” Charlie said. “I’m sorry.”

She smacked the top of the cat carrier again.

“Ouch!”

“I would never do that to you, Asher, you fucker. Never! How could you do that? I thought we were friends, well, not friends, but something. You fucker!”

“I’m right here. Stop crying.”

“I’m crying
because
you’re right here, you fucker. I finished crying because you
weren’t
here a long time ago.”

“I thought it would be easier—I couldn’t keep running the shop, being Sophie’s daddy, being Charlie Asher like this. I thought it would be easier. I’m a freak.”

“You’ve always been a freak, Asher. That’s your best quality.”

“That’s not true, I was always nice to you, at least when you weren’t being stubborn and moody.”

“Which is like, never.”

“Is that why you called the Buddhist Center and blackmailed me into meeting you? Because you’re angry?”

“Yes, I’m angry, but that’s not why. M told me you were in trouble, so I thought I might be able to help.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out between you and Minty Fresh.”

Lily cringed at the sound of M’s full name. “What could I do? You guys and the whole death-dealing thing . . . And he knows so much, and I don’t know anything, and he was always giving me stuff and forgiving me when I was a bitch—acting like he respected my opinion.”

“Maybe he does respect your opinion.”

“That’s what I’m saying. How do you win a relationship like that?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to
win
a relationship, Lily.”

“What do you know? You’re hiding in a cat box.”

“This isn’t a cat box.”

There was a commotion from the back room, a door opening at the second-floor landing, then footfalls on the stairs.

“Is voices. Hello,” said Mrs. Korjev. The stout Russian grandmother came down the backroom stairs, followed by Sophie Asher. Sophie, her dark hair in pigtails with clips that resembled gummy bears, was dressed in layers of pastels that would have looked perfectly fine on taffy or ice cream. The soles of her pink sneakers lit up with every step.

Lily leaned over the bar so they could see her. “Hey.”

“Lily!” Sophie scampered into the abandoned restaurant and jumped into Lily arms. “We miss you and your pizza.”

“I miss you, too, kiddo.”

“Lily, the goggies are lost. We’re going to put up posters.”

Sophie ran back to Mrs. Korjev, who handed her a letter-size printed sheet from a stack she was carrying. Sophie plopped the poster on the bar in front of Lily, then climbed onto the bar stool next to her. “See?” Sophie said. “There’s a reward.”

Mrs. Korjev pulled a staple gun from her shopping bag and held it. “Is reward for Mr. Chin at butcher shop, too, if he give Vladlena trouble about boning chicken again. Is lost-dog-poster staple on his front-head.”

“Forehead,” Sophie corrected the Cossack matron.

“If shoe fit,” said Mrs. Korjev.

“So you’re doing your shopping, too,” Lily said. “Multitasking.”

“Chinatown have best vegetables, even for white devils,” Sophie said, with only a slight Cantonese accent, a remnant of Mrs. Ling’s shopping tutelage. “Auntie Jane used to take me to Whole Foods on her day off, but she says she has to take too much vitamin X to keep from killing everyone there, so now we get our veggies in Chinatown.”

“Let’s see here.” Lily pulled the poster over. At the top there was a picture, printed in black and white, of Sophie perhaps a year or two younger, with the hellhounds. Sophie was in the tub, her head above a sea of bubbles, crowned with shampoo horns. Alvin and Mohammed flanked the claw-foot tub like guardians at the entrance to a bubbly tomb, making them look completely unreal to scale, which is kind of how they looked in real life.

“We blacked out my eyes with this square for my privacy,” said Sophie.

“Good idea,” said Lily. “You didn’t have any other pictures of them?”

“Nope,” Sophie said.

The poster read:

LOST

2 Irish Hellhounds.

Very black, like bear.

Huge, like bear.

Answer to Alvin and Mohammed.

Like to eat everything. Like bear!

REWARD!

“Did you write the text, Mrs. Korjev?” Lily asked.

“I put in two bears and the Irish part,” said Sophie. “Daddy said that no one would believe you if you called them hellhounds, but if you said
Irish
hellhounds everyone thought they’d heard of them.”

