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“You really can drive, right?”
Kelly nods. His gaze flickers from the floor and back to me.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I never operated an automobile when I was alive, but I’ve been well instructed since then.”
He sounds English. Cockney maybe. Michael Caine playing Harry Palmer. A working-class guy.
“Good enough. And don’t call me ‘sir.’ ”
“What should I call you, sir?” He cringes when he says it like he thinks I’m going to hit him. “My apologies.”
“Stark’s fine.”
“Why not Wild Bill?” says Mammon brightly. “I hear he likes that even less than Sandman Slim.”
Mammon turns to me.
“He’s here, by the way. Your great-great-great-granddaddy, Mr. Hickok. I could arrange a tête-à-tête.”
There’s no wheelchair in the room and there’s no way I’m carrying this charred creep to the car, so I push Mammon into his office chair.
“Introduce me, and when this is all over, I might let you keep the other arm.”
Mammon brightens.
“You see what I mean, Mr. Kelly? He wants us to see him as human, but what’s the first thing he does when he gets in here? He takes my legs. And I didn’t even attack him. Then he takes my arm and threatens me with further mutillefurther ation. That sounds much more Hellion than human, doesn’t it? I don’t think you’ll be wanting to turn your back on this one. Not for one minute.”
“Where’s the garage?” I ask Kelly.
“Directly below, Mr. Stark.”
“Mister.” It’s better than “sir.”
I don’t want either of them to see the Room, so I blindfold them both and take them downstairs through a shadow.
MAMMON’S BARGE TURNS out to be a pristine early-sixties Lincoln Continental limo with a drop top and suicide doors. I think more than a little of this world is put together straight from my unconscious. I’ll know for sure if I end up in a motorcycle race against Steve McQueen.
The Lincoln isn’t like a modern limo. The car is wide open on the inside. No partitions or sliding windows separating the passenger compartment from the driver. It’s like a club or a prison cafeteria. Candy would love this heap. I can see her in the passenger seat with her feet up on the dash hitting the button on her robot sunglasses in time with the radio.
It still feels strange to have left her behind while I go chasing after another woman even if it’s not for a romantic kind of love, but the kind that says if you’ve ever been deeply connected to someone, you don’t let them get snatched to the underworld without doing something about it.
When this is over and if the universe is still standing, maybe I’ll bring her down here. I wouldn’t take her to the Hell I knew, but I could see her getting off on a weekend in the Convergence. It would be like the adventure vacations yuppies go on where they get to experience the great outdoors from air-conditioned buses and ten-thousand-dollar tents. We’ll take over a floor of the Roosevelt Hotel and shoot paintballs at the wildlife.
I take Mammon from his chair and belt him in behind the driver’s seat. Kelly and I get in the front. He starts the ignition and drives us smoothly through the garage to the gatehouse, where a guard is waiting.
I show Mammon the knife in my hand.
“Be cool or you lose the other arm.”
“Of course,” Mammon says.
We pull up and Mammon rolls down his tinted window just low enough to show his face. He nods at the guard and the guard pushes a button that rolls away the gate. Kelly steers us out of the palace and on to Hollywood Boulevard. It looks like even in Hell I’m destined to travel in stolen cars.
“Turn right,” I tell him. “Things are messy the other way.”
He makes the turn.
It’s funny seeing Mammon sitting calmly with his bad legs and crispy arm. I got lucky back at the palace. I had no idea he could manifest a Gladius. Azazel didn’t bother to mention that when he sent me to kill Mammon more than ten years ago. I don’t know why he wanted me to do it and I don’t know why he changed his mind. Maybe his TiVo was out.
