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Howard looks at me like I’m a bug under a microscope.
“I understand that you were tortured and overpowered several people today. How did you feel while doing it? Any mental or physical problems?”
I hold up my wrist so that the others can get a good look. It’s healed but scarred and bruised, covered in patches of livid reds and purples. Sandoval and Sinclair frown at the sight.
“No problems at all. It wasn’t until I got back that I turned to jelly.”
He waves a hand at me.
“You see? No problems. He was able to perform his job, return, and is now awake, refreshed, and completely coherent.” He looks at Sandoval. “I know you’re not used to dealing with creatures such as this but trust me, Eva. He is functioning perfectly normally.”
Speaking of normal, I pour myself a drink at Eva’s bar.
“Thanks, Howard. And if you ever call me ‘creature’ again, I’m going to cut off your tongue with bolt cutters.”
Sandoval pats me on the arm.
“Careful, Stark. You want Howard to be your friend on your trip back to the world of the living.”
“Just tell Dr. Frankenstein to watch his language.”
“Of course. I’m sure he understands what a sensitive snowflake you are,” she says.
“What were you and Sinclair gossiping about when I came in?”
She looks over at him.
Sinclair says, “There were two more assassinations. Jared Glanton and Tetsuya Shin.”
“Here in L.A.?”
“No,” says Sandoval. “Jared was in our New York office, Tetsuya in Buenos Aires.”
“And they were the heads of their branches?”
“Yes.”
“Good. At least the pattern is confirmed. Which one of you runs L.A.?”
“That would be me,” says Sandoval.
“Then you’re not going to get a bullet in the head.”
“What makes you say that?” say Sinclair.
“Because they’re going to blow us up, Barron,” Sandoval says.
“Ah. Right.”
She looks at me. “That’s enough of you questioning us. What did you learn from that horrid woman in the basement?”
I glance at Howard, but he’s staring at a painting on the wall and won’t look at me.
“I’ve got good news. The ritual is tomorrow. And I know where and when.”
Eva goes over to Sinclair. They whisper to each other for a minute.
“Are you sure?” he says. “We were told it was the weekend.”
“She might be lying,” Sandoval says.
“She wasn’t. I made sure she knew it wasn’t in her best interest.”
Sandoval holds up a hand.
“Don’t tell me what you did. I don’t want to know.”
“Don’t worry. There were no bolt cutters involved.”
“Not another word.”
Sinclair says, “Where will the ritual take place?”
“At the Chapel of St. Alexis. Exactly at sunset.”
He looks at Sandoval.
“That’s right downtown. We could have a hundred armed associates there by then.”
“That’s a great idea,” I say. “Scare them off so they disappear and reschedule the ritual without us knowing when or where.”
“How do you want to handle it, then?” says Sandoval.
“I’ll take care of it myself. I don’t think there will be many faction people there because the ones who show up are committing suicide.”
“How will you do it?” says Sinclair.
“I’ll know when I see the setup, but I imagine I’ll basically just kill them all and take their stuff. Is that okay with everyone?”
Sandoval says, “It’s fine with me.”
“Me too,” says Sinclair.
Howard just grunts.
“Will you need anything from us?” says Sandoval.
“Body armor would be nice. Until I’m a hundred percent back, I’d like to keep bullets at a pleasant distance. I also need a couple of boxes of nine-millimeter ammo, plus three extended round clips. And bullets for the rifle I took from Marcella’s boys. A hundred rounds of 5.56 × 45 millimeter.”
“I don’t understand,” says Sandoval. “Can’t you simply use magic to kill them all?”
I shake my head.
“I won’t know that until I get there. There could be wards, charms, enchantments. A million little tricks that could slow down my hoodoo. I want to keep my body in one piece and that means being prepared for anything. Besides, sometimes a gun is just quicker.”
Sinclair has been scribbling notes on a piece of paper. When he’s done he looks over at me.
“Aside from the armor and the guns, is there anything else you need?”
I finish my drink.
“Yes. Before I have another one of these, I want a goddamn cigarette.”
Sandoval goes to her desk and pulls out a box of Nat Sherman Classics. Tosses it to me along with a gold lighter.
I sniff the box.
“Thanks, Santa.”
She nods at me.
“Eat something before you have more liquor. We want you in decent shape for tomorrow.”
I nod and head back to my room with my presents.
“I’ll get something when I’m out.”
“Where are you going?” says Sandoval.
