Zig tapped at the buttons of his cell phone while I hung up with Jacob. None of the apartments we'd been in had ghosts in them. None. People died all the time, so what was the deal? Dead people usually move along, most of them, anyway. Ghosts obviously had to move on at some point or another, or else I'd be swimming through an ocean of the dead every day. Murders, suicides, and accidents just took longer, as well as ghosts who were just plain stubborn.
"Are you holding supper for me?" Zig said into the phone.
"No, that's okay. Half an hour. Uh huh. No, really, you can all go ahead." He sighed. "No, nothing. I don't know. I guess there weren't any spirits to see. Uh huh. Okay. Yup. Love you. Bye-bye."
"If they were there, I would have seen them," I said, wondering why it'd come out so defensive.
I took my eyes off the road to glare at Zig. He nodded at me, eyes round behind the mounds of his fleshy eyelids and encroaching cheeks.
"Seriously," I said. "There's one sitting at that bus stop right there. And another one on the roof of the hardware shop."
"The roof?"
I tried to crane my neck to see if the roof ghost was obviously a jumper, but it was difficult to tell at thirty five miles per hour, and her semi-transparent.
"Maybe they're not dead," I suggested.
"Who? Lopez and the others?"
"Sure. Maybe it's some kind of cult thing. Gathering up people for...?" It sounded retarded even as I said it. I flicked on my turn signal and pulled into the parking lot of the Fifth.
I dropped off Zigler and then pulled out into traffic.
Chicago rush hour started before I even rolled out of bed and never ended before eight at night—though it was a little lighter on the weekends, at least before bar traffic started. I backtracked past the woman on the hardware store's roof and the ghost at the bus stop, and pulled up in front of the home of the last family we'd questioned, double parking. There weren't any spirits in my visual range. That wasn't so unusual. Maybe.
I wended my way past one of the other houses we'd searched and watched for a while. Maybe, now that it was full dark, a confused murder victim would make itself known. I didn't really think so, of course. Otherwise, I'd come clean with the family and get them to let me inside again. Or at least I'd pretend I had a few more questions for them so I could nose around.
I drove some more, and I thought. Three people missing.
Probably dead. Otherwise, there'd be ransom—especially the alderman's nephew. Unless ... what? Their spirits were trapped, too? Or maybe tied to the spot they were murdered, which I hadn't found yet. Or maybe there was a succubus scarfing down their souls like big strings of oily, black pasta.
I looked up and found myself at the Lopez's apartment, double-parked. Yellow light shone through the lace curtains that covered the living room window and hid the shelves of knick-knacks and clutter inside. All that crap taking up space, when the family sorely needed elbow room. Maybe it was a Hispanic thing, the need to have all that stuff around. Lisa would know.
Lisa would know if Lopez was alive or dead, too. She could even tell me where to look.
I had to call Lisa. She hadn't sounded very happy with me the night before, but she had to understand. I wasn't asking for myself. I thumbed in her speed dial and waited for her message, the one I always found myself mouthing the words to because she never answered her phone anymore now that she was being brainwashed at PsyTrain. Except that Lisa's phone didn't ring, and instead I got an earful of three dissonant tones.
"We're sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and try again."
I figured I'd just fat-fingered Lisa's number and went to dial it again, when I realized I'd used the speed dial to get her. I pressed the buttons again with exaggerated care.
"We're sorry. Your call cannot be completed as dialed."
Son of a bitch. Lisa had cancelled her cell phone.
I slammed my car into gear, pulled away from the curb, and drove. It was one thing for Lisa to tell me not to call her, but something entirely different for her to actually ditch her phone. You'd think I was some kind of psycho stalker or something. Who was the one who'd supported her while she was trying to figure out if she could be both a psychic and a cop? Me. Who was the one who took her under his wing when all her friends and family were across the country? Me.
I drove, and I swore, until finally I pulled my car over in front of a fire hydrant and slapped my police permit onto my dashboard. I glanced at the sidewalk. A couple inches of slush had hardened into a patchy obstacle course of ice, with crushed beer cans and cigarette butts and fast food wrappers sticking out here and there. The neon sign that said "Tarot Card Palm Reader" cast a pastel glow onto the hazardous walkway. I'd never met the palm reader; I was headed for Sticks and Stones, the shop upstairs, to see Crash.
