The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Volume One of Bobby Dollar (26 page)

“What he means is that we’re ghosts,” said Doris proudly. “The real thing, us. ’Cept we’ve got no place of our own to haunt. Once we lost the bungalow where we grew up, we just floated around. Eventually we floated all the way over here!”

“Bloody Norah, she makes it sound easy!” said Betty. “We haunted a second-class stateroom on the
Franconia
for two whole years before we could get off again! That running water is nasty stuff for ghosts—everyone knows that—but who would have guessed that the ocean counted too?”

“Oh, and then we were in New York for a while,” her sister continued. The two voices seemed very close to the ears, and the ladies loved to jump back and forth from side to side, as though someone was playing with the mixing board of reality. Even for somebody like me who
was
supposed to try this stuff at home, it could be quite disorienting. “Too cold, that was. That’s why we come out here!”

“Ghosts get cold…?” Clarence sounded like he was not getting the kind of answers about the supernatural world that he had expected.

“Just conceptual-like,” said Doris. “But it still stings a bit when it’s winter.”

“Oh, and you never liked that, our Dor, did you?”

“No, you’re right, bab, I day’n’t.”

“If you ladies are finished with your reminiscences,” I said, “perhaps we could do a little business.”

The coffee pot rattled, bouncing the lid and belching out a little drift of steam. “Ooh, wotcher got?”

I took the bag out of my pocket and set it on the table just as the waitress arrived with our water, a mere fifteen minutes or so after we’d entered the diner. When she was gone again I pulled out the telltale bottle. Now the cream pitcher began quivering too. “Oh, lovely!” said Betty. “Doris, look! Yardley’s English lavender!”

“Have a quick sniff,” I said and took off the cap. The lids of both pot and pitcher popped open as whatever was inside them rose invisibly and, presumably, hovered above the perfume bottle.

“Dunt it just take you back,” said Doris dreamily (and still invisibly.) By this time the delivery guys sitting a couple of tables away had noticed the rather potent smell of lavender drifting over and, by their expressions, were wondering what the hell Clarence and I were doing.

“Reminds me of going down the dance hall on a Saturday night,”
crooned Betty, then groaned as I put the cap back on the bottle. “Oh, you cruel sod! What did you do that for?”

“Because I need information, ladies, and I need it badly. Several not very nice people and some even less nice things are trying to kill me. I want to know what you can tell me about any of them.”

“Do we have to keep talking to the pitchers?” asked Clarence. “I mean, where are they now? Can
you
see them? ’Cause I can’t.”

“He is a strange one, in’t he?” said Doris. “Poor thing.”

“Count yourself lucky, bab,” Betty told him. “If you don’t like us in the cream pitcher, it could be worse. Sometimes we get into the sarnies. That’d make you lose weight, woont it? Your bacon bap talking back to you?”

“Sarnie?” the rookie said helplessly. “Bap?”

“Sandwiches,” I translated. “You ready to listen, ladies?”

“First let us get comfy, like,” Doris said, and suddenly they were both there. Well, not
there,
not in the three-dimensional sense, but present and visible in a filmy sort of way, two slightly purply-blue, mostly transparent and fairly podgy middle-aged ladies in what I’ve always assumed were outfits from the 1940s: dark dresses, heavy cloth coats, and hats. We were sitting in a four-person booth so one of them was next to each of us, Betty beside Clarence, and Doris next to me. Clarence tried to look like it didn’t bother him at all, but he also kept sliding away until he struck up against the wall of the booth.

“Mardy little bugger, isn’t he?” said Betty. Her hat was festooned with artificial flowers. “Cheer up, lad—it might never happen!”

As the waitress returned with our food, I explained the last few days to them all. I had to trim out some details I wasn’t sure I wanted to share with the kid, but I was able to lay out the most important bits. When I finished, the Sollyhull Sisters seemed to be listening carefully. The first question, though, made me wonder.

“Do you remember that boy from Erdington we were at school with?” asked Doris. “The one who had nasty crawly things in his pocket?”

