Slimy Underbelly

by Kevin J. Anderson

  As I ran past a narrow alley, however, in a completely unexpected—and completely clichéd—moment, Thunder Dick’s black-and-white cat yowled and sprang out in front of me, startling me and everyone else on the street. Morris/Maurice ran right under my feet, got caught on my shoes, and tangled in my ankles. I tripped and went sprawling into the gutter, my pistol flying out of my hands. The cat bounded away, turned to look at me, nonchalantly licked his shoulder to pretend that nothing whatsoever had gone wrong, then sauntered off.

  By the time I picked myself up, some gnome gang members were scurrying out of the gift-card shop carrying the cash register, which they dumped into the back of the jalopy. The driver revved the puttering engine.

  A big hand on my shoulder helped me lurch to my feet—Stentor. “You took quite a spill there, Mr. Chambeaux. Cats have a way of getting underfoot.”

  Mr. Bignome emerged from the gift shop, sprayed the lintel and the open sky with tiny bullets, then yelled in his improbably loud and domineering voice, “You’ll never catch me! Now, let’s get outta here!” He swung himself into the back of the jalopy, where the other gnomes caught him. “Bye-bye, suckers!” The jalopy squealed away.

  I heard police sirens and saw McGoo puffing up again, service revolver drawn. He grimaced in dismay. “Late again, Shamble?”

  “Miss Congeniality for the second time in a row.” I turned to the ogre. “Thanks for helping, Stentor.”

  But he was standing there in astonishment, his eyes wide, his inner-tube–sized lip trembling. His mouth was open, as if waiting to receive an air drop.

  “That was my voice,” he squeaked. “That lawn gnome is the one who stole my voice!”

  CHAPTER 18

  The getaway jalopy raced off, dodging through streets in the Quarter before it vanished into a convenient fog bank that one of the feuding weather wizards had stored there.

  All the while, Stentor kept pointing after Mr. Bignome, squeaking in anger. “That’s him! He stole my voice.”

  Although McGoo had seen enough unusual things in the Quarter that he took it all in stride, he was disgusted that the gang had gotten away again. As squad cars rushed up, he went into the novelty shop to talk with the manager and retrieve the security camera footage.

  McGoo might have lost his suspects, but I had gotten a major lead on my case. I turned to Stentor. “Now that we know who has your voice, let’s go to the Wannoviches to see if they can help us reunite you with your vocal abilities.”

  He brightened as we headed off to the headquarters of Howard Phillips Publishing. “I’m willing to try anything, Mr. Chambeaux. My legacy to the arts is at stake.”

  Inside the lobby, we again encountered problems with security. Even though the receptionist recognized me from the last time, she had seen so many “Dan Shamble” impersonators that she remained suspicious. Even worse, Stentor couldn’t find his ID, so he fumbled through his pockets, crevices, and other embarrassing hiding places, hoping he had just tucked it away somewhere. Meanwhile, the human security guard stood in the corner, trembling as he watched us.

  So, once again, I had to wait in the lobby for Mavis Wannovich to come to the rescue. This time I didn’t see any would-be zombie detectives loitering in the waiting area. The only other person was a tan-furred werewolf meticulously and nervously combing his face and the backs of his hands. He wore a dark pin-striped suit and polished wingtip shoes. A fresh and sprightly sprig of lavender flowers poked up from his lapel. At first I thought they were lilacs, but then I realized they were lupines.

  The werewolf sized me up and down and stepped forward, thrusting out a paw. “You must be auditioning for that Dan Shamble character. Have you talked to marketing yet?”

  I took his grip automatically. “I am Dan Chambeaux. The real one.”

  “That’s the spirit—stay in character, no matter what!” said the werewolf, adding a classy-sounding growl to his voice. “I’m up for Lou Lupine, Werewolf P.I. It’s the launch of their new Unnatural Detectives line.”

  “A werewolf detective?” said Stentor. “Oh, I’d read that!”

  “You don’t think it’s just a little derivative?” I asked.

  The actor playing Lou Lupine snuffled through his dark snout. “Sounds better to me than Francis, ghoul bounty hunter. I’m pretty sure they’ve canceled that one already.”

