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“Why don’t you have a drink and listen to the carols? That always makes me feel better.”
Someone comes in and Carlos stands, looking serious.
“Be cool,” he says, and goes to the end of the bar, where two uniformed cops have come in. The three of them speak quietly. Too quietly for me to hear over the jukebox. After a minute of chatter, Carlos hands one of the cops a Christmas card. The card is misshapen. Bulging. There’s something inside it. The three of them nod to each other and shake hands. One of them glances at me and stops like he thinks we might have gone to high school together. A second later, he turns and heads out with his partner.
“What was that?”
Carlos says, “Exactly what it looked like. Protection. But for real. Do you know how many cops are left in the city? They’re splitting town just like everybody else. The cops that are left, they need a little extra motivation to answer the phone if there’s trouble.”
“A nice racket.”
Carlos shakes his head and throws back his drink.
“The price of doing business in L.A.”
He pours us both another round and holds up his glass for a toast.
“Merry Christmas.”
We clink glasses and drink. I shake my head.
“I can’t believe it’s Christmas again. How do you people stand having the same holidays over and over? In Hell they only have holidays when Lucifer feels like it, so it’s always a surprise and all the little goblins are giddy as kindergartners.”
“You going back to the old country for the holidays?”
“Yeah, I’m Hell’s Secret Santa, bringing all the good little imps coal and fruitcake.”
“How do you tell the difference?” says someone behind me.
I turn and find Eugène Vidocq, besides Candy probably my best friend on this stupid planet. He doesn’t like talking about his age and swears he isn’t a day over a hundred and fifty, but I know he’s well over two hundred. He’s also immortal. And a thief. And after being in the States for more than a hundred years, he still has a French accent thick enough to slice Brie, a last remnant of his home that he won’t ever let go of.
He claps me on the back and nods to Carlos. Orders a couple of drinks. He isn’t alone. Brigitte Bardo is with him. She gives me a quick peck on the cheek. Brigitte is Czech. She was a skilled zombie hunter back in the day and used to do porn to support her hunting habit. These days she’s working her way into regular Hollywood films. But it’s slow. She still has an accent and it’s, you know, the end of the world, so there’s fewer films in production. When she’s not auditioning, she helps out at Allegra’s Lurker clinic.
Carlos brings Vidocq whiskey and Brigitte red wine.
“Where’s Candy?” she says.
“She wasn’t feeling well. Did you find anything wrong with her when she stopped by yesterday?”
“Nothing that I know of. She just took her Jade potion and left. She seemed fine.”
“Maybe I should call her again.”
“Leave her alone. This time of year can put people into odd moods.”
“Don’t I know it,” says Carlos. “It was just about a year ago that you wandered in here the first time. You were looking a little bleary, Mr. Stark.”
“As I recall, I’d just crawled out of a cemetery and was wearing stolen clothes.”
“You always make an impressive entrance,” says Vidocq. “As I recall, after your return you were going to shoot me the first time we saw each other.”
“Total misunderstanding. And sorry.”
He holds up his glass.
“Whiskey under the bridge.”
“You kicked a bunch of skinheads’ asses for me, remember?” says Carlos. “I didn’t know about any of you Sub Rosas or Lurkers back then. If those fuckers came in here these days, I’d give them a faceful of this.”
