The Dirty Streets of Heaven

why that…?’ Well, I asked those questions for real. In fact, I’m not sure if we’re working for God the Highest or for somebody else entirely.”

“That’s enough,” Clarence said. “I don’t need to hear any more blasphemy, Sam. I’m sorry-you’re a good man, I really believe that, but you’re no angel. Not anymore. It’s time for you to come back to Heaven. Maybe you can get some help…”

I had distanced myself from Sam, in part just to make it harder for Clarence to shoot both of us, and as I moved closer to the kid I said, “Not yet, please. Not until I find out what happened to the souls they took. Did it work, Sam? Did you find a place to hide them where they’d be safe?”

“That was the hard part,” he admitted. “We couldn’t stash souls on Earth without somebody noticing, but the Tartarean Convention set things up so that at the very least, a high-ranking angel and an equally high-ranking demon had to agree on making any new territory outside the Earthly bounds, no matter how small. My Third Way bosses had other recruits like me, and they were ready to fit us all out with fake identities and fake bodies. I probably should have just invented a name, but I wanted to pay back Dr. Habari, at least in a small way…” He trailed off. “Anyway, apparently the Third Way folk got a tip that Grand Duke Eligor might make a deal- for reasons of his own that I don’t know. And he did.”

As Sam had been talking, I moved a little closer to Clarence, and now I quietly slipped my empty gun out of my belt.

“…so because of that deal, we had our site,” Sam finished. “It exists. It’s real!”

I punctuated this fascinating revelation by hitting Clarence hard on the base of the skull with my gun butt. The kid didn’t even make a noise, just dropped like a sack of apples. I didn’t want to kill him, although I had no doubt that if I did he’d be resurrected again post-haste by our bosses, but I wasn’t going to stand there and see Sam get dragged off either. At least not until I’d heard the rest of the story. I took the smooth little needle gun out of Clarence’s hand, then turned back to my oldest friend.

“Okay, Sammy,” I said. “It’s just the two of us now. Convince me.”

“Convince you of what? That it works? That’s easy. Follow me.”

I stopped to check Clarence’s breathing, then turned him onto his side so if he puked he wouldn’t choke on it. Not a good way to go, even if you’re getting shunted into another body afterward.

“How hard did you hit him?” Sam asked as we made our way out past the outdoor pools.

“He’ll be out for awhile, but I don’t think the damage will be permanent.”

“Glad to hear it. I kind of liked him. At first I thought he was too obvious an outsider to really be a plant.”

“They double-bluffed you,” I said. “Temuel got me that way, too. Does that mean he was in on Clarence?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the Mule didn’t find out that Clarence was actually working for some of the higher-ups until after he asked you to keep an eye on the kid. It’s always wheels within wheels, B.”

“Heaven is one sneaky bastard, all right.”

We fell silent as we made our way up the Grand Promenade toward Merryland and its ruined attractions, as if we were two souls traveling not to some new third destination but floating through good old Limbo, out of time, out of space. I wondered if Sam and I would ever walk side by side this way again. And no more meals at Boxer Rebellion? Really?

I had no idea what I was going to do next. I didn’t really want to think about it.

The moon was still hanging around, silvering the rusted remains of the coiling Super Snake and the collapsed stalls of various attractions. This time, with nothing trying to suck my head off, I was able to appreciate the weirdness of the place. You notice I didn’t say, “the weird beauty of the place.” Shoreline Park might be many things, but beautiful is not one of them. But it smelled better out here at the north end, so either the sea breezes kept the air cleaner on this side of the island or the derelicts couldn’t be bothered to come all this way just to take a dump. Either way it made a pleasant change.

The peeling facade of some kind of game booth grinned as we passed. It might have been a clown’s head once, but now it was only two smears for eyes and a rictus smile of which only lipless teeth remained.

“So if you didn’t know it was me posing as Habari,” Sam said abruptly, “how did you know about the cemetery?”

“I got some help from Fatback. He told me that Habari had died, and when he told me Habari was buried in the very graveyard you used to take me to all the time-well, it seemed like a pretty long coincidence. Plus, I’d already picked up on at least one of the lies you told me.”

“There were a bunch. Which one?”

That made me feel sadder than I would have expected. “When you came to my room at the Ralston last night. You said you called Alice, and she told you the room number.”

“But I did call her. I’m not stupid, Bobby.”

“Yeah, but she gave you the wrong room number. She told me about it. She was feeling bad because she assumed you wouldn’t be able to find me. But of course, you only asked her for show. Kephas or whoever told you where I was, right?”

He only nodded, looking ahead now.

I was putting things together now. I had guessed that the angelic powers Habari had demonstrated to Edward Walker meant that one of the key players in the whole thing was probably local, since Habari the Magian worked out of the storefront on East Charleston. There just aren’t that many folks with haloes in San Judas, so I had begun to think it almost had to be someone I knew, as proved by the way Habari had reacted when we’d passed each other in our cars. He had recognized me immediately, even through my cuts, bruises, and bandages. But I’d gotten too fancy and instead of looking right next to me for Habari’s identity I’d made the leap to wondering whether Leo the Loke might have faked his own death.

“What about the bodies, Sam?”

He turned, startled. “What bodies?”

“The ones you and the other Magians must have worn. After all, you couldn’t ordinarily pass for an African clergyman, Sam.”

“The Third Way gave us those-they’re a little less functional, but a lot easier to enter and leave than the regular, earthbound bodies Heaven hands out. I’ve got the Habari body stashed away in a safehouse, but I can’t give you the location, Bobby, or the body. I’ll need everything I can trade to plead down my sentence with the bosses. Hey, maybe I’ll get off with a couple of million years in the fiery pit.”

Now I felt queasy. He knew as well as I did that it wouldn’t be anything like that simple. How could I have been so badly fooled by my best friend? And what was I going to do about him? “So now, after landing me in the shit, you’re going to sell out the Third Way too?”

“Shit, Bobby, that was supposed to be a joke. No, the truth is, I’m not giving you the safehouse and the Habari body because I want the Third Way to have a chance to clean it up and hide their tracks from the Upstairs boys. I never wanted this to happen to you, but I believe in what they’re doing. I’m not giving the Ephorate anything.”

“What did you think that day you bumped into me in front of the Magian Society office?”

Sam didn’t look around. “Startled the crap out of me.”

“I should have recognized you by your ride.”

Now he did turn. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t driving my own car.”

“Yeah, but no other angel would be seen dead in an old beater like that. You never cared about cars, Sam.”

Crazy Town, the funhouse, stood just in front of us. It actually still had a roof and most of its walls, but that was about it. The plaster of Paris spooks and clowns had eroded from the walls, leaving only spectral outlines and the occasional disembodied foot or hand or ear. What remained had been decorated with Day-Glo spray paints in a variety of runic designs that meant something only to the taggers themselves, but now even the graffiti was fading, rapidly becoming another piece of the past. As we crunched toward the building over a litter of broken bottles, I was glad I hadn’t managed to kick my shoes off while I was in the water with the ghallu. The wounds the creature had given me were beginning to heal thanks to my angelic constitution, but I was still injured, aching, bloody, and very, very depressed.

“It’s in here,” he said. “The door to the Third Way.”