by Tad Williams
“If you’re trying to creep me out you’ll have to try harder.” But I was as conscious of that hand on my leg as I would have been of a poisonous spider. Although not in entirely the same way. “I really don’t care how you spend your time, Countess. It just gave me a chance to meet you and ask some questions.”
The nails poked into my leg a little harder. She moistened her lips, which were already dewy in the extreme. “And have you asked everything you want to ask?”
This had gotten weird very fast. Don’t get me wrong-I’ve been around members of the Opposition’s seduction brigade before, and they have mojo working for them a poor little angel boy like me can’t even understand. But the Countess was something else. Way else. I was scared she was going to slide her hand up to my crotch and find out just how much of an act my I’m-not-impressed really was. “Okay, then, one more thing,” I said. “Yesterday I came home and found that I’d been visited by the Burning Hand. Anything you can share with me about that? Did I offend somebody on your side?”
“After seeing you operate, I can’t imagine how that could happen. But I highly doubt it, anyway. I suspect someone’s pulled a little prank on you. The Burning Hand-well, that’s a bit of an old wives’ tale. Haven’t heard of anyone actually getting one for years.”
“Then maybe it’s time to modernize the database.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and punched up a picture of my front door, then held it in front of her very pretty face. “What would you call that?”
Jackpot-or at least an expression crossed her face for the first time that wasn’t part of her Demon Queen act. She took her hand off my leg. The weird thing was that it wasn’t just surprise I saw but a hint of fear as well, which freaked me out. What could scare one of Hell’s society-page regulars?
Whatever it was vanished in a moment, like the reflection of something moving. “You’re half right, Mr. Dollar. That’s a burning hand-but it’s not The Burning Hand.”
“What are you talking about?”
The hand dropped lightly on my leg again and squeezed ever so gently. The nails were sharp enough to poke through the denim and touch actual skin. “Back in the old days, people who tried to renege on their agreements with us would be reprimanded with the mark of a black, ashy hand on their doors…but the hands that made the marks were human, or at least human-sized. The tradition is very clear about that. Unless you live in a munchkin cottage, I’d say the hand that made this must have been at least as big as a polar bear’s paw.” She held up her own dainty little mitt-the one that wasn’t prickling my thigh. Her long, sharp nails were without polish but very, very clean. “In other words, not made by anything human-sized.”
I could tell there was something else she wasn’t telling me, but I could also sense that she wasn’t going to tell me now. A sort of wall had suddenly gone up between us. I decided to cut my losses and see if I could get out of The Water Hole without a firefight. I disengaged her grip from my leg and slid out of the booth, but just as I did so the front door swung open and several large shapes crowded through, blocking the orange sodium light from the parking lot. Reinforcements.
“Thank you, Countess,” I said. “You’ve been more helpful than you know.”
“You’re cute, Dollar. If you survive the next few minutes you may call me Casimira the next time we meet.” She smiled, and she was so beautiful it hurt my chest. “My friends call me ‘Caz,’ but I don’t think you’ll be around long enough to earn that privilege.”
Damn, she was fine.
There were about five or six of them coming toward us, an entire exhibit escaped from the Big and Ugly Hall of Fame. I sprinted for the other end of the room, furious now that I hadn’t taken time earlier to map the exits.
I found the men’s room and levered myself out the window. Luckily they hadn’t thought enough of me to leave anyone staked out in the parking lot, so by the time they’d busted the lock on the restroom door I was wiping off sweat as I pulled out onto the Camino Real. But I was most of the way back to the motel room I’d rented on the north end of town before I finally stopped thinking about her hand resting lightly on my leg.
eight
posie and g-man
I awoke to the sun stabbing through the dusty blinds of the Royal Highway Motor Hotel like Norman Bates’s favorite steak knife, as well as the four most famous notes of the Hallelujah Chorus chiming over and over again from my phone-the sound of waiting messages. Believe me, if it was up to me, I’d have something better (or at least more discreet) but our phones are work-issue and Nikola Tesla himself couldn’t reset them. That doesn’t mean that’s what folks like you would hear, but it’s all an angel like me gets when the phone wants you to know there’s a message-HAH-lay-loo-yah. HAH-lay-loo-yah. Whoever did the programming for the House was either criminally stupid or had a very unpleasant sense of humor.
