The Case of the Singing Sword (The Billibub Baddings Mysteries)

by Tee Morris

  Let me just say that translating Elvish script is tough. You have to take a simple phrase like “Go get me a beer” and elevate it to a proclamation of universal importance. You also have to add in a few more words—all of the multi-syllabic variety—to this five-phrase request, and then adopt an air of “Do you have any idea of how important I am?” when speaking. After interpreting Elvish for a meeting of the military heads, I usually downed a tankard of the local pub’s hardest ale to counter my splitting headache.

  When I finally looked up, the cab was idling in front of my office building. Knowing the driver and I were more than square (the cab ride couldn’t have been more than five dollars), I placed the photograph back in my pocket and bolted upstairs for my office. Miranda was there, letting the bill collectors know we would be square for the next two months. She had that smile on her face to say that it was, for a change, a really good Monday for us.

  Well, it was a good Monday until she saw me.

  “Billi? Billi, you don’t look so good, hon.”

  “Miranda…”

  I stopped for a moment at the door frame of my office and finally took a breath. I know I was probably a mess of sweat, paleness and downright terror. I’m just thankful I hadn’t pulled a “Benny” in my pants yet. “Even if it’s Joe McCarthy offering me the position of shortstop, you hold my calls.”

  “Billi?”

  “Just do it!” I yelled.

  Miranda knew that if I ever yelled at her, she would get an extra week’s pay as my way of saying I was sorry for my temper. She also knew one of my outbursts was a sign of a serious case of dragon shit hitting the fan.

  The office door shut behind me, the “click” of the lock making me stop for a second. In the perfect quiet, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears like pixie wings against windowpanes. I closed my eyes tight and gave my head a shake, trying to recover a bit of that calm, cool reputation that had taken me a year to build as a private dick. But all I could see in my self-imposed darkness were the characters engraved on the sword in that photograph.

  Elvish writing in Chicago, 1929? No. Please, for love of the Fates, no. It couldn’t be.

  In the corner of my office stood a tiny icebox that kept a few consumable odds and ends, aside from the obvious. I pulled out a small block of ice and gave it a few whacks with the icepick, chiseling out enough hunks to fill a tall tumbler. Soon, my office was filled with the cracks, pops and hisses of warm bathtub gin covering the ice, followed by a few quick gulps that polished off half the drink. Downing alcohol this fast always made me light-headed, but it was helping me to calm down…sort of.

  The chilled glass felt good up against my temple, giving me a moment’s peace before I turned to the modest bookcase in the corner. No, my library was not as extensive as Dr. Hammil’s, but it was just as essential to my work and recreation. Right now, I was focused only on one book: my private log from my service in Acryonis, shelved in between a few literary classics I had enjoyed in my time at the library and a couple of books on baseball.

  I forced my legs to walk over to the bookcase so I could retrieve the old weather-worn journal. “Go to the desk,” I said out loud. “Turn on the lamp,” I told my hand.

  So far, so good. With the ice chunks providing a reassuring “tink-tink-tink-tink” music in the background, I flipped through the journal till I arrived at an entry that would either confirm or deny a growing hunch: my last assignment, the raid on the Black Orcs’ Keep of Tyril in the Dark Realm of the North.

  Back in those days, we had been told that the Nine Talismans of Acryonis were various ancient relics and baubles, all possessing magic qualities. Separately, they could do some damage. Among them was a ring that could unlock shadows, giving the ring’s bearer total control of them; a chalice that could give whomever drank from it the power of a God; and a medallion that controlled time itself. Together, those nine different doodads promised the world on a string, but that string was always attached to some provision that cost you hard. A few years of life, if you were lucky. Your soul, if you weren’t careful.

  Among these talismans was the Sword of Arannahs, a weapon of immense power that called upon the elements of Darkness and could command demon armies to wipe entire realms clean of life. Its wielder would know no enemy. Anyone standing before the Sword of Arannahs would be laid to waste, and those behind it would either live to serve, or feel its touch of death.

