by Dave Freer
“So there is nothing I can do, really. I haven’t got the money,” he said plaintively.
“You still took a cash payment.”
“But that was just an advance. I… I’ve spent it. I didn’t know. And Cander refused to pay me the other half.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t get the necklace that I was supposed to insist on. I tried, but that horrible old woman wouldn’t even consider it. It wasn’t my fault! Or the title deeds. They were fake anyway, signed by George Washington of all stupid things.” He snorted.
Yes, he wasn’t the sharpest check-stub banking’s box. I still couldn’t afford to let him go while I followed the money. And I couldn’t leave him loose, or he’d spook my next target. So I took the poor unfortunate to visit Fintan. I took him there unconscious and tied up, as it avoided little complications like him getting ideas about running away. Yes, of course it was quite safe. You think the neighbors are going to ‘phone the cops and say “I just saw a blue-faced dwarf carrying on his shoulder a man without any trousers, tied up with three belts and a puce necktie, and dump him in the boot of a rusty old Toyota?” I only do this stuff to help out the local ophthalmological and psychiatric industry. And one of the belts was golden, with rhinestones too.
Fin was mildly amused when I carted him in and dumped him on the floor, groaning. “I thought we could go through his pockets for the loot. But you seem to have detached the pockets from him.” Fintan mac Bochra still always wore a dirty white robe. Logic said it couldn’t be as old he was, but it looked it. Pockets were a fascinating new sartorial concept as far as he was concerned.
“You’d best be wary. His kind like men in dresses.”
“Aha! So that’s how the trick was done. The goddess’s power over men is near absolute, usually. Well, have you got their gold back?”
“No, but we’re a step further. But I need to keep this one incommunicado while I hunt down the next.”
“Certainly. As it happens I have an empty communicado about somewhere. He doesn’t look well though, my boyo. And he smells.”
“He had a little laxative experience earlier. The stuff you made that nearly buried the circus.”
“He’ll need re-hydrating then,” said Fin, wandering over to the workbench, pushing aside several empty bottles of Scotch and producing a large jar of transparent virulent green liquid, which had a severed head in it. The snakes on the head still writhed weakly. Possibly it wasn’t what Phil had hoped to see when he opened his eyes, because he closed them again going off in a dead faint.
We left the hydra to keep him company, in a place which had no way out except through a door that was ajar… That jar, the one with a Hydra’s head in it. Don’t ask me how it works. Non-dimensional geometry gives me a headache to understand, let alone explain.
Fin was all for visiting our Mr. Andrew P. Cander right then. I wasn’t. I like to know what I’m dealing with, and besides, getting into a bank usually took a little time and effort, or at least getting to parts and people that they didn’t want got to. Not impossible, no, but my experience of Fintan’s methods said doing it the slow hard way was sometimes less unpleasant, and always less disruptive and dangerous. That’s the downside of dangerous stuff like theoretical physics. Hurts get people and people get hurt. And sometimes non-people too, and they want to get their own back on you. So I did some fast thinking and offered Fin a drink. That usually works, and did this time. The trouble with that method of distraction, of course, is it tends to make the plans more grandiose by the time they do happen.
Still, we went to one of his current favorite watering-holes, and spent some of the money we didn’t have… And Fin decided to try a little bit of magic instead of just vaporizing walls. I wanted to know more, he told me, so he would do a summonsing spell. Only it needed twenty dollars. Amazingly, as I produced it… an acquaintance of Fin’s, a lady of shall we say negotiable virtue, appeared almost as if by magic. She made the money disappear too, which was not quite so magical or unexpected.
“I’ll charge it to expenses,” I said, knowing that I had a snowflake’s hope in hell of getting their gold, or my money out the clutches of the bank, but still. “So what do you know about Andrew P. Cander, Lulu?”
“Randy Andy the banker-wanker? He hasn’t been in for a while. He’s that hooked up on a semi-permanent basis with Lilabelle Gildenswan. Ann Jones, when she’s not working. She used to be an escort, worked out of Fat Freddy’s agency. She said she was getting tired of the game and hoping to put aside enough to retire.”
“Ah yes. Lilabelle of the improbable blond drapes and carpet. I remember her well,” said Fintan, who inevitably would. “Drink up. We’ll go and pay her a visit. Where does she live these days, Lulu?”
“You know the décor but not the address?” I said, foolishly.
“Décor isn’t quite how I describe it. More like decorum. I’ve heard of suitable decorum. The rum part I remember.”
We, for the parting with of another piece of green paper, got her physical address, and went to pay a social call. Unfortunately our quarry wasn’t there. Unfortunately, Lilabelle was, and it appeared she was heartily bored with her banker. It took a lot of effort to get Fin away, and more to get her away from Fin. I will never understand female taste, I conclude. But we had established that Cander had a wife, who wouldn’t divorce him, but was having an affair with her ‘personal trainer’—Lilabelle had spent money on ‘a private dick’— a term she found funny. There were teen-aged children and Cander was slightly more bent than a corkscrew. I hadn’t needed her to tell me the last part. I’d worked it all out for myself. I was a little surprised to find out he was one of Fat Freddy’s sleeping partners, and I do not mean in the sexual sense. It appeared his business interests involved a lot of transactions that involved cash and no taxes. A bank could be very useful for that sort of thing.
