Comeback Tour Read online

  Duroc suppressed a shudder. He hadn’t been there, but since Santa de Nogueira, his worldview had not been the same. All his life, he had known about the Dark Ones and the powers that had run in his family for centuries. Always, Nguyen Seth, the Elder, had been there, talking of things beyond anyone’s comprehension. Seth the Summoner had always been with his family, down through the centuries, ageless and unchanging, stalking the back alleys of history. And, in his dreams, he had been with his ancestors in the dungeons of the Inquisition, Place de la Guillotine, Dien Bien Phu. But only when the thing called the Jibbenainosay squeezed itself into the universe and joined in combat with the woman-shaped fiend Krokodil had Duroc really been forced to accept the reality.

  With the Jibbenainosay towering above him in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, vast and alive beyond the reach of his mind, he had known the truth of the catch-phrase people had been using recently. Quoting Judy Garland’s words in The Wizard of Oz, people would react to each new wonder, each new horror, with “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.”

  From Santa de Nogueira, Lola cut to a more recent Arizona disaster site. Fort Apache, where madmen had run riot, and strange presences had infiltrated the computer system. An expert was blandly explaining how close to holocaust the economic and information systems of the entire country had come.

  Duroc had been mixed up in that, too. He hadn’t been there, of course, but he had carried in his body the demon that had attacked the fort. The pain was still with him.

  The gumbo scalded his mouth, and he washed it down with a swallow of mineral water.

  Lola segued into a commercial for the GenTech biodiv, and a trustworthy-looking actor in a white coat was holding his midriff open so you could see how well his vat-grown liver was working as it dealt with a bottle of triple-strength vodka.

  Duroc thought of the women he had never met, but whom he had tried to kill. Chantal Juillerat, S.J., Swiss national, Op and exorcist. Jessamyn Amanda Bonney, alias Jazzbeaux, alias Krokodil, former juvenile delinquent, current host of an entity so alien that it made Nguyen Seth seem like a human being. These women, and their men—Trooper Nathan Stack, Sergeant James Quincannon, Cardinal Fabrizio De Angelis, Hawk-That-Settles—had interfered in the business of Elder Seth, and would inevitably die. They could not hope to survive against the Dark Ones.

  Lola came back, and her Serious Expression evaporated into her Smiley Face as she started boosting the ZeeBeeCee Blotto Lotto. “Who knows,” she was saying with moist lips, “maybe you’ll be the lucky winner…”

  What kind of a country was this? They took the mind-stretchingly unimaginable and spat it out in three-minute chunks before doing a money-making link into a pie-in-the-sky game. Don’t worry about the End of the Universe, because you could be the LUCKY WINNER!!!!!

  Lola was talking with a robot-voiced computer named RaLPPH, as it went through the arduous process of selecting the citizen who would be the beneficiary of the teevee station’s giveaway. Stock shots of poolside mansions, hunks and bimbos in immodest swimming suits, piles of sparkling gems, gleaming sports cars and screen-filling stacks of high denomination bills appeared. The dreams of America were so petty.

  “Say, m’sieur,” began a coffee-skinned indenture girl, slipping onto the stool next to him, “are you lonesome tonight?”

  Duroc looked sternly at her. She was young. She wore a filmy dress which changed colour as she moved. It was slit to the thigh, and cut low on her neck. Her hair was short and brittle with setting gel. Her lipstick and eyeshadow were vivid scarlet.

  He shrugged, and nodded to the gumbo chef.

  “Anis,” he said, holding up two fingers. “Deux.”

  Fat Pierre grunted, and reached for a dusty bottle. They called themselves French in the sinking city, but couldn’t make a proper anis.

  “I’m Simone Scarlet,” she said, shaking her blood-red nails.

  “Enchante,” he replied.

  “Are you a preacher?”

  “Would it matter?”

  The girl smiled. “Preachers are just men like others.”

  “I’m not a preacher. I’m an Elder of the Church of Joseph.”

  The drinks arrived. He sipped his. He had to fight to stop his hands shaking. The shadow of the Jibbenainosay was still in his mind. It could never be banished.

