Dangerous Hardboiled Magicians

by Mel Gilden

  I thought about Misty, the sort of person she was, her interests and enthusiasms, and decided that I hadn’t known her long enough for those thoughts to mean anything. Even so, we’d talked in my car on the way to her apartment, and I’d snooped around some after discovering her body, and I had heard the opinions of the people closest to her. I had an opinion myself, and I was stuck with it even if it was wrong. I kept going back to the one clunker—that triple mirror in her laboratory.

  If she wasn’t using it to pluck her eyebrows or to put on her make-up—and I didn’t for a moment believe that’s what she was doing with it—what was the three-way mirror for? Such a setup allowed one to view one’s face from the side, and to a limited extent from the back. Looking at one mirror in another, one saw progressively darker reflections going around a curve to infinity.

  I rummaged around in the bathroom cabinet beneath the sink for a shaving kit I’d been given as a gift and never used. In it was a three-way mirror—a much smaller version of the one on Misty’s desk. I took the mirror and the log back to my desk. I stood the mirror up on its three reflecting sides, held the log up to one reflecting surface, and let it reflect onto another.

  “Hah!” I cried and grinned. Of course, under normal circumstances if you reflected something twice you ended up where you began. But Misty had obviously enchanted the writing so that in the second reflection the squiggles snapped into focus, as if someone who had been speaking a foreign language suddenly fell into English.

  No wonder Silverwhite hadn’t been able to decode the book. He was used to dealing with magic—pure and simple or pure and complicated, it was always pure. Dr. Hamish at PrestoCorp would certainly be hobbled by the same kind of thinking. The idea of enchanting writing in such a way that you needed only a set of mirrors to decode it would be something only a very special individual would think of—that would be Misty Morning. The only reason I’d been able to figure out the puzzle at last was because I’d had two clues: One was Misty’s mention of Leonardo da Vinci, and the other was the triple mirror that didn’t belong. Plus the fact that I couldn’t depend on my knowledge of magic, so I had to try something else.

  Though I now had the secret to reading Misty’s log book, it was still slow going. I’d forgotten a lot in the stretch I’d been out of school, and this was not easy stuff to begin with. I dragged out some of my old textbooks and they helped. After banging my brain against Misty’s notes for an hour or two, I was pretty sure that the knots were the one-way doorways I had been assuming they were. Misty herself didn’t know whether she was working on a system for transportation or waste disposal, but she seemed pretty clear on the knots’ one-way nature.

  I learned some other stuff, too, all of it pretty minor compared to the business about the knots. By that time my mind was chasing its own tail. I locked the three-part mirror in my desk along with the log and left the rest of my books in stacks on top—sort of a decorating statement.

  I went to bed thinking about what I had to do the next day. Call Harold for one thing. He had the right to know the solution to the problem I’d given him. That would be the easy job.

  After much tossing, turning, and tangling of sheets, I eventually slept.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CURIOSITY

  The telephone awakened me the next morning. At the other end was Harold Silverwhite. He’d beaten me to it. “Rise and shine, old chum,” he said jovially.

  I hate jovial in the morning. “You rise,” I suggested nastily. “You shine.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve learned nothing that will improve your mood,” he said. “My sources can find no connection between Misty Morning and Merv Lupinsky.”

  “I didn’t really think there would be,” I said in a more reasonable tone, “but I had to try. Thanks for your help.”

  “Delighted to do it, old chum. I’m only sorry that I wasn’t able to help you with Ms. Morning’s log book.”

  I said nothing while I decided which was kinder—to let him believe the problem remained unsolved, or to tell him the truth.

  “I know you’re out there, old chum,” Silverwhite said. “I can hear you breathing.”

  Silverwhite was a big boy. He could take it. When I told him the truth he listened without interrupting. “My, my,” he said when I was done. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Another learning experience,” I agreed. “Let’s have lunch sometime.”

  “Isn’t the phrase ‘do lunch’?”

  “Only in deepest darkest Hollywood.”

  “At any of several rates, we’ll eat together,” Silverwhite said. “Cheerio, old chum. Thanks for the lesson in ingenuity.”

