“In a manner of speaking. But not recently.”
“Stop confusing me, George. I’m fucking exhausted.”
To his credit, Fatback didn’t sound offended this time. “Well, it’s not the same guy, obviously, but how many times do you run across a name like that? And a reverend, too?”
“Just tell me.”
“I found a guy who had the same name, first, middle, and last. And he was even a reverend. But he died seven years ago, almost eight, and he didn’t have anything to do with any Magian Society.” He gave me the details, which upset me considerably, because if I was going to figure out what all this new stuff meant I’d have to put off the drinking binge that had seemed like the only thing alluring enough to keep me alive until tomorrow.
I thanked him again and then called Clarence the Boy Angel. Although by my standards it wasn’t particularly late, I obviously woke the kid up. I wondered if the little company spy had gone to bed in his footie pajamas with his nice landlady reading him stories or something.
“Bobby?” He groaned. “What time is it?”
“Too late for you to be awake, obviously, so I’ll make it short.” If Sam was right I couldn’t trust him an inch, so I paused to figure out how best to phrase my question. “Look, when we went Upstairs and I had you look up all those names, did you only check the rolls of the living or whatever they call that stuff at Records?”
“Do you mean did I check dead people?” He sounded a little more awake now and cranky. “Of course I did. And I told you, I couldn’t find anybody by any of those names except that one guy, Jose Patrillo.”
Who was the ringer I’d put in to test him. So Habari was dead, but he wasn’t in Heaven’s records? What in the name of the Highest was going on around here? But just before I hung up, I thought of another question. “How far back did you look?”
“You mean how long in the past?”
“To see if any of them had died, yeah.”
He snorted. “Well, considering you told me that you’d just seen the guy in the flesh, I only went back a little way. I think I checked the deaths for the last couple of years in case he’d passed fairly recently but had been misfiled.”
So Fatback’s information was probably right, and the kid might even be telling the truth-about this, anyway. No matter what, though, things were getting very deep now, very deep indeed. “So you only went back maybe two years? If I told you somebody with that same name had died seven years ago right here in San Judas, that wouldn’t surprise you?”
“Somebody dies every few seconds, and lots of people share names, Bobby.” It sounded like he was getting impatient with me. It made an interesting contrast. “No, that wouldn’t surprise me very much at all.”
“Okay. Thanks, kid.” I almost asked him why our bosses had set him to snoop on me, but I also knew it was a bad idea to show him my hand. Never give up anything for free. “Go back to bed.”
“You sound like shit, Bobby.” He actually sounded concerned-an actor to the end. “I think you’re the one who needs to get some rest.”
“Oh, yeah. Soon as I can find some quarters for the vibrating bed.”
But I knew now that despite having to meet the scary soldier angel for breakfast at eight o’clock sharp (not an hour of the day I particularly enjoy even at the best of times) I wasn’t going to get a lot of sleep because there was too damn much to think about. The world I’d thought I knew was proving to be an even more dubious proposition than I’d figured, and I’d always thought of myself as a cynic. Plus, just to make my happiness complete, after breakfast I was going to be interrogated by the biggest powers on both sides of our permanent war-a great chance to make new enemies.
I locked the minibar to force temptation to work harder, since I could no longer afford to get slaughterously drunk. The sound of that key turning in its tiny little lock seemed like one of the saddest sounds I’d ever heard.
thirty-three
Seven minutes after eight in the morning is not my favorite time of day, and adding lukewarm scrambled eggs and the hard face of Karael only a cup of coffee and a grapefruit away didn’t do much to improve it.
“Sit up, Angel Doloriel. This restaurant is full of creatures who spend their entire miserable existence looking for any sign of weakness on our side, and you’re slouching like a school child who forgot to bring in his homework.”
My problem was that I
“This
I brushed it off and did my best to transfer the rest of it from plate to mouth more carefully as Karael explained again, for the third time since I’d stepped out of the elevator, what I was supposed to say and not say.
“The report you sent about this Third Way nonsense does not officially exist, Advocate,” he explained again. “It’s being held back until after the conference is over. We don’t want to start something before we know all the facts.”
“But why are we having a summit, then?” I noticed that thinning line again and wiped my mouth with my napkin. “Isn’t the Third Way exactly the sort of thing that should be…um…discussed with the Opposition?”
The line quirked up on one end. “You think so? That this is all about getting to the truth? Son, if we always let actual truth turn into official truth this cold war of ours would have turned hot a long time ago. You remember Sodom and Gomorrah? Or at least heard of them? Well, just change the names to Rio or Berlin or Shanghai, imagine those burned to the ground tomorrow with millions of casualties just for starters, and you’ll have some idea of why you’re going to do what you’re told.”
Ten minutes later, I was marched into the Ralston’s Elysium Ballroom, sometimes known as the Cloud Room because of the billowing, cloudy sky painted across the high ceiling. Packing his demon cohorts and angelic enemies into such a room must have amused Grand Duke Eligor to no end, and it was packed. A few hundred were grouped around the various tables, although most of their chairs had already been turned for a better view of the stage, where the main business would take place at a long table set with microphones. Other than Karael beside me, the main movers for both sides were already in place: Eremiel, our Heavenly expert on Hell, whose rawboned face and longish hair gave him the look of a nineteenth-century abolitionist preacher, very much in tune with the Gilded Age setting. The third of the important angels had to be Phanuel, the famous Angel of Exorcism, but by the standards of the Elysium Ballroom he was not very interesting to look at, just another Hollywood male lead in a sober suit.
As expected, the Opposition was visually a bit more interesting. Once you could stop staring at the jellied mass of Prince Sitri you noticed Adramelech, one of the old, bad ones, who had done less than the rest to pass as human. From a distance he looked okay, just an old man in a black suit with a skin color that suggested lots of sunlamp time. Only when you got a little closer could you see that what covered his face looked less like skin and more like a mask of sandstone, yellow and granular. The only things that moved in that stony mask were the eyes, black and liquid as tar. Just seeing the stillness with which he waited for things to start made it clear how big this all was. Adramelech scared me. Badly.
The last of the satanic negotiators was also the most ordinary looking, dressed in a sharp bespoke suit and wearing a pair of black-rimmed hipster glasses like an entertainment industry lawyer. This was Caym, another heavy hitter, president of the main Council of Hell and one of the smartest in the Opposition’s stable. What interested me, though, was that according to Fatback’s grapevine he was also Eligor’s mouthpiece, pushing the Grand Duke’s agenda in the deadly arena of infernal politics. I decided I needed to keep a close eye on him for clues to what Eligor had in mind.
