Morris and Chastain Investigations: Play With Fire & Midnight at the Oasis

by Justin Gustainis

  “How about a phone number?” Love said. “Or maybe an email address.”

  Kaspar shook his head like a banker turning down a mortgage application. “This man does not talk on the telephone – ever. And if he even has an email address, he guards it quite closely.”

  “What is this fella,” Morris said, “paranoid?”

  The half-smile reappeared on Kaspar’s face. “You may call it that, if you wish. Although I believe someone once observed, ‘It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.’”

  “Somebody’s out to get this Kabov?” Love asked. “Who?”

  “I believe that question is also one best answered by the man himself, assuming –”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Love said. “So, what’re we supposed to do, fly all the way down to Lauderdale and just knock on his door?”

  “No,” Kaspar said. “I think that could be unwise, and quite possibly dangerous.”

  Morris looked at him. “Dangerous?”

  “Indeed, yes. This was once a very dangerous man – professionally dangerous, one might say. It would, I think, be a mistake to assume that age has transformed the Lion of Judah into a pussycat.”

  “Lion?” Morris clamped a hand onto Kaspar’s forearm. “What do you know about lions?”

  Kaspar stared at him. “Unhand me, sir!”

  Once Morris had let go, Kaspar pulled the arm in close to his body and said, “I do not know what prompted such extreme rudeness on your part, but I assure you, I know nothing more about lions than anyone else who owns a television. The term ‘Lion of Judah’ is a very old one, and uniquely applicable to David Kabov, as you may learn, should you ever meet him.”

  “Let’s get back to that,” Love said. “How do we meet this guy, if we can’t call, email, or visit him?”

  “What you do is write him a letter,” Kaspar said. “To that address. Use my name, if you wish. Indeed, you probably should.”

  “And this letter should say what, exactly?” Love asked him.

  “Write that you wish to call on him, at a specified date and time. You should allow at least three days’ lead time from when you post the letter, the mail being what it is these days.”

  “Should we say what we want to talk to him about?” Morris asked.

  Kaspar gave him a sideways look, but addressed the answer to Barry Love. “That will not be necessary, but you should indicate in your letter how many of you there will be – I strongly advise no more than two – and a brief description of each person. And if you do visit him, be punctual.”

  “So what if we do all this,” Love said, “and show up at his door – punctually, I mean – and the guy isn’t even home? That’d be a pretty good example of what they call a fool’s errand, wouldn’t it? And I don’t know about Quincey here, but I hate feeling foolish.”

  “You need have no concern on that score,” Kaspar told him. “I understand that he rarely goes out. The only questions are whether he will admit you – and what kind of reception you will receive.” He tossed off the last of his absinthe and stood up abruptly. “I wish you good fortune – whatever your ultimate object may be. Now if you” – he gave Morris another sideways look – “gentlemen will excuse me, I have business elsewhere that has already been delayed long enough.”

  As he watched Kaspar head toward the door, Morris said, “You know, I don’t think he likes me.”

  “If you wanted to be buddies, then you shouldn’t have grabbed him,” Love said. “He’s weird about stuff like that.”

  “I just thought it was a pretty odd coincidence that he’s sitting here and talking about the Lion of Judah, when fifteen minutes earlier you were telling me that afreets like to snack on lion hearts.”

  “Maybe, but stuff like that does happen – otherwise, coincidence wouldn’t be a word.” Love leaned forward a little. “I kept saying we in front of Kaspar, so as not to confuse the issue,” he said. “But you know I’m not going to Florida with you, right? I can’t leave the city right now, Quincey – there’s too much weird shit going on.”

  “Anything I can help with, before I leave town?”

  “Probably not. You ever hear of a guy called Pinhead?”

  Morris shook his head. “Sounds like some old Dick Tracy villain.”

  “This guy’s a villain, all right, but the kind that would give Dick Tracy screaming nightmares.” Love signaled their waitress. “You want a refill?”