  “Thank Misty.”

  After hanging up, I sat on the edge of my bed for another few minutes scratching my head and gathering my forces, then went to get the paper.

  Both Trask and Philpot were on the front page just as Astraea had promised—head shots, not news photos. While doing research on Misty, the police found documents that indicated Lord Trask was in reality Ian Tahern, notorious con person. Someone had also tipped Morris Devore, the president of Stilthins Mort, that Lord Philpot and one of his students were having an illicit affair. Trask was in custody and Philpot had been suspended pending an investigation.

  “Well, what do you know?” I said out loud. Apparently Astraea had been busy. And she had arranged things so that the police were involved, though nobody had called them, not exactly. I was impressed. I wouldn’t be inviting Trask and Philpot to my tawdry little event that day after all.

  Someone knocked on my door and I was suddenly aware that I was still sitting around in my “Grumpy” night shirt. “Just a minute,” I cried while I threw on my bathrobe and quick-marched to the door.

  “I am early,” Astraea said when she saw me.

  “No,” I said, “I am late. Come on in.”

  This morning Astraea was dressed in a pink tailored suit and matching shoes. The outfit should have clashed with everything else in the world, but it didn’t. I showed her the paper. She seemed pleased, but only enough to raise the ends of her mouth a little. Her teeth didn’t even show.

  “If I asked you how you did that would you just tell me that you’re Justice?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling a little wider now. “These two are merely irritants, not public enemies. Justice is measured. It comes differently to each.”

  Astraea waited in the living room while I cleaned up and then put on a nice gray suit that wouldn’t have a problem standing next to the pink dream Astraea was wearing.

  I left my bedroom and found Astraea standing at the window, one leg cocked to emphasize a hip, looking out at the city. It was a sexy pose, but she didn’t seem to be aware of it—which may have been why it was sexy. As far as she was concerned, she was just looking out the window. I let her continue while I went to the kitchen and sat down at the table I used for an office where I searched through my files for Lord Slex’s home address. When I had it, I called Vic Tortuga.

  He answered the phone with his usual challenge. “What?” he demanded.

  “It’s Turner Cronyn, Mr. Tortuga. I’m about to wind up the case. If you want to be in on it, be at Lord Zorn Slex’s house as soon as you can. It’s south of Rancho Park just off Motor Avenue.” I gave him the address.

  “Who done it, shamus?” Tortuga asked.

  “Be there or be square,” I said, and hung up on his blustering.

  I dialed again. “King?” I asked when the man at the other end answered.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “It’s Turner Cronyn, King. How’s the heartburn?”

  “Oh, I never get sick from them Fink’s dogs. Cast-iron stomach. You ever make head or tail of Misty’s lab log?”

  “Hah!” was all I replied. “But I’m about to throw a party at which the guest of honor will be Misty’s murderer. Want to come?”

  He chuckled as if I’d told a dirty joke. “Not if that’s the only attraction,” he said. “Who kille
d her ain’t my business. I don’t care and Dr. Hamish don’t care neither.”

  “All right, then. Good luck to you.”

  “Wait a minute, Cronyn. Who done it?”

  I chuckled back at him as I hung up. I waited a moment, half-expecting him to call me back. If he did, I would give him all consideration I would give a telemarketer. Sometimes it’s fun to talk to a person when it doesn’t matter what you say.

  Lastly I called Lord Slex to warn him that he was about to have company. “Why here?” he asked. “Why now?”

  “It’s the end of the road for somebody,” I explained. “I know who’s been making zombies all over town, and I’m within inches of knowing who killed Misty Morning.”

  “Oh, really?” he remarked, disbelieving. “Who would that be?”

  “The culprit should be clear soon enough,” I said. “You and the others will be the first to know.”

  Lord Slex said nothing for a moment, but I imagined I could hear the rumble and bump of his thinking. “You’re not the police. They don’t have to accept your invitation.”

  “Of course not. But I think they’ll be curious, don’t you?”

  “This is a private residence. I don’t have to let anybody in—not even you.”

