Slimy Underbelly

by Kevin J. Anderson

  My partner, Robin Deyer, came out to brief me on the legal battles she had fought during the day. As a lawyer, Robin makes sure that downtrodden and underrepresented monsters get a fair shot in the legal system. She’s a young African American, as pretty as she is determined—and she is extremely determined. Her eyes had a faraway, preoccupied look because case subtleties ran through her head at all times.

  I had taken her under my wing back when I was a human private detective. We shared office space, offered assistance on each other’s cases, and enjoyed working together. After my murder, I think Robin was hit even harder by my death than I was. When I came back from the grave, she welcomed me with open arms (after she got over the shock and uneasiness). She made a special point to treat me just as she’d always done, and we quickly got back to our usual routine.

  “Any word on the gargoyle case?” I asked.

  For several weeks Robin had represented a gargoyle who was suing the Notre Dame cathedral for unauthorized use of his likeness. Comparing the gargoyle himself with photographs of several specific stone figures on the ancient cathedral, the resemblance was undeniable.

  Her expression tightened. “I think we’re going to lose that one. There seems to be an unbreakable statute of limitations clause in church law. Today, I’m neck-deep in that unnatural voting rights case.”

  Robin was tilting at a different windmill, challenging voter restrictions recently put in place for the sole purpose of denying unnaturals the right to vote. (No one seemed to remember that in some corrupt cities, dead people had done more than their share of voting over the years....) Both political parties insisted that the proposed voter suppression rules against unnaturals were disenfranchising their constituents, although neither side had been able to prove that unnaturals leaned toward any particular affiliation, as a rule.

  After Robin described a brief she had filed and her court appearance schedule for the week, I told her about the vampire circus and headed to my office to take care of my own work. “I think I can wrap up the Amontillado case this afternoon.”

  “Good,” Sheyenne called from the receptionist’s desk. “We need to send them a bill.”

  Robin cautioned, “The outcome wasn’t what the client expected. Maybe we should offer a discount—”

  Sheyenne cut right in. “The client is a client, and a fee is a fee.” If Robin had her way, she would do all cases pro bono, and Sheyenne often had to remind her about the facts of business. Even though I was undead and Sheyenne was a ghost, Robin still needed to eat, and we all had to pay the rent on the office space.

  I suggested a compromise. “Give the client a coupon for his next case with us. We did solve the mystery, which is what he hired us to do.”

  A wealthy man had asked me to track down a very rare cask of Amontillado, more than a century and a half old, and I found the cask behind a brick wall, along with an animated skeleton that had been manacled there. In the years since the Big Uneasy, the skeleton had managed to break loose from one manacle by detaching his entire bony hand. With his wrist released, he was able to reach the cask, work the bung loose, and pour the extremely expensive sherry down his throat. Of course, since he had no throat, the rare Amontillado spilled all over the vault floor and dried up. When I found the very expensive and very empty cask I’d been hired to track down, the skeleton laughed and laughed at the joke, saying in a rattling voice, “I drank it all, I drank it all!”

  Now I sat at my desk and wrote up the report, reducing the total number of hours billed on the case just to make Robin happy, and to make me feel better as well; Sheyenne didn’t need to know.

  It was full-dark outside by the time Sheyenne flitted through my closed office door. She carried a stack of papers, which could not spectrally pass through the barrier, so they fluttered to the floor outside. With an impatient frown, she flitted back out, picked up the papers, and opened the door to enter via the normal way.

  “I ran down the usual suspects at the circus. Some very interesting background material.”

  I took the papers. “Anything suspicious?”

  She arched her eyebrows. “Naturals and unnaturals all working for a traveling circus run by a vampire—isn’t that suspicious enough?”

  “I was hoping for something more specific.”

  “So many aliases, stage names, plenty of skeletons in the closet—and not like the one you found with your cask of Amontillado.” She grinned at me.

  “Speaking of that. . .” I handed her the bill and final report, which pleased her very much.

