Slimy Underbelly Read online

  CHAPTER 7

  Clients like to have updates, and I wanted to tell Stentor the ogre what I had learned, even though there wasn’t much to report. I might have half a dozen cases going at any one time, and to each client their problem is the most urgent matter. Sure, finding an ogre’s lost voice isn’t like curing some terrible disease, or running an orphanage, or ending world hunger, but solving cases is what I do. Does everybody need a world-shaking purpose for existence?

  I made my way to the Phantom’s opera house, where I would find Stentor. Even without a voice, he would be practicing his singing, trying to convince his boss not to let an understudy take over the role of Don Giovanni, although I doubted anyone could fill the ogre’s shoes (it would probably require six or seven feet inside each one).

  Out on the streets, people were pointing up at the sky. Though the afternoon remained blessedly clear and blue, clouds gathered in ropy strands like vapor trails from high-flying jets. As I watched, the white smears bent around like finger painting in the sky. The vapor trails formed giant words, using the air above the Unnatural Quarter as a wide-open billboard:

  VOTE ALASTAIR CUMULUS III

  FOR CLIMATE CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

  Suddenly, a wild wind gust nearly blew the fedora off my head, but I grabbed it in time. I’d had a lot of practice recently. As the breeze strengthened, I could hear a thin whistling sound through the bullet hole in my forehead; I really did need to patch that up with mortician’s putty.

  Pedestrians shouted and ran, and the vengeful wind became so strong that two ghosts flitting along the boulevard were scattered apart, fighting to make their way. Outside an apothecary shop on a rack marked down for quick sale, several magic amulets jangled together, until the locomotive of wind barreled down the boulevard, knocked the stand over, and swept up into the sky.

  A man in his late forties with a bushy brown beard and disheveled brown hair stood in the street wearing an eyeball-offending tie-dyed wizard’s robe. He clutched a handheld sundial talisman at his throat and gesticulated with his other hand, drawing imaginary letters with his middle finger. At his feet crouched a black tuxedo cat that looked extremely annoyed at having its fur ruffled by all that wind. The cat stalked off in a huff, leaving the wizard to continue his antics.

  Manipulated by the gust of wind, the words in the clouds were erased, then rearranged, replacing the name of ALASTAIR CUMULUS with THUNDER DICK. The tie-dyed wizard seemed delighted with his work. “Ha! Showed you!”

  Seconds later, a competing wind blast came in from the opposite direction, scrambling the skywritten letters once more. The battling breezes tangled the vaporous campaign slogans into illegibility, and the wizard in the tie-dyed robe—Thunder Dick—strode away, both frustrated and satisfied.

  As storekeepers picked up the mess in the wake of the gusty commotion, I knew we would all be glad when the election was over. . . .

  The opera house was a grand old building built in an ornate Gothic style, with pillars, flying buttresses, pointed eaves, and numerous shadowy alcoves. Gargoyles had once adorned the façade, but the Phantom had chased them away for squatting, calling them deadbeats.

  The Phantom was a bitter, humorless old man who had dreamed of a career in the opera, but possessed no singing talent. He was also hardened because of his loveless life, unable to find a girlfriend despite his frequent patronage of unnatural singles services. He blamed his romantic misfortune on his acid-scarred face, but many women would have overlooked that, given his stylish mask. No, it was the Phantom’s prickly personality that made them place a moratorium on second dates.

  Posters outside the box office showed a dramatic picture of Stentor the ogre decked out in his full Don Giovanni costume. The oft-quoted quote from the National Midnight Star graced the bottom of the poster: “The most fabulous performance by an ogre opera singer in weeks!”

  A sticker across the top of the poster announced, On indefinite hiatus.

  I went around back to the performers’ entrance, where a vampire set director and three zombie carpenters in overalls lounged against the brick wall, chain-smoking. Mounds of crushed butts around their feet implied how long they had been standing out there.

  The rate of cigarette smoking had skyrocketed among unnaturals, much to the delight of tobacco companies. One brand marketed specifically toward the undead was called Coffin Nails. What did they have to lose? It wasn’t as if they had health considerations.

