Chapter Twenty Six

The ride to Minneapolis took about three and a half hours from Freyja’s house. Hep and Scroat stopped at a gas station to call the guy Freyja said might know where Inktomi was at.

“So who is this guy, anyway?” Scroat said.

“I don’t know. The note just says ‘James’ and has a phone number.” Hep said. “You were there for the whole conversation, so you know as much as I do.”

“Awesome. I bet it’s going to turn out to be that Robert Wheeler guy under a pseudonym.”

“Would you drop the Robert Wheeler thing?”

Hep found a quarter and went over to the payphone. It was on a post on the far end of the sidewalk, and looked like it had seen better days. It gave Hep a dial-tone, however, so he put in his quarter and dialed the number Freyja had given them. The phone rang six times before someone picked up. Hep heard the quarter drop down into the phone.

“Who’s this?” said the voice on the phone.

“This is Hep. Are you James?”

“Yeah. Who’s Hep? I don’t know anyone named Hep. Why are you calling me?”

“I’m a friend of Freyja. She gave me your number.”

“OK, Hep the friend of Freyja. What do you want?”

“Freyja said you might be able to help us find Inktomi.”

There was silence for several seconds. Hep was about to ask if James was still there when he heard him inhale.

“Meet me at Nye’s Polonaise Room in an hour.”

“Um, OK,” Hep said. “How will I know it’s you?”

“I’ll find you. Order a blueberry daiquiri. I’ll look for the guy with the girly drink. See you in an hour.”

The phone clicked.

“Rude,” Hep said. He put back the handset, and turned back to Scroat.

Scroat looked at him as though he was waiting for him to say something.

“So?” Scroat said. “Is he going to help us out, or what?”

“I think so,” Hep said. “We’re supposed to meet him at some place called Nye’s Polonaise Room.”

“And then?”

“And then I guess he’s going to help us out. Or kidnap us, torture us and murder us. He wasn’t very specific. I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

“Great. I love mysterious meetings with people we don’t know. They always turn out so well.” Scroat said.

Across the street, lined up outside the entrance to a bar having a smoke, were a group of young men dressed mostly in black, in black trenchcoats, with black sunglasses. They seemed to be watching them. Hep noticed them, and waved. The group across the street did not wave back.

“Friendly here, aren’t they? Minnesota nice my sweaty ass,” Scroat said.

Hep looked up the street a ways, and noticed another couple people in black trenchcoats looking at them. Only this bunch were on the same side of the street as him and Scroat. When he looked back the other way, there were more of them, looking at them.

“That can’t be good,” Hep said. “I think we should get out of here before we find out what they want.”

The two of them hustled back to their bikes, started them up, and sped away. Hep kept a close eye on his rear view mirrors, checking to see if anyone was following them. He rode erratically, which frustrated Scroat, making sudden turns, lane changes and u-turns. In the course of the evasive maneuvering, they passed Nye’s. Hep made a mental note of where Nye’s was located.

When he was satisfied, they weren’t being followed, he pulled over to the side of the road on an empty street.

“What was that all about?” Scroat asked. “Do you know how hard it is to keep up with you when you’re pulling that kind of shit?”

“Yes, that was the point. I wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed.”

Scroat looked over his shoulder, and saw only empty road.

“Yeah, well, I guess we either ditched them, or no one was following us, huh?” he said.

“So it seems. Let’s go to Nye’s I guess,” Hep said.


Stepping into Nye’s was like stepping back in time to 1964. It was dimly lit, but the lights that were there were very colorful indeed. There was an organ in the corner, with it’s own bar around it, and an older woman was playing the organ and singing. There were plenty of dark tables with red vinyl chairs. It was perfectly, almost comically, sleazy, as any proper bar should be.

Hep and Scroat got a table, and a surly waitress came over to take their order.

“What can I get you, gentlemen?” She said.

“A blueberry daiquiri, and two beers,” Hep said. Scroat looked at him like he was insane. “There’s a reason,” Hep said, as if that explained the purpose of the blueberry daiquiri perfectly.

“Uh, I’ll see what the bar can do on that daiquiri. What kind of beer do you want?”

“I don’t know. What’s local, and good?”

“Well, we’ve got Summit in bottles, and Grain Belt Premium on tap.”

“I guess we’ll have Grain Belt Premium, then,” Hep said.

“I’ll have those for you in a minute,” she said, and walked away, leaving Hep and Scroat to enjoy the oddity of the place.

“You’d think this place would be chock full of hipster douchebags,” Scroat said.

“Yeah. I guess they haven’t gotten word about it.” Hep said.

They’d already had three beers, and the blueberry daiquiri, which the waitress had dropped off with obvious disgust, was now mostly just blueberry juice and rum, with an umbrella in it, when a guy in blue jeans, a white t-shirt and a biker jacket came over to the table and sat down.

“So which one of you is Hep,” the guy said.

“I am. You must be James,” Hep said.

The waitress came over to their table then.

“You want something to drink?” she asked James.

