Two women were already there, in the parlor, when we arrived. The older of the pair was a fleshy, snooty but well-turned out, version of every middle-aged woman that had ever run a shopping cart up my unsuspecting keister. Though the attitude suggested this one had money. No doubt Jeeves or Josette did her shopping for her. She wore a bright orange suit-thing and a matching pill box hat. Neither the flowers pinned below her shoulder nor the pearl baubles around her neck went with the outfit, and the assembled whole returned the favor by refusing to go with her blue hair. The other, a thirty-something brunette giving (or getting) security with a slim-fingered grip on the old hag's arm, was a decidedly sleek looking model, gliding naturally and comfortably from kitten to cougar. The elements comprising her facial features were perfectly measured. Her eyelids, unencumbered by make-up, were lowered in what looked to be an attempt at demure. But they failed. At twice the size necessary for seeing, the eyes knew they were ideal for being seen. (I had an odd feeling I recognized her, but couldn't come up with a name.) What I did know was – if she played her cards right – she could end up as my newest reason for staring sleeplessly at the bedroom ceiling.
The medium, stretching credulity by wearing a turban, and making it worse by calling himself Master Criswell, was no master when it came to scheduling. He'd penciled in both of our appointments for the same time. As the ladies arrived first, and were apparently socially something to write home about, Criswell asked if Lisa and I would mind waiting.
The suggestion didn't appeal to me. I had no clue how long it would take him to do his thing, make his pitch, hook the ladies and reel them in. But I knew I didn't want to wait hours for my chomp at the lure. I strongly suggested Lisa and I go. I may even have suggested the evening was “hog wash” and, if I did, probably too loudly. The old lady was annoyed and the medium appalled. The good looker, on the other hand, seemed mildly amused. She, the good looker that is, suggested we have a session together; one big happy group of strangers talking with the dear departed. 'Mother' baulked at the idea, but 'Daughter Dear' insisted. Resigned, the swami made a sweeping gesture toward the chairs around the table. I wasn't up on my séance etiquette but, as we took our places, Criswell appeared okay with our remaining strangers as he made no effort to introduce anyone.
Mother took the opposite side of the table as far from me as she could get. She wanted, it seemed, to speak with her late son and didn't want me getting in the way. Daughter Dear, who was in actuality daughter-in-law dear, would talk with her late husband if and when Mother surrendered the phone. She took the seat to my right with less enthusiasm than one might expect of a true believer. Lisa pushed her big glasses up on her nose, plunked herself down on my left – between me and Mother – and pushed her glasses up again.
As he lowered the lights, Criswell gave a little speech about those that had crossed over and his special connection to them. It was all I could do not to laugh. I had a few special connections to the dead myself and had half a mind to ask him if he'd like to trade. The guy looked like a magician in a Muscular Dystrophy backyard carnival. The turban was bad enough but, from neck to floor, he also wore a dark blue silk robe decorated with random hieroglyphics sewn in gold thread. They weren't crescent moons and stars but they should have been. If I had to guess, I'd imagine the nearest he'd ever gotten to the orient was the middle east of Chicago, Hyde Park maybe. Still, the show went on. He lit a couple of candles and reminded us, particularly me (though I may have been taking it too personally), of the seriousness of our endeavor. He took his seat between the old biddy and my new heart throb. He stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, gyrated a bit, did some heavy breathing, then sang a little a cappella ditty in a language that was news to me to get himself in the mood.
It was all a bit goofy but, I admit, I wasn't shocked by any of it. Lisa had given me a heads-up. She warned me Criswell would have his own way of conducting his voodoo, that he might have to sing, or chant, or play records, or dance; that he would have to go through some mumbo jumbo in order to contact his go between to the other side. To hear the voices of the dead, she said, he needed to enter their plain. It seemed like a lot of work to me. All I had to do was slam my head on something hard.
But my babbling is taking you away from the moment. Criswell apparently found the zone because, suddenly, he was speaking in some other guy's voice. I couldn't place it exactly but it reminded me of nothing so much as a villain from Johnny Quest.