Besides all the stuff from Fatback I hadn’t read yet, I had also received several nasty messages from Temuel’s office wanting to know where I was staying and one text from Clarence the Trainee Angel asking when I was going to pick him up. Shit, I remembered, that thing I set up with Sam. I sat in a puddle of unpleasantly bright light looking for the time and finally spotted the motel clock proclaiming 9:22 in digital scarlet. Practically the crack of dawn. I texted the kid back with fingers that felt like uncooked sausages, telling him to meet me at noon at Oyster Bill’s. No sense hurrying into the day. Besides, I had an errand I wanted to run before then, after I had self-administered some coffee.
Twenty-five minutes later, showered and with a cup of Peet’s the size of a grain silo between my knees-no cup holders in a vintage Matador, which might make you wonder how people survived the seventies long enough to invent cup holders later on-I was headed down the Bayshore toward the Walker place for the third time this week. The neighborhood had more or less returned to normal after the circus of the last couple of days, the sidewalks full of smiling postal carriers and people wearing casually expensive clothes walking their casually expensive dogs. Pretty much what you’d expect on a Saturday morning in Jude’s Palo Alto district.
Edward Walker’s house looked like any other house on the street now except for a small island of stuffed toys and flowers and written tributes, the kind of sentimental Sargasso that quickly collects these days near the scene of any semi-public tragedy. There was a different car in the driveway today, a scuffed, nondescript Japanese sedan that didn’t look like anything Walker himself would have driven. The car in which he’d died was nowhere in sight, although the garage door was closed.
I was mostly interested in what I might discover on the Outside, but the slightly odd car intrigued me, so I knocked on the door. Ordinarily in these situations I’m an insurance investigator, but that wasn’t going to play well at the house of a prominent suicide, and my usual backup, the National Transportation Safety Board, didn’t really make sense when the crime scene was a parked car, whether or not the engine had been running.
The young woman who opened the door could easily have walked out of someplace like The Water Hole or any other college hangout, and from practically any time in the last forty years. She had long dark hair braided with little bells and whatnot, and wore a dark, figure-camouflaging hooded sweatshirt over jeans and sandals. She squinted at me as though someone coming to the door was a very nutty idea. “Yeah?”
“Hi. My name is Robert Dollar and I work for Vista Magazine. I’m so sorry to bother you at a time like this but for some reason I couldn’t reach anyone by phone. Is Mrs. Walker here?”
She looked at me as though I had asked her whether fish flew. “There isn’t any Mrs. Walker. You ought to know that. My grandmother died about five years ago.”
“I’m so sorry-of course.” I hadn’t expected to deal with real folks, and although some of Fatback’s information was in a folder in my hand, I hadn’t found a chance to read most of it. “So you’re Mr. Walker’s granddaughter. Do you think I could have a few moments of your time? We’re running…
well, it’s sort of a tribute to your grandfather, and I’d like to make certain I’ve got the details straight. These things are always hurried, because of course no one was prepared…”
For a moment the irritated look dropped from her face to be replaced by sadness. She was actually quite a pretty young woman, but with a sullenness about her that made her look less than bright. “No one. You got that right.” She shrugged. “Come in, I guess. Wait, shouldn’t you show me some identification?”
