Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel

by Richard Kadrey

  I pass the Tiffany pistol around and everyone tells Candy about what great taste she has. She loves it. Then I can’t stand waiting anymore.

  “I’m going on a ghost hunt in Kill City.”

  That gets people’s attention.

  “I’ve been looking for the 8 Ball for over a month. All it’s gotten me is tall tales that I have the shitty thing. Yesterday, the Dark Eternal told me that there’s a ghost hiding in Kill City that might know where the 8 Ball is, so I’m going in to check it out.”

  “Do you believe what they said?” asks Vidocq.

  “I have to go in and find out.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean do you trust them? You have not harassed the Dark Eternal the way you have other gangs, but what’s to stop you from doing so?”

  “If they think you’re coming for them, they might be sending you into a trap,” says Brigitte.

  “I don’t think so. The Dark Eternal and I have steered clear of each other for a while.”

  “Is it true that’s because they paid you a large sum of money?” asks Traven.

  “Yes. And because they mostly feed on crooks and the fools that come crawling to them and I don’t have a problem with that.”

  Traven nods. I don’t know if he exactly understands, but he seems to accept that I’m not a simple sellout. I’m a complicated sellout.

  “If the Dark Eternal wanted me gone, they could have sent an army. What I think is really going on is that Tykho knows the 8 Ball is valuable and that it gives whoever has it power, so she wants it. She’s sending me in with a Dark Eternal rep, a guy called Paul Delon. He’s the one with the map.”

  “Tell me about this Paul,” says Vidocq. “Do we really need him? Couldn’t we take his map and use it ourselves?”

  I shake my head.

  “First off, Paul isn’t human. Candy and Brigitte would recognize him. He’s another Trevor. An automaton built by a Tick-Tock Man named Atticus Rose.”

  “What?” says Candy. “The last two tried to kill you.”

  “And we killed them. There’s no choice here. Robby the Robot has the map in his head. Without him I could wander around the place for weeks. All I want is to find the 8 Ball and make sure Paul never even touches it. I think I can handle that, but having more people would help. Is anyone willing to come into Kill City with me?”

  Everyone except Kasabian raises their hands. I look over at him.

  “You like horror movies, Kas. Aren’t you interested in seeing a real-life House of Usher?”

  Kasabian shakes his head. He’s working over the food like he’s Muhammad Ali and the buffet is Sonny Liston.

  “I’ll leave it to you prima ballerinas. My dancing days are over,” he says, tapping his bad leg with his fork.

  “You’re missing all the fun.”

  “Bring me back a snow globe so I’ll know what it was like.”

  “I guess that just leaves us,” I say. “But I don’t want all of us. Allegra, I’d like you to stay behind.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re basically going to the moon and that means someone is going to get hurt. If that was you, none of us knows how to fix you. And if one of us gets hurt, everyone would feel better knowing that the best doctor is at the clinic and not one of the second stringers.”

  “He’s right, my dear,” says Vidocq. “I know it’s not what you want, but it’s the smart thing to do.”

  Allegra crosses her arms and leans back in her chair.

  “Fine. I’ll stay.”

  I say, “You can also keep an eye on that other thing we talked about.”

  She nods.

  “Yeah.”

  “If there are any problems with that, you can crash here with Kasabian.”

  Kasabian gestures with a chicken wing like he’s conducting a goddamn orchestra.

  “Sure,” he says around a mouthful of food. “It’ll be like a campout. We can set their bed on fire and roast hot dogs on a stick.”

  “What are we taking?” says Candy.

  “Guns and lunch. I don’t plan on window-shopping.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Lights,” says Brigitte.

  “And water. We’ll be in there for at least a few hours. Anyone with boots should wear them.”

  “You’re going to need a first-aid kit,” Allegra says. “I’ll put one together.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “I’ll bring potions,” says Vidocq. “And some of my other tools.”

  Vidocq might just be the best thief in L.A. That could come in handy.

  Father Traven says, “I’ve been doing more research. I believe I’ve found some runes that will keep the Qomrama’s magic in check. I can put them on a vessel for it if I knew how big it was.”

  Candy gets the fake 8 Ball from the coffee table and tosses it to him.

  “Thank you.”

  “There’s a couple of rules we’re going to live by. The first is that everybody sticks together no matter what. If you’re pee-shy, don’t come. Second rule is that no one gets more than ten feet away from anyone else. Last rule is if we run into locals or loons, let Paul do the talking.”

  “You’re telling us to keep our mouths shut? You?” says Candy.

  “We’ll meet at Bamboo House of Dolls at eight tonight.”

  “Why can’t you take everyone in through a shadow?” says Allegra.

  “I’ve never been inside Kill City. It’s not the kind of place I want to stroll into blind. We’ll go in together, one step at a time, everybody looking out for everybody else.”

  “Still, going in at night,” says Traven.

  “Less chance of being seen. And the place has been dead for years. There probably isn’t much light inside, so we’ll be carrying our own light night or day.”

  From over at his desk Kasabian says, “And what’s Plan B?”

  “Plan B?”

