Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

There’s no way I’m taking the Hellion bike out in broad daylight. I use the black blade to pop the lock and ignition on a Porsche Boxster Spyder and pick up Candy at the clinic. When I open up the car on the 101 North I can’t help but smile. There’s something about driving a pretty girl somewhere potentially dangerous in a stolen car that just makes you feel good.

We drive to the address in Chatsworth that Lula Hawks gave me. It might be a waste of time but it’s the only waste of time I have right now.

The address is a grease-caked car repair place that’s such an obvious front they might as well put up a “Not a Real Garage” sign out front.

“Before we go in, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you but it was never the right time.”

“Let me guess. You’re the Lindbergh baby.”

“I’m the Devil. Lucifer went back to Heaven and stuck me with the job. I’m the new Lucifer. I just thought you might want to know who you’re hanging around with.”

She looks at me, her eyebrows slightly raised like she’s waiting for me to say something else. She cocks her head when I don’t.

“You thought I’d have a problem with you being devilish? Do you know me at all?”

“With things between us being complicated, I didn’t know.”

“Come here,” she says, and gives me a good long kiss. “There’s complicated and there’s complicated. Wanting to kiss you isn’t complicated.”

“Just everything else?”

“Just everything else.”

We walk over to the garage. When it’s clear we’re coming inside a couple of Lurkers drop their magazines and grab rubber mallets to start beating on the engine of a car that hasn’t moved in a good ten years. The Lurkers are vucaris, Russian beast men. Mostly wolves. They’re kind of like Nahuals, the local frat beasts. Like Manimal Mike’s half-assed front job these two look don’t look like much in the brains and ambition department.

“Is Mike around?”

“Who vants to know?” asks the taller of the two in a deep Boris Badenov accent.

“The Devil.”

Ivan the Terrible considers this for a minute.

“He’s busy.”

“Tell him I might be willing to do a deal where he gets his soul back.”

Ivan stares but the shorter vucari stands on tiptoe and whispers something in his ear.

“Vait here,” says Ivan.

“That’s okay. We’ll come with you.”

He weighs the rubber mallet in his hand but the little vucari says something else and Ivan backs down.

“This vay.”

“Why don’t you point to the door and we’ll make our own introductions.”

Ivan points to a grimy door with plastic “Cash Only” and “Protected by Smith & Wesson” signs tacked on the front. I open the door quietly and Candy and I go inside.

Manimal Mike is sprawled on a vinyl sofa with his back to the door. The sofa is patched with duct tape and smeared with enough grease to slick down the manes of all four presidents on Mount Rushmore. Across the room is a half-empty bottle of generic vodka on a worktable scattered with tools, gears, springs, and a sputtering half-finished mechanical python.

Mike has a little 9mm Kel-Tec in his hand and a shot glass on his head. I take Candy’s arm and pull her over by a tire rack. It’s lousy cover but it’s better than nothing.

Manimal Mike takes aim and fires at a steel plate mounted on the far wall. The bullet ricochets and hits an identical plate on the wall behind him. It ricochets again and hits the back of the sofa. This isn’t suicide. It’s Billy Flinch. A solo William Tell game where you try to shoot an apple off your head with a ricochet. I don’t think Mike is very good at it but you have to give him points for perseverance. There are at least a hundred holes in the sofa’s backside. Mike fires three more times without coming close to the shot glass on his brainless head. When the gun goes click  click, Mike drops out the empty clip and reloads it from a box of bullets next to him.

I say, “Hi, Mike,” and a handful of bullets go flying. The shot glass falls and shatters on the floor. He turns and looks at us with red hangover eyes, pointing the empty gun at us.