Secondhand Souls (9 page)

I figured as much, but I say to the kid, “That’s what the Friends of Dorothy are for, kid,” just taking a shot in the dark.

And he gets a goofy grin and says, “That’s what the guy said.”

And I say, “What guy?” but by that time we’re through the door and the band is playing, the horn player going to town on the old standard “Chicago,” to which I remove my sailor’s hat, because it is, indeed, my kind of town. So we drink and listen to jazz and laugh at nothing much, ’cause the kid doesn’t want to think about where he’s going, and he doesn’t want to think about where he came from, and I can’t figure out how to get behind this Dorothy thing with the band playing. After a few snorts, the kid even lets a dame take him out on the dance floor, and because he more resembles a club-footed blind man killing roaches than a dancer, I head for the can to avoid associating with him, and on my way back, I accidently bump into a dogface, spilling his drink. And before I can apologize, when I am still on the part that despite his being a pissant, lamebrained, clumsy, ham-handed army son of a bitch, it is a total accident that I bump into him and spill his drink, he takes a swing at me. And since he grazes my chin no little, I am obliged to return his ministrations with a left to the fucking breadbasket and a right cross which sails safely across his bow. At which point, the entire Seventh Infantry comes out of the woodwork, and soon I am dodging a dozen green meanies, taking hits to the engine room, the galley, as well as the bridge, and my return fire is having little to no effect on the thirty-eleven or so guys what are wailing on me. I am sinking fast, about to go down for the count. Then two of the GIs go flying back like they are catching cannonballs, and then two more from the other side, and through what light I can see, Private Eddie Boedeker, Jr., wades into the GIs like the hammer of fucking God, taking out a GI with every punch, and those that are not punched are grabbed by the shirt and hurled with no little urgency over tables, chairs, and various downed citizens, and it occurs to me that I have perhaps judged the kid’s dancing chops too harshly, for while he cannot put two dance steps together if you paint them on the floor, he appears to have a right-left combination that will stop a panzer.

Before long, guys from all branches of service are exchanging opinions and broken furniture and I hear the sinister chorus of MP whistles, at which point I grab the kid by the belt and drag him backward through the tables and the curtain behind the stage and out into the alley, where I collapse for a second to collect my thoughts and test a loose tooth, and the kid bends over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath, laughing and spitting a little blood.

“So, kid,” I says. “You saved my bacon.” And I offer him a bloody-knuckled handshake.

Kid takes my hand and says, “Friends of Dorothy,” and pulls me into a big hug.

“Yeah, yeah, Friends of fucking Dorothy,” I say, slapping him on the back. “Speaking of which,” I say, pushing him off. “Let’s take a walk—”

“I gotta get back to Fort Mason,” the kid says. “It’s nearly midnight. The cable cars stop at midnight and I gotta ship out in the morning.”

“I know, kid, but Friends of Dorothy,” I says. I’m aware all of a sudden that I have strayed somewhat from my mission, and that if the kid goes, I’m going to have to start all over again, although I suspect I have not exactly stumbled onto the mastermind of the diabolical Dorothy’s organization. But still.

“Look,” says the kid. “This has been swell. Really swell. I really appreciate you, you know, being a friend, but I gotta go. I ain’t never done nothing like this, never met anyone like you. It’s been swell.”

“Well, you know—” I says, not knowing how to bail this out. That one tooth was definitely loose.

Suddenly the kid grabs me again, gives me a big hug, then turns and runs off toward the cable-car stop. He’s about a half a block away when he turns and says, “I’m going to go see the Golden Gate Bridge in the morning. Oh-six-hundred. Ain’t never seen a sunrise over the ocean. I’ll meet you there. Say good-bye.”

And I’m am tempted to point out several things, including that he will have to see the Golden Gate Bridge as he passes under it when he ships out, that we are on the West Coast and the sun doesn’t rise over the ocean, and that there is no need to run, as I can hear the bell of the cable car and it is still blocks away, but these being finer points than I want to yell up an alley when there are MPs still on the prowl, I say, “I’ll be there.”

“Friends of Dorothy,” the kid says with a wave.

“Friends of Dorothy,” I say back at him. Which goes to show you, right there, the difference between sailors and marines: marines are fucking stupid. Running when you don’t have to.

