SANDMAN SLIM

What the hell is wrong with L.A.? Full of magicians, alchemists, bloodsuckers, soul suckers, the Golden Vigil, and federally funded angels, and no one's been able to touch Mason? That doesn't make any sense. It stinks of protection. It smells like a conspiracy, but I don't believe in conspiracies. Guys will say anything to get laid. If some CIA guy thought he could get a little action by showing a coed how he was the guy on the Grassy Knoll, he'd do it and we'd all know about it by now. But if there's no conspiracy, what does that mean? Maybe there's an asshole A-list that no one told me about. Shake hands with the forces of darkness and get a gift bag from Neiman Marcus and a free pass on murder and apocalyptic power plays.

Is Mason bulletproof because he's tight with the Kissi? Is everyone really that afraid? What did he have to do to cozy up to that celestial vermin anyway? What did he have to steal? Who did he have to kill? What Lovecraftian sewer slug did he have to blow to get up close and personal with God's bastard kids?

I don't believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in bullshit and I believe I'm up to my balls in it right now.

I throw the Veritas and it comes up showing a tangle of what looks almost like barbed wire. The thorn forest in Sheol, Downtown's wild western region. Caatinga thorns will strip and debone anything that wanders into them faster than a piranha with a chain saw. Roughly translated, the Hellion script around the edge of the coin reads, It's not too late to go back and get your GED. I can't tell anymore if the Veritas is giving me advice or just making fun of my doomed ass.

I've pretty much used up any sense of charity or obligation I might have had in this lifetime, but I don't want to turn into just another L.A. dick looking out for number one. I get out my cell and dial Allegra's number. She doesn't pick up. I dial my old number, but no one picks up at Vidocq's. I text Allegra the way I'd seen her text her friends: Keep yr doors locked. Mason 3's suicide bombers.

I wonder if Wells and his G-men have picked up Aelita. It couldn't hurt to make a quick check. The Chinese believe that having a funeral home near your store is bad luck in general and lousy for business. How bad must a dying angel outside your back door be?

I pick up a Jag outside a raw food restaurant next to a tanning salon. Isn't a tanning salon in L.A. like a frostbite salon in Fairbanks?

There's no one is behind me, so I can do a slow drive-by at Max Overdrive and get a look in the alley. Aelita isn't there. There's no blood. No scorch mark from her sword. No sign that anything has ever happened there. Thank you, Marshal. I'll drink to your health on New Year's.

I'D BE A happy camper if between now, when I kill Mason, and when I'm back Downtown, I didn't have to speak to anyone. But that's not how this is going to work out. I drive the Jag over to Allegra's apartment and pound on her door. Do it loud enough and long enough that one of her neighbors comes out and explains to me that she hasn't been home in a couple of days and that I should fuck off. I drive over to Vidocq's and ditch the Jag a few blocks away. There's a little bodega on the corner. I step into a shadow beside it. Two gray-haired men sitting on plastic milk crates and drinking beer ignore the weird white boy doing weird-white-boy stuff.

Vidocq's door is open. That's not so bad all on its own. The door opens and closes all the time when he goes in and out. But now it's standing open and the vaguely diffuse glow that signals a glamour is gone, like someone took soap and water and washed it off.

"When did they put an apartment in over there?" A nosy neighbor stands down the hall staring at the open door. He wants to see it, but he won't get any closer, like maybe the place is radioactive.

"Stay here," I tell him, and reach under my jacket for the na'at. The day I don't pack a gun, that's when I really want one.

"Should you go in there? Should I call the landlord?"

I throw him a quick keep-talking-and-you'll-be-shitting-out-your-tongue look and he backs off.

There's something really wrong with the apartment. Like the one out-of-tune string on a guitar. I can feel it before I even get inside. When I step over the threshold, something else hits. A taste and a smell. Vinegar at the back of my throat. Josef smelled like that when the Kissi revealed themselves. Not that I need another clue that there's something wrong with Vidocq's place.

The walls, ceiling, and floor are covered in twisting, spiky ideograms and letters, intertwined with endless spirals. Spirit faces or maybe images of God the Father, looking more like some saucer-eyed alien than a deity, are smeared around the room. The colors run from rust to a snaky, metallic green, but I've smelled enough dried blood in my time to know what the basic ingredient in all these pigments is.