  “Aren’t you curious, sir?”

  Lord Slex was silent for another moment. “You take a lot on yourself,” he said irritably.

  “Not so much, really. As you may recall, I felt pretty bad about Misty’s death.”

  Lord Slex grunted and hung up.

  Astraea spoke to me without turning around. “Will he let us in?” she asked.

  I tried to remember whether she could have known enough from my half of the conversation to ask that question. I couldn’t do it. Maybe it didn’t even matter. Being a goddess and all, listening to the far end of a phone conversation had to be peanuts for her. “I think he will,” I said at last. “He’s as curious as anybody else, if only to see if I screwed up the way I used to in school.”

  When I’d lifted my one and only physical clue from the pencil drawer in my desk and shoved it down into one of my vest pockets, I was ready to go.

  We left Astraea’s sedan chair, and I drove us down Fairfax, past the delicatessens, Ethiopian restaurants, and antiques stores, to Pico. At Fox Studios I turned left onto Motor, driving through Rancho Park, then deeply into the upper-class labyrinth that was Cheviot Hills. I had been to Lord Slex’s house back when I was a student at Stilthins Mort, so I got lost only twice looking for it now.

  Lord Slex lived on a street lined with camphor trees, each with its own enormous cloud of green leaves. From a low brick wall the lawn swept up a hill to a long surprisingly modern house done in the classic Spanish style, with white stucco walls, red pantiles on the roof, and lot of black ironwork. Vic Tortuga’s car was parked on one side of a large area paved in the same type of bricks as the wall out in front. Astraea and I walked across the parking area and used a brass lion’s head to knock on a door only slightly smaller than a ping-pong table.

  Lord Slex opened the door and then blocked our way. He was dressed informally in gray slacks and a very pale blue sport shirt with a fanned deck of cards on the pocket. He wore brown loafers but no socks. His eyes, hung with puffy bags, glared out from the morose and tired face of a man who hadn’t gotten much sleep lately.

  Beyond him, Vic Tortuga and Lyda Firebough stood in the center of the entryway looking like strangers waiting for a train. Vic wore a vest covered in a print inspired by peacock feathers over a brick-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Judging by their appearance, the heavy work boots he wore had not been involved in any activity more strenuous than walking across a room. Lyda wore a black sweater that matched her tights and buckled shoes. Her skirt was plaid and held together by a large decorative safety pin.

  Tortuga lit up like a hundred-watt bulb when he saw us—or saw Astraea, anyway—and immediately pushed past Lord Slex to open the door wide. “Come in, come in,” he invited as if it were his house and his party. Lyda gave me a soft but suggestive kiss on the cheek, which I suspected was more for Tortuga’s benefit than mine.

  Tortuga’s face shriveled into a sour expression. He noticed Lyda watching him and blew her a big theatrical kiss, which she ignored.

  The house was bright and modern and almost empty of furniture. Chairs, which ran in hard angular lines, looked as comfortable as milk crates. Obviously, some decorator had sold Lord Slex on a theory. Light came in through sliding doors that would open onto a pool if anybody cared, and through big round skylights that looked as if they’d been punched in the roof by falling meteorites.

  Tortuga stared at Astraea hungrily before briefly glancing in the general direction of Lord Slex, Lyda, and me. “This better be good,” he said.

  “I think you’ll like it,” I said. “Besides, you might as well stick around. The lecture is free.”

  Tortuga was about to say something even more clever when I took a packet of Spell-Be-Gone from my pocket and held it out to Lord Slex. “I’d like you to remove the spell you put on my face a few days ago.”

  “Come on, Cronyn,” Tortuga said. “I can’t believe you invited us here to watch Lord Slex remove a simple commercial spell.”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” I said. “But,” I continued and held up a hand to stop him from making the obvious complaint, “I think you’ll be more than entertained by what happens when he’s done.”

  “And what would that be?” Tortuga asked.

