Got Luck

by Michael Darling

  There was a feedback thrum of sensation that filled me at the same time my power left me. My body was lost for a moment within a sense of wholeness and warmth.

  “Mmm,” I heard Erin say.

  “Whoo,” I said.

  Erin’s bruise was gone.

  I pulled the medallion away, and she touched her shoulder with her fingertips. “Nicely done,” she said. “You could do very well as a healer.”

  “I had a good teacher,” I replied. “I felt, I don’t know . . . fulfilled somehow.”

  “That’s good. You’re supposed to feel that way.”

  She pulled her dress back up to cover her shoulder. Deep sigh.

  “So this is how you use magic directly.”

  “Power, focus, trigger,” I said.

  “Good. You get an ‘A’ for the class. We can talk later about making a focus that will best suit your purposes. For now, we should talk about enchantment. I have something for you.” From her purse she produced a silver dollar.

  “Looks like a silver dollar,” I said.

  Erin’s smile and flashing eyes tipped me off. She was quite proud of something. She pressed the face of the coin and it pivoted to reveal a secret compartment. Inside rested a silver sigil. “For an enchantment to work, the focus represents the purpose it serves. That’s why I could tell what the tattoo you copied was used for. Because of the design. But also how it felt.”

  “So what’s this one for?”

  “You’ve gotten pretty beat up the last couple of days. So more than anything, you need a shield. That’s a protection from physical attack. There are protections against magical attacks as well. Those are called wards. Considering your recent history though, a shield is what you need.”

  “Wow. That’s very thoughtful. Never got a shield from a woman before.”

  Erin’s hair had fallen off her ear with her animated teaching. She curled it back again.

  “It’s not much different from the last spell. You just put the spell on the focus instead of through it. Magic has its own set of rules. Some of it resembles physics. Other stuff makes no real-world sense at all until you understand magic better. For an enchantment, the power remains ready until it is used. It never dissipates. There is no entropy so it never grows weaker, unless the object is damaged or destroyed before you use it.”

  She handed the silver dollar to me. The sigil inside it was a stylized four-leaf clover. “For Luck,” she said.

  I laughed, “That’s very nice. Thank you.”

  “Shame on you for thanking me—but you will next time you’re attacked. Remember, for a shield, the focus represents you, but you have to have it with you. You can also create a shield for another person or even a place. The simplest way to enchant it is to hold it in your hand and look at it.”

  She tipped the sigil out of its compartment, and I held it in my hand. It was thin but still heavier than it looked.

  “Now put power into it like you did before.”

  This time the power flowed instantly. The blue glow surrounded the silver, bathing it in light.

  “You can put as much power into as it will accept.” Erin put her hands underneath mine as if she were measuring my progress. After a minute or so I felt the flow hit a dead end. “Good,” she said. “Now, the word for shield is ‘sciath.’”

  “Sciath,” I said. The blue light snapped into the sigil in an instant, and I felt the air around the sigil being displaced like a popping balloon. Strangely, the sigil was lighter now than it had been before.

  Erin put the sigil inside the silver dollar and snapped it closed. “Here you are,” she said. “Just keep it in your pocket and it will protect you until its energy is used up.”

  “How will I know if it works?”

  “You won’t die next time someone fires a bullet in your direction,” she said. “If you want to test it, get a gun. I have no problem shooting you.” There were those flashing green eyes again.

  “That won’t be necessary,” I replied. “Appreciate the offer.”

  “Good. So, I’m going to go home. In about five minutes you’re going to be asleep. Your power will demand recharging. Thanks for the nice dinner.”

  “You’re going home?”

  Erin found her heels and her purse, and I followed her to the front door, practically begging, “But, but, but . . .”

  She turned when she reached the door.

  Some part of my brain switched on and I found myself saying, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  “What?” she said.

  “My client, Milly Mallondyke, tried to kiss me. Nothing happened. I told her I was married.”

  Erin’s face was unreadable. She looked back and forth from one eye to the other, looking for something. I let her look.

  She took a breath. Then another. “I’m trying hard to find a reason not to like you,” she said. “You are making it difficult, Mr. Luck.”

  That was good, I think.

  She opened the door and moved under the portico toward her car. Halfway there, she turned and raised her forefinger to ask one last question. “If I hadn’t been there, would you really have chosen that girl?”

  I replied without hesitation. “No. I didn’t know what a helpmeet was, but it sounded like it would entail spending time with someone. I’d have picked the girl that was the most like you.”

  She paused for a heartbeat, then spun around so quickly her hair flowed like liquid around her head. She took two steps and spun back, and her hair settled over one shoulder. “Good answer. Okay. Bye.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Connection

  Erin was right. Exhaustion settled over me within a minute of her leaving, and I barely made it into bed before falling unconscious. No dreams. No half-awake rolling over in the middle of the night. Boom. Sleep. Morning. Just that fast.

  I felt great.