  “No, I better get going. But thanks for all your help, amigo. At least I’ve got a lead now.” Morris slid out of the booth and stood up.

  “Say hi to Libby for me,” Love said. “Is she gonna be heading down to Florida with you?”

  “I hope so,” Morris said. “I really do.”

  Sixteen

  THE DETROIT ZOO is not actually in Detroit. It occupies a hundred and twenty-five acres of ground in Royal Oak, two miles north of the Motor City. It is a well-designed modern facility, and a great deal of money has gone into building and displaying the animal collection over the years. The Detroit Zoo has it all (almost), from aardvarks to zebras. They’ve got bears (black, grizzly, polar, and panda), giraffes (reticulated), and pythons (also reticulated), as well as rhinos, kangaroos, gorillas, and penguins.

  And lions. Six of them.

  The newly redesigned Lion Habitat was only a few years old. It consisted of seven and a half thousand square feet of faux-savanna surrounded by a seventeen-foot wall full of glass panels, for easy viewing from outside. An interior wall further divided the enclosure into two sections, each occupied by its own three-member “pride” of lions. Keeping the two groups separate was essential; during mating season male lions have been known to try getting frisky with the females of another pride. In the lion world, this is a good way to get a set of three-inch claws raked across your importunate leonine face.

  Of course, the division also made things a bit easier for anyone contemplating breaking into the enclosure to kill one of the lions.

  Three men who had that precise goal in mind were now sitting in a stolen Ford Econoline van. The vehicle was parked about a hundred and fifty feet from the zoo’s exterior fence, in sight of one of the secondary gates used for deliveries. Abdul Nasiri was far too valuable to risk apprehension (according to Nasiri, anyway), so the raid had been entrusted to Jawad Tamwar, Mujab Rahim, and Sharaf Uthman.

  The zoo had closed to visitors at 5:00 p.m. It was now 10:22. Nasiri had obtained a very detailed map of the zoo, and by now the three men had it virtually memorized. Once Uthman used an unlocking spell to get the delivery gate open, they knew exactly how close they could take the car to the lion enclosure – about eight hundred feet from the exterior wall. The rear of the van contained two lightweight aluminum ladders that would extend to a length of twenty feet. One of these would get Uthman to top of the lion enclosure, where he would cast a spell that would send the three lions inside into a sleep so profound that it would verge on coma. Then Tamwar would join Uthman atop the wall, and Rahim would pass up the second ladder, which they would wrestle over the wall, setting one end firmly onto the ground of the lion enclosure. The two ladders would then be leaning against the wall from each side, their top rungs only a few feet from one another. Rahim would then climb the ladder himself, bringing with him a small plastic cooler half full of dry ice.

  The three of them would climb down into the enclosure and get their bloody work done. Afterward, they would reverse the process to get back out – only this time the cooler would be heavier – by about two pounds.

  In theory, Uthman could have used magic to levitate all three of them over the wall, both coming and going. But levitation magic is very stressful, and Uthman was no longer a young man. It simply would not do for the levitation spell to fail them when it was time to leave – especially since the surviving two lions would eventually awaken. Hence the ladders.

  A disagreement had arisen over which of them would remain outside the enclosure to deal with any prowling security guards; Nasiri’s research had
revealed that the zoo had four such men working the night shift. Rahim had volunteered (nay, almost insisted) to be the outside man, but his probable method of dealing with an errant guard was precisely what Nasiri wished to avoid.

  “The crusader police will devote far more time and resources to investigating the death of a guard than they will of an animal.” Nasiri had pointed to an image on his computer monitor. “Even one so majestic as this.” Nasiri had looked at each of them at this point, but had stared at Rahim a bit longer than the other two. “You will kill someone only if the alternative is being identified or captured. Our brother Sharaf assures us” – and here Uthman had come in for his own long, intense look – “that his magic is sufficient to disable anyone who might discover you, so let it be done that way. Keep your righteous thirst for the crusaders’ blood in check a bit longer, my brothers. It shall be slaked, more than slaked, very soon now.”

