The Perdition Score (17 page)

The cops glance at me and keep walking. They get in the cruiser, head around the corner onto Gower, and disappear. I start breathing again. The only thing worse than punching Charlie Anpu I could have done tonight is punch a couple of
cops. The fact they ignored me makes me wonder if I just got lucky or if Abbot pulled strings with LAPD like he said he would. Whatever it was, I'll take it.

I take a drag off the Malediction. The Denny's is just a block from Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, where Candy and I first went out together. If it wasn't so late I'd call her for a midnight rendezvous. But she's probably still rehearsing with Alessa and I'm not going to get in the way of her music. Besides, I have plenty left to do myself, so I let the thought go.

I walk deeper into Hollywood, where I'll have a better chance of finding a cab. I still need to get back to the Hollywood Bowl and pick up the bike. While I walk I call Abbot and tell him what I found.

But I leave out the part where I stole Charlie's car.

A T
ICK
T
OCK
Man is halfway between a garage mechanic and a true hoodoo artist. He makes mechanical familiars for rich Sub Rosas. Some use them for abracadabra purposes and others just keep them around for show. Manimal Mike is a Tick Tock Man, and a good one. He lives over the hill in the San Fernando Valley. It's a bit of a drive after going all the way to the warehouse, but with luck it will be worth it.

I pull up outside the small auto repair place he runs in Chatsworth. Not that he actually repairs cars. He just keeps a few junkers around for show so that no one will guess what he's really doing inside.

It's late and Manimal Mike has locked the metal sliding gate to the garage. I bang on it and shout until someone opens the door to the back room. All I can see is a silhouette lit
from behind, but I can tell it's a big man with an even bigger wrench in his massive mitt. He heads for the gate and I take a step back into the light outside the garage where he can see me. The mobile-home-size silhouette stops for a second and cocks its head. I hold out my arms and give him a stupid little wave.

“Stark!” he says through a Russian accent thick enough that you could chisel it into bowling pins. “How are you?”

“Great, Pavel. Is Mike home?”

“Of course. Of course,” he says, tugging at a ring of keys attached to his belt by a thin chain. A second later, he pushes the gate aside and lets me in. Gets me in a big bear hug when I come through. Pavel is one of Manimal Mike's cousins. It's not that Pavel loves me so much. He treats everybody he likes this way. He and his little brother, Ilya, are Vucaris. Russian beast men. Imagine a wolf or bear in human skin. They're nice to have on your side in a fight, but if they're not on your side, you'll want to make sure your life insurance is paid up.

Pavel leads me into the back, where Manimal Mike has his workshop. The place is full of half-constructed mechanical animals. Everything from squirrels to Bengal tigers. It's a beautiful place in its way, part zoo and part mad scientist's lair. Pavel calls to him and Mike looks up. He puts down his tools and comes over.

“Stark. How are you doing?” he says, and we shake hands.

“Just fine, Mike. It looks like you're getting along all right.”

It's true. The first time I was in Mike's workshop, not only was it a chaotic grease pit, but he was playing Billy Flinch, a
kind of one-person William Tell game where you try to shoot a glass off your head with a ricochet. Aim wrong and you'll blow a hole in the wall. Aim wronger and you'll blow your brains to Fresno. But Mike isn't into that anymore. He's not in the very top tier of L.A. Tick Tock Men, but he's on his way. All he needs are a few more of the right customers.

“Things are going pretty well,” he says. “Did you know I'm making a Persian cat for Tuatha Fortune?”

“That's great news. A couple of more clients like her and you'll be setting up shop in Beverly Hills.”

He wipes machine oil off his hands with a rag.

“That's why I have to make this cat perfect. Want to see it?”

“Another time. This isn't actually a social call.”

He nods. “This time of night, I had a feeling.”

I take the dildo from my pocket and hand it to him.

“Any idea what that is?”

He turns it around in his hands. Looks at it from all angles. When he finds the recessed button, he pushes it. The thing slides open and he lets it close again.