So next morning I’m on the bridge, crack of dawn, so hungover I feel like if I don’t close my eyes I might bleed to death, but not having to worry about it, since my eyes are too swollen up to bleed, and I see the kid, all by himself, about halfway down the bridge, out in the fog, waving like a goddamn loony when he sees me. So I limp out to him, and when I get close he starts running at me, so I says, “No running! No goddamn running!”

But he keeps running, and now he’s got his arms out like to give me a big hug, which I am in no mood for.

So I back away and say, “At ease, marine.”

And he stops, bounces on his toes like a little goddamn girl.

“I couldn’t wait to see you. I thought about you all night. I couldn’t sleep,” he says.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s good,” I say. “But about the Friends of Dorothy—”

“I’m sorry about that,” the kid says. “Really sorry. I mean, I want to, but I never did anything like that before. I mean, in Kansas nobody’s like that. I thought—I mean, if my folks—I thought I was the only one. Then this guy in boot camp told me about the Friends of Dorothy.”

That’s right. It was Kansas. Anyway, I says, “That’s it, you got to tell me about Dorothy, everything you know, Eddie.”

“But I don’t know nothing. I just, I just have these feelings—”

Then the kid grabs me, right then, and gives me a great big wet one, right on the kisser. I was so surprised I just about shit myself. So I push him off of me, you know, big flat palm to the chin, and when I get done spitting, I say, “What the hell was that about?”

And the kid looks like I just shot his dog. “Friends of Dorothy,” he says.

“Yeah, the Friends of fucking Dorothy, that’s why I’m here, but what the fuck was that? You queer or something?”

And he goes, “Friends of Dorothy. Like the Scarecrow. Like the Tin Man. Like the Cowardly Lion. People ain’t got anyone else like them. But Dorothy don’t care. Like you. Like us.”

“I ain’t like you, kid. I got people. I got a wife and kid back in Chicago. I’d be out shooting the ass off of Tojo myself if I hadn’t blown my knee out in football in high school. I’m not Dorothy’s friend, I’m not your friend, kid.”

“Friends of Dorothy,” the kid says. “We find each other,” he says.

“Queers? That’s what this is about? A bunch of fairies? Marines? Sailors? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Friends of Dorothy,” the kid wails.

“Not anymore. Naval Investigative Service. I’m taking you in, kid. You’re going in the brig, and if you ever wanna get out, you’re going to tell me everything you know about the Friends of Dorothy. Everyone you ever talked to about them. I need names, places, dates.”

“But I’m shipping out today. I ain’t never done nothing like this.”

“And you’re not going to again,” I says. “It’s time of war, kid, and being queer is a court-martialable offense. You and your Friends of Dorothy are traitors. Hell, they might even shoot you. You might make it back to Kansas, but it’s going to be in chains, to Leavenworth.” Rough, I know, but I’m hungover and annoyed that I’ve been made a sap, and I’m just trying to scare the kid so he’s easier to handle.

The kid starts shaking his head and backing away. “You can’t tell my folks. You can’t tell my dad. It would kill him.”

“Everyone’s going to know, kid. It’s going to be in the papers, so you might as well come clean.”

Then he turns and really starts to run.

“Where you think you’re going, kid? I got the whole fleet I can send after you. A deserter. A queer traitor and deserter.”

“Friends of Dorothy,” he wails. His face is melting into a big glob of snot and tears.

“Yeah, Friends of fucking Dorothy, traitor. Let’s go, Boedeker.”

The he just starts wailing, crying it, “But Friends of Dorothy! Friends of Dorothy!” and then, again with the running, but this time for the rail, and before I can get close to him, he’s over, headfirst. Hit the water like a gunshot. I bet they could hear it all the way to Fort Mason.

I look down and he’s just all bent up, like a broken scarecrow, floating dead in the waves.

“That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard,” said Mike Sullivan.

“Yeah, it was the war. Tough times.”

“So, you, did you, I mean, did you jump, too?” asked Mike.

“Nah, I went back to Chicago. Heart attack in ’58.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Smoked a lot, ate a lot of bratwurst, we didn’t know stuff in those days.”

“No, why are you on the bridge?”

“No idea. Guess that’s why the Spanish broad wanted me to tell you my story. You want I should fetch her?”

“Maybe that would be good,” Mike said. The ghost’s story had made him a little woozy. He couldn’t figure out if it was nausea or anxiety, but neither were to be taken lightly when you were up on the bridge.

