Dark Detectives

by Stephen Jones

  “To whom?” she asked.

  Actually, she hadn’t been paid in advance. Leech would certainly cover it, but Sally didn’t want to take his tainted money.

  “It’s not an allergic reaction,” Gené said. “Flies don’t sting.”

  “No,” the inspector agreed. “They chew.”

  Sally looked into Mimsy’s room. Maureen Mountmain lay on the bed. She was only recognisable by her distinctive hair, white with a red streak. Her naked bones lay in a nest of dead flies.

  “It’s started,” Gené said.

  *

  She had tried to call Neil but not been able to get through. Gené was silent in the cab, seeming far older after the long night and the horrors of Wimpole Street. There was a long-shot suggestion that it was all down to the new climate, hatching flies early and driving them mad.

  Sally tried not to be anxious. There was no home to bring Mimsy back to. She was off the case. In Muswell Hill, Gené dropped her off.

  “Don’t worry, Sal. It’ll take years. I’m sorry to lose you, but you can get on with your life. It comes down to those of us who live outside human time, Leech and me and the Seven Stars. Give my love to your son. I’d like to meet him one day.”

  Sally watched the cab go. She wondered where Gené was headed. She had said something about needing to get in out of the sun. And getting something to drink.

  If she was going to fail anyone, she was glad it was Leech—she thought now that he had wanted her to check Mimsy, somehow though—she was ripped open and bled empty about Maureen.

  She went upstairs.

  She had not been able to get a call through because Neil was using the modem, digging up material on the Fourth Plague of Egypt. He thought it was germane to the investigation.

  “There is no investigation, dear,” she said. “No client.”

  Jerome wandered in, dressed in his too-small pyjamas.

  “Who was the pretty lady?” he asked.

  “Were you peeking out your window?”

  Her son didn’t answer her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I give up. What was the Fourth Plague of Egypt?”

  “You should know that,” Neil said. “It’s in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Flies.”

  *

  “You won’t be out of pocket,” Leech said. “I’ve authorised a payment. You may forward it to Shelter, if you wish.”

  “I don’t deserve to get paid. I did nothing. I found out nothing. Mimsy is still missing. And the Jewel of Seven Stars.”

  The phone was cool in her hand.

  “You have found something out, then.”

  Leech sounded different. Tired? Maybe it was the connection?

  “A little. Nothing relevant.”

  “I had hoped you might influence Mimsy, by your example. I see now that was overly ambitious of me.”

  Had he set Sally Rhodes, with her sword of righteousness, against Mimsy Mountmain, with her weirdstone, hoping they would cancel each other out?

  “Can she hurt you, Derek?” she asked.

  “This call is over. Goodbye, Sally.”

  She listened to the dead line. It was now a question of living with the fear, of getting through the plague years. Derek Leech had an empire, and she had a computer-crazed kid and a boyfriend who’d never grow up. She knew, at last, that she was more suitable to survive.

  Marty Burns

  THE MAN WHO SHOT THE MAN WHO SHOT THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE

  by JAY RUSSELL

  Martin Burns was born in 1955. As a child actor, he played precocious brat Sandy Salt in Salt & Pepper, one of the many hugely forgettable Manny Stiles-produced TV sitcoms of the mid-1960s. Achieving a brief notoriety for his incessant use of the annoying catchphrase “Hot enough for you?”, Burns flared as a minor hearthrob teen-idol, then fizzled in a series of woeful adult performances, leading to an inconsequential career in low-budget films.

  He reputedly quit The Business and spent nearly two decades working as a low-rent private investigator in Los Angeles. He made a surprise return to acting in the television series Burning Bright, following his involvement in exposing the bizarre Jack Rippen/Celestial Dogs scandal. His acting has not improved with time.

  Marty Burns first appeared in Jay Russell’s debut novel Celestial Dogs (1996), which mixed Hollywood moguls with ancient Japanese demons in a battle for the soul of humanity. Emerging as the surprise hero, Marty subsequently travelled to Britain, where he became involved with a neo-Nazi cult with mystical powers in the sequel, Burning Bright (1997), and he investigated a murder mystery which revolved around an old Hollywood noir movie in Greed & Stuff (2001).