“That Hamish? I was just thinking of him too,” her sister said.

“He was like that, wasn’t he? Trying to hide things from teacher, but she always sussed it out.”

“You two are not going to get even another sniff of that Yardley if you don’t start helping me,” I said sternly.

“We are, pigeon, we are,” said Betty, rippling a little with impatience. “So just shut it and listen. This Hamish used to have things in his pockets he shouldn’t—snakes, beetles, once he had a live mouse, can you believe it?—but he was his own worst enemy, wasn’t he, our Dor? He truly was, he always made a fuss whenever the teacher looked at him, squirming and looking away from her so she always knew when he was up to no good. It was as good as saying, ‘I’ve got something I shouldn’t!’”

“Am I supposed to understand this?” I asked.

“Don’t be thick, pigeon,” Doris told me. “It dunt become you. She’s saying that you can see things better when you’re face to face with someone. Most folk can’t help showing what they’re thinking if you’re ’round them long enough.”

“Right.” Betty nodded as though that had made sense.

“Meaning what? Look, ladies, I’ve almost had my skin ripped off my body several times in the last couple of days. I may not look it, but I’m scared. Can you just talk plainly for me?”

Doris sighed. “Put it about that you
do
have this thing. See who shows up to dicker for it. That’ll lead to conversation.”

“But I don’t care about the people who want to buy it, I want to find the missing thing—the thing itself—because if he doesn’t get his thing back, one of the major lords of Hell is going to remove all my nerves and organs. And there’s no way that can turn out well.”

“We’re just trying to help, love. You don’t even know what it is that got stolen. But if you put it out that you
do
have it and then see what you get offered for it you might find out. That would make it a lot easier to find the thing, now wouldn’t it? Knowing what kind of a thing it is?”

“Actually,” said Clarence, “that makes sense.”

“Yeah,” I told him, “the kind of sense that will get me killed in new ways I haven’t even imagined yet. And here I was just worrying about the old ways.” I pushed my plate away. Suddenly I didn’t feel much like finishing my Belgian waffle, although usually I can choke down anything with sugar in or on it, no matter how beat up I am. “Speaking of the old ways of me getting killed, ladies, any insights about my horned friend, the
ghallu
? Because I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of it.”

Doris frowned and nodded sympathetically. “Oh, that’s a bad one,
pigeon. We’ve been asking all of our friends on the other side for the last few minutes, but nobody likes to talk about such things, even those old enough to remember. Them
ghallu
, they’re dead yampy—completely mad. They’ll eat their way through a mountain just to break a rabbit’s neck on other side.”

“Thanks for those words of colloquial wisdom,” I said. “What can I do to stop it?”

“Not much, bab,” said Betty. “A spell of dismissal, but you’d have to get the same fella who summoned it to dismiss it as well.”

“Great. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen, because the fella who summoned it is probably the same Eligor, King Bad Ass of Hell Corners, who wants me so interestingly dead.” I said it a little more emphatically than I should have, perhaps, and I heard one of the delivery drivers drop a spoon.

“Sssshhhh!” Betty wiggled her stubby fingers. “Don’t say the fella’s name out loud.”

The two delivery drivers finally got up to go. They’d been watching Clarence and me talking for several minutes, and of course we had only occasionally been talking to each other, the rest of the time to empty spaces in the booth. It seemed to have disconcerted the drivers; they left a pile of money on their table and inched past us wearing unconvincing smiles.

“Ooh, I fancy that second one a bit,” Betty said. “He’s got a nice bum.”

Doris hooted with laughter. “You old slapper!”

“Focus, ladies, please.” My head was beginning to hurt. The Sollyhulls are decent enough for dead people, but trying to get anything out of them requires the patience of a saint. “
Ghallu
, remember? As in, how do I kill it?”

“We don’t know, love,” said Doris. “Silver works on some demons, but on these big, old ones, well…” She trailed off.

