I was about to launch into another tirade about how I already knew I didn't want her case — at least not the one she was offering — when I decided on another tack.
Shrugging my shoulders and walking into the room, I said, "Okay; you win. I'll listen. But don't expect me to be hopping for joy ... an' get out of my chair."
Grinning like the proverbial canary-fed feline, Jennie — Mrs. Burban to you, Jack — stood and walked around the desk and into the only other chair in my office. I managed to keep from moving until she was firmly planted. Then I went and sat behind my desk.
The chair squeaked in protest of its new occupant. I couldn't blame it.
I leaned well back in my chair. I do that when I'm thinking about something or when I'm not really interested in what somebody has to say. Or both. "Okay, spill it."
Typical of smart dames in this part of the world — at least those that didn't start out here — now that Mrs. Burban had my "complete" attention, she spent quite a bit of time hemming and hawing and getting to the point. Let's just say it took a few minutes to say:
"Max is missing."
— and go on from there.
Okay, so it took a moment to sink in. Sue me. I leaned forward in a real hurry. She didn't even flinch.
"What?"
"My husband is ... missing. Gone." Jennie just looked across my desk and straight into my eyes. There wasn't really any regret, or sadness, or even longing there; just an apparent anxiety.
But I was pretty anxious myself. "Wait a minute. Max Burban, the most powerful and influential gangster in the Nile Empire — if you don't count the Imperials — has disappeared? And you're coming to me?" I forced myself to relax and sit back as if I was weighing my options.
I knew what the deal was right then — or thought I did — and I didn't want any part of it. In order to avoid a gang war, Burban's "successor" had sent his widow down here to recruit a P.I. who was "respected" (i.e. "not pushed around") by the Organization to "track him down." Times being what they were — a battalion of shocktroopers camped to the south and their officers sending patrols in every evening looking for "deserters" — the lieutenants of Burban's gang'd lie low for awhile, taking the new headman's orders until they were certain that Caesar was really dead.
Then, when the new "boss" — whoever had knocked off Burban — was secure enough in his power, he'd proclaim ol' "Blue" Max out by default and he'd take over. Sure, he'd have to break a few heads, but he'd already be on top of the mountain; everybody else'd have to work harder to knock him off.
Oh, and the P.I.? Well, near as I can figure from my studies of gangland philosophy, anybody who pokes into a mob boss's "disappearance" far enough to make it convincing is going to learn a lot of . sensitive information really fast. Gangsters aren't too subtle. The P.I. ends up in the Nile as croc food and everybody else is happy.
So, putting on my best "gee, that's too bad, wish I could help, but I don't really give a flying razenfratz" face, I said:
"Gee, that's too bad, wish I could —"
Jennie didn't let me finish. She jumped up and leaned over the desk and showed the first real emotion I'd seen since she entered my office — and, just my luck, it had to be anger. "Now listen to me, Reynolds," she shot, jabbing her finger at my eyes to punctuate her words, "do you think I'm stupid or something? If I thought this was some sort of setup or gang job, do you think I'd be here?!"
She sat down again—hard. "Do you honestly think," she continued more slowly, "that if Max was really dead I'd come to a broken-down P.I. for protection or help ... or that I'd let Den Abhibe" — that's Burban's Number One Thug, for you initiates to the Cairo Crime Scene — "manipulate me into coming here?" She chuckled grimly and smirked, "Hell; I don't think that towel-head even knows Max disappeared."
Now that caught me by surprise. If Max Burban was killed — and I still was convinced he wasn't dead —Den "Iniquity" Abhibe, "Blue" Max's top "manager," would be the first little Indian to profit by it. I expect Den kept better tabs on his boss than his harlots and hired guns.
Whether true or not, this little tidbit kept my interest. "So, he's vanished, but not dead." I leaned forward again, ignoring the squeaking of my chair, "and how do you know that?" It was my turn to smirk. "Guys in Max's type of business aren't known for disappearing without lots of fanfare and a retinue — unless they're entering permanent 'retirement'."
