"A publicity stunt for a movie. Equipment malfunctioned. There are many Sub Rosa in the film industry. They'll pay any fines and lawsuits this time. But they won't next time." Vidocq makes a face like he can smell two-week-old garbage from the apartment next door. "In this matter, no one is on your side.">It's sunny on Rodeo. It's always sunny on Rodeo. When rich trophy wives with platinum AmEx cards and endless supplies of Vicodin float down the street like Prada parade balloons looking for $20 lattes and $2,000 jeans, it goddamn well better be sunny.
Cherry's store is at the end of the block. I've got my knife, a gun, and I'm wearing the motocross jacket with the Kevlar inserts. The perfect accessories to go shopping for a Hello Kitty lunch box.
LOLLIPOP DOLLS IS like some weird little girl's hunting lodge. The heads and faces of every Japanese cartoon character and monster are hung on the walls like trophies. Their plastic guts are in model kits on the shelves and their skins are draped on padded hangers in long rows of animal prints and Little Bo Peep frills. When I turn around, there's a platoon of twelve-year-old Cutie Honey types staring up at me, letting me know that I'm extremely not welcome. It's Village of the Damned with ankle socks.
I say, "I'm looking for Cherry Moon."
One of the Lolitas walks over to me. She barely comes up to my chest.
"Who the fuck are you?"
It's exactly what I thought it would be, and now that I know, it's even worse. What comes out of this mouth of Lolita in a pink ball gown and yellow ribbons isn't a cartoon squeak, but the voice of a thirtysomething bar chick who's had too many late nights and smoked too many unfiltered Luckies. That's the other thing Mason gave Cherry. The power to be twelve forever and to do the same thing to her creepy entourage. A terminally fucked-up fountain of youth.
"I'm an old friend of hers. We both knew Mason way back when."
"Are you stupid or are you fucking stupid? No one talks about Mason around here, cocksucker."
I've never been chewed out by a fourth grader before. It's all I can do to keep from laughing. She must see it in my face because the next thing I know, she's snapped out a white furry-handled tanto knife and is pressing it under my chin hard enough to break the skin.
"Why don't you get out of here, Grandpa? We have a reputation and you're driving down property values. Cherry doesn't want to talk to you. And, by the way, you look like a faggot in that jacket."
Even with her cute move with the knife, I'm guessing that she's not a real blade fighter. If she was, she'd be holding the tanto under my ear, where she'd be right above a major blood vessel.
I sweep my arm in front of me, faster than she can see. All of a sudden I'm holding the knife and she has a sore wrist. The first thing she does is register surprise. Then fury. She steps back into the pack and they all strike cartoon fighting poses. A few more of them have knives out. They might look like little girls, but they stink of magic, Cherry's or their own. I can't tell. Either way, I don't like the idea of duking it out with a dozen windup dolls. This place probably has surveillance cameras and alarms. I don't want to have to explain to the cops why I'm going Mike Tyson on a bunch of pink-cheeked cherubs.
I hold up my hands so they can see I'm not going for a weapon, and start for the door. There's a pen on the counter. I use it to write down my cell number on a receipt.
"She can call me at this number. Tell her a dead friend is back in town and that she better call him soon or he's going to come back here and spank her." I hold up the tanto to the girl in the ball gown. "You get this back when she calls me."
I walk out of the store and drop the knife into the sewer grating on the corner.
I hear something over the noise of the traffic. Someone is calling my name. I turn around, thinking at first it's one of the girls from Lollipop Dolls, but no one is there. It's a man's voice coming from across the street. I have to shield from eyes from the damned sun, but when I do, I get a good look at him. It's Parker, not more than fifty feet away.
Parker isn't big. Parker is a Disneyland attraction. Lay some track across his back and shoulders and he could give the kiddies a wild ride. I go for him straight through traffic. Cars are zipping along Rodeo, heading for the green lights at both ends of the block. I hop across the hood of the closest car, drop down, and cut behind the next. Then I'm up on the trunk of another, but slip and end up on the hood of the car behind it.
