Delon sits behind me, next to Vidocq.

He leans forward and says, “So what’s the plan?”

“The plan is we go in and we get out ASAP. And why are you asking me? You’re Mr. Insider. What’s your plan for getting us to the ghost?”

“We’re going to have to deal with at least a couple of groups of crazies inside Kill City. Families and federacies.”

“What’s the difference?” says Traven.

“There are some intact old Sub Rosa families. Ones that have fallen so low they’re completely off the map. We’ll be meeting one of them when we get there. The Mangarms.”

I say, “Do they know we’re coming?”

“How would they?” says Delon.

“So, your plan is that we walk into their house and ask for a handout?”

Delon rustles a bag at his feet.

“I have shiny stones and beads to trade. Barter is very big in Kill City.”

“Are you sure the Mangarms know anything useful?”

“If they don’t they’ll know who we should talk to. In any case, they’re a good bunch to make nice with. They’re the family closest to the outside world, which keeps them vaguely civilized.”

“And how many uncivilized families will we be meeting?” says Candy.

“None if we get lucky. If we’re not, who knows?”

“What are the federacies you spoke of? Are they the uncivilized groups?” says Vidocq.

“Not necessarily, but they’re the ones most likely to be dangerous. They’re not families. More like dog packs. Random groups of down-and-out Sub Rosa, civilians, and Lurkers. The good thing is that they’re big on marking their territories, so if we keep our eyes open, we’ll be able to steer clear of them.”

“Luck is for suckers,” I say. “Keeping us out of crazy country is your number one job. If we have to take the long way around, fine. I don’t want to cage-fight a bunch of head cases where I don’t know the exits.”

“Understood,” says Delon. “I don’t want any close encounters either.”

“But we might have to meet them,” says Traven.

“It depends on where the ghost is hiding.”

“That means we might have to.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anyone here who doesn’t have a gun?” I say.

“I don’t,” says Traven.

“Do you want one?”

“No, thank you. You and Brigitte know guns. I’ll end up shooting myself in the foot.”

“Anyone else?”

“I don’t, but I have my own defenses,” says Vidocq.

Vidocq wears a custom greatcoat with dozens of pockets inside. Each pocket holds a potion he can toss like a mini-grenade at anything that needs its attitude adjusted.

“Good. What about you, Paul?”

He nods.

“I’m fine.”

Great. That means the fucker is armed. At least now everyone knows. The trick is going to be keeping him in front of us the whole time we’re inside.

WHEN WE REACH Santa Monica I park the van in the back on the top floor of a shopping-center parking lot. Before we ditch it, I wipe down the steering wheel and the front driver-side door, something I don’t usually do. In the past, I just left the vehicle and walked away. But now that LAPD has a file on me, I don’t want to make it too easy for them to track me.

We head for the beach with our bags and packs over our shoulders. Slung low on someone’s back is a kid-size vinyl Kekko Kamen pack, featuring a mostly naked female superhero in a red mask.

“Thanks for being discreet,” I say.

Candy smiles and keeps walking.

“This is discreet. I turned off the red LEDs in her nipples. And speaking of discreet, you have so many gun bulges under that coat you look like the Elephant Man.”

It’s just a few blocks to the beach. We stroll along past cafés and high-priced clubs with doormen in Hawaiian shirts, like just one more group of shitheel tourists.

“What’s so special about this thing we’re looking for?” says Delon. “Tykho says it might be a weapon, but you don’t look like the kind of person who needs more weapons.”

“You can never have too many weapons.”

“It is a weapon, then?”

“I didn’t say that.” I’m not sure how much this asshole knows, but I don’t want him knowing any more than he has to. “I don’t know exactly what it is, if you want to know the truth. All I know is that a very bad person wants it and that’s reason enough to keep it from her.”

“What’s so bad about her?”

“Well, she killed me once upon a time.”

Delon stops walking for a second. He has to take a couple of big steps to catch up.

“You’re not a vampire, are you?”

Delon has to sidestep a gaggle of drunk bachelorettes pouring out of a limo, dragging a bewildered-looking soon-to-be bride into what’s probably the third club of the night.

“Tykho said you were hard to figure out. Like whether you’re just making things up to keep a mysterious image. Did you really go to Hell?”

“Many times.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s dark, full of monsters, and it smells bad. The upside is that people don’t ask too many questions.”

Delon gives me a quick look and adjusts his shoulder bag.

We reach the long street that runs parallel to the beach and he says, “There it is.”

Of course, there it is. It’s pretty fucking hard to miss.

For about ten minutes Kill City was the biggest shopping mall in the country. It was called Blue World Village back then and was supposed to demonstrate peace and harmony for all the countries on the planet through high-end retail consumption.

The developers stole the basic layout from the Santa Monica Pier tourist trap—upscale vomit rides for the kiddies, shit restaurants, T-shirt and crap jewelry shops, a rip-off arcade—and tacked on a glitzy mall bigger than the biggest Vegas casino. It was a whole damned Smurf-size city. Hell, if the amusement park outside wasn’t enough, there was another smaller one inside.

Then, in thirty head-cracking seconds, the place went from Blue World Village to Kill City when part of the roof collapsed, taking down a couple of walls and a hundred construction workers with it. Took down a lot of investors too. The only reason the great white whale is still standing is because of all the lawsuits. The builders claim force majeure, that an act of God, an earthquake, brought the place down. A lot of investors have a lot of detectives claiming that the builders were skimming money off the top by buying inferior construction materials and using unskilled labor. Even the state and the city are fighting over who should pay to knock the damn thing down. Then there’s the families of the dead, suing everyone in sight. The mall was such a mess that they never even found a lot of bodies. They just sort of vaporized under all the concrete and steel.

If anywhere in L.A. is full of ghosts and feral shut-ins, it’s Kill City.

The lights by the mall, even the security lights, burned out a long time ago. There’s a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence around the whole site. I take out the black blade and slice through the wire and we move inside. We stay on the concrete sidewalk around the mall. The amusement park is out on a wooden pier. Half a Ferris wheel and enough of a roller coaster left to make a nice nesting site for birds. But every Pacific storm loosens the pylons a little more. One good blow and the pier will go down, maybe taking the rest of Kill City with it. I checked the weather before we started out tonight. Clear, calm skies. Warm Indian-summer air. Just the weather for a little B&E.

In a circular courtyard by the front doors is the sky-blue globe that gave the mall its name. If they reopen the place they might have to call it Bird Shit City. Most of the northern hemisphere is buried under the white stuff and South America isn’t looking so good. It’s like half the world is encased in a gull-crap ice age.

The glass entrance doors are nothing but bent aluminum frames. We step through and into the pool of light on the floor. This mall lobby is pretty intact. The collapsed section is a football field’s length back. The stars shine down on the rubble of a dead indoor garden.