Happy Hour In Hell: Volume Two of Bobby Dollar (43 page)

“So . . . what were you doing, Bobby?” he asked.

“Crazy shit. Don’t try it at home,” I said. “Seriously, don’t try it anywhere else, either. Let’s go find me some real food instead of this box of Triscuits and I’ll tell you what I can.”

“You want to ride in my whip?” G-Man asked.

“You were not included in the invitation,” I said. Because it was going to be hard enough talking to Clarence, who at least knew I was an angel, being one himself. There was no way I was going to include Garcia Windhover in the discussion.

G-Man’s expression, though, was so much that of the kid who not only doesn’t get picked, but also the team that gets stuck with him then demands compensation, that I felt sorry for him. “Okay, you’re right, Garcia, I at least owe you dinner. I mean, you may have carried me around in your trunk like a deer you ran over on the road and were trying to sneak home to make venison jerky, but I survived.” I would come up with some sanitized, non-terrifying-to-ordinary-humans version of what had been going on, although I’d need at least another couple of drinks in me before I could imagine what that version might be.

After the explanations-obligations were disposed of, I’d get back to my real job: getting Caz out of Eligor’s clutches. I hadn’t forgotten that for a second, especially because I was now wearing my jacket again, the one with the secret angel-feather pocket which happened to be in another space/time continuum. Eligor had actually told the truth about not being able to find it, because if he had, there was no way he’d have let me escape Hell. “And then afterward, you, Clarence my man, can drive me back to my charming apartment, assuming my landlord hasn’t already rented it to some wife-beating crackhead, and I’ll catch you up on company business on the way.”

“I’m down wit’ that!” said G-Man. “You want to hit the Chinese place down in Whisky Gulch?”

“Sure. But one thing, Windhover. If you’re going to hang around with me, you may not wear that eye patch. Not in public.” It reminded me too much of the Broken Boy’s helper, little Tico. That kid hadn’t been covering up to look cool; he had been hiding something ugly and painful.

“But it’s a tribute to Slick Rick!”

“And Rick would agree with me. For one thing, Slick is actually missing an eye. You aren’t.”

The G-Man pouted but agreed to leave his newest accessory behind. I almost told him that, even without it, he would have looked right at home in Pandaemonium, capital of Hell, but he probably would have thought that was a compliment.

job creation

I
F SOMEONE
had asked me what I’d do if I ever escaped from Hell, my first guess would not have been pot stickers and cashew chicken, but that’s how it turned out.

My second guess would have been pretty close to the money, though: As soon as I got back to my apartment, which was as dingy and unwelcoming as always, I promptly took a very, very long shower and then slept for the next fourteen hours straight. When I woke up, I was so pleased to find myself back in San Judas and wearing an ordinary (or at least non-demonic) body that I showered all over again, sang Dinah Washington songs at the top of my voice, and finished with a smoking rendition of “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” that caused a tin-eared neighbor to pound on the wall. I ignored the critic. Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of new scars that were never going to heal completely, and nightmare-fodder that would last for centuries, but things were finally moving my way. I was not so much of an idiot that I assumed exchanging the feather for Caz was going to be as straightforward as doing it with someone who
wasn’t
a cheating, murdering, psychopathic demon lord, but I knew Eligor and I both wanted what the other guy had, and that was good enough to start with.

I got the main switchboard at Vald Credit and slowly worked my way up the ladder, dropping names and telling lies until I made it all the way to Eligor’s own personal assistant. This one had an English accent, which reminded me a bit of Caz and made my heart beat even more impatiently.

“Who are you?” she asked—a bit bluntly, I thought.

“Bobby Dollar. Your boss knows me.”

“Does he? I’ve never heard of you.”

She seemed to be trying to piss me off. Well, that might have worked a few weeks ago, but not now—not on The Angel Who Walked Through Hell. I couldn’t help wondering if she’d behave any differently if she knew I was the one who shot her predecessor through the face and then helped her out a fortieth-story window. Maybe she’d be grateful to me for that bit of impromptu job creation.

“Doesn’t matter what you think,” I said. “Just tell your boss. Tell him I’m back, and I’m ready to do the swap.”

“Huh.” She didn’t sound impressed, but she did pause for a second. She might even have been paying attention. “Okay, the swap. Got it.”

“Yeah, tell him that he picks the time, I’ll pick the place. All nice and cozy and aboveboard.”

“Fabulous. I’ll pass it along.” And then she hung up. Hung up! Some bloody personal assistant, treating Eligor’s associates like that. Of course, it hadn’t been that long ago that her boss was busy setting all my nerve endings on fire, so I guess it wasn’t that rude, given the context. I even wondered a little if it might be the same secretary I’d killed, just re-bodied (and with an English accent this time for extra
zing
).