“So long, bridge painter,” said the ghost. “And by the way, you can tell the dame that you have not been helpful in the least. I feel like I’m the only one did any talking here. No offense.”

“You’ll want to fuck off, now,” said Mike, who despite being a nice guy, had his limits, which he was very close to reaching with this particular spirit.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” said the ghost.

In an instant he had rolled into the beam he was sitting on and Concepción materialized on the beam next to Mike, so close she could have sat on one of his safety lines.

“Thank you,” she said. “My brave champion.”

“Why?” asked Mike. He felt better just seeing her, in fact his emotions had swung from morose and anxious to elated and nearly giddy as soon as she appeared.

“I think you can understand now that we need you,” she said. “He is just one of many.”

“You need me for what?”

“To join us, of course,” she said.

9

Coffee with Lily

W
hen she arrived, he was already in the coffee shop, sitting in one of the conversation areas in a wingback chair, his long legs stretched out before him like a fun slide.

She said, “Just because the forces of darkness are rising and the end of the world is nigh, don’t think I’m going to play Armageddon bone monkeys with you, M. This is just coffee.”

She called him “M,” because she refused to call him Minty, it being, in her mind, entirely too cheerful and perky and kind of stupid, and because he told her once that when he had worked security for a casino in Vegas he said they referred to him as M.F., which everyone thought stood for
motherfucker
. So “M” for short.

“A double espresso for me, then,” he said with a smile.

She put her enormous spike-studded purse on the chair to the side of him. “How about two singles?”

He nodded. “That would be perfect, Darque.”

She turned to conceal her own smile and headed off to the counter to get their coffee. She knew he’d conceded to having two single espressos because he knew that watching him drink from the teeny-tiny cups made her laugh, so she’d won coffee already. But he
had
called her Darque, which she loved, so maybe
he’d
won. Fucksox!

When she returned with their coffees she said, “Are you sure you want to talk about this stuff here?”

“You didn’t want to come to my place.”

But she
did
want to come to his place, be charmed into insane make-up sex where he enveloped her pale and luscious beauty like a great spider, rendering her helpless in his grasp, stinging her again and again (although not in the butt) until she screamed. But he was too old, too tall, too rich (she would not be a slave to his economic stability—even at the price of moving back into a crap apartment in the Sunset), and most of all, he was way too dark and cool.

She said, “Well, in public I thought there’d be less sobbing. It would be less embarrassing for you.”

“Very considerate of you,” he said. “You know that one voice mail, I was having a bad reaction to some cold medicine. So, you know, just ignore that one.”

“Which one was that?” she said, eyes wide, which, with her dark and abundant eye makeup, made her look like a silent film star overplaying an insane person—Brigitte Helm, crazed anarchist/robot in Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis
was what she was going for.

“You know which one,” he said, then he took a sip from a tiny cup.

“Oh, you mean my new ring tone? Sure. Okay.” She smiled coyly into her latte. This was what the personal ads would refer to as “light dominance and humiliation” and she decided this was something she was keeping in mind as one of her dating profile preferences.

“Charlie Asher is alive,” Minty said.

“What?” She looked up so fast she spilled a little coffee in her lap. “Wait, what?”

“Audrey put his soul into one of those Squirrel People things. He’s been living with her at the Buddhist Center since we buried his real body.”

Lily had actually been there when he died from the Morrigan’s poison . . . well, right outside the room. She had gone to Asher’s funeral. She’d been devastated. He’d been annoying, but she’d thought he’d always be there. She’d probably ended up with Minty Fresh because she had been so traumatized over Asher’s death, at least that’s what her friend Abby had told her. Now Asher was alive? Tears welled in her eyes and she wiped them back. She said, “Wait. What?”

“Asher needs a new body and I’m going to try to help him find one. I need to find someone who is going to die, but of an accident that won’t ruin their body too much. Audrey has some
Tibetan Book of the Dead
gris-gris she going to do.”

“Wait,” said Lily. “What?”

“Rivera, the homicide cop that was following Asher, working the soul vessel cases? The one that shot the Morrigan while she was giving Charlie a hand job? He’s a Death Merchant now.”

“Rivera?” Was everybody special but her? For fuck’s sake. Armani cop, Rivera? “Wait, how long . . .”

