Grist 04 - Incinerator (36 page)

There were police now, pushing people in front of them, big men in blue uniforms, swearing and sweating as they shoved. One of them, like a cliché on a crude recruiting poster, held a little girl in his arms.

I pushed against the crowd, fighting my way upstream with fists and elbows, heading for the other side of the bowl. In the streets of the ersatz town, the reflections of fire danced the flame fandango on the walls. It was emptier here, and I could run. Most of the people were already behind me, sprinting for the relative safety of internal combustion, their magic carpet out of C3.

My ankles told me I was running uphill before my head knew it. I was too busy sucking air and following Wilton’s stick-thin figure with my eyes to know what my body was up to. He’d gone more than halfway around the bowl now, slanting uphill all the way and moving laterally ahead of the flames. His track, I saw, would eventually lead him to the crest. It would have to; he couldn’t double back without roasting in his own fire.

Shots.

They popped softly in the air like dud fireworks, and I saw men, just dark shapes, on top of the hill. As I labored upward, they fanned out, some ahead of Wilton and some behind him. A few of the men extended their arms and silly little spurts of flame, insignificant in the Kingdom of Conflagration, were followed by more pops.

Wilton stopped suddenly and sat down as though the hill had pushed a chair beneath his feet.

He was seventy-five yards above me now, and the men were a hundred yards above him. The funnel spouted fire over his head as he sat, a nimbus for the god of combustion, probably roasting gnats but not much else. I stumbled and fell, and he got up.

He was moving again, in the same direction as before, touching the fire to the ground at every step. Some of the police who had tried to get at him from behind found flames climbing the hill below them and retreated, either straight up or up and toward Wilton. I was running again, much closer to him now, making an impossible amount of noise, and when Wilton finally heard me, I was near enough to see the smeared death’s-head of his face and the irregular line of his teeth. They were bared as though he were trying to chew his way through the air.

I stumbled to my right, trying to get in front of him. He was only a few yards away now and watching me, the funnel pointed back over his shoulder, spewing a spire of flame. I stopped dead, and he looked at me for a long moment, and then pointed the funnel directly at me.

And turned the little faucet handle off.

I was backing up by then, and I slammed into something heavy. Flailing, I lost my balance and turned in midair to gaze up into the clear blue eyes of Willick, who glanced down at me surprisedly as I hit the ground and then lifted his arm and pointed it at Wilton.

“Stop
,” I cried, and Willick looked startled just long enough for me to grab his ankles and yank his feet out from under him. The gun went off as he fell, and he rolled down the hill and away from us like a felled log, crashing the undergrowth as he went. I managed to pull myself to my hands and knees, and found Wilton staring down at me. Above the black coat his face was gray and almost featureless except for the holes that were his eyes. There was blood gleaming on the black rubber of his coat.

He raised the funnel and pointed it at me.

“Simeon
,” he said, “will you
never
cease to disappoint me?”

And then he backed uphill a few steps and sat heavily. Men crashed their way downhill above him as he twisted the funnel toward himself, turned the handle, and opened a box of wooden matches. He closed his eyes and struck one.

The first one lit.

24

Ashes by Now

The heat had
broken. Cooler air from the sea flowed into the canyon, bringing morning fog with it. The fog would spread its marine damp over the fuel, turning it sodden and useless for the gods of fire. Zoroaster would be taking his seasonal holiday, probably in Miami with everybody else.

The house was both damper and emptier than I would have liked it to be. I had bandages on both hands, and a jagged cut on my forehead, courtesy of the floor of the catering truck, that extended perversely several inches into my hairline. They’d had to shave a shape like a very large comma into my scalp, just above my left eye. In all, I looked like someone who arched his eyebrow so often that space had been carved to make room for it.

On the stereo, Rodney Crowell was stretching country music into new shapes while remaining within the same immemorial scraggly whiskered, whiskey-soaked, heartbroken mode.

“You’re just like a wildfire,”
he sang, sounding like someone whose heart was tattooed on his sleeve;

“Spreading all over town.
“As much as you burn me, baby …”

I turned over on the couch, a fat book in my hands.

“I should be ashes by now.”

Eleanor was in chilly New York with Burt, “exploring his space,” as she’d said semiapologetically from an airport pay phone. When I’d suggested that his space was the nicest present he could give her, she’d hung up. She’d snorted unpleasantly first, though, and later called from New York to apologize for the snort. Small blessings are sometimes the only ones at hand.

Hoxley was dead. Burning rubber, it turned out, was the hardest fire of all to put out. Ashes by now, although he still stalked through my dreams. In my dreams, his eyes were on fire.

Eddie was moldering in the ground, or, alternatively, laying bets on the fastest seraphim in the sky. I had no idea which, and I didn’t particularly care. I’d liked Eddie, but he was as dead as Wilton. Some things you can’t fight. Schultz, almost preternaturally disconsolate, had resigned from the cops to go back into private practice.

My bank account was nearly full enough to compensate for my empty house. Annabelle Winston had been free with the zeroes. Zeroes, I soon discovered, are cold comfort, especially when you can’t think of anything you want to buy.

