The Dirty Streets of Heaven

twenty-four

Caz was still sleeping when I left. Gently detaching myself from those slender limbs while ignoring her half-conscious murmurs of protest, climbing out of that warm bed that smelled of our sex-it truly was one of the hardest things I ever did. When you leave, we’ll never have this again. Was she right? If we both survived, would we spend the rest of our lives regretting this or wishing it could happen again? Could it happen again? I didn’t even want to think about what the penalty might be for consorting with the enemy in such a very, very specific and (as far as my bosses would be concerned) objectionable way.

And could I even believe it myself? She was a demon, a minion of Hell itself. What could love truly mean to her?

It didn’t keep me from hurting as I walked away, though. Didn’t help at all.

After I found a cab I went to see Orban, not just because I needed to replace my lost gun, left somewhere at the bottom of the Redwood River, but because I owed him the courtesy of a face to face when I told him what had happened to the Bonneville he’d lent me. Also, the errand would distract me from what I’d just left behind. Orban wasn’t happy, of course. His accent got even stronger when he was in a bad mood: I have never been called a “deekhad” so many times in such a short span of time in my angelic life.

“How could you do that? That is my favorite, that car! Do you know how hard I look for parts? Nineteen seventy-one! How expensive? Almost two hundred dollars just for one sun visor latch! You bring back my sun visor latches? You bring back anything?”

Eventually he calmed down-in this case, “eventually” meaning after a half hour of fussing, fuming, and spitting, plus two glasses of Egri. I had one or two with him since it was lunchtime. I mean, why the hell not? I also promised I’d get the Bonneville back from impound and (somehow) pay for the damages, so eventually we changed the subject.

Tapping out my bank account and letting him hold the pink slip to my beloved Matador allowed me to drive away from Orban’s in another loaner, this one a far less glamorous and slightly less well-armored old diesel Mercedes the color of shower caulk. More useful, at least under present circumstances, was an FN Five-Seven pistol, a Belgian automatic with a twenty-shot magazine. (Yes, I know, technically it’s spelled “Five-SeveN” with a capital “N” at the end, but I’ve got no patience with that kind of cute whoopty-doo.) I had also sprung for another hundred silver rounds, which Orban had made up for the original buyer of the Five-Seven.

“That guy was too dead to pick them up when they are finished, so I let you have them cheap,” he said. “You can get a kit to make a thirty-shot magazine for the Five-Seven, but I don’t trust. Too tricky. Stick with twenty. Twenty is plenty.” He smiled in his beard. “Ha! Orban makes a rhyme.”

I left the poet of firepower standing behind his counter and headed back across town, bound for Five Page Mill in the huffing, rattling Benz.

I’d been thinking about the things Caz had told me ever since I’d left her, and much as I wanted to trust her-much as I needed to believe what she’d said, since I’d broken so many rules being with her-I still had some nagging doubts, and I had decided to do some checking.

I parked a few rows back from the front of Number Five, put on some sunglasses and an old Giants cap that one of Orban’s mechanics left in the back seat of the Benz, then settled back to watch who went in and out of Vald Credit. I saw Howlingfell pop out a couple of times like a cuckoo on a clock, always leading at least two other security guys, but I just stayed in my car and watched. The last thing I wanted was another shootout in Page Mill Square. Late in the afternoon I abandoned my surveillance long enough to drive to a nearby deli for a turkey sandwich and cup of coffee to go, then returned to the parking lot, ready now for a long siege.

As five o’clock passed most of the Vald Credit employees and many other workers from the plaza’s buildings spilled out of the high-rises and headed for the street and the bus stops. Vald Credit had its own parking lot under the building, which also began to empty, but the public lot was still full of customers for the shops on the lower floors of most of the buildings, so I didn’t feel any need to move.

At last, closer to seven than to six, my wait paid off: Howlingfell walked out of the building by himself and stood for a moment looking expectantly from one side to the other before a long, sleek car pulled up and he got in.

I followed at a respectable distance, the tail made easier by the fact that it was getting dark, and the Camino Real was crowded with commuter traffic. When the car pulled into a place called Il Milanese, a couple of miles down the main drag, Howlingfell went in by himself and the driver stayed outside in the parking lot, just as I had hoped. I watched the driver put on the dome light to read a magazine, then I took a minute to scribble a note on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope, and pocket it before I went inside.

It was an interesting place, full of swoopy modern decor and black and white photos of nineteenth century Italians, the men in high collars and the women mostly in voluminous black dresses, as if they had spent the entire century in mourning. The wall that fronted on the Camino Real was made of glass, and I wondered if the place might once have been a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. The counter with its roll of revolving stools confirmed my guess, but these days the guys in trucker hats had been replaced with young professionals eating bar snacks and drinking vodka and Red Bull.