Now I needed a place to do the exchange. Even if Eligor actually meant to honor the bargain (something I wasn’t taking for granted) I was going to need help.

I left a message on the phone number Sam had given me, then got on with my other post-Hell errands. I went down to the Compasses to see my angel friends and made up crazy stories about where I’d been for the last three weeks. (Yep. It turned out I’d only been gone three weeks. Like I said, time runs differently in Hell. They sure could pack a lifetime’s misery into twenty-something days.) But I was so pale from lying in a closet all that time that I had an inverse suntan, so I told them I’d gone up to Seattle to visit a friend. Monica, who knew me better than anyone now Sam was gone, treated this fiction with the contempt it deserved, but she didn’t press me for the actual details. She probably assumed I’d been shacked up with someone. I had a few questions for her, however, and waited until we had a table to ourselves for a few minutes while Young Elvis and Teddy Nebraska arm-wrestled at the bar and everyone else made fun of them.

“What about Walter Sanders?” I asked. “Has anyone heard from him?” I knew they hadn’t because I knew where he still was, which was serving as purser on
The Nagging Bitch
, sailing the seas of Hell and spreading the Lifters’ message, but I was curious what people thought about his disappearance.

To her credit, Monica looked worried. “No, nobody has. I asked The Mule, but he says he thinks he’s been transferred. It’s just shit trying to get information out of the Big House.”

“Amen.” Which reminded me, I definitely had to talk to Temuel soon. The archangel deserved at least an edited report on what had happened to me, since he’d been more instrumental in getting me there (and back) than anyone else, and I in turn had quite a few questions I needed to ask him. “And you, kiddo. How are you doing?”

I just meant to be affectionate. We’d been through a lot together, Monica and I, and if much of that time I’d been trying to escape having a proper relationship, well, that wasn’t her fault. But as soon as I said it, she started looking furtive, even guilty. “Okay, I guess. Why? I mean, you don’t usually ask, Bobby.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to break any rules . . .”

I never got to finish my thought, because just that moment, to everybody’s surprise (mine even more than the rest) the door of the Compasses swung open, and my dear old friend Sam Riley walked in. I nearly fell out of the booth.

Monica jumped up and ran to hug him. Within moments almost every angel in the place was swarming him like bees come to watch the honey-dance. Sam laughed and shook hands, even accepted some hugs and kisses, which wasn’t much like him. At last he shouted to Chico to get him a ginger ale, then let himself be backed against the bar while the rest of his chums threw questions at him.

Chico the bartender looked almost as nonplussed as I was, as if he knew about Sam’s real current status with our bosses, but he kept his mouth shut and kept the ginger ales coming. As far as I knew, Clarence was the only other person besides me who knew that Sam was officially a Traitor to Heaven, but I was still so surprised to see him there, I could hardly speak. What was Sam doing? Was he trying to force our bosses’ hands, somehow?

I hung back while Sam spun some crazy tale to the Whole Sick Choir, hinting that he was on some kind of super-secret undercover mission (which raised the question of what he was doing here, in broad tavern-light, but nobody bothered to ask). With a notable lack of interest in his own safety, my old buddy sat in the Compasses for nearly an hour, answering questions (or, to be more honest, pretending to answer questions while lying through his teeth) and acting pretty much like the same old Sammariel that everyone missed so badly. At the end of the performance he finally slid past the others to me, draped one of his large arms over my shoulder, and suggested we go grab a late-night bite.

The residents of the Compasses lined up to say goodbye like Sam was visiting royalty. They made him promise not to be a stranger and reminded him of several upcoming events that, in other times, he would have been part of. Sam laughed and promised he’d do his best to make each and every one. That part was a lie too, but I think most of the angels knew that. They might not have had any idea of the true reason, but Sam’s return had the distinct air of someone who had moved on—who was only back for a visit.

As soon as we got outside, I was up in his face. “What are you
doing
here, man? Really? You’re just going to waltz in like nothing’s wrong? What if Clarence had been there? He would have tried to arrest you again.”

“I knew he wasn’t there. As for me showing up at all, well, think of it as my plan to keep our bosses guessing.”

“What do you mean,
‘
our
bosses’? You’re on the Enemies List, remember?”

Sam looked up and down Main Street. “You know, I wasn’t making that up about being hungry. I’m starved. One thing about living in a pocket universe and not wearing a mortal body most of the time, you get really nostalgic for food. Is that Korean place on the edge of Spanishtown still open late?”

“Bee Bim Bop? Yeah, I think so.”

We got there and found a small line of hipsters blocking the door, but it didn’t take too long to get a table, even on a Friday night. I had rediscovered beer since I had returned from you-know-where—that was one of the things I had been thinking about the whole time, how good a cold beer would taste instead of one of the weird root-based drinks they served up in Hell. Hellbeer might get you shitfaced even quicker than the earthly stuff, but it was about as refreshing as drinking lukewarm bathwater after a fat guy’s gotten out of it.

