No one thinks of L.A. as ever being cold, but when it’s winter and the clouds roll in and the temperature drops to sixty or below, it can feel downright chilly. But the armor doesn’t notice. It has its own heat gauge set at body temperature. I could probably go to Antarctica and feed the penguins in nothing but flip-flops and a serape and not shiver once.
On the dying edge of Hollywood Boulevard, another tourist trap is going out of business. I buy a couple of black button-down shirts with HOLLYWOOD spelled with palm trees over the breast pocket. They’re loose enough that they hide the armor without making me look like the Michelin Man.
Back at the Beat Hotel, I take the one peeper I kept with me out of its saline-filled container, pop out my eye, and put the peeper in. Nothing happens. I can’t see into Hell. Not the library, the grounds outside the palace, or through the peepers I put into the hellhounds. Lucifer is blind up here. Something else Samael kept to himself. I take the peeper out and put my eye back in.
Back when Samael was in L.A. and I was playing bodyguard, he told me that he had very little power on Earth. That’s probably why he gave Kasabian access to the Daimonion Codex. Lucifer can’t see it from here but half-dead Kasabian can.
I spend the rest of the afternoon playing around with the armor, seeing what Lucifer tricks I can pull up here. I find a few but nothing that’ll get me a Nobel Prize. As usual I’ve timed things perfectly. I hang around Hell long enough to get all of Lucifer’s power and then come home and lose most of it.
In the afternoon, Candy calls. She wants to meet at the Bamboo House of Dolls around ten. Why not? It’s that or more Brady Bunch reruns, and that’s goddamn depressing for the Lord of the Underworld, even when he’s only operating at half speed.
Before I leave, I unscrew the air vent with a dime. What do you know? Kasabian wasn’t just shining me on. There’s a carny roll of twenty hundred-bills inside. The day just suddenly got brighter. What’s ridiculous is how easy I am to buy off. Two grand out of two hundred and I want to kiss the sky? Don’t let it get around but it turns out Lucifer is the cheapest date in Hell.
Now, this is something solid and real. It smells like beer and whiskey and the sweat of the patrons and the cigarette smoke blown in through the doors by the trailing edge of a Santa Ana, which is just how it should be. It’s a bar’s job to be unambiguous. In a sea of troubles, you can hold on to a bar. The Bamboo House of Dolls is my Rock of Ages.
Everything is where it should be. Old Iggy and the Stooges and back-in-the-day L.A. punk-band posters. Behind the bar, it’s all palm fronds, plastic hula girls, and coconut bowls for the peanuts. The jukebox chips and coos as Yma Sumac warbles through a spooky “Chuncho.” Carlos the bartender is pouring shots of Jack for everyone bellied up at the bar and mine taste best because they’re free. I hold up my glass to toast him for the third time tonight and he holds up his. It’s that kind of night. I’m in my bar with my friends. Now I’m really home.
Vidocq has his arm around my shoulders. He’s hardly taken it off since he got here, like if he lets go I’ll blow away on the breeze.
“At least it wasn’t eleven years this time. You’re doing better,” he says.
“Maybe you should try not going back at all,” says Allegra.
“I signed up with Monsters Anonymous,” I tell them. “Trying to kick the Hell habit one day at a time.”
“I’ll drink to that,” says Vidocq. He holds up his empty glass and Carlos comes over and refills it.
Carlos says, “I wasn’t sure if it was you when you walked in. Even with that fucked-up face, I’m still not a hundred percent.”
He starts to pour me my sixth Jack of the night. I put my hand over the glass.
“Let’s surprise everyone. Why don’t you give me a cup of coffee?”
“See? I knew it wasn’t you. Look at this place. It’s like a wake for someone no one liked. Your pendejo brother just about drove me out of business.”
He’s right. The bar is maybe a third full. It used to be packed every night before I took off. Civilians and Lurkers like hanging around places with criminals, even if a few of them get chewed up, like the night a handful of zombies wandered in. What’s funny is that’s exactly why people come to places like this. They want to get close enough to death to smell the graveyard dust, as long as it’s someone else’s name that gets chiseled on the gravestone.
