The Dirty Streets of Heaven bd-1

by Tad Williams

  “Okay. Thanks, kid.” I almost asked him why our bosses had set him to snoop on me, but I also knew it was a bad idea to show him my hand. Never give up anything for free. “Go back to bed.”

  “You sound like shit, Bobby.” He actually sounded concerned-an actor to the end. “I think you’re the one who needs to get some rest.”

  “Oh, yeah. Soon as I can find some quarters for the vibrating bed.”

  But I knew now that despite having to meet the scary soldier angel for breakfast at eight o’clock sharp (not an hour of the day I particularly enjoy even at the best of times) I wasn’t going to get a lot of sleep because there was too damn much to think about. The world I’d thought I knew was proving to be an even more dubious proposition than I’d figured, and I’d always thought of myself as a cynic. Plus, just to make my happiness complete, after breakfast I was going to be interrogated by the biggest powers on both sides of our permanent war-a great chance to make new enemies.

  I locked the minibar to force temptation to work harder, since I could no longer afford to get slaughterously drunk. The sound of that key turning in its tiny little lock seemed like one of the saddest sounds I’d ever heard.

  thirty-three

  the odor of violent subtext

  Seven minutes after eight in the morning is not my favorite time of day, and adding lukewarm scrambled eggs and the hard face of Karael only a cup of coffee and a grapefruit away didn’t do much to improve it.

  “Sit up, Angel Doloriel. This restaurant is full of creatures who spend their entire miserable existence looking for any sign of weakness on our side, and you’re slouching like a school child who forgot to bring in his homework.”

  My problem was that I had brought my homework to the summit conference, and it had kept me up half the night. The alternative had been to spend the wee hours of the morning cursing Fate and wondering what Caz was doing back with her ex, a monster who didn’t even have Hitler’s fondness for dogs. But I couldn’t tell that to the general, of course, so I just nodded. “Sorry. Up late. Working.”

  “This is your work, Angel Doloriel. In a little over twenty minutes you’re going to be in there with the big boys, and so far, I’m underwhelmed by your effort.” His mouth tightened into a very thin line. “There’s egg on your lapel.”

  I brushed it off and did my best to transfer the rest of it from plate to mouth more carefully as Karael explained again, for the third time since I’d stepped out of the elevator, what I was supposed to say and not say.

  “The report you sent about this Third Way nonsense does not officially exist, Advocate,” he explained again. “It’s being held back until after the conference is over. We don’t want to start something before we know all the facts.”

  “But why are we having a summit, then?” I noticed that thinning line again and wiped my mouth with my napkin. “Isn’t the Third Way exactly the sort of thing that should be…um…discussed with the Opposition?”

  The line quirked up on one end. “You think so? That this is all about getting to the truth? Son, if we always let actual truth turn into official truth this cold war of ours would have turned hot a long time ago. You remember Sodom and Gomorrah? Or at least heard of them? Well, just change the names to Rio or Berlin or Shanghai, imagine those burned to the ground tomorrow with millions of casualties just for starters, and you’ll have some idea of why you’re going to do what you’re told.”

  Ten minutes later, I was marched into the Ralston’s Elysium Ballroom, sometimes known as the Cloud Room because of the billowing, cloudy sky painted across the high ceiling. Packing his demon cohorts and angelic enemies into such a room must have amused Grand Duke Eligor to no end, and it was packed. A few hundred were grouped around the various tables, although most of their chairs had already been turned for a better view of the stage, where the main business would take place at a long table set with microphones. Other than Karael beside me, the main movers for both sides were already in place: Eremiel, our Heavenly expert on Hell, whose rawboned face and longish hair gave him the look of a nineteenth-century abolitionist preacher, very much in tune with the Gilded Age setting. The third of the important angels had to be Phanuel, the famous Angel of Exorcism, but by the standards of the Elysium Ballroom he was not very interesting to look at, just another Hollywood male lead in a sober suit.

