The Perdition Score (12 page)

Abbot nods.

“I was hoping we'd find some evidence that perhaps Charles was getting kickbacks or family favors for steering money to Wormwood. We're in brand-new territory now.”

“L.A. always throws something new at you. That's why it's fun.”

“You think this is fun?”

“Maybe ‘fun' isn't the right word. Maybe ‘familiar' is better. We're moving from your side of town to mine.”

“Where the angels live.”

“And the monsters. They're easier to get along with than angels.”

“The fact you know that is why I wanted you on my side,” says Abbot. He looks at his watch. “However, I have a Skype in a few minutes with some people who might have some additional insight into what's going on. I'm afraid we need to wrap things up.”

I get up. Feel the weight of the box in my pocket.

“Good luck with the espionage, boss.”

We're walking to the door when he puts a hand on my arm. Happily, not the burned one.

“Before you go, I wanted to ask you something. Have you heard anything about the investigation into Nick's disappearance?”

“No. Aren't you in touch with Julie?”

“Yes, but I was wondering if you might have heard some talk around the office. Maybe something she's not ready to share yet.”

“No. But I can ask Chihiro if you want.”

“Thank you. I'd appreciate it.”

Abbot starts to walk me out onto the deck.

I say, “How hard is it to get a cab around here?”

“What happened to your car?”

“The angel murdered it.”

“I'm sorry. I'll have my driver take you home.”

“I won't say no to that.”

Abbot gets out his cell and makes a call.

One of the two security guys I met earlier is on the deck. He looks at me funny. Right. I forgot to put Charlie's face back on. Too late now. My cover's blown. I stand a little closer to Abbot, just to make sure everyone knows I'm in with the in crowd.

Abbot puts his phone away.

“It's done. He'll meet you at the end of the pier.”

“See you at the next council meeting.”

“Don't worry about that. Keep up with your investigation. We can get by without you for a session or two.”

I head out. The driver is indeed waiting at the end of the pier. He holds the door for me and closes it when I get in. As much as I hate Abbot's world, I could get used to this limo business.

I have the driver drop me on Sunset Boulevard by a bike shop I know. I'm still nervous about being in public in my face, so I put on a new one. The limo driver's.

At the bike shop, I pick up handlebars, a front light, and some tools. It's not that heavy, but it's awkward to carry. I should have asked the limo to wait for me. It's too late now. I hump the gear back to Max Overdrive.

Just an hour ago, I was floating on a custom-made cloud with free drinks and guys whose only job it was to watch my
back. Now I'm sweating like a pig and dodging dog shit in the street. It's a hard landing, coming down from Valhalla.

C
ANDY AND
A
LESSA
are practicing in the storeroom. One of them is burning through “Miserlou” and the other sounds like she's falling down the stairs with a boxful of cats. But she keeps playing. Good for her.

It's after hours and Kasabian has the news on. They're playing shaky phone footage of me getting my ass kicked, then the angel flying away. I change channels. It's the same thing. Me down on one knee, then wings flapping into the sky. Everybody likes the part where I'm getting burned and pounded into SpaghettiOs, but no one bothers to show that I actually won the damned fight. I need a better press agent. Kasabian laughs quietly each time they show me falling, but he's too smart to say anything.

I really hope Abbot can talk to someone about getting my mug off the screen.

Finally, the news gets tired of me and moves on to other local merriment.

Some shitbird shot up the crowd at a food truck selling upscale southern food. Fried chicken, grits, hush puppies, the whole bit. Nine people shot. Six dead. The cops don't think the shooter's connected to the truck or anyone in the crowd. They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I wonder who the little creep had a grudge against. It doesn't matter. It's always the same thing with these guys. His girlfriend left him. He lost his job. He ran out of toothpaste. The news show puts up a yearbook photo of the guy's face over the bodies in
the street. I don't need to see him. Ninety-nine percent of these guys are the same. They cruise along in a bubble of dude-bro privilege, then can't stand it when the world lets them know they're nothing special. Then everyone has to pay.

However, there's something else that bothers me: I recognize the truck. I ate there once, out at the La Cienega oil fields when I got a note more or less commanding me to come out and meet the Wormwood board of directors. They really rubbed it in too. Made a party of it. Had a circle of food trucks. A dining room table. The works. That was the day where Burgess and Sandoval explained to me how the world really worked. How Wormwood Investments works. That's what gives me a bad feeling about this particular shooting.

Is this a message from Wormwood? Did someone see me on TV and decide to put me on notice? Try to provoke me into doing something stupid? Did they send that fucking angel after me or are they just having a good time, setting up a massacre to remind me that I can't eat a taco without lining their pockets?

Or am I going down a paranoid rabbit hole? Maybe the shooting is just what it looks like. One more asshole with a gun and a grudge having a bloody tantrum?

