Hollywood Dead (Sandman Slim 10)

Sandoval looks at her watch.

“The clock is ticking, Stark. Your body is already starting to break down.”

“A cigarette would really help me think.”

“Tick-tock,” she says.

I take a breath and lean back on the pool table.

“Then we have to make them come to us,” I say. “Make them think you have something they want so they’ll come after it. Maybe a counter-spell that can blow up their ritual. Now, here’s the hard part. Someone’s got to take that fake spell and stroll out of here with it. Let themselves get kidnapped, then bring one of them back here for questioning. Any volunteers?”

I glance around the room knowing the answer but hoping Roger might be enough of a suck-up that he’ll raise his hand.

No such luck.

“I think you win the coin toss, Stark,” says Sandoval.

“I had a feeling I would. I wish you’d told me all this earlier in the day. I can’t really get started until tomorrow, Thursday. That’s cutting things close.”

“I told you. We couldn’t bring you back any sooner,” says Howard.

“You’re lucky you brought me back at all. I was one hot second from being double dead.”

Howard frowns.

“Dying in Heaven?”

“Being murdered, technically.”

“You do find trouble everywhere,” says Sandoval.

“I was just looking for the buffet line.”

“Is there anything we can do to get started now?” says Sinclair. There’s the slightest edge to his voice. He doesn’t like all this chitchat. Yeah, he’s scared, but he knows something he’s not telling me. Probably what’s really going on. I believe that these creeps don’t want to get blown to rags, but I wonder what they do want. I’ll put beating information from Sinclair on my to-do list for tomorrow. For now, I just talk to him.

“Do you have a rat in your organization? Don’t answer. It was a rhetorical question. For things to be this out of control, of course you do.”

“They’re worse than you think,” says Sinclair.

“What do you mean?”

“Assassinations,” says Sandoval. “Slow, but steady.”

Sinclair chimes in.

“Mostly the heads of other offices. Pieter Holden in Vienna was first.”

Sandoval holds up one finger, then two.

“Megan Bradbury in Chicago and Franz Landschoff in Cairo are the most recent.”

I look over at the roaches, then back to them.

“You’re sure it’s the faction doing it?”

“There’s no question,” Sandoval says.

“Not just a rat then. A great big rat.” I go to Sandoval and stage-whisper, “Eva, do you think it’s one of these assholes?”