Something whirred overhead, and I looked up, heart racing, but it was only some night bird passing. No message there, at least not one I was waiting for.
Twenty minutes or so drifted by, but I was still alone, just me and the smell of wet concrete and a few ice cubes rattling in the bottom of an empty glass.
eighteen
make friends and incinerate people
I WAS LIMPING as I made my way along Centennial Avenue, but it was only a tactical limp.
I saw my Datsun reach the corner and turn, heading back toward Ravenswood, the new paint job quite convincingly ratty after the recent hard use. I’d let the Amazons drive me because I didn’t want to risk setting off the incendiary in the heel of my shoe, but I was damned if I was going to risk getting them hurt on this little scouting expedition, which was exactly the kind of stupid, probably unnecessary thing I do best by myself.
Centennial had been a major thoroughfare back in the 1960s, but it had fallen on leaner times, and the big downtown rebuilding program of the mid-90s had just missed it by a couple of streets. It was wide but didn’t look it because it was crammed with boxy, multistory buildings built at the beginning of the previous century. These days people drove through it too fast, and although it was still a neighborhood where people lived—almost all the upper floors of even the more successful businesses were apartments—the gloominess, wide streets, and fast traffic tended to keep even local pedestrians moving quickly. Not to mention the less pleasant elements of street life, which were to be found on Centennial in profusion, as some guy on public television might say. The intersection of Centennial and Industrial a few blocks down was one of the best places in Jude to find hookers and drugs at pretty much any hour of the day.
Here, a little west of Cendustrial, as some of the locals called it, things weren’t quite so grim, but they hadn’t exactly caught the wave of gentrification either. The downstairs businesses were mostly small taquerias, Asian food joints, dry cleaners, and nail salons—the kind of establishments you find in strip malls out in the suburbs.
Number 378 was a big, sandy-gray building of about the same vintage as the rest of the street, but a floor or so higher than its neighbors. It was also a bit more upscale than the rest of the block, with three entrances on the bottom floor, one for a doctor’s office, one for an accounting business, and one with “Sonnenrad Communications” written in gold paint on the glass. I pushed that one open and went in. There was no one inside, just a kind of sad little waiting room with a table and some magazines. (Nothing particularly neo-Nazi, I feel honor-bound to report, but I guess you don’t want to leave copies of Genocide Illustrated out for the UPS guy to see.) A laser-printed sign taped to the wall said the reception desk was one floor above, so I limped carefully up the stairs to a smaller room. The receptionist was about twenty-five and as blonde as one of the German schoolgirls out of Triumph of the Will. Her accent, though, was strictly San Judas.
“Can I help you?”
“I have an appointment. My name is Dollar.”
She nodded, punched a button, announced me into her headset, then said “Someone will be right out,” before turning back to whatever important work she was doing for the good of the race, which seemed to be reading Us Magazine.
After a few seconds one of the bastards I’d caught in my apartment, the dark-haired missionary I’d named “Timon,” opened the inner door and beckoned me in. As I entered, Pumbaa, his blond, slightly stockier buddy, stepped in on the other side of me.
“Herr von Reinmann is waiting for you,” said Timon, stiff as your first slow-dance chubby. “We’re very sorry about the misunderstanding of the other day.”
I wasn’t going to waste a lot of energy on pretend courtesy. “Let’s get on with this.”
We went up another flight of stairs, then Timon knocked on a door about halfway down the hall before showing me in.
The room had clearly once been a very nice office, a lawyer’s practice or even an old-fashioned medical consulting room, though the faded wallpaper was at odds with the modernist furniture. One big window crisscrossed with wrought iron bars took up a lot of the northeastern side. Across the wide room from me, behind a big oak desk, sat a man of about thirty or so with pale skin and black hair. His hair was military-short, like that of my escorts, nearly shaved to the scalp, but unlike Timon and Pumbaa, he had a full, thick beard. He looked less like a stereotype neo-Nazi than I’d expected—more like Abe Lincoln in the middle of a lice epidemic. This was emphasized when he stood up, because he was also quite tall, nearly six and a half feet, with long arms and long hands.