  It was too early to go down to the station and I needed a run. I found myself doing laps around a place called Merrie Christmas Park. I’d been told the park was named after a little girl who had passed away and her parents had dedicated the spot to her memory. That reminded me of Mr. Mayer’s daughter for a moment, and I distracted myself by drinking in the scenery. There wasn’t a single evergreen tree in sight, but there were lots of banyan trees for shade and walkways to jog down. I had my silver dollar in my pocket. I was almost hoping someone would take a shot at me. I was curious to see what would happen. No snipers though. Not even a drive-by. Probably for the best.

  After a couple more miles, my heart rate had been duly accelerated and my muscles were loose. I made my way back home and showered and changed into some comfortable slacks and an ecru shirt.

  In the kitchen, Max had prepared bacon and eggs and hash browns—just on the right side of crispy—and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Exactly what I was craving.

  I ate modestly and jumped in the car.

  The soundtrack for the day started out with some Rolling Stones. I drove to the sounds of Mick Jagger and friends delivering some emotional rescue. Perfect.

  * * *

  Charles Mayer had not slept well. He might not have slept at all. He sat in the same clothes in the same chair in the same interview room, looking like a teddy bear that had fallen out of a car on the I-95 and then got run over for an hour or two. His eyes were so dark he looked like he’d been in a bar fight, and his hair on the left side was doing a fine impression of a cockatoo’s crest. I was curious to see if he was still carrying a Stain or if it had disappeared along with the temporary tattoo. The black ribbons still curled around him with a hateful darkness. Interesting. His hands weren’t cuffed today and I was glad to see him nursing a cup of coffee.

  “Mr. Mayer, do you remember me?”

  “Oh. I am so sorry, sir. So unbelievably sorry.” He blurted it out, the words tumbling over each other
in a rush.

  He remembered all right.

  “I got no idea what happened to me.”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Mayer. You weren’t yourself.”

  “I was not,” he agreed.

  “The only explanation I can come up with is that you were drugged,” I said. Of course, that wasn’t the explanation, but it was the only thing I could think of that could be accepted by poor Mr. Mayer—and local law enforcement. “Did the police here tell you anything?”

  Charles nodded more energetically than I thought possible for a man in his state.

  “They said there was some kind of tattoo on the back of my neck. When they washed it off, I felt better.”

  “There is a certain class of drugs that can enter the nervous system through the skin,” I said. “Some of them are helpful, like when you put a patch on your arm to help you stop smoking.”

  “Okay, okay. That makes sense.”

  “Other drugs can be harmful. Yesterday, you were acting like you were on PCP, although it could have been something else. If it’s a new drug, it may not be easy to detect. The question is, how and when did you get that tattoo?”

  Charles shook his head. “I don’t go into those places. I’ve never been in a tattoo parlor.” He said it “pah-lah” and I found his Bostonian accent charming today.

  “It could have been somewhere else. Gymnasium? Swimming pool? Spa?”

  Charles snapped his fingers. “That coulda been it,” he said. “I got a free massage at this company I was consulting for. We got some coupons for free massages from our client.”

  “Did the masseuse come to your location or was it at a massage parlor?” I was desperately hoping he’d say “pah-lah” again.

  “We all went down to this place in Hollywood.”

  Darn it. No “pah-lah.”

  “I had the flyer with the stuff from my truck,” he said. He was excited he was helping. I was excited he was helping. I felt a rise of adrenalin begin to push into my system.

  We opened the file folder that had again been left on the table. I watched as Charles flipped past the “photographs” without a blink or a twitch. He found the piece of paper he was looking for. The Starlight Spa in Hollywood. I tried to maintain a calm demeanor.

  “That’s very good, Mr. Mayer,” I said. “May I take this?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why would I want to keep it?”

  “Thank you. And do you mind my asking who your client is? The one that gave you the coupons?”

  “Yeah, sure. Mallondyke South African Mercantile.”

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a solid freakin’ lead.

  I was pumped enough that I almost forgot my other question.

  “Do you know where you got the rifle that was found in your truck, Mr. Mayer? Or who gave you the ammunition?”

  He shook his head. “No idea. I know I had the rifle and I used it, but I don’t have any idea where that rifle came from or how I got it. Again, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right now.”

  I believed him for reasons of my own.

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayer. This is all very helpful,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah. You bet.”

  “And may I say I was very sorry to hear about your daughter. My condolences to you and your family.”

  “Yeah. She done it to herself. We couldn’ta helped her any more than we did. And I know you didn’t have anything to do with her dying.”

  I nodded gently. “Well, I’m going to follow up on this information you’ve provided and maybe we can find out what happened to you.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  I found Kapok in the hallway.

  “I gotta couple gangbangers to interview next—you wanna talk to ‘em for me?” he asked.

  “Do they want to kill me?” I replied.

  “Not yet. Maybe they will after they meet you.”

  “Well, apparently, wanting to kill me is a prerequisite to a good interview.”

