by Tad Williams
I’d also glued a small metal plate into the upper side of the hole I’d hollowed into the heel of my shoe, so if I miscalculated there’d be less chance I’d blow my own foot off. I’m an angel and it would probably grow back eventually, but that still wouldn’t make it fun.
Anyway, I stomped down as hard as I could and the charge went off. Wow, did it go off. Because I had only covered the hole with some black putty, all the force went backward (it still felt like someone had shot me in the sole of the foot), directly at Timon and Pumbaa. The BANG was loud enough to stagger everybody in the room who wasn’t expecting it, strong enough nearly to knock me off my pins, and the amount of smoke that billowed out was very satisfying. Within a second and a half, before anyone could do more than paw at their holsters, the cloud was head high and swirling all around me. Baldur von Rightwing screamed something, then people were lurching all around, trying to find your humble narrator.
Which is why I was glad they didn’t know I was an angel. I dropped to my knees where the smoke was thickest, opened a Zipper in the air, and then crawled inside.
See, the great thing about Zippers is that the bubble into no-Time that they open can only be seen by angels and other similar types of beings. As far as the Black Sun boys were concerned, I’d just vanished.
On the other side of the Zipper, I crouched in clouds of motionless smoke that were as resistant to my touch as cotton candy, and I waited. It’s never an exact thing, the slippage between Outside and real-world time, so I had to give it long enough to make sure Baldur and his men had gone looking for me. If I came back out too fast I’d find myself in the middle of several angry, ear-damaged Nazis with guns, and my life would become painfully ugly.
I couldn’t hear or see what was going on outside my little bubble, so I counted until I was pretty sure I’d lasted three or four minutes, then I stepped back through the Zipper and let real time catch up with me. To my great happiness, I’d managed it correctly. The room was empty except for the remaining traces of smoke. Behind the screen of iron bars the window was now open; chill November breeze was clearing the room. I grabbed my gun and other weapons off von Reinmann’s desk, and when I noticed a flash drive sticking out of his laptop, I grabbed that too. Then I slipped out the door into the third floor hallway as discreetly as I could.
The Black Sun people had no idea what I’d done, so they had scattered through the building looking for me. I could hear a couple of them shouting from the fire escapes at either end of the corridor, which had been my first choice for a getaway, so that wasn’t going to work. Instead, I hurried down the stairs to the second floor where the receptionist was still sitting at her desk, no doubt wondering why her co-workers were running all over the building shouting and waving guns.
I stopped in front of the desk. Her eyes went wide with fear even though I didn’t point my gun at her. “Look,” I said, “I don’t know if you’re one of these Kool-Aid drinkers, but if you’re not a racist monster, I suggest you grab your purse and your coat and get the hell out of this building and never come back. There’s a severed head on the desk upstairs. Police are going to be here soon and things are going to turn, well, difficult.”
I didn’t wait to see what she did, because I could hear the street-level door bang open below and footsteps mounting the stairs. I dashed into the stairwell and halfway down, then opened another Zipper, not to dodge them this time, but just to give myself a couple of seconds to think about how this could play out. Then I stepped out of it again and smacked the first guy coming up the stairs with the butt of my automatic, right between the eyes. He went down like a cow hit with a captive-bolt gun, and tangled his comrade so that the second guy’s gun discharged right over my shoulder. I jumped over them both and hit the door running. Embarrassingly, I forgot about the steps outside and almost broke my leg, but when I got up I hadn’t done anything worse than skin my knee and ruin my pants.
I was trying to decide which direction gave me the best chance of escape without a public firefight when the second guy from the stairs (who’d only fallen down) came crashing out the door after me. I think it was the brown-haired missionary Timon, still holding his gun and looking distinctly unhappy. By then, of course, I was running.
Pow! A shot flew past me and snapped off the brick facing, sending chips everywhere, including into the skin of my face. I turned to shoot back at him as I was running, trying to find an angle where I wasn’t going to hit anyone on the street if I missed, and ran right into a fucking parking meter. It was like being whacked with God’s three-iron. My gun flew out of my hand, and I went stumbling, falling, rolling into the street.
By the time I got myself sitting up, Timon knew he had me and had slowed to a walk, his gun leveled at me. I was calculating the ridiculously small odds that I could hit him with my one throwing-knife while lying on my back thirty feet away, when my pursuer suddenly stumbled and let out a shriek like a man getting a surprise, no-anesthetic appendectomy. He dropped onto the sidewalk and lay there screeching hoarsely, rolling from side to side, something long and thin sticking out of him like a misplaced chopstick.
A car screeched to a halt next to me. The door opened and before I knew it someone was trying to pull me in. I started to fight until I recognized Oxana. I shook her off, crawled back to retrieve my gun, then scrambled into the back seat. Before I even had the door closed, Halyna pushed down the accelerator and threw the boxy little car into a broad u-turn that had oncoming traffic honking and swerving. Timon was still wailing on the sidewalk when we turned the corner.
“I shoot him!” said Oxana proudly, waving a competition crossbow at me from her place in the passenger seat.
“You were supposed to stay away,” I said, but mostly I was trying to catch my breath.
