The Mistress of Illusions

by Michael D. Resnick

  “This stuff is all so beautiful and so exotic, I don’t know how we’ll ever be able to tell what’s missing.”

  “We’re not giving up three minutes after we arrive,” said Raven. “Someone’s dead, and you and Rofocale were in the hospital for weeks.”

  “Me?” she said, puzzled. “I haven’t had a day off in two months.”

  He grimaced. “My mistake,” he said, and then added silently, Perhaps, but I don’t believe it.

  They spent another few minutes going over all the artifacts and opening boxes that were stacked in corners, but kept coming up blank. Finally they’d run through everything and stopped. Velma sat down on the only chair, and Raven leaned against the counter.

  “So do we figure this was a dead end?” she asked.

  “It may not have been the right approach, but it’s not a dead end,” answered Raven. “Mako was killed. There’s got to be a reason.” And part of that reason might explain why I’ve been a Munchkin, a Bogart clone, and a sorcerer.

  “You know,” remarked Velma, “once you know the stock, as Mako must have, this is really a boring, confining little space. Imagine sitting on this chair eight hours every day.”

  “Son of a bitch—that’s it!” exclaimed Raven.

  She frowned. “What is? What are you talking about, Eddie?”

  “He didn’t just sit where you are for eight hours a day,” said Raven. “If nothing else, he had to visit the bathroom every now and then. And with no hired help, he probably ate right on the premises.”

  “He could have his food delivered, Eddie. He didn’t have to cook it here.”

  “But he couldn’t have his toilet delivered,” said Raven. “There’s got to be a back room.”

  They began examining the wall behind the chair and found a door behind the wall hanging. They walked through it and found themselves in a narrow area, perhaps ten feet by five, with a microwave on a shelf and another shelf holding an empty food tray. There was a sink and another door, this time a sliding one, that led to a small toilet.

  “Not a lot more comfortable,” remarked Velma.

  “Not any leads, either,” said Raven with a frown. “Yet there has to be some reason why he was killed, two of you were shot, and I was left totally alone.”

  “I wasn’t shot,” insisted Velma.

  “Humor me,” said Raven. “The answer’s got to be here somewhere . . . or if not the answer, at least a clue.” He looked around. “He’s got a microwave. He had to store his food somewhere before he cooked it. Where?”

  Velma bent down next to the microwave, which sat above a small cabinet. She opened the door to it.

  “Here it is, Eddie,” she announced. “A tiny freezer. Probably holds half a dozen frozen meals from the grocery store.”

  “Are there any other cabinets, however small and unimpressive?” asked Raven.

  There was one. It held a dozen paper plates, plastic knives, forks, spoons, plastic cups, and a half-empty bottle of ketchup.

  “What a way to live!” muttered Raven. “Anything else?”

  She looked around. “That’s it . . . and I’ve checked the drawers out in the shop. Cops left the art, but they took the money.”

  Raven shrugged. “Cops have to live too, and Mako’s not going to need that money where he’s at.”

  “So do we stay or go?”

  Raven sighed deeply. “Might as well go. He had his chance to kill us once before. He’s not coming back to do it now.”

  They were just about to leave the tiny room and go back into the store when Raven started to close the door of the washroom and saw something he’d ignored before.

  “Just a sec,” he said.

  “What is it?” asked Velma.

  “Medicine cabinet,” answered Raven. “It’s unlikely that any of this had to do with drugs, but it’ll only take me ten seconds to check.”

  “Go ahead,” said Velma.

  He entered the little room, opened the cabinet, and froze, staring at what he found inside it.

  “What is it, Eddie?” she asked after a moment. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Closer than you think,” he said, grabbing a piece of paper and carrying it out with him.

  “What have you got there?” she asked.

  He shrugged helplessly.

  “I don’t understand,” said Velma.

  “It means everything I’ve thought about this was wrong,” said Raven.

  He held the paper up for her to see.

  It was a target-pistol bull’s-eye—and superimposed over the bull’s-eye was a photo of Eddie Raven.

  5

  “Whoever it was wanted you,” said Velma. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Absolutely,” said Raven, frowning. “But that leaves a major question: Why did he kill Mako, shoot everyone else, and leave me alone?”

  “There’s only one reasonable answer,” said Velma. “You have something, maybe some special knowledge, that they want from you.”

  “But no one’s tried to get it since the shooting.”

  “Tried where, Eddie?” she shot back. “I’ve been listening to you: Camelot? Oz?”

  He grimaced. “Point taken.”

  “So what’s our next move?”

  “There’s probably nothing more to find out in the shop here,” replied Raven. “And I don’t feel like going back to my apartment and waiting for them.” Once again he found himself fumbling for a cigarette and wishing he had one. “I think it’s time for a field trip.”

  She frowned. “Where to?”

  He smiled. “Right here.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Velma.

  “I’ve been walking around for a day or two, and I was doing the same thing, visiting the hospital a couple of times a day right after the shooting—and nobody laid a hand on me, no one threatened me or even looked my way. I have a feeling the word has gone out to keep their hands off me. So I plan to confront them and find out who issued the order.”

