Happy Hour In Hell: Volume Two of Bobby Dollar (7 page)

old friends

I
DIDN’T STAY
in the hospital long. Sequoia Medical is short of beds as it is, and since angels heal fast, once they saw how quickly I was getting better they didn’t argue much when I checked myself out. I did get a lecture from one nice young doctor about refraining from active sports and strenuous activity for a while. It wasn’t me she needed to tell, of course, it was the guy with the piranha mouth and the very, very bad attitude.

The police interviewed me about the attack too, but since they thought I was a private investigator working a major insurance fraud, they didn’t kick up too much fuss. Heaven is good with bureaucracy, and I’ve kept my concealed-carry permit active since my Harps days, so I even got my gun back, which I filled with silver as soon as I could get to the rounds I’d left in the Datsun.

Instead of going back to my apartment (Smyler obviously knew about it, since he’d been waiting for me outside) I disposed of the now-petrified burger and fries I’d been bringing home the night of the last attack, and then drove down the Bayshore.

I parked in Southport and limped out to the ruins of Shoreline Park, because I didn’t have any other way of getting hold of Sam and I was getting desperate to talk to him. I had taken a roundabout route to make sure I wasn’t followed, and I kept my eyes open as I walked carefully through the filth and wreckage, between walls of corroding tin and broken plywood covered in fading paint. When I reached the Funhouse, I left a message on the mirror that Sam had shown me. I wasn’t stupid enough to write anything obvious. It just said, “Where we ate lunch, 7pm.” Sam would remember the little Southeast Asian place, I knew, and it would be up to him to get there without being followed. The question was, when, if ever, would he find this note? It looked like I was going to be eating Burmese food for the next few nights, but there are worse things to do, believe me.

I didn’t have to explore the menu all that much—Sam strolled through the door of the Star of Rangoon just as I finished ordering, looking very Robert-Mitchum-ish in his wrinkled coat and big, baggy face.

“Did you get me the pancakes?” he asked.

“You want the pancakes, order them yourself, you lazy bastard.” It was good to see him. He looked good, too, with a relaxed smile on his wide face.

He shoved into the booth, called the waitress back and ordered for himself, then looked me up and down. “Few new bruises, I see. Did Karael and some of his militant angels work you over?”

“I wish.” I told him who had given me all these new cuts, scrapes, and puncture wounds.

“You’re shitting me.” His ginger ale arrived and Sam drank half of it at a swallow, as if the long trip from Third Wayville had made him thirsty. “Leo bagged and burned that little creep.”

It was strange how easily it all came back together, as if Sam and I hadn’t been through all that craziness, as if he had never lied to me. There was, however, a little hollow place deep inside me, even if I was ignoring it. “Tell me about it. But it was Smyler. It
is
Smyler, and he’s still out to get me. I think Eligor put him on me.”

Sam raised an eyebrow, the closest he’ll let his good-old-boy persona come to showing actual surprise. “Eligor? Why would he do that? You’ve still got the magic golden feather, don’t you?”

My old chum was the one who had hidden it on me in the first place, trying to protect me from an infernal double-cross. With one thing and another, though, he hadn’t bothered to tell me about it until much later, which was one major reason I had almost died about eleventy-thousand times in the previous weeks, in many, many interesting ways.

“Yes, I’ve got it,” I said, “or at least I assume I do, since I can’t actually touch it myself. And if Eligor was smart he’d just leave me alone. But I think the whole thing goes a bit deeper than common sense.” I took a breath. “I have to tell you something.”

And I did. I told him the whole thing about me and the Countess of Cold Hands, the whole bizarre, tabloid-headlines story:
Angel Loves Demon,
or
I Sold Out Heaven for a Roll in Hell’s Hay
. Although, the only people actually disadvantaged in any way by our relationship were Caz and myself. Oh, and Eligor, of course. The grand duke definitely counted himself as an injured party.

