“I don’t know if you’re looking for directions or a date, but we’re fresh out of both. Take a walk and stare at someone else.”
He’s fast for a guy who looks like he just escaped from a deep-fat fryer. He lunges and grabs my arms over the biceps. He’s strong for a cripple, but nothing I can’t handle.
Then my arms are burning. Literally. My coat sleeves smoke and burst into flames where he’s holding me. I have heavy Kevlar inserts in the sleeves, but in just a couple of seconds the heat is almost through and down to my skin.
I step back and bring up my forearms in an outward circle from underneath and hit his arms hard. Standard self-defense stuff every high school kid knows. It doesn’t work. It’s like hitting Jell-O. And now my forearms are burning. Wrestling this guy is like waltzing with lava. I try to form hoodoo in my mind to knock Smokey the Asshole across the street or at least make him let go, but the pain makes it hard to think straight.
I bark some Hellion I learned back when I was fighting in the arena. If you do the hex right, it’s like a garbage-can-size gut punch that hits in a blaze of purple light and bores like an oil-rig drill through just about anyone or anything. I get it just right. The purple explosion, the whirlpool of power. Smokey’s midsection collapses in on itself. And goes through and out his back, dragging a long strip of lava flesh with it like burning taffy. The prick doesn’t even seem to notice.
The guy isn’t a burn victim. His face churns like thick liquid as we wrestle. Stupid. I should have known this asshole wasn’t human.
The heat is down to my skin, cooking my arms. Being hard to kill means a lot of things. I have a high pain threshold, but it’s not infinite. Not when something a volcano shit out is trying to give you an Indian burn. Being hard to kill also means that you don’t go down fast, so whatever’s cutting you, shooting you, or burning you alive is something you get to experience for a good long time.
Being hard to kill isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, but it sure as shit isn’t the best, and right now it isn’t even fun.
Something clear and hard spins past my shoulder and hits Smokey in the face.ionin the He jerks his head away like I have bad breath. But he doesn’t let go. Another vial flies past. And another. Smokey lets go this time. Vidocq is behind me, limping over and tossing potions like a pitching machine.
Smokey backs away, his arms pulled in close to his body. Something’s hurt him. Good. He starts to shake like someone stuck a vibrator in a bowl of cherry Jell-O. I step back and grab my gun, but before I can use it, Smokey melts like the Wicked Witch of the West, leaving a circle of scorched black earth on the green lawn.
Vidocq grabs my shoulder and pulls me back to the car. He bunny-hops on his good leg into the passenger side and I slide into the driver’s seat, jam the black blade I carried back from Hell into the ignition, and we peel out.
“What the hell kind of burglar alarm was that? Why can’t rich people have rottweilers like everyone else?”
“I don’t think that was an alarm. That was a demon.”
I glance at him. My arms are throbbing now, and between each throb they still feel like they’re burning. I smell something, but I don’t know if it’s the coat or me.
“I’ve never seen a demon like that before.”
“Neither have I, but the potion that hurt the creature was a rare type of poison. A toxin formulated to affect only demons.”
I drive at a moderate speed. I pause at stop signs and obey every light.
“Think it was after us?”
Vidocq shrugs.
“Possibly. But who knew we’d be here tonight? And why would someone attack you now? You’ve been a good boy for weeks.”
I roll down the windows to let out the smell. I’m stinking up the Lexus, but who cares? I hate these luxury golf carts. Gaudy status symbols with as much personality as an Elmer’s-Glue-on-white-bread sandwich.
I say, “Maybe someone was settling an old score. Hell, maybe it was after you.”
Vidocq laughs. “Who would send a demon for me?”
“I don’t know. The few thousand people you’ve robbed over the last two hundred years?”
“It’s more like a hundred and fifty. Don’t try to make me sound old.”
“ ’Course, sending a demon for something like that sounds like overkill. Especially something rare enough that neither of us recognizes it.”
“I’>
“Whiner. Your girlfriend is the best hoodoo doctor in town. She’ll give you an ice pack and conjure you some kangaroo legs. Then you can do your own second-story work.”
Vidocq pats me on the shoulder.
“There, there . . .” like he’s patting a five-year-old with a skinned knee. “I would have thought you’d be happy. You got to have a fight. Draw a little blood. Isn’t that what you’ve been wanting?”
I think it over.
“I suppose. And you killed it, not me, so my not-slaughtering-things record is still intact.”
“Unlike your arms.”
“A little Bactine and they’ll be fine by the morning.”
“Judging by the look of them, they’ll hurt in the meantime. Take this. It will help you sleep.”
He reaches into his coat and hands me a potion.
“No thanks. Dr. Jack Daniel’s is coming by tonight. He’s got all the medicine I need.”
He slips the vial into my pocket.
“Take it anyway. He might be late.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“And don’t forget to brush your teeth and say your prayers.”
“Fuck you, Mom.”
WE DRIVE ACROSS town, near what the city fathers call the Historic District, an ironically named area in a city that has no history but has seen more shit go down than a lot of countries. It’s all right to forget all the Mansons, the celebrity ODs, the brain-boost religions, the UFO religions, the tinhorn Satanists, the rock-and-roll suicides, the landgrabs, the serial killers, the ruthless gangs and even more ruthless cops, the survivalists with cases of ammo, cigarettes, and freeze-dried beans in their desert compounds, as long as we remember to bring the family downtown to grab a latte and admire the knockoff Mickey Mouse T-shirts.
We ditch the car in the Biltmore Hotel parking lot and start the four-block walk to the Bradbury Building. This is flat-out stupid, but Vidocq insisted that he could walk off whatever happened to his leg in the fall. I’ve seen plenty of injuries. I know he can’t, but I let him hobble until he grabs my arm, huffing and puffing before falling against a newspaper box full of local porn papers. I didn’t know those things were still around.
“Want to take the shortcut?” I ask.
“Please,” he says.
I put one of his arms around my shoulder and lift him off the box. We limp to the corner and around the side of a Japanese restaurant. I pull him into a shadow by the delivery entrance. We go into the Room of Thirteen Doors and I pretty much carry him out the Door of Memory and into Mr. Muninn’s place.
Every good thief needs a fence and Mr. Muninn is Vidocq’s. Muninn’s regular shop, the one he keeps for his vaguely normal clients, is in the old sci-fi–meets–art-deco Bradbury Building on a floor that doesn’t exist. He serves a pretty select clientele—mostly Sub Rosa and über-wealthy L.A. elites. But if you ever stumbled into his store and could afford a Fury in a crystal cage, the seeds from Eve’s apple, or Napoleon’s whalebone cock ring, he’d let you in. Mr. Muninn’s a businessman.
The really interesting stuff he keeps in a deep cavern beneath the Bradbury Building. His secret boutique for only the oddest and choicest items in the world. That’s where we come out.
When he sees us Muninn holds his arms out wide like he’s giving a benediction.
“Welcome, boys. What a pleasure to see you two working together again.”
Vidocq says, “Just like the good old days. I’m limping and he was just on fire.”
Vidocq drops into a gilt armchair that probably belonged to King Tut.
I stamp my foot on the stone floor a few times, shaking loose shotgun pellets that have embedded themselves in the soles of my boot.