The Perdition Score (6 page)

“Get whatever kind of lamp you want for the living room. Flying robots. Naked witches.”

“You know I was going to anyway.”

“Yeah, but I just wanted to say it.”

“Thanks. You know if I find out someone's hurt you, I'm going to eat their fucking heart, right?”

“I know.”

“I know you know, but I just wanted to say it.”

“Thanks. Can I ask you one more favor?”

“What?”

“Can you turn that goddamn surf record over and play the other side. You've played this one about fifty times.”

“This is
my
homework. Alessa is going to teach me surf guitar.”

“I bet there are songs on the other side you can learn.”

“Your wish is my command,” she says, and pads out of the bedroom to the stereo.

When she's gone, I take a long, deep breath. This thing we have. I don't want to fuck it up. I don't want to lie anymore and I don't want a dog. I just want Candy or Chihiro or whoever she has to be next to stay alive. We're in this together and I'll kick the ass of anyone who gets in the way. Even if it's me.

“Did I tell you an angel gave me a birthday present tonight?”

She comes back into the room and flops onto the bed.

“No. Tell me every little thing about it.”

So I do. And we're okay.

For a while.

C
ANDY IS GONE
when I wake up in the morning. There's a note on the kitchen counter when I go in to make coffee.

            
Jamming with Alessa at her rehearsal space after work.

            
Home late. Be naked.

There are some hearts and she's taped a press-on tattoo of a sleeping cat at the bottom of the note. I lick a spot on my forearm and press down on the tattoo. A minute later I pull it off. No cat. Just a few frayed lines scattered across my scars.
Once again, my stupid body rejects the simplest amusements. So, I make coffee. That's one bit of pleasure that still works.

I don't bother going downstairs and bothering Kasabian. He's even drearier than me in the morning. Before he gets up and turns on the news or does something else to annoy me, I turn on the rest of a movie I started with Candy the other night:
Amer
. It's a deconstruction of Italian
giallo
flicks. The directors tear it down to its essential elements—beats, images, violence, colors, sexual tension—but they do it almost wordlessly, like a silent movie. Just the thing for that time of day when words are still hard to come by.

I sip coffee and smoke, letting the movie run through to its end and one last little shock, then pick up my phone and thumb in Vidocq's number. He picks up after a few rings.

“James, how nice to hear from you at this early hour. Is everything all right?” His voice is deep, the accent relentlessly French.

“Nothing's wrong. Sometimes I'm actually up during daylight hours. I just thought if you were going to be around, I'd swing by and show you something that fell into my lap from Heaven.”

“Really? You must come immediately. Do not stop for coffee. I've made some better than your vile swill.”

He says it all like the friendliest headwaiter in L.A. See, I always notice the accent because it's such an accomplishment. Eugène Vidocq has lived in the U.S. for around a hundred and fifty years. Any normal person would lose an accent after all that time. But Vidocq holds on to his like some grandma with the family photos. Nothing in the album means anything to anyone except her, which makes her hang on all the harder.

“I need to get dressed. I'll be over in half an hour.”

“I doubt that on a weekend,” he says. “Let us say an hour.”

“Don't rub it in.”

I used to walk across town through a shadow and come out by Vidocq's front door in ten seconds. It feels like something that happened in another lifetime, but it's really been less than three months.

I plow through the Hollywood traffic south and get to Vidocq's place in just under an hour. L.A. people are obsessed with addresses, distance, and times between places. I used to worry about the first two, but now I'm just like every other asshole in this town. A clock watcher, knowing the hour I wasted getting here I'll never see again. Everyone in L.A. is like this. It's one of the town's big secrets. Want to know why people drink and smoke so much weed? They want to wipe out the time slipping away from them. Want to know why people do coke and get on the pipe? They're trying to outrun the clock. Like Superman at the end of the movie where he flies around the world fast enough to roll back time. That's all anyone in L.A. wants. To get back the time they lost
just fucking being in L.A
. I can't outrun time. I don't even know if angels or Mr. Muninn can. Gods and regular schmucks, we're all stuck on the same linear run from here to the end of time. Just some of us get to run a little longer. Like Vidocq. He's immortal. He doesn't worry about being stuck in traffic. He could spend a month waiting for a cab and not blink. Me, I have to wait eleven seconds at the bodega to buy coffee and I'm contemplating a murder/suicide pact with everyone in the store.

I take the old industrial elevator up to Vidocq's floor in
his building and knock on the door. He meets me at the door in a robe and slippers, holding a plate of crisp bacon slices. Vidocq has salt-and-pepper hair and a short trimmed beard. I put on actual people clothes and he's just rolled out of the sack.

“I see why you wanted me to come to you.”

He looks down at himself for a moment.

“I couldn't bear to dress myself this morning. Do you ever feel that way? One more morning, brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes. It can drive you mad. When I was alone, I went years without cutting my hair or beard. I looked like the Abdominal, Aminal . . . What do you call him?”

“The Abominable Snowman.”

“Yes. Him.”

“‘Yeti' is an easier word.”

“Yes, but I prefer the other. It gives him a sinister dignity whereas Yeti makes him sound like just another animal.”

“He probably
is
just another animal. He's got to know by now we're looking for him. Three hot meals and a fresh pile of hay every day has got to beat running away and throwing your shit at hikers.”

“I suppose it comes down to who's looking for you. Will the hunters study and appreciate you or do they simply want to dissect you? Likely a smart beast, he will be suspicious of us,” Vidocq says.

“Hey, don't knock it. That's how I feel every day.”

“As do I.”

“Then give me some coffee and let's drink to that.”

He hands me a cup full of the black stuff. I hold it up and say, “To freaks everywhere.”

Vidocq holds up his mug.

“May you fly, walk, swim, or crawl for all eternity under the noses of our betters.”

