“This stuff gonna fit?”
“It should,” he said, surprised, “it’s yours.”
I dressed in silence. The suit fit well. The tie I skipped.
“So,” he said once I was dressed, “is there someone I should call? If not a doctor, then your wife perhaps?”
“What? No! I mean, I’d hate to bother her this late.”
“I think she’d like to know as soon as possible, don’t you? After all, your return is nothing short of miraculous. I swear, in all my years, I’ve never seen anything like it! I expect the medical journals will be chomping at the bit to write about you —and let’s not forget the media! No doubt they’ll be sure to growf!”
I’m guessing the media wouldn’t be sure to growf —that’s just the noise the guy made when I snatched the sheet off the mortician’s table and wrapped it around his head. He struggled against me, but I held it fast, twisted tight over his mouth like a gag. Eventually, he caught on he wasn’t getting anywhere with his thrashing about, and he dialed it down to the occasional token kick.
“Listen,” I said, my lips scant inches from his ear, “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you force me to, I will. See, I can’t have anybody knowing I’m alive, which means you aren’t calling anyone, you understand?” At that, his thrashing increased, and he shouted some muffled mmm-mmm-mmmms into the sheet around his mouth. I tightened my grip on the sheet and forced him to the floor. With the gag in his mouth, and my knee in the center of his back, the fight once more drained out of him.
“That’s more like it,” I said. “Now, you’ve been decent to me up until now, and I appreciate that. But I’ve got some business to attend to, and I’m pretty sure the second I walk out that door, you’re going to be on the horn to the cops. Maybe they believe you that I up and walked out of here, and maybe they don’t —but either way, this body’ll be missing, and they’re going to want to find it. Which means I’m going to have to tie you up.”
More thrashing and muffled screams.
“Hey hey hey,” I said, yanking back on the twisted sheet like a rider reining in a horse. “No need to get touchy, OK? It might not seem like it right now, but I’m doing you a favor here. One way or another, I’m walking out of here, and you’re keeping quiet. My vote’s for tying you up, but if you’d rather I left you laid out on a slab, it’s your call. No? OK, then —put your hands behind your back, and keep still.”
He did as I said. I left the sheet around his mouth, and wrapped each end a couple times around his wrists. Then I moved down to his feet. “Lift ’em up.” He bent his knees so that the soles of his black loafers pointed skyward. “Attaboy,” I said, wrapping his ankles as I’d wrapped his wrists, and then tying off the ends. The result was more or less your basic hog-tie, though I confess it probably wasn’t as tight as it ought to’ve been. But like I said, the guy’d been decent to me, and besides, all I really needed was a few hours’ head start.
“Can you breathe OK?” I asked. He nodded —or tried, at least. “Good. Now my guess is, you can work your way outta that in a couple of hours, and if you manage to, then good on you. In case you don’t, though, I’ll put in a call to the cops as soon as I get to where I’m going, and let ’em know where they can find you. Sound good?”
“Mmm-mmmm!” he replied, wiggling around in a manner that suggested he thought there wasn’t much about this situation that sounded good to him. I tried not to take it personal.
“All right, then. Oh, and Ethan?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m afraid I’m gonna need a car.”
6.
Scalding water beat down on my face, my chest, my injured stomach, pinking up my borrowed skin and washing the grit of this God-awful day from my weary limbs. Going on two days now, I supposed, since the midday sun was high overhead by the time I’d arrived at this shit-hole of a motel. But I hadn’t slept a wink since the bus ride to Bogotá, a meat-suit and a continent ago, so the last thirty-odd hours bled together into a tangled mess of pain and guilt and shame. Then again, I guess the same could be said of the past sixtyodd years.
Snippets of my conversation with Danny kept running through my head like a record on repeat. Lilith’s admonitions about the straight and narrow aside, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have done something more to help him. But there wasn’t anything I could do —and besides, Danny’s problems were his own. After all that had passed between us, I didn’t owe him a fucking thing.
Thing is, if I really believed that, why couldn’t I stop thinking about it?
When the shower finally ran cold, I shut it off and grabbed the coarse white towel that hung from the ring beside it. The motel was a run-down little momand-pop place on the outskirts of Springfield, just off of Highway 55 —The Land of Lincoln Motor Lodge, according to the sign around front. The room was courtesy of one Mr Ethan Strickland, a little object lesson about the perils of leaving one’s wallet in the center console of one’s car. The car in question, a faded blue Fiesta two-door with all the roominess and pickup of a riding mower, was in a spot out back, out of view of the street in case ol’ Ethan managed to wriggle free of his constraints and notify the authorities of its theft. The room I wasn’t as worried about —the desk clerk wouldn’t run Ethan’s credit card until checkout, and since I planned on skipping out before then, I’d be long gone by the time the charge posted to his account. I know I told him I’d put in a call to the cops once I got where I was going, to let them know where they could find him, but after the day I’d had, I didn’t think Ethan would begrudge me a few hours’ grace for a shower and a little shut-eye. OK, that’s not entirely true. I was pretty sure he would begrudge me that, but truth be told, I didn’t care.
At least today’s collection had gone well enough. Guy was a big muckety-muck at the local state house who, after an unsuccessful gubernatorial run back in ’98, cut a deal with a demon to curse anyone elected to the post. He was allowed to stick around for long enough to see the next two dudes go up the river on corruption charges, but he won’t be around to see what happens to the third. The guy was a politician to the last: when I showed up to collect him, he tried for half an hour to talk me out of it. Once he saw that it was useless, though, he didn’t put up much of a fight. Eh —if it’s true what they say about hell being a committee, I’m sure he’ll feel right at home.
Once the job was done, exhaustion hit me like a cartoon anvil, and I set out looking for someplace to lay my head. Even when I’ve got the cash —which for the record ain’t that often —I tend to avoid your nicer hotels, because their staffs are typically friendly and attentive, and I’ve got no use for either. Hence my shabby motel digs. But hey, the shower was plenty hot, and the bed looked soft, so shabby or not, it was good enough for me.
I dried off, and padded naked to the bed. Then I slipped my boxers back on and switched on the TV. CNN was covering a ferry accident somewhere off the coast of Maine. A dozen bodies had thus far been recovered, their skin stripped from their flesh by the force of the blast that had caused the ship to founder. The survivors they plucked from the chilly waters of the bay reported that immediately prior to the blast, two passengers had been heard arguing atop the upper deck. One of them was a local named Larry Thibodeau, though those who’d spoken to him that day claimed he hadn’t been himself, and one obviously distraught witness said there was something wrong with his eyes —she claimed they flickered with black fire. I’m sure the authorities just assumed she was in shock, but my guess was, she’d caught a glimpse of a demon walking around in Larry’s skin. The other man was a stranger to them, and apart from the fact that he was of average height and build, not a one of them could remember what he looked like. That’s pretty much standard operating procedure for angels working out in the open; they’re far too dignified to take human form, opting instead for a sort of vague sketch of a person that human eyes slide right off of.