Sam didn’t say anything for a long time after I finished. He signaled for another ginger ale, and the proprietress brought it over with the good grace of a camel trudging through a sandstorm. He took his time pouring and then rolled it around in his mouth like a wine critic about to hold forth on this year’s Beaujolais nouveau.

“Well, B,” he said. “I have to admit, you have lifted fucked-up to an entirely new level.”

I laughed in spite of everything. “I have, haven’t I?”

“I’ve got no problem with you
shtupping
a
dybbuk
, particularly.” Sam liked to use Yiddish sometimes. Maybe he thought it made him sound intellectual, maybe he just knew it was funny when an angel who looked so Boston Irish started dropping Brooklyn Jewish. “But you definitely could have picked one who would have been less trouble than Eligor’s main squeeze. So what are you going to do?”

And that was the problem: I didn’t know. As far as I could tell, Grand Duke Eligor had just decided he didn’t want to wait until I made it to Hell the usual way—he was sending me an express invitation. “It’s got to be Eligor trying to get me, right? You and I saw the bagmen take Smyler. Leo burned him! How else could he be after me now?”

“Yeah, somebody powerful does seem to have it in for you. What happened to Walter Sanders, by the way?”

“He’s still not back yet. No news. Which now that you mention it is pretty strange.”

Sam had a last
paratha
, ladling up the curry sauce like a canal dredger, then polished off his ginger ale. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

We walked to Peers Park, then settled on a bench. The lights were on and the park was full of parents and kids enjoying the spring evening, which made me feel slightly less vulnerable to being attacked by a twice-dead guy with a bayonet, but Sam himself was on Heaven’s Most Wanted List, so I wasn’t exactly relaxed.

“Okay, first off,” Sam said as we watched a guy trying to get his obviously brain-damaged dog to fetch a tennis ball, “only a butt-hat says, ‘my enemies are trying to kill me, so I’d better make it easier for them by going over to their place.’ Trying to sneak into Hell is the dumbest thing you’ve ever thought of in a career of pretty amazingly stupid things, Bobby. You know that, right?”

“I don’t know what else I can do, Sam. I can’t just leave her there. And it’s not like Eligor’s willing to leave me alone either. Obviously.”

He grunted, the Sam Riley version of a long-suffering sigh. “Knew you’d say that. But how would you get in there? Or get her out of there? Shit, even if a whole pile of miracles sort of happened one on top of the other, and you actually got away with it, where would you hide her from Eligor once she’s out?”

“Yeah, I admit there’s a ton of questions. I was kind of hoping you might help out with some of them.”

He grunted again. It was like sitting next to a hippo wallow. “Man, you’re way out of my area of expertise here. But we agree that Bobby Dollar walking into Hell is a stupid idea, don’t we? Good. Because you wouldn’t last ten seconds.”

“What about the bodies you have access to? You Third Way guys?”

“Kephas, whatever he or she might be, only gave me access to a body to help make the whole Magians thing look legitimate.” The Magians were the group of renegade angels, like Sam, who had recruited souls for the Third Way—the neither-Heaven-nor-Hell afterlife. “You wouldn’t do any better trying to waltz into Hell dressed as the Reverend Mubari than wearing your own ugly mug. This is Hell we’re talking about, Bobby, not Disneyland.” He gave me a look that should have sent me home crying. “And even if you find a body to wear, how do you get
in
? There are lots of gates, but there are even more guards. Bored, mean guards who used to be murdering psychopaths when they were alive, but haven’t even got the threat of Hell hanging over their heads now. Because they’re already there, right? And they’re in charge!”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Don’t rub it in, Sam. I’ll think of something.”

“So many terrible situations have begun with those exact words, B, but I suspect this one will be special even by
your
famously screwed-up standards.”

Sammy-boy stood up, gave me the number of a safe phone so I could leave him messages without having to hike all the way out to Crackhouse-by-the-Sea, then took his leave. I sat for a while, thinking as I finished my beer.

