The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 1: American Nightmares (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #1)

by Michael Panush

  "Brilliantly inventive series... unforgettable characters... witty, pulpy style, bordering on hard-boiled... not a single bum note in any of the stories, they all pop off the page." ~Tony Healey (Reader Review)

  "This book is rollicking, engaging, and truly entertaining. The characters have quirky personalities and work diligently to keep the reader flipping pages. ~Vergere Street (Reader Review)

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  A Taste of The Stein & Candle Detective Agency: Cold Wars

  A Taste of El Mosaico: Road to Hellfire

  A Taste of Jurassic Club: Dinosaur Jazz

  About the Author

  More Books from Curiosity Quills Press

  Full Table of Contents

  Everything in the spacious garden of Ravenwood Manor was gray and dead, including the house’s master and his wife. Baron Edwin Exham and Lenora Exham sat at a glass table around dead grass, dead flower beds and skeletal dead trees. They were still as a painting with their mammoth bodyguard standing behind them. I was there to meet them for a job, and they insisted on seeing me in the twilight around sundown. I knew what they were. I didn’t mind.

  My name is Morton Candle and I’m a private dick. My fists and my guns work for whoever pays the most money, and investigation is usually only half of the job. The other half involves violence and blood. I take the bad jobs, the weird jobs, the jobs that pay well because there are so few people willing to do them – and even less who know what they’re dealing with. You see, I tore across Europe with the Screaming Eagles in the Big One, parachuting down into the black heart of the Black Forest – and right into the center of Hitler’s occult workshop. I won’t tell you what I saw there, but consider my eyes open and my trigger finger itchy.

  After forcing the Nazis back to Berlin and putting an end to the Third Reich’s maniac wizardries, I went back to the States and found that the G.I. Bill didn’t reward you much for fighting a bunch of mechanized Kraut monsters with knives for hands and mouths full of fangs. The OSS – and their CIA successors — wanted everything about the Black Forest operation to go away quietly, so that meant an honorable discharge for me and the boys in my unit. I decided to go into the spook-stomping business for myself.

  That’s also when I met the kid, for a second time. Weatherby Stein was a month shy of fifteen-years-old, born into a family of Germanic alchemists and occultists stretching back to Johan Conrad Dippel and Faust. He had the bad luck to have a mother who was British and of a persuasion Hitler didn’t like. He got back from boarding school in England, only to find his ancestral estate crawling with storm troopers. His father was given a simple ultimatum, as German as wiener schnitzel – work for us or your wife and son go to the camps.

  Mr. Stein had done just that, and when my unit and I came screaming through, the local commandant decided that Uncle Sam’s boys didn’t deserve to know any of the supernatural secrets of the Thousand Year Reich. Weatherby’s parents got a luger shot to the skull, and he would have followed them if a bunch of pissed-off paratroopers hadn’t smashed in a second later and put a few rounds through everyone wearing a swastika.

  Weatherby was just a kid then, but the OSS picked him up and demanded that he tell them about all of his father’s projects. He wasn’t talking, so they cut him loose. He met me after that, and I told him that with my muscle and his smarts, we could make a lot of dough together. Weatherby Stein agreed, though not without complaint. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t stopped complaining all through the long road to Cold Springs, Nebraska, and the decrepit robber baron’s mansion on the hill overlooking the city. It was known as Ravenwood and was the recent home of Baron Edwin Exham.

  Weatherby stood next to me in the garden, wearing one of his father’s black Victorian suits, waistcoats and ties. I told him that people didn’t actually dress like that anymore. He fixed me with one his cold blue-eyed stares, harder than it should be for a gawky teenager with hair like raven-black straw and hick round spectacles. “I have no regard for the excrement known as modern clothing. I dress as people should, not how they do. I am like this in every regard.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You sure are, kiddo. You sure are.” He demanded that I refer to him as Master Stein and then we argued about that for a half an hour.

