by Tad Williams
So when I got woken up at the ComfortRest Inn at four in the morning with a client call, summoned to an accident scene on the freeway up near Mission Shores, I suspected I might hear from the Celestial City while I was Outside. And I did.
The client wasn’t anything unusual, a woman on her way to her job, driving all the way in from Morgan Hill. She’d fallen asleep at the wheel, drifted, hit the center divider, and flipped over. Luckily it had been early enough in the morning that the freeway was largely empty and no one else had been killed. Her guardian angel explained that the deceased was a nice, hard-working sort, a fifty-something grandmother whose defense wouldn’t provide much of a challenge, but I didn’t have long to enjoy that before the judge appeared in a glare of inscrutability and informed me that my superiors were requesting my presence in Heaven after we finished.
The last thing I wanted to do was face those five shiny, powerful beings across a table again, this time trying to explain why my idea of a low profile included shooting up somebody’s office, but I didn’t bother to tell that to the Principality who delivered the message. Firstly, it wouldn’t have done any good, and second, it might have spoiled poor Gloria Dubose’s chance at Heaven. I may be crazy, but I’m not a bastard. Not most of the time, anyway.
So I did my duty for God and Choir and then headed back toward the unevenly disinfected premises of the ComfortRest, but when I reached the motel I didn’t feel like trying to go back to sleep, and I certainly wasn’t in a hurry to visit my front office. As I’ve said before, Time is different in Heaven, so I didn’t think they’d care too much if I waited until night came around when I would sleep again. Until then, I’d just keep myself caffeinated and vertical. So I went and downed about four cups of dishwater-strength coffee at a 24-hour coffee shop and tried to decide what I was going to do next.
The more I thought about it the more I liked the Sollyhull Sisters’ advice about pretending to put Eligor’s whatever-it-might-be up for auction. I mean, it was a spectacularly stupid, spectacularly dangerous thing to do, but it wasn’t as if I had a lot of time to come up with something more subtle. My superiors were probably about to rip off my halo and drum me out of the corps, and a certain red-hot monstrosity with horns was out there somewhere looking for me-along with the rest of Eligor’s minions, probably-slowed only by the fact that I was moving around a lot and sleeping in motels. (It’s times like this when I wonder what the higher angels who organized all this were thinking when they gave us earthbound underlings bodies that needed to be fed and watered and rested just as if we were real people.)
So it seemed like I might as well poke things along. If I was going to wind up demoted (or worse) then I intended to go out like a crazy man, kicking and screaming and setting shit on fire all the way.
I parked downtown, not too far from Beeger Square. It was getting into the morning now, and I was beginning to think about a late breakfast to ease the headachy buzz of too much coffee, so I tried Sam but got no reply. On the off chance he was sitting in The Compasses and had turned his phone off, I called the bar phone. Chico said he hadn’t been in but that Monica had just walked in and wanted the phone. I didn’t even have a chance to react to that before she was in my ear.
“Don’t come in, Bobby.”
“Huh?” was what I replied, or something equally dazzling.
“If you were going to come to The Compasses, don’t,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to, but is this some weird way of saying you’re still pissed off at me?”
“How could anyone ever be pissed off at a sweetheart like you?” The sarcasm was so thick it actually made the phone heavy in my hand. “No, seriously, B, it’s weird around here. There are people lounging around outside the building, homeless folks, street crazies…”
“And this is new?”
“Shut up. I know the regulars, and these aren’t them. They’re watching the place-they take turns so it’s not too obvious. Someone’s definitely got an eye on The Compasses, so how much would you be willing to bet it’s not you they’re watching for?”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t touch that action. That’s why I wasn’t planning to come in anytime soon.” I sighed. Eligor must have found out that after the arrest I’d walked right out the back door of County. Was I going to be living on the run indefinitely? Permanently? Because you don’t outlast one of the Lords of Hell in a grudge-match.
“And there’s more,” she said. “We’ve had a couple of more no-show clients, if you know what I mean. Like your Walker guy.”
