The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 3: Red Reunion (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #3) (10 page)

“Morton Candle!” Selena sounded like a shrill schoolteacher. She put her arm on Chad’s shoulder and looked up at me, like a tiger about to pounce. “Chad is a good man! He does not use any kind of drugs, and he is kind and loving. You have no reason to insult him, and I will not send him away while I spend time with my baby brother. If staying with you while you work on your cases is the only way I can get the two men I love most in the world to meet each other, then so be it.” She tapped my chest with a thin finger. “And you have no right to stand in my way.”

I turned to Weatherby. As far as I was concerned, it was his call. “What do you think, kiddo?” I asked.

The boy looked back at Chad, who smiled. “Well, all right,” Weatherby said. “If you want that, Selena. I won’t disagree with your wishes.” He turned away, and headed inside. I stayed close to him, and Selena and Chad followed.

Chad leaned forward, trying to talk to Weatherby. “Thanks, Weatherby. I’m sure we can be good buddies. I really like your sister, and I think we can—”

“Please.” Weatherby turned to him, and he clammed up. “Just don’t talk to me, if you please? At least for now.” He turned back to me as I held the door for him. I think Weatherby’s polite silence hurt Chad more than my enraged insults. I didn’t mind. As far as I was concerned, the toilet bowl was the only place a beatnik loser like him belonged.

The interior of the Royal Crown Club was done up like a hunting lodge. Warm red carpets, a blazing fire in the corner, and the heads of deer and moose on the walls gave the appearance of a place where gentlemen swapped stories of their biggest kills. But the only hunters there were looking for good stocks and summer homes, as well as the buffet and a night’s entertainment. Something was screwy with that entertainment, so the management had called us in.

As soon as we entered, a short, fat guy in a leopard-print tuxedo came toward us, a martini shaking in his hands. He had a red face, topped with a few strands of gray hair. He looked like a soccer ball with arms and legs. This was Ben Blemmy, the owner of the Royal Crown. He wiped sweat from his forehead as he shook my hand. “Good to see you, Mr. Candle, Mr. Stein, good to see you. Please, follow me.”

He headed to a service entrance, and we followed. He talked constantly, not bothering to check who Chad and Selena were. I guess he had other things on his mind. “You fellows know about Tommy Gabriel, don’t you? Sure you do. He’s a gold mine, a solid gold mine, a crooner that makes the ladies go crazy and fork over dough by the handful. Sure, he’s a headache and a half, with a bunch of weird conditions, but I’m not one to complain.” He turned back to look at me. “Am I?”

“Nope,” I agreed. “What’s wrong with him?”

Blemmy laughed. “I could write a book on that, I tell you! He don’t want no one in his rooms, he only takes certain foods, and he wants his room nice and toasty at all hours. But that I can handle. You see, Tommy Gabriel is the best kind of employee – the one who pays you back. Every buck he earns goes to the tables, and the Royal Crown takes it back. Matter of fact, he was in pretty deep debt to me – until he took off yesterday morning, with about half of the cash we got in the Royal Crown’s treasury. I want you to find him and get my money – and my crooner – back.”

We left a small service hallway and walked into a series of private rooms. These were the high class places, where the Royal Crown’s richest guests could afford to flop. Blemmy led us to a door marked with Tommy Gabriel’s name in gleaming gold letters. He fiddled with his keys, unlocking the cream-colored door.

“Mr. Blemmy, may I ask a question?” Weatherby said. “Would not the police or a normal private investigator specializing in missing persons be better for this situation?”

“Well, some of the money Gabriel swiped wasn’t exactly earned legally. And I don’t like cops.” Blemmy opened the door. “I pay good money to the local Outfit to keep the coppers out of my business. A lot of the money Gabriel stole was for them. I already put in a word to the boys in Reno, and they said they’re sending me a top shooter. All you gotta do is find Gabriel. The Mob’s button man will do the rest.”