“I’ve been drinking almost nothing but Aqua Regia for three months. I want something a human being might drink. And that little darling with my face is no brother of mine.”
Carlos nods. Looks over the crowd.
“Maybe things will pick up when people hear the real you is back.”
“If it helps, you can pour the coffee in six shot glasses.”
“Great idea.”
He goes away to get the coffee and glasses.
Candy comes in just as he sets them down. She takes one, throws it back, and makes a face.
“What the hell is this?”
“Coffee.”
She slams the glass down.
“You’re such a pussy.”
“Yeah? Pick any random stranger and I’ll punch them if you’ll stay the night tonight.”
Her posture changes. She tenses up. Looks over her shoulder to a table where Rinko sits alone.
“Don’t. I can’t. It’s complicated.”
“Sorry. That was stupid.”
“No. It’s all right.”
Candy catches me looking at Rinko.
“She said she wanted to come.”
“She wants to keep an eye on you.”
“More like she wants to keep an eye on you. I guess I talked about you a lot. You know, when I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“You talked about me?”
Carlos brings Candy a shot.
“De nada,” she says, and downs it. “I told her what an old fart you are and how you have rotten taste in music.”
“Skull Valley Sheep Kill is the best band in L.A. these days.”
“If you’re an old fart. Anyone who doesn’t drink Geritol for breakfast knows that Asaruto Gâruzu is the only band that matters.”
She’s wearing another shirt with the same band and Japanese characters.
“If I’m an old fart, you’re a rice queen.”
She puts on her robot sunglasses. The ones with pictures from some anime TV show I’ve never heard of on the frame. When she presses a button between the lenses, the glasses sing the show’s theme song in a tinny voice.
“What makes you say that?”
The civilians all have dirty faces streaked with sin but the Lurkers are clean. I guess Lucifer isn’t in charge of them. My friends aren’t any exception when it comes to sin signs. Most of their faces are smeared, but not like Kasabian’s. Allegra and Carlos aren’t too bad. Vidocq is the dirtiest among my friends. His signs reach from his face to his hands, but I’m not surprised. I know he killed some guys in France a hundred years back. Like LAPD says, there’s no statute of limitations on murder, even if someone deserves it. I checked my own face in the hotel mirror. No sin signs at all. Is that because I’m Lucifer or because I’m still not entirely human?
“I missed you, you know. I wrote you notes and left them around hoping Kasabian could see them and tell you.”She glances back at Rinko.
“Yeah. I missed you too. A quarter of a year’s worth.”
She’s plenty pissed at me. Not as pissed as Rinko but pissed. I can’t blame her. I promised her three days and gave her a hundred. This is going to take a time to pass. If it ever does, now that she’s moved on to someone else. Still, she went to the hotel with me last night. Was that a welcome home or a good-bye fuck? I guess I’ll find out. I’m so fucking good at being patient.
“I should go see how Rinko is doing,” she says.
She takes her drinks and starts back to the table. She stops and turns.
“You were going to tell me something about Lucifer last night. What was it?” she asks.
“Nothing important. Go see Rinko before she eye snuffs both of us.”
She goes and Allegra follows her over. Vidocq and Father Traven are together at the end of the bar, so I head down that way. When I get there, Vidocq drops his arm on my shoulders again. Damn French.
“Hey, Father. When did you get in?”
I put out my hand. When Traven shakes it, he lays his other hand on top like I’m the pope or Little Richard. Liam Traven is my favorite priest. Partly because he was excommunicated, which means he doesn’t take corporate shit, and partly because he’s nuts. He reads, writes, eats, and breathes ancient languages no one has ever heard of. He knows the names of more old gods than the Vatican and every Dungeons & Dragons player in the world.
“I just walked in,” he says. “When Eugène called me, I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him. And here you are.”
“If it’s any consolation, I’m not sure if I’m here either. I feel like a bad Xerox someone put through the shredder.”
“I’m sure that will pass.”
“Sorry about your car. Did you get it back?”
