Dangerous Hardboiled Magicians

by Mel Gilden

It was also possible that my theory was a bucket of swill, but I wasn’t doing anything else that day so I would invest a little time looking under rocks to see what damp nasty things skittered away from the light.

  I got up, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. I burned an hour that way, then called Vic Tortuga’s private number.

  “What?” a voice demanded. It was Vic himself.

  “It’s Turner Cronyn, Mr. Tortuga.”

  “You know who took Eulalie’s soul?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Tortuga. Might I speak with Ms. Firebough?”

  “Ms. Firebough is busy,” Vic said. “She has her finger in her nose.” Vic laughed. I let him. He finished and yelled for Lyda. Soon there was the click of heels on a hard surface and a moment later Lyda came on the line.

  “Turner Cronyn, Ms. Firebough.”

  “I recognize the voice. What can I do for you?”

  “Last night there was some talk about Merlin—”

  “Do we have to talk about that?”

  “It might help.”

  Lyda breathed gently into the phone. “All right, then,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you ever learn who Merlin really was?”

  “No. I never had much to do with him. I worked through Eddie and Louie.”

  “I see. Thank you, Ms. Firebough.”

  “Lyda. And while I have you—you know, I’ve been thinking.”

  Which was a straight line if I ever heard one, but this didn’t seem to be the time for cleverness. “What have you been thinking, Lyda?” I asked.

  “With all that talk about Misty last night I forgot to tell you something that may be important. Before she went with Vic, back when she was an undergrad, she dated Lord Philpot for a while. Nobody’s supposed to know, but I’m thinking that Lord Philpot might be able to tell you something useful.”

  “He certainly might,” I said. “Do you have any other random thoughts?”

  “Not about Misty, no,” she replied as if she were really sorry.

  “Thanks for your time, then,” I said and hung up. Her second-hand relationship to Merlin didn’t surprise me. If I’d thought a little longer that morning, I wouldn’t even have called her to ask the question. Assuming Merlin had killed Misty because she knew his real identity, then if Lyda knew, she would have been dead long since. So either Merlin believed that Lyda didn’t know or my entire theory was thinner than diner coffee.

  I didn’t think it would do any good, but I used the number Lord Slex had given me to call the Morning family back in Chicago. After three rings a female voice answered. She sounded old and very tired, as if I had awakened her from a deep sleep.

  “Mrs. Morning?” I asked gently.

  “Yes. Who is this, please?”

  “My name is Turner Cronyn, Mrs. Morning. I am investigating the death of your daughter.”

  There was a long silence during which tiny electronic tones came to me from the other end of the universe.

  “I already spoke to the police, and to those lords at the school where she worked.”

  “I understand how unpleasant this must be for you, Mrs. Morning, but it’s possible you can be a great help to me finding out who did it.”

  “Who is this?” a man’s voice yelled at me. Too late I held the receiver away from my ear.

  “This is Turner Cro—”

  “I don’t care who the hell you are. My wife and I have been harassed enough by you people. We’re bringing Misty home where she belongs, and that’s the end of it.”

  Somebody had obviously rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe there wasn’t a right way. “Don’t you want to know who—?”

  “We don’t use magic, whoever-you-are. We don’t believe in it and we don’t approve of it. Lord knows what made Misty the way she was, but we always told her she’d come to a bad end. Talking about it won’t help. We’re bringing her home and that’s the end of it.”

  By this time I had the receiver a good six inches from my head so that when he slammed down the phone the crash did only minor damage to my eardrum.

  After speaking with Misty’s parents I felt a little less sorry for them. Misty hadn’t just come to Los Angeles to work, she’d come to escape from Chicago. I hoped she could rest easy back there.

  Next I called Lord Philpot. Talking to him couldn’t be any more useless than talking to Misty’s parents.

  A young girl answered the phone at Lord Philpot’s home. I recognized her voice, which was a surprise, but it gave me something new to think about. I told her I wanted to speak with Lord Philpot. She claimed not to know where he was or when he’d be back.