Helpwise, I had struck out with both Sam and the Sollyhull Sisters, so if I was really going to try to sneak into Hell, I’d have to find another way. I supposed the Broken Boy might have an answer to that, but the problem was that I already needed to ask him a costly question about Smyler, because I was likely to get stabbed in the eye long before Sam’s psychopathic Hell guards would ever get their chance to beat me into jelly, and I couldn’t really afford to pay the Boy to answer
two
questions.

Either way, though, it was painfully (and expensively) obvious where I was going next.

ectoplasmic boogaloo

I
LIKE TO
drive. For one thing, I find it just distracting enough that it leaves my mind free for deep thinking. If you ask me just to sit down and think, all I think about is how I’m tired of sitting down, but behind the wheel of a car I just turn the driving over to the lower functions and let my thoughts loose. Also, with the exception of my bosses trying to get hold of me, or the occasional hellbeast trying to disassemble me, when I’m driving I’m safe from interruptions. I knew my phone wouldn’t ring because I was on suspension, and unless Smyler had got hold of something faster than his old VW van, he wasn’t going to trouble me on the freeway. So I drove north, thinking.

Sam was right, of course: the whole idea of trying to sneak into Hell was so stupid that nobody in his right mind would even bother with it. There was a reason we’d been fighting these guys for a million years or more, and it wasn’t because we didn’t like their national anthem. They wanted to destroy us and did their best to accomplish that every damn day. Breaking into the place—well, that would be like a Jew breaking into Buchenwald. You might accomplish it somehow, but what would you do when you got there?

But my alternatives were few. And even if I didn’t go, I’d still have to find a way to deal with Smyler, which, despite his comparatively small size and up-close choice of weaponry, had already proved pretty damn difficult. I mean, how do you kill someone who’s already died twice?

With cheerful thoughts like these in my head, and the fabulous slide work of Elmore James rasping and clanging from the car’s speakers, I drove north through the no-man’s-land of smaller communities strung along the peninsula between San Judas and San Francisco, until I reached the industrial ruins at the edge of the Bayview district in South SF. I didn’t know exactly where I was going to find the Boy, but I knew he’d be somewhere under concrete in that not very nice part of the world. Bayview was where all the black shipyard workers settled, only to be kept there by economics and prejudice after the dock work dried up. It was a poor community, defined more by what other people thought about it than anything else, a refuge for the old and vulnerable. Which, I suppose, is why the Broken Boy had never left.

I spotted the first piece of telltale graffiti on a concrete stanchion, something that looked like a vertical row of letter “D”s, or an aerial view of a pregnant chorus line:

They weren’t Ds, of course, but Bs. Two of them, for the Broken Boy, which meant I was in the right area. It’s his obscure way of advertising. He doesn’t have many customers, but the ones who need him need him
real
bad, so he hangs out his shingle. I parked my car, locked it, checked to make sure I’d locked it, then set out on foot to see if I could find a greater concentration of BB-tags.

Eventually, somewhere north of Bayview Park, I spotted three of the tags on the same corner under the freeway. More importantly, an African-American kid of about ten or eleven years old was sitting there on a chunk of concrete and rebar, pitching pennies by himself against a pillar. He watched me from the corner of his eye as I approached, plainly trying to decide what kind of threat I was.

“Hey,” I said when I was about ten feet away. “I’m looking for the Boy.”

The kid gave me a quick
you-ain’t-much
look, then went back to flicking pennies against the cement. “So?”

“I’ve got five bucks if you can take me to him. I’m an old friend of his.”

“He don’t have no friends that old.” Clink.

“Look, you can go ask first if you want. Tell him it’s Bobby Dollar. He knows me.”