  The entry soon confirmed my worst fears. The Elvish writing recorded in my journal (which I occasionally used as a reference for my translations) was a perfect match with the glyphs etched into the flat of the found in Egypt: “The wielder meek shall possess this blade and bring about the servitude of a world.”

  Even in my world, we didn’t really understand what that meant. I do remember the same conclusion everyone in my team from the Allied Races reached: This whole “servitude of a world” thing was a bad idea, and the Sword of Arannahs was a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.

  As this case had now become one of those cases, I knew at last what I never wanted to know: The Sword of Arannahs was in fact the Singing Sword, and now two of America’s biggest crime bosses were looking for it.

  That was when I puked into my office wastebasket.

  A light rapping sounded on my office door as I gave a few more heaves, the bathtub gin leaving my mouth as quickly as it had entered. The room was spinning, partially from my home mix of gin, but mainly due to everything from the afternoon now coagulating in my head like a severe belly slash on the mend.

  It was not out of the ballpark that the Talismans could have surfaced here. I mean, among some of these “rare” books severely undersold in nearby dealers’ shops were the words and chronicles of my time. And then there was me, the dwarf-now-dick in Chicago. So yeah, why not?

  Then again, what did I know about that magic shit? Not enough to fill a fairy’s codpiece, I’m here to say. But what were the possibilities of another “banished talisman” finding its way into this realm and being christened, for example, “Excalibur?” Could the people who were burned at stakes and left hanging at the gallows on trumped-up accusations of witchcraft actually dumb mooks who had been sucked into voids of oblivion before me? How about this world’s Chinese culture, filled with dragons? Could those dragons have been unfortunate beasts on the wrong end of some wizard’s spell?

  Stumbling away from the foul stench of my wastebasket, I picked up the photo I’d dropped—this photo of a sword that had just happened to pop up in an archeological dig in Egypt, out of the blue.

  “According to the amount of sand and dust on it, compared to the other items we have found at the site, the sword had not been there long. A few years, at most…” Dr. Hammil had told me. Should I guess, around the same time I arrived here?

  I heard the rapping again. Miranda’s silhouette was flanked by two others, which were a little larger and fainter because they were farther away from her and the door.

  “Uh, Billi, you okay in there?”

  “Yeah, Miranda,” I grunted, “but I really don’t want to see anybody right now.”

  “Billi…” her voice quivered lightly, and then fell silent.

  She couldn’t hide it that time. Fear. I looked up from the photo to see the other two shadows move closer to her. Shoving the photo into my pocket, I fought to walk a straight line to the coat rack. My hand had just made it around Beatrice when the shadows halted their advance and Miranda found her voice again.

  “Billi, it’s the cops. They want to talk to you aboutny Riletto. They just found him dead in some alleyway.”

  I let go of Beatrice and shook my head, hoping that the twerp hadn’t gone to the trouble to change suits.

  Chapter Six

  Suits and Saps

  The alleyway I had seen up close and personal earlier that morning was now crawling with flatfeet of all kinds, with the neighborhood’s more inquisitive types camping out on their stoops to watch the sideshow. Not that there was a lot to see from wh
ere they were sitting—due to the safe distance at which coppers were keeping the motley assortment of bystanders, all anyone could see of the crime scene were the cops, their cars, and a lot of flashes coming from the alleyway. People with a good view were catching quick glimpses from their windows, but with a flutter of curtains or a good yank against a set of blinds, they were gone. The best way to know nothing is to see nothing, even if you can hear it over the radio.

  The way my uniformed escorts were hustling me through the barrier of cops holding back public eyes and curious mob fans, you would have thought I was some kind of Police brass. The crowd we were muscling our way through was now screaming even louder at the sight of a dwarf flanked by cops and getting a front row to the crime scene. I kept the peepers forward out of habit as the voices behind me grew more distant and the murmurs of detectives and uniforms in the alleyway became more intelligible.