I have more identity cards than an international smuggler and I’ve learned to find the right one as nimbly as a stage magician. I popped it out, and she squinted then waved me inside. She led me to a large, open living room and flopped down on the couch without giving any indication of where I should sit. The other couch was too far away, so I perched on a hassock a few feet from her and tried to look journalistic. She didn’t offer me anything to drink-while she fetched it I would have cased the room as thoroughly as possible-so I did my best to examine the place while we talked. It was very clearly the living room of a man of ideas, or someone who wanted to be seen as one, anyway, with one wall of the primarily white room dominated by an immense book case. Most of what it held was books, but there were also a number of casually fabulous folk art items perched on the shelves. A few pictures hung on the walls, mostly black and white Ansel Adams prints of dramatic landscapes uncluttered by human figures. The couches had sheepskins draped on them and nice examples of Mesoamerican pottery sat on many of the surfaces. The whole thing looked expensively tasteful but also a trifle neglected-I thought I could see dust on some of the pieces.
I pulled out Fatback’s report and stole a second to glance over it. There it was at the top of Walker’s bio, what I should already have known-widowed, wife was named Molly. And the granddaughter was…
“You must be Posie, right?”
She nodded. “Like the flower.”
Looking up from the bio, my eye was caught by an impressively large Mayan calendar in baked red clay that hung on the chimney behind the young woman. “That’s a lovely piece,” I said. “Is it genuine?”
She squinted at it, then shrugged; I was beginning to think she normally wore some kind of lenses. “I don’t know. Grandma and Grandpa used to bring stuff back from all kinds of places. I think that’s from Mexico or something.”
Laboriously, I turned the questioning from things Posie didn’t know much about to things Posie apparently knew nothing about at all-for instance, the reason her grandfather had killed himself. Not that I asked her outright.
“Such a shock to the whole community.” I shook my head. “Your grandfather was so admired. He seemed like a man who had so much to live for.” I lowered my voice to a respectful half-whisper. “I don’t mean to pry-and this certainly won’t go in the article-but was he ill?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But he never told us stuff like that, anyway.”
“Did he have any other confidantes?”
“Other confidence?”
I wanted to groan but stood up instead. I began to examine the bookshelves, discreetly (or at least I hoped so) photographing them with my phone. “No, confidantes-people he talked to. Close friends, colleagues. A priest…?”
“Priest!” She laughed sourly. “That’s pretty funny. Grandpa hated religion. Thought it was all a bunch of shit to trick people out of their money.”
I nodded. “Well, obviously it wouldn’t be a priest then, but still, he must have had friends. Your grandfather was a very beloved man. Did he have anybody to share…difficult decisions with?” I was all but asking her who else I could talk to, but she was very slow on the uptake. I finally figured it out, though-the girl wasn’t necessarily stupid, she was just stoned. As I passed her I got a distinct whiff of weed off her sweatshirt and hair.
“Not really. He had his old friends from HT, I guess.”
“HT?”
I had bemused her again. “HoloTech? The company he, like, founded?”
“Yes, of course.” Homework, Dollar. “I just didn’t hear you clearly.”
“And there was that nice old African guy. I can’t remember his name.”
“African guy?”
“Yeah, some kind of doctor. He used to visit Grandpa and they’d sit around talking. I saw him here a couple of times. Really nice old dude. Talked like he was from England or something, but Grandpa told me he was from Africa.”
“Could you find out his name for me? He might…might have some unique insights to add to our article.”
She rolled her eyes and stretched. “Yeah, but I can’t do it now. Somebody’s coming over.” She looked up at the clock. “Should be here any minute.”
I took the cue. As I moved toward the door I pulled a card from my wallet. “Call me or email me if you remember the African gentleman’s name or anything else of interest, would you? You’ve been a great help.”
“Sure, totally,” she said. I’d heard less enthusiastic agreements, but offhand I couldn’t remember when.
When I left the house I opened a Zipper and stepped through to the Outside, but the clean-up crew had been very thorough and there was nothing left to see, not a single trace of Grasswax’s hideous demise or anything else useful. I stepped back into the real world and climbed into my car. It was almost time to begin my babysitting session with Clarence.