  The elevator doors opened, and Mavis Wannovich emerged. She brightened when she saw me, waving her hands. “Yoo-hoo, Mr. Chambeaux!”

  The werewolf adjusted his pin-striped suit, straightened the lupine on his lapel, and waved after me. “Good luck with the audition, bro.”

  When I introduced Stentor the ogre, Mavis was cheerful. “Yes, we have your delightful frog. This is a very interesting case—it’ll make the backbone for a great new novel in the Dan Shamble series.”

  Stentor blinked incredulously. “I’ll be a character in a book?”

  “Well, somewhat,” said the witch. “Our stories are inspired by actual events, but our ghostwriter has a certified poetic license.”

  Stentor’s case sounded like no more than a B storyline to me, but then I’m neither a writer nor a publisher.

  After the ogre signed a waiver, promising to cause no mayhem in the publishing offices, Mavis got each of us a visitor’s pass, led us through security, and again up to the thirteenth floor. We went straight to her office, where Alma sat white and clean, with no sign of her editorial mud bath.

  Robin’s plastic lunch container sat on the desk between two copyedited manuscripts. The lid was ajar, and the speckled frog seemed content. Stentor brightened and used his ham-sized hands to slide the lid aside. “There he is! I missed him.” He looked at the Wannovich sisters. “You took care of my frog?”

  “The best of care,” Mavis said, and Alma snuffled.

  Stentor touched the frog with a frog-sized finger and looked at me. “He and I were very close.”

  “Frogs don’t pick just any throat,” I said.

  “It was a happy circumstance,” the ogre answered, “despite the way it turned out.”

  I explained to the Wannovich sisters that we now knew who had stolen Stentor’s voice, and the ogre asserted that his distinctive baritone voice was much better suited to opera singing than to yelling commands during a robbery.

  Mavis had already set out the books about vocal displacement spells and their uses, using a sticky note to mark the section on amphibious transfer protocols. “Lawn gnomes aren’t generally loud,” said Mavis. “They keep quiet so as not to scare fairies that might visit the gardens. But this Mr. Bignome sounds like he has compensation issues.” She adjusted her pointy hat. “I believe he stole the ogre’s famous voice so he could command his gang.”

  “Now that we know who took the voice, can we get it transferred back?” I asked.

  Mavis wasn’t as enthusiastic as I would have liked. “Alma and I studied the spell books, and yes, we think we have a way to reconnect Stentor with his voice.”

  The ogre leaped to his feet with such excitement that he jostled the desk, scattering manuscripts. The frog sprang out of the plastic container and landed on the floor, hopping around in confusion. The ogre backed away, afraid he might hurt it. Alma scurried after the creature, trying to corner the poor frog with her snout. I fumbled after it, but Mavis finally removed her pointy hat, scooped up the frog, and deposited it back in the plastic container.

  “From what we can tell, it’s a simple enough spell,” she said, putting the lid over the top of the plastic container so the frog couldn’t escape again. “We can reestablish the connection between you and your distant voice, but there’s one catch. In order to implement the spell, we’ll have to use the same catalyst that was used to steal your voice in the first place.”

  “A catalyst?” Stentor asked.

  “Yes,” Mavis said. “You’ll have to swallow the frog.”

  Inside the plastic container, the spotted creature hopped and thumped against the lid, as if it had heard and understood its f
ate.

  Although determined to get his voice back, Stentor was also concerned about his amphibious friend. He stroked the plastic lid. “It’s all right. This won’t hurt,” he said in his squeaky and not-quite-soothing voice. “There’s plenty of room in there, and I promise not to swallow all the way.”

  Alma trotted around the desk, which I realized was part of the spell preparations. I assisted in setting out the candles, copying designs for specific runes from the spell book. As he waited, the ogre clutched the plastic container to his enormous chest, obviously nervous.

  When we finished setting up, Mavis drew a deep breath and prepared for her incantation. “It’s time for the frog to go back in the throat,” she said.

  I gave Stentor a reassuring pat on his sofa-sized arm. He closed his eyes as if to be brave, popped open the plastic lid of the container, and upended it into his mouth. The frog tumbled down his throat, and the ogre closed his lips tight.

  Mavis quickly read her spell after reassuring us that she had proofed the words herself to make sure there were no typos. Stentor squirmed. I could see his throat convulsing, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he struggled not to swallow.

