by Dave Freer
“I don’t get it.”
He chuckled. “She didn’t either. And there is a lot of it, mostly mathematical and she found it, nonstop, shall I say, hard to live with. She freed me pretty hastily, before it got nasty.”
Heading back to Fin’s cave, we stopped a bit short of his vacant lot. There were four police cars there, and some fellows wandering around with flashlights — rather despondent wandering, by the speed of the flashlights. Fintan and I watched the pretty moving lights for a little while.
“They’ll give up soon enough,” he said, philosophically.
They probably would. Fintan’s ‘vacant lot’and cave were not friendly places. I often wondered just what he was sitting on there. Fintan pretends he does things by accident, but I’m not that easily fooled any more. “I suppose we had better have a check on this Malik Jasmin,” I said. “Then I can get this all wrapped up and present my bill. Or get you to present it for me.”
“I think they prefer Johns to Bills,” said Fintan.
“My account. My demand for money.”
“Ah. That. Certainly.”
So we drove to visit Mr. Malik Jasmin, whose address Freyja had extracted from our besotted banker. There was no-one home. That wasn’t that surprising. I took Fin back to his cave, where, indeed the cops had given up.
I went to sleep, the sleep of someone who has money, if only temporarily. The sleep of the just has nothing on it.
Fin woke me from my sweet dreams. He had a rather sorry and frightened-looking Phil the ‘investment advisor’with him. “I got to thinking.”
“Always dangerous,” I said pushing my way into my kitchen, and getting the coffee going.
“Indeed. Nearly as dangerous as not thinking. Now, it seems that your next link in the chain, this Malik Jasmin… favored this fellow. Knew his interests, or lack thereof. So I asked Phil a question or two. And it turns out they have had interests in common.”
“Ah. Like what?”
“Each other.”
And thus much was explained and revealed. Phil was one of Malik’s boyfriends, one he took home to his little love-nest, which Phil was unaware was not his home. The address was quite different to what Cander thought was his home. I suspected he didn’t want his paramours knowing where he lived, which seemed sensible. Phil also got around to telling us what he’d done with a bunch of the ring-gold he’d got from Freyja and Gersemi, and somehow not turned over to Cander. I should have looked behind his books. They were the for-show kind, and yet looked like they’d been moved… I’d have to turn in my badge if I missed any more clues like that.
“I suppose our first move is to check on this address,” I said, getting my keys.
“Tch,” said Fin. “You’re not at your best in the early morning, boyo.”
It was technically early morning, as in ‘before first light, and after midnight’. And I hadn’t had much coffee. “What have I forgotten?” I asked.
“Always collect the gold you’re sure of first.”
He had a point. So we did that. We must have been feeling soft because we let Phil collect a pair of trousers too.
The day began with living the dream. Waking your bank-manager at dawn, with intent to do GBH.
There was no answer to the knock on our errant bankster’s door.
My prisoner quivered. “He’s probably just getting dressed. It… it always takes him a long time. Mal believes in dressing for success.”
I tried the handle, and the door swung open to reveal a scene of carnage, with a body as the centerpiece.
“I am afraid,” said Fin, looking at the bloodstained man on the floor in the mess of shredded silk shirts and well-bound with elegant neckties, “He seems to be being successfully dead. It’s a lifetime achievement, but one he won’t look back on with much pleasure. But it was a nice shirt.”
“The corpse probably doesn’t care if it is the very soul of sartorial elegance,” I said, prodding it with one foot in a place that make those pretending to be dead wince, at the very least. This one didn’t.
My prisoner found the abuse of neckties upsetting or something. He screamed. I hit him hard, but not quite hard enough to cause the second unexpected death.
The shooter did that, and also showered the scene in flying glass. The second shot might have done the same for me, if I’d still been there. But I decided somewhere else was a good place to be.
So did Fin. I also decided on shooting back. It seemed a good idea at the time.
Of course the main problem with modern society manifested itself quite rapidly. People just can’t mind their own business. And somehow the cops are just a lot more available and rapid in their response in elite parts of town. Pure chance, of course, but the dee-dah, dee-dah of police sirens were still not welcome. Here we were pinned down with two corpses, breaking and entering. You could be pretty sure our shooter was going to depart just in time to leave us to face the music — if that was what you called the police-sirens.
