Slimy Underbelly

by Kevin J. Anderson

  In a blaze of glory, Bignome swiveled his Timmy gun from side to side, spitting out a succession of pipping and popping gunfire. “You want a piece of this?” He shot more pots, which shattered around us. His painted eyes blazed. “You’ll never get me!”

  McGoo started shooting, and bullets ricocheted off the metal shelves. Bignome dodged and ducked. The framework of the shelf unit wobbled, but the lawn gnome kept his balance. “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!”

  As Stentor charged forward, he stubbed his toe on a large overturned planter. He stumbled, reached out to catch his balance, and grabbed the edge of the metal rack, jostling the shelf unit.

  The evil gang leader teetered and wobbled on the top shelf. He barely had enough time to wail, “Nooooo!” before he toppled off the shelf. He fell several feet to the concrete floor, where he shattered into a hundred jagged plaster pieces.

  McGoo and I rushed forward, guns still drawn, but it was too late. Bignome was irreparably broken, and no amount of epoxy or touch-up paint could put him back together again.

  We stood together, looking down at the sad debris. “Case closed,” McGoo said. “He really was hollow inside.”

  “Case closed,” I agreed. I turned to the stunned-looking ogre, who stared with round tear-filled eyes and a quivering lower lip. “Right, Stentor?”

  “I sure hope so,” the ogre replied.

  But all that came out of his throat was a minuscule squeak.

  CHAPTER 31

  It took almost until dawn for McGoo and his squad to wrap up the scene of the shoot-out at the Lawn and Garden department. Two police officers had to receive Band-Aids for injuries caused by the Timmy-gun pellets, but Mr. Bignome was the only fatality of the raid; all the other lawn gnomes had been arrested, duct-taped, and sent for processing back at the station.

  The coroner came in to inspect the broken Mr. Bignome and pronounced him shattered on arrival, after which a police janitorial squad swept up the pieces. While McGoo was grateful that the lawn gnomes’ crime spree was finally over, he would have a tough job delivering the news to poor Mama Bignome.

  I had my own client to take care of, though, and Stentor looked more anguished than I had ever seen him. Not only did he feel guilty that his clumsiness had toppled the lawn gnome from a five-foot-high shelf, but now he despaired of ever recovering his voice. Hearing the potentially operatic tones emerging from Bignome’s throat had given him hope. But now . . .

  I consoled Stentor as he sat hunched at a picnic table that had been marked down, unsuccessfully, for final sale before the store was abandoned. His shoulders shook like an earthquake, tears streamed down his face, and his fat lips trembled in dismay. He snuffled so loudly that his snot sounded like a garden slug being sucked down a vacuum hose.

  “Now what am I going to do, Mr. Chambeaux?”

  “I think your voice might be getting a little better,” I lied. “Maybe the process takes a while.”

  “Or maybe my voice disappeared into the air when Bignome shattered. What if it’s gone forever?”

  “Let’s talk to some real experts before we draw any conclusions. Maybe we skipped a step. It could be a simple spell, and everything will be fixed.”

  “Or it could be a hard spell,” the ogre moaned.

  “Mavis and Alma are good at hard spells, too,” I said. “Come with me. It’s too early to go to the publishing offices, but this deserves a house call.”

  I often visited the Wannovich sisters at their apartment. I had been their guest for a monthly meeting of the Pointy Hat Society, a loquacious group of women who gossiped about spells, coven matters, recipes, the best price for eye of newt, and other women’s issues. I also went there for my monthly maintenance spell.

  Stentor followed me along the streets of the Quarter just as dawn was breaking. I recognized the Wannoviches’ apartment by its distinctive welcome mat: Abandon Hope Ye Who Enter Here.

  I rang the bell while the ogre stood forlorn and shuffling his feet. I heard a snorting and a scrape of trotters from the other side of the door. When the door opened, the large sow filled most of the space, snuffling with delight to see me.

  Behind her, Mavis wore a housecoat, and her hair was done up in sharp metal combs to continue the distressed look. “Why, Dan Chambeaux, what a surprise! I’m afraid I’m a mess.”

