The Dragon Done It (7 page)

So I staked out the apartment, caught the husband and closed the loophole. Closed the case too. Open and shut, just the way I liked it.

She liked it the same way as me, so we spent the night in the sack. Okay, maybe it was unprofessional, but a guy's got needs, right?

Next morning, while she was making chicory coffee, I saw something under the mattress. It looked like a photograph, and here's one thing you should know about me: I'm never off-duty. Call it dedication, call it a curse. In this case, call it trouble.

The picture showed the getaway car on the day of the heist. The guy behind the wheel wasn't the husband. It wasn't even a guy. It was the dame.

She came through with the coffee, saw me with the photo and laughed.

"You can't prove anything," she said.

"You framed your own husband," I replied.

"My alibi's cast-iron."

"What about the photo?"

"A sentimental reminder," she said, drawing a tiny gun from the garter around her right thigh. She wasn't wearing anything else so there was nowhere else she could have hidden a weapon.

The gun held one bullet and she used it to shoot a hole in the photo, right where her face was. I tossed the ruined photo aside through a cloud of gunsmoke and chicory.

"You used me," I said. "Now that loophole's closed your husband's never getting out of there. And you're walking around free as a bird."

"As an eagle," she laughed.

As I brushed past her she pulled me close and kissed me once, brutally.

"See you around, mister," she whispered.

And she did. Most years she came to me with some scam or other. Every time I told myself I wouldn't get involved. Every time I told myself she was a ruthless, heartless dame on the lookout only for herself. And every single time I fell for it. And her.

Except this time.

This time, I told myself, things were going to be different.

The Tunnel of All Ends is the place to go when you want to find something out. Everything's down there, and I mean everything. Everything that ever happens gets recorded and filed away in some or other side alley and it stays there forever. Don't ask me how it works—something to do with a quantum inseparability link to a place called
Stone
—but the paperwork must be catastrophic because
everything's
there, categorized and cross-referred and waiting to be found. You just have to know where to look.

Which is where the Search Engine comes in. It's ugly and terrifying but it's fast and it never fails.

Unfortunately, the fare can be on the high side.

"There," said the driver, pointing out a long, shabby passage with something like a finger. At the far end, a tired-looking station platform sagged beneath flickering fluorescents. "Lycanthropia Terminus."

Then the driver turned towards me, brandishing something like a hole punch, but more like a surgical instrument, and said the words I'd dreaded hearing this whole trip: "Tickets, please."

By the time I folded myself back out of the filing cabinet, the dame had shot herself a neat, round hole in the door. She was about to reach through the hole to undo the latch. Dropping the hat, I marched over and did it for her. Her fingers brushed mine and our eyes met through the rain-streaked glass. Her lips parted and, so help me, I felt my heart do that familiar high-wire plunge.

I pulled away from the door and slumped myself down behind the desk.

"You can let yourself in," I growled.

"I already did," she replied, her voice husky, maybe from the cold, maybe not. "May I sit down?"

I shrugged. "Please yourself. You usually do."

She sat down, smoothing her soaked sweater over her knees. I tried not to watch her doing this, without much success.

"I'll come straight to the point," she began. "This man . . ." she pointed to the corpse on the floor, ". . . I mean, this
creature
, has been blackmailing me."

I kept my eyes fixed on hers. It wasn't hard. "Looks like he just stopped," I said.

"Are you going to turn me in?" She leaned across the desk and clasped her hands around mine. Her touch was cold and electric. "Are you?"

"Is that why you shot your way in here? To plead your innocence before I figured it was you?"

"How long would it have taken you to find out?"

I shrugged. "Would have taken me a minute or two to get the slug out of the stiff. As for tracing it—that depends who I went to."

"Give me a for instance."

"Deke the Rip could do it in a half hour. Twenty minutes to get to his place and back."

"So you'd have been knocking on my door within the hour."

Again I shrugged. "It's what I do."

"You think I don't know that?"

"You know it. So why shoot the werewolf on my doorstep? Why not choose somewhere more discreet? And why was he blackmailing you?"

She pressed her shoulders back in the chair and crossed her legs. Water squeezed from the soaked fabric and puddled beneath the desk. "You're asking a lot of questions—no, you don't need to tell me: it's what you do."

