“I’m sorry. Perhaps I get a bit carried away. But I confess, I do enjoy it.” He was being cute and twinkly again, which made me mistrustful. God, it sucks to be me.
“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious. Can you drop me at the Salt Piers, or do you have to get this thing back to the real cab company? I need to do something about my car situation.”
“Ah,” he said, “I almost forgot! Get out, please.”
I did, and stood stretching my legs. Temuel came out of the front seat, dangling the keys in his hand. The keychain fob was a little enamel angel on cheap silver. “You kind of overdo it a bit, you know?” I told him. “That’s my main suggestion—just dial it back a little.”
He looked guiltily at the keys, then handed them to me. “Take it.”
“What do I want with an angel keychain?”
“No, the cab. It’s yours. You need a car, right?”
I couldn’t help it. I stared at him with my mouth half-open. “You’re giving me the cab?”
“Yes. Don’t worry—I didn’t steal it. Not from a cab company, anyway.” He put his finger beside his nose. I’d never seen anyone do that outside of an old movie. “Just don’t mention it to anyone in accounting upstairs, all right? Mum’s the word!”
“But what am I supposed to do with a freaking taxi?”
“Drive it. I’m told people don’t pay much attention to taxicabs. It should be good for your . . . for all the things you’re doing.”
I could only shake my head. While I was still shaking it, he started off down the road on foot, headed toward the bay. “Where are you going?”
“Back home,” he said. “But I thought I’d have a walk first. It’s nice to get out of the office.”
I watched the archangel until he was only a small shape outlined against the switch grass and rushes, just another schlubby guy out communing with nature. Then I got in my taxicab and headed home again.
Fucking thing didn’t even have a CD player, and it drove like a truck, but I guess it was better than walking.
twenty-five
the smart set
WHEN I got back to the apartment, everybody hurried out to the garage to see (and make fun of) my new ride.
“That is so cool!” shouted Halyna. Oxana was laughing. “You are very funny, Bobby!”
“What are you supposed to be now?” Clarence asked me. “The Beatles?”
“Listen, you young whippersnapper, that Yellow was a Submarine. What you mean is, ‘Who are you supposed to be, Joni Mitchell?’ because her old man was taken away by a Big Yellow Taxi. Your grasp of culture is appalling, Junior.”
“Every time you open your mouth,” Clarence said, “you just seem older and weirder.”
Inside, the Amazons returned to lazy alternations of sparring and making dinner. (I’d told them I was tired of doing all the food prep.) I didn’t like what I was hearing of their meal plans, something about barley soup, so I sat down with Clarence. He’d brought his own computer and was scrolling through the images Oxana had taken at Schloss Sepanta.
“I’ve labeled as many of these as I can, Bobby. I never wanted to know this much about rich San Judaeans.” He paused on one. “See, that’s the governor. Do you think he’s in on this, too?”
I gave the kid a look to make sure he was kidding. “I’m not worried about politicians, although you’d be surprised how many have connections with both sides.”
“Well, that’s too bad, because there’s a ton of them here. Look, there’s the mayor of San Judas. And a here’s a bunch of congresspeople at this event, whatever it was. But most of the people in the pictures aren’t that well-known, or at least not that easy to identify. It’s going to take forever to put names on all of them.”
“You can skip most of the really famous ones, because why would Anaita hand the horn to one of them? She wouldn’t trust any mere mortal to keep it from the Grand Duke of Hell, least of all a politician.” I frowned at the images of Donya Sepanta going past; formal, ceremonial ones mostly. She, or Anaita rather, was still beautiful in the pictures, but not in the astounding way she’d been at our meeting, more like her own slightly more ordinary-looking sister. The angelic glamour didn’t come through in any of the photographs. In fact, she might have just trotted it out for yours truly. “All I really want to know is where that damned horn is. I’m just hoping . . .” Something occurred to me. “Hey, aren’t you on call? This place blocks cellphones. They could be calling you and calling you and you wouldn’t—”
Clarence rolled his eyes. “Yes, Bobby, I know. You told me. That’s why I go out into the yard every little while to check.” He flicked to the next image.
“Hold on, go back. No, that one. I saw something. What is this?” The photo was Donya Sepanta and another woman standing with two men.
“Some charity thing, that’s all I know, and I only know it because she’s wearing the same dress in another picture where she’s giving someone a giant fake check. And Ms. Sepanta, whatever she really is, never wears the same dress twice. Why? Do you know those people?”
“No.” The men were both Silicon Valley executive-types, badly shaven and slightly long-haired in an “I’m not really an evil plutocrat” kind of way, and the unknown woman was the female version of that, which meant she dressed a little better than the men (because she had to). The four of them were standing with champagne glasses in the kind of awkward group photo you get when you interrupt people having a conversation and ask them all to smile. But it wasn’t Anaita or the main figures that had caught my attention, but something in the crowd of a couple of dozen people, out of focus but visible behind them—something that I couldn’t see now. “Can you make it clearer?”
“No. I can make it bigger, but this is a picture that Oxana took with her phone of a photograph behind glass in less than ideal lighting. The best government photo labs in the world might make it better, but I can’t.” He frowned. “Believe it or not, Bobby, sometimes even angels can’t do miracles.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Junior.”
