Hummingbird Salamander(75)

Me: Fuck you.

>>I thought we already covered that. Oh—and Alex shuttered your company. You must have seen that.

I put the phone down. Hellmouth was full of unpleasant revelations. Silvina. Allie. The company going under didn’t surprise me. I didn’t care, either. I did care whether Allie had been hurt.

I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t. Wanted a cigarette. No, I didn’t. Thankfully, I never allowed the bottles of booze to follow me into the car.

I could smell the sweet, subtle odor of tenrec following me from the warehouse. Curling around me, as physical as wire against the throat. I’d had to look that one up. Not knowing what a tenrec was had haunted me. But knowing hadn’t helped.

Part of me wanted to tell Hellmouth where I was and just get it over with. Whatever he wanted, whatever he was after.

Unless what suited Hellmouth best was me in limbo. In which case it didn’t matter.





[78]


Sometimes I feel as if we live in hell and don’t even realize it. The lacerations are endless. The lies we accept, the rituals we perform. All these useless acts.

All these worthless cases I thought were worth taking on. While the world burned. While Vilcapampa was taking god-knows-what measures—and not just against me, but, I imagined, against the remnants of Silvina’s network. If “Friends of” could be considered a network and if that network still had a purpose. While Hellmouth searched like some infernal floating eye. I might’ve put Ronnie in danger just by going to Unitopia. Everything I turned my attention to turned to shit.

Small beer. Small potatoes. Small towns. Where would these cases have gone without me? These needs and wants, these paranoid fears that half the time were actually something. But usually not worth the victim knowing the truth. What I really owed them was to put the truth in the widest possible con text. To spread Silvina’s gospel, to overturn the comfort of the everyday with the knowledge of what would come tomorrow.

No matter who Silvina had been in bed with, literally and figuratively. No matter what Silvina had meant to do, no matter whether I agreed with it or not, I knew she was right about the state of the world. So maybe I was hiding in more than one way. Maybe I was hiding from the future.

The ethics of surveillance. The ethics of spying. Well, I’d thrown that all out the window with my small-beer cases. Everything existed in a tactical state of gray. You couldn’t untangle the passion from the logic, the underlying philosophy from the technology.

Fuck it. I had a job to do.



* * *



I arrived late in the day. The car dealership slumped across a lot on the edge of town, the kind of generic place with streamers and banners that fades into the background so easily. The streetlamps here were a sickly yellow that leaked light in strange patches. The competing green-gray of sky sparked against the steel of flagpoles and chrome of car hoods. I already knew the business wasn’t doing well—the financials were terrible.

The office Nora had mentioned was a kind of island: a shed on the west end of the property that looked like the kind of thing that’d get blown up in a TV comedy skit. With a stand of tall conifers to the right, under which loitered suspect-looking cars that no amount of fresh paint could stop from looking decrepit. Spilling out to the east, the rest of the cars seemed disjointed, unconnected. More like the failed exodus in an apocalyptic movie. A large wooden sign at the entrance proclaimed “Ed’s Bargain Deals & Extravagant Savings.” The paint had faded so much, I hardly noticed it.

I’d spent too much time figuring out where the threat might come from to feel comfortable with this setup.

I parked at the Dollar Store that abutted the dealership. This particular one wasn’t owned by Vilcapampa Corp, and the security camera faced toward the front door. I walked to the corner of the building, the stuccoed concrete a dull egg yellow. Stood there for a moment, checking the place out with my small scope. Any walk up to the shed would provide a clear line of sight for anyone watching for me.

After a second, three men emerged from the shed-shack-office. One was Nora’s husband. The other two registered as employees. One of them must be his trainee. The other one might be Ed. Nora hadn’t told me Ed owned the dealership, but no matter: it was a three-in-one deal.

I took a deep breath, like I was about to jump off a balcony. Walked around the corner, heavy on the cane, started across the gravel parking lot, husband straight ahead, stand of trees to the right, reassuring Dollar Store wall still to my left. I remember thinking it’d be some small challenge to meet all three and then tail the husband without them remembering me buying a car off them. I liked that.

I remember being puzzled in that split second. That infinitesimal moment when the gravel was kicking up dust, like something was underneath it. The gravel jumping. Staring at it like it was inexplicable, or even supernatural.

Until I realized. A silencer.

Bullets.

It was bullets.



* * *



A figure had risen from among the cars and conifers. Indistinct, like a phantom. Hillman? I dropped like a sack of potatoes, cane clattering to the side, pulled out my sidearm, returned fire. Saw the figure hesitate, hunch down.

That small motion. That tell. But it was enough. The triad by the office had seen the shooter, but not me. As I watched in surprise, all three drew concealed handguns and started firing back. My jaw dropped. I forgot for a second to seek cover. Like this was something that happened too often. Another fucking day at the office. Another normal afternoon of firing into the tree line. The rattle-ricochet of bullets off car metal. The splat-split of windshields cracking.