"I'm not sure I can tell you, Mr. Reynolds," Jennie said. The uncomfortable — and secretive — look was back. I sighed inwardly. Nothing in this part of the world is easy, is it?
"Listen, honey; you either tell me right now, or I'll evict you from my chair, my office and, if I have anything to say about it, the rest of my life." Which might not be too long, if Max heard me talking to his doll this way. I calmed down in a hurry. "Look," I said, standing and walking around the desk again, "if you don't tell me everything, there is no way I'm going to help. I don't need any amount of money so bad that I'll go into a case blind."
She tried to cover her warring feelings with a joke, "Yeah; you hide out in this part of town for the aroma of the fishmarket, I bet." But that sounded hollow even in her ears. I waited for her to spill it.
And waited.
Finally, as I was deciding even I can't afford a decorative piece of artwork like Jennie Burban cluttering up my office any more, she caved in. Reaching into her . (I turned away; even I have my morals), Jennie pulled out a strange-looking cross. No; strike that; it wasn't a cross, it was a jeweled miniature ankh with the top loop broken. It hung around her neck on a gold chain.
"This is how I know, Mr. Reynolds," she muttered, her eyes apparently fascinated with my beat-up shoes. Hey; they are pretty shiny.
I looked, but I didn't touch. Aside from its diamond chips and gold inlay, it didn't look any different from any other incredibly expensive piece of jewelry you might find in a museum somewhere. In fact, I was surprised even someone as well-protected as Jennie must be would wander around the streets of Cairo with the price of the East Side on her neck. I said as much.
She chuckled again, with no trace of humor and enough irony to choke a camel, "that's the funny part," she said, "I can't take it off."
"Really? Let me try," I started to lift it over her head, but she jumped up and grabbed my wrists with a pair of steel claws masquerading as hands and nails that must De sharpened daily. tow; I dropped the ankh back between her . back where it belonged.
"Hey, its gone!" It was true; the ankh and the gold chain had vanished; all that was under her shirt was . I wrenched my eyes upward and stopped at hers.
Sometime, some man is going to develop a serum that will allow him to look into the tear-filled emerald green eyes belonging to a beautiful young woman and not feel moved. He'll make a fortune and I'll be his first customer. But now .
"No ... no, it's still there, Mr. Reynolds," she reached down and I kept my head steady. Jennie lifted the ankh up again, in front of my eyes. "See? It's only invisible when I don't hold it." Opening her fingers, Jennie let the piece of jewelry fall — and disappear. "But that's not why its important," she continued, sitting slowly back down, "it's the other spell I'm worried about."
Spell.
While I pay pretty close attention to details when I interview possible clients — even ones who I'm going to turn down — certain words make my ears prick up. While I won't go into an exhaustive list, I do have my "Two M's" — Monsters and Magic. Both fascinate me, probably because they didn't exist on Earth two years ago, and both are things I just can't handle. I'm just a detective, not a hero.
Not anymore.
Anyway, I decided I wanted a break. "Um, you want a drink or something, Jen—Mrs. Burban?" I sidestepped over to the bookcase I use as a liquor cabinet. I don't think Tolstoy would object to my putting War and Peace to a humanitarian function.
I opened the book and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Scotch. I'd gone back to my desk, sat down, and already started pouring the second glass when Mrs. Bur
ban said, quietly:
"I don't drink."
Now that, you must admit, was too much. I'd heard about doing seven impossible things before breakfast, but now I was hearing them. I don't know if it was the strain, or the surprises, or just my own twisted set of values and rationalizations, but the idea that the largest smuggler of illegal liquor in the largest city in the Nile Empire had a wife who didn't drink — well, I just started laughing fit to howl.
Though my eyes were filled with tears, I can imagine what Jennie was like across the table. She was watching a "broken-down detective" break a little further. After a few moments, though, I imagine it got pretty tired, and that's why she did what she did.
She walked over and slapped me. Hard.
There's something about getting slapped by a dame in your own office that takes the humor out of just about any situation. Looking back, I'm really kind of surprised I didn't slap her back. Fortunately, I don't always follow the "Nile" way of doing things, so I just stared up at her. Her eyes weren't the least bit wet now — they were stone cold hard.
