Rachel Caine - Godfellas.pdf - Rachel Caine - widez2

GODFELLAS, OR, VIC TAKES A ROOM AT THE MAGELLAN

anoriginal short story by RachelCaine

I suppose you might say I died happy.Couple bottles of gin, a hooker who looked exactly like Julia

Roberts, and one cigarette too many. See, I was laying there in the afterglow, lighting up, not paying any

attention, when the door opened and JimmyCassoli came in with his two ugly cousins and put a couple of

.375 hollow points through my forehead.

Didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would – big noise, big flash of light, and then it was all over but the

crying. That was the hooker crying, ‘causeshe had to get the hell out of the room without her best pair of

fuck-me shoes. JimmyCassoli must have known her or something because he didn’t pop her on the way

out, or maybe he was just more interested in making sure I wasn’t going to get up and follow her.

While they were going through my wallet for the green and grabbing up my working gun – I really hated

that, I loved that .45 – I realized I wasn’t actually laying there looking up at them anymore. I was

standing next to them, but it was like I wasn’t standing there, because they didn’t see me. I took a swing

atCassoli , who wasyucking it up how I’d pissed the bed, but it didn’t connect. I kept trying, though;

nobody screws with VicDonato like that without paying for it.

Except maybe JimmyCassoli , who slapped his cousins on the back and took them down the stairs, out

for an evening of lasagna and big-man bragging. I was left standing there, fists ready and nobody to slam

them into except that poor bastard on the bed, who I then realized might really be me.

I had to sit down. See, that guy on the bed that looked like me wasn’t dead yet. Going, you know, but

not gone. Blood kept pumping, lungs kept filling,eyes kept staring straight up. Die , I kept thinking, like I

was the hitter, not thehittee . Only the guy on the bed didn’t die, not then. Not that quick. Took another

fifteen minutes for the cops to show up, guns drawn, take a look at him -- me -- laid out bleeding into the

bed, and call for an ambo.

So for the next twenty minutes or so firemen, cops, paramedics, goddamn Boy Scout trooped around

my fucked-up near corpse like ants around a picnic. Hell, I was the biggest tourist attraction since Father

CarmineOzowski hung himself from the sprinkler head while wearing a black leather teddy. Speaking of

priests, one of the cops – BillyTorreti , we’d been altar boys together – came up with one, dragged his

drunk holy ass out of some othershithole room, I guess, ‘cause I remember Billy propping the Father up

while he made the sign of the cross and gave me unction. At which point, I started shaking all over and

leaking brains out of the great big hole in the back of my head.

I felt it, that exact second when the guy on the bed ceased to be me and started being a decomposing

pile of meat. I felt it, but nothing happened. I didn’t zip off to heaven, or hell, or into the light with my

dead friends.

Nothing.

Happened.Not to me.

Eventually, the room got sorted out. Coroner carted out my smoking corpse, trailing cops and crying

hookers like a Saint Paddy’s day parade. I was already forgotten by everybody except the maid, who

was going to have to wipe soot off the walls and put in a new air freshener.Baddabing ,badda boom.

Game over.

I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do. Hanging around staring at the bloody mattress

sounded sick, but for the first time in my life I had no place to go.Nobody to see.Nobody to do.

Then this guy walked into the room.Just a guy, on the skinny side, medium everything. He didn’t look

like much of nothing, but unlike all the other mopes, he wasn’t looking at the bed. He was looking straight

at me, giving me big puppy eyes, and I was feeling just a little bit pissed off, so I snarled, "What the hell

you looking at, pinhead?"

"I don’t know, Vic. What am I looking at?" He had a medium voice, too.Some kind ofMidwestaccent.

He sounded mild and a little bit cocky, which pissed me off more.

I was about to tell him to fuck off when I noticed the wings. I’m talking real wings, sort of like a fan of

white light, so bright it should have set the dingy peeling paint on fire. Apart from the wings, he still

looked like the kind who ordered vanilla at 31 Flavors, which was crazy, right? How could he be an

angel? Angels were sexy babes in sheer robes and little fluffy wings, likeVictoria’s Secret models

I checked behind me. No wings.

"Not yet," the angel said, like he was listening to my head. "First, you have a few things to take care of."

