The Dirty Streets of Heaven

twenty-six

I dreamed I was reaching out for Caz. The dream should have been sweet or sexy or full of Catholic guilt or something, but instead I was scrabbling in dirt like a dog as she was being pulled away from me down a hole into dark, crumbling earth. At last she was gone, and though I scratched frantically all I could hear were muffled screams. I woke up in my Earthly body, streaming sweat, and for long moments my limbs felt like they belonged to somebody else.

Earthbound angels dream, but not very often. I almost never do, but occasionally a disturbing experience brings one on, and Temuel’s response counted as just that. I’ve always had a kneejerk distrust of Heaven, especially when it came to whether or not they had Bobby Dollar’s best interests in mind, and although my superiors could be stingy with the truth I’d never known any of them to lie straight to my face. I mean, could they even do that? They were important angels of the Lord! But unless the Mule had forgotten an extremely important conversation with me, something angels definitely don’t do, he was baldfacedly denying something that we both knew had happened.

There was a third option, of course: I might have lost my mind, or at least the parts that I’d always counted on, my memory and my sense of logic. That wasn’t a possibility I could afford to entertain very seriously, since I had become more and more isolated from my Heavenly support system in recent days. My best friend was in the hospital, maybe in a coma, my favorite hangout was wrecked, and my bosses were pissed off at me. If I couldn’t trust my own judgement I was in real trouble.

Morning light was filtering in on me through the curtains of Clarence’s rented basement room. Well, I say rented, but it looked a lot like the kind of room an adult son might have waiting for him in his parents’ house, always ready for a visit. A fancy (and dust-free) model of a biplane dangled from the ceiling on a nearly invisible thread, a Giants team poster hung on the wall, and the bookcase was crammed with science fiction and sports and travel books. Even the bed where Clarence’s currently untenanted body lay looked as though it had once belonged to a child. The coverlet was decorated with the logo of the San Judas Jacks, a local minor-league basketball franchise that had gone under some years ago.

But just because Clarence’s soul was still in Heaven didn’t mean his body was dead. Our masters had arranged things much more sensibly than that, and the kid gave every sign (and sound) of merely being asleep. I lay waiting for him to wake up, and while I did, I ran through everything that had happened to me on this last strange trip Upstairs. I knew I had particularly wanted to remember the idea that I might not be the only one with authority problems, but as often happens, whatever had made it seem so significant at the time had not remained attached to the concept. Still, it was something to mull over while I listened to Clarence’s quiet snoring.

I thought about calling Caz. I’d actually thought about it a lot in the last twenty-four hours, but I didn’t know what to say to her. Hell, I didn’t even know how I felt. Well, actually, I did, but that was part of the problem-I wasn’t supposed to feel that way about someone from the other side.

“Where’s the coffee?” I said when Clarence’s eyes began to flutter open.

He groaned. “Come on, man, give me a minute!”

“A minute? Angel, please. I’ve been lying here waiting and listening to you wheeze like an asthmatic basset hound for at least half an hour. You should get checked for whatever that is. Sleep apnea. You sounded like you were trying to swallow your tongue.”

“Really?” Alarmed, he sat up.

“No. But I’m glad your heart’s actually beating now. Find me coffee, and then tell me what you discovered in the Records Hall.”

“You’re an asshole, Bobby.”

“Just trying to do the Lord’s holy work.”

He led me upstairs to the kitchen and got something going in a French press that looked appropriately black and strong. “Are you going to be pissed off at me if I didn’t find all the stuff you wanted?” he asked.

“Depends. Talk.”

He looked like a kid who was certain he’d be grounded for a month. “It’s just…well, except for that Patrillo guy, there wasn’t anything on any of the rest of those names.”

“Really?” I gave him a stern look, but inside I was pleased. He’d passed the test, as well as confirming what I’d guessed about the names. Jose Maria Patrillo, head of some Christian charity called the Sixth Angel Foundation, was the only person whose name I’d given the kid that wasn’t one of the names Fatback had told me showed up in connection with the Magian Society. As I’d suspected, Clarence hadn’t been able to find any records on Habari or any of the others, just the ringer, Patrillo, which meant the Magian-related names all had to be pseudonyms. “Really, kid? You couldn’t find anything on the others? Nothing at all? Not even rumors?”

