The Dirty Streets of Heaven bd-1

by Tad Williams

  The envelope contained a note written on impossibly dainty, almost transparent paper in a finicky little hand that it was hard to feature as the product of Sitri’s immense, pudgy paws.

  “If you come down to the lobby bar at midnight you will learn something to your advantage,” it read. At the bottom was a single florid letter “S”.

  I wondered why he hadn’t just invited me to the Roosevelt Suite. It didn’t seem likely that Prince Jabba the Hutt and I would be able to have a surreptitious meeting in the crowded lobby, even after midnight, but on the other hand there’d be enough people around that it didn’t seem likely he was going to bump me off, either. I was already in the game and had pretty much bet my house, so I couldn’t afford to ignore the summons. I pulled on my coat, but not before putting on my shoulder holster and making sure that I had a round chambered in my new FN automatic. Nobody wants to be the guy they say, “He forgot to load his gun,” about while shaking their heads grimly.

  I didn’t encounter anything in the halls, but I heard enough weird sounds from behind doors to make me hope some local channel was showing slasher movies. The elevator was empty too, although I swear somebody had cranked up the air conditioning way beyond what was reasonable, and I had to suffer what felt like cold breath on the back of my neck all the way down to “L.” Signs and portents. Unfortunately, when you live in my world they’re as ubiquitous as advertising and even harder to sort through for truth.

  The lobby was still a busy place, with all kinds of folks from my side and not-my-side going in and out, grouped in chatty little bunches. Looking at a troop of obvious Hellspawn laughing and smoking outside the front door, I wondered how many crimes under investigation by Interpol could have been solved merely by listening in on their cheerful conversation.

  The bar was full but not crazy full. I stood for a moment in the doorway looking around for either Sitri or his bodyguards, but even with all the weird looking people in the room I didn’t see any as weird as the prince. Then, at the corner of my eye, something bright caught my attention.

  She was sitting at the bar by herself with her back to me, but even without the fall of pale gold hair down her shoulders and back, I would have known that slender shape anywhere, anytime. She wore a black skirt that showed her fine, pale legs and a red cashmere sweater that clung to her like a second skin, displaying the delicate bumps of her spine like a topo map in scarlet. Before I could get a chance to tell myself it might be someone else, fruitlessly denying the knowledge that was throbbing in every nerve of my Earthly body, she turned to the bartender, and I saw her face in silhouette. It was indeed the Countess of Cold Hands, her very own self, just as I had known from the first moment I spotted her. It was Caz, and she was all alone as if waiting for someone. As if waiting for me.

  thirty-two

  saddest sound i ever heard

  That was an intense couple of seconds, let me tell you. There she sat, staring at the mirror behind the bar, and it was like one of those movies where the single spotlight comes on and everything else goes dark: I couldn’t see anything but her. I had been smothering my feelings so strenuously for the last forty-eight hours or so that the intense wave of longing that rolled through me almost made my knees buckle. She was so beautiful. Her face was perfect.

  No, not quite, I realized; that kind of perfection only exists after someone’s used an airbrush on a photo, but Caz came very close. Her only flaw-and it didn’t seem like a flaw to me-was that her high-bridged, slender nose and her fine bones gave her a look of fragility, of something fierce that had known a cage, that knew it could be broken and feared that beyond all else.

  She looked young, but also like she might not age well. She looked like she could be damaged and probably would be. But still, my God, she was beautiful.

  And in fact she would never age, I suddenly realized. She would appear this way forever, or at least as long as it suited her. Casimira of the Cold Hands would never get any older than this. But that didn’t mean much to me anyway. Chances were good that, one way or another, I wasn’t going to get any older either.

  As I moved toward her she seemed to sense my presence, or at least that she was being watched. I wasn’t surprised-it seemed like I’d never stared at anything so intently in my short angelic life. I was so surprised to see her in the Ralston that for a moment I literally couldn’t think of what to say.

  She turned and her eyes went wide.