Great.I couldn’t even go to hell without owing some asshole a favor. All of a sudden I felt tired, really

tired, tired of everything. My life had been one piece of bullshit piled on top of another. A giant mountain

of crap, and I'd been the king of thedungheap .Big VicDonato .

So what the hell?Might as well screw up my afterlife, too.

"Shoot," I said. He winced and looked at the bed. "You know what I mean."

I had some debts to work out.Of course.Which meant I had some time to serve, a cross betweenjuvie

detention and a Federal pen.

My sentence was two more years stuck inside the fucking Magellan.

Which just goes to prove, the more things change …

Two years later, on the last day of detention (say hallelujah),I sat on a plastic avocado-green couch in

the Magellan’s lobby and stared at the desk clerk, who was reading a thick paperback. He was new, I

noticed. I kept an eye out for that sort of thing around here.

"Hey," I said. The desk clerk glanced up at me, waved vaguely, and went back to moving his lips. "Hey!

Buddy!"

"Yeah?"He didn’t even look up this time.

"You ought to get a better job. This one’s bad for your health." If he was an innocent asshole working

the night shift, a little intimidation could save his life. Of course, if he was a genuine innocent asshole, he

couldn’t have heard me ask the question, ‘cause, of course, I was dead, and therefore that would be

kinda hard.

He finally looked up from his book.

"Look," he said. "It’s your last day, right? Give it a rest. We can call this one a draw, you know, in

honor of your big day and all."

"My ass."

"Shit. Well, whatever you want," he shrugged."Just figured you’d want to get to that sunny afterlife

sooner instead of later."

"I will," I said, and spread my arms out over the back of the couch. Genuine antique,that couch .

Nobody had so much as wiped it off since 1969. I figured the lobby carpet for shag, too, but who could

tell under all the grime."Soon as we’re done. How’s life on the wrong side of the tracks?"

He shrugged again and opened his book like he might just go back to it. "It’s okay. Tell the truth, that

singingHosannahIn The Highest, thatain’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?"

"Like sleeping with your sister."He grinned, so I clarified it. "No, I mean your sister. Man, she was

good."

No more grin. He put the book away. "You don’t want to mess with me, you stupid fuck. You really

don’t."

"Yeah, and you’d be who, exactly?"

"Nobody you want to mess with." I might not have been a big thinker, but I could see that this little

conversation was going nowhere. It was time to quit talking.

I sized him up.Nothing special about this punk except for two nose rings and one in his lip like a pull-tab.

Of course, looks weren’t everything.

Take me, for instance. I wasn’t much to write home about, either.

We dick-measured for a while without saying anything.

"I can see we’re going to need to get this part out of the way," he said. "This is the door to Hell. I guard

the door to Hell. So I think you’d better walk out and go cry on Saint Pete’s shoulder or whoever’s

God’s doorman this week, and save your ass, ‘cause otherwise I’m going to fry it like the Colonel’s

chicken, baby."

I gave him the universal Italian goodwill gesture.

"You’re kind of a stupid fucker, aren’t you?" he asked, with a certain degree of admiration. I sighed.

"Okay, that’s it. I’mgonna come over there and play pop your weasel." He looked confused. I gave him

the short version. "You want a piece of me, go right ahead. Iain’t leaving."

He smiled like he had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at me under the counter, only I had the feeling

what he had in store for me was nowhere near as warm and fuzzy as that. "Duuuude," he said – he had

that half-dead surfer look – "Thanks. As a matter of fact, I am so hungry."

And then heTurned . Not a pretty sight. Some of these scumbags, they look nearly human – at least as

nearly human as they ever did. He wasn’t that pretty.Tumors, tentacles and a big drool problem.

And teeth.They always had teeth.

"Nice outfit," I said. "Yourmommy get it for you?"

"Your soul is mine," he hissed, and sort of oozed through the counter. Christ in a can, you’d think word

would get around or something, that trick was older thanMethusulah , David FuckingCopperfield could

do it. I shrugged and metabolized a nice big silver cross.Very B-movie. I seriously missed having the

heavy artillery, like a chrome .45 or a nice handful of Uzi, but more than just the times had changed.

Besides, an Uzi would have just given this pencil dick a bad case of acne.

