Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel (4 page)

“Right. One brother wants it and the other has a line to it but won’t cut the other brother in on the deal. I can see some Lifetime Channel drama in that.”

I look at the address. It’s a glitzy hotel and a room number.

“I’m glad I could be of help. Especially if it’s going to save the world. Even I have people I’d rather not see hurt in a celestial war.”

Blackburn stands, letting me know my time is up.

I get up, and when he extends his hand I shake it. I wonder if he’s looking into my future. I want to ask him what he sees, but I don’t. I’m not sure if I altogether believe in scrying, and what does it matter what he tells me? If I live or die it doesn’t change what I’m going to do: find the 8 Ball. And when I finally do die, I know I’m going back to Hell. That was easy. Now I’m a scryer too. All I need is a crystal ball and a pointy wizard hat. I can get a booth at the Renn Faire and make a mint.

On the way out a couple of Blackburn’s security goons get me by each arm and shove me up against the front door. I’m one deep breath shy of putting the idiots out of their misery, then marching back in and twisting Blackburn’s head off for lying to me. But another man in a suit strolls up. He’s almost a head shorter than me, with a fine-boned face and hands. His skin is so pale it’s almost white. Calm, blue, almond eyes set in a face so handsome it’s almost pretty.

“Oh, my ears and whiskers, is that little Audsley Ishii?” I say.

He gives me a lopsided grin. Not a nice grin. The kind a headsman gives you when he doesn’t like you and knows his ax is good and dull today.

“I’m not going to engage with you Stark, so don’t even try.”

“What’s the matter? Did you hear Blackburn and me talking inside? A little nervous about your job?”

Ishii gets close enough for me to smell his fresh and minty mouthwash.

He says, “I don’t want you showing up here again without an invitation.”

“What you want matters as much to me as the price of pinto beans on Mars.”

“I won’t warn you again.”

“Perfect. The next time your boys jump me, it’ll give me the perfect excuse to lop off your head.”

“Get out of here and don’t come back.”

The guys on my arms pull me away from the door and try to shove me outside. I plant my feet on the carpet and push back. I look at Audsley.

“I’m just curious. Did you know you were going to write a suicide note when you woke up this morning or did the urge just sneak up on you?”

Ishii walks way. Before I can say anything else stupid, I’m pushed out on the shitty street in front of the shitty hotel. A few of the other security hoods are standing around. They laugh when they see me get the bum’s rush. I stare at them, memorizing their faces. If everything goes wrong and fire comes down from the sky, I’m making an igloo out of their bodies and taking Candy inside with me. We’ll still die but I’ll get to listen to these idiots roast first.

I make like I’m walking over to them. They get serious. Hands move toward gun bulges under their jackets. Just before one of them faints or pops a shot off, I disappear into a shadow on the side of Blackburn’s building.

Teach your boys that trick, Ishii, you Napoleon-complex Snow White prick.

T
HE
B
EVERLY
W
ILSHIRE
Hotel is so posh it gives the Taj Mahal a hard-on. Almost four hundred rooms and a million more secrets. It’s strange seeing it in daylight instead of Hell’s perpetual twilight. Downtown, there’s another version of the Beverly Wilshire. The penthouse was my—Lucifer’s—private space in the infernal palace. Of course, there are other differences. Basement kennels full of the hellhounds. Gibbets out front for extra-naughty prisoners. Hell’s legions on guard. And as far as the eye can see, the wreckage of Pandemonium, Hell’s capital. The heady reek of blood tides and open sewers.

Up here, the Beverly Wilshire is where Blackburn’s crowd buy and sell small countries and bang their mistresses before hunkering down in gated communities with more guns than the Third Reich.

This is the address Blackburn gave me for Brendan Garrett. The room number is for a corner suite. I have a hoodoo key buried in my chest. It lets me enter the Room of Thirteen Doors, the still center of the universe. Nothing can touch me in the Room. Not God or the Devil. It’s my vacation resort and my ace in the hole. From the Room I can come out through a shadow anywhere I want. But that doesn’t mean I like doing it. I especially don’t like walking into rooms when I don’t know what’s waiting inside. But I know the Beverly Wilshire well enough that I figure I can bail safely if I barge in on a gunfight or an ether frolic.