  I said nothing but held out the packet to Lord Slex again and shook it. He frowned, but took it from me with a single angry swipe of his hand, turned, and walked along a short hallway carpeted in white chenille to a white door, which he opened. We followed him into the room beyond, which was a large laboratory that reminded me of the one on the second floor of Misty Morning’s apartment but was much neater. Bright afternoon sunlight came in through four enormous windows, each one made up of a dozen or so smaller panes. Not much went on in this room—not recently, anyway. It looked like a store display advertising laboratories.

  Like a doctor about to do an examination, Lord Slex asked me to sit down on one of the stools lined up along the big stone table in the center of the room. As I sat down, a cold fear covered me like a blanket soaked in alcohol. What I was about to do had to be done, but that didn’t mean I was happy about doing it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  OLD HOME WEEK

  Lord Slex read the instructions on the back of the packet, mumbling the words to himself, then tore the packet open. He threw the dust from the packet over me while saying out loud the words he had mumbled earlier. Lyda gasped and Tortuga smiled with secret knowledge. Lord Slex twisted the packet and threw it into a metal wastebasket.

  “How do I look?” I asked and smiled engagingly at the crowd. I knew how I looked: eyes a little smaller, a little less chin. For better or worse I was myself again.

  “You look cute and wonderful,” Tortuga remarked sarcastically. “But what’s the point?”

  “The point is that I’m expecting one more guest, and changing back to my original appearance is the only invitation he’ll accept.”

  “Who—?” Lord Slex began and was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a man standing in a martial arts crouch in the center of the stone table. He was a strong-looking but compactly built man with dark ragged hair. He wore a red satin jacket that I’m pretty sure had the words HOUNDS OF HELL on the back. It was the same guy who’d attacked me at Silverwhite’s house, the same guy who’d harassed Dad and knocked me cold at the airport.

  With hot black eyes he glared at me out of his square ugly face. “Yeah. You look like the guy. Maybe you’re the guy.” He made fists and tightened his arms as if he were about to perform something acrobatic, but before he let loose I surprised him by introducing him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I announced in a voice so calm I impressed myself, “I’d like you to meet and greet Eddie ‘The Ender’ Tips.”


  Still tight as a muscle with a charley-horse, Eddie looked around at the crowd. He didn’t like all the people staring at him. His eyes went up and back between Astraea and Lyda.

  “Hello, Eddie,” Lyda said. Astraea merely watched him with disapproval. She could not be anything but beautiful, but her expression was grim, dangerous, and sharply pointed. I hadn’t known her face could do that.

  “Hi, Lyda,” Eddie said. “Long time no see. Uh, you know all these people?”

  “Small world, huh, Eddie?” Lyda said.

  Eddie licked his lips. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said to me and threw his hands into the air as he had at the airport. But he didn’t disappear this time, which seemed to surprise him. Then his eyebrows dropped, and he got a tricky expression on his face. “Let me go, Astraea,” he said, “or there’ll be trouble.”

  Astraea chuckled at that, as if Eddie had told a funny joke, but one she’d heard before. “I am Justice, Eddie. I will not let you get away.”

  “What am I to you?” Eddie asked as if he really didn’t know.

  Not quite so worried now about what Eddie might have in mind for me, I explained it to him. “You’ve been turning guys into zombies all over town,” I said, “guys who look like me. You even tried to get my father. You would have gotten me, but you found me before you stole the Blue Diamond from Misty Morning, and you couldn’t find me after you had it.”

  “So what?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” I suggested politely.

  “Tell him, Eddie,” Astraea said. “Or should I tell him? I have guessed most of it.”

  “Have a good time,” Eddie said and folded his arms.

  “Very well,” she said and took up a classical pose, one hand raised as if holding a balance scale. “The Fates assigned you to pick up Misty Morning’s soul after she was killed. You went to the scene of the crime, but you were a little early. Just early enough to see Ms. Morning try out her Blue Diamond. In the Blue Diamond you saw an opportunity to increase the chaos of the universe. The Fates knew what you had in mind, and they gave you just enough rope to hang yourself. Some time before your assignment to pick up Misty Morning’s soul they had warned you that your attempt to create more chaos in the universe would be thwarted by a man who looked like Turner Cronyn.”