  “You know, for when Plan A goes wrong. No offense, but it took your fearless leader over there eleven years to find his way out of Hell. When Plan A goes tits up, what’s your backup plan for getting out of Kill City?”

  Everyone looks at me.

  “Thanks, Kas.”

  “Just being a team player, boss.”

  I TAKE A Toyota SUV off a parking lot on North Cahuenga. It’s brown, a few years old, and with a couple of dents in the fenders. A vehicle like this is practically invisible to the highway patrol. Yeah, I could take everyone through a shadow right to Kill City’s front door, but there’s no way I’m letting Delon in on that trick. I figure that anything he knows, Norris Quay will eventually know, and I’m not ready to share that secret with the richest prick in prick town. If things go sideways inside, I’ll drag everyone else out through the Room and leave Delon’s Tick-Tock ass behind.

  The others, including Delon, are waiting at Bamboo House of Dolls. Candy is waiting by the curb. When she sees me she calls inside and jumps in the shotgun seat. The others pile in the back. I head for the I-10 and turn west to the land of seashell art and crab salad. Santa Monica.

  Delon sits behind me, next to Vidocq.

  He leans forward and says, “So what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is we go in and we get out ASAP. And why are you asking me? You’re Mr. Insider. What’s your plan for getting us to the ghost?”

  “We’re going to have to deal with at least a couple of groups of crazies inside Kill City. Families and federacies.”

  “What’s the difference?” says Traven.

  “There are some intact old Sub Rosa families. Ones that have fallen so low they’re completely off the map. We’ll be meeting one of them when we get there. The Mangarms.”

  I say, “Do they know we’re coming?”

  “How would they?” says Delon.

  “So, your plan is that we walk into their house and ask for a handout?”

  Delon rustles a bag at his feet.

  “I have shiny stones and beads to trade. Barter is very big in Kill City
.”

  “Are you sure the Mangarms know anything useful?”

  “If they don’t they’ll know who we should talk to. In any case, they’re a good bunch to make nice with. They’re the family closest to the outside world, which keeps them vaguely civilized.”

  “And how many uncivilized families will we be meeting?” says Candy.

  “None if we get lucky. If we’re not, who knows?”

  “What are the federacies you spoke of? Are they the uncivilized groups?” says Vidocq.

  “Not necessarily, but they’re the ones most likely to be dangerous. They’re not families. More like dog packs. Random groups of down-and-out Sub Rosa, civilians, and Lurkers. The good thing is that they’re big on marking their territories, so if we keep our eyes open, we’ll be able to steer clear of them.”

  “Luck is for suckers,” I say. “Keeping us out of crazy country is your number one job. If we have to take the long way around, fine. I don’t want to cage-fight a bunch of head cases where I don’t know the exits.”

  “Understood,” says Delon. “I don’t want any close encounters either.”

  “But we might have to meet them,” says Traven.

  “It depends on where the ghost is hiding.”

  “That means we might have to.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anyone here who doesn’t have a gun?” I say.

  “I don’t,” says Traven.

  “Do you want one?”

  “No, thank you. You and Brigitte know guns. I’ll end up shooting myself in the foot.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I don’t, but I have my own defenses,” says Vidocq.

  Vidocq wears a custom greatcoat with dozens of pockets inside. Each pocket holds a potion he can toss like a mini-grenade at anything that needs its attitude adjusted.

  “Good. What about you, Paul?”

  He nods.

  “I’m fine.”

  Great. That means the fucker is armed. At least now everyone knows. The trick is going to be keeping him in front of us the whole time we’re inside.

  WHEN WE REACH Santa Monica I park the van in the back on the top floor of a shopping-center parking lot. Before we ditch it, I wipe down the steering wheel and the front driver-side door, something I don’t usually do. In the past, I just left the vehicle and walked away. But now that LAPD has a file on me, I don’t want to make it too easy for them to track me.

  We head for the beach with our bags and packs over our shoulders. Slung low on someone’s back is a kid-size vinyl Kekko Kamen pack, featuring a mostly naked female superhero in a red mask.

  “Thanks for being discreet,” I say.

  Candy smiles and keeps walking.

  “This is discreet. I turned off the red LEDs in her nipples. And speaking of discreet, you have so many gun bulges under that coat you look like the Elephant Man.”

  It’s just a few blocks to the beach. We stroll along past cafés and high-priced clubs with doormen in Hawaiian shirts, like just one more group of shitheel tourists.

  “What’s so special about this thing we’re looking for?” says Delon. “Tykho says it might be a weapon, but you don’t look like the kind of person who needs more weapons.”

  “You can never have too many weapons.”

  “It is a weapon, then?”

  “I didn’t say that.” I’m not sure how much this asshole knows, but I don’t want him knowing any more than he has to. “I don’t know exactly what it is, if you want to know the truth. All I know is that a very bad person wants it and that’s reason enough to keep it from her.”

  “What’s so bad about her?”

  “Well, she killed me once upon a time.”

  Delon stops walking for a second. He has to take a couple of big steps to catch up.

  “You’re not a vampire, are you?”

  Delon has to sidestep a gaggle of drunk bachelorettes pouring out of a limo, dragging a bewildered-looking soon-to-be bride into what’s probably the third club of the night.