Howlingfell was in the restaurant’s back room, his low, animal brow furrowed as he surveyed the wine list. He didn’t jump or even look particularly surprised when I slid into the other side of the booth, but his hand slipped off the table, and I knew he was reaching for his gun.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Howly,” I said. “I’m just here to talk.”

“Stupid?” He scowled at me, which made him look even more like something you’d find in your chicken shed with a limp hen hanging from its jaws. “You’re the one who just did something stupid.” He slowly lifted his hand and set it on the table so the flat black automatic he was holding lay sideways, pointing at me, with his finger still on its trigger. Then he carefully draped his napkin over hand and gun to hide them from the folks in the other booths. “Why do you want to spoil my dinner, Dollar? What’d I ever do to you?”

“Less than I’ve done to you, to be perfectly honest. Remember when I stepped on your neck? Good times, good times. Ah, ah, ah, stay relaxed! I’ve got a big old gun of my own pointing at you under the table. Let’s not turn this into a contest to see how much silver we can put into each other.”

“Silver. You think I’m afraid of silver? You tried that already.” His lip curled. “You missed my balls by a couple of inches, but it’s still going to take me weeks to heal down there, and I heal fast. My girlfriends are all pissed at you. Not to mention that it really fucking hurt. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to listen to any of your bullshit-I think I’m just going to blow your face off!”

“Don’t. I’m not threatening you with silver this time, pal. I’m threatening you with something a lot worse.” I looked up. The waiter was coming toward us. I hoped nobody got startled.

The napkin over Howlingfell’s gun hand twitched a little, but for the moment everything stayed in place. “Worse? Like what?”

“Like your boss. Hang on.”

The waiter took two waters off a tray and put them in front of us. “Hi, my name is Eric, and I’ll be your server,” he said with cheerful disinterest in whatever weird vibe was going back and forth between us, which he couldn’t have helped but notice. “Can I get you gentlemen anything?”

“Vodka rocks for me,” I said. “I’ll just have some breadsticks, but my friend probably wants dinner.”

“I’ll order later,” Howlingfell snarled. “Just bring me a glass of Chianti. The Castello dei Rampolla.”

As the waiter glided away I smiled at my unwilling host. “So, have you really learned to like fancy wines? Pretty good for a kid who grew up on the scorching sidewalks of the Via Dolorosa, Howly. Or do you just like to put anything in your mouth as long as it’s wet and red?”

“Shut up, Dollar. You have something to say about my boss, then say it fast. I’m sick of your face.”

“Okay, fair enough.” I took a breadstick and crunched off the end of it, my other hand still out of sight beneath the table. “I’m going to tell you a little story. About how your boss’s ex-girlfriend ripped him off. And how you helped her do it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He half stood and the napkin over his gun started to slide, but after a moment he controlled himself and sat down again. A few people turned to look at us. “You lying cocksucker!” he said in a loud whisper. “I didn’t know anything about that!”

I was taking a big risk that he might just start a firefight right there in the restaurant, but the last, small part of me that still had any sense needed to know that Caz had been telling me the truth. Outside of the Grand Duke, Howlingfell was the only person still around to confirm her story, and I already knew that threats weren’t going to make him talk to me-after all, here he was in a restaurant less than twenty-four hours after I had put a couple of silver slugs into his pelvis, inches from his jewels, so obviously he was one tough bastard. The only thing he was scared of would be the same thing that scared me-his pissed-off, crazy, murderous boss Eligor.

“Honestly, Fuzzy,” I told him, “for your own sake, don’t do anything stupid ’til you hear me out.”

He showed me lots of teeth. “The stupid thing would be letting you walk out of here.”

I smiled back. “You can decide for yourself, but here’s what you need to know first. My information says that if the Grand Duke catches up with the Countess she’s going to say the two of you were in it together; that she only walked out with Eligor’s…personal property”-I had a sudden attack of discretion because I didn’t know whether Howlingfell knew what had been stolen-“because you deliberately looked the other way.”

“Lying whore!” I thought he was going to pop a vein. His face began to take on the color of a zesty marinara. “I didn’t know anything about it! She got to one of my crew….”

“So it was just a coincidence that the grand duke’s chief of security was slumming as a mere prosecutor’s bodyguard?” I affected a superior laugh. “Right. You were keeping an eye on your investment.”

