Dangerous Hardboiled Magicians

by Mel Gilden

  “Who?”

  “Him,” Astraea said as she pointed at me.

  “But,” I said, “you didn’t know how I would thwart you, of course. And because you are a keres and couldn’t hurt me, the only thing you were able to do was bluster around making empty threats and hoping I would just go away. By the time you stole the Blue Diamond I didn’t look like my usual handsome self, so you never found me—just a squad of guys who looked like me.”

  Eddie shook his head as he chuckled gloomily. “That’s how the Fates are,” he said. “They never tell you everything you need to know. They tell you what a guy looks like but not that he don’t look like that no more.”

  “Bummer,” I said.

  Eddie agreed. “And you’re right when you said I couldn’t hurt you because I am a keres. Keres don’t kill, which you obviously know because you hang around with Astraea so much. The whole Misty Morning incident was legal from my point of view—a human killed by a human, and therefore part of the regular order of the universe.”

  I nodded. “I’m convinced,” I said. “But if you didn’t kill Misty, who did?”

  Eddie seemed to think, but I could tell he was enjoying the dramatic silence. He stretched it until it began to vibrate. “Him,” he said at last pointing at Lord Slex. “Mr. Lover Boy.”

  Eyebrows went up all over the room.

  Lord Slex made a short bitter laugh. “You can’t possibly believe him,” he said to nobody in particular.

  “Under ordinary circumstances,” I said, “I wouldn’t. But it just so happens that other evidence points to you too.”

  Lord Slex went slack and pale. “Oh, please,” he said, trying his best to pretend he thought I was bluffing.

  “I’m being foolish, I know, but I’ll tell you what I have just for the fun of it.”

  Lord Slex sank to one of the stools, looked over his shoulder at Eddie—who was showing a lot of teeth in his satisfied smile—and then back at me. “Go on,” Lord Slex said as if I were about to give a report in his class.

  “First, the killer had one of Misty’s house keys, so he or she must have been somebody Misty knew. But that still gives us, say, a few dozen suspects.”

  “I didn’t—” Vic Tortuga began. But when everybody turned to stare at him, he waved one hand to throw away whatever he had been about to say.

  “Second,” I went on, “a kid named Herb Hillyer had been following Misty because he had a crush on her. He saw the killer leaving in a Brent Martin disguise spell. Merlin, a magician who worked during Prohibition, always wore just such a disguise when he met with his people. As it happens, the car in the photo on your desk in your private office at Stilthins Mort was manufactured during Prohibition, too. A wizard, who was probably out of work during Prohibition, certainly could not afford such a car. But he wouldn’t have had any trouble if he were bootlegging. I think the owner of that car was you, Lord Slex.”

  “Old home week,” Eddie remarked, almost to himself.

  “Nice seeing you again, Merlin,” Lyda said angrily. “Looks like you’ll get what’s coming to you at last.” She smiled at me. “May I help?”

  “If you’re good,” I said. “But I suspect you’ll have to wait in line.”

  Gathering his forces, Lord Slex drew himself up. He didn’t even look in Lyda’s direction. “I never wore a Brent Martin spell,” he said. “And even if I did, that doesn’t mean I—or even this person, this Merlin—killed Misty.”

  “Maybe not,” I admitted. “But there’s more.”

  “Perhaps what you still have is better than what you’ve give us so far,” Lord Slex said.

  “Much better.” I let him have it right between the eyes. “I don’t think you killed Misty because she found out that you were Merlin. I found no evidence to support that idea. I think you killed her because you were jealous. Herb Hillyer said that you were never the wizard Misty was. That was it, wasn’t it?”

  As I spoke, Lord Slex’s face became hard. He moved his jaw up and back and licked his upper lip with his pointy pink tongue. He caught himself doing these things and stopped, but his face remained hard. “I see that you are still the idiot you were in school,” he said.

  “That’s exactly why you hired me,” I said.

  “Oh, really? I admit that I am fascinated.”