We stepped inside. This case was getting worse by the second. Dirty money and mob hitmen were a bad combination. “But why did you hire us?” I asked. “What’s so strange about this case?”

Tommy Gabriel’s room was as ritzy as they come. A king-sized bed gleamed across from a glass coffee table, and a fully stocked drinks cabinet beckoned in the corner. The room was kept hot, warm enough to make me sweat in my trench coat.

“You want to know why?” Ben Blemmy asked. He pointed to a large mirror against the far wall, where various cosmetic supplies rested in neat wooden cases. “That’s why.”

I saw what he was talking about. There was a mask on a wooden stand, and the mask was Tommy Gabriel’s face. The pink skin, perfectly curled pompadour, and little dimple that all of America knew and loved sat there. Tommy Gabriel had peeled it off before he left. Weatherby and I walked over to it, while Chad and Selena stayed near the door.

“This is an amazingly lifelike mask…” Weatherby said. “It must have cost a fortune to create. But if Gabriel had to disguise himself, then that means—”

“He ain’t human.” I said what we were all thinking. If he was just a deformed guy, he could’ve gotten plastic surgery to make him look passable instead of spending a bundle on an expensive mask. Something else was going on here.

Chad gulped. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s something all right.”

Mob hitmen, dirty money, and a lounge singer who could take off his face – this case was about as bad as they come. And there we were, with Selena’s new beatnik boyfriend, right in the middle of it. Luckily, I already had some ideas where to start.

There was a cab stand down the road a little from the Royal Crown, and we headed straight there.  According to Blemmy, Gabriel didn’t own a car. Without an auto – and missing a face – he couldn’t have gotten far, so I bet he bundled himself up and called a cab. Most people think cabbies don’t notice anything but the road in front of them, but that’s not the case. A taxi driver sees everything that goes on in the backseat, and they’d remember if one of their passengers wasn’t human.

Despite the glitz and the sleaze, Tahoe wasn’t that big of a town. We rode past some of the casinos and lounges, almost hidden in the surrounding forest. The ride was painfully silent. Weatherby and Selena sat in the back, talking in quiet whispers, while Chad slouched in the passenger seat. He tapped a finger on his knee as he looked out the window. He looked like he was trying to think of something to say to me.

“So,” Chad finally said. “You play any tunes while you and the kid are cruising around? I know a lot of these really gone bands back in New York, you know, jazz and bebop and such. I can give you some records if—”

“Close your face,” I told him.

“Morton!” Selena cried. “Chad is just trying to be polite! You have no cause to be mean to him!”

I mumbled an apology and kept driving. I didn’t say anything, but Weatherby did. “Mr. Albright?” he asked. “How exactly did you become acquainted with my sister?”

“It was a party,” Chad explained, happy to have some conversation. “Just a little campus shindig. I always enjoy going to those, just to see what crazy thing my fellow students are up to. So I was there, digging the records and snapping my fingers, when I looked in the corner and saw the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, just standing there next to the wall, with no one talking to her. So I went over and introduced myself. I was holding a cup of coffee. She was near the table with the sugar and cream. We got to talking, and I realized that she’s smart, and kind, and just an amazing person, in every way.”

Weatherby smiled a little. “She certainly is,” he agreed. “And you know, of our…” He paused and stammered. “Our circumstances and misfortunes?”

“Yeah.” Chad looked back at Selena. “She told me about the War. I’m sorry, Weatherby. My own parents are a bunch of stuck-up high society losers, but I can’t imagine what losing them would be like. They named me, ‘Chancy,’ if you can believe it. I don’t think they’d like Selena. They wouldn’t even like the idea of her. I don’t think they even like me that much.”

“Not hard to see why,” I said. Chad Albright was a rich kid with bohemian delusions. And I didn’t know if Selena was part of his act – or if he genuinely loved her. He didn’t take my bait, but kept on talking, looking at Selena and Weatherby all the while.

