The Dirty Streets of Heaven bd-1

by Tad Williams

  I started back toward the Kingsport Plunge. As I patted my pocket to make sure the feather was undetectable, I discovered something else nestled there already-Howlingfell’s phone. It had got very wet, as I had too, but like me it was still functioning, so I rang the last number Howlingfell had called. Someone picked up but didn’t speak. Still, I was pretty sure I knew who was listening on the other end.

  “Guess what,” I said. “That whole ‘Mission Accomplished’ thing? A bit premature, as it turned out.” I looked up at the sky, which was beginning to cloud over, shrouding the moon. I was tired of being wet, so I walked a little faster. “But what I really wanted to tell you was that I do have the feather, and if you fuck with me or anyone I care about-anyone I care about, do you understand? — I’m going to use it as proof when I tell your Hell-buddies about the deals you’ve been making with Heaven. Is that clear? Oh, and tell the Countess that I’ll see her again. That’s a promise.”

  I didn’t wait to see if Eligor would respond, I just threw the phone as far as I could, then listened until I heard it hit and shatter somewhere in the shadows. I knew that what I’d said was true: I was going to find Caz. I was going to find her even if I had to go to Hell and yank her out of Eligor’s arms to do it. I was going to free her so that someday she could stand in front of me and at least tell me honestly how much of what we’d had was real. I wasn’t going to rest until I knew the answer.

  Clarence was sitting up when I got back to the pool, dabbing at his mouth with his sleeve. He’d obviously thrown up, but otherwise he didn’t look too bad. “What happened?”

  “To Sam? He got away when you went down, I’m afraid.”

  “No, what happened to me? What hit me?”

  “The ghallu must have had a reflex twitch. Got you with its tail. Knocked you silly.”

  Clarence squinted at the monster’s corpse, which was already beginning to turn into sludge, little rivers of gray and black trickling away into the cracks between the tiles. “That thing doesn’t have a tail.”

  “Its leg, then. Doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s see if your ride is still waiting. I’m too tired to walk all the way back home.”

  He asked for his dart gun, but I didn’t give it to him. He made a face at me like an angry third-grader. “You’d better start trusting me, Bobby. We’re on the same side.”

  “Trust you?” I laughed. “Kid, you tried to arrest my best friend! And you hacked my phone.”

  “It was nothing personal,” he protested. “I was doing my job.” He gave me a significant look. “I don’t have to tell them anything except what I learned about Sam and the Third Way. Everything else is your own business. Including your pal, the Countess.”

  It was friendly blackmail, but it was still blackmail. “Where did you come from, anyway, kid?” I asked him. “Where did they find a piece of work like you?”

  “Took me right out of Records because they knew you and Sam’d be too suspicious of anyone with a background more like yours.”

  “A competent background, you mean? Yeah, well, they definitely fooled me, I’ll admit it. But I’ll decide for myself whether we’re on the same side. You’re still on probation with me.”

  Clarence was outraged. “Probation? You’re the one who should have to prove yourself to me! You let Sam get away.”

  I tucked his needle gun into my pocket. “Yeah, kid, but you’re the one who got your skinny ass kicked by something I’d already killed.”

  thirty-nine

  the dirty streets of heaven

  One more nasty surprise awaited me. As Clarence and I made our way (in my case, my staggering, exhausted, stinking way) off the footbridge on the mainland side a car waited for us in the Garcia Park lot. But it wasn’t a Lincoln Continental or any other kind of old lady car, it was the ugliest, pimped-out red gangsta mobile imaginable.

  I’d seen it before.

  Garcia Windhover was wearing what I imagine was his idea of a stealth-mission suit-all black, including a do rag that made him look like L’il Wayne’s severely anemic nephew. The stealth aspect was undercut a bit by the immense words “FUCK ALLA Y’ALL!” written across the front of his baggy XXXL t-shirt in screaming white letters.

  “Mr. D!” He spread his arms exactly like he was welcoming me back from a tour of combat duty. Although in some ways it was true-in fact I felt like I’d been dropped out of an airplane without a parachute-G-Man was not exactly the person I would have hoped to find waiting for me when I got back on home soil. I ducked his enthusiastic bro-hug like a weary matador.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I turned to Clarence, who at least had the good grace to look sheepish. “Why is he here? How do you two even know each other?”

  “I told you, I knew where you were, where you went,” Clarence said. “Because I didn’t know what you were doing-I didn’t know whether you were in cahoots with Sam. And so…well, I was kind of checking up after you.”

  “Then he told me how he was your partner,” said Garcia with all the relish of a teenager confirming an urban legend he had heard from someone who had heard it from the guy it happened to. “So here I am, dude!”