  Suddenly, my stride was halted by a fresh-faced young kid careening around the corner of the alleyway. Sporting freckles across his nose and cheeks, he looked barely above the age limit for joining the Academy. I had to stifle a snicker under the dire circumstances, but it really was hard to take the look of a farm kid in the black duds of the 15th precinct seriously.

  Once I saw his eyes, though, I gave him plenty of room. I knew that look extremely well. Wore it myself decades ago, and later, I found that all the green recruits wore that face in their first few battles. The first time you watch a buddy get torched by a rock dragon or an orc drive its fist through a comrade’s chest, you can’t be expected to keep your food down for long. (I still manage to get all queasy whenever I catch a whiff of breakfast sausage.)

  I took another few steps back, adding to his already-generous amount of personal space. Good thing my instincts were on the mark: This cop set a new distance record in cookie-tossing. It would have cost me a few of the Lesingers’ bills to get what was coming up out of him off of my shoes.

  Just then, my shadow appeared for a second on the wall the rookie was holding up with one hand. Then again, and again. I could only shake my head and feel for this poor constable. His first picture in the Chicago papers wouldn’t be apprehending the low-lifes threatening Chicago’s innocents, nor would it be busting one of the biggest illegal bootlegging networks working out of his precinct. It would be upchucking his lunch in front of a dwarf detective.

  “Well, well, well,” huffed a thick brogue from the alleyway. “If’n it ain’ tha littl’ Circus Freak o’ Chicago, comin’ ta jine us this fine afternoon. Wish I cou’ say I was surprised ta fin’ out y’was ’ere this marnin’.”

  “Is that what you heard, O’Malley? Well, thank the Fates you finally got those damn potatoes out of your ears. I bet you’re hearin’ all kinds of stuff now.”

  What little civility he had in his voice dissipated like a mist after a warlock takes his leave. “I ’eard enuff ta haul yer fat arse down ’ere, ya freak ya!”

  I shot a glance over my shoulder at the rookie, who was still trying to collect himself. “And with your boys extending such a friendly invite,” I replied to O’Malley with a wink and a smile, “you think I’m going to stand you up? After all, this is our first date. People are going to talk.”

  Still nothing. His face didn’t budge. I wondered if some wizard had, once upon a time, slipped through a portal and cursed him as a child to grow up without a sense of humor.

  This mirthless creature towering over me was Chief John O’Malley, a crusty Irishman who—regardless of the prejudice I’m sure he encountered on the trip upward to his lofty office—could not care a succubus’ pimpled ass whether he insulted me or not.

  I first met O’Malley while working on yet another divorce case, during which my client had suddenly fallen ill with a severe case of murder. (Being pushed from the top of a four-story building will do that to you.) O’Malley, who had just received his Police Chief appointment, wanted to make his first case an open-and-shut one. The press quoted his claim that the jilted ex-wife had taken matters into her own hands and let gravity do the dirty work.

  Tribune newshounds were about to run a story on the ex-wife’s arrest when “an anonymous source” sent in photographs of her enjoying some extra-curricular business. Seen clearly in these photos of the couple enjoying a romantic afternoon in Hyde Park was a large clock, keeping perfect time in the background. In another photo taken from a different angle, an outdoor concert provided their afternoon’s entertainment. It also confirmed her location at the moment of my client’s fall.

  The story swept across Chicago faster than an ogre horde blinded by blood lust. When the article ran, I chuckled at my reporter-pal’s final comment: “If this is any indication of what we can expect from Chief O’Malley, perhaps we will have to place our faith in small wonders.” It was a pleasant nod to me, and subtle enough that you would have to be pretty clever to pick up exactly to whom he was referring.

  No sooner had I finished reading than the phone rang. O’Malley was a lot more clever than he appeared.

