Page 49

“I’m sorry. I’ll have my driver take you home.”

“I won’t say no to that.”

Abbot gets out his cell and makes a call.

One of the two security guys I met earlier is on the deck. He looks at me funny. Right. I forgot to put Charlie’s face back on. Too late now. My cover’s blown. I stand a little closer to Abbot, just to make sure everyone knows I’m in with the in crowd.

Abbot puts his phone away.

“It’s done. He’ll meet you at the end of the pier.”

“See you at the next council meeting.”

“Don’t worry about that. Keep up with your investigation. We can get by without you for a session or two.”

I head out. The driver is indeed waiting at the end of the pier. He holds the door for me and closes it when I get in. As much as I hate Abbot’s world, I could get used to this limo business.

I have the driver drop me on Sunset Boulevard by a bike shop I know. I’m still nervous about being in public in my face, so I put on a new one. The limo driver’s.

At the bike shop, I pick up handlebars, a front light, and some tools. It’s not that heavy, but it’s awkward to carry. I should have asked the limo to wait for me. It’s too late now. I hump the gear back to Max Overdrive.

Just an hour ago, I was floating on a custom-made cloud with free drinks and guys whose only job it was to watch my back. Now I’m sweating like a pig and dodging dog shit in the street. It’s a hard landing, coming down from Valhalla.

CANDY AND ALESSA are practicing in the storeroom. One of them is burning through “Miserlou” and the other sounds like she’s falling down the stairs with a boxful of cats. But she keeps playing. Good for her.

It’s after hours and Kasabian has the news on. They’re playing shaky phone footage of me getting my ass kicked, then the angel flying away. I change channels. It’s the same thing. Me down on one knee, then wings flapping into the sky. Everybody likes the part where I’m getting burned and pounded into SpaghettiOs, but no one bothers to show that I actually won the damned fight. I need a better press agent. Kasabian laughs quietly each time they show me falling, but he’s too smart to say anything.

I really hope Abbot can talk to someone about getting my mug off the screen.

Finally, the news gets tired of me and moves on to other local merriment.

Some shitbird shot up the crowd at a food truck selling upscale southern food. Fried chicken, grits, hush puppies, the whole bit. Nine people shot. Six dead. The cops don’t think the shooter’s connected to the truck or anyone in the crowd. They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I wonder who the little creep had a grudge against. It doesn’t matter. It’s always the same thing with these guys. His girlfriend left him. He lost his job. He ran out of toothpaste. The news show puts up a yearbook photo of the guy’s face over the bodies in the street. I don’t need to see him. Ninety-nine percent of these guys are the same. They cruise along in a bubble of dude-bro privilege, then can’t stand it when the world lets them know they’re nothing special. Then everyone has to pay.

However, there’s something else that bothers me: I recognize the truck. I ate there once, out at the La Cienega oil fields when I got a note more or less commanding me to come out and meet the Wormwood board of directors. They really rubbed it in too. Made a party of it. Had a circle of food trucks. A dining room table. The works. That was the day where Burgess and Sandoval explained to me how the world really worked. How Wormwood Investments works. That’s what gives me a bad feeling about this particular shooting.

Is this a message from Wormwood? Did someone see me on TV and decide to put me on notice? Try to provoke me into doing something stupid? Did they send that fucking angel after me or are they just having a good time, setting up a massacre to remind me that I can’t eat a taco without lining their pockets?

Or am I goi

ng down a paranoid rabbit hole? Maybe the shooting is just what it looks like. One more asshole with a gun and a grudge having a bloody tantrum?

I’m going to make myself crazy thinking like this. I can’t function wondering if everything I do and everything I think is one big Wormwood mindfuck.

What would be hilarious is if I brought the massacre to them. Kill them all in one big Night of the Long Knives dance party. The only problem there is that I don’t know how many of them there are. I met a few of the higher-ups, but for all I know they could be like Abbot and his Sub Rosa contacts, meaning they’re everywhere there’s money or power to be sucked up. That’s the only thing that makes sense. How else could they function? They’re everywhere all the time, like evil bastard Pinkertons. We Never Sleep.

And here I am again. Staring down into a swirling, paranoid rabbit hole.

I go upstairs and check on the box. It’s where I left it in my coat pocket. I take it and put it in the bottom drawer of the dresser with my extra guns. It’s not any more secure than my coat, but if anyone goes for it while I’m home, at least I know I can shoot the hell out of them.

The worst part of all of this is that every part of my brain and body wants to go back to the abandoned high school and get down into the fight pit with some big bruiser with something to prove and no damned sense. But I made a promise to Candy and to myself, so I light a Malediction instead.

I’m standing by the window, blowing the smoke into the street, when Brigitte calls. We talk for a minute and she suggests something even better to do. I toss the cigarette out the window and go downstairs.

It’s quiet in the storeroom when I knock on the door. Candy opens it and smiles when she sees me.

“What’s going on, TV star?”

“Please. That’s the last thing I want to hear.”