The Love-Haight Case Files (34 page)

On the bright side, Evelyn got more court time than any associate of similar vintage. The bad news was that most all of it would have been his court time. Many judges were not enamored with the notion of a ghost appearing before them, especially in a professional capacity. Thomas wasn’t sure if it was because of simple prejudice against OTs, the complicated bureaucratic and ethical issues involved because of the special abilities and limitations of ghosts and other OTs, or that they simply didn’t want anyone to appear in their court who couldn’t effectively be jailed for contempt if they got out of line.

His reverie was interrupted by Evelyn’s return to the office. She had gone out for a few minutes to report in to Sad Sadie on the day’s events at court and to pet Barney’s belly for a few minutes. “That Barney’s one smart dog,” she said with a bright smile. “He even knows how to play dead. Flat on his back, with all four paws in the air. Sadie said she taught him just last night. Said it was a survival skill for anyone sleeping on the streets.”

If only playing dead was so simple. Thomas shoved the negative thought away and smiled back at Evelyn, but he guessed she could tell his heart wasn’t in it, because her brow furrowed.

“Anything else you need me to do before Dagger gets here?” she asked.

“Nah,” he replied, then shook himself and made a deliberate effort to will away his gloom. “It’s getting close to closing time. Why don’t you put a note on the door for Dagger to meet us up on the roof? We’ll have an impromptu beer or two to drown the sorrows of today’s adverse ruling and launch our investigative quest.” As soon as he said the words, he realized they were not wholly accurate. “Er … that is you and Pete can have a beer or two … and Dagger when he gets here.” Thomas wondered if heavy drinkers who became ghosts spent eternity going through withdrawal. Maybe that was why Val was always going from person to person and bar to bar nearby, trying to catch a high off of someone else’s buzz.

“C’mon, Pete,” he said to the gargoyle, who was fussing with a controller and muttering something about putting an orc on a hook to bait a troll. “Stop slaying orcs and have a beer on the rooftop. If you ask nicely, I bet Evelyn will bring up a six-pack of Gubna’s Oskar Blues along with the Miller Lite.”

The mention of his favorite micro-brew got the gargoyle to turn his head around so fast Thomas could hear the stone sinews of his neck muscles pop and grind. “Oskar Blues? That’s good stuff.” He gave a gravelly shrug. “Miller Lite’s okay, too. I mean, it tastes great. But it’s less filling, you know?”

Thomas and Evelyn both laughed, causing the gargoyle considerable consternation. “What’s so funny? What did I say?”

Thomas simply started floating to the doorway and up the stairs. He made it a practice never to float through Evelyn’s apartment on the floor above. It would be creepy to do so—she deserved her privacy. “C’mon, Pete. Evelyn will grab the beer. “I’ll race you to the roof.”

Pete grumbled as he hopped down from the chair of Gretchen’s desk. “You know that’s not fair, boss. These stubby little wings I got, they don’t let me fly.”

Chapter 4.5

Evelyn looked up from her Miller Lite to see Pete finish a third can of Oskar Blues, crumple the can flat with a simple clench of his fist and toss the can down the narrow opening between his building and the one next door.

“Hey!” she shouted. “That’s littering!”

Pete scrunched up his stone countenance. “Nah. Sad Sadie collects the cans from there real regular. With an extra mouth to feed, I figure she can use the extra cash. If we drink the whole six-pack, she might be able to trade up from them tiny tins of cat food to a big honkin’ hunk of canned dog food.”

Evelyn had to admit the green granite gargoyle had a point, but she didn’t want him to get into any bad habits. “As long as she’s collecting them, okay, but you need to keep track. Litter around the building doesn’t exactly attract the best clientele for the office.”

“Hmmmph,” replied Pete. “You could say the same thing about Sad Sadie.”

Thomas turned back from looking down at Sad Sadie’s alleyway from the corner of the rooftop. “No bad-mouthing our client or I’ll cut off the beer.”

“Well, it’s true,” grumped Pete.

“I can also cut off your
World of Warcraft
privileges.”

“That’s not fair. I earn them minutes turning pages and makin’ calls and stuff. It’s
quid pro quo.”

Evelyn was shocked. “You know Latin? You know legal Latin?”