  “You hired me to give yourself an alibi. If you were ever suspected of Misty’s murder, you would be protected to some extent by the fact that you had hired a private detective to find the murderer. And then you went and hired me, hoping I’d be just as incompetent a detective as I was a magician.”

  “Apparently I was correct.”

  I smiled. “That’s what you say now, but you were enough afraid I might surprise you that you hired Louie ‘The Mouth’ Stuckler to distract me.”

  “You found Louie?” Lyda asked, delighted.

  “I did,” I said. “He sends his regards.”

  “I could have saved myself a lot of trouble,” Lord Slex said as if Lyda had not spoken, “if I’d killed Misty before I suggested the board hire you to protect her.”

  “True enough. But you’re not a natural-born killer. You had to work up the nerve to whack her, no matter how jealous you were. Accidentally running into Louie gave you an idea how you might do it. You saw the moment before I went on duty as your last chance to make the whole plan work.”

  “Everything you say is mere theory,” Lord Slex said, dismissing it all with a wave of his hand.

  “All theory,” I admitted, “but I have some physical evidence, too.” From the pocket in my vest I took an empty magic packet twisted in the middle to give it a feminine waist. “I found this one,” I said as I held it up, “in the wastebasket in Misty’s lab. It contained the same kind of rat poison spell that killed Misty, maybe the very spell itself.” I strode to the metal can at the end of the stone table and with two fingers pulled out the empty magic packet Lord Slex had used to change me back to my original appearance. I held the two packets out on the palm of my hand. “You see,” I said. “Both have been twisted in the same way.”

  “I am Lord Zorn Slex, a board member of Stilthins Mort College. Even if I wanted to kill Misty, I would not need a commercial spell.”

  “When you walked into Spell-Mart you were looking for a commercial spell to help with an intimate itching problem. I wondered even then why you didn’t just mix up something on your own. The day I met Misty for the first time I saw Eulalie Tortuga leaving your office. Like Herb Hillyer, she also was of the opinion that you were no longer the magician you had been. That was two votes against you, maybe three. Herb and Eulalie and I could have been wrong, but you can see how taken all together these little incidents would also make a person suspicious.”

  “Certainly I can see how they would have made someone like you suspicious,” Lord Slex said, making the admission an insult. “Do you have any more of your hard evidence?” he asked and folded his arms. “I don’t find that twisted paper very convincing, and I don’t think the police will, either.” He was one cool dude.

  “I do,” I said. “Eddie, did you see Lord Slex take Misty’s log book?”

  Eddie shrugged. “Sure,” he said agreeably.

  “Eddie,” Astraea said. It was a warning.

  Eddie glanced at her nervously. “If you mean that flat book Misty wrote things in, then yeah, I saw him take it. It was just laying around. After Misty was dead she didn’t care.”

  “So you say,” Lord Slex said. “Maybe he has it.” Lord Slex nodded at Eddie.

  “Sure,” I said, “he might have it. The police didn’t find it, which means that somebody had to take it. But the time between the moment I last saw Misty Morning alive, and the moment I found her body was very short. If Eddie doesn’t have it, the only other person who could have taken it is the murderer.”

  Lord Slex begot a smile, but it was a poor weak thing.

  “Actually,” I said, calm as pudding, “I have it.”

  Lord Slex’s smile went away like s
moke on a windy day. Everybody else looked from him to me as if we were playing tennis.

  “It has a black and white marbled cover,” I said, “and a coffee stain spreading from the spine. It looks as if it’s seen a lot of hard use, but I’m just guessing about that.”

  Lord Slex’s face collapsed into a horrified expression. He ran to a wooden drawer in the side of the lab table and used a small key to open it. He anxiously pushed things around inside until he fished out a book very much like the one I’d described. He shook it in the air triumphantly.

  In the time it took to blink once he became aware of the corner he’d painted himself into. Suddenly he pulled a packet from a pants pocket. In one swift motion he tore it open and flung the powder it contained at me. Before the dust settled, he was running for the door with the book in his hand. I attempted to run after him but discovered that I couldn’t move.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  JUSTICE HAPPENS

  Vic Tortuga took a fast step toward Lord Slex, but Lyda Firebough put an arm across his chest to stop him, and though he glared at her he stayed stopped.

