Abandon All Hope

by Dick Denny

  I tossed the camera to Gretchen because honestly, she was a way better shutterbug than I would ever be. Her photo composition made shots of affairs almost seem like art. Not that anyone would accuse me of understanding art. Oddly, her photography had gotten a lot better since the events with her Mom.

  She dried and combed her hair as I brushed my teeth then I got the fuck out of her way in terms of ownership of the bathroom.

  I left a note for Agnes in case we didn’t make it back before the world’s greatest assistant arrived for work on Monday.

  Gretchen took a styrofoam cup and filled it with the rest of the coffee. I respected that she took it black. In a way, it was as indicative as how low maintenance she was. In fact, even though Bruce Campbell had warned me I could screw up with my soulmate, it was really Gretchen’s accommodating nature that made us work.

  Who else would put up with me?

  We headed out and took the stairs instead of the suspect elevator. Megatron had moved into one of the empty offices on my floor, but we weren’t going there yet. Job or no, Sunday was for brunch with Yuri and Mary Jo. Mary Jo understood my proclivity for “non-fancy” food so she chose the brunch places with me in mind.

  Gretchen’s styrofoam cup of coffee was only enough to get her to her next cup of coffee. The restaurant was five blocks away so we walked.

  “What’s this place called?” I asked.

  Gretchen sipped her coffee and looked at her phone. “The Red Door Knob.”

  “Fuck.”

  She laughed at that reaction but I dunno what else she could have expected from me.

  “This place Old Person Eclectic or Hipster Bullshit?”

  She laughed again. “I dunno, didn’t ask.”

  “Goddamnit,” I muttered as we stopped for a bus to drive by.

  “You look hungover.” She smiled up at me as she clutched my arm.

  “I’m not as young as I used to be. Can’t drink like I’m twenty-five anymore.” They say confession is good for the soul but that’s bullshit. Or at least that’s how it felt then.

  Her laugh didn’t help things.

  Where my eating could be defined as picky, Yuri was a goddamned garbage disposal. His idea of edible was synonymous with able to chew without breaking teeth for the most part. Mary Jo seemed to be a fan of fancy for fancy’s sake in terms of brunch. The first we’d attended I couldn’t even tell you what was on the menu; I didn’t even recognize the language. I didn’t have a lot of hope for The Red Door Knob.

  I didn’t get hopeful when I saw the place. It looked like it was designed to resemble some cafe in France where Hemingway would have written the more depressing bits of The Sun Also Rises. The owners wanted it to feel so Parisian that no French person would ever be caught dead there. Luckily the weather was warm enough that Yuri and Mary Jo had taken a table outside. That would make it easier to throw myself in front of a bus if the waiter offered me kale-infused water or quinoa anything.

  Mary Jo hugged me low enough around the waist she pointedly didn’t know if I had pistols under my arms. Yuri lifted Gretchen off the ground as he hugged her.

  We sat, Yuri and I with our backs against the wall and the girls across from us. I picked up the hard-cover menu and saw it had easily eight pages consisting of a card stock that had a higher thread count than my towel.

  Mary Jo laughed. “Page three, Nick, halfway down.”

  I looked skeptically and then my eyes went wide. “Holy shit.” I didn’t believe it so I read it again. Savory smoked bacon waffle with honey cinnamon butter and hot syrup. My eyes were wide as I looked at Mary Jo.

  “Oh, ye of little faith.” She laughed.

  I shut the menu, I didn’t need to look at it anymore. “Hey, even fucking Thomas wanted to poke his fingers in Christ’s holes, all right?”

  She laughed again. “Okay, forgiven.”

  I didn’t wait a lot of time when the waiter arrived. Gretchen ordered eggs Benedict, a coffee, and a mimosa; Mary Jo ordered something I couldn’t pronounce and a Bloody Mary. Yuri ordered about three things off the menu; none of them I think were in English.

  I think the reasoning behind Sunday brunch was for Mary Jo to keep an eye on me and Gretchen. I think she worried about us. The mothering was a touch odd for us; neither of us had possessed award-winning moms. But in a way it was sweet. Their kids were gone in college and I was willing to bet that we were the target of empty nest syndrome. I’d always thought of Yuri as a cool uncle and Mary Jo as an overly protective aunt. But I was as shitty an uncle as I had been a son, so how would I know?