“Fuck you, angel. Eligor was the one who put me on Grasswax in the first place! I was watching him because the boss knew he was in it with that bitch, somehow.” Howlingfell was beginning to lose control. The idea of his boss blaming him for the theft really scared him, and he wasn’t thinking carefully, which was what I had been hoping. “This is all made-up crap. Do you really think this is enough to get you off the boss’s shit list?” The napkin was definitely moving, which meant his hand was twitching as he got a better grip on his gun.

“Ah, ah,” I said. “You don’t really want to make all that noise in here, do you, Howly? You like this place, remember? Not to mention that after you miss me several times and I get away, you’ll have to explain to the police why you accidentally shot all these nice people.”

Howlingfell picked up his butter knife and ran his thumb down its smooth edge, his hairy hand trembling ever so slightly. “I don’t need my gun to do you, angel. I could kill you just fine with this. Or my bare hands.”

“I don’t know why nobody wants to hang out with you, Howly. You’re fun.” I stood up, then-carefully, so as not to alarm him-and took out the note I had written before coming in. “I’m going to be on my way now. Before you call for reinforcements, or even decide to try to butter me to death on your own, I strongly suggest you read this. But only if you value your continued torture-less existence. As you keep pointing out to me, your boss is a bad character to cross.” I set the envelope down on the edge of the table as I turned. Seems I wasn’t too careful and the envelope fell onto the floor. As he watched me, eyes almost glowing with hatred, I headed for the door. I confess that my muscles were tensed since I was half-expecting to get shot in the back.

I looked back and saw him lean down to pluck the envelope from the floor so I hurried out of the restaurant. As he tore it open and read the words, “Stay away from the osso bucco, I hear it’s not very good tonight,” I was climbing into my car.

By the time Howlingfell burst out the front door of Il Milanese with his gun out and a face like an enraged, shaved pit bull, ready to blow me to tatters, I was already speeding away down the Camino Real.

My dangerous due diligence performed-so far Caz’s story about Grasswax and the feather was holding up-I got on with the rest of my list. First I phoned Clarence. I still had my doubts about him, but I’d thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone.

“Wow, Bobby, are you okay?” he asked when he picked up. “What happened? I saw The Compasses…!”

“Yeah, yeah, it was all very exciting. Most fun I’ve had since Grampa Dollar confused the gasoline and the corn liquor. Are you at home?”

“Um, yeah. I mean, I will be in a few minutes. I was just at a restaurant. My roommates are out tonight.”

I had no idea what that meant. “I was just in a fine dining establishment myself, but I didn’t eat anything but breadsticks so I may pick something up on the way. I’ll see you in about half an hour.”

“But…!”

I hung up before he wasted my time trying to talk me out of it.

Cruising across town in the Benz was less than exciting. I’ve never liked diesels. They root and snort like Fatback looking for a truffle, and they’re about as fast to respond as the complaints department of a major corporation. Still, it beat the hell out of walking, so I rolled down the windows and did my best to enjoy the evening. I grabbed a couple of tacos at a fast food drive-through and ate them as I drove, dropping bits of tortilla shell and tomato into my lap and onto Orban’s floorboards. I wondered where the ghallu was now-was it hunting for me this moment, or did it only go where it was sent?

As I headed up Whipple toward Brittan Heights I passed the angled white bulk of Sequoia Hospital and thought about Sam lying there in emergency, stuck full of tubes and with nothing to do (if he was conscious) except listen to Jimmy the Table’s boring stories about the good old days in Spanishtown, when Jimmy had first been an advocate back in the seventies. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, let alone my poor buddy who couldn’t even get up and walk away, and for a moment I was strongly tempted to pay Sam a surprise visit. The temptation only lasted a moment, though: I was feeling pretty good because my bluff had worked on Howlingfell, but I also knew I really shouldn’t push my luck.

I had previously dropped Clarence off in front of the big house up in the heights, but this time I had to get out and look for the front door, which was harder to find than you’d have guessed. I finally found a door, and after I’d been knocking for a while Clarence showed up.

“Wow, so…you’re here.” He was wearing gray, old-fashioned sweats, like he’d been working out, and white running shoes. I’d rather die than wear white running shoes. In fact, it might even be what killed me in the first place. Maybe I’m an angel today because the white running shoe mafia bumped me off.

“Is this your tribute to Rocky Balboa?” I asked him.

He looked down at his clothes. “I guess. Come on in.”

He didn’t have any beer, but he got me a soft drink out of a refrigerator that was almost as big as my apartment. The house was huge too, one of those Frank Lloyd Wright-ish things, all wood and tile and concrete, mostly open plan so you could see from one room into a couple of others without moving. One of the bigger rooms was even open to the sky, although you could close it off with sliding doors in bad weather and make it into an interior courtyard. I wondered again about Clarence’s roommates. They must be rich valley kids with high-paying jobs, but they also must have a maid service because the place was quite clean.

