THERE ISN’T MUCH traffic on the road at four A.M., but with a dead guy in the trunk the roads still feel crowded. All it will take to spoil the rest of the night is a bored cop pulling me over or a drunk driver plowing into me. I’m more worried about the cop. Yeah, I know I can get away from them. I’ve done it before. It’s the dash cam that bothers me. I don’t like the idea of LAPD having any more footage of me, especially with a corpse in the trunk and the murder weapon behind my back. It’s a long drive out to Malibu when you have to stick to the speed limit.
I turn off the headlights when I head up the hill to Teddy Osterberg’s place, driving by moonlight. I haven’t been out here since I burned the place down. Teddy’s mansion is a pile of rubble and some scorched beams surrounded by police tape. Teddy was a ghoul. Someone with an appetite for dead flesh. In his spare time he was a cemetery buff. He collected them like other people collect model trains. At the top of the hill, I pop the trunk and haul out the body and the shovel.
There are hundreds of grave sites sprawled in every direction. Marble tombstones and rotting wooden markers. Angel-topped mausoleums and rocky burial mounds. I take Declan out to the far end of the collection where Teddy has an old-fashioned potter’s field. It’s invisible from the road and seems like a good enough place for Declan to spend his retirement years.
The ground has baked hard under the California sun. I should have brought a pick to break up the soil. After about an hour of digging, I have a hole just deep enough to hold Declan. I push him over the edge with my boot and fill the hole back in, packing down the earth on top of the grave and scattering the leftover dirt around the cemetery.
Back at the car, I toss the shovel in the trunk and head down the hill, not turning on the lights until I’m back on the main road. I’m trying to decide if I should burn Teddy’s car or push it into the ocean when I hear a horn behind me. I put my arm out the window and signal for whoever it is to go around, but the car just keeps honking. It’s a late-sixties’ cherry-red Mustang. Probably the property of some movie star’s kid. At least it isn’t a cop.
When the road widens enough to have a decent shoulder I pull over to let the car pass. Last thing I want is to attract attention when my coat is covered in cemetery dirt and another man’s blood. Imagine my glee when the car pulls off on the shoulder behind me. I pull my gun and put it in my coat pocket.
I get out and wait. The other car’s headlights are in my eyes, but I can hear the driver’s door open and someone start my way. It’s a woman and she’s walking with purpose. All I can see is her outline. She’s wearing spike heels. I cock the hammer on the pistol.
“I don’t always expect tribute, but can’t a girl say hello around here without every nervous Nellie pulling heat on her? You boys do love your guns.”
I recognize the voice.
“Mustang Sally?”
She steps between the headlights and me and I can finally see her face. She’s smiling, knowing how much she spooked me. I smile back.
“Is that a guilty conscience you’re wearing tonight?” she says.
“Not guilty. Just tired. I buried a guy up at Teddy Osterberg’s place. What are you doing here?”
“What I always do. Driving.”
Mustang Sally is the highway sylph. The queen of the road, a spirit that’s been around in one form or other since the first humans left the first mud ruts in the ground with their feet and then wagons. She drives L.A.’s roads 24/7 every day of the year and only stops when bums like me lure her over with tributes of cigarettes and road food. But tonight she stopped me.
“It’s nice to see you. Thanks again for the help last time.”
“Getting you into Hell or keeping you from getting run down when you got back?”
“I’m grateful for the first and pathetically grateful for the second.”
She doesn’t say anything for a second. I’m not the one who stopped her, but she’s still a spirit that needs feeding. I pull out the closest thing I have to a tribute. Half a pack of Maledictions.
“It’s all I have. I didn’t expect to see you.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t expect to see you either, but kismet,” she says, and sniffs the pack.
“These must pack a wallop.”
She taps out a smoke and holds it to her lips. I get out Mason’s lighter and spark the cigarette for her.
“So this is what they smoke in Hell these days. A tribe that used to worship me—who was it?—they liked sage sprinkled with wolf dung, so I suppose I’ve had worse smokes in my time. So, what can I do for you tonight?”
I open my hands. Sally makes a face and brushes some graveyard dirt from my shoulder.
“I wasn’t looking for you. You stopped me.”
She shakes her head.
“Use your brain. You’re on this road. I’m on this road. Spirits and mortals don’t just bump into each other outside a Stuckey’s without it meaning something. So, we’ve exchanged pleasantries. You’ve paid me this ludicrous tribute. All the formalities are taken care of. What’s on your mind?”
I’m not sure what to say at first and then it comes to me.
“I’m going into Kill City.”
“You do go to the most interesting places. Why?”
“I have to find a ghost.”
“That’s probably a good place for them. How many people died there?”
“In the accident, a hundred give or take.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know anything about the place or where we’re going. We have a guide but I don’t trust him. I’m not sure what to do about it.”
Sally puffs the Malediction, pulling the smoke as deep into her lungs as any Hellion.
“Here’s the thing: Kill City isn’t really my kind of road. I’m an open-road gal. Kill City is more of a labyrinth. You know any labyrinth spirits?”
“No.”
“I know a few but they won’t be any help. They’re all as dizzy as clowns in a clothes dryer.”
“Do you have any words of wisdom before I go in?”
She nods her head from side to side, thinking.
“You could get one of those little Saint Christopher statues for your dashboard.”
“You’re the only traveling saint I believe in.”
She smiles. A few other cars pass us as we talk. You’d think us standing here in the middle of the night would attract rubberneckers. But no one slows down or even looks at us. It’s like we’re invisible.
“What I can tell you is what I tell anyone in your position. When you get lost, and you will get lost, keep going and don’t stop till you hit the end of the road. There will be something there, even if it’s not what you were looking for. And something is always better than nothing, isn’t it?”
“That depends on how pointy something’s teeth are.”
She blows out some smoke and drops the Malediction on the ground, grinding it out with her shoe.
“Sorry I can’t be more help,” she says.
“You’re always fine by me, Sally.”
“I mean really sorry. I’m a spirit of the earth. Something bad is coming, and if it gets here, it will eat me like a ripe peach. And I don’t want that. I love my roads and the funny people I meet along the way. I saved you once. Now you’re going to return the favor, right?”
“I’m going to do my best.”
“That’s all a lady can ask. I’ll see you around, Mr. Stark.”
She turns and heads back to her car.
“I’ll see you, Sally. Drive safe.”
That makes her laugh. She guns the Mustang’s engine and peels rubber back onto the road.
Some days are harder than others in the kill-or-be-killed game. Some days are stranger. This day might have set some new records.
I WAKE UP around noon and start calling people, telling them to come to the penthouse around three. Candy and I spend an hour rearranging furniture so the sofa, which now covers the remains of Declan’s sizable bloodstain, doesn’t look too out of place. Kasabian’s gimp leg makes him useless for this kind of work, so he hangs out at his desk kibitzing the whole time, like a half-crocked Martha Stewart.