The kid gave me a longer look, then scooped up his pennies and stood, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his hoodie, his shoulders up against the wind. March in San Francisco is kind of like December anywhere else. He just stood there, waiting, until I figured out what was going on. I pulled the five out of my pocket and held it out. When he still didn’t come nearer, I set it down on an old plastic paint bucket, put a rock on it to keep it from blowing away, and stepped back. He took it cautiously, watching me the whole time like a cat accepting food from strangers, then turned and disappeared up an incline beside the freeway, leaving me in the cold shadows. I sat on the bucket to wait, but it must have been a slow day at the Broken Boy’s office because the kid was back in less than ten minutes.

“C’mon,” he said, jerking his head to show me which direction we were going. It was a bit of an obstacle course, uphill through dirt and ancient ice plant spiked with plastic bags and food wrappers, then through a culvert. I had to get down on my knees to get through, and couldn’t help but reflect on what a great target for a mugging I was, but there just wasn’t any other way to see the Broken Boy. It’s not like he has a phone and takes reservations.

I followed the kid through this obstacle course long enough that if I’d been trying to figure out where we were, I probably would have given up. We emerged at last in an even darker, bleaker, and more windswept area beneath another part of the freeway, outside what had once been some kind of maintenance door, its little safety cage still intact, although the light bulb it protected had long since disappeared. It looked rusted shut, but swung open surprisingly easily, revealing a set of steps leading down. The kid produced a flashlight from his hoodie and led me into the depths like a midget Virgil.

The maintenance tunnel was cluttered with old rusted breaker boxes jammed with grubby wires, dumped there when their day had ended. A few more turns and then the kid stepped aside and waved for me to walk past him. As soon as I did, he turned his flashlight off and everything went dark.

“Who goes there?” asked a voice that could not possibly have belonged to anyone past puberty. “Friend or foe?”

“What is this, a road company of Peter Pan? It’s me, Bobby Dollar. Tell the Boy I’m here.”

One by one lights began to flick on, each one a flashlight held by a kid no older than the one who had led me. It really looked like they were on a camping trip, getting ready to tell ghost stories. There was even a campfire, of a sort—a hibachi in the middle of the room, full of hot coals. The little barbecue was mostly covered with an iron lid, only little bits of red light leaking out to splash the grimy cement walls. One of the junior soldiers went and kicked the lid off, and all of a sudden I could see properly. Not that there was much to be seen, just the half-dozen kids and the damp, ugly nexus of concrete tunnels.

“I hope there’s enough ventilation here for that barbecue,” I said. “Otherwise you and the Boy are going to wind up dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Don’t worry about us.” The tallest of the kids stepped forward. He was missing an eye, or so I guessed, because he had a bandana tied over one socket, which made it look more than ever like Captain Hook should be making his appearance soon. “How do we know it’s really you?”

“Other than the fact that I found the place? I don’t know. Try asking me my mother’s maiden name.”

One-Eye frowned. “We don’t know that.”

“Neither do I, so we’re even. Look, I brought money, and I’m in a hurry. Can I please see the Boy?”

“Hey,” said one of the other kids in a lazy voice I was meant to hear, “if he’s got money, why don’t we just take it off him?”

“Shut the fuck up,” said One-Eye quickly. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.” He turned back to me. “I’ll see if he’s ready.”

Something whispered through the room then, a scratchy little sound that made the hairs on the back of my neck get up and look around. It took me a moment to make out the words:
“No, it’s all right. Bring him in.”
It sounded like a ghost, and not the healthy, lively kind like the Sollyhull Sisters, either.

He was sitting in the corner of a room off the main tunnel. I’d actually gone past his door. The only light was from a dry-cell emergency lantern near him, which cast his distorted shadow high across the walls. He barely filled the wheelchair. He’d lost weight since the last time I’d seen him, and although I was certain only that the Boy was somewhere between nine and fourteen years old, I did know that he shouldn’t be getting smaller at his age.

