“That good enough?”
Titus nods.
“It’s a good start,” he says to Evelyn. To me he says, “And after I do this, you’re going to owe me a favor, right?”
“Right.”
He smiles, takes Evelyn by the elbow, and leads her to his table.
“This way, ma’am. Let’s see if we can track down your wayward child.”
Carlos says, “You were a real world-class prick there for a minute. Then you turned it around right at the last second and came out sort of looking like a person.”
“I’ve gotta get out of here.”
“I’m kidding, man. You did fine with the old lady.”
“No, I didn’t. This is my punishment for not killing Mason. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. There’s no reason for me to exist. I kill things I don’t care about for people I hate. I yell at old ladies. And now I’m going to owe goddamn Titus a favor.”
“I’m going to wrap up this food so you can take it home with you.”
I turn in my seat and look at Evelyn and Titus. He has Aki’s ring in one hand and the photo in the other. His eyes are half closed and he’s whispering an incantation. Evelyn hangs on his every word. She doesn’t look happy, but maybe a little more hopeful.
I’m suddenly aware that while I’m watching Titus, pretty much everyone else in the bar is watching me. I’d like to think they’re staring because of my white-hot animal magnetism, but I know I’m not Elvis. I’m Lobster Boy, hear me roar.
Carlos gives me the tamales in a Styrofoam carrier.
Thanks and good night. Be sure to tip your waitresses.
I leave through a shadow near the fire exit in back.
YOU KNOW HOW they put out oil well fires by setting off an explosion that’s so big it snuffs out the first fireball with a bigger one? Sometimes the only way to get past something impassable is to smash it with itself. Like kills like. When you live with a dead man’s head that won’t shut up and smokes all your cigarettes, the only way to deal with the awfulness is to make it so unbelievably awful that it becomes kind of weirdly beautiful. Like an exploding giraffe full of fireworks. (Hellions really know how to throw a birthday party.)
Kasabian calls it his “pussy wagon,” but I can’t go there, so I call it the “magic carpet.” Really it’s a polished mahogany deck about the size of a dinner plate, supported by a dozen articulated brass legs. When I brought it home from Muninn’s—partial payment for a quick smash-and-grab job—one end of the deck was loaded down with prisms, mirrors, and gears that must have meshed with another long-lost machine. The top is covered in what looked like teeth marks and stained with something black. I don’t want to know what used to drive the thing or what happened to it.
After I unscrewed and sawed off all the extra hardware, I let Kasabian take it out for a test drive. What do you know? His low-rent, third-rate hoodoo was just powerful enough to keep the brass legs in sync, so he can move around on his own now. It’s nice not to have to carry Kasabian everywhere anymore, but it means that every day I come home to a chain-smoking Victorian centipede.
He’s standing on what used to be the video bootlegging table and using his brass legs to tap numbers into a PC. Ever since he got mobile, Kasabian has been doing Max Overload’s books again. He and Allegra set up a little in-store wireless network so he can do the banking and buy new inventory online. Race with the Devil, a decent piece of mid-seventies trash with Warren Oates and Peter Fonda trying to outrun a bunch of rural devil worshippers, plays on a monitor next to the PC. Ever since his visit Downtown, Kasabian has been on a devil movie kick. He doesn’t look up when he hears me come in.
“So, how did it go?” He turns and looks at me. “Oh, that bad.”
“Just about that bad, Alfredo Garcia.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“I had to go Wild Bunch in the theater. Left me in a Peck-inpah state of mind.”
“Did you get paid, at least?”
“Yeah, here’s the big money. Plus the usual deductions.”
I drop the check next to the keyboard. Kasabian pinches the ends of the check between two of his brass legs and holds it up to read it.
“That prick. He just does this to humiliate you. It makes him feel better about not being able to do the stuff you can do and needing you for his dirty work. It’s pure envy.”
“Yeah, it’s a glamorous life here in Graceland.”
I pick up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the bedside table and pour some into the same glass I’ve been using for three days.