He laughed and kept on coming. "Hey, douche brain, what makes you think I’m scared of your little

cross?"

"Nothing," I said, and flipped it in the air, grabbed the long end, and threw it end-over-end. Somewhere

between us, it turned red hot and developed a nice sharp point on it.

Oooh, that had to hurt. Plus, it ruined his loud Hawaiian shirt.

I figured he wanted to give me one last curse, but the cross was eating into him in a big way, and he was

just plain too pissed to bother.

We got down to the serious dancing.

Messy.Very, very messy.When it was over, the Magellan was knee-deep indiscorporated Demon, and I

was having a bitch of a time scraping dried ectoplasm off my plaid jacket. Not that it mattered. I was

about to trade in my sports coat for something nice and heavenly, in a 36 Long.

"Nice job, Vic," said my supervisor, who was either some unpronounceable Angelic name or Ed,

depending who you asked. He looked pretty comfy today, mostly human except for the big gaudy wings

behind him. I used to ask him, why the wings? I’d never got that part. I mean, wasn’t like we used ‘emor

anything. Typical angel, he’d never given me a straight-out answer, either.

Ed, who’d floated in through the front doors sometime while I was kicking the shit out of Surfer Demon,

came in and levitated about three inches over a pool of bubbling slime. "You know, we really must

discuss some ways to make this less – messy."

"You want the fucking place redecorated, hire Martha Stewart," I said. "I’m in the extermination

business. Actually, I guess I just graduated out of the extermination business. Yippee." One of the dirty

fluorescent lights was flickeringoverhead, it was giving me a headache. I took a pair of shades out of my

pocket and slid them on.

"You know, you don’t really need those."

"Go play with your harp, Ed."

Ed looked like I’d farted at God’s dinner table. "I wish you’d– "

"Act more like an Angel. Yeah, we’ve been all over that. Well, excuse me, but the Big Guy picked me,

he knew what the fuck he was getting into. He’s all-knowing, right? So I got nothing to apologize for." I

kicked a still-wiggling tentacle out of my way. "That’s why you hired me on, buddy.Because Iain’t neat ."

"Actually, I recruited you because you had something we lack," he said softly."Passion.So few souls die

with such a sense of life and the importance of it. When you ascended– "

"—got whacked– "

"—you kept that passion. Most souls come to us at peace. Not you."

"No shit," I said. "I got my head blown off by a hollow point out of a .357, thatreally fucks up your best

day. Look, can we skip the catechism and get right to the part where you bless me and get me the hell

out of here?"

I was not in the mood for Ed’s crap. I’d just smoked a Demon, probably the equivalent of a made guy

in the Opposition, and as far as I was concerned it was just about Miller Time. I had done two years of

hard time knocking down the bad guys, and it was time to get my reward.

I didn’t like that look from Ed.That kind look. It gave me the creeps.

"Vic," he said gently. "I’m afraid we’re not quite finished yet."

"Maybe you’re not, but I am. Unless you want thisrathole torched."

Hey, believe me, I was all in favor of splashing a little gas and holding a barbecue, but I was pretty sure

that wasn’t theAngelic Way. Preserve, protect, you know. The only fair game was the kind with horns,

hooves and too many teeth.

"We can’t do that." Ed looked pained.

"So you tell me."

"There are living people here."

As if she wanted to prove his point, a dazed, stoned, half-dead hooker wandered down the stairs and

across the lobby in search of the Coke machine. For her the twitching piles of ex-Demon didn’t exist.

Neither didI . Neither did Ed. We wouldn’t unless we dropped another level and put on skin, which all

things considered was not in my plans. Not that I don’t like it, it’s just I got used to doing without it, you

know?

The hooker tripped over a seam in the threadbare carpet. She could have been anywhere from thirteen

to seventeen, but not around the eyes. She’d skipped all those years of braces and training bras and shy

little kisses in the school halls; she’d hold up pretty good another couple of years and die with a needle in

herarm, or a knife in her chest, or maybe just freeze her ass to death in an alley somewhere. Ed watched

her with that quiet tender look he gets. I’d seen him give that same damn look to a five-year-old raped

and strangled in acrackhouse . It was all just a matter of degree to him.

I didn’t bother to get out of the hooker’s way as she walked through me. She shivered a little, crossed

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