Slimy Underbelly Read online

  With a sneer on his painted face, one of the scuttling gnomes gave me the finger—a stubby little finger, but it qualified nevertheless.

  I shot him, though I only meant to wing him. The bullet struck the rude gnome in the foot, and with a plink his sprightly boot turned into a puff of plaster dust. He toppled over on the street and lay writhing and wobbling, trying to get back up.

  “Help!” he called in his cute gnomish voice. “Don’t leave me behind.”

  As the other gnomes secured the cash register in the jalopy, Mr. Bignome took a step back toward his fallen comrade. With an angry glare, he swung his Timmy gun around. “Dead gnomes tell no tales!” He opened fire and shattered his comrade into broken fragments.

  I shot three times at the jalopy, hoping to put out one of the tires. I chipped off the top of one of the gnomes’ pointed hats, but missed the tiny vehicle.

  Squad cars roared in, and a familiar florid-faced, redheaded beat cop ran up, arriving on foot just as the patrol cars screeched to a halt in front of the Medium-Sized Shop of Horrors. He was gasping for breath, angry that he hadn’t arrived sooner.

  Other cops piled out of their squad cars and charged into the flower shop, but the lawn gnomes had already gotten away. The beat cop bent over with his hands on his knees, heaving giant breaths. “Hey, Shamble.”

  “Hey, McGoo,” I answered.

  It was our usual exchange.

  Officer Toby McGoohan is my BHF, my best human friend. We’ve been through life, death, and afterlife together, and we remain friends through it all. Not every relationship can survive that. We both came to the Unnatural Quarter by roundabout ways, and we both stayed here. If I had to be stuck anywhere, though, it was good to have a friend like McGoo.

  “Am I too late?” He took off his cap and wiped sweat from his forehead.

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  McGoo put his cap back on. “Well, I’m not up for a promotion anytime soon. Was it Bignome again?” When I nodded, he shook his head. “Unbelievable! This is the third floral shop they’ve knocked over in the last two weeks.”

  “Unbelievable,” I agreed. “The Quarter has three floral shops?”

  The woodwitch managed to shut off the jangly wind-chime alarms, returning blessed silence to the foggy streets. Robin emerged, carrying the bedraggled water lilies. Surprisingly cheery, considering the mayhem, Sheyenne said, “At least we got the flowers at a discount.”

  After we gave our statements to McGoo, we headed off to the Recompose Spa. After an early-morning robbery, the day was bound to get better.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Zombie Bathhouse did not hold a lot of fond memories for me, but if I avoided every place in the Quarter that left a bad taste in my mouth (even though I couldn’t taste much), I’d end up stuck in the office all day.

  And Lurrm was sincerely trying his best to make the Recompose Spa a legitimate, family-friendly place.

  Both Sheyenne and Robin expressed dismay over the Timmy-gun pellets embedded in my back, so I promised I would see the Wannovich sisters for my monthly body maintenance that afternoon. I had planned to talk with them about Stentor’s stolen voice anyway. But first, even a zombie detective has social obligations he can’t get out of.

  Recompose had a humming new neon sign with intense blue lettering. Old moss had been scrubbed off the building’s brick exterior, but fresh tendrils were already working their way up the mortar. Big signs in the barred windows announced: GRAND RE-OPENING! UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT! and FAMILIES AND LARVAE WELCOME!

  Lurrm met us at the check-in counter after a similar-looking frog demon tried to charge us entry. Lurrm clasped his little hands together and belled out his throat. “These are friends, Carrl. I have comp tickets for them.”

  Robin presented the worse-for-wear water lilies, which had a strong but pleasant scent that reminded me of the peonies that had grown in a hedge near my boyhood home.

  Lurrm’s enormous smile broadened further. “Oh, how thoughtful of you! Just the right touch, ayup.”

  He carried the flowers while Carrl the attendant gave Robin and me plastic wristbands, but he was discomfited over what to do with Sheyenne. “It’ll work.” She extended her insubstantial arm. “So long as it’s not organic.”

  “Finest plastic,” said Lurrm.

