Dangerous Hardboiled Magicians

by Mel Gilden

  Using a piece of chalk, Morton drew a pentagram around Misty on the hardwood floor. At each point of the star he set a small metal tray into which he tapped some dried greens from a big plastic bag. He lit the greens, filling the room with a strong acrid odor. Making complicated motions with a big feather, probably from an eagle, he stirred the thready smoke around a little. After a moment of watching what the smoke did, he clambered to his feet and made a note on a form.

  One of the uniformed policemen approached Fotheringay and handed him something. Both their backs were to me so I couldn’t see what it was, though I could guess.

  “I know what killed her,” Morton said.

  “And that would be?” Siltz said.

  “A commercially available poisoning spell, the kind used to kill mice, rats, and other small vermin.”

  “It take any special skill to use such a spell?” Siltz asked casually, just to pass the time of day.

  “Not much,” Morton explained. “Anybody with two hands and a voice could have done it.”

  “Good call, doc,” Fotheringay said. “Here’s your murder weapon—or what’s left of it.” He let a small sealed plastic bag fall to the cement table. Inside was the twisted spell packet I’d left in the trash can. We all stared at it as if it were removing its clothes.

  Morton picket up the plastic bag, opened it, and sniffed at the contents. He nodded. “That would do the job,” he said as he sealed the plastic bag again.

  “What do you say, Cronyn?” Fotheringay asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m no expert,” I said, “but I’d say that unless analysis downtown tells you more, you still have a wide-open case.”

  “Who asked you?” Siltz asked snidely.

  “That’s enough,” Fotheringay said.

  We all watched grimly while more of the coroner’s staff came in and took away Misty’s body. Maybe Siltz was right to be sarcastic. I’d been hired to do a job and had failed miserably. I owed Misty, if not the Stilthins Mort board. If you fall off a bicycle, you have to get right back on. It was time for me to get back onto the bicycle.

  Pretty politely, considering, Fotheringay asked me to join him and Siltz downtown for a look at the mug books. I agreed because no other answer was possible.

  We were on our way out of the room when we were stopped by an scratchy irritating voice. “Hey, bud. Lay off. That ain’t yours,” it said.

  “What the hell?” Siltz said.

  Two more plainclothesmen were staring at Misty’s desk from a few feet away. Imps took a last baleful look at them before they disappeared. “Something in the drawer, sir,” the younger of the plainclothesmen said.

  “And that would be?” Fotheringay said too politely.

  With great interest, I watched the two men hurriedly get back to work. In my business you never know when you’re going to need to get past some imps. I might learn something.

  The young plainclothesman pulled small plastic bags from an attaché case, each containing a small amount of powder or dry leaves or bark. Soon quite an apothecary lay on Misty’s lab table in front of the other cop, a round dark man with hair like a wire brush. The round man pushed his partner aside and impatiently took a mortar and pestle from the attaché case. Without weighing anything, he chose a pinch or two of a few ingredients and used the pestle to grind them together in the mortar.

  “What’s he using?” I asked the world at large.

  Fotheringay shook his head and Siltz smiled using all his teeth. Neither of them said anything, nor looked as if they wanted to. Like any other professionals, the police liked having their little secrets.

  After a moment or two the round man nodded and backed away. The other plainclothesman took a pinch of the dry mixture in the mortar and threw it at Misty’s desk as he spoke a spell. He spoke quickly and I did not catch the words. Imps rose from the bottom drawer like dirty soap bubbles. Each one burst, leaving behind a shred of ash that was caught by a current of air I could neither see nor feel, and carried it away.

  When the show was over, the round man stepped forward and set a black plastic box over the keyhole. A moment later he opened the drawer without trouble. “Empty,” he said.

  “Do you have any idea what she might have kept in there?” Fotheringay asked me.

  I was wondering the same thing. I was also wondering who had it now, whatever it was, and whether it would do him any good. “No,” I said.

  Siltz chuckled as if I’d said something funny.

