Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

“I miss you, but we have to go. Things will be okay soon. You’ll see.”

She pecks me on the lips, turns, and gets back in the car. The doc steers them out onto Sunset, where they disappear into traffic.

THE CHATEAU MARMOT is a giant white castle on a green hill and it looms over Sunset like it fell out of a passing UFO. It fits in with the surrounding city with all the subtlety of a rat on a birthday cake. Make that a French rat. The place is a château, after all.

When the parking attendant sees the Bugatti, he mistakes me for someone he should care about and rushes over. His interest lasts for maybe a second, the exact amount of time it takes me to step out of the car. People have cash registers for eyes at places like this. By the time my feet are on the ground, he’s totaled up exactly how much my clothes and haircut are worth and I’ve come up short. Still, I’m driving a two-million-dollar car, so I might be an eccentric foreign director who’s just flown in for some meetings and sodomy, which means he can’t quite work up the nerve to shoo me away like a stray dog that just crapped in the pope’s big hat.

“Good evening, sir.”

“What time do you have?”

He checks his watch.

“Ten to eleven.”

“Thanks.”

He tears a numbered parking tag in half, hands me half, and sets the other half on the Bugatti’s dashboard.

“Are you staying at the hotel?”

“No. Meeting a friend.”

“That will be twenty dollars, sir.”

I tear up the parking tag and drop the pieces on the ground.

“I’ve got a better idea. Keep the car.”

“Sir?”

He wants to come after me, but other cars are arriving, so he drives the Bugatti into the garage.

Inside, I go the front desk and it hits me that I don’t have a room number or any idea who to ask for. Point for Kasabian.

“Good evening, sir. How can I help you?”

The desk clerk looks like Montgomery Clift and is better dressed than the president. He’s smiling at me, but his pupils are dilating like he thinks I’m going to start stealing furniture from the lobby. I stashed the leather jacket in the Room of Thirteen Doors before coming over and am wearing the rifle coat. I thought it looked classier and more formal, but maybe I was wrong.

“A friend of mine is staying here, but I don’t have his room number.”

“Of course. What’s your friend’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s not going to give his real name and I don’t know what name he’s using. He has a lot of them.”

The clerk raises his eyebrows a little. Now he has an excuse to release his inner snotty creep.

“Well, I’m not sure what I can do about that. You and your friend should probably have dealt with that in advance. Are you even sure he’s here? We specialize in a fairly exclusive clientele.”

“He’ll be in your penthouse. The biggest one you have.”

The clerk smiles like I’m a bug and he’s deciding whether to step on me or hose me down with Raid.

“Unless your friend is a Saudi prince with an entourage of thirty-five, I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”