“Not particularly. He liked the big construction machines when he was little.”

Fucking fascinating. This family is in training for the Tedious Olympics.

“Are you developing anything new? Anything unusual?” asks Candy. Nice. She has good instincts for this Sherlock Holmes stuff. Me, I’m about ready to take her back to the hotel and break more furniture.

“What do you mean ‘unusual’?”

“You’re the builder,” I say. “We don’t know a dump truck from the Batmobile. You tell us.”

K.W.’s eyes unfocus. Make microscopic movements back and forth in their sockets. It’s an involuntary thing. The brain trying to access memories. If he was lying, his eyes would favor his left side, but they don’t.

K.W. shrugs.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. We’re finishing a housing development. Upgrading the fixtures in a strip mall. We’re about to break ground on an office park near the 405.”

“Okay, the jobs are boring. Are your clients? Any eccentrics? Odd requests? Anyone paying you in magic beans?”

He thinks again. His eyes stop and hold steady.

“There’s only one thing I can think of and it’s not really odd. It’s just not something that happens every day.”

“Tell us,” says Vidocq.

ight="0" width="12" align="left">“A client called for a fix-up on a business property. What was unusual was that I never met her or a rep in person. We did everything on the phone. It was like she was one person handling everything herself. That’s unusual in this business.”

“What was her name?” I ask.

He frowns.

“I can’t remember. My secretary would know.”

“What did she hire you to do?”

“She wanted us to renovate and restore an old commercial site in the Hollywood Hills. It was a big job, too. There was extensive fire damage, but she wanted us to fix it rather than tear it down. It was something historic. An old gentlemen’s club. That I remember. It’s not a phrase you hear too often these days.”

I put down my coffee and Vidocq picks up his. Candy and I look at each other.

“Did she tell you the name of the club?”

“Maybe. I don’t remember.”

“Was it Avila?”

K.W. smiles.

“Yes, that’s it. How did you know?”

The human brain is a very funny thing, and because of that, it can do very funny things to the human body. Take mine right now. My heartbeat just doubled. All my senses are cranked up to eleven. Even the angel in my head feels it. I hear Jen’s breathing change. She knows my question and K.W.’s answer are important. I smell K.W. starting to sweat. He gets it that something he’s said is connected to Hunter’s disappearance. Vidocq and Candy are plain excited and trying not to show it. I’m as excited as any of them, but I feel cold, too. Like someone cracked open my chest and dumped a bucket of ice inside. But I don’t show any of it. This is basic stuff. I could have had this information yesterday if I hadn’t let the TJ thing get to me. But I guess getting to me has been the idea all along.

“How did you know the club’s name?”

I sip my coffee. The room is practically vibrating from the tension. Candy is a furnace. She wants to run out and start gnawing on bad guys or the coyotes in the hills. Something.

“A lucky guess.”

“I’ll call the office and get you the woman’s number.”

I shake my head.

“Don’t bother. It’ll be turned off and she won’t use it again.”

Jen says, “You know who it is, don’t you?”

“No,” I say. It’s the truth. I don’t know. But yes, I know.

“I have an idea, but I don’t want us to start getting ahead of ourselves.”

The three of us get up and head for the door. The Sentenzas don’t show us out this time. They stay in their bright and familiar kitchen, huddled there like the house is the Titanic and the serving island is the last lifeboat afloat.

Jen calls after us.

“What can we do?”

“Stay by the phone,” I yell over my shoulder.

WHEN WE GET to Allegra’s car, I say, “I’m driving,” and Vidocq doesn’t argue.

We get in and I tell the other two, “Get out your cells. You’re going to make calls.”

I start the car and back out of the driveway. I’m driving slow. Concentrating. I know what to do and I want to get to doing it, but I need to set it up right.

We head for the Golden State Freeway, but it’s bumper-to-bumper, so I turn the car and we head to the city on surface streets.

I tell Candy, “Call Allegra. Tell her to clear out all the diaper-rash and splinter patients. We’re bringing in a special case.”

“You’re that sure Hunter is at Avila?” she asks.

“I’d bet the pope’s red shoes. Tell her to get out every piece of Kinski’s hoodoo medical gear she has. The demon’s been working over Hunter for days. He’s going to be in bad shape.”

I don’t have to tell Vidocq what to do.

“I’ll call Father Traven,” he says.

I nod.

“Tell him to get his picnic basket together and be ready. I don’t want to give whatever’s in Avila the chance to know we’re coming.”

I get out my phone and dial the number Vidocq gave me for Julia. She answers on the second ring.

“Stark? How are things going?”

“I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?”

“I know where Hunter is. We’re on our way there right now.”

“What’s the bad?”

“Aelita is involved. It might be a trap and we all might die.”

“Do I need to tell you to be careful?”

“It’s always good to be reminded. I’ll call you when it’s over. If we’re dead, I’ll call collect.”

I DON’T KNOW what to expect when we pick up Traven. How much bread do you need to bum-rush a demon out of Ferris Bueller? A baguette? A dump-truck-ful of biscuits?

Traven is waiting on the curb when we get to his place. He’s all in black, with an old-fashioned high-collared coat that makes him look like Johnny Cash’s stunt double. He’s holding a battered canvas duffel bag. It’s big, but he hefts it easily. I guess not that much bread after all.

I hit the brakes at the corner and say, “Let Traven sit up front. I want to talk to him.”

Vidocq gets out of the car and takes Traven’s duffel. He slides into the back with Candy. Traven gets in the front. I’m moving before he has the door closed.

“I understand you’ve found the boy. How’s he holding up?”

I steer the car back toward the Hollywood Hills.

