It was a slow night in Tom's Holiday, a bar for the wayward souls at the Brain Hotel. Old Tom had given up 80 percent of his living space to create the joint. He was content to sleep in a small room in the back on a waterbed-style single bed with only a transistor radio and a small collection of Ian Fleming novels he'd once read. Tom's Holiday had daily specials, a decent selection of Brain pub food, and a jukebox containing every song he'd ever heard. It stopped around 1970, but that didn't bother any of the patrons-only Old Tom. He was forever asking me about new music, urging me to listen to the radio in the real world more often.

“Ya got any new Beatles?” he'd ask.

“Sorry,” I'd reply. “I don't think they're getting back together any time soon. Want me to listen to some Wings? They're on tour this year."

“Ah, that garbage. Don't bother. What's Hendrix doin'?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him the news about that one.

Old Tom was one of my first soul collections. He'd been a chef and bartender at a number of casinos, then worked his way up to-then out of-a prime bartending gig at a crooked casino. One ill-conceived wisecrack, and that was it. Some thug made him chug a cocktail of liquid drain cleaner. I'd picked him up thinking he'd know a shitload of management detail; turns out, all he knew was how to mix a mean French martini.

Over in the corner, a group of souls-Old Tom, Doug, and the Brain hooker, Genevieve-were watching an episode of The Bionic Woman I'd seen earlier in the week. I was lazing over a tall glass of draft Brain beer, trying to forget everything for a few moments. You spend enough time with a body of information and after a while you start to lose perspective. You start to believe the information is devoid of meaning. You forget why you're looking at the information. You question your role as a gatherer of information. And that's when your world really turns into a pile of shit.

So there I was, taking a mental health break, when Brad walked in.

“Hard at work?"

I looked up and smiled. “Collecting my thoughts."

“What's to collect? They're all in those filing cabinets of yours, aren't they?"

Brad was referring to the cabinets in my office. As I've mentioned, all that I observed in the real world was instantly transcribed to sheets of paper. Well, not instantly-I had to want it to be recorded, but it was fairly easy, so I kept everything recorded just in case. Soon my office filled up with filing cabinets. I started putting them in other rooms on the floor, and eventually the entire 2nd floor became a massive filing system of the past six years.

“It's not that easy,” I explained. “The names of your killers could be printed on any one of those pages. They're probably in file #4,759, page 312. You want to start skimming pages?"

“It's been what… eight months, best as I can tell? How far along are you?"

“Very close. It's only a matter of time."

“I've heard that before, in eight million variations."

“What do you want?"

“You know what I want."

True enough, I did. And as long as I was in a truthful mood, I could admit to myself I was nowhere near catching Brad Larsen's killers.

Robert taught me that you can't count too much on the souls you collect. “The sad truth is,” he told me, “90 percent of ‘em you never want to see again."

This was especially true now. Over the past eight months I'd collected five additional souls, which-including myself-brought the Brain Hotel total up to 13. Three of the newcomers were useless.

Soul #9 was Mort, an accountant who'd claimed he kept books for “organized crime figures,” offered to show his books to the cops, but died of a heart attack a few days later. He was a tough collection. Had all sorts of ideas about the afterlife, being Catholic and all. Association info? Nada. “All I did was crunch the numbers,” he said. “Honest. Now you gonna explain to me why I don't see no Saint Peter?"

George, former aide to a corrupt Henderson councilman, was soul #10. I collected him thinking I'd learn all sorts of insider goodies about local corruption. But once inside the Brain Hotel, George refused to speak. All he did was oil-paint Revolutionary War scenes. And he couldn't even get the historical details right-many of the British Redcoats wore Timex wristwatches. He also sang drinking songs to himself, usually loaded on a bottle of Brain gin he'd cooked up in his room. The only Association info he supplied came in the form of parody folk ballads he played on his Brain guitar:

Useless!

Fredric, soul #11, was not much better. He'd been a bookie when he was alive, and stole money from a couple of his clients to pay for his girlfriend's Tijuana abortion. Somebody caught him, and chopped off his arms. Inside the Brain Hotel, he replaced them with a set of ripping, hairy guns capable of tearing a Manhattan phone book in half. But he never used them, except to hoist a mug of Brain beer at Tom's.

Fredric claimed to know something about the Larsen murders. “You might want to watch the Bicentennial,” he'd said, then clammed up when I pressed him on it. Watch the Bicentennial. Great. That was about as useful to me as “Remember the Bastille."

On the useful side was soul #12: Lynda, a dead hooker I'd picked up in Laughlin. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure she was killed by the Association. She could have been one of those random dead hookers you run across from time to time.

But she did have an important piece of info: the name of the Larsens’ killer. “Oh, that would be Ray,” Lynda said. “Ray Loogan. He was braggin’ about it. Couldn't have been more than 24 or 25. He didn't seem to ever have to shave. Guy got iced ‘round Labor Day, you said? Had to have been Ray."

I was surprised. This Loogan punk sounded like someone you sent to dislocate somebody's grandmother's shoulder, not take out a government witness five states away. But he must have impressed somebody higher up. This was a great gig for a guy his age-especially if he pulled it off.

Since I had the victim's soul in my head, I can only confirm Ray had been successful.

Lynda went on to tell me that Loogan's bosses had sent along a babysitter named Leah Farrell to keep an eye on him; she had to bail him out of a mess somewhere along the line. (Killer Number Two, no doubt.) But Lynda couldn't tell me exactly what the mess was, or if Loogan had been penalized (read: whacked) for it. She only heard Farrell had been out of Vegas for months, helping Loogan with unfinished business.

The luckiest acquisition was #13, a soul named Paul After. He was a hired gun who'd been double-crossed and decided to turn state's evidence. The evidence? Nothing as good as what Brad Larsen had, apparently. Just some tax nonsense. Paul thought he could use the cooked books to bargain for higher rates. The negotiations ended when Paul's employer sent a lawyer to the meeting with a semi-automatic pistol. Blammo. That was the end of Paul. And the beginning of our relationship.

So naturally, Paul had good reasons to want to work with me. He wanted his bosses-who I assumed to be the Association-burnt like toast. He was also Grade A professional muscle, unlike the rest of the B-List schlubs I'd been collecting.