“I’m taking a walk. Personal stuff.”
“What I mean is, will it be dangerous?”
“My ego might get bruised, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Howard says, “Remember to take care of your body. The healthier it is, the easier your transition will be. Damage it too much and I might not be able to bring you back fully.”
“You just be ready tomorrow night, Dr. Frankenstein. This monster wants to be able to eat donuts again.”
“What the hell does that mean?” says Sinclair.
“Don’t worry about it. Just be ready.”
I STILL HAVE some of Sinclair’s cash burning a hole in my pocket. Bamboo House of Dolls has good drinks and good food, so that’s destination two. Before that, though, I need to make one other stop.
It’s closing time at Max Overdrive and Kasabian is hustling the last customers out the door. It’s Friday night so I know what happens next. I light a Sherman and wait for it. Sure enough, in a few minutes, the door opens again and more people file out. Allegra is in the lead, followed by Brigitte Bardo. Candy and Alessa are last. They’re laughing, holding hands as they head out for a night of drinking, and my heart stutters for a minute. It’s one thing to wish them happiness in the abstract, but it’s another to see Candy laughing and in love without me. It hurts, but I’m a big boy, so I stay in the dark across the street and finish my cigarette.
Kasabian is still in the store putting money and discs away before heading out to join them. I wait until Candy and the others are out of sight before stepping into a shadow.
And step out again in the back of Max Overdrive. I watch Kasabian for a minute. He looks good. The mechanical body Manimal Mike made for him moves smoothly and naturally. He even has a few upgrades. His hands look human, not like the metal claws I remember. He’s wearing a bulky track suit zipped up to his neck to hide his stainless steel torso and legs. The suit hangs loose on him like someone deflated him. Still, he looks happy and healthy enough. Time to ruin all that.
I walk into the light.
“Evening, Kas. Long time no see.”
I should have waited a little longer. He was going through the day’s mail and the moment I speak it all goes up in the air and floats down like New Year’s confetti. He stumbles back and slams into the wall, stays there like a butterfly pinned to a board.
I hold up my hands and say, “Before you reach for the gun under the counter, I’m just here to see how you’re doing.”
He points at me and doesn’t say anything. Finally, he sputters, “Fuck you.”
I approach him slowly because I really don’t want to get shot tonight.
“Everything’s fine, man. Calm down.”
He relaxes a little and put his hands to his head.
“Fuck you, man. Why won’t you stay dead?”
“Nice to see you too, Kas.”
He leans heavily on the front counter and stares at me.
“Shit. It really is you.”
“It really is.”
“And you’re not here to kill me?”
“When I crawled out of Hell last time I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be back. This time I am.”
He stares a little more.
“How did you do it?”
“Get back?”
I make it to the counter and offer him a cigarette. He takes it with trembling fingers. I light it for him and look the store over.
“I didn’t do it,” I tell him. “Truth is, I didn’t know if I’d ever make it back. It was some other people who brought me back.”
He frowns.
“I don’t mean to sound harsh, but why? It’s been a year, man. Things …”
“Things have changed. You’ve all moved on. I get it and I’m not going to barge back in and expect you to throw me a party. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you assholes. I need to know how things are.”
He puffs his cigarette.
“You mean how Candy is.”
“That’s a good place to start.”
“How she is is there’s a big box of your shit in the closet where you used to lock me up. No one goes in there. No one looks at it. You’ve been cleared out and put away. Get it?”
I light my own cigarette.
“I take it that means Alessa has moved into our place upstairs.”
“Their place,” he says. “Not yours. Theirs. I told you. Things have changed.”
There it is. Things have changed. I’m not surprised, but it’s still a kick in the teeth.
“Are they happy?”
“Like a basket of kittens. And it gets a little aggravating sometimes for those of us, you know.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah.”
“What ever happened to Fairuza?”
Fairuza is a Lurker, a Ludere. Blue skinned and very sweet. She and Kasabian were an item last time I saw them.
He taps some ash on the counter.
“She’s long gone. Remember that night Allegra killed the French chick who poisoned Vidocq?”
“I ditched the body, so yeah.”
He shakes his head.
“She never got over it. Had a nervous breakdown and everything. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with any of us.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it. It’s the story of my life.”
“Speaking of Vidocq, I didn’t see him when the others left. How is he?”
He looks at me.
“You’ve been spying on us? There’s a word for that: stalker.”
