You should start walking.”
“My family owns this place. This city. L.A. to the Valley and out to the desert.”
Carlos gives me a look and I give him one right back. He stays put, but starts cutting up limes so he has an excuse to hold a knife.
“People listen to me when I talk.”
“I guess the rich really are different. Most of us come from monkeys, but you’re giving off a whiff of rattlesnake.”
Ziggy has a friend with him. Not quite as handsome. His suit isn’t quite as nice. He’s trying to maintain his cool in front of the girls, but he’s about sixty seconds from running.
The friend says, “Please just do the trick, man, and we’ll get out of your hair.”
“I just killed five people. I’ll show you that trick if you like.”
I go back to my drink and the tamales. Ziggy is about to make another strafing run, not knowing that when he opens his mouth, I’m going to stick my fork into his eye and make him dance like a marionette. But the girls get on either side of him and pull him to the door.
As they go out, I hear one of the girls say, “Daddy would say that man looks like a sheep-killing dog.”
When they’re gone, Carlos curses quietly, so fast I can’t tell if it’s English, Spanish, or Urdu.
“I hate that shit.”
He wipes off the spot where Ziggy was leaning.
“No, you don’t. You encourage it. Look at you. You walk in here with that burned-up arm and dried blood all over a monster movie T-shirt and you don’t want to be noticed? Normal people bet on football or collect stamps to pass the time. Your hobby is telling people to fuck off, but you can’t do that unless they notice you in the first place.”
“You understand how being a bartender works, right? I complain and you bring me drinks and sympathy. Don’t start trying to get reasonable with me.”
“You like these little fights because you don’t have any real ones right now, is all I’m saying.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Armageddon.”
“Don’t sweat it. I think your star is beginning to fade. New people keep coming in, but a lot of old ones have disappeared.”
“If I take up knitting, think the rest will go away?”
“Louie Toadvine is one of them, which is funny because I owe him money.”
Carlos pours himself a glass of seltzer and drops in some of the lime wedges he was cutting.
“Your friend Candy was in here last night.”
I dig into the tamales.
“Good for her.”
I haven’t seen or spoken to Candy more than three times since we saved a bunch of about-to-be-sacrificed angels on New Year’s. We killed a lot of people that night, but none who didn’t deserve it.
“She’s a pretty girl.”
“Is she? I don’t entirely remember.”
Since then I’d only seen her a couple of times with Vidocq and once when I got Doc Kinski to drain the venom from my arm after a Naga purse snatcher went king cobra on me. Kinski is the medical man for a lot of Sub Rosa and Lurkers. Most people think being a doctor is a big deal, but Kinski used to be an archangel, so for him, being a doctor is sort of like flipping burgers at McDonald’s after you were president.
“Candy’s nice. Asked about business. How is it dealing with the Sub Rosa? When am I ever going to get some new tunes on the jukebox?”
“What do I care about any of this?”
He shrugs.
“I thought you two were friends. More than friends maybe.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
Carlos holds up his hands.
“Sorry, man. I didn’t mean nothing. It’s just something I heard. Anyway, she said she and Kinski had been moving around a lot. That’s why she hasn’t been around. She’s heading back out to wherever he is.”
“Did she mention where?”
“Nope.”
“She was sick for a while after Avila. It isn’t good for her to be around all that blood. It affects her funny.”
Candy’s a Jade, which is kind of like a vampire only worse. She’s trying to lay off the people eating, but dragging her up to a massacre pushed her over the edge and she fell off the wagon for a while.
“I didn’t get the feeling she was in here to talk to me. She asked when you usually came in. I had to tell her you come and go and don’t keep regular hours.”
Was Candy looking for me? It’s funny she’d come to Bamboo House. I’d thought about waiting out in the strip
