Killing Pretty (Sandman Slim 7)

The front of the store looks as solid as the side. There’s only one place the hoodoo doesn’t glow, over where the angel painted KILL. I touch the spot and don’t feel any kind of resistance. It must not be ordinary paint, but something the angel brought with him from Heaven.

I put a finger on the side bar of the K and push. My hand goes right through the wall. Slipping my other hand into the K, I pull as hard as I can, and a small gap appears in the hoodoo. If I duck down and pull my shoulders in, I can just slip through the breach.

Inside, I go upstairs and grab some garbage bags from under the kitchen sink. Toss clothes from Candy’s and my closet, then Kasabian and Vincent’s room. Before I come down, I grab Candy’s laptop and stuff it in our bag so the clothes will cushion it.

My one worry about being inside is that I won’t be able to get out again. But there’s a crack in the hoodoo at the point where I came in the front. I drag the K open again and shove the bags through, then climb out. Passersby on the street are just as frozen as Candy and the others. I grab the bags, go back to the side of the store, and step left.

The three of them stare at me and the bags.

“How did you do that?” says Candy. “You were only gone a second.”

“It felt a lot longer than that. Time is funny when I’m backstage.”

“Backstage?” Kasabian says.

“I’ll tell you about it later.”

I hand everyone a bag and we head for the car.

“Where are we going to go?” says Candy.

“Have a donut and give me a minute. I need to make some calls.”

It takes twenty minutes, but on the fifth call I get hold of the right person who understands the subtle art of the bribe. Back in the car, I gun it and pull a U-­turn, getting us back onto Hollywood Boulevard.

Kasabian leans up over the seats.

“I don’t suppose you have a secret suite at the Beverly Wilshire?”

“Better,” I say. “We’re going back to the Beat Hotel.”

He puts a metal hand to his face and slumps into the back.

“Somebody, kill me now.”

IF KASABIAN WASN’T such a drama queen he’d remember that things weren’t so bad at the Beat Hotel. We stayed there a few weeks after an ill-­behaved zombie horde overran L.A. and trashed Max Overdrive early last year.

The hotel is near the glamorous strip mall and parking lot by the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Gower, and right across from the Museum of Death. The front of the hotel is painted a shade of green no one asks for, but just sort of happens. The place is a dump, but I love it. The rooms are reasonably sized and the decor is sort of a cross between seventies swinger and halfway house. The kitchens are the best rooms, explosions of reds, yellows, and glitter, like someone’s bell-­bottoms exploded on the way to a Ziggy Stardust concert.

Candy and I get settled into our room and Kasabian and Vincent settle into theirs. None of us are on the hotel’s register because we don’t know how long we’re going to have to crash here and we don’t want anyone knowing where we are. While I put away our clothes on the crooked wire hangers in the closet, Candy calls Julie back.

I can only hear one side of the conversation, but I can tell when Julie asks about the stakeout because Candy turns a little white and changes the subject.

“Max Overdrive was padlocked shut and the county put a spell on the place to keep ­people out. Be careful to take your work with you whenever you leave and back up everything else off-­site.”

There’s a pause as Candy listens. Then she says, “I’ll get you a report in the morning.”

Another pause and she says, “What? Are you sure?”

She goes to the little kitchen and opens her laptop on the plastic table, types in a URL.

“Oh shit.”

I sit down beside her.

“What’s wrong?”

She turns the laptop so I can see the screen.