A scratching noise came from the cat carrier on the bar and Sophie seemed to notice it for the first time. “Hey, what’s that? Do you have a—”

Lily clamped her hand over Sophie’s mouth. “No. I don’t. There’s nothing in there. Nothing. Do you understand?”

Lily’s hand still on her mouth, Sophie nodded. Lily tentatively pulled her hand away.

“I wasn’t going to say it,” Sophie said.

“I know,” said Lily. “I’m just taking the empty carrier to a friend. There’s some food in there that shifted.”

“Okay,” said Sophie.

“We need to go,
lapochka,”
said Mrs. Korjev. The Russian matron had come around the corner of the bar like a great, bosomy whirlwind when Lily grabbed Sophie and still held her staple gun at the ready. Lily was relatively sure that she had been only seconds from having her own forehead stapled.

“Okay, you two,” Lily said. She carefully lifted Sophie off the bar stool and set her on the floor, then crouched in front of her. “I hope you find the goggies.”

Sophie gave Lily a hug. “Come see us. Bring special-special pizza.”

“I will,” Lily said. “Bye, Sophie. Bye, Mrs. Korjev.”

“Bye,” Sophie said, leading Mrs. Korjev out the metal door that led into the alley. Mrs. Korjev looked back at Lily, siting down the mole on the side of her nose, letting Lily know that she had her eye on her.

As soon as the door closed behind them, a heartbreaking wail rose from the cat carrier.

“You okay, Asher?”

“I miss her so much. She’s gotten so big.”

“Sorry.” Lily patted the top of the cat carrier.

“What’s special-special pizza?”

“It’s a flaming-dome pizza with mac and cheese inside. I created it for Sophie to celebrate her becoming a vegetarian.”

“She’s a vegetarian? She didn’t even
like
vegetables last year.”

“It’s okay. She’s only a vegetarian because it was a thing with the other girls. Jane convinced her you could still be a vegetarian if you only eat animals that eat vegetables, too.”

“So anything but what?”

“I don’t know, lion, bear, crocodile—”

“Jane is ruining my daughter. I have got to come home. I’m missing everything.”

“But you
are
coming back, right?” said, Lily trying to cheer him up.

“Probably not. We’ll never find the right body.”

“No, that’s the good news. That’s why I’m blackmailing you—I mean, why I called. I think I have the body for you.”

“Lily, I have to be there almost at the moment of death. You can’t just grab a body out of the fridge.”

“Are you implying that I keep bodies in my fridge?”

“It’s just an expression.”

“That’s not an expression, Asher.”

“Okay, sorry. No, I don’t think you have a human body in your fridge.”

“Douche.” She pouted. She’d forgotten how much fun it was to pout in front of Asher. If only she could see the distress on his little face.

“I said I’m sorry,” he said. “Go on.”

“It’s a guy I met on the crisis line. He’s about your age, pretty nice-looking, if you like that type, doesn’t seem to have any family, no wife or girlfriend, and he’s got balls the size of toaster ovens.”

“Trust me, Lily, enormous genitals are not as fun as they sound.”

“It’s just a figure of speech. He’s a painter on the Golden Gate Bridge, so he’s up on high steel, hundreds of feet above the water, every working day.”

“And how do you know he’s going to die? Did Minty find him in his date book?”

“No, M doesn’t know anything about this, the guy told me, himself. He wanted me to talk him out of jumping off the bridge.”

“That’s horrible. Is he depressed?”

“No. He says he’s not jumping to get
away
from anything, he’s jumping to get
to
something.”

“But don’t you have a moral obligation to talk him out of jumping?”

“It’s a gray area.”

“How can that be a gray area? You work on a suicide hotline. You can’t just say, ‘Okay, have at it.’ ”

“I have before.” She chewed a nail.

“Lily!”

“Shut up, they made a good case. Besides, nobody that I told to jump ever actually jumped.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “We’ll have to ask Audrey. She’s the one who knows the rituals and stuff.”

“Do you want to see your daughter again or not?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then shut the fuck up and let me kill this guy for you.”

“Let’s talk to Audrey.”

“But if she says go, it’s a go, right?”

“Sure, I suppose.

“Good. Where’s the nun with our drinks?”

The nun with the drinks came through the door fifteen minutes later, a cardboard tray in one hand, a lost dog flyer wedged between the cups.