“And if you can't, at least get your own reality show.
Sasquatch Hoarders
. Or
The Real Housewives of R'lyeh
.”

We drink our coffee, satisfied that we're the two cleverest people in the room.

He sips his coffee. Sets down the cup and the plate of bacon on his worktable.

“As I recall, you have something for me.”

“That I do.”

I set the box on the table near his food. Among his many interests, Vidocq happens to be a world-class alchemist. He was a good alchemist back in the day, but the extra two hundred years since then have given him plenty more practice.

He picks up the box. Looks it over top and bottom, then eyeballs it with a magnifying glass.

“Where did you get it?” he says.

“A dying angel brought it to me. Didn't say what it is. Said he didn't know. All I do know is that some angels like what's inside it. He said the war in Heaven won't end unless someone destroys it.”

“Dying angels. Wars. This does not fill me with joy.”

He sets the box back on the table and pushes back the lock. When that goes all right, he gets a long steel rod and carefully pushes open the top. I don't blame him. I've been known to bring him things that catch fire.

When nothing explodes, he takes the vial from its padded case and holds it up to the light.

“The fluid is almost opaque, but not quite. As if there is
some shifting something inside. I can't tell what. Some debris? Sediment?”

He looks at me.

“Is it safe to open?”

“I have no idea. But if it blows up I don't think the angel who gave it to me knew it would.”

“That will be a great comfort to the other residents if I set the building on fire or fill it with poison.”

I hadn't thought of that last bit.

“You have any gas masks?”

He reaches under his worktable and comes out with something rubbery that looks like it's a couple of wars past its prime.

“Just the one, I'm afraid,” he says.

“Story of my life. Fuck it. Let's go. I'll hold my breath.”

Vidocq gets a small, stumpy candle down from the top of a set of wooden shelves behind the table. He lights the candle with a paper match and the flame flickers a light green.

“As long as the flame stays this color, we're safe,” he says, and puts on the gas mask.

I lean in close and shout, “You're still wearing the mask, even though I don't have one?”

He nods vigorously.

“Thanks,” I say. “It's good to know you're always there for me.”

I take the vial and unscrew the top. “The angel called this stuff black milk.”

And suddenly I know why. It smells like the curdled insides of a lizard-skin Hellion bovine with shit for blood and fish guts for bones. Even in the gas mask, Vidocq is choking. I get
the top back on the bottle fast. Last night's tamales are seriously considering making a break for it onto Vidocq's nice rug.

Vidocq shakes his head. Takes the vial from my hand.

“No.”

He points to the candle. The flame is still pale green.

“See? The smell is unpleasant, but not deadly. We must persevere.”

With his other hand, he opens an old medical cabinet on his worktable. The cabinet doors swing apart like bird wings, revealing racks of potions and drawers for instruments.

He takes off the gas mask and pulls some potions from the cabinet. Pours a little of the black milk into a shallow Pyrex dish and screws the top back on. I put the vial back in the box, hoping it will kill some of the smell.

“Mind if I open a window?”

“Mmm,” he mumbles, already lost in the experiment, barely noticing I'm there. I crack a window, letting in the smoggy L.A. breeze.

Much better.

Vidocq uses a dropper to add tiny amounts of a purple potion to the black milk. I take one of his bacon slices and wait to see what happens next.

After almost a minute, he says, “Interesting.”

I look at the mess on the table.

“What's interesting? I don't see any difference.”

“That's what's interesting. Look closer. The two liquids remain separate. They won't mix.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea. Yet.”

He pours the mixture into a flask that's connected to a
series of glass tubes and other glass receptacles. As the liquid moves through the tubes, it separates back into black milk and the purple potion. He pours out the potion in the kitchen sink and swirls the milk in its flask.

“I would like to test it with red mercury,” he says. “But I'm out of it and it's not easy to find these days.”

“What are you going to do?”

He sighs.

“Make some phone calls. Ask a few favors.”

“Did the test tell you anything?”

He crosses his arms, staring at the mystery goo.

“The potion I used is a very simple one. It separates other potions into their basic elements for study. But instead, the milk repelled it.”

“Meaning?”

“As I said, I have no idea. My greatest fear is that being angelic in origin, it might not react properly with any Earthly chemicals.”

“It could be Hellion.”

“True. But Hellions being fallen angels, the problem remains.”

And here we are again. Back to the same problem. I'm stuck in L.A. with no way to get to Hell, where I might find an angel that I could choke long enough to help me. I need to sit Kasabian down for a more serious talk.

Vidocq puts a drop of the milk on a glass slide and places it under a microscope with a
PROPERTY OF UCLA
sticker partly scraped off.

Among Vidocq's other interests is burglary.

“Anything?” I say.

He shrugs.

“There's movement within the fluid. Perhaps living organisms. Perhaps simply repellent elements. It's too early to say with any certainty. I'm sorry.”

“It's fine. I knew it wouldn't be simple. Nothing with angels ever is. For all I know, this whole thing is just a prank. Now that he can't get at us, let's fuck with Sandman Slim. Maybe black milk is just an exploding cigar.”

“Please,” he says. “Until we know what this is, don't say ‘exploding.' It's bad luck.”

“I didn't know you believed in that kind of thing.”

“I believe in everything. It's what frequently comes with age. We hope for wisdom, but we just end up with more uncertainty.”

“Well, you're still the smartest guy I've ever met.”

“Merci.”

He stands aside and lets me look into his microscope. All I see is black sludge with tiny dots spinning into and around each other.

“I mean it,” I tell him. “I don't know if I could make it two hundred years and stay sane.”

“Don't underestimate yourself,” Vidocq says.

“Are you ever going to tell me how it happened?”

He goes back to the microscope and carefully removes the slide.