Ballistic Kiss

by Richard Kadrey

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  Thivierge turns away. “You need to go now. All this talk about the old days is bringing back memories I’d rather not dwell on.”

  “I understand,” I say, trying to sound sympathetic. “But you’ll still go through your albums?”

  “I told you I would,” she says angrily. “If I find anything, I’ll send you a copy. Leave your address with Maggie on the way out. And that’s a hint about where you should be headed right now.”

  I wonder if Flicker was able to buy me more time.

  “Sure. But I’d appreciate it if you could do it fast. I’m kind of on a deadline.”

  She laughs again, and this time it’s the brittle one.

  “Aren’t we all?” she says. “Now get out of here. I’ll look for your smut this evening.”

  I go through the airlock fast, for both her sake and mine. I can’t feel my feet anymore, but at least I got my connection to Little Cairo.

  In the foyer, Maggie gives me some stationery so I can write the address of the abandoned nail salon that’s the front door to the flying saucer house.

  Going outside into the L.A. heat, I feel like my skin is going to crack like broken glass. It’s too bad about Thivierge and the ice queen act she’s been forced into. But she’s survived all these years. A tough old broad. I like her. In case someone did sabotage her all those years ago, when this is over, I’ll come back with Vidocq and we’ll put up some better protection around her haunted mansion. Let her live out the rest of her small, cold life in peace.

  It’s late at night and I can’t sleep, so I walk down to Hollywood Boulevard.

  Talking to Thivierge and thinking about the Pussycat Theatre brought me back to Samael. Now that I have a tight connection to his lost angel I wonder if I should have started with her in the first place. But I’m pretty good at getting things backward. And, anyway, before Chris I had nowhere to start.

  What the hell is it about the Pussycat Theatre? Chris Stein partied there. His girlfriend Samantha partied there. And goddamn Zadkiel hung there too. What weird magnetism does the Pussycat possess?

  They hosed the old theater down, so now it’s a regular movie house playing the current crop of Hollywood crap. Nothing special about it at all anymore. Ninety-nine percent of its clientele and employees probably have no idea where they are. The place seems a lot more suited for an angel now, with dull new movies full of CG and easy morality. Angels eat that kind of stuff up. What would send the Opener of the Ways from Heaven to a classic seventies porn palace? Doc Kinski—the archangel Uriel—stayed on Earth, but he kept a low profile. But angels are a lot more like people than the Church or anyone in Heaven wants to admit. A lot of the same desires and hang-ups. Who says an angel escaping Uptown’s goody-goody hosannas wouldn’t want to walk on the wild side? I sure as hell would. You might be a crazy killer, but on this one thing, good for you, Zadkiel. Follow your dreams, even if they are to watch skin flicks 24/7.

  It all brings me back to my other question, whether Samael really wanted me to find his angel at all or if he’s playing some other dangerous game he doesn’t want to get involved with. Being him, he’s capable of doing both things at once. Did he really come to see me on his own or did Mr. Muninn send him with a whole other agenda in mind? They both want the war in Heaven over, but do they really believe a single angel can pull it off? I have serious doubts. Still, they might be getting desperate enough to try anything, because what do they have to lose?

  When I get sick of the boulevard, I turn onto North Cherokee Avenue, to the site of the Masque club. Like the Pussycat, its heyday was in the late seventies. In fact, the club was located in the Pussycat’s basement. I wish I could have seen it back in the day. Just about every punk band in L.A. played there. X. Germs. Alice Bag. The Screamers. The Weirdos.

  Who knows what kind of demented stuff went on in that musical dungeon when it was open? I’d kill to know. What was it Maria said Brendan Mullen told her? “If everyone knew where all the bodies were buried, no one would dance for fear of treading over some poor bastard’s face.”

  That’s what I feel like right now: a dead slob with people dancing on my face. I’m in the middle of something but can’t get a handle on any of it. Stein. The Stay Belows. Zadkiel. What the Lodge Within the Lodge really wants. Janet. Candy. How does it all fit together?

