Secondhand Souls (18 page)

Charlie immediately spotted Minty Fresh across the room, towering above the crowd, and near him, Lily, in a black lace and brocade Victorian dress with a plunging neckline and bustle, and a black-feathered hat with a veil. Charlie escorted Audrey in their direction, and as they cleared the crowd, saw Fresh was talking to Inspector Alphonse Rivera.

There were introductions all around, condolences, and when Rivera shook Charlie’s hand he grasped it with both hands and held it for a second. “Charlie, you have no idea how happy I am to know you’re here,” Rivera said, looking directly into the eyes of a stranger he’d never even seen before.

But Charlie
did
know, and he believed him, because in the face of a death, overwhelming, irresistible death, what moves you is life, and Charlie being here, even in the body of this stranger, was the thing that would touch this strong, collected cop the most. “Wouldn’t be here at all if not for you, Inspector,” he said.

Rivera still held his hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help pull you out of the bay. I—”

“You needed to be somewhere else,” Charlie said. He could see Rivera was still a little stunned, as could happen to you, mercifully, after the death of someone close. The grief or remorse might come over him later, like a rogue wave, but right now he was functioning, doing his duty, carrying on. There’d be no sloppy songs with his fellow officers for this one, no raucous, funny stories, of which he’d have had hundreds. He was part of the fraternity, but he stood out from every other cop in the room, in the city, in the world, because he knew who,
what
, had killed Nick Cavuto. “I’m going to get them, Charlie.”

“Absolutely,” Charlie said.

Minty Fresh leaned down, said, “We’re going to meet tomorrow. Everyone. We just need to pick a time and place.”

“The Buddhist Center,” Audrey said. “Noon?”

Minty Fresh looked to each of them for a nod.

Charlie looked around for Jane, Cassie, and Sophie, and saw they were already in a reception line that ran four deep halfway around the great room and was moving, slowly, by a thin, middle-aged, balding fellow in an immaculately tailored suit.

“Brian,” Rivera said. “Brian Cavuto. Nick Cavuto’s husband.”

“I didn’t even know he was married,” Charlie said.

“Neither did I,” said Rivera.

“We should pay our respects,” Minty Fresh said, directing Audrey and Lily to go before them to the line with a slight bow.

As Lily went by, Charlie whispered, “Nice bustle.”

“I liked you better when you were in the cat box,” she said.

B
rian took Rivera’s hand and held it in both of his the way Rivera had held Charlie’s only moments before, gripping and shaking his hand with the rhythm of his words as he spoke. He had that lean, stringy strength of a marathon runner. Cavuto used to say guys like that wanted to be the last one everyone ate if they went down in a plane crash in the mountains.

“Inspector Rivera, I’m so glad you came.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Rivera said, because that’s what you say. “Nick meant a lot to me.”

“You were his best friend,” Brian said. “Nick talked about you constantly.”

Rivera couldn’t keep up any pretense. This guy had been Nick’s husband. He’d know bullshit even if he didn’t call bullshit.

“Evidently I didn’t even know him at all.”

“You knew him,” Brian said, patting Rivera’s hand. “He was a huge lunch whore.” Brian smiled and released Rivera’s hand.

“Okay, maybe I did know him.”

“That was one of his favorite things. He would tell me at least twice a week, while we were eating dinner, like I’d never heard it before.” Brian then did an uncannily accurate impression of Nick Cavuto: “ ‘Fucking Rivera says I’m huge lunch whore.’ That’s what he always called you, ‘fucking Rivera.’ ”

“Well,” said Rivera, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second, waiting for the power of speech to return. After a quarter of a minute or so, in which Brian waited patiently, not touching Rivera’s arm, which might have caused the detective to break up in front of four hundred cops, not offering comfort, just waiting, politely looking at his shoes, until Rivera said, “he
was
a huge lunch whore.”

Brian laughed.

Rivera laughed and said, “You’ve done this before.”

“Inspector, I’m gay, I’m fifty, and I’ve lived in the Castro for thirty-two years. I buried half a generation of friends and lovers before the cocktail. Yes, I’ve done this before. Not like this, though.”

“You can call me Alphonse,” Rivera said.

“I’ll call you ‘Inspector.’ Nick liked that. He was proud of being an inspector, a detective,
a working cop
.”

“He wouldn’t even take the tests to move up,” Rivera said.

“He was where he wanted to be, and for that we can both take comfort.”

“I’m going to get them.”

“I know,” Brian said.

Rivera nodded and moved on. He walked by his partner’s open casket but could only bring himself to look at Cavuto’s tie, and smile, because someone, probably Brian, had put just the slightest smear of mustard there.