“Beautiful work,” he says. “Did you notice there was no sound? That's some ace engineering.”

“Yeah, wonderful. But what is it?”

He takes it to his workbench and examines it under the big magnifier attached to an adjustable metal arm.

“The metal is cold iron,” he says. “High quality. Beautiful workmanship. The teeth at the end of the boring mechanism are in perfect alignment.”

“Boring? So, it's some kind of drill.”

“It could be,” he says, and brings the dildo back to me. Opens it up and points to small clips inside the body.

“They hold something. My guess is it's for seating small mechanical parts in a larger mechanism.”

“Any idea what?”

He shakes his head. “It could be anything.”

“Maybe a box? Could you use it to make a small box? Something with delicate metal parts?”

“Definitely. If you want to leave it with me for a while, I can play with it and tell you exactly how it works.”

I take it out of his hands.

“Can't do it. I liberated it from the car of one of our betters, so you don't want to be caught with it.”

“No, I do not,” he says, walking back to his workbench.

I follow him over and show him the bottom of the drill.

“What's this?”

“It looks like a maker's mark,” he says.

He puts it back under the magnifier and shines a light on it.

In a minute he says, “Damn.”

“What?”

He hands it back to me.

“Whatever that is, it cost someone a fortune. Atticus Rose made it.”

There's a familiar name. Rose was one of the most famous Tick Tock Men in L.A. At least until me, Candy, and Brigitte busted up his workshop. No one has heard much about him since, but it looks like he's far from retired.

“Do you have any idea where he might be? Any rumors in the Tick Tock world?”

Mike picks up a tiny saw. Plays with it while he talks. I don't need to see his eyes or hear his heart to know he's nervous.

“Nothing. Personally, I think if he's still around—and it sure looks like he is—he's got one full-time private client.”

I put the drill back in my pocket.

“Thanks a lot, Mike. I owe you for this.”

“If you want to pay me back, forget you were here. I don't need trouble right now.”

“Don't worry. I didn't tell anyone where I was going and I won't.”

“Cool,” he says. Then quietly, “Still, I'd love to see the workshop that came out of. Rose always had the best of everything.”

“It would take someone with heavy money to set him up, I bet.”

Mike's eyes widen a little.

“The kind of work he does, just his equipment is going to run four or five million dollars. That doesn't include the workshop itself, materials, and maybe an assistant.”

“I've got the picture. Thanks again.”

“How's the arm skin working out for you?” he says, touching his left arm.

I flex the fingers on my Kissi arm.

“I'm not wearing it now, but it's really come in handy.”

“That's great to hear. Let me know if you need more.”

“You're a prince, Mike.”

I wave to his cousins as I head for the door. Pavel follows me out and locks the gate behind me.

“
Do svidaniya,
Pavel.”

He laughs. I put my hand to my heart, wounded.

“I didn't say it right, did I?”

“You say it right for parrot or little sister's talking doll.”

“Take it easy, Pavel.”

He waves a hand and goes back into the shop repeating
“do svidaniya”
to himself, adding little bird squawks every now and then.

I get on the Hellion hog and head home.

So, someone in town has a pet Tick Tock Man on the payroll, maybe turning out more angel boxes. But who are they for? It has to be Wormwood and some of their lackeys. How much black milk is there floating in L.A.? My guess is not too much. If we were rolling in the stuff, Karael would have mentioned it to me when he gave me the sample. And that psycho angel wouldn't have had to carve me up like an Easter ham. That means whoever has Rose on the payroll is getting ready for more of the black stuff to hit town. That's one problem.

The other is that I still don't know what the hell they'd use it for. Allegra put one tiny drop too many on the slide and it wiped out her swimming meat. No one is getting high off the stuff, that's for sure. And unless someone is doing a magic act teaching pork chops the flying trapeze, no one is using it to reanimate dead things.