The official business hours of Sticks and Stones are noon to six, Monday through Saturday. But Crash lived in a couple of rooms behind the store, and if he was home and had nothing better to do, he usually just left it open well into the night.
I followed the pattern of painted thumbprints up the stairs and wondered why I thought Crash wouldn't have anything better to do on a Saturday night than sit around in his store.
He was probably out getting laid or something. The doorknob didn't move, and I felt like an idiot for not calling ahead, when suddenly the knob unstuck itself and turned, and the door jangled open with a giant fanfare of a dozen strung-together bells.
"Oh. It's you." Crash sprawled on a threadbare recliner beside the counter, squinting at a catalog. His ancient Levis had been washed so many times that they molded to every intimate contour of his body, except his knees, which poked out through frayed holes. His T-shirt was screened with the logo of a band I'd never heard of before, and Jesus Christ, I felt every sad year of my pushing-forty life when I looked at his spiked, bleached hair, his piercings and tattoos, and his long, lean muscles.
I stared at him, wondering what, exactly, I'd expected him to do for me. He ignored me and read.
"Do you sell anything that can answer a yes or no question?" I asked him.
"For entertainment purposes," he asked me, not bothering to look up, "or for real?"
I squelched the impulse to scream, "What do you think, you jackass?" Maybe he was asking a serious question—though I had my doubts. "You're the one with the metaphysical shop. If I wanted a Magic Eight Ball, I'd go to SaverPlus."
He looked up at me and grinned. "Did you notice the new guy who works at the return counter in the SaverPlus basement? He's kind of a creep—which I think I like about him—and he's got this monster bulge in his pants."
I could totally see him getting into someone who was a creep. "Um. No."
"They're still open. Why don't you go buy a Magic Eight Ball so I can return it?"
"No."
"Then what the fuck good are you?"
I turned my back to him and started flipping through rows of incense boxes on a shelf beside the door. "Don't you have something, I dunno, like one of those pendulum things?"
"They only work if you're a precog. Which you aren't."
I sighed. I knew that. I was just freaking out because of Lisa.
"So first it's this purported GhosTV you want me to locate for you," Crash said, the recliner creaking and protesting as he levered himself out of it, "which makes no sense, since it can't actually get rid of ghosts, only screw around with their signals so you can't see 'em." He looked like he was grinning, though I only saw him from the corner of my eye because I refused to give him the satisfaction of looking at him. Still, it was a pretty safe bet.
"That sounds way worse to me—knowing they're there but not being able to see 'em, just 'cos you flipped a switch. So tell me, Vic. What is it you really want?" He'd abandoned his catalog and swung the full weight of his focus on me, pouring himself against the shelf where I couldn't possibly not see him, running his tongue-barbell along his bottom teeth. It might've been full-on flirt mode for anyone else, but it was day-to-day attitude for him. No wonder Jacob cut him loose. I don't think I'd sleep well at night knowing my boyfriend was willing to drop trou for any Tom, Dick, or Harry, either.
"I really do want some kind of divination. How about, uh, tea leaves?"
Crash glanced down at the colorful box in my hand. "You won't find anything that benign if you keep shopping in the Voodoo section. Maybe what you really want is a bigger hard on."
I put the box of lodestone shavings back on the shelf, where it lived between a "Come to Me" aerosol spray and a candle with Saint Barbara on it. "You keep the Voodoo next to the religious stuff?"
Crash huffed and repositioned the lodestone box that I apparently hadn't shelved to his satisfaction. "Voodoo is a religion. What the hell did they teach you at psychic school—or where you high that day?"
I considered buying the Triple-X Curse mojo bag and dumping out the contents on his spiky, blond head.
"Saint Barbara is a Catholic saint," he said, "sure. But she also represents Chango, one of the Oshiras. The slaves who honored their African religions had to do a little creative improvisation to keep on worshiping while the whites were watching."
I thought about the shrine in Mrs. Lopez's house. "What about Mexicans—do they buy this stuff from you?"