A
cross the room, Sophie waited with Auntie Cassie for her daddy and Audrey to get through the line, and for Auntie Jane to return from the bar. Among all the cops, the mayor, city councilmen, firemen, EMTs, nurses, prosecutors, jailors, and friends, was the occasional junkie, or hooker, or ex-gangster, most of them standing off to themselves, or trying to, not feeling as if they fit in, but feeling like they needed to be there, because as much as Nick Cavuto had been a rough, profane, bull of a cop, he had also been a kind, fair man, and in the course of his long career had touched a lot of people’s lives. Standing out from those, though, were three man-nuns from the order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group who did their service and performance for the community with good humor and, of course, in drag.

The three were all in Kabuki-style whiteface makeup with three different styles of habits. The one closest to Sophie wore a wimple with wings.

“Are you a nun?” Sophie asked.

“Why yes, darling, we all are,” said the sister.

“The nuns at my school are mean.”

“I’m a different kind of nun.”

“Flying?”

“No, but thanks for asking.” The sister primped his wings.

“A booty nun?”

“I don’t know what that is, honey, but I like where you’re going with it. No, we’re more like—like fairies.”

“Fairies?” She grinned in a kid-rictus and pointed to a vacant spot in her lower gum. “You bitches still owe me some money for this.”

“Oh my. We’ll see about that. Sister has to go do good deeds now, honey.” The nun led her sisters a few feet to the right, where they turned their attention to others in need of mercy.

“Who was that?” asked Cassie.

“Just a fairy.”

“Honey, we don’t use that term, it’s not nice.”

“Like Magical Negro?”

“Auntie Jane really has ruined you. Come, let’s go blame her.”

Lily finished in the reception line first and headed for Cassie and Sophie. As she passed the Sisters, one of them looked at her corset-elevated cleavage and tsked-tsked her as she passed.

“Really, doll, the devil’s pillows at a funeral?”

“Only dress I had that was clean,” Lily said. Which was not entirely true, but even she knew it was ill-advised to throw down with drag nuns at a funeral, and she felt very mature for the lie.

“Well, they’re stunning,” said a second nun. “If you got it, flaunt it, I guess—”

“God loves hussies, too,” said the third. “Bless you, child.”

T
he funeral was held at St. Mary’s Cathedral of San Francisco, which has the distinction of being the only church in the world designed after a washing-machine agitator. There was a wide courtyard that led out onto Geary Boulevard, the main east-west surface artery of San Francisco, and today it was filled a block wide and a half a block deep with policemen from a score of departments all over the state, in dress blues, standing in ranks, saluting their fallen brother in arms.

The cathedral was full, not just the main sanctuary, with its soaring concrete ceiling broken with strips of stained glass, but all the pews that reached back into grotto-like overhangs. The doors on all sides of the main nave were propped open and hundreds of people stood in the outer lobbies, which had highly polished floors and glass walls that looked out on the courtyards and the streets.

If the outside of St. Mary’s resembled a washing machine, the interior was a minimalist starship, with the round dais and altar at the head of the nave, and a pipe organ built into a platform that rose and cantilevered over the mourners on the side, like the control center of the great vessel.

Rivera and the other pallbearers stood to the side of the casket, along with an honor guard with rifles and a corps of eight with bagpipes and drums. He stood at ease, hands in white gloves folded in front, as first the bishop, then two priests, then the mayor, the chief of police, the district attorney, a senator, two congressmen, and the lieutenant governor spoke of Nick Cavuto’s courage, dedication, and service to the city for twenty-six years. The entire time, Rivera tried not to smile, not because he wasn’t grief-stricken or nearly shaking with a desire for revenge, not because he didn’t feel the profound space that his friend had left vacant, but because he could hear Cavuto cracking wise through the entire ceremony, calling bullshit on everything the politicians and clerics said:
“You know why those guys with the bagpipes have daggers on their belts, right? So they can stab themselves in the fucking legs to take their minds off the music.”

He could hear him like his friend was standing next to him:
“You know why they play bagpipes at a funeral? It’s to rush the soul to heaven because he’s the only one who can leave early. Tell me if my ears start to bleed, this is a new shirt.”

Thousands were watching, and Rivera knew that he, the fallen’s partner, dare not smile, and he knew that Cavuto would be laughing at him, razzing him, daring him to laugh.

And when they had all spoken, the great organ had played, the final prayer given, the bagpipes started to play, to signal them to move the casket, but instead the crowd parted and a solitary figure came up the aisle, female, thin, dressed head to toe in beaded lace, a veiled pillar of femininity and grace, moving as if floating above the floor. And no one moved. The pipes whined to silence. She turned, faced the mourners, and began to sing.