  “Tykho said you were hard to figure out. Like whether you’re just making things up to keep a mysterious image. Did you really go to Hell?”

  “Many times.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s dark, full of monsters, and it smells bad. The upside is that people don’t ask too many questions.”

  Delon gives me a quick look and adjusts his shoulder bag.

  We reach the long street that runs parallel to the beach and he says, “There it is.”

  Of course, there it is. It’s pretty fucking hard to miss.

  For about ten minutes Kill City was the biggest shopping mall in the country. It was called Blue World Village back then and was supposed to demonstrate peace and harmony for all the countries on the planet through high-end retail consumption.

  The developers stole the basic layout from the Santa Monica Pier tourist trap—upscale vomit rides for the kiddies, shit restaurants, T-shirt and crap jewelry shops, a rip-off arcade—and tacked on a glitzy mall bigger than the biggest Vegas casino. It was a whole damned Smurf-size city. Hell, if the amusement park outside wasn’t enough, there was another smaller one inside.

  Then, in thirty head-cracking seconds, the place went from Blue World Village to Kill City when part of the roof collapsed, taking down a couple of walls and a hundred construction workers with it. Took down a lot of investors too. The only reason the great white whale is still standing is because of all the lawsuits. The builders claim force majeure, that an act of God, an earthquake, brought the place down. A lot of investors have a lot of detectives claiming that the builders were skimming money off the top by buying inferior construction materials and using unskilled labor. Even the state and the city are fighting over who should pay to knock the damn thing down. Then there’s the families of the dead, suing everyone in sight. The mall was such a mess that they never even found a lot of bodies. They just sort of vaporized under all the concrete and steel.

  If anywhere in L.A. is full of ghosts and feral shut-ins, it’s Kill City.

  The lights by the mall, even the security lights, burned out a long time ago. There’s a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence around the whole site. I take out the black blade and slice through the wire and we move inside. We stay on the concrete sidewalk around the mall. The amusement park is out on a wooden pier. Half a Ferris wheel and enough of a roller coaster left to make a nice nesting site for birds. But every Pacific storm loosens the pylons a little more. One good blow and the pier will go down, maybe taking the rest of Kill City with it. I checked the weather before we started out tonight. Clear, calm skies. Warm Indian-summer air. Just the weather for a little B&E.

  In a circular courtyard by the front doors is the sky-blue globe that gave the mall its name. If they reopen the place they might have to call it Bird Shit City. Most of the northern hemisphere is buried under the white stuff and South America isn’t looking so good. It’s like half the world is encased in a gull-crap ice age.

  The glass entrance doors are nothing but bent aluminum frames. We step through and into the pool of light on the floor. This mall lobby is pretty intact. The collapsed section is a football field’s length back. The stars shine down on the rubble of a dead indoor garden.

  The L.A. heat and wet ocean air have turned the inside of Kill City into a kind of hothouse. The air is warm and thick. Water drips from the ceiling. Green fungus grows on every surface where it can get a hold. The floor is slick with the stuff. Mold leopard-spots the walls and storefronts. In the center of the lobby is a fifty-foot Christmas tree. The outside lights glitter off enormous ornaments almost lost under a layer of furred fungus.

  Something crashes to the floor on the other side of the lobby, hitting hard enough to shake the Christmas tree. Candy and Father Traven have their flashlights out and shine them in the direction of the sound.

  A hundred feet away, an enormous helmet has crashed to the floor. The ceiling of the lobby is twelve stories high. A mannequin Santa
and reindeer, dusty chrome cherubs, and a shooting star dangle precariously on the few support wires that haven’t snapped yet.

  “Did anyone see it fall?”

  Heads shake and people mumble no or shrug.

  “An auspicious beginning,” says Vidocq.

  “One of the crazies might have dragged it here from another part of the mall and left it leaning against something,” says Delon. “They used to have a grand bazaar up here once every couple of months. It was supposed to be neutral ground during the market, but someone always violated it. With all the violence, eventually the market died. That’s when things really fell apart. The last vestiges of an organized society. Now when the crazies trade, the groups do it one-on-one and try to avoid each other the rest of the time. They’re about one inch from tribes of jungle headhunters.”

  I say, “We should get moving,” to Delon.

  He goes to one of the standing mall maps. It’s as tall as he is, upright and square, like one of Kubrick’s monoliths from 2001. Delon wipes fungus from the front of the map with his jacket sleeve.

  “I thought you knew the mall by heart,” says Traven.

  “I do,” says Delon. “I just want to make sure we’re oriented correctly.”

  Everyone gets out their flashlights and clusters around him, reading off the names of the expensive shops over his shoulder. Candy comes up to me and nods at the tree.

  “I told you it was Christmas. You should have given me my present.”

  “That’s not a Christmas tree. That’s Swamp Thing’s summer home.”

  She heads to where the others are standing. I pop the cylinder on the Colt to make sure it’s fully loaded. It is. I follow her over.

  “Got it,” says Paul. He points to a “You Are Here” arrow on the map. “I know where to go from here.”

  “Which way?” I say.

  He points off to the left.