Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“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.”>“Mind if I have one of those?”

“Not at all.”

He holds out the pack to me. I take one, break off the filter, and toss it on his lawn. Teddy doesn’t flinch but he saw the butt fall and knows exactly where it is. He’ll be out here with tweezers and bleach later to clean up my mess.

I light the cigarette with Mason’s lighter. Without the filter, the smoke is rough and rich, like a three-hundred-pound nurse giving me CPR.

There are acres of land below us carved up and divided between several graveyards. It’s a whole housing development for the dead.

“Speak of the Devil, to your right is a foreign sanctuary. A small one from the Cannes region of France.”

It’s a pretty collection of stone monuments and phone-booth-size tombs filled with cats. Cats seem to love dead Frenchmen. I’ll have to ask Vidocq about that sometime.

“Over here is our first import from Asia.”

Miniature candy-colored pagodas and ornate stone barges fill a very old, very crowded Thai graveyard. Beyond it is a re-creation of an improvised Civil War graveyard, complete with crumbling wooden markers.

“How the hell do you do all this?”

Teddy beams, delighted that I’m impressed.

“We keep a group of necromantic engineers on retainer. They survey the cemetery proper, caskets, tombs, and bodies. Whatever’s appropriate. Then chart the exact depth and position of each burial against the stars. The cemetery is then dismantled and rebuilt here, reproducing the original alignments down to the millimeter.”

Teddy bats away a fly, the first I’ve seen here. Maybe an ungrateful jabber left a hole open nearby like an oversize groundhog.

“If need be, we can transport native soil back with the disinterred remains.”

What’s funny is that Teddy is as unimpressive as the estate is impressive. I’m even forgetting to treat him like shit. For all his eccentricity, Teddy is one of the beige people. They want to fade into the woodwork and disappear. It’s not depression. It’s more like a desperate desire to become invisible. He’s only tolerating me because he doesn’t want to piss off the other Devil freaks enough to shun him. Plus, it’s a chance to show off. If I sat next to him at the synod, I guarantee he wouldn’t have said a word to me all night. He’s cold oatmeal in thousand-dollar loafers. Dad and Granddad must have done some serious damage before leaving him alone on a hill with nothing but dead playmates.

“Have you heard about the little girl?”

He finally lights the damn cigarette and takes a puff.

“Everyone’s heard about her. If you’re implying that she’s one of mine, she’s not. Like most ghosts, mine are completely nonaggressive.”

“You’ve never had any trouble with any ghosts?”

He shrugs. Turns the wheel and runs alongside a long stone burial mound.

“They have their moods just like anyone but they don’t go around stabbing people.”

I keep thinking about Amanda’s story about the Imp of Madrid. She’d be right at home here.

“Pull over.”

Teddy stops the cart under a towering stone angel.

“I don’t buy any of what you’re selling, Teddy. This funfair for ghosts and they’re all tame little bunnies? I don’t believe it. You’re connected to the girl. I don’t know how but you are. And, you see, she went after Saint James.”

“Who?”