by Mel Gilden
“Or,” I went on, “we could just figure out what happened to Eulalie Tortuga the old-fashioned way—you know, using leg work and asking questions and being accosted by strangers in coffee shops.”
Astraea smiled shyly. “I think the old-fashioned way would be best.”
I sighed and shook my head.
She put her hand on my arm. “You might be surprised by the things the gods don’t know,” she said evenly.
“I might,” I remarked, inviting her to tell me.
She said nothing. She’d even stopped playing with her muffin and only stared at me as impassively as a statue. I would have given a lot to know what thoughts were going through her mind at that moment—godlike thoughts or merely crazy ones?
I blinked before she did. “All right,” I said. “We won’t talk about what the gods know. Is it all right if we talk about what I know?”
Theoretically, I was supposed to keep one case separate from another. Anything that a client told me was supposed to be privileged information. Of course, strictly speaking, I didn’t have a client in the Misty Morning murder case, so maybe I could stop agonizing over gumshoe ethics.
“Of course. Tell me about Misty Morning.”
“How did…?” I began and interrupted myself. “Oh, sure. King and I mentioned her.”
“That’s right.”
After a moment I began again. “Misty Morning was a talented graduate student at Stilthins Mort who was murdered yesterday afternoon. In her laboratory were these sort of space puckers. A pencil almost tore my arm off going into one; it should suck in air but it doesn’t. It’s possible that things that go in never come back out, but that’s more a guess than a theory. The big question is, would the soul and the body stay separate if somebody threw a soul down this kind of transdimensional laundry chute?”
“It might if it was, as you describe it, a one-way chute. Do you believe it is possible that because of these ‘puckers’ the crime against Misty and the crime against Eulalie are connected?”
“It’s possible.” I scratched the back of my head. “I don’t even know if the murderer noticed them. Certainly, the victim did not become a zombie. She was dead. Therefore, except for the long shot that the person who took Eulalie’s soul had access to Misty’s laboratory or access to the thing that made the puckers in Misty’s laboratory or that the puckers are one-way, there isn’t much of a connection.”
“As Justice I am interested in the murder as well as in the stealing of Eulalie Tortuga’s soul. You have suspects for Misty Morning’s murder?”
“I have two so far, a guy wearing a Brent Martin spell and a little guy with a cauliflower nose. I don’t think Herb Hillyer can be accused of anything more serious than puppy love.”
“Who is Herb Hillyer?”
“Misty’s assistant.”
“People have killed for love before.”
“Hillyer isn’t the type.” Even as I said it I thought I might be wrong.
“Is it possible the man wearing the Brent Martin spell and the little man with the cauliflower nose are the same man?” Astraea asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “The little guy had to arrive at Misty’s house before Herb Hillyer or I did, or without Hillyer seeing him, anyway. That seems impossible given the traffic and the time of day, unless he could do some pretty sophisticated magic or use one of Misty’s puckers.”
“You can travel in these puckers?”
I shrugged. “Anyway, he could not have both come and gone if the puckers go only one way—which is still open to question. But okay, let’s leave the puckers out of it for a moment. There was no sign of forced entry. Which means that somebody she knew could have killed her—almost everybody she knew had a key to her apartment.”
“Did the murderer go in and out the back way?”
“There is no back way. I checked.”
Astraea nodded.
“Meanwhile,” I said, “we’re stuck with the little guy and the guy in the Brent Martin spell. If the little guy could magically get into her apartment, he could probably magically get out. If he could magically get out, he had no need to masquerade as Brent Martin.”
Astraea absorbed that while I continued.
“I found the little guy with the cauliflower nose in the bushes outside her apartment. He didn’t kill her after I found him, and it is unlikely that he would have waited around if he’d killed her before. No, I think our main suspect is the guy in the Brent Martin spell.”
“You said Misty lived in an apartment. Could Brent Martin have come out of some other apartment in the building?”
“It’s possible. In which case he is not a suspect either.”
“Which would leave us with Herb Hillyer,” she pointed out agreeably.
“So far,” I said. “And we still have all those other people with keys.”
We sipped coffee and ate muffins for a while. I could have driven her home and investigated Eulalie Tortuga myself, or even driven her home and given back the money. But she was pleasant to talk to, and her Justice superpowers had already come in handy once. Plus the fact that giving back money is a bad habit to get into. I seemed to have acquired a partner.
“Are you really Justice?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, leaving me just where I’d been before I asked the question.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We have to be at Finks in forty-five minutes.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE RACK OF TIME
Taking the freeway across town was almost worthwhile, but not quite, so I drove east on Washington Boulevard, the traffic thickening all the time. It got worse as I drove north. Astraea and I didn’t talk, but she seemed to enjoy the ride.
At Melrose I turned past a sort of shed into the parking lot behind it. The lot was much bigger than the shed but it was full of vehicles, as it always was. I parked next to a streamlined model that seemed to be made of bronze and held together with thousands of rivets. It looked like a Victorian clothes dryer but was probably a two-man submarine. Amazing what people will take on the road.
When Astraea and I got out of the car, I was struck by the heavenly smell of grease and Fink’s chili, the secret ingredient of which was probably more grease.
