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hole on the compartment lid and pull.
Oh, Charlie, my Charlie. What have you been up to?
The first thing that grabs my jaded gaze are the piles of neatly bundled hundred-dollar bills. I pull out a few. Then a few more. The compartment is deeper than I thought at first. There must be half a million in cash back here. As hard as it is, I put the money back and move on to the other goodies. Bags and bags of pills. I recognize a few. Civilian stuff. Pharmaceutical-quality amphetamines. Vicodin. Dilaudid. Some muscle relaxants and a fistful of blue Viagra tabs. Then there are the Sub Rosa goodies. Akira. Dixie Wishbone. Even some Red Sonja, a combination of dried blood and pituitary glands. Only vampires and their flunkies use that stuff, proof Charlie has been cheating on his Sub Rosa friends with bad kids from the other side of the tracks. There’s even a Glock 17 with six loaded clips. But it’s what’s in the secret compartment under the secret compartment that makes my night.
It’s an angel box. Maybe the one he had the other night, maybe another. Who cares? I take it out, then put it back in its padded cubbyhole. If Charlie is carrying it, the car is going someplace and I don’t want him to notice it’s missing. Instead of stealing the whole box, I open it and take the vial of black milk. Let him explain that to whoever the box is for.
The only other thing in the compartment is a complete mystery. It’s kind of, well, dildo-shaped, but made of a dark, heavy metal. There’s a thumb-size recess on the thing’s blunt end. When I push it, the body of the dildo retracts, exposing a thin, sawtooth-ended tube. I relax my thumb and the thing snaps back into its original shape. Is it something new that an angel gave him? If it’s important, why didn’t my angel give me one? I bet if I got Charlie high enough on his Dilaudid and some Dom Pérignon, he’d come around, but Abbot doesn’t want me to have that kind of fun.
I’ll have to console myself with stealing it instead.
I stuff it in my pocket with the black milk and put everything else back where it was. I even wipe the dirt off the tire from where I set it on the ground. Last thing, I wipe my prints from every flat surface.
Back in the driver’s seat, I give the dildo one more look-over, and it confirms my instincts. There’s a maker’s mark by the thumb recess. I can’t read it well, but I know the look. The thing was made by a Tick Tock Man.
I start the engine and ever so gently drive the car back into the city. Park it in the lot of a twenty-four-hour Denny’s on Sunset and wipe down the interior. Just as I step out of the Rolls, a couple of L.A.’s finest walk out of the Denny’s to their cruiser on the other side of the lot. The only thing more conspicuous than my ugly face next to this high-end car would be my ugly face running away from it. So, I just stand there and light a Malediction, like I do it every night.
The cops glance at me and keep walking. They get in the cruiser, head around the corner onto Gower, and disappear. I start breathing again. The only thing worse than punching Charlie Anpu I could have done tonight is punch a couple of cops. The fact they ignored me makes me wonder if I just got lucky or if Abbot pulled strings with LAPD like he said he would. Whatever it was, I’ll take it.
I take a drag off the Malediction. The Denny’s is just a block from Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, where Candy and I first went out together. If it wasn’t so late I’d call her for a midnight rendezvous. But she’s probably still rehearsing with Alessa and I’m not going to get in the way of her music. Besides, I have plenty left to do myself, so I let the thought go.
I walk deeper into Hollywood, where I’ll have a better chance of finding a cab. I still need to get back to the Hollywood Bowl and pick up the bike. While I walk I call Abbot and tell him what I found.
But I leave out the part where I stole Charlie’s car.
A TICK TOCK Man is halfway between a garage mechanic and a true hoodoo artist. He makes mechanical familiars for rich Sub Rosas. Some use them for abracadabra purposes and others just keep them around for show. Manimal Mike is a Tick Tock Man, and a good one. He lives over the hill in the San Fernando Valley. It’s a bit of a drive after going all the way to the warehouse, but with luck it will be worth it.
I pull up outside the small auto repair place he runs in Chatsworth. Not that he actually repairs cars. He just keeps a few junkers around for show so that no one will guess what he’s really doing inside.
It’s late and Manimal Mike has locked the metal sliding gate to the garage. I bang on it and shout until someone opens the door to the back room. All I can see is a silhouette lit from behind, but I can tell it’s a big man with an even bigger wrench in his massive mitt. He heads for the gate and I take a step back into the light outside the garage where he can see me. The mobile-home-size silhouette stops for a second and cocks its head. I hold out my arms and give him a stupid little wave.
“Stark!” he says through a Russian accent thick enough that you could chisel it into bowling pins. “How are you?”
“Great, Pavel. Is Mike home?”
“Of course. Of course,” he says, tugging at a ring of keys attached to his belt by a thin chain. A second later, he pushes the gate aside and lets me in. Gets me in a big bear hug when I come through. Pavel is one of Manimal Mike’s cousins. It’s not that Pavel loves me so much. He treats everybody he likes this way. He and his little brother, Ilya, are Vucaris. Russian beast men. Imagine a wolf or bear in human skin. They’re nice to have on your side in a fight, but if they’re not on your side, you’ll want to make sure your life insurance is paid up.
Pavel leads me into the back, where Manimal Mike has his workshop. The place is full of half-constructed mechanical animals. Everything from squirrels to Bengal tigers. It’s a beautiful place in its way, part zoo and part mad scientist’s lair. Pavel calls to him and Mike looks up. He puts down his tools and comes over.
“Stark. How are you doing?” he says, and we shake hands.
“Just fine, Mike. It looks like you’re getting along all right.”
It’s true. The first time I was in Mike’s workshop, not only was it a chaotic grease pit, but he was playing Billy Flinch, a kind of one-person William Tell game where you try to shoot a glass off your head with a ricochet. Aim wrong and you’ll blow a hole in the wall. Aim wronger and you’ll blow your brains to Fresno. But Mike isn’t into that anymore. He’s not in the very top tier of L.A. Tick Tock Men, but he’s on his way. All he needs are a few more of the right customers.
“Things are going pretty well,” he says. “Did you know I’m making a Persian cat for Tuatha Fortune?”
“That’s great news. A couple of more clients like her and you’ll be setting up shop in Beverly Hills.”
He wipes machine oil off his hands with a rag.
“That’s why I have to make this cat perfect. Want to see it?”
“Another time. This isn’t actually a social call.”
He nods. “This time of night, I had a feeling.”
I take the dildo from my pocket and hand it to him.