“I sent him the
Big Book of Death
myself. Asher told me that Rivera was able to see him while he was collecting a soul vessel, so even back then he was becoming. He opened a bookstore over on Polk.”

“Rivera?” she said.

“A woman appeared in his shop out of nowhere, a banshee, shrieking, warning him that shit was going down—‘an elegant death,’ she said. Then she Tased him and disappeared.”

“A banshee?” How did you get that job? She would be awesome at that. They give you a Taser?

“Rivera hasn’t collected a soul for a year. Turns out, Charlie Asher was supposed to keep collecting soul vessels as well. He hasn’t. His shop should have stayed open. We should have never opened that restaurant.”

“Well I could have told you that,” she said. Pizza and jazz, really a stupid combination. Would have been obvious to here if she hadn’t been all woo-wooed over the enormous mint Death Merchant at the time.

Minty said, “We’re not sure that the Death Merchants who were killed when all that went down were replaced. I’m trying to find out, now. There could be a thousand or more uncollected soul vessels. That’s way, way worse than what caused the last un-fucking-raveling. No telling what kind of shit going to show up.”

“Well little Sophie is the Big Death, right, the Luminatus, she can just smack them down like before, right?”

“She might not be. Asher says her hellhounds are gone.”

He put down his first espresso and tossed back the second. Lily found no joy whatsoever in watching.

“Gone? Wait. What?”

“And the Emperor is running around, talkin’ about he got to make a list of all the forgotten dead, which would be on par crazy per usual if all this other shit wasn’t going down.”

“But no one has seen the Morrigan, right?” Lily was the one who had first figured out who—what—the raven-women were, and she’d seen firsthand the entity that had led their attack, a winged bull-headed thing that had nearly destroyed Charlie Asher’s secondhand shop looking for soul vessels. Charlie had seen the Morrigan rip the creature to shreds in the vast underground grotto that had formed under the financial district. Historically speaking, it had been a fucked-up day.

“Nah, Sophie took them out, we’re hoping
that
was a forever thing.”

“I’m going to need another coffee. You?”

He shook his head. She nearly lost her balance when she stood up—the maelstrom of new and disturbing information she was trying to process making her light-headed. He caught her arm and steadied her.

“You all right?”

She nodded. “I just need a minute with you not telling me stuff.”

She stumbled over to the counter and ordered, stood there and waited even after the barista told her he would bring it to her. It had all gone to shit so fast—one minute she was the boss of the whole situation, the next she’s stumbling around trying to grasp the idea that Charlie was alive and was trying to escape from the body of a squirrel person. (And what deeply creepy little fucks they were, even for her, for whom deeply creepy had long been a goal.) Had M dumped all this on her just because she’d been winning? Didn’t matter. She needed to talk to Charlie Asher, she needed in on this grand and dark debacle that was about to happen. She picked up her coffee and returned to the Mint One.

“So?” she said as she sat. She sipped her coffee.

“So,” Minty Fresh repeated, tenting his long fingers on his chest.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Rivera is trying to catch up on his list, retrieving soul vessels. He’s back on the force.”

“When was he
not
a cop?”

“Retired. Temporarily. Back now. He needs someone to work in his shop. He asked for you.”

“Wait. What?”

“Eventually we’re going to have to figure out a way for Asher’s shop to open again, too, if everything doesn’t blow up. But first things first.”

“You called me, had me come down here, dumped all this world-shaking shit on me because you want me to work in fucking retail?” Oh, it was so wrong. So, so, unfair. Bullshit, that’s what it was. Bullshit!

“He needs someone,” said Minty.

“Someone, but not me. Some anonymous, unspecial person with no talent, not me. I’ve saved five and a half lives this month already.”

“A half ?”

“Jumped but lived, so, you know, technically, I didn’t stop the guy from jumping, but he failed, too, since he lived, so it’s a tie, so half a save. Anyway, the point is, I have important things to do.”

“I told him that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did. I told him you were special,” he said.

“Wait,” she said, then dug into her purse for her phone to buy time to think. What was he trying to pull now? She was not going to let him get away with that weak-ass charm thing he did. She looked at her phone to check the time, then stood up. “Look, I’ll let you know. I’ve got to go. I have a date with the guy who paints the Golden Gate Bridge.”

That sounded way less impressive than she had hoped it would.

