Costume Not Included

by Matthew Hughes

  "I ain't gonna argue," said his assistant.

  "Then what have we got?"

  "Crimewise? You mean in that burgh of yours?"

  "Yes."

  "Coupla muggin's. And there's this stock boy gonna swipe some steaks from the supermarket when he gets off work."

  "That's it?"

  "It's a quiet night. It's too bad you didn't ask me sooner. There was a murder just before we come out to see his nibs."

  "What! A murder! Why didn't you say anything?"

  "I wasn't on duty. You was gettin' ready to have dinner with mom and the missus. I didn't wanna–"

  Chesney cut him off. "Wait, when was the murder? When exactly?"

  Xaphan produced the big old pocket watch that was attached to the chain that ran across its waistcoat. The demon flipped the gold case open and studied the dial, then said, "Bout five seconds ago, your time."

  "So is the victim actually dead?"

  Xaphan thought about it. "Depends on what you mean by dead. Heart's stopped. Breathin's stopped. Body's on the floor. Brain is windin' down."

  "So not brain dead?"

  "Nah. But pretty soon."

  Chesney was thinking. "Listen," he said, "when we step outside of the world, we step outside of time, right?"

  "Always."

  "Okay. Now, I've never asked you this, but when we step back in, do we have to come in exactly when we left off?"

  Xaphan's weasel brow wrinkled. "I think we're suppose'ta."

  "But do we have ta?'"

  The demon's brow wrinkled even more deeply. "I guess not," it said, after a moment.

  "So if I said, 'Let's go back into the world just before the murder, just in time to prevent it,' how would that be?"

  Xaphan's brow cleared. "Okay," it said, "I know this one. If someone's dead, they have to stay dead, cause otherwise you're calling a soul back from our place, or the other place, and that's not kosher. Traffic goes oneway, ya see?"

  "Oh," said Chesney, "I guess that makes sense. Too bad, then."

  "Wait," said the demon, "I ain't finished yet. You can… what's the word when you bring a dead body sorta back, so you can order it around?"

  "Reanimate? Zombie? Frankenstein?"

  "That's the one! Alphonse and me, and some of the boys, we went to see that picture. Did I laugh!"

  "But I don't want to reanimate a corpse," said Chesney.

  "You sure? They can be a lotta fun at a party."

  "I'm sure. So, dead is dead, and I can't prevent the murder."

  "Oh, sure you can," said his demon. "I was gettin' to it. If the soul hasn't actually taken a powder, you can deal yourself in a little before the deadly deed. Then the murder don't really happen, so it don't really count."

  "Really? Excellent. All right, get me in costume." Instantly, he was clad in blue and gray, gloves and half-mask in place. "So what's the setup?"

  "Well," said Xaphan, "it's a mom and pop fight. In the kitchen. Same old razzamatazz: he drinks too much, she's always playin' the bingo, blah, blah, blah. He gives her a push, she smacks him with the fry pan, he sees red, stabs her wit' the knife. She goes down, end of story."

  "Except I come in, grab the knife before he gets her, it's all good."

  "You wanna play it like that, we'll play it like that."

  "Let's go."

  It was a three-room shotgun apartment on the third floor of a walk-up tenement. The kitchen had a view of the window of an identical apartment across the air shaft. It was dingy and lit by a single sixty watt bulb hanging from a globeless ceiling light fixture. The woman was about sixty, gray-haired, with smoker's rivulets all down her upper lip. The man was just old, his hair thin, greasy and lank, dressed in a stained sleeveless undervest and colorless pants over worn-out carpet slippers. Everything he wore was redolent of beer and cigarette ash. His eyes were moist, probably with tears that were the result of the blow he had just taken to the side of his head, where a bump was already rising.

  The knife had been on the table, where the woman had been cutting up cabbage. Now it was in his hand and he was rising from the chair into which he'd been knocked back by the swipe from the frying pan. In another second, the long blade of German steel would be buried to the hilt in her middle, slicing open her heart and piercing a lung, bringing almost instantaneous death.

  Except that the Actionary appeared. His hand flashed out at superhuman speed and, with the strength of ten men, closed about the old man's wrist. The knife fell from his nerveless grasp and seemed to Chesney to float slowly toward the floor. He caught it with his other hand, then as Xaphan returned him to non-emergency speed, he stepped back and, in a dramatic gesture, raised the weapon in both hands and snapped the blade in two.

  For a moment there was absolute silence and stillness in the room. Then the old woman said, "What the Hell do you think you're doin'? That was a hunnerd-dollar knife! Our boy Donny gave it to us on our fortieth anniversary!"

  "He was going to stab you with it," said Chesney, indicating the old man with a sideways motion of his head.

  "I never!" said the husband.

  "It was in your hand! You were getting up! It was pointed at her belly!"

  "I was, whatchamacallit… gesturin' with it, to make a point, like."

  "That's right," said the woman. "He likes to gesture and such!"

