Saladeen glared. “I’ll be waiting on you.”
Doc took in the way the two men were bristling at each other. For a moment, it looked as though he were going to comment, but then he seemed to think better of it and addressed himself directly to Jim. “You had better relax yourself, my friend. I have a request to make of you that I don’t think you’re going to like.”
Jim sighed. “I usually have to be in town at least a full day before they start giving me the bad news.” He glanced at Saladeen. “I mean, I haven’t even gotten in a fight yet.”
Doc ignored the glance. “I regret I’m going to have to ask you to leave town.”
Jim couldn’t believe Doc was saying it. “Leave town?”
“You got it.”
“You’re running me out of town?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You’ve got multiple-murdering dogs drinking themselves stupid on the street and you want to run my inoffensive ass out of town?”
“It isn’t any negative reflection on your character, believe me.”
“It isn’t?”
“You’ve got to realize that it’s nothing personal.”
Doc half glanced in the direction of the cantina and Jim immediately fixed on this. “This is some Voodoo-instigated bullshit, right?”
“It is, but don’t ask because I can’t tell.”
“They told you to toss me out of town?”
Doc treated Jim to a hard, warning look. “Keep your damned voice down.”
Saladeen threw in his ten cents’ worth. “You tell him, Doc. Lame won’t listen to me. Motherfucker hasn’t got the brains to be scared of them.”
Doc regarded Jim bleakly. “A man’s best friend can be a measure of healthy fear.”
“I thought a man’s best friend was his dog.”
“Not the way dogs are here.”
Saladeen upped his bet to a full quarter. “If someone told me to get out of town and was good enough to let me know it was Queen Danbhalah motherfucker La Flambeau and her crew behind it, I’d be long gone; no questions. You know what I mean? Lawdy mama, feets do your stuff; all the minstrel bullshit, and this nigger wouldn’t give a damn. You better believe me, Morrison. I’d be history, and willingly.”
Jim looked from Saladeen to Doc, and a glint of the old devil was kindled in his eye. “And what if I just stayed put?”
Doc half turned so the light glinted on the gold lightning flash and the mother-of-pearl grip of Elvis’s deluxe Colt. The gun rested heavy in the shoulder holster on the left side of Doc’s chest. Jim’s eye was immediately drawn to it. Doc observed where he was looking and he cracked a dry smile. “Persuasive?”
Jim slowly nodded. “It’s the Gun That Belonged to Elvis, isn’t it?”
Doc’s expression was uncompromising. “Wholly correct, my unfortunate friend.”
Weapons in the Afterlife, particularly firearms, were mainly props to image or vanity, or leftover habits. In the normal run of things, they presented little more than a momentary threat to anyone but the created creatures of fantasy. The Gun That Belonged to Elvis was a little different, however. Like the Flaming Sword of the Red Angel, the Slingshot of David, Hitler’s Revolver, the Knife Prince Yussupov Used to Kill and Castrate Rasputin, or the Great Siege Cannon of Don Carlos O’Neal, the Gun That Belonged to Elvis was a significant figment of celestial mythology and postmortem folklore. As such, its effect was totally unpredictable. A gold bullet from its barrel might well blast Jim all the way back to the Great Double Helix, or even rearrange him into some totally new, unknown, and probably unacceptable form. Jim had seen the very same pistol used against Moses, and the self-designed prophet had appeared to suffer nothing more than brief pain, but Jim Morrison wasn’t going to take any chances. Now that his memory was slowly returning, he recalled too many of the legends concerning the Colt of Elvis. That Doc Holliday should even threaten him with it meant the situation was grave; no negotiation or debate.
Jim deflated with a shrug. “So I guess that’s it. Come with the dust and be gone with the wind.”
Without anyone noticing his approach, Long Time Robert Moore was standing beside the three men. The lone diamond in the gold tooth twinkled as he spoke. “I’ll give you a ride as far as the Crossroads, if you want it, boy.”
Jim frowned. “A ride?”
The old bluesman grinned. “In my Cadillac.”
“You got a Cadillac?”
“Sure do. Long and black and fully loaded.”
“As far as the Crossroads?”
“All the way to the Crossroads.”
“What happens at the Crossroads?”
“You go your way and I go mine.”
Jim hesitated. The other three looked at him intently. Finally Jim laughed. “Sure, I’ll take a ride to the Crossroads in your Cadillac.”
Robert Moore nodded. “Then I’ll go and get the car. You all just wait right here.”
As Moore walked away, a pair of more staccato, higher-pitched bangs cracked from the cantina. Jim, Doc, and Saladeen half ducked, but Long Time Robert Moore just kept on walking.
When he returned with his Cadillac a few minutes later, the first thing Jim knew was that Robert Moore’s car couldn’t be faulted for magnificence. It was a black Coupe de Ville, probably a ’56 or ’57, but so majestically customized that its true origins were obscured. It sported six headlights and four military spots. It had been lengthened to forty feet long, and the oversized fins looked designed for a V2 rocket. The black gloss of the Cadillac’s paintwork was so perfect, so opulent and deep, that it threatened to drown anyone looking too closely. Instead of the standard lavish chrome bumpers, the ones on Long Time Robert’s car were in the form of two relief figures of naked women, sculpted in the style of Erte.
The huge juggernaut of a car pulled up beside Jim. The passenger door swung open and Long Time Robert Moore waved for him to get in. Jim looked at Doc. “So I guess I’m out of here?”
“Like I said, it isn’t personal.”
“I never did get to visit Sun Yat.”
“Maybe next time.”
“Next time?”
“Infinity is a very long time, my friend.”
Jim sighed. “Ain’t it just.”
He lowered himself into the leopardskin interior of Robert Moore’s Cadillac. It smelled of incense, old leather, Chanel No. 5, and high-test marijuana. Robert Moore sat behind the wheel; to Jim’s surprise, a Marilyn Monroe blonde, complete with white dress, was sitting in back. She smiled at him as he got in, but said nothing. Long Time Robert Moore put the car in gear and glanced at Jim. “Ready to go, rock and roll boy?”
Jim nodded. “Ready to go.”
***
Although the outside light could hardly be described as bright, it took Semple’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the red gloom inside. As soon as she was able to see, she was pleased to discover that her supposition had been correct. The decor might be Egyptienne, but it was a saloon as she knew and recognized one, complete with bar, stools, and booths to one side. All it lacked was a jukebox playing Patsy Cline or Frank Sinatra, but they probably didn’t have such things in Necropolis. The dim interior made it hard to see every detail, but the place reminded her of a run-down version of some upmarket deco joints she had seen on Earth.
She had half expected something weird and exotic, like reclining couches and a sunken bar, or perhaps oiled slaves wielding peacock fans and pouring odd-colored wine from stone jars, but what she’d found was all disconcertingly normal. Maybe the standard barroom setup from the twentieth century was simply the most practical design for serving alcohol, or maybe Anubis’s imagination had failed on this detail. About the only radically different element was a flat, triangular, wall-mounted screen behind the bar. Semple had to assume it was a Necropolis television set, but, coming as she did from the age of radio, she had little experience of TV. All she gathered was that, at least at the moment, Necropolis TV wasn’t showing any actual programs. Just the jackal head of Anubis, slowly and regally revolving against a dramatic sky filled with threatening storm clouds.