Crime Spells

“No,” I say. “I mean, I think you hit on something before. There are hundreds of possible plungers, and dozens of possible wizards, but there’s only one pay-off, and that’s the one I have to make to Milton.”

“You’re going to pay him?”

“Tomorrow,” I say. “Tonight there’s something I have to do. Get me Morris the Mage’s phone number.”

I talk to Morris, and we agree on a price, and he casts his spell and gives me the magic word, and the next morning I hunt up Milton in the men’s room at Joey Chicago’s, where he is sitting fully clothed on one of the toilets, his nose covered in bandages, reading an ancient book of magic.

“Good morning, Milton,” I say pleasantly.

“I ab nod talkig to you,” he says through the bandages.

“That’s too bad,” I say. “Because I have sought you out to pay my debt of honor.”

I pull out the money and hand it to him.

He smiles, gets up, puts the money in a pocket, and walks to the door.

“Thag you, Harry,” he says. “I god to deliver this. I’ll see you lader.”

He walks out of the men’s room, through the tavern, and out the front door, and I go back to the apartment, where Be

“Is it accomplished?” asks Be

“Let’s give it an hour,” I say.

Be

“He’s got to have delivered it by now,” I say, “and whoever he’s delivered it to hasn’t had time to get to a bank. So let’s make sure he thinks twice before trying to rob Harry the Book again.” I pause for dramatic effect, and then say: “Abracadabra.”

“That’s it?” asks Be

“It’s not going to happen here,” I say. “Turn on the news in another hour and we’ll see if it worked.”

Be

“And that’s that!” says Be

“Not quite,” I say.

“Oh?”

“ Milton never used a bank or a safe in his life, which means his share caught fire in his pocket. Find out what hospital he’s in and send him some flowers.”

“Any note with it?” asks Be

“Yeah,” I say. “Tell him that if God had meant pianos to fly, He’d have given them wings.”

Gently Gently looks surprised. “You mean He didn’t?”

If Vanity Doesn’t Kill Me by Michael A. Stackpole

For a guy who squeezed into a rubber nun’s habit before hanging himself in a dingy motel room closet, Robert Anderson didn’t look so bad. Sure, his face was still livid, especially that purple ring right above the noose, and his neck had stretched a bit, but with his eyes closed you couldn’t see the burst blood vessels. He looked peaceful.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Cate Chase, the Medical Examiner. “I’ve seen worse. Is that a good thing?”

“Let’s not start comparing instances.” With her red hair, blue eyes, and cream complexion, Cate should have been a heartbreaker. She would have been, save she was built like a legbreaker. One glance convinced most men that she could hurt them badly, and not in a good way. She jerked a thumb at the room’s vanity table. “What do you think?”

I shrugged. Dragging it along had tipped over a can of soda, and a half-eaten sandwich had soaked most of it up. The Twinkie had resisted the soda, being stale enough you could have pounded nails with it. “Looks like he unscrewed it from the wall, shifted it so he could watch himself. Autoerotic asphyxiation?”

She nodded. “Suffocating as you climax is supposed to take the orgasm off the charts. You pass out, you can strangle to death.”

“Not my idea of fun.”

“There go my plans for the rest of our afternoon.” She flicked a finger at Anderson. “Take another look.”

I caught her emphasis and breathed in. I closed my eyes for a second, then reopened them. I peered at him through magick. He was a silhouette, all black and drippy. Corpses tend to look like that. I’d seen it before.

“Something special I’m supposed to see?” I faced her as I asked the question, and magick rendered her in shades of red gold, much like her hair. It put color into everything, save for that Twinkie. It was neither alive nor dead.

Cate shook her head. “Something, I hoped. Anything.”

I waited for her to expand on her comment, but she never got a chance.

Detective Inspector Winston Prout charged into the room and thrust a finger into my chest. “What the hell are you doing here, Molloy?”

“I invited him, Prout,” Cate said.

I smiled. “Coffee date.”

He glared at the both of us, about a heartbeat from arresting us for indecent urges. He was one of those ski

“Civilians aren’t allowed in a crime scene, Molloy.”

“My prints, my DNA are on record. I haven’t touched anything.”

“If you don’t have a co

I hesitated just a second too long.

He raised an eyebrow. “You co

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “A little.”

“Spill it.”

“Your vic?” I nodded toward the man in the closet. “He’s married to my mother.”

That little revelation had Prout’s eyes bugging out the way Anderson ’s must have at the end. I’d have enjoyed poking them back into his face, but he got control of himself pretty quickly. He was torn between wanting to arrest me right that second and fear that I’d already set a trap for him. He’d wanted a piece of me since before his stint in the Internal Affairs division. He saw it as a divine mission, and getting me tossed from the force for bribery hadn’t been enough.

He punted the two of us, leaving a tech team to do the crime scene. Cate and I retreated through a hallway where painters were trying to cover years of grime in a jaunty yellow to a nearby coffee joint. We ordered in java-jerkese, then sat on the patio amid lunch-bu

“You didn’t know about Anderson, did you?”

Cate shook her head. “Should I say I’m sorry for your loss?”

“If it will make you feel better.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He was a shit. He and my mother were very Christian, which meant they were usually anti-me.”

Cate understood. Prejudice against those who are magically gifted isn’t uncommon, especially with Fun-dies. It’s that “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” thing. Having a talented child is as bad as having a gay kid was late last century. My mom had compounded things by being the society girl who ran off with a working man-my father-then getting pregnant and actually delivering the child. My having talent was the last straw. She ditched my father, the Church got the marriage a

I blew on my coffee. “Why did you call me?”

Cate leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “ Anderson ’s the fifth Brahmin who’s died like that in the last two months. Very embarrassing circumstances. The deaths have been swept under the carpet.”

She fished in her pocket, produced a PDA, and beamed case files into mine. I glanced at the names on each document. I knew them. I dimly recalled that they’d died, but I couldn’t remember any details. I’d met three of them, liked one, but only because she didn’t like my mother.