  I glared at Clarence, who shrugged and couldn’t quite meet my eye.

  “I needed a ride,” he admitted. “I could tell something big was going down when you guys left the hotel, then I heard what had happened to the hotel on the television news.”

  “You called him for a ride?” I said quietly as Garcia opened all four car doors, even though there were only three of us. “Shit, Clarence, you’re the worst undercover agent ever.”

  “It takes about half an hour to get a cab up to Brittan Heights, Bobby. I was in a hurry, and he told me that he’d worked for you before.”

  “Totally,” said Garcia, brushing some loose popcorn kernels out of the back seat. “I can be your wheel man.”

  “No fucking way,” I said. “We are not ‘partners.’ I am not partners with you, Windhover, or you, Special Agent Treacherous Bastard.” I glared at Clarence.

  Garcia looked intrigued. “Can I have a code name too, Mr. D?”

  “Yes. ‘Idiot.’ And you may not call me ‘Mr. D.,’ either.”

  “Then what should I call you?”

  “Five minutes ago I would have said, ‘an ambulance.’” I dragged my weary bones into the back seat, then stretched out, dripping all over Garcia’s leather upholstery. My head was pressed uncomfortably against the door, but I didn’t care. “Now I just want to take three or four showers and sleep until August. So let’s go.”

  “We could be your ‘associates,’” Garcia said cheerfully. “That sounds more bad-ass anyway.”

  I groaned and closed my eyes and let the dizzy darkness climb back over me. I dimly felt the thump of Garcia backing over a concrete parking stop, the hydraulics in his stupid car setting the whole thing wobbling like a waterbed, then I surrendered to oblivion.

  I finally made it to The Compasses about eleven the next evening, limping and bruised and burned but finally clean and at least partially rested. I waved to Kool Filter who was puffing furiously and talking into his Bluetooth, then I trudged up the stairs.

  The place looked pretty good considering that the end facing the street had been reduced to rubble only a short time earlier. The floor had been swept, the worst damage hauled away or covered with plastic tarps, and Chico had a makeshift bar going, a big slab of one-and-a-quarter-inch plywood on trestles with boxes of booze stacked behind it. He had also salvaged enough chairs and tables from the wreckage that, if you squinted, it didn’t look all that different from an ordinary weekday night. Monica was sitting with Sweetheart, but she trotted over when she saw me and gave me a hug. The mere fact of her being kind and female was enough to make me mist up, but I didn’t want to mist up, and I certainly didn’t want to confuse Monica with all my weird emotions, so after just a few seconds I broke free. She let go only reluctantly.

  “When we heard about the Ralston we thought you were dead or worse!” s
he said. “I was so worried about you, Bobby. Where’s Sam? Is he okay?”

  Obviously the real news had not got out yet-Clarence had actually kept his word. I wondered how hard my bosses were going to try to hush everything up. “He’s okay, yeah. But I think he may be taking a long leave of absence.”

  While Monica and Sweetheart pondered this, I asked Chico for one of his pricier iced vodkas and some orange juice-in two separate glasses; discovering how out of shape I was had made me consider adopting a healthier lifestyle. Drinking the orange juice separately seemed like it might fit the bill.

  For about an hour I chatted amiably (and in large part untruthfully) with the Whole Sick Choir in ones and twos, but Monica and the rest could see I mostly wanted to be on my own in a room full of people, and so they didn’t stay long at my table. We’ve all been there, all had something go so bad that it clung to your mind for weeks. That’s one of the best things about The Compasses-everybody gets it. Besides, I knew I’d have to go to Mecca the next morning and make my official report, and since I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say, I didn’t want to box myself in too much now-a lot of people were going to be looking over my version of what went down at the Ralston and afterward. And of course, my bosses must already have been wondering if I’d been contaminated by my friendship with Sam-which was, of course, quite true. I’d let him go, hadn’t I?

  While everybody else talked and laughed, I sat and rehearsed a few possibilities of how I could play it with my bosses. I was feeling flimsy and weightless, but not in an entirely bad way. Like a feather, maybe. Like the invisible feather I’d been carrying with me without even knowing it, and which I still carried. It was strange to think I was sitting here surrounded by the old familiar while I had something in my pocket that could blow everything familiar sky high. I had to hope that Heaven really was Heaven, or at least a good copy, because otherwise I knew way too much about too many things to be left walking around.

  Thoughts like these kept swirling round and round until at last I gave up thinking for the evening. You can overthink until you get paralyzed. I’d decided I’d come up with some useful half-truth for the bosses, and then I’d hang onto those half-truths no matter what anyone said. At least I’d find out once and for all if anyone can lie to Heaven.