I'm going to make myself crazy thinking like this. I can't function wondering if everything I do and everything I think is one big Wormwood mindfuck.

What would be hilarious is if I brought the massacre to them. Kill them all in one big Night of the Long Knives dance party. The only problem there is that I don't know how many of them there are. I met a few of the higher-ups, but for all I know they could be like Abbot and his Sub Rosa contacts,
meaning they're everywhere there's money or power to be sucked up. That's the only thing that makes sense. How else could they function? They're everywhere all the time, like evil bastard Pinkertons.
We Never Sleep
.

And here I am again. Staring down into a swirling, paranoid rabbit hole.

I go upstairs and check on the box. It's where I left it in my coat pocket. I take it and put it in the bottom drawer of the dresser with my extra guns. It's not any more secure than my coat, but if anyone goes for it while I'm home, at least I know I can shoot the hell out of them.

The worst part of all of this is that every part of my brain and body wants to go back to the abandoned high school and get down into the fight pit with some big bruiser with something to prove and no damned sense. But I made a promise to Candy and to myself, so I light a Malediction instead.

I'm standing by the window, blowing the smoke into the street, when Brigitte calls. We talk for a minute and she suggests something even better to do. I toss the cigarette out the window and go downstairs.

It's quiet in the storeroom when I knock on the door. Candy opens it and smiles when she sees me.

“What's going on, TV star?”

“Please. That's the last thing I want to hear.”

“Poor baby. You need a drink. Why don't we go to Bamboo House after we finish practice?”

“Actually, Brigitte is over there with a friend and I'm kind of climbing the walls. I might head over there now.”

“Okay. We won't be too much longer. I'll meet you there.”

“Great. You're sounding good in there, by the way.”

“No, I don't, but I appreciate the sweet lie.”

“Anytime, baby.”

“But I am getting better, don't you think?”

“I do.”

“See you soon.”

“Sounds good.”

She closes the door and the noise starts up again. This time I really can hear her hitting the melody. It's slow and creaky, but it's there. It's nice to see her so happy.

Kasabian puts on gloves to hide his metal mitts and we head out a couple of minutes later. I look around at the movie posters on the wall and decide to put on Robert Mitchum's face from
Out of the Past
. Kasabian rolls his eyes when he sees the glamour, but, once more, he's too smart to say anything.

T
HERE
'
S A DECENT
,
but not oppressive crowd in Bamboo House. Nobody says hello or bugs me on the way in, which is a nice change. I might have to wear faces more if it will keep the selfie-stick crowd at bay.

Les Baxter is on the jukebox playing “Oasis of Dakhla.” Brigitte is standing near it drinking martinis with a woman I've never seen before. She's shorter than Brigitte, with blond hair and the kind of dark eyes that inspire duels. I ditch Robert Mitchum. Brigitte waves when she sees us and Kasabian and I go over.

“Where's Chihiro?” she says when we get close enough to hear.

“A new friend is teaching her some tunes. She'll probably be here soon.”

“Hello, Kasabian. How are you?”

“Great, now that I'm with actual people and not stuck in the store with Johnny Buzzkill here.”

Brigitte looks at me.

“Are you all right? Are you feeling ill?” she says.

I shoot Kasabian a look, but he's looking at Brigitte.

“I'm fine. Who's your friend?”

Brigitte loops her arm around the other woman's.

“Stark, Kasabian, this is Marilyne. All the way here from the wilds of France.”

Marilyne smiles softly and offers her hand. Kasabian and I shake it. She gives him a slightly funny look afterward, but covers it well. His mechanical hands are hard to disguise, even when they're wrapped in suede.

“Nice to meet you both,” she says with barely a hint of accent.

Kasabian has had a crush on Brigitte ever since she arrived from Prague, but from the way he's looking at Marilyne, his affections might be defecting.

“How do you two lovely ladies know each other?” he says.

“Marilyne is friends with some of the producers of my new film,” says Brigitte.

“How interesting. Are you in the movie business too, Marilyne?”

“Not even remotely,” she says.

“She's a doctor,” says Brigitte.

Marilyne looks at her.

“Don't be silly. I'm just a chemist.”

“But you have a doctorate degree.”

“Yes.”

“Then you're a doctor,” says Brigitte insistently.

Marilyne sips her martini, then shakes her head.

“I just run a small lab, analyzing whatever the true doctors send to us.”

Kasabian starts to say something. His pupils are the size of tractor tires. It's true love and whatever is about to come out of his mouth is going to be embarrassing for everyone.

To cut him off I say, “What part of France are you from?”

“Nothing exotic. I was born and raised in Paris. Have you ever been?”

“No. I have a friend from there, but I've never been there myself.”

“Yes, Marilyne. You must meet Eugène,” says Brigitte. “He's the most French man I've ever met and he's a chemist, like you.”

