Kill City Blues (Sandman Slim 5)

The Banker keeps his cool, but he’s fading fast. He leads me into an office done up in the same Greek style, but there’s a phone, a computer, and a lot of prescription pill bottles on a carved mahogany desk. Three plasma-screen TVs are mounted on the walls, all tuned to different business channels. The picture window looks out over L.A. but not this L.A. The tallest building is maybe ten floors. It’s L.A. from a long time ago. Maybe from the thirties, when a lot of the big zoo enclosures were built.

A minute later someone comes in. It’s almost funny. I recognize him immediately. It’s Trevor Moseley, but Moseley with a good fifty more years on him. Norris Quay.

He’s slightly stooped and walks with a cane. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt, cream-colored slacks, and soft black slippers. This wouldn’t be interesting except that everything in this place screams Grecian formality and here’s Grandpa ready for an afternoon of checkers and pudding at the old folks’ home.

“Ronald, you look like death,” Norris says to the Banker. “Go see my doctor.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ronald says, clutching his bleeding hand. He still has it together enough to give me a nod before leaving.

Besides Quay, the only people in the room are two bodyguards. Massive, steroid-stinking sons of bitches. They wait in opposite corners of the room, not moving or speaking. They look rooted to each spot, like statues of Titans. But I bet they can move pretty fast when provoked.

I say, “So, how many of you are there?”

Quay hobbles to a deep blue-and-gold velvet sofa and takes his time lowering his bones onto the cushions, in no rush at all to answer me.

“You mean my simulacra? Generally no more than two or three at a time on each continent. Except Antarctica, of course. I don’t collect penguins.”

He smiles. The lines on his face remind me of the splitting roads in Pandemonium after an earthquake.

I shake my head.

“You’ve got your numbers wrong. I met three of you in just the past few days. One with Declan Garrett and two more with Atticus Rose.”

“Yes. Atticus always keeps a few extras around for when one has an accident.”

“The ones in Rose’s workshop both had accidents. I burned them.”

Quay purses his lips.

“What a waste. Never mind. I’ll have Atticus run off a few more.”

“You know where he is?”

“I know where everyone is.”

Quay crosses his long legs and picks some lint off his trousers.

“What’s the story with your clone called Trevor Moseley? He runs through every religion there is and ends up hanging out with Angra Om Ya nutcases?”

“My little Trevors, Fredericks, Pauls, Williams, and the others have insinuated themselves in various groups around the world. Groups that possess or might come to possess things I want.”

I knew it.

“You want the 8 Ball.”

“The Qomrama. Yes. Trevor was going to buy it from them or, if need be, take it. Then he . . . that is, I found that they didn’t have it. In fact, like me they were looking for it, and all signs pointed to you having it.”

“But I don’t.”

“Much to my dismay.”

Quay makes an exaggerated sad face.

“Were you doing business with Declan Garrett? You should be more careful. He tried to blow you up.”

Quay waves a dismissive hand.

“I would never do business with Declan. He’s a crook. Anyway, I knew he didn’t have it.”