  “I’m here to see Stentor,” I said. “Is he inside?”

  The vampire stage director gestured with his cigarette in a long, lacquered holder. Vampires loved their affectations. “Sure, he’s varming up—but it’s pointless. Just follow the sqveaks. You can’t miss him.”

  I went through the back hallways of the opera house, where understudies mumbled to themselves, practicing lines. I heard female singing coming from deep below, wafting through the grates in the floor. It was a warbling voice, heart-wrenching in an operatic sort of way.

  I knew the Phantom ran an academy for would-be opera singers down in a large sewer vault, where he kept his best pipe organ that had been relocated from Paris, piece by piece. He claimed that the sound quality down in the tunnels was perfect for his purposes. He had a portable Wurlitzer for other occasions.

  I wondered if he had the same landlord down there as Jody Caligari, our junior mad scientist.

  From behind a closed door, I heard singing, of a sort. It sounded like the lead vocalist from a chipmunk cover band having a bad voice day. The words were delivered in bombastic Italian in a dramatic fashion, but because they sounded as if they were sung by the Munchkin boys’ choir, the effect was absurd.

  When I knocked, the singing stopped, mercifully. The ogre’s big eyes lit up when he opened the door to let me in. He grabbed a glass, upended it into his enormous mouth, gargled, and spat the liquid into a bucket, where it smoked and steamed. He cleared his throat, but his voice remained a squeak. “Mr. Shamble! Do you have news?”

  I said, “You were right: Your voice was definitely stolen. Using a spell called an amphibious transference protocol, someone kidnapped your voice for his or her own purposes.”

  “But who did it? Can you track them down?” Stentor asked. “I want my voice back.”

  “I was hoping you could suggest the names of anyone who might have a use for your voice? Do you have any enemies . . . say, operatic rivals?”

  He shook his enormous shaggy head. “It’s a small field, Mr. Shamble. If one of my rivals started using my voice, everyone would know right away. We don’t even have an understudy for my part in Don Giovanni. No one can handle it. The thief can’t be anyone from the opera world.”

  I sighed. “I’ll keep digging. Don’t you worry.”

  Stentor began singing again, to my dismay. Even worse, he seemed to want me there to listen so he could draw moral support.

  A man barged into his dressing room, decked out in a black tuxedo. The white porcelain mask that covered half of his face didn’t manage to conceal his sneer. “Enough, Stentor!” He clapped a hand to his forehead, almost dislodging the mask. “I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve taught many abysmally talented students down below, but you make their worst caterwauling sound like a superstar diva. We are done—do you hear me? Done!”

  “Maybe you could find a different part for me,” Stentor squeaked.

  “No! I am canceling Don Giovanni as of today. The show is ruined.”

  “But,” the ogre said, his inner-tube–sized lower lip quavering, “but you can’t! The opera is my life.”

  “And the opera is my livelihood,” said the Phantom. “And until your last name is ‘Of The Opera’ like mine, you’re expendable. Since you don’t have an understudy and can’t sing anymore, I’m changing the docket. As of today, I’m starting auditions for a revival of Cats. We’ve been waiting a long time for a popular show, and I think the Quarter is ready for it.”

  “No!” Stentor wailed. “Not Cats. Just give me a little m
ore time—Mr. Shamble here is tracking down my voice. He’s the best detective in the Quarter.”

  “Best zombie detective,” I said, always careful to define the parameters.

  The Phantom dismissed me with a quick glance. “I thought he was just a fictional character. Well, when he finds your voice, maybe you can get some work as a radio voice-over artist. But not here in my opera house!” With a flick of his tuxedo tails, the Phantom swished out of Stentor’s dressing room.

  The ogre started blubbering, and tears flowed in rivulets down the canyons of his face. I tried to reassure him, patting him on the shoulder. “The only way you can make this better is to find my voice, Mr. Shamble,” he said.

  “I’m on it. I promise.” I left the dressing room, heavyhearted. I knew how much this case mattered to the big guy.