Everything is very calm and quiet inside my head. In the distance, halfway across the solar system, I hear squealing tires. Grinding metal. Shattering glass. People are yelling. But I'm back on my feet and moving. My blood is pumping and I feel a heat spread from my belly to my arms and legs. For the first time since I crawled out of the fire and back onto this rock, I feel like myself. Parker is dead ahead and I know exactly what I'm doing.
On my left, a storefront explodes, knocking me off my feet. I make a nice dent in the front passenger door of a Cadillac parked at the curb. People are screaming. The store is on fire. I look up in time to see Parker tossing what looks like a flaming basketball from hand to hand. He throws it in my direction. I roll away from the Caddie, but Parker misses the car and hits a bus stuck in traffic. More broken glass. More screaming.
I get to my feet and run at him. He backpedals down the street. Something is wrong. No matter how fast I go, Parker stays ahead of me. When he spins on the balls of his feet and really turns on the speed, I can't come close to keeping up.
By the time I'm on the next block, he's gone. I keep turning around, like a drunken ballet dancer, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.
Something hot explodes against my chest and it feels like a bulldozer is trying to park on top of my lungs.
Parker has thrown another one of his plasma balls, but show-off that he is, he missed by an inch and took out a mailbox. It's snowing People magazines and liposuction flyers. The front of my jacket is scorched down to the Kevlar and a little voice in the back of my brain is telling me to let one of the fireballs hit me so that next time they won't hurt. Only if one of them hits me, I'm not all that sure there will be a next time, so I tell the little voice to shut the hell up and go to Plan B.
I spring forward from a crouch and slam my shoulder into a parking meter. The pavement cracks. Two more slams and the meter is loose enough for me to pry it from the ground. I creep along the sides of the cars, keeping below window level. Parker has disappeared again. I try to reach out with those weird, new senses that keep telling me people's secrets, but I can't feel him. He's probably too powerful for something as crude as my kindergarten mind-reading experiments. Besides, I'm distracted by the smell of burning shops. The sound of crashes and women screaming.
Then I see him, behind a Hummer two cars ahead. He's juggling another plasma ball and the glow is visible under the parked cars. I sprint forward, hoping that I'm faster than he is at this distance.
When he steps around the car to knuckleball the burning plasma, I'm already there. I swing the parking meter up and catch him square in the chest with the end that's still hanging on to a nice chunk of concrete. Parker goes flying, smashing into the half-inch-thick glass of a bus kiosk, where he leaves a nice bloody spot on the shattered glass. I'm amazed, but he manages to crawl to his feet. That's something new. The old Parker was tough, but there's no way he could have taken a blow like that and lived, much less stood up. Then he surprises me again. He starts running away. Not as fast as before, but fast enough that I have trouble keeping up.
At the corner, he cuts left onto Wilshire and blows down the street at his inhuman pace. I'm fast at short distances. My reflexes are quick enough to snatch a knife out of a moppet's hand or yank the eyes out of a Hellion's head. But I'm not a marathon runner. Parker is a receding dot. I'm losing him.
Desperate to keep him in sight, I do the only thing I can think of. I grab the knife and slam the blade down as hard as I can lengthwise on the street. This one block of Wilshire shudders and an inch-wide crack slices the sidewalk in both directions. It's not exactly ten-point-oh on the Richter scale, but it makes Parker stumble. He looks back and, for the first time, seems a little nervous. He takes off running across the street to a tall, glass-and-chrome office building. I take off after him, but stop in the middle of the street.
When Parker reaches the office building, he doesn't go inside. He doesn't stop running or even break his stride. He takes one big leap and goes from the street up the side of the office building and keeps running. He doesn't crab up the side like Spider-Man. He sprints standing straight up, like the Flash.