The Sandman Slim Series Books 1-4. Richard Kadrey
sultan of Brunei.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“You’re not the sultan? Perhaps you’re Bill Gates or the czar of all the Russias?”
“No.”
“Then trust me. You can’t afford Spiritus Dei.”
The little man wanders to a nearby table and picks up a wooden doll that looks like it was pulled out of a fire. He winds a key at the doll’s back. It stands up and begins to sing. The song might be a hymn or an aria from an opera I’ve never heard of, which is all of them. The doll’s voice bounces off the walls, high, perfect, and heartbreaking. With a soft click, the key in its back stops moving and the doll falls over. Its voice echoes for several minutes, bouncing off the labyrinth’s thick walls.
“Of course, we might be able to do a trade,” Muninn says. “There’s a certain someone who would like a certain something in the possession of certain other people in our little town. I would like you to help Eugène procure this item for me. If you’re successful, I guarantee you a flask of Spiritus Dei and a not inconsiderable amount of cash. Eugène told me that you’d like money to be part of your payment. Is that right?”
“Money is good.”
“Money I have.”
Muninn brings over a set of blueprints he’d hidden behind a collection of canopic jars. He spreads the blueprints on the only relatively uncluttered table in the room, first pushing animal teeth, Mayan vases, and a box of lenses and prisms out of the way.
“The place you are invading is called Avila. It’s a gentleman’s club in the hills.”
“What does that mean, ‘gentleman’s club’?”
“Just what I said. A gentleman’s club. In the old sense. A place to drink, to eat, and to gamble with friends. It’s also the most exclusive and expensive bordello in the state. Perhaps the country. Avila’s clients are film producers, software billionaires, local politicians, and foreign heads of state. Only the highest of the high can get inside. Except for you two, of course. You’ll be the rats in the walls.”
The building on the blueprints is round and the interior is laid out in concentric circles.
“While Eugène is an accomplished thief, Avila is heavily guarded. It might take days or even weeks for him to figure out how to penetrate the defenses. However, I understand that you can easily get him inside and out again.”
Avila is laid out with the offices in the outside circle. Food and a bar one circle in. Gambling one more level in, and the bordello one after that. The center of the blueprints is blank.
“At this time of year, there are parties every night, leading up to their New Year’s Eve party in a couple of days. You’ll want to go in there as soon as possible. Now, there will be enough chaos to make your work easier, but on New Year’s there will be too much.”
I point to the building’s blank center.
“What’s in there?”
“No one knows. Perhaps you’ll find out.”
“Does it pay extra?”
“Let’s see what you bring me.”
I’m trying to keep my mouth shut, but it’s really pissing me off that I have to give up the hunt for Mason so I can play cat burglar for an Oompa-Loompa. But that’s exactly what I have to do if I want to keep Max Overdrive open and have a place to live. I don’t have a choice. I don’t think Vidocq would be happy having me planning mass murder at his kitchen table.
“I’m in,” I say.
“Good boy,” says Vidocq. “I’m in, too.”
“Me, too,” says Allegra.
“Forget it. No amateurs on this bus. Only criminals.”
Allegra starts to say something, but Vidocq cuts her off.
“He’s right, even if he’s rude about it. What we’re doing is criminal and dangerous. This isn’t the time or place for you to learn about such things.”
“Fine,” she says. “Have a boys’ night out. I hope you and your dicks will be very happy together.”
I look over at Muninn and he has two tuxedos on hangers.
“Gentlemen’s disguises for a gentleman’s club.”
WE STEP FROM the room and into Avila without anyone noticing, which is something I’ve always wondered about. How can you see two guys dressed like ushers at Liberace’s funeral walk out of a wall and not react? My guess is that no one sees us or remembers us. The room or the key or some combination must temporarily blind or switch off the memories of anyone nearby. Otherwise how could I have sent so many of Hell’s A-team killers down to Tartarus, the special Hell for the double dead.
Avila is a palace designed by Martians. A rip-off of a rip-off of a rip-off of a Victorian men’s club that some set designer saw in a Sherlock Holmes movie when he or she was six. Still, the scale of the place is impressive. They must have cut down half the Amazon rain forest to get the dark wood for the bar. The Rolexes in this one room could pay off the national debt.
The place is full of sloppy, well-dressed drunks laughing and screaming in a dozen languages. Happy hour at the United Nations of Money. Half-naked and just plain naked hostesses serve drinks and tapas and hold out silver trays piled high with white powder, syringes, and glass pipes, whatever the partiers want. Perfect. Who needs magic to sneak around when you’ve got Caligula’s bachelor party going on down the hall?
Vidocq’s thief instincts are cranked up to eleven and he finds the office in the time it takes me to stop looking at the girls. He’s no fun at all when he’s in business mode. He pushes me into the office ahead of him and closes the door.
After all the rumpus-room fun, the office is kind of a letdown. It could be the office of a bank president or a Beverly Hills real-estate tycoon. There are lots of awards on bookshelves. Lots of celebrities smiling down from the walls. Some of their eyes are so glazed it looks like you could go ice skating on them. Over where Vidocq is working on the safe is an oak desk the size of a Porsche and probably more expensive.
“How’s it going over there?” I ask.
Vidocq is rattling little bottles together as he pulls potions from the pockets of his tux.
“It’s as I thought,” he says. “The safe is ordinary, but it’s protected by a number of protective spells.”
“Want me to help? I’m good at breaking things.”
“Be quiet. I have to understand exactly what’s at work here and eliminate the spells one by one and in the proper order.”
I’m already bored and annoyed by Avila. It’s not that I have anything against bad behavior. I’m all for it. But this incestuous, backslapping, heavy-money-party cabal scene is everything I hate about L.A. in particular and human beings in general.
Those pricks down the hall, flying high above it all on this hillside, they’re the kind of people whose faces end up on money or a new library so that kids will have a new place to hang out while realizing that no one ever taught them how to read. Their wealth doesn’t insulate them from the world. It creates it. Their bank statements read like Genesis. Let there be light and let a thousand investment banks bloom. They shit cancer, and when they belch in a bowl valley like L.A., the air turns so thick and poisonous that you can cut it up like bread and serve it for lunch at McDonald’s. A Suicide Sandwich Happy Meal.
There must be a hundred of them just ten steps away. I wonder how many I could kill before the cops got here.
Vidocq is mumbling over his vials and potions across the room. I drop down into the desk chair and look through the pile of envelopes in front of me. Aside from a few charity begging letters, suck-up notes from politicians, and more bullshit awards, the rest