Without a microphone or amplifier, her voice filled the cathedral, the lobbies, the courtyards and the streets. She sang the notes of heartbreak and loss, of grief unassuaged and glory unrewarded. She sang to the heartstrings of all who could hear—tears streamed and eyes clouded until the sunlight through the stained glass looked like stars. She sang “Danny Boy” and “The Minstrel Boy,” in a Celtic dialect, because even though Cavuto had been Italian, all cops are Irish in death. She sang a dirge in an ancient language that no one recognized except that the notes resonated with that part in each of them that could feel the passing of a soul—a part they had never touched before. And when she finished, she was gone. No one saw her leave, but somehow, everyone was left with a bittersweet sadness, satisfied that they had said good-bye. Their vision was cleared of tears.

As he helped lift Cavuto’s casket, to take it out to the hearse under the salute of five thousand cops, Rivera smelled the faint odor of burning peat and at last allowed himself to smile.

18

Strategy

T
hey met at the Three Jewel Buddhist Center the day after the funeral: Charlie, Audrey, Minty Fresh, Lily, Rivera. Minty Fresh had called Carrie Lang, the pawnbroker, and Jean-Pierre Baptiste, the Death Merchant from the hospice. Charlie had found the Emperor and his men in the utility closet behind the pizza place in North Beach, and strangely enough, had no problem convincing the old man that he was, indeed, Charlie Asher in a different body, and saw to it that he and the men made it to the meeting. The Emperor entered carrying the map bag containing the heavy journal Rivera had given him.

Audrey was accustomed to leading meetings at the Buddhist Center, and they usually held them in what had been the parlor in the grand old house, with attendees sitting on the floor, but for this one she decided that they should all sit on chairs. She and Charlie set them up in a circle. Introductions were made all around, with as little biography as possible, because they could have filled the entire day with the reasons each of them was there.

“Well,” said Minty Fresh. “I think Audrey ought to start, because it seems like once again we are dealing with metaphysical shit that she’s spent a lot more time thinking about than the rest of us.”

“Oh, that’s just a load of moo-poo and you know it, Mr. Fresh. You all are much more experienced than I am.”

“Uh-huh,” said Fresh. “You did a ritual that moved Charlie’s consciousness out of a monster you made from deli meat into that dude over there, who you more or less talked into jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge so you could do it. Anyone else feel like they got more experience with spooky-ass supernatural shit than that? Show of hands.”

No one raised his hand. Carrie Lang and Baptiste, who knew nothing of the Squirrel People, looked dumbfounded, even for people whose work involved collecting human souls. Wiggly Charlie had been locked in the butler’s pantry with the last two mozzarella sticks and a tennis ball he’d taken a liking to, largely to avoid a lengthy and somewhat irrelevant explanation of how he came to be, but also to keep Bummer from eating him. The stalwart Boston terrier had growled and scratched at the pantry door until the Emperor was forced to exile him and Lazarus to the porch.

“I’ll start,” said Lily, and when Minty Fresh started to object that he had just made a perfect explanation of why Audrey should run things, Lily glared him into silence.

“Proceed,” said the big man.

Lily said, “Seems to me, we need to figure out what is happening, why it’s happening, and what we need to do about it, agreed?”

Everyone nodded except Baptiste, who said, “I don’t even know why I am here. I do my part and everything works out as it should, just like it says in the
Big Book.
”

“Speaking of which,” said Carrie Lang, who was wearing a casual business suit instead of her usual denim and Indian jewelry ensemble. “I’m guessing that there’s a reason that we’re totally ignoring the instructions in the
Big Book
not to have contact with each other.

She looked at Minty Fresh.

“We think that the rules have been changing,” said the Mint One.

“Right,” said Lily, taking back the floor. “Did each of you bring your copy of the
Great Big Book of Death
?”

Rivera, Carrie Lang, and Baptiste all nodded. Minty Fresh said, “Rivera has mine now.”

“Good,” Lily said. “Do they all say ‘revised edition’ on the cover?”

Everyone nodded.

“And none of you has ever been out of possession of the book since you received it?”

No all around.

“Yet it’s changed, right? M, you knew the text backward and forward, and it changed?”

“Yes.”

“All of them did,” Lily said. “Spontaneously.” She looked at Audrey. “What’s up with that?”

“No idea,” said Audrey. “All this was going on when I met Minty Fresh and Charlie in their shops, when I was looking for soul vessels. I thought they were somehow trapping the souls. I didn’t know they passed on to the next person through the object.”

