Page 175

A SUB ROSA cleanup crew must have been to the UFO mansion while I was asleep. The place is put back together again just like the first time I saw it. No bullet holes. All the windows intact. I go into the kitchen and open the refrigerator. Yep. Same boring food as before. But right now, all food is exciting, and soon I’ll go to Bamboo House of Dolls and have Carlos’s tamales.

I unload my pockets on the kitchen island.

There’s fifty thousand dollars in cash in five ten-thousand-dollar bundles. There are stocks and a pile of bearer bonds, which, according to Die Hard, are very valuable. Abbot will know about them. There are boxes of diamond earrings, pearls, and other shiny stuff. I’ll have to have people over and let them figure out who wants what. The bottom of one pocket is already ripped because I stuffed four small gold bars in there. I figure that those should go to Vidocq and Ray. They can use them in their hoodoo spells. Or just cash them in and buy a new TV. That’s all right too.

I leave everything on the kitchen island, grab a glass, and go into the living room with Eva’s bourbon. I pour a shot and toast her.

You brought me back and then tried to kill me, so I guess we’re even there. But if I ever see you or Barron again, I’m taking your heads down to the bowling alley and not stopping until I roll a three hundred with each of you.

I turn on the TV and flip through the channels, but what I’m really thinking about is the windows. I wonder how far it is down from them to the hillside below. If I bought one of those collapsible home fire-escape ladders and hung it outside, I wonder if I could reach the ground. It’s L.A. sometime in the seventies outside. How can I not check that out?

Abbot doesn’t have to know.

No one has to know.

I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

I FALL ASLEEP with the TV on. Babies sleep a lot, right? I guess new bodies need sleep too. And I didn’t piss myself, so I’m still one up on babies.

It’s about three in the morning, everything on TV is garbage, and I don’t have any movies yet. I grab my coat and shadow-walk to Donut Universe.

The woman working the counter is my alien friend from last night. She looks startled when she sees me.

“Wow, you look a lot better.”

“Thanks for helping me out. I think I’d still be lying there without you.”

She gives me a sly smile.

“The last time you were in you said you’d buy out the store if you were still alive. Are you a man of your word?”

I spread a thousand dollars of Sandoval’s money on the counter.

“Is that enough?”

She holds up a hundred to the light to see if it’s counterfeit.

“It’s a start,” she says. “But I have a better idea.”

She brings me a black coffee and an apple fritter.

“Voilà.”

“You remembered.”

“On the house,” she says.

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

She leans across the counter and speaks in a low voice.

“Look around. It’s just us and a couple of drunk convention guys who don’t want to go home to their wives.”

“Thank you …”

She points to her name tag and says, “Janet.”

“Janet. Right. I’m Stark.”