“Maybe if you popped it one right in the heart with a silver bullet,” said Betty—trying to sound like Jimmy Cagney, I guessed, but it didn’t make it any more convincing. “Or popped it four or five, more likely, and it wasn’t well…”

“Believe me, I’ll try silver, but judging by past experience it’s a bit like trying to aim a rubber band at a tiger while it’s busy trying to knock your head off.” I moved around in my seat to unkink my bruised
and aching back, then took a last swallow of my coffee. “Anything else, ladies? About the
ghallu
or any other subject?”

“Oh, yes, one,” Doris said. “Your Grasswax fella? That prosecutor?”

“I remember him well—his outside
and
his insides.”

“We used to hear a bit of him,” said Betty as if she’d started the sentence. Sometimes it seemed like they were one person, the way they finished each other’s thoughts, but I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been living together (or living and dead together) for over a hundred years. “He had a gambling problem. That’s what we heard.”

I waited. “That’s all? He was from Hell, ladies—of course he had vices. I don’t think you’re allowed to live there unless you do. Not having vices would
be
a vice, if you get what I mean. So what of it?”

Betty frowned, a thin, nearly transparent line on her even more transparent face. “We told you, Bobby love, don’t get stroppy. People who have the gambling fever tend to owe people things. Money. Favors. We just thought we’d mention it.”

I stared at them for a moment, and they looked back at me expectantly. “Right,” I said. It wasn’t like I’d come up with anything better on my own. “Thank you, ladies. I’ll think it all over. Come on, Clarence.”

As the kid sat wondering how to get out of his seat without sliding through the ghost of Betty Sollyhull, I took the bag back out of my pocket, removed the bottle of English Lavender, and discreetly poured it on the floor. As the almost asphyxiating smell of the stuff rose around me I dropped an extra twenty on top of our bill. As we reached the door I called to the waitress.

“I’m afraid I’ve spilled one of my perfume samples on the floor. Sorry to make work for you, but I’ve got to run. I’ve left some extra money.”

The Sollyhull sisters had risen up like clouds of steam in sensible shoes, becoming less and less substantial as they flew back and forth above the table until at last I could no longer see them. But as I led the kid to the door we could still hear them, giggling like schoolgirls.

“Oh, that’s lovely. Lovely! Takes me right back!”

“Do you remember that boy Tom Kippers who used to take you to the pictures? The one who always carried barley sugar?”

“Barley sugar! What I wouldn’t give for some of that right now! Oh, Doris, what a lovely thought!”

As we headed for the car Clarence asked me, “How did they die?”

“I think they set their house on fire. Something like that. Killed their parents, too, but I don’t think they meant to die themselves—just didn’t get out fast enough or something. Pretty famous case in Birmingham.”

“What? Did they do it on purpose?” the kid asked, horrified.

I closed my door and buckled myself in. “They died a long time ago—like I said, it was a famous case. You only haunt things when you’re working off certain very severe Purgatorial deals, the kind that keep souls from going straight to hell.” I shrugged. “They probably wouldn’t still be hanging around if it had been an accident, would they?”

The rookie didn’t say much on the way back into downtown.

A
NOTHER NIGHT, another cheap motel. So far, I was staying ahead of trouble, both from the Opposition and from my own people, but I couldn’t figure out how my little adventure in Eligor’s office tower hadn’t come to the attention of my superiors. I didn’t expect the Grand Duke himself to report it, even though it was a ridiculously indiscreet breach of every convention there was, right back to Tartarus, but the whole Magian Society connection to Vald Credit suggested Eligor did have something to hide. He was quite high up, after all, so I supposed one of his underlings could have been the one sheltering the Magians, but I was fairly certain that the connections between a Hell-founded megacorporation, the slippery Reverend Doctor Habari, and Grasswax’s former bodyguard couldn’t
all
be accidental. For one thing, why would Howlingfell take time off from working for Eligor to pull a low-level duty protecting a mere prosecutor unless the Grand Duke wanted it that way? But the odds were that folks on both sides would eventually hear about my trip to Five Page Mill, and my bosses would find out soon after that. I could only imagine what the Ephorate would think of my little adventure, but my educated guess was ‘not much.’