To Suzanna S, always inspiring
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
– T. S. ELIOT, The Waste Land
Gonna take a week off
Gonna go to Hell
Send ya a postcard
Hey I’m doin’ swell!
Wish you were here …
– THE CRAMPS, Aloha from Hell
Table of Contents
“Tell me,” says the Frenchman.
“TELL ME,” SAYS the Frenchman. “How long has it been since you last killed anything?”
He’s fucking with me. He knows the answer, but he wants to make me say it. Father Vidocq taking confession.
“I don’t know. What time is it?”
“That long, then?”
I shrug.
Vidocq and I are in a very dark room in a very large house full of very fashionable furniture and we’re stealing something very valuable. I have no idea what and pretty much don’t care. It’s just nice to be hanging out and doing some crimes with the old man. Crimes where no one ends up zombie meat, shot, or annoyingly decapitated.
“It’s been a while,” I say. “Six. Eight weeks. Somewhere around there.”
I slipped us into the house through a shadow. Vidocq is working on the wall safe. He’s good with safes. He’s had over a hundred years of practice.
“So, no crusades? No great wrongs that need to be righted?”
I reach into my pocket for a cigarette, then remember there might be smoke alarms.
“Nothing worth killing for. I’m no cop. The Sub Rosa has their own Mod Squad to deal with the small stuff.”
I like watching Vidocq work over a safe. He has hands like a surgeon. Nimble. Precise. He could thread a needle while being shot out of a cannon.
“Incroyable. Perhaps you’re reaching something of a rapprochement with your angelic half and it’s having a moderating effect on your disposition.”
Right. I’m part angel. Half, if you want to get picky about it. It’s great. A halo and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee in L.A.
“Maybe. The angel screams at me sometimes, mostly at night when I’m tired and he can ambush me with one of his Give-Peace-a-Chance, no-smoking, veggie-bacon sermons. But he isn’t trying to run the show single-handed anymore. We reached a kind of MAD pact the other day.”
Vidocq looks at me.
“MAD?”
“Mutually Assured Destruction. I told him that if he ever tried to push me out of my brain and turn me into a clean-living choirboy again, I’d have to do something, you know, unreasonable.”
“Such as?”
“I told him I’d get hammered and go through the Room of Thirteen Doors to the Pearly Gates. Then I’d find the Archangel Gabriel and thunderbolt-kick him in the cojones in front of all the other angels.”
“Whereupon the other angels would draw their swords and kill you.”
“Exactly. Mutually Assured Destruction.”
“That sounds much more like the old you.”
“Thanks.”
Technically, I’m what you call a “nephilim.” Half human, half angel. And I’m the only one. The others are all dead. Suicides mostly. Some people call my type freaks. If you’re one of heaven’s lapdogs, you’ll probably call me “Abomination.” I say, call me either of those things to my face and you’ll get to see what your lungs look like as throw pillows.
The angel half of me got shaken loose a while back when a High Plains Drifter—that’s “zombie” to you—bit a chunk out of my hand. The human half of me almost died and the angel half thought that was its chance to take over. It was for a while, but then I got my strength back and I locked the angel upstairs in the attic like Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? It still bangs on the door and shouts, but I’ve learned to ignore it most of the time. Some of the time. It depends on the day.
Vidocq goes back to work on the safe. Over his clothes, he’s wearing a tailored gray gabardine greatcoat. Looks like his girlfriend Allegra’s been dressing him again. He looks like the doorman at a speakeasy in the Kremlin. The greatcoat tinkles gently when he moves, like he’s smuggling wind chimes. The sound of the hundred or so little potion bottles he has sewn into the coat’s lining. I have my guns, my knife, and na’at. Vidocq has his potions.
“What exactly are we stealing?” I ask.
“A golden brooch or device in the shape of a scarab. It’s quite ancient. There is a clockwork mechanism inside. Perhaps it’s God’s pocket watch.”
“He doesn’t need a watch. He needs a compass so he can find his own ass.”
There’s a click and the front of the safe swings open.
Vidocq moves his hands in a graceful TV-spokesmodel arc in front of the safe.
“Et voilà.”
“You are the man, Van Damme.”
He squints at me.
“Jean-Claude Van Damme is Belgian, not French.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Fuck you.”
I like how Vidocq pronounces “fuck”: “fock.”
He whispers, “C’est quoi, ça?”
“Anything wrong?”
“No. It’s very interesting.