“You want a drink?” he says. “I’ve still got some Belgian beer Fairuza brought over.”
I shake my head.
“Some other time.”
I start upstairs.
“She’ll be all right,” says Kasabian. “Allegra knows what she’s doing.”
I don’t say anything. I go upstairs and close the door. Find a bottle of Aqua Regia and don’t bother with a glass. I fire up a movie on the big screen, but when I finish the bottle I realize I have no idea what I’ve been watching.
AT THREE A.M., Sola and I drive down Wilshire in an empty sixteen--wheeler. My head hurts—-hell, my eyes hurt and I’d rather be at home waiting for a call about Candy, but maybe this is a little healthier. Getting a little action instead of sitting at home drowning myself in Aqua Regia. I put a glove on to match the one that covers my Kissi hand. It covers the gauze on my wrist and Sola will think I’m getting into the James Bond spirit of things. I’m not.
“Christ, if we’re going to work together I wish you’d call me Julie instead of Sola,” she says on the way over.
“Careful. You took the Lord’s name in vain. Wells probably has the truck bugged.”
“Not for long,” she says.
She pushes the heavy truck through the gears like an expert and parks it on Wilshire a block away from Robertson. I start to help her drag our passenger into the driver’s seat, but she waves me off. Our passenger is a corpse in a T--shirt and jeans. Apparently, the Vigil has an arrangement to pick up the occasional unclaimed body from federal prisons around the country. So much for respecting the dead. I get out while she wrestles the corpse into place behind the wheel. She does the dirty work cleanly and efficiently. I’ve never seen this side of her before.
“Julie,” I say.
She looks at me.
“What?”
I shake my head.
“Nothing. Just practicing.”
“Okay.”
She smiles and hops down from the cab, slamming the door shut. We’re both dressed in black coveralls, courtesy of the Vigil. Mine are too tight. Julie’s are too loose. We look like a -couple of idiot thrift--store ninjas. She slings a pack onto her shoulder and we cross the street, heading for our target.
Walking makes my head hurt, but sitting made it hurt too. The night rain is cool. It helps wake me up and get focused. No one at the Vigil knows anything about Candy. Rogue Lurkers are subject to immediate arrest, no questions asked. I’m not going to take a chance on that happening.
We walk to an empty store that used to sell high--end sound systems. We’re near the corner and have a great view of the Pickman Building. Inside the store, power cords, stereo cables, and coax snake the floor and hang from the ceiling like jungle vines.
I say, “What were those three things again?”
Julie kneels and starts taking things out of the pack, laying them in a semicircle around her.
“Diversion, intrusion, and extraction.”
“This is the first one.”
“It will be in a minute.”
She looks at me.
“You’re not drunk, are you?”
“I toasted a friend’s health tonight, yes. But I’m fine.”
“Damn,” she says. “I need you Johnny on the spot tonight. Can you handle that?”
“No problem.”
“Screw this up and you can go back to calling me Sola. Marshal Sola.”
“I’m fine. Just point me at whatever you want dead.”
She plugs together several pieces of electronics, including a joystick and a small flat--screen monitor.
“With luck, dead won’t enter into things tonight.”
“That’s not my experience with breaking into secure places, but fingers crossed.”
The monitor comes on, displaying an image looking straight down Wilshire Boulevard.
“You ready?” Julie says.
“Not really. I can hoodoo us inside the building right onto the tenth floor, but I don’t like doing that kind of thing. I like coming out places where I at least know the terrain. That way I avoid walking into deadfalls and snake pits.”
“Here,” she says, handing me another small tablet. “There’s blueprints of the tenth floor, along with surveillance photos.”
I flip through the shots.
“How many guards will there be?”
“If we’re lucky, none. Most of the time no one is on the tenth floor but Saint Nick.”
“But someone might come up for a smoke or a chat.”
“If there’s anyone there, let me handle them.”
“Carrying another nonlethal, are you?”
She moves the joystick, getting a feel for it. The image on the monitor vibrates slightly. It takes me a minute to see that the image is looking out through the sixteen--wheeler’s windshield.
“We always start with nonlethals,” Julie says. “But we carry regular backup pistols.”
“Fine. You’re the one with shooting theories. I’m just the help. What’s the stuff after diversion?”
“Intrusion and extraction.”
“Yeah. Get in clean, then run away. Two of my favorite things, especially the last one.”
She flips a switch on the box with the joystick. The camera jumps as the truck shifts into gear.
“You ready?”
I think about Candy strapped to the exam table in the clinic and I want someone to shoot at me just so I can strangle them.
“Ready.”
She pushes the joystick forward and the truck moves out into the flooded street. Julie has the windshield wipers on full. The truck picks up speed and blasts through a red light at the corner. Then she floors it.
As the truck picks up speed, the wipers can’t keep up with the rain, and the windshield shows nothing but splotches and colored lights. Without missing a beat, she thumbs a switch and the camera shifts to infrared. The scene is clear again, the building straight ahead.
