Devil Said Bang (35 page)

I leave Kasabian sucking down a plate of filet
mignon and onion rings the size of horseshoes while
Django
the Bastard
plays on the big screen. I forgot how movies look better
when they’re not on a laptop screen. It’s a nice change. I don’t bother saying
good-bye. Between the movie and the food, Kasabian wouldn’t hear me anyway. I go
to the garage, steal a Volvo (every crook’s go-to car when they don’t want to be
noticed) and drive to the clinic.

Traffic isn’t bad. Everyone who isn’t running for
the hills must be bugging in. I only have to run a couple of red lights to get
across town. When I get there, I beach the Volvo across three spaces in the
parking lot, get out, and give the clinic door a copper knock. That
authoritative knuckle rap cops have to master before they get to make the donut
run solo.

The door opens and Allegra comes out, pulling it
closed behind her.

“You thought if you didn’t answer the phone, I’d
just go away?”

“Sorry. I thought the answering machine was
on.”

“ ’Course you did. I want to see Candy.”

I start for the door but Allegra puts her hand on
my chest. Then pulls it away when she touches the armor.

“She’s all right. It was just a slash and didn’t go
too deep. I closed her up and gave her something to sleep. She’ll be out for a
few hours. Rinko’s taking care of her.”

“Speak of the Devil.”

Rinko hits Allegra’s shoulder when she pushes open
the clinic door. She comes right up to me. I’m ready for the slap I know is
coming. I got her girlfriend hurt. I won’t even try to stop her.

Rinko’s hand flashes up. The shirt rips. Sparks
kick off the armor. She slashes down again with the scalpel, this time at my
throat. I step back and catch her hand, shoving her hard enough into the clinic
door to rattle the glass.

“Don’t hurt her!” yells Allegra.

I won’t. I can see it in her eyes. She’s possessed.
Someone is having fun Downtown. Rinko already hates my guts, so it probably
wasn’t hard getting in her head and tweaking her to come at me. I was hoping
that with Aelita up here, the possession games would stop for a while. Maybe I
should have burned Hell on my way out of town. Maybe I should have hung more
skins on the fences. Was I too awful a Lucifer or too nice? Neither. I was just
lousy. Am just lousy. I should have seen this coming.

The clinic door opens again and Vidocq comes out.
He has another scalpel and the same dead-fish possessed look in his eyes. When
he raises his hand to slash me, I pop him once in the jaw. Not hard enough to
hurt him. Just hard enough to lay him out.

Allegra gets between us, dragging poor dazed Rinko
with her.

“Eugène. Stark. What’s wrong with you? Stop
it.”

“He can’t hear you. He’s possessed. So was
Rinko.”

Rinko is starting to come around. Allegra kneels by
Vidocq and checks his eyes. Looks back at me.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she
says.

“These days, when one possessed person goes down,
another pops up. I thought you were going to go off with the scalpel next but
maybe you’re immune because of the angel hoodoo you work with all day. Lucky for
both of us.”

Rinko comes over and helps Allegra get Vidocq back
on his feet. She looks at me funny. She has no idea how she got outside or why
my shirt is ripped or why I’m dressed like an extra in a Hercules movie.

“Vidocq will be fine. When his head clears, he
won’t remember a thing.”

I get around them and open the door. Allegra looks
like she might slash me without being possessed.

“We don’t need your help.”

She waits until I step away from the door before
taking Vidocq inside.

“I’m not the villain here. I’m the one who got
knifed.”

“This time,” says Allegra, pulling the door behind
her. I grab it before it closes.

“Take care of Candy. And don’t let either of these
two near her.”

“I know how to run my own clinic.”

“Really? Does your staff settle all its arguments
with a knife fight?”

Allegra doesn’t say anything. She tries to pull the
door closed. I don’t let her.

“When I’ve done what I have to do, I’m coming back
and I’m going to see Candy whether any of you like it or not.”

I let go of the door. She pulls it closed and locks
it.

“It’s nice to see you’ve still got the magic touch
with people.”

The voice is behind me. I recognize it because it’s
mine. I turn around and look at me.