  I stepped inside. “It’s not a social call, Mavis. This is an urgent matter.”

  Stentor worked his way through the doorway, careful not to break anything. He squeaked, “Good morning, ma’am.”

  Mavis’s expression fell. “So you haven’t found your voice yet, Mr. Stentor? Sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, we found it, but something went wrong,” I said, then explained how Bignome had been killed in the shoot-out.

  “Completely shattered,” Stentor added.

  “But as you can hear, his voice still isn’t back,” I said. “Is there any way you can help? What did we do wrong?”

  “Oh, dear. This will require some thought.” Mavis bustled around. “It’s breakfast time—would you like me to make you some eggs? I could scramble a whole cauldron. And don’t worry, I keep the lizard eggs and the chicken eggs separated now to avoid confusion. There won’t be any more embarrassing mishaps. I can promise you that.”

  I was glad I hadn’t been there for the last mishap, whatever it was. “No, thanks. I usually just have coffee in the mornings.”

  Stentor said, “I could use a dozen eggs—scrambled please. And bacon, too, if you have it. I like bacon.”

  Alma responded with a huff and a rude snort. Mavis said, “We don’t serve bacon around here, Mr. Stentor.”

  “Oh,” he said, mortally embarrassed. “You’re Jewish?”

  “Just eggs will be fine, Mavis,” I said. “We’re more interested in the vocal-transference spell. Was there a glitch? Why didn’t Stentor’s voice come back when the lawn gnome shattered?”

  Alma dutifully went to a low bookshelf, knocked over one of the spell books, and begun ruffling through the pages. “My sister will find what you need to know in a jiffy,” Mavis said as she pulled out a full carton of eggs from the refrigerator. She sniffed them, then put them back and took a different package from a lower shelf. “Yes, these are the ones.”

  She cracked the eggs into a large bowl while she heated a black pot over the raging fire that formed a single broad burner on her stove. She poured the eggs into the cauldron and popped down slices of bread for toast.

  In the living room, Alma selected another book and used her snout to turn the pages.

  Mavis scooped the scrambled eggs onto an enormous platter for the ogre with five slices of toast. She gave a much smaller serving to me, though I had asked for none. She nudged the toast toward me. “I put some special marmalade on there for you.”

  Stentor tucked into the meal, but before I could take a bite, Alma let out a happy squeal. Mavis hurried over, picked up the book, and skimmed the lines of runes and strange incantations. “Ah, I think we found the trouble. Here, let me run a spell check.” She muttered a set of confusing words, snapped her fingers, and looked down at an arcane symbol that had appeared in a blank spot on the page. “Exactly correct. Mr. Stentor, I’m happy to inform you that your voice is back—but only halfway. This spell is not complete, yet. You skipped a step.

  “When Mr. Bignome was shattered, your voice left his body . . . but went back into the frog, which was the catalyst for the vocal transfer in the first place. We’ll need to use the original frog to connect your voice back to you.” She looked up, pleased and relieved. “There, your problem is solved! How are the eggs, by the way?”

  Stentor set down his fork with a clatter, and his lower lip began bouncing again like a trampoline.

  “Now what’s wrong?” I asked. “That’s the answer we were looking for.”

  He hung his huge shaggy head. “But I let the frog go! I felt bad about keeping it in that little plastic container. It seemed hungry and lonely, so I turned it loose back in
to the wild, where it belongs, where it can roam free.”

  Mavis clucked her tongue. “You’ll have to get it back before you can retrieve your voice.”

  The ogre started sobbing. This was all starting to sound like a tragic opera in its own right. “But how will I ever find it now?”

  I patted him on the big solid shoulders. “Don’t give up hope. I’ve had harder cases.”

  He didn’t seem to know where to start, so I made a suggestion. “We’ll try the same trick you used to help find the lawn gnome gang—if you call out, the words should emerge from the frog’s mouth. Keep shouting as often as possible, ‘Help! Someone has stolen my voice. If found, please call the police.’ A Good Samaritan is bound to call it in.”

  I wrote down the phrase for him so he could remember.

