 |
        |    |
|
|||||
You spend a few thousand years in the eighth circle of Hell tormenting the frauds of history, and you learn a thing or two. There’s a certain amount of attrition in any profession. When Big Red moved me up from the first moat of Malebolge, I pretty well figured the scam had a down side. I had to wonder where my predecessor went. In keeping with Red’s stress motivation management style, there was no training program. I’d moved from poking puke seducers and panderers with a fork to walking the Earth stealing faith. Hey, I’m not bitching, but where’s a hard-working demon to find faith to steal? I looked in places that seemed likely: middle schools, playgrounds, hospital maternity wards. Hey, get ’em young and clean, I figured. All the new guys make that mistake. The babes have the innocence, but for faith they gotta grow up enough to be aware, or stealing from them doesn’t mean much. Free will, you know. No matter where I looked, my totals were low, always low. A black-hearted bastard name of Boseman was top producer month after month. That guy always stole more faith than everybody else. I didn’t complain, mind you. I wasn’t anywhere near his league. I was too worried about my leathery hide to worry about Boseman. If a guy’s totals are consistently low, Big Red just takes your existence—no preliminaries, no sense of dread. You spend three weeks last on the list, and you cease to exist. Stress motivation management. I figured that’s where the guy I replaced went. So I learned fast. Got my numbers up out of the basement. In fact, I learned to like the job. A lot of demons hunt faith because they have to if they want to keep on keepin’ on. It took about a year before I was doing it because I loved it. The hunt’s the thing for me. After that, it’s the seduction. There’s just nothing like taking some TeenZine-reading virgin out of her fantasies and into the real world of screaming kids, welfare, and no child support. I’m a sucker for ironic justice. Nothing steals faith faster. Guilt? Maybe a little. But I’m a demon. Come on. I figured it was that way for Boseman, too. He was into the hunt. Had to be to post totals like his. Eventually, I made top ten. Hard work and love of the job will take you a long ways. Envy, a little rage, some professional jealousy, and hey, you get your numbers up. If you like your work, you figure the tricks. I mean, every job has its tricks. I’d figured a few of ’em, sure. Steal a mortal child’s faith in their parents, and you tally of a percentage of the kid’s life-long misery. Easy to see. Easy to count. Take her faith in all mankind, and you get a bigger percentage of her misery. It just follows that if you can steal the faith of a lot of mortals all at once, you get bigger numbers. It wasn’t long before I was ignoring single pops and screwing with public figures, corrupting clergy, and generally wrecking the lives of high-profile people. Broadcast a videotape of the faith-healing Reverend Jimmy-Bob Glory in his birthday suit boffin’ the right and righteous Miss Virginia Pure Voice in all her leather and handcuffed beauty, and you steal the faith of hundreds or thousands at a time. But it wasn’t enough.  I still rode hind tit to Boseman for nearly a hundred months. When I was fed up with hitting the top ten and never making number one, I decided to risk a couple of day’s numbers to just follow him. You know. Want to be number one? Learn what number one does—then do it better. Where’d he go? Mexico. First day of the month, his first stop was a village in Mexico. The village was in the hills of the Baja peninsula. It was a watch-where-you-step, dirt street, hole of a place. Roving goats and dogs. An adobe church—no power, no plumbing. I’d have never in a million years thought to look there for faith to steal. Those people were already hurtin’ deep. It was some feast day or another. Hey, it’s always some feast day or another down there. Those people got religions piled on their religions. Course, religion ain’t the same as faith. Folks were walking around in white lace and shit. Okay, that gets my attention. White lace usually means somebody is keeping their kids in the dark about something. That, or you’re watching a Vicky’s Whisper catalog shoot. I’m thinking maybe Boseman’s got something there: some clergy to bring down, maybe a little pre-confirmation pedophilia, maybe both. Good stuff. Medium numbers. Meat and Potatoes. Maybe he starts there and lets his numbers grow from a solid foundation. Yeah. I follow him. I think I get it. A week or two of this, then he can afford to take shots at the really big scores. Rock stars busted for kiddie porn, glam girls busted shoplifting, muscle cars made in China—the kind of stuff that makes global media and undermines the faith of millions. High overhead for setup, high risk, high return. Boseman went human and walked in cool, right down the main dust path between adobe hovels. He’s got this whole English gentry thing happening. You know: bowler, tweed, waxed stache, a walkin’ stick he can fold out the top and sit down on. He’s