  “Hello, Caz,” I managed to say. Clever, huh? I’d like to see you have come up with something better under the circumstances.

  The look on her face seemed close to panic. “Bobby, what are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” I suddenly felt conspicuous, but if anyone in the bar was watching us they were being cagey about it. “Why didn’t you call me back?” Now that I stood in front of her I was more than a little angry, but that was only part of the storm that was blowing my emotions this way and that. For those who don’t know anything else, let me just tell you, it’s really weird to live in a human body. You can feel the hormones pumping, feel the hide bristling, skin stretching and shrinking, feel yourself being tugged by fight-or-flight impulses like the animal that you are. Or were. I wanted to grab her, kiss her, drag her to my room, but just as powerfully I wanted to shake her until tears came to those robin’s-egg-blue eyes, make her feel how much I was hurting. Yet another part of me was terrified that one of Eligor’s minions would spot her, and I’d have to decide between some kind of fatal standoff or else stand helplessly and watch them drag her back to the beast she had cheated, a creature that I already knew did not take losing well.

  “You can’t be here, Bobby!” She grabbed her drink and downed it and began fumbling in her purse for money to leave on the bar. “He’ll kill you!”

  “Who, Eligor?” I was confused. Why was she worried about me instead of herself? Everything seemed to have gone topsy-turvy. “No, this is a summit conference, there’s an official truce. I’ve been ordered to be here and the place is packed with angels. I’m in no danger at all.” Okay, not completely true, but I had bigger worries at the moment. Just seeing her again had me terrified that something might happen to her. Even if she’d lied to me, tricked me. Even if she didn’t care about me at all. “You’re the one who shouldn’t be here, Caz. Your ex owns this whole fucking hotel…” I was startled by something that flickered across her face-something like shame. “Wait,” I said. “You knew that already. You must have. Caz, what are you doing here?”

  “Oh, Bobby…” But she was looking over my shoulder now, and the shame was replaced by something else entirely.

  “Well, well, well!” said a voice I knew. It lifted the hairs on my neck, which were just starting to relax, right back up again. “Two of the most interesting people I know!”

  I spun. The Grand Duke was only a couple of yards away, leaning on the bar, dressed in his Kenneth Vald best, a linen suit and expensive moccasins that made him look like a rich colonial-which, in a sense, he was. Eligor wasn’t from here, but he definitely owned a lot of it.

  I wasn’t in any condition to play his game. I didn’t reply, but I didn’t reach for my gun, either. Once I found out he owned the place, I had decided there was a good chance I would bump into him. I had just hoped it would be somewhere I felt safer, like when I was sitting next to General Hard-Ass Karael, Scourge of All Hellspawn.

  “Oh, sorry, am I interrupting?” The Horseman was the very soul of graciousness, that blond lord of Hell, cheerful and charming. Now the people in the bar were definitely watching. Eligor swung a lot of weight and not just in San Judas. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot-you two already know each other.” His smile was cold and clean as a surgical blade. “I’m not surprised. You’re both very…enterprising.” He turned to Caz, whose face had gone dead as a doll’s. “But I’m afraid I really do have to interrupt. We have a meeting, Countess. People are waiting for us.” He didn’t beckon or even raise his hand, but she rose f
rom her bar stool and went to stand beside him, obedient as a dog. I met her eyes again, but there was nothing there for me, her expression so empty that I began to wonder if everything else I had seen on her face tonight and those other, more intimate times had just been more of her masks.

  “A pleasure to see you, Mr. Dollar, even briefly,” Eligor said. “I hope you’re enjoying your stay.”

  “It’s a very nice hotel.” I was determined not to spend the entire conversation in stunned silence. “But, honestly, Vald, some of the people you let in here…!”

