Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“I need a car right now.”

“Of course, Mr. Macheath.”

I put down the phone and start pulling on my clothes.

“If you want to come along, you need to get dressed.”

“I am dressed.”

“No, you’re not,” I say, and hand her the folder pistol.

“What’s this?”

“Push the button on top of the grip.”

The folder snaps open from the bottom, like bomb-bay doors opening on the jet. Candy puts the rifle stock to her shoulder, sights around the room, and pulls the pistol’s trigger making Pow! noises.

“That’s exactly why I didn’t load it.”

“No fair.”

“Them’s the rules.”

“Killjoy.”

“You can always give it back if you don’t like it.”

“Are you kidding? This is my new bedtime teddy bear. You and Rinko can move over. I’m snuggling with this cuddly puppy every night.”

I don’t bother pointing out that she hasn’t spent more than a few hours at a time with me, much less an entire night.

We ride in the hotel limo to Max Overdrive. The driver doesn’t talk to us. Doesn’t even look at the rearview mirror. He must have heard about Lucifer’s last driver. The one who ended up with his lips sewn together.

The side door at Max Overdrive looks like an angry drunk beat it to death with a sledgehammer. The store area on the first floor is as trashed as an empty room can be. Every rack and piece of shelving has been tossed around and smashed. That answers one question. It would have taken at least a half hour for one person to do this much damage. So, there was more than one. How many are left? I take out the Sig and start upstairs.

The door is half open. I push it the rest of the way with the toe of my boot.

Kasabian sits on the floor sipping a beer, his back to the minifridge. The bedroom is trashed but in better shape than the store. Nothing looks particularly broken. Just turned over and dumped on the floor. When Kasabian moves, one of his leg’s gears scrape and crunch together. His left leg is bent to the side just below the knee. Hellhounds aren’t dainty devices. It took a lot of strength to do that kind of damage.

“Goddamn,” I say.

“Careful in case one of them is still around. They were very picky about blasphemy,” says Kasabian.

“Hey, Kas,” says Candy. “Does your leg hurt?”

“Only when I breathe or think.”

Candy and I sit on the bed. Kasabian holds out a beer. We shake our heads.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with you and your beef with King Cairo, would it?”

“I don’t know. Did they say what they wanted?” I ask.

“There wasn’t a lot of chitchat. Mostly it was crashing and throwing and then a couple of them that bounced up and down on my leg asking where it was.”

“Did they say what ‘it’ was?”

“I thought they meant the money. I told them where it was, and when they found it, they left it and took off. Two hundred grand in cash and they just walked away.”