  The Phantom stalked off and entered his own office down the hall, where a sign on an easel announced, “Auditions today.” A yowling and caterwauling came from the room, and I saw half a dozen feline shapes run down the hall: Siamese cats, calicos, Persians, Russian blues, orange tabbies, Maine coons, even a tuxedo cat that looked like the one I had seen next to the tie-dyed weather wizard in the street.

  When the Phantom announced auditions for Cats, it was like setting out saucers of cream. Felines from all over the Quarter came racing in to practice their best Webberian chorus, instead of yowling on fences and in back alleys.

  I left the opera house, not wanting to hear those auditions, and headed off to another case. Robin and I had an appointment at the Mad Scientists Patent Office.

  CHAPTER 8

  Suffering from the usual red-tape asphyxiation, the Mad Scientists Patent Office was a typical cookie-cutter government bureaucracy, despite its unusual and provocative name.

  After Sheyenne tracked down the address, Robin and I drove off in her battered, rusty old Ford Maverick, which we affectionately called the “Pro Bono Mobile.” By now the deteriorating muffler was loud enough to announce our presence to all passersby, drawing attention, but not in a good way.

  Robin had owned the car since her law-school days, and she viewed the Maverick as a family member. “Once you’ve rolled over an odometer once or twice, you’re invested in a car,” she had told me.

  Every month or so, when we brought the car in for yet another round of repairs, we talked about buying a more professional-looking business vehicle for Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations. Somehow that never went beyond talk.

  In order to get a handle on Jody Caligari’s case and the real worth of his confiscated items, we wanted a clearer picture of who he was and just how important his research might be. For a boy of twelve to have filed five separate patent applications said good things about him. The kid had an endearing personality and enough confidence that he could always become a pint-sized motivational speaker if the junior supervillain gig didn’t work out.

  The Mad Scientists Patent Office was a squarish building on the outskirts of the Quarter, located in a nondescript business park. The companies in adjacent buildings had likewise nondescript names such as Bovar, Inc., or AlbyTech, or Smith Associates, all of which offered indefinable services or products. The patent office occupied one of the larger units. Robin parked the Pro Bono Mobile in a spot marked, VISITORS ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE VIOLATED AND THEN PROCESSED.

  We entered the office together. One entire wall was a white project board with magnets in different columns to indicate the progress of numerous patent applications. Three secretaries sat at desks, typing forms in triplicate on actual manual typewriters. Apparently, the patent office hadn’t yet approved the use of desktop computers.

  Deeper in the building, I saw cubicle after cubicle after cubicle, each one occupied by a quiet civil servant, displaying a demographically appropriate mix of humans, vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, ghouls, and various demons, as well as a smattering of underrepresented unnatural minorities. The Bureau of Unnatural Labor Relations had imposed strict quotas, especially for government offices inside the Quarter.

  A loud explosion came from the testing labs in the far back, accompanied by the hissing jets of a fire-suppression system. The clerks in the cubicles continued their work without even flinching.

  We went up to the front desk, where the human receptionist ignored us as she filed paper cards in an actual Rolodex. We waited. Robin cleared her throat. The receptionist testily pointed to a bell on the countertop, where a sign said, RING BELL FOR SERVICE. When I rang the bell, the receptionist smiled and greeted us. “How may I help you?”

  With government agencies, every step of every process had to be done in a particular approved way.

  “We’re here to inquire about some patents,” Robin said.

  “Are you scientists?” She reached toward a rack of pigeonhole shelves next to her typewriter, ready to withdraw an appropriate form.

  “I’m a detective,” I said, “and a zombie.”

  “And I’m an attorney,” Robin answered.

  “A patent attorney?”

  “Just an attorney seeking justice for unnaturals.”

  The receptionist frowned at her selection of forms, drew one out, then slid it back in. She seemed at a loss. “I don’t appear to have a form for unnatural detective and natural attorney with queries regarding patent oversight and office questions.”

  “We’re here to inquire about the status of pending patents for a client of ours,” I added.

  When the receptionist continued to dither, Robin suggested, “Could we speak to your supervisor?”

