“Yeah, but you’re not a very good liar. Sometimes you have to lie to people.”
He directed me away from the desk and sat down. “Find something useful to do. Clean your gun or something. If I need someone who couldn’t tell the whole truth if his life depended on it, I’ll let you know.”
• • •
Needless to say, with sexy Amazons running around half-naked in the next room and loudly making out for hours most nights, all my guns were already pretty damn clean, and every blade I owned had been sharpened and re-sharpened until they were all as thin as fingernail clippings. However, I had been trying to decide what to do once I actually knew where my suspect lived, so I figured I might as well get on with that part.
Monica picked up on the second ring. “Naber.”
“It’s Bobby.”
There was a bit of a pause. There always is. The kind of history Monica and I have is just pleasant enough that I can always call her, but not so much that we don’t usually start off with one of those awkward pauses. “Yes, hello, Bobby. How are you?”
“Been better. Been worse. Any chance I could buy you a cup of coffee?”
I swear I could hear her thinking. “What does that mean, exactly?” she said at last.
“Nothing weird, I promise. I really need to talk to you. In fact, I need a favor.”
“Ah.” She sounded more comfortable now. “When? I’m just on my way to a client out in the hills.”
“I could meet you on your way back.”
“Okay.” She named a restaurant we’d been to before. “Give me an hour before you set out. Alice said it would be a quick one.” The tone of her voice changed. “I think that means it’s a kid.”
“Sorry to hear it. Yeah, an hour. I really appreciate this. You’re a sweetheart.”
“Yeah, that’s me—the sweetheart of the regiment.”
• • •
Look, I know I’m not the most sensitive guy in the world, but when Monica came in I could tell it had been a bad one, so I just went to the bar and ordered her a drink, then let her get about half of it down before I said anything.
“Bad night?”
“You know. A nine-year-old girl. Beaten to death by her stepfather.” She stirred her drink, then took another long swallow until the ice sounded dry. “I hate kids. I mean, I hate working with kids. In our job.”
I could only nod. Kids are the hardest, not so much because they don’t understand, unless they’re really little, but because they ask so many questions, and you have to keep saying, “I can’t tell you,” or, if you’re more honest, “I don’t know.”
“You want another drink?”
“No. I have to drive.” She looked up. Her eyes were a bit red. “What can I do for you, Mr. Dollar?”
I wasn’t quite ready to dive in. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how are you and Teddy Nebraska doing? Is it serious?”
“I don’t know. He’s sweet, but he’s so old-fashioned. I swear, he couldn’t have been alive past the late eighteen-nineties.”
“Is that why he’s been acting so weird around me?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t one of her good ones. “I think it has more to do with the fact that you scare him to death. He wants to make sure you’re not angry with him for dating me.”
“Really? Scared of me? Why? Does he think I’m jealous?”
“I told him you wouldn’t be.” A smile, shadowed with regret. “I kind of wish you would be, but I knew you wouldn’t. Yeah, I think he’s worried you might beat him up or something.”
I sat back. “You’re kidding. Me?”
“That’s right, Dollar. I know you’re a useless softie, and you know it, but everyone else down at the Compasses thinks you’re kind of a bad-ass. Fighting demons and monsters, mysterious absences—you’re the cool kid on the playground.”
It was so different than the way I saw myself—hapless pawn of fate, barely able to keep it together for nine or ten minutes at a stretch—that I laughed loud enough for the drunks in the next booth to glare at me. “You’re joking.”
“I don’t have the energy.” She put the glass down and sighed. “So what do you want, Bobby?”
I told Monica, without explaining who I thought the target really was, of course, that I needed to get to Donya Sepanta, close up and personal.
“Why don’t you just do what you ordinarily do? Smash through the front door and keep going until someone tries to kill you?”