  The second time an LAPD cruiser rolls by to check on me, I head home. The last thing I need right now is cop trouble.

  I wake up groggy after a night spent dreaming about William Blake’s Great Red Dragon doing coke off Farrah Fawcett’s ass in a Gothic mansion hidden under the Pussycat.

  Yesterday’s conversation with Thivierge has left me with a hundred more questions, but there’s no way I’m going back to Ice Station Zebra for another chat. The smartest thing to do is talk to someone else who was there all those years ago. Someone who can confirm Thivierge’s story about Stein’s going visionary on everyone.

  I dial Danny Gentry’s number and the phone rings a few times before going to voicemail. But when I try to leave a message, a damn computer tells me that his mailbox is full. I wouldn’t have guessed a guy like Gentry had that many friends. Or maybe he’s just ducking creditors. I make sure to have money in my pocket when I ride the Hog to the Kiernan Arms.

  I buzz his apartment on the building’s Fort Knox front gate directory. No answer. After a couple of more long tries, I give up and go into the lobby through a shadow. I check his mailbox. It’s stuffed full and there’s a notice saying that he has to pick his letters up from the post office since it’s too full for the mail carrier to fit anything. On the off chance something funny is going on and Gentry isn’t just sleeping one off, I get out the Colt and go up the stairs to the fourth floor.

  I knock on his door hard. Then harder. I twist the doorknob. It’s locked. Then I knock fucking hard. Nothing.

  Gentry’s neighbor is still blasting the same teeth-grating country pop he was playing last time I was here. When the frowning dumbass sticks his head into the hall to complain about the noise I stick the Colt in his face.

  “Play Taylor Swift one more time, motherfucker.”

  He turtles his head back into his apartment and the music stops.

  I’m fed up with the whole situation. Technically, I could go into Gentry’s place through a shadow, but kicking his door in is much more satisfying.

  I keep the Colt up as I go through his place, room by room. I finally find him exactly where I left him last time—in a chair by the window, his Marlboros on a little table next to him. Only Danny isn’t smoking. Danny is dead.

  Whoever killed him has a sick sense of humor. Gentry’s head is tilted back so far, another inch or two would have snapped his neck. But it wasn’t the neck that killed him. Someone took that stupid plastic Academy Award that Stein gave him a thousand years ago and shoved it all the way down his throat. The poor fucker must have choked to death staring right up into the eyes of his killer.

  I look around the room for anything that might give me a clue to who might have done it. But who am I kidding? I’m not a real detective. Maybe if the killer dropped an eight-by-ten and their Social Security card I could figure things out, but the room looks just how I remember it, and Gentry’s door was locked.

  When I look down the hall again, there’s a small mob of the Kiernan’s ragged tenants in the doorway staring at me.

  “That’s him with the gun,” yells the country-pop dumbass. “Someone call the cops.”

  I give the place one more quick look over, and as one brave jackass advances on me with a baseball bat, I step through a shadow and come out near the bike.

  I’m sorry, Danny. You had a tough life and a worse death. If I can find out who did that to you, I promise I’ll make them cry.

  Then I have a really bad thought.

  I get on the Hog and blast across town to Chanchala Abodes.

  I don’t bother knocking this time. I just get out the Colt and check the
front door. It’s unlocked.

  The front reception area looks the same as when I was here last. But the door to Chanchala’s office is open. Someone as precise as her doesn’t get sloppy like that, so I level the pistol in front of me and go in.

  The spare Japanese-style room is mostly the way I remember it, except for the long trail of blood spatter on one wall.

  Chanchala’s body is faceup on the floor, and aside from the slash of red on the wall, it looks like every drop of her blood has soaked into the carpet. I put the Colt away and kneel down. Her throat is slit in a single, precise cut that goes from ear to ear. But that wasn’t enough for whoever killed her. Like with Danny Gentry, they had to add a little flourish to make the murder just a bit more awful. They filled her mouth with sand from the miniature Zen garden and stuck in the tiny rake by the handle so it sticks up like a flower on her grave.