“He was try to shoot you, so I shoot him!” she said, ignoring me.
“Pretty good aim,” I admitted. “Right in the knee. I guess he’ll have to quit the Aryan University track team.”
“Knee?” She sounded disappointed. “I was try to shoot him in testes.”
“You know what?” I said. “You girls are fun. But scary.” I leaned back in the seat, still sweating. “Before we reach the freeway, let’s find a pay phone, if such a thing even exists any more. I need to call the cops and make an anonymous report about some really bad people on Centennial Avenue.”
nineteen
karma comedian
THE WOMEN were still talking excitedly about arrowing people in the balls when we pulled into the garage at Caz’s apartment.
“I wish my mother still alive,” Oxana said suddenly.
“What?” I was examining the bottom of my shoe. The explosive packed in the heel had melted half the sole, which explained why the back of my foot felt sunburned. “Your mother?”
“Yes. She very church, very religion. I tell her I save angel, she is so proud!”
For about half a second it was silent in the car, like someone had loudly passed gas. “You two know I’m an angel?” I said at last.
“We know, of course,” said Halyna as she turned off the engine. “You think we run away with some normal man to fight Anahita? She is much bigger, stronger angel even than you!”
I was a little hurt that I hadn’t won them over with just my swagger and charm, but I had to admit it would save me the long, embarrassing lecture I had been planning about how when a Deity loves a planet very much, they get married and make little cherubs.
“Okay,” is what I said instead. “Glad you’re cool with it.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m always kind of wired after people have been shooting at me. As for the Amazons, they were pretty high on the whole adventure, so after we got back I let them take my car and go over to Junior’s Catering to pick up some food while I did some strategic thinking.
The Junior Burger, which you can only get there, and only when Junior wants to make them, is one of the grea
t inventions of modern cuisine. He puts the cheese and grilled onions and hot peppers between two patties, then crimps them into one big patty and slaps it on the fire. When it comes off, it’s magic. I sometimes think that Junior props up the entire economy of the Ravenswood district. Certainly the place is always crowded, with a dozen people waiting outside just to get in and order, and about three-quarters of them are from the rich side of the freeway.
It was a reasonable evening, so I took a beer and went outside to the courtyard to think. I finally saw a neighbor, a young guy in a suit who kind of half-waved at me (like a man meeting a dog that may or may not be dangerous) before scurrying back into his apartment. The people who lived in this semi-expensive oasis in the middle of a poor neighborhood seemed to be the kind of folks who were making money but were never at home; singles who drove to Tahoe every weekend to go snowboarding or something. I wondered what they’d think if they knew an angel had sublet the demon-woman’s apartment. I’d be willing to bet they wouldn’t have cared as long as they didn’t have to make small talk with me on their way from the garage to their sturdily bolted doors.
My cell rang, which startled me a little. The call failed, so I walked away from the apartment until I got a whole bar. It rang again, and I picked up but didn’t say anything.
“Bobby?”
I was slightly relieved. “Clarence. How are things for our littlest angel?”
“What’s going on with you?” he asked. “Everybody in the Compasses is saying you quit or something.”
I laughed, despite myself. “As if. You know what the retirement plan for ex-angels is? Neither do I, because there’s no such thing. I just asked for a little time off.” But I wasn’t thrilled with the idea my colleagues were already talking about it when I hadn’t had an official reply from Heaven. “How did you hear about it?”
“Who hasn’t?”
Alice. Why was it that you couldn’t get the time of day out of our superiors without a feasibility study and an environmental impact report, but Alice could announce my business to everybody she talked to? “Nah, I didn’t quit, I’ve just got stuff to do. In fact, I need to talk to you. Is your car working?”
“I have one I can use.”
“Good. Meet me in the Crescendo Club parking lot. It’s on the Camino Real between Santa Cruz and Valparaiso.”
“You mean now?”
“No, I was thinking right after the Last goddamn Trump—you know, while everyone else is hurrying to final judgement. Yes, now.”
“But I just got in!”
“Sorry, but I really need you to meet me there. Do not—repeat, do not—bring Wendell. And do not even consider calling Garcia G-Man Windhover. If something goes wrong with your ride, let me know, and I will come all the way up to Brittan Heights and get you, even though it’s been a long fucking day where once again bad people tried to injure me, and I am exhausted and sore.”
“I said I’ve got a car.” The lad was sullen as a scolded teenager.
“Good.” I remembered that the Amazons were still out at Junior’s. “I just thought of something. Better make it about forty minutes.”
• • •
I drove the Camino Real with a burger in one hand. Here’s an important Bobby Dollar lesson for life: You cannot eat a good burger with one hand if you don’t want stuff in your lap. Luckily I have had years of driving-while-eating experience: I know to use the wrapper as a picnic blanket so I don’t show up to meet the recently dead with pickle chips and mustard splotches on my crotch.
Clarence was parking an obscenely large car when I got there, the kind of thing that looked like it should be towing water-skiers. I pulled up next to it.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. “Company ride?”
“Mine’s in the shop. This belongs to my landlady.”