“I think… ” started Fin.
“If you did,” I said grumpily, “we wouldn’t be in this mess. It’s time to scarper.”
So we did.
Of course Fin couldn’t just leave. He had to take a souvenir… well, a particularly ugly piece of African sculpture with him.
“Wouldn’t one of the neckties have done?” I asked as we panted up to the Toyota.
“Old Oongy is a friend. I met him when he decided try a bit of self-promotion among the Milesians. He thought that they were uncivilized, made terrible beer, and he went home.”
“To Africa.”
“Everything is relative, even relativity. And besides, he’s carrying a bullet.”
“You want me to take him to the ER?” I asked as I began driving away.
“No, I’ll deal with it,” said Fin.
Sarcasm is sometimes wasted on Fintan. Actually, make that always.
I took him back to his cave, and took myself off to Mario’s for some curative coffee. It stirs the mind, as well as being damn good coffee.
As I drank it, I worked through the chain of events in my head. One thing was plain, someone had known we were coming. Someone had laid in wait for us, someone who had already tortured Jasmin. That meant one of two things: either someone else was after the rest of Freyja’s ring-gold, or there’d been a falling out among thieves. I hoped it was the latter, but I was still no wiser as to who the other parts of this conspiracy could be. The rest of the cup of coffee helped no further. However, Fintan did. He called, in his usual fashion. I did buy him a cell-phone once, but he took it apart to free the little people within it.
“The bullet came from Helvetica. From Turicum,” he informed me.
“That’s a long shot.” That meant Switzerland and Zurich, for anyone not Fin’s age.
“Possibly the means of delivering it over the last hundred yards was a little closer,” admitted Fintan. “But that is whence it came.”
All I knew about Zurich these days was that it did involve banking, among other things. It was an expensive place to live. I hadn’t been there for 300 years and hadn’t planned to go back. “And how is your patient?” I asked.
“Complaining how thin the beer is. He tells me it is so thin you can see through it which means it is no good at all. Barely worth drinking. He’s got through two cases so far, in the effort to rid the world of it. He’s all consideration, is Oongy. I shall have to send him back to Africa again.”
I didn’t ask about how a wooden Objet d’art was drinking his beer. There are some things a man was not meant to know. Instead I took the ring-gold we’d recovered out to Freyja and Gersemi. They were glad to see some of their hoard back.
They were less glad to be asked about Switzerland. Less glad to the point that Freyja tossed a cat at me, so I left. On my way down the hall, past the statues, Gersemi caught up with me. “I think you’d better just leave it alone,” she said. “We’ve at least got something back.”
“What is it about Switzerland?”
She looked around warily. “Aurvangar” , she said and turned and walked away.
So naturally I took her advice and did exactly what I always do with good advice and went and looked it up. It was Norse myth, not surprisingly. The wet gravel plains occupied by the dwarves. Plains? Switzerland? Well, the Swiss plateau wasn’t mountains, and it was liberally cloaked in gravel as a byproduct of ice trying to turn mountains into plains. Aurvangar was also the home of four black dwarves — Dvalinn, Alfrik, Berling, and Grer, from whom — in exchange for ‘marriage’ — Freyja had got the Brisingamen. It’d been an expensive one-night stand for each of them.
I sucked my teeth. Private Investigating for Dummies had said PI work was mostly about divorce cases. So far it hadn’t been for me. That, it appeared, had changed. The Gnomes of Zurich were more real than most people suspected. They were, at a guess, still peeved about the alimony Freyja had got away with.
This was above my paygrade, but at least it wasn’t a willful attempt to start Ragnarok. I went to tell Fin my conclusions.
He nodded, thoughtfully. “I’ve come across them. But the question is, Eochaid, why now? They are rich enough to buy whole armies of rich bankers and have been for millennia.”
“I’ve got an idea on that too. Divorce usually is nasty, but when it gets really, really nasty is when there are kids involved. You’ve obviously known the old woman for a long time. Tell me about the other daughter, Hnoss.”
