“When were you going to tell us?” Audrey asked.
“Now?” Bob ventured.
“So the Squirrel People are still going out in the city?” Charlie asked. “Using the sewers?”
“Mostly,” Bob said.
“What about the Death Merchants’ date books?” Audrey asked. “The soul vessels?”
Bob shrugged.
Charlie said, “So, if they’re like me, their books kept getting names—”
“They aren’t like you,” Bob said. “Their souls moved on. You’re a monstrosity with a human soul.”
Audrey cringed but pushed on: “Have your people seen any new Death Merchants?” The Squirrel People could see the glow of soul objects, as could she, and she’d never really questioned why, but it had been a useful talent when she was misguidedly having them steal souls from the Death Merchants’ shops.
“We haven’t looked,” said Bob. “I only had them look in the places we’d been before because I heard you two talking.”
“No soul vessels lying around either?” Charlie asked.
“Nope,” said the bobcat.
“If all those souls have gone uncollected—”
“Plus the ones in your and Rivera’s books,” Audrey said. She looked to Bob. “Could the People of the Squirrel help Charlie find the soul vessels in his book, at least?”
“We need new outfits,” said Bob.
“Pardon?” Audrey said.
“You only made us one set of clothes each. They’re wearing out.” He presented the elbow of his red coat, revealing a hole there.
Audrey said, “I suppose I could patch—”
“I’d like leather armor,” said Bob. “Like a samurai. Like a shogun.”
“But strictly speaking, you don’t even need clothes,” Audrey said.
“Strictly speaking, no one does,” said Bob.
“Your clothes take a lot of time to make, Bob. They’re miniature theatrical costumes. The stitching is actually more difficult than regular clothes because they’re smaller. I don’t think I can—”
“Fine,” said Bob. “The People do not need you.” He walked back into the butler’s pantry.
“She buys the groceries,” Charlie called after him.
“We can find food.”
“Clothes are merely adornments of ego, anyway,” Audrey said.
Bob stopped, walked back, stood in the doorway, and dropped his spork. He undid the brass buttons of hs long red coat and pulled it open, revealing crisscrossed strands of muscle running over bone—some of the ham-colored fibers had crept up his neck and were starting to form the beginnings of cheeks on the bobcat skull that was his face. The high beefeater collar had hidden the progress.
“Adornment of ego?” Bob said.
“Oh, yeah,” Charlie said. “Well have a look at this.” He started to untie his robe and Audrey held her hand out to stop him.
“I’ll make new clothes,” she said.
“For all of us,” Bob said.
“For all of you,” Audrey said.
“And extras. So we can change.”
“Fine,” said Audrey. “I’ll get started tonight.”
“Good,” said Charlie. “Because if we don’t get this done, the dark could rise again, and you know what comes then . . .”
“About that,” said Bob. He buttoned his jacket, picked up his spork, and turned to walk away. “You may want to get yourself a spork or something.”
“What?” Charlie scampered into the butler’s pantry after Bob, but he was gone. Charlie returned into the parlor. “There’s a vent in there behind the wastebasket—drops right into the space under the house.”
“You’re not a monstrosity, Charlie,” Audrey said.
“It’s okay,” he said, waving the thought away with a raptor’s talon. “But I can’t collect souls like this, and I don’t trust the Squirrel People.”
“I have an idea, but it might be a little, uh, humbling.”
“We just got owned by a guy who carries a spork.”
“Good point. Also, because you’re officially still a Death Merchant, at least your date book is still active, I’m hoping that you’ll still be invisible when you’re collecting a soul vessel.”
“Not invisible; people just don’t see you. If you call their attention to you, they can.”
“You didn’t have to be naked for that to work, did you?”
“No.”
“Good, because—”
“Yeah, I know,” he said.
“You know about the cat carrier?”
“No, I was thinking of something else.”
You can see me?” Rivera asked the guy with the mop. After actually collecting several soul vessels from the names on his list, he was starting to gain some confidence as a Death Merchant. He’d even managed to enter the houses of two of his “clients” unnoticed, passing right by people who didn’t realize he was there. All his years as a cop had conditioned him to take special care in entering a residence, so to ease his mind he had started to think of the names in his date book as warrants, which also expired if not served. The fresh names had worked, the older ones, not so much, but this name had only appeared in his book this very morning. Now he was busted while standing over this poor woman’s hospice bed like some kind of ghoul. There was only one proper way to deal with this: badge the shit out of the mop guy.
“Inspector Alphonse Rivera,” he said, flipping open his badge wallet to flash the seven-pointed gold star. “SFPD homicide.”
“Uh-huh,” said the mop guy, much less impressed than Rivera had hoped. “I am Jean-Pierre Baptiste. Are you lookin’ for something, Inspector?” He was black, about sixty, and spoke with a musical Caribbean accent—from a French-speaking island, Rivera guessed.
“I’m working a case, and I’m looking for a book that I was told I might find here.” All the soul vessels he had found had been books, which had been convenient, since he owned a bookstore, but then, it appeared that the universe preferred specialty retailing.