  We passed through the turnstile and went down a level to the main pools. I noted a remarkable difference from this place’s previous incarnation as the Zombie Bathhouse. The last time I’d been here, when the place was managed by a fat zombie gangster, the bathhouse had a seedy appearance with patterns of mildew creeping up the tiles as if some fungus fairy had taken up drunken finger painting. Now the tiles on the walls and floor were sparkling clean.

  “It’s very sanitary,” Lurrm pointed out. “No risk of communicable diseases. Bathhouses have a bad reputation, but we insist that all patrons, regardless of species, take a shower before entering our pools.”

  I looked around. “You have quite a crowd already for your first full day.”

  Lurrm flicked out his long tongue and then reeled it back into his wide mouth. “We gave out a lot of coupons. I’m hoping for repeat business. Ayup.”

  There were three dressing rooms marked Male, Female, and Other. Four zombies sat together in a bubbling hot-springs pool, their eyes closed in ecstasy, their slack mouths open and emitting a long string of vowels. Another gray-skinned undead shuffled past with a white towel wrapped around his waist, though it didn’t quite cover his wrinkled butt crack.

  “We just opened a new set of pools with the proper chemical and marsh balance,” Lurrm said. “Recompose is an amphibian-friendly bathhouse. We even set up an egg-laying pond, but it’s currently for employees only.”

  We heard squeals and splashing from a separate kiddie pool. When we were drawn to the sounds of mirth, I expected to see pint-sized zombies, but instead the shallow pool was full of black torpedo-shaped creatures with slick skin and broad sucker mouths.

  Lurrm explained, “Zombie kids have priority if they want to use the pool, but for now it also doubles as a tadpole pond.”

  Catering to all possible customers, a concession counter sold lemonade, electrolyte drinks, self-serve blood packets, and even embalming fluid, for both oral and intravenous consumption.

  The mineral pools were at different temperatures, burbling up from deep aquifers with a sulfur smell. Runoff slopped onto the floor and flowed down into drains. Frog-demon attendants skimmed the floating scum from the pools.

  “We plan to open up spa services, too, including manicures, claw restoration, facials—ayup, there’s a demand for that.” Lurrm’s throat belled in and out.

  I said, “I’ve always advocated for zombies to take care of themselves. Look at me.” I touched my face, felt the firmness of the skin there. “Once you let yourself go, there’s no coming back.”

  Robin inhaled deeply, and her forehead furrowed with questions. “The disinfectant is strong—and I’m used to the usual odor of zombies.” She glanced at me with an embarrassed look on her face. “No offense, Dan.”

  “I’m a zombie, no denying it.”

  “But there’s also an undertone of”—she sniffed again—“sewage?”

  “Can’t be helped,” Lurrm said. “With the refurbishing and the expansion, we’re connected to the greater sewer network. But if we bring in large enough zombie crowds, no one will notice the smell.”

  Lurrm placed the lily pads on the surface of one of the unoccupied pools, spreading out the fleshy green leaves as if he were laying out placemats. He stepped back to regard his work. “Charming! Ayup.”

  Next, he showed us a set of wooden doors. “A bathhouse and day spa would be nothing without a sauna. We imported the wood from Finland for that authentic touch. There’s an automated water-dispensing system to maintain a high level of steam.” He yanked open the door, and we were greeted by an unpleasant ripe stench. A skeleton sat on one of the wooden benches, lounging back, with a towel wrapped a
round his pelvis. On the floor at his bony feet was a pile of sloughed-off flesh.

  Lurrm groaned. “They’re supposed to limit their time in the sauna to fifteen minutes. I hate it when they stay in too long.” He closed the door.

  Sheyenne let out a startled gasp, then chuckled. A disembodied hand scuttled across the floor, running on its fingers like a spider. It crawled to a damp towel that had been discarded on the tiles, held it between thumb and forefinger, then used the other three fingers to drag the towel toward a bin. The crawling hand deposited the towel where it belonged, then scuttled away. Prowling across the floor, it picked up another towel and continued its tedious work of cleaning up.

  Lurrm was delighted. “That’s Crawling Hand, or C.H. for short. He’s very handy and eager to please, ayup. Does so many errands around here, I don’t know what I’d do without C.H. He’s my right-hand man—except he’s a leftie.” He called out, “C.H., come and meet our guests.”