On my way back to Hell, I had to abandon Traven’s car on the street near the body of a dead cop. It was an ugly scene but it was Josef’s fault not mine and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Eventually. The police held on to it for a few weeks. I feel awkward asking you this right away but I need to.”
“No. I didn’t kill that cop. But for what it’s worth, I killed the guy who did it.” And slept like a baby. But I don’t tell him that part.
I say, “I’m glad I caught the two of you together. There’s some stuff I want to talk to you about. Things that happened to me in Hell. Changes I’m still trying to get my head around.”
“Is that what the glove is for?” asks Traven.
I look down, relieved I remembered to put it back on.
“This? No. I just lost my arm and the new one is kind of ugly.”
“You lost your arm? My God.”
“Don’t sweat it, Father. Now I can get handicap plates.”
“What do you mean ugly?” asks Vidocq.
I scan the room. No one is looking, so I slip off the glove and let them get a good look at my demon mitt. Immediately I realize that it was a mistake. Traven has gone white.
Vidocq says, “Allegra tried to describe it but didn’t come close to capturing la horreur exquise.”
Traven stares at me. If eyes could scream, run home, and hide under the blankets, he’d be blind.
“Is that what Hell is like? What else did they do to you? I couldn’t psychologically survive something like that.”
Father Traven used to translate old books for the Church. Then he translated the wrong one. An evil Necronomicon thing. The Bible of the Angra Om Ya. The gods before God. He got excommunicated for his trouble, and in the priest game, excommunication is a one-way ticket to Hell. Traven is the dirtiest guy in the bar. His sin signs are deep and awful. Almost every bare inch of skin is black. His hands look like he dipped them in tar. They practically drip with sin. Then I remember. Traven’s a sin eater, from a long line of sin eaters. He’s swallowed more sins than a thousand of the worst killers and bastards you can think of. The weight of it must break his back. And he says he couldn’t survive getting an arm like mine. I think he’s selling himself short but we all define horror in our own way.
“Don’t sweat it, Father. I met God. He isn’t what you think He is. I know the Devil pretty well too. He isn’t what you think either. Trust me, Heaven or Hell, consider yourself taken care of.”
“I know that should reassure me but somehow it doesn’t.”
“Then let’s have another drink,” says Vidocq.
I call Carlos to bring over a round of drinks. We clink glasses and throw them back.
Vidocq raises an eyebrow at Traven.
“Have you told him about the Via Dolorosa?”
“Not yet.”
“The Via Dolores? What is that?”
Traven shifts his weight. The subject makes him uncomfortable.
“Via Dolorosa,” says Vidocq. “ ‘The Way of Sorrow.’ It’s something the father learned while you were gone.”
“I suppose you inspired me,” says Traven. “I’ve spent my whole life sitting by myself among books. I thought the work I was doing was important and that I was important. The sin of pride. Then I watched you march off to Hell by yourself and I knew that reading old books wasn’t enough anymore.”
“And that’s what Dolores is?”
“You could say that.”
“Is it a trick or something? Show me.”
Traven shakes his head and looks at the sparse mix of civilians and Lurkers. He isn’t used to seeing humans mixing with what he probably considers monsters. But he’s dealing with it all right.
He says, “At the right time and place. When you tell me more about what happened in Hell, I’ll tell you about the Dolorosa.”
“Deal.”
My legs shake so slightly it’s barely noticeable.
“Did you feel something just now? A little earthquake?”
“No,” says Vidocq. “Father?”
Traven shakes his head.
“Never mind. It’s probably me. I’m still getting my land legs.”
The bar doors open and standing there is my favorite professional zombie hunter, Brigitte Bardo. Ex-professional. It’s not like she quit the business, but when there aren’t any zombies left to hunt, it’s hard to stay pro. She was also a porn star in Europe. Lots of civilians in occult work and Lurkers do sex work because the money is good and they can’t deal with regular jobs. There’s something else about Brigitte and it’s not pretty and it comes to me every time I think about her. A zombie bit her while we were hunting together. We found a cure and Vidocq gave it to her but it was my sloppiness that almost turned her into maybe the worst thing in the world.