  “Confront who?” she said, frowning.

  “In the comic books and B movies we called them the underworld. These days they’re probably the syndicate. I just think of them as the bad guys.”

  “But they had no reason to shoot you or rough you up, Eddie.”

  “I know. But someone with some clout doesn’t want me killed, and evidently I know something so valuable that they spread around some money or some threats or both to make it so no one shot me by mistake.”

  “By mistake?”

  He smiled. “Do you know how many innocent people get in the way of bullets every day in New York?”

  “It’s been awhile since anyone accused you of optimism, hasn’t it?” she asked, returning his smile.

  He patted his pockets. “Only one gun,” he said, “and not all that much ammunition. I think I’ll go back to the office and pick up a little more protection.”

  She walked to the door. “Let’s go.”

  “You sure you want to come along?” he asked. “It could be dangerous.”

  “All the more reason,” she said. “Let me have a gun, too.”

  “I like the way you think, Velma,” said Raven, walking out onto the sidewalk. She joined him, and it took them another fifteen minutes to get back to the office.

  Raven walked right to his desk, pulled out two pistols, handed one plus a box of bullets to her, stuck the other in his coat pocket, added some ammunition, and sat down to consider where to go next.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Velma. “Gotta go to the little girls’ room.”

  He nodded an acknowledgment, she left, and he began weighing his options. He noticed that he’d left an empty paper coffee cup on his desk, and reached out to grab it and throw it in the wastebasket, when he noticed his hand. It was far larger than usual, the flesh gn
arled, covered by coarse, matted hair, and with gleaming inch-long nails.

  “Shit!” he muttered, walking over to stare at his image in the glass on the office door. “I thought I was all through being other people.”

  He looked at the face staring out at him. It was that of a dead man, the eyes hollow and staring, big ugly stitches on the neck, the hair sparse and long.

  He turned to see if Velma had come back yet, and was relieved to find that she hadn’t. He couldn’t ask or expect her to come along with Frankenstein’s monster or whatever the hell he’d become, and even if she was willing to, he didn’t want her anywhere near him when the shooting started, as it almost certainly would when anyone saw what he had become.

  He grabbed his battered fedora, pulled it down almost to his eyes, lowered his head, walked out the door, and quickly made his way to the subway station on the corner. He went down the stairs, grateful for the lack of human traffic, then walked to the far end of the platform, made sure no one was watching him, and jumped down onto the area between the tracks.

  He walked another hundred yards, stopped, crossed over the tracks to his right, and came to a door. He had no idea how he had known it was there, but he had, and now he entered it.

  When he was two feet inside the entrance, he stopped, frowning.

  Since there’s likely to be some shooting, I’d better see if bullets can do me any harm. I think I’m dead, but let me at least see if I’ve got a pulse.

  He felt for one and couldn’t find it.

  Well, that’s a good thing, I suppose.

  He began walking down a dark corridor, came to a door in about fifty feet, felt around for a knob or a handle, found it, opened the door, and stepped into a well-lit room filled with chairs, couches, a wet bar, a sink, clouds of cigarette and cigar smoke, and seven men, some of whom he recognized from newscasts or their posters.

  “Hi, guys,” he said in a voice that was about two octaves lower than his own.

  Suddenly all seven men were on their feet. Two of them, the two closest, who had the best view of him, were shaking like leaves, but all seven had guns in their hands, and all were pointing at him.

  “I mean you no harm,” said Raven. “I just want to talk.”

  “Who and what are you?” demanded one of them.

  “My name’s Frankie,” he answered. “I’m a friend of Eddie Raven. He was expecting this kind of reception, so he asked me to come in his place.”

  “I repeat: What are you?”

  “I’m just a guy who needs to talk to you.”

  “You’re not a guy at all,” said another. “What graveyard did you escape from?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Raven. “Someone’s after my friend Eddie Raven. We have reason to believe that he’s located in Manhattan. We just want to find out who and where he is. No harm will come to you if you help me out on this.”

  “There’s plenty of harm in this room,” said a third man, “and it ain’t coming to us, baby!”

  And so saying, he put three bullets into Raven’s chest.

  Suddenly Raven smiled—a smile of relief, though none of them could tell that. “It tickles,” he said.

  The shooter examined his pistol, then looked up, frowning. “It’s working.”

  “Now, you can all empty your guns into me, if it’ll make you happy, but then we’re going to talk, and if I have to wait too long I suspect I’ll be in a very bad mood.”

  The seven men exchanged looks.

  “Have a drink, Frankie,” said one of them. “We’re happy to talk.”

  Raven walked to the bar, poured himself a drink, took a swallow, and felt half of it roll out through a couple of bullet holes in his neck. The other half went down, but somehow didn’t taste quite right.

  “Now,” he said, “our information is that there’s a hit out on Eddie Raven. We don’t know the connection, but we think it may have something to do with the guy who shot up that fortune-teller’s shop over on Fifth Avenue a few weeks ago.”