Then all kinds of odd happenings began to take place. The candles somehow snuffed themselves out and the room fell into darkness. Out of nowhere a trumpet blared which, truth be told, I didn't care for a bit. The swami threw his head back, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, with his spine as straight as an arrow. A light flared, from where I wasn't sure, illuminating a green mist swirling above and behind his head. The Quest villain vanished as, suddenly, Criswell was muttering in what sounded like a Brooklyn accent. I sighed and bit my tongue not to groan.
Then, as reported, in what seemed his own voice, the medium said, “If you're ready… Take the hands of those seated on either side of you. And remember, no matter what happens, do not break the circle.”
Lisa excitedly reached out. I took her hand and got a chill. There was nothing mystic in that, my secretary's hands were always cold. Then I grasped the invitingly warm hand of the lady beside me. Instantly, and without warning, I felt as if I'd been cracked on the back of my head with a hammer.
No, I wasn't assaulted; at least not from without. I was experiencing another of the flashes I'd first encountered on my last case. Apparently, they were with me to stay. I should have told you, that's how the psychic visions came – with a vicious blow. I'd never mentioned it to anyone but, privately, I'd begun to think of it as being 'thunderstruck'. I'd never had the experience, but couldn't help but think that's what it was like to be struck by lightning in a thunderstorm. The nape of my neck was burning. A kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind my eyes. My chair vanished and I was falling through the dark. As I fell, I strained to see anything in the pitch blackness.
I heard it before I saw it. Water! I heard the tumultuous splashing of water that, if it really existed, was as dark as my surroundings. Slowly I made out ripples on a surface far below. But a surface of what? A pool? A lake? A sea? I had no clue. The splashing went on.
Then I heard a great painful gasp. I saw, and could just begin to make out, a familiar shape beneath me. I was still falling through black space, so it must have been beneath me. The bust of a man. No, not a bust, but a live man from the shoulders up. A man sunk nearly to his chin and bobbing in black water. He didn't have a face, not that I could make out. But he must have had a mouth because I could hear him choking, gurgling, spitting mouthfuls of water and foam, trying desperately to catch a breath. He groaned. He cried in pain. But words seemed beyond him. Then he jerked violently and went still.
There followed a pause, pregnant with silence, damp, and cold. My world as I tumbled downward was blackness, the man in the water, and nothing more. Then he jerked awake, or back to life, or back to motion, slapping the surface and kicking in the water. Still he had no face but, finally, he had words as pained and helpless as they were. He screamed, “Help!” Which seemed in order considering his circumstances. Then, weakly, he began to beg, “Help… me! Down… here…”
There was no strength in his voice. The poor guy was drowning. I didn't know who he was, where he was, or how he'd gotten there. But there could be no doubt. The man was drowning. Mind you, all this time I'd been falling through the dark, tumbling toward him. Then I splashed down.
My altered reality was altered again. The first part of the hallucination had been startling. This new change was terrifying. I was suddenly on the edge of consciousness. My head was splitting, in the back as always on these psychic journeys but, now, on the left side of my forehead too. An all new stabbing pain. I was in the black cold water myself. I gagged. I choked. I sputtered and coughed. The drowning man was gone. I had t
aken his place. And, sisters and brothers, I was drowning.
Then my surroundings changed again. I was still in the dark (though not as dark) but the silence had gone. A horn blared; the blast of a trumpet loud enough to raise the dead. It took a second to recognize it as the same horn we'd all heard at the start of the séance. This was not, however, the fleeting greeting from one of Criswell's dear departed as before. Nor was it a diverting little blast of sound to hide the hiss of a green mist released into the room by a charlatan (a thought that had, I confess, occurred to the cynic in me). The trumpet blare this time was continuous and ear-splitting.
I realized the thunderstrike vision had passed. I was back in the real world. The blaring trumpet was genuine and, as usual, I was to blame. When the psychic attack had come I had fallen out of my chair. Now, as I came back to reality, I found that I'd landed underneath Criswell's table. I had a hold on the solitary center pedestal and was sitting at the medium's feet. Make that the bogus medium.
