LITMIR.BIZ

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clue. I’m taking it to Vidocq tomorrow. Do you know much about Wormwood?”

      “Only what you told me.”

      “How about Norris Quay? Do you ever see him Downtown?”

      “Now, him I’ve seen,” Kasabian says. “He’s a real player in Pandemonium. Got himself protection. A nice setup in an office building. Norris is doing fine, making bank on everything that goes down.”

      “Any new souls hanging around with him?”

      “They come and go. You know more Wormwood faces than I do. I just see creeps in tailored suits and limos with Hellion escorts.”

      I pick a DVD of David Cronenberg’s Frankenstein and Kasabian plucks it from my hand, slipping it into its case.

      “I need to get down there and see the place for myself.”

      “I need a week in Fiji with Brigitte Bardot, but that’s not going to happen either.”

      “You’re right about that.”

      “I’m always right, but you won’t admit it.”

      “There’s no Nobel Prizes around here. Just tamales.”

      “It’s time for you to call the missus. Tell her I’m going to die sorting discs.”

      “Good. More tamales for us.”

      “And once again, you’re not allowed down here. Go upstairs and stay out of my way.”

      “Yes, boss.”

      I go upstairs and pour myself some Aqua Regia.

      If Abbot is right and Wormwood is playing games up here and Quay is doing business down there, it makes sense that they’re connected. I wonder if he’s the source of black milk? But how would he make money off it? And who else could be working with him? Maybe David Moore. He’s dead and had connections through a talent agency run by the Burgess family—Wormwood heavyweights. But that wouldn’t help Kasabian. He wouldn’t recognize Moore. Fuck me. I should have brought more peepers with me when I came back from Hell that last time. Just another in a long series of mistakes. Maybe there’s some other way I can see Downtown like Kasabian. Who could help with that? Maybe go back and ask the powers that be in Piss Alley? Maybe not. When they gave me the power to sidestep for a week, it aged me enough that I’ve got a few gray hairs. Who knows what price they’d want next time?

      I go into the bathroom, strip off my clothes, and get into the shower. I need to wash the fight and as many lies off me as I can.

      When I get out, I can hear Candy and Kasabian talking downstairs. She comes up and the first thing she says is, “Kas says you have a black eye. Are you all right?”

      If Kasabian wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him tonight.

      “I’m fine. I just bumped my head getting off Abbot’s damned boat.”

      “Poor baby,” she says, and drops her vinyl eyeball bag on the kitchen counter.

      She comes over and kisses my bruised eye.

      “Maybe I can take your mind off all the pain.”

      Candy opens the eyeball and pulls out the record Alessa Graves gave her. She puts it on the stereo and cranks up the sound. The trembling rumble of surf guitar fills the room.

      Reaching under the towel, she begins to massage my cock, then kisses me hard. I lean against her, smelling her hair and neck. She pulls off my towel and pushes me down on the sofa, keeps pumping me with her hand. I pull her on top of me and start to roll her over when she says, “Wait a minute.” She throws off her short dress and underwear and pulls me inside her.

      “Fukaku hamekonde chodai,” she whispers.

      I have no idea what that means, but I don’t think it has anything to do with tamales. When she wraps her legs around me, I have the strange feeling it’s the music more than me that’s driving her, but it doesn’t seem like the right time to ask.

      THE GOOD NEWS is that we don’t break any furniture we care about, just a secondhand lamp that was here when I moved in. I know that if I get another lamp, Candy will conveniently lose it and replace it with something horrifying. Something that spins and has talking robots or waving tentacles.

      Candy crawls into bed and we divvy up the tamales. I take some down to Kasabian, and when I come back upstairs, she’s propped against a pile of pillows digging into her dinner. I take my plate into the room and join her in bed.

      “Hey, do you remember me bringing home a folder or packet of some kind when I went to work with Abbot?”

      She nods, holds a hand over her mouth, and chews.

      “It’s on the floor next to the bureau. You put it there and I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to ask about it.”

      “You looked inside?”

      She nods, looking a little guilty.

      “Sorry. A big envelope from the augur. How could I not look? Besides, knowing you, it was a check for a million dollars and you forgot about it.”

      I mix some beans with rice and swallow a mouthful.

      “I guess I don’t have a good history with money.”

      “It’s not money. It’s authority. Someone gives you a job and you take it, but then they give you an envelope full of stuff to read and it’s like homework. You leave it on the floor hoping the dog will eat it.”

      “And it never does.”

      “You’re mad at the dog we don’t have?”

      “Can we rent one to clean up my mistakes?”

      “It would have to be a pretty big dog.”

      I poke her in the leg with my fork and she punches my arm. Candy isn’t exactly human. She’s a Jade, which is kind of like a vampire, only worse. It also means she’s strong. Her love taps are like a velvet-covered baseball bat.

      “Abbot said there was stuff in the folder about insurance.”

      “Mmm,” says Candy around a mouthful of food. She swallows and says, “Yep. Medical and dental. There’s 401(k) stuff in there too.”

      “Now he’s just fucking with me. He knows I don’t have any bank accounts.”

      “He’s the augur. He has pull. Just because there’s paperwork that says you’re dead, it doesn’t have to always be that way. Talk to him. Maybe the Sub Rosa can resurrect the late James Stark.”

      I shake my head and eat my tamales. I’m very hungry and then very self-conscious. We’re in bed naked and I wonder if I have any bruises on my body from the fight. I should have checked myself when I took a shower. It’s a good thing I’m not a spy. I’d blow my cover story two minutes into enemy territory. I change the subject.

      “Did Julie tell you about the kid I brought her?”

      “Yeah. He’s a friend of the Abbot’s or something like that.”

      “Abbot was cagey. I’ve been wondering about that, but I don’t know what to think.”

      “There aren’t that many secrets men usually have about a missing kid. The kid is dead. The kid was snatched by the mother and he doesn’t want to say so. Or he snatched the kid and doesn’t want to say. There’s another more common reason.”

      “Come on. Tell me.”

      “It’s his kid and maybe Mom is married to someone else.”

      I try to picture that for a second. I don’t know anything about Abbot’s personal life. He could date women, men, or tentacled elder gods for all I know. I look at Candy.

      “You’re getting good at that detective stuff.”

      “I

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