  As expected, the Opposition was visually a bit more interesting. Once you could stop staring at the jellied mass of Prince Sitri you noticed Adramelech, one of the old, bad ones, who had done less than the rest to pass as human. From a distance he looked okay, just an old man in a black suit with a skin color that suggested lots of sunlamp time. Only when you got a little closer could you see that what covered his face looked less like skin and more like a mask of sandstone, yellow and granular. The only things that moved in that stony mask were the eyes, black and liquid as tar. Just seeing the stillness with which he waited for things to start made it clear how big this all was. Adramelech scared me. Badly.

  The last of the satanic negotiators was also the most ordinary looking, dressed in a sharp bespoke suit and wearing a pair of black-rimmed hipster glasses like an entertainment industry lawyer. This was Caym, another heavy hitter, president of the main Council of Hell and one of the smartest in the Opposition’s stable. What interested me, though, was that according to Fatback’s grapevine he was also Eligor’s mouthpiece, pushing the Grand Duke’s agenda in the deadly arena of infernal politics. I decided I needed to keep a close eye on him for clues to what Eligor had in mind.

  Many others were on the stage with them, the great and good (or nasty and bad) of both sides. Terentia and Chamuel, both part of the Ephorate that had grilled me in Heaven, were there in human form, as were many other angels and demons I didn’t immediately recognize.

  “Don’t gawk,” Karael said sharply into my ear. “I’m going up there now. There’s a seat for you in the second row with your name on it. Sit there, keep your mouth shut, and remember everything I told you.”

  As the Angel Militant climbed the steps to the stage, his back straight as the shortest distance between two points, I found the chair marked “Dollar” and slipped into it. Like a wedding between the Hatfields and McCoys the audience had been seated by affiliation, and I was happier than I’d been in a while to be surrounded by fellow employees of the Highest.

  With Karael in place the conference finally lurched into life. Adramelech-acting as chairman because we were on the Opposition’s home ground-gave the opening remarks, a blur of verbiage that managed to be both dryly politic and yet clearly menacing, with several comments about “temporarily putting aside our very real differences to address the mutual problem.” Eremiel spoke for our side and managed to be succinct and even occasionally funny, as when he referred to the chairman as the “honorable Adramelech-which must be the first time those words have been spoken together.” Even a couple of the Hellspawn grinned at that.

  And of course before they could depose anybody there were more speeches, about an hour-and-a-half’s worth. It seemed like everybody who’d ever been fitted for a halo or issued a pitchfork had to have their say. The delegates from Hell seemed to range along a continuum from the noisily nasty ones, who were like professional bigots, complaining about how really it was their side that was misunderstood and stigmatized, to your basic politburo thugs, the sort of bureaucrats who signed orders for torture and execution and then paused for a catered lunch before going back to work. Their basic stance on the entire Heaven/Hell conflict was “Lies, lies, all lies. We will bury you someday.”

  My side had its own version of this kind of crap, of course, but the range was more like militant Christian war hawks at one extreme, and gray little European Union bureaucrats at the other. Either way, by the time the preliminaries ended a whole lot of nothing had been said, but the massive ballroom stank with the odor of violent subtext. The only thing that had been made definitively clear was that neither side was taking the blame for the missing souls. Then th
e parade of witnesses began.

  I tried to stay focused-you never knew when some little slip would turn out to be important-but with pride of their hosting privileges, the other guys went first and called up a numbing stream of minor infernal bureaucrats to explain all the ways they had noticed something amiss without in any way conceding that they might have made an error and without giving away anything substantial about Hell’s internal procedures. In short, a snore-fest. No doubt following the official party line, most of Hell’s deponents hinted darkly that only the Highest, who liked to make His own rules, could pull off such a thing. The only one that really caught my attention was a scrawny under-devil who even in human form looked like he’d lose an arm-wrestling match to Olive Oyl. He said that some nameless archdemonic supervisor had assured him that the souls must be hidden in some Heavenly safe house right here on Earth, like high-value defectors, because other than Upstairs or Downstairs there was nowhere else to go.

  “The Tartarean Convention specifically states that no new territory can be opened without the consent of both Heaven and Hell,” he said piously. “And such a thing has never happened. I looked it up.”

