Richard Kadrey - Kill City Blues

BACK WHEN I was still the Lord of Flies, I’d walk through the Chateau Marmont lobby like Errol Flynn back in the day. Now that I’m not, I creep through with my head down like a flea-bitten hillbilly trying to sneak out on a bar tab. Sooner or later word is going to get out up here. The local Satanists might be nouveau riche headbangers and trust-fund creeps with a grudge against the world, but they have some good psychics on their payroll. One of them is going to pick up Mr. Muninn’s vibes and start wondering how Lucifer is doing paperwork in his palace in Hell and ordering kung pao shrimp in his Chateau penthouse at the same time.

Lady Snowblood is playing on the giant plasma screen in the living room. Kasabian is at the long table he uses for a desk, surrounded by dirty plates and beer cans. He’s naked, but it isn’t like ordinary naked. Kasabian is a disembodied head. I’m the one who disembodied him. He shot me, so it seemed like the thing to do. He used to scuttle around on a little wood-and-brass skateboard I conjured for him. Now he gets around on a mechanical hellhound body I brought back from Downtown. Only the body has never quite worked right. Manimal Mike is trying to fix that.

Kasabian is bouncing on the balls of his two rear hound feet. His balance looks good. Mike looks up as Candy and I come inside. He points to Kasabian, looking pale and hopeful.

“Can I have my soul back now?” he says.

I watch Kasabian.

“I don’t know. Can Gimpy make it down the catwalk on his own?”

Kasabian takes a step, teeters, and plants his ass on the side of the table to keep from falling.

Mike slumps into a desk chair. Wipes his face with a dirty rag. It leaves a trail of grease on his forehead and cheek. He wheels himself over and uses a delicate tool that looks like a screwdriver crossed with a spider to make adjustments to Kasabian’s legs.

Mike is a Tick-Tock Man. He builds mechanical spirit familiars for the Sub Rosa chic set. He might be a drunk and nutty and a little suicidal, but he knows his way around machines. He also owes the Devil a favor. The idiot sold his soul a few years back. Now he wants it back. He still thinks I’m Lucifer, so I’m making him work off the debt by fixing up Kasabian.

While Mike works on him, I show Kasabian the dead man’s bloody photo on my phone.

“Friend of yours?” Kasabian says.

“He missed, if that’s what you mean.”

“And now you feel guilty for offing him.”

“That’s the problem. I didn’t. He did it to himself. And I want to know why.”

I flip to the guy’s driver’s license. Kasabian squints at it.

“Trevor Moseley. When did he die?”

“Just now,” I say. “Like twenty minutes ago.”

He shakes his head.

“I won’t see him for a day or so. They’re not exactly state-of-the-art when it comes to sorting out the new meat Downtown.”

Kasabian has a few useful skills. He’s a passable computer hacker, he has good taste in movies—he once ran a choice indie video-rental place in Hollywood. Also, he can see into Hell. It’s a gruesome little trick, but gruesome describes 99 percent of his life, so what’s one more percent between friends?

The trick works like this: when I came back from Hell, I brought a jar of peepers with me. Peepers are eyeballs a lot like ours (no, I don’t know where they come from and I don’t want to know), only they work like surveillance cameras. I scattered dozens of them around Hell. Between the peepers and his ability to peek into Downtown through the Daimonion Codex, Kasabian can spyglass a good chunk of Hell. Entrepreneur that he is, he’s even turning his deadeye trick into a business. Setting himself up as an online psychic. When it’s up and running, he’ll track down any of your dead relatives and report back on them—as long as they’re in Hell. Seeing as how that’s where most suckers are headed, he should be in business until the sun turns this rock into one big overcooked s’more.

“Let me know when you spot him. I might just go down and ask Mr. Moseley a few questions.”

Candy says, “Can I go too?”

I should have been ready for that.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Candy tosses down the magazine she was thumbing through.

“We talked about this. If you leave me here and disappear down there again, you better stay down there because I swear I’ll salt your skull and drink you like a daiquiri.”

Candy isn’t exactly human. She’s a Jade. That’s sort of like being a vampire, only Jades dissolve your insides and drink you, kind of like a spider. I know it sounds bad, but she’s off the people juice these days. And it’s kind of sexy when she lets the monster out. I just have to be around to make sure it goes back in.

“What’s the difference between true love and a murder spree?” says Kasabian.

“I don’t know. What?”

He shrugs.

“I don’t know. I was hoping you lovebirds would have a clue.”

He smiles, pleased with his half-assed joke.

I say, “Go bite a mailman, Old Yeller.”

Mike lets go of Kasabian’s leg. He flexes it and it looks like it’s working all right. Mike goes to work on the other one.

“Well?” says Candy. She’s right beside me, her hands balled into fists. She’s not backing down on this.

“You’re right. I promised. But this is only if I actually go. I’m not making any special trips down so you can take snapshots with Stiv Bators.”

“Deal.”

She stands on her toes and kisses me on the cheek.

“I got it,” says Kasabian. “When it’s true love you know why you’re getting stabbed.”

“Kasabian, you romantic fool,” says Candy. “You just got ten percent cuter.”

He smiles at her.

“Kitten, I’ve got romance coming out my ass.”

“And now the cute is gone.”

Mike chuckles to himself. Kasabian shifts his leg, clipping him on the nose.

“Learn to stop while you’re ahead,” I say.

“I haven’t had much practice with women since you turned me into a carnival attraction.”

“I’ll have you tripping the light fantastic in no time,” says Mike.

As casually as he can, Kasabian says, “Stark, you still have Brigitte’s number?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not asking for a hookup, just an introduction.”

“I’ve put Brigitte through enough. I’m not letting you loose on her.”

“You won’t do me one favor, but you want me to look up your dead pal in Hell.”

“Look, Mike gets your legs working, you can come down to Bamboo House of Dolls and ask her yourself. Maybe she’ll say yes just for the novelty of doing a robot.”

“I think she might be seeing someone,” says Candy.

“Who?” says Kasabian.

“The King of Candy Land. Or was it Josie and the Pussycats?”

“Great. Now she gets discreet. Forget it. Chicks only want one monster in their life and Stark got to Brigitte first.”

Mike stops working and Kasabian tries to stand. This time he makes it. His legs support him and he takes a few steps like, well, a circus dog doing a trick for biscuits.

I say, “You know, no matter how well you make his arms and legs work, he still looks like a mutt.”

Mike sighs and nods.

“To rework his whole body so it’s more human shaped, I’d have to cut it up with a plasma torch, lengthen and straighten his back legs, redo the spine, and rebalance and recalibrate the whole thing,” he says. “The only way to do that is for Kasabian to get off it.”

I look at Kasabian, walking steady for the first time since I’ve been back.

“Maybe he’s right. Maybe you should go back to your skateboard for a while and let Mike do his thing.”