  Apocalypse Now, Voyager was a novella published in 2005, and further Marty Burns stories have appeared in the anthologies Dark Terrors 4 (‘Sullivan’s Travails’, 1998), White of the Moon (‘What Ever Happened to Baby June?’, 1999) and Psycho-Mania! (‘Hush … Hush, Sweet Shushie’, 2013).

  IT STARTED WITH a friendly game of strip Ouija; it ended in massive head trauma, a moderately broken heart, and the pink taffeta dress that John Wayne was buried in.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  There’s a ton of time to kill when you’re on a shoot. It’s kind of a cliché about how boring filmmaking is, but if you’re an actor it’s a simple truth: you spend most of the day sitting around waiting to act. (Of course, there are a few who say that even when the cameras are rolling I look like I’m waiting to act.) So you have to find ways to fill the day. The catering unit helps, but son-of-a-gun if the network doesn’t insist on a weight clause in every actor’s contract. I suppose that’s what happens when you show up for negotiations carrying a sixer.

  We were working on the third episode of the second season of Burning Bright: something or other to do with a missing kid, a deadly virus, a pretty girl—there’s always a pretty girl. I used to question the logic of the show’s plots, but I got too many stomach aches. Now, on the producer’s advice, I read my lines and bank my cheques. Most of the day’s shooting was occupied with a tricky action sequence requiring my stunt double. I had to hang around the set just in case, but with the Dodgers having an off-day and my iPad on the fritz, I couldn’t think what to do until Karlbert, our story editor, pointed out the new wardrobe assistant.

  “She can undress me any old time,” Karlbert practically drooled.

  Karlbert’s a pig (though he may not be entirely responsible: what were his parents thinking when they named him Karlbert?), but this time he did have a point. Though my leching days are largely behind me, I sure enough could endure a blast from the past for this woman. She was one hundred and twenty immaculately proportioned pounds of delight, with generous handfuls of femininity in all the right places. Not to mention a killer Gene Tierney overbite.

  That’s a good thing, if you didn’t know.

  Bobbi was her name and as luck would have it, she was as free-thinking as she was attractive. You’d have to be to agree to play strip Ouija with Karlbert, who’s on the thin side of bald and the fat side of rotund, and me. Now admittedly the rules of strip Ouija are a little ad hoc, but the essence of the game is to pose questions to the Other Side that generate a positive response. Provoke any bad karma and you lose an item of clothing. Given my extensive networking with things that go bump in the night (along with Karlbert’s and my unashamed willingness to cheat), I figured Bobbi’s good ship lollipop would be cresting the horizon quicker than you could say Madame Blavatsky.

  Less than an hour later, I still had my pants and socks and Karlbert a very grey pair of very briefs. Bobbi’d lost an earring, but gained a smug expression. So much for networking. I tried to avoid glancing Karlbert’s way; bad enough he had that name, he was hairier than a baboon to boot. It was his turn to ask a question, and he looked stumped before his face lit up.

  “Was John Wayne a homo?” he asked the Great Beyond.

  I took my finger off the planchette.

  “What kind of fool question is that?” I demanded.

 
“It’s a damn good question. And one to which the answer will be a resounding yes, if you’ll be kind enough to oblige.”

  “John Wayne was not a … he wasn’t gay,” I said.

  “Because he never hit on you?”

  “No! I mean, I never met him. But we’re talking the Duke here.” I’m not much on Hollywood legends—if anybody knows just how strange a town this is, I do—but John Wayne for goodness sake!

  “James Dean was queer,” Bobbi said.

  “James Dean partied with Sal Mineo, for chrissake. John Wayne hung with John Ford. And John Ford was a man’s man.” They both looked me at oddly. “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”

  “John Wayne,” Karlbert said, “was buried wearing a dress.”

  “You read that on TMZ or something?”

  “It’s true.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Want to bet?” Karlbert pointed at the Ouija board. “Let’s ask.”

  “No, no, no. Not good enough by half.” Karlbert had big, fat fingers; teaming up to get Bobbi naked was one thing, but I wasn’t about to thumb-wrestle him over the planchette with money on the line.