I ordered a bowl of the stuff the restaurant’s named after, rice and shredded meat and fried egg. Sam had his usual order of inexplicable soup, followed by several kinds of hot, spicy stuff, and we mostly concentrated on eating and drinking—tea, in Sam’s case. By the time I was working on my second beer I finally felt ready to talk, so I started with my meeting at the Museum of Industry with Temuel, then gave him the rest of it—abridged, of course, or we would have been there for days.

“Well, B, I don’t want to say ‘I told you so,’ so I’ll just say, ‘What a dumbshit,’ instead.” He shook his head. “I did try to tell you not to go there, though.”

“Yeah. And I want a little credit for how hard I had to work to ignore you.” I leaned back and signaled for another Sapporo. We were close to the only patrons left in the place now, the hands of the clock reaching for midnight like a stick-up victim’s, but I leaned forward and lowered my voice anyway. “I’m gonna tell you something, Sammy-boy.” I was definitely feeling all those beers. My body had gotten out of practice while I had been filtering Inferno-booze through demonic kidneys. “Yeah, it was probably stupid, but that’s not what’s bugging me. It’s the whole setup. Hell. Heaven. I mean, you should have seen it. It was horrible, but they were alive, Sam. They were doing things, making plans, struggling to get by. Shit, in some ways it wasn’t that different from San Judas.”

“I could have told you that, and I’ve only been to Jude.”

“I’m not joking.”

Sam smiled. “I know you’re not. And I know tomorrow morning you’ll think you were telling me really important stuff, BD. But just remember this when you’ve pissed all that beer out of your system: I already figured this shit out.”

“Huh?”

“Why do you think I parted company with our original corporate sponsors? Why do you think I’m living in exile in a hole in reality that both Heaven and Hell will be happy to disintegrate back into the ether as soon as they find out where it is? Because I can’t put up with this shit anymore. Who knows, maybe our bosses are right.” He frowned. “Maybe they’re telling the truth about everything, and maybe sheer nastiness really is the only way that Good will ever defeat Evil. Maybe by bowing out of the Cold War I’ve just doomed you and the rest of my friends when the Last Trump starts blowing and the dead get up and salute.” He looked flushed, as if he’d been drinking something other than rice tea, but after a moment I realized it was something else, a deep, deep anger. “But you know what? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just keep pushing an agenda I didn’t believe in. And if you ever get to feeling the same way, Bobby . . . well, just let me know.”

I stared at him. It was strange, seeing this Sam. I knew about his change of heart, his decision to act on his principles and join the Third Way—hell, I’d had it rubbed in my face on that night at Shoreline Park—but somewhere deep down I’d never quite let myself believe it, as if all this political stuff was just a lark for him, like a pop musician who suddenly wanted to play real roots music. It wasn’t just a lark, though. And if I thought about it long enough, it began to make sense.

I couldn’t afford to think about it that long.

“Yeah, but what I need from you now is something a bit more specific, pal.” I picked up the check and looked it over, then put a couple of twenties and a ten on top of it and set it back down on the little tray. “Yes, I’m buying. That’s why you’re going to earn your meal. I need a place to make the exchange. Any suggestions?”

“With Eligor?” He shook his head. “Of course with Eligor. Right.” He drew circles with rice tea on the tabletop as he considered. “I’d say you have to pick a public place, for safety’s sake, but the more I think about that the less certain I am.”

“Why?”

“Because someone might recognize you. You’re already walking a tightrope with the Big House folk. All they’d need is a report that you’ve been meeting up with Eligor the Horseman, and you’d be headed for a Deep Audit.” Which was a way of saying I’d have my soul taken apart by Fixers, fleck by fleck, and everything I’d ever felt, thought, said, or done would be delivered to people like the Ephorate, at least one of whom was probably my sworn and deadly enemy. From the rumors I’ve heard, Heaven’s interrogators are as thorough as the torturers of Hell, just a bit more subtle. “Well, where then?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out and call you. I’ve got a few things to take care of while I’m here in town, but I’ll be thinking about it.”

“Things?”

“Jeez, Dollar, you’re not the only friend I have in the real world, you know.” He picked a toothpick out of the bowl on the front counter. “You might be the only one who’ll go out to Korean at eleven o’clock at night, though, so I’ll do my best to come up with a location that will improve your chances of surviving. Fact is, I think I better come with you on this little mission.”

I finished the last of the beer in the bottle, then caught up to him as he went through the door. “Last couple of times you’ve come along to help me we almost died. Almost died
ugly
, too. Let’s try to do better next time.”