In the morning, when I start to go out, I reach for a gun and remember that all I have is the Glock. A sleek manly gun. Guys who love Glocks love Corvettes because Dad had one and they’re still trying to crawl out of the old man’s shadow. Glocks: the only guns that come with a side of daddy issues. I hate Glocks. But I take it anyway.
I spend the day just walking around breathing in the perfume of car exhaust, dry air-conditioned air, and greasy Mexican food. I buy a fish taco from a van on the street. It looks like the Mona Lisa and tastes like God’s own Lunchable.
I’m still getting used to a sky. And lost and frantic civilians piling up on the street corners, fidgeting, waiting for the green light. Running at the wrong time on the red and almost getting hit by a bus. They gasp like they’re all gut-punched, never catching their breath from the endless running. If they knew they had a billion billion years of Heaven or Hell to look forward to after their measly eighty on Earth, would they slow down or would they get even more wired?
No one thinks of L.A. as ever being cold, but when it’s winter and the clouds roll in and the temperature drops to sixty or below, it can feel downright chilly. But the armor doesn’t notice. It has its own heat gauge set at body temperature. I could probably go to Antarctica and feed the penguins in nothing but flip-flops and a serape and not shiver once.
On the dying edge of Hollywood Boulevard, another tourist trap is going out of business. I buy a couple of black button-down shirts with HOLLYWOOD spelled with palm trees over the breast pocket. They’re loose enough that they hide the armor without making me look like the Michelin Man.
Back at the Beat Hotel, I take the one peeper I kept with me out of its saline-filled container, pop out my eye, and put the peeper in. Nothing happens. I can’t see into Hell. Not the library, the grounds outside the palace, or through the peepers I put into the hellhounds. Lucifer is blind up here. Something else Samael kept to himself. I take the peeper out and put my eye back in.
Back when Samael was in L.A. and I was playing bodyguard, he told me that he had very little power on Earth. That’s probably why he gave Kasabian access to the Daimonion Codex. Lucifer can’t see it from here but half-dead Kasabian can.
I spend the rest of the afternoon playing around with the armor, seeing what Lucifer tricks I can pull up here. I find a few but nothing that’ll get me a Nobel Prize. As usual I’ve timed things perfectly. I hang around Hell long enough to get all of Lucifer’s power and then come home and lose most of it.
In the afternoon, Candy calls. She wants to meet at the Bamboo House of Dolls around ten. Why not? It’s that or more Brady Bunch reruns, and that’s goddamn depressing for the Lord of the Underworld, even when he’s only operating at half speed.
Before I leave, I unscrew the air vent with a dime. What do you know? Kasabian wasn’t just shining me on. There’s a carny roll of twenty hundred-bills inside. The day just suddenly got brighter. What’s ridiculous is how easy I am to buy off. Two grand out of two hundred and I want to kiss the sky? Don’t let it get around but it turns out Lucifer is the cheapest date in Hell.
Now, this is something solid and real. It smells like beer and whiskey and the sweat of the patrons and the cigarette smoke blown in through the doors by the trailing edge of a Santa Ana, which is just how it should be. It’s a bar’s job to be unambiguous. In a sea of troubles, you can hold on to a bar. The Bamboo House of Dolls is my Rock of Ages.
Everything is where it should be. Old Iggy and the Stooges and back-in-the-day L.A. punk-band posters. Behind the bar, it’s all palm fronds, plastic hula girls, and coconut bowls for the peanuts. The jukebox chips and coos as Yma Sumac warbles through a spooky “Chuncho.” Carlos the bartender is pouring shots of Jack for everyone bellied up at the bar and mine taste best because they’re free. I hold up my glass to toast him for the third time tonight and he holds up his. It’s that kind of night. I’m in my bar with my friends. Now I’m really home.
Vidocq has his arm around my shoulders. He’s hardly taken it off since he got here, like if he lets go I’ll blow away on the breeze.
“At least it wasn’t eleven years this time. You’re doing better,” he says.
“Maybe you should try not going back at all,” says Allegra.
“I signed up with Monsters Anonymous,” I tell them. “Trying to kick the Hell habit one day at a time.”
“I’ll drink to that,” says Vidocq. He holds up his empty glass and Carlos comes over and refills it.
Carlos says, “I wasn’t sure if it was you when you walked in. Even with that fucked-up face, I’m still not a hundred percent.”
He starts to pour me my sixth Jack of the night. I put my hand over the glass.
“Let’s surprise everyone. Why don’t you give me a cup of coffee?”
“See? I knew it wasn’t you. Look at this place. It’s like a wake for someone no one liked. Your pendejo brother just about drove me out of business.”
He’s right. The bar is maybe a third full. It used to be packed every night before I took off. Civilians and Lurkers like hanging around places with criminals, even if a few of them get chewed up, like the night a handful of zombies wandered in. What’s funny is that’s exactly why people come to places like this. They want to get close enough to death to smell the graveyard dust, as long as it’s someone else’s name that gets chiseled on the gravestone.
“I’ve been drinking almost nothing but Aqua Regia for three months. I want something a human being might drink. And that little darling with my face is no brother of mine.”
Carlos nods. Looks over the crowd.
“Maybe things will pick up when people hear the real you is back.”
“If it helps, you can pour the coffee in six shot glasses.”
“Great idea.”
He goes away to get the coffee and glasses.
Candy comes in just as he sets them down. She takes one, throws it back, and makes a face.
“What the hell is this?”