I don’t want to run for anything. I want to shove this miserable cheap-ass check so far up Wells’s ass he can read the routing number out the back of his eyes.
But Max Overdrive is just limping along these days and I don’t want to have to find someplace else to live. Landlords in L.A. don’t want you to have pets. What am I going to do with a chain-smoking severed head? Dignity is nice but it’s money makes the lights and shower work.
I watch the welders working across the warehouse so I don’t have to look at Wells while I fold the check and slip it into my pocket.
“At the end of time, when your side loses, I want you to remember this moment.”
Wells narrows his eyes.
“Why?”
“’Cause Lucifer doesn’t expect you to thank him when he fucks you over. That’s why he’s going to win.”
Wells looks down at the floor for a minute. Puts his hands behind his back.
“You know, my mother watched a lot of Christian TV when I was growing up. Hellfire-and-brimstone hucksters telling Bible stories and yelling about damnation to get fools and old people to send them their welfare checks. I never paid much attention to ’em, but one day out of nowhere this one wrinkled old preacher starts telling what he says is a Persian parable. Now, that’s weird for a Baptist Bible-thumper.
“You see, there was once a troubled man in a little village near Qom in ancient Persia.”
“This is the story, right? ’Cause I don’t want to hear about you and your dad going off-roading.”
“Shut up. One day the troubled man got out of bed to work his fields and maybe he was killed or maybe he just kept walking, but he was never heard from again. The sun was shining through the door as the man left and threw his shadow on the wall by the hearth or whatever it is you call it over there. When the man’s wife and children came home and found the house empty, the wife sees her husband’s shadow and asks who he is. The shadow says, ‘The man is gone and become a shadow to this house. I am the shadow of the man who did not go, but will remain here.’ The shadow stayed and over time became a man and he and the woman and her children lived there happily together for many years.”
Wells puts his hands together almost like he’s praying. It creeps me out seeing this side of him.
“Later, when I heard that the Golden Vigil was founded in Persia, I knew it was God speaking to me through the TV that day. He was telling me that here is where I’m supposed to be.”
“That story doesn’t even make sense, and what exactly does it have to do with anything we’re talking about?”
“It means we’ve done our job for more than a thousand years, so you can shove your disapproval.”
“That sounds like the sin of pride, Marshal. Better run downstairs and let Miss December flog it out of you. Webcam it and charge by the minute. You won’t ever have to take government money again.”
Wells looks at me. His phone goes off. He ignores it.
I want to tell him to go fuck himself.
“You done whining? You ready to work? I have something else for you.”
But I need this.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to walk through a murder scene with me. The victim was Sub Rosa. No rough stuff. Just observation.”
“You have forensics people. Why do you need me?”
“I don’t want them getting too deep into this one yet. I want you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been to Hell.”
“So?”
“I want you to take a look at a body and tell me what you think it means.”
“Are you sure it’s just one body and not five?”
“Funny.”
“I want my full fee.”
“Half. No one is asking you to kill anything.”
“You’re using up my valuable drinking and smoking time. I need compensation.”
“As you just pointed out, we’re government funded, which means that we work within a simple and predetermined pay structure. In other words, looking and pointing doesn’t pay the same as hunting and killing.”
“Tell you what, go down to Chinatown, find a club called the Owl’s Shadow, and hire yourself a Deadhead. Those gloomy necromancers are a bunch of low-self-esteem Siouxsie and the Banshees bitches. They’ll fall all over themselves to help a fed do a murder-scene magic show.”
Wells takes the phone from his pocket, looks at the caller ID, and frowns.
“Look, you can sprinkle some pixie dust around while you’re at the scene. Do some damn magic that won’t break anything and I can get you two-thirds of your normal fee. But that’s it.”
“Done.”
I put out my hand. He puts the phone to his ear so he doesn’t have to shake on it.
“We’ll meet at three A.M., when things are quiet and the bars are closed. I’ll call you with the address.”
“Nice doing business with you, Marshal. Give the missus my best.”
“Get out.”
I DECIDE TO skip the Ray and Huston show on the way out, so I slip through a dark patch on a wall outside the warehouse. Come out in the alley across the street from the Bamboo House of Dolls.
What I thought was a one-night blowout right after I saved the world on New Year’s has turned into a six-month running party. After I tossed Mason to the mob Downtown, it seemed like half the Sub Rosa in L.A. showed up at Bamboo House to kiss his ass good-bye. And they never left. Carlos is happy enough. Sub Rosa tip big at civilian places where they can hang out without ending up part of the floor show.
Most Sub Rosa, you’d never notice. They look boringly human, are human, and go out of their way to fit in with other humans, even if they sometimes dress like nineteenth-century dandies or Mayan priests. Others in the bar look like they stepped off a steam-powered zeppelin from Neptune. They’re the Lurkers, and good, upstanding Sub Rosa don’t like them soiling the furniture at their clubs so they come here. There are succubi and transgendered Lamia. Shaggy Nahual wolf and tiger beast men laughing like frat boys and stacking their beer cans in a pyramid until they knock it over. Again. A group of blue-skinned schoolgirls with pale blond hair and horns peeking out through their pigtails are playing some kind of betting game with ivory cups and scorpions.
Carlos is a big part of the reason Bamboo House of Dolls is still standing. He didn’t even blink when the crusty half of L.A.’s magic underground dropped in to get shit-faced. If Jesus was a bartender, He would still only be half as cool as Carlos. With all his newfound lucre, all the man has done to the place is get some new bar stools, a better sound system, and cleaned up the bathrooms so they’re a little less like a Calcutta bus station. It’s good to have one thing that hasn’t changed much. We need a few anchors in our lives to keep us from floating away into the void. Like Mr. Muninn said the one time he came in, “Quid salvum est si Roma perit?” What is safe if Rome perishes?
“Swamp Fire” by Martin Denny is playing on the jukebox. Carlos comes over with a cup of black coffee.
“You didn’t have to get dressed up just for me,” he says.
“Like the look? It’s from the Calvin Klein Book of Revelations line.”
“The crispy black arm is nice even if it is shedding dead skin all over my floor, but that burned-up jacket is un pedazo de basura.”
“Time