  It wasn’t that different from what I’d been doing for years, anyway, I told myself-just a more straightforward approach to deception. Another day at the office, really. The streets of Heaven might be paved with bullshit and paperwork, but I’d been walking those dirty streets for a good long time now. I felt pretty sure I knew what to say and what not to say. After that, it would all be in His hands.

  Eventually Young Elvis started a stupid discussion about the hotel fire, yammering on and on about how he was certain it was one of the demon-lords trying to off a rival (which was partly true, but his list of suspects had no relationship to the real events). I stopped listening when Walter Sanders suggested that Young Elvis had blown up the building himself because they wouldn’t let him into the conference.

  Mostly I just watched. Mostly I just waited for Sam to walk in, even though I knew he wouldn’t. And I thought about Caz, of course. I thought about Caz a lot. Thinking about someone you can’t have is a special kind of Hell you can summon without drawing a single pentagram.

  It was a bit after midnight when Clarence entered. No Garcia Windhover tagging along this time, all praises to the Highest. The kid said hello to Monica and the others, hesitated, then got himself a beer and slid into the chair across from me.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Why did you do it, Junior? Really?”

  He looked surprised. “Because I had to, Bobby. They chose me, and it was my job. I’m…I’m sorry about Sam.”

  “Yeah. I am too. So now what? Back to Cloud Nine to get a medal pinned on your robe? Did you finally earn your wings?”

  “Actually, I think I’d like to stay here. I mean, I like this job. The real job, not…not what they sent me here to do.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe that. “Sam said you made up all that bullshit you kept asking him about. All that ‘Why are we here, what’s really going on?’ Pretending to doubt the status quo.”

  A strange look flitted across his face. “Yeah. Made it all up to see if I could shake something loose. Why? Don’t you ever ask those kind of questions anymore, Bobby?”

  I tried to hate him, but I couldn’t. He was just an eager young officer trying to do his job. Just another righteous angel of the Lord. “I told you once, kid, I only ask questions I can hope to get answered.”

  He nodded. “Sensible. Keep your sights set low. That way you won’t get into trouble.”

  Now it was my turn to give him the strange look. Was the kid trying to get me to say something incriminating, or was he warning me not to? Or was something else going on with him-something more complicated?

  No. Not biting. I pushed myself away from the table and stood up, which in my condition was harder than it sounds. I’d spent too much time already getting dragged around by questions like that, and I badly needed to sleep again. I needed other things, too, but sleep was the only one I was likely to get. Anyway, it had to beat sitting here listening to Jimmy the Table and Sweetheart laughing over the old story of the guy who fell through a skylight and died burglarizing a house and then tried to convince his heavenly advocate that he’d only been checking the neighborhood rooftops for endangered birds.

  Not that it wasn’t a good story.

  I nodded to Clarence and then headed to the door. Monica was looking the other way, which saved me having to say goodbye.

  My car was still in the parking lot at the Ralston Hotel, so I was walking, which suited my mood. It was a decent late-spring night, and a few folks were coming out of the bars on Main Street. I let myself drift with them, listening to the conversations, marveling at the bubble these mortals lived in, the things that went on all around them that they couldn’t and wouldn’t want to see. I could have walked back to my own apartment, but I hadn’t slept there in a long time. It would be cold, and the bed would need making, which made the whole thing seem like work when all I wanted was to take a long shower and collapse. Instead, I headed back for one last night at the motel where I’d made Garcia and Clarence drop me off after Shoreline Park. After all, I was getting used to motels.

  I limped up Jefferson as the clubbers and bar patrons gradually split off to find their cars or a bus stop, until I was the only person still walking. The apartment buildings on either side of the street had gone quiet, with lights on in less than half of the windows, the patterns of illumination as abstract as modernist paintings. I stopped in a corner bodega and bought myself a bottle of something to drink. The guy behind the counter barely looked up from the Punjabi soap opera on his little television.

  When I finally reached my room at the Mission Rancho Motor Lodge, I found I wasn’t that sleepy anymore. I dumped my coat, turned off my phone, turned on some music, and carried my drink out onto the balcony. Across the park the old mission was dark but for that single bulb over the door. Lights burned in some of the other motel rooms, but for once the guests were pretty quiet. A guy went by whistling on the street down below, walking an old dog who stopped every few steps to sniff something.

  After a day like I’d had, I decided against using a glass. Instead I drank my orange juice straight out of the bottle as I watched the bugs circle the little light in front of God’s first house in San Judas, and I kept company with all my ghosts, the old ones and the new.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: fbd-58bb14-9327-ef42-2b8b-1298-2be6-cf20df

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  Document creation date: 09.09.2012

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  Williams, Tad

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