  She continued with her summary, “First off, Oscar Kowalski is not a very talented businessman. He’s filed for bankruptcy twice since the Big Uneasy, barely scraped through, and seems to be in rocky circumstances right now.”

  I said, “I don’t see how stealing a deck of fortune-teller cards, costume jewelry, and a cold Reuben sandwich would help his financial situation.”

  “Probably not.” Sheyenne glanced down at her papers again. “Checking back along the circus route over the years, I found that two goblin roustabouts were arrested for petty theft, but they escaped and disappeared. Young twins. Their juvenile records should have been sealed, but Robin pried them loose because the law is still murky.”

  “Robin used a murky law to her own advantage?” I asked. “Good for her.”

  Sheyenne blew an imaginary breath through her lips. “The goblins were over eighteen years old—adults according to the letter of the law—but goblins live a long time, and those twins are still adolescents as far as goblins go. Still, nobody’s bothered to change the law, so we got the arrest records. Not that it does us much good, if the twins are no longer with the circus.”

  Robin would probably decide to challenge that law, now that she’d noticed the injustice.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Aldo—or should we call him Zelda?—is late on his child support, and his ex-wife is trying to track him down.” She checked off items on her list. “Fazio got arrested for drunk driving in his clown car, but that was never prosecuted. Oh, and his clown license has expired.”

  I frowned. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a clown license. I find that very suspicious.”

  Sheyenne blinked her blue eyes at me. “More suspicious than all the other things?”

  “He’s a clown. I’m always suspicious of clowns.”

  CHAPTER 4

  With the information Sheyenne had uncovered about the circus personnel, I went back to the midway early enough to catch the nighttime monster matinee. While unnatural crowds started to gather inside the Big Top for Bela’s performance, I stopped by Oscar Kowalski’s office trailer just outside the main tent. I wanted to ask him about bankruptcy filings, late child-support payments, Fazio’s expired clown license, and anything else that came to mind. Instead, I stumbled into another crisis.

  “I refuse, Oscar!” Bela cried with an exaggerated and obviously fake Transylvanian accent. He raised his chin with an imperious air and flared the nostrils on his beak-like nose. “You must cancel the show. I can’t perform under these circumstances—it is impossible!”

  “Nothing’s impossible, Bela.” Kowalski sounded long-suffering and annoyed. He sat at his desk with an open, and messily scribbled ledger. “Nobody’s canceling the show. You can go on, and you will go on.”

  “But it’s been stolen!” Bela clutched at his throat, where I noticed the gold medallion was missing. (The far-too-clingy silver lamé bodysuit had previously demanded most of my attention.) “It’s my Air Commander medal, given to me for being a Flying Ace in World War Two—or World War One, I forget which. If I don’t wear the medal, then I won’t have the confidence to transform into a bat at the climax of my show.”

  I interrupted, startling them. “You need a magic talisman to change into a bat?”

  “Have you ever tried it?” Bela snapped, then whirled on Kowalski. “Have you? Most vampires are incapable. It requires the utmost concentration. My Air Commander medal is the p
erfect focusing aid.”

  “So it’s like Dumbo’s magic feather?” I said. “Without it, you wouldn’t have the self-confidence to fly?”

  Bela raised himself up, looked down his nose at me, and said with withering sarcasm, “Yes, exactly like that.” He sniffed.

  “It’s all in his head,” Kowalski explained to me. “Nothing magical whatsoever. The medallion’s just a piece of junk.”

  “It is part of my act! I feel naked without it.”

  Again, I had trouble tearing my attention from the excessively form-fitting lamé bodysuit.

  The ringmaster looked at his watch, closed his ledger with finality. “Sorry, Bela, but the show must go on. So follow that advice—go on!”

  In a huff, the vampire trapeze artist strutted out of the admin trailer.

  With a flicker of relief on his face, Kowalski turned to me. “Every week he’s got some other excuse, imagines he’s been cursed whenever he passes gas, threatens to quit the circus, but I doubt any rival show would have him.”

  “Are there other monster circuses?” I hadn’t heard of any.