Out the window, the truck barrels past us. Julie hits a button and the truck’s air horn blows three times.
At the corner of Robertson, she hits the front brakes and the trailer starts to swing around, threatening to pull the cab over on its side. But she hits the accelerator and lets up on the brakes at just the right moment so that the truck slides across the intersection, up over the curb, and crashes into the front of the Pickman Building broadside.
Smashing through the glass and steel walls, the truck doesn’t slow until most of it is resting comfortably in the lobby. Julie cuts the engine. This isn’t the time for random fires. Just a distracting truck with a dead driver. How tragic.
“What about emergency response? We just set off a shitload of alarms.”
She hands me a box with one red button.
“Get ready,” she says, shutting down her electronics. “Hit it.”
I press the button. Nothing happens for a second. Then a dull thump echoes through the street. All the lights in the neighborhood go out.
“There’s an EMP device in the trailer. We just blew their power and all their electronics. They’ll come back up, but not until we’re gone.”
“You are diabolical.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now get us inside.”
“It’s too dark. I need a shadow.”
Across the street, guards are coming out of the Pickman Building, gazing up at the truck. Some fiddle with their walkie--talkies. Some are trying to use their phones. None look happy.
Julie leads me into a toilet in the back of the store and snaps a glow stick.
“Is this enough light?”
“Barely. But it’ll work.”
I push my arm into a shadow just to make sure. I hear Julie draw in a breath.
“You’ve never seen this trick before?”
“Not this close.”
“You might want to close your eyes. It can be a little weird the first time.”
She closes them and I take her hand.
“Ready?”
“Definitely.”
I pull her into the shadow and out onto the tenth floor of the Pickman Building.
JULIE WAS RIGHT. There aren’t any guards on the tenth floor. All that’s there is a small room, a plastic cube in the center of the empty floor. This would be a cakewalk except that the floor is covered in magic circles. It was dumb luck that we came out between two of them.
“Don’t move,” I say. “This is why I don’t like going into places I don’t know. Step in any one of these circles and you’re dead. Probably we’re both dead and I’m not in the mood for that tonight.”
“Damn. What do we do to get around them?”
“It’s too dark for me to see them clearly, so I can’t draw a countersign.”
“I have climbing gear. We can go across the ceiling.”
“Easy, Catwoman. That will probably be hexed too.”
“What do we do?”
“If I knew what kind of hoodoo these were, I could answer that.”
“These might help,” she says, and pulls two sets of goggles from her pack.
I put mine on and find a button on the side. The room blazes with the light, showing every nook and cranny protected by hoodoo power. The only thing glowing brighter than the circles is Saint Nick himself in the plastic cube. I guess that answers Wells’s question. I get the feeling he’s locked up tight. Nick is no guest.
“Well?” says Julie. “Can you get us through?”
“Give me a minute.”
I kneel and examine the first circle. Shit. I don’t recognize it. Probably some Angra bullshit. If only Father Traven was here. A good guy who deserved to live a lot longer, he’d read these signs like a cookie recipe and we’d scoot right through. But he’s dead, I can’t read these, and we’re stuck.
“Anything?” says Julie. I don’t want to tell her that we’ve come this far and can’t go on. There has to be something. There’s always something.
“Ever hear of a potion called Spiritus Dei?”
“Sure. It’s one of the most powerful potions around. Supposed to ward off any supernatural being. Do you have some?”
“No.”
She lets out a breath.
“But I always dip my bullets in it. We can jump the small circles and there are only two big ones between us and Saint Nick’s door.”
“You’re going to shoot them?”
“Unless you have a better idea.”
She looks up and down the room like she’s hoping a cab will pull up and take her away from the crazy man. Finally, she shrugs.
“Magic is your end. Do what you think is best.”
I pull out the Colt.
“This is going to be loud. Cover your ears,” I say.
She does. I aim with one hand and put the other over one ear. No point in going completely deaf.
I cock the hammer on the Colt and fire into the first circle.
The hoodoo light through the goggles flickers. The circle pulses like broken neon and goes out. I pull the trigger again and the second circle flickers off.
“Is it safe now?” says Julie.
“Only one way to find out.”
I jump the small circles and the place where the first big circle glowed just a few seconds earlier. Nothing happens.
“Don’t touch anything,” I say. “There might be hoodoo the goggles can’t see.”
“Thanks.”
“You know I’m stealing them, right? I mean, when this is over, these goggles are coming home with me.”
Julie shakes her head.
“Just come up with a good story for the report. I didn’t see anything.”
We make it to Saint Nick’s door. He’s sitting in a plastic kitchen chair staring at us. Not hostile, but not looking like he’s thrilled about being rescued. They might keep him drugged. Or he might be so crazy he doesn’t know what’s happening. That’s the Saint Nick I’m hoping we don’t have to deal with.
Julie flicks on a small flashlight, holds it between her teeth, and examines the cube’s lock. It looks like some combination of a keypad and a physical lock. She pulls a small silver box from her pack and fits it over the mechanism. It glows and something whirs inside. Julie looks at her watch.