Dangerous Hardboiled Magicians

by Mel Gilden

  Vic turned the handle and pushed open the door. Inside was a guest room lit by a single hurricane-style lamp standing on a bedside table. As in the living room, every wall not used for something else was a bookcase. The bed was empty and smooth, as if it had just been made. Sitting in a chair to one side, her face sculpted by heavy shadows, was a woman wearing white flannel pajamas covered with tiny pink roses. Long red hair hung down around her shoulders. Her face was relaxed and held no expression. She might have been sleeping except that her eyes were open and the little finger of her left hand was vibrating. It never stopped the entire time we were in the room. I knew this woman. I’d met her once before.

  “Eulalie Tortuga,” Vic said as if introducing the Queen of England. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her now but she was the hottest art dealer in town.”

  “How did she get here?” I asked.

  “Walked, I guess,” Vic said. “She showed up very early this morning.”

  “Funny she should come here.”

  “Not so funny,” Vic said angrily. “We were not able to live together, but that doesn’t mean we hated each other, or even disliked each other. She just came to the place she knew they’d take her in.”

  “In her present condition I’m surprised she knew anything.”

  “You know what her condition is?”

  “The paper said she was a zombie.”

  “The paper!” Vic exclaimed with contempt.

  We stood in the doorway for a few more seconds watching her. No part of her moved except that little finger. She must have been breathing, but I couldn’t see her do it.

  “Hello, Eulalie,” I said.

  No response. I would have been surprised if I’d gotten one, but I had to try.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I said, making Vic smile. He liked people who said “when” before he did.

  He closed the door gently and carefully locked it. We all went back to the living room where Lyda Firebough was sitting on the lounger I had been sitting in before. Vic and Astraea sat at one end of the big L and I sat at the other.

  “So, Mr. Detective,” Vic said, “do you know any more now than you did before?”

  “A little,” I said. “A day or two ago I saw Eulalie Tortuga coming out of the office of Lord Zorn Slex at Stilthins Mort.”

  Vic seemed surprised by that. “What was she doing there?”

  “Having an argument. She seemed to think that whatever relationship she and Lord Slex had was now ended. He disagreed with her.”

  Vic’s face clouded over.

  “Come on, Vic,” Lyda said. “For all practical purposes you two weren’t married any more. You can’t have expected her to stay celibate. You certainly didn’t stay that way.”

  “Keep out of this.”

  Lyda seemed pleased to have gotten a rise out of him.

  “Do you know how zombies are made?” I asked.

  “Voodoo or something. Does it matter?” He was still angry about Lord Slex.

  “Astraea tells me that zombies are made when a soul is removed from the body of a person before its time.”

  Vic pursed his lips. I could see he wanted to say something clever and insulting. But all he did was glance at Astraea. “Is that so?” he said.

  “But when a soul is removed early,” Astraea said, “keeping it away from its body is impossible. It always finds a way back.”

  “Then if you’re right about Eulalie being a zombie, all we have to do is wait.”

  “No,” Astraea went on. “It would have returned already, immediately after it had been removed.”

  “Then she’s not a zombie,” Lyda said.

  “Very good, schutzie-putz,” Vic said sarcastically.

  “Or,” I said, “someone has found a way to dispose of souls permanently.”

  Everybody thought about that. Especially Astraea, who knew more about lost souls than anyone, thought about that.

  “That doesn’t sound likely,” Vic said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But a grad student at Stilthins Mort was murdered yesterday. Her name was Misty Morning. She had things in her laboratory that might have done the trick.”

  “Misty? Dead?” Vic’s cool supercilious attitude cracked. He seemed genuinely astonished and horrified.

  I was surprised, myself. I hadn’t expected my announcement to have that effect on him. “I guess you didn’t see this morning’s paper,” I said.

  He and Lyda Firebough shook their heads.

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” I went on. “How did you know her?”

  “She was Vic’s girlfriend before me,” Lyda said in an unsteady voice. “Even so, we were friends. How was it done?”