“I never would have guessed. Come on, hop in.”
“Why? I thought we were going to have a drink and talk?”
“No, I picked this place because it stays open late so your car won’t get towed. We’ll drink and talk, all right, just not here. Don’t worry, your landlady’s wheeled yacht will be fine. Nobody’s going to steal it because nobody knows how to drive a Toledo Steam Carriage anymore.”
He just gave me a look. The kid was learning. “Where are we going?” he asked as we sped back across town.
“I’m taking you to meet the rest of the team. But where we’re going is a secret, and that really means secret this time. You don’t tell Wendell or G-Man or your landlady, and especially you do not mention it to Alice, who would immediately broadcast it to the entirety of Heaven and Earth. Understood?”
“Why would I tell Alice?”
“I don’t know, I’m just trying to make a point. Shit has gotten real serious now, and it’s going to get seriouser soon.”
“‘Seriouser’?”
“Fuck the shut up, kid. Listen. From now on, I am at war. To the extent that your existence is tragically but irrevocably linked with mine, so are you. Got it?”
He was silent for a while as we made our way down the Embarcadero, the height of the buildings going up and down like a bar graph depending on how wealthy the part of town. “You know,” he said at last, “I really didn’t appreciate that threat the other day.”
I didn’t really know what he was complaining about—I’d stuck a pistol in the Amazons’ faces, but they weren’t bitching. “Well, I’d say sorry, but I’m not. I am totally not kidding—I’m at war. Nazis were trying to shoot me today, and believe it or not, armed fascists are actually the least of my worries.”
“But I’m already risking my career, Bobby. Actually, I’m risking my soul for you and Sam. Why do you keep treating me like I’m some stupid kid?”
Okay, I admit I felt a sting. “Look, I’m doing the best I can, but I’m not real trusting by nature. When I trust people, I usually get fucked over. And as for you, hell, I’m not even sure I like you yet.”
“Thanks a lot.” But he sounded almost as amused as angry. “I just thought maybe you didn’t trust me because . . .”
“What, because you’re gay?” Now I got angry. Good thing I’d finished my burger long ago or there would have been dill chips flying everywhere. “Shit, do you really think I care? I’ve been to Hell, kid! I could care less what you or anyone else does for love and companionship in this stinking universe. I do not care who you get sexy with. Got it? Do. Not. Care.”
“Actually, I was going to say, ‘because I tried to arrest Sam.’” He laughed. “Wow, somebody kind of made a big old Freudian mess all over themselves, huh?”
“Shut up.”
As you can see, I won the argument. Because my car, my rules.
• • •
After I introduced him to the Amazons, who were still wiping mayonnaise from their faces when we came in, and wearing the happy glow of a couple of world-class cheeseburger virgins who’d just had their cherries popped in a big way, Clarence walked around Caz’s apartment, eyes wide. “This is crazy,” he said. “I mean, the decor, it’s . . .”
“Don’t.” I was a little sensitive about it.
“I didn’t mean anything bad.” He paused in front of the desk, where I had been working on Caz’s laptop. “Is this safe? I mean, if you’re trying to keep your location a secret.”
“I’m not stupid, Junior. It’s a proxy connection—several proxy connections, in fact. If Hell couldn’t find Caz through this, Heaven won’t be able to track us either.”
(A quick aside: when I first moved the Amazons into the apartment, I looked through Caz’s computer to make sure there wasn’t anything on it that would compromise her safety if the Amazons saw it. Doing that felt creepy, but necessary. But the really weird thing was that, other than factory-installed apps, her computer had only about three or four things on it, all of them completely innocuous, like local restaurant reviews. Serious
ly, it was like examining your grandmother’s computer, except with fewer cat pictures. Even with all the precautions she’d taken over the connection, I guess somebody like Caz, born a century before Leonardo Da Vinci, still didn’t feel all that confident about technology.)
The laptop screen Clarence was staring at was full of Google Earth satellite photos. I had also covered about forty pieces of scratch paper with complicated (and probably useless) attempts to figure out the angle of the photo from Donya Sepanta’s garden, and thus narrow down the location of her house for a close-up search. I started to explain all this to Junior, but the little upstart interrupted me. “I get why you think you’ve found Anaita’s secret identity. But why don’t you just find her address the normal way?”
“What normal way? Do you think that an important angel like Anaita—who’s not supposed to be spending large amounts of time on Earth, plus is up to her holy neck in all kinds of weird intrigues, not least thwarting the entire plan of Heaven and Hell by creating an alternative destination for human souls—is going to have a listed number?”
He shook his head. “No, but if she’s living an earthly life, even part time, she’s probably not pruning her own shrubbery. She has parties, right? Some kind of social life? She must have caterers, a dressmaker, employees, gardening service, you know, stuff like that. You could spend weeks trying to figure it out with all this . . .” he grimaced and waved at the messy table, “. . . Boy Scout stuff. Do you always light a fire by rubbing sticks together, too? Are matches for pussies?”
“Don’t get snippy, Sunny Jim.”
“Look, just let me do it. I came from the Records Hall of Heaven, Bobby. I know something about finding information.”