“Of course,” gruffed Pete. “Most of my brothers spend their lives hanging to the tops of churches. Can’t help but learn a few things. Besides, in case you didn’t realize it, turning pages for someone ain’t exactly the most engaging job in the world. If you didn’t read what was on the pages, you’d go stir crazy. More boring than watching pigeons roost and you can’t break the monotony by killing the damn rats with wings.”

Evelyn noticed how distressed Thomas looked as Pete described his “work.” The last thing Thomas needed was to worry about the job satisfaction of a beer-swilling, pigeon murdering gargoyle. “The office rent keeps the building going,” she reminded her stone friend, “and that keeps you alive. Our clientele, and thus, our appearance are keys to your survival.”

“Shush,” whispered Pete. “If the pigeons ever figure that out, they’ll flock from all over the city just to leave droppings here. I’ve got quite a reputation with the bird brains.” He cracked open another Oskar Blues, as if worried that he had to drink fast before the beer was taken away. “Besides, since when did your clientele care about the … ambience … of the neighborhood?”

Any other response was cut off as Dagger strode from the access doorway to the roof. The big man pointed at Pete. “Any pigeon unloads his droppings on me, Pete, and I’m blaming you.”

Evelyn reached down to the dwindling six-pack and tossed an Oskar Blues to the private detective, ignoring the dismay on Pete’s face as she did so.

Dagger caught the can with a relaxed flick of the wrist. He turned it almost sideways, bit into the middle of the aluminum cylinder, tilted his head back, and used a fingernail to pop the top. The open top let air into the can, allowing the contents to drain through the bite holes in an instant. He crushed the can and tossed it lazily towards Pete’s feet, as the gargoyle looked at him in shock.

“It’s called ‘shooting’ a beer,” he said to the gargoyle. “It’s the fastest way to drink a beer, and … well, I was thirsty.”

Evelyn marveled, not for the first time, at the bizarre things you could learn in the legal profession, while Pete inspected the can.

Dagger licked a speck of foam off his lips and turned to Thomas. “So what’s the plan?”

“Plan?” said Thomas.

“Yeah, plan. You want to break up a dog-fighting ring. I’m good to go. What do you know? Where are we going? What are we expecting to find?”

Thomas fidgeted with the edge of his suit. “Uh … we, we don’t know any of that. We were kind of hoping you might know something about the dog-fighting ring. Supposedly, there are floating fights at various locations in Chinatown and the Tenderloin district.”

Dagger scowled. “If I knew anything about a dog-fighting ring in the city, there wouldn’t be a dog-fighting ring in the city.”

Evelyn interjected. “But you spend so much time in the Tenderloin and—”

Dagger finished her thought “—and other seedy areas of town.”

Evelyn felt blood rush to her face. “Well, something like that.”

Dagger sniffed. “Big area. Lots of secrets. The only way I survive there is by not asking about ones I’m not paid to learn about.” He turned toward Thomas. “So, no plan?”

Thomas tilted his head to one side. “Well, I thought maybe that maybe you and I could just go to the Tenderloin and I’d … well, I’d just go completely invisible and pass through the buildings, you know, being incorporeal and all, ’til I saw something. Then I’d let you know what I found and we’d … well, we’d play it by ear from there.”

The look Dagger gave Thomas made Evelyn sure she knew how the detective had gotten his name. “What kind of grab-ass plan is that?”

Thomas blanched, whether it was because his ghostly blood drained from his ghostly face or because he tended to become more transparent generally when under stress, Evelyn wasn’t sure.

“I admit,” Thomas replied, “it may be a bit tedious.”

“Tedious?” growled Dagger. “You whiz through buildings while I sit in a car waiting around for you to cry ‘Mommy,’ then we just punt the ball upfield? Is that what you’re saying?”

Thomas didn’t answer. He simply stood … or floated … looking down at his feet.

Dagger shook his head. “It’s not just tedious and inefficient—you don’t even know if the bad guys are in town between fights, and you don’t know when the fights are going to occur—it’s a violation of privacy. There’s lots of secrets in the Tenderloin and Chinatown, but most of ’em aren’t criminal. They’re just people being private. But you’re just going to float through everybody’s business while they’re taking a shower or picking their nose or yelling at their kids or doing their taxes or making out on the couch, but that’s no nevermind to you, because you’re a man on a mission and that means you got a right to peep into everyone’s business?”