  But for now at least, Weatherby was silent. He stared down at his loafers as Baron Exham looked me over. The hill was cold and I wore a trench coat over my rumpled vest and suit, the fedora low over my shadowed face. I had a strong jaw. It was used to getting hit. Exham probably knew I was heeled – a pair of Colt .45s in crossed shoulder-holsters, not to mention another arsenal back in the car– but neither he nor his bodyguard said anything. I guess he liked that I came prepared.

  Exham was gaunt and hairless. His pinstriped double-breasted suit would have looked comfortable on any big city banker and a cigar seemed at home in the corner of his mouth. His eyes moved from my boots to my fedora, and were as impassive as swamp water.

  His wife was something else. Lenora Exham had short blond hair, curling up just above her shoulders and leaving them bare. They were white as milk. Her skin seemed to shine in the few shafts of moonlight, so that everything about her was luminous. She folded her arms and her legs as she looked at me. I looked back for a while, before I tore my eyes away. I had to concentrate on the business at hand. When Lenora Exham was nearby, I had a feeling that would be difficult.

  “So, Mr. Candle, you said you possess the necessary martial talents to assist me with my problem?” Baron Exham asked. His lips curled back, and he trapped his cigarette between teeth like pale tombstones. “As you know, my…condition often prevents me from settling scores and removing threats to my vast fortune.”

  “Nosferatu.” Weatherby said it at a whisper. He knew what we were dealing with, at least.

  “What about him?” I nodded to the bodyguard. He had thick reddish brown sideburns framing a scowling face with a roadmap of scars. The guy’s build would have made a tank jealous. He had crammed himself into a dark sweater, and stood head and shoulders taller than me, Weatherby and the Baron. “Scared of getting those mitts dirty, big man?”

  “What the Hell is that supposed to mean?” He had a voice like gravel being ground up.

  Exham shrugged. “Bruno is loyal, as long as I indulge his…eccentricities. But his job is to watch over me and my wife while we slumber. This kind of work requires me to have an agent in the town of Cold Springs.”

  “What sort of agent?”

  “One who can get things done.” Baron Exham came to his feet. He walked away from the glass table, his boots rustling the dry dead grass. He looked down at Cold Springs. It was a little town, a bump on the road between bumps on the road. It had a bar, a motel, and that was about it. “I have made you aware of my substantial fortune, Mr. Candle, taken from my ancestral home in the moor country of my native land.”

  I nodded. “Enough to make Midas jealous.”

  “Ah,” Exham said, the hint of a smile splitting his cheeks. “You know the classics?”

  “When I need to.” I was looking at Lenora and she returned my smile.

  Her husband continued talking. “There is a group of miscreants, rogues, and reprobates – young motorcyclists, for the most part. They call themselves the Bike Bats, but they do not share my lineage.” He spoke with the disdain of the confirmed blueblood. “They’re half-turned, able to go about in daylight, subsist on small amounts of blood – and lacking the true power and majesty of my proud line. A sn
iveling little snot named Nails Kenzie runs the gang.” Baron Exham turned back to me. “They are massing in Cold Springs, sir. They mean to have my fortune.”

  “And you can’t exactly go to the police,” I said. I nodded. “Let me discuss it with my associate.”

  Weatherby Stein and I walked across the dead garden. I stopped in the shade of some topiary animals, which had long since turned into wire skeletons in ragged gray coats of dead vegetation. I reached for a cigarette and my lighter as I kicked at a pile of leaves. They came apart like ash.

  Weatherby shook his head at the cigarette. “Filthy habit,” he said, as he fastidiously started cleaning his spectacles on his jacket. “The tobacco fumes are noxious in the extreme, outdoing even your usual odors in terms of odiousness.”

  “I like it.”

  “It’s foolish and shortsighted, sacrificing far too much in exchange for a small reward.” He replaced his spectacles on his thin nose. “Much like this opportunity of employment. I don’t like working for vampires. They see mortals – like us — as midnight snacks. They have little patience; they scheme and plot more than a sewing circle’s worth of housewives. And furthermore, Baron and Baroness Exham have allowed this splendid mansion to fall into a state of total disrepair.”