looking cool and way out of place. He stopped at a corner. A dark kid, a boy maybe five, sat on a stool next to a five gallon stucco-mix bucket full of flowers. Boseman bought himself a bouquet, and then he was out the other end of town, around the back of the church and poof gone, out to another village before I can even skip along down the street. I followed, ducking behind the church. No sign of him. I opened a hole in reality and checked the stats board in Central Dis. I swear he started with a zero just like everyone else. When he left town, he was way up. That sucker had slipped one right by me. Somewhere between putting hoof on dirt and popping out of that Mexican dust hole, he collected more lost faith than some guys pick up in a month. Hey, I knew for a fact that he hadn’t touched a single child, hadn’t molested a virgin, hadn’t corrupted a wannabe nun or priest. Hell, he hadn’t so much as dirtied the name of the tooth fairy. He just bought flowers from a kid. I checked the main street. I wasn’t alone. There was another demon on the prowl following Boseman. He was a new guy. Gorgon, or Grotan, or Gravel or something. I saw him slinking off down an alley. He looked like the cosmos had fallen in on his head, or was about to. He poofed out. It didn’t make sense. None at all. I had to think a few days, that and bust a hump to get up my lost totals. Losing the first day of the month doesn’t go unnoticed. The old saying is, “Low producer on the first is a goner.” By week three, I was healthy in the mid-range, safe for the month. That, and it was clear that the new guy wasn’t going to make it. He hadn’t posted a damn thing by week three, while I’d done a lot of good work—not top ten work, but good work. That first day had cost me. Still, you gotta pay your dues, right? So I figured if I took another day to follow Boseman, I’d be okay. If I figured out his flower trick, I’d be number one next month, two at the worst. It might take me a month or two to perfect his program and figure a way to improve on it. He headed for backwater Yucatan. Same kinda dirt hole village as Baja. Different part of Mexico, same poverty. I followed. He saw me. I mean, I should have known he’d see me. I had to get closer, you know? Anyway, halfways down the main street, doffing his bowler to some Mayan babe who was way far from having any faith in anything she wasn’t seeing from the horizontal, he caught me out of the corner of his blood-red eye. Give the guy credit for cool. He didn’t bolt. He didn’t raise hell, and he’d have been in his rights to raise hell, too. Big Red would have thrown an unholy fit if he found out I was tailing Boseman instead of working my own program. Territory isn’t assigned, but everybody knows the hunt is life and death stuff for immortals. Encroachment is always a big deal. Instead, standing there in the blowing dust in his spats and tweed with his damn bowler, he just tipped that hat and smiled. His handlebar mustache twitched up and folded, looking for all the world like some black-and-white, folded-wing falcon diving on his lip. “Top o’ the morning, Andrews,” says he. “Morning, Boseman,” says I, and I walk right up to him in my clean, tourist linens and deck shoes. I stick out my hand. If he’s gonna be cool, I can be cool too, right? “Working the Yucatan this month?” he asks, like he doesn’t know what I’m up to. I figure he’s setting me up, so I tell the truth just to put him off guard. “Following you, Boseman.” “Central Dis send you? Checking up on my program, are they?” I see he’s a little pale. I’m good. I can see angles. I can see that Boseman maybe isn’t all on the up-and-up with Central. I can play it, eh? I’d learned a thing or two from my charges in the Malebolge. Disarm fear and anxiety with flattery? Sure. Works as good on the corrupt and corrupting as on the innocent and faithful. “Nah,” says I. “I’m just following you to see how you make your totals. You’re the best. You’re always the best. I figure you got some kinda edge. Maybe a system I can learn.” He nods. Takes it in stride like he knew it was coming. He taps the top of his hat and the smile fades and his mustache lands and lets it’s wings droop down over his mouth and along his chin. “Figured it out, then?” he asks. “Nah,” I says. “It’s got something to do with flowers, but I ain’t got close enough to see what you do there.” He nods. “Come on, then. See if you can figure it.” And off he goes toward the local flower child. In this village, it’s a girl. Maybe six. Black-haired, brown-eyed, and a bit too white for this country. I’m thinking fast. You know—where’s the lever? Prejudice against mixed blood? Fear of persecution? What’s the angle for this kid? Orphan, likely. No faith in parents. Church probably never helped her. Mixed blood, and all. What’s she got faith in? What can Boseman do with flowers? I follow, of course. I mean, he invited me, right? And he buys the flowers. I watch. He gives her a coin. He gets a bunch of flowers. They’re just flowers. Yellow daffodils and blue nasturtium things. The kid is just a kid. Gracias. De nada. Boseman