“No!” shouted Thomas. Evelyn felt a wave of air pressure bump past her as Thomas shouted. “No. I don’t … I mean, I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m not a peeper.” He looked over at Evelyn. “Never, I swear.” He turned back to Dagger. “I guess I expected you to be able to identify a specific target … a commercial location, maybe a warehouse. And when you couldn’t, ’cause you didn’t know, I just didn’t think it through.”

Pete stopped inspecting Dagger’s discarded can and looked up suddenly.

“Dog barks.”

“What?” said the rest of the trio in unwitting simultaneity.

“Dog barks,” repeated Pete. “The average barking dog in an urban area can be heard by two hundred and fifty people.”

“It can?” said Evelyn.

Thomas scrunched up his face and looked to one side, like he always did when calculating numbers. “It makes sense. San Francisco has a pretty high population density. Especially with an open window, the sound could easily carry to that many people, maybe more.”

“How did you know that, Pete?” asked Evelyn.

Pete tossed Dagger’s can into the narrow space between buildings. “Somebody mentioned it on
World of Warcraft
when they were pricing guard dogs for the camp. Games can be very educational. I’ve learned a bunch of new ways to kill pigeons by playing.”

Evelyn let Pete’s last remark slide. “San Francisco Animal Control or the police or somebody must keep records of noise complaints.”

“Yes,” said Thomas, “but there’s bound to be some habitual complainers who will skew the results.”

“But,” Evelyn continued, “if we look for spikes that differ from the historical patterns, we should be able to narrow it down.”

Thomas nodded and Evelyn noticed that a smile was beginning to return to his face. “I’ll check with Patrolman Lane when he does his final rounds in an hour and see if he can get us any data from the police blotter.”

“And I’ll,” chimed in Evelyn, “contact Animal Control and see if I can get any information from them.” Things were finally looking up.

Even Pete got in the spirit. “I’ll commune with my brothers across town and see if they’ve noticed anything.” Gargoyles on the various buildings around town could communicate through low frequency vibrations in the buildings they protected, down through the bedrock beneath the city, though Pete had once told Evelyn that low-level quakes sometimes gave the conversation a kind of Tourette’s syndrome quality. Pete continued, “I can’t promise anything, though. I gotta admit they talk a lot more about pigeons than dogs. I mean, us gargoyles don’t usually have to worry about dog poop.”

Dagger grabbed the last can of Oskar Blues. “And I’ll have another beer. Now, that’s a plan.” He looked around at the group. “Compare notes tomorrow afternoon?”

Everyone murmured agreement as Dagger got ready to “shoot” his beer.

Pete looked over the edge of the building. “Drink fast, Dagger. Gretchen just got off the bus with a boatload of office supplies, and somebody needs to help her get ’em inside.”

Evelyn saw the shining edge of Thomas’ smile dim. She knew he wished he could help carry things and was frustrated he couldn’t. But he was helping Gretchen and Sadie … and her … more than he knew. She had to make sure he understood that.

Chapter 4.6

The fey winked and giggled at each other as they danced around the tall pole in the center of the clearing. Each of the participants, who were festooned with flowers as circlets on their heads and braided into belts for their gaily-colored skirts and pantaloons, held a long ribbon attached to the pole. As they danced around the pole, half clockwise, half counter, the fey darted first in and then out in passing, causing the ribbon winding round the pole to braid in a bright, intricate pattern.

Truth be told, Pete found the celebration a bit silly, even embarrassing to watch, but it wasn’t the main focus of his attention. He shifted his point of view frequently, looking outward from the edge of the maypole circle to the dark shadows and tree cover beyond. He saw a flicker of black against the dark cover as evening fell, then heard the full-throated war cry of the wood banshees as they rushed in to suck the life from the frolicsome fey.

After remaining almost stock still for so long, it felt good to move again. Gretchen’s office chair bumped with a heavy thud against her desk as Pete twisted and turned the controller, maneuvering his
World of Warcraft
character to do battle against the forces of evil in the make-believe realm. His character spun and danced with a lithe flexibility and lethal grace his own stone form would never know. This was so much more fun that killing pigeons!

His skill was such that the bloody battle was over almost before it began. But it had barely ended when a dark shadow fell over the entire scene.

“Sign off, big guy, or I’ll do a hard reboot and you’ll lose this session’s accumulated experience points.” Gretchen hovered over him. When he looked back and to his right to see her, he noted her eyes were narrowed and the tip of her cane was only a few inches from the on-off switch for the surge protector into which his … okay, her … desktop computer was plugged.