  “It’s important,” I said. “I want to talk to him about Misty Morning.”

  “Poor Misty,” the girl said. There was a scratching sound and then complete silence, as if she had put her hand over the receiver. She seemed to be gone for a long time. While she was gone I drew a sphere and shaded it carefully. “He isn’t here right now,” she told me again when she came back. “But he often spends the evening at the Magic Vault. You might run into him there.”

  I thanked her and she thanked me, all very polite, and I hung up.

  I pushed the switch hook on the telephone and held it down while I tried to predict the future. I had no idea whether Lord Philpot would actually make it to the Magic Vault this evening. I tried to make that mean something, but couldn’t decide either way.

  During these pointless thoughts I released the switch hook and spoke the spell for Harold Silverwhite. While the phone rang I thought about the large favor I had once done him. Helping him had been a pleasure, but Silverwhite felt he was still paying me off. Going to him when I needed his help did us both some good.

  “Acme Magic,” a cultured voice announced. It wasn’t quite British—mid-Atlantic I think the accent was called.

  “How’s the boy?” I asked.

  “Is that you, Cronyn?” Silverwhite asked. “What a pleasure. How is my favorite consulting detective?”

  “That was Sherlock Holmes. I’m just a regular old PI. Remember?”

  “You’ll always be a consulting detective to me. What may I do for you, old chum?”

  “Did that guy who attacked me ever come back?”

  “He did not, I’m sorry to say. He could have helped me clean up the lab. It took hours.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault, old chum. What about you? Any unpleasant visitations?”

  “No. I guess whatever was bothering him stopped bothering him. Right now I have a different problem.”

  “No favor too large, old chum. No favor too small.”

  “Thanks. I have a little something I’d like you to take a look at. Will you be at the Magic Vault this evening?”

  “I can be, of course. Shall we say nine-ish?”

  “Let us say nine-ish.”

  “I’ll pencil you in,” Silverwhite said.

  Two guys at the club, that was us. We said our good-byes and hung up. Having spoken to him, I felt as if I’d made some progress. He was intuitive about anything magical, which Misty’s code probably was. Some jealous people claimed he was part elf. It might even be true. If he’d been with me at Misty’s laboratory, I probably could have gotten into that empty drawer before the police arrived.

  I went to get the morning paper from outside my door, and sat down with it in the kitchen. I stared at it for a long time without anything registering, then something snapped inside me and a photograph I’d been staring at made me shiver and blink.

  The headline said Second Zombie Found, which in itself was worth noting. But the photo next to it was a head shot of a guy named Joe Flynn, a small business man who, except for a thin mustache that was no more than twin Ls back to back under his nose, could have been my brother.

  “Coincidence,” I said out loud, hoping it was true. But I generally don’t believe in coincidences. The way Joe Flynn tied me to the stealing of Eulalie’s soul made me nervous. I let the queasy feeling work in me for a while then tur
ned the paper over and went back to the telephone to call Detective Fotheringay downtown.

  “Siltz,” the voice at the other end of the line growled at me when I connected. I told him that I wanted to speak to Fotheringay and he asked me who was calling. I didn’t feel like having an argument that morning, but I told him anyway. “Imagine,” Siltz said, and left me on hold.

  “Fotheringay.”

  “Cronyn,” I said.

  “I’m dancing,” Fotheringay said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I see you have another zombie on your hands.”

  “You’re a little behind,” Fotheringay said, “We have three new zombies.”

  “Oh?” I said, not knowing whether I wanted to hear more or not. “You fascinate me strangely.”

  “Joe Flynn was only the first. Early this morning—but too late for the papers, I guess—two more showed up.”

  “Anything in common with Eulalie Tortuga?”

  “Not a thing that we can see. Renaldo Duncan owned a restaurant in Culver City. Merv Lupinsky was a technical writer who lived in an apartment near Fairfax High. As far as we can tell they didn’t know each other. Neither one of them knew Flynn. But they all still had something in common.”