Saint James is dressed in tan khakis and a blue
pullover with an off-brand logo over the pocket. He looks like me if I was
eleven years younger and a Mormon kid on my missionary work. I’d never admit it
but I feel strange and it even hurts a little seeing myself without all the
scars. The guy I was before I went Downtown has been gone so long I don’t even
remember him but I’m looking at him and that’s bad enough. What’s worse is that
Saint James, patron saint of traitors, cowards, and general pricks, knows
it.

“How’s Heaven, pal? I mean Blue Heaven. What the
hell is that? Some kind of time-share hideout with D. B. Cooper and Ambrose
Bierce?”

“I was about to pull you out of Vidocq’s way but as
usual you solved the problem with your fist. You’re punching friends these days.
It’s good to see a man broaden his interests.”

“The only reason you’d save me is because half my
skin is yours.”

“True enough, but you didn’t have a shred of common
sense up here, and Hell hasn’t helped you gain any perspective.”

I take out a Malediction. Sit on the hood of the
Volvo and light it. I don’t offer Saint James one. No way this milquetoast
smokes.

“You’re wrong. I have plenty of common sense. I’ve
hardly killed anyone since I’ve been back. Okay, maybe those ten guys at
Blackburn’s. But I’m the injured party here. Everyone’s gunning for me because
of something you did.”

He shakes his head. Clamps his jaw angrily before
speaking.

“I didn’t kill the mayor’s son and you know it. It
was the ghost. I was trying to stop her just like I tried to stop her before. I
was there when the boy was killed, so it was easy to pin it on me. I think
someone is protecting the girl.”

“If I’m supposed to be impressed with your
detective skill, you’re going to have to try harder. I know all that and I know
who’s doing it.” It’s a lie but I’m not about to let this asshole in on how in
the dark I am. “All I need to figure out is why. You know, even if you showed up
with all the pieces of the puzzle and a carton of Carlos’s tamales, it doesn’t
change the fact that you left me to clean up Mason’s shit. Now I have to clean
up yours and I’m supposed to swoon over a happy reunion because you finally
stepped up?”

“Right. Like you never left me holding the bag.
Running wild up here and down below. Getting us backed into corners so that I
had to figure a way out.”

I puff the Malediction and blow smoke in his
direction but the wind carries it away.

“All that’s what’s changed. Being on my own
Downtown, I learned to think more before I break things. I did some bad things
as Lucifer but not nearly as many as I could have. I saved the place from
imploding and taking a whole lot of souls down with it.”

Saint James smirks. He isn’t buying it.

“I saw you playing cowboy with Great-Granddad. How
is Wild Bill?”

“You were there spying on me?”

“Checking up on you. Believe it or not, I was
concerned.”

“I bet you were. You found out it’s lonely out here
on your own and you want back in my head. That’s why you’re here. Forget it. I’m
done with the
Three Faces of Eve
routine. I don’t
need you.”

He looks me over. Another shirt ruined. I need a
tailor or at least a clothes fairy. I wonder if Manimal Mike can make one for
me.

“Are you going to wear that armor forever?” says
Saint James. “You’ll never be more than half a person without me.”

“I read books when I was Downtown. I learned about
the Greeks. ‘Loss is nothing but change and change is Nature’s delight.’ Marcus
Aurelius said that.”

“Marcus Aurelius was Roman.”

“I know. Ain’t that a bitch?”

This time, when I blow smoke, I get him. He steps
away, waving his hand at the cloud.

“This armor is why I don’t need you. I have all the
power I had when we were together and even a few new tricks.”

“The armor hasn’t improved your thinking.”

“The only thing you have on me is the Thirteen
Doors Key and I can live without that.”

“Really? How much longer can you ride that beast of
a motorcycle before the police catch up to you? How many more cars can you
steal? The police aren’t fools. Julie Sola told me they have a whole task force
looking for the car-theft ring. You’re a whole criminal conspiracy.”

“A task force just for me? I’m flattered as hell.
I’ve never been a gang before.”

“You realize that if you’re captured, they’ll take
the armor. And since you don’t have the key, you’ll be stuck in jail. Just
another mortal fool in a sea of monsters.”

I flick the cigarette butt at him and burn a small
hole in his pullover before he flinches out of the way.

“You left me to the monsters when you blew Hell.
Let me change what I said before. It’s not that I don’t need you. I don’t want
you. Have fun in Blue Heaven.”

