Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

At the end of the walkway is a burned-out three-story concrete utility building. Technically, it’s only two stories now. It looks like the top one collapsed and caved into the second during the fire. The city bolted wire shutters over all the ground-floor windows to keep kiddies from playing in the death trap. Naturally, most of them are torn down or bent back enough for someone skinny to squeeze inside. The double metal doors in front are shut with a padlock and chain heavy enough to hitch the Loch Ness monster to a parking meter.

Why am I not surprised when Lucifer pulls a key from his pocket, pops the lock, and throws open the doors? A blast of cold, wet air hits us from inside. The place smells like Neptune’s outhouse. There’s a set of stone steps inside, winding down to the waterline. A few high school kids are hunkered on the stairs below the first turn, drinking forties and passing around a joint. They lurch to their feet, a little shaky in that panicked stoner kind of way where cops and pigeons are equally terrifying. I guess they don’t see a lot of tuxedos down here. Lucifer nods to them and one of the boys nods back.

“You cops?” he asks

As we pass the group, Lucifer turns to the boy.

“Sometimes. But not tonight.”

I don’t know if it’s the dark, the narrows walls, or just being in a strange place for the first time, but the stairs seem to go down a long damn way. Feels like well below the waterline. When we hit the bottom, there’s another door. Instead of rusted metal, this one is covered in red leather and has brass hinges. There’s a doorman next to it in a gold silk coat and short breeches dripping with enough gold filigree to make Little Lord Fauntleroy look like he shops from the discount bin at Walmart. He opens the door when he hears us. I guess standing in the dark doesn’t bother him. His eyes look black and blind and his lips are sewn shut.

I start to say something, but Lucifer cuts me off with a dismissive wave.

“Golem. Salvage from some Parisian potter’s field. French revenants are all the rage among the Sub Rosa gentry this year. I wouldn’t waste my money. Golems aren’t much more than windup toys. You could train a dog to open that door and it could still fetch and bark on cue. This dead thing will open the door from now until doomsday, but that’s all it’ll ever do. Ridiculous.”

“At least you don’t have to tip him. Are they all sewn up like that?”

“Of course. Golems are lobotomized so they don’t bite, but they’re not so easy to recall if something goes wrong.”

Past the door is another golem, this one with stapled lips, but that’s not the hilarious part. There’s a gondola floating in an underwater canal lit by phosphorescent globes hovering near the walls. The golem is dressed in a gondolier’s striped shirt, black pants, and flat-brimmed hat like the ticket taker at a Disneyland ride, if the ride was hidden under an L.A. reservoir and full of animated corpses. It’s a small dead world, after all.

Lucifer steps down into the gondola and I follow him. The golem poles us along the narrow canal until we hit a T-intersection where he steers us right into a wider channel.

“The limo driver, he was cut and stitched up, too. Is he a golem?”

“No, he’s alive. He’s just annoying.”

“You cut his throat?”

“Of course not. When he apologized for what he did, he cut his own throat to prove his sincerity.”

“I guess it’s better than ending up in a box of fingernails.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Where the hell are we? How far are we under the reservoir?”

“We’re not under the reservoir anymore. Our brain-dead friend has taken us out into an old tributary of the L.A. River.”

“Huh. It never crossed my mind that the L.A. River was ever anything more than scummy concrete runoff.”

“Everyone here thinks that way. It’s only the ones who remember when the river was wild who appreciate it.”

“Muninn would remember.”

“I’m sure he does. If I remember right, his cavern isn’t far from another of the underground channels.”

“Will he be here tonight?”

“I doubt it. He’s worse than you when it comes to socializing with the Sub Rosa.”

“Where are we going? Who’s going to be there?”

“The party is being thrown by the head of the studio, Simon Ritchie. I think I mentioned that he’s a civilian, so the party is being thrown in the home of one of the truly outstanding Sub Rosa families, Jan and Koralin Geistwald. Lovely people. They came here all the way from the northernmost part of Germany when this river roared along the surface.”

“So, that makes them a couple of hundred years old?”

“I’m sure they’re considerably older than that, but they came to America two-hundred-ish years ago.”