That wasn't a cynical accusation and it wasn't a guess. I was sitting – painfully – on a panel of foot operated switches wired into the floor. These, obviously, controlled the supposed 'evidences' of contact with those that had passed over. For example, the ghostly blaring trumpet. One of the switches was goosing me sharply and, I realized, it was me blowing the trumpet with my rear end. It was a hustle, the whole séance; one big plastic banana, phony pony show. A second switch, no doubt, snuffed the candles on command. A third, it seemed likely, flooded the ceiling in green light. A fourth, I would bet, sent a cloud of mist swirling above our heads. Disoriented as I was, I moved to kill the horn and rescue my tender derriere. In doing so, I pressed another switch that unleashed what was apparently meant to be a chorus of crying 'dead' children. You can imagine how many friends I was making.
Above the table, the old lady screamed in outraged horror, “Why… I never!”
I agreed. With a face full of her fat ankles it was a first for me too.
The cougar said something, I'm not sure what or to whom. Then Lisa appeared. She dropped to the floor beside me, grabbed me by the arm, and was trying to pull me to my feet. She was a girl of action and it was a nice thought but, in reality, not a good plan. I couldn't stand. I was still under the table.
“Get off!” The medium shouted, kicking me in the back. “Get off me!”
Long story short. The old lady left the place in tears with her pill box hat askew on her blue hair. I felt bad about that. Her daughter-in-law slinked sinuously out after her wearing the same amused look as earlier in the evening, only more so. I felt worse about that. Criswell, his turban unwinding, stood in the entrance – now the site of hasty exits – begging his disheartened customers to come back. It looked to be no use. They appeared to have sworn off his services for good.
The phony medium's plea to Lisa and I was shorter. “Get out,” he cried. “Get out. Get out!”
Chapter Three
You're probably wondering if either of those two stories had a point. They did. I'll get to it later. You may be wondering if I'm ever going to put this show on the road. I will right now.
I've mentioned the injuries I suffered on my last case but, until now, haven't said anything about the case itself. Suffice to say it led me through a series of murders of the members of Chicago's famous Temple of Majesty church with a killer leaving cryptic Bible verses like bread crumbs to follow. The whole thing might have been easier to solve if I'd stayed up on my scripture over the years but, like most everything else in my life, it had gotten away from me. That case, though closed, was apparently not completely behind me. It obviously still bugged me because, as I'm telling this, another verse I haven't revisited since childhood springs to mind. If your right hand offends you, cut it off.
Nobody that knows me would be surprised to hear that Lisa is my right hand. She's also my right arm, my brain and, when push comes to shove, most of my backbone. But after nagging me into that hospital stay, where bad things happened, then dragging me to that fraud of a medium, where worse things happened, my secretary was – just then – also a sizable pain in my rear end. I needed a break, time to scream at the cosmos, and told her in no uncertain terms to leave me alone. I tell you this so you'll understand my cloudy mood when, a few short hours later, Lisa called me and interrupted my quiet night. To put it bluntly my secretary was lucky I take that 'right hand' verse figuratively.
In the first minute of her call I had to stop and restart her twice. Lisa has a tendency to talk fast when she's excited and only gains speed as she goes. Whatever she was saying, it sounded like her apartment was on fire. But I was mistaken. When I finally slowed her to a speed I could decode, it turned out she wasn't at her apartment. She was at the city harbor.
When I asked why, she went as closed mouth as Cagney on death row. “I can't tell you on the phone,” was all she'd say. That and, “Just get down here!” What could I do? I went.
The harbor is on Chicago's south side, not far from the massive stockyards, but just inland from Lake Michigan itself. It connects to the lake through a short east-west channel.