  Simone Scarlet drank. “You’re from Salt Lake City?”

  He nodded.

  “And does the desert really bloom?”

  “It does.”

  Duroc put her age at about seventeen. She was a little undernourished, her silky limbs a shade too meagre, her skull a touch too apparent under her velvety skin.

  Simone Scarlet sighed. “I’d love to become a resettler. It looks so exciting on the newsnets. As if you’re really doing something, not just sitting here while the waters rise.”

  He laid a hand over hers. She was warm to the touch.

  “There are always places for the pure in heart, child…”

  Her face fell. “Pure… some chance, huh?”

  “Pure in heart.”

  He touched her breast, and felt her fragile heart beating birdlike under her ribs.

  She saw something in his eyes he couldn’t keep out of them. Her heartbeat increased, and there was a spasm of fear tugging at her mouth.

  “You’re not…”

  “A preacher?” He smiled. “I told you that.”

  She was trying to back away, but he held her. She looked across the room at a flashily-dressed young black man with an electric blue velour jumpsuit, a mink-banded cowboy hat and more gold in his teeth, on his fingers and around his neck than you’d find in a federal reserve. He nodded to her, urging her on. Simone Scarlet wasn’t sure…

  Duroc kissed her, hungrily. When he shut his eyes, the Jibbenainosay expanded in his mind, and terror gripped him. He lost his interest in the girl, and let her go.

  She looked at him with eyes older than her body. She was torn between being frightened of him and feeling pity.

  He called for more anis, and his hands shook.

  “What… what is it?”

  “Time, Simone,” he said. “It’s out of joint.”

  “I don’t understand.” She laid a hand on his shoulder, massaging through his shoulderpad.

  He remembered his business in the city. It was urgent. Nguyen Seth was expecting the best of him. The Path of Joseph had been thorny these last few months. Krokodil was still a nuisance, and the failure of the demon download at Fort Apache had been a severe disappointment to the Dark Ones. A lot of blood would have to be spilled to win back the favour of the masters.

  “M’sieur,” she said. “I have an apartment nearby. It is above the waterline. Very little damp.”

  He finished his drink, and handed his cashplastic to the chef. He slipped it through the machine and returned it to him.

  He opened his wallet, and slid the cashplastic back into its slit. It didn’t quite fit.

  He looked at Fat Pierre, who was stirring the steaming gumbo.

  “Hand it over,” he said.

  The chef shrugged, and kept stirring.

  “You know very well what I mean, salaud. The American Excess card. Give it back to me.”

  “I already did.”

  He look out the fake and crushed it in his fist. It dropped on the counter.

  Simone Scarlet was shrinking away again.

  “Why you do that?”

  Duroc let out a stream of French abuse at Fat Pierre, switching between Parisian gutterspeak and authentic Creole.

  He wrenched the card-processing machine off the counter, and pulled it apart. His card, along with several others, was in a compartment at the bottom of the thing. It was a clever device, which reproduced the impressions of the code numbers on a blank plastic chip and turned out an almost-perfect fake in seconds.

  Fat Pierre reached for a large knife that was hanging on a rack, but Duroc got him by the scruff of the neck with a strong grip. He swung himself over the counter,
and got the chef in a necklock.

  Everyone in the diner was looking at him.

  The chef tried to ram an elbow into his stomach, but he dodged. He wrestled the burly man over to the stove, and shoved his head into the boiling gumbo.

  Fat Pierre’s screams bubbled out of the pot. Duroc let the man go and, a towel pressed to his scalded face, he slumped to the floor, whimpering.

  Simone Scarlet’s mouth was wide open.

  Duroc came out from behind the counter, and took Simone’s elbow, helping her on with her fakefur wrap.

  “Your apartment?” he said. “Can we walk there?”

  She nodded.

  He steered her past the young man with the golden accessories, and out onto the street.

  “Toto,” he said, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.”

  There was music playing in the distance. With the ripples lapping the kerb, they walked three blocks to Simone Scarlet’s apartment house.

  As the sun went down, the stench got worse.

  III

  “Hey, Elvis,” said Nick Papageorgiadis, “va-va–vooooom!”

