SANDMAN SLIM

"You might be a hero to those fools inside, but you're not to me. To me, you're a dangerous man. A criminal for sure. Possibly a wild dog that needs to be put down."

"You're from the Inquisition, aren't you?"

She laughs.

"My boy, I am the Inquisition. And from this moment onward, I will be watching every move you make."

"Isn't that a song by the Police?"

"That's exactly the kind of thing that will get you another package. Only this one will be a bit more, let's say, lively."

"Lady, I've seen Hell and I've seen Hollywood and I have a pretty good idea what Heaven looks like. So, take your threats and shove 'em straight up your deviated septum. For me to worry about your finger wagging, I'd have to give a damn about something, and I've pretty much reached my limit there. Anytime you want to get all junkyard dog, give me a call. You might kill me, but trust me, you're going to have a limp and that face of yours isn't going to move so easily anymore."

She keeps looking at me. No reaction. Nothing. Just her stare shifting through the phases of the moon.

"Have a nice party, young man."

"Leave a light on. Maybe I won't wait for you to come after me."

That makes her laugh. A high titter, like crystal wineglasses tinkling together.

That's enough fun for one night. I throw my cigarette into the gutter and look around for a comfy shadow.

"Littering is a crime, even in L.A."

I'll be hearing that drawl in my dreams for the next hundred years.

"U.S. Marshal Wells. Come to party with the pixies?"

"Don't be obscene," he says. "I can smell the crazy on these people from here."

"Don't knock it. You might get lucky. Some of them inside are going to love a man in uniform."

He shakes his head.

"I don't like wasting my time talking to people too crazy or stupid or addled to understand what I'm saying."

"Then maybe what you were going to say, it's not worth saying."

"No. It is. You did a good thing the other night. I don't know that we could have stopped the ceremony without you."

"And Candy."

"Yes, your sidekick monster. So, are you Batman and Robin now?"

"I think that was our first and last date."

"Too bad. You might have been good assets."

"I'll tell her we have Homeland Security's blessing. And you can hire us, if you want. I'm sure for the right price, I can get her out of retirement."

"Aelita told me about your business proposition. I'll never understand people like you. You respect nothing. You value nothing. But you went out of your way to take on the biggest evil this city has seen in a good long while."

"I value plenty. Probably just not things you'd care about."

"You might just be surprised."

He looks away. His heartbeat is up. He's hiding something.

"It's okay to be in love with an angel. Trust me. You wouldn't be the first."

He nods, but he still won't look at me. There's a package under his arm. He holds it out for me.

"I thought you might want this. We found it when we were searching Avila. There was a whole room of similar items. It's your girlfriend's ashes."

And there goes L.A., dropping down fifty thousand feet right under me. Swallowed up by the San Andreas fault. My head swims, but I don't want him to see that. I start to say thank you, but nothing comes out.

"Don't say anything. It's okay even for an asshole to get choked up. Trust me. You wouldn't be the first."

He walks away and gets into one of his blacked-out vans. I step into the first shadow I can find.

I WANT TO steal a car. Something big. Something ugly. A Hummer or a director's decked-out Land Rover. Reinforced suspension, emergency winch, and self-sealing tires, like he thinks he can four-wheel his way out of the Apocalypse. I want to steal something bright and shiny and stupid and expensive, set it on fire, climb into the driver's seat, and pile-drive it into the ocean at a hundred and twenty. Feel the windshield cave. The crack as the safety glass pops out, hits me in the face, and snaps my neck. I want to feel the cold black water swallow me up and spit me out on the sandy bottom of the world. Just blind crabs and bone-white starfish down here. I don't want death. I know what's waiting for me when I die, and Hell is too bright. Too loud. I want oblivion. I want to not exist. I want to feel something that's not pain. I want Alice.

But Alice wouldn't want me to disappear. She didn't like me stealing or breaking other people's things, so I won't do any of that tonight.

See? Even dead she makes me a better whatever-the-hell it is I am. A less stupid person. A more considerate monster.

I step out of a shadow and onto Venice Beach. Alice is under my arm in a brown plastic box. There are bonfires fifty yards down the sand. A boom box pumps out something that, at this distance, is just beats and the buzz of overloaded speakers. People cop drugs on the street behind me. Couples grope and sweat in the dark.

I knew a drug dealer from Marin County. A hippie, but the kind who slept with a .45 under his pillow. When he got into organic pot farming, he stopped using the toilet. He'd shit on a black plastic tarp behind his house, staked out in the sun, so his droppings would dry out and he could use them to fertilize his plants. He told me that he got the idea from a friend who made sun dried tomatoes.

He did the fertilizer experiment for a year. Collected each dried-out nugget after a month in the sun. He told me that at the end of that year, everything he dropped on the tarp fit inside one shoe box.

I don't know why I think of that, except that the only person I ever loved now fits into something about the same size as that dead hippie dealer's shit box.

There's a crescent moon out. Does that mean it's a good night to let Alice go or a bad one? If I was better at magic than murder, I'm sure I'd know.

The water is cold and calm. Low tide. I have to walk out a good ten or twenty yards to feel the waves on my legs, boots sinking into the wet sand all the way out. I wade into the sluggish waves until I'm in waist deep.

Pop the top of Alice's plastic sarcophagus. Her ashes are in a plastic bag, like something you'd put your lunch in. I hold out the bag so that the bottom is about an inch underwater. Pull the black knife and slit the side.

The waves lap at the bag, washing out her ashes. Alice floats on the surface of the ocean, a white cloud spreading out in all directions. When the bag is empty, I drop it and the box into the water. I wade out, following the ash cloud as it's drawn away with the tide.

I want to follow her all the way out, over my head, and keep on going. But she wouldn't like that, either.

I stop when the water is up to my chest and watch Alice spread out into the black Pacific. Scoop up a handful of her ashes, but they wash away when the water runs between my fingers. That damn song is stuck in my head again.

"It's dreamy weather we're on You waved your crooked wand Along an icy pond with a frozen moon A murder of silhouette crows I saw And the tears on my face And the skates on the pond They spell Alice."

My legs are good and numb when the last of her drifts out of sight. I'm not even cold anymore, but I can't stop shaking.

Good-bye, Alice. I know you probably don't like the idea of me killing, but it's all I have left to give you. And I've gone too far to stop now. When I'm sure about Mason, this thing is done. I'll go back down where I belong and dream about you in Hell. Till then, sleep tight.

WHO WOULD HAVE guessed that Kasabian had his act wired tight enough to have accident insurance? Allegra found the papers in the bottom of the safe when she was closing up the one night a week she still works at Max Overdrive.