The Wrong Goodbye

I’m looking for. And all I need to make my life a whole lot easier is a few minutes of peace and quiet.” I nodded toward the bathroom, where old Roscoe was shouting himself hoarse. “You think maybe you could shut him up?”

“I ain’t about to whack him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“What are you, new? If I wanted Roscoe dead, I would’ve killed him myself back at the barn. I was thinking something more along the lines of bringing him a beer and a bite to eat from what’s left of our stash. And toss me that pack of smokes, while you’re at it.”

“Aw, come on, Sam —you’re not really gotta light up in here, are you? Didn’t nobody ever tell you secondhand smoke kills? The last thing I need right now is lung cancer on account of your nasty-ass habit.”

“You’re kidding me, right? You’re worried about lung cancer? Gio, you’ll be lucky if you last the fucking week —and if by some miracle you’re walking around in Mr Frohman’s body any longer than that, it’ll be your heart that gets you, not your lungs.”

Gio looked nonplussed. “Still, dude, it’s all of our house. Can’t you take it to the porch or something?”

“Gio, this house isn’t any of ours —and if I drag my ass outside to smoke, somebody might see me and call us in. You want to spend your last days on this earth in jail?”

At that, he looked chastened. “I’m just sayin’ —a little consideration for your fellow housemates would be nice. Besides, it’s the twenty-first century —who smokes anymore?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Toss me my fucking cigarettes —I’ll crack a window, and blow the smoke outside, OK?”

“You know what? Go ahead. Not like you give two shits about anybody but yourself.”

He chucked the pack at me, and then sulked over to the bathroom door, a gas station burrito and a Santa Fe Pale Ale in hand. I unwrapped the pack and tapped out a cigarette. Then I fetched a matchbook from my pocket and struck one alight. But as I raised it to my waiting cigarette, I paused.

Lung cancer? Seriously? Guy was off his fucking nut.

I sat like that a minute, marveling at Gio’s unrelenting ridiculosity, the match flame a scant inch from my unlit smoke. Eventually, the flame guttered and died. I thought about striking another, but something stopped me.

Ah, fuck, who am I kidding? Someone stopped me. That’s right —the bad-ass soul collector skipped a much-needed smoke to spare a damned man’s feelings. Least I hope that’s what it was. Better to admit that I’m a marshmallow than that I was swayed by the dumbest argument this side of the devil made all the dinosaur bones and stuck them in the ground to deceive us.

Jesus, am I going soft? I mean, shit —if I want a smoke, I should just have one, right?

Right?

Eh, I thought. Maybe later.

Then I shook my head and set the pack aside, cigarette and all.

18.

“I don’t get it,” Gio said, struggling to keep a grip on the local section of the newspaper, which was flapping like a flag in a hurricane now that the Caddy was on the open road. For the moment, it was just he and I —we’d left Roscoe tied up and screaming back at the squat. It was safer traveling without him, and not just a little quieter, too. Or rather it would’ve been, if Gio could’ve kept hold of the goddamn paper. “What exactly am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Halfway down, under the thing about the fire.”

“’Area Man Found Wandering in Desert,’” he read.

“That’s the one.”

“Yeah, but what about it? All it says is that this dude was found naked and babbling late Sunday night somewhere off of Canyon Point Road.”

“He’s our guy.”

“The hell you mean, ‘He’s our guy’? You think Naked Dude’s the demon dope-peddler you been looking for?”

“No. But I think he can help me find him.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Because I’m pretty sure Dumas’s skim-joint is where he was coming from when they picked him up.”

Gio frowned. “I thought you said this skim shit was only for demons and undead-types like you and me —that the living wouldn’t get nothing out of it.”

“It is. Only those removed from the light of God’s grace are susceptible. The living would be unaffected.”

“Removed from the light of God’s grace, huh?” His thick brow bunched with worry. “Is that what I am now?”

I hesitated for a moment, then bit the bullet and told him the truth. “Yes.” What else could I have said?

He swallowed hard and tamped down his emotions. When he looked at me again, he was a little drawn, a little pale, but once more calm and collected. “So what the fuck would Mr Richard Shaw of Chilton Drive, Las Cruces have been doing there?”

I sighed, tried to explain. “When you’re out on a heist, you ever drive your own car?”

“Hell, no —you’re on a job, you want something disposable. A car that, once you ditch it, it can’t be traced back to you.”

“Exactly —and for a demon, it’s no different. See, skim-joints are strictly verboten in the demon world, because they rely on a steady supply of human souls to make their product —souls destined for hell, sure, but souls nonetheless. Now, ideally, the skimmer shaves off what they want and then passes the soul on to meet its ultimate fate, so nobody’s the wiser. But if there’s a fuck-up in the skimming process, that soul could be destroyed. The destruction of a human soul is a violation of the Great Truce between heaven and hell, and if either side were seen to be condoning such an act, the result would almost certainly be war —which means skim-joints are an affront to God and the devil both. So the last thing any demon wants is to get caught coming out of one. An easy way around that is to possess some unsuspecting bastard for a few hours and ditch him when you’re done —sort of the demon version of a getaway car. See, unlike me, all demons —be they the lowliest and most monstrous foot-soldiers, or the higher-ups that look like you and me —have bodies of their own, so when they possess someone, it’s more like remote projection. Snatching a vessel to hit a skim-joint means their true selves can be safe and sound half a world away. On the off-chance their vessel’s killed, they wind up right back in their own body —no harm, no foul. Only the hardcore skim junkies ever bother to show up in person; the way I hear it, the high’s better if you’re present in the flesh.”

“Yeah, I gotcha —but if they wanna keep things on the DL, why wouldn’t they just kill the dude when they were done with him? I mean, what’s to keep the guy from blabbing?”

“Well, for starters, demonic possession is pretty traumatic. The vessel usually doesn’t remember much in the way of specifics —just the odd image, scent, sensation. Besides, even if he did remember, who in their right mind would believe him? And remember —Dumas’s skim- joint would attract a fair bit of business, so this wouldn’t exactly be an isolated incident. If all Dumas’ patrons started killing vessels left and right, the white hats would be bound to notice, and that’s the last thing anybody wants.”

“The white hats? You mean, like, angels?” Gio’s face had taken on the kind of inner light usually reserved for kids waiting up to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus.

“That’s right. Only we’re not talking harps and feathers —these are more the angry Wrath of God types. Believe me,” I said, thinking back to my own tangle with an angel months before, and the swath of destruction across the length of Manhattan that had resulted, “angels are not to be trifled with.”

That inner light faded, replaced by something closer on the reverence scale to fear. “Still, I don’t get why you’re so sure this Richard dude’s our guy.”