The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Volume One of Bobby Dollar (46 page)

I sat for a moment staring at Walker’s typewritten letter. I felt, as Edward Lynes Walker himself must have felt—like a man who had been swimming near the shore and suddenly realized the current was pulling him far, far out to sea. Could this be real? Did Habari truly represent some dissident faction of Heaven or was he an agent of Eligor’s? Or could he even be Eligor himself? Clearly, whatever he was, the being who called himself Moses Habari had abilities I didn’t quite understand. If he had taken Walker, a living man, through a Zipper to Outside and then showed him a soul about to be judged, without either the prosecutor or the advocate knowing he was there, he was doing something so far beyond the rules I knew that it might as well have been magic. The higher angels and, presumably, the higher demons can do things we rank-and-file can’t, but they are also very powerfully limited by the Conventions when they manifest on Earth, even Outside. I could believe that Habari and his lot (if he wasn’t some kind of lone wolf) might be willing to break the Conventions, but how could they get away with it? The whole system was set up to make sure a Principality or a Hell-Duke couldn’t just go strolling around Mortalville breaking the rules. I couldn’t even imagine how anyone could get around it and still do what Habari had done.

I didn’t have any answers. I felt like Woodward and Bernstein talking to Deep Throat in a Washington garage, learning that their story reached all the way to the White House. But I doubted that either of those two reporters worried that their discoveries might threaten not only their immortal souls but also the very foundations of the universe.

I really, really wanted a drink. Instead, I went back to reading the extraordinary document that had been hidden in the atheist’s bible.

I skimmed through the next two pages, which was about how Walker put his affairs in order but without making it obvious what he planned. I’m sure he was not the first prospective suicide to have done such a thing, but he was certainly the first to do it while planning to scam both Heaven and Hell. My admiration for Walker grew as I thought about it. What he had done took guts, real guts. Like one of the early astronauts he had been given a lonely role to play, but without the
potential for glory if he succeeded. He even referred to himself as an “after-naut,” a joking term he had picked up from Habari.

Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, Walker had very little to say about what was supposed happen to him after he connected the hose to the exhaust pipe of his 7 Series BMW, except that he had been assured he need do nothing, and that Habari and his “people” (a pretty dubious term, I think you’d agree) would handle all the details. I couldn’t help wondering whether they had succeeded. Certainly Walker’s soul had gone
somewhere
. I had been an eyewitness to that.

He closed with part of a poem by a writer whose name I didn’t recognize, R. W. Raymond.

He signed the last page,

Yours in hope,

Edward Lynes Walker

I
FEEL WEIRD admitting it, but the first person I thought of calling when I finished reading Walker’s astonishing letter was not Sam, or Monica, or even my bosses upstairs (although I’d have to, of course) but Caz. Since we’d parted, I’d been carrying around the memory of what we’d done together—how we’d
been
together—and I still couldn’t find a proper place for it in either my heart or my head. Thoughts of her kept drifting through my head like sun showers, and like sun showers I couldn’t tell whether they were a relief to my feverish mind or precursors of bigger, darker storms to come. What the hell, literally, had I been thinking? What was I doing? How could I hope to keep something like this hidden from Heaven?

But, oh, dear God, how I missed her. It hadn’t been just lust, or even simply love—as if that could ever be simple. We had felt right together. We were twin souls separated by a million years’ history of war and hatred and treachery. If the whole thing hadn’t been so painful, it might have been funny. I mean, was there ever a more doomed relationship?

I sure can pick ’em.

But now it was time for your friend Bobby Dollar to force himself back to the issue that was literally at hand, the pages of Edward Walker’s confession-slash-suicide-note piled in my lap. Everything Habari had told Walker might be true, of course—clearly, he was no ordinary reverend doctor. But Walker still might have been duped, especially if
Habari was working for someone like Eligor—which, after hearing about the powers Habari had exhibited, seemed increasingly likely. I had already established a tenant/landlord connection between the Magians and the grand duke; not exactly a smoking gun, but in this game, I find coincidences generally pretty suspicious. Heaven moves in mysterious ways and so does Hell, but they have their fingers everywhere and seldom by accident.

Whatever my own speculations were, though, I had to make a report to my bosses and quickly. I may be a lousy angel and a grumpy, ungrateful employee, but I’m not a fool, and Walker’s story could represent the thin end of the wedge for some Opposition plan to short-hop each and every human soul after death. Even if it was something less dire than that, it was still way too big for me to be coy about what I’d found. Honor, duty, and the always-popular covering of my own precious
tuchis
mandated contacting Heaven as quickly as possible.