I no more than pulled up and parked when I spotted Lisa sixty yards away, out on what would prove to be pier 23, doing jumping jacks to get my attention. I haven't described Lisa yet and, it occurs, I ought to for those that don't know her. Lisa Solomon is a tall brunette. It's not over-stating it to say she's brilliant, efficient, and gorgeous. But God has a sense of humor and, for kicks, gave her all the grace of a Bourbon Street wino. Before you can fully take in her long beautiful legs, she's likely to trip over them and fall on her prat. Watching Lisa hop around, as I approached, I was half expecting she'd topple into the drink. But the world is full of surprises and this time she stayed on her feet.
I had almost reached her when she pulled something from her pocket, took a bite out of it, then chewing like a mad cow stowed whatever it was away again. That was not a surprise. I saw Lisa once when she wasn't eating; once. How she stayed skinny remains one of the world's great mysteries. This may have been a cookie, in which case it was probably peanut butter. “You're not going to believe this,” she shouted, spitting chewed bits.
“What? What's so unbelievable you couldn't tell me over the phone but you can yell across a pier? While you're at it, why are you on a pier?”
“C'mere.” She grabbed my shoulder, leaned in, and whispered, “I came down to rent a boat.”
“At this time of night?”
“No! Hours ago.”
“Why? What do you need with a boat? What do you even know about boats?”
“I used to date a fishing guy.”
“A fishing guy?”
“You know. A guy who fishes.”
“A fisherman. You did? I didn't know that.”
“It didn't last long. He smelled like fish.”
I sighed. Then Lisa sighed, frustrated by my sigh. I could feel her pain. It was probably aggravating to have a boss that wanted information when there was so much to ramble on about.
“Sorry,” I said, seeing the situation for what it was. I settled into my gum shoes and grudgingly accepted the fact I was in for the long version. “Go ahead.”
Lisa smiled. “It's just that, after what happened to you at that séance, I thought I better come out here and take a look.”
I studied her earnest face, owl-like as usual behind her massive glasses, then did a quick study of the pier and harbor beyond. Nothing I saw gave me a clue. Like it or not, I was going to have to ask. “What at the séance led you to the harbor?”
“That thing that happened to you. You know, the head thing.”
“The head thing.” You, reader, are now up to date on the thunderstrikes, the interactive Extra Sensory movies (visions? hallucinations?) that randomly and painfully played in my head. “Yeah, the head thing. I got it. How does the harbor come into it?”
“The water.” She pointed helpfully off the pier.
“I know what water is. What has the water in the harbor got
to do with the séance?”
“You almost drowned!” Lisa beamed. “I detected!”
I think I mentioned too that Lisa wanted to be a detective? Yeah. Like Noah scooped pet food, Lisa wanted to be a detective. She was going on, “I added two and two. At the séance, during your head thing, you almost drowned. Where else in Chicago, but the harbor, are you going to almost drowned?”
“The Chicago River,” I said. “Or in any of a hundred thousand swimming pools. In a bathtub. A whirlpool in the Bear's locker room.” Lisa frowned but I went on. “In Bill Veeck's tears after Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park. The fountain at Lincoln Park. A horse trough at the petting zoo. In your cups. In your toilet. A rain barrel.”
“All right.”
“A puddle. A teaspoon.”
“All right,” she hissed, angrily digging in her pocket. “I was playing a hunch.” She produced her comfort food again and took a vicious bite. I'd been way off. It was a Zagnut bar. “You play hunches all the time,” she whined, launching tiny peanut brittle and toasted coconut javelins my direction.
“It's part of my job to play sensible hunches. I'm a licensed private investigator. You are not.”
“Well, I'm going to be. Some day.”
“Until that fateful day could you just be my secretary?”
“What does that mean?”
“For starters, it means, stop forcing me to chase wild geese. Please! I have no clue what happened at that séance. Neither do you. I don't know what it had to do with water, except I saw a guy drowning. Then I was dropped into it and felt I was drowning. What I did not see, and what I fail to see now, is any connection to the city harbor.”
“Well, I did.”
“What? What connection? Why are you here? Why am I here?”
Red Herrings Can't Swim (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 2) Page 2