“It doesn’t work like that!” He looked upset at being doubted. Really it was what I had expected to hear, and I was happy to have the confirmation. It also made me feel better about Clarence’s truthfulness, although by no means did it prove he was legit. “This isn’t like an internet search or something,” he explained as I did my best to act as though I didn’t already know. “The Records are about real people, see. I found all kinds of stuff on that Patrillo guy, but all the other names-that Habari and the Germans, those others-they just don’t give anything back. They’re not among the living right now, if they ever were.”

“Which is probably because they aren’t real people,” I said. “Cool your jets, kid. I believe that’s all you found, and I don’t think anyone else would have found anything more, but-”

I didn’t get a chance to finish because just that moment Sheila, Clarence’s roommate/surrogate mom, walked into the kitchen. She was wearing slippers and a dark green velour housecoat. “Good morning, Harrison,” she fluted as she came in, then stopped, clearly a little surprised to see me. “Oh! Did your friend stay over?” Her look was confusion mixed with an unwillingness to intrude on what she obviously considered private matters.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said cheerfully. “We were up so late playing Twister that I just crashed out on Harrison’s floor.” I turned to the kid, who had spluttered coffee down his front. “You okay, buddy?”

“Twister?” she said doubtfully.

“Yeah, it’s a card game. A variant on Two-Man Stud. Hope you don’t mind me spending the night. It got a bit late to drive home.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” she said. “Do you fellows want some breakfast?”

“He might,” I said, standing up. “I need to get to work. See you, Harrison. Thanks for the game.”

Clarence looked as though he wished the ghallu had got me after all.

I only knew part of the reason that Eligor had sent his pet monster after me; I knew why he thought I had the golden feather, but not why Grasswax had blamed it on me, or exactly what kind of weird bargain the feather signified. But one thing I’d decided was that it was too much of a coincidence that Grasswax, Caz, Eligor, and I should all be involved somehow with both the disappearing souls and the disappearing feather, especially since it was now looking like it had all gone down on the same day. In fact, I was becoming more and more certain that the feather had some bearing on the whole missing-souls mess that started with Edward Walker’s death. I also wanted to know why Walker and the others had been souljacked in the first place. Were they just random victims? But if so, why would Walker have been checked out so closely ahead of time, including personal visits from Habari? Was Habari working with the soul-stealers or against them?

The fact that the Rev. Dr. Habari and the others from apparently Magian-related groups seemed to have no independent existence only strengthened my belief in a link between Eligor’s feather and the missing souls. The Magian paper trail leading to Eligor suggested that, whether or not he was the author of the Great Soul Snatch, the grand duke clearly had something to hide about his role in the whole apocalyptic mess. It also made me realize that I needed to get a better handle on the souls who had already disappeared, or at least find out enough about them to look for patterns. I needed to speed things up, and I had very little hope that the summit conference between Heaven and Hell was going to come up with answers that would help me-not with so many asses to cover, both those bearing tails and otherwise.

When I hit the Camino Real I found myself a coffee shop that looked just busy enough that I wouldn’t be the only patron and ordered a late breakfast, then pulled up all the memos Fatback had sent me about the individuals in San Judas whose souls Monica had told me were among the missing. It wasn’t the first time I’d looked the information over but it had been more than a few days, and I was hoping something new would jump out at me.

Even the atheist angle, which was quite strong with Walker and a few others, didn’t hold up all the way through. Several of the missing souls belonged to men who seemed to have a fairly ordinary connection to religion, and one of them was even a well-known Christian minister, leader of a successful, modern, evangelical church that was big among the lapsed Catholics of Spanishtown. On the surface, the missing souls seemed to be a pretty random lot.

I had worked through hash browns, bacon, my second cup of coffee, and was poking at the fruit cup when I finally realized I’d been spending my time looking for secondary connections like neighborhoods and workplaces and committees and even children’s schools without giving any attention to perhaps the most important thing they all had in common-their deaths. Walker was a suicide. Rubios, the minister, had fallen from an office balcony when a railing had given way. An esteemed Stanford researcher had slipped off a BART platform in front of a moving train with nobody nearby. The police had concluded her death was nothing but a tragic accident. The rest? Two suicides and three more natural deaths.

So there was my first question-three suicides? Wasn’t that an abnormally large ratio out of seven otherwise random deaths? Had they all really chosen to take their own lives? One of the suicides had been very ill, which made it less likely that foul play was involved, but it certainly didn’t rule it out.

