A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) (30 page)

“Who, what? That’s what you said on my voice mail. Where is Sophie?”

Cassandra dragged him to Sophie’s room, where he was met in the doorway by a growling Mohammed.

“Daddy!” Sophie shrieked. She ran across the room and leapt into his arms. She gave him a big hug and a sloppy kiss that left a chocolate Sophie-print on his cheek. “Down,” she said. “Down, down.” Charlie put her down and she ran back into her room, but Mohammed prevented Charlie from entering, pushed his nose into Charlie’s shirt, leaving a giant dog-nose print in chocolate. Evidently there had been a chocolate orgy going on in his absence.

“His mother is supposed to pick him up at one,” Cassandra said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Charlie strained to see around the hellhound and saw Sophie standing with her hand on Alvin’s collar while he menaced a little boy who was crouched in the corner. The little boy was a little wide-eyed, but otherwise unhurt, and he didn’t seem that frightened. In fact, he was hugging a box of Crunchy Cheese Newts, and was eating one, then feeding the next one to Alvin, who was dripping hellish dog drool onto the kid’s shoes in anticipation of the next newt.

“I love him,” Sophie said. She went to the little boy and kissed him on the cheek, leaving a chocolate smear. Not the first. It appeared that this little guy had been suffering Sophie’s affections for quite some time, for he was covered with chocolaty goodness and orange Cheese-Newt dust. “I want to keep him.”

The little boy grinned.

“He came over for a playdate. I guess you scheduled it before you left,” Cassandra said. “I thought it would be okay. I tried to get him out of there, but the dogs won’t let me by. What are we going to tell his mother?”

“I want to keep him,” Sophie said. Big kiss.

“His name is Matthew,” Cassie said.

“I know his name. He goes to Sophie’s school.”

Charlie started into the room. Mohammed blocked the doorway.

“Matty, are you all right?” Charlie said.

“Uh-huh,” said the chocolate-, cheese-, and dog-drool-sodden kid.

“I want him to stay, Dad,” Sophie said. “Alvin and Mohammed want him to stay, too.”

Charlie thought that perhaps he had not been strict enough in setting limits for his daughter. Maybe after losing her mother, he just hadn’t had the heart to say no to her, and now she was taking hostages.

“Honey, Matty has to get cleaned up. His mommy is coming to get him so he can go be traumatized in his own house.”

“No! He’s mine.”

“Honey, tell Mohammed to let me in. If we don’t get Matty cleaned up, he won’t be able to come back.”

“He can sleep in your room,” Sophie said. “I’ll take care of him.”

“No, young lady, you tell Mohammed to get—”

“I have to pee,” Matthew said. He climbed to his feet and skipped by Alvin, who followed him, then under Mohammed and past Charlie and Cassandra to the bathroom. “Hi,” he said as he went by. He closed the door and they could hear the sound of tinkle. Alvin and Mohammed bullied their way through the doorway and waited outside the bathroom.

Sophie sat down hard, her feet splayed out, her lower lip pushed out like the cowcatcher on a steam engine. Her shoulders started heaving before he could hear the sob—like she was saving up breath—then the wailing and the tears. Charlie went to her and picked her up.

“I—I—I—I, he—he—he—he—”

“It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”

“But I love him.”

“I know you do, honey. It’ll be okay. He’ll go to his house and you can still love him.”

“Noooooooooooooooooooooo—”

She buried her face in his jacket, and as much as his heart was breaking for his daughter, he was also thinking about how much Three Fingered Wu was going to ding him for getting the chocolate stain out of his jacket.

“They just let him go pee,” Cassandra said, staring at the hellhounds. “Just like that. I thought they were going to eat him. They wouldn’t let me near him.”

“It’s okay,” Charlie said. “You didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“They love the Crunchy Cheese Newts.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Sorry. Look, Cassie, can you clean up Sophie and Matty and take care of this? I have some stuff in my date book I have to take care of right away.”

“Sure, but—”

“Sophie will be fine. Won’t you, honey?”

Sophie nodded sadly and wiped her eyes on his coat. “I missed you, Daddy.”

“I missed you, too, sweetie. I’ll be home tonight.”

He kissed her, got his date book from the bedroom, and ran around the apartment collecting his keys, cane, hat, and man purse. “Thanks, Cassie. You have no idea how grateful I am.”

“Sorry about your mother, Charlie,” Cassandra said as he passed.

“Yeah, thanks,” Charlie said, quickly checking the edge of the sword in his cane as he went by.

“Charlie, your life is out of control,” Cassandra said, now slipping back into the unflappable persona that they were all used to.

“Okay, I’ll need to borrow your strappy black pumps, too,” Charlie said as he headed out the door.

“I think I’ve made my point,” Cassie called after him.

R
ay stopped Charlie at the bottom of the stairs. “You got a minute, boss?”

“Not really, Ray. I’m in a hurry.”

“Well, I just wanted to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Well, it seems silly now, but I kind of suspected you of being a serial killer.”

Charlie nodded as if he were considering the grave consequences of Ray’s confession, when, in fact, he was trying to remember if there was any gas in the van. “Well, Ray, I accept your apology, and I’m sorry I ever gave you that impression.”

“I think all those years on the force made me suspicious, but Inspector Rivera stopped by and set me straight.”

“He did, did he? What exactly did he say?”

“He said that you had been checking some stuff out for him, getting into places he couldn’t get without a warrant and so forth, stuff that you’d both get in a lot of trouble for if anyone found out, but was helping to put the bad guys away. He said that’s why you’re so secretive.”

“Yes,” Charlie said solemnly, “I have been fighting crime in my spare time, Ray. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.”

“I understand,” Ray said, backing away from the stairway. “Again, I’m sorry. I feel like a traitor.”