  I think after Jammer died Mary Jo was afraid I would flounder. I hoped that was the reasoning. Truth is I think Yuri felt guilty we’d left him out of the play that had cost us Jammer.

  What if are the two shittiest words in the English language.

  Gretchen smiled throughout, and no coffee could ever compare to that.

  Chapter Four

  Beating the Bushes

  “Lookin for Love in all the Wrong Places” - Covered by Me First and the Gimmie Gimmie’s

  We went back to the building and made our way to our floor. The offices of the office B-4 was no longer occupied by Cleveland Guthrie CPA. Cleveland had bolted from the country one night without a word to friends or family. As far as we knew he was holed up on some non-extradition beach living off a lot of other people’s money. I’d lucked out in that all he did was my taxes; he didn’t manage anything for me. Not that I really had much money to manage.

  Now the office space B-4 was occupied by Megan T. Meyer Cyber Solutions. She was basically doing the same work she was doing before. Cybersecurity consulting and network planning and whatever other buzzword phrases could be thrown at computers and the things people did with them nowadays.

  I rapped my knuckles on her powdered glass window and waited for her to come to the door. To my great disappointment, she answered the door in her idiotic geisha outfit, complete with cheap Chinese-made sword.

  I sighed. “Goddamnit…”

  “What?” Megatron asked with genuine confusion.

  “Why?” I shook my head.

  “Why what?” Her confusion had not abated.

  I gestured at the outfit. “Why are you the way you fucking are?”

  “Oh my god,” I heard Gretchen gasp. “I LOVE IT!” She rushed past me and wrapped Megatron up in a tight hug. The other side effect of Jammer’s death was Joy with an E-Y didn’t talk to us anymore. Apparently, it was just too hard for her. Gretchen had fought it, hard, but one person can’t hang on when the other is hell-bent on letting go. Jammer’s death had cost Gretchen both her mother and Joy. So the void of best girlfriend was filled by Megatron. It didn’t help that she was living in the same hall as us either. Proximity matters in relationships as much as it matters in non-gerrymandered census taking. So when Gretchen had told Megatron when they first met, “We are going to be the best of friends!” it turned out to be prophetic.

  Gretchen’s hug elicited a squeal from Megatron and a wish to commit suicide from me.

  “How was brunch?” Megatron asked with a giggle.

  “Oh, it was amazing. Mary Jo found a place that Nick even liked!” Gretchen laughed.

  Even though Megatron’s look resembled mock disbelief, I knew it was genuine. “Nick doesn’t like anything.”

  “I know!” Gretchen giggled. She looked up and down Megatron’s outfit. “I want this kimono.” I tried to imagine Gretchen in the kimono but I couldn’t separate just the kimono out of the outfit. I pictured Gretchen in the whole Megatron insanity. Somehow Gretchen made it appealing.

  “It was handcrafted in Singapore,” Megatron bragged.

  “So you’re saying it’s not Japanese?” I asked. My curiosity got me dirty looks from both ladies. “What?” Instead of addressing my question, the ladies chose to ignore me.

  “Mega,” Gretchen smiled, “we need a favor.”

  “Sure, Gretchen, what do you need?” Megatron was always helpful when Gretch
en did the asking. It was like pulling freaking teeth when I needed anything.

  “We need,” Gretchen said cautiously, “you to do some tugging on the Akashic Network.”

  Megatron’s eyes narrowed into the suspicious glare that she normally saved for me and graciously let Gretchen experience it. “You remember what happened last time I started tugging on that web?”

  Gretchen took both of Megatron’s hands in hers. “It’s important. It could help Switch.”

  It was honest, but that didn’t make it less of a low blow. It’s a card I’d have played, but I wasn’t sure Gretchen would have. But she did. Then again that’s all it took.

  Megatron stepped aside and let us in, shutting the door behind us. Whereas Gretchen and mine’s office could have been ripped from the set of The Maltese Falcon, with the exception of Agnes’s laptop anyway, Megatron’s was like something out of The Matrix. Two walls filled with various monitors displaying everything from reruns of Naruto to current stock trends for various global markets. Her leather swivel chair had controls for something on the arms, but for all I knew they might as well have controlled a spaceship.

