It occurred to me as I pulled into the secure garage that since I’d sent a message back to Caz, or tried to, I was hoping to hear from her again. The problem was, I’d moved since the nizzic found me, and the new place didn’t have windows, so I’d have a hard time knowing when it found me again. Something else I’d have to think about.
To my absolute lack of astonishment, Halyna and Oxana were watching television when I got there, one of those horrible reality things where the host confronts people over paternity and infidelity. They seemed to be enjoying it, so I dumped several of the sandwiches onto a plate and slid it in front of them.
“When is something going to happen, Mr. Bobby Dollar?” Halyna asked, but I noticed she didn’t take her eyes off the sleazy boyfriend who was shouting back at the studio audience, “You don’t know nothing ’bout it! You don’t know nothing!”
“This man crazy,” said Oxana, amused as only the young can be to find out how stupid lots of people are.
“No, really. We want to help you,” Halyna said. “When can we help you?”
“Sooner than you’d like, probably, so enjoy the time off.” I took a pair of rubber gloves out from under the kitchen sink, then went to Caz’s desk where the light was better. Most of the lamps in the main room were hidden behind gauzy draperies, so that the place looked more than a little like a bordello. I’d been a bit taken aback the first time I saw it, until I’d realized that Caz, however sophisticated she’d become over the course of several hundred years of afterlife, was still at heart a medieval girl. She had probably dreamed of living somewhere like this when she was young—some idea of Moorish luxury that would have been quite different from her cold home in Poland.
Once I had the gloves on I checked the envelope again, but it hadn’t been mailed so there wasn’t much information to be had, only my name—“Mr. Robert Dollar,” which was actually kind of funny—written on the outside in felt pen.
The inside was different, if only because the paper was fancy business letterhead, embossed with a familiar symboclass="underline"
Dear Mr. Dollar,
it read, clearly printed from a computer document in so-very-1990s Helvetica 14.
It has come to my attention that a truly unfortunate error has been made by some of my employees invading your privacy. I assure you that I personally would never have allowed it, and that when I heard that matters had gone so far as a physical encounter between you and my overzealous subordinates, I disciplined those responsible.
We are not enemies, Mr. Dollar, and we should not be enemies. I hope I can prove that to you. In fact, we have many goals in common and my organization could be helpful to you in reaching yours. I would very much appreciate a chance to discuss this and other matters with you. Please come to my office on Friday at 15:00 and let me explain.
I apologize for the unusual way of communicating with you, but you seem to have changed your address, and I had no other way to reach you.
If for any reason you cannot make Friday’s appointment, please call, and I will be happy to set a new one. It is important that we speak and important that we have no further misunderstandings.
Sincerely,
Baldur von Reinmann
Regional Director
Sonnenrad.org
There was even an address—378 Centennial Avenue, San Judas, CA 90460. Right in downtown, convenient to stores and large coliseums suitable for torchlight rallies.
I couldn’t help it—I laughed as I read it. Physical encounter? Herr von Reinmann must have been referring to his hired strong-arm guy beating the (almost literal) holy shit out of me. But it had all been a misunderstanding, of course. We could work together, me and the Nazis. I would find them very helpful.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just like Poland did.”
I jotted down the address and time, but didn’t bother hanging onto the letter, since other than humor value it wasn’t going to give me anything else useful. I got the pastrami sandwich I’d bought for myself, reheated some of the morning’s coffee, and sat down to eat. By the time I was cleaning crumbs off the table, I’d decided that the Black Sun creeps were too dangerous to be ignored, especially if they had supernatural monstrosities like the Nightmare Children at their disposal. I needed to understand better how they fit in to the whole Eligor-Anaita-feather-horn mishegoss. The quickest way to learn that would be simply to accept their invitation.
• • •
That night, I made a laundry list of the things I was going to need before visiting Baldur and the Blitzkrieg Boys. The Amazons had retired to bed to practice their horizontal calisthenics, so when I’d finished the list, I took a beer and went out into the courtyard of the apartment complex to stretch my legs. There were lights on in a few of the other apartment windows, but so far I hadn’t seen any of the neighbors. That made sense, of course—Caz would have picked a spot for her pied-a-terre where she wouldn’t have to come into contact with others very often. But since I now knew I’d had neo-Nazis practicing black magic above me for weeks in the old apartment, I wondered if I was being too casual about who might be sharing these new digs.
I stayed out for almost an hour. The storm had swept through, but the chilly air hadn’t. It was pretty cold even for an angel, but I was determined to give a messenger from Caz a chance to find me, and the nizzic had seemed to make all its visits after dark. But my only company at this hour was a dog somewhere down the street, who barked loudly and hoarsely, over and over, until he gave up in strangled despair, only to start again a few minutes later, protesting the stupidity of a world where the humans got to sleep inside and be safe and comfortable while he was outside in the cold.
“I know that feel, bro,” I told the dog, then finished my beer and went back inside.
seventeen:
sshhhh
THURSDAY WAS library day for me. I intended to put in a good few hours, so I gave the Amazons a map of the places where I needed things picked up, then had them drop me off on Middlefield Street on the outskirts of downtown Jude. Halyna could drive all right, but I doubted she had a license, and based on the trip out, I sure as hell wouldn’t have let her drive my late, lamented Matador. Both women were dressed a bit more soberly today, (at my direction, because the last thing I wanted was to have some of the more dangerous supplies picked up by people who looked like they belonged to an anarchist cell). In fact, the Amazons now looked like a couple of teachers, which was the way I wanted it. Harmless.
“Professional,” I told them as I got out. “If you have any problems, just call me. But be professional!”
“You too much worrying,” Oxana reassured me. “We will shoot nobody.”
The Harper Library downtown had once been San Judas’s first fire station, and still showed its historic roots in the high ceilings and the arches along the facade (which had allowed room for fully loaded hook and ladder trucks to drive out at speed) but a lot had changed in seventy or eighty years. If the brick walls and the Spanish tile roof still looked much the same, the insides were completely different from anything the older citizens would recognize. Twenty years or so before, about the time I first arrived in San Judas, the city had rebuilt the whole thing, gutting the inside, putting in more windows, and expanding outward to the back, including a large garden full of winding paths and benches. Like most libraries, it now had extensive multimedia resources, computers and video-watching rooms and all sorts of other fancy stuff meant to lure in Jude’s jaded, internetted youth. To me, it always seemed a bit like trying to get people to eat their good old healthy lima beans by offering artisan burgers, too, but I’m not a library professional, so what do I know? In fact, I’d only been to the Harper Library at all recently because of business. The head librarian had died at her desk—probably as she would have chosen—and I had a very interesting time seeing her through her judgement. I’ll tell you about that one someday.