The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 1: American Nightmares (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #1) (2 page)

“A fellow can hope.” I patted his shoulder. “I’ll let them know.” I walked back to Baron Exham. “All right, Baron,” I said. “The kid and I are now on your payroll. What do you want done?”

Baron Exham smiled widely, and now I could see the fangs reaching down over his lips. “The Bike Bats, Mr. Candle. I need them dealt with. Not now, of course. Night is coming, and my wife and I must feed. But tomorrow morning, while we slumber, you will go into Cold Springs and find them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “You got a place to flop for me and the kid while you’re indulging your appetites?”

Exham pointed to the manor. “We have several rooms. They are somewhat dusty, but I’m certain you will find that Ravenwood Manor possesses numerous other comforts.”

I didn’t take my eyes off of Lenora. She licked her pale lips. “I’ll bet,” I said.

I slept poorly, which was probably a good thing. Weatherby Stein and I picked rooms opposite each other. He carried a collection of his father’s books with him, and the kid selected a tome thicker than a phone book by some Dutch bum for a little bedtime reading. I put a .45 under my pillow and looked at the ceiling until I fell asleep.

I dreamed of the war, and that woke me up a little before dawn, like it always did. I felt the wind on my face like a hundred knives during the drop, and the mud crunching under combat boots. Bullets kicked up dirt around me. The heat of gunfire burned against the snow and I saw the faceless head of some poor Kraut kid after a .30 cal was through with him. That made my eyes open and I found myself staring at the crumbling ceiling. Then I realized I wasn’t alone.

I grabbed the automatic from under my pillow and sat up. I pointed it at the doorway. Someone was there. She walked forward and I saw it was the Baroness Lenora Exham. I didn’t lower the pistol. “Watching me sleep?” I asked. “Getting hungry? Sorry, sister, but this one ain’t for drinking.”

“You are nervous, aren’t you?” she said, her arms resting loosely at her sides. “You are afraid of death. Perhaps eternal life would be a blessing for you.”

“Yeah. Except sleeping in a coffin don’t sound that comfortable.” I set my gun on the nightstand and stood up. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep right about now?”

“I will, in a moment,” she said. “Beauty sleep?” She laughed. It sounded hollow. “Don’t you think I’m beautiful, Mr. Candle?”

“Like a panther, baby, ready to pounce.” I walked over to the corner where my clothes rested in a heap. I put on my shirt and started buttoning it. “And I bet your hubby doesn’t like you pawing around with the hired help.”

“He’s not the biggest cat in the jungle,” Baroness Exham replied. “And I wasn’t always like this. We met in a Kansas City dance hall, before the war. It was a wide open town, as I’m sure you know.”

I shrugged. “I never got out of Brooklyn, until I went to France.”

“Edwin met me backstage, after I did a little fan-dancing,” Lenora continued. “He made me an offer – go with him and get all the money I wanted, keep all the beauty I had, and live forever. I agreed without a thought.” She sat down on my bed, behind me. I buttoned my vest and tucked in my tie. “But time has passed, Mr. Candle. A lot of it has.”

“You don’t look it, sister.”

“Yeah. And the funny thing is, I stay young, but I’m getting older. And I’m just a little tired of it all.”

I turned around. “Well, find someone else to put a little excitement back into your life.” I put my hat on my head. “I’ve got to go to work.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” She took my gun from the nightstand and held it out, barrel first. I didn’t know what was more dangerous – the pistol or the hand holding it.

Quickly, I took the gun from her and slid it into my shoulder-holster. “See you around, sister,” I muttered, and headed outside. Weatherby stood in the hallway, fiddling with a pistol clip. It was special ammo, laced with garlic and carved with crosses. He handed it to me and I pocketed it. He tried to stand on his tiptoes and peer behind me, to look at Lenora Exham. I closed the door behind me.

“Is that the Baroness?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“Not until you’re older,” I told him.

“Mr. Candle, I can understand your, well, a-attraction to her, but please don’t let it cause any trouble for us.” He hung his head, speaking with all the sadness of the impoverished aristocrat. “We really need the money from this operation.”

I nodded. “I’ll be careful.” I didn’t want to crack wise at the kid, not when he seemed so pathetic. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s head into town.”

We walked down the dusty hallway. Shafts of sunlight reached in through the holes in the ceiling, illuminating the spray of dust. It felt like we were walking through a cloudy patch of sky. I felt better when we were outside, and even more so when we were down the hill and inside my powder blue Packard.

I started the auto. Weatherby Stein knew how to re-animate a corpse with a bolt of lightning, how to feed and care for a pack of graveyard ghouls, and how to exorcise a vengeful spirit, but he couldn’t drive an automobile. He sat in the passenger seat, because the back was full of guns and ammunition. It was army surplus mostly, with a few choice modifications. I hit the gas pedal and started rolling into town.

“So, do we have a plan of attack against these motorcycling miscreants?” Weatherby wondered.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Piss them off, then beat them down.” I looked over my shoulder at our little armory. “Exham said the Bike Bats were half-turned. That makes them like normal bloodsuckers, but a little weaker, right?”

“Correct. The clip of ammunition in your automatic should prove efficient.”

“What if I don’t want efficient? What if I want to take off limbs and tear bodies in half?”

“Then there’s the trench gun. I’ve prepared the shells with extract of garlic, holy water and slivers of silver.” He reached in back and grabbed the shotgun. It looked twice its size in his spindly arms. “But you don’t intend to slaughter these men, do you?”

I shrugged. “I just want to be prepared.”

