the Russian Mystery Circus, and a trio of women so tall that for a moment I thought they might be wearing some kind of Carnival costumes with false heads. Fox whispered that they were Scythian priestesses-“truly real Amazons, dear Bobby!” as he put it. It was quite a stunning array of weirdness, but it still didn’t tell me anything about what it was I was supposed to be selling.
Fox clapped once. “Gentlemen. Ladies. Before the bidding commences, a word from the sponsor of proceedings, Mr. Dollar.”
Something north of forty eyes watched me as I took a step forward. I slipped my hand into my coat out of habit and touched my revolver just to assure myself it was still there, still full of silver. I really,
“I won’t waste much of your time.” My voice echoed and quickly died. I noticed for the first time that there were life-size wooden frigate birds hanging from the high ceiling like frozen phantoms. “You know what I’ve got. I’m here to answer questions, and then I’ll take bids. I’ll make arrangements for transfer with the winner.”
“But why can we not examine the object?” demanded one of the Copts. “How can we be expected to bid on something that we cannot see?”
I took a breath. I had pretty much expected that as the first question, but I was glad to hear the word “object,” which I would use from now on. “You’ll have a chance to examine the object before any payment is made, trust me, but I’m not going to set up inspections for every Tom, Dick, and Youlios who wants one. Please remember, my possession of the object in question is still slightly…controversial.” I smiled. Nobody laughed.
Edie Parmenter, who’d been talking into her Bluetooth, looked up and said, “One hundred thousand.” She had a slight lisp.
A murmur ran through the others. “Do you know for a fact it’s real?” called out one of the Euro-Japanese Crowleyites.
I took a small risk. “It is. Not all that glitters is gold, if you get what I mean, but this absolutely, definitely is.”
The Crowleyites nodded. “One hundred fifty thousand,” one of them said.
Fox stepped in then and began to orchestrate the bidding as if it were an ordinary auction (except very few of those are usually run by tap-dancing albinos) and the bidding quickly climbed beyond six hundred thousand. Box- man, Edie Parmenter on behalf of her absent principal, and the Opus Dei guys took the lead, with occasional brave stabs from the Crowleyites and one or two of the occult object dealers. I was guessing things would slow down for good and settle near a million, which was pretty amazing for something nobody had actually been able to examine, and possession of which, as my own experience attested, could easily get you killed. And I
I didn’t have long to worry about that. As little Foxy Foxy wheedled a new bid out of the Catholics for three- quarters of a million dollars I heard something bang against the door behind me. For half an instant I had the horrible, funny idea that it would be Sam showing up late, guns drawn and blazing even though I didn’t need saving, but a moment later the entire door splintered around the latch and swung inward and a couple of objects not much bigger than tennis balls bounced through into the hall. I covered my eyes, and a half-second later they exploded loudly, blinding anyone who hadn’t looked away and not doing my ears much good either, thank you. Smoke was filling the hall as a group of armed men rushed in. I threw myself onto the ground, and the hall’s single overhead light abruptly went out. People were shouting in anger or fear or both, then the shouts turned to screams as guns began firing, muzzle-flare strobing the room as the walls echoed with the ratcheting of automatic weapons.
nineteen
As the guns started blazing in the darkened hall it occurred to me that if anyone was the likely target of this raid, it was me; even if these men weren’t Eligor’s, they almost certainly belonged to someone who wanted what I was supposed to have. I needed to get out of there. Sure, I felt bad about the other auction participants getting shot at, but I was even more worried about what was going to happen to Heaven’s least favorite angel.
I fired back at the armed shock troops, then rolled to another spot so they couldn’t get me by aiming at my flashes. More shots crackled out. I reloaded, then returned fire again, cursing all the time that I had to use silver bullets at ten dollars a round on what were probably cheapjack, low-level mercenaries. I’d already wasted something like a hundred bucks just firing into the darkness, and it pissed me off.
“I turn off the lights, Dollar Bob!” a voice whispered in my ear during a brief lull in the gunfire. I admit I squeaked like a startled puppy. It was Fox, who had proved many times over how easily he could sneak up on me. “But they find the switch soon, I think, so maybe you better vamoose, podner.”
“Yeah, this whole auction thing kind of went to hell, didn’t it?”
My crypto-Asian friend laughed quietly. “Hee! Don’t worry, we finish our business another time, Mr. D-Bob. Go now-crawl to the back of the hall, behind the totem poles.”
He was referring to a forest of New Guinea carvings I had noticed earlier, each pole so extravagantly decorated and carefully burnished that they looked like melting psychedelic candles. In the intermittent flashes of muzzle fire I could make out the poles standing a few yards away across no-man’s-land, pale as a copse of birch trees, so I began my commando-crawl, belly against the parquet and extremely grateful that I was wearing dark clothing. Once a line of automatic rifle slugs stitched their way along the floor just in front of me, missing my face by mere inches and showering me with stinging slivers. I also had to crawl over two bodies that were in my way, one of them in stiff clerical robes, but I finally made it into the totem forest without taking a bullet. A couple of seconds later I found the heavy fire curtain at the back of the room and the exit door hidden behind it. It was locked, but I rose to a crouch, waited for another loud burst of gunfire before kicking the door open, then dove through, hitting and rolling on the far side and fetching myself a nasty thump on the head against the iron railings of the hall’s covered back porch. I dragged myself upright in the dim light, swaying and woozy, and realized I was now on the opposite side of the building from my car. I was just about to jump down and try to lose myself in one of the neighboring buildings when I heard voices both behind me from inside the hall and also coming toward me from the front, getting louder.
There was no direction to run where I wouldn’t be out in plain sight for several seconds, an easy kill shot for men with automatic rifles, and although I took a moment to reload my.38, there was no way I was going to try blasting it out gangster-style with a bunch of armed assault troops. Instead I broke the light bulb above my head with my gun butt, then shoved the pistol into my pocket and leaped up to catch the overhang of the porch, which was not much bigger than the top of an old-fashioned phone booth. I managed to swing my legs up and pressed myself belly-first into the dark space above the door just as the first people appeared from around the front of the building. It sounded like some of the auction guests running away, but I didn’t bother to look, since I was busy straining my muscles to keep myself hidden. An instant later the door crashed open beneath me and a trio of armed men lurched out and met several of their fellows coming around from the front of the hall. One of the three beneath me was talking into a headset, but he pushed it away from his mouth to growl at the other four.
“Haven’t found him inside but they’re still sweeping the building. The bastard’s probably running, but we’ll catch him before he gets far. Move out and deploy down the street along either side, and I’ll get you some backup. Go!
I recognized the leader’s voice-my hairy old chum Howlingfell, who began talking on his headset again as his men hustled off in military quick-step. I waited until the last of the assault team had rounded the far corner before I interrupted his conversation by swinging down and booting him as hard as I could, both heels against his nasty flat head. He was wearing an aramid fiber assault helmet; I didn’t crush his skull but it wasn’t for lack of trying. As he crumpled to the ground I dropped on him, planting my knee on his throat for the second time in a week or so as I shoved my.38 against his belly.
“Remember me, Howly?”
“Fuck you, Dollar,” he gasped, then made a retching noise. I was glad to hear I’d kicked him as hard as I’d