A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) (48 page)

Mrs. Ling was, and had always been, a Buddhist, and so she was a firm believer in the concept of karma, and that those lessons you did not learn would continually be presented to you until you learned them, or your soul could never evolve to the next level. That afternoon, as the Forces of Light were about to engage the Forces of Darkness for dominion over the world, Mrs. Ling, staring into the blank eyes of the squirrel people, had her own epiphany, and she never again ate meat, of any kind. Her first act of atonement was an offering to those she felt she had wronged.

“You want snack?” she said.

But the squirrel people marched on.

T
he Emperor saw the van pull up near the creek and a man in bright yellow motorcycle leathers climb out. The man reached back into the van and grabbed what looked like a shoulder holster with a sledgehammer in it, and slipped into the harness. If the context hadn’t been so bizarre, the Emperor could have sworn it was his friend Charlie Asher, from the secondhand shop in
North
Beach
, but Charlie? Here? With a gun? No.

Lazarus, who was not so dependent on his eyes for recognition, barked a greeting.

The man turned to them and waved. It
was
Charlie. He walked down to the creekbank across from them.

“Your Majesty,” Charlie said.

“You seem upset, Charlie. Is something wrong?”

“No, no, I’m okay, I just had to take directions from a mute beaver in a fez to get here, it’s unsettling.”

“Well, I can see how it would be,” said the Emperor. “Nice ensemble, though, the leathers and the pistol. Not your usual sartorial splendor.”

“Well, no. I’m on a bit of a mission. Going to go into that culvert, find my way into the Underworld, and do battle with the Forces of Darkness.”

“Good for you. Good for you. Forces of Darkness seem to be on the rise in my city lately.”

“You noticed, then?”

The Emperor hung his head. “Yes, I’m afraid we’ve lost one of our troops to the fiends.”

“Bummer?”

“He went into a storm sewer days ago, and hasn’t come out.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Would you look for him, Charlie? Please. Bring him out.”

“Your Majesty, I’m not sure that I’m coming back myself, but I promise, if I find him, I’ll try to bring him out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to open this van and I don’t want you to be alarmed by what you see, but I want to get into the pipe while there’s still some light from the grates. What you see coming out of the van—they’re friends.”

“Carry on,” said the Emperor.

Charlie slid the door open and the squirrel people hopped, scampered, and scooted down the bank of the creek toward the culvert. Charlie reached into the van, took out his sword-cane and flashlight, and butt-bumped the door shut. Lazarus whimpered and looked at the Emperor as if someone who was able to talk should say something.

“Good luck, then, valiant Charlie,” said the Emperor. “You go forth with all of us in your heart, and you in ours.”

“You’ll watch the van?”

“Until the Golden Gate crumbles to dust, my friend,” said the Emperor.

And so Charlie Asher, in the service of life and light and all sentient beings, and in hope of rescuing the soul of the love of his life, led an army of fourteen-inch-tall bundles of animal bits, armed with everything from knitting needles to a spork, into the storm sewers of San Francisco.

T
hey slogged on for hours—sometimes the pipes became narrow enough that Charlie had to crawl on his hands and knees, other times they opened into wide junctions like concrete rooms. He helped the squirrel people climb to higher pipes. He’d found a lightweight construction helmet fitted with an LED headlamp, which came in handy in narrow passages where he couldn’t aim the flashlight. He was also bumping his head about ten times an hour, and although the helmet protected him from injury, he’d developed a throbbing headache. His leathers—not really leathers, but more heavy nylon with Lexan pads at the knees, shoulders, elbows, shins, and forearms—were protecting him from bumps and abrasions on the pipes, but they were soaked and rubbing him raw at the backs of his knees. At an open junction with a grate at the top he climbed the ladder and tried to get a look at the neighborhood to perhaps get a sense of where they were, but it had gotten dark out since they started and the grate was under a parked car.

What irony, that he would finally summon his courage and charge into the breach, only to end up lost and stuck in the breach. A human misfire.

“Where the hell are we?” he said.

“No idea,” said the bobcat guy, the one who could talk.

The little Beefeater was disturbing to watch when he spoke, since he really didn’t have a face, only a skull, and he spoke without ever making the
P
sound. Also, instead of a halberd, which Charlie thought should have come with the costume for authenticity, the bobcat had armed himself with a spork.

“Can you ask the others if they know where we are?”

“Okay.” He turned to the damp gallery of squirrel people. “Hey, anybody know where we are?”

They all shook their heads, looking from one to another, shrugging. Nope.

“No,” said the bobcat.

“Well, I could have done that,” Charlie said.

“Why don’t you? It’s your _arty,” he said. Charlie realized he meant “party.”

“Why no
P
s?” Charlie asked.

“No li_s.”

“Right, lips. Sorry. What are you going to do with that spork?”

“Well, when we find some bad guys, I’m going to s_ork the fuck out of them.”

“Excellent. You’re my lieutenant.”

“Because of the s_ork?”

“No, because you can talk. What’s your name?”

“Bob.”

“No really.”

“Really. It’s Bob.”

“So I suppose your last name is Cat.”

“Wilson.”

“Just checking. Sorry.”

“’S okay.”

“Do you remember who you were in your last life?”

“I remember a little. I think I was an accountant.”

“So, no military experience?”

“You need some bodies counted, I’m your man, er, thing.”

“Swell. Does anyone here remember if they used to be a soldier, or a ninja or anything? Extra credit for ninjas or a Viking or something. Weren’t any of you like Attila the Hun or Captain Horatio Hornblower in a former life or something?”

A ferret in a sequined minidress and go-go boots came forward, paw raised.

“You were a naval commander?”