  It had therefore seemed logical that Uthman, the wizard, should remain outside the lion enclosure while the others went in to do the bloody work of the evening – but the other two had raised firm, if respectful, objections.

  “I do not doubt our brother’s power to work miracles,” Tamwar had said. “Have I not seen him do so more than once already? But if perchance one of these lions should prove less... susceptible to his power than even our wise brother might expect, it would be essential to our mission for him to be on hand to deal with the creature at once, lest disaster befall us all.”

  The thug Rahim had typically been more blunt. A product of the Cairo slums, he had never seen a zoo before – had not even been aware that they can be found in the Middle East. But Rahim knew enough to realize that even his skill with a knife would be no match for an awake, angry lion. He was also motivated by his own crude notion of fairness. “Our brother assures us that his magic will render the great beasts harmless,” Rahim had said. “He should be therefore be with us to suffer the consequences, just in case he should be proved wrong.”

  It had finally decided that Uthman would cast an aversion spell on the ladder, as well as on the parked van. A variation on what infidel magicians called the Tarnhelm Effect, the spell would not render either the ladder or van invisible, but rather would cause the eye of anyone passing to unconsciously avoid looking at them. Unless a strolling guard should actually walk into the side of the van, for instance, he would pass by without even registering its presence. That arrangement would have to do.

  Thus it was that the three fighters for jihad had found themselves on the hard-packed earth inside the Detroit Zoo’s lion enclosure. Each carried a backpack containing essential materials. Uthman’s, of course, contained magical implements and materials he might need. Rahim bore the small plastic cooler and dry ice. And Tamwar carried a pack containing several medical instruments, including several veterinary scalpels and a device that is known among surgeons as a rib-spreader.

  The moonlight, combined with the park’s ambient lighting, provided enough illumination for the men to see where they were walking, and to observe the three still forms that lay a few hundred feet away. They had discussed the operation a hundred times in planning, so there was no wasted conversation now. The three men set off stolidly on their mission. They had a djinn to feed.

  Seventeen

  FROM THE DETROIT Free Press:

  LION MUTILATION PUZZLES,

  ANGERS OFFICIALS

  By Frances Dooley, Free Press Staff Writer

  (Royal Oak, March 19) Officials and employees of the Detroit Zoo are outraged over a daring break-in last night that has left one of the facility’s prize lions dead and mutilated.

  The invasion, which occurred sometime between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., involved one or more persons, who entered the lion enclosure and killed Samuel, one of only two male lions in the zoo’s collection.

  A zoo employee, speaking anonymously, said that Samuel’s corpse was mutilated, apparently resulting in the removal of the animal’s heart.

  Louise and Mimi, the two female lions also living in that section of the enclosure, were not harmed, according to zoo officials. How the intruders were able to kill the male lion without harming, or being attacked by, the two females, is one of many questions facing zoo officials and Royal Oak police.

  Roger Wigton, the zoo’s Director of Animal Health and Safety, said blood samples would be taken from the two female lions, as well as the corpse of Samuel, to determine if the animals had been drugged.

  Police said that the intruders apparently entered the zoo grounds through a service gate, although the gate has an alarm that was neither set off, nor apparently disabled.

  The zoo has a system of security cameras that cover the entire park, both outdoors and indoors. However, the system apparently went down last night, since nothing was recorded after approximately 10:00 p.m., zoo officials say.

  Police theorize that the zoo’s central computer was somehow hacked, disabling both the video system and the alarms, thus allowing the intruders to enter, do their bloody work, and leave undetected.

  Authorities are not ruling out the possibility that some kind of occult ritual may be at the root of the crime. “I’ve seen reports over the years of animals being used by these devil-worshippers as sacrifices,” said Royal Oak Police Chief Frasier Boone, “but that’s always involved small animals, like dogs, cats or chickens. If some of those sickos are in our community, we will identify and prosecute them, to the fullest extent of the law. This kind of cruelty will not be tolerated.”

