by Brian Lumley
“Our job? Tell me something new.”
“The world, for Christ’s sake! There isn’t a bird out there, married or single, who can’t be pulled at the right time, in the right place, for the right reason, and there isn’t a bloke who isn’t trying to pull one. Sometimes I think it’s not the act itself, just that it’s a guilty act! You know? Stolen apples taste the sweetest? Well, maybe they do—until they cramp your stomach. But they do it because it’s forbidden. Some of them, anyway. And others just because it’s there.”
“Like climbing a mountain?”
“Smart bastard! I’m serious. Every timid little fink you see is a potential stud, and every sweet, innocent little thing is probably getting it six nights a week. And the married ones are the worst.”
Paynter shrugged. “That’s life, Jim. But apart from work, what’s it got to do with me?”
“Everything. Now you tell me you’re getting married, to Judy Dexter, the boss’s daughter—and that you want me to be your best man!”
Paynter’s smile slipped a little. “I’m not following you,” he said, hoping he wasn’t.
Slater finished his beer, ordered two more. “Yes you are,” he said. “You just turned sour, so I know you are. Listen, I was married! Did you know that?”
Paynter knew. Three years ago she’d gone off with the milkman or a door-to-door insurance salesman or something. He’d heard it mentioned in the office, but never when Slater was around. Jim was too big and too volatile to take chances with. Apparently it had broken him up for a long time: the fact that while he was out nooky-snooping, some jerk had been doing it with his wife. Hence the creeping alcohol dependency, the cynicism, and now this bitter anti-connubial harangue. If Jim Slater didn’t straighten up, he’d soon become a marinaded misogynist. Or, if tonight was typical, he was one already.
“You know?” Slater said again, insistently, his words beginning to slur a little. “I said I had a wife!” He used the last word like it was poison.
“There are good ones and bad ones, Jim,” Paynter answered, wishing he could change the subject. “You had a mother and a father, too, but did they split up?” He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he said it.
Slater eyed him across the table. “Actually, yes,” he said. “But good and bad? I suppose there are. At least I used to think so.” He looked away, peered into his beer, seemed to find it fascinating. At length he took a swig, said: “Tell me, what’s the most expensive thing you’ll ever buy in your life?”
“Eh?” (Maybe the subject had decided to change itself.) “A house, I suppose.”
“You suppose wrong,” said Slater. “But it’s a good try. Let me tell you: you buy a house to cage a bird. Before the bird, digs are good enough, or a grotty old bachelor flat. But when she comes along it has to be a house, for the kids. So…point made. Try again. The most expensive thing you’ll ever buy?”
Paynter’s sense of humour was rapidly evaporating. “A car?”
“A car? Hah! No imagination. But again, it’s an example of how the mind works. Why do young guys buy cars, eh? To pull the birds. And why do birds like guys with flash cars? ‘Cos they’re handy for how’s-your-father. Anyway, you’re wrong again.”
“So what is the most expensive thing I’ll ever buy?”
Slater scowled. “Your bloody marriage certificate, ding-dong!”
Paynter had to admit the wit of it, however misplaced, mordant. “Jim,” he said, “Judy and me are different. I mean, are you really worrying about us?” He smiled, sadly shaking his head, trying to convince Slater how wrong he was. “We’re…different,” he said again.
Slater couldn’t be swayed. “See, I’ve worked for Dexter for a long time,” he said. “His little girl Judy’s been around ever since she was oh, fifteen? You think you’re the only young, good-looking filth-ferret in the business?”
Paynter was still smiling, but it was frozen on his face now, totally humourless. “I think you’ve said enough, Jim,” he said.
“Eh?” It was the other’s turn to display his surprise. “You think I’ve said—? Well if that’s what you think, then I haven’t said nearly enough!”
“Enough for me, anyway,” said Paynter. He stood up, almost sent their beers flying, headed for the door. Snatching his overcoat from a peg, he knew Slater was right behind him. The bartender called good night after them, but neither one answered him. And then they stood outside on the pavement like strangers, buttoning their coats, silent in the dark and the drizzle. Slater radiated misery, Paynter anger, and each was physically aware of the other’s aura.
