“I don’t consort with whores, thank you very much. I rip ’em.”
“Fucking hell.”
I get out the flask and have a drink. The Aqua Regia burns in just the right way going down. I start to offer Jack a drink because you always offer the other guy a drink, but I screw the top on and put the flask back in my pocket.
We’re off the beach and heading inland, picking our way through the dead neighborhoods. At the corner of one of the main streets, where rows of burning palms converge on it like a weird offering to a glue-sniffing beach god, is an office building with a three-story clown sculpture in front. It’s in white face with dark whiskers and is wearing a top hat, white gloves, and ballet slippers. I know it’s supposed to look whimsical, but whimsy in a place like this is like jerking off at a funeral. Someone might enjoy it, but you wouldn’t want to know them.
“Assuming that you are Sandman Slim, tell me about yourself and your work. I’ve heard your name many times. Hellions talk about you like the bogeyman.”
“I might be a monster but I never mailed a kidney to a newspaper.”
“Half a kidney. I ate the other half.”
“Mom always said it’s a sin to waste food.”
“How many Hellions have you dispatched, Sandman Slim? How many humans and human souls?”
“No idea.”
“How many women?”
“I yelled at a meter maid once.”
Soon we’re in a residential area. People in Venice are sun worshippers and most of the houses have huge windows. Some of the upscale places even have one or two glass walls. The glass is all gone. Shattered by earth tbogd by earemors and fucked over by looters. Houses are tagged with spray-painted Hellion gang signs. Teenyboppers are assholes here, too. I hope Heaven’s teens are idiots. Going joyriding in Dad’s wings and TPing other angels’ clouds.
A dust devil swirls down the street, pelting us with trash and broken glass. I pull Jack behind a burned-out car and wait until the twister passes. It turns at the corner and heads down another street like it’s alive and has a sense of direction. A few doors later, it goes. The neighborhood isn’t completely deserted. I don’t want to know who or what still lives here. I pull Jack to his feet and we get moving.
I hear a different kind of rumble back the way we came. There’s a light in the distance. A spotlight coming down the dunes to the beach. The posse must have circled back and found Mammon’s limo.
“Is there a faster way, Jack?”
“Yes, but it’s more dangerous.”
“Let’s go.”
We make a few turns back the way we came and run right into a dust storm. I’m practically blind, but Jack pulls me through it like I’m a poodle on a leash. When we emerge from the storm we’re in a different neighborhood. Winding hill roads. The steep grades and long driveways are chewed-up, ever-widening fissures. Ghost mansions come and go in the settling dust. We head downhill, just like this neighborhood is. If the cracks in the road hook up with other, deeper cracks, one good shake and the whole side of this hill is going to turn into Surf City. Hang ten and ride the mansions, Rolls-Royces, and manicured lawns all the way down to the flats and into the Pacific.
Jack looks at me, trying to figure out how we got here.
“You’re navigating with your eyes,” he says. “To navigate these days, you have to think like a worm or mole. You must know what’s underground. This isn’t a land of right angles or streets anymore. It’s purely geologic. The sand back at the beach was probably used as landfill around here to flatten sections of the hills.”
“I’m lucky I have you, then.”
“Yes you are.” He pauses. “You were telling me about how many people you’ve killed.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
“Back in London, old Inspector Abberline and the rest of the Met think I only took five. I took plenty more than that, believe you me. There were a few in the country, but south by the coast was best. Like the lovely beach we just left. Do a day’s excursion to Brighton or Portsmouth. I’d find saloon trollops and rip them down by the wharfs. Toss their innards to the birds and fill their bodies with stones to weigh them down. They’d slip into the sea like it was waiting for them.”
“20100">nough, you twisted fuck.”
We walk on, Jack staring at his feet. Each step leaves a shallow impression in the thick dust that covers the sidewalk. If the posse is behind us, we’ll be easy to track, but I don’t have time to worry about that now. Each step is a second hand on a clock ticking away the time. Jack said it would take a day to get to Eleusis, but I’ve already lost track of how long we’ve been walking.
“None of this is a coincidence, you know,” says Jack.
“Yeah. You had a great personal ad on Craigslist.”
“Assuming I’m who I say that I am and assuming that you are who you say you are, do you truly believe that two such infamous killers could cross paths through simple happenstance?”