âTELL ME,â SAYS the Frenchman. âHow long has it been since you last killed anything?â
Heâs fucking with me. He knows the answer, but he wants to make me say it. Father Vidocq taking confession.
âI donât know. What time is it?â
âThat long, then?â
I shrug.
Vidocq and I are in a very dark room in a very large house full of very fashionable furniture and weâre stealing something very valuable. I have no idea what and pretty much donât care. Itâs just nice to be hanging out and doing some crimes with the old man. Crimes where no one ends up zombie meat, shot, or annoyingly decapitated.
âItâs been a while,â I say. âSix. Eight weeks. Somewhere around there.â
I slipped us into the house through a shadow. Vidocq is working on the wall safe. Heâs good with safes. Heâs had over a hundred years of practice.
âSo, no crusades? No great wrongs that need to be righted?â
I reach into my pocket for a cigarette, then remember there might be smoke alarms.
âNothing worth killing for. Iâm no cop. The Sub Rosa has their own Mod Squad to deal with the small stuff.â
I like watching Vidocq work over a safe. He has hands like a surgeon. Nimble. Precise. He could thread a needle while being shot out of a cannon.
âIncroyable. Perhaps youâre reaching something of a rapprochement with your angelic half and itâs having a moderating effect on your disposition.â
Right. Iâm part angel. Half, if you want to get picky about it. Itâs great. A halo and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee in L.A.
âMaybe. The angel screams at me sometimes, mostly at night when Iâm tired and he can ambush me with one of his Give-Peace-a-Chance, no-smoking, veggie-bacon sermons. But he isnât trying to run the show single-handed anymore. We reached a kind of MAD pact the other day.â
Vidocq looks at me.
âMAD?â
âMutually Assured Destruction. I told him that if he ever tried to push me out of my brain and turn me into a clean-living choirboy again, Iâd have to do something, you know, unreasonable.â
âSuch as?â
âI told him Iâd get hammered and go through the Room of Thirteen Doors to the Pearly Gates. Then Iâd find the Archangel Gabriel and thunderbolt-kick him in the cojones in front of all the other angels.â
âWhereupon the other angels would draw their swords and kill you.â
âExactly. Mutually Assured Destruction.â
âThat sounds much more like the old you.â
âThanks.â
Technically, Iâm what you call a ânephilim.â Half human, half angel. And Iâm the only one. The others are all dead. Suicides mostly. Some people call my type freaks. If youâre one of heavenâs lapdogs, youâll probably call me âAbomination.â I say, call me either of those things to my face and youâll get to see what your lungs look like as throw pillows.
The angel half of me got shaken loose a while back when a High Plains Drifterâthatâs âzombieâ to youâbit a chunk out of my hand. The human half of me almost died and the angel half thought that was its chance to take over. It was for a while, but then I got my strength back and I locked the angel upstairs in the attic like Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? It still bangs on the door and shouts, but Iâve learned to ignore it most of the time. Some of the time. It depends on the day.
Vidocq goes back to work on the safe. Over his clothes, heâs wearing a tailored gray gabardine greatcoat. Looks like his girlfriend Allegraâs been dressing him again. He looks like the doorman at a speakeasy in the Kremlin. The greatcoat tinkles gently when he moves, like heâs smuggling wind chimes. The sound of the hundred or so little potion bottles he has sewn into the coatâs lining. I have my guns, my knife, and naâat. Vidocq has his potions.
âWhat exactly are we stealing?â I ask.
âA golden brooch or device in the shape of a scarab. Itâs quite ancient. There is a clockwork mechanism inside. Perhaps itâs Godâs pocket watch.â
âHe doesnât need a watch. He needs a compass so he can find his own ass.â
Thereâs a click and the front of the safe swings open.
Vidocq moves his hands in a graceful TV-spokesmodel arc in front of the safe.
âEt voilà .â
âYou are the man, Van Damme.â
He squints at me.
âJean-Claude Van Damme is Belgian, not French.â
âThereâs a difference?â
âFuck you.â
I like how Vidocq pronounces âfuckâ: âfock.â
He whispers, âCâest quoi, ça?â
âAnything wrong?â
âNo. Itâs very interesting. The owner of this safe is a very paranoid man. The inside is etched with spells and runes.â