  That did the trick, providing the receptionist with an alternative she could embrace. “Yes, I’ll call the DAMP.” She pressed a buzzer button on her desk, and a woman in her late fifties emerged from one of the front offices. She was solid and hefty in a matronly sort of way, gray-brown hair in a no-nonsense perm, sensible glasses, a pantsuit. She might have been a zombie, but if so she was even more well-preserved than I am. Or maybe she’d been in her job for so long she had fossilized into the part.

  “I am Miz Mellivar, Deputy Assistant Manager of Patents. How may I help you?”

  Robin explained, “We’re researching the background on patent applications filed by a client of ours, an ambitious young mad scientist named Jody Caligari.”

  The woman gave a small smile, which was no doubt the extent of her cordiality as a civil servant. “Ah, Jody! That boy shows great potential.” She clucked her tongue. “He’s not quite there yet, more ideas than follow-through, but he does have the imagination . . . and mechanics can be learned.” She gestured us into her office. “Let’s have a look. We’re a busy office here, as you might expect. The Unnatural Quarter being what it is, every evil half-wit and his sub-genius brother thinks he can be a mad scientist. Someone has to impose standards. These days there’s just too much mad and not enough scientist to go around.”

  Robin and I took seats in front of Miz Mellivar’s too-neat desk. She swiveled in her office chair to reach a credenza behind her and pulled a rectangular file box onto her desktop. “People don’t understand that a patent can only be issued for something truly new and innovative. We had one particularly clueless man in here last week trying to patent his evil laugh.”

  “You can’t patent a laugh,” Robin said.

  Miz Mellivar rolled her eyes behind her glasses. “I know! We sent him over to the Mad Scientists Trademark Office, where he might have better luck.”

  She took the lid off the rectangular box and ran her fingers through a long line of index cards. She couldn’t seem to find what she was looking for, flipped back and forth among the cards. “Please excuse the inconvenience. This is a very outdated system, but we’re undergoing an upgrade. Within six to twelve months, we’ll be using uniform manila file folders.”

  She had an idea and looked in a different section of the box. “Ah, I thought so! I filed under ‘J’ for ‘Jody’ instead of ‘C’ for ‘Caligari, Jody.’ Since he’s only twelve, I think of him on a first-name basis.”

  Th
e Deputy Assistant Manager of Patents looked at the reference number stamped on the index cards, got up from her desk, went to a large metal filing cabinet, found the correct drawer, and pulled out his patent applications.

  “That young man has some very interesting ideas.” She held up a legal-sized form. “This is for an Evilness Sieve, and this one is a Dark Powers Magnet. And this one”—she smiled gently—“X-ray Spex specifically tuned to see through the walls of girls’ locker rooms. He even built and submitted a working prototype.” DAMP Mellivar shook her head. “Denied, of course—nothing original in that patent.”

  Oddly, the X-ray Spex made me think that Jody was more normal than I had first imagined. “He is twelve,” I pointed out.

  Mellivar looked at the other cards and forms. “A Glove of Destiny, and finally a cape that flutters dramatically even indoors without wind.”

  “What was it all for?” Robin asked.

  “Jody was trying to build a complete do-it-yourself supervillain kit, but couldn’t find ideas that weren’t covered at least peripherally by other existing patents. Villain territory is pretty well trampled here in the Unnatural Quarter, you know.”

  “So you declined his patents, then?” I asked.

  “I didn’t want to break the kid’s heart, so I filed them under Pending Further Review. Now that his ideas are safely nestled in the bureaucracy, it could be a very long time before anything makes it through the red tape.”

  Robin frowned in disapproval. “How does any patent ever get through the system?”

  “Sheer momentum.” The Deputy Assistant Manager of Patents’ voice took on a scolding tone. “But if a mad scientist tries to circumvent the system and create a monster or test a superpower or immortality treatment without going through proper channels, he’ll find himself in deep slime. All new discoveries must be certified with our office’s Mad Scientist Seal of Approval. Don’t underestimate the power of this office. You’ve heard about the laws of physics—even they have to follow the laws of patents.”