“I don’t know where it was, Bobby. Just this place Samkiel sent me. But there wasn’t a desert.”
“Whoa, hang on, cowboy. Who’s Samkiel?”
“The shiny angel who sent me there in the first place—the important one. I heard one of the other angels mention his name once, and people weren’t using names around that place much, so I remembered.”
“Okay, Samkiel.” I didn’t know the name, but I filed it away for later. “That’s something. Then what happened?”
He looked embarrassed. “I’m not exactly sure. To be honest, for a long time I hardly even remembered any of this, but once I started hanging out with you and Sam it started to come back a little.” He looked up at me. “Hey, where is Sam? How come he never comes out with us anymore?”
I sat back and drank my coffee, thinking. I couldn’t find any holes in Clarence’s story, not that it proved anything. The people we worked for, if you can call them that, are much more powerful than we are. Since they were capable of wiping our memories, they might even be able to implant cover stories right into an angel’s brain. At least I was going to assume that, until I found out otherwise. Still, I didn’t have much choice but to believe him. I was running out of potential allies. “Sam and I had a bit of a disagreement. That’s why I need to be able to trust you—and why we’re starting with History 101.”
“Trust me? Didn’t I do that feather thing with the guy from Hell with you? Totally against every rule.” He stopped scowling. “What do you mean, disagreement?”
“All right, argument. To put it more clearly, Sam said I was a stupid, paranoid dick. I’ll tell you all the fun details some other time. I don’t think he’s given up on me, but I also can’t count on him right this moment. So I need you, kid.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know yet. But shit is getting serious. From now on, don’t talk to anyone in Heaven you don’t need to, and don’t talk about me to anyone—including Sam.”
“Really?” He looked very worried by this.
“No, Clarence, I’m just joking with you. We’re going to meet him at Chuck E. Cheese later on and play skee-ball. Yes, Sam. Until I know where he stands on Kephas, I have to play it very, very safe.”
Well, Clarence wouldn’t be satisfied until I told him the important facts about Kephas, that it was probably Important Angel Anaita who wanted my soul jerked out and fed to demon-alligators—although even if I was right that she was behind it all, I still had no idea why I’d pissed her off so badly in the first place. Yes, I had wound up with her feather, but I hadn’t stolen it, and I hadn’t wanted it. She didn’t have any need to go after me at first. Of course, after the whole thing went down with Eligor and Caz I probably knew too much to be left alone.
“Oh, Clarence,” I said, “one more thing. We’re friends now, in a weird sort of way. But if you’re not what you keep telling me you are—if you’re still working for our bosses somehow and you rat out me or Sam, I swear on the Highest I will make you wish you’d never met me.”
He was startled at the change in my tone and showed me hurt-puppy eyes. “That wouldn’t be anything particularly new, Bobby.”
“That’s because I’m difficult. Because I’m rude. But if I have to come after you, you’ll have entirely different reasons. Serious reasons.”
“Thanks for the good faith.” He scowled. “You give angels a bad name.”
“Not my fault. I’m just as the Good Lord made me.” Yeah, like I should automatically trust somebody who had started out as a fink for management.
I wasn’t feeling particularly enthused about seeing G-Man again, so I left Clarence still shaking his head in dismay and I started home. While I still had bars on my phone, I pulled into a parking lot and called Alice at the office to tell her I needed a longer, indefinite leave of absence. Alice informed me in her cheerful way that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in the Devil’s backyard that would happen, so I asked her to address the request straight to Archangel Temuel. I hoped the Mule would back me up, or at least delay the request long enough to give me some time before it was turned down. Too many things were happening at once now, and I couldn’t afford to be called to any surprise job reviews up at the Big Shiny.
While I was sitting at the curb I went back over Fatback’s latest information-dump about prominent local Persian-American women. The more I looked, the more I liked my candidate; she was wealthy, had no immediate relatives I could find, and seemed very, very private. I called George’s number and got the answering machine.
“Hey, hope the worm treatment is going great, and congratulations on that. Skip all the other people and just get me everything you can find—I mean everything—on this woman named Donya Sepanta. Fast, too, if you can tear yourself away from the mud saunas. Please.”
Back at Caz’s apartment, the Amazons had clearly been having a dress-up party. Oxana greeted me wearing a yellow Dolly Parton wig and a miniskirt that would have looked immodest on a ’60s stewardess. Halyna sported a sleeveless red leather pantsuit and an Afro wig, although with those muscles she looked more like Ike than Tina. They were both still wearing their combat boots and various spiked leather armbands and neck straps, though; the combination was somewhat unsettling.
“Luckily for you two I already have enough money, or I’d be pimping you out to the small but select militant-Nancy-Sinatra-bondage-dyke market,” I said. “No, you both look great, but I think we’ll tone it down just a touch when we go into action.”
“Not too much,” said Halyna, primping her wig. “This is most fun we have in America.”
“Our great nation has that effect on tourists,” I said. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”
As entertaining as it was watching two young women enjoy themselves getting in and out of clothes, it only made me wish Caz were there. I locked myself in the bathroom for a while so I could concentrate on my work. After all, Heaven wasn’t going to overthrow itself.
sixteen:
letting it bleed
ONE OF those northern weather fronts had dropped down on us from somewhere in the neighborhood of Alaska, so as I drove across town I kept the defroster on and the windshield wipers at full speed. It was a cold rain, and I would much rather have been sitting in a warm apartment that still smelled like Caz (although with the Amazons each taking two steamy showers a day, the scent was almost gone). The Tierra Green Apartments had the oldest, most pathetic water heater outside the Third World, and its pilot light went out at least a couple of times a week. The women hadn’t had regular hot water in months, and they were taking full advantage of it now.
I was listening to Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones, a nearly perfect album both for rainy days and for considering the end of the world as we know it. Not that I was really planning to overthrow all of Heaven, just part of it—one certain, very powerful part of it, to be precise—but even so, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Love In Vain” seemed disturbingly appropriate.
I parked out on Parade along the waterfront, still hoping to keep my recently painted car hidden from prying eyes, and checked for people following me as I took a roundabout walk to the Compasses. My fellow heavenly advocate Kool Filter was huddled in the doorway of the Alhambra Building, trying to stay dry under the awning, but since the rain was blowing sideways he wasn’t doing very well.
“A silent protest against the unfairness of the city’s smoking laws,” I said as I walked up.
Kool offered me a fist. We bumped. “Silent, hell. I’ve been bitching about it for years. But it doesn’t make much difference when nobody’s listening.”
“Our true condition in this world writ small.”
He gave me a look. “What’s that shit mean?”
“You know. We all work for shadowy forces, follow rules we don’t understand, and when we complain, nothing happens.”