“What normal way? Do you think that an important angel like Anaita—who’s not supposed to be spending large amounts of time on Earth, plus is up to her holy neck in all kinds of weird intrigues, not least thwarting the entire plan of Heaven and Hell by creating an alternative destination for human souls—is going to have a listed number?”
He shook his head. “No, but if she’s living an earthly life, even part time, she’s probably not pruning her own shrubbery. She has parties, right? Some kind of social life? She must have caterers, a dressmaker, employees, gardening service, you know, stuff like that. You could spend weeks trying to figure it out with all this . . .” he grimaced and waved at the messy table, “. . . Boy Scout stuff. Do you always light a fire by rubbing sticks together, too? Are matches for pussies?”
“Don’t get snippy, Sunny Jim.”
“Look, just let me do it. I came from the Records Hall of Heaven, Bobby. I know something about finding information.”
“Yeah, but you’re not a very good liar. Sometimes you have to lie to people.”
He directed me away from the desk and sat down. “Find something useful to do. Clean your gun or something. If I need someone who couldn’t tell the whole truth if his life depended on it, I’ll let you know.”
• • •
Needless to say, with sexy Amazons running around half-naked in the next room and loudly making out for hours most nights, all my guns were already pretty damn clean, and every blade I owned had been sharpened and re-sharpened until they were all as thin as fingernail clippings. However, I had been trying to decide what to do once I actually knew where my suspect lived, so I figured I might as well get on with that part.
Monica picked up on the second ring. “Naber.”
“It’s Bobby.”
There was a bit of a pause. There always is. The kind of history Monica and I have is just pleasant enough that I can always call her, but not so much that we don’t usually start off with one of those awkward pauses. “Yes, hello, Bobby. How are you?”
“Been better. Been worse. Any chance I could buy you a cup of coffee?”
I swear I could hear her thinking. “What does that mean, exactly?” she said at last.
“Nothing weird, I promise. I really need to talk to you. In fact, I need a favor.”
“Ah.” She sounded more comfortable now. “When? I’m just on my way to a client out in the hills.”
“I could meet you on your way back.”
“Okay.” She named a restaurant we’d been to before. “Give me an hour before you set out. Alice said it would be a quick one.” The tone of her voice changed. “I think that means it’s a kid.”
“Sorry to hear it. Yeah, an hour. I really appreciate this. You’re a sweetheart.”
“Yeah, that’s me—the sweetheart of the regiment.”
• • •
Look, I know I’m not the most sensitive guy in the world, but when Monica came in I could tell it had been a bad one, so I just went to the bar and ordered her a drink, then let her get about half of it down before I said anything.
“Bad night?”
“You know. A nine-year-old girl. Beaten to death by her stepfather.” She stirred her drink, then took another long swallow until the ice sounded dry. “I hate kids. I mean, I hate working with kids. In our job.”
I could only nod. Kids are the hardest, not so much because they don’t understand, unless they’re really little, but because they ask so many questions, and you have to keep saying, “I can’t tell you,” or, if you’re more honest, “I don’t know.”
“You want another drink?”
“No. I have to drive.” She looked up. Her eyes were a bit red. “What can I do for you, Mr. Dollar?”
I wasn’t quite ready to dive in. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how are you and Teddy Nebraska doing? Is it serious?”
“I don’t know. He’s sweet, but he’s so old-fashioned. I swear, he couldn’t have been alive past the late eighteen-nineties.”
“Is that why he’s been acting so weird around me?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t one of her good ones. “I think it has more to do with the fact that you scare him to death. He wants to make sure you’re not angry with him for dating me.”
“Really? Scared of me? Why? Does he think I’m jealous?”
“I told him you wouldn’t be.” A smile, shadowed with regret. “I kind of wish you would be, but I knew you wouldn’t. Yeah, I think he’s worried you might beat him up or something.”
I sat back. “You’re kidding. Me?”
“That’s right, Dollar. I know you’re a useless softie, and you know it, but everyone else down at the Compasses thinks you’re kind of a bad-ass. Fighting demons and monsters, mysterious absences—you’re the cool kid on the playground.”
It was so different than the way I saw myself—hapless pawn of fate, barely able to keep it together for nine or ten minutes at a stretch—that I laughed loud enough for the drunks in the next booth to glare at me. “You’re joking.”
“I don’t have the energy.” She put the glass down and sighed. “So what do you want, Bobby?”
I told Monica, without explaining who I thought the target really was, of course, that I needed to get to Donya Sepanta, close up and personal.
“Why don’t you just do what you ordinarily do? Smash through the front door and keep going until someone tries to kill you?”
I bowed my head. “I’m trying to improve my karma, sweetie. From now on I’m going to do it the peaceful way first. Then when I fuck that up, I go back with guns blazing.” I was stopped by her look of alarm. “I’m kidding. There will be no guns. I just need to get in and meet this woman face-to-face.”
“She must be very good looking. But I thought you had a new girlfriend.”
A moment of constriction around the heart and lungs. Who’d been talking? “Where did you hear that?”
“Gossip doesn’t come like email, with To and From in the header. I don’t know. Everybody talks about it. Some mysterious woman no one’s ever seen.” She smiled, and it was a little better this time. “Honestly, Bobby, I don’t mind. We were never serious about each other, were we?”
I smelled another trap. “I always cared about you, Monica. I still do.”
“And that calls for another drink, I believe.” She waved until she caught the harried waitress’s attention. “How about you?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“So, then—your new girlfriend?”
“It’s complicated. And she’s out of town. For a while.”
“So you’re scouting up new talent?”
“If I swear I’m not, you won’t believe me. Think what you want. But I do need to meet this Sepanta woman. Help me?”
“I’m not trying to be mean, honest. And if you’re serious about this new one who you never talk about, I wish you the best. Now, what can I do about Donya Sepanta?”
I was still inventing the plan, so I briefed her as best I could, doing my best not to harp too much on the need for secrecy, although I was scared to death my pursuit of Donya Sepanta would also become news around the Compasses. If people found out I was after Anaita it could have even worse repercussions than people knowing about Caz. Although now that I thought about it, the downside of both would be immediate ejection of my immortal soul from Heaven and its prompt conveyance to the lower depths, so it was kind of a pick-’em.
Monica agreed to help, pending the rest of the information on Donya Sepanta, which I promised I’d get to her as soon as I had it. “She is beautiful, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. You sure you’re not aiming a bit high?”
“It’s nothing to do with sex, Monica. I swear on the Highest.”
“Bobby, everything you do is something to do with sex. I just don’t have the strength to dig deep enough to find out. Let me know when you need me. I’ll look up some of my old contacts.”