  "Listen," said Chesney, "I came back in time to prevent him from sticking this in your heart. By now you should be lying on the floor, dead as a mackerel."

  This information caused the couple to pause. "You're from the future?" said the old man. "Jeez, I used to read about that stuff when I was a kid. Ray Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein."

  "Don't start with that malarkey again," said his wife. "This bozo broke Donny's anniversary present."

  "Well, jeez-looeez, Marjorie, the guy did just appear outta nowhere. An' he's dressed like Buck Rogers." The old man gave Chesney the once-over, then did it again, while his nicotine-stained fingers touched the bump on the side of his head. He winced and said, "Hey, what did you do to my head?"

  "Nothing," said Chesney, "She did–"

  "I never!" said the woman.

  "You're still holding the frying pan," said Chesney. She turned and set the pan down on the counter beside the gas stove, then looked at him as if the act was conclusive proof of her innocence.

  Meanwhile, the old man was saying, "So you come from the future to stop me from sticking Marjorie – not that I ever would, baby. Does that mean we're part of some important timeline?"

  "Timeline!" said Marjorie, addressing the ceiling as if it would now confirm the idiocy of her spouse.

  "No," said Chesney. "It's not like that. I only came back by a few seconds, because when I heard about the murder–"

  "I never!" said the old man.

  "When I heard what was going to happen, it was only a few seconds after it happened." That hadn't sounded right. "Wait, I mean–"

  "Never mind all this hoopdedoo," said Marjorie. "What about the knife? That's a Henkel chef's special, cost about a hunnerd and fifty, easy."

  "Yeah," said the old man, "not to mention sennuhmennul value."

  "Xaphan," Chesney said, in a voice only his assistant could hear, in a conversation that took place outside of time, "Can we fix the fershlacklinner knife?" Chesney had long ago taught himself, aided by his mother's soapgargling, never to swear. Instead he made up nonsense words on the spot.

  "Done," said the demon.

  Chesney felt a vibration in the hand that held the knife's handle. He lifted up the Henkel chef's special and showed it whole and perfect again. "There," he said, "it's fixed."

  The old man took the knife, turned it over, examining the blade. "How'd you do that?" His watery eyes brightened. "Did you go into the future and, like, weld it with lasers?" Then he recollected what they'd been talking about before. "Wait a minute, you said you only came back five seconds. So were you, like, already here when I– I mean, when you thought I–"

  "No," said Chesney, "I
wasn't here."

  "Were you on some, whatchacallit, alternate timeline? You know, parallel universe. Or did you–"

  "No," said Chesney, "I was in…" And then he thought better of it and said, "Xaphan, get us out of here."

  "Want me to make them forget we was here?"

  "I don't care. I'd rather be in Hell."

  Instantly, they were in his warm and cozy room in the outer circle of Hell. Xaphan went to the drinks cabinet, poured itself a tumbler of rum and got a cigar from the humidor. The demon lit up and blew some complicated shapes of blue smoke. "Couldn't do this on the boss's nickel," it said.

  "Why," said Chesney, "does everything have to be so complicated?"

  "What?" said Xaphan. "You mean those old fuds?"

  "They weren't even grateful."

  The demon blew some more smoke. "You want grateful, don't fix it before it happens. Fix it after it happens, when they'd give anythin' not to have had it happen." It drank half a glassful of the pungent liquor. "And even then, don't be surprised if they turn around and give you the fish-eye."

  Chesney sighed. He recognized that his assistant's view of the world was at an angle to his own, but at this moment he was tempted to share it. Still, he told himself, I did save her life, even if they both denied it. The deed stands. He said as much to the demon.

  "Deed, schmeed," said Xaphan. "So, you wanna go home? Your momma and the girlfriend, they're gonna mix it up if you don't."

  "Guess I'd better. Just let me think a little first."

  The demon poured itself another glass of rum. "Take alla time you need," it said.

  "Mother," Chesney said, "I've been unfair to you and to the Reverend Billy Lee."

  "Yes, you have," said Letitia, reminding Chesney that she never gave ground and never forgot a trespass, even if she was supposed to forgive them.

  "So I will go to his house, and I will read the book."

  "What book?" said Melda.

  "Nothing that concerns you," said Letitia.

  "Anything that concerns–" the young woman began, but then she allowed Chesney's gently raised hand to check her outburst.

  "Anything that concerns me," Chesney said, "concerns Melda. We are a couple."

  "She is not–" his mother began to explain, but when he raised his hand again, she scarcely paused before continuing, "not part of what you are called to do."

  "If she's not part of it," Chesney spoke before Melda's fuse had smoldered all the way to the inevitable explosion, "then I'm not part of it."

  "How dare you speak to your mother in that way?" said Letitia.

  Melda eased into the conversation, her tone deceptively mild. "Tell me, Mrs Arnstruther: you say Chesney is a prophet?"

  There was no warmth in the older woman's reply. "He is. I have seen the book. I have seen the angel of the Lord."