I bowed my head. “I’m trying to improve my karma, sweetie. From now on I’m going to do it the peaceful way first. Then when I fuck that up, I go back with guns blazing.” I was stopped by her look of alarm. “I’m kidding. There will be no guns. I just need to get in and meet this woman face-to-face.”
“She must be very good looking. But I thought you had a new girlfriend.”
A moment of constriction around the heart and lungs. Who’d been talking? “Where did you hear that?”
“Gossip doesn’t come like email, with To and From in the header. I don’t know. Everybody talks about it. Some mysterious woman no one’s ever seen.” She smiled, and it was a little better this time. “Honestly, Bobby, I don’t mind. We were never serious about each other, were we?”
I smelled another trap. “I always cared about you, Monica. I still do.”
“And that calls for another drink, I believe.” She waved until she caught the harried waitress’s attention. “How about you?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“So, then—your new girlfriend?”
“It’s complicated. And she’s out of town. For a while.”
“So you’re scouting up new talent?”
“If I swear I’m not, you won’t believe me. Think what you want. But I do need to meet this Sepanta woman. Help me?”
“I’m not trying to be mean, honest. And if you’re serious about this new one who you never talk about, I wish you the best. Now, what can I do about Donya Sepanta?”
I was still inventing the plan, so I briefed her as best I could, doing my best not to harp too much on the need for secrecy, although I was scared to death my pursuit of Donya Sepanta would also become news around the Compasses. If people found out I was after Anaita it could have even worse repercussions than people knowing about Caz. Although now that I thought about it, the downside of both would be immediate ejection of my immortal soul from Heaven and its prompt conveyance to the lower depths, so it was kind of a pick-’em.
Monica agreed to help, pending the rest of the information on Donya Sepanta, which I promised I’d get to her as soon as I had it. “She is beautiful, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. You sure you’re not aiming a bit high?”
“It’s nothing to do with sex, Monica. I swear on the Highest.”
“Bobby, everything you do is something to do with sex. I just don’t have the strength to dig deep enough to find out. Let me know when you need me. I’ll look up some of my old contacts.”
“Bless you. I mean that.”
“Yeah. Give an old trooper a kiss on the cheek, and we’ll say goodnight. I have to go home. Some of us are still working for a living.”
Which sounded like she knew about my leave of absence, too. Did everybody know more about my life than I did? Probably.
We hugged goodbye in the parking lot, and I tried not to think much about how warm and alive Monica felt, or the absence of Caz, which was all I had instead.
When I got home, such as home currently was, I found Clarence dancing with the Amazons in the middle of the living room to Junior Walker and the All-Stars’ “Shotgun.” I didn’t even know Caz had that song in her collection. How did a fifteenth-century Polish countess know about Junior Walker?
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said loudly over the music, “but I’ve had a long day, what with people trying to murder me and all, and I still ne
ed to get Clarence back to his car.”
“Join us!” cried Oxana. “We are having a celebrate!”
“Yes, we are getting on our groove,” said Halyna.
“Because I found the address, Bobby,” Clarence announced without ever stopping his science-grad-student Watusi. Before that moment I would have guessed that all gay guys could dance. “Number One Hilltop Way,” he shouted. “The place is huge! There’s a satellite picture on the laptop!”
I wandered to the desk to look at it. If Casa Sepanta had been built a few hundred years earlier, it would have been a castle. Outside the very large house and numerous outbuildings were walls, a guard booth, the whole nine yards. And there, nestled beneath a bunch of trees, was the outline of the pools from the Sunset article. Junior had come through. Phase Two could begin.
So why did I feel like I’d swallowed a large, cold stone?
twenty
lioness
IT WAS a beautiful late fall morning in Northern California, the trees still bright with the previous night’s rains, the sky frothy with clouds, and shafts of sunshine striking down like God’s own searchlights. It would have been a perfect day to drive in the hills, if that had been all we were doing. But it wasn’t.
