“Ah, I see. Well, I wouldn’t wish that on Anastasia. I owe her a certain level of respect after the calm way she’s handling things. She’s never been disrespectful to me. I simply can’t ask you to mutilate her like that, and I’m glad you prefer not to.”
Shaw chuckled at the irony. “I usually use a handgun or rifle,” he said, pulling a pair of elbow gloves out of his jacket pocket and putting them on. “I’m the soul of discretion, as a professional courtesy, if the client requires. I can leave no evidence whatsoever.”
“There’s no need for a show,” Clawson said dismissively, gesturing at the gloves. “You come highly recommended and don’t have to prove yourself to me. LifeEnders, Inc. and certain references have already done that for you.”
Shaw pulled a note card from his jacket pocket and went on as if the man were not talking, “But that’s not the case here. You have everyone searched coming in, so I didn’t even bother to bring a gun. I’ll do it with that paper weight, as Anastasia suggested.”
Clawson blinked, suddenly speechless, as Shaw rose and took the replica dagger in his right hand in one smooth motion.
“She overheard the phone call where you discussed hiring me with the acquaintance who recommended me,” Shaw explained. “She beat you to the punch, hired me, and I posed as an LEI Franchise owner.” He read from the note card. “Anastasia wants you to know that it’s her having you killed, she’s already accessed your deposit box and destroyed your altered will, she still has the original, as stipulated in the prenup you insisted upon, and she wants you to suffer, insofar as circumstances allow.”
Clawson trembled slightly as he raised one hand, a gulp rising slowly and discernibly up his throat. As he eyed the man standing across his desk, within easy arm’s reach of him, and the deadly iron blade in his skilled right hand, he said, “Mr. Shaw, your reputation is such, I’m told, that you cannot be dissuaded from completing an assignment once you’ve taken it, but consider what I can do for you.”
“I’m a man of simple tastes and much professional honor, Mr. Clawson. You cannot buy me off.”
As Clawson reached for the 9mm Beretta hidden under his desk, Shaw lunged across and stabbed him in the right shoulder. Clawson spasmed, failed to touch the pistol, and lurched back from his assassin. His chair fell over, and he landed on his back, then rolled into an undignified heap under the window.
Shaw strolled around the desk, slipped the Beretta from its holster under the desk, checked it, and put it into one of his pockets. He crouched beside his target. “I have 10 minutes marked out for this at your wife’s request, Mr. Clawson. It’s not really in my personal aesthetic, but it is in my professional, if you understand. Were it up to me, I’d just shoot you in the head with your own Beretta.” He glanced at the note card and continued, “You’re to hurt before you go. Anastasia says it’s on behalf of the post-pubescent children you’ve enjoyed all these years. She says their blood cries for vengeance. Since you have the room soundproofed with both technology and magic, I don’t expect we’ll be disturbed in that time.”
He paused, regarding the terrified man on the carpet before him clinically. Clawson wasn’t weeping, but he was staring at the blade of the replica dagger.
Shaw put the note card back in his jacket pocket and said, “I’m a man of few words. As I’ve delivered the message, I’ll say no more.”
He knelt and went to work. Clawson began to weep.
Anastasia met him in a coffee shop half an hour later. He told her it had been done according to her specifications. She thanked him, asked no further questions, delivered a cash gratuity, and departed. The seven-figure fee had already been wired to an LEI account that would take its percentage and forward the rest to Shaw’s personal account. Other than business, her only remark was that he had a blood spot on one of his shoes. She did not pale on seeing it. She walked out the door ready to be queen of a corporation.
Shaw, slightly chagrined that he’d missed the spot, went to the restroom and cleaned it off before heading downtown to his apartment to watch the game. The Cardinals were playing, and he might catch the last few innings if he were lucky. On his way in, he passed his neighbor, Father Darren, on the way out.