  “A rat-killing spell.”

  “Oh,” Lyda exclaimed as she put a hand to her mouth.

  “Who did it?” Vic asked, his voice tight with control.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t take any special skill to use a spell like that. It is pretty cheap stuff that would be purchased for the very reason that it would not differentiate between rats and other living things—like people. Did Misty have any enemies—a wizard, maybe, or a guy with a cauliflower nose?”

  Both Vic and Lyda studied the sea-green carpeting as if clues were hidden in the weave. “Misty was a terrific person,” Vic said. “A lot of people had keys to her place, I suppose, but none that I know of would want to hurt her. Of course, I didn’t know everybody who had a key. A cauliflower nose?”

  “That’s what it looked like to me,” I said. “Do you have a key, Mr. Tortuga?”

  That shocked him back to his old self. “No. Why? Do you think I killed her?”

  I shrugged. “Your estranged wife is now a zombie and your former girlfriend is dead. That’s quite a coincidence.”

  “And my motive would be?”

  “I don’t know, but it would be fun to guess.”

  Vic made a noise of disgust way back in his throat and made a slashing motion with one open hand. “With an imagination like that you should be writing books. Besides, as I said, I don’t have a key to Misty’s apartment.”

  “That’s refreshing,” I said. “You seem to be one of the select few.”

  “But he could have used mine,” Lyda suggested. “He knows I keep it in my purse.”

  “I don’t,” Vic said, coming to a boil.

  Lyda smiled and said nothing.

  “What about Lord Slex?” Astraea asked. “Like Mr. Tortuga, he had a connection to both Misty and Eulalie. And, I understand that, unlike Mr. Tortuga, he did have a key to Misty’s apartment.”

  I shook my head. “Sure. A lot of people had keys. The real problem is that not one of them, not even Lord Slex, seems to have the skill to remove a soul and keep it long enough to get it to Misty’s apartment, where he could use one of those space puckers.”

  “Space puckers?” Lyda asked.

  “Those things in Misty’s lab where a person might permanently dispose of a soul. I don’t know that one of them could keep a soul any more than a sieve could hold water, but no other possibility has yet presented itself. Of course,” I went on, “anybody could hire a soul removed. If they knew who to hire.”

  “Lyda might,” Vic said, smiling broadly. “She has a lot of experience with illegal magic.”

  “Vic,” Lyda said, warning him.

  “Oh, didn’t you know?” Vic asked innocently. “During Prohibition she helped Eddie ‘The Ender’ Tips and Louie ‘The Mouth’ Stuckler, and a magician—who, for the purposes of Prohibition, called himself Merlin—to smuggle bootleg magic. Merlin was their magic connection. Lyda was a runner, delivering the magic and collecting money for it.”

  Lyda buried her head in her hands. She and Vic seemed to snipe at each other a lot—not everybody’s cup of tea, but they seemed to enjoy it. Only this time Vic may have gone too far.

  “After Prohibition,” Vic jiggled on happily, “she did time and because of it couldn’t get a wizard’s license even though she’d been through the regular cou
rse at Stilthins Mort.”

  I looked at Lyda. “You were doing magic at the bookstore,” I said, hoping to get her back into the conversation. “Lyda?” I said when she didn’t answer.

  When she lifted her head, her eyes were dry, but terrible anger showed on her face. “You don’t need a license to do magic,” she said in a voice that was too composed, “just to get caught.”

  After that the living room was so quiet I could hear a clock ticking in another part of the house. A car swished by outside like the ghost of a car. My shoes squeaked when I moved in them a little. Vic continued smiling.

  “Did Misty or Eulalie have anything to do with your Prohibition activities?” Astraea asked. She spoke softly, but her voice seemed to boom in the silent room.

  To Lyda, the idea seemed to be a new one. “Why, no. For one thing, fifteen years ago Misty was barely a kid. In any case, she and Eulalie never had any criminal connections at any time, that I know of. Except him,” she flopped her hand in Vic’s direction, causing him to briefly laugh like a lunatic.

