The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 1: American Nightmares (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #1) (8 page)

I swore. This mission had just gone and got fouled up in a big way. There was no sign of Baum’s boy, and now it looked like we were gonna be torn to shreds by the guerillas, without even getting a chance to begin negotiations. I fumbled for my second grenade. Staying to fight was out of the question. It was time to make some tracks.

“We split up!” I shouted. “Try and lose them in the jungle! Reconvene back at the beach, and then maybe we can pick some of them off! You all got that?” A bullet made a new hole in the brim of my fedora, and I tried to keep my head down. I saw them pointing the .50 cal our way, threading in the ammo belt and preparing the weapon. We didn’t have much time. I didn’t wait for my pals to agree to my plan.

I popped the pin, cooked it for three long seconds and then hurled it forward. The grenade landed in the center of the sandbags, and the guerillas started running away, scattering into their camp just before an explosion tore into the dirt and shook the trees around them.

Even before the dust had settled, I was up and running. I didn’t have time to look out for Miss Rosa or Belasco, as I pounded down the slope towards the wide blue sea. I weaved through the trees, hearing the whine and crack of bullets behind me like the snarls of angry beasts. Every second, I imagined one sliding between my ribs or erupting out of the back of my skull. I sucked in air as I tried to reach the beach.

I remembered doing this before, with mortar strikes screaming down around me and fellow soldiers dying like rats in the snow from withering machine gun fire. At least I didn’t have the Third Reich to contend with this time. But that was small comfort when I reached the beach and stopped running at the water’s edge, stepping back to avoid the incoming surf.

I looked over my shoulder. “Miss Rosa?” I asked. “Belasco?” There was no response. I wondered if the Commies had nabbed them. I sighed as I looked back at the ocean. It was pale green in the afternoon sun, stretching out over rocks gone smooth from the pounding waves. I kicked at the sand. “Hell,” I muttered.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned around. Weatherby Stein had made it at least. He sank to his knees, struggling to catch his breath and then looked up at me. “Did Miss Rosa and Mr. Belasco make it out?” he asked.

“Don’t know,” I said. “And I don’t exactly want to go back.” I started thinking about a way out of this jam, but nothing popped up. I put my hands in the pockets of my trench coat and turned around, kicking up another spray of sand on the surf.

Then something moved under the sand. I stepped back, reaching for my pistol as I saw a withered hand gone gray from rot reach out from the yellow sand. Another hand followed it, and then a torso with a head on it. Half of that head was missing.

“Zombies!” I cursed. “Stand back, kid. I’ll send this dead chucklehead back to the grave.”

“Wait!” Weatherby stepped in front of me, ruining my shot. I would have slugged him and taken the shot, but he knew more about the occult than anything else, so I peeled back my ears and listened. “It has yet to attack!” he explained. “If that was its purpose, it would have grabbed your leg and sunk its decaying teeth into your flesh, but it has not done so!”

We both looked down at the zombie. It had burrowed out of the sand, and slowly came to its feet. All he had to wear were rags. I had no idea what the zombie had been in life. But like Weatherby said, it didn’t attack. Instead, it turned on its heel and waved a hand with two fingers on it. It wanted us to follow.

Weatherby looked down the beach as the zombie started lurching along the sand. “Should we follow it?” he wondered.

I shrugged. “Why not? The living don’t seem to lead us anywhere good. Maybe the dead man will be a change of pace.”

I holstered my automatic and we followed the zombie down the beach.

After a few minutes of keeping pace with the zombie’s shambling excuse for a run, we arrived at a small wooden hut built on the upper beach and overlooking the sea. A metal cylinder of a smokestack poked into the sky and more zombies stood around the hut, their lips sewn shut to prevent their moaning. A few charms swung down on fishing line from the roof, ranging from the heads of chickens and shark teeth to small pouches of gris-gris. Our zombie guide stopped walking and sank down to his haunches. I think he was grateful to be at the journey’s end. I wasn’t.

I drew out my automatics and motioned for Weatherby to stay back. “Hello?” I asked. “Anyone home?”