“There’s only one?”

“Yes,” she said. She had no idea. There was now.

“Y’all have a good time, then,” Minty said. “Good seeing you, Darque.”

“Yeah, you too,” she said, fussing with stuff in her purse as if she were searching for car keys, which she wasn’t, since she didn’t have a car, but it was a thing you could do when you couldn’t think of what to do.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said. He watched as she walked away and thought,
She’s too young, too short, and way to motherfuckin’ spooky, and I miss her. But at least I won coffee.

At the door of the coffee shop she turned and said, “You did not win.” Then she walked out.

Motherfuckin’ spooky,
he thought
.

D
awn, pink and chilly. The Emperor of San Francisco was trudging along the waterfront by the Aquatic Park when a guinea pig dressed in the pumpkin pants and satin doublet of an Elizabethan dandy ran by on disproportionately long, wading-bird legs, a small model tugboat thrown over its shoulder. It was followed by two equally patchwork creatures dressed in what appeared to be red shop rags, the type that are sold in rolls; one creature had the head of a calico cat, the other that of an armadillo, the latter chanting “go, go, go” as they passed.

“Well, you don’t see that every day,” said the Emperor. Lazarus, the golden retriever, ruffed in sympathy, but Bummer, the Boston terrier, was already after them, hell-bent for leather, emitting a staccato growl that sounded as if he had swallowed a very small and angry motorcycle and was trying to keep it down as he ran.

Not in my town,
Bummer thought
. Not in my town.

Lazarus looked to the Emperor as if to say,
We have to go after him, don’t we?
He fell into a tolerant trot while the Emperor tucked his walking stick under his arm and hitched up the army-surplus map bag he had slung over his shoulder to hold the heavy journal containing his list of the dead, and strode along behind.

His bad knee had been bothering him more than usual lately, since they’d started sleeping nearer the water, in and around Fort Mason, sometimes in a nook or cranny at the St. Francis Yacht Club, instead of in the utility closet behind the pizzeria in North Beach whose benevolent owner had cleared out the space and even provided a key for the Emperor and his men. Something about being closer to the bridge helped the names of the dead come to him, and on recent mornings he could scarcely work the stiffness out of his hand before the names and numbers began flooding his mind, and he would have to sit down wherever he was and record them. At first he’d gone to the library, and to the police station, and even to City Hall to get the names the dead had asked for, but these were names he hadn’t found there, and the dates went back much further than the year the dead had originally asked him to record.

At the edge of the park, streetcar tracks, long unused, ran into a long concrete trench where the street cars used to pass before entering the tunnel under the great meadow above Fort Mason. Bummer chased the hodgepodge creatures into the trench, knowing that there was a set of steel doors closing off the tunnel at the end and soon he would tear ass out of whatever these things were, or at least stand tough and give them a stern barking at.

As the doors came into his view, Bummer smelled a foul, avian odor that he’d encountered before, and he stopped so abruptly he nearly toppled over. The doors covered only the lower portion of the tunnel; the arch above, nearly four feet high, was open and dark. At the base of the doors was a wide puddle that looked like tar or heavy oil.

The Emperor and Lazarus caught up to Bummer just as one of the creatures, the calico-cat-headed one, bounced up and over the doors, into the dark arch. As the second one, the guinea pig, crouched to leap over the top of door as well, out of the puddle came a sleek feminine hand with long talons that impaled the little dandy in the chest. Another hand snaked out of the dark liquid, snatched the toy tugboat, and submerged, then a third emerged, talons bared, and with the first one tore the guinea pig to shreds; blood and silk splattered the door and the concrete walls of the trench.

The third creature turned and ran back toward the Emperor and his men, who also turned and followed it out of the trench.

Above his own rasping breath the Emperor heard, “Oh, that’s delicious, isn’t that delicious?” in a breathy, female voice, that wafted from the dark tunnel.

T
hey’d agreed to meet at an independent coffee place off Union Street in the Marina called The Toasted Grind.
Did nobody drink anymore?
Lily wondered. She loved coffee, but this was turning out to be a stressful day and a couple of stout Long Island iced teas would certainly take the edge off, especially if the bridge guy was buying. She’d only agreed to this because the bridge guy had called as she was getting ready to meet M, and she thought it would be something she could tell the Mint One that would make him jealous. Oh, well.