  The disembodied hand trotted over, bounced up and down on its fingers, then popped into the air. I reached out to catch it, and the hand seized my grip.

  I swung my hand around, with C.H. still attached, and passed him on to Robin, who also shook the hand vigorously, while Sheyenne merely waved.

  “Where did he come from?” I asked.

  The frog demon shrugged. “Not quite sure. Somebody just left it here. You should see how much he helps in the massage rooms. C.H. can work stiff and sore muscles so you forget all about rigor mortis.”

  Robin set C.H. on the floor, and he waggled his index finger at her, wanting something. She bent down. “I don’t understand. What is he asking?” She looked up at Lurrm.

  “It’s just one of those pull-my-finger gags. Don’t fall for it. Go on, C.H., run along.” The frog demon shooed away the disembodied hand, who scuttled off and picked up a candy wrapper that someone had dropped. Crumpling it in the palm of his hand—clearly annoyed with sloppy and discourteous patrons—C. H. hopped over to a trash can and tossed the balled wrapper in, making an expert rim shot.

  Lurrm insisted that Robin stay for a lemonade, which she sipped while we met in Lurrm’s private office. He was clearly proud to show us where he had hung the framed business license and sales tax certificate on his wall. Rubbing his soft hands together, he said, “Ms. Deyer, humans are welcome too. I know you have a stressful job—come down here for a soak. Relax a bit. I’d always be happy to have you and Mr. Shamble here.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Robin said, which was her polite way of saying, No, thank you.

  For myself, I couldn’t drive away the image of being forced to sit in a hot pool next to the obese crime lord with his perpetual and offensive outgassing. “Maybe another time,” I said.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was stiflingly hot and humid when the three of us headed back to the Chambeaux & Deyer offices. The sun shone bright, and vampires and other nocturnal dwellers returned to their lairs, grumbling. Robin and Sheyenne had admin work to do, and I needed to pick up the frog that had come out of Stentor’s throat before I went to see the Wannoviches.

  In the hallway outside the door to our second-floor offices, we encountered a shriveled old hunchback in a lab coat pacing impatiently. He was bald, with drooping earlobes, and his face had so many wrinkles that it looked like a wadded ball of flesh-colored tissue paper. He wore enormous round black spectacles with magnifying-glass lenses that made his eyes look the size of dinner plates.

  Sheyenne had taped a note to the door, promising to “Be back soon.”

  The shriveled old man peered at us through his telescopic glasses, swung his hunch around, and tapped a finger meaningfully on his wristwatch. “It’s fifteen minutes past soon. I can’t wait all day. I need to hire your services, and you were the only zombie private detective listed in the Yellow Pages.”

  “You actually looked in the Yellow Pages?” Sheyenne asked. “I guess the ad was worthwhile.”

  “I also ran an Internet search.” The wrinkled old man rounded on me, poking his head forward like an emperor penguin I had once seen in a nature documentary, back when I had the time to watch nature documentaries. “But first, a test to see how good your detective skills are.” The hunchback waggled a finger at me, aiming to stab at the center of my chest but ending up only reaching my abdomen. “I’m a lab assistant for a mad scientist who uses only Apple products. Can you figure out my name?”

  I had a sense of foreboding that I was about to get hit with a McGoo-level bad joke, but I played it straight in case he was on the level. I tried to remember all the lab assistants and mad scientists I knew in the Quarter, regardless of their preference for electronic devices. “Should I have heard of you?”

  “I want you to figure it out.” His voice held a hint of a pout. “It’s a riddle.”

  “I’m a detective, not a riddler. Is there a crime you’d like me to investigate?”

  “Maybe not, if you’re going to be a stick-in-the-mud.”

  Robin crossed her arms over her chest. “A mad scientist’s assistant who uses only Apple products? Your name is iGor.”

  The shrunken man laughed aloud and pranced in the hallway. Under his lab coat the hunchback bounced up and down like a beach ball. “Yes! Get it? iGor—”

  “I get it,” I said, “but that’s not your real name.”

  “No, but I had you going. Ha, ha! In fact, I fooled you in every way.”

