A delivery truck speeds up the street. It swerves toward the curb. Hits the cars the kid is standing between. The impact drives both cars up onto the sidewalk. The kid is still between them, but now he’s in two pieces. A girl screams and keeps on screaming.
The kid’s friends must have followed us outside. A -couple of the other Goth kids run to the curb like maybe they can put their friend back together again. I climb over the trunk of one of the wrecked cars. Go to the truck and pull the driver--side door open. The driver half falls out, held in place by his seat belt. His head is pulped from smashing into the windshield. I test his seat belt. It’s locked right across his body. It doesn’t make sense that he could have hit the inside of the windshield. Unless someone else belted him in after his head was in pieces and he was dead. I step up onto the running board to check out his body. His right arm is gone. Cut off neatly at the shoulder. Another Angra groupie? I can see why he’d sacrifice himself, but why take out the kid? No way he was looking to die.
I start back into the bar. The kid’s phone rings. He had it in his hand the whole time.
“Don’t touch it,” I say.
I kneel down and pry it from his hand. One of the boys vomits into the street. I go back inside the bar and head straight for the men’s room, where it’s quieter. No one is inside. I shove a trash can under the doorknob so no one can get in. Where the number of the caller should be displayed it says BLOCKED. I thumb the phone on.
“He’s right, you know. You can’t stop it.”
There’s static on the line, but I know the voice. This isn’t the first time he’s crank--called me from Hell.
“Fuck you, Merihim.”
Merihim is head of the Hell’s one official church. But it was all a ruse. He’s also in a Hellion Angra cult. A lot of the fallen angels want the old gods back so that they’ll destroy the universe, hoping it will relieve them of the torments of Hell. It’s the biggest suicide pact in the history of creation.
“Try again. Do you think there’s only one who can speak through mortals?”
The line static clears up.
“Deumos?”
She’s another fallen angel. She ran another underground, radical church in Hell. Except it was all a con job. She was working with Merihim to bring the Angra back. I guess you can’t trust Hellions or preachers. Who would have guessed?
“The who doesn’t matter. The what matters. Return the Qomrama Om Ya. That’s the only way the killing will end.”
“So you can summon the Angra? I know how you want things to end.”
“Admit it. You’re as exhausted by existence as we are. Help us end it.”
“Hello? Say that again. It’s hard to hear you over the bullshit.”
There’s a pause. I start to think that the line has gone dead.
“Hello?”
“You’ll find each other sooner or later, and when you do, you’ll see how pointless your cowboy antics really are.”
I hear a click and the call is over. I drop the kid’s phone in my pocket and take out my own. I hit redial and call Candy.
It rings twice and she picks up.
“You all right?” I say.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason. You weren’t feeling well earlier.”
“Where are you?”
“Bamboo House.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
“Don’t bother. Cops are on the way.”
“Are you okay?”
I switch the phone to my left hand. There must have been blood on the kid’s phone. I wipe my right hand on my coat.
“I’m fine,” I say. “You stay put, lock up the store, and I’ll bring home some donuts.”
“Yum.”
I try to slip out the front of the bar, but the cops are already there. It’s the two that were in the bar earlier. When they try the bully--boy routine, I use the only weapon I can think of. One that might backfire in my face. I flash my Vigil credentials at them. They back off. Reluctantly, but they back off.
“I understand you removed evidence from the accident scene,” says one. The one who looked at me funny before. He’s still looking at me kind of like I’m a talking lobster.
“I’m taking in a cell phone to the Vigil’s labs.”
“You don’t think this was a traffic accident?”
“I don’t know what it is, but I know the kid is a person of interest in a Vigil investigation, so I’m keeping the phone.”
“Let me see that ID again.”
I pull it out but keep it close enough that he can’t grab it from me.
He writes down my ID number and closes his notebook.
“We’ll be in touch,” he says.
“I’ll count the seconds.”
I walk around the corner into the alley next to Bamboo House. The headlights of the cop car throw a nice shadow on the wall. As I step through I catch the cop with the notebook watching me. I keep going. This is Hollywood. Fuck him if he can’t deal with a little street magic.
I’M HOME MAYBE twenty minutes when someone pounds on the front door of Max Overdrive. I grab my Colt and head downstairs. The front of the store is all glass, so if someone really wanted to get in they could. Still, I’d like to know who I’m dealing with. I flip on the outside light and go behind the counter. We installed a surveillance camera over the door when Kasabian and I had the place fixed up. Except tonight all I can see is the outline of a body outside and heavy rain. More pounding on the door.
“Stark. I know you’re in there. Open up, dammit.”
It’s a woman’s voice.
I take a chance and look around the shade that covers the door and recognize Marshal Julie Sola. I stuff the Colt in my waistband and unlock the door. She brushes past me to get out of the rain. She’s in a long slicker raincoat with the hood pulled up over her head. Still, she’s drenched and making a puddle on the floor. I point to the peg on the wall where -people can hang their raincoats. She gives a soft “Ah,” takes off her coat, and hangs it up.
Her hair is long and dark, pulled up high and pinned in place. It was, at least. Now it’s a wet rat’s nest. She’s dressed in light, loose--fitting sportswear, a kind of idiot camouflage the Vigil makes many agents wear to try and blend in with their country--club location. She looks vaguely embarrassed, but quickly shakes it off.
“Thanks,” she says. “I thought I’d find you here.”
“You’re half drowned. Why didn’t you wait till I came in tomorrow?”
“Would you have really come to see me?”
“Maybe not first thing, but sure. I like you fine.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” she says. “This is what I mean.”
She hands me the manila envelope she’s been holding. She had it under the jacket, but the front is still damp.
I open the envelope and find official Vigil stationery and forms. Many pages of forms. It’s my psych evaluation.
“I have to do all this?”
“Ah no. This is just part one. There are three parts.”
“Fuck me,” I say. The pages are full of word problems, shapes I’m supposed to group together, drawings, and questions about my parents.
“I can help you,” she says. “I know the right answers to give so Washington won’t ask any questions.”
“You think Washington is going to buy it if I come off like Mike Brady?”
She smiles and rubs her hands together to get the circulation going.
“So we’ll leave some rough edges on. The point is you’ll pass. We need you.”
I drop the envelope on the counter.
“Why are you back working with them? Last I saw you, you were happy in the Mike Hammer PI biz.”
She shrugs.
“Look at things. The world is too crazy to want one more inexperienced private investigator. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at my job, but I was slowly starving to death. Eating through my savings and playing a lot of Tetris waiting for the phone to ring.”
“Bad timing, I guess.”
“To say the least. When Marshal Wells called and offered me my old job back, it wasn’t hard to say yes. What about you?”
“Not so different. But he told me he knew how to work a weapon, something to fight the Angra with. Turns out it was a fib. He has a bag of bones working on it. Maybe he’ll figure it out.”
“I met him once. Creepy guy. He called me ‘tubby.’ I don’t look fat to you, do I?”
“I don’t know. He called me ‘lardass’ last time I saw him.”
Candy comes down the stairs.
“Is this where the party is?”
“Candy, this is Julie Sola. Marshal Sola these days. Julie, this is Candy.”
Candy comes down and they shake hands. She has powdered sugar on her fingers and it rubs off on Julie.
“Sorry,” she says, and holds out the bag she’s holding. “Want a donut?”
“No thanks. I was just dropping off some paperwork.”