  Police said that arrests are expected in the near future.

  Eighteen

  LIBBY CHASTAIN CAME in to her living room from the kitchen, holding a half-full pot of coffee. “I thought I’d have a second cup,” she said to Quincey Morris. “How about you?”

  “I’d love one, thanks,” he told her. Morris never declined Libby’s coffee. She mixed her own, from freshly ground beans. The ingredients of what she called “Libby’s Brew” were no mystery: Jamaican Blue Mountain, Hawaiian Kona, Free Trade Columbian Dark, and something called Kicking Horse Coffee, which is roasted in Canada (although, of course, they don’t grow the beans there). The proportions, however, were a closely held secret, having been learned – Libby sometimes claimed – from a hundred-and-forty-two-year-old witch in St. Louis who credited her age and general spryness to the fact that she drank a pot of the stuff every day.

  Knowing what went into the stuff, Morris had tried to recreate it in his own kitchen a couple of times. The results, although very tasty, were never quite as good as Libby’s Brew. He’d said as much once, and she had replied, “Oh, you probably forgot to add the eye of newt. Crucial ingredient.”

  They had already exchanged the relevant parts of what they had learned the night before. Libby had told Morris that it might be a good idea for them to find a device that would fire a fruit pit through the air with reasonable speed and accuracy. Morris had related what he’d found out in Strangefellows, in the company of Barry Love.

  “So, although djinns are associated with the Middle East, the fruit pit doesn’t have to come from there?” Morris asked.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Libby said. “Not according to Ashley, anyway. Good thing, too – the only fruits native to the Middle East with pits in the center are dates. And their pits are oblong.”

  “Good enough for David, apparently.”

  “Yes, but he used a sling, and even then had to trim the date pit down to something more circular, so it would fly better.”

  “Well, as long as it doesn’t matter...” Morris scratched his chin. “What are you thinking about using?”

  “To an extent, the choice depends on what we use to fire it – a slingshot, one of those paintball guns, or something else.”

  “Um. I assume you’ve been doing research,” Morris said. “Which fruit has the biggest pit?”

  “Looks like the papaya,” Libby said. “But those things can have pits that weigh a half pound, or more.”

  “Too big for our purposes, t
hen – unless we get Roberto Clemente or somebody to throw it at the fucking afreet. And I think we might have trouble getting Roberto interested in the gig.”

  “Quincey.” Libby’s voice reflected the smile on her face. “Roberto Clemente was a right fielder, not a pitcher.”

  “Oh.”

  “And he’d be operating under the additional disadvantage of being dead.”

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” Libby said. “No papaya pits for us.”

  “Guess we’ll have to try some of the others, like avocados and peaches, and see which works best in our chosen mechanism of propulsion.”

  “‘Mechanism of propulsion.’” Libby smiled again. “You’ve got such a way with words, Quincey – it almost makes up for the fact that you don’t know shit about baseball.”

  “There’s lots of things that I don’t know shit about,” Morris said. “And one of them is the Knights Templar – the current incarnation, anyway. That’s why I was thinking about dropping a line to this David Kabov fella, then paying him a visit in a few days. Care to come along?”

  “I might as well. Some warm sun would feel good, right about now, although I don’t imagine we’ll be staying all that long.”

  “Not unless Kabov tells us that the Knights Templar are based in Miami Beach, or someplace.”

  “Guess we’ll have to find out,” Libby said. “While your letter’s in transit, maybe we can check out some ‘propulsive mechanisms.’”

  Morris tossed down the last of his coffee. “You know, I remember hearing about a stripper who was famous for shooting ping pong balls out of her, um, neither regions. Wonder if she’d be of any use to us.”

  Libby thought for a minute, then nodded solemnly. “You might be on to something there, Tex. Could be just what we need to kill this afreet.”