I step on the kick-starter and the bike fires up on the first try.

First question. Where’s Candy? No way she’s at the Beat Hotel anymore. What’s the second choice? L.A. is a lot to take in when it’s not on fire. I can’t get used to seeing the sky. I need to get my bearings and screw my head on straight.

I’m starting to feel just a little conspicuous on this Hellion hog, with a headlight that could blind the space shuttle, no driver’s license, license plate, title, or insurance. Not that I ever had any of those things. But now I don’t have them and I’m on an illegally imported foreign motorcycle. Back on Earth thirty seconds and I’m already a felon. Welcome home, shithead. I’ll stick to the side streets for now.

I cross Hollywood Boulevard and pull the bike into the alley next to Maximum Overdrive video, the store where I lived with Kasabian. Kasabian used to be dead. I know because I cut off his head. It’s where I’ve been staying since I got back from Hell the first time, which makes it the closest thing I’ve had to a home in eleven years.

A man and a woman walk by holding hands as I turn into the alley. It looks like they’ve been picnicking by a coal-mine fire. Their hands and faces—every exposed patch of skin—is smeared with gritty dirt, but their clothes are clean and pressed. I’ve never see two dirtier clean people in my life. They catch me looking at them and cross to the other side of the street.

The alley by Max Overdrive is a snowdrift of junk. The Dumpster overflows with plastic trash bags and food cartons. There are enough broken bottles that the alley looks like a salt plain. I don’t think the garbage has been picked up in weeks. I steer the bike and park in the Dumpster’s shadow.

In the old days I’d use the Key to the Room of Thirteen Doors to walk into the store through a shadow but Saint James has that. I take the duffel off the bike, get out the black blade, and slip the tip into the door lock. One turn and it clicks open.

Inside, the place stinks of paint. The floors and display stands are covered with plastic drop cloths, but there’s a fine layer of dust on them. No one’s done any work in a long time.

There’s a light on upstairs in the room I used to share with Kasabian. I go up the stairs quietly, knife out and ready. At the top I push open the door with the toe of my boot. It opens on a messy bedroom. There’s a wooden desk where Kasabian used to keep his bootleg video setup. Now there’s a computer surrounded by monitors. I push the door open more. Something is in the room with its back to me. A heavy mechanical body with a human head. It picks up a bag from Donut Universe in its mouth and heads for the desk on all fours like a dog. When it sees me, the head opens its mouth and drops the bag. It raises a paw and points at me.

“Don’t say a goddamn word.”

The last time I saw him, Kasabian was still just a chattering head without a body. Now he’s something more, but I don’t know if it’s an improvement.

I come inside and drop the duffel. My armor is sticking out from under my shirt. Kasabian nods at it.

“Did the Wizard give you a heart, Tin Man?”

“Funny. Careful you don’t pop a rivet, Old Yeller.”

His face is like the couple in the street. Smeared with something dark and coarse, like black sand. He trots to the desk on all fours. Kasabian’s head on a hellhound body isn’t a pleasant sight.

When he gets to the desk chair, Kasabian pushes back with his hind legs until his ass is firmly on the seat. Then he leans the rest of his body back like half of a drawbridge rising. In a second he’s gone from windup toy to Pinocchio on a good day, an almost real boy. He picks up the bag of donuts with his claws and drops it on the desk without offering me one.

“Is that the best Saint James could come up with? It’s better than nothing but it doesn’t exactly look finished.”

Kasabian frowns for a second then gets it.

“Saint James? Yeah. That’s about right. As for this”—he raps a fist against his chest—“your better half never paid off the charm maker reworking it, so he didn’t finish the job.”

“Why not?”

“The asshole disappeared.”

“How did you know it was me and not him just now?”

“He looks like a bathing beauty and you’re the Loch Ness Monster. Seeing you young like that was giving me the heebee-jeebies.”

“You mean how I looked before you sent me Downtown.”

“Something like that.”

With the back of one metal hand, he pushes away an ashtray overflowing with Maledictions. Fidgety jailbird stuff, like now that I’m back he thinks I’m going to steal him blind. I lean in for a closer look at his body.

“So how does it feel?”

He flexes his arms and legs. Stands and starts picking up the beer bottles, pizza boxes, and crusted food containers that cover every flat surface.

“You remember that arcade game where you move a claw around to grab a shitty teddy bear out of a bin? It’s kind of like I’m the claw.”

He flexes his fingers and picks up a Chinese-food container. His hands are the hound’s paws reworked and extended into clawlike hands.

“I know I’m ugly as a spider on a baby but it’s nice to have hands again.”

“Don’t feel so bad. We’re both in gimp club these days.”

I take the glove off and push up my left sleeve.

Kasabian shakes his head in disgust.

“Is that Kissi?”

“Yeah. Josef’s idea of a joke.”

He shakes his head and goes back to picking up trash.

“I get Rin Tin Tin’s gnawed-on bones and you get to look like Robocop. Story of my life.”

I reach over and take the Donut Universe bag off the desk. Kasabian’s eyes flicker over at me but he doesn’t say anything. I take out an apple fritter and bite into it. Fuck me. People food. The day-old dried-out grease bomb is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

“How’d you lose the arm?”

“In a fight.”

“Did it hurt?”

“A lot. Does that make you feel better?”

He moves his head side to side like he’s thinking.

“A little. Not enough. You can go out and pretend to be a person. Me? I’m still stuck in this room.”

“Why? You’ve got arms and legs. Get yourself some clothes and some gloves and you’ll be dancing in the rain.”

He picks up a burger wrapper, sniffs it, and drops it in with the other trash.

“If only. The body works okay dicking around here but I can’t go much further than the corner for beer. The legs won’t hold. Like I said, the guy never finished the job.”

“Take some of the Dark Eternal money and pay off the charm guy yourself.”

After I snuffed all the zombies in L.A., one of the local vampire cohorts, the Dark Eternal, handed me a suitcase full of cash as a reward for saving the city, i.e., their snack supply.

“Saint James took it. Gave it all away.”

“What?”

“Right before he disappeared. Got all pious about it being dirty Lurker money. That kind of bullshit.”

I bite into the donut, talking with my mouth half full.

“I can’t tell you how many ways I’m going to kill that prick.”

Kasabian takes the bulging garbage bag, pushes open the alley window, and drops it into the pile on the Dumpster.

“That’s why the trash is piling up and downstairs isn’t finished.”

“Smart boy. Now tell me what number I’m thinking.”

He sits down at the desk and reaches past the overflowing ashtray to get a pack of Maledictions. Takes one for himself and holds out the pack to me. I take it and light our smokes with Mason’s lighter.

“What are you watching?” I ask.

“The Long Goodbye.”

“Nice.”

“The best movie ever made about L.A. Fuck Chinatown. And don’t try to argue with me ’cause your opinion is going to be wrong.”

We smoke and watch the movie for a couple of minutes. A gangster is starting to strip and he’s telling Elliott Gould to do the same. I want to ask about Candy but the words won’t come out. I had this fantasy that she would have moved in here, taken my place, and be waiting for me. Being alone makes you stupid.