"If you're through, Mr. Reynolds, I would like to finally discuss some business." She walked over and sat again. It seems I was getting more exercise on this case than my last three—and I hadn't even left my office yet.
"The reason," she continued coolly, "I was hesitant in telling you about the necklace should be obvious even to a clod like you. If you, or I, or anyone else removes it from my neck — I die."
She said it with such complete sincerity that I believed her. I kept my mouth shut.
"I don't think you know this, but my maiden name is Gueneveire Rasbaalen," she saw no flicker in my eyes, and then remembered. "Ah, yes; you aren't from Terra, are you? You were on this planet when we ... arrived. Well, then, a little background is in order.
"My father was Professor Andre Rasbaalen, a scientist of some repute on our — excuse me — my home cosm. He was able to perform marvels envied even by the renowned Dr. Frest and Professor Furioso of the Mystery Men." Those names I had heard. I took a swig of Scotch as she continued. She hid her disgust well.
"My father was, however, not interested in perfecting new gadgets and gizmos for use in battles by heroes and villains of Terra. Rather, he wanted to devote his talents to the more mundane assistance of the everyman. He built super-dams that provided electrical power to whole cities; he built safer and better air- and sea-ships; he worked on mass food production and synthesization.
"It was this last project that caused him the most difficulty. Studying growth powers and gadgets, and other so-called 'pulp' powers, my father theorized that, by using the same weird science that turned mere mortals into heroes, he could produce animals and vegetables that would produce ten times their normal amount of food — without having to feed them more."
Jennie paused here, reflecting. Her eyes teared up again, but she brushed aside my offering of a handkerchief. "That was what attracted Maxwell R. Burban." She said the name not like the name of a man she'd been married to, nor as if it were the name of a man she despised, but rather as if she was referring to an unmerciful force of nature that had destroyed her life.
"Burban came to us in his 'civilian' persona as a successful businessman. I was sixteen, and he swept me off my feet by being gentle and charming and attentive, and he was helpful and encouraging to my father. I guess Daddy was too caught up in his work to notice what Max was really like, and I was just happy to have someone paying attention to me.
"He financed my father's projects in food production, and he acted like a friendly uncle to me." She chuckled wryly. "He spoiled me rotten and I, a stupid kid, let him."
Now the tears were flowing down her cheeks, but she still refused to notice. She held my complete attention, her green eyes bright and wet, "I didn't know anything was wrong between my 'Uncle Maxie' and my father until ." Her voice broke and then halted. Her head down, she dabbed at her face with a tissue.
"Until what?" I prompted.
"Until it was too late," She had been about to say something else, I was sure, but I didn't prompt her. Her face had undergone a radical change. Underneath the makeup and the wetness, her face was granite and her eyes were hollow. "Max wanted my father to perfect his 'Ultragrowth' formula for use in his illegal breweries, distilleries, and opium fields. We didn't find out until it was too late.
"Max," she continued, acrimony slowly creeping into her voice, "insisted that he be allowed to build my father a laboratory. He invited us to come live with him. He implored us to make his house our own." She chuckled, her voice now full of self-recrimination. "I was a little idiot; a sixteen-year-old girl living in a mansion with servants and clothes and anything else I wanted. I didn't know what he meant by 'everything I have is yours.'"
Jennie laughed grimly. "But my father did. My father found out rather quickly what Max was truly like, soon after we moved in — but he couldn't say anything. He knew what Max wanted me for, and he hated him for it — but I was a hostage to his silence.
"So, instead of warning me or trying to escape, my father tried to sabotage his own experiments, slowing them up and then making false 'breakthroughs' when Maxwell got impatient. Just enough, just enough ."
Her voice died off. I offered her a drink, but she looked at me like I was handing her a dead snake. I put it away, feeling mighty tactless.
"My father didn't give Max enough credit. He started assigning some of his crooked scientists to pose as my father's guards. My father was careful, but eventually they caught him tampering with his experiments."