  I stood up, and Astraea did the same. Vic’s eyes followed her as she walked across the room to stand next to me. Lyda made no move to join him, but she looked at us with interest.

  “I can’t tell you what an entertaining evening it’s been, Mr. Tortuga. And thanks for the autograph for my father. Now, if you’ll just give me Eulalie Tortuga’s address, Astraea and I will be on our way.”

  “I hope I’ll be seeing both of you again,” Vic said, though he was looking at Astraea.

  “We may have more questions,” I suggested agreeably.

  Vic nodded and asked us to wait here. While he was gone, Astraea asked Lyda if she was all right and she claimed that she was. “I don’t know why I get like that,” she said, “Vic flirts with everybody.”

  “I didn’t flirt back,” Astraea said.

  “I noticed. Thanks.”

  “If you’re worried that someone might hear about your activities during Prohibition,” I said, “don’t be. I am the graveyard of your secrets.”

  “Thanks,” she said again. “Living here, it’s easy to forget there are nice people in the world.”

  Vic may have been listening beyond the bend in the hallway because he came back then with a slip of paper that he handed me. Written on it in neat block letters was an address on Highland. He’d also given me his telephone number. “In case you come up with something,” he said.

  “You never know,” I said. “Sometimes I get lucky.”

  We all had a good laugh over that.

  I thanked Vic again, while he and Lyda walked us across the black stone entryway to the front door. Astraea let him take her hand and kiss it gently, but it seemed to have as much effect on her as a feather has on a wrecking ball.

  Outside, the evening had turned cold. Astraea and I hurried along the high hedge without speaking, and I let us into my car. The seats were even colder than the air and Astraea shivered. The heater blew warm air at us as I rolled back down the hill on the LA side.

  “What do you think?” I asked when Astraea had stopped shivering.

  “You are the detective,” she said. “I am Justice.”

  “I know,” I said thoughtfully. “You’re just some goddess. I bring the criminals to you. But you protest too much. You asked some good questions in there. And you got Vic Tortuga to show us Eulalie.”

  “Any pretty woman could have done it.”

  “Maybe.”

  We passed Rigby Court on the way down the hill, and I turned onto it so Astraea could see the scene of the crime—or the outside of it, anyway. A blue neon address flickered and buzzed on the outside wall as if it were full of insects. The rest of the building might have been taken to the Moon for all we could see of it in that light.

  “Misty lived here?”

  “Yes.”

  Without another word she got out of the car and walked under the bougainvillaea into the courtyard. I hurriedly followed her. The courtyard was fragrant with night-blooming flowers. The perfume and the hulking shadows cast by the trees made the whole place seem even less real than it had during the day. Astraea stood outside Misty’s apartment with her hands raised, palms outward, like a mime feeling his way around the inside of an imaginary box. Red words floated in the air: Police Line—Do Not Cross.

  “Not much to see,” I said after we’d stood there for a while.

  “No,” she said. “But sometimes I get feelings.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Not so much. Just what we already know. She was fundamentally a good person.”

  “And the murderer?”

  “Probably somebody she knew. But you already guessed that.”

  I nodded there in the dark, which seemed pointless, so I stopped.

  She shivered once, not necessarily from the cold, and let me escort her back along the cement path, then out to the car. We started down the hill again.

  “Do you think either one of the Stilthins Mort board members or Vic Tortuga is a keres?” I asked, just supposing out loud. The question whether any of them had the supernatural power to kidnap a soul had been burning a hole in my brain for some hours.

  “I haven’t met any member of the board,” Astraea reminded me, “but I am sure Vic Tortuga is not. I would know.”

  I ignored the fact that I had forgotten who had met whom. “Tortuga suggested that Lyda Firebough might know where to hire somebody to steal a soul,” I said. “I think he was just yanking her chain, but it seems like a real possibility. What do you think?”

  “Yanking her chain?”