Astraea attracted the usual attention as we walked to the front of the shed, where the word FINK’S was painted on a billboard in big red letters. No explanation was offered, no explanation was needed. Up here the odors rising with the steam inside the shed were damned near strong enough to build on. The line was relatively short, for Fink’s, and we stood in it.
“What are we doing here?” Astraea asked. “I am full of coffee and muffins.”
I waved away her objection. “Think of what you had at Jack’s Magic Bean as dessert,” I explained. “This is an entirely different eating experience—heartburn city. You can order anything you want as long as you get chili on it. The rumor is that Orson Welles used to visit this place in his limo, his driver would order six chili dogs, and then they would tool around the city while Orson scarfed up the dogs in the back seat.” I shrugged. “Cheaper than cocaine, I guess.”
“It seems to be a popular place,” Astraea admitted.
“There’s always a line, even in the middle of the night. Gangs have declared it neutral territory. Nobody wants to be denied their fix.”
When I got to the front of the line, I leaned on the counter and spoke to the counter man, ordering two chili dogs and two Mitz root beers. Mitz comes in a variety of flavors, and I believe that Fink’s is the only place outside of Israel where you can get any of them. I paid for the food, gave Astraea the two bottles of Mitz, and carried the paper boats full of stomach corroder into a little bricked courtyard in back of the place, where there were a few picnic tables under umbrellas.
I bit into my dog immediately, and with a little encouragement Astraea did the same. She smiled and nodded as she chewed, just as anyone else might. I have never seen a woman look so good with a drip of chili on her chin
.
I was thinking about seconds and trying not to burp when Nosmo King showed up carrying a Ralphs shopping bag in one hand and a chili dog in the other. Nobody got out of here without gas.
We waited while King ate his dog and drank his Mitz cola. People came and went. The smell of grease and chili was constant. In a disgusting display, King licked the remaining chili out of his paper boat, then swallowed the last of his Mitz. He used an untidy wad of napkins to wipe his face and hands. “Food of the gods,” he remarked.
Astraea smiled. “Soon, perhaps,” she said.
“Huh?”
“If your hands are clean, Nosmo, let’s see it,” I said.
He rubbed his hands together and thrust one of them into the bag. He pulled out a flat book with a black and white marbled cover. A brown stain that might have been coffee spread from the spine. The corners were worn and rounded, as if the book had been used a lot, and not carefully. He held it out as if offering his business card and folded his arms.
I opened the cover, allowing the light wind to riffle the pages like a magician about to do a card trick, and saw that Misty had wasted no time. The book began at the top of the first page with formulae and small paragraphs of words, all in tiny neat cursive writing.
I couldn’t make out any of it. I had expected that I would not understand the formulae or her notes. But I couldn’t even understand individual letters or symbols. I flipped through the rest of the book. A few pages at the end were empty, but the rest of it was the same kind of gibberish as the first page. I passed the book to Astraea. She studied it for less time than I had and put it down in a clean spot on the table.
“I’m generally pretty good with English,” I said. “What’s the gag?”
King leaned toward me on his arms and looked from side to side as if he were about to impart secret information. “I can’t read it, and as far as I know Dr. Hamish can’t read it either. But that doesn’t change anything. I held up my end of the bargain. If you discover any information that might interest Dr. Hamish, it has to go through me.”
I nodded while I thought about the book. I knew that wizards sometimes kept track of their experiments in code. If Misty was very clever, and she obviously was, maybe no one would ever know what the book said.
“All right,” I said as I reached for the book and held it. “Anything I have for Dr. Hamish goes through you.” Which was not exactly what he had proposed, but he didn’t seem to notice. He folded up the shopping bag, saluted me with a single sharp nod, leered at Astraea, and strode away as if his pants were on fire.
“Can you read it?” I asked Astraea.
“No. Is it important?”
“It might be. Of course, if I can’t figure out what it says, we’ll never know. Do you want another dog?”
“No, thank you,” she said and lifted one hand to stifle a small cute burp. “Perhaps some other time.”
“Not the food of the gods?”
“Not exactly.”
We walked back to my car, where I threw Misty’s log book into the trunk. I drove us over to Crescent Heights, then north past small neat houses toward the Hollywood Hills. We crossed a street that led into a private community called Mount Olympus.
“Your people live in there?” I asked.
“Some,” Astraea said, and refused to say more on the subject.
Crescent Heights became Laurel Canyon as we climbed. Soon we were swerving past houses and stores that would have looked more comfortable in a bucolic mountain village. The road straightened out as we dipped into the San Fernando Valley. We crossed Ventura and the traffic thinned again.
My parents still lived in the house where I grew up, a boxy and unpretentious affair with an attached garage at the front and all covered with a not very interesting shade of brown stucco. It was not exactly around the corner from Words, etc., but even so, getting to the bookstore wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes.
I parked, and we strolled up the cement walk to the front door.
“Nice geraniums,” Astraea said.
“Don’t forget to tell my dad,” I said. “They’re his pride and joy.”
I was a little surprised that I had to knock on the door. Mom is usually right on top of things socially.