  Meanwhile, Astraea pointed at Lord Slex. She didn’t hurl a thunderbolt, but she did prevent him from opening the door—or maybe it was just stuck. He glanced around with the eyes of a trapped animal, looking for another exit. Lyda motioned at me with both hands and suddenly I was free. I approached Lord Slex, and he shrank back toward the door. Using a little kid’s binding spell I tied him up. He clutched the log book against his chest, and squirmed like a caterpillar hanging by a silk thread, making incoherent but angry grunting and growling sounds while I gently lowered him to the floor with his back against the wall. I pulled the book from his hands and handed it to Astraea. He continued to struggle against the simple spell while he jabbered on about showing respect for age and experience.

  “You’re your own worst witness, Lord Slex,” I said, interrupting him. “Before this I thought maybe all of us were just prejudiced against you, but, well, if you can’t get out of that little bitty spell with nothing but your pinky finger it’s obvious even to somebody like me that you’re not the wizard you once were.”

  Lord Slex howled, and seemingly by force of will alone he broke through the binding spell. His eyes were wild and mad as he clumsily got to his feet and then rushed me with his gripping hands ready to tear flesh away from bone.

  When Lord Slex passed one of the big multi-paned windows, it suddenly exploded inward as if a giant fist had punched it from the outside. The crash seemed to go on and on. We all ducked as glass and wood flew across the room to make a tattoo of loud thumps when the sharp pieces struck the opposite wall. Some of them impaled the wall like knives in a circus act. As suddenly as the crash began there was silence. The tinkle of a piece of glass settling only made the silence seem more absolute.

  Years later, debris slid off me as I uncurled and looked around. The others were doing the same.

  The only person not moving was Lord Slex. I walked carefully through the splinters of glass and wood until I got to him, then felt for the artery in his neck.

  “I’m no doctor,” I said, “but I’d say this man is dead.”

  I looked up at Astraea. “Freak accident?” I asked.

  She was standing very still and her face showed no emotion. “I am Justice,” she said.

  She had told me that before, but its meaning had never struck me so hard as it did then. I didn’t think she would hurt somebody who wasn’t guilty, but then each of us was guilty of something, if only of stealing a candy bar when we were five or of reading under the covers by flashlight. She was a goddess, all right, but I didn’t want to sleep with her—not at that moment, anyway. A woman who could kill a man with a window was worth fearing.

  A spot of light appeared next to Lord Slex’s body, and it quickly unfolded into Louie “The Mouth” Stuckler. He glanced around. “Wow,” he remarked. “What happened here?”

  When nobody seemed ready to tell him, Louie shrugged and went on. “They told me to pick up Lord Zorn Slex,” he said. “Is that him?” He studied the body with a professional eye.

  “That’s him,” I said, feeling as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.

  “Hey, that’s the same guy who hired me to follow Misty Morning,” Louie said with surprise.

  “What do you know?” I remarked, enjoying the fact that things were going my way. “You told me he seemed to know you, yet you didn’t know him,” I said to Louie. “I think it’s because the last time you spoke to him before that he was Merlin, and all dressed up in a Brent Martin spell. What do you think?”

  “Could be,” Louie allowed. “I’ve always liked Brent Martin,” he went on, brightening up. “He’s one of the few guys who can both sing and dance.” He blinked at the crowd. “Hey, Lyda. How are they hanging?”

  “I have nothing that hangs,” she told him forcefully, but with good humor.

  “Hah!” Vic Tortuga remarked. Lyda punched him hard in the shoulder, causing him to shy and then laugh.

  “Whatever,” Louie said. “Hey, Eddie. Long time no see.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “How have you been, Louie?” His desire to know was not strong.

  “Okay, I guess. I’m here to pick up the guy on the floor. What about you?”

  “I came for him,” Eddie said, pointing at me.

  Louie was confused. “But he ain’t dead,” he said.