  “How about that Baroness?” I asked. “Some dame, eh?”

  “Uh…yes.” Weatherby liked to pretend he didn’t have any feelings. I knew better. “She was q-quite beautiful.” He put his hands in his pockets. “We do need the money, don’t we?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, we must be careful, Mr. Candle. We must be on our guard at all times, as if we were dealing with the devil himself. But I think, if we can handle this correctly, some amount of that ancestral bloodsucker gold may find its way into our pockets.”

  “A fellow can hope.” I patted his shoulder. “I’ll let them know.” I walked back to Baron Exham. “All right, Baron,” I said. “The kid and I are now on your payroll. What do you want done?”

  Baron Exham smiled widely, and now I could see the fangs reaching down over his lips. “The Bike Bats, Mr. Candle. I need them dealt with. Not now, of course. Night is coming, and my wife and I must feed. But tomorrow morning, while we slumber, you will go into Cold Springs and find them.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “You got a place to flop for me and the kid while you’re indulging your appetites?”

  Exham pointed to the manor. “We have several rooms. They are somewhat dusty, but I’m certain you will find that Ravenwood Manor possesses numerous other comforts.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off of Lenora. She licked her pale lips. “I’ll bet,” I said.

  I slept poorly, which was probably a good thing. Weatherby Stein and I picked rooms opposite each other. He carried a collection of his father’s books with him, and the kid selected a tome thicker than a phone book by some Dutch bum for a little bedtime reading. I put a .45 under my pillow and looked at the ceiling until I fell asleep.

  I dreamed of the war, and that woke me up a little before dawn, like it always did. I felt the wind on my face like a hundred knives during the drop, and the mud crunching under combat boots. Bullets kicked up dirt around me. The heat of gunfire burned against the snow and I saw the faceless head of some poor Kraut kid after a .30 cal was through with him. That made my eyes open and I found myself staring at the crumbling ceiling. Then I realized I wasn’t alone.

  I grabbed the automatic from under my pillow and sat up. I pointed it at the doorway. Someone was there. She walked forward and I saw it was the Baroness Lenora Exham. I didn’t lower the pistol. “Watching me sleep?” I asked. “Getting hungry? Sorry, sister, but this one ain’t for drinking.”

  “You are nervous, aren’t you?” she said, her arms resting loosely at her sides. “You are afraid of death. Perhaps eternal life would be a blessing for you.”

  “Yeah. Except sleeping in a coffin don’t sound that comfortable.” I set my gun on the nightstand and stood up. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep right about now?”

  “I will, in a moment,” she said. “Beauty sleep?” She laughed. It sounded hollow. “Don’t you think I’m beautiful, Mr. Candle?”

  “Like a panther, baby, ready to pounce.” I walked over to the corner where my clothes rested in a heap. I put on my shirt and started buttoning it. “And I bet your hubby doesn’t like you pawing around with the hired help.”

  “He’s not the biggest cat in the jungle,” Baroness Exham replied. “And I wasn’t always like this. We met in a Kansas City dance hall, before the war. It was a wide open town, as I’m sure you know.”

  I shrugged. “I never got out of Brooklyn, until I went to France.”

  “Edwin met me backstage, after I did a little fan-dancing,” Lenora continued. “He made me an offer – go with him and get all the money I wanted, keep all the beauty I had, and live forever. I agreed without a thought.” She sat down on my bed, behind me. I buttoned my vest and tucked in my tie. “But time has passed, Mr. Candle. A lot of it has.”

  “You don’t look it, sister.”

  “Yeah. And the funny thing is, I stay young, but I’m getting older. And I’m just a little tired of it all.”

  I turned around. “Well, find someone else to put a little excitement back into your life.” I put my hat on my head. “I’ve got to go to work.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” She took my gun from the nightstand and held it out, barrel first. I didn’t know what was more dangerous – the pistol or the hand holding it.