Lily looked at Minty Fresh. “See, she doesn’t know anything about it.” To the group she said, “We know that the book set down rules to keep the Underworlders or whatever from rising, which everyone broke, causing the shit storm last time, bringing up the Morrigan and that thing with the wings, that Asher saw them tear apart.”

Rivera said, “If we try to figure out
why
it’s happening, we won’t get anywhere. We need to figure out
what
is happening. And I can tell you, I haven’t seen the Morrigan, but I’ve heard them.”

Baptiste nodded.

“And they killed Cavuto,” Rivera went on. “There’s no doubt in my mind. I’ve seen that feathery goo that passes for their flesh, and we’ve all seen what their venom does.” He nodded to Charlie.

“That hand job in the alley was completely against my will,” Charlie said.

“He means killing you,” said Minty Fresh.

“Exactly,” said Lily. “How did the
Big Book
change? It assumes that you’ve already broken the rules.” She snatched Rivera’s copy off his lap and paged through it. She read, “
So you fucked up
— It says,
A new order will be established. In the meantime, try not to get killed or let your world be overwhelmed by darkness forever.
”

“That’s really not that helpful,” said Charlie. “I think we need pushpins and red string. You’re supposed to put all the stuff you know on a bulletin board with pushpins, then connect them with red string. It’s a must for figuring things out.” He looked at Rivera, who was a cop and would know about such things.

Lily looked at the others. “Clearly Asher is still an idiot, so at least we have that on our side.”

“Hey!”

“A new order,”
Lily said. “That’s you.” She pointed to Baptiste. “He’s selling souls on the Internet, at swap meets, that’s new. Rivera is new, too. He didn’t collect any souls for a year, and Asher’s calendar was active as well, yet bad stuff only just started happening. Before the big battle, that kind of screwup would have brought up a world of trouble. It’s new.”

“Plus the banshee,” Rivera said. “She warned me of a new, elegant Death. Something more insidious than what came before.”

“I thought she was one of them,” said Minty Fresh.

“That was her at Cavuto’s funeral yesterday, singing,” Rivera said. “That wasn’t enemy action. You felt it.”

Everyone who had been there, which was everyone but Carrie Lang, had felt it.

“Comfort and consolation,” said the Emperor. “I felt it.”

“And I think she was there the night Cavuto was killed, but not to hurt him. To warn him. It’s what she does. She’s a good guy.”

“What about the other thing she warned of, the ‘elegant Death’?”

“He’s here,” said Minty Fresh.

Everybody looked to the big man, the same look:
You’re telling us this now?

“I wasn’t sure. I saw a car in my neighborhood, early the day we pulled Charlie from the bay. A 1950 Buick Roadmaster fastback. Can’t be a dozen of them in that condition left in the world. It’s why I brought the soul vessels with us on the boat, besides what happened to Cavuto. In fact, y’all need to carry all the soul vessels you have, old and new, with you at all times to keep them safe.”

“Can’t they just kill people and take their souls, like the cop?” asked Carrie Lang. She looked quickly to Rivera. “Sorry, I mean the policeman. Your partner.”

“That’s just it,” said Minty Fresh. ”They didn’t get his soul. He came up in your calendar just before they attacked him. I saw it when I was at your shop.” He looked to Rivera. “Show them.”

Rivera reached into a leather briefcase beside his chair and pulled out a very large, short-barreled, stainless-steel revolver. He held it up so everyone could see. “Brian, Cavuto’s husband, asked me to come by their house yesterday after the services. He said Nick wanted me to have it.”

“I thought they’d gotten it,” said Carrie Lang. “That I wouldn’t be able to retrieve it at all.”

“What? What?” Lily said.

To everyone in the room except her and the Emperor, the revolver was glowing a dull red. Charlie leaned over and whispered to Lily. “It was Nick Cavuto’s soul vessel.”

“Oh!” Lily said. “You said he shot the Morrigan with a revolver. Shouldn’t it be in evidence or something.”

“This is a different one,” said Rivera. He handed the big revolver to Carrie Lang, who tucked it into her oversized purse.

“He had two of those?” Lily looked to Minty Fresh, who shrugged. He had two enormous Desert Eagle .50-caliber automatics he’d carried during the last debacle. “Okay, so it’s not a penis-size thing,” Lily said.

“Some evil shit out there, Darque,” Minty said. A smile.

“Wait,” Charlie said. “Back up. How do you know that this Buick is this ‘elegant Death’ the banshee warned about?”

“Teeth marks,” said Minty Fresh.

“Huh?” said Charlie, and a chorus of various “huhs” and “whats” sounded around the room.