I raised my eyebrows. "You got that right. So, you want to answer some of them?"

Lowering her eyes, she began her story.

"I hooked up with him a couple of months ago. He was kind of mysterious and that fascinated me. He only let me see him two nights a week and never at all around the full moon. I suppose I should have guessed his secret but . . . well, with some folk, just being around them makes you blind to the obvious, you know what I mean?"

"Yes, ma'am," I murmured, watching what was left of the rain trickling through her hair. "I know."

"He was big on casinos so we did the strip. He won a lot of dough; he was lucky that way."

"Not so lucky now," I said, eyeing the corpse. "So, why the blackmail, if he was on such a winning streak?"

"Because his luck ran out. He ran himself up a tab he couldn't pay off and got the heavies on his back—I'm talking about the real heavies now. He owes a lot of money to a lot of very ugly people. I mean owed, I guess."

"The Tartarus Club?" I hazarded. She nodded her head and shuddered. The movement did remarkable things to the curves beneath that damned sweater. "Are you telling me the Titans were after him?"

"Yes. Only I got to him first."

"So what did you have that he wanted?"

"Money, what else? I inherited a packet from my third husband."

"How did
he
die?"

"In tragic circumstances."

"I'll bet."

"Are you cross-examining me?"

"Is that an invitation?"

"Since when did you wait to be invited?"

"Stick to the story, ma'am."

By now her eyes were locked back on mine. That was just the way I liked them.

"I'm a rich widow these days," she went on, "and that's all you need to know. So, the wolfman got wind of my billions . . ."

"Pardon me—did you say
millions
?"

"No. Now where was I? Oh yes, he found out I was rich and decided I was the one to pay off his debts and buy his ticket out of hell. Only I'd already found out he was cheating on me, so it was no deal. That's when I got the first blackmail note."

"What did he have on you?"

She held my gaze and said quietly, "There were two photos taken that day."

I closed my eyes and all at once I was back in that apartment. Damn it all, I could even smell the gunsmoke and chicory.

"Why didn't you destroy all the evidence?" I said. "You were quick enough to shoot a hole in the photo I found."

I could sense this whole thing was getting out of hand, maybe even getting dangerous. The dame still had a gun in her hand, after all. I knew I had to keep her talking. Besides, I was curious: why had she kept the one piece of evidence that could have put her away for life? Why run the risk?

To my astonishment, a tear was spilling from between her perfect black lashes.

"Sentimental reasons," she said. "My first husband—the one they locked away, the one I framed, the one who spent every spare hour of the day beating the bright blue hell out of me . . . I . . ."

"You still love him," I said. "Sweet mother of mercy! Now I've heard it all."

I rocked back in the chair and reminded myself there are two things man was never meant to know: what happened before the big bang singularity and why dames do what they do.

"So," I said heavily, "your boyfriend, the werewolf, stole the photo and used it to blackmail you, to pay off his gambling debts."

Wide, tear-filled eyes trembled in her pale, cold face as she nodded, her bottom lip trembling.

"It's just a coincidence we were in your neighborhood when I finally got him cornered. And that's the honest truth," she said, her voice breaking.

Rising from my chair, I slammed both fists down on the desk and lunged towards her, my own lips pulled back from my teeth, and with the most ferocious growl I could muster I said, "Liar!"

Her tears stopped abruptly. I held my breath and waited for the gunshot. I wished I'd put my feet up on the desk—that would at least have given me a fighting chance. But no, I faced her down, knowing my only hope was to outstare her.

Only when she looked away did I allow myself to breathe again. How much time had I bought myself? I didn't know. What I did know was I'd knocked her off-balance. I had to keep her that way, so I went over to the wolf's corpse and picked up the hat.

"Interesting badge," I said, fingering the lining. "The
Helmwolfen Bruderschaft
. Not a very well-known pack."

"I wouldn't know," she said listlessly. The big handgun lay on her lap; her fingers lay on the big handgun.

"It's not well-known for one very simple reason," I continued. "It isn't a wolf pack at all."

"Isn't it? But I thought all werewolves belonged to packs."

"They do. But our friend here isn't a werewolf."

