Tom left them as soon as he felt the presence of the King, drawing his thoughts back into his new feline head. He’d come close enough to the Hole in the Sky to see for himself what had taken place, even though he had too clear an idea already. Winston Watt was dead, as he’d hoped would be the case after hearing the gunshot, but then so was Oscar. His boy Juan would have to grow up without a father, now. There was little enough that Tom could do about it, though. Not with his body ruined and his delicate arrangement with the King in disarray. Death had been denied, and that meant it was no longer safe for Tom to hang around this place. Mictlantecuhtli would know he’d tried to cheat, to breach their contract, and that meant he had no patron anymore.
He’d been lucky to catch the mountain lion that was currently the only thing anchoring him to the living world. Having a form to cling to meant that Death wouldn’t be able to claim his ghost, despite owning his bones. He wouldn’t be able to stay in a cat forever, obviously, but at least he’d bought himself a little time to try and think of another option. He was sure he’d have an idea before too many hours or days had passed.
The former necromancer turned and ran up into the hills with his commandeered catamount, into the wild and away from the comforts of civilization, putting as much physical distance between himself and the King’s Chambers as he possibly could.
Part Five: El Dia de los Muertos
(The Day of the Dead)
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A century later…
Black Tom, still trapped out amidst the hibiscus blooms where Ingrid had evoked and bound him earlier in the afternoon, watched as the tattooed man who’d been spying on her padded silently out of the greenery.
He circled around Tom’s invisible enclosure, looking him over slowly and thoroughly. Tom did likewise. His examiner’s hair was shaved down to a shadow, and his dark jeans and sweatshirt were each voluminous enough to conceal multiple weapons. He had a greenish-black teardrop inked under the outside corner of his left eye. His sunglasses’ thick frames didn’t quite cover it up.
“You Tomas Delgado, ain’t you?” the gangbanger said. “I get it-del Gato. That’s cute, ese. That’s real clever.”
He got close and looked Tom in the eyes. Through his shades, of course. They were each wearing their own set of impenetrably dark lenses.
“You recognize me, then, ese?” the gangster asked. “You remember me, Tommy del Gato, mister black magic man? Huh? Do you?”
Black Tom shook his head.
Winston pulled off his disguise. His fleshmask, ‘Xavier’s’ secondhand face. “Perhaps this helps to refresh your memory, Tom?” the skeleton underneath asked in his familiar, dry British accent.
Tom felt his eyes go wide behind his glasses. He beat and scrabbled at the walls of his invisible cell in a way that made Winston’s uncovered skull seem to grin. He knew by now that he couldn’t get out, but he was unable to keep from trying again anyway. Like a wild animal caught in a trap.
“Ahh, yes, there we are,” the skeleton on a two-day furlough said. “I didn’t think you’d forget me so soon. You must have known that someone would have to fill the position you were groomed for when you opted to breach Mictlantecuhtli’s contract.” He leaned in and said, ominously: “Do you know how long time feels in Mictlan, Tom? How many millennia of servitude I’ve already endured? Because you opted to ditch your freely assumed obligations?”
Winston stepped back and slipped his face on. He covered his empty sockets with his shades and grinned Xavier’s vicious grin at Black Tom.
“Hardface be comin,’ ese,” Winston said, dropping back into his character’s voice. “An’ he is gonna mess you up. If not him, then me. Count on it.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lia blasted back toward North Hollywood in Dexter’s sleek BMW at wildly excessive speeds, cutting in and out of traffic as she shot up Laurel Canyon Boulevard and accelerating through yellow lights at Ventura, at Moorpark, and then again at Riverside in the last nanoseconds before they changed over to red, eliciting honks and shouted curses from the disgruntled left-turners she darted past.
She’d never driven so fast in her life.
Eventually, perhaps inevitably, Lia blew past a motorcycle cop’s speedtrap while rocketing east on Sherman Way. Blue and red lights burst like a fireworks display in her rearview mirror and a siren chirped, making her jump in her seat and yelp in startled response. She pulled over into a Home Depot parking lot, feeling sick.
The officer who’d snagged her removed his helmet and left it on the seat of his hulking motorbike before hitching up his gun belt and approaching. He didn’t bother to take off his silver, aviator-style shades.
“License and registration please, ma’am,” the cop said, when Lia rolled down her window to speak with him.
“I… I don’t have them with me,” she said, only then realizing that she really didn’t. Her purse was down in her hobbit hole. She could see her own dismay reflected twice in the officer’s shiny lenses.
“I’m gonna ask you to step out of the vehicle then, ma’am, and turn around and put your hands on the side of it.”
Lia had little choice but to comply. The motorcycle cop (who was tall and young and under better circumstances might’ve been somewhat attractive) frisked her efficiently.
“I just forgot my purse this morning, officer, is all, I really don’t think-”
“Ma’am, this vehicle was reported stolen yesterday afternoon, so unless you can produce some ID and a good explanation, I’m gonna have to ask you to put your hands behind your back.”
Lia did as she was told, and the cuffs closed around her wrists with two decisive clicks. A few do-it-yourself shoppers watched the sorry drama from beside their parked SUVs, but all of the day laborers gathered around the hardware store had scattered when lapolicia arrived.
Shitballs, Lia thought.
She was fucked and she knew it.
The tall cop guided her to a seat on a concrete block at the front of a parking spot. She was cuffed tight. Black Tom could’ve let her loose in an eyeblink, but he wasn’t available right now.
The officer paused to jot down some notes. Lia noticed a small black tattoo in the shape of a dog on the back of his left hand when he flipped open his notebook.
She felt a small kindling of hope.
“Hey. Blackdog,” she said.
The cop slowly turned his head. “What did you say?”
“Your tattoo,” Lia said. “You’re a Blackdog.”
“And what would you know about that?”
“Before you call this in or whatever,” Lia begged, “will you do me one favor? Will you call Frank Chudabala for me? Captain Chudabala? Please?”
“And what would you want me to tell him?” the cop asked.
“Tell him Lia la brujachica needs the Blackdogs,” she said. “Tell him I’ve fallen down a well.”
The young patrolman didn’t stop frowning, but he did pull a personal cellphone out of his pocket and dialed it, never once taking his mirror-covered eyes off of Lia.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ingrid Redstone stood in the door of the Yard’s ancient office shack, leafing through a dog-eared paperback copy of The Portable Dorothy Parker she always carried in her purse and waiting as the day grew long. Her gangsters hung around their cars out in the gravel parking lot, most of them smoking nasty, chemical-scented, factory-rolled cigarettes. A bit of a surprise, that was, really. At least to Ingrid. It’d seemed to her that people didn’t do that so much anymore, in this baffling new madhouse of an era.