Not because I was going to tell her any of this, but just because I had to do something about the ache I’ve already mentioned, I called Caz on the emergency number she’d given me. I was close to blurting out actual feelings but had a sudden, frightening image of a Heavenly court martial playing back the voicemail while they all shimmered ominously at me, so I left her a bloodless message to the effect that I wanted to speak to her, then headed across town toward the company office to make my report.

I tried Sam’s phone, too, but only got his voicemail. I hoped that meant Monica and the others no longer needed to sit vigil by his bedside answering his calls. On top of all my other worries I felt like a total jerk that I couldn’t visit my best friend, but there was no sense borrowing trouble. I rang The Compasses and had a brief chat with Chico. To my relief, he reported that Sam was out of danger, which meant he was not going to have to get another body. Getting a new one is an iffy thing at the best of times—lots of recuperation and a recovery pattern that, though faster, isn’t that different from a stroke victim’s. Of course, after Leo’s death on what I thought of as the Heavenly operating table, I have a deeper distrust of the process than most of my peers.

“What about me?” Chico asked as I was trying to wrap up the call. “No, ‘How’s it going, buddy?’ No, thanks for saving your scrawny
culo
the other night? While getting the shit kicked out of my bar by some kind of crazy old-school demonic motherfucker?
Chupa mi verga,
Dollar!”
Chico thinks he’s Mexican, and not just in appearance—he thinks his
soul
is Mexican. Maybe it is, but I don’t know how being part of
La Raza
can survive death and angelic transformation. Still, why argue with a grumpy bastard who keeps an automatic shotgun full of silver salts within arm’s reach?

“Sorry, man. What can I say? I’m in your debt. I didn’t know you were that badass.”

“Only when I need to be.” He sounded mollified. “Anyway, it’s tough out there. You take care, BD.”

“Trying my best,
hombre
.”

I parked around the block in case Eligor’s men were staking out our office, then slipped in over the fence from the courtyard of the office building next door. Alice’s desk was next to a window. She watched me climb, cling, then awkwardly drop as if I were a very unimpressive clown performing at a child’s party. “Not getting enough exercise, Dollar?” she asked after I mounted the stairs and stumbled in.

I was still puffing a little as I dropped into a chair to examine the hole I’d just torn in my pants. I was running out of jeans, and I was going to have to start wearing something sturdier, like those ugly tactical khakis. “No, it’s just that visiting you always brings out the swashbuckling romantic in me, Alice.”

She shook her head. “Save the bullshit. I got a lousy chimichanga from GoGo Burrito and it’s backing up on me. I’m going home early. What do you want?”

“I need to send a p-mail. Private, too. I have to do it myself.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Ooh, you really
are
a man of action, Dollar. I’m all aflutter…but that might just be that chimichanga.” She gestured vaguely toward the inner office door. “You know where it is. I’m going to lock up, and you can let yourself out. Do
not
try to sleep here.”

“I’m not homeless!”

“You will be if you keep gouging your expense account for fancy motels.”

“Fancy? These are the kind of places that make you use the last guest’s soap.”

She rolled her eyes and went back to whatever she had to finish before she gave herself the rest of the day off.

Sam always calls sending a private prayer-mail “going to Mecca,” not because you’re surrounded by other pilgrims but because the process
itself is less like one of those baroque churches full of golden clouds and plaster cherubs and more like that big block of stone that all the Islamic faithful go to see. The room is small and has no windows. The only thing in it is a standard wooden desk, and the only chair in the room is facing it instead of behind it. On top of the desk is a big black blotter like you’d see in an insurance office, and sitting unceremoniously on top of that is a cube of clear crystal about a foot and a half square. At least I always assumed it’s crystal—maybe it’s some cheap glass thing they bought in one of those home decorator stores. It wouldn’t shock me. One thing about my bosses, at least in their operations here on Earth: they’re more into making things work than making things look good.

I sat in front of the cube and composed myself. I had my eyes shut, because if they were open when the light of Heaven came I’d have been seeing a shiny green cube in front of everything for the next half hour. I mean, it really scorches your optic nerves. So I waited. I saw the first great flash against my eyelids and then the light dimmed down to a healthier level, and I opened up.

What’s the light of Heaven look like on earth? Like sunlight streaming through the clouds in the tackiest garage sale painting you ever saw. Really, it’s so beautiful it’s embarrassing. No subtlety whatsoever.

A voice spoke. As far as I know it was only in my head, one of those sweet, indefinable angel voices that could be either male or female.

God loves you, Angel Doloriel.
The question, “So why are you bothering us?” was, as always, only implied.