  “No. Hence, my point. And I admit it takes a lot of concentration to turn into a bat, especially on the fly, but he doesn’t have to be such an ass about it.” He brushed down his jacket, looked at the watch again. “Now, I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, Mr. Chambeaux. Come up with answers yet?”

  “Even better—I’ve got a lot more questions.”

  “How is that better?”

  “That means I’m making progress.”

  Kowalski stood from his desk. He looked tired as he reached for his top hat. “I can’t talk with you at the moment. The show must go on for me, too, and if there’s any unreasonable delay in the performance the lions start complaining.”

  “Don’t you mean the lion tamer?” I asked.

  “No, Calvin’s easy to deal with, but the lions want their treats, and they can get quite demanding.” He showed me out of the trailer and locked the door behind us.

  With the audience crowded in the Big Top for the monster matinee, the midway was quiet and dark. I decided to lurk and snoop, two things for which a zombie detective is eminently qualified.

  Since the Air Commander medal was the latest stolen item, I made my way to Bela’s darkened tent. Though he considered himself the star of the circus, the vampire’s mobile domicile wasn’t much more than a place to shelter his coffin when he needed some quiet time—wide open and not secure. If Bela had gone to ground to take a nap, someone could easily have snatched his medal from the nightstand and run off with it.

  I walked around outside Bela’s tent, senses alert and scanning the ground for any unusual clues . . . such as that playing card lying faceup on the ground not far from the tent.

  It was the jack of diamonds, the same card that predicted a person would be hungry soon after breakfast. I guessed it came from Zelda’s deck.

  I kept plodding along, scanning from side to side. The circus seemed eerily empty, filled with shadows. I heard the audience cheer in the Big Top; Calvin must be in the middle of his act.

  Spotting something ahead, I bent over to pick up another playing card, the six of hearts. With two dropped playing cards making a dotted line that led from Bela’s recently burgled tent toward the general direction of Zelda/Aldo’s trailer, I knew how to connect the dots.

  As I approached the trailer, I heard raised voices, an argument in full swing. Aldo was shouting, so upset that he still sounded high-pitched and falsetto, and not in an attempt to maintain his transvestite identity. “What did you want with my magic cards anyway? It wasn’t enough for you to steal my fortune-telling deck, so you had to steal my playing cards, too? And my makeup kit? You’re trying to ruin me!” He had his wig in his hand, and a smear of cold cream had removed only the first few layers of eye shadow.

  Fazio was still in full clown makeup, his bright red nose planted in the middle of his white-painted face, his pink hair sticking out in all directions. “You have nothing I’d even want to steal—certainly not your amateur makeup kit! You are a fake and a disgrace!”

  Before they could come to blows, I interrupted, holding up the two playing cards. “Are these from the deck? I found them on the ground near Bela’s tent—there’s been another robbery.”

  Aldo grabbed the playing cards, as if he could make a good start with only two of the fifty-two. “Yes, there has—my cards and my makeup kit.”

  Fazio asked, “What other robbery?”

  “Someone took Bela’s Air Commander medal right before his trapeze act.”

  “Bela never goes anywhere without that gaudy thing.” Aldo crossed his arms over his too-obviously padded chest, then turned to the clown. “Why would you steal the poor vamp’s Air Commander medal?”

  “I didn’t steal it! And I didn’t steal your damn cards, either! Or your makeup kit. I am a completely honest, law-abiding citizen.”

  “Then what about my Reuben sandwich?” Aldo demanded. Fazio hesitated just long enough for the fortune-teller to pounce. “I knew it—you took my sandwich!”

  “Those may be two unrelated cases,” I said. “And, Fazio, you’re not off my list of suspects—I know you’ve been keeping secrets.”

  The circus clown seemed to turn even whiter than his greasepaint. “You . . . know my secret?”

  “Your clown license is expired, and that’s enough to make me suspicious,” I said, deciding not to bring up the clown-car drunk driving incident. “I can bring in the real police at any time, but for now I’ll keep looking.”