  "And does that make you the mother of a prophet?"

  "If that is what I am called to–"

  But Melda homed right in. "And do prophets' mothers usually outrank their sons?"

  Letitia froze. Melda had the good grace neither to move nor to let her face do anything that would call up associations with a running back's post-touchdown victory dance. There was silence around the dining table until Chesney said, "Then that settles it. Mother, I will read the book. Melda will read the book. And then we'll see."

  Instantly, he realized that his last four words had been quoting the Devil. And if his mother had come back at him, he would have told her that her bidding and Satan's were one and the same. But Letitia Arnstruther was looking a little like a champion boxer whose head was still reverberating from a haymaker that had come out of nowhere.

  Chesney thought he'd better save the news for the rematch.

  • • • •

  Lieutenant Denby scrunched his thin shoulders against the angle made by the car door and the driver's seat and watched the matronly woman get into the forty-oddyear-old Dodge DeSoto. He had routinely called in to dispatch to run the car's plate when it had parked in one of the visitor's slots outside the condo building where the nerd kid lived. When the tag had come back as belonging to a Letitia Arnstruther, the policeman had settled in to wait.

  He had already seen the girlfriend's beat up old Hyundai go down the ramp into the building's underground parking and knew that she would park in one of the two bays allotted to the kid's unit. The other one stayed empty; the kid didn't drive, had never even got a license. Denby had followed the girlfriend around for a couple of days, in case she was a go-between who would lead him to the guy in the costume. That was the term the lieutenant used when he thought of the Actionary, except when he thought of him as Mr Spandex – but the latter label always caused an odd tickling sensation in the back of the lieutenant's mind, as if he ought to remember something that he had forgotten. Something important.

  The Dodge started up. Whoever looked after the vintage car knew what they were doing, because the big old V8 engine purred as if it had just come out of a 1960s showroom. Denby watched it pull away from the curb like a 1930s ocean liner leaving the dock. He let it get a block ahead then started up the ghost car and followed.

  Letitia Arnstruther – had to be the mother; there were no other Arnstruthers in the state – lived in a well-established middle-class neighborhood a couple of miles from downtown. And if she was going home, Denby figured, she would have turned left onto Columbus Drive. Instead, she went straight through the lights and he had to juice it up a little to get across the intersection before the yellow turned to red.

  She got onto the parkway, and Denby dropped back until he was a good two hundred yards behind. Then, when the parkway met the interstate, she rolled up onto the overpass and took the on-ramp heading south.

  "Oh, ho," the lieutenant said to himself, "and where are we going tonight, mother dear?"

  She settled into the through-traffic lane and so did he, then he slowed down enough to let three cars overtake and get between him and the DeSoto. The old car's tail lights were unmistakable. He matched speed and waited to see where all this was taking him.

  He was pretty sure the girlfriend was not playing intermediary. She went to work and back, went shopping when she needed to, and spent most of her free time with the kid – and at the kid's apartment, which was bigger than hers and up high enough that street noise wasn't a nuisance, the way it was in her ground-floor suite. Arnstruther had only been over to her place once since Denby had started keeping tabs on McCann, and their conversation had not been useful.

  What he had overheard had been more than a little surprising, the lieutenant would have admitted – if he'd had anyone to talk to about this assignment, which he didn't because what he was doing was way over the line and would have got him canned if he hadn't had coverage from the highest levels of the department and City Hall. Denby was using completely illegal surveillance methods, including having the phone company turn Melda McCann's landline handset into a permanent open mike. Not only was every call she made or received intercepted and recorded, but so was every conversation – in fact, every sound – that happened within twenty feet of the phone.

  The phone was right next to the girlfriend's bed, so the loudest and clearest signals had come from the couple's most intimate encounters. That was where the "more than a little surprising" part of the surveillance came in; apparently, either Melda McCann had undiscovered acting talents of Academy Award-winning quality, or Chesney Arnstruther was an absolute master of the female fiddle. Denby had listened to the tape twice and had come around to thinking that the kid had more going for him than showed on the surface.

  It was only after the connubial concerto in question that the policeman had heard any mention of Mr Spandex. When their heavy breathing had moderated, Melda had brought up what she called "the endorsement question." The kid had said, "Not now, Melda."

  She had said he ought to be thinking about his opportunities, and he'd said, "That's not what the Actionary is all about."

  She hadn't wanted to let it dr
op, but apparently he'd done something that had made her moan softly. By the time another opportunity for conversation had come around, they were too exhausted to make good on it.

  So Denby figured that the girlfriend knew about the guy in the costume, but not everything about him. And she wasn't the go-between. The lieutenant was sure he would know more about who knew what about whom if he could also get an open-mike phone tap on the kid's landline, but even though the phone company had put their best techies on the job – after swearing them to secrecy on pain of losing their positions and any hope of working in the industry again – the only signal they ever got from within the Arnstruther apartment sounded like a series of deep-belly belches that would have hands down taken the prize at any frat house burp-off contest.