  “All right,” Fotheringay said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE CLOSEST THING TO A WITNESS

  I sat in the back of an unmarked car staring through the barrier at the wavy blond hair on the back of Fotheringay’s head. Siltz sat behind the wheel, his hair shining in the light from a street lamp. Fotheringay turned down the police radio until the dispatcher whispered at the edge of my consciousness like a bad dream. Siltz started the engine, and we followed a couple of prowl cars out of Rigby Court and down Benedict Canyon. As he drove, Siltz hummed an unrecognizable melody to himself.

  Siltz parked the car in the police lot and helped Fotheringay escort me into Parker Center, for Los Angeles a low and rather modern public building. We went upstairs to the police department the tourists never see, if they’re lucky, and into the offices where the homicide guys hang out.

  Fotheringay led us through the chaos into a smaller room that contained one long wooden table and a few ancient chairs. Siltz pushed the door closed behind us until the latch clicked. In one wall was a bookcase containing huge books, each with a number on its spine. Siltz put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me down into a scuffed chair.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I will have a seat.”

  Fotheringay chuckled while he pulled a huge book from the case and carefully set it down on the table in front of me. Siltz took up a position in one corner of the room, leaning across the top of a filing cabinet on one elbow, his face a bored mask.

  Fotheringay flipped open the book to the first page. It was empty. “If you see anybody who looks familiar, just point to him and say, ‘that one,’ and the parade will stop.”

  I nodded.

  Fotheringay made motions over the blank page and a line of men appeared near the top edge, each about six inches high, each with a precise and distinctive face. Each one moved a little—coughing into fists, swaying, scratching an ear—as if alive.

  “Any of these guys your man with the cauliflower nose?” Fotheringay asked.

  “No.”

  “Yeah, it’s too much to hope for to strike gold right off the bat, but I have to ask. You never know.”

  The first group of men disappeared and was replaced immediately by a second group, each just as distinctive and lifelike.

  “No,” I said again.

  We ran through the first book and three more. The faces, as distinctive as they were, all began to look the same. I did my best to look for the guy with the cauliflower nose, but by the time we were finished, I don’t think I would have recognized my own mother.

  Fotheringay closed the fourth book on the last line of men and put it away. Siltz yawned and seemed barely awake. I felt like the bottom of a birdcage. I waited. We all waited.

  A woman in uniform came in with a file that she handed to Fotheringay. She left again without looking at me or Siltz.

  Fotheringay sat down across from me and tried on an interested expression. Somehow he only succeeded in appearing more tired. “It would have helped if you’d been able to point out the guy,” he said.

  “I sympathize. Right now I must be your number one suspect.”

  Siltz was awake enough to laugh sarcastically.

  “You would be but we’ve done some checking.” Fotheringay tapped the file. “You never met Misty Morning before today.”

  “And worse yet,” I said, “I had every motive for keeping her alive, and none at all for wanting her dead.”

  “We’ll decide what’s worse,” Siltz said, making it so
und like a threat.

  “It so happens you’re right,” Fotheringay agreed as if what Siltz had said meant no more than the dust in the corners. “But don’t leave town. Even though you’re not exactly a suspect, you are the closest thing we have to a witness.”

  “It’s nice to be wanted, I guess,” I said as I stood up.

  “Siltz will drive you back to your car,” Fotheringay said, causing his assistant to scowl as if Fotheringay had asked him to make the coffee.

  “And me without an anti-rabies spell,” I said.

  Fotheringay smiled. “Play nice, boys,” he said. “Oh, and, Cronyn: if you get any bright ideas, don’t keep ’em to yourself.”

  “You too,” I said, and Fotheringay nodded as if his mind were already at home in bed.

  With all the grace you might expect, Siltz led me back through the building and down to the parking lot. Most of the way back to Misty’s place he weaved in and out of traffic, riding the siren. We did not converse. He stopped at the top of Rigby Court and waited for me to get out.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He said nothing, but nearly ran over my foot as he zoomed away.

