“Cool, I’ll read it all through when I get a chance. Bill me, yeah?”
“Don’t worry, I already did. I’m saving up to get this new Swedish eye-tracking software. My voice-control stuff is too old and slow, and it makes too many mistakes.”
Just to clear up any confusion, George Noceda—at least the George I talk to—has problems using a keyboard because he doesn’t have hands, he has trotters. That’s because he’s a pig. Pig with a man’s brain by night, man with a pig’s brain by day—pretty much the shittiest kind of were-pig you could be. The reason why is a long story, but basically he got hosed by Hell. “Hope it works out for you, buddy.”
“Very kind, Mr. B. I’d better get off the phone—the sky’s getting light. Vaya con dios.”
“You too, man.” And I meant it. I wouldn’t have wished George’s curse even on Donald Trump, and George is a really nice guy.
The client I’d been called to argue for was a nice old lady named Eileen Chaney who had just died in Sequoia General an hour before I got there. When I stepped Outside she was patiently waiting for me, and seemed completely unsurprised by any of what was going on, except that I didn’t have wings.
“Haven’t earned them yet,” I said, which might not have been the exact truth but was at least simple.
“I’m sure you will, young man.” She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You have a nice face.” Okay, so death hadn’t improved her vision, but I still resolved to do my best for her. Turns out there wasn’t much to do. Mrs. Chaney had nothing shocking in her background, Hell’s prosecutor was comparatively new and only offered the most perfunctory case against her, and so the whole thing was over in what felt like half an hour.
When Mrs. Chaney and the judge disappeared, I was left alone with the prosecutor for a moment. Except for the whites of his eyes, this demon (who went by the charming moniker “Shitsquelch”) looked like a statue carved out of a giant peeled purple grape. He stared at me with unhidden interest.
“I’ve heard about you, Doloriel,” he said.
“Yeah. People get bored, my name comes up.”
“Seriously. Some of the folks on my side really don’t like you. Like, they’ve got plans. If I were you I’d get into a different line of work.”
“If you were me, your friends would have killed you a long time ago,” I said.
While he was puzzling that out, I split. I was afraid he might ask me for my autograph or something.
It was about seven-thirty in the morning when I got back to the apartment house, an ugly time of the day for any sane person but especially for someone with as many sore parts as I had. I parked across the street and looked around carefully before leaving the car. In the building lobby I ran into some neighbors, two young women who lived down the hall. We’d seen each other a few times but never spoken. I thought they were probably a couple, because I only ever saw them together. One was tall and lithe and dark, the other only a little shorter, red-haired and impressively muscular without being particularly big. They were dressed to go out running. I stepped aside to let them by, and the redhead stared at my face.
“Oh! Z vami vse garazd?” she said. Sounded like Russian. “Are you quite right?”
I assumed she meant, “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, thanks. I was mugged.”
“Bozhe mii!” She said something else that I couldn’t understand to her dark-haired friend, who shook her head gravely. They walked past me with sympathetic looks on their faces.
“Take careful!” the tall dark one told me as they went out. She too was pretty obviously another non-native speaker.
Sam was gone, off to save the world or buy more ginger ale. I was on my own. I tried to catch up on a little sleep but I was too wired to relax, not to mention my ribs and skull felt like they’d been run through an industrial stamping press, so I got up again, swallowed about eleven ibuprofen, and checked out the directions Edie Parmenter had given me the night before. Her employer, this Doctor Gustibus, lived a good distance out of the city, over on the coast side of the hills, but I didn’t mind a little thinking time.
As I headed toward the freeway on-ramp I called Alice and asked her to take me out of rotation for a couple of hours while I handled some personal business.
“You can call it what you want,” she said. “Me, I’d just be honest and say ‘Staying home to watch game shows and jerk off,’ but I’ll pretend if you want.”
“It’s a complete mystery to me why people so often use the words ‘vicious bitch’ to describe you, Alice.”
She hung up before I’d finished being rude. I hate that.
• • •
I do like driving, especially when I don’t have to worry about a call from work. I followed the Woodside Expressway up and over the hills toward the Pacific, rising from oak scrub to redwood forest. When the sun got high enough it burned off some of the morning mist. It was not what you call a gorgeous November day, at least by Northern California standards, but it was nice enough. This time of year the golden light we get in October turns a bit brassy, and it’s almost silver by December. Today it was still on the buttery side, but there was a distinct nip of winter in the air, that cold twinge of mortality even an angel can feel, the chill that can make you shiver even in direct sun.
As I slalomed through the hills, I took inventory.
Anaita had made some deal with Eligor, and (as best I could tell) they had exchanged Feather and Horn to seal the bargain. Eligor had lost the feather for a while, but now he had it back, thanks to me, Barnum’s favorite angel. (I call myself that because apparently there’s a sucker born every minute even in the afterlife, and I’m the afterliving proof.) The horn, however, the other marker of their bargain, was still hidden.
And now, to add to the fun, some neo-Nazis and local criminal scum had apparently banded together to find the horn—reasons unknown—as well as work in a few beatings for me when their busy schedules allowed. I had no idea how these guys fit into things, but lots of folk had been interested in the feather when I had pretended I was going to sell it. It was possible some of the bidders at the Big Feather Auction had been fronts for the Black Sun or were connected to them some other way. I hoped Edie’s employer could tell me more about those organizations than just their names, which was why I was driving all the way out to the coast. If I didn’t get anything useful out of this Gustibus, I’d be back to square one again. And I didn’t have anything in square one except empty space.
As I crested the hills, the fog began to turn into drizzle. I put on the wipers and turned up the CD player, one of the few additions I’d made to the extremely old Japanese car I was driving. Charlie Patton’s blues took me through the rain and back into the light as I reached the shining, wet expanse of Highway 1 on the far side of the mountains, where I headed north.
The sky was streaked with clouds, although blue was trying to push through. The ocean itself was a steely gray, and there must have been some decent surf because I saw cars parked in several places along the shoulder and people in wetsuits heading down to the shore with boards.
Edie’s directions said, “Before you get to Half Moon Bay, turn left at the flying horse.” I wished I’d double-checked with her before leaving, because she hadn’t specified whether this marvel was a street, a restaurant, or an actual horse with wings. As I got close to Half Moon Bay, I slowed down a little. Luckily it was only a bit past noon, because the visibility gets really bad later in the afternoon as the sun drops toward the ocean and shines straight into your eyes. I passed a few restaurants and bars with picturesque names, but none of them were anything to do with horses, feathered or otherwise.