The Necromancer's Gambit: The Bust
Nicolas Wilson
Rook waits until I start up the car to ask me, “Was that true? About Tiny?”
“So you two were listening.”
“Intermittently. Queen’s cock sense started tingling. So is it?”
“I need Pawn focused.”
“Okay, but now I want to know. Don’t you need me focused?”
“I doubt you’ll lose sleep over it; and besides, you strike me as better at multitasking.”
“That’s mean.” She falls back in her seat in half a pout. But there’s no radio on, and it’s dark, so there’s not much to see flying past the car, so it’s only a couple minutes before she says “I assume we’re rushing headlong into the fanged maw of the VC.”
“Nope. The VC are probably pissing themselves over the hunter in town- but they have protocols. They’ll be fine. Which sidesteps the fact that Pawn was helping that hunter and has now lost track of him. But right now, I want to get a second opinion.”
“Another diviner? You don’t trust the Queen?”
“Somebody got to Castle. Maybe they did it without an inside man. But I wouldn’t have. Which means all of us are suspect.”
“That seems treacherous.”
“It is. A rather slippery slope. But the fact is they probably floated an offer to someone- which means I have to suspect everyone. I don’t trust you much more- though the fact that the new guy- or lady, as this case may be- is who we’d suspect first makes you a less likely plant; it’s too obvious. And, as far as it goes, I trust the Queen. It just doesn’t go far enough. Regardless, divination’s more art than science; it doesn’t hurt to get another perspective.”
“I sense there’s a but somewhere.”
“Only if you meant a two ‘T’ butt; our diviner’s a tantra mage.”
“Oh, a divinatrix.”
“That’s not half-bad, actually. Devi might like that.”
“Devi?”
“It’s the Hindi word for goddess; I suspect it’s a stage name.”
“You’ve never asked?”
“A gentleman never does.”
“I think when it comes to names, a gentleman always asks.”
“Not if we’re talking about the same thing;” namely, a woman’s right to privacy. I pull us into the parking lot; a blue neon woman gives me a welcoming wink from the sign. “You might be happier just sitting in the car,” I tell her as I unbuckle my seatbelt.
“The old boy’s club asserts itself,” she says, slumping deeper into her seat.
“Suit yourself,” I shrug, and close my door.
She gets out, and only then notices the oversized woman’s oversized neon bust. “Wait, another strip club? Isn’t this the third titty bar you’ve taken me to in as many days? I’m beginning to think you may have a problem.”
“One, Portland’s got the highest number of strip clubs per capita in the country; though I’d hardly call the Hole a titty bar.” She sticks her tongue out at me. “Two, most crime gets worked nights, and at night there are only so many places for that to happen. Third, the same religious knee-jerks stigmatize magic and sexuality, so there tends to be a social confluence- people get pent up hiding who they really are and when they finally let go, it can be messy. It’s the Catholic schoolgirl phenomenon.”
“The what?”
“Catholic schoolgirls, and religious women in general, have a tendency towards, um, explosive promiscuity; having to hide their sexual identity all the time means that at a certain point their resolve to remain chaste breaks down. I think the same could be said for homosexual circles, too. And I know there’s an inherent double-standard; straight men aren’t held to the same rigid yardstick of purity.”
“Rigid yardstick? Was that an erection joke?”
“Maybe. But before we go inside, you should know: ‘The Bust’ isn’t just a strip club- it’s also a cop bar. Some of the dancers are cop girlfriends and wives or academy wash-outs; even the bouncer’s off-duty police. So behave, or you will get us arrested.”
I hand the guy at the door our cover; he recognizes me enough he doesn’t make me wait while he counts it out. I walk past the bar, and the floor, towards the back room. “I’m here for Devi,” I tell the bouncer standing between me and a hallway.
“Yeah. You I remember.” This time he doesn’t insist I need an appointment, which is an improvement. The staff attire is modeled off real police uniforms, modeled so closely the bouncer didn’t bother to change out of his Police Bureau blues. But he doesn’t say anything else, he just glares at the pair of us.