I could think of lots of things I wanted. Problem was, none of them happened to be for sale.

“Ashes by now.”

On the other hand, I was finally enjoying Dreiser. Billy Pinnace had whistled through
Sister Carrie,
stinging my vanity, and I’d taken another whack. Poor Carrie was making all the wrong choices, and I was sympathizing with her heartily, my sympathy perhaps oiled slightly by an indistinct number of Singha beers, when the phone rang.

The room was getting dark enough to make me turn on a light, so I had to get up anyway. I dropped the book to the floor, and Bravo Corrigan, still hanging around in the hope of a free lunch, thumped his tail. To him, the phone held out a vague promise of future fun.

First, I snapped on the light. Then I picked up the phone and said, “Yeah?”

“Ho,” somebody said. Rodney Crowell’s bassist whopped his strings.

I looked at
Sister Carrie.
Many wrong choices, safe on the page, beckoned to me.

“Ho, yourself,” I said.

There was a silence, enlivened by the random electronic cackle.

“I’ve got this apartment,” the voice said. “It’s an okay apartment.” There was another pause. “Um,” the voice said.

I waited. Sister Carrie gave me a despairing wave.

“Do you know how to hook up a stereo?” the voice said.

“Yeah,” I said to Al Hammond, “I think I can hook up a stereo.”

I tripped over
Sister Carrie
on the way out.

About the Author

Timothy Hallinan
has lived, on and off, in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years. He wrote songs and sang in a rock band while in college, and many of his songs were recorded by by well-known artists who included the platinum-selling group Bread. He began writing books while enjoying a successful career in the television industry. Over the past fourteen years he has been responsible for a number of well-reviewed novels and a nonfiction book on Charles Dickens. For years he has taught a course on “Finishing the Novel” with remarkable results — more than half his students complete their first novel and go on to a second, and several have been, or are about to be, published. Tim currently maintains a house in Santa Monica, California, and apartments in Bangkok, Thailand; and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is lucky enough to be married to Munyin Choy-Hallinan.

www.timothyhallinan.com

Other Books by Timothy Hallinan

The Simeon Grist Series

The Four Last Things (Simeon Grist #1)

Simeon Grist knows the City of Angels inside and out—the sex for sale, the chic seductions, the clientele of every bar from downtown L.A. to Venice. So when he’s hired by a Hollywood recording company to shadow one Sally Oldfield, suspected of embezzlement, Grist discovers she’s heavily invested in something far more lucrative than CDs—namely the Church of the Eternal Moment—a million-dollar religious scam built around a 12-year-old channeler and the voice of a man who has been dead for a millennium. Though he tails Sally all the Way to a seedy motel and a date with a murderer, he’s too late to save her. And now he knows snooping has gotten him in way too deep, for he’s become the next target of a very flesh-and-blood entity waiting in the twisted back alleys of sin and salvation to give him a brutal look at the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell—revelations he could definitely
live
without…

PRAISE FOR “THE FOUR LAST THINGS” AND THE SIMEON GRIST NOVELS

“Terrific, well-crafted, thoroughly satisfying… updates Raymond Chandler’s vision of life in Los Angeles through Grist’s sardonic, often hilarious observations… leaves one looking forward to Hallinan’s future endeavors.”

—Los Angeles Herald-Tribune

“It’s rare to find a first novel in the mystery genre that boasts a smoothly plotted story, crisp dialogue, and excellent characterizations… This exciting tale accomplishes all three… The book never falters, sustaining suspense and interest throughout… a sure winner.”

—Booklist

“Hallinan has a genuine ability to write effective prose, engaging repartee, sharp and witty characterizations… this laudable first effort could become a notable series.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“Wonderful… you gotta love a novel that starts with the hard-drinking private eye sighing about the dame he’s been following.”

—West Coast Review of Books

“Hallinan neatly maximizes his gift for offbeat characters and clever pacing… Simeon Grist, the sleuth he created, is in a class by himself.”

—Inside Books

BUY
The Four Last Things
on Kindle
by clicking here
.

Everything But the Squeal (Simeon Grist #2)

Simeon Grist is a private eye and Los Angeles is his city. It’s Raymond Chandler country, especially the parts Grist sees – like the dank underbelly that lies between Santa Monica and Hollywood Boulevards, where all the California dreaming is a nightmare. But beggars and private eyes can’t be too choosy, and Grist is on a new case – one that leads him down the streets of LA and into the dead, dark places of a killer’s heart.

It starts off on Hollywood Boulevard, a street filled with runaways who quickly lose their innocence and sometimes their lives. Missing is a thirteen-year-old from Kansas, Aimee Sorrell, a/k/a Dorothy Gale, who didn’t find Oz over this rainbow. In fact, from the Polaroids her mother got in the mail, Aimee found nothing less than hell – drugs, pornography, and sexual slavery. It is the not-so-pretty pictures, and especially the marks on the girl’s body, that convince Grist to take the Sorrell case and to begin his search among the castoffs and criminals of an all-night diner, a 24-hour magnet for the displaced.