I didn’t have any music going in the car because I was tight and worried. Also, every time I put anything on the Amazons begged me to play Lady Gaga instead, and I just wasn’t up for that discussion. They had caught a bit of my mood, perhaps because I’d lectured them for about half an hour before we left Caz’s place. Monica had come through, I had an appointment, and the only thing that would stop me from keeping it would be if I had to pull over along the way and throw up repeatedly.
I know, you’re wondering why a guy who’s been in Hell would be sweating something this simple. I can’t really explain, but I think it has to do with the literal fear of the Highest every angel has. I mean, this wasn’t just something I normally wouldn’t do, this flew directly in the face of everything Heaven had taught me. You don’t question your superiors. You certainly don’t go to their houses (if I was right about that, which still remained to be seen) and more or less dare them to do something about it. But if I was truly going to commit myself to angelic treason, I needed to see for myself that I had the right suspect. I can’t explain it any better than that.
“When we get there, Halyna, you’re going to stay with the car.”
“That is not fair.” She looked at Oxana with resentment. “Why is she pretending the photographer?”
“Because she can’t drive. And despite all my careful planning, it’s my experience that a good percentage of my work ends in screaming, shots fired, and things catching on fire. If that happens here, I’d prefer not to be hunting for my car keys as I run.”
Just at that moment I turned onto Hilltop Drive and continued up at a steeper angle.
“And you, Oxana. You remember what I told you?”
“Yes. Walk in house. Don’t go far. Take pictures.” She lifted her digital camera. “I know.”
“And ‘don’t go too far’ means stay near me, no more than one room away. Go along with anything I say. Smile and nod. If anyone asks you a question that you don’t want to answer, forget your English and speak Ukrainian—”
I suddenly stopped talking, because we had rounded another bend, and now I could see the house. It wasn’t just on the hilltop, it was the hilltop, surrounded by so many acres that you could have dropped the entirety of downtown San Judas on it and still had room for most of Spanishtown as well. It was really quite beautiful, a combination of Moorish and California Spanish architecture from what I could see, but we were still too far back to make out most of the details.
We soon reached the outer fences, impressively nasty things with iron spikes, and the first guardhouse. Two serious-looking private security guys sat inside, and I was pretty sure they were armed. The gate, fortunately, looked like something we could probably ram our way through on the way out if we had to, especially since I’d left my puny little Datsun behind and rented a fairly hefty Chrysler sedan for the day in enemy territory.
“My name is Richard Bell,” I told the unsmiling fellow in the booth. “I’m expected.”
He looked at a screen I couldn’t see, then the two halves of the gate slid apart with only the softest thrum of machinery. “Follow the main road all the way to the top,” he said. He handed me a ticket for my dashboard and three visitor passes, all laminated and almost certainly electronic. “The guard there will tell you where to go.”
More guards. I was very glad I hadn’t decided to do my usual and just climbed over the fence to see what happened. I was fretfully aware I had more than my own life in my hands this time.
“Just remember,” I said to the women as we followed a long curving driveway lined with palm trees, “this is deadly serious.”
“We know,” said Halyna. “You tell us many times.”
“Yeah, but it’s my job to get you out of here safe, and I’d like to do my job right.”
Halyna smiled. It wasn’t nervy or innocent or anything except an acknowledgment of a difficult choice made. “Do not worry too much for us, Bobby. We have had good training.” She was game, that one.
The second guard booth was coming into view, this one next to an even larger ironwork gate set in a no-shit stone wall that looked like it could hold off an artillery barrage. What did Anaita, if it really was her, need with this much security? Maybe this was her idea of normal. If Gustibus was right, she had been a goddess once. Maybe once you’ve been one of those, it’s hard to live down to mortal standards, even if you’re trying to pass for human.
Then again, I thought as we were processed by the second set of guards, maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe this is just some extremely rich Persian-American lady who does a lot of work for charity and lives in a fabulous mansion.