  “Okay, for Switch,” Mega agreed. Yet instead of walking over to one of the various touchscreens or keyboards, she walked to a file cabinet. “What do you need to find?”

  “Baalberieth,” I told her flatly, I didn’t see a reason to sugar coat anything. Then again that could probably be a big problem with my general life philosophy.

  She pulled open a drawer and started pulling on a pair of gloves with wires running up the backs of each of her fingers and LED lights that I was positive were just there to look freaking weird. She then pulled out a VR headset that probably came in four sizes: small, normal, abnormal, and asshole. It doesn’t take a genius to guess which size Megatron Terabyte the Cyber Samurai chose to buy. She tugged her hair back and put the set on her hair, adjusting the head strap before connecting the chin strap. The straps were black and I could just imagine the chin strap coming away caked in white wannabe geisha makeup.

  She started waving her hands around like a professional community theater actress trying to preform a farcical pantomime of Tom Cruise’s performance in Minority Report. I wanted to scream but I managed to keep my trap shut and not make any grunting or growling animal sounds. It was the acting performance of a career. And the Oscar goes to….

  “Okay,” Megatron said as dramatically as anyone can say okay, “what do you need to know?”

  “Can you print us off a general rundown, and then anything current?” Maybe it was the asshole in me or the Wrath of God I was carrying around in my gut, but I wanted to smash that VR set and tie her to her crazy chair instead of watching her wave her arms like a high school drama club understudy.

  But I kept my shit together, and she kept waving her arms. “Oh,” she whispered, and wiggled her fingers like she was doing jazz hands. “Oh!”

  “Are you looking at VR-POV porn?” Gretchen asked in the most polite tone I could imagine.

  “Should we leave?” I butted in, not wanting to know if the answer was yes.

  “Nick, Gretchen, this…this is bad.”

  “Well,” I said more calmly than I felt, “it’s the fucking Demon of Murder.”

  “No, Nick.” She flicked a wrist and pics started flashing on one of the monitors. “Dr. Eric Travis…he’s still teaching.”

  “Doc Douchebag is dead.” I was speaking slowly but watching the monitor. I knew it because I was there when he gave himself to the fucking demon.

  She flicked her wrist again and an online announcement appeared on the screen. It was an advertisement for a lecture on Feminine Symbolism in Egyptian Iconography: Comparing and Contrasting Within The Modern Paradigm.

  I looked at the announcement and at the picture of the smiling, Rolf wannabe from The Sound of Music in a three-piece suit standing behind a lectern, hand raised pointing at something off-screen.

  “You’re telling me for the past six months, the Demon of Murder has been posing as a douchebag college professor?” I wasn’t asking anyone in particular, I just kinda felt like it needed to be said.

  “Well,” Gretchen offered, “this isn’t so bad.”

  “How is this not bad?” Megatron asked as she twirled her gloved fingers, probably scrolling through something. Hopefully scrolling through something, any other possibility I could think of was too horrible to contemplate.

  “Well,” Gretchen chewed her lower lip while looking for a bright side. “We know where he lives, where he works, where he’ll be the day after tomorrow.” She gestured to the notice still on the screen.

  “I don’t know if it helps,” Megatron said, unable to hide the concern in her voice. “I think someone else is looking for him, too.”

  “Well, that’s good too, right?” Gretchen grinned. “Enemy of my enemy?”

  “Who else is looking for this asshole, Mega?” I asked quietly. My focus was still on Baalberieth. The picture of Dr. Douchebag up on the monitor.

  “Uriel.”

  “What the fuck kind of parent names a kid Uriel?” I asked offhandedly, derisively. “Shit head have a surname?”

  I glanced at Gretchen and saw genuine concern on her face.

  “Nick,” Mega said slowly, “Uriel is an archangel.”

