Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel Read Online Free PDF

easy. Now I’m a scryer too. All I need is a crystal ball and a pointy wizard hat. I can get a booth at the Renn Faire and make a mint.
    On the way out a couple of Blackburn’s security goons get me by each arm and shove me up against the front door. I’m one deep breath shy of putting the idiots out of their misery, then marching back in and twisting Blackburn’s head off for lying to me. But another man in a suit strolls up. He’s almost a head shorter than me, with a fine-boned face and hands. His skin is so pale it’s almost white. Calm, blue, almond eyes set in a face so handsome it’s almost pretty.
    “Oh, my ears and whiskers, is that little Audsley Ishii?” I say.
    He gives me a lopsided grin. Not a nice grin. The kind a headsman gives you when he doesn’t like you and knows his ax is good and dull today.
    “I’m not going to engage with you Stark, so don’t even try.”
    “What’s the matter? Did you hear Blackburn and me talking inside? A little nervous about your job?”
    Ishii gets close enough for me to smell his fresh and minty mouthwash.
    He says, “I don’t want you showing up here again without an invitation.”
    “What you want matters as much to me as the price of pinto beans on Mars.”
    “I won’t warn you again.”
    “Perfect. The next time your boys jump me, it’ll give me the perfect excuse to lop off your head.”
    “Get out of here and don’t come back.”
    The guys on my arms pull me away from the door and try to shove me outside. I plant my feet on the carpet and push back. I look at Audsley.
    “I’m just curious. Did you know you were going to write a suicide note when you woke up this morning or did the urge just sneak up on you?”
    Ishii walks way. Before I can say anything else stupid, I’m pushed out on the shitty street in front of the shitty hotel. A few of the other security hoods are standing around. They laugh when they see me get the bum’s rush. I stare at them, memorizing their faces. If everything goes wrong and fire comes down from the sky, I’m making an igloo out of their bodies and taking Candy inside with me. We’ll still die but I’ll get to listen to these idiots roast first.
    I make like I’m walking over to them. They get serious. Hands move toward gun bulges under their jackets. Just before one of them faints or pops a shot off, I disappear into a shadow on the side of Blackburn’s building.
    Teach your boys that trick, Ishii, you Napoleon-complex Snow White prick.
    T HE B EVERLY W ILSHIRE Hotel is so posh it gives the Taj Mahal a hard-on. Almost four hundred rooms and a million more secrets. It’s strange seeing it in daylight instead of Hell’s perpetual twilight. Downtown, there’s another version of the Beverly Wilshire. The penthouse was my—Lucifer’s—private space in the infernal palace. Of course, there are other differences. Basement kennels full of the hellhounds. Gibbets out front for extra-naughty prisoners. Hell’s legions on guard. And as far as the eye can see, the wreckage of Pandemonium, Hell’s capital. The heady reek of blood tides and open sewers.
    Up here, the Beverly Wilshire is where Blackburn’s crowd buy and sell small countries and bang their mistresses before hunkering down in gated communities with more guns than the Third Reich.
    This is the address Blackburn gave me for Brendan Garrett. The room number is for a corner suite. I have a hoodoo key buried in my chest. It lets me enter the Room of Thirteen Doors, the still center of the universe. Nothing can touch me in the Room. Not God or the Devil. It’s my vacation resort and my ace in the hole. From the Room I can come out through a shadow anywhere I want. But that doesn’t mean I like doing it. I especially don’t like walking into rooms when I don’t know what’s waiting inside. But I know the Beverly Wilshire well enough that I figure I can bail safely if I barge in on a gunfight or an ether frolic.
    From Rodeo Drive, I step into a shadow next