The Devil You Know

“These things are never offered unless they’ve already been accepted, Mr. Castor. I’m sure you understand. Are you looking for a permanent position?”

Gabe was going a very scary color, fetchingly set off by his snow-white hair. It looked as though the effort of not speaking was going to cost him a major blood vessel.

“You’ve already got an exorcist,” I pointed out with a nod in his direction.

“My table is long and wide. It’s all a question of what good things you bring to it.”

“And that’s where I stick,” I said. “I mean, all I can do are the basics. I can’t raise demons, for example.”

“No.” Damjohn’s eyes flicked over to Gabe for the merest instant. “But for dangerous and marginal activities of that nature, one uses the reckless and the stupid. For you I’d have other tasks.”

I shook my head, not in refusal but in lingering disbelief. This was surreal. Damjohn was between me and the stage; from where I was sitting, a hugely pneumatic redhead was spreading her legs right behind his head, giving him a most unusual—but somehow appropriate—halo. “How much would you be looking to pay?” I asked, just for something to say.

“As a starting salary? Let’s say two thousand pounds a month. With a lump sum to cover moving expenses and any possible friction on the more tender areas of your conscience. And it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that any of my girls would be delighted to receive a visit from you at any time. More than delighted—because you’d be coming to them as my personal friend and associate. If you have any unusual needs of a sexual kind, they would be well catered for.”

Damjohn looked at me shrewdly, and I got the feeling that I was being weighed and assessed by a very skilled fisher of men. “I can see,” he said, “that I’ve still failed to find the measure of you, Mr. Castor. But I do have one other inducement to offer you.”

He stopped and waited for a response. I shrugged to indicate that I was still listening. On the stage, the redheaded woman was gone. In her place, a sax player was laying down some very lazy and half-hearted licks to a recorded backing, no doubt making the sex tourists feel like real urban sophisticates.

“You must have wondered—a man who does what you do for a living and who has been gifted by nature as you have would have to wonder—what conceivable scheme of things would allow the dead both to return as they do, in the forms that they do, and then to be sent away again by the likes of yourself and Mr. McClennan here. You must, in other words, have questions about the structure and logic of the invisible world—its geography, for want of a better word. You must have asked yourself what it all means.”

I’m sure that Damjohn saw me tense. Up to now, I’d been feeling pretty much on top of this conversation, because I knew that there was nothing he could offer me that I’d want. Me and love—even me and sex—is a complicated equation, and you can wear empty pockets with a certain chic, like a badge of integrity. But answers? Oh yeah. I’d gone halfway around the fucking world looking for answers.

Damjohn smiled, and this time he meant it—not as an expression of any warm feelings toward me, but from the pure and simple pleasure of having found my weak point.

“And you’d know?” was all I could find to say. “How’s that, then? I heard that Jesus walked among the prostitutes, but that was a while ago now. You’re not telling me the two of you met?”

The smile curdled slightly, but Damjohn’s tone stayed light and relaxed. “No. I’ve not had that pleasure. But I have spoken to his opposite number, as it were. I have knowledge that comes with a price many would consider too high. Of course,” he glanced across at Gabe again, this time with undisguised contempt, “I’ve usually been able to persuade others to pay it on my behalf.”

He leaned forward, his stare spearing me. “I know where they come from, and I know where you send them to. I imagine that information would pique your curiosity. Am I wrong?”

The look on his face was the overintense benevolence of a man who’s just invited you into the deep woods to look at some puppy dogs. I stared back at him, my feelings for a moment in too great a turmoil to allow me to speak. While that moment lasted, I was a six-year-old boy again, the remains of my birthday cake still in a Tupperware box in the bottom of the fridge, screaming at my kid sister to get out of my bed because she was dead already and she was scaring me. I saw her fade into nothing, her sad face last of all like the fucking Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.