  I walked down into Rigby Court and found my car in the little parking lot. It had been leafleted with an advertisement for Chinese health food. Any kind of food sounded pretty good about then, but I balled the paper up, threw it into my back seat, and drove home.

  That year I was living in an apartment in the La Brea Towers. I drove along Sixth Street at the edge of the tar pits, then turned left onto Hauser, which took me into the maze of the apartment complex. I maneuvered my car up streets and around traffic circles, past identical white apartment buildings, then parked as close as I could to my building, which wasn’t very.

  Leaning against the wall, I rode up to my floor in a flat-smelling elevator barely large enough for two people and a bag of groceries.

  Once I got into my apartment, I found that I was too wired to go to bed. Dinner was a handful of peanuts and a glass of water, and even that seemed like a lot of trouble to prepare.

  After my gourmet meal I sat on the couch for a long time looking out the window at the lights of the city. Far-off red and white navigation lights blinked on broomsticks in the landing pattern miles east of the airport. Much closer, the water floating on the tar in the tar pits shimmered, all that remained of the magic paraphernalia thrown into them during Prohibition. Occasionally, some magical something rose from the pits and attacked an innocent bystander. Usually the thing that triggered the magic was an accident of nature, but I’d heard rumors that the magician who had put the paraphernalia together always maintained a connection with it, and he could still control it to some extent—the law of contagion hard at work. Whatever. Apparitions always caused the local politicians to do a lot of tap-dancing and hand-waving about ecology and public safety, but a week later the incident was forgotten.

  The guy in the little burgundy Honda Augury was out there, as was the guy with the cauliflower nose. Were they sleeping, or like me, were they too hyped-up from the day’s entertainment to sleep? A locater spell would have been handy about then, but as far as I knew no such thing existed. Too bad Misty had not bent her mighty mind to such a thing when she had a chance.

  “Anyone with two hands and a voice could have done it,” the coroner’s man had said. I put my hand into a pocket and found the empty twisted packet of vermin-killing spell. All it suggested to me was that Misty had been murdered by somebody with two hands and a voice. At this hour, and in my condition, a conclusion any more clever was impossible. When I awoke on the couch the next morning, I still had the packet cupped in my hand. I shuffled to my desk and put the packet into a small drawer with some pencil stubs I hadn’t yet found the time to throw away.

  When I stumbled into the bathroom and looked into the mirror for the first time that morning, I was shocked to see a face I didn’t recognize. It took a moment to remember that Lord Slex had given me the face the day before. His reasons for messing with my appearance now seemed frivolous. Maybe they always had been. I looked pretty good, but somehow that didn’t gladden my heart.

  Sleeping on the couch in my clothes made me feel like a bum, so I took extra care showering and getting dressed. I had to tie my tie three times before I got it right.

  I took a gander into the hall outside my front door and was just in time to see morning papers popping into existence in front of a few doors, including mine.

  I made eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast, and ate them while I found out what everyone else had been doing while I’d been losing a client. Misty’s murder got a small amount of space on page one below the fold. Her photo was displayed prominently. According to the story, the crime had been phoned in by an anonymous tipster, and the police had arrived in seconds. Detective Fotheringay was quoted as taking a bold stand against evil-doers. He was assisted by Ormund Siltz. A quick solution to the case was expected.

  It being a slow news day, also on page one I read an article about Eulalie Tortuga, estranged wife of Vic Tortuga, famous best-selling novelist. There was no photo, but given what I knew about Vic Tortuga’s taste in women, she would not be ugly. Ms. Tortuga had been found wandering through Westwood with a blank expression on her face and a head full of nothing. The police had tried to take her in for her own protection, but she’d managed to elude them. Officer Hodel, the man on the beat, said she’d acted like a zombie—but she may have just been drugged, zombies not being so common. Anybody with information leading to her apprehension is asked to—etc. etc.