  “You’re probably right,” Kapok said. “I’m going to get a warrant for that massage parlor. See if we can get their records.”

  “First, put Mr. Mayer into protective custody,” I replied. “Him and his wife. The people who did this to him might come after him. Then get your warrant.”

  Kapok chewed on that for a minute.

  “Remember, the arrest is all yours,” I said.

  “Don’t get cocky,” Kapok replied.

  * * *

  I peeked into the medical examiner’s lab. Erin was in there, wearing an electric blue dress with matching pumps under her lab coat. She looked really good. And really busy. There was another examiner in the lab, working at a table near the door. I deduced he was Sean Graver based on the detailed and focused way he was approaching his work and taking meticulous notes. And from the nametag he was wearing on his lapel. This detective stuff. Woo hoo.

  “Hey, you must be Sean,” I said.

  He didn’t look up from the microscope slides he was preparing. It appeared he was examining some dirt with sparkling minerals of some kind in it. “Mm-hmm,” he said.

  “I wanted to tell you that I read the report you wrote for a murder I’m working on. It was really well written.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Wow.

  “So. Uh. Good to meet you.”

  I could have asked him if his family always dealt with dead people. Uncle Graver the Mortician. Cousin Graver the Gravedigger. Sean Graver the Examiner of Dead People. But he was dead people. Where’s the fun in talking with that?

  Erin was more responsive. She actually smiled when I approached.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, hey.”

  “Always gotta one-up me, eh, Got?”

  “Best I can do is catch up.”

  That earned me another smile.

  “I brought the casing for you to check,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Nope. I’ll be glad to see what I can find.”

  I handed her the baggie with the bullet casing in it. “I got a lead from Mr. Mayer this morning, and I have to say, he is in a much better mood.”

  “That’s good. On both counts,” she replied.

  “I’m going to run up to Hollywood and see what I can find out. Is that anywhere near the place you were going to show me?”

  “Not even close,” she said.

  “Can I call you later?”

  “You’ll be in trouble if you don’t.”

  I liked the sound of that.

  * * *

  I made another stop at the Iron Foundry.

  Nat was in his office working on his accounts for the month. He loves doing that. Almost as much as rubbing cinnamon sticks on his eyeballs. He didn’t have much choice though. He’d had to fire the college kid he’d hired to keep the books a couple of months ago. The kid had been a whiz at making the numbers crunch. He was also a whiz at harassing the patrons. After the cops had hauled him off to jail, Nat found his system completely blocked by passwords and firewalls and who knows what. Then he’d had to hire another college whiz to get him back into his own system and he’d vowed to do the job himself from then on.

  “Can I drag you away?” I said.

  “Please,” he replied.

  “We’re going to go check out some massage people.”

  Nat looked at me. And waited.

  “What?” I said.

  “No joking around?” he said.

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Nat stood up and got his gun, which he tucked into the back of his jeans. Inwardly, I smiled.

  Technically, I should be going by myself. Nat didn’t have a private detective’s license like I did. He was just a civilian with a very useful set of skills. Skills that had saved my backside more than onc
e.

  I told him the situation, more or less. I explained that Charles Mayer had been under the influence of something unsavory and had tried to run me over yesterday. There was a tattoo painted on the back of his neck, which was identical to the tattoo found on Barry Mallondyke. We were going to go find out if Mayer had gotten the tattoo at the massage parlor and if Mallondyke had ever been to the same place.

  I fed Nat the theory I’d concocted: they’d get people all relaxed on the massage table and then put the tattoos on while they were face down and chilling out. Probably told them it was some kind of new treatment to ease tension and improve circulation or something. I didn’t know if the tattoo had the drugs in some kind of solution that would penetrate the skin or if it was something else. I just knew there were similarities, and it needed to be checked out. And, in a fit of practicality, I needed backup.

  As I offered my explanation, I started to feel bad. I don’t lie to my friends. While I wasn’t lying completely, I was leaving out some information, which made me feel like a complete jerk. The main reason to go there was valid. I was just hoping that we could find out what we needed when we got there and leave without a fuss. If it was a quick in and out, I’d told Nat what he needed to know and kept it simple. That was for the best, right?

  I climbed into my Mustang and Nat got into his personal Escalade. He owned three. Two of them were black and had Iron Foundry advertising all over them. The one he drove today was white and unmarked. I copied the address of the massage parlor and gave it to Nat through the window. Nat followed me to I-95 and we headed north.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Spa Giant

  The Starlight Spa was in the middle of the block, surrounded by exotic-looking restaurants, a martial arts dojo, an ice cream pah-lah, a pet store, and several hotels. The outside had Japanese screens behind the windows and bamboo trees painted on the glass. Underneath the name of the shop were some Kanji characters that probably said “Starlight Spa” in Japanese.

  Nat parked on a side street across from the spa and I parked around the corner.

  I waited while Nat took a walk around the block.

  “Back entrance,” he said. “No windows. Steel door looks solid.”