  Stentor looked slightly less miserable now that we had a plan. “I’ll try it, as soon as I finish my eggs,” he said. “I’ll shout it all day long.”

  CHAPTER 32

  I hadn’t been in the office much for the past day. When I got back late the next morning, I found that I had lost the use of my desk.

  Jody Caligari had commandeered my office. The kid had brought in fabric, scissors, a sewing kit, modeling clay, and a fishing tackle box filled with costuming doodads and paraphernalia. When he looked up at me with his innocent expression, his red hair was masterfully tousled. His freckles looked as if they’d been stolen from an ancient Howdy Doody rerun, and his grin was infectious. “Hi, Mr. Chambeaux! I hope you don’t mind. Sheyenne told me I could use your desk.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. “That desk is where I solve cases, Jody.”

  The young man looked crestfallen. “Sheyenne says you mostly solve cases by wandering around and bumping into clues.”

  I glanced across the lobby to where Sheyenne sat at her own desk, giving me a mischievous smile. I turned back to the kid. “It’s a little more involved than that. A detective has to know where to wander around. There’s an art to it. You get a certain feel for who or what you might bump into. It’s called investigating, kid.”

  I glanced at the costume strewn across my desktop. Something about it looked familiar, but it wasn’t a mummy disguise or the hunchback lab assistant iGor. “Where did all my notes and files go?” The disorganized arrangement had made a certain sense to me.

  “I stacked them all in perfect piles,” Jody said, as if expecting a pat on the head. “Everything careful, neat, and even alphabetized.”

  Now I’d never be able to find anything, but I didn’t want to crush the kid after he thought he’d done a good deed. “Sheyenne will help me sort it all out. She’s good at that.” From her desk she teasingly stuck out her tongue at me. “But I have to ask, why are you using my office?”

  “Because it was available,” the kid said in a bright voice.

  “Shouldn’t you be at Junior Mad Scientist Camp? If you can’t motivate yourself, how will you motivate a minion army?”

  He shook his head. “This part is a directed-study program, and we’re expected to have our own resources.” His voice hitched, and tears suddenly filled his sparkling blue eyes. “And I have no place else to go.”

  I said in a rush, “It’s all right. We’ve got temporary space. Stay here as long as you like. No big deal.”

  Robin stopped outside my office. “He’s just keeping busy while he waits.”

  The boy bobbed his head up and down. “The patent office has got to approve my inventions soon.”

  “I wouldn’t set your heart on that,” I said, though I didn’t have any objection to him working on his costume in the meantime. He might as well occupy himself with something innocuous. I reached out to touch the dark fabric, some kind of robe. “Is this part of your Dr. Darkness outfit?”

  “This is something else, and nobody can see it until it’s finished.” Jody snatched away the costume, pulling it protectively toward himself. “Dr. Darkness!!!—and don’t forget the three exclamation points—is going to be the world’s best supervillain. Here, look, I’ve sketched out a modified costume. It operates on the same physical principles as the prototype that Ah’Chulhu stole, but it looks cooler. More Silver Age.”

  He showed me his sketch of a muscular, grinning villain. There was a hood and a mask, flashy gloves, an elegant cape that drifted about whether or not there was a breeze. In the center of his chest, where most costumed characters sported a logo of some kind, were three yellow exclamation points.

  “It’s mostly black,” said Jody, “a fashion statement because he is Dr. Darkness!!! after all. The fabric has special absorbent properties, so that it drains dark energy from the evil all around him, which strengthens Dr. Darkness!!! while weakening his enemies.” He was excited to show off his work. “And I’ve got an idea for a special tar-glob power that’s unique among supervillains. I’ve read all the comics, so I know what I’m talking about.”

  Amused, Robin looked at me. “Isn’t he cute?”

  I had no practice at being paternal, and didn’t have much of a role model from my own childhood, but I could try. “Why do you want to be a supervillain, Jody? Sounds like a bad thing to aspire to.”

  “Maybe it is in the outside world, where everything’s black and white, but if you’re a supervillain in the Unnatural Quarter, people don’t necessarily hold it against you.” I could tell he’d put a lot of thought into this. “Not all monsters are bad, are they? Who would ever think of a zombie as the good guy?”