“That’s why I came in tonight. I don’t want to be that person.”
“Thanks for making me your shrink.”
“So, where is Vidocq?”
He shrugs.
“Don’t know. I haven’t seen him for a while. Allegra dumped him after the thing with the French chick.”
“He was kind of an idiot, chasing after a girl he hadn’t seen in two hundred years.”
“I’m not sure you’re in a position to judge, window peeper.”
“How’s Brigitte? Working?”
He reaches back and pulls a Blu-ray box set off the wall.
“She’s doing fine. She’s the star of a big cable series. Plays an international spy and hit woman. But she’s a good guy, you know? Anyway, she spends a lot of time kicking the shit out of everybody in six-inch heels.”
I turn over the box set. Queen Bullet, it says in shiny red letters. The back is mostly stills of her snapping necks and shooting bad guys, dressed in miniskirts and evening gowns. She looks like she’s having a ball. Good for her.
I slide the set back to him.
“And how’s the store? Still in business, I see.”
Kasabian sighs.
“It’s doing good. Alessa had the idea to sponsor movie nights every month and Candy lets bands play here sometimes. We put the floor shelves on wheels so we can push them out of the way.”
“That really is good thinking. Are you still getting those special movies?”
“All the time.”
A witch friend used to use her hoodoo to find us movies in other realities that were never made in this one. Then she’d snag us a copy and we’d rent them for a fortune.
Kasabian hands me another disc.
On the front is a drawing of a burning giraffe holding a butterfly net and wearing a cowboy hat. I hold it under the light to make sure I’m seeing it right.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Giraffes on Horseback Saddles,” he says. “Screenplay by Salvador Dalí and starring the Marx Brothers.”
“This is what’s keeping the lights on?”
He takes the disc back and hands me another.
“Right, I forgot you have no sense of humor. This is more the stuff that’s keeping us going.”
There’s a horned red guy smoking a cigar on the front. The cover says, Hellboy 3, directed by Guillermo del Toro.
I hand it back to him.
“That makes more sense. I’m glad you didn’t all lose your minds while I was gone.”
He turns around and gives me a look.
“Don’t worry about us,” he says. “We’re doing fine and making more money than ever.”
“Don’t stab me in the heart so quick. I’m not ready to die again.”
“Okay. But sometimes you have a high fucking opinion of yourself. I mean, if you came back to save us, we don’t need it.”
“Understood.”
I look around the store, feeling like it was a bad idea coming here. The place looks great. Clean. New posters on the wall. And unless Kasabian was lying, they’re making money, which we never did when I was here. It makes me wonder if I was the thing holding the store back. Candy and Kasabian, too. Maybe it’s more than them getting over me. Maybe it’s that I was the problem in the first place. If that’s true, I’m not really sure what I came back for. It’s sure not to fuck up everybody’s lives again. I’m going to have to think about it. See if there’s some small place I can still fit in.
Kasabian is wiping his cigarette ash into a trash can when he says, “So, who brought you back?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do. First time you came back from Hell you were alive. This time, I don’t know. I saw you die. We all did.”
I look at him.
“Wormwood. It was Wormwood who brought me back.”
He frowns.
“Those crazy Illuminati bastards? Why would they do that?”
“I’m working for them. But only for one more day.”
“What the fuck are you doing for people like that?”
“Trying to save your life, for one thing. They might be complete assholes but there’s a worse bunch of assholes that want to blow L.A. off the planet in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Oh,” he says. “Is that why you’re here? To tell us to get out of town?”
“No, because I know when and where it’s going to happen and I’m going to stop it.”
He looks at me.
“Are you sure? I mean, I can get to LAX in an hour. Burbank airport even faster. And don’t worry. I’ll leave a note for Candy and Alessa.”
I tap a finger on the counter.
“Stop it. I told you. I’ve got it handled. After I take out the bombers, I’m free. I don’t owe Wormwood anything. I fact, I plan on killing a whole lot of them soon.”
He puts his hands over his ears.
“I don’t want to hear this shit. Don’t you understand? None of us have had to hear about one of your Superman murder sprees for a year. And I think I can speak for Candy and Alessa too when I say we don’t want to. Things are quiet. We do our jobs and we have fun. We have okay lives. Please don’t fuck that up.”