  “Got a question,” said one of the man.

  “Shoot,” said Raven. Five men leveled their weapons at him. “Make that ask.”

  “How did you know we were down here?”

  Raven smiled. “I’m a detective, remember?”

  “You’re a critter out of my worst DTs, but you’re no detective!”

  Damn! thought Raven. Remember who and what you are, Eddie.

  “Okay,” he said aloud. “Eddie kind of deputized me. He’s the detective, and it’s his business to know where to find you.”

  “Got another question,” said the man. “The bullets didn’t hurt you, but did you know they left little holes in you where they hit?”

  “So what?” asked Raven, trying to see where the conversation was going.

  “So,” said the man, pointing his gun at Raven’s head, “maybe we can’t kill you, but you’ll have a damned difficult time finding us after we shoot your eyes out.”

  And suddenly seven guns were pointed at his eyes.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a feminine voice from the doorway.

  Raven and the seven men turned toward the doorway, where they saw a medusa, a female creature with hair made of living snakes, each baring its fangs at them. In her hands she carried a spear gun, but instead of a spear it housed a snake that hissed incessantly and exhaled flames.

  “Lisa?” whispered Raven.

  She smiled a frightening smile and shook her head. “Euryale.”

  “It’s a goddamned medusa!” said the man who was closest to her.

  “Medusa’s my puny kid sister,” she replied with a smile. “Now I suggest you put your pistols down before I take them away from you and feed them to my snakes.”

  One of the men fired a quick shot at her. It bounced off her cheek, rebounded into the closest man, and knocked him down.

  “You heard what the lady said,” said the shooter. “Holster your guns.”

  Six men put their guns away, while the seventh got painfully to his feet, checked to make sure all his bodily parts were still attached and functioning, and handed his gun to Euryale.

  “All right,” she said, “I believe you gentlemen were preparing to answer my friend’s questions?”

  “I don’t know why you care,” said one of the men. “Bullets bounce off one of you, and go to sleep inside the other.”

  “We’re doing this for my friend Eddie Raven,” said Raven. “And now, if you’re all through doubting our abilities, I’d like some answers.”

  “Hell, the last few minutes have been so crazy I don’t even remember the question.”

  “Who wants Eddie Raven dead, and why? And what does it have to do with Mako or his fortune-telling shop?”

  “I don’t know,” said the closest man. “Just that word came down a couple of months ago to keep our hands off Raven.”

  “This was before the shooting?”

  “Definitely.”

  “And who passed the word?”

  The man shrugged. “Beats me. We all got it.”

  “By ‘all’ do you mean you seven?”

  The man shook his head. “I mean every crook in our organization, which extends into Brooklyn and Queens and the whole city. And that was the gist of it: Leave Raven alone.”

  Raven frowned and turned to Euryale. “Is he telling the truth?”

  She gave the man a frightening smile. “He’d better be.”

  Raven looked at the men. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” said the man who’d been sprawling on the floor a couple of minutes earlier. “There’s one thing that might be of some interest or use or import or something.”

  “Okay,” said Raven. “What is it?”

  “The organization put out a hit on Raven about three or four months ago. In fact, he was number
one on our enemies list. The word went out to everyone, however many thousands of us there are: Kill Eddie Raven. Then, a couple of weeks later, maybe a month at most, word came down to leave him totally alone.” He paused. “Make any sense to you, Frankie?”

  “Sounds like we’re going to have to go a little higher in the ranks for our answers,” said Raven. “Who’s the top man?”

  “We just know him as Mister Big,” was the reply.

  “And where do I find him?”

  “He’ll kill me—all of us—if I tell you.”

  “And I’ll give you a passionate hug and kiss if you don’t,” said Euryale. “Which do you think is more agonizing?”

  The man rattled off an address.

  “This had better not be a phony,” said Raven. “We know where to find you.”

  “You don’t think we’ll still be here tomorrow, or even an hour from now?” said another of the men.

  “No, I don’t,” answered Raven. “But then, you don’t really think you can stay hidden from us, do you?”

  The man looked at Raven and Lisa in their current incarnations and simply shook his head.

  “Then, if you’ll excuse us for intruding on your party, we’ll be on our way,” said Raven, walking to the door.

  “Bon voyage,” said the smallest man. “Have a safe trip, Frankie.”

  Raven walked out the door and back into the subway tunnel. He waited for his companion to follow him, then turned to her.

  “Shut the door, Lisa,” he said.

  She frowned. “My name is Euryale,” she said.

  6

  “It’s happened again,” muttered Raven.

  “What has?” she asked.

  He almost did a double-take. “Look at us!”

  She nodded. “I should have fed my hair. It’s too active.”

  “Goddamnit!”

  “Try to control yourself, Frankie.”

  “I’m Eddie,” he growled. “Eddie Raven. You know that.”

  She shrugged. “If that’s what you want to be called, fine.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded. “We were just in my office a couple of hours ago, and then at Mako’s shop.”