The door opened and a little boy stepped out. He wore a white suit and a thin bowtie, stained with sea water and rumpled, as well as white trousers and dress shoes. He had a black eye, but otherwise didn’t look too banged around. As he pushed his spectacles up his nose, I recognized the kid. This was Henry Wallace Baum.

“Easy, son,” I said, lowering my cannons. “I’m Morton Candle and this is my pal Weatherby Stein. Your old man sent us to get you back. Is there anyone else in there with you?”

He nodded. “Papa sent you? I mean, my father, he sent you? Is he all right?” He called back into the hut. “It’s okay, Mrs. Le Croix! My father sent them. They’re friends.”

A fat round Negro woman stepped outside and stood behind the boy. She was built like a walrus with a weight problem, and wrapped round in a white strapless dress. A white turban covered her hair, and a necklace and bracelets laden with charms clanked with her every movement. She carried a large walking stick topped with a snake’s head and used that to approach us. He stepped in front of Henry Wallace, almost like she was shielding him.

“Are they, child?” she asked. “Or maybe they have come to get another piece of the action?”

Weatherby stepped forward, and bowed his head. “My good woman, rest assured that we have no ill intentions concerning Henry Wallace. We merely seek to return him to the loving arms of his father.” He stood on his tiptoes, trying to look past the Black woman at Henry Wallace. “Your father is quite well, though sick with worry about you. But we’ll take you home, and he will be overjoyed.”

I still looked at Henry Wallace’s captor. I recognized her, from the seedy back alleys and dingy curio shops of New Orleans. “Mama Le Croix,” I said. “You’re a long way from home. What are you doing here? And how the hell are you mixed up in this?” Mama Le Croix was a Voodoo mambo, a priestess who dabbled in black and white arts equally. She practically ruled the Gothic Quarter of New Orleans, and after the war, when I was drinking myself into a stupor in the countless saloons of the Big Easy, I had made her acquaintance.

“We should tell them, Mrs. Le Croix,” Henry Wallace suggested. He stepped away from her and walked over to Weatherby. “That’s a really cool suit, Mr. Stein. Are you some kind of world traveling adventurer? I’d imagine only one of those would wear something like that.”

Weatherby’s face reddened. “Well, I do travel the world, and I suppose I do have adventures. But it pleases me to no end that you have excellent taste in clothes. My father kept these clothes, inherited from his father, and going all the way back to the Stein line. In our great castle, deep in the Black Forest of Germany—”

“You grew up in a castle? Holy cow!” Henry Wallace was clearly impressed.

“Indeed, it was a fine place for a growing boy. I’ll tell you about it presently.” It was funny to see Weatherby dote on the child. I always imagined Weatherby had precisely two emotions – anger at the modern world for not speaking Latin properly and sadness for his family’s fate. But this was something else entirely. Weatherby patted Henry Wallace on the shoulder as he looked at Mama Le Croix. “Mrs. Le Croix, perhaps you could discuss your troubles and we might be able to assist you in some manner.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Come on in and get comfy. I’ll tell you the whole thing.”

We followed her into the hut. It was a simple dwelling, with a few crates serving as stools, and numerous Voodoo charms hanging from the ceiling and walls. Mama Le Croix sat down and looked over at me. “You remember my son, Raymond?” she asked.

I nodded. “Negro hoodlum with a knife scar. Toughest street fighter ever swung a blade.”

She nodded. “My Raymond was a good boy, Mr. Candle. He worked hard to keep me in green – anyway he could. But a while ago, he got into a card game on one of those Mississippi riverboats with Sly Baum. I told him he shouldn’t have done it. I told him Papa Legba lays out the roads the way he does, and no amount of wishing is gonna help his luck. But he gambled everything away, and he lost it.”

Henry Wallace Baum folded his hands and looked at his dirtied shoes. “You d-didn’t mention that, Mrs. Le Croix,” he said. “I’m sorry. My father, I think he’s a very good man. But when he’s, you know, gambling, he becomes someone else. I’ve never really seen him gamble, but I think he can be pretty unpleasant.”

“And what happened to Raymond?” I asked Mama Le Croix. Things were starting to take shape, though there were plenty of gaps that needed to be filled in.