“Hang on-you mean here in San Judas?”
“One for Sanders, one for Jimmy the Table. I’ll send you some information about those clients when I can, but basically it was the same as with yours-everybody present except the guest of honor.”
I cursed silently. If there were already more vanishing souls just in San Judas that might mean more everywhere. It was beginning to look like an epidemic. “Thanks for the information, beautiful. I owe you.”
“More than you’ll ever know, Dollar. Dinner and drinks might pay back a little of it. Let me know when there’s a break in your schedule of being attacked.” She paused when she normally would have hung up, then added: “Be careful, Bobby. Really. This stuff is getting scary-weird.”
If the bad guys were keeping watch for me at The Compasses then obviously Beeger Square was out, but I still needed a corner somewhere in the middle of downtown, because that’s where Foxy the White-Nosed Reindeer had told me to ask for him. I headed back down Broadway until I got to Beech, where the pedestrian traffic was still thick, then popped over to Marshall, not far from the Kaiser Health tower. Only a couple of days to Carnival now and the decorations were all up, streetlights and traffic lights swathed in tinsel. They’d have finished erecting the stage and the reviewing stands in Beeger Square and hung the special colored lights, but God only knew when I’d get to see them.
I watched the nearest corner for a few minutes but nobody seemed to be lingering except the guy crouched against the base of the traffic light with the cardboard “HOMLESS NEED HELP GOD BLESS YOU” sign. I gave him twenty dollars to get something to eat and he thanked me and ambled off toward the coffee shop on the far corner. As soon as he was gone I took a breath, feeling increasingly stupid, and said, “Fox.”
Nothing happened. I tried again, ”Mister Fox” this time, and over the next few minutes even worked my way up to “Foxy Foxy,” but still without luck. I was about to give up, deciding I had been too tricky trying to summon him that way, that he really had meant I should ask for him like an ordinary street person, among people hanging around on corners, but I had one more idea and was determined to try it before packing it in. In a lull after the pedestrian green light emptied my corner, I opened a Zipper-just a small one-put my mouth against it, and whispered “Fox” into the timeless spaces of Outside.
“Dollar Man!” someone cried from just behind my right ear, startling me badly. I spun around, and there he was in all his pale glory, his baggy dark suit augmented by a truly ghastly knit scarf of alternating pink and black stripes. With his untanned skin and his continual prancing he looked like the sacrificial lamb the goth kids might send out first to distract the school bullies while the rest made a run for it. “You call for Foxy!” he said cheerfully. “Is it love, true love?”
Another group of pedestrians was assembling on the corner, waiting for the light to change, but none of them paid us any attention. I couldn’t tell whether that was angelic glamour protecting us or just the fact that downtown Jude has plenty of residents who looked and acted like Mr. Fox. Did I mention that we closed the state mental hospital a few years ago and threw most of the patients out into the streets?
“So you come to do business, Mr. Bob Dollar?” He spread his long white fingers. “You decide to sell, or you interested in some of Foxy Foxy’s other products? I have the best, all sizes, all smells, all the time!”
I really wanted to get this over with quickly: Every moment I s
pent standing on a downtown corner I felt like I had a big target painted on my back. Or maybe a price tag. “You said you had…buyers,” I said quietly. “For that…thing. I’ve decided I’d like to have a little auction. Do it all at once. Get my price and then get rid of it.”
“Ah.” Fox smiled broadly, showing some gold. He looked like a live-action anime character. “Getting a little hot in Bobby-town, yes? Is it, yes? Perhaps the grand duke’s moo-cow going clip-clop in your china shop?”
I smiled back, but it wasn’t a happy one. “Just tell me, can you arrange it?” So my pale new friend knew about the ghallu. He clearly knew a few things. Who was this guy? I couldn’t figure out if he was one of Hell’s banished-you run into them-or an undead hanger-on like the Sollyhulls, or something else equally weird that I just hadn’t heard of yet. “Can you?”