But if Eligor or some other strategist in Hell had come up with a way to snatch the souls of the departed right under our angelic noses, why would they need to make it look like anything? Dead folks were shuffling off the mortal coil every hour, and both sides had thousands of operatives just to process those transitions to the afterlife. Why bother to hurry a few folk out of their mortal bodies just to snatch their souls? Unless some kind of special death was necessary before the soul in question could be hijacked. Was that where someone like the elusive Habari came in? To “help” the chosen out of their bodies, whether they wanted to go or not? But the Reverend Doctor seemed to have spent a lot of time hanging around with Edward L. Walker for someone whose job was simply to commit a murder. Even if it was necessary to give the mark something before he or she died-some kind of soul-collector or equally science-fictional device-it seemed like it would have been easier to have a professional pickpocket plant the thing on them before they were killed instead of sending someone like Moses Habari to pal around with the intended victim for weeks ahead of time.

No, clearly I still didn’t have enough information to make sense out of the disappearing dead, or even to begin to. I sure couldn’t guess what the method was, and I didn’t have a clue as to the motive, either. Why steal souls and try to hide it? Not that the Opposition wouldn’t have loved to be able to do it, but when there’s only two players in the game, and one of them always cheats anyway, why would they bother to keep their advantage a secret? There were only two players in the game, weren’t there…?

I shuffled through the information Fatback had sent me on the deaths, all the forensics and reports from first responders, but still nothing jumped out at me except the waste of all these significant lives, many of them over before they should have been, no matter what the reason.

Then something did jump out at me. In fact, it damn near knocked me down and screamed “Boo!” in my face. Significant lives. The methods of leaving those lives may have seemed random and the lives themselves may not have had any connections with each other, but one thing did link them-they were all significant people.

As this struck me, I felt a prickle run up my spine. Scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, and even a minister. I scanned the list again, and now that I was looking for it, it screamed out at me: they weren’t all as rich as Edward Walker by any means, but they were all accomplished people who had made their way in the world and done so very successfully. Proud people, and with good reason to be. Bright, determined, and probably articulate.

Proud people.

Struck by a sudden hunch I dialed a number I hadn’t called in a while-the Walker house. I was in luck: Garcia Windhover answered the phone.

“Yo. G-Man talking at you.”

“Bobby Dollar here. I need you to do me a favor.”

“Sweet! I’m all over it, boss.”

Boss? Did he think he was my deputy now? Or worse, my assistant? “Uh, okay. Well, if Posie’s there with you I need you to get her out of the house for about two hours. Can you do that? You see, I’m worried. I think she might be in danger at her place.” I explained to you how sometimes even angels like me have to stretch the truth, didn’t I? “Give me a couple of hours, and I’ll let you know when it’s safe to go back.” I explained it would be best if he could get her out of the neighborhood entirely for the afternoon.

He promised he’d give it a shot. “I’ll tell her it’s like a bomb threat or something.”

It wasn’t a very good excuse, but obviously she wasn’t the most discerning young lady, either. I decided not to micromanage. “Thanks…G-Man. I’ll be in touch in a couple of hours.”

Was I feeling guilty? Good question, but I wasn’t putting him and Posie in danger-the contrary, if anything. I was heading for the Walker house, and the farther they stayed away from me the better their chances of a long, happy life, since I was a bit of a disaster magnet at the moment.

I left Orban’s loaner Benz around the corner from the Walker place and let myself into the yard through the side gate. The house was empty, which meant G-Man had done his job. I hadn’t bothered to ask him to leave the house unlocked for me because of the terrifying possibility that if he knew I was going to be there he might sneak back to try to help me. Anyway, anybody who was in the Harps can pick a lock with his eyes closed and his hands tied. I wasn’t trying to make things interesting, so I was inside in a minute or so. The house hadn’t changed much, except that more dust had gathered on the books and objets d’art since my last visit. I got the feeling that Posie was squatting in the place more than inhabiting it. Perhaps it was going to be sold, which made it even more important that I find what I was looking for today.