From Rodeo Drive, I step into a shadow next to a palm tree and come out in the hall by Garrett’s suite. I put my ear to the door and listen. Nothing. Just the steady hum of the hotel’s air-conditioning system. I go into the suite through a shadow around the doorframe.

The room isn’t too bad. Almost human in a show-offy kind of way. Gold carpet and drapes. Reds and earth tones for the pricey furniture. But even in Richie Rich hotels the art stinks. It’s all vague impressionist scribbles, like minimalist portraits of whoever the artist was hitting on that day. They’re not make-you-want-to-throw-up bad, they’re the kind of art designed not to offend or appeal to anyone. White noise in a classy frame. If I was staying here I’d have to cover them up like I was in mourning.

The room looks lived in, like Garrett’s been here awhile. Room-service menus and magazines on the coffee table. Clothes hung up in the closet and tossed over the backs of chairs in the bedroom. A half-empty bottle of Laphroaig and two glasses, one with lipstick. So he’s had company. But the most interesting things are the bird and the bedside table.

The bird is a raven and it’s fake. How do I know it’s fake? It hasn’t shit all over the floor. It’s a mechanical familiar and a nice one by the look of it. It cocks its head and stares at me with its shiny black eyes, letting me know that this is its space and it’s not going to move. In the bedside table I find a calfskin wallet, keys, a phone number in a feminine hand on a cocktail napkin, a thick wad of twenties and hundreds held together with a gold money clip, and five passports, all with different names but the same picture. I’m guessing Garrett’s. As I lay the goods out on the bed the bird cranes its head around and I’m reminded how stupid I can be.

I was so distracted by Garrett’s goods that I didn’t check out the whole suite. I don’t have to turn my head to know what the raven is looking at. Instead, I duck as a bullet from a silenced pistol flies by my head.

Garrett gets off another shot and hits the bedside table. That gives me just enough time to slip the black blade out of my waistband at the back and throw it. I don’t want to kill him. I just want him to stop shooting so I can ask him questions. Garrett flinches when he sees the knife, but he’s not quite fast enough. The blade hits the barrel of the gun and knocks it from his hand. But it doesn’t fall far enough away. He dives for it. I toss an easy chair at him and follow behind it, hoping to get to the gun first. Funny thing about hope. It seldom works out. That’s why they gave it a stupid name like “hope.”

Garrett gets to the pistol just as I reach him. Still on the floor, he tilts the barrel up and fires. My eyesight goes black for a second as the pain hits and almost doubles me over. I have enough momentum that I go over Garrett and hit the wall behind him. He looks me in the eye, but before he can swing the gun around, I clip him good on the temple with the heel of my chic loafer. Garrett flops onto the floor and the gun falls from his hand.

Having just had some sense shot into me, I grab the pistol and check to see that Garrett is really unconscious before I go into the bathroom to look at my wound.

I’m a nephilim. Half angel, which makes me hard to kill. And I’ve been hurt worse than this. Hell, just in the past year Kasabian shot me in the chest, Aelita stabbed me with an angelic flaming sword, and a Hellion cut off one of my arms. Garrett was packing a light, quiet .22. Not a shoot-out weapon. More like something a hit man would pack. A .22 shell might bounce off the thick part of your skull if it was coming from any distance, but put a slug in right behind the ear, it’s pennies-on-your-eyes time. So it seems like Declan and Brendan are both comfortable with killing when things don’t go their way. At least Brendan does his own dirty work.

I sit on the cool tile of the bathroom floor with a towel pressed to my side. The pain from the shot has turned to a steady ache that peaks when I breathe in. I’m lucky that he didn’t hit a rib or lung or I’d really be in bad shape. By tomorrow morning the wound will be healed. The bullet will still be inside me, but I’ll only feel it when I do the Twist, so I can wait to get it out.

In a few minutes the throbbing eases off. I get to my feet and go back into the suite. Check that Garrett is still unconscious and then go for his bottle of Laphroaig. Unscrew the bottle with one hand while holding the towel with the other and take a long pull. And instantly regret it. Laphroaig isn’t exactly my brand. I prefer Aqua Regia, Hellion moonshine. I developed a taste for it when I fought in Hell’s arenas. Sure it tastes like cayenne pepper and gasoline but it’s better than this Scotch. This stuff tastes like barnyard dirt and burned lawn clippings. The rich are different. They don’t just own the earth, they like to drink it.