“I thought you were going to call me by my name.”
“No, I said I’d call you Harrison instead of Clarence, Clarence—I mean, Harrison. I never said I wouldn’t call you kid, or Junior, or Mr. Smarty-Pants.”
“The irony is that the one who acts like an eight-year-old is calling me ‘kid.’”
“No, the irony is that you, the one who dresses like a sixty-year-old, aren’t grateful for it. Get a better copy.”
He stared at me. “I just explained . . .”
“Get a better copy. If this wasn’t taken by Sepanta’s own personal photographer or something, then maybe it was on some website or in some magazine. Come on, you’re Captain Records Hall, right? So find a better copy. I’m going back to looking up her other properties.” I patted him on the shoulder. “Remember, God loves you.”
I couldn’t quite hear his reply as I walked away, but I don’t think he said the same thing back to me.
• • •
The Amazons’ barley soup smelled a lot better than I thought it would, especially once they started to put in the mushrooms and onions and little bits of bacon. In fact, I was beginning to look forward to dinner when Clarence stepped out to check his messages. He was out there for quite a while, and when he came back he said, “No rest for the weary. I’ve got a client over in Friendly Acres. But I think I found a better version of the picture.”
I looked at the screen. “It’s not the same picture.”
“No, but it’s the same event and the same people from a slightly different angle.” He slapped at my fingers as I tried to enlarge it. “If you’re going to look at my computer while I’m gone, don’t ruin anything. Old people get really cranky with technology sometimes, and they break things.”
“Cute. Hurry back.” But I was already examining the new image
. It had been taken at a very similar angle, but whatever had caught my attention in the first one didn’t even raise a flicker now. I scrolled back through Clarence’s recent history and found the rest of those pictures on a photographer’s web page under the heading, “Charity event, San Judas, 6/17/03.” It named the other high-rollers posing with Anaita, but I didn’t care about the main figures. It was something in the background that had snagged me in the first place.
I went back to the first picture and stared at it, then got up and looked at it again from a few feet away, then from so closely that my nose almost touched the screen. Back to the far wall before moving in slowly. Sideways. Upside down. Then I printed out a copy and walked around with that in my hand for a while, turning it and turning it, letting my eye drift over the blur of shadows and faces and shapes in the background until they became almost meaningless, looking for the pattern that had first caught me. And then suddenly, for no reason I could name, I saw it again. It was a shoulder and the back of a head, a man in the crowd who had turned away just as the photo was taken. Whoever it was, I still didn’t recognize him, but now I knew what I was looking for. Something about the guy made my Dollar Sense tingle.
• • •
Clarence showed up just as the Amazons were serving soup. I had cracked a bottle of Caz’s best wine, a really old-looking Burgundy (that’s good, right? Because I might have told you, I’m more of a vodka man myself) and I was pouring it.
“Smells good,” he said. “May I have some? Wine, too? I’ve just had the most horrible, nasty old woman to deal with. Even worse, I got her off with only a century of Purgatory. I would have sent her to Hell, personally.”
“Don’t joke ’til you’ve been there,” I said. “But I have something that may make you feel a bit better. We have a lead.”
I handed him a glass, then led him over to his computer. “See that guy? Right there? He was in the back of the crowd. I finally found one of your other pictures where you can see his face.”
Clarence shook his head. “Not the most pleasant-looking person I’ve ever seen, but I don’t know him.”
“You wouldn’t, but Sam and I would, because the last time I saw him he was about to have Sam blown to bits and me dragged to Hell.”
“But that’s not Eligor . . . what’s his Earth name? Kenneth Vald? That’s not Vald.”
“No, but it’s Vald’s ex-security chief, an ugly piece of work named Howlingfell, who I’m pleased to say wound up being swallowed by that monster you met later, at the old sea baths at Shoreline Park. You remember the ghallu, right? You remember how it . . . kicked you?”
He gave me a really unpleasant look. “Not exactly. I remember how you coldcocked me with a gun and told me the monster did it.”
“I was improvising. Look, you want an apology, I’m sorry. You were trying to arrest Sam.”
He didn’t look happy, but he turned back to the screen. “But what’s so interesting about this Howlingfell guy? I mean, he’d go everywhere that Eligor would go, right? That’s what security guys do.”
“Right. And I’m trying to find anything that might link Anaita with Eligor, so that’s point of interest number one. But you haven’t heard the rest.” I took a swig of my Burgundy. I’m not sure I’ll ever be a serious wine drinker, but I have to say, right then, that shit tasted good. “See, I tracked down the fundraiser, too. Yes, your old Grampa Bobby’s got some gosh-durned computer skills. The party was held at the Elizabeth Atell Stanford Museum of the Arts, that big old thing out on the campus. They were celebrating breaking ground on a new wing for the museum. And Donya Sepanta was one of the main fundraisers.”
Clarence was perking up. “And Eligor was there?”
