The Dirty Streets of Heaven

The office complexes and condos along the bay front had all been full just a few years back, during the last internet boom, but harder times had driven a lot of the new tenants back into cheaper parts of town or out of the area entirely. I could see a lot of “For Lease” signs and a lot of untended grounds. It was kind of depressing, but I wasn’t on a sightseeing tour, so I followed the curving road past offices and warehouses, through East Bayshore all the way out to Sand Point, a jutting finger of land which had long, long ago been the site of an important lighthouse. The antique lighthouse tower still stood just beyond the hotel at the end of the point like a younger brother waiting for an older sibling before going in to swim, and I knew they kept the light shining picturesquely out over the water at night, but I doubted it was any use now except as a post card item.

The Ralston was one of those big old places built in the earliest years of the twentieth century, and although it had been kept up very nicely and had even undergone an extensive renovation in the late 1990s, it still looked strangely out of place, looming up all by itself in front of the sullen green bay. It seemed like it should be the centerpiece of a city block, like the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco or the Waldorf in New York, but there was no city block around it, just a few smaller office complexes perched a respectful distance away on either side. Despite the big flag snapping in the stiff bay breeze atop the green copper roof and all the cars in the parking lot down below, the hotel seemed strangely solitary, like the statue of Ozymandias Shelley describes standing forgotten in the middle of the desert.

The words of the poem came back to me, but from what part of my memory I couldn’t tell; I couldn’t remember actually reading it during my angel years. Seepage from my past life, maybe. Our bosses claim it doesn’t happen, but most of us don’t believe them.

Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away…

No matter how I tried to concentrate on the banks of flowers in vast planters outside or the bright striped awning that fluttered over the front entrance like a king’s coronation train, I couldn’t make myself like the look of the place. After another couple of minutes I turned my car around and headed back, westward into the setting sun.

As I got back on the freeway I tried Caz again, but she still wasn’t picking up, and I couldn’t think of anything I hadn’t already said in the previous three messages. The traffic was still bad, so I peeled off a few exits before I’d planned and headed up the Woodside Highway. On a sudden whim I picked a place just at the edge of Spanishtown called the Mission Rancho Motor Lodge and checked in, taking a room at the far end of the top floor overlooking the local park. I wasn’t exactly certain why the place called to me but it did, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts.

I didn’t figure it out until I got back from a late dinner of tacos al pastor at a little place in the neighborhood and dragged a chair out onto the balcony to watch the lights come on. Not too far away, at the edge of the park and almost hidden by the apartment buildings and commercial buildings that had sprung up on all sides of it, stood the hacienda silhouette of Mission San Judas Tadeo, the place where the whole crazy, haunted city had got its start. The mission building was dark except for a light over the front door, and the streetlights in the park barely bounced back off the adobe facade; even so, the low building looked welcoming, like a campfire would to someone wandering lost in the woods. As I sat staring at the mission, thinking about the poor Indian bastards who had been shanghaied into building it for the Spanish priests, something clicked into place-not about the big questions I was grappling with but about why I was there at that moment, and why I’d had that reaction to the Ralston Hotel. All that gilt and carved stone, the sheer size of the place, had reminded me of the Vatican, something I’d seen only on television but which, to be honest, had always made me a bit queasy. Because as far as I’m concerned, when you pile up that much treasure in one place you’re not glorifying Heaven any more, you’re showing off how much power you wield right here on Earth. The padres who convinced or browbeat those Ohlone Indians to build the mission (the select few of them who’d already survived the plagues of European diseases) might not have been much different than their buddies back in Rome, but in their own way they had been trying to make a place where they and their charges could talk to God and feel His presence-a house that was just big enough for Him and a few followers, not a giant “screw you” to the rest of the world like St. Peter’s. Maybe the Vatican had once been that way too, but it sure wasn’t anymore. I could still see what the mission had been, however-a spot that for a hundred years and more had served as the heart of a community, offering real comfort instead of threat and spectacle.

I don’t know, maybe all that was just more of my sour mood. I had a lot of reasons besides the gaudiness of its appearance to dread going to the Ralston, and I was probably over-sentimentalizing San Judas’s homey little mission, but as I sat there on my motel balcony watching the nighttime traffic eddy past, listening to the sound of other people’s televisions and conversations and music echoing out over the park, motel sounds and neighborhood sounds mingling together, I felt as if I had found something important in the middle of everything-a reason to keep on doing the strange and frustrating things I do.

thirty

sat on a panda

For most people, packing for a conference means throwing clothes and toiletries in a suitcase, calling someone to feed the pets, and maybe asking the post office to hold the mail. In the current life of B. Dollar, Angelic Vagabond, the list was more like: Clean gun. Pack gun. Pack extra silver bullets. Consider obtaining second gun.

I did have to choose clothing suitable both for official functions and for being chased by a monstrous soul- sucking creature whose only weakness was a mild dislike of water, which made me wish I had a rubber tuxedo. I settled for my one suit. In my line of work, and with my particular sorts of friends, I don’t go to many funerals (or weddings) so it was fairly clean.

I also decided against getting a second gun because the weekend ahead looked to have one upside-I was not all that likely to be attacked by the ghallu, or even Howlingfell or Eligor, although the last two might well be in attendance. See, one thing about a summit conference in our business; everybody’s walking on eggshells. Nobody wants to spark off the apocalypse so everyone would be cautious. If Eligor was behind the horned monster, as I was pretty certain he was, he wasn’t likely to set it rampaging through the Edwardian decor of the Ralston, especially with infernal royalty like Prince Sitri in attendance, folks even higher up the food chain than the grand duke himself.

I called young Clarence and caught him between clients. He seemed to be in a good mood. What was the deal with him? Why had Temuel asked me to keep an eye on him, then denied it? Could the kid somehow be involved with the heavenly insiders Habari had talked about? Some kind of agent for these mysterious Third Way guys? And was my supervisor in on it too? But if so, why hadn’t the kid been on the scene the day of the first soul- napping? Since it had been Sam’s case it would have been easy for him to be there. It only rolled to me because they were tied up when it went down. If having him present for the Great Walker Extraction was the reason someone had dropped Clarence in our midst, the kid had blown it pretty thoroughly, so why was he still here? Maybe he and his Magian masters were playing some longer, deeper game. But it sure was hard to believe any of that about Clarence while I was talking to him. If his dorky-kid-brother act was an act, it was a brilliant piece of method theater.

“So I hear you’re going to the summit conference,” he said to me, in the exact same awestruck tone as an eleven-year-old talking about the All-Star game. “That’s going to be amazing! Are you excited?”

“Oh, yeah, there’s nothing like standing at a public urinal next to some guy from the other team whose entire mission in the universe is to spread venereal diseases.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “You’re really funny sometimes, Bobby. I heard some of the biggest guys from our side are going to be there. Karael and the warrior angels. I even heard that Eremiel is going to be there! I’ve never seen him but I’ve heard he’s awesome.”

I confess I rolled my eyes. On Heaven as on Earth, fanboys are fanboys. “Yeah, Eremiel’s one of the guys who knows Hell really well, so of course he’ll be there. Angel of the Abyss. I think he’s leading the delegation.”

Clarence started to say something and then laughed. To his credit he sounded embarrassed. “I almost asked you to take pictures.”