  As the witches continued their work, I could sense magic flying through the air as the spell’s crackling energy swirled around the ogre. His clumps of hair began to stand out straight from static electricity.

  Suddenly, Alma blew out the candles, ending the spell. Mavis let out a sigh and leaned back in relief. “There, it was a complete success!” she said. “Stentor, you are now reconnected with your voice.”

  The ogre tried to talk, but even less sound came out now—just a breathy few words, like a ghost of a voice. “This doesn’t seem like a success to me.”

  I realized the problem. “Of course not. You’ve still got a frog in your throat.”

  I pounded him on the back, and Stentor opened his mouth and coughed. The panic-stunned frog flew out like amphibious sputum to land among the manuscripts on the editor’s desk. The ogre’s shoulders bounced up and down as he chuckled and said, “There, that’s better.”

  But his voice was still a nearly inaudible breath.

  His expression fell like a curtain at the end of a performance. “What’s wrong? Where’s my voice?” He clutched his throat.

  The dizzy frog kept hopping in circles around the desk.

  Mavis studied the spell book with concern, and Alma grunted a few suggestions, but her sister shook her head. “Wait a second, I’m checking something.”

  Trying to be useful, I scooped up the frog and returned it to the plastic container, where it huddled in the corner, traumatized.

  “Let me revise my opinion,” Mavis said. “This spell was a complete partial success. You are indeed reconnected with your voice, Stentor, but the voice hasn’t been put back into your larynx yet.”

  “What does that mean?” Stentor breathed.

  “It means that your voice is yours again, but the words you speak are coming out of Mr. Bignome’s mouth.”

  The ogre groaned in dismay.

  Not what either of us had hoped, but I pondered the problem. “Hmm, that might still be useful. If you talk, but your words come out of the lawn gnome’s mouth, then he has no control over what he says. We could use that to our advantage—like a game of long-distance Marco Polo across the Quarter.”

  Stentor understood. “I see.” He drew in a deep breath and began to bellow, though he produced almost no sound. “Stop! Thief! Somebody call 911. This lawn gnome has kidnapped my voice.”

  Even though we couldn’t hear anything, if Mavis was right, his displaced shout would be coming out of Bignome’s mouth, somewhere across town.

  Smiling, I handed Stentor the plastic container with his frog. “Let me talk to my policeman friend. We may be able to wrap up two cases at the same time.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Since the lawn gnomes were armed and dangerous, I wanted to bring McGoo the new development about Stentor’s displaced voice as soon as possible. I headed to the main precinct station of the UQPD.

  McGoo is not a desk cop. He walked the beat every day, claiming that he enjoyed the fresh air more than a stuffy office job. I knew he was kidding himself, because no one had ever accused the Unnatural Quarter of having an abundance of fresh air . . . especially after the recent sewer uprising.

  “A desk job just gives you hemorrhoids and a big gut,” McGoo had once told me after he was passed over for a promotion.

  “And you prefer sore feet,” I said.

  “Damn straight, Shamble.” With the dramatically changing weather due to the Wuwufo campaign, he couldn’t have enjoyed being outside very much.

  At this time of day, I knew he would be back at the station. I arrived at the dingy building whose façade had come from a large crypt that was dismantled stone by stone and then moved across town. Perpetrators and victims were a motley mix of species and levels of scruffiness. A mummy sat on a bench smoking a cigarette, careful not to set his bandages on fire. A vampire was hauled into the rear holding cells by two uniformed cops as the vampire yelled, “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me! That was somebody else’s coffin.”

  Two poltergeists had been brought in for causing a domestic disturbance, rattling the neighbors with their ectoplasmic argument. A group of teenaged zombie slackers looked sullen as they waited for their parents to bail them out; they had been picked up for vandalism, using spray paint to tag the side of a building, and were apprehended because they moved so slowly that they couldn’t finish writing their statement.

  A small bald man in a plaid sport jacket handed me one of his cards. “You in trouble? I can get you out of it.” I glanced at the card, recognizing him as another slimy cop-car–chasing bail bondsman. “Been Busted? Call Ghost Fixers!”

