Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

He nods and puts the jacket under the bar.

“I’m guessing since you haven’t even looked at that coffee that you want a drink.”

“Some of the red stuff.”

“You sure?”

“Does the pope live in a nice house?”

“At least have some food, too. I just pulled some pork tamales out of the steamer.”

“Maybe that and some rice?”

“You got it.”

“City of Veils” by Les Baxter comes on. Crazy trumpets and drums at the beginning, then it slides into old-fashioned strings and Hollywood exotica. I half expect to see Errol Flynn dressed like a pirate in a corner booth trying to get a hand job from Lana Turner. After some of the red stuff, maybe I will.

I haven’t heard that Alice song again since the night it came blaring out of the jukebox, like nails being hammered into my ears. I had Carlos check and the song wasn’t even on the machine. He had the company bring him a new box, just so I wouldn’t sit at the bar getting twitchy, waiting for it to come up again.

Later I knew that the song had never been on the machine. It was one of Mason’s hexes. He wanted to watch me go crazy. If he’d pumped me full of LSD and locked me in a spinning mirrored room full of rats, he couldn’t have done any better.

That was six months ago. Half a year since I sent Mason to be poached in Hell and waved bye-bye to his Kissi pals as they burned up and blew away on the solar winds. A hundred and eighty days since I watched Alice’s ashes drift away like fog into the Pacific. I’m doing fine, thanks. Maybe a little bruised around the edges, but I have all the medicine I need right here in this glass.

Carlos sets down the plate of tamales and pours a double shot of the red stuff into a heavy square tumbler, the way we used to drink it in Hell. Aqua Regia is so red it’s almost black, like blood under moonlight. It goes down smooth, like gasoline and pepper spray. It probably saved my life Downtown. When I discovered I could swallow Aqua Regia and keep it down, Hellions starting looking at me differently. I think that’s when one of them got the idea of putting me in the arena instead of killing me. Just when my novelty was wearing off, I was interesting again.

“I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

Carlos shakes his head.

“You weren’t strong enough to kill him.”

“How would you know that?”

“Because you told me. We’ve had this conversation about fifty times before.”

“Really?”

“Maybe you should stick with coffee or maybe a beer. You don’t need the red stuff.”

He reaches for my glass and I slide it away from him.

“Yeah, I really do.”

“You couldn’t have beaten him. He was too strong. You knew it, so you did what you could.”

“Yeah, but sometimes it’s not about winning and losing. It’s about doing the right thing. I didn’t do the right thing. I shouldn’t have walked away. Lucifer was right. By leaving Mason in Hell I gave the prick exactly what he wanted.”

“You’re alive and you’re walking around. Long as you can say that, doing the right thing remains an option. Just keep your head down until you figure out the right time and place.”

“Thanks, Carlos. You’re the best dad a boy could ask for. Will you adopt me?”

“I thought I already did.”

Carlos looks past my shoulder and shakes his head. I don’t have to look. I can feel them. Behind me are college girls with pens and paper. They want to stand too close and ask for my autograph in breathy voices. If I’m dumb enough to sign, as dumb as I used to be, I’ll be able to buy my autograph off eBay in an hour. I sip my drink and dig into the tamales with my fork. Pretend I don’t notice as Carlos waves them off.

The real problem with college girls is that they usually have college boys with them.

A second later someone is leaning on the bar to my right.