  After educating myself with the funnies, I folded the paper neatly and stacked the sections on the kitchen table. I washed the dishes and let them dry in the drainer while imagining what my next interview with the board at Stilthins Mort would be like. I couldn’t make it pleasant. Still, I would have to go see Lord Slex and his pals sooner or later. Not only would they want to hear my version of what had happened to Misty, but I had a few questions for them.

  While putting stuff into my pockets I found the check for 700 bucks Lord Slex had given me an age ago. It would have to go back. The hour Misty had been safe in my care barely counted.

  I was just patting my pockets to make sure I had everything I needed when the telephone rang. It could have been somebody asking if I wanted to change my long-distance service. But it wasn’t.

  “Mr. Cronyn? This is Lord Slex.” I guess he’d read the morning paper. His anger was obvious but controlled. “We’d like to see you over here at Stilthins Mort at your earliest con­venience. In the boardroom. Now would be good. I’m sure you know why.”

  “Yes, sir. I was just on my way when you called.”

  He hung up and I did the same. Neither one of us had said good-bye.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “NO WIZARD IN HIS RIGHT MIND”

  I don’t remember how I got to Stilthins Mort. I don’t even remember leaving my apartment. Driving was a blur of automatic responses. The last person to ride shotgun in my car had been Misty Morning, and her perfume, a light clean flowery scent, seemed to be riding with me still.

  When I arrived, the same bored guard let me in through the same gossamer barrier. This time he had to live without my jaunty wave. I drove up to the administration building and parked. Students milled and lounged upon the grass just as if I wasn’t about to have one of the worst hours of my life.

  I marched under the stained-glass wizard, who might have been sneering at me while he continued trying to condense a woman out of smoke. I sneered right back, then took the stairs to the third floor of the building, where I walked down a long corridor that had no classrooms to a desk in front of double doors. From behind the desk, a prim woman with white braids pinned across the top of her head watched me approach with disapproval, as if I were delivering the garbage.

  “Turner Cronyn to see the board,” I announced as if I didn’t care whether she liked it or not.

  She nodded, a motion so small I wasn’t sure she’d made it, and slipped bet
ween the double doors in such a way that I couldn’t see what was beyond. I waited for what seemed to be a long time, but still not long enough. “Come in, Mr. Cronyn.” Saying it hurt her, and she held the door open barely enough to admit a starving cat.

  I opened it a little wider and, stepping inside, found myself at one end of a long room. At the far end was a large wooden block that looked like a judge’s bench. On either side of the bench was a cauldron with smoke rising from it—sandalwood, I think. The three board members sat behind the bench, concentrating on me while I crossed the tessellated floor as if they were grading me on my walk. I think there was more stained-glass fantasy on the walls, but I wasn’t there to see the sights, so I kept my eyes on Lord Slex, who sat between Lord Trask and Lord Philpot.

  I cozied up to the bench, which I believe surprised them a little, and stood on tippy-toe to set the $700 check down in front of Lord Slex, lining up the long edge of the check exactly with the long edge of the bench. I backed off and for a few seconds we stared at each other.

  Lord Slex spoke as if he were pronouncing sentence. “Mr. Cronyn, we hired you to protect Misty Morning. Shortly after she entered your care, she was murdered by person or persons unknown. I admit that the return of your retainer shows honesty on your part, but need I point out Ms. Morning is still dead?”

  “No need at all,” I replied.

  Lord Trask dabbed at his rabbity eyes and took a deep breath. When he spoke, he spit out the words. “Tell us how it happened, Mr. Cronyn,” he said.

  “In your own words,” Lord Philpot added.

  I wanted to ask him whose words he thought I might use, but I was in enough trouble already. I told them everything: about the guy in the burgundy Augury, about the other guy with the cauliflower nose, about how I’d found Misty dead in her own laboratory. I spoke about the space puckers and about the vermin spell. I didn’t mention how the spell packet had been twisted. It didn’t seem important. I told them I’d been through the mug books downtown but hadn’t found anybody I wanted to get to know better.