“You have any idea how much steel they put in the bumper of a 1950 Buick?” Minty asked. “In the bodywork?”

“A lot?” ventured Charlie, not seeing where this was going.

“A shitload. That car is as heavy as any two modern cars, and in the back of it, through the bumper and up onto the rear of the body, were two bite marks. Clear as day.” He held his hands apart as if he were holding an imaginary volley ball. “About this big. Through the metal. Through the motherfucking bumper. Y’all ever seen a creature could do something like that?”

There was a pause. Thinking.

“The goggies,” said Charlie.

“Hellhounds,” Lily said at the same time.

“That’s right, motherfuckin’ hellhounds. Whatever was driving that Buick got hellhounds on his tail.”

Charlie said, “And they disappeared, about the time—”

“That the Morrigan showed up,” said Rivera.

Lily said, “And the hellhounds showed up in the first place to protect Sophie from the Morrigan.”

“Where
is
Sophie?” asked Minty Fresh. “She’s kicked their ass before, she can—”

“She’s seven,” said Charlie.

“She’s the Luminatus,” said Lily. “She’s the
Big Death
.”

“Maybe,” said Charlie. “Maybe not. Does anyone have pushpins in their car? I just think I could get a better handle on all of this if we had pushpins and some red string.”

“
Maybe not
?” said Minty Fresh. “Did you say
maybe not
?”

Charlie rubbed his forehead as if he was thinking, when he was actually just stalling for time. Mike Sullivan had less forehead and more hair than Charlie was used to, so he found that the forehead rubbing wasn’t really working.

“
Maybe not?”
Minty Fresh repeated. “Sophie is
maybe
motherfucking
not
the Luminatus—the only thing that kept the whole damn city from being destroyed last time? Maybe not?”

“We think she might not have her powers anymore,” Charlie said.

“You think
maybe
you ought to find out?” asked Minty Fresh.

“Probably,” said Charlie.

“A few months ago, Bummer lost the hellhound powers she bestowed upon him,” said the Emperor, being helpful. “It was a relief, really. He had such a penchant for biting the tires off of Volvos. I don’t know why. He still enjoys barking at them.”

“Excuse me?” said Jean-Pierre Baptiste. “Could someone tell me what all of you are talking about, please?”

“
Us
,” said Carrie Lang. “Tell
us
.”

And so they did, running through the whole history of what had happened before, glossing over the bits about Audrey and the Squirrel People as if that was just a minor thing that had passed, not mentioning that they had been the ones who had saved Carrie Lang from the Morrigan by duct taping her up and hiding her in a dumpster, as she was still a bit traumatized by the event, focusing more on how Sophie had basically vaporized the Morrigan with a wave of her hand.

When they were finished, Carrie Lang said, “Whoa. A little kid?”

“She’s in the advanced reading group,” said Charlie.

Carrie Lang said, “So now you think there could be a thousand souls unretrieved?”

“Maybe more,” said Rivera. “I’ve gone back to the early names on my calendar. I haven’t found one soul vessel from those.”

“Plus all those on my calendar,” said Charlie. “While I was—uh—unable to retrieve them.”

“The
Big Book
revised edition still says that it would be really bad if they ended up with the powers of darkness,” Lily said, tapping the page in Rivera’s copy of the
Big Book.
“There’s no way to know how many souls have been missed.”

“I have a list,” said the Emperor, and they all turned to him. He pulled the journal from his map bag and held it up. “Here.”

Lily handed the
Big Book
back to Rivera and crossed the circle to get the Emperor’s journal. They all watched as she leafed through it, hundreds of pages of names in two, single-spaced columns per page, printed in the meticulous hand lettering of an engineer. “You have nice handwriting,” she said. She flipped back and forth. “You have dates next to them. These aren’t just for the last year.”

“I was given the dates along with the names.”

“Some of these go back to the 1700s.”

“Yes,” said the Emperor.

“Who gave you the names, Your Grace?” Charlie asked.

“I got many from the library. And public records. Inspector Rivera was very helpful with that. But some were given to me by the dead themselves. While I slept. The older ones. When I awoke, I would know all the names and the dates next to them.”

Lily closed the journal with a finger in it to hold her place. “So, basically, I’m the only one here who doesn’t have a superpower. Even the crazy homeless guy has a special power, but not me?”

“That’s not true, Lily,” Charlie said. “The Emperor may be fabricating all of this.”

“A distinct possibility,” said the Emperor.

Lily looked around the circle. “I need each of your date books. Cough ’em up.” She collected the date books from the five Death Merchants then slung her messenger bag over her shoulder. “Audrey, I need a place to work and I need your Wi-Fi password.”