"Who, the Santerians?" he shrugged. "They could, if they want to do business with a gringo. They prefer to shop at their own Botanicas, but once in a while they'll come here in a pinch." He tweaked the angle of the lodestone box again.
"Shit. I gotta do inventory—this shelf looks picked over, and lately jimson weed is nearly impossible to find. Must be a Voodoo convention in town."
I noticed a Saint Martin candle just like the one in the Lopez apartment burning beside the doorway. "They have conventions?"
"It's an expression." Clash rolled his eyes. "More likely, some kid's figured out he can get high if he smokes it."
I nudged a stack of "Fast Luck Money Drawing" soap out of alignment. "So everything's connected to a whole religion, a giant ritual? You don't have anything that'll just give me an answer?"
Crash narrowed his eyes. "I can sell you something, sure.
But none of the tools will work for you if you don't have the talent to use them. Come on. You and I both know a good precog can read the future in a chicken liver or a wet spot.
You're the PsyPig. Don't you have a cop friend who can tell your fortune?"
"I do. Only she won't talk to me."
"Aha." I could see him grinning again in my peripheral vision, even though I was trying really hard to avoid him by focusing on an illustration of the Seven African Powers.
"That's why you're so tied up in knots that I can feel it from across the room. And here I thought you'd ditched Mister Perfect and come over to take me for a spin."
"You'll be the last person I'll run to if that ever happens."
"We'll just see about that." He grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me toward the counter. "Miss Mattie's not here, is she?"
I gather that when Crash was a child, he'd been closer to his neighbor, Miss Mattie, than he was to his own mother—who was still alive and heading up her garden club in the wealthy suburb, Arlington Heights. "Why would Miss Mattie be here?" I said. "You were sitting in her spot."
"She hung around here all the time before I even got her that chair. And I totally surrender the chair when Oprah's on.
And The View." A small television perched across from the chair on an end table painted with zebra stripes. The TV was currently off.
"If she's not here now," Crash said, "then I don't need to behave." He pulled a wooden box out from behind the counter as he spoke, grinning all the while. It was just banter. I don't think he actually had the hots for me. He just needed to preserve his reputation as a slut. Probably.
"I'll let you test drive a pendulum if you give me a blowjob."
"No!" I snapped.
He opened the box with a flourish. "Can't say I didn't try."
He pulled out one of the pieces, a fancy metal pointer-looking thing on a chain, and held it between the two of us where it circled over the glass countertop. "But anyway, I won't let you get your wiggy vibes all over it and just sell it to someone else. Unless...."
I watched the charm circle around, and thought of the little metal person Mrs. Lopez had given me that morning. I dug in my pocket, hoping it wasn't so small that I'd managed to lose it.
"Ohmigod. I could totally market these as ... as Medium Charms. Or something. I'd have to think of a better name.
'Get messages from beyond the grave.' They'd have your name on 'em, endorsed by the most powerful medium in the United States. What do you say?"
"Right. Everyone'll believe that." I felt the cool metal between my fingertips, snugged up against a pack of gum and a Polaroid.
"That's the beauty of it," Crash said. "It'll be totally true. You can wear 'em under your shirt for a week, rub your weird mojo off all over 'em."
"No, I mean the 'most powerful medium' part. You'll need a bigger celebrity than me."
Crash twitched his fingers so that the pendulum spun in a figure eight. "Didn't you test out at level five? Or is that just another juicy Internet rumor?"
I avoided talking levels with Crash, since he'd bombed his testing and therefore couldn't get a government psychic job, and he got nastier than usual when his jealousy was aroused.
Instead, I put the photo on the counter and laid the charm across Miranda Lopez's stretchy, purple sweater, and abruptly changed the subject. "Say, do you know what this is?"
"A Mexican chick with big boobs?"
I glared at him.
He smiled back, wide. "Oh. You mean the milagro?"
I looked at the little charm, hardly more detailed than a stick figure, standing with her feet planted far apart, wearing a wide triangular skirt. I concentrated on the word "milagro," but knowing the word for it clarified nothing.
Lisa could probably explain it to me. Damn it.