  While a few of the audience on the other side of the ballroom chuckled at this wet-behind-the-horns simpleton, I sat forward in my chair. A puzzle piece that had been sitting prominently to the side of my unfinished mental jigsaw, a piece labeled “Why the feather?” suddenly seemed to have found its place. I snuck a look up at Eligor, who sat at the back of the stage with other infernal dignitaries, but his calm smirk was unchanged. Nevertheless, his friend Caym quickly ended the skinny demon’s testimony and sent him back to sit with his catcalling comrades. I wondered if Eligor was even now imagining how that gawky, talkative underling would look as demonic macrame, a la the late Grasswax.

  Soon it was Heaven’s turn to bore everyone in the room to death, although Sam’s testimony provided a few entertaining moments when he followed a bunch of Heaven’s least forthcoming pencil-pushers into the witness chair. Adramelech seemed interested in hearing what he had to say, but Caym just looked focused and blank, while Prince Sitri, who had barely spoken, continued his imitation of the world’s largest melted candle.

  “You were the first of your cohorts to receive the summons to the death scene of Edward Walker, were you not?” Adramelech asked Sam.

  “I certainly was,” Sam drawled.

  “Why didn’t you obey?”

  “Other than my documented allergy to work?” Sam paused to let the quiet laugh die away on both sides. “Because I was busy training a new recruit, and he was very eager to learn the ropes.” He nodded as if remembering a sunny day on the river when the fish were biting. “Yes, sir, these young fellows, they’re much more aggressive and impatient than we were. Wild young guys. I’d hate to be in the Opposition’s shoes when they get the reins in their hands…” He broke off as if he’d said too much, but his grin said, We’re having fun now, huh?

  Adramelech was not intimidated and certainly not amused. His wet black eyes were like puddles of tar on a beach. “Stick to the questions, little angel.” His voice was as dry as Thirst itself. “Did you answer the summons?”

  Sam smiled. “You know that I didn’t, Senator.” Adramelech was famously the president of the Great Senate of Demons, so this was a bit of a swipe, but the stony face didn’t show even the tiniest crack.

  “Then we need hear no more from this honorable gentleman,” said Caym, blinking and pushing his glasses back up his nose. “It’s almost noon and we have many more witnesses to depose. Unless his Honor objects…?”

  Adramelech made a noise of contained disgust and shook his head. Sam gave me a little thumbs-up as he passed me on his way out of the ballroom. I half wished he would have stayed, just so I could have seen at least one friendly face.

  They broke for lunch but I didn’t feel like eating. I went back to my room to see if it had been searched-it had, of course-and then got a soft drink from the machine before returning to the ballroom. The atmosphere seemed to have become even more tense, frustration setting in as both sides realized nothing was going to be accomplished, and nothing was going to be said that everyone didn’t already know.

  Shortly after the proceedings resumed I got my call to the stage. As I climbed the stairs I thought I was being stared at a little more intently than I had expected, and not just from the Opposition side of the room. I couldn’t help wondering whether the Heavenly bastard or bastards who had set Clarence on me might be watching me even now, in this very room.

  No matter where some handicappers may rank me, I’m not the dumbest guy ever to wear a halo. I did exactly what Karael had told me, answering the questions as truthfully as I could while staying resolutely clear of anything controversial. At least I did until Prince Sitri sideswiped me with a surprise inquiry. His soggy, wheezing voice made me want to clean each of the words thoroughly before I allowed them into my brain.

  “Isn’t it true that you’ve been following up on the case since the disappearance of Edward Walker, Mr. Dollar? That you have been investigating various unusual acquaintances of Mr. Walker’s?”

  Karael, bless him, bristled and half-rose from his chair. “What our people do and what our internal policies are in an unprecedented case like this are none of your business!”

  One of Sitri’s eyebrows rose like a caterpillar climbing a glob of suet. “Pardon me, but aren’t missing souls all of our business? Is that not the reason we are gathered here in this lovely hotel? Surely only someone with something to hide would object to my question?”