“So, little man, I just want to let you know that I’ll never let Selena get hurt, or want for anything. She’s a grown woman, and she doesn’t need to be taken care of, but I’m there for her. And I’m there for you, too, if you need me to be.”

“Thank you, sir,” Weatherby said, and Selena put her arm around his shoulder. I could tell Weatherby didn’t think much of Chad Albright. But Chad loved Selena. That was obvious to Weatherby, and I guess, for him, it was enough.

We arrived at the cab stand, left the car and got to work. Chad and Selena stayed outside while Weatherby and I started our interviews. Most of the taxi drivers were enjoying their lunches in a small break room next to the garage when we arrived, and I walked in with a crisp fin held between my fingers. They looked up from their sandwiches to the dollar, and I nodded to them.

“Hello there,” I said. “I’ll give this and its brother to anyone who can tell me if they picked up a strange passenger last night, and where they took him.” I returned the five-spot to my pocket. “But don’t think about getting smart. If you say you gave the Loch Ness Monster a ride, I’ll bust your jaw for lying.”

Silence fell over the cab drivers. One fellow, a portly guy in a checkered shirt and flat cap stood up. “I think I saw something,” he said. “Hell, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I work a late shift. I get all kinds of weirdoes. But this was different. He wore a big trench coat and a fedora, low so that his whole face was shadowed. Then a bit of moonlight came in through the window, and I saw his face. It had scales and it was green as a lime. He only went a little down the highway, and had me drop him off in the woods.”

Weatherby and I exchanged a glance. “A reptilian humanoid,” he whispered. “That’s remarkably odd.”

I nodded as I forked over ten bucks to the cabbie. “Got that right.”

The taxi driver took the money. “Mister?” he asked. “Is there anything I should do about seeing that lizard man?”

“Want my advice? Forget it ever happened.” I turned away and walked outside. We left the cabstand and met up with Selena and Chad. Both were anxious to know what we had learned, and Weatherby explained everything. The kid was deep in thought, running down options of what exactly Tommy Gabriel could be.

It wasn’t until we got back to the Roadmaster that he sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “It can’t be a naga, for those beings are feminine and retain their serpentine tails. It could perhaps be one of Dogon’s reptilian men, but those are most decidedly inhuman. I doubt one could pass for a lounge singer.”

Selena patted his shoulder. “Just think on it, darling. I’m sure there’s an answer. I’ve heard many accounts of reptile people walking amongst us, so perhaps they all have a common source.”

Chad coughed. I looked over to him as I started the engine. “You got something to say, beat boy?” I asked.

“Well, I think I do, Mr. Candle.” He turned around, preferring to talk to Weatherby than to me. “Okay, dig this – I read a lot of some really weird books, just way out there stuff. Half the time, the people who write them are hopped up on bennies and booze, so I take them with a grain of salt. But I got my hands on of a copy of the rough draft of this book by Bill Burroughs, and he talks all about other dimensions, filled with bizarre creatures, connected to our own.”

“And some of those creatures are reptilian?” Weatherby wondered.

“He calls them Mugwumps. The ones in his story are in a place called Interzone, and their piss is some kind of super drug. But that’s not important. What is, is that one of the places you can get to Interzone, or other freak-o dimensions is Crystal Grove National Park. That’s not but a few miles from here.”

I considered his theory. I didn’t like it. I’d sooner drive the Roadmaster off a cliff than believe in the ravings of some lunatic junkie writer. I looked at Weatherby, and I saw disbelief in his face, but a little trust too. “You want to check it out?” I asked, speaking to the kid and no one else.

“I suppose so.  After all, the cab driver said that he dropped Mr. Gabriel near that area,” Weatherby agreed. “It seems to be a good lead.”

Chad smiled. “Good enough at least,” I said, trying to cut down his optimism. I turned the auto around and headed for the highway. Crystal Grove wasn’t far.