Father Michael Darren was a Catholic priest at St. Peter’s Church. The rectory had burned down a year ago, and the parish had found him alternative housing in the building until the rectory was rebuilt. The insurance coverage had been inadequate, and a fundraising campaign was still underway. Construction had yet to begin.
“Gordon,” Father Darren said, nodding and smiling, as he always did.
“Mike.” Shaw nodded in return.
“You’ll be available Thursday for a game or two?” the priest asked as he opened the stair door.
“You betcha.” He waved and went into his apartment. In a minute, he was sitting on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, watching the game.
Chapter 2
Two Graduate Students of Opposite Work Ethic
Clark Smith was a 25-year-old history nerd, and he liked it that way. He spent his days, and many of his nights, at the University of Memphis in the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology and the history department, learning the history, culture, art, and language of Ancient Egypt. He was becoming proficient, and, maybe one day, he’d be a respectable Egyptologist.
Jonesy Fredericks was 27 and said he was a history nerd, but he was actually a dilettante, and he liked it that way. College was an excuse to not get a real job. He spent his days on the Highland Strip at the bars, restaurants, and vape joints.
On the infrequent occasions Clark went to a bar or restaurant off campus, he usually found himself in the company of his roommate and occasional classmate. It was on such an occasion—at a bar and grill beside the railroad tracks, a stone’s throw from the university bookstore—that Jonesy told him about his scheme to get rich quick and drop out of school before he was expelled from the program.
“How do you know it’s the diorite cat from King Tut’s tomb?” Clark asked him, amused but not really intrigued. Far-fetched daydreams that released Jonesy from the actual work it took to accomplish goals were nothing new.
“I was at a party at Michelle’s house. You remember Michelle? Graduated with a master’s in biology about the time you entered the Egyptology program?” Jonesy was well into his fifth mug of beer and getting a little tipsy.
“Vaguely,” he responded, but wasn’t at all sure he did.
“Well, her house was over there in the Belle Meade neighborhood, in walking distance from campus. Poplar and Goodlett.”
Clark grunted an affirmative as he took a bite of his burger.
“The place was crowded. The party was going well; lots of people were ‘at their ease’ as they used to say.”
Clark didn’t know who used to say “at their ease” to mean drinking too much, but sure, whatever.
“Michelle took me to the only private place we could find, her old man’s study. We were making out when I saw this statue up on a shelf. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Michelle was hot, you know, and a little drunk. Later, I took a closer look at it to see if I could read the inscriptions—the cartouche, at least. I made it out as Tut’s and figured it was a really nice reproduction. That was all I thought about it.
“You remember I wrote that paper last semester on epigraphic aspects of the Carter expedition to the Valley of the Kings?”
Clark nodded. By wrote a paper, Jonesy meant he’d paid someone else to write it, but ok.
“I came across the mention of an artifact that turned up missing. You’ve seen the famous black and white photo of the inside of the tomb when he and Carnarvon opened it? There’s a chariot all in pieces and the bed frame shaped like a lion?”
“Hippo,” Clark interrupted.
“What? No, a lion,” Jonesy said, scorn at the idea furrowing his brows and grimacing. He swigged some beer and shook his head.
“It’s a hippo; I’m pretty sure,” Clark said.
> “Whatever,” Jonesy said dismissively. “Under that extraordinarily long hippo,” he emphasized the word humorously, “was a diorite cat that was never seen again.”
“That rings a bell. They suspected it was sold on the black market by an Egyptian worker.”
“Some towelhead with a shovel or something, yeah. No one could ever link any of the suspicious individuals to the crime. The Egyptians pointed fingers at the English. The English pointed fingers at the Egyptians. At any rate, the picture and what details I could remember of Michelle’s dad’s sculpture were the same.”
“Reproduction?” Clark suggested.
“Thing is, Michelle’s granddad or great granddad spent lots of time in Egypt back in the ‘20s, as I remember. Her dad was always talking about family history.”