The ferret appeared to whisper into Bob’s hat (since Bob no longer had ears).

“She says no, she misunderstood, she thought you meant horn blower.”

“She was a prostitute?”

“Cornet _layer,” said Bob.

“Sorry,” Charlie said. “It’s the boots.”

The ferret waved him off in a “no worries” way, then leaned over and whispered to Bob again.

“What?” Charlie said.

“Nothing,” Bob said.

“Not nothing. I didn’t think they could talk.”

“Well, not to you,” said Bob.

“What did she say?”

“She said we’re fucked.”

“Well, that’s not a very good attitude,” Charlie said, but he was starting to believe the go-go ferret was right, and he leaned back into a semisitting position in the pipe to rest.

Bob climbed up to a smaller pipe and sat on the edge, his feet dangling over; water dripped from his little patent-leather shoes, but the floral pattern brass buckles still shone in the light of Charlie’s headlamp.

“Nice shoes,” Charlie said.

“Yeah, well, Audrey digs me,” said Bob.

Before Charlie could answer, the dog had grabbed Bob from behind and was shaking him like a rag doll. His mighty spork clattered off the pipe and was lost in the water below.

L
ily had been looking all night for a way to approach Minty Fresh. She’d made eye contact with him a dozen times over the course of the evening, and smiled, but with the atmosphere of dread that fell over the room she was having trouble thinking of an opening line. Finally, when an Oprah movie of the week came on the television and everyone gathered around to watch the media diva beat Paul Winfield to death with a steam iron, Minty went to the breakfast bar and started flipping through his day planner, and Lily made her move.

“So, checking your appointments?” she said. “You must be feeling optimistic about how things will go.”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

Lily was smitten. He was beautiful
and
morose—like a great brown man-gift from the gods.

“How bad can it be?” Lily said, pulling the appointment book out of his hand and flipping through the pages. She stopped on today’s date.

“Why is Asher’s name in here?” she asked.

Minty hung his head. “He said you’ve known all about us for a while.”

“Yeah, but—” She looked at the name again and the realization of what she was seeing was like a punch in the chest. “This is that book? This is your date book for
that
?”

Minty nodded slowly, not looking at her.

“When did this name show up?” Lily asked.

“It wasn’t there an hour ago.”

“Well, fucksocks,” she said, sitting down on the bar stool next to the big man.

“Yeah,” said Minty Fresh. He put his arm around her shoulders.

W
ith Charlie pulling on the legs of the bobcat guy (who was doing some impressive screaming considering he had prototype vocal cords) and the squirrel people dog-piling onto the Boston terrier, they were eventually able to extricate their lieutenant from the jaws of the bug-eyed fury with only a few snags in his Beefeater’s costume.

“Down, Bummer,” Charlie said. “Just chill.” He didn’t know if
chill
was an official dog command, but it should be.

Bummer snorted and backed away from the surrounding crowd of squirrel people.

“Not one of us,” said the bobcat guy, pointing at Bummer. “Not one of us.”

“You shut up,” Charlie said. He pulled a beef jerky from his pocket that he’d brought for emergency rations, tore off a hunk, and held it out to Bummer. “Come on, buddy. I told the Emperor I’d look out for you.”

Bummer trotted over to Charlie and took the beef jerky from him, then turned to face down the squirrel people as he chewed. The squirrel people made clicking noises and brandished their weapons. “Not one of us. Not one of us,” chanted Bob.

“Stop that,” Charlie said. “You can’t get a mob chant going, Bob, you’re the only one with a voice box.”

“Oh yeah.” Bob let his chanting trail off. “Well, he’s not one of us,” he added in his defense.

“He is now,” Charlie said. To Bummer he said, “Can you lead us to the Underworld?”

Bummer looked up at Charlie as if he knew exactly what was being asked of him, but if he was going to find the strength to carry on, he was going to need the other half of that beef jerky. Charlie gave it to him and Bummer immediately jumped up to a higher, four-foot pipe, stopped, barked, then took off down the pipe.

“Follow him,” Charlie said.

A
fter an hour following Bummer through the sewers, the pipes gave way to tunnels that got bigger as they moved along. Soon they were moving in caves, with high ceilings and stalactites in the ceiling that glowed in various colors, illuminating their way with a dull, shadowy light. Charlie had read enough about the geology of the area to know that these caves were not natural to the city. He guessed that they were somewhere under the financial district, which was mostly built on Gold Rush landfill, so there would be nothing as old-looking or as solid as these caves.

Bummer kept on, leading them down one fork or another without the slightest hesitation, until suddenly the cave opened up into a massive grotto. The chamber was so large that it simply swallowed up Charlie’s flashlight and headlamp beams, but the ceiling, which was several hundred feet high, was lined with the luminous stalactites that reflected red, green, and purple in a mirror-smooth black lake. In the middle of the lake, probably two hundred yards away, stood a great black sailing ship—tall-masted like a Spanish galleon—red, pulsating light coming from the cabin windows in the rear, a single lantern lighting the deck. Charlie had heard that whole ships had been buried in the debris during the Gold Rush, but they wouldn’t have been left preserved like this. Things had changed, these caves were all the result of the Underworld rising—and he realized that this was just a hint of what was going to happen to the City if the Underworlders took over.

Bummer barked and the sharp report echoed around the grotto, sending a cloud of bats into the air.

Charlie saw movement on the deck of the ship, the blue-black outline of a woman, and he knew that Bummer had led them to the right place. Charlie handed his flashlight to Bob and set his sword-cane on the cave floor. He drew the Desert Eagle from the shoulder holster, checked that there was a round in the chamber, cocked the hammer, then reset the safety and reholstered the pistol.