The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Bureaucratic finagling has a smell of its own, too, I went back to my desk and made the call. When I got through to Charlie, he sounded jovially wary, a combination implausible only to someone who's never taken his crowns from the government "What can I do for you this afternoon, David?" he boomed. I'd expected him not to bother remembering it was still morning for me, so I wasn't disappointed when he didn't.

"You've hear about what happened out here over the weekend?" I asked. It wasn't really a question.

For a second, though, he sounded as if it was. "Only news out of Angels City I've heard is that monastery fire." He hesitated, just for a second. I could almost see the ball of St Ehno's fire pop into being above his head. "Wait a minute.

Are you telling me that's connected to the Devonshire case?"

"I sure am, Charlie. Eleven monks dead of arson, in case all the news didn't make it back East" Without giving him a chance to rally, I pushed ahead: "My boss Bea says she's already spoken to you about the way I got this case. It's bigger than you thought, it's bigger than I imagined when you dropped it on me. You should be aware that we may have to have help from D.StC."

"If you do, you'll get it Eleven monks. Jesus, Mary; and Joseph." Charlie being of the Erse persuasion, I thought that would hit him where he lived.

"Something else," I said: "Don't you think it's time to level with me and stop playing coy about the 'bird' who tipped you to the trouble at the Devonshire dump?"

This time, Kelly's pause lasted a lot longer than a second.

Even through two phone imps and three thousand miles of ether, he sounded unhappy as he answered, "Dave, I'd tell you if I could, but I swear I can't. I'm sorry."

I blew exasperated air out my nose, hard enough to stir the hairs of my mustache against my upper hp. "Okay, Charlie. Play a game with me, then. Is your feathered friend from groups involved with any of these…?"! named the Garuda Bird, Quetzalcoad, the Peacock Throne, (hesitantly) the Peacock Angel, and, as an afterthought, the phoenix.

More silence from Charlie. Finally he said, "Yeah, the bird's in there somewhere. Believe me, I'm taking a chance telling you even that much. So long." And he was gone, fester than a Medvamp out of a Korean restaurant.

Nice to know one of the ideas Judy and I had come up with was the right one. It would have been nicer still, of course, to know which. I thought about what he'd said and, as well as I could tell over the phone, how he'd said it. Maybe politics wasn't what sealed his lips. Maybe it was fear. That was the first time I started getting a little bit fearful myself.

Well, onward - no help for it unless I felt like quitting.

And if I did that, not only would I not want to look at myself in the mirror but Judy would drop me like something just up from the Pit. So off I went to Slow Jinn Fizz, the closest outfit I'd yet found that had a red-letter contaminant on my chart.

The carpet ride up into St. Ferdinand's Valley took about twenty minutes. Slow Jinn Fizz was on the chief business flyway of the Valley, Venture Boulevard. The address itself was enough to tell me the outfit had money. The building argued for that, too: an elegant gray stucco structure with SLOW JINN FIZZ in neat gold letters on the plate glass window by the entry door. Underneath, in smaller (but just as gold) letters, it added, A JINNETIC ENGINEERING CONSORTIUM. "Aha!" I said before I walked in. The combination of the name and the Solomon's Seals discarded at the Devonshire dump had made me figure jinnetic engineering was what Slow Jinn Fizz was all about. Nice to be right every so often.

A dazzling blond receptionist, as expensive-looking and probably as carefully chosen as the rest of the decor, gave me a dazzling white smile. "How may I help you, sir?" she asked in the land of voice that suggested she'd do anything I asked.

I reminded myself I was engaged. The smile congealed on her face when I pulled out my EPA sigil. "I'd like to see Mr. Durani, please, in connection with some of your firm's recent dumping activities."

"One moment. Inspector, uh, Fishman," she said, and disappeared into the back of the building.

Ramzan Durani came out a couple of minutes later, in person. He was a plump, medium-brown fellow in his midforties who wore a white lab robe of Persian cut and an equally white turban. "Inspector Fisher, yes?" he said as we shook hands. I gave him a point for getting it right even though his receptionist hadn't "We spoke on the phone last week, did we not?"

"That's right, sir. In a way, this is about the same matter."

"I thought it might be." He didn't seem as volatile in person as he had over the phone, for which I was duly grateful.

"Please come with me to my office, and we shall discuss this further."