  Again the smile, meaningless as the grin on a great white shark. “Ah, but the duty of a host is to find a way to accommodate every guest. That’s why I’m so happy to have the Countess back. She is very good at finding what people need and giving it to them.” He started to turn, then paused. “Please, don’t let me rush you off, Mr. Dollar. The lady and I have to go, but I hope you’ll stay and have a drink on me.” He looked up, made eye contact with the bartender. “I’m sure you have lots of old friends who’d love to find you here and catch up on old times.”

  He walked away then, graceful and self-assured as a cat, with Caz at his side. I half thought she might turn to look back at me but of course she didn’t.

  I sort of collapsed onto the stool Caz had occupied, because at the moment I didn’t trust my legs to carry me across the room. I had been shot in the heart without anybody even pointing a gun at me.

  The bartender came to take an order, but after the eye contact between him and his boss, I couldn’t imagine letting him pour me anything so I shook my head. I felt like someone was waving a big magnet around near my internal compass: I suddenly didn’t know where to go next, what to do. Why was Caz here? Why had she gone back to him? And why had Sitri wanted to send me down here, unless it was just to provoke his rival, the grand duke. Caz had told me she’d stolen the feather and that Grasswax had done something with it, so why would Eligor take her back? Did she have it all along and now had used it to buy her way back into safety? Or was the truth something worse? Had I been played like a sucker from the start?

  A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. “Fancy meeting you here,” said another voice I recognized and wished I didn’t. Just the thought of having to go through something like this now made me so tired I almost didn’t answer, but I forced myself to turn and face the unibrow and the nasty little eyes beneath it.

  “Howlingfell,” I said. “It’s so nice to see you that I’m even going to say please when I tell you to take your hand off me.”

  He smirked and stepped back. He was wearing a shiny new suit that made him look every inch the jumped-up punk he was. That didn’t mean he couldn’t kill me, of course. I know lots of people who were killed by punks. In fact, punks with a grudge are probably the most dangerous type to deal with. Give me a crazy-ass, violent drunk any day.

  “You look a little depressed, Dollar,” he said. “Found out your girlfriend went back to the guy with the power and the money, huh? Isn’t that too bad.”

  “Howly, do me a favor and fuck off, will you?” I stood. “I don’t need you, and since we’re under truce I can’t do anything useful to you, so why don’t you go back to pissing around the edge of your tiny little territory and leave everything else to the grown-ups?”

  His lip twitched back. He was in a mortal body, of course, but he still looked like his first impulse was to go for my throat with his teeth. “You think you’re something special, Dollar, but you’re not. You’re just dog shit to someone like Eligor.”

  “And that’s your job, huh? Cleaning up the shit? Nice resume-builder.”

  He stared at me. His eyes, which at first had looked brown, now caught the light and gleamed deep red like a Sangiovese Grosso. “You wait, you little snot,” he said, just quietly enough to make sure everyone in the bar was trying to hear. “As soon as this conference ends, you’re mine. I’m going to eat your liver. And even your fancy girlfriend will forget you. She probably already has.”

  It took every bit of self-control I had not to shove my fist right into his bushy-browed face. “Glad to hear you’re getting serious about your diet, Howly. But there’s no organ meat in the world with enough vitamins to wipe away all that ugly.”

  I thought he might jump me as I walked off, and I almost wouldn’t have minded. There’s a certain therapeutic value in getting bloody (as long as you make sure the other guy gets bloodier). But all Howlingfell did was let out a snarling breath that sounded like a lion imagining the day the keeper would forget to lock the cage door.

  By the time I got back to my room my phone was vibrating. All I really wanted to do was find out what would happen if I mixed all the little bottles left in the minibar together and downed the results, but out of long habit I dragged it out of my pocket to check the number, then answered.

  “George, what’s up?” I’d almost forgotten I’d called Fatback. After seeing Caz I barely cared.

  “Well, my fees, for one thing, if you keep leaving me these hurry-hurry-need-it-now messages.”

  “George my friend, after Porky and the one in Lord of the Flies, you are the funniest pig ever.”

  “I’m calling because you said you needed help.” He sounded hurt. Why is it that every time I feel like I’ve been gutshot by life, everybody else suddenly decides to get sensitive?