  I could see dozens of laptops and phones around the room suddenly being assaulted by ten times that many fingers (in most cases) as heavenly and infernal bureaucrats took note of this interesting little contretemps. The flurry of typing and texting brought home to me the strangeness of the whole conference in a way nothing else had. All these creatures of light and darkness, immortal and immensely powerful, with abilities humans could only guess at, and yet by mutual consent they were meeting here on Earth where they had to make do with the stumbling artifacts of mortal technology to do their jobs. It was like the UN deliberately holding their deliberations by candlelight in Dark Ages France.

  In Caym, Karael had an unexpected ally in trying to cut off this line of inquiry. The bespoke demon suggested that perhaps a Rules Committee meeting should be convened to decide on whether Sitri’s question was permissible under the agreed format. Many in the audience groaned at this time-wasting idea, but a few demanded it be implemented. A couple of spectators cried “cover-up!” from the infernal side of the room. The argument became general and rather shouty.

  Adramelech, perhaps because he was also playing Eligor’s game, or maybe just because he was a million years old and needed to piss, finally slammed his gavel hard against the tabletop and rasped for silence. In the ensuing hush he turned from side to side, stiff as a tortoise who had just woken from hibernation, then said, “We do not have time to do this today. We have only today for all the witnesses. These points can be resolved before the deliberative phase tomorrow, time permitting.” Which effectively closed off Prince Sitri’s question and anything like it. I saw no disappointment in the glittering eyes that peeped out of the prince’s drooping facial flesh, and I wondered if the whole thing had just been Sitri’s way of poking at his rival Eligor, like the little confrontation he had arranged between Caz, me, and the Horseman in the hotel bar the night before.

  I answered a few more procedural questions and was interested to note that nobody on either side seemed willing to bring up the strange coincidence of Grasswax getting snuffed at the same site only a few hours later. In fact, the whole subject of what really happened around the Walker disappearance seemed to be surrounded with an invisible fence like the kind people use to keep wayward dogs in the yard. But how did they get all those demons and angels fitted with shock collars? How could a supposed inquiry work so hard not to inquire? How high did this Third Way thing go-and did it reach that high
on both sides?

  After I was released from the stage, a number of other angels were interviewed about the souls who had disappeared after Edward Walker, but none of it gave me anything to work with or pushed the discussion forward much at all. Already any pretense of fact-finding had disappeared into partisan bickering. If you think watching Congress make laws is unappealing, you should see the sausage-factory of the eternal powers at work. Gosh, you would think they didn’t like each other or something.

  Five o’clock was approaching. I was hungry and depressed, two things that don’t usually go together for me, and I was just contemplating sneaking out as soon as Karael looked away for a moment, when Adramelech abruptly gaveled the whole thing to a close.

  “We will resume tomorrow morning,” he said, his words like wind over dry hills. “I suggest that all participants consider ways to make our next session more productive. I am not impressed with our progress today, nor does it make me hopeful of any real joint solution to our problem.”

  He walked from the stage as slowly as a tin toy overdue for a winding. Caym followed him while Sitri waited patiently for the hydraulic lifter that would move him into his cushioned golf cart. The prince’s pudgy fingers were tented on his chest, and to my untrained eye he looked rather pleased with his day’s work, which as far as I could tell seemed to have consisted of nothing more useful than taunting Eligor with hints about the Magian Society. Should I try to question Sitri again? I wasn’t kidding myself he would do me any favors, but I wondered how deep his rivalry with Eligor went. Enough that he might throw me a bone, if only to help bury the Grand Duke? But he was rolling toward the freight elevator, and I didn’t have the strength of will to chase him just now.

  I checked in with Sam but the ache of my buddy’s injuries hadn’t been improved by a long day in a ballroom chair. He was going to take a nap but promised to catch up with me later, so I went upstairs and called in a room service strike on my position, then took my coat and tie and shoes off. I’m not a suit person by nature, as you’ve probably guessed. When forced to wear one, I always have to fight the urge to find a jagged rock and rub it off me like an itchy old snakeskin.