The inner gate guards had shotguns in the booth, and who knew what else that I couldn’t see. I really, really hoped we weren’t going to have to crash that gate under fire.
The gate opened, and we rolled into a huge semicircular driveway that looped past the facade of the main house, which had to be thirty thousand square feet if it was an inch, a tasteful combination of European and Middle Eastern themes.
I parked, then left Halyna with the car keys, telling her to text me if she saw anything that seemed weird or dangerous. She agreed, but from the sad look she gave me I might have been asking one child to wait while I took the other in for ice cream and candy. These women were tough, yes, but they were still innocents in some ways, certainly in the ways of Heaven versus Hell. If I hadn’t needed warm bodies, if I had still had Sam, things would have been different. But the first rule of Bobby Dollar Club is, “Things are just what they are. Stop bitching.” (The second rule is, “Never ask ‘How could things get any worse?’ Because they will.”)
We were met at the front door by either a butler or a personal secretary. It was hard to tell because he wore a long robe and introduced himself only as Arash. He looked me over with a professional eye. “And you are Mr. Bell, from Vanity Fair magazine? Ms. Sepanta has been looking forward to this meeting.”
“Thanks. This is my assistant. I hope Ms. Roth explained on the phone that this is just a pre-interview. We’re going to get a feeling for the place, and then we can set a date for the photographers and do the rest of the interview in email or on the phone.”
Yes, Vanity Fair. Don’t even ask about all the favors Monica had to call in to make this lie work for me. You can get people to give interviews who’d never let you across their doorstep otherwise, especially if it’s for a big-name publication.
“Just so.” Arash made a funny little bow, then led us down a hallway and across a courtyard where a tiled fountain blipped and splashed, to a high-ceilinged reception room chock-a-block with (I had no doubt) precious Middle Eastern antiques and some of the most beautiful c
arpets I’d ever seen, in or out of a museum.
“Please wait while I tell her you’re here.” He slipped through a tall door into the next room.
I looked at Oxana, whose wide eyes suggested she’d never been inside any private building this big in her life. “Pictures?” I whispered. “Remember, anything written down or any photos that look contemporary.”
She turned to me, confused. “Con-temp . . . ?”
“New. Any pictures that look new.”
Arash emerged and graced us with another bow. “Ms. Sepanta will see you.”
“Wander around a bit,” I told Oxana loud enough for him to hear. “I’m sure Mr. Arash will be happy to show you a few likely locations for the shoot.”
Mr. Arash didn’t look all that happy, to be honest, but he nodded and gave me a tight smile. “Of course.”
He showed me through a door and into a greenhouse. That’s what it seemed like at first, anyway, even though the roof wasn’t glass. An amazing number of plants turned it green on all sides—plants in pots along the walls, in smaller pots on various surfaces, and even in hanging baskets. Several of them had their own individual misters attached, which made the orchids and other blossoms sway like the heads of colorful snakes. The room was so thick with moisture that I felt like I’d suddenly developed a head cold.
The second thing I saw was Donya Sepanta, rising from a teak desk at the far end of the room. Two thoughts struck me simultaneously.
The first was, “I’m in love.”
The second was, “It’s her.”
Monica had been right—she was beautiful, with long black hair braided into several intricate loops, and yet with most of it still loose and flowing over her shoulders. She was tall, with skin the color of flawless old ivory, and the most perfect bone structure I’d ever seen on a mortal body. She might have been thirty or she might have been fifty, but it didn’t matter. Any room she walked into, she would have been the only woman anyone saw.
Luckily for me, I recognized that the immense urge I suddenly felt to throw myself at her feet and apologize for ever having thought her guilty of a single bad deed was not only a very bad idea, it was not even real. No, it was glamour of the oldest, most magical sort, the kind that caused mortal men to dance away their lives in a fairy mound, or return every year of their lives to a hilltop where they’d once seen beauty running naked on Midsummer’s Eve, until they finally died miserable and unfulfilled old men.