  The Chief had kept a giant black mark by my name ever since, taking bizarre pleasure in trying to put a chink in my chain mail whenever he could. Note, I did say, trying. His cleverness did little to make up for his lack of wit. However, his inability to get under my codpiece only egged on his attempts at insulting me, and I enjoyed watching him take a swing only to swing. Poor mick couldn’t knock one out of the park if I told him what pitch I was throwing. Whenever our paths cross, his face gets a little harder and his hair is graced by a few more white hairs in that sea of red.

  “Listen, Chief, if you hauled me all the way down here just to practice your battlefield insults on me, I’m flattered that you invited all the press. You must have an incredible verbal infantry at the ready. Since I’m not thinking that’s the sole reason you called me here, how about explaining to me why I’m in the middle of a crime scene by invitation, provided you talk slow so your brain can keep up.”

  O’Malley beady eyes never left me as he walked over to the freckled cop and slapped a hand on the rookie’s shoulder. “Go home, Donovan. Ya’ve seen enuff for a day.”

  The rookie was breathing evenly again, his pallid look accented by those freckles of his. He was one of Chicago’s Finest, and now his picture was probably going to wind up on the front page of the Tribune, the Daily Herald, or—Fates forbid—one of those smaller, independent rags that aren’t worth the paper they are written on. (Yeah, I know I don’t talk like a scholar, but when you are weaned on the classics and the finest voices in literature, dime-store newspapers hammered out on basement typewriters are an insult in every way.)

  “Right, then. An’ now t’you, Shorty.” O’Malley stared at me for a minute, an eyebrow rising slowly as he studied me standing underneath him. “If i’ t’were any other crime scene, I’d toss y’outta here wi’ tha bathwat’r…but as i’ t’is, I t’ink I’m gonna need yer perfessional opinion on this.”

  I felt a chill run down my spine as I watched what he did next. Motioning with a gesture to the alleyway, O’Malley smiled at me. At that moment, I decided that I liked him better when he was stone-faced.

  The remaining rookies all looked like that kid Donovan, but they were still managing to keep their lunches in their stomachs. Even the seasoned cops were looking a little rough around the edges. One way or another, everyone in the alley had that green look—and we’d already celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, so I knew that wasn’t the reason.

  Well, not everyone was celebrating the luck of the Irish. There was a pair of suits I didn’t recognize. They weren’t Chicago’s Finest. That much was plain from the quality of suits and shoes they wore, compared to that of the other detectives on the scene. Everyone seemed to answer to them—even O’Malley, who gave them a nod as I came around the corner. They reminded me a little (too much) of Imperial Watch Guards of Trysillia. Good fighters, don’t get me wrong…but Watch Guards were nothing less than mindless drones who follow orders and ask no questions. Everything was carried
out by the book. If not, they were writing the book.

  These suits looked up to give me the stare, pencils in their grasp and pressing against their memo pads, ready to pick up where their last scribbled thoughts left off. I kept my own baby blues locked with theirs. When you’re four-foot-one, it doesn’t do you any good to be intimidated.

  These guys were good. Usually when humans of this realm get into a staring competition with a dwarf, the dwarf wins. My best opponents for this contest back in Acryonis were elves. It is easy for elves to play this little intimidation game because of their omnipotence. Elves know everything; just ask them, and they’ll tell you. We used to be pretty chummy, the dwarves and the elves, but we had a falling-out once. Lots of races all tried to guess why. A disagreement over battle strategies in the Great War? Bad business surrounding a mining contract?

  Actually, if you really want to know, it was over a malt-beer recipe.

  Anyway, while I kept walking with O’Malley in my peripheral, these guys and I were enjoying our own stare-off. Whoever these suits were, they must’ve taken lessons from the elves. They didn’t blink. Statues. I had to wonder if they were still breathing. I felt my own fists tighten. Ain’t no way I was going to lose this stare-down with these chumps.

  Then it dawned on me: These were the same chumps that crashed my detective’s breakfast party at Sal’s. I hadn’t found out yet who these yahoos were, but it was going to take a little more than a corpse at a crime scene to break that stare-off we had going.

  Benny’s corpse, it turned out, was more than enough.