“Mr. Dollar!” He had a slight but definite Scandinavian accent. “So kind of you to come. Again, many apologies for my colleagues’ mistakes. The guilty have been disciplined, I promise you.”
It didn’t look to me like either of my two escorts were suffering too badly, but I only nodded. “And you must be Baldur von Reinmann.”
He smiled, as if I had recognized him in public and asked for an autograph. “I am! Yes! And we have much to speak about. But first, please forgive me, my colleagues must . . .” he made a gesture of regret, “well, let us be honest. They must search you for weapons. I have many enemies, and you and I have not yet established our friendship.”
I shrugged and let them pat me down. One of them found my FN automatic, withdrew it with careful fingers, and set it down on the desk. The other one found my sleeve knife, but missed the second blade, which was down my collar at the back. Ever the good sport, I told them, then passed it to yellow-haired Pumbaa.
Von Reinmann frowned. “Thomas, you were hasty in your search.” He set the pistol and the two knives off to one side of his desk, well out of my reach. “Now search again.”
This time they found the third knife, a very small one built into my belt buckle, more of a punch-blade, really, and eventually they even noticed the lead rod sewed into my sleeve. Instead of having them pick my jacket apart, I just took it off and tossed it to von Reinmann, who folded it neatly and put it on top of everything else.
Thomas aka Pumbaa brought me a chair and set it in front of the desk, then he and the brown-haired guy stood on either side of me while I sat down.
“Can I offer you something?” the boss asked.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I just had lunch with my daughter before I came.”
I watched the bearded man’s response, but he only nodded, which made me very happy. I had invented a daughter not just to explain away the Amazons if someone saw them drop me off, but more to see if the Black Sun Faction knew I was an angel. No reaction meant probably don’t know. Which would make things way more likely to work out in my favor.
Now I had to sit through about five minutes of Baldur von Bullshit explaining to me how his men had totally misunderstood his directions to make contact with me and had then taken even their foolish surveillance of me further still, into that (his words) “so regrettable physical conflict.”
“You mean beating me until I was coughing blood?”
He waggled his hand at these sad but minor details. “As I have said, Mr. Dollar, we can only regret the error. But we have taken great pains to make certain such a thing does not happen again.”
“Really? I may be wrong, but two of the guys are standing right here breathing down my neck, and neither one of them seems to have had his legs broken.”
BvW smiled with real pleasure, and for the first time I was worried. I mean, he was happy I brought that up. I remembered what the Amazons had said—these people were dangerous. “Oh, but they were only along to help. It was the so-called professional we hired who botched this so badly.”
Bald Thug, he meant. So they were going to fob it all off on him. What was the point? He isn’t around, too bad, he’s escaped somewhere, whatever they were going to say—why even bring it up? “Well, he seemed pretty certain his job was to restructure my face.”
/> “Terrible, terrible. But don’t worry. We have taken care of it.” BvW opened the laptop on the desk in front of him, the biggest monitor you could get and still carry it onto a plane, then turned it around toward me. “Watch. You will see.”
For a moment there was only a blur of light and shadow on the screen, then the image regularized itself, and I could see a man lying on his side on what seemed to be oily concrete, caught in a pool of light. No, not lying exactly, but sort of kneeling, with his hands apparently tied behind his back. Someone was holding his head down against the floor. I could see enough of the kneeling man’s face to recognize Bald Thug, and my nose sent me a nostalgic twinge of pain. Bald Thug was talking, but the volume was off, and I couldn’t hear a thing he was saying.
“Okay, yeah, there’s your boy. What, did you spank him for me?”
“Watch.”