I look at him, trying to gauge his level of bullshit. Kasabian has never forgiven me for cutting off his head, and I can understand that. Part of me wants to believe that he’s saying all of this because I’m in a weak position and it’s his chance to finally get some revenge. But it’s not that. He doesn’t have a heart for me to listen to, but I can read his eyes and the frightened microtremors around his lips. He’s telling the truth. Barging in here like this, I might as well have driven a tank through the front door. At least I waited for Candy to leave so she didn’t have to see this disaster.
“You’re right,” I say. “I just had to know how things are. I’m going to go now. Do not tell Candy I was here.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t trust me. “Is that a threat?”
“No. It’s me asking you politely to keep Candy out of this.”
“Okay,” he says grudgingly. “I just didn’t like your tone there at the end.”
“Sorry. I’m going to take off.”
I’m starting to step into a shadow when Kasabian says, “Hey, I’m not telling you to fuck off forever. Just don’t pop out of the dark like the Grim Reaper and scare the piss out of me.”
“Got it.”
“For what it’s worth, I know Candy misses you. We had a drink on your birthday. Just the two of us. She got kind of misty-eyed and everything.”
“Misty-eyed? I suppose that’s better than nothing.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, right?”
“That’s what they say.”
As I’m about to leave, a poster on the wall catches my eye. It’s for a drive-in theater called the Devil’s Door.
“Is that Flicker’s place?”
“Yeah,” says Kasabian. “She reopened about three months ago. Fixed the place up nice. You ought to go see it.”
“I just might.”
“See you, Stark.”
“Later, Kas.”
I step through a shadow but don’t go out anywhere. I stay in the Room of Thirteen Doors and just breathe the cool air.
That didn’t go the way I’d hoped. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what I was looking for, but it wasn’t “You being dead is the best thing that ever happened to everyone.” I’m going to have to think about this more before I do anything. Maybe check in and see if Vidocq wants some company. Two assholes without a country. I wonder if he’s still living in my old apartment. Maybe he wants a roommate. It doesn’t sound like anyone is going to be inviting me back to Max Overdrive anytime soon. But I’ll worry about that later. Got to keep my head clear and get through the next twenty-four hours. After that, whatever happens, I’ll be home and alive. Hell, if it comes down to it, I can get a sleeping bag and bed down here in the Room, which, now that I say it, sounds incredibly depressing. I wonder if I can squeeze some money out of Sandoval for finishing the job early. Then maybe I could get my old room at the Beat Hotel. A bathroom, a bed, and clean towels that don’t stink of Wormwood corruption would be fine with me. And I’d be back in Hollywood full-time. It’s not exactly an ambitious plan, but the world is coming at me hard and fast. One step at a time is all I can handle right now.
At the moment, however, I have to figure out the rest of my night. I’m not ready to go back to Sandoval’s place and I’m sure as hell not going to Bamboo House. Kasabian is right. There’s a fine line between looking in on your ex and stalking, and I’m right on top of it. What’s depressing is that even Donut Universe is useless to me right now. But I have one more alternative, and it’s not a bad one at all.
I STEP INTO a shadow and come out due west of Max Overdrive.
Sure enough, it’s right where I remember. Because the entrance faces north, Flicker calls the place the Devil’s Door. The drive-in is surrounded by a high black wall covered in flames and horned dancing girls. There are eyes over the entrance and teeth around the edges so that when you enter, it’s like you’re diving right down the Devil’s gullet.
I go through another shadow and come out by the concession stand. It’s all overpriced drinks and expensive popcorn that you’re happy to pay for because all the money goes back to keeping the last old-school drive-in in L.A. open for business.
On the screen, Alan Ormsby is chewing up the scenery as he mock-marries a corpse from the local cemetery. The movie is Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and Alan’s blushing bride will be snacking on his guts before the honeymoon is over. It’s a beautiful print of one of the first color zombie movies ever made. I wonder where she found it.
It’s wall-to-wall cars below the screen—a full house. There are even a few rented hearses in between the sports cars and SUVs. About half the crowd milling around the food stand is in makeup and filthy zombie rags. That’s why it takes me a few minutes to recognize her. She’s in zombie drag too, talking to an undead ballerina and a cowboy spinning a lariat made of vertebrae.
I don’t know Flicker’s real name and I don’t know anyone who does. I know she’s Chinese. I know she comes from heavy Sub Rosa money. And I know that she doesn’t talk to her family anymore because they don’t approve of the kind of hoodoo she practices. But she’s one of the best at what she does and this drive-in is proof of that.
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