Candy carries each soaked sheet and towel into the bathroom and throws it in the tub. The wall looks like a musk ox exploded while taking a soak.
“Where are you taking the body?” says Candy.
“Teddy Osterberg’s place.”
“Silly question.”
Kasabian moans and groans, but he does his bit getting up the blood. I bag as many of the sheets and towels as I can carry, figuring I can come back for the rest later.
I kiss Candy on her bloody cheek. She smiles but I can tell she’s still a little sore. I toss Declan’s body over my shoulder, grab the bags of bloody sundries in my hands, and tuck the shovel under my arm. No one in recorded history has looked more like he’s going to dispose of a body than I do right now.
I step through a shadow and come out in the garage. It only takes a couple of minutes to find Declan’s Beamer. I pop the trunk with the black blade, toss Declan inside and the other goodies on top of him.
The black blade opens the door, and when I jam it into the ignition, the car starts right up. I back up carefully and drive out of the garage, giving the attendant a friendly wave as I leave.
THERE ISN’T MUCH traffic on the road at four A.M., but with a dead guy in the trunk the roads still feel crowded. All it will take to spoil the rest of the night is a bored cop pulling me over or a drunk driver plowing into me. I’m more worried about the cop. Yeah, I know I can get away from them. I’ve done it before. It’s the dash cam that bothers me. I don’t like the idea of LAPD having any more footage of me, especially with a corpse in the trunk and the murder weapon behind my back. It’s a long drive out to Malibu when you have to stick to the speed limit.
I turn off the headlights when I head up the hill to Teddy Osterberg’s place, driving by moonlight. I haven’t been out here since I burned the place down. Teddy’s mansion is a pile of rubble and some scorched beams surrounded by police tape. Teddy was a ghoul. Someone with an appetite for dead flesh. In his spare time he was a cemetery buff. He collected them like other people collect model trains. At the top of the hill, I pop the trunk and haul out the body and the shovel.
There are hundreds of grave sites sprawled in every direction. Marble tombstones and rotting wooden markers. Angel-topped mausoleums and rocky burial mounds. I take Declan out to the far end of the collection where Teddy has an old-fashioned potter’s field. It’s invisible from the road and seems like a good enough place for Declan to spend his retirement years.
The ground has baked hard under the California sun. I should have brought a pick to break up the soil. After about an hour of digging, I have a hole just deep enough to hold Declan. I push him over the edge with my boot and fill the hole back in, packing down the earth on top of the grave and scattering the leftover dirt around the cemetery.
Back at the car, I toss the shovel in the trunk and head down the hill, not turning on the lights until I’m back on the main road. I’m trying to decide if I should burn Teddy’s car or push it into the ocean when I hear a horn behind me. I put my arm out the window and signal for whoever it is to go around, but the car just keeps honking. It’s a late-sixties’ cherry-red Mustang. Probably the property of some movie star’s kid. At least it isn’t a cop.
When the road widens enough to have a decent shoulder I pull over to let the car pass. Last thing I want is to attract attention when my coat is covered in cemetery dirt and another man’s blood. Imagine my glee when the car pulls off on the shoulder behind me. I pull my gun and put it in my coat pocket.
I get out and wait. The other car’s headlights are in my eyes, but I can hear the driver’s door open and someone start my way. It’s a woman and she’s walking with purpose. All I can see is her outline. She’s wearing spike heels. I cock the hammer on the pistol.
“I don’t always expect tribute, but can’t a girl say hello around here without every nervous Nellie pulling heat on her? You boys do love your guns.”
I recognize the voice.
“Mustang Sally?”
She steps between the headlights and me and I can finally see her face. She’s smiling, knowing how much she spooked me. I smile back.
“Is that a guilty conscience you’re wearing tonight?” she says.
“Not guilty. Just tired. I buried a guy up at Teddy Osterberg’s place. What are you doing here?”
“What I always do. Driving.”
Mustang Sally is the highway sylph. The queen of the road, a spirit that’s been around in one form or other since the first humans left the first mud ruts in the ground with their feet and then wagons. She drives L.A.’s roads 24/7 every day of the year and only stops when bums like me lure her over with tributes of cigarettes and road food. But tonight she stopped me.
“It’s nice to see you. Thanks again for the help last time.”
“Getting you into Hell or keeping you from getting run down when you got back?”
“I’m grateful for the first and pathetically grateful for the second.”
She doesn’t say anything for a second. I’m not the one who stopped her, but she’s still a spirit that needs feeding. I pull out the closest thing I have to a tribute. Half a pack of Maledictions.
“It’s all I have. I didn’t expect to see you.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t expect to see you either, but kismet,” she says, and sniffs the pack.
“These must pack a wallop.”
She taps out a smoke and holds it to her lips. I get out Mason’s lighter and spark the cigarette for her.
“So this is what they smoke in Hell these days. A tribe that used to worship me—who was it?—they liked sage sprinkled with wolf dung, so I suppose I’ve had worse smokes in my time. So, what can I do for you tonight?”
I open my hands. Sally makes a face and brushes some graveyard dirt from my shoulder.
“I wasn’t looking for you. You stopped me.”
She shakes her head.
“Use your brain. You’re on this road. I’m on this road. Spirits and mortals don’t just bump into each other outside a Stuckey’s without it meaning something. So, we’ve exchanged pleasantries. You’ve paid me this ludicrous tribute. All the formalities are taken care of. What’s on your mind?”
I’m not sure what to say at first and then it comes to me.
“I’m going into Kill City.”
“You do go to the most interesting places. Why?”
“I have to find a ghost.”
“That’s probably a good place for them. How many people died there?”