There was one problem, though: I didn’t actually know what I was looking for. As I’d reviewed Fatback’s material on the local victims, I had become more and more certain that someone like Edward Lynes Walker, a successful, well-known man, wouldn’t just kill himself without even trying to explain it, unless he was very, very depressed, if for no other purpose than the apology many suicides left. But Walker had no history of depression, and judging from the coverage of his death, it seemed that everybody who knew him had been astonished that he had taken his own life. It’s damn hard to prove a negative, of course, and the absence of a note certainly didn’t indicate murder. But if I did find a suicide note that others had missed, or anything that would shed some light on his frame of mind in his last days, I might be able at least to eliminate foul play and narrow my focus to what had happened after he died.

My only lucky break was that most of Edward Walker’s working life seemed confined to the room he had probably called a “study,” but which a later generation would have called an office; a big, sunny upstairs bedroom oriented around a handsome antique writing desk, on which his computer, a fairly expensive Dell Precision, still sat. The walls were lined with bookcases except for a low table on one side of the door and two large metal filing cabinets on the other. I didn’t bother checking the computer, and not only because the police lab and probably his lawyer would have already examined it thoroughly. Although he was no doubt very technologically literate, Walker seemed to me like the old-school kind of guy who would always have a hard copy of anything important. In fact, if he was concerned enough about snoopy hackers he might not even have committed it to electronic memory. After all, Edward Lynes Walker had been born into the last analog generation.

There are two different ways to toss a room: the kind where you know what you’re looking for and the kind where you don’t. The first kind is easier because you can immediately eliminate a lot of things. For instance, if you’re looking for a picnic basket you don’t need to spend a lot of time searching in envelopes. I didn’t have that luxury, so I started pulling things out of cabinet drawers as quickly as I could and setting them on the floor. After about half an hour the carpet looked like the downtown San Judas skyline crafted from piles of paper and beige cardboard, and I sat down and began working my way through.

I pulled out every sheet of paper in all of those files, one sheet at a time, and examined each one, albeit briefly. For an otherwise lazy guy I’m pretty thorough, but at the end of the first two hours of hard grafting I hadn’t come across anything out of the ordinary, although after having looked at thousands of snippets of Walker’s life I was beginning to feel as if I was finally getting to know him. For one thing, just reading his business correspondence made it clear that he was no sucker. He might have had an overly keen belief in his own undefeatable good sense (which I have found is often true with engineering types) but I was equally certain he wouldn’t have bought any pitch without proof. The atheism first suggested by his books seemed to arise not out of a dislike of religion per se, but from a feeling that anything that couldn’t be scientifically proved wasn’t worth wasting time on. Did that make him more of an agnostic than an atheist? Walker certainly hadn’t been religious, no matter how you sliced it. If by some chance his disappearance had been voluntary, why would someone who didn’t believe in an afterlife decide to play hide-and-go-seek with Heavenly authorities?

More than two hours had now gone by. Posie might convince her boyfriend to bring her home any time, but I wasn’t ready to give up. I hurried through all the books in the office, pulling each from its shelf and inspecting it for stray envelopes or pieces of paper tucked inside, without luck. It took a long time but I was being thorough. I got all the books back into place and the room tidied just as I heard a car pull into the driveway. I wasn’t panicked-I knew I could make Dozy Posie believe just about anything, and I couldn’t imagine G-Man putting up much of an intellectual struggle either, but I didn’t want to push my luck in case I had to get back into the house again, although I wasn’t sure it would be worth it. After all, I’d failed to find what I was looking for despite a pretty thorough search, so I was beginning to doubt the sudden certainty that had set me off, a hunch that had seemed very powerful just a few hours earlier.

I hurried down the stairs and stopped dead, staring. I had completely forgotten the books in the living room shelves, most of which were art books, business manifestos, and a few novels. But right in front of me were several rows of religious material-well, anti-religious, mostly-that now seemed to me like as good place to leave a suicide note as in his office. But I could hear keys rattling in the door, which meant I couldn’t stay. I’d have to come back another time.

Then I saw it, down near the bottom of the nearest bookshelf, between one of Dawkins’ books and Mark Twain’s Letters From the Earth-the black leather, gilded spine of a King James Bible. As they used to sing on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others.” The front door was opening, so I just reached out and grabbed. Then the angel with the stolen bible under his coat (that would be me) sprinted through the kitchen to the back door and escaped into the yard, only seconds ahead of the bible owner’s granddaughter and her faux-gangster boyfriend.