The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

"Mrs. Cordero, whatever is in this potion, it's very strong magic and very dark magic," I said. Magdalena translated for me. "My spellchecker won't even confront it, you see. I want two things from you, please." She nodded. I went on, "First, I want to take this jar to a proper thaumaturgical laboratory for full analysis."

"St, take it," she said.

"The other thing I want is the name of the curandero who sold it to you," I said. "Mrs. Cordero, this stuff is dangerous.

Do you want another mother to have a baby bom like Jesus?"

"Madre de Dios, no," she exclaimed.

"Good," I answered, more abstractedly than I should have. I was wondering if the hellbrew in the tartar-sauce jar had caused all the apsychic births around the Devonshire dump. If it had, then the biggest part of the case for leaks against the dump had just collapsed. But if the dump and everybody using it were innocent, who'd torched the Thomas Brothers monastery, and why? All at once, nothing made sense.

I pulled my attention back to the tacky little living room in which I stood (I'm sorry, but an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, while undoubtedly effective as an apotropaic, is not to my mind a work of art if it's painted on black velvet in luridly phosphorescent colors). Lupe Cordero still hadn't said who the curandero was. I realized she was waiting to be coaxed. Okay, I'd coax her. "Please, Mrs. Cordero, this information is very important." w) "You don' tell him who you hear it from?" she asked anxiously.

I hedged. "I'll try not to."

To my relief, that was good enough for her. "Okay," she said. "He call himself Cuauhtemoc Hemandez, and he have his house up near Van Nuys Boulevard and O'Melveny." I noted the irony of a curandero operating by a Dutch and Erse comer; Angels City is changing. Lupe went on, "His skin, it say curandero in letters red an' green." "Thanks very much, Mrs. Cordero," I said, and meant every word of it. I wrote down what she'd told me so I wouldn't forget it, then left the house and started flying around looking for a public pay phone. I finally found one outside a liquor store whose front window said CERVEZA PRIA in letters three times the size of the ones that advertised COLD BEER.

I called the office from there, and got Rose. When I asked to talk to Bea, she said, "I'm sorry, Dave, she's already on the phone with someone."

"Could you ask her to come out to your desk, please?" I said. "This is important"

One of Rose's many wonderful attributes is her almost occult sense of knowing when somebody really means something like that (and if there's a spell to produce the same effect, way too many secretaries have never heard of it). Half a minute later, Bea said, "What is it, David?" It had better be interesting lurked behind her words.

When I'd told her what the spellchecker had done with Lupe Cordero's potion, she sighed and said, "Well, you were right that is important Bring it in to the laboratory right away, David, and we'll see what really is in it Then we and the constabulary will drop on Mr.-Hemandez, did you say his name wasp-like a ton of bricks. Most of the time these curandems are only guilty of venial sin, but desouling a baby isn't even slighdy venial."

Tf that's what did it," I said cautiously. "But yeah, I'm on my way. I'm just glad the lab survived last year's budget cuts."

"So am I," Bea answered.

Farming things out to private alchemists and wizards would have eaten up just as much budget as maintaining our own analysis unit specialists, naturally, charge plenty for their expertise. You're not just paying for what they know now, but for what learning it cost them. And besides, this way we didn't have to stand in a queue in case we needed results in a huny.

As soon as I got back to the Westwood Confederal building, I took the jar over to the lab. It's on the same floor as the rest of the EPA offices, but tucked into a comer and hedged around with protective charms not much different from the ones on the fence outside the Devonshire dump.

Our principal thaumaturgic analyst (bureaucratese for wizard, in case you're wondering) is a balding blond fellow named Michael (not Mike) Manstein. He's very good at what he does; he brings an Alemanic sense of precision and order to what's too often a chaotic art That he makes me want to stand at attention and dick my heels every time I go in to talk with him is by comparison a detail.

"Hello, David," he said, looking up from the table where he was inscribing a circle with his black-handled knife.

"What can I do for you this afternoon?"

I gave him the tartar-sauce bottle and explained where I'd got it and how my spellchecker had reacted to it. His eyebrows came together as he listened; a little vertical crease appeared just above his nose. I finished, "So I'd like you to find out what really is in the jar here and what spells made it strong enough to set off my spellchecker like that. I may have to exorcise it before I can use it again."