The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Volume One of Bobby Dollar (54 page)

Soon it was Heaven’s turn to bore everyone in the room to death, although Sam’s testimony provided a few entertaining moments when he followed a bunch of Heaven’s least forthcoming pencil-pushers into the witness chair. Adramelech seemed interested in hearing what he had to say, but Caym just looked focused and blank, while Prince Sitri, who had barely spoken, continued his imitation of the world’s largest melted candle.

“You were the first of your cohorts to receive the summons to the death scene of Edward Walker, were you not?” Adramelech asked Sam.

“I certainly was,” Sam drawled.

“Why didn’t you obey?”

“Other than my documented allergy to work?” Sam paused to let the quiet laugh die away on both sides. “Because I was busy training a new recruit, and he was very eager to learn the ropes.” He nodded as if remembering a sunny day on the river when the fish were biting. “Yes, sir, these young fellows, they’re much more aggressive and impatient than we were. Wild young guys. I’d hate to be in the Opposition’s shoes when they get the reins in their hands…” He broke off as if he’d said too much, but his grin said,
We’re having fun now, huh?

Adramelech was not intimidated and certainly not amused. His wet black eyes were like puddles of tar on a beach. “Stick to the questions, little angel.” His voice was as dry as Thirst itself. “Did you answer the summons?”

Sam smiled. “You know that I didn’t, Senator.” Adramelech was famously the president of the Great Senate of Demons, so this was a bit of a swipe, but the stony face didn’t show even the tiniest crack.

“Then we need hear no more from this honorable gentleman,” said Caym, blinking and pushing his glasses back up his nose. “It’s almost noon and we have many more witnesses to depose. Unless his Honor objects…?”

Adramelech made a noise of contained disgust and shook his head.
Sam gave me a little thumbs-up as he passed me on his way out of the ballroom. I half wished he would have stayed, just so I could have seen at least one friendly face.

They broke for lunch but I didn’t feel like eating. I went back to my room to see if it had been searched—it had, of course—and then got a soft drink from the machine before returning to the ballroom. The atmosphere seemed to have become even more tense, frustration setting in as both sides realized nothing was going to be accomplished, and nothing was going to be said that everyone didn’t already know.

Shortly after the proceedings resumed I got my call to the stage. As I climbed the stairs I thought I was being stared at a little more intently than I had expected, and not just from the Opposition side of the room. I couldn’t help wondering whether the Heavenly bastard or bastards who had set Clarence on me might be watching me even now, in this very room.

No matter where some handicappers may rank me, I’m not the dumbest guy ever to wear a halo. I did exactly what Karael had told me, answering the questions as truthfully as I could while staying resolutely clear of anything controversial. At least I did until Prince Sitri sideswiped me with a surprise inquiry. His soggy, wheezing voice made me want to clean each of the words thoroughly before I allowed them into my brain.

“Isn’t it true that you’ve been following up on the case since the disappearance of Edward Walker, Mr. Dollar? That you have been investigating various unusual acquaintances of Mr. Walker’s?”

Karael, bless him, bristled and half-rose from his chair. “What our people do and what our internal policies are in an unprecedented case like this are none of your business!”

One of Sitri’s eyebrows rose like a caterpillar climbing a glob of suet. “Pardon me, but aren’t missing souls all of our business? Is that not the reason we are gathered here in this lovely hotel? Surely only someone with something to hide would object to my question?”

I could see dozens of laptops and phones around the room suddenly being assaulted by ten times that many fingers (in most cases) as heavenly and infernal bureaucrats took note of this interesting little
contretemps
. The flurry of typing and texting brought home to me the strangeness of the whole conference in a way nothing else had. All these creatures of light and darkness, immortal and immensely powerful,
with abilities humans could only guess at, and yet by mutual consent they were meeting here on Earth where they had to make do with the stumbling artifacts of mortal technology to do their jobs. It was like the UN deliberately holding their deliberations by candlelight in Dark Ages France.

In Caym, Karael had an unexpected ally in trying to cut off this line of inquiry. The bespoke demon suggested that perhaps a Rules Committee meeting should be convened to decide on whether Sitri’s question was permissible under the agreed format. Many in the audience groaned at this time-wasting idea, but a few demanded it be implemented. A couple of spectators cried “cover-up!” from the infernal side of the room. The argument became general and rather shouty.

Adramelech, perhaps because he was also playing Eligor’s game, or maybe just because he was a million years old and needed to piss, finally slammed his gavel hard against the tabletop and rasped for silence. In the ensuing hush he turned from side to side, stiff as a tortoise who had just woken from hibernation, then said, “We do not have time to do this today. We have only today for all the witnesses. These points can be resolved before the deliberative phase tomorrow, time permitting.” Which effectively closed off Prince Sitri’s question and anything like it. I saw no disappointment in the glittering eyes that peeped out of the prince’s drooping facial flesh, and I wondered if the whole thing had just been Sitri’s way of poking at his rival Eligor, like the little confrontation he had arranged between Caz, me, and the Horseman in the hotel bar the night before.

I answered a few more procedural questions and was interested to note that nobody on either side seemed willing to bring up the strange coincidence of Grasswax getting snuffed at the same site only a few hours later. In fact, the whole subject of what really happened around the Walker disappearance seemed to be surrounded with an invisible fence like the kind people use to keep wayward dogs in the yard. But how did they get all those demons
and
angels fitted with shock collars? How could a supposed inquiry work so hard not to inquire? How high did this Third Way thing go—and did it reach that high on both sides?