We sat in the kitchen, and I told him about everything that happened right up until I crawled out of the Redwood River and called Caz, because that was obviously not only my own business but totally against the rules and thus not the kind of thing I was going to discuss with a new and almost unknown quantity like this kid. I still sort of liked him, though, even though I didn’t trust him, which was a fairly familiar situation for me. (Because I don’t really trust anyone, get it?)

“I saw Chico’s gun one other time,” Clarence said as I rehashed the Gunfight at the Compasses Corral. “That machine-gun thing. Wow.” He sounded like Piglet talking about Christopher Robin’s blue braces. “He asked me to take a tray of drinks off him while he answered the phone, and I saw it stashed behind the bar. That thing is huge!”

“And it still barely slowed that bastard of a ghallu down,” I said. “So I’m having to rethink the whole thing. Meanwhile, I need your help with something.”

A certain trapped-animal look crossed his face. “Really? Like…like what?” I could see he was imagining being deputized and dragged into a new shootout with the Nightmare from Nineveh. “Because I…I’ve got a lot of stuff to…”

“Shut up, you have nothing. I talked to Alice and made sure you have the night off. We’re going to upstairs.”

He involuntarily looked toward the staircase.

“Not that upstairs, Clarence. To the Big House on the Hill. Headquarters. Heaven.” A noise from the other side of the room made me grab for my piece, but before I got it out Junior leaped out of his chair and skittered between me and whoever was coming in the side door. (I found out later it led in from the driveway.) A nicely dressed Caucasian couple of a little past retirement age stopped in the doorway.

“Oh, hello, Harrison,” the woman said to Junior. She was handsome in a slightly hippie-chic way, an old Northern California liberal with money. “We didn’t mean to startle you and your friend. The movie was terrible and Burt had a headache.”

“The movie gave me a headache,” said the man, presumably Burt. “It was the kind of thing that Sheila likes, but it leaves me cold. Subtitles, people staring, nothing happens at the end.”

“We didn’t see the end, so how do you know?” Sheila asked pointedly, then smiled at us to show they were acting out old, familiar roles.

“I saw enough of it. I know.” He headed across the kitchen. “I’m going upstairs. You coming, Sheil?”

She looked at us. “He was right,” she said in a stage whisper. “It wasn’t very good. But he always thinks foreign films are going to be bad, so I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.” Out loud, she said, “Yes, Burt, I’m coming.” She turned in the doorway. “Oh, when I was at the store today I saw some of that cereal you like, Harrison-the one with the grain and nuts and dried fruit. So I got a couple of boxes.”

“Thanks, Sheila,” said Clarence, looking as though he wanted to slide through the floor and disappear.

“Well, I remember you liked it,” she said brightly. “Help yourself to anything, boys. Goodnight!”

He was still watching the door long after she’d disappeared, probably because he didn’t want to see the expression of incredulity on my face. “You’re kidding me,” I said. “Those are your roommates?”

“What? They’re nice people.”

“Did you go out shopping for a mom and dad? Or did you answer an advertisement? ‘Wanted, surrogate child for older couple’?”

He colored very impressively. “Lay off, Dollar. You’re not funny.”

I started laughing. It took me a while to stop. “Okay, sorry. Nevermind. I’ve got more important things to do with you than argue about your weird domestic arrangements.” I leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder in my chummiest manner. “After all, we’re going to have a slumber party tonight.”

“Slumber…”

“In other words, I’m sleeping over and we’re going to Heaven together.”

“Ssshhhh!” He looked absolutely panicked. “Jeez, what if they hear you? Can you imagine how that would sound?”

I chortled again. “Pretty funny, now that you mention it. And it’s going to get worse, too, because I’m going to bunk down in your room. Just find me a spare blanket and a pillow. Maybe we’ll even tell ghost stories.”

“You’re going to sleep in my room? Isn’t that…kind of gay?”

“No. If I suggested we play Twister in our underpants, that would be kind of gay. Now shut up and find me a blanket and lead me to your room. You do have your own room, don’t you? You don’t sleep in a crib at the foot of Sheila and Burt’s bed or anything?” I know I was being a bit nasty to the kid, but I still didn’t trust him and I was interested see if I could get him riled up past his haplessness act.

He only stared morosely. “You think you’re funny, Bobby, but you’re not.”

“I do like to see a junior angel sulk,” I told him. “It smells like victory. Now drink up all your milk and then let’s get to bed. Little Clarence has a busy night ahead of him.”