Aloha from Hell. Richard Kadrey

      I give the old man a look. I don’t like having my own stupid confessions thrown back at me. Of course he’s right. Mason wanted to go to Hell and he wanted to go there alive, just like I did. And I walked up to him like a backwoods rube with a corncob pipe and put him there. Not many people know about that. I couldn’t walk the streets if they did. I couldn’t look people in the eye if they knew I’d sent the most dangerous man in the world to the worst place in the universe so he could raise an army to kill them all. People get murdered for mistakes like that. Sometimes they don’t wait for someone else to do it. If someone else tries it, they might get it wrong and leave you in a coma, only half dead. That would be even worse. Someone might feel sorry for you and that’s something I couldn’t take.

      “Kasabian still has access to Lucifer’s book, The Daimonion Codex. He keeps an eye on Downtown twenty-four/seven. If Mason makes a move, I’ll know about it.”

      “Why not simply go yourself?”

      “I’ve tried a few times. Even changing my face with a glamour, there’s always some Hellion or other who spots me and I have to de-ass the place fast. There’s got to be another way to get to him, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”

      I’m lying. I’ve tried it a couple of times and I was so nervous that the glamour wasn’t even half-baked. I thought I could walk back Downtown like Patton riding a tank. But I can’t. The smell and the heat hit me and I’m back on the arena floor, ripped open and bleeding, hoping my guts don’t slip out into the dirt. Or I’m covered in thick Hellion blood, playing hit man for another Hellion while he tells me Alice will be safe as long as I keep killing for him. And then she’s dead and all I am is a murderer. So I close the door to Hell and I slink back home, sitting at my favorite bar long enough that the smell fades and Kasabian won’t know what a coward I’ve become.

      What’s more useless than a weak-kneed killer?

      “You’ll find a way in,” says Vidocq.

      I nod and finish my drink, putting on my serious, thoughtful face.

      “I hope it’s soon. Since I can’t play Hannibal Downtown, the angel in my head wants me to roam the streets at night looking for bad guys like Batman. I got so pissed one night that I actually did it. Know what happened? Exactly nothing. Looking to get mugged is crazy and bad guys walk the other way when they see crazy coming. What I need is angel Valium to shut this Boy Scout up.”

      Muninn nods.

      “I know how it feels to constantly be at odds with those closest to you. Eventually you reach the point where none of you can stand the sight of each other anymore. My brothers and I are like that.”

      “Brothers?” says Vidocq.

      That’s more interesting than a two-headed calf singing “Some Velvet Morning” in tight harmony. I have about a million questions, but most aren’t real discreet. I go with the easiest.

      “Are they like you? Live in caverns and know everything about everything?”

      Muninn shakes his head, lost in thought. He stares at the green liquor bottle.

      “I have four brothers, and no, none live in caverns. None of us is even the slightest bit like the others. I haven’t seen any of them in years. Centuries. Occasionally I miss them, but the truth is that I have no real interest in tracking any of them down. I daresay they feel the same thing about me.”

      No one says anything. We’ve hit into one of those weird silences that happen when someone drops something too real into the middle of a conversation that should just have been about drinking and patting ourselves on the back. Somehow, while we were talking, Muninn has opened the box and extracted a scroll from the scarab. I pick it up.

      “What’s so special about this that we had to bust open Fort Knox to get it?”

      Muninn’s eyes lighten. He smiles.

      “Yes, that. The scroll is for a gentleman in, let’s say, investment banking. A man like that can do extraordinary damage to his soul. Maybe even several souls. He is always on the market for new souls to wear until he ruins them too. Even L.A.’s many soul mongers can’t keep up with him. The price of souls is going up for everyone. And Los Angeles is a town that needs all the souls it can lay its hands on.”

      “So, the scroll is a soul?”

      “No. It’s a bit like … What do you call the elixir that restores hair?”

      “Rogaine?”

      “Yes! Rogaine for the soul. It restores and replenishes the user’s original umbra. A re-souling will last him a year or two I hope. Buyers can become testy when they want a new soul and you have to tell them that the cupboard is bare.”

      “Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about my life.”

      Vidocq says, “If you feel so good, why not come take a trip with me tomorrow?”

      “Another job?”

      “That’s for you to decide. I sometimes do work for a private investigator. Today she called and asked about you. She has a job that she believes you would be perfect for.”

      I finish my drink and smile.

      “Get mixed up in a total stranger’s problems for no good reason? Sounds like a scream, but I think I’ll pass.”

      “Maybe doing something for a stranger will settle down your angel,” says Muninn.

      The moment he says it, the haloed bastard starts squirming around. It tickles the inside of my skull and not in a good way. I try to push him back into the dark, but he smells a hero moment and won’t budge.

      “And there’s my poor, abused knee,” the old man says, patting his leg. “You owe me for tossing me through a window tonight.”

      I turn from Vidocq to Muninn.

      “Never save a Frenchman’s life. He’ll hold it against you for the rest of yours.”

      I look at Vidocq and screw up my face into the least sincere smile I can make.

      “What the hell? I haven’t done anything truly stupid in weeks.”

      THE BEAT HOTEL is in a typically glamorous area, near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and North Gower.

      Across from the hotel is the Museum of Death, a fenced gray bunker with a ten-foot painted skull out front. Next to it is the long-dead Westbeach Recorders, an empty studio local acts used to record and where Pink Floyd recorded part of The Wall (I believe that like I believe Jesus invented chili dogs). Down the street a car dealership is dying in the desert sun, the parboiled cars like beached fish carcasses slowly cooking to squid jerky. A couple of strip malls and empty parking lots on the corner. The front of the Beat Hotel is painted a pale industrial green. Maybe green paint was on sale that day or maybe it’s supposed to be ironic. I’ve never been sure.

      If any of this makes you think I don’t like the Beat Hotel, you’re wrong. It’s like a cross between a seventies swingers no-tell motel and the kind of hipster hot spot where rock stars stay when they don’t want to be seen bringing home good smack or bad strippers. The rooms are comfortable in a Zen halfway-house kind of way. But the kitchens are decorated in bright primary-colored vinyl like a Playboy-chic burger joint. The place looks like where David Lynch would meet Beaver Cleaver’s mom for secret afternoons of bondage and milk shakes. I love it.

      Kasabian and I have been there about three weeks. I rented us a room for the month. At the end of the month I’ll probably do it again. You’re not supposed to stay for more than a week, but I pay the right people to change my name on the registry so it looks like someone new moves in every Saturday.

      I had to get out of Max Overdrive for a while. All the rebuilding going on after the zombie riots—the saws and hammers and especially the stink of new paint—was making me feel kind of stabby. None of it bothered Kasabian, of course. He’d put on headphones, crank up