“Rum and Coke,” he said.

The waitress went away, and James said to Hep and Scroat, “So, what do you want with Inktomi?”

“Why should we tell you anything? We don’t know shit about you, asshole,” Scroat said. “Just tell us how to find him and go away.”

“I make it my business to know things. Right now, I know where you might find Inktomi, but I don’t know anything about you guys, except that you’re friends with Freyja. So, what do you want with Inktomi?”

Hep said, “Our house burned down after he’d stayed in it. We want to know if he’s OK, and then we want to know if he had anything to do with it.”

James sat back, and said, “Oh, he stayed in your house in Arizona. I’d heard he was going to Arizona, but didn’t know where he was staying. Yeah, as of last week, he’s still alive and relatively healthy. Are you guys good friends? He doesn’t talk about you too often.”

Hep looked over at Scroat, who seemed a touch pissed off.

“We’re not good friends anymore. Just old friends. Scroat here offered the house to him while we were traveling. We got back to find our house in flames.”

“Well that’s a real bummer. I guess you’ve got a compelling reason to find him then,” James said. He paused, then said, “You’re not going to kill him are you?”

“Depends on how we’re feeling when we see the fucker,” Scroat said.

Hep elbowed him in the side, then said to James, “No, we’re not going to kill him. We just want to know what happened to our house.”

“All right then, I might be able to tell you how to find him,” James said. “Man, I need a smoke though. Do you guys want to go outside and chat for a minute?”

“Sure, whatever,” Hep said.

James held up his pack of smokes when the waitress started to protest about them leaving, and said “we’ll be right back.”
Daylight was nearly blinding when they stepped out of the dark bar. They walked a short distance away from the door.

James took out a lighter and a cigarette, and had just put the flame to the cigarette when a group of young men dressed in black came around the corner.

“Oh, fuck,” Scroat said. Hep and Scroat turned to walk in the other direction, and found their path blocked by another bunch of young men in black clothes.

“What? What the hell do you want?” Hep asked them.

“We have a score to settle,” one of the young men said.

“What the fuck are you talking about? We’ve never even seen you guys,” Scroat said.

“You’ve met our brothers in South Dakota, I believe,” the young man said.

“Well, if they wouldn’t have been such dicks, we probably wouldn’t have bothered them,” Scroat said. “Fuck you guys. Fuck off back to your mom’s basement to play World of Warcraft or whatever it is you losers spend all your time on.”

“I think we need to teach you some manners,” the young man said. The other young men advanced on Hep, Scroat and James (who was trying his best to hide behind Hep and Scroat).

“Good fucking luck with that, bitches,” Scroat said.

One of the young men reacted by throwing a punch at him. A mistake, he would learn, as his brothers in South Dakota had learned. Scroat dodge the punch easily, grabbed the young man’s head, and drove it into his knee.

“OK, bitches, who’s next?”

The Minneapolis chapter of the Society of the Seven Seals swarmed on Hep, Scroat and James, or at least attempted to. The fact is, a bunch of inexperienced kids just aren’t much of a match for two gods who have centuries worth of brawling experience.

“I kind of feel bad beating up people so young,” Hep said to Scroat.

“Yeah, but they’re all soft and rubbery and fun to punch. I just can’t help myself,” Scroat said.

James watched all of this, unable to escape, with a mix of awe and horror.

Eventually there was only one member of the Society of the Seven Seals still conscious and standing, staring down two pissed of deities. Showing wisdom far beyond that of his companions, he turned and ran.

“See?” Scroat said, “And people are worried about the kids of today. They have at least a little bit of sense.”

They turned around to look at James, who was busily digging in his pockets, looking for a fresh smoke. He produced a cigarette, and lit it with shaky hands.

“That,” he said, and took a drag, “was some crazy shit.”

“Yeah, I know. So, I believe you were going to tell us where Inktomi is,” Hep said.

James took a look at the Society of the Seven Seals, spread around on the sidewalk. Some of them were coming around, getting up, and running off without looking back.

“You’re not going to do this,” he gestured at the aftermath with his cigarette, “to him, are you?”

“Not unless he really, really deserves it,” Hep said.

“Good enough, I guess,” James said. He took another drag, and said, “He’s in Las Vegas, counting cards or some shit like that. You’ll probably find him at Binion’s Horseshoe. He likes the burgers there, and he doesn’t care too much for the strip.”

“Great, thanks,” Hep said. He turned and went back in to Nye’s to settle their tab. Scroat followed him in.

“See?” Scroat said. “I fucking told you we should have gone to Vegas.”

“Shut up, Scroat,” Hep said. He paid their tab, and the two of them went back outside, where James was finishing up his smoke.

“See you round, James” Hep said as he walked past.

“Yeah, later,” Scroat said.

“What the hell? You’re not even going to buy me a drink?” James said.

“Nope,” Hep said. He and Scrout got on their bikes, and pointed them towards Vegas. They had a twenty six hour ride ahead of them, and it was time to get moving.