“Exactly,” I said. “A wannabe follows the real things. He listens. He could know things precisely because they have the same opinion of him that we do. He’s a nut job. They wouldn’t pay attention to him.”
“Beelzebub” was a rare exception in the demonic sense. He was just a guy. He’d played around with a lot of things in his time, I’m sure. Rocker who couldn’t sing or play an instrument. Goth who didn’t have the ennui down quite right. Emo when emo was so very last year, A satanist who really wasn’t a satanist. After all, Those books are thick. Reading is hard. The Necronomicon isn’t even real. Who knew? Patterning yourself on a bad late-night TV movie is easier than doing actual research. And, to give credit where it was due, the real satanists, who are rare and far between . . . the genuine ones, the down-and-dirty ones—they get their desire sooner or later. Off to Hell they go. A Twinkie or bag of chips to be devoured whenever the torture becomes boring for the demons. I didn’t think that’s what they had planned when they were butchering Wilbur the pig or Foghorn Leghorn the rooster on their altar while trying to say the Lord’s Prayer backward . . . which would be the satanic DUI test. Instead of ZYXWVU, while touching your nose with a fingertip, you had to pull off “Amen. Ever and ever for glory the and, power ...” while chopping off a chicken’s head. They could chant and chop all they wanted. They still ended up as a TV dinner.
Bubba didn’t go that way though. He was such a thoroughly slobbering, pathetic, slimy wannabe that the demons did the absolute worst thing they could to him.
They ignored him.
When you ignore someone for so long you forget they’re even there, whether you’re a con artist demon or not. You say things you shouldn’t, and Bubba, although he couldn’t do jack shit with the information, heard it all. And now we would go find out if anything he’d picked up today had to do with Griffin. And while Zeke couldn’t find Griffin, I knew precisely where to find Bubba. . . . I had his pamphlet. Tours of Satanic Sin City . . . because when the sun goes down, it all goes down. He should’ve given up the satanism and become a copy-writer. There was slightly more money in it and a whole lot less demon-on-human mutilation.
“Fine. Let’s get the satanic shithead and ask him some questions. Only you’d better ask them.” He closed his eyes and ground the heel of his hand against his forehead—still trying to find Griffin, on the inside if not out. “Because right now, I want to hurt someone. I really, really want to hurt someone. Too much.”
“Trust me, Kit. I won’t be walking on any eggshells around him, but I’ll leave enough of him to do some talking.” If he knew anything. When you’ve pinned your first and last hope on a satanic school bus-driving demon wannabe, you knew it was going to be a bad night.
We caught up with him at Carluccio’s Tivoli Gardens. It was a restaurant next to the Liberace Museum and whether Liberace was a tricked-up demon, an angel of blinding light, or only an entertainer who thought rhinestones were the greatest invention of God and Man and wanted to outshine the sun itself, I didn’t know. I was always curious, yes, but at times it was best to let some things go. Keep a little mystery alive.
Keeping Bubba alive . . . Well, we’d see.
His old school bus, painted black, naturally, with wispy white ghosts and staring, bloody red eyes, was idling by the Gardens, hoping to pick up some tourist action. There were reputable ghost tours in Vegas. Fun in the absent sun pointing out the gangster Bugsy Siegel’s hotel, the Flamingo, the “Motel of Death” where many celebrities had died—I’d never caught exactly who those celebrities were—a haunted park with a “demon” child, and the Gardens, where Liberace’s ghost occasionally had a snit fit. A phantom rhinestone wedgie was nothing to mess with, I was sure.
Bubba’s tour, on the other hand, was not reputable, not licensed, not legal, and not especially hygienic—all of which kept him on the move, trying to pick up tourists on the go. The Gardens were his second fishing stop of the night and we caught him there just as he was leaving. I didn’t bother to look for a parking spot, pulling up on the sidewalk and ditching the Cobra. It would either be towed or stolen. I didn’t give a damn either way. If we could find Griffin, a lucky thief could keep the car.
I caught the bus door as it was closing, pushed it back open, and went up the two steps to stand just behind and right at Bubba’s ear. “You weren’t trying to leave without us, were you, Beelzebub?”