After I was released from the stage, a number of other angels were interviewed about the souls who had disappeared after Edward Walker, but none of it gave me anything to work with or pushed the discussion forward much at all. Already any pretense of fact-finding had disappeared
into partisan bickering. If you think watching Congress make laws is unappealing, you should see the sausage-factory of the eternal powers at work. Gosh, you would think they didn’t like each other or something.

Five o’clock was approaching. I was hungry and depressed, two things that don’t usually go together for me, and I was just contemplating sneaking out as soon as Karael looked away for a moment, when Adramelech abruptly gaveled the whole thing to a close.

“We will resume tomorrow morning,” he said, his words like wind over dry hills. “I suggest that all participants consider ways to make our next session more productive. I am not impressed with our progress today, nor does it make me hopeful of any real joint solution to our problem.”

He walked from the stage as slowly as a tin toy overdue for a winding. Caym followed him while Sitri waited patiently for the hydraulic lifter that would move him into his cushioned golf cart. The prince’s pudgy fingers were tented on his chest, and to my untrained eye he looked rather pleased with his day’s work, which as far as I could tell seemed to have consisted of nothing more useful than taunting Eligor with hints about the Magian Society. Should I try to question Sitri again? I wasn’t kidding myself he would do me any favors, but I wondered how deep his rivalry with Eligor went. Enough that he might throw me a bone, if only to help bury the Grand Duke? But he was rolling toward the freight elevator, and I didn’t have the strength of will to chase him just now.

I checked in with Sam but the ache of my buddy’s injuries hadn’t been improved by a long day in a ballroom chair. He was going to take a nap but promised to catch up with me later, so I went upstairs and called in a room service strike on my position, then took my coat and tie and shoes off. I’m not a suit person by nature, as you’ve probably guessed. When forced to wear one, I always have to fight the urge to find a jagged rock and rub it off me like an itchy old snakeskin.

I’ve always found hanging out for long stretches in a hotel room a strangely mixed experience. The sense of
other
ness never goes away, the knowledge that you’re not in your own place, although the anonymity of the situation is appealing. It’s like being the last undiscovered guy in a game of hide and seek. You just settle into being on your own, and if it lasts long enough you even stop thinking about anyone looking for you. That is, until someone finds you.

I had been mindlessly flipping channels for so long that the sky beyond the room’s flimsy muslin curtains had gone from pale blue to black, and the baseball games and prime-time dramas were winding down. In fact, I was winding down too after my long night and early start, my eyes starting to droop, when someone knocked on the door.

I’d called Sam an hour earlier and he’d said he was taking Advil and staying in bed, so the chances were good my late visitor was someone I didn’t want to see. In this situation, that meant “someone I might have to shoot.” My dwindling supplies of adrenaline were enough to get me off the bed quickly and over to my coat and shoulder holster. I still had the extended magazine on the Five-Seven automatic. I wanted it loose and in my hand from the start so it wouldn’t snag on anything, so I hid it behind my back as I cracked the door, stepping back in case somebody strong was planning to kick it hard enough to break the chain. My heart was beating fast, and I was ready for anything Hell might send through the door.

Well, almost anything.

“Let me in,” Caz said in a cold, flat voice. “This hotel is crawling with busybodies and spies. You can call me a whore when I’m inside and the door’s locked.”

She came in with her head up, looking defiant, ready to be slapped or cursed. I closed and locked the door and put the chain on, wondering just for a moment if I might have dozed off, if this could all be some kind of dream. She stared at me, waiting for me to do whatever I was going to do next, and to be honest, at that exact moment I didn’t really know. The less angelic parts of me ended that confusion by grabbing her shoulders and pulling her toward me, then I used my mouth to silence the question she started to ask and dragged her down onto the bed. At first she seemed to be struggling, but it was only to get her clothes off. I didn’t even bother with most of mine. We rolled, grabbed, scratched at each other. She was weeping and cursing as I entered her. I might have been doing the same.

I
T WASN’T love, and it wasn’t just lust—it was
hunger
. I don’t know what I wanted at that moment, but I wanted it so badly I couldn’t think. I finished quickly and collapsed gasping on top of her, and only then felt the sweat that was gluing our bodies together and dripping from my forehead into her hair. I couldn’t speak. Words were the last thing on my mind. She lay panting, her face turned away from me, her clothes half-on, half-off except for what was scattered around us on the bed and the floor. For long moments we just lay there, breathing into each other’s ears as if everything else didn’t exist. Did you know that was the real meaning of the word “conspire”? To breathe together. But what kind of conspiracy was this?

“Caz.” I said. “Just…I don’t understand any…”

Her hand shot up, pushing my chin back, forcing me up and away from her. For half a moment I thought she might go for my unprotected throat. Then, as she wriggled out from beneath me, skin sliding on damp skin, I was terrified that she was going to leave me. She got a knee into my gut and pushed me farther up and to the side until I had to roll off her, my naked belly and groin exposed, helpless as an animal ready for slaughter. But instead of killing me she clambered on top of me and reached down to yank and squeeze me until I was hard again, then she gripped my ribs with her knees and sank down on my cock, a look of such obsessive concentration on her face that for a moment I wondered if I was in her mind at all.

She rode me like a Valkyrie swooping down through the lightning to the last battle, late for the Twilight of the Gods. When I reached up for her pale breasts bobbing and shuddering just above me she clamped my wrists with her hands instead and forced my arms back down, pinning me with the fierceness of her need, rubbing and grinding on me until we both came together in a moment that seemed more heart attack than heart’s desire. But that wasn’t enough for Caz. She stayed on me, squeezing me inside her, and continued to ride me, until I felt another shudder build up inside her, a tremor that seemed to run up and down her spine until she quivered and then went rigid, then shook again for some seconds before sliding off to lie beside me, arms above her head, still twitching like the victim of an electrical shock.