  “Bummer, huh?” Eddie said.

  “Whatever you say, Eddie. I got work to do.” Louie knelt and plunged his hand into Lord Slex’s body as if it were no more substantial than air. After a moment of feeling around he pulled out something that consisted entirely of a silvery sheen, something that made a spider’s web look as gross and rugged as the hairy cordage in the window of Enough Rope. Louie deposited the silvery thing in a small basket that hung from one shoulder. “See you in the funny papers,” he said, and raised his hands above his head.

  “Wait,” Astraea said. “There will be more work for you.”

  “Yeah,” Tortuga said. “Pretty soon we’re going to run out of windows.”

  Nobody thought that was funny. After Louie put his arms down, he and Astraea looked at each other with a gaze you could drive traffic over. I think they were exchanging information, but what did I know? Eventually Louie pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the stone table. He looked up at Eddie and waved. Eddie ignored him.

  “This is all very entertaining,” Vic said, “but it makes no more sense than one of my early novels. I can see that Lord Slex killed Misty, and maybe even why, but I still don’t understand what this has to do with Eddie and his need to create zombies.”

  “Perhaps I can explain,” Astraea said. She set the log book onto Lord Slex’s desk and rested the palm of one hand on it.

  “I’m all ears, schutzie-putz,” Vic said, and smiled at her warmly. Lyda scowled.

  Astraea looked at me and I nodded. Astraea began:

  “Eddie hated Lord Slex because he was able to date Eulalie Tortuga when he, Eddie, couldn’t. As much as he hated Lord Slex, there was no point in Eddie’s stealing his soul because he had no way to permanently dispose of it. But then the Fates sent Eddie to take away Misty’s soul after Lord Slex killed her, and he learned about the Blue Diamond.”

  “Blue Diamond?” Vic asked.

  I explained. Vic took it all in as if he heard that sort of explanation every day. “So why,” he asked, “didn’t Eddie make him a zombie after he could take Lord Slex’s soul and use the Blue Diamond to make it stick?”

  “Eddie was interested in revenge,” I said, “but he was also clever. He had no idea what happened to the souls that went through the knot made by the Blue Diamond. Maybe they danced in the sunshine and ate ice cream all day. He wanted to give Lord Slex all the trouble he could. He figured that Lord Slex would be in more pain—first, if he lost Eulalie, and second, if he was prosecuted for Misty’s murder.”

  “That prosecution part seemed to work out,” Eddie s
aid, enjoying the memory. “I guess if he was Merlin, he deserved it even more, huh?”

  Vic was still trying to understand. “So,” he said, “what it amounts to is this—Eddie took Eulalie’s soul because she wouldn’t date him?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “The bitch.”

  Vic growled like an angry dog and pulled himself up onto the stone table, scattering glass and wood bits.

  “Vic!” Lyda cried.

  Vic paid her no mind, but leaped at Eddie, surprising him so much that Eddie did the first thing that came naturally—he morphed into an enormous black dog dripping flames. The growl he gave as he attacked Vic was something from the back of a prehistoric cave, something that made the little hairs stand up all over my body. Eddie fiercely tore at Vic’s chest and with much less tenderness than Louie had shown, yanked free Vic’s soul—leaving behind not so much as a scratch. I couldn’t have coughed twice in the time it took.

  While the soul struggled to get free of Eddie’s fangs, Eddie took his human form again and pulled the Blue Diamond from his jacket pocket. He took the soul from his mouth and held it tightly in his fist while he raised the diamond aloft and said a few well-chosen words, causing a knot to open in the air before him. Before he could do anything else, I picked up a hunk of wood from the table and in the same motion flung it at the hand holding the Blue Diamond. The diamond flew out of his hand and shattered against the far wall, leaving a big spot of sparkling blue dust.

  The soul struggled free and, like tinsel in a hurricane, flew across the small space to once again bury itself in Vic’s body. Lyda went to Vic, gently brushed his face with her hands, and cried over him.

  “You bring shame onto the gods and goddesses,” Astraea said sadly.