I get off the Volvo hood and start around to the
driver’s side.

“You mean it, don’t you? This isn’t just the anger
talking. You really intend to give up half of yourself forever.”

I pull up my shirtsleeve and show him the Kissi
arm.

“Remember this? I lost part of me already and I
learned to get along without it. I can do it again.”

“Can you honestly say you don’t miss the Room of
Thirteen Doors? The quiet. The perfection. Knowing you’re at the still silent
heart of the universe and that no one can touch you.”

“I miss it like a junkie misses the needle. But
it’s like Herodotus said—and that guy I know is Greek: ‘Very few things happen
at the right time and the rest do not happen at all.’ ”

“How does that even apply?”

“ ’Cause you’re a day late and a dollar short, so
fuck off.”

He leans on the top of the Volvo.

“Without the Key you can’t get to Blue Heaven and
you’ll never see me again.”

“You can travel with the Key but I have people who
watch my back. What do you have besides frequent flier miles?”

“Everyone who watches your back gets shot, stabbed,
or punched. How long will they put up with that?”

I get in the car. Talk to him through the open
window.

“Good-bye. Say hi to Amelia Earhart for me.”

Saint James steps into a shadow and is gone.

“Y
ou
know, I had to kill myself a little in Hell a few days back.”

“Maybe you’ll get it right this time,” says
Kasabian.

When someone asked Willie Sutton, the safecracker,
why he broke into so many banks, he said, “Because that’s where the money is.”
When you want to find a ghost who tried to kill your girl (okay, not technically
mine but I like her a lot), you go to the Tenebrae because that’s where the
ghosts are.

I stick the tip of black blade into my arm until
the blood flows.

“This is the funniest thing you’re going to see all
day.”

Kasabian looks at me and turns abruptly away.

“Jesus. Give a guy some warning. Why are you doing
that? You don’t have enough pain in your life?”

“It’s not the cutting that’s funny. It’s that I’m
cutting the nice clean stitches the hotel doctor just put in. I need some
blood.”

“What for?”

Don’t think for a second that just because I’m hard
to kill, getting hit or burned or cut doesn’t hurt. It feels the same to me as
it does to anybody else. It’s just that I get over it faster. When it’s
happening, though, I feel every little twitch and twinge of pain. Cutting into a
recent wound is an especially interesting experience. There’s a lot of internal
“What the hell are you doing?” screaming.

“Remember when you tried to shoot me with that
booby-trapped weapon? The Devil’s Daisy that Mason gave you?”

“Yeah,” says Kasabian. “Damn thing ruined a
perfectly good surrogate body.”

“Remember that I talked to you in the deadlands
when you were gone but not in Heaven or Hell yet?”

“Yeah? Is that what that’s about?”

I nod. Grimace when I dig down too deep and hit
bone.

“Shit. I’m going back to the same neighborhood to
talk to another ghost. She gave me this little paper cut, so I figure blood from
the wound will get me close to her.”

“You cut yourself up when you came to see me?”

“Worse than this. Usually you have to slit your
wrists and be at death’s door for this trick. I’m hoping I can get away with a
little less blood this time.”

He takes a chance and sneaks a look in my
direction. The blood is flowing and I’m dripping it around a Magic Circle I’ve
carved in the tile floor. Thirteen interlocking circles and lines meeting at
seventy-two points. Metatron’s Cube. The Flower of Life.

“The really funny part is that I shouldn’t even
have to do this. Lucifer can hop from Hell to Earth. I bet he can get to ghost
central too but I still haven’t figured out ninety-nine percent of his
power.”

The circle is nearly closed with blood.

“When you see me come back, it would be swell if
you helped me out by breaking the circle. Just wipe up a little blood.”

“I was just sitting here thinking that what I’d
love to do after a nice lunch is wipe up your body fluids.”

I toss off my sliced shirt and strip naked except
for the armor.

“The Tin Man comes out of the closet at last.”

I toss him the ripped shirt.

“Shut up, and when you see me twitch, you can use
that to break the circle.”

“You’re not going anywhere, are you? This is just
some kind of frat hazing where I have to stare at your sack while standing on
one leg and reciting the alphabet backward.”