“Can do, flyboy!” he said cheerfully. He grinned like the host of one of those Japanese game shows where they make the contestants eat centipedes. “Can do! I’ll set it up, you bring the thing, and we’ll all swing, swing, swing.”
“Okay. But one more thing-no demons, got it? Nobody from Hell. I smell any horns, I walk.”
“Heard and obeyed, Dollar Bob!”
“Okay. When should I get hold of you again?” I turned sharply at a noise, but it had nothing to do with me-a car had almost run over a late-breaking pedestrian in the crosswalk, and the driver was now venting his rage through his open window.
“No need, my new friend,” Fox said cheerfully. “I’ll find you and let you know when the big meet and greet will be!”
“I’m not sure you’ll be able to find me that easy,” I began, but when I turned back to him there was no longer anybody on the corner with me except the homeless guy, who was just returning with a cinnamon bun and a cup of coffee, his sign tucked under his arm.
“Gotta go back to work,” he said as if apologizing.
“Did you see where that guy went? Pale-skinned Asian guy in a dumb-ass scarf?”
The man only shook his head. “No offense, man, but you weren’t talking to anyone when I got here…just yourself.”
I had a choice of errands to occupy me while I waited however long it would take for Fox to set up the auction. As I drove back to the motel I called Fatback and left a voicemail adding Foxy Foxy and Grand Duke Eligor to the list of things I wanted to know more about. I was giving George so much work I was going to need to top up his retainer out of my motel-shrunk bank account. I also left a message with my friend Orban the gunsmith telling him what I was going to need from him, then ducked into a drug store and bought myself more shaving stuff and toiletries because it looked like I was going to be staying in motels for a while, and I was beginning to get a little lackluster in the grooming department. I mean, if you died, you wouldn’t want a heavenly advocate who looked like he’d just tried to use his six months’ sobriety chip to buy a drink, would you?
The small stuff dealt with, I headed down toward Southport with the car windows open, hoping the bay air would blow a little life back into me. I only had until tonight to get more answers, then I’d have to go in and face my masters-and that was really what they were, weren’t they? I called them bosses or employers, but unless you’re in the mob or an army under fire your bosses can’t usually kill you when they get pissed at you, and no other bosses but mine and my opponents’ can have your soul jerked out of your body and sent to the deepest fiery pits to suffer for eternity. Unless you work for Walmart.
Anyway, I did my best to enjoy the cool but not too cool air, since I didn’t know when I might get to appreciate it again. I followed Charleston Road out to the little office park I’d already visited, the place where the Magian Society had rented their storefront. This time I had my breaking and entering tools in the trunk because I was going to toss the place, if there was anything left to toss.
As I pulled into the driveway of the parking lot for 4442 another car was pulling out, a clunky old sedan which might once have been pearly gray but now was scratched to shit and had a fine tracing of rust around all the trim. I looked at the driver as I passed, wondering if it might be my friend the grinder guy from Suite C, but the person who looked back at me was a middle-aged black man with a round face, gray hair, and-as soon as he saw me-a look of extreme shock on his face. I mean he pinned me immediately, like he’d just been looking at a picture of me. Habari. Had to be. His tires squealed as he pressed the pedal all the way to the floor, and the big old rusty boat fishtailed for a moment before it caught the road and roared away. His back seat was full of boxes-the guy even had rolled-up stuff hanging out the windows like some kind of fly-by-night carpet salesman.
I was caught in the narrow driveway and made the mistake of trying to make my U in a single turn, which meant I had to go up the high curb on one side of the driveway where I got stuck for a second. When I finally got all my wheels back on the level I took off after him as quickly as I could, but that big boat had more under the hood than I would have guessed: he was already a few hundred yards or so ahead of me, heading back up Charleston.