I was less than keen on going to visit Cander at his palatial home, principally because of the kids. My experience was that people would do the really stupid for their children. I prefer not to give them reason, even if Lilabelle said the two were spoiled ratbags.
Fin and I went off to see Freyja and Gersemi first. “A progress report might be a good idea. I’d hate the old woman to get impatient,” said Fintan. “She could do something rash.”
I thought that likely. She had probably caused a few.
The Battle-boar was still wary about the Harley, which was all to the good, from my point of view. My clients still had the same amount of cats and marble dust about them. Needless to say, like all clients, they wanted to know why I hadn’t sorted it out already. “I got your Mr. Phil Lattily. But he’s just a pawn. He was used because he would be immune, shall we say, to your charms. He handed over your gold to the bank.”
Freyja sniffed. “I can arouse passions in an ice-floe. Still. Any time I want to.”
“I am sure you can. Only he’s not an iceman. He’s one of those attracted to other men, so he wasn’t besotted. But his boss is not that way inclined.”
“It’s all the fault of these modern times,” said Gersemi. “I blame the Greeks myself. The Vik should have looted and burned Constantinople, while they had the chance. I don’t know why modern women have tolerated this. What’s the point in having power if you can’t execute men who ignore you?”
“I believe modern feminists find them non-threatening,” said Fintan. “Personally I’m in favor of encouraging it and bringing it out into the open. Takes a bit of competition out of circulation, improves the ratio of women needing a man, and they don’t breed. When they had to keep it secret, they did. So, if it’s in the breeding… it’ll die out.”
They both stared at him and shook their heads. “You always were a little mad, Old One,” said Freyja, eventually.
“Yes, it’s part of my charm,” said Fin, cheerfully. “Now we need to get this fellow’s boss. You can tie him up in knots. There’s more to this than just theft, I think.”
“Go and fetch him,�
�� Freyja commanded.
“We may have to get him from his bank. I got in once, I think I can do it twice,” I said grumpily. “It would be easier if I could fly, but I can’t. I’m going to have to climb walls, which I had better do in the dark. And I’m going to have to hire a gargoyle, and pigeons don’t come cheap at this time of night.”
They looked at each other again. “We could let you have the falcon-feather cloak. As a loan,” said Freyja, like I was pulling teeth.
“I’ll consider it surety on my fee,” I said. “Which I’ll have sent to you. I’m not going have you don the Bisinghamen and make me lose my wits.”
“I told you that he was brighter than he looks,” said Fintan, cheerfully. “Fetch it out, Freyja.”
I was betting I was right about how she’d planned to settle their debts, though. Or why they’d stayed rich, and I’d got poor. I mentally put another nought on that bill. I probably wasn’t going to collect it, but a PI had to dream.
Gersemi fetched Freyja’s famous feathered cloak. It didn’t look like it would fetch a lot on the open market. It would have been rejected by the average thrift shop as too old, and starting to molt. It didn’t actually shed feathers, it just looked like it would start to, any moment. Probably, if it still worked and enabled me to fly, when I was suitably high in the air. But Fintan mac Bochra looked impressed, and so I was more than I might have been.
“You have to be quite firm with it,” said Freyja. “Don’t let it get distracted by rabbits. I broke a leg with it swooping down on one.”
“How do you use it?” I asked.
“Just put it on. Then, if your will is strong enough, it will carry you where you wish to go.”
“And if your will isn’t strong enough?”
“Then it’ll carry you where it wishes to go.”
They seemed to find that idea very amusing, which, given their sense of humor, left me hoping I was strong-willed, and wondering if climbing up to the fourth floor air-conditioning vent wasn’t still a better option.
I took Fin back to his cave. Well, most of the way back to his cave. He had me drop him at a wine-bar. Honestly. A wine-bar. An upmarket wine bar. The kind haunted by ‘professional women’. And I don’t mean the oldest profession either. At least you know what goes on with that profession. Someone needs to explain to them some day that when cats get old, they stop growing, except sideways, turn into old cats and sleep on the mat in front of the fire. They don’t keep growing and become cougars, or puss-in-boots either.
“It’s Freyja and that kid of hers,” he said. “I’m a bit out of practice with that type.”
“Those two are not going to tie you in around their fingers, are they Fin?” He was a sucker for anything in skirts. And, well there was a lot of power for them to get Fin to abuse. He might let Bisons-hogg loose again, just for a start. And besides, though I’d never tell the old bastard that, I was fond of him.
He gave a shout of laughter. “They’ve tried. Not to worry, boyo. I’m proof enough against feminine wiles, when I want to be. I just don’t want to be, most of the time. Now go and research your banker, and leave me to my immoral pastimes. I think I’ll get drunk and disorderly. It may help me forget that Freyja called me ‘Old One’.”
He really is quite touchy about that. But he is old. You just don’t point it out.
