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“Tell me,” says
the Frenchman. “How long has it beensince you last killed anything?”He’s ucking with me. He knows the answer, but he wantsto make me say it. Father Vidocq taking conession.“I don’t know. What time is it?”“That long, then?”I shrug.Vidocq and I are in a very dark room in a very large houseull o very ashionable urniture and we’re stealing some-thing very valuable. I have no idea what and pretty muchdon’t care. It’s just nice to be hanging out and doing somecrimes with the old man. Crimes where no one ends upzombie meat, shot, or annoyingly decapitated.“It’s been a while,” I say. “Six. Eight weeks. Somewherearound there.”I slipped us into the house through a shadow. Vidocq isworking on the wall sae. He’s good with saes. He’s had overa hundred years o practice.“So, no crusades? No great wrongs that need to berighted?”
Richard Kadrey
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I reach into my pocket or a cigarette, then remember theremight be smoke alarms.“Nothing worth killing or. I’m no cop. The Sub Rosa hastheir own Mod Squad to deal with the small stu.”I like watching Vidocq work over a sae. He has hands likea surgeon. Nimble. Precise. He could thread a needle whilebeing shot out o a cannon.“
Incroyable
. Perhaps you’re reaching something o a rap-prochement with your angelic hal and it’s having a moderat-ing eect on your disposition.”Right. I’m part angel. Hal, i you want to get picky aboutit. It’s great. A halo and ve bucks will get you a cup o coeein L.A.“Maybe. The angel screams at me sometimes, mostly atnight when I’m tired and he can ambush me with one o hisGive-Peace-a-Chance, no-smoking, veggie-bacon sermons.But he isn’t trying to run the show single-handed anymore.We reached a kind o MAD pact the other day.”Vidocq looks at me.“MAD?”“Mutually Assured Destruction. I told him that i he evertried to push me out o my brain and turn me into a clean-living choirboy again, I’d have to do something, you know,unreasonable.”“Such as?”“I told him I’d get hammered and go through the Room o Thirteen Doors to the Pearly Gates. Then I’d nd the Archan-gel Gabriel and thunderbolt-kick him in the cojones in ronto all the other angels.”
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