“Hmm. Hnoss means ‘treasure’, you know. Nice girl. Last I heard she was working in Las Vegas. She’s kept her looks better than Gersemi. A real little raven-haired beauty. She used to come home every now and again. The two sisters were close. I don’t know what the fight was about, but it was recent.”
“Fancy a trip to Nevada?” I asked, thinking I needed my head read.
Fin brightened visibly. Nodded. “I was banned from the place, but that was back in 1962. Fortunately they have relatively short memories. It’s another reason I disapprove of record-keeping.”
Flying with Fin is always an adventure. Flying with Fin since the TSA, more so. Personally I think that it was something of an uncalled for response, but hopefully the insurers will cover it, and the poor fellow who fondled Fin’s crotch will recover one day. The airline will probably emerge from bankruptcy too. Otherwise, it was an uneventful trip.
Fin’s idea on how to find Hnoss was to go to all the floor shows, a progression he was happy to let the Casinos finance. I got tired of it, and used the internet instead. I found her. I also found out that, without letting Fin break the Casino bank we wouldn’t easily get to see her act. So I leaned on a professional contact from long ago (a set designer, actually. And it was more like ‘asked nicely’than my normal practice — very unusual. I can’t have that getting about.) and she told us Hnoss’s address. So we took a taxi, and found ourselves stopped at the gates of the Ridges. Things could have got interesting here, except Fin got the guard to call Ms. Freyjasdottir and tell her that Fintan mac Bochra wanted to see her… and gates magically — or rather, mechanically opened.
It was a lovely house, and it wasn’t a patch on its owner, who squealed with delight and hugged Fintan. Women. I’ll never understand them. Soon we were sitting in what was either a ballroom or a lounge with pretentions of being a ballroom, looking at the indoor waterfall and being served strong drink and fermented Char on fresh lefse. Trust me on this, if you think pretzels are encouragement to drink, they’ve got nothing on rakfisk. Hnoss sat next to Fin, and once the white-coated house-servant had slid himself away, she patted his knee, and asked, “So what brings you to Vegas, Uncle Fin? I thought you never left Nowheresville, Flyovercountry.”
Uncle. I had to laugh at that. Fin waved at me. “Eochaid. He’s working on a case. I’ll let him tell you about it.”
Great. Tact is not my strongest point. I tried to gather my thoughts. She looked at me from under her long dark lashes. She was carrying her age much less obviously than her sister, but it was there, when you looked carefully. And when you looked at those eyes. “Eochaid. Ah yes. The Pictish King.”
“Long ago. I try to avoid mentioning it. Or my name. I’m a private investigator, these days. It’s less smelly than Kinging.”
“More honest too,” she said showing a dimple. She had that gift — and it really is a gift — of looking like she really was interested in you, and only you, when she spoke to you. “So what are you investigating? And what should I call you?”
“Bolg is good enough.”
“My favorite fictional detective is Belgian, Mr. Bolg,” she said with a twinkle of those wise eyes. Yeah, she was smart. Most people don’t get that. “But you should grow a mustache. And so, what is the mystery? The plum pudding?”
“A matter of someone robbing two old ladies.”
She turned pale. “They’re all right?”
She plainly knew exactly who I was talking about. It wasn’t a lot of dots to join, though. I nodded. “I’ve recovered some of the loot.”
“The Brisinghamen? I told her… ”
“Is still safe. But that is what the thief was after. And they were prepared to kill to get it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I want them found and… dealt with. Dead. I wish Gersemi had told me. Mother forbade her to ever speak to me, but she calls, sometimes.”
“I tend to try and avoid killing anyone unless it’s absolutely unavoidable,” I said. You did not want to get on Hnoss’s bad side.
“Or he really, really wants to,” said Fin, as helpful as ever. “But so far, Hnoss, they’ve avoided anything that even resembles physical violence with your mother and sister. It was a confidence trick. It’s been each other they’ve been killing.”
“They’re saving me time. You find them Mr Bolg. I’ll have them dealt with.” She sighed. “Mother and Gersemi, they have no… no business sense. It was too easy for mother, and my sister only thinks of art. I’ll have to… to go and make peace. But I want this threat neutralized.”
“The thief — or the one killing them — came from Switzerland.”