“In the accident, a hundred give or take.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know anything about the place or where we’re going. We have a guide but I don’t trust him. I’m not sure what to do about it.”
Sally puffs the Malediction, pulling the smoke as deep into her lungs as any Hellion.
“Here’s the thing: Kill City isn’t really my kind of road. I’m an open-road gal. Kill City is more of a labyrinth. You know any labyrinth spirits?”
“No.”
“I know a few but they won’t be any help. They’re all as dizzy as clowns in a clothes dryer.”
“Do you have any words of wisdom before I go in?”
She nods her head from side to side, thinking.
“You could get one of those little Saint Christopher statues for your dashboard.”
“You’re the only traveling saint I believe in.”
She smiles. A few other cars pass us as we talk. You’d think us standing here in the middle of the night would attract rubberneckers. But no one slows down or even looks at us. It’s like we’re invisible.
“What I can tell you is what I tell anyone in your position. When you get lost, and you will get lost, keep going and don’t stop till you hit the end of the road. There will be something there, even if it’s not what you were looking for. And something is always better than nothing, isn’t it?”
“That depends on how pointy something’s teeth are.”
She blows out some smoke and drops the Malediction on the ground, grinding it out with her shoe.
“Sorry I can’t be more help,” she says.
“You’re always fine by me, Sally.”
“I mean really sorry. I’m a spirit of the earth. Something bad is coming, and if it gets here, it will eat me like a ripe peach. And I don’t want that. I love my roads and the funny people I meet along the way. I saved you once. Now you’re going to return the favor, right?”
“I’m going to do my best.”
“That’s all a lady can ask. I’ll see you around, Mr. Stark.”
She turns and heads back to her car.
“I’ll see you, Sally. Drive safe.”
That makes her laugh. She guns the Mustang’s engine and peels rubber back onto the road.
Some days are harder than others in the kill-or-be-killed game. Some days are stranger. This day might have set some new records.
I WAKE UP around noon and start calling people, telling them to come to the penthouse around three. Candy and I spend an hour rearranging furniture so the sofa, which now covers the remains of Declan’s sizable bloodstain, doesn’t look too out of place. Kasabian’s gimp leg makes him useless for this kind of work, so he hangs out at his desk kibitzing the whole time, like a half-crocked Martha Stewart.
Candy takes me into the bedroom and gets a box down from the top shelf of the closet. It’s flat and square, sealed with packing tape.
“I didn’t wrap it yet because it’s only Thanksgiving.”
“Remind me which one that is.”
“You don’t know what Thanksgiving is?”
“I’m aware of its existence but I don’t remember the details. We had different holidays in Hell.”
“It’s the one with turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie and everyone eats and drinks too much and people fall asleep watching football or making fun of people watching football.”
“Right. The one where my father broke things because he bet on the games and always lost. Always. My whole childhood, I don’t remember him winning once. Shouldn’t a man win once, just out of sheer statistics?”
“He wasn’t your father. Doc was,” says Candy.
She’s right, but what difference does it make? I don’t want to think about it or get into an argument about it. Doc Kinski means a lot more to Candy than he does to me. He took care of her. Got her started on the potion that makes it so she doesn’t have the hunger to drink people. She loves him and I only met him after the point in my life when meeting your real father isn’t much more than a technicality. Something to check off a life list. Smoke your first cigarette. See your first porn flick. Meet your real father.
Candy sees I’m not happy with her bringing it up. She picks up the box and puts it in my lap.
“I was keeping this for Christmas, but saving the world is a good time for presents too.”
I unwrap the box and take out a gun.
“Do you know what it is?”
“I think so. I’ve seen pictures of them. It’s a presentation pistol.”
“It’s from Tiffany’s, the old jewelry place. They made fancy pistols since before the Civil War. I couldn’t find one of those. This one is, like, from the eighties.”
It’s a Colt, with a matte-black finish and gold filigree on the cylinder and golden eagle wings along the barrel. The ivory grips are carved with talons.
“Does it work?”
“I don’t know. Test it.”
I pull back the hammer and dry-fire it several times. The action feels good. I know these things are supposed to be for show, but it feels like a good piece of hardware.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s great. Where did you get it?”
“Doc had it. A civilian gave it to him when he fixed him up on the sly.”
Now I see why she brought him up. Don’t get me wrong. Doc was a good guy, considering he was a deadbeat dad and, worse, a goddamn angel. He’s the one who filled me in on my background. Told me I was a nephilim, an Abomination in both Heaven and Hell and the only one of my kind left alive on earth, so, you know, lucky me. Back in Doc’s prime he was known as Uriel, one of the warrior archangels. He fought in the Heavenly war against Lucifer and the other rebels. Knowing all that, I still find it hard to picture him with a gun in his hand, even if he was just stashing it in a box, never to be fired.
“Is that okay?” says Candy.
“Yeah. It’s great. You’re great. Thanks.”
I kiss her and put thoughts about where the gun came from out of my head. I’m good at that. And I’m damned sure not going to let a good gun’s origins stop me from using it.
She smiles and sits up straight.
“So, where’s my present?”
“What makes you think I have one? It’s only Thanksgiving.”
“People have been bribing you all over town, and not just with money, I bet.”
I look at her. She’s still smiling, but there’s something in her eyes.
“You didn’t give me this because I’m trying to save the world. You did it became you don’t think we’re going to make it to Christmas.”
She lets her shoulders fall.
“So? What if I did?”
“Assuming I have anything for you, you’re not getting it now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m more optimistic than you. You can wait for Santa.”
She throws a pillow at me.
“You dick.”