  “Sorry. Rough evening. Thanks for calling back. Find anything yet?”

  “I’m sending you specs on the Ralston. Yes, it’s another Vald Credit property. At least there are plenty of fire escapes.”

  “That’s good, because right about now I wouldn’t mind burning the place down.” I flicked through the files just to make sure they’d all arrived. Schematics, emergency information that looked like it had been lifted straight out of the San Judas FD main server, all kinds of goodies. “Seriously, great work, George. That’s just what I needed.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. D.” He sounded cheerful again. “Any time.” Sometimes George seemed almost pathetically grateful for any kindness. I guess when you spend your entire thinking life in the body of a Majestic Large Black boar hog you’re going to have a bit of an inferiority complex. But even though Fatback was a good guy, I didn’t want to be talking to him or anyone just then, I wanted to be drinking myself unconscious.

  “Anything else?” I prompted him. “About Leo, maybe?”

  “Nothing other than what you already know, Bobby. There was a big stink at the time, in your circles, when he died, if you know what I mean. Lot of scuttlebutt, loose talk, folks who thought he’d been bumped off for asking too many questions or knowing things he wasn’t supposed to know. But I can’t find anything new. Oh, but speaking of dead guys…?”

  I could almost hear the minibar calling to me-Oblivion, Doloriel, sweet oblivion-but I did my best to pretend patience. “Yeah?”

  “That Habari guy you asked about? The one with the what’s-it-called society?”

  I immediately became more focused. “Magians. Yeah? What do you mean, speaking of dead guys? Did he turn up in a morgue or something?”

  “In a manner of speaking. But not recently.”

  “Stop confusing me, George. I’m fucking exhausted.”

  To his credit, Fatback didn’t sound offended this time. “Well, it’s not the same guy, obviously, but how many times do you run across a name like that? And a reverend, too?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I found a guy who had the same name, first, middle, and last. And he was even a reverend. But he died seven years ago, almost eight, and he didn’t have anything to do with any Magian Society.” He gave me the details, which upset me considerably, because if I was going to figure out what all this new stuff meant I’d have to put off the drinking binge that had seemed like the only thing alluring enough to keep me alive until tomorrow.

  I thanked him again and then called Clarence the Boy Angel. Although by my standards it wasn’t particularly late, I obviously woke the kid up. I wondered if the little company spy had gone
to bed in his footie pajamas with his nice landlady reading him stories or something.

  “Bobby?” He groaned. “What time is it?”

  “Too late for you to be awake, obviously, so I’ll make it short.” If Sam was right I couldn’t trust him an inch, so I paused to figure out how best to phrase my question. “Look, when we went Upstairs and I had you look up all those names, did you only check the rolls of the living or whatever they call that stuff at Records?”

  “Do you mean did I check dead people?” He sounded a little more awake now and cranky. “Of course I did. And I told you, I couldn’t find anybody by any of those names except that one guy, Jose Patrillo.”

  Who was the ringer I’d put in to test him. So Habari was dead, but he wasn’t in Heaven’s records? What in the name of the Highest was going on around here? But just before I hung up, I thought of another question. “How far back did you look?”

  “You mean how long in the past?”

  “To see if any of them had died, yeah.”

  He snorted. “Well, considering you told me that you’d just seen the guy in the flesh, I only went back a little way. I think I checked the deaths for the last couple of years in case he’d passed fairly recently but had been misfiled.”

  So Fatback’s information was probably right, and the kid might even be telling the truth-about this, anyway. No matter what, though, things were getting very deep now, very deep indeed. “So you only went back maybe two years? If I told you somebody with that same name had died seven years ago right here in San Judas, that wouldn’t surprise you?”

  “Somebody dies every few seconds, and lots of people share names, Bobby.” It sounded like he was getting impatient with me. It made an interesting contrast. “No, that wouldn’t surprise me very much at all.”