“We haven’t seen him, but I know where he is. It was a place called Avila. In your line of work, you wouldn’t have heard of it. They called it a gentlemen’s club. Basically it was a casino and whorehouse for a very select group of über-rich assholes.”

“Avila? After Saint Teresa of Avila?”

“Who’s that?”

“Saint Teresa experienced an intense encounter with an angel. She describes it in sublimely intimate terms. The angel stabs her in the heart with a spear and the pain she describes is intense, but also beautiful and all-consuming.”

“I didn’t know saints went all the way on a first date.”

He nods and purses his lips. He’s heard it all before.

“A lot of people choose to interpret her description of religious ecstasy in simple sexual terms.” He shakes his head. “Goddamn Freud.”

“At least the name makes sense now. You see, Avila was a huge secret. A real Skull and Bones kind of operation. If you were one of the handful of people in the know, one of the politically anointed or rich enough to use the same accountant as Jehovah, you got access to the club inside the club. You go to see what the club was really built for.”

“And what was that?”

“They didn’t keep human hookers in the inner sanctum. For the right price and a few blood oaths, you could fuck an angel.”

Traven turns and looks at me, his face a blank mask.

“I’m not joking,” I say. “No one knows who started the place or what kind of hoodoo they used to capture and keep them. L.A.’s a major power spot, so for all anyone knows, it might have been here in some form forever.”

“And you think that’s where the boy is being held?”

I nod.

“I knew the last angel that got dragged up there. Her name is Aelita. She ran the Golden Vigil. God’s Pinkertons on earth. Real turbocharged assholes.”

“Yes. I know about the Golden Vigil. You think this Aelita was taken there to become another prostitute?”

“No, she and the other angels were going to be sacrificed to open the gates of Hell. You see an old buddy of mine, Mason, has ambition the size of King Kong’s balls. He wants to knock off Lucifer and take over Hell. Then he wants to stick a fork in God and grab Heaven. He’s hard-core enough that he might be able to pull it off. You still with me, Father?”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Traven squinting. He doesn’t know what to believe. I guess it’s a lot to absorb when you’ve spent your life in church libraries, reading the books, learning the stories, and then finding out you have no idea how the universe really works. All these years he’s been thoroughly shielded from everything but writer’s cramp. Now he finds out that a real-life low-down biblical horror show was going on across town from where he brushed his teeth in holy water every night before bed. I can’t blame him if his mind is a little blown.

“You want a cigarette?”

“That’s would be nice,” he says.

I hand him Mason’s lighter and the pack of Maledictions from my pocket. Listen to him rustle the pack and spark the lighter. He coughs at the first puff but keeps smoking. Maledictions are easier to take when you’re doomed.

“You were talking about a man named Mason trying to open Hell. I gather you stopped him.”

“Something like that.”

“And we killed an ass load of devil minions and dark magicians along the way,” says Candy.

Traven turns in his seat to look at her.

“You were there, too?”

She smiles.

“Stark invites me to all his massacres. Isn’t that right?”

She kicks the back of my seat. I look at her in the rearview mirror.

“You’re not helping.”

She smiles and settles down in her seat.

Traven puffs quietly on the Malediction, staring out the window as I steer us into the hills.

“So, because you stopped the sacrifice, you think that Hunter is in Avila?”

“Yeah. Mason and Aelita are behind this whole thing. They set the Qlipuffs on Hunter.”

“Qliphoth. Why not send the demon after you?”

“Because Mason has a truly fucked-up sense of humor. I knew Hunter’s brother and Mason would bust a gut using the kid to get me back up here. Aelita is helping just because she generally hates my guts.”

“I thought you said you saved her.”

“Yeah, when she found out I’m not exactly human, she got testy. A real racist.”

“You know, yesterday if someone told me I’d be driving to an exorcism with a nephilim I would have been surprised. Today, though . . .”

He trails off and smokes the Malediction.

I wish I could read minds like Lucifer. I can hear Traven’s heart beating fast. He’s feeling the mixture of cold and fear that’s excitement. He half knows what’s coming and he’s not sure if he can handle it. That’s me in the arena, waiting for the gates to open to see what I’m going up against in this episode of Kick Stark’s Ass. After a while you learn to live with the fear and ignore it, but it’s never a hundred percent gone. But some kinds of fear can make you more than you are. You face down something bigger than yourself and maybe come out of it with scars, but you’re a little stronger for it. There are other fears that are like a hole in your center where pieces of your soul go down the drain. That kind of fear has nothing to do with the knock-down-drag-out in the arena. That’s the horror of finally knowing how things really are. Who has the power and how they love tossing it around at C;Yt arouneveryone who doesn’t have it.

Every one of us, human and monster alike, lives with an angelic boot on our throats. But we don’t see it, so we forget about it and limp along doing the stupid little things that make up our stupid little lives. Then the boot comes down on your gut, squeezing the air out of your lungs and cracking your bones like old matchsticks. And you know the only reason it’s happening is because you’re not one of the celestials on high. You’re suffering with the worst curse of all. You’re alive. We’re just bugs on God’s windshield. That’s all we are. Annoying. Disposable. A dime a dozen.

Traven says, “You toss it all off so easily. Men enslaving angels. Humans challenging both Lucifer and God. And you say you’re a nephilim, something I don’t even know if I believe in.”

“Don’t worry, Father. I believe in you.”

He’s talking about me, but it’s not what he means. I can hear it in the almost inaudible tremors in his voice.

“Ask the question, Father.”

“What do I have to look forward to in Hell? Do they have special amusements for ex-priests?”

I should have gone easier on him. The poor guy is ex-communicated. To him that means he already has one foot in the coal cart to the hot country.