I won’t bore you with the details-you want a car chase, wait ’til they make a film out of my life. I almost caught up to him after about a quarter of a mile, but he was swerving all over the narrow road, and there were enough other cars nearby that I didn’t want to risk causing an accident. I almost caught him again on Rengstorff Avenue on the far side of Bayshore. I forced him over toward the other lane, then we hit a red light, and he was pinned by the cars in front of him. I was too, but he was in the far left lane, and the crazy bastard drove right over the center divider, leaving part of his muffler pipe on the ground, then disappeared back over the freeway toward the eastern side. Despite all the smoke and noise he was putting out, by the time the light changed and I could go after him, I couldn’t find a trace anywhere.
I drove back to the Magian Society and let myself in, but Habari had cleaned the place out. Nothing left but cut phone wires and electrical cords hanging out of the sockets. It was an empty cave now, just drywall, industrial carpeting and concrete-not even an insurance company calendar left on the walls.
I cursed myself up one side and down the other for waiting too long before coming back. I had let myself get caught up in everything else, although admittedly everything else included almost getting killed and being arrested by an SJPD S.W.A.T. team. But still, I shouldn’t have left it. I had only missed getting the slippery bastard by a few minutes. I ached to have him there with me in that deserted office so I could ask him a few pointed questions, but that wasn’t going to happen, was it?
I headed back toward the busier parts of town.
I was really missing The Compasses. Avoiding my favored hang-out would have been tough at the best of times, but for a guy who also had to move from motel to motel it was miserable. I was banned from most of my friends, my home, everything. I was angry that this had happened to me-furious-and, of course, I was scared, too, but also just plain bored. In fact, it was a bit like being in combat.
I picked my stop for the night early, a budget place near the Bayshore, then sat watching a preseason Giants game on the television and nursing a beer. Sam returned my call but said he had a client that was probably going to take him a while. I would even have been willing to spend an evening hanging around with Clarence, but Sam said the kid had gone home for the night. In a fit of ennui I even called him but he didn’t answer his phone. I wondered if the kid was having dinner with his adopted family, cozy and, for a little while, feeling almost human.
When my own phone rang a bit later and it was Alice sending me a client, I was as pleased by the news of someone else’s death as I’d just about ever been. Horrible, I know, but I’m being honest-I was that desperate for something to do besides watch a bunch of minor league players I didn’t know getting their brief shot at the bigs.
The victim turned out to be a kid from Stanford who’d fallen out of his dorm window, so I flashed one of my fake IDs at the Teller Gate guards a
nd drove onto the campus. The dormitory in question was at the western end of the school where the trees were thick and the hills leaned close overhead, which gave the spot kind of a Sleepy Hollow feel. I left my car in one of the lots and walked the rest of the way in, showing a press badge to anyone who seemed doubtful about my right to be there but otherwise trying not to be noticed. I did it well enough that by the time I reached the dormitory itself, an island of flashing lights in the middle of the darkness, I might as well have been invisible. I strolled past the outermost barricade of Stanford campus police vehicles, three regular cruisers, and several golf-carty things blocking the driveway. The house was festooned with bunting and hand-painted signs-apparently a Mardi Gras party had been the evening’s entertainment. I glanced briefly at the tent being erected over the body of the unfortunate student, then opened a Zipper and stepped Outside.
It was a relief to see the dead kid’s soul actually waiting there, dressed in a stained toga and tangled strings of shiny parade beads, probably looking pretty much as he had in life (although undoubtedly better than he did in death after falling head first off the roof of a four-story building onto pavement). He had one of those haircuts that always irritates me, one where the hair on either side has been brushed together in the middle like some kind of dolphin fin. It turns the wearer into a pinhead-not a good look for anyone.
“Brady Tillotson,” I said. “God loves you.”
“What is this shit?” he asked, glaring as though I might have engineered his fall, although by the smashed bottles lying near the now shrouded body I guessed his passing was more likely what would be called “misadventure,” which is legal shorthand for “death by stupid.”
“You’re dead, Brady. I’m sorry, but I’ll do my best to make this go smoothly for you. I’m Doloriel, your heavenly advocate.” I didn’t see his guardian angel yet, or the Opposition, so I gave him a quick rundown of what was going to happen.