  Tired, the Op flashed his one-sided sneery grin at the mechanic, and dutifully answered, “Yeah, va-va-voom…”

  He was wearing a clean black leather jacket over one of his trademark pink shirts, black pants, black leather boots and a black string tie. His jacket was an Op special, cut loose around the chest to hang unnoticeably over the harness-holster.

  Nick shimmied across the garage, waving his rag, and abased himself in front of the pink Cadillac like a Voodoo Bro before Lord Shango or Damballah. The man was into cars like some men were into women or whisky.

  “Cad-dee-laaaac, yo!” Nick breathed reverentially, touching the unscarred bodywork of the classic automobile. “Va-va-voooom!”

  “Yeah, it’ll va-va-voom all right. Check the engine and the oil, though. Can’t be too careful about maintenance with a baby like this.”

  Nick caressed the gleaming hood as if it were his baby daughter, and sprung the concealed catch, exposing the G-Mek engine in its cradle. There was enough power in its gleaming cylinders to lift a Vixen jet fighter off the runway. The mechanic sighed, lasciviously, and reached into the car’s workings to tighten a few nuts.

  The Op had bought the automobile originally on September the 3rd, 1956, as a gift for Mama Gladys, who didn’t drive. It had mainly been in storage in Nick’s garage for thirty years, used only when Elvis was on furlough from the army. Ten years ago, Nick had persuaded him to have it completely refitted. An Op needed a flashy car, Nick told him. The Cadillac was fully convertible now, with swampskimmer attachments. If Nick could have found a place to put wings on the thing, it would fly like a bird.

  “The lase mounting is a degree off, Nick.”

  The mechanic looked shocked. “Oh, Elvis, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. Just fix it.”

  “I do it free. I miss it last time.”

  “You work, you get paid, Nick. You know how I feel about that.”

  Nick looked sheepish, and shrugged. Elvis could trust him to do a perfect job with the Cadillac. Sometimes, the Op thought Nick loved the car more than his own family.

  It was certainly a prime piece of American workmanship. Not a scrap of Japtech in there, from the IFF transmitter to the chaingun. The trunk was spacious enough to accommodate a felon in relative comfort. Fassett had complained, of course, but he had been lucky. If Elvis had left him around Yazoo City, the Krewe would have nailed him to a tree and stripped off his skin.

  He’d just dropped his prisoner off at the Federal holding penitentiary on the outskirts of town, and promised to download the documentation into the FBI’s files tomorrow. From the car, he had made a few calls to personal friends in the bureau. He thought he could guarantee that Fassett would serve some hard time in a reeducation centre.

  That was another shred of scum out of circulation. Elvis felt good about that.

  Leaving Nick to work on the car, the Op rode the elevator up to his apartment on the 15th floor. It was small, but served him well on the rare occasions when he was in town. Most of the time, on the road, he lived out of the Cadillac. It had been made in an era which prized size as well as style; you could probably settle down and raise a family in the car. Not that he had ever been in a position to find out. There hadn’t been much time in his life for putting down roots.

  He entered his code in the building’s security system, and the automatic gates let him in. There was a uniformed guard—some ageing kid called Springsteen who was always hanging around, asking him questions about being an Op—but he was just for show. The machines ran the building.

  Springsteen was busy just now, so Elvis was able to walk past him with just a hello. He was too tired for talk. He’d been driving hard, working off the adrenalin that had built up before the firefight. The swampy roads weren’t busy, and he had had a clear route, passing only a few corp convoys and a solo cyker or two. Fassett had stopped banging after an hour, and it had been a quiet trip. Pushing 130 most of the way, he had made it from Yazoo to Memphis in just under two hours, crossing the state line at dawn. Of course, it had taken the rest of the day to deal with the Safe Route through the NoGo and to detour by the Federal Prisoner Depository.

  Now, he just wanted to get some sleep. Tomorrow, he’d do his document work and sew up that bastard Fassett with the courts. He’d want to do a careful job. The CAF had pricey shysters backing them up. Then, he’d check his answering service and see if any more commissions were in the offing.