After a while Paynter said, “Forget it.” He looked this way and that, uncomfortably.
“Yeah, yeah,” Slater mumbled. As close as he would get to an apology. “Hey, my car’s round the corner. I’ll drop you off.”
“No, it’s…are you sure?”
“Sure. You can’t walk in this. It’s only fit for fish. Soaks through everything—even a soak like me!” Another apology.
Paynter softened. “You’ll be OK to drive?”
Slater managed a smile, however wry. “When I’ve had a few is the only time I am safe to drive!” They ran through layers of mist and rain to find his car. When they pulled up in front of Paynter’s place fifteen minutes later, and as the younger man was getting out of the car, Slater said: “Andrew, if I turn this best man thing down, you won’t think too badly of me?”
“I guess not. No one knows I was going to ask you, anyway, so no one can get upset.”
“It’s just that—”
“It’s OK, Jim. I know…”
• • •
The next morning Paynter “overheard” a conversation where Slater and Dexter talked in the latter’s office. In fact the entire office overheard it, for Dexter was angry and Slater surly. “Jim,” Dexter’s voice was hot, exasperated, “I just don’t know what gets into you. You called this woman…names!”
“She deserved every one of them,” Slater answered, his voice rumbling as always.
“What? But that wasn’t for you to decide, Jim. We’re lucky that this one will probably end up settled out of court, because if it went through a court we’d be the losers. Oh, not the case—our reputation. Now look, Jim, it’s taken me too many years to build this thing up to have some woman-hating gumshoe tear it down.”
“I called the girl a slut,” Slater’s voice was a little louder now, “and she is. A young slut eating up boyfriends like the world was running out of men. Which wouldn’t be quite so bad if she weren’t already married—to a rich idiot! I watched her for a fortnight and even I didn’t believe it! I was afraid I might catch something just following her!”
“But you’re not the judge and jury!” Dexter’s voice was louder, too. “And you’re far too experienced a detective to just let them catch you watching them. I say you let yourself be seen! It was a deliberate provocation. That man lost two teeth! If he wasn’t so badly compromised you’d be explaining all of this to a judge right now—and this agency would be hiding under whatever cover it could find!”
“The guy went for me!” Slater pretended astonishment, but Paynter knew from his voice that it was an act. “Was I supposed to just stand there and let him take me to pieces?”
“You nearly hospitalised him! Look, I’ve had it with you, Jim. No more arguing on this one—or the last one—or the one before that. Get this through your skull: these people aren’t Big Criminals, they’re just people who cheat on their husbands or wives.”
“Right. They fuck fraudulently.” Slater wasn’t cowed.
“Whatever they do, they’re our bread and butter. If you want to beat them up and toss them in a dungeon for their sins, then maybe you should emigrate to South Africa, get yourself fixed up with a sjambok and…and what the hell! Something like that, anyway. But you certainly don’t belong here!”
“I’m sacked?” Slater’s voice was calmer now, almost resigned.
And after a pause: “No,” said Dexter, sourly. “Not sacked, just warn
ed. And Jim, this time it’s the last warning.”
“Is that it? Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
People scattered in the main office, began filing things away where they didn’t need filing, opening envelopes, picking their fingernails. Someone started whistling tunelessly, and Paynter went back to checking a perfectly good report. Dexter’s door opened and Slater stood there looking out, his head cocked on one side. He saw the exaggerated bustle and smiled humourlessly. Over his shoulder came Dexter’s voice, still angry: “Look in your pigeonhole, Jim. It’s for next weekend. Worth big money. It might keep you off the bottle and get you out of my hair for a while all in one go!” Dexter had intended the entire office to hear every word, and Slater knew it.
He slammed the door behind him…
Two hours later when Paynter left the office, Slater was waiting for him. “A quick one?”
“Drink or word?”
“Both, now that you mention it.”
They went to their local, ordered beers. Paynter had things to do; without his saying anything, the half-pint he ordered underlined the fact that he wasn’t staying.
“What, have I got leprosy or something?” Jim Slater scowled.
