Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) (29 page)

Two deep clearing breaths to regain my composure and I began.  I relayed the entire night’s events.  Soup to nuts.  Alpha to Omega. In to Amen.  I didn’t abridge things like when I spoke to Bernard and Bernie but gave him all the dirty details.  I owed him that much…if not as a reward for solving the Charlemagne angle, then for loyalty to him because of the angst he showed as I departed earlier that night for my mission with Bernard.

Helmet didn’t interrupt, and given he’d need to keep up his bad habit, the I-can’t-speak act, I didn’t expect him to.  What I did expect was the I-told-you-so smile.  I’d underestimated ghost buddy because I only saw concern as I described what happened in No Face’s version of hell. 

Helmet wouldn’t ask any questions so I stood up, maneuvered my way around Karl’s displays of affection, and headed down the short hallway to hit the head and then grab another beer.  I sat back down in front of the computer and picked up my smartphone.  Forty-seven messages.

I opened the one from Sister Christian first. 

MISSED U. HOPE U HD FUN W/Sarah.

And there was a photo of the gang sitting around a table in some German restaurant. Beer glasses for the guys, a wine glass for Sister Christian.

No mention of cathedrals, demons, or hanging out in evil paintings.  Maybe it was all wiped from their memory-banks.  I wondered who could perform that kind of magic but didn’t think long on it.  When you’re dealing with angels and demons there are many suspects.

The other forty-six texts?  All from Soyla.  The first one showed her fully clothed and I thought she must have been mad at me for spoiling her payday. She wore a scowl on her face and her arms were crossed prudishly at her chest.  OK, she was definitely mad at me for ruining her payday.  I cycled through the rest of the snaps and saw that Soyla appeared to peel away her anger in synch with peeling away her clothes.  Quick timeout for a public service announcement:  Smoking hot babes should always use that kind of anger management therapy.

Somewhere during the Soyla-show I decided to stop ceding control of my life to my glands.  I’d wake up a new me in the morning.  So rather than spending the rest of the evening ogling Soyla’s pics I gathered my resolve and put the phone down.  After only three more hours and another couple of beers, that is.  The sun hadn’t risen so technically I could say it was still evening.  The Gaius versus glands thing hadn’t officially kicked off.

Helmet sat on the sofa and Karl slept in his lap. I decided to grab an hour or two in my bed before showering and heading off to my shift at the commissary.

Neither Karl nor Helmet stirred as I shut down the computer and gathered all the empties.  Recycling is a pain in the neck.  When I returned to shut off the lights and bid Helmet good night I noticed someone had booted up the computer in my absence.  Someone, heck.  Both of the
someones
in the room knew who did it even if
one
of the
someones
pretended like he didn’t.  Stupid ghost with his stupid incontinent dog.

I gazed at the monitor.  Looked like Helmet left Charlemagne behind and moved on to researching someone else. Great.  Maybe he’d find a way for me to visit the larger continent of hell next week.  I thought about shutting the box down.  But what would be the point?  It’d be on in the morning and the dead German soldier would just pretend like it wasn’t him.

“Karl wouldn’t fib to me like this,” I said to Helmet.

Big mistake.  The sound of his name excited Karl into a doggie climax…all over Herr Doktor’s hardwood floors.  Perfect metaphor for the evening.  At least it would all be gone in the morning.  The screen caught my eye again as I waved goodnight to Helmet.

I paused to scan one of the open sites, each window stacked one upon the other.  Helmet’s new topic of interest: Joseph.  A few lines told me this wasn’t the Joseph of Mary and Joseph fame but some guy who lived and died long before the world’s most famous couple rode their donkey into both Bethlehem and history.

The religious theme continued, because this Joseph turned out to be one of the Jewish Patriarch dudes. Seems he was sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up ruling Egypt.  I could sympathize with the part about family selling you out.  Hadn’t Sparky done the same to me?  This Joseph guy had eleven brothers, or Sparkies, to deal with. I headed off to bed. 

“Have fun,” I said as I turned off the light.

And yes, Karl’s ears went up in the ghost dog concentration look and I sensed a cold draft on the pillow next to me as I drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 39

“Whatchu doin’ here, homey?”

For a sick moment I thought J-Rod remembered the past couple of days.  I felt guilty for causing the gang worry by not answering their texts after I got home from Aachen.  Probably thought I’d died.  But that didn’t fit with the grin I saw on J-Rod’s face.  Same with the rest of the crew.  All there, all smiling.

“What are you talking about?” I said as I hung my coat over the peg.

“Right,” said Watanabe.  “Come to work on your vacation?  That’s dedication.”

“I call it loco, homey.”

Didn’t make sense.  I’d not asked for a vacation.  The main reason for that?  Baggers don’t get vacations.  We’re not full-time employees but more like food servers back in the USA who work mostly for tips. When we want to take a few days off then we arrange things by trading schedules with our buddies.

Captain Tickles walked over and said, “Which one of you is Private Teutoberg?”

The moron
. 

“Me,” I said, and I raised my hand as if saying “me” wouldn’t suffice. 

Now who’s the moron?

Tickles handed me an envelope and walked away. 