“It’s okay, Ray. But I really have to go. You know, fighting the Forces of Darkness and all.” Charlie held his cane out as if it were a sword and he was charging into action, which, bizarrely, it was and he was.

C
harlie had six days to retrieve three soul vessels if he was going to get caught up before he returned to
Arizona
for his mother’s funeral. Two, the names that had appeared in his date book the same day as Madison McKerny were seriously overdue. The last had appeared in the book only a couple of days ago, when he was in
Arizona
—yet it was in his own handwriting. He’d always thought that he had been doing some kind of sleep writing, but now, this was a whole new twist. He promised himself he would freak out about it as soon as he had some time.

Meanwhile, with the near-death hand job and the dead-mom thing, he hadn’t even done the preliminary research on the first of the two, Esther Johnson and Irena Posokovanovich, and both were now past their pickup date—one by three days. What if the sewer harpies had already gotten there? As strong as they’d become already, he didn’t even want to think about what they could do if they got hold of another soul. He considered calling Rivera to watch his back when he went to the house, but what would he say he was doing? The sharp-faced cop knew there was something supernatural going on, and he’d taken Charlie’s word that he was one of the good guys (not a hard sell when he’d seen the sewer harpy driving a three-inch claw up his nostril only to survive nine rounds of 9 mm in the torso and still fly away).

Charlie was driving with no destination, heading into
Pacific
Heights
just because the traffic was lighter in that direction. He pulled over to the curb and called information.

“I need a number and address for an Esther Johnson.”

“There’s no Esther Johnson, sir, but I have three E. Johnsons.”

“Can you give me the addresses?”

She gave him the two who had addresses. A recording offered to dial the number for him for an additional charge of fifty cents.

“Yeah, how much to drive me there?” Charlie asked the computer voice. Then he hung up and dialed the E. Johnson with no address.

“Hi, could I speak with Esther Johnson,” Charlie said cheerfully.

“There’s no Esther Johnson here,” said a man’s voice. “I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

“Wait. Was there an Esther Johnson there, until maybe three days ago?” Charlie asked. “I saw the E. Johnson in the phone book.”

“That’s me,” said the man, “I’m Ed Johnson.”

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Johnson.” Charlie disconnected and dialed the next E. Johnson.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice.

“Hi, could I speak to Esther Johnson, please?”

A deep breath. “Who is calling?”

Charlie used a ruse that had worked a dozen times before. “This is Charlie Asher, of Asher’s Secondhand. We’ve taken in some merchandise that has Esther Johnson’s name on it and we wanted to make sure it’s not stolen.”

“Well, Mr. Asher, I’m sorry to tell you that my aunt passed away three days ago.”

“Bingo!” Charlie said.

“Pardon?”

“Sorry,” Charlie said. “My associate is playing a scratch-off lotto ticket here in the shop, and he’s just won ten thousand dollars.”

“Mr. Asher, this isn’t really a good time. Is this merchandise you have valuable?”

“No, just some old clothes.”

“Another time, then?” The woman sounded not so much bereaved as harried. “If you don’t mind.”

“No, I’m sorry for your loss,” Charlie said. He disconnected, checked the address, and headed up toward
Golden Gate
Park
and the Haight.

T
he Haight: mecca for the Free Love movement of the sixties, where the Beat Generation begat the Flower Children, where kids from all over the country had come to tune in, turn on, and drop out—and had kept coming, even as the neighborhood went through alternating waves of renewal and decline. Now, as Charlie drove down
Haight Street
, amid the head shops, vegetarian restaurants, hippie boutiques, music stores, and coffeehouses, he saw hippies that ranged in age from fifteen to seventy. Grizzled oldsters panhandling or passing out pamphlets, and young, white-Rastafarian dreadlocked teenagers in flowing skirts or hemp drawstring trousers, with shining piercings and vacant pot-blissed stares. He passed brown-toothed crackheads barking at cars as they passed, a spiky holdover here and there from the punk movement, old guys in berets and wayfarers who might have stepped out of a jazz club in 1953. It wasn’t so much like the hands of time had stood still here, more like they’d been thrown in the air in exasperation, the clock declaring, “Whatever! I’m outta here.”

Esther Johnson’s house was just a couple of blocks off Haight, and Charlie was lucky enough to find parking in a twenty-minute green zone nearby. (If the time came that he ever got to talk to someone in charge, he was going to make a case for special parking privileges for Death Merchants, for while it was nice that no one could see him when he was retrieving a soul vessel, some cool Death plates or “black” parking zones would be even better.)

The house was a small bungalow, unusual for this neighborhood, where most everything was three stories tall and painted in whatever color would contrast most with the house next to it. Charlie had taught Sophie her colors here, using grand Victorians as color swatches.

“Orange, Daddy. Orange.”

“Yes, honey, the man barfed up orange. Look at that house, Sophie, it’s purple.”

The block did have its share of transients, so he knew the doors of the Johnson house would be locked.
Ring the bell and try to sneak through, or wait?
He really couldn’t afford to wait—the sewer harpies had hissed at him from a grate as he approached the house. He rang the bell, then quickstepped to the side.

A pretty, dark-haired woman of about thirty, wearing jeans and a peasant blouse, opened the door, looked around, and said, “Hello, can I help you?”

Charlie nearly fell through a window. He looked behind his back, then back at the woman. No, she was looking right at him.

“Yes, you rang the bell?”

“Oh, me? Yes,” Charlie said. “I’m, uh—you meant me, right?”

The woman stepped back into the house. “What can I do for you?” she said, a bit stern now.

“Oh, sorry—Charlie Asher—I own a secondhand store over in
North
Beach
, I just talked to you on the phone, I think.”