“Fine. Here’s your clue for today. I want you to write down everything that happened before the man you brought in died and everything you saw and heard when you went inside his head. Make sure Ishiro Shonin gets a copy and so do I.”
“Now I’m your secretary.”
“For the kind of money we’re paying you, you’re whatever I need. Today you weren’t much of anything at all.”
“Speaking of money, I still don’t have my first check.”
Wells squares his shoulders.
“I wanted a man to question and you bring me back a horror show. This isn’t a good time to complain to management about your salary.”
I look over at Candy. She’s leaning her elbows on the table.
“I’ll write your report, but I’m doing it at home.”
“I want it by nine A.M.”
“Noon, it is.”
Wells is tense. His heart rate is up a little. His pupils are narrow. I head over to Candy.
“Is there something else you have to say? Something you’re not telling me?”
“Yes. Up your game, Stark. These might be the End Times. I don’t want you half-assing your way through them.”
It’s a good party-line statement, but it’s not what he’s thinking about. There’s something else.
“Sure,” I say. Then to the Shonin, “See you around the watercooler, King Tut.”
“Don’t eat too much tonight, fatty. Salads are your friend.”
I grab my coat and Candy and I follow Wells outside. The Shonin stays behind and pours himself some tea.
“What an asshole,” she says.
“He’s just trying to get under my skin. Sounds like he’s getting under yours.”
She shakes her head.
“Maybe. I don’t feel well. I’m going to see Allegra.”
I touch her cheek. It’s cold, but Jades always run a little cool.
“You feel a little colder than usual. Want me to come along?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at home.”
“At least let me take you through a shadow. It’ll take you forever on the street.”
“I’m fine,” she says. For a second she flashes her Jade face. It’s almost subliminal, like she wasn’t in control. “Stop getting all over me.”
I say, “I’ll see you at home.”
Candy doesn’t say anything. Just walks away.
I remember that she still has my gun and I almost go after her. But I don’t. Maybe some space is what she needs right now. Anyway, whatever’s wrong, Allegra’s clinic will fix her up.
I find a good shadow by the lab door and go through, coming out at home. Maximum Overdrive. The video store I run with a not-quite-dead man named Kasabian.
MAX OVERDRIVE IS located on Las Palmas, right off Hollywood Boulevard. It sits midway between Donut Universe and Bamboo House of Dolls, the only junk-food place and bar that matters in L.A.
Kasabian used to run the store. When I came back from Hell I cut off his head. I might have been a little hasty, but he’d just shot me and I wasn’t feeling entirely reasonable at the time.
The trick with the black blade I used on him is that if you hold it just right it cuts, but it doesn’t kill. And that’s what I did to Kasabian. He’s spent most of the last year as a disembodied head and he hasn’t shut up about it.
Lately I started feeling sorry for him, so I had a Tick Tock Man called Manimal Mike attach Kas to a mechanical hellhound. Now he sort of has a body, even if it’s a little wobbly and whirs like a toy train when he moves.
Some Lurkers are in the store. A young Lyph whose denim jacket looks like it was mugged by a Bedazzler. All rhinestones and shiny bits on the back. Jim Morrison’s face in flames. Underneath it says LIGHT MY FIRE. Lyph have horns and hooves and tails just like Halloween devils, but they’re as sweet as peach ice cream when you get to know them.
A couple of Tykho Moon’s boys are in the shop, dressed to the nines in the best leather and latex you can steal off a dead model.
Tykho is the boss of the Dark Eternal, the biggest, baddest vampire clan in L.A. Yeah, Dark Eternal sounds kind of like an eighties Goth band, but Tykho assures me the name is a lot scarier in Latin. The Eternal have been around for a long time. Tykho’s boys are arguing, bumping shoulders like a couple of young pups, and whispering to each other.
Kasabian isn’t anywhere in sight, which isn’t a big deal. It isn’t like anyone is going to shoplift any of what we carry. Max Overdrive used to be a regular video store. We rented movies, sold new and used discs. In other words, a money pit. BitTorrent and movie streaming were killing us. Thanks to Kasabian’s obsessive collecting, our impressive porn and horror collections kept us afloat for a while, but we were going down fast. Now we’re a boutique shop catering to a select clientele of Sub Rosas, Lurkers, and a few civilians with money and a taste for something special. Mainly, movies that don’t exist.
The taller of Tykho’s boys turns and spots me. He wears a patch over one eye. Sucks for him. He must have lost it while he was still alive and couldn’t regenerate it when he turned. He gives me a toothy smile and comes over. Leans on the counter, hooking his thumb at the rack of our specialty movies.
“Don’t get me wrong, Stark. I appreciate all the artsy stuff, but don’t you have anything that’s actually fun?”
What we rent mostly now are lost movies. Movies cut to pieces by the studios or lost in fires or time. Movies that literally don’t or shouldn’t exist anymore in this dimension of reality.
“London After Midnight is fun. It’s a murder mystery. Lon Chaney plays a creepy guy with a giant set of fangs and a weird beaver hat, who might be a vampire.”
Eye Patch leans back, frowning.
“Silent movies? Those are as scary as a damp sponge.”
“That means you wouldn’t like Metropolis. I have the only totally complete copy in the world with the original score, you know.”
He shakes his head.
“Not interested.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened. We only have one rack of special discs. We’re still building up inventory. You think it’s easy conjuring video and film from other dimensions? It’s not. And the young curandera I contracted with to get them charges a fortune for each one.
“What is it you want?”
“Action. Guns. Explosions.”
“Go home, crack open a light beer, turn on your TV, and find some Michael Bay shit.”
“Come on, man. You have any Clint Eastwood?”
“No special ones. You like his spaghetti westerns?”
The shorter vampire comes over when I mention westerns.
“Who doesn’t?” he says.
I point to an old poster on the wall.
“You know that gangster flicks are the natural descendants of those Italian westerns, right? Action. Crime. Lawless loners and gangs riding the range, only in cars, not on horseback. Antiheroes and ambiguous heroes who aren’t all good or all evil. You follow me?”
Eye Patch says, “Look at you. The philosopher.”
“Once Upon a Time in America is what you want. Leone shot it to run five hours. The studio cut it to ninety minutes. Later there was a three-hour version, but it still wasn’t the whole thing. If you like cowboys, you’ll like it.”
“Who’s in it?” says Eye Patch. His buddy goes over to the poster and reads off names.
“Robert De Niro. James Woods. Joe Pesci. Tuesday Weld. William Forsythe . . .”
“Sold,” says Eye Patch.
“Good choice,” I say, taking a disc from under the counter. I put it in a couple of plastic bags to keep it from getting wet.
“Your turn to pay,” says Eye Patch. His friend sighs, which always hits me as slightly creepy. I mean, vampires don’t breathe, so sighing is something they have to practice. Willing their diaphragms to move, sucking air in and pushing it out again. It’s a lot of work just to sound disgusted.
Short guy slaps a hundred-dollar bill on the counter.
“Your prices are highway robbery.”