“That sounds lovely,” she says. “This is only my second visit to the States, but I liked it enough that I came back and have decided to get my citizenship.”

I cut Kasabian off again.

“Good luck with that.”

“If you ever need any help studying . . .” Kasabian says.

“Thank you,” says Marilyne. “That's very kind of you.”

She looks back at me.

“And what do you do, Mr. Stark?”

Brigitte touches her arm and aims a wicked smile at me.

“Don't call him mister. It makes him uncomfortable. And don't call him Jimmy. That makes him furious.”

“Not furious. But only you and Chihiro get a pass on the Jimmy thing.”

“Don't let the tough-guy act fool you,” says Kasabian. “He loves being called Jimmy. Isn't that right, Jimmy?”

The jukebox changes to Arthur Lyman doing “Sakura.”

“If you ever call me that again, I'm going to recycle you into Max Overdrive belt buckles, Tin Man.”

Kasabian is on a roll, though, showing off for his new lady love.

“Belt buckles. That's a great idea. We need to get back into merchandising.”

“And what do you do, Mr. Kasabian?” says Marilyne.

“He runs my video store,” I say.

“
Our
video store,” he says.

“It's mine because you're technically dead.”

“So are you.”

“No. I'm just
legally
dead. Big difference.”

Kasabian shrugs.

“Maybe it's really Chihiro's store.”

“I can live with that.”

“I never quite imagined you as a shopkeeper, Stark,” says Marilyne.

“She's being polite,” says Brigitte. “I told her all about you. The slightly tarnished white knight.”

“The schmuck who kills schmucks,” Kasabian says.

I glance at the bar. This is more talk about me than I like around strangers, even friends of Brigitte.

“I don't do much of that these days. I'm just the monster who falls asleep at meetings.”

“Meetings?” says Marilyne. “From what Brigitte told me, I find that hard to believe. What kind of meetings?”

I glance at Brigitte.

“It's all right, James. She's not Sub Rosa, but she knows all about your world.”

“In school, my best friend and her family were Sub Rosa,” Marilyne says.

I try to get my brain around that for a second.

“You aren't Sub Rosa, but you went to a Sub Rosa school?”

“No. In France, Sub Rosa children go to ordinary school like the rest of us. It's not until
collège
that they're separated from the other children.”

“It keeps them from being too insulated,” says Brigitte. “Is that the right word?”

“Insular,” says Kasabian. “But it sounds good however you say it.”

“How very sweet of you.”

I can't stand watching Kasabian doing Cary Grant, so I say, “I need a drink. Anyone else need one?”

“I'm fine,” says Brigitte.

“No, thank you,” says Marilyne.

“Why don't you fetch me something frosty, Jimmy?” says Kasabian. “I'll keep the ladies company.”

I head to the bar to keep from shooting him.

Carlos already has a glass of Aqua Regia ready for me. I thank him.

“Can I get a beer for Rin Tin Tin, too?”

He looks past me at Kasabian making his moves.

“Any kind in particular?” he says.

“You have anything shitty in a can? Maybe you forgot it in your car on a hot day?”

“I know exactly what you want.”

He goes in the back and comes out with a foamy glass. It doesn't look special to me.

“What is it?”

“Carbonated Alabama swill,” he says. “I keep it around for when the frat boys come in. They can't tell the difference.”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

“You better get over there before he eats one of them.”

I weave my way through the crowd and hand Kasabian his piss water. He takes a big gulp and doesn't bat an eye.

“I like your bar,” says Marilyne. “I've never been anywhere like it.”

I look around the place for a second.

“There isn't another place in the world like Bamboo House of Dolls. That's why we take care of it. Right, Brigitte? The first time I found out who she really is was right here.”

Brigitte sighs.

“That's right. We both fought monsters back then. I miss it.”

“You fought what?” says Marilyne.

Brigitte gives us both a coy look. I sip my drink, but she doesn't say anything, so I ask, “You didn't tell her?”

“I thought I'd introduce her to you first. After that, anything I said about myself would seem mundane in comparison.”

“Mundane is the last thing you are.”

“D
ě
kuji,”
she says.

“Brigitte, tell me. What's your secret?” says Marilyne.

“Later,” she says. “I'll need another drink first.”

“There's Chihiro,” says Kasabian.

I look over at the door and she waves to me. She's with Alessa. Grabs her by the hand and pulls her through the crowd.

It's introductions all around when she gets there, then Candy says, “Have you told him about your movie yet?”

“I haven't had a chance,” says Brigitte. “But it's a lovely part in a big production. The biggest part I've had since coming here. That's how I met Marilyne, through the producers. Pieter Ligotti and his partners.”

That name is familiar. It takes me a minute to come up with it, but finally I do. I was introduced to Pieter by Burgess and Sandoval when they dragged me out to the oil fields. That means Brigitte's movie is being financed by Wormwood.