“They say man proposes, God disposes,” he told me, squeezing in behind the table. “But seems to me like I have to do most of the disposing. Man, I think I just pissed out several gallons in there. I’m serious. Like a racehorse.”
“Not really interested,” I told him.
“Actually, I’ve got something I need to tell you about.” Sam checked his coffee, which had gone cold, and waved for our ancient waitress to freshen it up.
“What’s that?” Maybe some food would help me, I decided. I was really jittery now. Maybe some pie.
“You asked me if you could come to Kainos.”
“Kainos?”
“That’s what we call the place. You know, the Third Way. You said you wanted to check it out.”
“Hey, don’t make it sound like I saw the light or something. This isn’t a conversion, man, I just need to make a fact-finding trip.”
“Well, that’s the problem, B. You’re not going to be making that trip. Things have changed.”
“What does that mean?”
“That the operation has been shut down, more or less. Kephas just told us that we’re not bringing in any more souls and that from now on there won’t be anyone going in or out except for me and the others who’ve been helping—the rest of the Magians.”
Magians was the name Sam’s group of angels had taken in their quest to find suitable human subjects willing to risk their souls to join the Third Way after death. “So you’re saying I can’t get in?”
“I have no idea what kind of controls or whatever Kephas has, but I’m pretty sure you’d be noticed if you even tried, which would put me square in the crosshairs. Remember, Bobby, unlike you I don’t have anywhere else to go if the shit hits the fan.”
I felt weird, exhausted, and wired at the same time, and even if it wasn’t making me feel cheerful anymore, I’m pretty sure the alcohol was still fucking with my judgement. I probably shouldn’t have broached the subject, not then, not there, but I was beginning to feel I needed to know where everybody really stood—who was truly on my side.
“Sam, I gotta tell you something. I know who Kephas is. And you know what? It’s your Kephas who’s out to get me.”
He just stared at me for a long time, then picked up his spoon and stirred his black coffee for another lengthy interval. “Talk,” he said at last.
And I did. You have to remember, I’d been holding this in a long time, ever since the dead murderer Smyler told me that Kephas was his boss, too, and Walter Sanders passed along something that made me realize that Kephas was probably Anaita. I had to explain the whole thing to Sam, of course. I’d held back a lot from him, how I’d met Walter in Hell and the whole works, and it took a long time to bring him up to date. Meanwhile, Sam just sat and sipped a little coffee and said nothing at all, but I have to say the vibe he was putting out was not a harmonious one.
I was praying that when I finished he’d do something good, slap my shoulder and tell me he was with me to the end, or come up with some better explanation that made sense out of everything, but instead when I stopped talking he just kept looking at me for a few seconds, then said, “You done?”
I said I was.
“Good. Because I have to say that’s the biggest bunch of horseshit I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been shoveling the stables of untruth for many, many years.” He leaned back. “Look at you, Dollar. You’re a fucking wreck. You’re in love with a woman who was burned at the stake and admits herself she deserved it. You went to Hell for her, for Heaven’s sake! You’ve pissed off one of the heaviest hitters on the Opposition, you got the Compasses torn to pieces because of it, and now you’re trying to tell me that the thing I’ve worked on with all my heart for years is just some scam. In fact, you probably think it’s just another plot to get you. Do you think I’m in on it too, Bobby? That because I kept some secrets, I’m your enemy? That I’m working with Kephas to get you?”
“No, Sam, don’t be stupid . . . !”
“Stupid? Shit, don’t just look at yourself, listen to yourself. You move every few weeks, you’ve got bullet holes in your apartment wall, you don’t sleep, and you’ve got all your bosses pissed off at you, not to mention the hordes of Hell. But instead of just making a clean break and coming with me to Kainos, you’ve been determined all along to do it your own way. Well, old chum, I hate to tell you this, but your way sucks.”
While I was still sitting there with my mouth hanging open like a gaffed fish, he stood up and threw a five on the table for his coffee, then tossed a twenty in front of me. “Get yourself a cab, man. I don’t want to spend any more time with you right now. If you weren’t covered in bruises I’d be tempted to take you outside and pop you one in the nose.”
He took a couple of steps and then turned around. “I get it that you’re miserable. I get it that you think the world is hopelessly fucked, both the human world and the world we live in. Shit, I more or less agree. But that doesn’t mean I have to go down and roll in it with you. You may be right about some of it, even, but that doesn’t mean you’re right about all of it. And at the moment, I don’t care about any of it.”
“Sam, I’m sorry . . .”
“Tell me some other time, maybe I’ll listen,” he said, walking away. He was in such a mood that he accidentally dragged his coat across the plates of the two people sitting in the booth next to ours. Sam’s big, though, and when he’s angry only the suicidal would jump up and start something. They didn’t even start talking about what a jerk he was until the glass door had closed behind him.
After he’d gone, I just sat staring at my coffee, watching it get cold. The waitress wandered by a couple of times and offered to freshen it up, but I just waved her away. I didn’t want any more fucking coffee.
fourteen:
other people’s problems
I DIDN’T GET much sleep that night, but for once it wasn’t because of bad dreams. I had the distinct feeling that a noose was being drawn tight around my neck, tighter by the day. I had one hope, and that was to find the horn and get it away from Anaita. But meanwhile I was losing friends and allies right and left.
I didn’t think Sam was gone for good—not really. But I wasn’t used to him being that pissed at me, and I still didn’t know all the facts about his arrangement with Kephas. On top of it all, I still had a few trust issues with him. After all, he’d lied to me from the beginning about the Third Way, and that was something I hadn’t believed could ever happen. Shit, maybe he’d known he was working for Anaita all this time. Maybe the bluster was all faked. I didn’t even know how to think about that, it seemed so impossible.
But if I couldn’t call on Sam, who did that leave for Team Bobby? Foxy Foxy had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with any of this—I believe the good old phrase “scared shitless” applied, if you could say that about a Japanese nature spirit. Clarence was a maybe, since he still hadn’t entirely cleared himself after starting out his career as a spy and trying to arrest Sam. (Of course, I’d clocked him on the skull with a gun butt, so it wasn’t like I’d been a great mentor, either.) George the Internet Pig was out in the Central Valley somewhere, the Sollyhull Sisters would have been out of their league completely, and the Broken Boy was more broken than usual after answering my last set of questions. Which left me what? Two Amazons I’d just met and my guns-and-cars supplier, Orban—in other words, two women who didn’t speak great English yet and an immortal Hungarian who never would. Anyone else? Dr. Gustibus, but he was too weird an unknown to count on.
Of course, I’d almost forgotten my old friend G-Man, aka Garcia Windhover, the wannabe-gangsta idiot kid who thought he was one of my operatives. He’d do anything for me, despite his complete and utter lack of qualifications or even rudimentary intelligence. His English wasn’t too good either, even though it was his first language. Sure, I could always bet my immortal soul on G-Man—or just shoot myself now.