By then, we had arrived in Cold Springs. It had one street and the saloon was on it. I drove the Packard over and slowed it down. Outside the saloon were a dozen motorcycles, gathering dust. Inside were their riders, raising hell. The saloon was called the Oasis. It had a neon palm tree hovering above the entrance. If this was the oasis, I’d hate to see the desert. I loaded one of my automatics with the prepared bullets, kept the other with normal forty-fives. Then I stepped inside.

The jukebox was blaring rock and roll. I couldn’t say I liked it. The Bike Bats had the run of the place. Besides the bartender, there wasn’t one fellow without a short black leather jacket, with fangs and wings embroidered on the back. A couple of them were smacking around balls on a pool table in the back. The rest were smoking or drinking. Nobody was saying much of anything.

They looked up at me as I walked in. I took off my hat and held it in my hand. “My name is Mort Candle. I’m looking for someone named Nails Kenzie,” I said. I tried to keep a smile on my face. “I was wondering if any of you gents have seen him.”

“You looking for me, daddy-o?” Nails Kenzie was sitting at the bar. A bottle of bourbon sat next to him. He had curly black hair, carefully piled on his head, and wore a ring on each of his long fingers. He wore aviator sunglasses, and I could see my reflection in them. I couldn’t see the reflections of any of the other Bike Bats. “Cause I gotta say, I ain’t the kind of man worth searching for.”

“Maybe I got a good reason.”

“Maybe suicide ain’t such a good reason, pal.” He raised his hand, and I saw a switchblade in his pale palm. It flicked to life. The other Bike Bats weren’t playing pool any more. “Let me guess – the Baron sent you. He’s worried about me and the boys taking his gold.” Nails shrugged. “I guess he’s right to be worried. That withered old fancy-pants ought to lay down in his coffin and not get out so we can just take every buck he’s got.”

I put my hat back on my head. “I guess this isn’t gonna be such a friendly bumping of gums.”

“I guess not.” Nails moved to stand up.

He pulled back his shiv and then he tried to slide it between my ribs. Except that he couldn’t, because before he got off the barstool, I took out one of my Colts and planted the handle in his face, breaking his sunglasses. He went down like a sack of hammers and I kicked the knife from his hand, slamming my boot into his midsection. He gurgled and coughed and did nothing else.

I started walking to the door. One of the Bike Bats moved to stop me, and I slugged him the chest and left him wailing on the floor. “Great thing about you bloodsuckers,” I said, kicking open the door. “You always forget how easy it is to bust you up.”

I made it to the Packard and slid in behind the driver’s seat as the Bike Bats started charging out of the Oasis Saloon. I got behind the wheel, and nodded to Weatherby. He handed me the trench gun, and the first Bike Bat out of the saloon doors got his left leg torn off by a load of buckshot for his trouble. I handed the trench gun back to Weatherby. “This is gonna be fast and nasty,” I said, starting the engine. “A boiler against a couple of two-wheeled toys. But I think we’ll be okay.” I sped away from Cold Springs, and out into the open plains.

Behind me, I could hear the rumble of the Bike Bats’ Harleys. They were coming fast, driving like hell to get some revenge and composure in equal measure. I slammed down the gas pedal of the Packard, and it roared like a tiger ready to pounce. I could hear the Bike Bats speed up behind me, gobbling down that asphalt like it wasn’t even there. I gave them some time, letting them get angrier with each passing seconds.

“Mr. Candle?” Weatherby asked, panic burning away his usual aristocratic indifference. “M-Morton? They are going to catch up with us, very shortly!”

“I know,” I said. “I’m counting on it.” Then I slammed on the breaks.

I like the Packard for a number of reasons. It gets good miles to the gallon, it’s reliable as a cowboy’s horse in the moving pictures, and most importantly, it’s very good for banging some poor bastard around. I slammed on the breaks and let the Packard come to a screeching halt. The Bike Bats didn’t have the same luxury.

They smashed into the rear of the car, mangling their bikes and themselves. Some of them managed to steer out of the way, off the street and into the ditches on the sides of the road. Their motorcycles weren’t used to handling Nebraska dirt, and they hit the ground soon enough. I gave it a few seconds as the second batch of bikers crashed into their fallen friends.

I took the trench gun from Weatherby and stepped out. I stepped over the fallen Bike Bats, looking for their leader. One of the Bike Bats, lying on the ground with his leg twisted the wrong way, came up at me with a sawed-off shotgun. I fired first, taking off the hand holding the gun at the wrist.

I found Nails Kenzie lying on the ground, wincing as he tried to pull himself up. First I hit him under his chin, knocking him back to the pavement. Then I swung the butt of the shotgun into his hand and he yelled as I heard his fingers break. “Listen up, Nails,” I said. “I suggest you find yourself something else to dream about instead of the baron’s gold. It’s protected, and so is he. You understand?”

“Go to Hell!” Kenzie whined.

“You sure are spirited.” I swung the length of the trench gun into his chest. I heard one of his ribs go. “Do you understand?”

“Y-yes!” Kenzie bellowed. “For Christ’s sake!”

“I knew we could work something out. Gotta dangle now. See you later.” I walked back to the Packard and got inside, then started driving back to Ravenwood Manor.

“It’s finished?” Weatherby asked.

“Yup. Just gotta drive on back and get paid. Then we move on.”

“Excellent.” Weatherby smiled as he rolled back to Ravenwood. “I have no desire to linger here.”

I thought about Lenora Exham. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to move on just yet.

It turns out I didn’t get the chance. When we got back to the manor, we found Bruno standing outside, his arms folded. “The Baron ain’t awake yet,” he said. “But you’ll get your payment soon enough, right out of his coffers.” He looked down at me and Weatherby. “If you done the job, that is.”