  I stalked off among the dark trailers and tents. I hoped I could find the Air Commander medal in time to take it to the vampire trapeze artist before his act, just to give him a psychological boost. The crowd in the Big Top continued to cheer the lion tamer’s show.

  I paused at Annie’s tent. Since the tent flaps were open, I looked in. The fat lady was inside, lying on her bed, and appeared to be asleep, covered by a mounded blanket. She looked like a mountain range under the comforters. More plates piled with cookies, brownies, ribs, and wings remained within easy reach; someone must replenish them all day long. I left her to rest.

  I circled around, trying to keep an open mind, but ready to find Fazio responsible (okay, I admit, I was guilty of clown profiling). There, outside the front of his tent, I found the red ribbon and gold disk—Bela’s Air Commander medal, just lying on the ground. Not only was the circus thief persistent and random, he was also clumsy. Why steal things, then drop them all over the place like a cat losing interest in a mouse?

  In the Big Top, the crowd cheered and applauded as Calvin finished his show. I grabbed the medal, deciding to confront the clown later. At the moment I had to get the Air Commander medal back to the vampire trapeze artist before he started his act.

  I expected to feel a tingle of magic; if the Air Commander medal were really a spell-impregnated amulet, I should have been able to sense the power even with my numb fingers. Then the “gold” disk rotated as I dangled the ribbon, revealing Made in China stamped on the back; I suspected the disk itself was nothing more than coated tin.

  But Bela somehow had it in his head that he needed this thing for his bat transformation, so I might as well be of service.

  I raced to the Big Top at the best speed I could manage—joints and muscles tend to stiffen up postmortem, so it’s a good thing I keep myself in shape. So many spectators were milling at the main tent opening—mummies, werewolves, ghouls, vampires, a very tall ogre—that I couldn’t get inside, so I ran around to the side by Oscar Kowalski’s office trailer. I pushed my way through a smaller stage entrance, holding up the medal. “Wait—I have to get this to Bela before he starts!”

  But the ringmaster had already announced the performance, and the crowd drowned out my voice. Spotlights shone on Bela, high up on his trapeze platform, and the audience gave suitable gasps as the light swung down to illuminate the hundred sharpened stakes.

  For all his prima donna behavior, Bela
was a true showman. Even without the not-so-magic medal around his neck, he showed no sign of nervousness as he grabbed the trapeze and swung out over the yawning gap. As Bela began his act, Kowalski withdrew to the side of the tent, where he saw me holding the red-ribboned amulet. “I found it,” I said, “but too late.”

  The ringmaster gave a snort. “He doesn’t need the thing. It’s all in his head, and I can’t let him make excuses. The show must go on.”

  Above, Bela did a beautiful somersault loop, then caught the trapeze bar again.

  “His ego needs to be taken down a notch anyway. He demanded a big pay raise. Does he think the circus is actually making any money? We’re holding on by a spiderweb here.”

  I lowered my voice. “I know about the bankruptcies, Mr. Kowalski.”

  The ringmaster frowned. “So then you know I can’t pay Bela any more, but I can’t have him leave, either. If he refused to do the show tonight, and I had to refund all these tickets . . .” He gestured to the audience. “I might as well bury myself six feet under without a book to read.”

  Bela swung back and forth on the trapeze, increasing his momentum and height as he set up for the climax of the show.

  Kowalski looked up. “The fumble is all part of the act, you know. He better not chicken out tonight.”

  At the apex of the swing, Bela flipped himself into the air, spun three somersaults, then reached out to catch the returning bar, fumbled and missed—just as I had seen him do that afternoon. Bela wore a panicked look, his arms outstretched as he plummeted toward the pointy wooden stakes.

  The audience gasped. A necromancer screamed in a high womanish voice. Kowalski and I waited for Bela to transform into a bat.

  And waited.

  He flailed and thrashed in real panic. In the last instant, Bela squeezed his eyes shut, either in a last-ditch attempt to concentrate or to avoid seeing so many sharp wooden tips. And then he slammed into them. Since he’d been falling spread-eagled, Bela managed to impale himself on a goodly number of the one hundred stakes.