A moment later the figure that had been holding down B-Thug’s head leaned in so I could see the rest of him. It wasn’t possible to say for sure because the new figure was wearing a ski mask, but it might have been von Reinmann himself. The ski-mask guy brought out a long, wide-bladed dagger and displayed it to the camera. I could tell by the shape what it was, and although I couldn’t read the etching on the blade in the dim light where they had filmed, I already knew what it said: “Meine Ehre heißt Treue”—my honor called loyalty, roughly, which was inscribed on all the Nazi SS daggers of that kind. I almost made a remark about collecting the whole set or something, but then a couple of other dark figures leaned in to hold Bald Thug more firmly, and the one with the dagger began sawing at his neck.
It was horrible to watch, even more so because it wasn’t fast. Even a strong man is going to need a little time to saw through a muscular man’s neck with a dagger, however sharp, especially when that muscular man is struggling for his very life, thrashing and screaming—not that I could hear him, for which I was grateful. The last minutes were just unsanitary, nauseating butchery. When it was all over the camera shut off, so that the last view was of the headless neck and the blood-spattered torso.
Baldur von Reinmann closed the laptop and sat back, his face pleasant and self-satisfied. “The honor of our group is very important to us, Mr. Dollar, and we do not take our debts lightly. And in case you think we staged this like some American television show, I have a gift for you.” He leaned down and lifted something from the floor behind his desk, then thumped it down on top of his blotter. It was what they call a DJ case, a cube-shaped box about a foot on each side with a lid that snapped shut and locked; DJs use them to lug their vinyl records around from gig to gig. “A gift for you, Mr. Dollar, to show our sincerity. Go ahead, look inside. You will know that the unfortunate attack on you has been repaid.”
I’ve seen a lot in my day, so it wasn’t like I was worried I was going to throw up or anything, but I definitely wasn’t feeling quite as lighthearted as I had when I came in. I knew from Gustibus and the Amazons that these guys were killers, so that was no surprise, but the positive pleasure von Reinmann took in showing me the execution put him in the next class down: sadists and crazies.
Not much of a surprise, I thought, These are the kind of people the Highest made Hell for in the first place.
I did my best to look unmoved, but I didn’t open the box, either, just left it sitting there like a little spaceship from the planet Decapitron that had landed in the middle of the desk. “Okay, if you’re done with your little presentation, I need answers. You said we could work together. What is it that you think we have in common?”
He smiled an empty smile. “The Horn, Mr. Dollar. You know it as well as I do, so I will not insult your intelligence. The Horn of Abigor.”
Bingo. At least we weren’t going to waste any more time. “Abigor? You mean Eligor?”
He waved his hand again. “Abigor, Eligor, Eligos—these immortal beings have as many names as they have men who worship them or pray for their mercy. You have shown a rare ability to obtain artifacts others can only dream of. The Horn of Abigor would be of particular use to us. Whatever you are being paid, I have been authorized by our leader to pay you one hundred and fifty percent.”
“Your leader? I thought you were the leader.”
He smiled, but this time it was a little tighter. “No, no. The Black Sun is an old and august society, and although I have been lucky enough to make my way into the upper ranks of our faction, we all give our allegiance to the master—the Imperator, all praise him.” Timon and Pumbaa repeated the words in a murmur, like a catechism.
“We are a far greater force than you can know, Mr. Dollar—a powerful movement, an army. We can offer you much besides our friendship, but our friendship alone is a very good thing to have.”
“I’m sure.” I said. “And what will you do with the horn if you get it?”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Come, we cannot answer all questions. Besides, it will be for our master to decide. But you need not worry. Only good will come of it. We are not some nihilistic sect, some anarchist cell intent on tearing down all civilization. We are builders, Mr. Dollar!”
“Yeah, I’m sure. But it didn’t take long for the Soviet tanks to bring down all that Nazi architecture in Berlin, did it?”
For a moment I saw something not just angry, but insanely so, a glint in his green eyes. I braced myself to get hit, but he only sat back in his chair and wagged his finger at me like an annoyed schoolmaster. “You will not see me rise to such bait, Mr. Dollar. We have a certain connection to some of the older Volkisch movements, but Hitler was a fool and an amateur—and a racist!” He said it like I might be surprised to hear it. “He wasted far too much time worrying about the Jews when the real enemies were closer, far closer.”