  His funds were low, he knew. He ought to take a high-paying bodyguard or courier gig if he was going to finance another few Yazoo City actions. The trouble was that the people who most needed the help were the ones least able to afford it. And once you got a rep for being a Samaritan Op, you were overloaded with deserving and undeserving cases. It was a tough century, and someone had to look after his neighbours.

  He had been born dirt-poor in a house that was just a few tarred boards the right side of a shack. His Pa had had so little in the way of education that he had misspelled his surviving son’s middle name on his birth certificate. Elvis Aron. It was supposed to be Elvis Aaron. Often, he’d thought of getting it changed by deed poll, but that would mean admitting old Vernon had made a mistake. He wouldn’t insult his Pa’s memory that way.

  He opened the door of his apartment, and stepped into the tiny hall. The first thing he saw was the only picture he had from the wild years before the army, a small framed photograph of him on stage, swivelling his hips, trying to keep hold of a guitar and a microphone at the same time. Behind him, you could see Bill Black twanging his bass. That had been when he and Bill and Scotty Moore were the Blue Moon Boys, doing the Louisiana Hayride show. Before it all got crazy, and the Original Colonel stepped in, and the music went weird…

  Some said that Elvis Presley had gone to the Devil. Now, the Op wasn’t so sure they hadn’t been right.

  The Op shucked his jacket, and carefully hung it up. He pulled off his shoulder holster, which was weighed down with three guns—a Colt Police Python for the left armpit, a G-Mek Finishing Touch automatic for the right, and a one-shot derringer for the small of the back—and hung that on the stand.

  His frozen nineteen-year-old self yelled silently at him. What had the song been? “That’s All Right (Mama),” his first recording at Sun? “Good Rockin’ Tonight”? “Mystery Train”? “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone”? The kid had the music in him, for sure, stronger than anything else. That felt remote, but he could dimly remember the urges that seemed to come directly from his gut as soon as puberty hit him. He chased girls like all the others, that was certain. But there was something else, another need, another drive. Some Preachers had called him an instrument of the Devil.

  He broke away from the picture, and went into his studio. Slipping off his shoes, he sank onto his couch and, too tired to sleep, just stared…

  The music had seemed to com
e out of him like blood spurting from a knifewound. It had been joyous, but there’d been pain too. He was full of the music like some of the backwoods preachers were full of the Word of the Lord, and he had to let it loose. Even when he sang gospel, people said the Devil was in his voice, in the movements of his hips.

  The Devil’s Music, they had called it. It had been called that forever. Any music that got inside people and stirred them up was in Satan’s Top Forty. Elvis remembered the stories about Paganini having sold his soul for the music, and the things they still whispered about poor, lost, stabbed-through-the-heart-at–28 Robert Johnson.

  And if the Devil didn’t want his soul for himself, he sent Colonel Thomas Parker to claim it for Hell’s side.

  The Original Colonel.

  Elvis loosened his shirt, and stabbed a button on the couch arm. The air conditioning kicked in, and he felt cool air on his chest.

  He remembered the Colonel. And the Colonel’s strange, money-doling shadow, Mr Seth.

  Seth had been with the Colonel from the carnival days, always sponsoring the promoter, nurturing him for some unknown life’s work. An old-time barker, on the payroll as one of the Colonel’s many nebulous advisors, had told him a story about Parker’s early days in showbusiness, about a band called Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys and about Colonel Parker’s Dancing Chickens. Seth had told the Colonel that a country music show he was arranging would qualify as an agricultural event and thus not be liable for tax just so long as he had an animal act on the bill. What Parker did was put a hotplate in the bottom of a cage and cover it with straw. When it was plugged in and heated up, the band would play “Turkey in the Straw” and the curtain would go up on a couple of chickens high-stepping to the music, their pain-squawks covered by the fast fiddling. When the chickens gave out, the Colonel would Southern-fry the fowl and serve them to hungry customers during the intermissions. One of the scary things about the Colonel was that he liked to hear that story told, and never could understand why it made people look at him in a different way. As far as he was concerned, the whole point was that he had put one over on the revenue men.