  That set on me a bit heavy. I’d dealt with three archangels so far in my life. Gabby, who brought us work that so far, the one job really, was more trouble than it’d been worth. Michael, who had shown up at Jammer’s wake. Michael had been cordial, but in the way that opponents could be courteous before a fight—the politeness of I respect you but am going to fuck you the fuck up courtesy. Then lastly there was Zadkiel. That had ended better than expected. I’d cut Zadkiel’s fucking head off.

  “Can you see why Uriel’s in town?” I silently hoped it was for some unrelated innocuous reason. Deep down I knew I wasn’t lucky enough for the reasoning to be He’s here for a bake sale!

  “I can’t see anything obvious,” Megatron confessed.

  “Why would Heaven double book this?” Gretchen asked.

  “What do you mean?” I glanced at her and saw her concern as she chewed her lip nervously.

  “Why would Gabrielle put us on this job,” Gretchen gestured to the picture of Dr. Douchebag on the screen, “if Uriel was already on this?”

  “It could be messed up corporate structure,” Megatron offered.

  “Huh?” Gretchen’s confusion was apparent in her Shakespearean repose.

  “Well,” Megatron offered as we heard her industrial-strength printer start to spit paper, “you know a corperation, or really any big organization. All the parts don’t necessarily talk to each other. I mean, did Gabrielle put you on this job or did someone put her to put you on this job? I mean, we don’t know if they work dependent or independent of each other.”

  We mulled that in the relative quiet except for the printer noises and computer fans.

  “Michael didn’t go after you at Jammer’s wake but I’m pretty sure Zadkiel would have.” Gretchen nodded in agreement to an argument Megatron hadn’t really made, but the supposition was there.

  “Gabrielle doesn’t want the Sword,” I agreed, “so you’re saying the Heavenly Choirs aren’t on the same sheet of music?”

  “Well, that makes sense with what Lucifer told us about why Zadkiel was coming after the Sword.” Gretchen was starting to sound more excited than she should have been with this kind of thing.

  “Yeah, but even without a band leader, these assholes have to talk to each other, right?” I mean, come on, Heaven couldn’t be as fucked up as the corporate world where asshats didn’t talk to each other except at meetings. How often would heaven have meetings? What’s time matter to immortals?

  Then it dawned on me what I needed to do, even if I didn’t want to, really didn’t want to. “Fuck.”

  Megatron started pulling off her idiotic VR rig and Gretchen looked to me in confusion. “What?” Gretchen asked as her fingers played up t
he inside of my arm.

  “I gotta go to storage,” I said quietly. “I gotta go through the box of stuff we took from Jammer’s.”

  Megatron put her VR rig away and looked to Gretchen and me with concern. Last time something like this had happened she’d almost been taken and killed, Switch had been fucked up, and Jammer killed. Her concern was justified.

  “What do we need from the Jammer box?” Gretchen asked. After Jammer had died we’d gone through his loft and cleaned it up, taken things no one needed to find. There’d been some guns, some medical stuff, and a lot of drugs we’d tossed.

  I looked and let my gaze lock with Gretchen’s dark, concerned eyes. “I need the mescaline.” Her eyes went as wide as they were infinitely deep. “I need to talk to Bruce Campbell.”

  Chapter Five

  …Still Drinking Fireball

  “The Gambler” Kenny Rogers

  So, despite the fact that I come across as a scumbag, and the fact that I drink like a fish, I’ve never really done drugs. I mean I can’t say I’ve never done drugs because back in the Army I was basically hooked on eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen to the point that, like everyone else, I referred to them as “Ranger Candy.” I’ve also taken whatever was prescribed to me because I’ve been sick. So when I say I’ve never really done drugs just take it to mean I’ve never done illegal shit or abused the stuff I was prescribed—except for the ibuprofen. I’ve used the hell out of that.

  The only exceptions were the contact highs I’ve gotten at concerts, and the time Jammer dosed me with mescaline after I’d been shot in the shoulder. I never smoked coke, I’ve never snorted a line of weed—did I mix those up? To me, Molly is a girl’s name and ecstasy is something found right at the end of sex. So the fact that Gretchen and I were lying side by side on the bed, fully clothed, holding hands, in the middle of the day was noteworthy because of the empty vials of concentrated mescaline laying in the garbage can, courtesy of Jammer.