  I had to concede the point.

  Jody looked at his sketches again. “That’s why I like it here. I’ll be sad when summer camp is over. I can do my work in the Quarter and not be judged or teased or bullied.”

  It’s bad when a supervillain in training gets bullied. I could see why Miz Mellivar wanted to encourage this young man. He had a lot of energy and imagination, but it needed to be channeled properly. Being cheated and evicted by a tentacle-faced half demon was a lousy way to kick off a supervillainous career.

  “I wish I had my prototype suit back,” he said, and closed his sketchbook. “What do you think Ah’Chulhu’s going to do with it?”

  I glanced at Robin, then back to the young man. “We think Ah’Chulhu has more schemes afoot—or a-tentacle—than just trying to get you to pay your back rent.”

  “If I was a supervillain, I could protect everyone,” Jody said, crossing his arms over his admittedly scrawny chest.

  “I’m not entirely sure you understand what a supervillain is,” I said.

  Sheyenne drifted over. “Sometimes we can change the way people think—make new definitions of old ideas and turn the world on its head. Right, Beaux?”

  Robin didn’t make promises lightly, but she said, “We’ll get your suit back for you, Jody. You’re a very talented costumer, as well as a great mad scientist-to-be. You sure you won’t tell us what that is?”

  Jody covered his work. “I’ll move to the conference room if you want, but I need to have my privacy. Golly!”

  I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. “You know those eccentric creative types, Robin.”

  “Especially eccentric mad scientists in training,” Jody added. “And masters of disguise.”

  I left my office. “All right, you can use the desk as long as you like. I’ve got cases to solve.”

  “By wandering around?” Jody asked.

  “That’s part of it. It’s a process.”

  CHAPTER 33

  After an unsuccessful day trying to track down Stentor’s frog, find proof of nefarious campaign shenanigans, or get any dirt on the underground slumlord to help solve Fletcher’s murder or at least retrieve Jody’s possessions, I headed back to the office that evening. My desk was unoccupied, and Sheyenne explained that Jody had left in the middle of the afternoon to turn in a homework assignment at camp.

  As I briefed her on my lack of progress on various cases, I realized that I had forgotten to make a stop. “I think you and I should check up on Recompose and see if there’s been any furt
her harassment. The police still haven’t found that tentacle creature, but I want to pin something on Ah’Chulhu. Want to come along?”

  Of course she did, but Sheyenne was curious as we walked away from the Chambeaux & Deyer offices. “Do you really think Lurrm is in trouble?”

  “Probably not at the moment, but it’s after dark, and I want to spend some time with you.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It gives me a chance to have a pleasant nighttime stroll with my girlfriend. I need to take care of my relationship.” I might have blushed, but the embalming fluid didn’t let it show.

  We made our way toward the seedier section of town, and in the Quarter that’s saying a lot. The exterior of the former Zombie Bathhouse looked almost inviting. A new marquee sign with moveable plastic letters announced, FAMILY SPECIALS! and SIGN UP NOW FOR OUR TADPOLE SWIMMING CLASSES. But with the narrow alleys and clinging shadows, as well as the persistent mildew and grunge, Lurrm still had a lot of work to do before this became an upscale neighborhood.

  When we walked into the front lobby, Lurrm was surprised to see us. “You’re always welcome here, Mr. Chambeaux!” He rubbed his squishy fingertips together. “Ayup!”

  “Just keeping an eye out. Have the gator-guys bothered you again?” I asked.

  Lurrm’s long tongue flickered in and out of his wide mouth. “I haven’t seen them since you were last here, but I won’t let my guard down: Could be that they just can’t find the place again and they’re still searching.” He showed us that he had installed three more turnstiles just like the original that had confounded the alligator lieutenants/associates/escorts.

  I spun one of the turnstiles, which gleamed under the bright lights. Carrl, the attendant, sat behind his window, ready to sell tickets, rent towels, and provide change for the lockers. He was still reading the same fishing magazine.