"When will Mr. Kasabian be back?"
"I have no idea. You know how these family things are. It could be a while."
She nods, looks down, then up at me. "Okay. I'll stay. For now."
Hallelujah. "Thank you, Allegra."
"You're welcome, Just Stark."
I WAIT FOR an hour upstairs, until the store fills with the lunch-hour crowd. When there's enough ambient noise downstairs, I figure that I can check on Kasabian and be covered if he starts screaming again.
He's right where I left him on the shelf. When he sees me, he doesn't scream. He just moans.
"For chrissake, put a bullet in my head or change the goddamn channel!"
On the set, some daytime talk show is playing. An older guy in a suit and a bottle blonde are talking about an actress I never heard of and a pasta maker that's going to change everyone's life.
"Please, turn this shit off."
"I don't know. That sounds like one damn fine pasta maker."
"Fuck you."
"Do you have a car?"
He stares at the TV, ignoring me. I reach over and turn down the sound.
"The keys are in my right hand pocket," he says.
I tilt his comatose body to the side so I can reach into his pocket. Got 'em.
"What kind of car is it?"
"Give me back my body."
"Where's Mason?"
"I don't know."
"I don't believe you."
"Trust me, if I knew how to send you to Mason, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Then I'd ask him to let me watch as he ripped your balls off."
I turn the talk show back up and lock the closet door. Muffled profanity comes from inside.
I grab the garbage with the bloody clothes and sheets and head down the stairs to the store. Allegra and another kid are behind the counter, busy with customers. There's a rear exit to the store in a small storage room behind the porn section. I get out the bone blade and try a trick that worked in Hell. Placing the tip of the blade into the lock, I push it inside and turn. The lock clicks open.
Behind the store is a short alley with a couple of dumpsters. I toss the garbage bag and head for the street.
It's nice out. Sunny, but not yet hot. I feel a lot more human and settled today, just another normal guy with a .45 tucked in the back of his jeans, out to run some errands. I counted Brad Pitt's money last night and it came to twenty-two hundred bucks, so I'm sure I can get everything I need.
I keep pressing the little unlock button on the key chain and my good mood evaporates when Kasabian's car finally chirps. A white Chevy Aveo with a dented trunk. Only rental companies buy white American cars, which means that not only is Kasabian's car a piece of shit, it's a used piece of shit. But who's more pathetic, the guy who drives a used piece of shit or the guy who steals it?
IT'S WEIRD STARTING over from zero. It changes the scale of your ambitions. Instead of fantasizing about what kind of mansion you'll buy when you win the lottery, you ask yourself, Do I own socks? Do I have a toothbrush? Do I have a shirt that's not covered in blood?
Money is strange, too, if you haven't used it for a while. Hell is mostly a barter economy. Especially among the high and mighty, having to buy something is a massive social faux pas. It means that you don't have anything good enough to trade or you aren't clever enough to swindle your way to your heart's desire. Brad Pitt's wad seemed like a fortune when I counted it, but I blow through most of it in a couple of hours.
The big money goes for a few choice items. A new pair of Caterpillar steel-toed boots, because steel is always a good idea. I also pick up a long, light overcoat. There's a reason spies and private eyes wear trench coats in all those old movies. They're big enough to hide a multitude of sins, especially the kind with bullets. I pick up a long, charcoal-gray silk overcoat at a West Hollywood rent-boy boutique. Anything heavier than silk will look ridiculous in L.A., and wearing a black overcoat is nature's way of telling you to lay off the Bauhaus.