To get Caz back, I could have said, but didn’t have to. Clarence knew. He’d been in the parking garage with me when it all went sour, when Eligor went home with the angel’s feather and I was left with nothing but a couple of gallons of dissolving fake Caz. Clarence and Sam had basically carried me home that night, then poured me back out of a vodka bottle a couple of weeks later.
The girls at the next table were ignoring their parents completely now. As the adults conversed quietly in what was probably some Indonesian dialect (if you think I know the difference between Balinese and Javanese you’ve definitely got the wrong angel) the girls giggled and squealed in English. “She says she’s getting an after-school job!” pronounced one of them with disdain.
“As a slut!” said the other. They both collapsed into laughter again. The parents and the old woman didn’t even look at them. They may not have understood English very well.
The grown-ups probably don’t know much about what their kids are getting up to here in the Land of the Free, I thought.
This sparked an idea, which distracted me enough that I missed part of what Clarence was saying.
“. . . Because if this Kephas stashed the horn in Heaven somewhere, you’ll never find it, Bobby.”
“No, I don’t think that’s where it is.” But I was focused now on what the girls behind him had said—after-school job. “If you had something that belonged to an important demon, the last place you’d want to stash it would be Upstairs. Talk about something sticking out like a sore thumb! It would be like trying to hide a chunk of uranium in a Geiger counter factory.”
“So you think the horn’s somewhere here on Earth?” He snorted. “Should be easy to find after narrowing it down so far.”
“Sarcasm is like training wheels for the humor-impaired,” I informed him. “You want another beer?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got something to do in a little while.” Suddenly he seemed to go a bit cagey. “But thanks. The buffalo washcloth thing was actually pretty good.”
“You’re a miracle of tolerance, Junior.” I flipped some money onto the tray to cover the bill and the tip. “I just thought of something I have to do, too.”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “I thought we might hang out a bit longer.”
“Why?”
“Nothing.” But he looked like it had definitely been something—the kid wore a mild but distinct air of disappointment. “I just wanted to talk to you about—never mind, it doesn’t matter. It can wait.”
“Good. Because I just realized I have another resource besides the fabulous Mr. Fox who can give me some information about auctions—especially auctions for exotic objects, like angel feathers. And possibly demon horns, too.”
• • •
There are very few activities that are going to make a guy look and feel more like a pervert than driving slowly past a Catholic girls’ academy when school lets out, examining all the young women. (You have to look closely, because the uniforms make them look alike, you see. Honest, there’s a reason I was doing this.)
I finally spotted her and eased up alongside the curb. Luckily for me, she was walking by herself. I had a suspicion she did that a lot. I rolled my window down.
“Hi. Can I buy you a milkshake, young lady?”
She looked up with a slightly unfocused expression, as though she needed to see me before knowing whether she was being teased or actually threatened. She pushed her glasses up her nose, then smiled.
“Mr. Dollar! Hi. What are you doing here?”
“Like I said, Edie, buying you a milkshake—if that’s okay. Can you spare me fifteen or twenty minutes?”
“Sure. Do you want me to get in?”
“Probably give people the wrong idea. The SJ Creamery’s just around the corner and down a block. I’ll meet you there.”
Because of slow traffic from all the people picking up their daughters, Edie actually reached the place before I did. I settled in on the other side of the booth, facing her and her enormous backpack. Despite her youth, Edie Parmenter was one of the most acute sensitives in Northern California, and her after-school job had nothing to do with rolling burritos or stacking jeans at the Gap.
We both ordered chocolate shakes. I was still fairly full from lunch, but it’s hard to turn down a serious milkshake, and that’s the kind they made there. “It’s weird to see you here, Mr. Dollar,” Edie said. “Not bad, I mean, just . . .” She laughed. “I totally didn’t expect you.”
“Me and the Spanish Inquisition,” I said. “Sorry—old joke.”
Edie gave me a stern look. “I know about Monty Python, Mr. Dollar. My dad quotes them all the time.”
“Ow.” I leaned back. “How’s life? How’s school?”
“Tenth grade completely sucks, but at least I don’t have to board at school this year. But I have to say I don’t think nuns make the best science teachers. Like, Sister Berenice was telling us the other day that humans only went to the moon to try to find God. And this other teacher told me that God hates San Judas because there are so many gay people living here.”
“Yeah, especially around the downtown fabric stores,” I said. “That’s a real problem for Heaven. Armageddon is supposed to start right here in the Pioneer District.”
She looked at me carefully. “I get it. You’re joking. There’s nothing wrong with gay people.”
“I agree. Not to mention that anybody who pisses off nuns is okay with me.” I paused while our shakes arrived, nodded thanks to the server, then unsheathed my straw. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something, Edie. The last time I saw you—remember?”
“Islanders Hall?” She pushed back her glasses again so she could see to force her own straw into the thick shake. “The auction, yeah. That was totes scary! All those people shooting! And you knocked me over on my bike.”
“It was quite a night, all right. But I wanted to ask you to tell me what you remembered about it. Mostly I want to know who else was there.”
I had picked the right girl. Edie reeled off a list—Japanese Crowleyites, some Jesuits, Scythian priestesses (Foxy had called them “Amazons,” I remembered) and more. But none of the names sparked any new ideas. I asked Edie in a roundabout way if she’d heard anything lately about a horn that might have the same kind of value as the feather, but she only shook her head.
“Oh, no! That feather—that was crazy! I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Not since then, either.” She paused for a moment, sorting something out in her mind. “The person who sent me that night, well, that person (she was walking around the pronoun, I noticed, protecting her client) wanted me to describe everyone else who was there, too, just like you.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble, but can you tell me anything about your client? Anything at all?”
She put down her milkshake. “You know I can’t do that, Mr. Dollar. It’s bad business.”
“I get it. Drink up, I understand. Okay, here’s another question. I have a real need to find out some things, and that night and the people who wanted the feather make a good starting point. Any chance your client would talk to me?”
Edie’s eyes went big. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, do me a favor. Contact him or her and ask, would you? Tell them it’s important to me and that I’d make it worthwhile to them.”
She still looked worried. “I don’t know.”
“It can’t hurt to ask. You’ve known me for a few years now, Edie. Have I ever lied to you about anything? Done anything crooked?”
“You hit that guy in the face that one time.”
“Are you talking about the jamoke who was trying to sell that bogus relic of Le Saint Prepuce? Come on, that was gross, and he totally had it coming. Let’s be fair—he threatened to pull a knife on me.”
She giggled. “Actually, it was pretty cool. Like a movie.” She slurped up the last of her shake and sat back, studying me through her slightly crooked glasses. She could have been Encyclopedia Brown’s cooler sister. “Okay, Mr. Dollar. I’ll check it out with my employer. How do I reach you?”