Helpwise, I had struck out with both Sam and the Sollyhull Sisters, so if I was really going to try to sneak into Hell, I’d have to find another way. I supposed the Broken Boy might have an answer to that, but the problem was that I already needed to ask him a costly question about Smyler, because I was likely to get stabbed in the eye long before Sam’s psychopathic Hell guards would ever get their chance to beat me into jelly, and I couldn’t really afford to pay the Boy to answer two questions.
Either way, though, it was painfully (and expensively) obvious where I was going next.
eight:
old friends
I DIDN’T STAY in the hospital long. Sequoia Medical is short of beds as it is, and since angels heal fast, once they saw how quickly I was getting better they didn’t argue much when I checked myself out. I did get a lecture from one nice young doctor about refraining from active sports and strenuous activity for a while. It wasn’t me she needed to tell, of course, it was the guy with the piranha mouth and the very, very bad attitude.
The police interviewed me about the attack too, but since they thought I was a private investigator working a major insurance fraud, they didn’t kick up too much fuss. Heaven is good with bureaucracy, and I’ve kept my concealed-carry permit active since my Harps days, so I even got my gun back, which I filled with silver as soon as I could get to the rounds I’d left in the Datsun.
Instead of going back to my apartment (Smyler obviously knew about it, since he’d been waiting for me outside) I disposed of the now-petrified burger and fries I’d been bringing home the night of the last attack, and then drove down the Bayshore.
I parked in Southport and limped out to the ruins of Shoreline Park, because I didn’t have any other way of getting hold of Sam and I was getting desperate to talk to him. I had taken a roundabout route to make sure I wasn’t followed, and I kept my eyes open as I walked carefully through the filth and wreckage, between walls of corroding tin and broken plywood covered in fading paint. When I reached the Funhouse, I left a message on the mirror that Sam had shown me. I wasn’t stupid enough to write anything obvious. It just said, “Where we ate lunch, 7pm.” Sam would remember the little Southeast Asian place, I knew, and it would be up to him to get there without being followed. The question was, when, if ever, would he find this note? It looked like I was going to be eating Burmese food for the next few nights, but there are worse things to do, believe me.
I didn’t have to explore the menu all that much—Sam strolled through the door of the Star of Rangoon just as I finished ordering, looking very Robert-Mitchum-ish in his wrinkled coat and big, baggy face.
“Did you get me the pancakes?” he asked.
“You want the pancakes, order them yourself, you lazy bastard.” It was good to see him. He looked good, too, with a relaxed smile on his wide face.
He shoved into the booth, called the waitress back and ordered for himself, then looked me up and down. “Few new bruises, I see. Did Karael and some of his militant angels work you over?”
“I wish.” I told him who had given me all these new cuts, scrapes, and puncture wounds.
“You’re shitting me.” His ginger ale arrived and Sam drank half of it at a swallow, as if the long trip from Third Wayville had made him thirsty. “Leo bagged and burned that little creep.”
It was strange how easily it all came back together, as if Sam and I hadn’t been through all that craziness, as if he had never lied to me. There was, however, a little hollow place deep inside me, even if I was ignoring it. “Tell me about it. But it was Smyler. It is Smyler, and he’s still out to get me. I think Eligor put him on me.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, the closest he’ll let his good-old-boy persona come to showing actual surprise. “Eligor? Why would he do that? You’ve still got the magic golden feather, don’t you?”
My old chum was the one who had hidden it on me in the first place, trying to protect me from an infernal double-cross. With one thing and another, though, he hadn’t bothered to tell me about it until much later, which was one major reason I had almost died about eleventy-thousand times in the previous weeks, in many, many interesting ways.
“Yes, I’ve got it,” I said, “or at least I assume I do, since I can’t actually touch it myself. And if Eligor was smart he’d just leave me alone. But I think the whole thing goes a bit deeper than common sense.” I took a breath. “I have to tell you something.”
And I did. I told him the whole thing about me and the Countess of Cold Hands, the whole bizarre, tabloid-headlines story: Angel Loves Demon, or I Sold Out Heaven for a Roll in Hell’s Hay. Although, the only people actually disadvantaged in any way by our relationship were Caz and myself. Oh, and Eligor, of course. The grand duke definitely counted himself as an injured party.
Sam didn’t say anything for a long time after I finished. He signaled for another ginger ale, and the proprietress brought it over with the good grace of a camel trudging through a sandstorm. He took his time pouring and then rolled it around in his mouth like a wine critic about to hold forth on this year’s Beaujolais nouveau.
“Well, B,” he said. “I have to admit, you have lifted fucked-up to an entirely new level.”
I laughed in spite of everything. “I have, haven’t I?”
“I’ve got no problem with you shtupping a dybbuk, particularly.” Sam liked to use Yiddish sometimes. Maybe he thought it made him sound intellectual, maybe he just knew it was funny when an angel who looked so Boston Irish started dropping Brooklyn Jewish. “But you definitely could have picked one who would have been less trouble than Eligor’s main squeeze. So what are you going to do?”
And that was the problem: I didn’t know. As far as I could tell, Grand Duke Eligor had just decided he didn’t want to wait until I made it to Hell the usual way—he was sending me an express invitation. “It’s got to be Eligor trying to get me, right? You and I saw the bagmen take Smyler. Leo burned him! How else could he be after me now?”
“Yeah, somebody powerful does seem to have it in for you. What happened to Walter Sanders, by the way?”
“He’s still not back yet. No news. Which now that you mention it is pretty strange.”
Sam had a last paratha, ladling up the curry sauce like a canal dredger, then polished off his ginger ale. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
We walked to Peers Park, then settled on a bench. The lights were on and the park was full of parents and kids enjoying the spring evening, which made me feel slightly less vulnerable to being attacked by a twice-dead guy with a bayonet, but Sam himself was on Heaven’s Most Wanted List, so I wasn’t exactly relaxed.
“Okay, first off,” Sam said as we watched a guy trying to get his obviously brain-damaged dog to fetch a tennis ball, “only a butt-hat says, ‘my enemies are trying to kill me, so I’d better make it easier for them by going over to their place.’ Trying to sneak into Hell is the dumbest thing you’ve ever thought of in a career of pretty amazingly stupid things, Bobby. You know that, right?”
“I don’t know what else I can do, Sam. I can’t just leave her there. And it’s not like Eligor’s willing to leave me alone either. Obviously.”
He grunted, the Sam Riley version of a long-suffering sigh. “Knew you’d say that. But how would you get in there? Or get her out of there? Shit, even if a whole pile of miracles sort of happened one on top of the other, and you actually got away with it, where would you hide her from Eligor once she’s out?”
“Yeah, I admit there’s a ton of questions. I was kind of hoping you might help out with some of them.”
He grunted again. It was like sitting next to a hippo wallow. “Man, you’re way out of my area of expertise here. But we agree that Bobby Dollar walking into Hell is a stupid idea, don’t we? Good. Because you wouldn’t last ten seconds.”