  “Trying to get a rise out of her, to make her angry for the entertainment value. It’s not important. Could anybody but a keres steal a soul?”

  “Maybe. The world is full of gods, goddesses, and demiurges. But certainly no human could do it. And to answer your next question, yes, I do believe it is possible to hire a keres to do the job for you.”

  “It seems to me finding a keres would be almost as difficult as separating a soul from a body. You can’t just search for ‘demons’ in the maJsys.”

  “True.”

  “Could you find one if you had to?”

  “I would have to go through channels, and even then my request might not be granted.”

  “Channels?”

  I glanced at her and saw a soft smile flicker on her face. “It is not important,” she said.

  “Yanking my chain?”

  “I would not do such a thing.”

  Soon we were at the bottom of the hill, and I was able to think about something besides my driving. I still didn’t know who killed Misty Morning, but if someone had used one of her space puckers to dispose of a soul, then her murder and Eulalie Tortuga’s current situation might be connected. Which might mean that the person or persons unknown who had taken Eulalie’s soul had also murdered Misty to get the pucker.

  I found Enough Rope again and stopped the car. The street was empty, tourists having gone wherever they go at night. I half-turned toward Astraea and she half-turned toward me. Her lips were a little parted and I thought I could smell her jasmine-scented breath. Slowly I leaned closer to her, and I thought I was going to touchdown when she stuck out her hand at me. “Thank you for your help,” she said. “Please keep me informed.”

  “Sure,” I said, my head spinning.

  Before I had a chance to at least be gentleman enough to walk her to her door, she was out of the car and into the small store. I sat for a moment trying to catch my breath. I had apparently misread all the signs. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  I had a long lonely drive home in the cold thinking about Astraea and about Misty and about Eulalie. If I’d done anything differently, would Astraea have kissed me? I also wondered whether Lord Slex had done me a favor by altering my face. When I had a free minute I’d get some Spell-Be-Gone and change back. What I looked like didn’t seem important at the moment. No useful thoughts about murder or the stealing of souls came to me that hadn’t come to me
before.

  For once I found a place to park right in front of my building. I took the elevator to my floor and let myself into my apartment. Thoughts continued to swirl in my head while I got ready for bed, and I was actually horizontal for all of a minute when I had an idea. I leaped from the warm nest I’d made and went to the corner of my room where I sat down in front of my skrying ball and spoke my spell code at it. I got the maJsys from the Microsoft genie and looked up the mythology of Justice.

  Everything Astraea said about Justice and her sisters was true, or at least documented. They did dance with the Graces. The maJsys article also said that she was a relative of the Three Fates. If the three women at Enough Rope were the Fates, that would fit in nicely. Or was I merely crazy? Astraea, if that was her real name, could have done the same research I was doing, discovered the same ancient knowledge I had discovered. And the three women could be just that, three women.

  One fact about Justice that Astraea had not shared with me was that she was a professional virgin, often associated with the constellation Virgo. That explained the handshake, if nothing else did. Even if Astraea only believed she was Justice, I guessed I would have to get my kicks elsewhere.

  I shut down the skrying ball and went back to bed, where I attempted to think professional thoughts.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MAKE THE CALL

  The sun touched my face and I awoke. Or maybe what did it was the sound of a jackhammer breaking up concrete many floors below, a sound like a bumblebee in a tin can. In any case I lay there for a while with my eyes closed against the glare coming in through the windows, thinking.

  For some reason my mind kept returning to Merlin—the guy who’d supplied illegal magic to Eddie ‘The Ender’ Tips, Louie ‘The Mouth’ Stuckler, and Lyda Firebough during Prohibition. Lyda seemed sure that neither Misty Morning nor Eulalie Tortuga had ever been involved with any of the gentlemen. However, like a lot of professions, wizardry is a pretty small pond. It was possible that entirely by accident Misty had stumbled across Merlin’s true identity. I was not reaching very far to think that Merlin would have murdered Misty to keep the secret a secret, especially if he had a lot to lose.