“Heil Hitler,” I said under my breath so that only the baggers could hear.

The envelope contained two things.  The first was my passport.  Check that.  It was a copy of my American passport.  It looked real enough.  And as I paged through it I saw that it probably
was
real.  All of my entry and exit stamps for the past couple of years.  The photo was updated a bit.  My face wore the vacant expression a chick would see if she caught me meditating on her backside.  Nice touch. 

A page in back felt a little thicker than the others so I flipped to it.  A visa for entry into Israel.  The other document was a computer printout showing departure and return dates along with confirmation numbers for an El Al flight.  Departing from Frankfurt in four hours.

Sister Christian hugged me and said something about how sweet it was for me to come in and say goodbye to my friends.  An excellent suggestion.  I gave her a good, long hug goodbye and I hung on until she pushed back with enough strength to let me know she was getting desperate for air.

I left the commissary with a load of questions unanswered. Did the crew remember anything?  Did they still know about my condition? And the most important of all: was the firmness I felt up top on Sister Christian home grown?  Would it really matter?  No.  At least I left with one answer.

I walked toward the Wiesbaden train station and my mind shifted to matters much less important than Sister Christian’s somatic enhancement history.  Things like who sent me a plane ticket to Israel and how they manufactured a new—and authentic—American passport.

I checked the little blue book travel document once more on the train ride back to Bad Homburg.  The issue date was set to a year before I arrived in Germany.  Whoever created the thing understood El Al security would be suspicious of a newly-minted passport.  My benefactors had thought of everything.

And who were they?  Val’s relatives came to mind.  They might have found my name in some of his documents.  Maybe they thought we’d had a business meeting or something just before the old guy went missing.  On the other hand, I suspected Val left behind a lot of rich grieving people.  Money might not buy happiness but a lot of cash can dry up a few tears.

I dismissed Prince One Way and his family from the suspect list.  They would have sent me a ticket to Baghdad, Damascus, or some other location in the same geography.  I suspected that crowd steered clear of Tel Aviv.

Bernard and The Seven?  Perhaps.  More than perhaps, when I thought about it.  Most likely.  They’d own the resources necessary to reproduce a passport—and an Israeli visa.  They could pull it off, all right.  But The Seven didn’t taste right either.  Close, but a few spices missing here and there.  Bottom line, I didn’t know who wanted me in Israel.  By the time I reached my apartment, I’d decided to go ahead and find out.

Karl didn’t seem a bit confused to see me back from work so soon.  He did his joyous sneezing circles routine and dropped his guts.  No time to care because I needed to pack. I told Helmet I’d be gone for a few days.  He didn’t seem to care either, though he did perk up when I told him I’d leave the smartphone on the computer desk.  Who could afford those kinds of roaming charges?

Three pairs of boxers, three t-shirts from the pile that stunk the least, and my toothbrush.  I opted against the additional weight of toothpaste and a comb. The hotel would provide those things at the concierge desk. Everything fit in one of those zippered, biodegradable shopping bags.

I decided to have a little fun on the way out and stopped at Herr Doktor’s door.  He answered my knock with Frau WatchEverything in tow.  I handed him my key and said, “I’ll be gone for a couple of days.  Could you please bring in my mail?” 

He replayed it a couple of times in his mind before his face lit up with greedy glee.  Free access to nose around my flat.  He grabbed my mailbox key before I could change my mind, nodded yes, and slammed the door in my face.  I think I heard dancing feet as I walked out the door and into the little parking lot.

The train ride to the basement of the Frankfurt Flughafen—airport—got me there with two and a half hours to spare. Good thing because all the questioning by El Al security almost made me miss the flight.  Why did I want to go to Israel?  No good answer.  Remember how I said I can’t lie well?  A trip to Israel wasn’t even on my mind when I’d gotten dressed a couple hours before.  I think my story left the security guy with the impression I was traveling to study the mating habits of bisexual camel flies.

Embarrassing, but effective enough to get me moving down the hall toward the departure lounge.  I heard tapping on the glass wall as I passed the smoking room.  They actually have one of those in the airport.  All glass. All fog.  You could smell the place fifty yards away so how effective could the million-dollar venting system really be?  I stopped and saw Sarah Arias waving at me. 

She held up the just-a-second finger, took a last toke that consumed half an unfiltered cigarette, and smashed the butt into an overfull ashtray.  I saw her exchange one of those female butt-poking-back-so-our-crotches-don’t-touch hugs with an elderly lady before she opened the door.

Smiling perfection of beauty and an odor that said flower-strewn hillside in paradise as painted in a North Carolina sports bar.  I forgot all about the tobacco smell when Sarah Arias threw her arms around my neck in the kind of welcome usually reserved for a soldier returning from war.

“You didn’t give them what they wanted,” she whispered.

And maybe I didn’t.  But she was well on her way to giving me all that I wanted, and for the second time in one day I carried a friendly hug a bit too far.  A brief mental debate and I awarded Sarah Arias’s parts with my official seal of naturalness.

“Pig,” she whispered in my ear, but she didn’t sound mad. 

