'Yeah. Dell Ammo. Fighting the forces of heaven and hell. One man apocalypse. The bodies are dropping already.'
'Has he flipped?' The kid looked me up and down.
'Forget it, doll baby. You've managed to land in the midst of a cosmic power struggle, and the poor joker in the middle of it all wants to get drunk and sleep the aching memories away.'
When we reached Auberge and split up to go our separate ways, I did just that. In a nice, clean hotel room for a change.
12
St. Judas
The nice clean sheets in the hotel room no longer looked nice or clean. Whatever I drank before falling into a stupor had sweated out again. I smelled as bad as I felt. Some memory from long ago slid away back where dreams come from, and I lay still, working at waking up.
After lolling about like that for a few minutes, I rolled out of bed and navigated toward the bathroom. One hot and cold shower and a shave later, I felt ready to make a phone call.
Pulling the business card out of my wallet, I set it next to the telephone and punched out the combination of numbers and letters. If the HWHY was some sort of mnemonic, I had no idea what it was for.
A female voice as pert and crisp as sunrise over the mountains said, 'Forty-nine forty-nine. May I held you?'
'Is this the church?' I asked with a small degree of surprise. A church with an answering service?
'Church, sir?'
She must get darned few calls for them. 'Uh... the St. Judas Church.'
'Oh,' she said with a pleasant tone. 'One moment.' The phone went silent.
I waited. A cigarette eventually found its way to my lips and got lit. Halfway through the smoke, a man's voice crackled onto the line. He had that sharp-edged bite that one would expect from a tough businessman, not from someone connected with a church. At least, not a with a nonevangelical church.
'Who is this?' he demanded, as polite as a gunshot.
'A fellow believer,' I said in a simpery voice. 'A traveler on the path to understanding. A humble seeker after-'
'Cut the crap-I'm a busy man. Are you the guy that knows Joey Moreno?'
I stumbled over a thought. He'd caught me off guard with that one. '
Joey,' I said. 'He got iced last night.'
It was his turn to pause. The silence on the other end was thick enough to lean against. After a moment, the voice spoke.
'How'd it happen?'
'Shot. In my office. I found him there.'
'Did you by chance have anything to do with it?'
'Probably. He knew me too well.'
Another pause. 'That's a good answer. A very good one. Honest. I like that. Look, pal, I think I know what you're up to from what Joey told me. And I suspect that there's big trouble brewing because of it. And not just for Joey or you. This may have serious repercussions. Serious. I think we could both benefit from a talk.'
He gave me an address on the eight hundred block of South Broadway. I told him I'd meet him in a couple of hours and rang off.
I ground out the cigarette and thought hard. It might be a setup. Whoever killed Joey could have planted the card on him. I loaded up my Colt and shoved it into my waistband holster.
The best way to find a trapper is to hang around His traps...
In the middle of the east side of the block sat a squashed sort of building jammed between two other equally squashed buildings. A sign in the window hung at a careless angle.
Checks cashed here
Rubber stamps made to order
24 hour legal forms
Maps to the stars's homes