Graves' end

“Lia Flores.” She shook his proffered hand and considered him, feeling curious. “So, Ben Leonard, were you really there?” she asked. “The Night of the Blackdogs? I’ve heard the stories for years.”

Ben Leonard nodded. “A thousand black ghost dogs,” he said, “all barking in unison, all at once, witnessed by dozens of cops from a dozen divisions, warning us off from a building that collapsed not three hours after. It was like nothing I ever knew could be. Changed me, frankly. Changed every guy who saw it. Showed us all a wider world.”

“Sure you didn’t eat some funny mushrooms earlier that evening?” Lia kidded.

“No, I didn’t,” Ben said, “and why does everyone I ever tell ask me that? No, I was sober and lucid and in my right mind. We all were.” He looked Lia over in his turn, as curious about her as she was about him. “So,” he said. “You’re, like, an ‘independent operator’?”

Lia nodded.

“More of you on the street than there used to be,” Ben said thoughtfully, re-appraising her. “Guess I never met an actual witch before, though. A real one who can do things, I mean. Most of the ones I’ve run across were sort of pretending.”

“No warts, no broom, no pointy hat,” Lia said. “Hope I don’t disappoint.”

Ben smiled. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

Three LAPD cruisers pulled around the corner and into the Home Depot parking lot, and Ben raised a hand to their drivers in greeting. Then he turned back to Lia.

“Your motorcade awaits,” he said. “Let’s leave that stolen thing for somebody else to deal with. You can ride in one of the cruisers… or I guess you can ride with me. If you like. I don’t think the Captain expects normal regulations to apply.”

Lia thought about it, then broke into a grin.

She was still grinning some minutes later, gleefully, under a helmet and perched on the back of Ben’s motorcycle while it and the three cruisers flew up Vineland at an insane rate of speed, flashing lights, blaring sirens, and parting traffic like a blade.

Chapter Forty-Two

Graves got Big Juan sitting up and propped him against a discarded, cushionless sofa some slob had dumped in the alley. Within minutes, the fat man was breathing better.

Graves paced while he interrogated, his bony feet crunching over dead leaves and bits of broken glass. Hannah and Charlie Lurp looked on.

“This world is what he wants,” Big Juan said, in answer to the walking skeleton’s most fundamental question. “Mictlantecuhtli. He’s obsessed with it. They all are, over there. In love with the flesh. You said ‘fetish’ an’ you were sorta kidding, but that’s really what it’s like. They envy every moment of our stupid little lives.”

“Daylight’s burnin,’” Graves said. “Cut to the part about the girls.”

“You mean Ingrid, don’t you? Ingrid Redstone, that singer shot you in the back of the head?”

“You’re a quick study, you are.”

“Way it got explained to me, she was gonna be Mictlantecuhtli’s Queen,” Big Juan said. “It was a deal they made: she was gonna give up her life so he could have one. Mictlantecuhtli needed someone with her kinda skills an’ her connection to the earth to break all the way through the wall between worlds an’ take over an incarnation. Guess that’d be where you come in.”

“Why me?” Graves asked.

Big Juan shrugged. “I dunno. Why not, I guess? But that Ingrid, she got cold feet. She couldn’t do it to you, even though it woulda ended with her becoming Queen of all Mictlan. She stopped you goin’ in to talk to Hardface the only way she thought she could.”

Graves was troubled by this interpretation. “What’d Hardface have to say about it?” he asked.

“I dunno about that either, man,” Big Juan said. “That was it for me, I planted you for Caradura an’ I was out. Stopped operating altogether. El Rey shut his place down afterwards, after you died, so I got a real job an’ had a different life. Learned to bake, opened a shop, sold cakes and donuts for near forty years.”

“Never even occurred to me you might still be alive,” Graves said.

“Well, me neither, tell you the truth, but I’m scheduled to hit the century mark next summer,” Juan said, nodding. “Willard Scott’s supposed to say happy birthday on the TV, an’ all that shit.”

“Runnin’ across you here was pure dumb luck,” Graves said, speaking less to Big Juan than chasing down his own train of thought. He looked to Hannah, and then to Charlie. “What’re the odds of something like this happening, d’you think? All of us being here at the right time and place?”

“I think it’s what Lia means when she talks about ‘synchronicity,’” Hannah said quietly. “The past and the present harmonizing. Maybe the future, too.”

“Yeah, that’s how these things like to work,” Big Juan confirmed. “Like maybe it couldnta happened any other way. You get used to it after you been operating for a while.”

Graves and Hannah and Charlie Lurp all looked back down at him.

“I do know one more thing,” Juan wheezed. “El Rey didn’t kill that Ingrid to bind her in Mictlan. He wanted that project to work, an’ I guess he still needed a witch.”

Hannah looked to Graves. “Like Lia,” she murmured.

“Must not’ve panned out for ’em, though,” Big Juan said.

“Why do you say?” Graves asked.

“Because the world’s still the world, amigo,” Big Juan replied. “I can’t imagine it would be if Mictlantecuhtli had got out into it.”

Graves nodded and extended a hand. He, Hannah and Charlie pitched in to haul Big Juan to his feet, Iwo Jima style. “All right,” Graves said, once the giant was upright again. “I’m calling us square. Go on livin’ out the rest of your different life, Big Juan.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Gracias. I was sorry about what happened to you, man. You coulda killed me that day, but you didn’t. I remember that. And I know you were only there to save that lady. I wouldnta chose to see it work out like it did.”

“Guess I appreciate that, for what it’s worth.” Graves nodded and looked to Charlie. “Charlie, you wouldn’t happen to have a car, wouldja?”

“Not no more, but I know where there’s one you can use.”

“Dexter?” Hannah said. “What are you gonna do?”

It seemed like it was becoming a standard refrain.

“I’m thinkin’ it’s time I paid this Hardface a visit,” Graves growled. “Look him square in the sockets and see what sort of personification he is.”

Graves and Hannah waited in the small staff parking lot behind the nursing home while Charlie Lurp and Big Juan San Martin shuffled around to the front of it. Juan needed to refresh his tiny oxygen tank. Charlie returned alone after less than ten minutes, slipping surreptitiously out a back door that banged shut anyhow when he turned to rest his weight on his walker. Graves and Hannah hurried over. Charlie thumped the hood of another fancy modern car (a Jaguar, this time) that was parked in a spot with a sign reading ‘RESERVED FOR DR. WALSH.’

“Doc locks hisself up in his office to look at that internet porn and sample the pharmaceuticals on most afternoons, but he leaves his keys in his jacket on the coat rack,” Charlie said, holding up a jingling ring on a leather tab embossed with the Jaguar logo. “So this ain’t gonna be missed for at least a couple of hours.”

“Ahh, thank you there, Charlie old pal,” Graves said, accepting the stolen keys from the wobbly old man. Back in the war, Charlie’d had a knack for acquiring whatever a guy might happen to need, from a bottle of whisky or an extra carton of cigarettes on up to a jeep or a box of grenades. Graves was glad to know he was still getting up to his old tricks. “If I get through this I’m comin’ back here,” he promised. “We’ll play a game of chess ourselves.”

“Just like that weird old movie,” Charlie grinned. “I’d like that, Dex, I really would.”