I whipped off my coat and made ready to turn it inside-out. The intense heat of the Search Engine's cab had prompted me to turn it into comfortable but penetrable sealskin. Right now it was about as bulletproof as a wet paper towel. I was quick, but the dame was quicker. Throwing back the chair, she stood in a lithe, economical movement and pointed the big handgun right at the center of my head. Since that's a part of my anatomy I'm particularly fond of, I froze.

"Drop the coat," she hissed.

"It's just a coat."

"Drop it!"

I dropped the coat.

"What do you know?" she snapped.

"I'd never heard of the
Helmwolfen
. There was no mention of any such pack in the book. But not everything gets into the Big Dictionary." I smiled. "You're not in there, for instance, but you exist all right."

"You can be sure of it. Go on."

"When I dug a bit deeper I discovered there's a secret society called the
Helmwolfen
, but they're not werewolves."

"They're not?"

"No, ma'am, although they move in similar circles. Turns out the
Helmwolfen
are gamblers. What they do is kind of weird: they take ordinary articles of clothing and lace them with
lycanthropia
 . . ."

"
Lycanthropia
? What's that?" She looked puzzled, but I wasn't convinced the expression was genuine.

"Essence of werewolf. Musk. Distilled hound-juice. Whatever. It's intense stuff, very, very powerful. You don't even want to think about how they get their hands on it. Anyway, it does pretty much what a werewolf badge does to its owner."

"What do you mean?"

"Put it this way, you put on an outfit laced with
lycanthropia
and it won't be your own face you see next time you check the mirror."

"It can turn anybody into a werewolf?"

"Not necessarily a wolf. Could be anything. Tiger, bear, stoat, you name it. It's usually a mammal, usually a carnivore. But not always. There's records of wereparrots. One poor bastard turned into a wereshark and suffocated in his own front room."

"So where does the gambling come in?"

"The
Helmwolfen
bet on what the victim—and these
are
victims, make no mistake—will turn into. Big money changes hands. It's not a game for the squeamish. Wereism isn't a stable condition. Unless you're born to it, chances are the transformation will only be successful one way."

"One way?"

"Yeah. When you change back, all the different parts of your body go back in the wrong order."

"How do they get the . . . victims . . . to do it?"

"Gambling again. There are
Helmwolfen
behind most of the big casinos in most of the big towns. Including the Tartarus Club. They see some poor sucker laying down more than he can afford and make him an offer he can't refuse. 'Try this game,' they say. 'Survive, and we'll wipe the slate clean.' "

The gun wavered in her hand.

"You're the one who owes the money," I said, seizing the advantage, "aren't you? I'm just telling you what you already know. Because the truth is that
you're
the one they made the offer to, not this poor schmuck."

For a moment I didn't know which way she'd tip. Then she collapsed like a bunch of wet noodles into the chair, bent her head to the desk and sobbed her wretched little heart out.

Me, like the poor sap I am, wrapped my arm around her shoulders. Beneath the sodden sweater she felt hot and alive. I told myself to keep my mind on the job.

"I'm s-sorry," she wept. "I didn't know w-what else to do. I w-was so d-desperate. Can you forgive me?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'll need to get it all straight in my head first. Without a guy like me on the case this could all get mighty confusing."

"You can work it out," she said, touching my cheek with ten thousand volts of fingertip. "I know you're the man for the job."

"Okay," I said. "Let me see. You start visiting the Tartarus Club, maybe thinking you'll get hooked up with some rich widower, maybe just to kid yourself you still got a life. Instead you get hooked on the gaming tables—blackjack's my guess. Am I right so far?"

Sniffling, she nodded.

"So, you run yourself deep into debt. You go to the management, flash them your legs, maybe a little more. They decline your offers and make you one of their own. 'Just try this hat on for size,' they tell you. 'We got ourselves a little game going back here. Big Iapetos thinks you just might be a swan.' 'Can I think about it?' you say. 'Sure,' they say. And again, when you ask if you can keep the hat while you chew it over, they say, 'Sure.' Because they know you won't dare get rid of it, for fear of what they'll do to you. And you won't dare try it on. You'll just stare at it and stare at it until you run back to them screaming to get it over with. Am I still on the eight ball here?"