“No. I’ve found a bunch of articles, society page stuff, some PR crap in the magazines that cater to rich dicks who love to hear about their own good works, things like that. And Kenneth Vald wasn’t there. Or at least, nobody made any mention of one of the most newsworthy billionaires in the world—and certainly in San Judas—being at the museum gala.”
“But then what’s the big deal?”
“Because, Junior, why would Howlingfell show up if it had nothing to do with Eligor? He was either there because Eligor was there, or he was there because he was casing the place for a proposed meeting. Either way, it’s the first real lead we’ve had. Now we need to research this museum, especially the new wing. We need to get deep, deep into it and find out everything we can. In fact, you’re going to do just that. You can have dinner first, though.”
“What do you mean me? What are you going to do?”
“Have another glass of wine. And think about what I’m going to need to break in there.”
“Break in?” Clarence almost dropped his glass. “Why on earth do you want to do that?”
“I like to get the feel of a place, and that includes smelling and listening and poking my nose where it doesn’t belong. And let’s not forget, our friend Ms. Sepanta was celebrating having plunged ten million dollars, reportedly half her own money and the rest from her personal fundraising, into a new Asian wing for the museum where she and Eligor were probably going to have their meeting. So she’s invested a lot in that place, and I want to know why.”
“But why break in? You said we’re going to research—”
“Yes, research first, and maybe it will turn out to be a blind alley. But in case it isn’t, I’m going to be ready to get in there and have a look around. Because that’s the way I roll.”
Clarence gave me another disapproving look. “That’s how you roll? Like a teenage meth addict looking for stuff he can fence for drugs?”
I poured myself some more red vino and sat down in front of my soup bowl. The steam was very pleasantly scented. “It smells lovely.”
Halyna and Oxana were already finishing their first bowls, so I hurried to catch up. Clarence finally sat.
“But, Bobby, when you do things like that, crazy, bad stuff happens. And it almost always goes wrong. Remember you and Five Page Mill?”
“Yeah, crazy, bad stuff happens. And that’s exactly why I do things like that. Because it’s when things get out of control that other people’s plans collapse.”
“Including your own.”
“Including my own, sometimes. But I’m used to living that way. The others aren’t. And it’s been a long time since Anaita’s had anyone stand up to her.”
“That’s because the rest are all dead,” said Clarence.
“Or raped,” said Halyna.
“Or make into slaves,” said Oxana.
“My, you’re a cheery bunch. Shut up so I can celebrate.” And I did, damn it.
twenty-six
kids today
DON’T GET the idea that I only ever scream “Geronimo!” and leap into dangerous situations. Sometimes you’re not hearing the rest because I’m skipping over the boring parts. The next week was one of those boring parts.
As November clicked over into December, the Amazons and I spent a lot of time staking out the museum and checking out Anaita’s other holdings. I discovered pretty quickly that Donya Sepanta had a lot of properties, but the only one in the Bay Area was the estate we’d already seen. I still believed she wouldn’t hide anything important there, in part because it was so obvious, but also because it would have been pretty easy for Eligor to infiltrate her household staff, who were all human. But that still didn’t mean the museum was anything more than somewhere that Anaita once met Eligor.
Our preliminary surveillance of the Elizabeth Atell Stanford Museum of the Arts, or as much of it as we were able to do from a taxi (which, fortunately, are as common on big college campuses as empty beer kegs) showed us that not only had Anaita helped raise a lot of money for the place, she actually dropped by there every few days, and usually stayed at least a couple of hours. I decided I needed to know more, so I called up a friend.
?
?? • •
“You want to do some work for me, Edie? I’ll pay your usual rate.”
“I guess,” she said. I could hear the television in the background. “But I have finals right now, Mr. Dollar. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing too difficult. Just visit a museum.”
“Oooh, I love museums. Well, most of the time. Sometimes,” she lowered her voice. “Sometimes I get a bad one, you know?”
“Bad?”
“You know—not so much the museum itself, but something in it. Something that’s got a totes ugly vibe. It’s even worse if I touch it.”
I assured her that I didn’t want her touching anything this time, and we picked a time after school to meet up, on a day when Mr. and Mrs. Parmenter wouldn’t freak out if their daughter came home a bit later than usual.
“Okay. I’ll tell them I’m studying with Molly.”
• • •
As you may have guessed, one of the reasons I was working at this so hard was because it kept me from thinking too much about Caz. Because it was really hard to stop thinking about her. From the very first moment the Countess of Cold Hands and I were together alone, something special had been going on between us, something stronger than sex and more binding than compatibility. We completed each other, somehow. We hadn’t really realized it before then, but we were both unfinished, like a puzzle with its sad little, bumpy, jigsawed edges exposed. And then we came together. Then we were whole. And then Life, the Universe, and especially Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell, ripped us apart.
I’d never get used to it. It had been an amputation. It was conceivable that someday I might learn to live with the loss, but I sure wouldn’t ever be normal again without her.
For a guy who had gone through his angelic life wondering why he didn’t fit, why he didn’t take things calmly the way other angels did—like my buddy Kool Filter, shaking his head at the craziness of his life but accepting it—that had been huge. It still was huge. I needed her. Now I knew that she needed me, too. Everything else, including the impossibility of it all, was just detail.