Sean Traver - Graves' end

“Holy shit,” Graves said. “It’s Charlie Lurp! Brother, you got ancient .”

“Dex, am I dyin’?” Charlie looked like he really needed to know. “Is this what happens? Old friends come back to meetcha?”

“I don’t think so, Charlie old pal. At least not today,” Graves said. “I got special dispensation, is all.”

“Last time we talked was when I helped my buddy Dave track you down,” Charlie said. “You disappeared right after that.”

“Yeah, well, I woulda phoned… but you know how it is.” Graves tapped his exit wound and Charlie nodded as if he did indeed know how it was to be shot in the brainpan and buried for sixty years.

Graves threw off the hooded sweatshirt he’d scrounged from the same roadside gutter in which they found the shopping cart he’d been pushing Hannah along in since her feet had started to blister during their downhill trek. He shrugged back into his long coat and headed down the alley, feeling little need to hurry after Hannah’s low-speed pursuit of Big Juan. Graves kept pace with Charlie, who followed with the aid of a walker, bumping along step by step. The thing had slit-open tennis balls crammed onto its feet, for some reason.

“Big Juannie wasn’t the one that done that to you, was he, Dex?” Charlie asked, pointing up at the exit hole in Graves’ forehead. “Wouldn’t put it past him-the asshole cheats at chess. Poker too.”

“Nah,” Graves said. “But he used to work for the guy that had it done. And he did dump me in a hole, way out in the desert.”

“That dirty son of a bitch,” Charlie said.

They came upon Hannah, who was crouched over the prone and wheezing form of Big Juan, way down at the litter-strewn end of the alley. So that was that. Chase over. It hadn’t been much of a horserace.

Hannah looked over her shoulder as first Graves and then Charlie stepped up behind her. Graves took his hat off her head and settled it back onto his own. Then he leaned over Big Juan, getting right down into the old henchman’s face.

“I need some intel before you shuffle off there, big fella,” he said. “You worked for Hardface once. You know his ways. Spill what you know about his fetish for earthy girls, and maybe I won’t come after you on the other side.”

Lia’s handcuffs came off less than fifteen minutes later, and the young officer’s attitude had changed markedly by the time they did.

“Guess the Captain thinks pretty highly of you, Miss Brujachica,” he said, using the Spanish description like a surname. “Says you’ve consulted on SWAT operations before?”

“Remote viewing, yeah,” Lia said. “Looking into places people needed to go. I’ve also helped on a forensic case or two.”

“Well,” the young cop said, “the Cap pulled me and three other units off our assignments and says we’re to help you. Blackdog guys all. So it looks like you’re getting a police escort. I’m Ben, by the way, Ben Leonard.”

“Lia Flores.” She shook his proffered hand and considered him, feeling curious. “So, Ben Leonard, were you really there?” she asked. “The Night of the Blackdogs? I’ve heard the stories for years.”

Ben Leonard nodded. “A thousand black ghost dogs,” he said, “all barking in unison, all at once, witnessed by dozens of cops from a dozen divisions, warning us off from a building that collapsed not three hours after. It was like nothing I ever knew could be. Changed me, frankly. Changed every guy who saw it. Showed us all a wider world.”

“Sure you didn’t eat some funny mushrooms earlier that evening?” Lia kidded.

“ No , I didn’t,” Ben said, “and why does everyone I ever tell ask me that? No, I was sober and lucid and in my right mind. We all were.” He looked Lia over in his turn, as curious about her as she was about him. “So,” he said. “You’re, like, an ‘independent operator’?”

Lia nodded.

“More of you on the street than there used to be,” Ben said thoughtfully, re-appraising her. “Guess I never met an actual witch before, though. A real one who can do things, I mean. Most of the ones I’ve run across were sort of pretending.”

“No warts, no broom, no pointy hat,” Lia said. “Hope I don’t disappoint.”

Ben smiled. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

Three LAPD cruisers pulled around the corner and into the Home Depot parking lot, and Ben raised a hand to their drivers in greeting. Then he turned back to Lia.

“Your motorcade awaits,” he said. “Let’s leave that stolen thing for somebody else to deal with. You can ride in one of the cruisers… or I guess you can ride with me. If you like. I don’t think the Captain expects normal regulations to apply.”

Lia thought about it, then broke into a grin.

She was still grinning some minutes later, gleefully, under a helmet and perched on the back of Ben’s motorcycle while it and the three cruisers flew up Vineland at an insane rate of speed, flashing lights, blaring sirens, and parting traffic like a blade.

Graves got Big Juan sitting up and propped him against a discarded, cushionless sofa some slob had dumped in the alley. Within minutes, the fat man was breathing better.

Graves paced while he interrogated, his bony feet crunching over dead leaves and bits of broken glass. Hannah and Charlie Lurp looked on.

“This world is what he wants,” Big Juan said, in answer to the walking skeleton’s most fundamental question. “Mictlantecuhtli. He’s obsessed with it. They all are, over there. In love with the flesh. You said ‘fetish’ an’ you were sorta kidding, but that’s really what it’s like. They envy every moment of our stupid little lives.”

“Daylight’s burnin,’” Graves said. “Cut to the part about the girls.”

“You mean Ingrid, don’t you? Ingrid Redstone, that singer shot you in the back of the head?”

“You’re a quick study, you are.”

“Way it got explained to me, she was gonna be Mictlantecuhtli’s Queen,” Big Juan said. “It was a deal they made: she was gonna give up her life so he could have one. Mictlantecuhtli needed someone with her kinda skills an’ her connection to the earth to break all the way through the wall between worlds an’ take over an incarnation. Guess that’d be where you come in.”

“Why me?” Graves asked.

Big Juan shrugged. “I dunno. Why not, I guess? But that Ingrid, she got cold feet. She couldn’t do it to you, even though it woulda ended with her becoming Queen of all Mictlan. She stopped you goin’ in to talk to Hardface the only way she thought she could.”

Graves was troubled by this interpretation. “What’d Hardface have to say about it?” he asked.

“I dunno about that either, man,” Big Juan said. “That was it for me, I planted you for Caradura an’ I was out. Stopped operating altogether. El Rey shut his place down afterwards, after you died, so I got a real job an’ had a different life. Learned to bake, opened a shop, sold cakes and donuts for near forty years.”

“Never even occurred to me you might still be alive,” Graves said.

“Well, me neither, tell you the truth, but I’m scheduled to hit the century mark next summer,” Juan said, nodding. “Willard Scott’s supposed to say happy birthday on the TV, an’ all that shit.”

“Runnin’ across you here was pure dumb luck,” Graves said, speaking less to Big Juan than chasing down his own train of thought. He looked to Hannah, and then to Charlie. “What’re the odds of something like this happening, d’you think? All of us being here at the right time and place?”