“This book you’re looking for, you think it might be glowing red?”
Rivera felt an electric shiver run from his heels to the crown of his head, only a little less paralyzing than when the banshee had shocked him with the stun gun.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rivera said, not even convincing himself. He’d interviewed witnesses who lied so badly that he was embarrassed for them and had to look away to keep from wincing. Usually, after a few minutes, they would realize they weren’t pulling it off and would just cave in and tell the truth. Now he knew how they felt.
“Let us step out into the hallway,” Baptiste said, “so Madame Helen can get some rest.” To Helen he said, “À bientôt, madame, I will stop in before I go home.”
“Monsieur Baptiste,” said Helen, gesturing for him to come closer.
“I am here, madame,” he whispered.
“Don’t let that man alone in here with me. I think he’s Mexican. I think he’s after my Proust.”
“I will keep it safe, madame. But I don’t know where it is.”
“I had Nurse Anne wrap it in a towel and put it in the bottom drawer. Don’t look now, but check once you get rid of him.”
“I will, madame.” Baptiste looked to the little white dresser. There was one in each room, where patients’ personal things were kept. “I will.”
He left his mop bucket in the room and joined Rivera in the hall, then signaled for the policeman to follow him outside. He told the nurse at the desk that he was going on break and led Rivera outside to a spot by a covered bus stop. The hospice was in the outer Sunset, where San Francisco met the sea, and even though it was a sunny day, a cold wind swirled in the streets.
“You heard her?” Baptiste asked.
Riv
era nodded.
“Don’t think badly of Helen. She has also asked me to keep the darkie nurses out of her room. A long time ago, when she was a little girl, someone planted a small seed of fear in her, and now, when all of her fears are bubbling up, this is one she has yet to let go, but she has not lived her life this way.”
“Then she doesn’t know you’re—”
“I speak French with her,” said Baptiste with a shrug—c’est la vie. “Now, for you, Inspector, how did you know it was a book?”
“How did you know I was looking for something?”
“How many people that you meet are surprised when you can see them, Inspector?”
“I’m asking the questions here,” said Rivera, feeling stupid for having said it. He remembered Charlie Asher having a similar reaction once when Rivera had spotted him up on a roof about to brain a Russian grandmother with a cinder block. Charlie had known then that Rivera was going to be a Death Merchant, long before the Big Book showed up in the mail.
“Oh, I understand. I work in a hospice. There is always a vessel close here, so much of the time I have to whistle or sing while I am working or people will run into me.”
Rivera decided to drop the pretense. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already gone against the Great Big Book of Death’s warning about contact with other Death Merchants before this.
“You are one of us and you work in a hospice? Seems kind of easy. Lazy.”
“Me? You are a homicide detective and I am the lazy one?”
“I’ve never collected a vessel from one of my cases.”
“Seems like a waste of coincidence. Maybe you are just not very good at finding things. The Big Book says it is very bad to miss a soul vessel. Very bad indeed.”
“I could be better at it,” said Rivera. “I didn’t pick it up right away. I only started a little more than a year ago.”
“Me, too,” said Baptiste. “The book came in the mail a year ago and my wife opened it. I thought it was a joke until people started running into me at work and I began to see the soul vessels’ red glow. I have never met another person who does this.”
“There are a lot of us. I don’t know how many, exactly.”
“But you have met others?”
“Yes. A couple. Many in the city were killed a year ago. All of them shopkeepers. I think you and I must be their replacements.”
“Killed? What do you mean they were killed?”
And because to keep the secret would have been unfair to the point of endangering him, Rivera told Baptiste about the darkness rising, about the Morrigan, about the Underworld somehow expanding itself into the sewer system of San Francisco, about the battle under the city, and of how Charlie Asher had sacrificed himself to put things back in order. Baptiste, already well adjusted to this soul-selling world, actually seemed pleased to have some dimension put on the responsibility that had been dropped on him from his mailbox.
“You said these Death Merchants were all shopkeepers? You and I are not shopkeepers.”
“I have a bookshop on Russian Hill. That’s how I knew that the soul vessel would be a book. Probably, anyway. If you don’t have a shop, then how—”
“My wife sells them on the Internet.”
“You sell souls on the Internet?”
“It’s not always the Internet. Some Saturdays she will take them to the swap meet at the Cow Palace parking lot and sell them off a blanket. People pay a lot of money for the silliest things. We may be able to buy a house soon.”
“How do you know the right person gets the soul?”
“How do you know in your bookshop?”
Actually, Rivera didn’t know. While he had several soul vessels in his shop, he had yet to sell one. But when he did, there was no way to verify the right person was getting it. According to the Big Book, each soul would find its right person. He shook his head and they both looked into the gutter. Rivera had a million questions for the orderly, and he guessed that Baptiste felt the same toward him, but there was a feeling of wrongness to it, like somehow they were cheating on a test.