She leapt to her feet, turned and yelled “Daddy!” in a voice that could have shattered glass — if the glass in her home hadn’t been armored.
A short, broad little man, with obsidian-black hair and eyes — and he was short compared to me — in a perfectly cut suit came rushing in, “What is it liebschen?” he said, soothingly. “Shall I have these… gentlemen removed?” The pause was accompanied by slight widening of his eyes, as he looked at us. A hand edged toward his jacket buttons.
“Do they also say ‘make my day’ in Zurich?” I said, showing him the reason that would be a terminally bad idea.
“I think your daughter wants an explanation about what you’ve been up to, Dvalinn, is it?” said Fintan.
The dwarf artificer scowled furiously. “It’s Von Dvelinn. Who the hell are you?”
“Fintan mac Bochra. We met about a thousand years back.”
His mouth fell open, and closed with an audible snap. He looked at Hnoss, who was standing tapping her small foot, looking remarkably like a badly contained storm, of the ‘I destroy cities’scale. “I can explain everything,” he said, weakly. “I only did it for you, Liebschen. It ought to be yours.”
“Oh good,” said Fin. “I’ve got quite a long list of things that need explaining including the shape of flea mouthparts and how to split infinity, so why don’t we get some more drinks, and you both sit down.”
It took a while to get all the details straight. Dvalinn had come, as international financiers do, to Vegas for a meeting. You couldn’t possibly discuss new mining projects in Uzbekistan anywhere else, could you? He’d been taken to a very exclusive cabaret show, as a way of making him feel appreciated, if not to soften him up a bit. Hnoss actually blushed at this part, which surprised me more than a little. “It’s um, burlesque.”
Color me deeply surprised. If that’s blue I was the right color already, and I’d bet it was somewhat that color as a show.<
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“I, er, use people in the audience as props.”
She’d sat down on his knee. Stole some of his drink. And he’d told her… rather testily, that she was young enough to be his daughter. “That made me laugh, I mean… well, you understand.”
But he’d come back the next night. And the one after. And the one after that. He’d made none of the usual moves which got Hnoss curious enough to investigate, after the show. And he’d asked her if she was Freyja’s daughter.
“She looks like her mother,” said the dwarf. There was just a hint of sadness in that tone. Well, Freyja left her mark. She used her power, shamelessly. “Except for the hair.”
When you’re a multi-billionaire, organizing a DNA test on the glass hadn’t been hard. And, it seemed, Hnoss had never known that she wanted to find her father, until she suddenly had one. The relationship wasn’t hard to see, with two close together, and she’d inherited his mind and business acumen… as well as her mother’s interest in playing with men. “I don’t have to be in showbiz. I just enjoy it. It’s an art form as much as Gersemi’s statues are.”
“Quite similar in a lot of ways,” I agreed.
She glared at me. Not stupid, was Hnoss. And then laughed. “Yes. That too.”
Charm was as natural to her as it must have been to her mother. And of course she’d seen the Brisinghamen, seen it at work too. “I’m getting a little older. I thought, seeing as mother almost never uses it, and Gersemi has no interest in using it, she might let me use it on the show. I didn’t want to have it or anything.”
“But it is yours by right,” said Dvalinn. “So… when you were upset about it, Liebschen, I, er, set about getting it for you.” He’d used the details he’d extracted from their casual conversation about Hildisvini getting blind drunk and sleeping off the windfall apples every year, and the knowledge that Freyja would trust in her ability to bedazzle heterosexual men, to set it up.
“Malik Jasmin… he was responsible for the death of one of my young assistants. I met him in Davos, he thought he’d exploit young Michael’s preferences to gain shall we say, information that would give him a financial advantage with us. Michael found out, and Jasmin had the young man killed before it got back to me. Unfortunately, my investigators recovered Michael’s mobile.” There was a steely chill in Dvalinn’s voice.” In the background information they brought to me about Malik, was the fact that he lived in your small city. I recognized the name, and saw the possibilities. He was a nasty piece of work, even in my line of business, and we have many. This was a scumbag who enjoyed robbing the weak. And the man was also proof against feminine charm. I… leaned on him. I didn’t ’expected the fool to involve others, but once things started to go wrong, he contacted me in a panic. I had to deal with him.”