The internet is a wonderful research tool, and good for finding many things you do not want too. After a while I decided I did not want to know any more about Andrew Cander or his family, who seemed to spend a lot of time in Europe, without him. There had to be more to all this than Cander. How had he known when and who to send? I did some thinking, and then did what any sensible old campaigner does, and slept. Well, some old campaigners. Others preferred Fin’s approach on account of you might not get a chance to drink and carouse tomorrow. I work on the theme that if I do drink and carouse tonight, I probably won’t live to try tomorrow. Fin says I am a pessimist. I’m planning on being a live pessimist, and so far it has worked.
A sensible pessimist would prefer his magical cloak of falcon feathers not to be at least a thousand years old, and known to be flighty, as well as helpful for flying, but it was what I had. It got me where I wanted to be, with limited swearing, which was the roof of the Apex bank, with a little bag of tools, another latex mask, with a beard, and a good-looking plastic security badge.
They must have thought the roof quite a secure place, well above the other buildings. There were air-conditioning units, and the elevator superstructure. And a locked emergency stair, which opened with a little persuasion. I didn’t go any further, but checked out the elevator electrics, found the controls — and the remote for them, and got one of the cars to come up to the top floor. Then I could climb down the shaft and could open the roof-trap, as intended for servicing. So I did some servicing. Well, more like short-circuiting, but quite useful. It took me a while, long enough to make it a short wait until the poor flunkies who always come in and open up before the workers get there, and long before their bosses do. Once they were stirring around and thus the security system was off, I put on my workman’s overalls, attached the security badge prominently to the outside of them, took my greasy bag of tools and suitably slouched downstairs.
I was right in my guesses. The smelliest muck always floats to the top, and Mr Cander had a large corner office that he wasn’t in yet. His secretary was in her outer office, painting her toenails, when I arrived all of a sudden and said I’d been sent to fix the aircon in Mister Cander’s office. She was suitably impressed by my badge and the bunch of keys I hauled out, like I knew that I was allowed to do this. She did tell me I’d better get it sorted out before the boss got in. And she was kind enough to tell me I had an hour and a half at least.
It didn’t take me that long. I clattered and cursed and whistled tunelessly while I downloaded his hard drive, and did all the nice privacy respecting things that a fellow like me does. Then I closed up and left while his secretary plucked her eyebrows. I hadn’t disturbed his golf-putter, so you might say there was no trace of my passing that he would immediately notice.
I would notice his passing, because I could hear and see what was going on in his office quite well, in my little rooftop eyrie. The quality of electronics these days makes Fintan’s magic seem a little hard and dangerous. Of course he says it is all part of the same thing.
I had a little screen set up, so I could watch and listen, and I had my photography to admire in the meanwhile, and access to the bank’s computer system, via his PC, which now had a little dongle, on the inside of the box, to let me access it wirelessly.
I had a busy morning, trying to separate the normal legal larceny from something I could nail him for. The bank had made a large profit on gold sales, just a few days back. Tens of millions… But, the paper-trail said, all the bank had actually made was a very small commission. Someone was a lot richer than they had been… and it wasn’t my clients.
I was going ask Mr. Andrew P. Cander some very hard questions about that money. Questions not asked easily in his office. They might make the paint peel off his secretary’s toes. I had a different place in mind, a nice sealed metal box. But my biggest worry, right now, was that the bird had flown. He did come in, eventually. His secretary did tell him the aircon had been fixed, and he say that he didn’t even notice it was broken, but as he appeared to be being more interested in her temperature, it wasn’t noticed. He did get into the elevator a little later, but as he took his secretary and his PA from the next room with him, I had to wait until he decided that a little lunch called.
I stopped all the elevators coming up to his floor, sent them all to the ground floor, bar the one I dropped into via the roof.
Andrew P. Cander had got into it, all alone, and unsuspecting. I’d let him push the button and had the doors close, all the time ignoring the other person in his elevator. I believe that’s modern elevator etiquette. I showed how bad mannered I was by shucking the Glock and introducing
it to him.
“Mr. Andrew P. Cander. My gun wants to have a little word with you about some missing gold.”
In the darkness of a stilled elevator, with just the dim glow of the emergency light, he looked sallow. It was an improvement. Before the power cut he’d looked like a bank manager. It’s amazing how appearances can be non-deceiving. He looked at the muzzle of the Glock, nervously. Maybe he was thinking that pressing the emergency button when I drew it had been less than clever. The power had cut as he did it. My work, earlier, had not been in vain.
He attempted to recapture his courage, and dignity, after that initial shriek. It’s because I’m not very large, I think, that people have these delusions. “I don’t see how you could have got a gun past the metal detectors into the bank. It must be plastic,” he said, reaching for it. “Ouch!”
“Next time I’ll break your fingers,” I said, as he clung to his knuckles. “It seems dumb for me to tell you how I did it. I might need to do it again. And you might live to tell someone. Maybe.”
He was used to being in control, so he still tried bluster. “You’ll never get away with this, you know. That’s why they’ve cut the power. You might as well just give it to me.”
I smiled sweetly. I could only hope it looked villainous in that light. “I will give it to you. Indeed I will… ” He stepped toward me, reaching out a hopeful hand, but cautiously. He was beginning to learn. Amazing how educative being stuck in an iron box with a little man with a gun could be.