Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

“Goodie. I love twenty questions.”

“You can drop the drunk act. If you were drunk, I could smell it in your sweat. All you did was take a hit off the bottle and swish it around your mouth so your breath would smell of wine.”

He gives me a wink.

“Clever boy. Cuts right to it, doesn’t be? We can’t put anything past this one, can we, young lady? I didn’t catch your name.”

“Brigitte Bardo.”

“Of course. Ritchie’s darling. Forgive me, my dear. I only know you from your work and I didn’t recognize you without a cock or two in your mouth. It’s lovely to finally meet you in the flesh.”

“And you.”

“If you don’t mind me inquiring, do you have just the tiniest bit of Gypsy blood in you?”

“I don’t mind you asking. And yes, I do.”

“I thought so. You people play some glorious music. Of course, you weren’t so appreciated where I’m from. Most likely it was all the stealing.”

“If there’s anything missing after our visit, send a bill to Simon’s and I’ll have it taken care of.”

He laughs and takes a swig from the bottle.

“Love your Nazi curtain,” I say.

Cabal turns in his chair and looks at the Black Sun like he’s never seen it before.

“Oh, that. One has to keep up appearances. Clients expect a bit of the scary-scary when they call on me.”

“Is that why you have a slaughtered village hanging on your wall?”

He moves his eyes to look at the tapestry.

“Sadly, no. That’s more of a family portrait. We’re not the ones on horseback but the ones on fire.”

He has a pretty strong magic barrier set up around his thoughts, so I can’t tell if that’s a sad damned story or a pretty effective lie.

“I wanted to talk to you about Drifters.”

Cabal shakes his head.

“It breaks my heart to disappoint you, but the resurrected are not within the purview of my business dealings. I toil in the more prosaic fields of demons and elementals.”

“But you’ve used them, haven’t you? Maybe you don’t use them on a regular basis, but how about in some kind of rent-to-own deal?”

He shrugs.

“As I said, one has to keep up appearances. When a competitor or social upstart oversteps the clearly demarcated boundaries of my sphere of influence, they must and will be dealt with swiftly and in as decisive a manner as it takes so that they might serve as an object lesson to others with similar rash inclinations.”

“So, you have used Drifters against your enemies.”

“Once or twice. I won’t deny it.”

“When was the last time?”

“I can’t recall with any great clarity. One gets old. Many of the things that were so crystalline clear in one’s youth become misty and difficult to plumb from the depths in our later years. Though I work hard to keep up appearances, I’m afraid I’m not the man I once was.”

Brigitte says, “In my experience, that’s what men say when they’re exactly the man they used to be, but hope to deny it with age and excuse it with youth.”