"That was when I found out what Maxwell R. Burban was really like." She chuckled grimly and shook her head. "Yes, the wolf shed his sheep's clothes at last."
"What happened?" I asked. Despite myself, my curiosity was overcoming my reticence at having gangland's biggest honcho's wife sitting in my office for over an hour — that's usually a bad survival sign, by the way.
"In the middle of the night, my maid came and woke me up. She said I had to put on a robe and follow her down to my father's lab. I asked if there'd been some kind of accident, but she wouldn't answer." Again, the chuckle, this time followed by a smirk of irony, "I swear, if I hadn't been in such a hurry myself, that little German bitch would've dragged me down the three flights of stairs."
Now, Mrs. Burban seemed a lot more animated, but nothing like the minx who had entered my office earlier. Though she was still frightfully attractive, she was less the fox now and more the she-wolf. I took note, but continued to listen.
"When we entered the lab, I was grabbed from behind by a couple of Max's goons. One held my mouth shut and the other had my arms. But nothing covered my eyes.
"I could see what they'd done to my father. They'd beaten him, and cut him, and they had him hooked up to some sort of electrical device. But I could tell he hadn't given them whatever it was they wanted. And Max ... Max just sat there smiling. He looked at my father, and then at me, and then back to my father. I had never recognized true evil until then."
Jennie swallowed a sob and continued. I have to say, at that point, I was ready to believe just about anything. Even though she'd walked into my office ready to vamp me or do just about anything to get me to work for her, now, when it really mattered, I could tell she wouldn't resort to tears as a means to an end. She wasn't up to toying with my emotions that way.
I respected that.
"Max stood and sauntered over to my father, twirling a riding crop in one hand, the other hand deep in a suit pocket. I tried, but I couldn't hear what he whispered to my father, but it made his swollen eyes open and he stared at me and then swore — the first time I'd ever heard him swear — up and down at Max.
"Max ignored him, and stared at me. I became aware that my robe was open and all I had underneath was a silk teddy. The way my 'Uncle Maxie' looked at me made me feel ... unclean. I struggled against the guards and started to cry.
"I've had a lot of time to think about that evening, and I'm sure that that was what did it
for my father. He saw his only daughter — the only thing in the world left of his beloved wife — struggling in the arms of two giant goons, being appraised like a slab of meat by a bipedal snake. He gave in."
Jennie sighed and took out a cigarette. I offered to light it, but she just shook her head and toyed with it between her index finger and thumb. The way she stared at it, I developed an uncomfortable feeling with what it must be like to be under a hostile microscope. Finally, she continued.
"Two weeks later, Max had his formula — but at a cost. My father, who must have felt tremendous guilt over what he had given the world, tried to hang himself. He was foiled, however, by one of the very scientists who had turned him in originally. Still, he had done enough damage to be critical — he was paralyzed from the neck down.
"But he had done his job."
A single tear leaked from an emerald eye and ran down a marble face. Again, Jennie seemed not to notice her own feeling. She shuddered, and carefully put the cigarette back in her purse.
"That was when he became the hostage."
The rest I could guess; it was typical of these "Terran villains." Unable—or unwilling—to find a female who possessed a perversion equal to their own, they somehow blackmail innocent women into debauchery, or, in this case, marriage. In order to guarantee her father's medical care, Jennie had to submit to the indignity of ... marrying Maxwell R. Burban. Being a loving daughter and, apparently, a guilt-ridden one, she did so.
The necklace, a wedding present, was an additional guarantee. If Jennie tried to take revenge on her new husband—at least a final sort of revenge, for I was of the opinion that Jennie did everything else possible — the necklace would kill her. She didn't know where Max had gotten it, and she really didn't feel like discussing it.
Anyway, soon after marrying Burban, now "Husband Maxie" got an invitation to join with Dr. Mobius in dominating "the Tenth Empire of the Nile." Apparently, Max had been supplying Mobius with Terran contacts all throughout his thirty-some-odd-years as a High Lord. Burban, his interest piqued, agreed to join in.
Mysterious Cairo Page 2