  I waited, fearing that I knew what he was going to say.

  “Given differences in facial hair and glasses and such, each of them resembled the others physically.”

  Though I had been mentally braced, Fotheringay’s confirmation was still a shock. Bizarre and unpleasant possibilities rolled through my mind with the anonymous evil intent of enemy tanks. I said nothing.

  “Cronyn?”

  “What are the chances?” I remarked, just to be saying something. I needed to get a grip. “Do these victims have addresses?” I asked.

  “That’s police business,” Fotheringay said. “Besides,” he went on, “my team and I have been all over those places, just as we’ve been all over Eulalie Tortuga’s place, and we found nothing anybody would call a clue.”

  “I’d like to take a look, even so. If you’ve already been there, you can’t be worried about me muddying the water.”

  “Hell,” he said softly. There was a long open space during which I heard a radio playing elevator music softly, people talking, and telephones ringing—office noises. Fotheringay came back and gave me three addresses. He was about to tell me where Eulalie Tortuga’s house was but I stopped him. “I already know that one,” I said, having some pride.

  “Maybe you are a detective after all,” he said. “She’s unlisted.”

  “If you get an outfit you can be a detective, too. Do you have time to answer another question?”

  “Sure. Down at headquarters we like nothing better than to do research for you private guys.”

  “Cop humor,” I remarked playfully.

  “Get on with it,” Fotheringay said, “or I’ll let you talk to Siltz again.”

  “The question is this,” I said. “Do you have any magic stuff from Prohibition lying around in a dark dusty corner of your evidence room?”

  There was a short silence. “I assume you’re not just taking a poll,” Fotheringay said.

  “No. In particular I’m looking for a spell put together by a Prohibition magician known as Merlin.”

  I imagined him nodding into the telephone. “Is this maybe a bright idea connected with the murder of Misty Morning?” he asked.

  “Someday it could be,” I said. “But right now it’s just a hunch on a very short leash.”

  “It doesn’t matter. All the Prohibition stuff we ever had was taken to the La Brea Tar Pits years ago, either dumped into the pits themselves, or put on display at the Prohibition Museum. Why is this important?”

  “I was just thinking that spells have characteristics, like fingerprints, depending on where the magician who made them up learned his magic. If one of Merlin’s spells still existed, an expert could tell me where he went to school.”

  “That might be useful,” Fotheringay allowed grudgingly. “But I still don’t see what that has to do with Misty Morning.”

  “I’ll let you know if anything comes of my hunch.”

  A vast sigh came at me through the telephone. “All right. I don’t know why, but all right. Call Mr. Samuel Quandum at the Prohibition Museum. Tell him I sent you.”

  “Thanks. By the way, how are you doing on the case?”

  He laughed at me and hung up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC

  A minute later I was riding down in the coffin-like elevator with a big woman who had a jaw like a satchel. She was a neighbor but I didn’t know her name. We both nodded and smiled before ignoring each other completely the rest of the way down.

  I crossed Sixth Street and entered the La Brea Tar Pits. It was a beautiful park, a city block square, one thick side of which was burdened with art museums. Tar pits of varying sizes dotted the landscape, each surrounded by a municipal spell to keep out the curious and the stupid. A couple of kids were trying to get a kite into the air using only the wind, and not having much luck. A man and a woman sat on a bench beneath tall trees sniffing at each other’s throats. Following an asphalt path, I found what I was looking for—a small round building made of white-painted brick.

  The inside was mostly taken up with exhibits telling the story of Prohibition; Prohibition was one of those ideas that seemed so good to some people that they decided God must be on their side. A woman named Anna Montaigne started the movement by single-handedly destroying a mom-and-pop spell store in Clarion, Pennsylvania. Ms. Montaigne was uglier than a dried-up apple and had no talent for magic herself, though her enemies claimed she was a witch. Her talent lay in public speaking. And before long she’d convinced a lot of people that all magic, no matter how innocuous, was the work of the devil. “Pick a card, any card,” became an obscenity. It meant the political life of any public servant to oppose Ms. Montaigne. Then rumors leaked out that Ms. Montaigne’s rhetorical talent came from a spell cast by her second in command, a tall thin geek named Charles W. McGonigal. The rumors increased both in frequency and severity until one day Montaigne and McGonigal failed to show up for an anti-magic rally. Neither they nor the movement’s operating funds were ever seen again. After that, the forces opposing Ms. Montaigne had no trouble pulling Repeal out of a hat.