  Karlbert thought for a moment. “Okay,” he said, nodding to himself. “I know another way. If you’ve got the cash and the nerve.”

  Bobbi studied me with a will-he-or-won’t-he look in her eyes, and a pout as sexy as all get-out on those delectable lips.

  What was a boy to do?

  *

  The guy lived Hollywood adjacent—sorry, we talk like that in L.A.—right around the corner from three, count ’em, three nudie bars. It was awfully late to be so close to Little El Salvador for my lily white ass, but a bet was a bet. And Bobbi, who’d insisted on coming with us when shooting wrapped for the day, was nervous enough that she let me hold her soft-as-satin hand.

  Karlbert rapped on the apartment door. I surveyed the field of broken syringes scattered in the grass out front. One fewer than the number of spent condoms. An L.A. zen garden.

  “So what does this guy do exactly?” I asked.

  “He’s a psychic,” Karlbert said.

  “Huh-boy.”

  “Oh yeah, and a cartoonist.”

  “He’s a psychic cartoonist?”

  “Uh-huh, but the two careers are entirely separate so far as I know. Thing is, he’s also a collector.”

  Before I could ask, Karlbert knocked again, then kicked so hard at the base of the door that the wood nearly splintered. Footsteps sounded from the other side.

  “Whatever you do,” Karlbert hurriedly whispered, “don’t say anything about his weight.”

  “His weight?” I said.

  The door opened. The frame was filled by an enormous black man wearing leather trousers and nipple rings. I knew because he was naked from the waist up. He had a broad belly like a bean bag chair, and coin slot eyes. He also wore a shoulder holster containing a very big gun.

  “K.B.,” he croaked. “What haps?”

  “Yo, Montserrat. I’ve brought a couple of unbelievers for a history lesson. We seek a taste of your own brand of truth.”

  Montserrat—he was big enough to be an island—took me in with a bored glance, but his narrow eyes widened at the sight of Bobbi in a tight T-shirt. He actually licked his lips. Who wouldn’t?

  “All right,” he said, tongue still dangling. “C’mon in.”

  The tiny apartment was filthy beyond belief. Fortunately, the disgusted eye was distracted from the ignorant armies of roaches and silverfish clashing over the mouldy remains of pizza crusts by the array of photographs gracing one long wall from floor to ceiling. Presumably this was Montserrat’s collection. The pictures were pornographic in the extreme—stuff I didn’t even know people outside Cirque du Soleil could do—but more amazingly, every damn shot featured a celebrity. Movie and TV stars past and present, politicians, baseball players, the first lady of the American theatre, Flipper …

  Bobbi gasped. I gasped even louder.

  “Virgins?” Montserrat mumbled.

  Karlbert nodded. I probably should have been offended, but I was too stunned.

  Montserrat seemed reluctant to take his eyes off Bobbi, but Karlbert took the big man by the arm and led him to the far side of the room. They spoke in hushed tones.

  Bobbi pointed to a spot high on the wall. “Is that … Richard Nixon?” she squeaked.

  I gawked and nodded. “A tricky dick, indeed.”

  “Poor Mrs. Nixon,” Bobbi said.

  “Poor Checkers!” I clucked.

  “Yo,” Karlbert called.

  I walked across the room. Bobbi was glued to the spot, taking it all in. I let her be. Montserrat had disappeared.

  “Give me the money,” Karlbert said, holding out his hand.

  We’d wagered five hundred bucks. Karlbert had actually made me stop at a cash machine to get the moolah on the drive over.

  “You haven’t won yet.”

  “Just give it to me,” Karlbert insisted.

  I sensed this was no place to argue. I slipped the folded bills into Karlbert’s palm just as Montserrat returned. He held a big photo album in his massive hands. With surprising gentleness, he opened the book and flipped through the laminated pages. When he found what he wanted, he turned the book around and held it up for the two of us to see.

  It was an 8 x 10 glossy of John Wayne. He looked like he was about sixty-five in the picture, that revered face as battered as an old pair of shoes.

  John Wayne: standing in the doorway of a western saloon—a film set, no doubt.