“And those real enemies are?”
“We have spent too much time on this already, Mr. Dollar.” He stood, unfolding his long, lean frame from the chair. “Now, do we make our agreement to cooperate? It will mean better money for you, and in the long run it will mean much more. You will find yourself part of a very, very influential movement, and we will only gain power in the years ahead.”
“And what if I say no? Because I’m kind of used to working alone.”
“But that is precisely the problem,” said BvW. “Because it leads to misunderstandings. Like this.” He indicated the box on the desk. “No, I think you will say yes. After all, what else can you say?”
“So I say yes, and then I walk out?”
“More or less,” he said. He reached down and pushed a button on his phone and a side door opened. Three more men entered, all similar in age and appearance to the two missionaries (as I still thought of them). All wore the kind of jackets that were good for concealed carry, and this time I was pretty sure they were packing more than just pepper spray. “Some of my associates will go with you, of course, to pick up anything you might need before you move in here with us. We have extensive dormitories in the upper rooms, and many rooms to choose from. Surely you will like that better than, pardon me, the ghetto where you have been living.” So they apparently didn’t know I’d moved out of Tierra Green, or where I’d moved to. I was happy to hear that.
With the three new guys in the room, the odds had just become dramatically worse if I’d planned to fight my way out—but I hadn’t. Still, I decided it was time to get the party started, before any more neo-Nazis appeared, so I stood and moved a careful step closer to the desk. As I expected, von R. shifted so that he was still between me and my weapons. He wasn’t just big, he was smart. I reminded myself not to let the master-race bullshit make me careless.
“Oh, one thing I wanted to ask you,” I said, pausing in front of the desk. “Why Baldur von Reinmann?”
He seemed caught off balance. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Baldur, the Norse god of light? Reinmann—‘pure man’? Isn’t that a bit like calling yourself Jesus von Superman? I mean, doesn’t
anybody in your organization just start laughing sometimes?”
His long pale face went very cold. “Ah. I was told you had an odd sense of humor.”
“No, really. I’ve been doing some research.” I turned to Timon, Pumbaa, and the new guys. “Do you fellas all know this? I mean, your boss here has had a shit-ton of names. First he was plain old Morten Egge, son of an Oslo dentist and big into Star Wars. Then he was something else for a while—Svein Hvitkriger or something, when he started hanging out with the black metal crazies. Hey, did you guys play in one of his bands? Anyway, what came next?” I turned to von Reinmann, who was getting paler by the second. “Oh, yeah, the black metal thing was going so well he changed his name to ‘Uruk’ and became a movement spokesman—death metal church-burners and cough-syrup drinkers just love those Tolkien names. And now he’s Baldur von Reinmann, uberleutnant of the Black Sun Faction.” I shook my head. “Opportunist—or just kind of teenage? ‘Help me, I don’t know who I am!’ Are you going to be a hippie next and name yourself Barley or Sunflower or something?”
Von Reinmann was distinctly not amused. “Hurt him,” he told his men.
“Yeah,” I said. “You can try.” I threw a mocking Nazi salute. “Sieg heil, baby!” And then I stamped my right heel on the floor as hard as I could.
If my trick didn’t work, I was going to be in a world of trouble. Give me a gun, a few sharp objects, a good night’s sleep, and a lot of cover, and with my angel advantages I might—just might—be able to take five or six guys, but I’m not promising anything. In the middle of my enemies’ turf in an upper floor office, with nothing in my hands but sweat, I was more likely to wind up shot to ribbons. That was why I had stayed up late the previous night.
You may not know this, but you can make a pretty damn good ninja flash-bang that also smokes like a motherfucker with mostly household stuff. I’d added a few touches of my own to make the smoke cloud grow bigger and faster—and no, I’m not going to tell you about how to do that—but you can put together something a bit less oomphy with just potassium nitrate, sugar, and the pebbly stuff out of those little snap blasters you find all over during Chinese New Year, the ones you throw down that explode with a little pop.