Finally, Baptiste said, “How long? For Helen?”
“Three days,” Rivera said. “But you know, the number isn’t always how long they have to live, only how long we have to collect the soul vessel. So probably less. I’m sorry.”
“Why do you suppose I did not get her name in my calendar?”
“I don’t know,” Rivera said.
“I should probably get the Proust book for you, then.”
“I would let you collect it, but I’m afraid I may have already set things out of order by falling behind on my calendar.”
“I understand,” Baptiste said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Rivera waited, closed his eyes, and just felt the chill wind biting through his light, worsted wool suit. In a few minutes Baptiste came back out of the front door, moving quite a bit more quickly than he had gone in.
“It’s gone,” he said.
“Did you check all the drawers?”
“I checked and I asked the shift nurse, who said that Helen had her check on it this morning. It was there then, she said.”
“Did Helen see anything?” Rivera asked.
Baptiste just looked at him.
“Sorry. Did she hear anything?”
“Rats. She complained of the sound of rats scurrying in the room. She rang for the nurse after we came out here.”
“Rats?”
“Her hearing is very good.”
They just looked at each other and there was a lull between gusts of wind when the leaves that were skittering around in the street slid to a stop. A woman’s voice whispered, “Meeeeeeeeat.” A woman’s voice that seemed to be coming from under an Audi wagon parked on the curb across the street. They both looked and did a slow, synchronized deep knee bend until they could see under the car, where there appeared to be nothing but leaves and a candy wrapper.
“Did you hear that?” Baptiste asked.
“Did you?” asked Rivera.
“No,” said Baptiste.
“Me either,” said Rivera.
11
Crocodile Tears
Lily let herself into the empty storefront that had once been Asher’s Secondhand and later the location of Pizazz, the pizza and jazz place she and M had opened. The sight of the sign, leaning in the corner, and the idea that she’d let the Mint One talk her into that name made her want to start cutting herself again, something she’d indulged briefly when she was fifteen but had quickly stopped because it hurt. The space filled the entire ground floor of a four-story building at the corner of Mason and Vallejo streets, where the North Beach, Chinatown, and Russian Hill neighborhoods met like slices of an international pie.
All the booths and tables were gone, as well as most of the restaurant equipment. Only the oak bar and a great, brick, wood-burning pizza oven remained. There was still a storeroom with a staircase that led up to Charlie Asher’s old apartment (now Jane and Cassie’s), but now it contained only a walk-in refrigerator and a few bar stools and chairs instead of the collection of knickknacks that had filled it when it had been Charlie’s store.
Lily dragged some stools out to the bar and sat down to wait in the diffused daylight from the papered-over windows. This would be weird, but she found she was excited at the idea of seeing Charlie again, even if he was a wretched little carrion creature now.
Soon there was the silhouette at the door of a woman who apparently had a crescent-moon-shaped head and Lily hurried to the door to let her in. Oh yeah, this was going to be weird.
Audrey, wearing yoga pants, a sweater, and sneakers, stood on the sidewalk holding a cat carrier shaped like a Quonset hut. It was made from heavy nylon embroidered in blue and orange swirls, heavy mesh halfway down on either end.
?
??Hi,” Lily said, stepping out of the way so Audrey could come in. They’d met once before the debacle, when Lily had been the one with the postmodern hair. “Where’s Asher?”
Audrey lifted the cat carrier.
“Well dump that little fucker out,” Lily said. “Let’s have a look at him.” Charlie had described his new body on the phone but she wanted to see him for herself.
“Hi, Lily,” came a voice from inside the luggage.
“Asher!” Lily bent down and tried to look into the cat carrier, but beyond something dark reflecting two points of light—eyes, she guessed—she could see nothing.
Audrey swung the cat carrier away from Lily. “He’d prefer you didn’t see him this way.”
“Oh, hell no,” Lily said. “I agreed to meet you here where all my PTSD began, I get to look at the little monster.”
Lily tried again to squint into the cat carrier. Audrey swung it around the other way.
Charlie said, “Audrey, if you keep swinging this thing around, I’m going to be sick.”
“Please,” Audrey said to Lily. “He’s really sensitive about his looks.”
Audrey put the cat carrier on the bar and sat down at one of the stools. Lily sat and squinted through the carrier’s mesh, trying to see something. Still just points of light.
“Asher, is it really you?”
“It’s me now.”
“I feel like I’m talking to a tiny priest in a tiny confessional. But you can only hear my tiny sins.” She affected her bowed-head-of-deep-contrition look, which was new to her, so she wasn’t confident in it. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I once drank the last of the milk and put the empty carton back in the fridge. I drew pubes on my Barbies and posed them in a threesome with a Ninja Turtle. I sometimes wish that dicks were mint flavored. I won’t say what made me think of it. I never wished that you were dead, Asher, but when I worked here, I sometimes wished that you would fall down the stairs and land in a cake. I don’t know how the cake gets there, it’s just a fantasy.”
“I don’t think any of those things are sins,” Charlie said.