Richard Kadrey - Kill City Blues

I fall near where we keep the food trays lined up buffet style against the wall. At least I don’t have to worry about Candy being concerned about my belly wound. My half-blasted-off clothes will distract her. Plus, I have the cash. And the fake Qomrama.

I grab the edge of a table and pull myself to my feet with my prosthetic left arm. The explosion must have blown off the glove. The arm is ugly as Hell. It was given to me by a Kissi, an extinct race of mutant angels that lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. My prosthetic looks like a bug claw crossed with the Terminator, but it handles things like explosions pretty well, so I can use it sometimes when the rest of my body isn’t cooperating.

Before I know what’s happening, I’m being steered onto one of the leather sofas. I find half a cup of Aqua Regia on the coffee table and gulp it down. When I look up Candy is standing over me. She’s pulling off my shredded shirt, looking scared. And sees the bloody towel. Now her fear is mixed with annoyance.

“I let you out of my sight for ten fucking minutes,” she says.

My ears are ringing, so it takes me a second to understand what she said.

She pulls out the black blade I gave her and cuts off the rest of the shirt and towel. When she sees the bullet wound she looks at me hard.

Before she can say anything, I hold out the 8 Ball.

“Look, baby, I brought you a present.”

Then I pass out.

I WAKE UP in bed naked and wrapped in a sheet. There’s a stain where my blood and something else has soaked through. Candy sits beside me, playing a game on her pink laptop.

Vidocq is in a chair nearby, smoking, his feet propped on a corner of the bed. Spirited Away plays on the big screen. It’s what Candy always watches whenever she’s upset. A young girl sits on a train. Some kind of Japanese folk spirit sits beside her. White oval face. All draped in black.

“Where did that come from?” I say, nodding at the laptop.

She doesn’t look up from whatever she’s playing. It pings and pops. Plays a silly little tune.

“I don’t think she’s speaking to you at the moment,” says Vidocq in his smooth French accent.

I look at her. She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen.

“I guess not.”

I’m blistered from the explosion. I lean down and sniff the stain on the sheet. It’s a strange mild acid reek with something sweet. Maybe even a little Spiritus Dei. A complicated potion. I look at Vidocq.

“One of yours?”

He smiles and inclines his head in a little bow.

“Thanks,” I say.

“De rien.”

Vidocq is an alchemist and a thief. He’s also a hundred and fifty years old. You’d think after living in this country for a hundred years, he would have lost the accent. I don’t think he wants to. It’s all he has left of France. It’s not like he can ever go back. Where does a hundred-and-fifty-year-old thief and murderer—he killed a couple of guys way back when. Don’t worry. They deserved it—get a birth certificate? A driver’s license? A passport? Yeah, he could get fake documents like Garrett had in his room, but Vidocq is too proud for that. Unless he can go back as himself, I don’t think he’ll ever set foot in the old country again.

I glance back at Candy. She still won’t look at me. I put a finger on the top of her laptop and start to close it.

“Don’t,” she says. “I just got to this level and I’ll lose it.”

“Your computer is dead. Whose is this?”

“Mine. Samael said he’d get me a new one and he did. It’s a newer model too. Lots more memory and a faster processor. Good for games.”

I lie down on my back.

“So all in all a good day for you.”

“Shut up,” she says.

I move closer to her. Put my hand on her leg.

“This is going to happen sometimes. It’s how my life works. You can’t always come with me and I can’t dodge every bullet. Just remember that bastards tried to kill me for eleven years in Hell and almost a year up here and no one’s done it.”

She says, “That’s not true. You’ve died a couple of times.”

“Not like lying-there-getting-smelly kind of dead. Just technically dead.”

She hits the keyboard harder. She still won’t look at me. I really want one of Vidocq’s cigarettes.

“You’ve got to understand that if this is going to work between us.”

“I don’t want to,” she says.

“I don’t always either. But it’s how things are. ‘Death smiles at us all and all a man can do is smile back.’”

“Where did you hear that crap?”

“I read it in a book Downtown. It’s Marcus Aurelius.”

She nods.

“Quote a dead guy. Real smooth.”

I kiss her leg and get up. I stink from sweat and burned skin and need a shower.

On my way to the bathroom I say, “I’m going Downtown to see Mr. Muninn. You can come with me or you can stay here and sulk.”

I stand under the hot water for a long time, washing off the grime and dead skin. The wound has already closed, though I can feel the bullet inside me.

I put on a robe and go back into the bedroom.

Candy has closed the laptop. She and Vidocq are quietly watching the movie. I sit down beside her on the bed. She balls up her fist and punches my real arm.

“Ow.”

“I wasn’t sulking. I was mad. And not entirely at you.”

“I know. Trust me. If I could, I’d be the most boring bastard in the world.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” says Vidocq.

“Okay. Tenth most boring bastard.”

Candy says, “Sometimes you get worked up. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Really? How does stopping to grab money in the middle of an explosion count as careful?”

The fake Qomrama and the cash are lying nearby on the bed. I pick up the money.

“Did you count it?”

“It’s just shy of four thousand dollars.”

“Chicken-and-waffles money.”

Along the edges, the bills are as crisp and singed as I am. I show them to Vidocq. He chuckles and leans in closer.

He says, “That’s a strange design on the clip. It almost reminds me of the Golden Vigil. Though not entirely.”

The Golden Vigil. God’s Pinkertons on earth. They were a Homeland Security offshoot that Vidocq and I used to work for. The Vigil worked with a special group of agents using angelic tech, supposedly monitoring and policing nefarious hoodoo-related activity. Zombies. Rogue vampires. Demon attacks. Hell, they even put Lucifer on a terrorist watch list. Mostly, though, they were just another set of bullheaded cops in better suits. U.S. Marshal Larson Wells and, more importantly, Aelita ran the show. That’s until she went on her god-killing crusade and the government shut the Vigil down. Not a tear was shed.

“Not quite? You’re sure?”

Vidocq nods.

“I’m positive. Not the Vigil.”

“But still similar.”

“Yes. Similar.”

I toss the money back on the bed.

“I wish I could have talked to Garrett. All this cash. Passports. A mechanical familiar. Who the hell was he waiting for?”

“And who was the bomb for? Monsieur Garrett or the party buying from him?” says Vidocq.

“He had a familiar?” says Candy.

“Yeah; a good one too. I should have grabbed the asshole’s wallet.”

I can see Kasabian banging away on his own computer, building his Web site.

“Did Old Yeller find out anything on Moseley?”

Candy says, “Not much. He had a record but all minor stuff. He was kind of a religious nut. A couple of arrests for protesting outside abortion clinics. A fine for trashing a Scientology office and some Orthodox graves at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It looks like he’s been through every religion on the planet. There’s photos of him in a dozen getups from different religious sects and cults.”