A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper 1)

"Yes," Charlie said solemnly, "I have been fighting crime in my spare time, Ray. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you. "

"I understand," Ray said, backing away from the stairway. "Again, I'm sorry. I feel like a traitor. "

"It's okay, Ray. But I really have to go. You know, fighting the Forces of Darkness and all. " Charlie held his cane out as if it were a sword and he was charging into action, which, bizarrely, it was and he was.

Charlie had six days to retrieve three soul vessels if he was going to get caught up before he returned to Arizona for his mother's funeral. Two, the names that had appeared in his date book the same day as Madison McKerny were seriously overdue. The last had appeared in the book only a couple of days ago, when he was in Arizona - yet it was in his own handwriting. He'd always thought that he had been doing some kind of sleep writing, but now, this was a whole new twist. He promised himself he would freak out about it as soon as he had some time.

Meanwhile, with the near-death hand job and the dead-mom thing, he hadn't even done the preliminary research on the first of the two, Esther Johnson and Irena Posokovanovich, and both were now past their pickup date - one by three days. What if the sewer harpies had already gotten there? As strong as they'd become already, he didn't even want to think about what they could do if they got hold of another soul. He considered calling Rivera to watch his back when he went to the house, but what would he say he was doing? The sharp-faced cop knew there was something supernatural going on, and he'd taken Charlie's word that he was one of the good guys (not a hard sell when he'd seen the sewer harpy driving a three-inch claw up his nostril only to survive nine rounds of 9 mm in the torso and still fly away).

Charlie was driving with no destination, heading into Pacific Heights just because the traffic was lighter in that direction. He pulled over to the curb and called information.

"I need a number and address for an Esther Johnson. "

"There's no Esther Johnson, sir, but I have three E. Johnsons. "

"Can you give me the addresses?"

She gave him the two who had addresses. A recording offered to dial the number for him for an additional charge of fifty cents.

"Yeah, how much to drive me there?" Charlie asked the computer voice. Then he hung up and dialed the E. Johnson with no address.

"Hi, could I speak with Esther Johnson," Charlie said cheerfully.

"There's no Esther Johnson here," said a man's voice. "I'm afraid you have the wrong number. "

"Wait. Was there an Esther Johnson there, until maybe three days ago?" Charlie asked. "I saw the E. Johnson in the phone book. "

"That's me," said the man, "I'm Ed Johnson. "

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Johnson. " Charlie disconnected and dialed the next E. Johnson.

"Hello," a woman's voice.

"Hi, could I speak to Esther Johnson, please?"

A deep breath. "Who is calling?"

Charlie used a ruse that had worked a dozen times before. "This is Charlie Asher, of Asher's Secondhand. We've taken in some merchandise that has Esther Johnson's name on it and we wanted to make sure it's not stolen. "

"Well, Mr. Asher, I'm sorry to tell you that my aunt passed away three days ago. "

"Bingo!" Charlie said.

"Pardon?"

"Sorry," Charlie said. "My associate is playing a scratch-off lotto ticket here in the shop, and he's just won ten thousand dollars. "

"Mr. Asher, this isn't really a good time. Is this merchandise you have valuable?"

"No, just some old clothes. "

"Another time, then?" The woman sounded not so much bereaved as harried. "If you don't mind. "

"No, I'm sorry for your loss," Charlie said. He disconnected, checked the address, and headed up toward Golden Gate Park and the Haight.

The Haight: mecca for the Free Love movement of the sixties, where the Beat Generation begat the Flower Children, where kids from all over the country had come to tune in, turn on, and drop out - and had kept coming, even as the neighborhood went through alternating waves of renewal and decline. Now, as Charlie drove down Haight Street, ami

d the head shops, vegetarian restaurants, hippie boutiques, music stores, and coffeehouses, he saw hippies that ranged in age from fifteen to seventy. Grizzled oldsters panhandling or passing out pamphlets, and young, white-Rastafarian dreadlocked teenagers in flowing skirts or hemp drawstring trousers, with shining piercings and vacant pot-blissed stares. He passed brown-toothed crackheads barking at cars as they passed, a spiky holdover here and there from the punk movement, old guys in berets and wayfarers who might have stepped out of a jazz club in 1953. It wasn't so much like the hands of time had stood still here, more like they'd been thrown in the air in exasperation, the clock declaring, "Whatever! I'm outta here. "