Which meant, of course, she only took a cursory look at what I was thinking, otherwise she would have slapped my face. And here I thought I’d vanquished those treacherous glands.  All things considered, I felt lucky my guardian angel wasn’t some fat bearded guy fresh off the shrimp boats in Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

Sarah Arias looked good standing there in tight jeans and a soft-looking lavender sweater that had won the spot closest to her body in the morning clothes lottery.  Her whole ensemble seemed to enhance the many things that made her beautiful—from her light purple tam to the sweater to the chain belt hanging loosely around her thin waist to the jeans and the cute little hiking boots into which snuggled what I imagined to be perfect feet.  I even fell in love with her oversized purple purse for no other reason than it belonged to Sarah Arias.

Oversized purple purse?
  I took another look.  Leather? Check.  Egyptian hieroglyphics? Check.  Gold Hebraic symbols? Check.  I turned around.  I wanted to get out of the crazy modern-architecture building and away from Sarah Arias.

She did her mind-reading trick and grabbed my hand before I could go.  I tried to shake her off but she wasn’t having any of it.  She radiated her full angel mode through the skin contact.  “Calm down,” it said.  “Peace and love,” it said.  “We are the world,” it said.  Now I was the one who wasn’t having any of it.  If she wanted the confrontation to happen on the secure side of Terminal 2 in front of the Duty Free Shop, so be it.  I wrenched my hand away from hers.

“You used me,” I said.

And she had.  I could forgive Soyla and Sparky.  I expected as much out of them.  They couldn’t help doing what they did because of who they were.  And they never tried to make me believe otherwise. I never expected any dealing with No Face or his demons to go my way, and there was brutal honesty in that.  Val and Prince One Way?  I harbored no ill will toward them.  They’d paid the tab on what they owed me.  Accounts closed.  But an angel?
My
guardian freakin’ angel
?

If I’d given the concept of a guardian angel any thought at all—and I couldn’t remember doing it before this mess started—I would have thought
no way
.

“I did not,” Sarah Arias said, and I could see a desperate, heartbroken look on her face.

“Nice try sister,” I said.  “You’re no different from Mestephos.”

I thought she’d cry.  Didn’t I hear somewhere about no tears in heaven?  Tears wouldn’t move me though, and I strained to hold off the impulse as I felt my teeth extend.  And I piled it on.

“I take that back,” I said.  “You are different from a demon.”

I saw hope on her face.

“Mestephos never claimed to be on my side,” I said.  “All he wanted out of me was a meal.  And he made it clear.”

Tears began.  They glistened like diamonds and disappeared in flight before they reached the floor.  So what.  Let them flow.  Would they be there if I’d taken that purple bag into the demon dimension and never returned?  I doubted it.  She wasn’t crying for me.  Not at all.  Those tears were all about getting caught.

“You’re wrong,” Sarah Arias said.

“About what?” I said.  “Am I wrong about you wanting that purple bag as much as anyone else who drove me to doing the things I did?  The risks I took?”

A couple of American soldiers in civilian clothes slowed up to take another look as they passed.  I noticed a few more people staring at Sarah Arias and me from the Duty Free Store.  I lowered my voice.

“Or am I wrong about twenty people who died in hell last night,” I said. 

That would be in addition to the two lives I ended to satisfy my own demon, but I wasn’t in the mood to beat myself up.

Sarah Arias pulled a lacy handkerchief from somewhere and began dabbing at her eyes.  I noticed her makeup didn’t smear.  She still looked perfect.  Was she even wearing makeup?

“Come with me,” she said.  “And I’ll explain.”

I thought about that for a second.

“Come where?” I said.  “To the departure lounge?”

She shook her head.

“Israel,” she said.

“Just like that?” I said.  “Israel.  Drop everything and fly off to Israel with someone who tried to get me killed.”

Now I saw the hint of a smile on her face.

“If you weren’t already prepared to do that,” she said.  “What are you doing here now?”

Crap.  Checkmate.

“We’re going to sit down in that bar,” I pointed at the restaurant a few shops down the wide hall, “and you’re going to convince me I’m wrong about what you’ve done to me.”

“We’ll miss the flight,” she said.

So be it.  We could miss that flight and every other departure.  I didn’t care.  She could go by herself.  Leave me behind.  I didn’t know why she needed me anyway.  Pulling at that thread a little more, I didn’t know why an angel would need me to steal the purple bag in the first place.  It kind of made sense there’d be rules against demons walking into a cathedral and desecrating a grave, and I kind of understood why Sparky and Soyla nudged me down the yellow brick road in order to keep the risk away from themselves.  But an angel? 

You’d think they’d be granted free access to holy locations.  Was it possible Sarah Arias was just cleaning up my mess?  I wasn’t sure, and my anger didn’t want to give in just yet.

“We’ll miss the flight,” she repeated, and this time I heard urgency in her voice.

“I’m not going,” I said.

I could see the gears moving in her mind, or maybe I imagined it.  More likely she was scanning my brain and picking up the uncertainty.

“I’ll pretend to be your wife on the flight,” she said.

“Departure in twenty minutes,” I said, “Stop gabbing and let’s get moving.”

And we did.