Hollywood Dead by Richard Kadrey

Author:Richard Kadrey [Kadrey, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780062474179
Publisher: HarperVoyager
Published: 2018-08-22T23:00:00+00:00

BECAUSE SHE HATES it, I shadow-walk into Eva’s office. She and Barron are having a nightcap and watching the news on her million-inch TV. On the screen is a helicopter shot of vans and cop cars around a warehouse in East L.A. The news is reporting it as a raid on a terrorist compound. That’s a smart way for Abbot to have played it. There are enough Sub Rosa in the police department and local FBI office that he could call in some favors and make it look like the Golden Vigil takedown was good, clean law enforcement. Your tax dollars at work. Let Marshal Wells count rosaries, meditate, chant, or whatever the Vigil does in jail for a couple of days. Then, if Abbot can play it right, the badass part of the Sub Rosa—the part no one likes to talk about—will swoop in and haul the Vigil’s true believers off to a hoodoo black site. I have no idea what happens then and I’m not asking. Life is too short. Way too short for some of us.

I say, “You two must be breathing easier, huh?”

Barron chokes on the pill he was trying to swallow. I walk over and slap him on the back a couple of times. He drains a glass of water and just sits there, too exhausted by the choking fit to care that I’m close enough to snap his neck.

Sandoval, on the other hand, cares a lot. She’s on her feet, clutching the TV remote like it’s a gun.

I put my hands up.

“Don’t shoot. Think of the children.”

She turns off the TV and tosses the remote on her desk.

“I was praying you’d be dead by now.”

“I couldn’t leave without one last good-bye.”

She stands there coolly, like she’s staring down a poodle that just shit on her chinchilla long johns.

“Have you killed Howard yet or just tortured him, hoping he’ll save your precious life?”

“How do you know he hasn’t already told me how to fix my complexion problem?”

“You wouldn’t be here if he had. From the looks of you you don’t have much time left. You’d be spending it doing the ritual.”

I walk slowly around the room. Sandoval stands her ground but doesn’t want me behind her, so she has to follow me, turning around in place. We’re like an ugly little carousel covered in bones and bad meat instead of bouncing horses. Barron sits in his easy chair gobbling pills like they’re sweet potato fries and he hasn’t eaten in a year.

“What if I told you that I don’t care about the ritual anymore? That I’m not afraid of Hell, I’m not going to get fixed in time, and I want to have one last little blowout before I go?”

Sandoval looks at me.

“If you were a normal person I’d say you were lying, but it being you, I don’t know. I can’t imagine the life you came back to is what you’d hoped for. Your lover in the arms of someone smarter and much less ugly than you.

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