She comes a couple of steps closer like she doesn’t want anyone inside to hear her.
“Do you know a Tick Tock Man called Manimal Mike?”
“Never heard of him.”
“He knows a lot of things. He might be able to help you.”
“Why would he?”
“You own his soul.”
Good reason. She writes something on a piece of paper. Hands it to me and I look it over. It’s an address in Chatsworth.
“Don’t tell him I sent you. Or that you know me at all. Good luck,” she says, and goes back inside the abandoned hotel.
I put the paper in my pocket. Walk through the wards and into the street where the Augur’s mansion is just another anonymous shit shack in a neighborhood full of them.
A block away a gray-haired homeless guy, not much more than a pile of rags with a face, puts out his hands for spare change. He smells like Four Roses and death. I’m the Devil. I don’t save people or souls, my own included. I reach into my pocket, pull out Cairo’s crumpled twenty, and drop it into his hands.
“You might buy a sandwich along with the jug,” I say, knowing he’ll never do it.
I walk on. I want out of this dead zone and back to the Beat Hotel. I’ve got no girl, no home, a gun I hate, and I have to beg a talking head on a dog’s body for pocket money. Still, I wouldn’t trade lives with anyone back at Blackburn’s.
I ride the Hellion hog to the Beat Hotel to change shirts and pick up some gear. I made a mess tonight but I think I’m still following Wild Bill’s advice. Pick and choose your fights. Carlos got shot by someone gunning for me, so this is the fight I pick. I hope the shooter was one of the sons of bitches I dragged Downtown tonight. Maybe I’ll get Semyazeh to send their souls to Wild Bill’s bar and make them lick his floors clean every night for the next thousand years.
Should I call Candy and tell her I’m okay? She’s probably pissed that I sent her away. If I got us both locked up in the Sub Rosa Sing Sing, she’d be pissed about that. If I said forget about your girlfriend and run off with me she’d be pissed in a whole different way. I can’t win. Maybe I should have stayed Downtown. At least people missed me when they thought I was dead. Punching Cairo and morons like him is a lot easier than being a person. I’ll stick to that for a while.
Kasabian has conspicuously not given me a key to Max Overdrive so I jimmy the back door with my knife. Across 110th Street is playing on the video monitor when I come in. Kasabian quickly closes the browser window on his laptop. Porn is my guess. Maybe something with Brigitte. He’s a little obsessed ever since he found out I know her. He casually sips a beer when I come into the bedroom.
He says, “How’s life back under the big black sun?”
“I almost got killed by a ninja hit squad and I crashed a Sub Rosa synod.”
“So just another night in Wonderland for you.”
“You didn’t tell me Saint James murdered a kid.”
“Oh. That.”
He puts down the beer. Before getting the hellhound’s body Kasabian was just a head. We stuck a bucket under him when he wanted to drink beer or eat. Now he has a hellhound stomach and that’s both good and bad. It’s less messy than emptying the bucket but it means I get to watch the skin sack swell as he fills it with beer and donuts. I don’t want to know how he empties it.
“I didn’t think you’d believe me. Who told you?”
“The four guys who shot up Bamboo House of Dolls and almost killed Carlos.”
“Damn. That’s verging on rude.”
“Tell me you didn’t know there were shooters looking for Saint James. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“Why the hell would I do something like that?”
“If I was dead, you’d have all the money.”
“I already have all the money. Even I wouldn’t do that shit to you. I might be a bastard but I’m not a complete asshole.”
Kasabian is harder to read than live people. He doesn’t breathe or have a heartbeat. But Lucifer’s senses would catch him in a lie.
“I believe you. This would have been a lot easier if you were trying to get rid of me.”