  “Sorry, no,” I said. “Zombie detective. Here on business.”

  “I should have noted the lack of handcuffs.” He scurried into the station, handing out cards to anyone who might need his services.

  Behind a high desk, the watch chief lorded it over anyone coming and going in the station. A poster on the back wall showed a muscular werewolf with a torn cop uniform holding a gigantic magnum in his furry hand. It was the rogue vigilante cop, Hairy Harry, a hero to policemen everywhere. The poster was even autographed.

  I knew my way around the station well enough. After asking a couple of the cops on duty where I could find Officer McGoohan, I was directed back to the lunchroom. I bumped into him in the hall, where he was just clocking out. He looked tired, wrung out. I wondered if it was due to frustration from the lawn gnome robbery, or—worse—if Rhonda had called him back with more surprises (twins, this time?), but I didn’t ask. Sometimes it’s best not to disturb junkyard dogs. Or ex-wives.

  “Man, what a day, Shamble—I’m ready for the Tavern,” he said. “Those lawn gnomes are really giving me a bad opinion about landscaping fixtures. Four violent robberies so far. No one’s been hurt yet, despite all the firepower in those Timmy guns, but sooner or later they’re going to poke somebody’s eye out with those things.”

  I hid my smile. “Cheer up, maybe you’ll catch them tomorrow—all it takes is some good detective work.”

  He was too distracted to pick up on the hint. “Around here, the detectives have desk jobs.”

  “I meant some zombie detective work, McGoo. I’ve got a connection to Mr. Bignome.” His eyes lit up as I explained how the Wannovich sisters had established a linkage with Stentor’s voice, so that whenever the ogre talked, the loud words would come out of Mr. Bignome’s mouth. “I told him to keep shouting. The neighbors are bound to hear it and call in a report.”

  “Like somebody with a stolen cell phone calling their own number to harangue the thief.” He raised his eyebrows. “Interesting—but if Bignome is holed up in an isolated hideout, we might not hear it.”

  “Stentor is very motivated,” I said. “We can get him to yell for quite some time—and that ogre’s got a three-window-pane voice. If he yel
ls enough, somebody’s going to report a disturbance.”

  McGoo chuckled as the possibilities occurred to him. “If he’s clever, Stentor could cause Bignome lots of trouble. Say, by making the gnome shout, ‘I’m overcompensating. I need a big voice because I have a very tiny penis.’ Good work, Shamble. I’ll tell the report desk to pay close attention. I’d like nothing better than to shut down those gnomes.”

  Next to the front desk of the precinct house, business cards covered a corkboard, tacked one on top of the other. I saw the Ghost Fixers bail bonds, various attorneys, and estate-planning services. Even Lurrm had put up a flyer offering a special rate to anyone recently arrested: Feeling stressed? Come relax in the Recompose hot springs. Get a massage from our expert masseuse C.H. (Convicted felons excluded). The frog demon was an ambitious marketer, but if he wanted to establish a new, clean reputation for the former Zombie Bathhouse, I thought he should go after a different class of clientele.

  As we walked out the front door, I finally had to ask, “Any more word from Rhonda?”

  “Not a peep. Maybe she reconsidered . . . or maybe she’s got something else up her sleeve.”

  I felt sorry for him. “Rhonda’s not the type to reconsider.”

  “Nope,” he said. “I’ll just wait for the other combat boot to drop.”

  CHAPTER 20

  On my way back to the office, I got sidetracked by the brothel. Although I had no interest in their services (honest), the Full Moon still managed to get my attention. The twenty-four-hour ladies of the night had a way of doing that.

  As night fell, a cold snap slammed on the Quarter, making sparkles of frost creep up the walls of buildings like a spreading plague. Shivering mummies tightened their bandages, wrapped their arms across their chests, and hurried inside to shelter. Werewolves blew out frosty breaths and rubbed their paws together as they huddled on street corners.

  Always enterprising, Neffi—the madam who ran the Full Moon Brothel—sent a couple of her girls out with flyers that said, Need someone to keep you warm tonight? Our fine women can drive away the chill of the grave. (Succubus service no longer offered.) Cinnamon, the sexy werewolf call girl, pushed one of the flyers into my hands with a flirtatious lick of her tongue along her muzzle.