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Next, his skin does a slow-motion version of what just happened to his clothes. Starting at his hands and feet and moving inward, his skin peels away like a spray-on tan snowstorm. He hangs in the air like a trembling anatomy chart from a Bio 101 textbook.
“Take off your clothes,” I tell his friends. “Or I’ll burn them off like his.”
His friends aren’t dumb. They can’t wait to get bare-assed in front of a bar full of total strangers. The only thing they’re careful with are their own soul bottles. They set them on their clothes like eggs nestled in henhouse nests.
I go back to the floater. I hope people are listening and not just looking. This won’t work if no one hears me.
“I know you have the Qomrama Om Ya. Don’t bother denying it. You have forty-eight hours to bring it to me. If I don’t get it, I’ll peel you down to your bones. And I’ll take my time. You understand me?”
His three friends say, “Yes.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
I pull the floater’s big toe. His shell-shocked eyes turn down to meet mine.
“Do you understand me?”
He nods.
I bark more Hellion and the shreds of his skin float back to his body. But not his clothes. Those are ashes. The rest was an illusion. You can’t really peel a civilian’s skin off. I’ve seen it tried. Their hearts explode or they stroke out. However it happens, they always die, and dying isn’t the statement I want to make today. Today is about wounding. Making the floater’s buddies have to carry him home and explain to their bosses what happened and what I said. The rest of the bar is going to call everyone they know and tell them what they saw and heard. Clever me. I just phoned my demands to everyone in L.A. without using up any of my monthly minutes.
When Mr. Sharkskin looks human again, I drop him. He hits the floor and curls up in a fetal position on a pile of ashes, surrounded by his glowing bottles.
“Hey, Father. Want to save some souls?”
I stomp on a glowing bottle and crush it. There’s a soft sigh as cobalt-blue smoke escapes, rising, spreading, and dissipating. One soul set free.
Traven happily crushes a bottle. Candy throws one against the wall. Brigitte, Vidocq, and Allegra start breaking them, and in a second the whole lousy bar is doing a drunken Riverdance on the rest of the bottles. The place fills with bright blue wisps that rise to the ceiling and vanish.
I burn the rest of the other three Cold Cases’ clothes with a curse. Fish around in my pockets, and between Candy and me we come up with eight dollars. I toss it to the naked idiots.
“Bus fare, assholes. Get out.”
They do. Dragging comatose Mr. Sharkskin off the floor and carrying him outside.
I go to the bar and Carlos pours me an Aqua Regia. I drink it slowly. It gives the Cold Cases enough time to get out and, if they’re lucky, hail a cab that’s going to jack them up for a huge tip.
A good exit is an essential part of making a statement. But you can’t walk out after roughing up just one guy. People might think you had a grudge. To drive the statement home you have to spread the pain. I don’t mean burn anyone else’s clothes off, just make it clear that the statement is for everyone within earshot.
There’s a couple of Foxy Reynards by the door. Hoodoo con men. You ever wonder why tourists on Hollywood Boulevard play three-card monte with guys at bus stops, knowing they’re going to lose? The Reynards’ swindle isn’t the game. Any idiot can learn to palm a card. The Reynards win because they make you want to play even when you know you can’t win.
I collar the older of the two.
“The same goes for you as those other lowlifes. If you know who has the 8 Ball, urge them in the strongest terms to hand it over because I’m coming for you next. Let’s see how many of you bad dogs the city pound can neuter.”
Now it’s time to go.
I wait at the corner and light a Malediction. The others catch up to me a few seconds later. It’s laughs all around. For once, even Allegra doesn’t look mad at me.
I DON’T HEAR a word from the Cold Cases. No one sees any of them for the next few days. Not at any of their usual bars or restaurants or even their Wilshire Boulevard business offices. An entire industry gone to ground.
I’m not entirely surprised they ducked out. If they’re going to try any retaliation, they’re not going to do it themselves. They’ll hire someone and they’ll want a good alibi when it happens. Not that I’m sitting around waiting for a piano to mysteriously fall on my head. I hit gangs every day for the next week, sometimes two a day.
First, a big Nahual smash-and-grab collective. Their clubhouse looks like the dumbest garage sale in the world. Everything from diamonds and gold-plated tire rims to broken clock radios and dusty cassette players that have been sitting around unsold since before Atlantis pissed off to the bottom of the ocean.
I hit a couple of Ludere underground casinos. Besides gambling, they launder money for L.A.’s unsavory Sub Rosa and civilian swells. That one’s sure to come back and bite me in the ass, but it was too much fun flipping the roulette and blackjack tables, like rock-and-roll Jesus versus the moneychangers.
I hit a Wise Blood coven, part of a ring selling bootleg potions. Some stolen but most nothing more than colored water and a little laudanum or strychnine for a kick. Imagine going to some old bruja to cure Granny’s cancer and getting something as useful as a Diet Coke.