“Yes?” she said through the door.
“Don’t be cute, Mom. It’s me, Turner,” I hesitated, “and friend.” Astraea shined her smile on me. Then it occurred to me that my parents hadn’t seen me since Lord Slex had changed my appearance. Mom probably thought I was selling brushes, at the very least. “How are Mortimer and James T?” I asked.
Behind the door all was silence. I could imagine the quick whispered conversation between Mom and Dad.
Mom opened the door a little and studied us. “Hurry,” she said after a moment. “Don’t let the cats out.”
We slipped into the house as if we were anarchists arriving at a cell meeting. Inside, the house was nothing special either, except that I’d spent the first eighteen years of my life there and knew every board in the hardwood floor by name. Mom was a short woman, long past middle age, with a nimbus of white hair that looked as if it had been styled by the same person who did hair for George Washington.
Dad stood nearby, probably to make sure I didn’t cold-cock Mom and head for the family silver. He was taller than Mom, and a little overweight. He had the profile of a cartoon bear. “Come into the light,” he said. “I want to have a look at you.”
With his hand gripping my arm, he escorted me along the narrow entryway and into the living room. Mortimer, the gray-and-white cat, was sleeping on the living room table. James T, who was orange with a white target on each side, was sitting in the kitchen doorway watching us solemnly.
“I’m sure you have a good reason for not looking like yourself,” Dad said. “Let’s have it.” He sounded friendly, but he hadn’t loosened the grip on my arm.
“One of my old instructors at Stilthins Mort put a spell on me.”
“Why would he do that?” Mom asked, looking worried.
“It was part of a job,” I said. “I’ll change back when I get the chance, I guess. Maybe not. I’m getting used to looking like this.”
Mom picked up a framed photo and showed it to Astraea. “Such a handsome boy,” Mom said. “He doesn’t need spells.”
Astraea took the photo. While she studied it, Dad noticed Astraea for the first time. His eyes got wide, and they shifted to Mom and back to Astraea. I knew Astraea’s virtue was safe, but that didn’t prevent Dad from feeling guilty about what was probably the first thought that came into his head. As usual, Astraea seemed not to notice. I was increasingly aware that the chances of her embarrassing me in public were remote.
“Who is this?” Dad asked.
“Astraea Scales,” I said. “We’re working on a case together.”
Dad nodded.
“Very handsome,” Astraea said and handed back the photo.
“The wizard just firmed up my chin a little,” I said.
Dad shook his head. “At least you had a haircut lately,” he said. He was still holding my arm. I’d have to convince him to let go before it went numb.
“I can show you where the secret hiding place is,” I said. There were removable floor boards in the corner of a back bedroom. Under them Dad kept a strongbox full of important papers and some cash. Theoretically nobody but my parents and I should even know of its existence.
“What did I promise to get you if you learned to tie your shoes?” Mom asked.
“Cowboy boots,” I said. “But I never got them.”
“That’s him,” Mom said. “He never could let that go,” she explained to Astraea.
Dad released my arm and sat down heavily in an overstuffed chair.
“Please sit down,” Mom said. “I’ll get some fruit.”
I knew protesting would do no good. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Beautiful geraniums,” Astraea said.
Dad beamed.
Astraea and I settled a
t opposite ends of the couch while Mom put a bowl of grapes in front of us on the coffee table and sat down in a chair she pulled away from the living room table. Idly she scratched Mortimer behind the ears. He turned his head and leaned into her hand. She began a story about the quality of the grapes and the good deal she had made purchasing them.
I let her continue while Astraea and I munched on fruit. “You’re a demon shopper, all right,” I said at last. “But as good as the grapes are, they’re not why I’m here. We need to talk about Vic Tortuga.”
“I’ll get the book,” Mom said, and rushed from the room.
“What do you have so far?” Dad asked.
“Not much,” I said. “We suspect that somebody stole Eulalie Tortuga’s soul, making her a zombie. We have a suspicion about who did it and how, but not why.”
“Zombies aren’t so common. What makes you think that’s Eulalie Tortuga’s problem?”
“Actually, Astraea suggested it,” I said.
Dad leaned forward and plucked one grape from a bunch. “And what is Astraea’s interest in all this?” he asked, being careful not to look at her.
Maybe Astraea would embarrass me after all. “I’ve taken her on as an assistant,” I said before she could launch into her story about being Justice.
“You got good taste in assistants,” Dad said. “And that might make things easier for you.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Tortuga fancies himself quite a man with the ladies,” Dad said. “You’ll have more luck getting him to pay attention if Astraea is with you.”
I nodded. Dad didn’t need to know I was going to take her with me anyway.
Mom came back into the living room brandishing Dad’s copy of The Rack of Time and handed it to me. I looked on the back flap where, as I’d hoped, I found a photograph of Vic Tortuga. He wore big dark-framed glasses on a square handsome face. A contrived curl of hair fell across his forehead, and he’d forgotten to button the top three buttons of his shirt. One open hand seemed to be attempting to grab a flying bird out of the air, but he probably was just making a point. I handed the book to Astraea. She studied the picture for a moment and then closed the book.