“Uh, huh,” Clark prompted, getting slightly interested. Jonesy drained his mug and ordered another beer. Clark ate his French fries slowly, savoring the dipping sauce.
“So I called Michelle up the other day and asked how she was, and we talked over old times. She’s doing well enough, but her folks were about to split up in a nasty divorce last year when her dad died, and it turned out he’d spent a lot of the family fortune on another family he was hiding in Little Rock. His life insurance goes to them, not Michelle’s mom, and so on and so on. Her mom had to sell the house, downsize a lot, and put most her dad’s stuff in a storage unit on Poplar, near the Popeye’s.” He gestured east.
“Oh, the reproduction is in it?”
“Yep. Michelle was kinda pissed about it. Her mom stopped paying the bill, and it’s all going to be auctioned next week. Michelle was attached to a few items, but she’s in debt herself, you know. She always relied on her daddy to pay most of her bills. Now she’s just making rent and student loan payments and such.”
He paused and gave Clark a really significant look. “You keep calling it a reproduction. What I’m trying to tell you is it might be the real thing, a real piece of Howard Carter’s find from King Tut’s tomb. We could be a couple miles away from a genuine piece of history, some 4,000 years old.”
“More like three,” Clark said.
“Whatever. Point is, it’s bound to be worth a lot of money.”
“Or it could be a piece of Egyptomania kitsch worth no more than any other. Did you ever pick it up?”
Jonesy thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, I picked it up to turn it around. It was heavy.”
“Heavy like plaster or ceramic?”
“Heavy like stone.”
“Did it feel hollow, or solid?”
“No, man, heavy like solid stone.”
“You think Howard Carter’s missing diorite cat is in a storage unit over on Poplar?”
“I think King Tut’s missing diorite cat is in a storage unit over on Poplar, and I think you and I should try to go get it.”
“Touché. We could be heroes if it was the real thing, of course, but how likely is that?”
“I told you her great granddad spent a lot of time in Egypt back in the 20s. What if he bought it and brought it back to the States, and it’s been in the family ever since? We could get rich, man.”
Clark ate his last French fry thoughtfully. Jonesy waited, nearing exasperation.
“Last month,” Clark said, “you thought you had a system for beating the casinos that involved counting cards and invoking the kaval, and you wanted to go to Tunica to hit the blackjack tables at Hollywood, Gold Strike, and Horseshoe.” Seriously, you wanted to try sorcery, you ass, he thought.
Jonesy shrugged. “I still think it could work. The guy who wrote the book made millions.”
“Did he? With magic? Really? He probably made more money on the book than on gambling.”
“You wanna check out the stupid cat or not?”
“I’ll humor you, if you like.”
Jonesy pulled some photos out of his pocket and placed them on the greasy table. “I got these from Michelle,” he explained. “I told her it was for a paper. She made me pay for them. She has a steady boyfriend now, so she didn’t put out, either.”
“Graduating, getting a real life, and having a family tragedy occur does change a person, doesn’t it?” Clark observed wryly, wiping the photos off with a napkin.
Jonesy nodded and said, “I didn’t think of that, but still, for old time’s sake, she could have.”
Clark let it pass and examined the photos. They were blown up sections of other photos, and a little grainy. They showed the statue in question.
“Look at the right-hand side,” Jonesy said, pointing. “The photos Carter took never showed the right-hand side. Reproductions would have left that side blank or duplicated the inscription from the left-hand side, right, or just put nonsense there or another cartouche or something.”
Clark looked it over, wishing he had his Faulkner’s Middle Egyptian Dictionary with him and his Hoch or Allen Grammar. “It does look like it actually says something, but that doesn’t prove it’s real, you know.”
“Let’s go home and check it out with our books,” Jonesy suggested.
That was a first. Clark looked up in surprise.
“Okay,” he agreed.