I hadn’t even gone two blocks before I noticed I was being followed. The tail was so obvious that I didn’t know whether to laugh or be really, really worried, because if they weren’t complete incompetents then they must have wanted me to see them, and if they wanted me to see them it was because they didn’t think I could do anything about it. Either way, I wasn’t going to roll over. I took my time going down University Avenue so I could check out the other vehicle. It was some kind of red low-rider with too much chrome and what looked like a scoop sticking out of the hood. I decided not even the archdemons of Hell were subtle enough to be that conspicuous, so instead of getting back on the freeway I took him over the bridge to Ravenswood, a neighborhood about as opposite Walker’s tree-lined Palo Alto as you could imagine. The Ravenswood Renaissance of the sixties was long over, and the people on the rich side of the freeway had gone back to the more familiar pastime of ignoring their eastern neighbors completely; and now poverty held sway again on the east side of Bayshore. It must have been particularly galling to the Ravenswood folks to look out and see Palo Alto’s proud skyline on one side and the shining towers of Mission Shores just to the north-a bit like being the one ugly cheerleader on the squad.
Our side has got a safe house in Ravenswood, a nondescript little place in an apartment complex off Bay Avenue. The key thing is, the parking lot has an electronic gate. I keyed the numbers and drove down into the garage, then quickly drove out the back exit onto the street and circled the building. The tail car, a chopped, flame-red Pontiac GTO, was still in the driveway, halted by the gate. He saw me coming and tried to back up but I blocked him with my car, then I just sat there waiting to see what he would do next. He confirmed his amateur status by jumping out of his ride and strutting up the ramp toward me, one hand behind him. He was young, skinny, and dressed like the hip-hoppiest ghetto star you ever saw-sideways baseball cap, big chains, waistline of his pants halfway down to his knees-but he was also as white as the guy on the Quaker Oats box.
“Whatchu doin’?” he demanded. “You blockin’ my car, man!”
I got out as he reached me. “Am I?”
He was clearly psyching himself up for something big and stupid: he bounced around on the balls of his feet like he had to pee, but his hand stayed behind his back. Up close I could see that he had one of those little chin beards (sparse and caterpillar-fuzzy) that always make me wonder if the guy just missed a patch.
“Don’t give me no shit!” he said, bouncing even higher in his outrage. “I been followin’ you!” And then, like a tired old stripper climbing from a cake, out came his piece, a 9mm. And to confirm the guy’s gangsta-wannabe
status he held it sideways as he pointed it at me-a recipe for inaccurate fire and a good chance of the shell stovepiping and jamming the pistol. I smiled despite myself as I spread my hands.
“Peace, dude. You got the gun, you’re the boss.”
“Yeah! You better recognize!” He was still bouncing, and I was a little worried he might accidentally squeeze the trigger and injure a bystander. “What were you doing at Posie’s house?”
The picture was suddenly clear. I wanted to wince. “You mean you followed me all the way over here just because I was parked in your girlfriend’s driveway? Scratch that, your girlfriend’s grandfather’s driveway?”
“Whatever! I’m the one asking the questions, motherfucker. And if you don’t want to get your ass capped, you better just answer ’em.”
“A little insecure, aren’t we?” I moved one of my hands in a gentle circle. “Look, I’m going to reach into my pocket and take out one of my business cards.”
“Super slow, dude.” He grimaced to show me how ready he was to start my ass-capping. I felt sorry for his parents, who had clearly spent a lot of money on his very nice orthodonture and would hate the way he was grinding his teeth together. I delicately lifted the card out of my breast pocket with thumb and forefinger and held it out to him. As he stepped forward to take it I let it slip my fingers and flutter to the ground. In the half second that he stood watching it, I took the gun out of his hand then gave him a sharp smack in the middle of the forehead with it, leaving a horseshoe-shaped red mark. He tottered back a couple of steps and then fell unceremoniously on his butt in the sloping driveway, his faced screwed up like he was going to cry.
