SS 04: Devil Said Bang: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey Page A

up the receiver
on the fourth ring.
    “Hello?”
    “Still alive and kicking, I see.”
    “Who is this?”
    “Puddin’ ’n’ Tain. Ask me again and I’ll tell you
the same.”
    “Fuck you. I’m hanging up.”
    As I put down the receiver the voice comes
again.
    “You’re always so serious. So linear. You’ve got to
get into the spirit of things.”
    I almost recognize the voice but not quite.
    “What spirit is that?”
    “That you’re nothing. You’ve been flailing at the
universe your whole life, and where has it gotten you? You’re not really the
Devil. You’re not Sandman Slim. You’re not a man and you’re not an angel. Some
people live in gray areas but, friend, you are a gray area.”
    “Am I supposed to understand any of that?”
    “You could always kill yourself now and save us the
trouble.”
    “What would that solve? I’d just end up right back
here. Did Brimborion put you up to this?”
    “What do you think?”
    “I think he’s hiding somewhere nursing his hand
with whiskey and a Valium chaser.”
    “There you are.”
    “Am I supposed to be spooked by this? You sound
like someone’s dad hard selling Girl Scout cookies.”
    “You’re not the only one with peepers, you know.
Don’t think because you watch the world, the world doesn’t watch you back.”
    “I’m going to find you, you know.”
    “I’m counting on it.”
    There’s a click and the line goes dead.
    Crank calls? Is this how things work from here?
This isn’t Hell. It’s junior high.
    I wake
up hurting. The hangover is gone and now I can feel every bit of the beating I
took last night. My jaw aches and my ribs are bruised. Every time I move, the
armor presses on them and makes me wince.
    Something shatters down the hall. Glass and metal.
Something heavy hits the floor, like a car falling through the ceiling. I grab
my knife and run toward the sound.
    Ms. 45 is lying on her side by one of the big
picture windows in the front room. The glass dome holding her brain is smashed.
Pink meat and spinal fluid leak onto the tile floor. I stand by the body
listening. Ready for whoever got to her to come for me.
    I don’t hear a thing. It doesn’t make sense that
someone could get in here but they did. The peeper by the hall is gone, so I
can’t play back whatever happened.
    Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to ditch the
Glock.
    Making a pass through the rest of the penthouse, I
don’t see anything out of place. I need to get someone to clean up the hound
before it stinks in here like Mason’s lab. There’s a phone in the bedroom. I get
the Glock from the library and head there.
    A shadow flickers across the bedroom.
    Looks like Brimborion has a second passkey after
all. Good. First I find out what he’s looking for in my room and then I get to
kill him.
    But the moment the thought forms, I know it’s
wrong. Brimborion isn’t the creeping-around-smashing-hellhounds type. Especially
not when he just lost a finger. Whoever’s in the bedroom has much bigger balls
and a lot fewer brain cells than him. But he’ll know who’s after me and he’s
going to give me a name if I have to repaper the hallway with his skin.
    With the Glock in a two-hand TV-cop grip, I
shoulder open the bedroom door. No one in sight. I go inside, sweeping the room
with the gun. The closet door is open, the space empty. If Mr. Soon to Be Dead
is in toddler freak-out mode, he might be under the bed. More than likely he’s
in the bathroom trying to squeeze himself down the shower drain.
    I start across the room but only make it to the end
of the bed.
    Behind me, the door creaks open the rest of the
way.
    “Here are your fucking messages.”
    No question about the voice. It’s Brimborion.
    I turn around. He sees the Glock in my hand and in
an inspiring display of self-preservation lurches back, cracks his head on the
door, and falls onto his knees. I grab his shoulder and pull him to his
feet.
    “How did you get in here?”
    He looks at me like