They paid the bill as soon as the waitress noticed them, grabbed their jackets, and left. Their apartment was within walking distance, and five minutes later they were home. Clark had been looking at the pictures under streetlights on the way and was now intrigued. They turned off the television, which had been left on an internet newscast about crime and a new deadly virus going around.
“Surely it can’t be,” he told Jonesy, “but let’s see what the inscriptions say.”
Half an hour later, confident enough in his translation, he suggested, “Let’s hit the institute library tomorrow and check the Howard Carter books and some other resources.”
Jonesy, who’d been uncharacteristically attempting to assist in the translation, asked, “You think it might be real or you wouldn’t be going to more trouble, right?”
“I can’t say for certain, but we should check it out, just in case. If nothing else, it’ll be a lark.”
Jonesy nodded. “In that case, I’ll see if I can set up a time for us to look at the storage unit before the auction. That way, we’ll be able to find out if we need to raise money, and how much.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Jonesy took up his too-long-neglected game controller. Clark had studying to do and went to his room.
Chapter 3
An Elevator Ride at a Science Fiction Convention
“Kilkenny, old pal, I don’t think it’s fair for you to be in the costume contest. You’re a shapeshifter.” Roger Biehn, AKA Methodius Charn, told his usually invisible friend as they waited for the elevator. The pooka, currently in the shape of a man with goat ears, horns, and tail, looked at him reproachfully. Not for the first time, Roger wondered what his friend’s real shape was, and if he’d ever seen it.
“I don’t see why it’s unfair,” the pooka replied. “They use artificial costumes; I use natural. So what?”
“You do naturally what they can only simulate. I can’t pull the horns off your head, can I? Are they held on with a strap?”
“Humph,” the pooka said.
“If it was a shapeshifting contest with others of your kind, the playing field would be level, but here, it’s just not fair. There’s a level of realism with real changes that costumes just can’t match. The whole procedure is different. They have to use artificial means to look as authentic as possible. You use magical means to achieve authenticity. It’s not fair to compete, because there’s no competition. Professional soccer players don’t want to win versus toddlers, do they? No, they want to win playing against other professionals. It should be the same with you. Now, if you want to construct your own costume—sew, mold papier-mâché, and such—go ahead, but if you shapeshift, that’s cheating in my book.”
The elevator doors opened at last, and they stood aside for a woman in a Klingon outfit to step o
ut. Inside, going up with them, was a middle-aged man whose nametag declared he was “The Silver Slurper.” He was carrying a cup with a straw sticking out of it and noisily drinking at the moment. His clothes were shiny silver, and his skin and hair were painted to match. Roger stepped inside the glass box resignedly, turning his back on the nighttime view of East Memphis, with Clark Tower rising high in the distance to the west and an impressively large protestant church shining in the dark immediately north. Before the doors closed, a dark-haired young woman dressed as the comic book character Elektra stepped on. She was more than a few pounds overweight and spilled out of her costume the wrong way. She was having a lot of fun, though. Roger smiled at her because her smile was infectious. She pushed the button, then slipped to the back. Kilkenny had walked away as soon as the flash of cracking silver paint had come visible between the spreading elevator doors, but somehow, there he was inside beside Roger again. They didn’t speak to each other. The pooka had that indefinable air about him that told his friend no one else could see him.
“So, Mr. Charn,” the Silver Slurper said, “that new book you’re working on about the girl with the flamingo wings. I’ve been thinking about it, and I have a few suggestions you might be interested in.”
“Oh?” Roger asked as the elevator stopped at the next floor. Two youngsters of indeterminate sex in anime costumes stepped on, giggling to each other. One of them pushed one number, the other another.
“Don’t you think she should be pink all over, not just her wings? Flamingos are pink because of their diet. If her skin isn’t pink, her wings shouldn’t be, either, and vice versa, if her wings are pink, her skin should be too, right?”
“That’s an interesting point,” Roger said. The elevator lurched slightly going into motion, and they slid up another floor, stopping again.
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