“He got into the debt and needed to pay it, so he tried knocking over an armored car. Caught a shotgun blast square in the chest. The Loa of Graveyards has him now.” Mama Le Croix sighed. “I wanted Sly Baum to suffer like I suffered. I wanted him to know the terror – the absolute pain – of a parent who loses a son. So I found out where he was and I came here, to steal away his son. I located him, but I couldn’t do it alone.”

“So you got the guerillas to help you,” I muttered. It made sense. They needed all the cash they could for their crusade against capitalism. But there were some other things that bothered me. “But that’s not all. The mob was in on it.”

“Sly Baum had been ripping off the gang lords of this city for too long. Don Vizzini met with me when he heard I was moving against him. He had the funds necessary to gamble with Baum into his was out of luck – and deep in debt. It was the perfect vengeance – to make his love of games of chance destroy his son and himself.” Mama Le Croix sighed. “And there was more.”

“The Central Intelligence Agency approached Sly Baum to help create a spy network that would limit the growing power of the communists in Cuba. Baum refused. The CIA was enraged. An agent named Bobby Belasco approached me. The guerillas found out where he was, Belasco made the kidnapping, and then handed the child off to me, while Don Vizzini and his mobsters kept up the pressure of their debts.”

Henry Wallace’s thin frame looked deflated. He seemed small enough to pocket. “Oh,” he said. “I guess everyone hates my papa.”

“Don’t take it personally, kid,” I told him. I knew Bobby Belasco hadn’t been giving me the straight truth. For a curveball like him, that wouldn’t make sense. He had fired on the rebels and gave away our position in an attempt to get us all killed. He probably figured he could weasel his way out of the guerillas’ gun sights. I hoped he had. I wanted to have a little chat with the spy myself. “So you got the whole thing working. Except I get the idea that you’re having second thoughts, seeing as the young Baum is still breathing.”

Mama Le Croix came to her feet and stood next to Henry Wallace. “He has nothing to do with his father’s cruelties. He is polite and well-meaning, and with the naivety of one who believes in justice and the good things of the world. I could never hurt him. I will give him back to his father.”

Weatherby nodded. “A brilliant decision, Mrs. Le Croix. You are as well skilled in ethics as you are in black magic.” He nodded to Henry Wallace. “Come this way, my boy. We’ll have you back in the warm arms of your proud papa by suppertime.”

“Except we won’t,” I said. “Because the mob, the communist guerillas and the CIA ain’t gonna appreciate Mama Le Croix’s change of heart. Matter of fact, I got the feeling they’ll want her heart to stop beating altogether.” I pulled back my coat, revealing my shoulder-holsters. “Best get ready for some bloodshed before the day is out.”

A gunshot cracked through the air after my words. We all exchanged a glance. I guessed it was gonna happen sooner rather than later. Carefully, I walked to the door of the hut. I peered outside. The beach was packed with the communist guerillas. They had a few jeeps with them, armed with heavy machine guns, all aimed at the hut. I peered outside and looked at the silent ranks of Escopeteros in olive green uniforms, their rifles and sub-guns aimed my way.

Near the top of the beach, just where the hill sloped down, they had their prisoners. Bobby Belasco stood next to Miss Rosa. Their hands were bound and they had rifle muzzles to their heads. Belasco smiled at me. “Morty!” he cried. “Boy, I am glad to see you!”

“You betrayed me to the Reds,” I said. “You betrayed your country by working with them to kidnap Baum.”

“Yeah, but I just betrayed the Reds themselves, so it all works out.” Belasco shrugged. “Come on, Morton. I’ve played double agent, triple agent, and been in cover so deep that I forget what side I’m on. I don’t even think it matters that much anyway.” He nodded to the guerillas. “They want to execute me and the native beauty here. How about joining us? Misery loves company, after all.”

“Thanks but no thanks.” I ducked back into the hut and closed the door. The Cuban rebels were hoping to take us captive without a fight. That brought us precious seconds. “They’re outside,” I told Mama Le Croix, Weatherby and Henry Wallace. “Too many to fight, and loaded for bear.” I looked back at them. “I’m out of ideas. Got any?”