“Right. And I’m trying to find anything that might link Anaita with Eligor, so that’s point of interest number one. But you haven’t heard the rest.” I took a swig of my Burgundy. I’m not sure I’ll ever be a serious wine drinker, but I have to say, right then, that shit tasted good. “See, I tracked down the fundraiser, too. Yes, your old Grampa Bobby’s got some gosh-durned computer skills. The party was held at the Elizabeth Atell Stanford Museum of the Arts, that big old thing out on the campus. They were celebrating breaking ground on a new wing for the museum. And Donya Sepanta was one of the main fundraisers.”
Clarence was perking up. “And Eligor was there?”
“No. I’ve found a bunch of articles, society page stuff, some PR crap in the magazines that cater to rich dicks who love to hear about their own good works, things like that. And Kenneth Vald wasn’t there. Or at least, nobody made any mention of one of the most newsworthy billionaires in the world—and certainly in San Judas—being at the museum gala.”
“But then what’s the big deal?”
“Because, Junior, why would Howlingfell show up if it had nothing to do with Eligor? He was either there because Eligor was there, or he was there because he was casing the place for a proposed meeting. Either way, it’s the first real lead we’ve had. Now we need to research this museum, especially the new wing. We need to get deep, deep into it and find out everything we can. In fact, you’re going to do just that. You can have dinner first, though.”
“What do you mean me? What are you going to do?”
“Have another glass of wine. And think about what I’m going to need to break in there.”
“Break in?” Clarence almost dropped his glass. “Why on earth do you want to do that?”
“I like to get the feel of a place, and that includes smelling and listening and poking my nose where it doesn’t belong. And let’s not forget, our friend Ms. Sepanta was celebrating having plunged ten million dollars, reportedly half her own money and the rest from her personal fundraising, into a new Asian wing for the museum where she and Eligor were probably going to have their meeting. So she’s invested a lot in that place, and I want to know why.”
“But why break in? You said we’re going to research—”
“Yes, research first, and maybe it will turn out to be a blind alley. But in case it isn’t, I’m going to be ready to get in there and have a look around. Because that’s the way I roll.”
Clarence gave me another disapproving look. “That’s how you roll? Like a teenage meth addict looking for stuff he can fence for drugs?”
I poured myself some more red vino and sat down in front of my soup bowl. The steam was very pleasantly scented. “It smells lovely.”
Halyna and Oxana were already finishing their first bowls, so I hurried to catch up. Clarence finally sat.
“But, Bobby, when you do things like that, crazy, bad stuff happens. And it almost always goes wrong. Remember you and Five Page Mill?”
“Yeah, crazy, bad stuff happens. And that’s exactly why I do things like that. Because it’s when things get out of control that other people’s plans collapse.”
“Including your own.”
“Including my own, sometimes. But I’m used to living that way. The others aren’t. And it’s been a long time since Anaita’s had anyone stand up to her.”
“That’s because the rest are all dead,” said Clarence.
“Or raped,” said Halyna.
“Or make into slaves,” said Oxana.
“My, you’re a cheery bunch. Shut up so I can celebrate.” And I did, damn it.
twenty-six:
kids today
DON’T GET the idea that I only ever scream “Geronimo!” and leap into dangerous situations. Sometimes you’re not hearing the rest because I’m skipping over the boring parts. The next week was one of those boring parts.
As November clicked over into December, the Amazons and I spent a lot of time staking out the museum and checking out Anaita’s other holdings. I discovered pretty quickly that Donya Sepanta had a lot of properties, but the only one in the Bay Area was the estate we’d already seen. I still believed she wouldn’t hide anything important there, in part because it was so obvious, but also because it would have been pretty easy for Eligor to infiltrate her household staff, who were all human. But that still didn’t mean the museum was anything more than somewhere that Anaita once met Eligor.
Our preliminary surveillance of the Elizabeth Atell Stanford Museum of the Arts, or as much of it as we were able to do from a taxi (which, fortunately, are as common on big college campuses as empty beer kegs) showed us that not only had Anaita helped raise a lot of money for the place, she actually dropped by there every few days, and usually stayed at least a couple of hours. I decided I needed to know more, so I called up a friend.
• • •
“You want to do some work for me, Edie? I’ll pay your usual rate.”
“I guess,” she said. I could hear the television in the background. “But I have finals right now, Mr. Dollar. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing too difficult. Just visit a museum.”
“Oooh, I love museums. Well, most of the time. Sometimes,” she lowered her voice. “Sometimes I get a bad one, you know?”
“Bad?”
“You know—not so much the museum itself, but something in it. Something that’s got a totes ugly vibe. It’s even worse if I touch it.”
I assured her that I didn’t want her touching anything this time, and we picked a time after school to meet up, on a day when Mr. and Mrs. Parmenter wouldn’t freak out if their daughter came home a bit later than usual.
“Okay. I’ll tell them I’m studying with Molly.”
• • •
As you may have guessed, one of the reasons I was working at this so hard was because it kept me from thinking too much about Caz. Because it was really hard to stop thinking about her. From the very first moment the Countess of Cold Hands and I were together alone, something special had been going on between us, something stronger than sex and more binding than compatibility. We completed each other, somehow. We hadn’t really realized it before then, but we were both unfinished, like a puzzle with its sad little, bumpy, jigsawed edges exposed. And then we came together. Then we were whole. And then Life, the Universe, and especially Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell, ripped us apart.
I’d never get used to it. It had been an amputation. It was conceivable that someday I might learn to live with the loss, but I sure wouldn’t ever be normal again without her.
For a guy who had gone through his angelic life wondering why he didn’t fit, why he didn’t take things calmly the way other angels did—like my buddy Kool Filter, shaking his head at the craziness of his life but accepting it—that had been huge. It still was huge. I needed her. Now I knew that she needed me, too. Everything else, including the impossibility of it all, was just detail.
• • •
I read up on the Elizabeth Atell Stanford Museum of the Arts. It was named for the second wife of university founder and all-around rich important guy, Leland Stanford. The university itself had taken a rather dark turn in architecture and landscaping after Stanford’s son and first wife had died, and there had been no shortage of people even in the early part of the Twentieth Century who thought that the Gothic look of the school had been inspired by Elizabeth Atell, who began keeping company with Stanford after he’d spent almost ten years as a widower. The second Mrs. Stanford was quite a bit younger than her new husband, a woman of many interests, including spiritualism and the occult, which were both pretty common and socially acceptable in those days. Not only did Leland’s second wife have a lot to do with the design and building of the museum, but she was rumored to have used the place at night for seances with her like-minded friends. One source even claimed she had meant the whole place to be a monument to Spiritualism, but I never saw anything to confirm that.