The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

“No thanks. I have my car.”

“Drive safe.”

“Thanks.”

“She seems nice,” says Candy, biting into a jelly donut. “What else did she bring you?”

I pick up the note from Blackburn and drop it again.

“I have to go and see one of the few guys in town who can call in a hit on me. I saw a kid get crushed today. I got a phone call from Downtown. And now this.”

I look at Candy. She’s already headed for the stairs.

“These are really good donuts.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

“Don’t whine to me. You forgot the coffee. Now I have to go make some. Forget those papers for tonight. Come upstairs and have something to eat, fatty.”

I can tell by her tone she’s going to be calling m

e that for a long time.

Before we fall asleep I almost ask her why she never told me about the Ommahs. Almost. Maybe I’ll ask later when we’re not so tired. Yeah, then.

I CAN’T SLEEP, so I get up at the crack of eleven. Candy is still asleep, so I pull on my clothes quietly and go into the bathroom to brush the taste of lard and sugar out of my mouth. We killed most of the bag watching Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik last night. I don’t need to experience the wonders of fried dough again for a year.

I’m sick of hiding from the world, moving through the Room all the time. When I’m ready to leave I go around to the alley beside Max Overdrive and uncover the Hellion hog. It’s a little something I picked up in Hell, back when I was playing Lucifer. I wanted a motorcycle so I could get around by myself and not always in a clown-­car presidential motorcade. I asked the local demon techs to throw together a 1965-­style Electra Glide. They did their best. In fact they did a great job, but what they came up with was a lot more Hellion than Harley. The bike is built like a motorized rhino with handlebars that taper to points like they came off a longhorn’s head. The pipes belch dragon fire and when I kick the bike hard, the engine glows cherry red like it wants to shoot off into the sky, a panhead Space Shuttle.

But it’s not just kicks I want right now. The overcast skies mean there aren’t many good shadows to move through. Plus, I don’t want to spook any of Saragossa Blackburn’s guard dogs by appearing out of nowhere. When I get to his place, I want them to hear me coming.

I kick the bike into gear and it roars like a hungry Tyrannosaurus. At the curb, the water comes up almost to the tire hubs, but the bike doesn’t slow. The engine boils the water around us and every time I stop I’m enveloped in a cloud of steam.

The streets through Hollywood in the direction of the 101 are as snarled as ever, though some of the side streets are starting to be passable. ­People running for their lives 24/7—­hell, even L.A. has to start emptying out sometime. I’d love to collar one of the runners and ask them why they’re going, but I know what the answer would be. Aunt Tilly is sick in Nebraska. There’s a vegan lute hoedown in Portland. Skull Valley Sheep Kill is headlining a nonexistent music festival in Houston. Lies, all lies, and they know it, but do they understand it? It’s animal stuff. Zebras don’t hang around a watering hole when the lions show up.

Maybe this parade of chickenshit civilians knows more than the rest of us Vigil and Sub Rosa types determined to tough it out until the end. I mean, why should the Angra pick L.A. to be their launching pad? Then again, why not? Maybe Zhuyigdanatha wants to do an open-­mic night at the Comedy Store. Maybe the Angra want to have a drink at the Rainbow Bar & Grill like real old-­time rock-­and-­rollers. Maybe they want to stomp us into the dirt because L.A. defines reality for three-­quarters of the world. Or maybe because Mr. Muninn used to live here and they fucking hate him and the rest of the God brothers.

The brothers make up what’s left of God. See, he had a little nervous breakdown a few millennia back and split into five pieces. He’s weak, and one part of him, the brother called Neshemah, is dead. Murdered by Aelita and cheered on by big brother Ruach. Like the Ramones said, we’re a happy family.

Maybe I’m making too much of it all. L.A. is turning into Atlantis, slowly sinking beneath the waves. If the rain keeps up, those Brentwood blue bloods will be chain-­sawing their mansions into arks, loading up the kids, the Pekingese, their favorite Bentleys, and heading for warmer climes. Trust-­fund pirates and showbiz buccaneers, sailing the briny to Palm Springs and Vegas, where it never rains and Armageddon can’t get through the guards at the gated communities without an engraved invitation.

WHEN IT COMES to showing off, the Sub Rosa aren’t like the civilian big-­money crowd. They like anonymity more than kittens and cotton candy. While civilians compete for House Beautiful trophies, wealthy Sub Rosas like their places to come across as the most miserable shitboxes outside of the town dump. If they could live in a greasy Big Mac wrapper they’d do it.

Blackburn’s mansion is downtown, in an abandoned residency hotel on South Main Street. The bottom floor is boarded up, covered in aeons of graffiti and posters for bands and clubs that haven’t existed for a decade or more. The second and third floors have been gutted by fire. There’s something heroic about the utter devastation of the place. It probably says more about what the Sub Rosa have become than Blackburn ever intended.

The mansion is protected by more hoodoo than the gates of Heaven. So much that Blackburn didn’t have guards for years. Then I broke in that one time, and ever since, he’s stationed a private army outside. To fit in with the look of the street, his mercs are covered in grime and sporting the latest haute couture rags from Bums “R” Us.

Blackburn’s security chief, Audsley Ishii, and a dozen of his crustiest compadres surround me as I pull up outside the mansion. It takes me a second to recognize him under the moth-­eaten wool cap and stage-­makeup stubble. His raincoat is a plastic trash bag, which he’s cut open at the bottom for his head and the sides for his arms. He doesn’t pull a weapon. Neither does any of his crew, but if I sneeze I’ll have enough bullets and hoodoo thrown at me to knock loose one of Saturn’s moons.

Ishii says, “Stark. Don’t you even know enough to get out of the rain?”

“I like it. Makes this neighborhood smell less like a piss factory.”

“Well, you’d know all about living like a pig, would you?”

“Are you trying to insult me? ’Cause I can’t hear you over the sound of your garbage-­bag tuxedo.”

One or two of his crew smile, but sober up when he throws them a look.