As I took a last turn in the courtyard garden, I heard something fluttering. A moment later a tiny, crooked shadow dropped to the ground in front of me, extended its four wings, then folded them back up. I kneeled beside it.
It was a new nizzic, smaller than the last, kind of a cross between a bald hamster and a dragonfly. What it said was quiet and the message was short—by the time I picked out a few words, it had finished. I had to hold the creepy little thing close to my ear to hear properly when it started again. The voice was Caz’s, but weaker and more distant than before, as if she broadcast from a distant galaxy.
• • •
“This nizzic can’t be reset. This will be the last message, Bobby. I can’t stand it. It’s too hard, waiting to hear from you. These little sips of foolish hope only delay the inevitable. I’m sorry, my love, it’s my fault. If anyone should have known better, it’s me.”
• • •
I left the miserable little thing in the courtyard, locked up the apartment carefully, then climbed into my ugly yellow chariot.
I’d discovered something interesting about the cab while running my errands, another odd-shaped piece in the small puzzle that had been my relationship with Temuel. See, Heaven was definitely trying to keep an eye on me, and they had to know about the taxi, but they didn’t seem to be able to keep a direct trace on it. I knew this because in the few days since my trial, I’d already managed to lose several tail cars. Also: Heaven’s spies didn’t seem to know where the apartment was, either. I’d clocked several suspicious vehicles in the general vicinity of Caz’s place, but they seemed to be unable to narrow down my whereabouts past a good-sized sanctuary. Heaven’s Finest didn’t even seem sure which side of the freeway the place was on. How could that be? I had to admit that it seemed like it might have something to do with Temuel getting me to come all the way across town before he handed me over to Counterstrike.
Heaven may not have known exactly where I started my trip, but they latched onto me within a few minutes after I left the apartment. I was on the Bayshore, a mile or so south of the University Avenue exit, when I spotted the tail car, a nondescript Ford minivan. Actually, it was almost too nondescript, without bumper stickers or even dealer plate-frames. Female driver and male passenger were also wearing sunglasses, although it was now after six at night and the sky was getting dark. I was almost insulted until I decided they were just the obvious tail, the ones who I was meant to concentrate on and maybe even lose while the real tail followed me at a distance.
I took a circuitous route, pretending to try to lose the minivan, but I didn’t really want to lose them, so I didn’t give it my best shot. I took them on a long, irritating ride through the south end of town, up San Antonio Expressway and through a dozen cross-streets, then down Shoreline toward Stone Fruit Mall. It was interesting to see how much more modern the buildings were at this end of the city. The center of San Judas was moving, at least the economic center, leaving the dear old downtown behind. Out here, Silicon Valley’s current wave of well-to-do immigrants were building a big toddler town for themselves, full of zippy restaurants and coffee shops with sidewalk tables and awnings, and office buildings with the fancy, brushed-metal look of expensive bathroom fittings.
How did I get to be such an old man when I’ve only been alive twenty years or so? I must have been a real curmudgeon in my previous existence. But you probably already guessed that.
I pulled into the new parking structure at the Stone Fruit Mall. If you ask an old local, they’ll be happy to tell you that much of this part of San Judas (and the rest of the lower peninsula, too) was once the world’s fruit basket. I’m not sure I’d want that nickname myself, but I guess large rural areas can’t be choosy. Anyway, the massive four-story shopping center was built on the site of what had been one of the biggest apricot orchards in the state, which only survived now in the name, the blossoming branches on the mall logo, and probably expensive dried fruit packages in the mall’s many gift shops.
Now came the tricky bit. I parked in one of the outermost stalls on the second level, left my phone in the taxi (because let’s face it, we all know it had to have been bugged as hell after the trial) along with my car keys, stashing both under the seat, then made my way into the mall’s vast front atrium. You could look up several stories once you got inside, and the storefronts were nearly all glass—a huge faceted jewel of commerce. People wandered through the place like they were in Oz, some even bobbing their heads to the piped-in music.
Never listen to mall music. It will put you in an apocalyptic mood. But maybe the mood was only mine. The customers seemed happy—modern shopping malls are like a small (and somewhat brainless) world of their own. A guy I know who used to work in the Stone Fruit said that in the summertime, lots of parents just dropped their kids off in the morning with money for food and a movie at the theater, then came back and got them at closing time.
I figured that however many people were tailing me, some would stay outside to keep an eye on the cab while others followed me in. That meant I had to make my move quickly, before the inside tail found me, so I grabbed an elevator and shot up to the third floor, in and out of The Gap, then immediately shuttled back down to the second floor boutiques, up to the fourth, then down to the food court and across the mezzanine to the elevator on the opposite side, which I took down to the underground parking lot, where I was greeted in the elevator lobby with a large “Coming Soon: Target” sign. Dodging up and down that way was how I’d used the lifters in Hell to confuse the demons hunting me, and it had worked pretty well. I was pleased to see it seemed to work on angels, too.
I didn’t go near my own vehicle, of course. The elevators ferried shoppers back and forth to the main building, but at the far end of the garage was a set of stairs that led up to a bus stop and taxi stand next to the parking garage. I climbed the stairs, walked as fast as I could to the main doors, and then hailed the first passing taxi.
Yes, that was my plan in miniature. Leave one cab behind, get another. Everything else was just hand-waving for distraction. It was a lot simpler than trying to lose my surveillance on some breakneck, movie-influenced car chase. In fact, the best plans are usually always simple. Why don’t I remember that more often?
• • •
The driver let me out about a quarter of a mile from the Shoreline Park footbridge. After I paid him I had about twenty dollars left, so I gave it to him for a tip. In return, he warned me not to hang around too long after dark—because, he said, some real weirdos were out in the baylands at night. He clearly didn’t know he was talking to one of them. As he drove off, I pulled up my collar against the stiff bay breeze and started walking.
I thought I’d handled it all very neatly, so I was embarrassed as well as disturbed to see a solitary figure standing beside the beginning of the footbridge across the bay. The only thing I hadn’t got rid of was my gun, so I kept my hand on it as I got closer. The guy didn’t look like he was going to move, so I slowed to check him out.
“Come on, hurry up, would you?” he shouted at me. “It’s freezing out here.”
“Clarence? What are you doing here?” The kid was wearing a long overcoat—playing James Bond in his imagination was my guess—and looked every inch the mysterious contact in a dangerous foreign spot.
“Waiting for you, obviously. And you seem to have forgotten my name again.”
“Yeah, sue me. Why are you here? You couldn’t have got my message yet.”
“What message?”
“Shit.” I stood in front of him for a few seconds, staring. I hate surprises. “It’s been a long month, kid. Why are you here?”
“Because I’m going with you.”
I don’t feel good about this, but I confess that my first thought was to smack him unconscious again like I had last time we’d been out at Shoreline, because I just didn’t need this shit. I knew it was wrong, though, and I also had a suspicion I might not get away with it as easily as I had on the first occasion. The kid had been running and working out, things I should have been doing myself if I hadn’t been so busy trying not to get killed by demons and Nazis, and he was looking pretty fit. “No, seriously, why are you here?”