“It’s the weekend,” Paynter reminded him. “What’s left of it. Me, I want to enjoy it. I thought you wanted to talk? You didn’t say anything about a booze-up.”
Slater took a long Manilla envelope out of his pocket, slapped it down on the bar. “What do you make of this?”
Paynter took up the envelope, shook out a letter, a couple of photographs, several cuttings from foreign newspapers and typed translations of the same. “The job Dexter gave you? For next weekend?”
Slater was impatient. “Yes, but what do you think about it?”
Paynter sighed. “You expect me to read all of this?”
“Hey, let’s not pull any punches here!” Slater put on a hurt look. “I mean, wow! Here’s this total stranger asking for a whole ten minutes of your time!”
Paynter nodded, and quietly, resignedly said, “OK.” And he started to read the contents of the envelope. At first it didn’t make much sense, but then it began to sink in. “Well,” he eventually commented, “at least it’s not a sneak-and-peek job!”
“It’s not any sort of job that l can see!” Slater snorted. “It’s a kid’s job, a get-paid-for-nothing job, something you’d give to a keen, bright-eyed, oh-gee-this-is-my-first-assignment-snot!”
“Money for old rope,” Paynter shrugged. “And you’re on twenty five per cent of the take. And the cheque is a big one! So what are you making all the fuss about? Hey, if you don’t want this, give it to me!”
Slater scowled but made no immediate reply. After a little while he said, “Did you get the gist of it?”
Paynter was reading through it again. “Eh?” he briefly looked up, continued his reading. “Yes, I think so. A nutter, obviously. Phew! Somebody is a real fruitcake!”
Slater nodded. “Quite apart from the fact that it’s what Dexter said it was—namely, a way of getting me the hell out of it for a while—it’s weird, too. I mean, it isn’t that I don’t know how to go about it, but while I’m doing it I’ll feel about as balmy as the old girl who’s paying for it!”
Paynter had to agree that it was weird, but the cheque that accompanied it was very real. He frowned. “I’m trying to work it out.”
“Here.” Slater slid him a sheet of A-4. “This is how I broke it down.” Paynter peered at the beer-stained, minutely scrawled page:
(1) Role-Playing Game Conventions: Milan, Berne, Rheims.
(2) Signora Minatelli’s son, Antonio, eighteen years old, attends a weekend convention in Milano (Milan, Italy) and comes home with some story that the German Guest of Honour, Hans Guttmeier, disappeared from his room on the Saturday evening (17 or 18 July). Antonio is disgusted; Guttmeier had a big game the next day against an Italian challenge team for his world title. The Italian fans reckon he chickened out and did a moonlight flit back to Germany.
(3) Antonio, who can’t get enough of this gaming stuff, attends the Berne (Switzerland) convention two weeks later. Signora Minatelli expects him home late Sunday night or in the early hours of Monday. But he doesn’t show. Finally she telephones the hotel in Berne; they tell her his bill is unpaid and his car is still in the hotel car park—but no sign of Antonio.
(4) Meanwhile, news has broken that Hans Guttmeier didn’t make it back home to Frankfurt. And now it becomes clear that when he disappeared from the hotel in Milan he left all his gear in his room—including his Deutsche Marks and return rail ticket! Spurred on by interested parties, (top of the list being S. Minatelli) German, Italian and Swiss police get together on the job but there doesn’t appear to be any connection. So a couple of young blokes disappear in foreign parts—so what? It happens all the time. Tourists, especially in France and Italy, go missing regular as clockwork. Routine police work, that’s all; and the investigations grind slowly on…
(5) S. Minatelli—a real Italian Momma who loves her son dearly—gets in touch with the Surete about an upcoming French convention in Rheims, all set for the end of the third week in August. She has it all figured out: a wandering lunatic is doing the rounds of the gaming conventions, killing off attendees. Nice theory, but there are big holes in it. Like, no bodies? Anyway, the Surete thank her for the tip and assure her they’ll do what they can—which, as it turns out, amounts to nothing. No one goes missing from the convention in Rheims. But…S. Minatelli isn’t satisfied, and still her son hasn’t shown up. She gets a list of attendees at the French con., tracks them down, discovers that several were hippy-types of no fixed abode. So one or more of them could have gone missing after all…
(6) By now, though, S. Minatelli has come up with a second theory: her son has perhaps fallen in love with a young lady of similar bent (“bent” seeming very appropriate) with whom he is now doing the round of the cons. Apparently he’d mentioned in passing this girl he met at the Milan bash. Having remembered this much, Tony’s mother simply ignores the fact that his name isn’t on the Rheims list, and the coincidence of Hans Guttmeier’s disappearance. In short, she’s now clutching at straws.
