“Ah,” Joey said, nodding.
“You understand?”
“Sure,” he said shrugging. “Find ’em. Kill ’em. Get the stuff back.”
“How about you start with just looking around. Once we find it, we can worry about killing people.”
“Just look around. Check.”
“You’ve been out of action for a while, Joey. You think you’re up for this?”
“No trouble. None at all.”
“Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. I’ll have Lapierre get in touch with you and…”
“Ah, c’mon boss. I don’t need some smart-ass college fucker hanging off of me. I got sources. I can do this.”
“You want to take this one by yourself?”
“Yeah. Look, if I find something, I’ll let you know. Don’t worry about before. The thing with Chrysalis and the arrow guy, that was a one-time thing. Never happen again.”
Mazzucchelli paused, then walked over and clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s good to have you back, Joey.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“Show some respect for yourself. Clean the place.”
“I will, boss.”
Mazzucchelli went out, closing the door behind him. Joey lumbered back to the couch and sat down heavily. He dug his hand into the cushions and came out with the rattling bottle of darvon. He popped two of the great big hot pink capsules into his hand even though his arms weren’t really aching much and swallowed them dry.
The pills seemed to lodge about halfway down his throat.
It just wasn’t starting off to be a good day.
The Crystal Palace always looked worse in the daylight. Darkness and neon suited it better. Demise slouched across the empty lot beside it, Phan Lo two steps behind him and to his left. The day was overcast, but Phan wore dark Blues Brothers sunglasses all the same.
“Danny Mao was pretty pissed off, eh?”
“It’s fine,” Demise said. “I told him it was your fault.”
Phan went silent for a moment, only the sound of their footsteps over the constant murmur of the city.
“You’re fucking with me, right?” Phan said.
“Look,” Demise said, sighing, “let’s just get the shit back and then it won’t matter what I said.”
Demise reached the service entrance and pushed his way into the darkness. The storeroom was filled with kegs of beer and crates and boxes of harder liquor. A violet-skinned joker with a wattle like a rooster bent over a wooden crate of wine bottles, counting on his fingers. When he looked up, his eyes met Demise’s briefly and a shock of pain appeared in the joker’s face, the wattle shriveling and turning gray at the edges.
“We need to talk to Chrysalis,” Demise said.
The joker turned and ran back into the building. Phan Lo strode forward and barked his shin on a crate.
“Take the shades off,” Demise said. “You look like an idiot.”
“Nah, man. I like ’em.”
“Look, I promise not to kill you…”
“What do you want?” a man’s voice demanded. Sascha, eyeless and frowning, walked toward them. Demise grimaced. Sascha always gave him the creeps.
“Where’s Chrysalis?”
“ India, I think,” Sascha said.
“Fuck, that’s right. She’s on that thing with Tachyon and the senator, isn’t she.”
“What do you want, Spector?” Sascha asked again.
“What does anyone ever want from Chrysalis? We need some information. And we can pay for it.”
Sascha’s expression seemed to change. He nodded.
“There’s about to be someone trying to unload about twenty-five pounds of uncut white heroin at fire-sale prices.”
“And you’re looking to buy?”
“No. We just need to talk with the seller.”
“Since when are you working with the Fist?”
“Ran into the Sleeper a while back. He pointed out they might be hiring. The seller I’m looking for is an independent, though,” he said. “Anything the Mafia’s going to get pissed about has already happened. You’ll be out of the crossfire.”
“Leave a number,” Sascha said. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
Demise took a card out of his pocket and placed it silently on a wine rack, then nodded to Phan Lo and headed back out. A thin, cold rain misted down, and Demise turned his collar up against it.
“You must really hate that guy,” Phan said. “He’d be a pain in the ass for you to kill. You’d actually have to shoot him.”
“I’d manage.”
“All right now,” Father Henry said. “I just want you to listen here. Let me know what you think.”
The church was empty except for the two of them. Quasiman sat in the first pew, his misshapen back making him look like he was praying. Father Henry, leaning against the altar, cleared his throat, pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, and read from his notebook.
“Jesus could change water to wine, but it didn’t put him in AA meetings the way it did me. These days, somebody walking on water would hardly get them looked at funny, and I know of two or three people who have raised folks from the dead. The virus has changed more than our bodies. It has changed what we mean by ‘miracle’ and… Now boy, you’re laughing, and I haven’t got to any of the funny parts yet.”
Quasiman’s attention had flickered away, his eyes fixed on a spot in the aisle. Something about the carpet seemed to have given him the giggles.
“Oh,” Quasiman said, pointing to the space and grinning. “That’s sad. I mean that’s just… sad. I wish I was going to remember it.”
Father Henry closed his notebook and smiled, trying to swallow his annoyance.
“I’m sorry, son. Am I interrupting something here?”
Quasiman flickered rapidly for a moment, reappeared without his left arm, and frowned vacantly at him.
“I don’t know who you are right now,” the hunchback commented. “There was something I was supposed to do.”
Father Henry took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Talking to the man was like preaching to an electrical problem.
“That’s all right. We can try this another time.”
“Try what?”
“You were showing me how to polka,” Father Henry said and headed back for the sacristy.
He paused at the head of the basement stairs. He’d talked with the girl more in the night-her name was Gina, she was seventeen and running away from her pimp. That wouldn’t have been difficult, except that the pimp was also an informant for the police, and so she wasn’t likely to get help from that quarter. She needed to stay in town for a couple more days until her brother drove in from Seattle to get her.
He believed about half of it. Still, it was clear enough that she needed help. And if the Church wasn’t there to help out whores in trouble, well then it wasn’t the church Mary Magdalene had thought it was. Besides, he had a feeling about the girl…
Which didn’t mean she’d be a good person to talk his sermon over with, but Lord knew she couldn’t be much worse. He rapped his knuckles on the wall as he went down the stairs.
“Gina?”
“Hey, Father,” she said. She sat on the cot, her legs tucked beneath her, watching a soap opera on the old, grainy television. He’d shown her where the clothing donations were, and she’d picked out a blue wrap-around skirt and an oversize white men’s shirt. The outfit made her look like a normal girl, maybe just about to start college.
“You feeling better today?” he asked.
She nodded and turned down the volume on the set.
“Fine,” she said. “Whatshisface got me a sandwich this morning.”
“Good, good. I was wondering… well, I had a little trouble with the sermon last week. And I was working on some material, as it were, for Sunday. And while Quasiman is a good hearted fella, he doesn’t listen for spit, and I was thinking, if it wasn’t too much of an imposition…”
“Cool,” she said and thumbed off the TV. “The show’s boring, anyway. Fire away.”