The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 1: American Nightmares (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #1) (18 page)

Riordan wheezed. He wasn’t dead quite yet. “Finish…the film…” he said. “I made it…grand. The audiences will love it…the Americans will love it. All of England’s gothic secrets, set before the camera.” His lips pulled back. Blood was in his mouth, but he still smiled. “I’ve given you a masterpiece, Clarence. Use it…wisely.” His eyes remained open and a shudder ran through him, than he lay still.

Angelica shivered. She put her arm around Weatherby and pulled the kid close. “He summoned that monster to attack me?” she asked. “But why?”

“The gothic thing,” I said. “Some people just can’t get enough of it.” I looked up at the director. Clarence Teller was holding the .35 millimeter camera. He finally switched it off. “What are you gonna do with that, Teller?” I asked. “You can’t assemble a bunch of random chases, violent showdowns with freaky monsters and bloody, explosive endings into some kind of coherent film, can you?”

Teller shrugged. “We’ll fix it in post,” he replied.

After that dark night, Weatherby and I said goodbye to our friends, got paid and headed back to London. We got a room in a hotel in the East End and slept for two days straight. While I was buying tickets for a plane ride back to the States, I spotted a newspaper with a review from an advance private screening of
Curse of the Witch Queen
. Apparently, Teller and his crew had got it pressed through the editing process in rapid time, and were already screening it for a few select critics. More out of curiosity than anything else, I bought the paper, read it, and then took it back to the hotel to show the kid.

He read it aloud while sitting in an armchair in his smoking jacket over breakfast. “
Curse of the Witch Queen
represents a startling departure for Mallet Films and Clarence Teller’s usual interchangeable monster mash-ups. With its disjointed narrative structure that calls to mind Dali’s
Un Chien Andalou
, frighteningly realistic special effects and stunts, and utterly sublime, naturalistic acting from new talent Angelica Witt,
Curse of the Witch Queen
will be remembered as a shockingly surreal look into the mind of a true genius.” He put down the paper and stared up at me. “Well, it seems things have a relatively happy ending.”

“Kind of untypical for a gothic,” I said. “What do you make of it?”

Weatherby shrugged. “I originally thought Mallet’s simpering displays were pointless little entertainments for the dull minds of the masses, and nothing more. But they provide a window, however blurry, into the real darkness that lurks in the world. They can’t show what happened to me in the Black Forest, and everything else that happened in those terrible years and the hands of the Nazis, or all the other wretched things in the world, but they can put hints of it into their work, and still make it acceptable for a mass audience. It seems
Curse of the Witch Queen
will follow that tradition.”

I nodded. “Sounds about right,” I said. “Now get your coat. We got a plane to catch.”

Paradise City billed itself as Las Vegas without the sleaze. It was an isolated resort town, lost in the California desert, and every day tourists in their station wagons sped in to lose their money, watch the shows and dirty the linens in their hotel room, before speeding on back to their white picket fences without feeling the least bit guilty. They’re wrong, of course. Everything in the country is rotten. You just have to peel back the skin.

That’s my line – digging through the dirt to find out what stinks. My partner Weatherby Stein and I arrived in Paradise City for a job, and I was sure I was gonna end up getting my hands dirty. I didn’t know that when the day was over, my arms would be up to their elbows in blood.

We rode in down the main street of the resort town, past the lines of palm trees and buildings gleaming golden in the desert sun. My powder blue Packard, more battered than a glass-boned weakling after going a couple of rounds with the resident champ, stood out amidst the pale pinks and shining cars of the new rich and the middle class. I didn’t mind. They were coming to lose their money. I was coming to make some.

Or so I thought, anyway. Weatherby had received the letter from an old pal of ours – a gambler by the name of Sly Baum. Sly was too slick for his own good, but he always managed to pay his debts. Weatherby was also pen-pals with Sly’s son, a shy kid by the name of Henry Wallace. The boy was ten-years-old and Weatherby was fourteen, but they got along great.

I wagered it was because of the similarities in their lives. Weatherby had been kidnapped at an early age by the Nazis, and seen his parents die before his eyes. After that, he’d lived alone, without kids his own age. Henry Wallace got dragged over the country with his father, moving from one high stakes game to the next, without ever settling down roots and getting many friends. They were both lonely, without a chance to meet other kids.

I wasn’t sure what the job entailed. Weatherby said that we should head to the grand ballroom in the Oasis Casino, a swanky joint in the center of Paradise City, and meet up with Sly there. I didn’t ask many questions, figuring Weatherby would get around to filling me in on the details as we neared our destination. But here we were, a couple of blocks from the Oasis and I still knew nothing. I decided to ask some questions.