  Someone is definitely trying to cover their tracks, but they’re also having fun doing it.

  There’s nothing I can do for Chanchala, so I get on the bike and head for Benedict Canyon as fast as I can.

  I leave the bike a hundred yards or so down the hill and sprint the rest of the way to Lisa Thivierge’s spook house. I know I’m too late the moment I see the place.

  The front door is wide open and when I stick my head into the foyer, it must be over eighty degrees inside. Someone has turned off the air conditioner and cranked the heat up all the way.

  I run to Thivierge’s airlock garden room. Along the way, I trip over Maggie’s body. She has a knife in her back. There aren’t any extra flourishes to her murder, so she wasn’t the target. Just someone in the way.

  When I open the door to the garden room, the first thing that hits me is the stink. It’s like an old slaughterhouse that closed shop with meat on the hooks and blood in the sluices.

  Thivierge’s body isn’t hard to find. She’s still in her wheelchair, only now her arms and legs are tied to it. There’s a space heater at her feet, tilted upward, blasting out a steady stream of scorching. Her underlying flesh is bright red, but over that is a crust of blackened skin. Her tongue hangs out and her eyes are gone. Burst sometime before or after she died. After, I hope. I’ve seen a lot of vicious torture Downtown, but not so much up here. Whoever is committing these murders looks like they’ll have a successful career in a Hellion welcome committee.

  It has to be Samantha. She’s what all this has been leading to. And I have to find her fast or I get the feeling more people are going to die.

  There’s nothing I can do for Thivierge or the others, but maybe I could stop Samantha if I knew who the hell I was looking for. The only thing I can do now is find out everything I can about the mystery girl. And that starts with finding Thivierge’s photo albums. But the mansion is huge and I have no idea where to start looking.

  Not that I get the chance.

  When I start out of the garden room I hear people in the house. I get behind a pillar, hoping that Samantha might have come back to check on the carnage. No such luck.

  A gaggle of L.A.’s finest are coming in through the front door, pistols drawn. I don’t wait for them to find me. I jump through a shadow, get back on the Hog, and head back to Hollywood. More squad cars pass me as I go down the winding hills. I’m careful to obey every goddamn traffic law in existence all the way back to Hollywood.

  My first stop is Donut Universe, but Janet isn’t there, which is probably for the best. Right now, I don’t need a screaming argument with someone I care about. I just grab a fritter and some coffee and hunker down in the back of the place to think things over.

  All of my questions led me to Samantha. My guess is that she’s the one who killed Gentry, Chanchala, and Lisa Thivierge. That’s not a question. What I can’t understand is how did a sixtysomething rich lady find out? And where did she get the skills to murder in such bloodthirsty ways? I know she had the money to hire a hit man to do it, but they’re not exactly on Yelp. And would a straightforward killer murder three people in such baroque ways?

  The murders look very personal. The killings took time and even a little skill. What the hell has Samantha been doing all these years that she’s become so good at that kind of slaughter? And if it was her, maybe I’m wrong about Zadkiel’s being involved. If Samantha is capable of these murders, she could have easily turned Stein into a Black Dahlia.

  I wonder if I can do location hoodoo on all the Samanthas in L.A. based on age and income and . . . who the hell am I kidding? That’s not what I’m good at. And I get the feeling if I ask Abbot he’ll laugh in my face and pull the trigger on his own murder squad. There will go all the Stay Belows in Little Cairo, along with how many civilians? No. I’ve got to work this out on my own, and do it fast. Too bad I don’t have a single idea on how.

  I shove the uneaten fritter and coffee out of the way and am about to leave when my phone goes off. I don’t recognize the number, then the digits begin to move and rearrange themselves. They spell out answer me jimmy.

  I thumb the phone on and say, “Who the hell is this?”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t get dull on me. You know who this is.”

  I instantly get a headache.

  “Hello, Samael. Look, I don’t have time for you or your angel rescue mission right now.”