  Quickly, I took the gun from her and slid it into my shoulder-holster. “See you around, sister,” I muttered, and headed outside. Weatherby stood in the hallway, fiddling with a pistol clip. It was special ammo, laced with garlic and carved with crosses. He handed it to me and I pocketed it. He tried to stand on his tiptoes and peer behind me, to look at Lenora Exham. I closed the door behind me.

  “Is that the Baroness?” he asked, his voice cracking.

  “Not until you’re older,” I told him.

  “Mr. Candle, I can understand your, well, a-attraction to her, but please don’t let it cause any trouble for us.” He hung his head, speaking with all the sadness of the impoverished aristocrat. “We really need the money from this operation.”

  I nodded. “I’ll be careful.” I didn’t want to crack wise at the kid, not when he seemed so pathetic. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s head into town.”

  We walked down the dusty hallway. Shafts of sunlight reached in through the holes in the ceiling, illuminating the spray of dust. It felt like we were walking through a cloudy patch of sky. I felt better when we were outside, and even more so when we were down the hill and inside my powder blue Packard.

  I started the auto. Weatherby Stein knew how to re-animate a corpse with a bolt of lightning, how to feed and care for a pack of graveyard ghouls, and how to exorcise a vengeful spirit, but he couldn’t drive an automobile. He sat in the passenger seat, because the back was full of guns and ammunition. It was army surplus mostly, with a few choice modifications. I hit the gas pedal and started rolling into town.

  “So, do we have a plan of attack against these motorcycling miscreants?” Weatherby wondered.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Piss them off, then beat them down.” I looked over my shoulder at our little armory. “Exham said the Bike Bats were half-turned. That makes them like normal bloodsuckers, but a little weaker, right?”

  “Correct. The clip of ammunition in your automatic should prove efficient.”

  “What if I don’t want efficient? What if I want to take off limbs and tear bodies in half?”

  “Then there’s the trench gun. I’ve prepared the shells with extract of garlic, holy water and slivers of silver.” He reached in back and grabbed the shotgun. It looked twice its size in his spindly arms. “But you don’t intend to slaughter these men, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I just want to be prepared.”

  By then, we had
arrived in Cold Springs. It had one street and the saloon was on it. I drove the Packard over and slowed it down. Outside the saloon were a dozen motorcycles, gathering dust. Inside were their riders, raising hell. The saloon was called the Oasis. It had a neon palm tree hovering above the entrance. If this was the oasis, I’d hate to see the desert. I loaded one of my automatics with the prepared bullets, kept the other with normal forty-fives. Then I stepped inside.

  The jukebox was blaring rock and roll. I couldn’t say I liked it. The Bike Bats had the run of the place. Besides the bartender, there wasn’t one fellow without a short black leather jacket, with fangs and wings embroidered on the back. A couple of them were smacking around balls on a pool table in the back. The rest were smoking or drinking. Nobody was saying much of anything.

  They looked up at me as I walked in. I took off my hat and held it in my hand. “My name is Mort Candle. I’m looking for someone named Nails Kenzie,” I said. I tried to keep a smile on my face. “I was wondering if any of you gents have seen him.”

  “You looking for me, daddy-o?” Nails Kenzie was sitting at the bar. A bottle of bourbon sat next to him. He had curly black hair, carefully piled on his head, and wore a ring on each of his long fingers. He wore aviator sunglasses, and I could see my reflection in them. I couldn’t see the reflections of any of the other Bike Bats. “Cause I gotta say, I ain’t the kind of man worth searching for.”

  “Maybe I got a good reason.”

  “Maybe suicide ain’t such a good reason, pal.” He raised his hand, and I saw a switchblade in his pale palm. It flicked to life. The other Bike Bats weren’t playing pool any more. “Let me guess – the Baron sent you. He’s worried about me and the boys taking his gold.” Nails shrugged. “I guess he’s right to be worried. That withered old fancy-pants ought to lay down in his coffin and not get out so we can just take every buck he’s got.”

  I put my hat back on my head. “I guess this isn’t gonna be such a friendly bumping of gums.”

  “I guess not.” Nails moved to stand up.