Samael’s silk shirt is ruined. I’m hard on clothes. It’s like my body declared a jihad on everything I wear. At least this shirt wasn’t mine. But I kind of liked it. Candy isn’t going to be wild when she sees my blood soaked through.

I take the bottle and limp back to Garrett. I turn out his pockets but they’re empty. I pull my knife out of the floor and put it back in my waistband. Nothing to do now but wait for the guest of honor to wake up. Under other circumstances I’d dump water or a bucket of ice on him to get his ass moving, but I’m just as happy to have a few minutes of me time.

A phone on the coffee table rings. It’s not Garrett’s cell. It’s the hotel phone. I go over and pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Garrett?”

“Yes.”

“This is the front desk. A package has arrived for you. Would you like me to send it up to your room?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

I hang up.

I can’t answer the door like this. Garrett’s closet isn’t any help. He’s a lot bigger than I am. I’d look like I was wearing a tepee in one of his shirts. I toss the bloody towel in the bathroom and grab the hotel robe off the back of the door. I look at myself in the mirror. I’m pale and sweating, but I look more hungover than gut-shot. I set the pistol on the coffee table and drag Garrett to the bed, toss him on top, and cover him with blankets. The raven flutters over and stands on the lump that’s Garrett’s soon-to-be-kicked-around-the-room carcass.

There’s a gentle knock on the door. I grab the money clip and peel off a twenty.

A young, freckled woman in a hotel uniform stands in the hall.

“Mr. Garrett?”

“Yes. Thanks for bringing it up,” I say through my weak hangover smile.

“Of course.”

She hands me the box. There’s nothing on it but a tag for a local courier company.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” she asks.

“No. This is fine,” I say, and hand her the twenty. I didn’t get all the blood off my hands. There’s a line of red along one edge of the bill. But it looks more like ink than anything else. And let’s face it. This is an L.A. hotel. It can’t be the first time someone handed her bloody money.

“Thank you,” she says, and I close the door. That’s enough social interaction for now. I can feel my side starting to leak through the robe, so I carry the box to a larger table by the wet bar and set it down. I get a new towel from the bathroom and tie it tight around my waist. It burns like a son of a bitch, but it ought to stop all the annoying fucking blood for a while.

With the black blade I slice open the courier box. Inside is a leather brief bag, something like an oversize attaché case that lawyers carry. There’s another case inside that. Plastic, but heavy and substantial. Almost like a gun case. I slide it out of the brief bag, push that onto the floor, and set down the plastic one. I take a quick peek at Garrett to make sure he’s not going to sneak up on me. The raven is still standing guard over him. I pop the latches on the case and push back the lid.

Lying packed in a snug black foam liner is the Qomrama Om Ya.

Color me the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet. I grab it to make sure I’m not seeing things.

Wait. Keep the son-of-a-bitch part but forget the lucky. The 8 Ball is like the bird. A fake. The real 8 Ball radiates heavy magic that you can feel through your skin. This thing looks good, but it’s as magic as loaded dice.

Whoever made it isn’t a complete idiot. It gives off some minor hoodoo vibes, enough to feel real if you’ve never handled the real Qomrama. It’s like how Russian gangs sell kindergarten terrorists radioactive junk and tell them it’s plutonium. The morons think they’re going to build a nuke, but all they get is cancer-therapy scrap.

The only other thing in the case is an old book. It’s full of diagrams of the 8 Ball along with what look like instructions, but it’s in a language I’ve never seen before. I put the book in my back pocket. Father Traven might have some fun with it.

In the bedroom, the raven squawks and flutters back to the chair. Garrett sits up. His eyes go wide when he sees me with his courier box.

“That’s not for you!” he yells.

“Finders keepers.”

He starts feeling around the bed, knocking his passports and cash onto the floor. He’s looking for the gun, but it’s over on the coffee table. When he can’t find it, he swings his legs onto the floor and stumbles to his feet.

Just to be a dick about it, I take the fake Qomrama from the case and toss it from hand to hand like a basketball. I don’t see the blinking light right away. It’s down at the bottom of the compartment that held the 8 Ball. When I do notice it I have a pretty good idea what it is and I start running. So does Garrett, but the other way. He makes it to the coffee table, snatches up the pistol, and levels it at me.