I wrestled with some heavy questions that night, things that could affect not just my afterlife, but perhaps even the balance of Heaven and Hell. When at last I gave up on any really solid sleep and made myself some coffee, I had come to at least one major decision, something that scared me badly, but which had to be done.
It was time to sell my car.
• • •
“You are not serious.”
It was always hard to tell with Orban whether he was asking a question, making a statement, or talking to someone else entirely, because he didn’t make a lot of eye contact and was usually surrounded by bearded men who wanted his attention, a bit like Snow White during dwarf mating season, so I waited until the latest group of armament mechanics had eddied away. Orban repeated his earlier remark, which proved he’d been talking to me all along.
“Wish I wasn’t,” I said. “I love that car like an ordinary man loves his mother. More, because that car never gave me liverwurst for lunch or made me wear hand-me-downs to school. But I need the money, and I honestly don’t know if I can ever drive it again without feeling like America’s Most Wanted.”
Orban walked with me to the garage, and pulled the tarp off my muscle car, my beloved AMC Matador Machine. The coppery paint job and the black and white checkerboard upholstery were so beautiful I almost cried.
“It is certainly an ugly fucker,” he said, “but the engine runs like a dream. Nice, new four-oh-one.”
“Don’t remind me.” Why did everyone have to talk shit about how my car looked? Didn’t anyone in this town have any art in their souls? “I still owe you ten. How much you think you can get for it?”
“If I can find a blind man who likes to drive fast, maybe twenty-five total.” He squinted at me and frowned, which made him look like an Eastern-European Popeye the Sailor. “How bad are things? If you really want to sell, I can give you another ten now if that will help.”
“It would. It really would.” I was already beginning to think strange, un-Bobbylike thoughts about holing up in the woods with a bunch of guns and growing a beard. (Or maybe getting a job with Orban, since that’s how everybody he employed already looked.) But I definitely wanted liquid assets, and fast.
Because of his business, or more specifically his brand of customers, Orban was always handling cash, which was well known among the drug dealers and smash-and-grab robbers who tended to patronize him, both for guns and well-armored vehicles. But even so, nobody had ever tried to rob him. This probably says almost as much about Orban himself as about the dozens of well-armed guys who worked there and were pretty much on the premises all night and all day. Orban claimed he’d been the designer for the cannons at the siege of Constantinople. Don’t bother to Google, I’ll tell you—AD 1453. He might be nothing more than a formidable liar, but considering that my own girlfriend had been around that long, I was more willing than most to accept that as possible. He also claimed he had simply decided not to die, and that was why he hadn’t. If you spent a half hour with him, especially if he was giving you one of those looks of his, you’d probably take his word for it like I did. He isn’t a big man, but he has presence like a porcupine has sharp stuff.
In his office he counted me out a hundred Benjamins and I signed off on the pink slip. Then he broke out a bottle of wine, and we had a drink. Here’s another Orban tip: never tell him the Hungarian stuff he drinks tastes like cow piss. He claims it’s called Bull’s Blood, but I think that’s a translation error.
I promptly gave him a couple hundred back for his guys to paint the ancient Datsun I’d been driving for a while, another Orban special. I would have liked a fresh start and a new, never-seen car in case I had to disappear, but I settled for having the old car sprayed an unexciting black. I’d throw some dust on it when it dried.
While they were taking care of that, I wandered down the Salt Piers to a little burger joint and had a late breakfast. While I waited for my hash browns, sausage, and eggs, I went through Fatback’s Persian stuff again, then emailed him with directions on narrowing the search. Seagulls fought loudly on the railing outside the window. It was hard not to imagine that the crows who came to pick my bones when Anaita was done with me might sound a little like that.
• • •
As I drove back across town, Sam’s words were still stinging. Was he right? Was this all happening just because I was a stubborn asshole? I mean, nobody was arguing that I wasn’t a stubborn asshole—I lost that debate a long time ago—but had I really brought this all on myself? After all, it was Sam who had first stuck the feather in my pocket (more or less—inside the pocket had actually been inside a different part of time) and got me into this mess. Not that I was holding it against him, since it had led to Caz. Of course it had also led to the giant Sumerian monster trying to kill me, and Eligor having a personal grudge against me, and me going to Hell. Actually, I was holding it against him. Bastard.
Even after an hour or more under the hot lights, the car’s new paint job wouldn’t really cure for a month or so, but it was already dried shiny, so I turned off on the way back and drove along a couple of sandy dirt roads I knew that ran near the bay. Yes, I was pitting the new paint, but “new” wasn’t the point. “Different” was the point, along with “unremarkable.” I had several important things to do and I wanted to avoid attention.
I had decided that no matter what Heaven thought about it, I had to get out of the Tierra Green Apartments. Too many bad things had found me there. I had already packed a suitcase earlier with all my most crucial stuff. I wasn’t taking much with me, because I didn’t want it obvious to either my enemies or my bosses that I had moved out, so I was leaving most of my crap in the old apartment. My new place? Well, let’s just say I’d had an idea.
Once I got near downtown I called the cellphone number Halyna (the Red Amazon) had given me. I hadn’t talked to them since the Night of the Swastikid, so I was surprised and pleased when she actually picked up. I told her I needed her and Oxana to meet me, told them where and what to bring, said I’d see them in an hour, then hung up.
Once again I was back in the middle of town with some time to kill, but I wasn’t going anywhere near the Compasses, especially in the Datsun. If the place was being watched, as it probably was, I might as well just share pictures on the internet: “Here’s my car’s new paint job! LOL!” Instead I parked in a municipal lot and went into a bar I’d never visited. The tavern was called The Bung, and it was about as classy as you’d guess from the name; the kind of dark, depressingly quiet place where you could get completely shitfaced in the middle of the day and nobody would look twice. But all I wanted was a beer and some quiet to study the Persian stuff again, and even the beer was just a hair of the dog for my vodka-aching head.
I still had some shit to straighten out with young Clarence, Mister Hey-Guess-What-I’m-Gay, Mister Hey-Just-Dropped-By-Without-Calling, but that would have to wait for another day. And of course there was still the matter of those Black Sun charmers, especially the bald one with the big, bony fists who’d had so much fun with my face and ribs. Normally I would have already found those bastards and set their families on fire, but these were busy days.
As I looked through Fatback’s files again, I became more and more certain that there were four or five names in the Persian material that were real possibilities as a San Judas identity for Anaita, so I emailed George to focus on those. Then I just sat back in my booth and sipped my beer while some guy at the bar complained about his ex-wife. It was strangely soothing, listening to other people’s problems.