  John Wayne: American hero and icon.

  John Wayne: wearing … a pink taffeta dress.

  The sonuvabitch really didn’t have the legs for it.

  “It’s a fake, digitally fiddled,” I said. “You did this with Photoshop or something.”

  Montserrat shook his head.

  “Where’d you get it, then?”

  Montserrat just stared at me.

  “This is all bullshit,” I said, pointing at the wall. “These kind of scams have been going down for years, they’re old as Tijuana bibles. You manufacture these things. It’s nice quality, I admit, but it’s still a con.” I turned to Karlbert. “Give me my money back.”

  Karlbert had gone wide-eyed, shaking his head.

  “What?” I said. “Come on. The game’s up. Hand it over.”

  “It’s for real,” Montserrat whispered. He didn’t look mad so much as insulted.

  “And how do you know that exactly?”

  “Come from the horse’s mouth. Man who took this picture the man who shot the movies.”

  “What?” I asked. “What movies? What are you talking about.”

  “Camera dude give it to me. Dude what lensed The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Ever hear of it?”

  “Hey, I played poker with Woody Strode, okay? How do you know this guy took it, that it’s for real? How do you even know him?”

  “Cause I shot him.”

  There was a moment of deep silence. You could have heard a battleship drop.

  “Sorry?”

  “Camera dude got himself into trouble few years back. Liked to play the ponies, didn’t like to pay. Had to shoot him some. Was my job back then. He give me this so I don’t shoot him no more. It was a stressful situation.”

  Ex-button man psychic cartoonist. Great googly-moogly, I have got to get out of L.A.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Bobbi. She’d gone to take a closer look at a photo—Fred MacMurry and William Demerest! Is nothing sacred?—but now stared at the three of us openmouthed. I looked at Karlbert who rather eloquently communicated that it was a quarter-past time for me to shut the fuck up. I turned to Montserrat, who was again eyeing Bobbi’s tits and licking his massive chops.

  “Three bills, right Montserrat?” Karlbert asked.

  Montserrat nodded. Karlbert passed over the money and the big man carefully removed the photo from the album and handed it to Karlbert.

  “I’ve been wanting this puppy for
a good while now,” Karlbert told me. “I’m building a little collection of my own. Thank you very much.”

  I just nodded.

  Karlbert started toward the front door, but I had to turn back.

  “You, uh, got any of me in there?” I asked, pointing to the album.

  Montserrat shrugged his whalish mass, sniffed once. “No demand,” he said.

  I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

  We were walking back up the path to the sidewalk, when Bobbi reached into her pocket and pulled out the small snapshot.

  “What’s that?” I asked, offering a dopey smile.

  “I took it off the wall,” she whispered. “While you guys were talking.”

  Karlbert spun around. “What? You did what?”

  “I … I had to have it. I mean, he’s a Beatle.”

  Before I could even make out which moptop, I heard the roar from behind. Montserrat, still shirtless, nipple rings flapping, charged up the path toward us, gun in hand. Karlbert started to curse, but the gunshots drowned out the words.

  The first shot caught Karlbert along his left ear. I actually saw a piece of his dangly lobe fly off in a spurt of blood. The impact spun him around, so that the second shot caught him square in the back of the head. It was Zapruder time all over again.

  I froze as Montserrat thundered up to me. He raised the gun in both hands and jammed the barrel between my lips. He didn’t so much as blink before pulling the trigger.

  No more bullets. Straight to shul for this boy come Saturday morning.

  It seemed to take the big man a minute to realize what had gone wrong. I hadn’t moved a non-intestinal muscle, even as he flipped the gun around to pistol whip me, but Bobbi, bless her curvaceous soul, was a she-devil on wheels. She’d found a hunk of two-by-four amid the garden debris and brought it down with all her might across the back of Montserrat’s head.

  That caught his attention.

  Whether the blow to the noggin would have been sufficient to put an end to the evening’s festivities, we’d never know, because quicker than a Michael Ironside film goes to video, Bobbi swung the lumber around and brought it up with testicle-crunching force between Montserrat’s legs.

  They must have heard the scream in Yokohama.