It takes me a second to figure out why. “Okay, you should really sit in a booth,” I tell Rook; she doesn’t answer, this time, just looks at me. I shrug.
The bouncer clears his throat, but when she still doesn’t take the hint he stares at her and says, “She don’t do couples.”
“I can just watch,” Rook says, but she knows before he responds that her reply won’t help; “yeah, I’ll wait in a booth.” The bouncer stays in front of me, waiting until she actually takes a seat and looks like she’s staying put before he lets me pass.
Most dances happen on the floor, but Devi has a different arrangement with the management. Sure, when she feels like it, she’ll take the main stage and soak up all the extra juju that comes from a room full of men who’d murder their mothers to touch her, but most of her time is spent on her private stage.
It’s a bare concrete room, square, like you’d imagine an extra large prison cell to be. She keeps a fog machine on all the time, and the lights low. There’s a single metal-frame chair in the middle of the floor. There’s two doors, the one in from the hall, and a second into an office or dressing room- I have no idea what’s actually there, because she’s careful to always turn out the light before she emerges.
I take off my coat, and lay it over the back of the chair. If she stays true to form, she won’t come out until I’ve been waiting for a bit. The anticipation is part of her power, after all.
Before long, the door creaks open, and there’s silence so long my mind forces me to think of every other long door creak I’ve ever seen or heard, and what might be coming through that opening door; I’m struck by how many movie monsters flash through my mind. She lets that uncertainty linger, before I hear a single click of a heel.
By then my eyes have adjusted enough to make out her silhouette through the shadows and the fog. She’s beautiful, the kind of beauty I’m convinced would drive a man to madness in the clear, bright light of a day, and gives her power over men even when there’s almost no light at all.
“It’s been a while, Knight,” she whispers the words from across the room, but I feel their warmth on my neck; it’s all part of the show.
There isn’t music, but as she starts to move, slowly, deliberately, it’s in time with my heartbeat, and accelerates with it as it gets louder in my ears. She’s just walking over to me, but I could watch her walk across a room for hours.
She walks right past me, to the hall door, and bolts me in with her. Then she walks around me, and her fingers alight on my shoulder, and drag across my back; it’s just the right kind of touch to make me want more.
She half circles around me, and that’s when it stops being about movement, and starts being about motion. The dance is a sigil ritual, fueled by desire. And Devi’s a prodigy when it comes to desire. Practically inhuman is her prowess; if I didn’t already know it for a fact, I’d think she was a witch.
The other cops don’t know exactly what she does, but when they hit a rough spot in a case, the veterans will point greener detectives to her. She brings them clarity, is usually the rumor.
It’s erotic, but almost ethnic in its mystery. She’s Indian, I can tell that much between her accent and the glimpses of her I get in the dim light, but I don’t think there’s anything particularly Indian in the way she moves- it’s nothing so specific as that. I think I see hints of a dozen different cultures in her motions, and I wonder, idly, if she ever trained to dance professionally- well, formally, anyway.
But like good jazz, the ritual isn’t rigid and regimented; there’s an element of improvisation, and I’ve never seen two performances alike. Even she’s different every time. “The nose stud is new,” I tell her.
“It isn’t the only one,” she teases. I wonder if she’s lying. Unconsciously I look away; I don’t like being used, even if the spell is for my benefit- and even when I know it’s foolish to resist her. She catches me with her eyes, and I follow her, like a snake being romanced by a flute. “Don’t you desire me?”
“Desire is suffering,” I tell her.
“I’m mildly hurt that I put you in mind of overweight bald men; and Buddha only said that because he never met me.” She slides her hand up my thigh, making it nearly to my pelvis before turning innocently towards my hip. “But please, keep going. It’s cute, how much you want to- how much you try- to stifle me, to stifle you. When what you really want is just to give in,” she digs her fingernails into my hip. “Of course, there’s also potency in your resistance. And intellectualism is very sexy.” She retracts her fingernails, and walks around behind me.