“So,” I said, pulling the smoldering cigarette from the corner of my mouth. “Feel like telling me why we’re here? What does Sly want with us?”

Weatherby stiffened. The spindly kid never seemed comfortable in his Victorian suit and vest, but it was the only thing he would wear. “Well, it’s not Mr. Baum, exactly,” Weatherby explained. He had a package wrapped in brown paper at his side, and his thin fingers drummed on it expectantly. “It’s Henry Wallace. You see, Mort, it’s, well, it’s the boy’s birthday, and he seemed quite insistent that I should attend.”

I stared at Weatherby. “We’re here for some runt’s birthday party?” I asked. “No, let me rephrase that — we drove all the way across the country, all the way out to this miserable sucker’s Sin City, for a runt’s birthday bash?”

“Yes…” Weatherby seemed more than a little embarrassed. “See here, Mort – Henry Wallace and I have been communicating through letters for some time. He strikes me as an exemplary young man, and I feel an almost paternal affection for him, as well as a simple friendship. Plainly stated, I think he needs a friend. And he deserves one.”

I breathed smoke out from between clenched teeth. “You got him a good present?” I asked.

“The best,” Weatherby assured me.

“All right, kiddo. We’ll play this game for a little. Hell, maybe I can get myself a good drink at the Oasis’s bar. I got a feeling I’ll need one.” I spotted the Oasis Hotel and Casino gleaming at the end of the wide avenue. I steered the car in that direction, and settled into the parking lot.

The Oasis was one of a thousand new types of gambling halls to crop up all over the country, after gangster bosses decided to invest their money hard-earned in Prohibition days in something stately, glitzy and just on the edge of legal. It was a tall tower of aqua-blue glass, with a small forest of palm trees and lawn flamingoes planted around the entrance. Across from the parking lot, a blaring neon sign advertised pompadour-topped singer Tommy Gabriel, who was apparently crooning at the Dorado, and for a limited time only. Weatherby and I walked past the sign, through the palm trees, and into the casino lobby.

Through a marble archway behind the front desk, we could see the seemingly endless series of clanking slot machines, each occupied and whirring away. Waitresses dressed in soft pink robes and veils, revealing their bellies, crossed the room holding up trays of complimentary drinks. I watched one of them march by, enjoying the view while Weatherby talked with the receptionist, who wore a golden turban and vest.

But as I was examining the waitress’s more pleasing parts, I saw a flash of crimson from a familiar Hawaiian shirt behind her. I looked up, trying to place those red flowers on a red background, but before I could fix my eyes on the shirt, it was gone, vanished behind a row of rattling one-armed bandits. I shook my head as I turned away.

Weatherby stood before me, Henry Wallace’s present tucked under his arm. “Right,” he said. “The east ballroom is this way. Mr. Baum apparently rented it specifically for his son’s celebration.”

“Terrific,” I said, and fell into step behind Weatherby.

We walked down a hallway bordering the casino floor, and headed to a large set of double doors at the end. Weatherby pushed it open, the heavy doors giving him a little trouble and we stepped inside. You could have fit an army into that ballroom, and it was all empty, except for a round table at the center, where Henry Wallace Baum and his father were looking over a birthday cake.

Henry Wallace perked up when he saw Weatherby. “Holy cow!” he cried. “You’re here! Thank you, Weatherby! Thank you for coming! We’ve got some cake, and punch, and papa – my father, I mean—he says we’ll go see one of the shows later!” He hurried over to Weatherby’s side, chattering excitedly. Henry Wallace was a thin kid, small for his age, with all his hope and innocence spread across his bespectacled face. He wore a white suit, trousers and a bowtie.

I walked over to join Sly Baum at the table, while Weatherby and Henry Wallace talked. Sly had the same dark hair and bright eyes as his son, though his hair was thinning and he didn’t wear round spectacles. He had on his usual blue tuxedo, the bowtie undone and drooping.

Sly held a shining martini in one hand, and offered it to me. “Care for something a little stronger than punch, Mr. Candle?”

I took the martini and drained it. “Thanks,” I said. I watched as Weatherby and Henry Wallace walk to the table, deep in conversation. Weatherby was talking about the lifecycle of vampires, and Henry Wallace was listening in utter fascination. “So, is anyone else gonna show up to this little shindig?”

“Uh, no.” Sly Baum replied. He shrugged. “Look, Mr. Candle. I’m always on the move. Sometimes I got people chasing me, but more often than that, it’s another game luring me to Vegas or Atlantic City or New Orleans or any other burg where the cards are dealt and the money’s made. Henry Wallace reads a lot, and I buy him everything a boy could need, but there’s not much room for friends in his life. Or in mine, come to think of it.”