I did my best to get back to sleep after George and I hung up, but I probably managed only an hour’s actual unconsciousness before nine o’clock rolled around, which was when the Amazons woke me up with breakfast. They’d walked to the nearest fast-food place and brought me back a slice of pure madness called a Breakfast Taco, accompanied by a bag of soggy Good Mornin’ Taters. I actually ate this meal, and then did my best to pretend I didn’t want to run to the bathroom and immediately recycle it. The women meant well, but they hadn’t yet learned that the incredible bounty of America also spawned horrors Man was not meant to experience, especially in the early hours of the day.
• • •
I hadn’t noticed anything immediately noteworthy in Oxana’s pictures from Anaita’s house, so I had the Amazons send them to Clarence for further study. Then, once the Breakfast Taco had passed the make-or-break point in the digestive process, and I knew I could leave the house safely, I set out for Orban’s semi-legitimate gun shop and vehicle emporium. I wandered far enough from the apartment to be out of the blocked zone, called a cab to meet me out on University Avenue in twenty minutes, then started walking.
I had to go to Orban because the number one problem at this moment—number one out of about four hundred or so—was my lack of car. See, I can’t do rentals anymore under my own name because, well, because I tend to break them. Not on purpose, it’s just that stuff keeps happening to me. You may have noticed. Strangely and unfairly, the rental companies keep track of things like that. I’d had to use a fake ID to get the Chrysler we drove to Anaita’s house, and I didn’t want use those too often.
Also, I’m always a tiny bit more cautious with a car I haven’t paid for, and even a half-second hesitation might be a problem. I once rammed a six-legged something-or-other with a car that belonged to one of the other guys in the Harps, back in the Counterstrike Days. I saved both our lives, but he still made me pay for all the bodywork. So I was going to have to go back to Orban to get another vehicle, but I was worried. I’d planned out what to do with the cash I’d made from selling my Matador, and although I still had a lot of the money, I already knew I’d have to give a lot of it back to Orban for things that went bang and things that went boom; I couldn’t really afford another big chunk of it for something that went vroom-vroom. But what choice did I have? You can’t fight neo-Nazis and powerful angels using only the SJTD bus system.
It’s true. I swear I’m not just being picky.
Anyway, by the time I hiked out to University the cab was already waiting. The driver was a slightly schlubby-looking guy with glasses and a beard, the kind you can usually find in almost any bar explaining why everyone else is wrong about everything except him, but as long as he didn’t expect me to talk libertarian politics, I didn’t care. I spent the first part of the ride trying to read the instruction pamphlet for my new phone. The only problem was that it was in Serbo-Croatian, and mine is a little rusty.
“Nice day, huh?” the driver said. Since it was raining lightly, and gray and cold, I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but I nodded. “I mean, it could be worse,” he added. “Am I right?”
I didn’t know about him, but the only way I could imagine things being much worse at the moment was if this guy had a bugbear in his trunk, too, but I just nodded again. “I guess.”
“Me, I always try to remember that it could be worse. You know, like I could be in Hell or something.”
I stiffened and snuck a look at his face in the mirror, but he was chewing on a toothpick watching the traffic go past at the intersection where we’d stopped at a red light. “You worry about that much?” I asked.
“Not too much. But it’s good to remember. I mean, some people don’t know when they’ve got it good. Know what I mean? We never know what’s going to happen. And we never know until it’s all over who our real friends are. Or our real enemies.”
Now I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, although it was far from the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had with a cabbie. Still, I shifted a little bit so I could reach my gun easily. The Belgian FN had gone in the car fire, but I still had my good old Smith & Wesson revolver, my sofa gun, now back on the starting team. It was a bit depressing, actually. I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone anywhere unarmed.
We slid onto the Bayshore and headed north toward the Salt Piers and Orban’s place. I had almost stopped worrying about the driver when he suddenly said, “You sure this is where you wanna go?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the kind of place . . . well, people probably know you there, know you go there, I mean. So some other people might be watching.”
I carefully set the muzzle of my.38 against his neck so he could feel it against his bare skin. “I don’t like you much, pal. I think you’re going to pull off at the next exit. Right?”
He wasn’t very upset, or at least he didn’t seem that way. Maybe I wasn’t the first passenger to have this reaction. He carefully moved into the right lane and we exited on Marsh Road, heading out toward the edge of the Baylands Preserve. Before we left civilization behind entirely, I had him pull over in front of what was probably an abandoned cement plant, a great pale cube set behind razor wire. On this ugly gray day it looked like the kind of place that might house a concentration camp instead. When the driver stopped the car, he remained very still. Smart.
“I’d prefer not to shoot you,” I said. “Because I’m just that kind of dude—agreeable, friendly, interested in others. However, if you don’t explain this weird shit you’re talking to me, I may just have to shoot you a few times anyway, working my way up from the expendables to the oh-god-not-those. Are we clear?”
“Perfectly,” he said. “I guess I’m getting better.”
“What the fuck, if I may be so bold, are you talking about? Because you’re not about to get better, you’re about to be very unwell. This thing is jammed full of thirty-eight caliber semiwadcutters, and if I shoot you in the neck they’ll probably pop your head right off like a grape off a stem.”
“I’ve always admired how well you do this,” he said. “You must practice.”
“Talk! And not bullshit!”
“You really don’t recognize me?” He sounded thrilled, and all of a sudden I realized what was going on.
“Temuel?”
“I probably should have talked about sports—isn’t that what these kind of people do? But I don’t really know anything, and I would have got it wrong.”
“What the hell are you doing, Archangel? If you don’t mind me asking? Because you just freaked me right the fuck out, and I was about to pistol whip you.”
“See? I love that. It sounds so authentic! How do you whip with a pistol?”
I fell back in the seat. I know, I still couldn’t be one hundred percent sure it was Temuel and not some especially tricky, well-informed demon, but seriously, who else would be such a dweeb? “Why are you here, Archangel?”
“I thought it was time we had a talk. Some very worrisome things are going on, and—”
“Hang on. Why are you driving the cab I ordered? How did that happen?”
“Please, Bobby, give me a little credit. Do you really think an archangel can’t get his hands on a cab when he wants one?”
“Don’t bullshit me, please. How did you know I called for a cab?”
No answer. His eyes caught mine in the mirror for a second, then he looked away. I could swear I saw something that looked like shame.
“You told me you took all the tracking software and surveillance doo-hickeys out of my phone.” I don’t know why I was angry. What had I expected? “You gave it back to me, and said it was clean. You told me you took that shit out!” I’d only figured out that particular bit of management treachery after Clarence had shown up at Shoreline Park when there was no way he could have known Sam and I were there.