  Sheyenne used her poltergeist skills to unlock the door without bothering to use a key. “Won’t you come inside? Be careful, you look rather frail.”

  “Fooled you again!” He unbuttoned his lab coat and shucked it off, squirming from side to side, then unbuckled a strap across his chest. His entire hunch fell off to land in a tumble next to the discarded lab coat. He straightened with a groan. “Oh, that thing is heavy, and it makes my back stiff!”

  Next, he dug fingernails into his wattled throat, pried loose a pink edge of skin, tugging and stretching flesh-colored rubber. He was too eager, though, and the mask ripped. Finally, he discarded the whole thing, peeled off a skullcap, and shook his head to reveal a freckle-faced redheaded boy with blue eyes and a sparkling grin. “Golly, that’s so much better! Now I can really introduce myself. My name is Jody, Jody Caligari, junior mad scientist and master of disguise.”

  “And also potential client, I presume?” Sheyenne said.

  I stood next to the kid. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve,” Jody said, “and well on my way to being somebody. You’ll want to say you knew me when.” He blushed and looked away. “So I’d appreciate a little help out of a tight spot. You won’t regret it. When I become an evil genius, or the world’s most powerful supervillain, I’ll remember my friends and supporters.”

  “Are you here because you’ve read those Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. books?” I asked, wanting to get rid of any unrealistic expectations from the beginning.

  Jody looked confused. “No, have they been turned into graphic novels?”

  “Not yet, but I’m sure that’s in the works.”

  “I did my research.” Jody piled his torn wrinkled mask on top of the false hunchback and his lab coat, then took a seat at Sheyenne’s desk, spinning around in the office swivel chair. “And I’ve decided to present you with a great opportunity to do some pro bono work.”

  Sheyenne, the most practical member of our office team, frowned. “Right, because opportunities to investigate cases for free so rarely present themselves?” Her tone was teasing, but Jody didn’t seem to notice.

  He nodded. “Especially an opportunity like this one! I need your expertise, and it’ll make you feel good, I promise. There’s nothing like that warm, fuzzy glow when you help somebody reach his potential.”

  “Assisting supervillains in training isn’t necessarily the most surefire way to feel good,” I said.

  Jody’s grin was irresistible. Even I thought he looked adorable, and I’m not a soft sell. “But what if I end up being a good supervillain?”


  The kid was so eager and earnest I didn’t want to correct his misunderstanding. I resisted the urge to tousle his hair.

  “Do your parents know you’re here?” Sheyenne asked. “Won’t they be worried about you?”

  “I’m at Junior Mad Scientist Camp, and I send them postcards. I’m here on a scholarship.”

  Robin said, “Well, then, they must be very proud of you.”

  “Not really, but they try. My dad’s an insurance salesman and my mom’s an accountant. They don’t understand my interests. They smile and attend my science fairs, but they think this whole mad scientist thing is just a phase I’ll grow out of.” Jody flushed. “But, golly, I want to change the world! Ever since I got my first chemistry set when I was eight years old, I’ve been creating potions and experiments. I turned the neighbor’s poodle into a German shepherd and then back again, just to prove the concept.”

  “Is there practical value in that?” I asked.

  The kid shrugged. “Doesn’t every poodle aspire to be a German shepherd? Anyway, I was hooked. Once, I blew up the garage and created a blob that ingested half the block before I found a way to evaporate it. My parents were worried and sent me to a counselor. Fortunately, the counselor encouraged me instead of trying to cure me.”

  “That’s a rare kind of counselor,” Sheyenne said.

  “I came out here hoping to make my mark. I set up a world-class laboratory in prime mad-scientist real estate and was making unbelievable progress in the development of a supervillain—even analyzed and reproduced a bunch of the classic powers. I might have become the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize in superhero dynamics.”

  “All right, kid, you’ve got me interested.” I hung my fedora and jacket on the rack. “What’s your case? How can we help?”

  “I need you to retrieve my stolen work. And, Ms. Deyer, I could use your legal expertise, too. This is a heinous, heinous miscarriage of justice.”

  “Describe for me how heinous it is.” Robin pulled out her special yellow legal pad and set it on the table, where the magic pencil began taking notes.