  Other exhibits showed examples of Prohibition magic, and pictures of guys like Al Capone, who in their own public-spirited way had supplied magic where it was needed. Nowhere was there any mention of Merlin.

  On one side of the room was Ye Olde Gift Shoppe, where you could purchase souvenirs of your day at the Prohibition Museum. In the center of the room was a big square pit, which at the moment was lined with squirming little kids and a couple of harassed-looking women. The kids were leaning over a low wall and pointing things out to each other. “Cool,” seemed to be the most common exclamation, though I heard an occasional “awesome!” A man the shape of a bowling pin was talking to the kids in a high, nearly feminine voice.

  I went to look over the heads of the kids into the pit. Below was a lake of tar. In the center of it, books, wands, cauldrons, bags of leaves and roots, capes covered with stars and moons, and other magical paraphernalia were glued into a mound by ancient black goo. In one place bubbles continued to rise, and when each one broke, it released a little cloud of sparkling dust that quickly fell onto the tar—the entire surface glittered with the stuff.

  Behind the cash register in the gift shop was a young woman wearing a black gown that was bulky enough to hide a multitude of sins. I sidled over to her and we watched the kids together. “I’m looking for Samuel Quandum,” I said.

  “That’s him,” she said in a warm pleasant voice and nodded in the direction of the fat guy lecturing to the kids. “Is there something I could help you with?”

  “Not unless you’re an expert on Prohibition magic.”

  She shrugged. “I just work the cash register,” she said. “Would you like a bag of tal
cum powder that looks like the spell that got Al Capone? Only five bucks plus tax.”

  “Maybe later,” I said. I turned, and together the woman and I watched Samuel Quandum go through his spiel for the kids. They liked it well enough to stay quiet through most of it. I didn’t hear anything that was useful to me. Now and then my eyes met those of Mr. Quandum, and his brows would turn up into a questioning expression. Then he would start talking again, and the expression would disappear.

  The two women looked even more harassed when the kids invaded the gift shop, but the lady behind the cash register remained calm. While they were at it, Mr. Quandum walked over to me. I introduced myself and asked if I could speak with him alone.

  “I have to be available to answer questions,” Mr. Quandum said.

  “I have a question,” I said. “Detective Fotheringay downtown thought you might be able to answer it. I won’t trouble you very long.”

  “Very well, then,” he said, and led me back to a small cluttered office at the end of the building opposite the gift shop. He moved a pile of back numbers of a newspaper called That Old Black Magic from a chair to the floor and asked me to sit down.

  “You don’t seem to use much magic yourself,” I said as I looked around.

  “It clashes with the exhibits,” Mr. Quandum explained. “What can I do for you, Mr. Cronyn? You’re a detective, you say? I’m afraid the crimes I know most about are much too old to interest you.”

  “Oldies but goodies, Mr. Quandum. I’d like to hear about a Prohibition magician named Merlin.”

  Mr. Quandum smiled. “Merlin was a fairly common name for a Prohibition magician who wanted to keep his or her true identity a secret.”

  “This Merlin would have worked locally with a couple of jokers named Eddie ‘The Ender’ Tips and Louie ‘The Mouth’ Stuckler.”

  Mr. Quandum scowled. Or maybe he was just concentrating. Still at it, he rose and began walking his fingers through a filing cabinet. “We don’t display everything,” he said with his back to me, “there isn’t room. But it’s all been identified and cataloged. I did most of the work myself.”

  I made a noise showing that I was listening.