  “But I have good news. The week I originally gave you? Father has agreed to hold off on waving the white flag for a few more days.”

  I sigh and say, “I honestly don’t care right now.”

  “I understand,” he says. “You’re guilty about all the mayhem you’ve instigated. Three dead already, and how many more to come?”

  I want to punch him, but I can’t reach him through the phone.

  I say, “How do you know about that? I thought you were busy losing a war.”

  “Ouch. Kitty has sharp claws.”

  “Unless you have something useful to say, I’m hanging up.”

  “In fact, I do have something you might want to know: if you’re heading back to your tacky little house to pout, don’t do it.”

  “Why not? I have nowhere else to go and there’s nothing else I can do.”

  “Don’t do it because there’s a surprise party waiting for you.”

  A cop car passes on the street. I watch it cruise by.

  “Is it the cops or an old woman named Samantha with a knife?”

  “Either would be fun, but it’s neither one of them. It’s your friends from the great beyond.”

  “Stay Belows?”

  “Quite a lot of them. I don’t think Flicker’s little bundle of light will scare this mob.”

  My gut tightens.

  “Is Janet safe?”

  Samael laughs.

  “What has that child ever done that strikes you as safe?”

  I don’t say anything for a minute, trying to gather my thoughts. I don’t have any grand theories anymore except for Samantha. And now I’m even more worried about Janet.

  “I know you know more than you’re telling me. Just answer one question. Are Gentry’s, Chanchala’s, and Thivierge’s murders connected to anything going on with the Zero Lodge?”

  Imagine my surprise when Samael begins to sing.

  “‘All things bright and beautiful, / All creatures great and small, / All things wise and wonderful, / The Lord God made them all.’”

  I keep listening, waiting for an explanation, but Samael goes silent. Now I’m both scared and pissed.

  I shout, “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Time is running out.”

  “I’m doing the best I can, man.”

  He says, “Look into your heart, Stark,” and hangs up.

  I look into my heart and all I can see is bourbon and me punching Samael in the balls.

  What does that stupid song mean? What’s supposed to be in my heart?

  I go over the lyrics a couple more times in my head.

  “All things bright and beautiful, / All creatures great and small, / All things wise and wonderful, / Th
e Lord God made them all.”

  Basically, it’s saying that God made everything and everything is just great.

  This thing is a damn Disney nightmare.

  God made everything and everything is great.

  Only . . . God didn’t make everything. The angels built most of the universe. Is that important?

  One more time with the lyrics.

  Fuck.

  I am finally and truly going to murder Samael. None of this makes sense. Him. His stupid song. Looking into my sodden heart. It’s all a waste of time. It’s all infuriating.

  And a little light goes on in my head.

  Everything Samael said, every bit of it, every stupid clue, is connected to pissing me off. And if this mess is connected, it means that everything else is connected too.

  Thank you, Samael, you smart-ass sage.

  I hope. But I don’t have time to worry about it for another hour.

  I take a bite of the fritter and get on the bike.

  Getting to Janet’s place through the afternoon traffic is slow and frustrating. I want to ditch the Hog and go to their place straight through a shadow. But I’ve already taken too many chances lately. I let Gentry’s neighbors see me shadow walk. Maybe the cops at Thivierge’s place. Pretty much everyone in the Lodge. As anxious as I am to get to Janet, I have to think things through better and not peg the dial at 100 all the time. They’re not going to listen if I show up at their apartment jabbering like an ape. I have to slow down and think. Janet isn’t going to like what I have to say, so I have to go in the right way.

  When I get to their place I take a breath before pressing the buzzer.

  Janet’s voice comes through the door speaker a moment later.

  “Hello?”

  “Janet, it’s Stark. I know you don’t want to see me right now, but please listen. I think you’re in danger. Let me explain. After that, if you don’t want to see me, I’m gone for good.”

  They don’t say anything, but the lock buzzes and I go in.

  The door is open when I get to their apartment. Janet stands all the way across the room scowling and with their arms folded. Not a promising beginning.