(7) She contacts Interpol, the CID, Scotland Yard—you name it—and passes on all information, cuttings connected with the disappearances, photographs of her son, etc., etc. Will someone please look for him at the con coming up in London in mid-September? Which is to say, next weekend. We can only imagine what Interpol, CID, Scotland Yard think of all this; but…they say OK, they’ll have someone drop in at regular intervals over the weekend and case the crowd for Antonio Minatelli.
(8) She still isn’t satisfied: she contacts a PI—Dexter, of course—and he gives the job to me…
• • •
“Questions,” said Paynter, returning the notes to Slater. “What is a role-playing game?”
“The players act out roles under the guidance of an umpire. Where there are decisions to be made or alternate routes which may be taken a dice-throw decides what’s what. Or maybe it’s left to the umpire, the ‘gamesmaster’, to decide. See, there are lots of alternatives. Obviously, experience counts. You have to know the theory of the game: the books the game is based on, the skills you require to win, the scenario.” Slater studied Paynter’s blank expression. “Are you getting any of this?”
Paynter nodded. “I think so. It’s something like war-gaming, right?”
“Sure. In Star Trek scenarios it usually is war-gaming—but set in space. But I can’t be too dogmatic about it because I’m a little out of my depth myself.”
Paynter thought about it for a moment. “Of course, remove the background picture and you’re left with simple missing persons cases—or a missing persons case, if we’re just talking about your job: Antonio Minatelli.”
“You can’t ignore the background,” said Slater. “You know that. The background is the case.” He grinned. “You know, I’d passed this place downtown a thousand times an
d thought I’d never noticed it until I got this brief. Then I at once remembered it. Powers of observation! After I left the office this morning I went down to this specialist dealer and picked up some stuff.”
He produced a much larger envelope from his briefcase, tipped out its contents. “These kids publish their own magazines, worship their own idols, live in their own weird worlds—from what I can see. Look at these titles, will you? Vaults and Vampires, and…Cerebellum? And what about Judge Druid, and all this other stuff? Everything from the Dark Ages to James Bond! This one,” he indicated a slim pamphlet with a horror comics cover, “is an amateur magazine: a ‘fanzine’. But get the title, will you? They go for strange, strange titles!”
“Dugong?”
Slater shrugged. “A sea beast. Like an overstuffed walrus. Old-time sailors thought they were mermaids. But a sea creature, anyway. You see, Dugong’s for the aficionados of, er, this guy.” He slapped down a garish magazine on the top of the bar. “See, all the things that live in the sea worship the Great Sea God, pictured there.”
Paynter looked at the magazine’s cover. A sentient, leprous squid-thing seemed to look back at him, leering out from under an almost unpronounceable title. “The Call of—?”
They both squinted at the magazine, pulled faces.
“Er, Cuth-lu?” Paynter ventured again.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Slater shrugged. “Hell, the guy in the shop whistled it at me!”
“Eh?”
Slater nodded. “Future shock,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe I’m getting too old to keep up anymore. But when I bought this stuff, the guy checked the titles, got to this one and said: ‘Oh, yeah, The Call of Tootle-tootle?’ I’m not kidding! Here’s another: The Shoggoth Pit! Dedicated to this same Tootle-tootle. Do you believe this stuff? Hey, have I lost you?”
“Only slightly,” said Paynter, sarcasm dripping.
“Snap!” said Slater. “But I’ll keep at it. At least I’ll earn my twenty-five percent.”
Paynter laughed. “You’re a strange one, Jim. Fifteen minutes ago you were complaining about this job. But to tell the truth, I actually think you’re looking forward to it!”