has a bouquet, and we walk on out of town. “Check my totals,” he says. I do, and he’s still a zero. “Zilch,” says I. “Yup,” says he. “I could’a sworn it was the flowers.” “Nope,” says he. “So, what’s the trick?” says I. And damn, he looks me in the eye. Them deep, red demon orbs of his look right into me, right down to my where my fucking soul would be if I had one, and he says, “I cheat.” And I know it’s true. I know it ain’t some flower trick. He’s got some better rig going on. He’s slipped the systems, beat the devil, mucked up the works set forth by his red hot nibs himself. “How?” I ask. “How can you cheat? I’ve watched you.” “Check my totals,” he says. I do, and he’s way up to a third of a low-producer month. “Damn!” says I. “Yup,” says he. “Got it figured now?” I shake my head, but I figure now I know to look for a cheat instead of some system. We part company. I walk back down the street kinda cogitatin’ on the whole experience. I see a new guy. Grogan’s replacement. He’s in-human and wearing desert camo fatigues. Cool look. But that demon is sitting on a stoop crying. Okay, that’s weird. Crying demons ain’t an every day thing. I head straight for him. He sees me comin’. Poof, he’s gone. I never saw him again. No totals ever posted for that boy. He was just gone, tears, camo, and potential all naught. I don’t get it. I go back to work. The next month runs like a hundred others. I end up number nine. I mean, I bust a hump. Hell, I put together an orgy in a Baptist church camp, and I only make number nine. I get a burning memo from Central says they see I dropped in the totals. No big deal. I’m still top ten, but I can just feel Central Dis watching me. It ain’t pleasant. I mean, when a demon goes, he’s gone. For immortals, there’s no afterlife after the afterlife. Nobody wants Central watchin’. There I am on the thirty-first of the month, and I’m watching Boseman in Mexico again. I’m safe, but I’m not happy. I see him walk through town. I see him hand a new kid a coin. I see him take his flowers. Then, behind the church, just before he blinks out to his next village, I see him stop and talk to a guy, a guy in a jogging suit and a sun visor, a guy from Central. Bam! His totals jump right while I’m watching. Then he’s gone, and the guy from Central is standing there shaking his head. And it hits me. Boseman don’t cheat at all. Boseman’s a liar, not a cheat. The next month comes, and I manage number two. Boseman’s still king, but he and I share a smile now. The trick? It’s part work, see. That part I knew. And it’s part looking behind you to see who's watching. When you’re up in the stats, every month somebody comes to see how you do it. They’re looking for a trick, a slick tool, a way to go. Everybody wants the shortcut. They’re usually new guys like you, sometimes they’re desperate guys who ain’t making the grade. It’s all in the eyes. You gotta make ’em believe they can’t beat you, then you make ’em believe that Big Red’s game can be rigged. If you pull the trick, all the faith a demon has in the system hits your stats. All that concentrated, immortal faith in Central, in Big Red, in the corruption of the system itself, is yours. Bam! Like that. You bag the faith of an immortal, and that’s worth about a bazillion lifetimes of mortal suffering. There’s always new guys coming on. You take their faith. They disappear. The smart ones figure it out. It’s all part of the system, you know. Free will. You don’t got to lose faith, you can just shift your perspective. The ones that do, well they’re the guys at the top of the list every month. Boseman, Me, Lawrence, Cramer. A few others. Well, not Boseman. Not anymore. He moved upstairs. Wearing white now, working for the Cloud King. I’m number one now. Watch close. I’ll show you how it’s done. You dress the part. Spiffy. Out of place. I like a lavender tux, myself. The locals mark you right off as not part of the world. You buy your flowers in full daylight. In Africa, you pay with diamonds, uncut, huge. In Peru, it’s tiny necklaces, artifacts from the Inca. In Mexico, you pay with a Spanish gold piece, circa 1580. That’s the trick I missed that first day. Grogan didn’t miss it. It got him good. Boseman was a class act. He set up monthly visitations in low rent villages where people take the supernatural in stride. Hell of a scam. Low profile. No publicity. Find a kid dying of hunger, poverty, neglect—the usual faith-killing suspects. Drop a miracle on his little heart while some foul thing watched over his shoulder. Do the math. Restore the faith of a child, lose a little bit. Kill the faith of an immortal, numbers go way up. Boseman called it counter-intuitive initiative. I call it kickin’ ass. Big Red hates to lose us to the Cloud King, but that’s the way the game’s rigged. Once you hit the big numbers, you’re playing on a level that tips the scales. Red and the Cloud King can’t afford to keep you down. After all, to beat Boseman or me, you got to have a lot of faith in the whole system. I’ll be movin’ up soon. Spread a little coin for me when I’m gone, eh?
 |
