Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim 3)

I feel a little guilt bubbling up in the back of my mind. It’s the same feeling I always get when I look at a woman who isn’t Alice. But like Candy said, we’re here now. Let’s just see what happens. I can’t live in the shadow of Alice’s absence every moment of my life. I don’t push her away, but let her drift back where she was. Not forgotten, but not making me wish I was dead. I don’t let the picture of the Sentenza kid get to me either. Julia found one exorcist, so she can find another. Hell, I could point her to some Sub Rosa demon hunters.

My phone buzzes. A text comes through.

The girl is delicious. You’re right to be with her.

Leave anyan>Lthe case alone. Forget you heard about it.

Stay with the pretty girl.

I push the plates away and get to my feet, storming through the restaurant looking for anyone holding a phone. A guy in blond dreads and a sleeveless T-shirt is looking at his. I’m across the room in two long steps and snatch it from his hand. A woman’s voice comes out of the speaker. He’s listening to his voice mail. I slam the phone on the table and stomp out of the emergency exit, setting off the alarm. There’s no one on the street. A dusty station wagon and a VW Bug pass each other in the road. Only one passenger in each and neither of them has a phone.

I push back into Roscoe’s through the front door. Everyone in the place is looking at me like they’re expecting the crazy man in the coat to set off the bomb he’s obviously hiding.

I go to the table and show Candy the message.

“Tell me this isn’t you or Vidocq. Or something one of you set up with Julia.”

She shakes her head.

“Vidocq wouldn’t and I didn’t,” she says. I look at her and let the angel out for a second so he can look, too. He sees what I see. She’s telling the truth.

I take a couple of the hundreds I grabbed from my stash of vampire money last night. Drop the money on the table and nod for Candy to follow me out. We double-time it back to Hollywood Boulevard to get lost in the tourist crowd before one of the solid citizens back at the restaurant dials 911.

I say, “Do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I’m a little agitated and don’t want to have to explain anything. Do me a favor and call Vidocq. Tell him I want in on the case. I don’t like threats and I hate crank calls.”

Candy puts her robot glasses on.

“At least whoever it was thinks I’m pretty.”

“Even assholes can have good taste.”

THERE’S A PARKING lot less than a block from the Beat Hotel. Vidocq hates riding in stolen cars, so I look for one that will make him the least unhappy and settle on a brown Volvo 240, one of the most boring cars in the world. No one, especially a cop, will look twice at a Volvo, especially one the color of a Swedish turd.

I leave Candy in the idling car, go into the room at the hotel, and ditch my burned shirt for a clean one. I always heig. I alwave the knife and na’at with me, but on the way out I grab the Smith & Wesson .460. You don’t have to shoot an elephant with a gun this big and powerful. You just hit it on the knee with the butt and the elephant will give you all of its lunch money. When he sees me slip the gun into my coat pocket, Kasabian shakes his head, which, in his case, is his whole body.>“I might have killed a demon every now and then, but it’s not like they have distinct personalities. They’re like bugs. Who remembers stepping on a bug?”

“Maybe the song was a fluke, but I doubt it. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

I look her in the eye, take a drag on the Malediction, and blow it out.

“I’m going to Max Overdrive and find an Andrews Sisters musical. Then I’m going to the hotel, put it on, and drink steadily for the rest of the day.”

I stand up to leave, but Vidocq grabs my arm. He might look old, but he’s been using his muscles for over a century. His grip is like a claw lifter at a wrecking yard.

“Give me the folder,” he tells Julia.

Sola pulls a beige manila envelope from a shoulder bag she’d left on the bar.

Vidocq pushes me over to the bar and pulls something out of the folder. It’s a picture of a teenage boy in a school robe. Maybe a high school graduation shot. He’s smiling at the camera. Straight white teeth and messy brown hair under the graduation cap. He looks like the kind of kid who’d be captain of the track team. I hate him. Healthy, happy, popular jock. My natural enemy in school. On the other hand, he’s not someone I’d pick to square-dance with demons.

Vidocq says, “This is the boy we’ve been discussing. His name is Hunter. He’s nineteen. The same age you were when you were dragged to Hell. Tell me, Jimmy, did that experience improve your life? I don’t think so. Are you going to walk away and let what happened to you happen to this boy?”

There’s acid in the back of my throat. A whirlpool of anger and fear in my head as the nineteen-year-old kid I keep buried under the floorboards in my head, way deeper in the dark than the angel, struggles up to where I can’t help but look at him. Total Nam flashback time and I’m feeling things I didn’t know I could still feel. The dry, brittle arms gliding out from under the floor in Mason’s house, wrapping around me and dragging me Downtown. Sensations of falling. Crashing onto a blood- and shit-stained backstreet in Pandemonium. Trying to clear my head and focus as a thousand new smells, sounds, and the perpetually twilight sky hit me. Then the slow realization of where I was and the gleeful looks on the Hellions’ faces.

I toss the photo back onto the bar.