So forget the milk for now. What about the drill? If I can figure out who's got Rose on the payroll, I'm sure it will get me the rest of the information. Good-time Charlie is the logical suspect. He's got the money and he had the drill. But Abbot is right. I can't touch him for now. If I'm wrong, going for Charlie will send whoever has Rose underground, and that's the last thing I want.

Shit. This means I have to think and be patient, my two least favorite things.

When I get home, Candy is curled up in bed. I go in and kiss her and she wraps an arm around me.

“You should hear me play now,” she says sleepily. “I'm goddamn Rick Derringer.”

“You always were, baby.”

“Fucking A. I'm the king of the wild frontier.”

A second later, she's back asleep.

Elvis has left the building.

C
ANDY IS BACK
at work when I get a call from Vidocq asking me to come over. After the cops' giving me a pass last night, I'm feeling better about riding the Hellion hog and wearing my real face during daylight hours. Glamours are easy, but if you do them too much they get itchy. But it might be time to switch out the license plate on the bike. The owner has probably reported it missing. It's harder finding expensive motorcycles to steal because their owners don't like to leave them on the street. I have a policy of only stealing pricy vehicles because I know the owners will have good insurance. It's like what my mom said: “Only bums steal from bums.” I might be a killer, an Abomination, and a thief, but I'm not a bum.

Traffic is light and I make it to Vidocq's in good time.

“James,” he says, and hugs me, pulling me inside. I can smell the booze on him from out in the hall. I pick up a bottle of expensive-looking red wine from the coffee table.

“Are we celebrating something?”

He puts an arm on my shoulder.

“The light. The air. The fact we have been through so much and lived to talk about it.”

From the kitchen, Liliane says, “We are all little miracles, right Eugène?”

I missed her when I came in. She's as tanked as Vidocq. I hold up the wine bottle.

“Hey there. Nice stuff you brought.”

She comes into the living room.

“Oh. You know wine?”

“No. I was just being polite.”

She and Vidocq laugh a little too much at that. Liliane takes the bottle from my hand and pours me a glass. I hold it up to them both and take a sip. It's nice. A good excuse to get hammered with your ex while your current girlfriend is at work. I look at Liliane.

“I'll admit I was a little confused at Bamboo House the other night. What should I call you now?”

“For safety's sake, you should probably continue to use ‘Marilyne' in public,” says Vidocq. “Liliane is only a name for private moments.”

“It's true,” she says. “In Los Angeles on this day, in this year, I'm Marilyne. The name cost me quite a lot of money. I need to get my money's worth.”

Vidocq takes a big swig of wine and settles on the sofa. Liliane sits down next to him. I take the chair across from them.

“We've both had many names over the years. I've lost count of how many,” Vidocq says.

“And it gets harder every year. A century ago, with a few pieces of paper you could be anyone you wanted to be. Travel the world and come home again. These days, it's all fingerprints and computer chips in your passport.”

Vidocq sighs, drinks.

“It's one of the many reasons I've never returned to Paris. I've simply waited too long.”

“It's why I'm applying for citizenship,” says Liliane. “Travel is difficult for people like us. It will be even harder in the future. Soon, just staying alive and anonymous will be a nightmare.”

Vidocq puts his hand on hers. Gives it a squeeze.

“We will get by. There's always a way. Right, James?”

He points his glass in my direction and mock-whispers to Liliane, “Young James here is legally dead, yet he walks the streets and runs a business. Together, we will all survive.”

“Together,” says Liliane.

They look at me.

“Together,” I say, and finish my wine.

Vidocq pours me another. I look around the place. There are books open and lab equipment scattered across his worktable.

“So, what have you kids been up to today?”

Vidocq sits up, looking excited in that way only drunk people can.

“Liliane carried on my work after my apparent death all those years ago. She became a noted alchemist in Europe.”

“Perhaps not noted, but noticed,” she says. “It's why I work, and enjoy working, in laboratories now. It feels like home.”

“I've been showing her my tools and research materials. It's lovely to have a fellow worker of the way to share things with.”