The Broken Boy swung his head to the side so he could see me better. Just the angle at which his neck bent was painful to see. Cross Stephen Hawking with a singed spider and you have some idea. Except for his skin, which is pink and healthy as the hide of a newborn mouse. And his eyes, which are even more alive, alive-oh. “Hi, Bobby. Good to see you.” His voice was softer than I remembered, more air, less weight. “Long time.”

“Yeah. Well, I’ve been out of the Harps for a while now, you know.”

“That didn’t stop you the last time.”

Didn’t really want to get into that. Tell you another time. “Can you help me out, BB?” I suddenly felt bad. “Are you up to it?”

“Me?” The head lolled, the chest heaved. He was laughing. Quiet as it was in that cement tomb under the freeway, I couldn’t actually hear it for a bit. “Never better. Run faster, jump higher. Satisfaction guaranteed.” Then those bright eyes fixed on me again. “You don’t have to worry about me, Bobby.” A sentence that could just as easily have been finished, “because there’s nothing you can do.” Which was true: the gray areas between my team, the other team, and ordinary human folk are full of people like the Broken Boy, growing and dying like weeds in the cracks of a sidewalk.

“Okay, but I’ll have to explain for a bit first . . .”

“Money?”

I dug it out of my pocket, took off the rubber band. “I remember the drill. Nothing bigger than twenties. Your helpers can handle them up to make ’em look less new. They look like they’d be good at it.”

For a moment, as I held out the cash, his Tyrannosaurus arms almost seemed to be trying to reach for it out of old reflex, but then he called One-Eye (who was apparently named Tico) to take it from me and put it in the box. Tico swaggered out as if he’d made all that money himself. The Boy watched him go.

“They’re good kids,” he said from the vast height of the two or three years he had on any of them. “They take care of me.” And for just a moment I could hear the child he might have been if his gifts or his past had been different; the lonely, sick kid who wished he could go out and play with the others. Kind of like getting punched in the stomach, that was.

A moment later Tico returned with two of the other kids and began to get the Broken Boy ready. As they strapped him to his apparatus, which was really not much more than a rusty old home fitness gym they must have dismantled up in the real world and put back together down here, I found myself wondering for a moment about where they had all come from, what strange tangle of stories had brought them here together. Boy was the strangest of all, of course, but I knew almost as little about him as I did about any of his pint-sized minions. Even Fatback hadn’t been able to track down his real name. By the time any of us heard of him, he was already this tiny, messed-up kid with a very strong gift, selling that gift to support himself and a rotating gang of urchins.

Of course, no gift comes without a price tag, and the one the Boy paid was pretty steep.

First the kids wound his limbs and torso in elastic bandages, the kind weekend athletes use on a sprained ankle, until he looked like a joke hospital patient from a comedy sketch. Next they tied him to the exercise machine with surgical tubing. I was pleased to see they did it gently, with the reverence of priests preparing a holy shrine. They left slack in each connection except for the one around his forehead. The Boy’s eyes followed them, showing white at the edges, but I could tell he was calm. After all, he’d been through all of this more than a few times already.

“Hey, Bobby,” he said, “Kayshawn, the one who brought you in from the checkpoint?” His voice was so quiet I had to move forward to hear him. “He came to me because he wanted me to teach him how to dance. He heard of me, see, but he thought I was ‘Breakin’ Boy.’”

“Breakin’ Two, Ectoplasmic Boogaloo,” I said, apropos of nothing except the vague anxiety I always felt watching the Boy do his thing.

Tico came in from the other room with a can of Sterno burning on an old china plate. “But you don’t dance so good, huh, boss?”

“You’re tripping,” said the Boy. “I dance really, really good. But none of you can see me doing it.”

Tico squinted his single eye as he poured something powdery from his fist into the Sterno, then set the plate down on the floor in front of the exercise machine, making the Broken Boy look more than ever like some distorted heathen idol. The can began to spark and smoke a little, then the orange flame began to cool into blue. Tico backed away and crouched against the wall with the others, a rapt little congregation.