Her fingers dance through my hair, like a breeze; I forget the damp cold of the room, and the warmth of her makes it feel like we’re laying in the grass in the sun. Then she gathers a fistful of hair, and pulls me towards her, into her cleavage, and for a moment I’m lost in flesh and I kiss her and hope she doesn’t feel it- though I know that’s a fool’s hope.
She drops into my lap, and it’s rough, not smooth or premeditated; it makes it feel real, and personal, and when she grinds against me I don’t want to believe it’s all just part of her act. And that’s even more dangerous. She drags her silky cheek along my jaw, and her lips hover in front of me, invitingly. “Are you close?” I ask her; I’m getting tired of being mouse to her cat.
“Are you?” she grins, wide, and it only makes me want to stick my tongue in her mouth.
“This isn’t a social visit.”
“But you’re being so sociable,” her lips are so close to mine I can’t tell if they’re touching, or if it’s the soft, wet warmth of her breath on my lips. She bites my lower lip and pulls it back, and I follow her forward until she puts a hand on me and pushes me back into the chair while she dismounts. “I think… that’s enough.”
She’s different, almost awkward, in the way she stands, the way she keeps from meeting my gaze. I have no idea what’s her, and what’s the ritual; I don’t know if that makes the attraction easier or not. Hell, I can’t be sure there is any attraction, beyond the animal demand for flesh and progeny- or if there’s any mutuality to it. “I always feel so cheap and tawdry when you’re done with me.”
She grins, and in that grin she’s a temptress again. “I am cheap and tawdry; though I’ve never been done with you.”
“When will you be done with your insight?”
“I’ll have to get back to you.”
“So you’re teasing me with the divination now, too?”
“It’s… complicated.” I’m still so deep in her thrall I want to interpret that as meaning that we’re complicated- whatever our relationship, and she notices, most likely because it gives her one last bump of power. “Easy, tiger. We don’t want you to get overstimulated.” But the way she holds her hand against my chest, then draws it back, like a swan stretching its wings, does anything but calm me down.
Then she turns away, and I want not to watch her walk away, but I haven’t that kind of restraint left on tap. Then the door to her room closes, and I let out a sigh; I need about 5 cold showers. I get up, slowly, glad Rook wasn’t here to see that.
She’s still in her booth, idly poking at a cherry floating on the top of some ice in a drink she hasn’t really touched. She looks up as I approach. “You’re sweaty,” Rook says, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s fog, mostly.”
“So it was steamy in there?” she grins.
“God, why didn’t you stay in the car?”
“And miss this?” She plucks the cherry out of her drink and bites it away from its stem. “We ready to go?” she asks, still chewing on the cherry.
I gesture towards the door, and I follow her out. We’ve just made it back to the car when I hear the hammer draw back on a gun. “You know, if you’re trying to stay under the radar, coming to a cop bar was stupid- even for you. I’m going to need you to put your hands on your head, the both of you.”
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter.
“Daughter of one, actually, but it’s dark out here- easy mistake to make- just like it’d be easy for me to mistake your kneecap for a weapon and shoot it off if you turn that into a crack about upper lip hair. Now I’m going to pat you down for weapons, no sudden movements, no surprises, understand me?” She starts groping me a little too roughly; it’s the second woman in as many minutes feeling me up without any intention of even kissing me goodnight.
“You remember that friend of mine, in homicide?” I ask Rook.
“Friend was probably an overstatement,” she replies as the handsy woman starts going over her- though more gently, from what I can see.
“Friends usually don’t know each other by pen names. You’re clear. The lady can put her arms down. You,” she puts a cuff around my wrist, then twists the hell out of my arm, “you I know better than to trust.”
“I look like I’m resisting?”
“By not calling me back you’ve been resisting- obstruction of justice being the technical term.” She cuffs my other wrist, then shoves me back onto the hood of my car. I mumble a little unlock spell, and the cuffs come off in my hands; to save time we’ll just say I’m familiar with her handcuffs. Her eyebrow goes up and she puts out her hand, expectantly; I drop the cuffs into her palm. “You’re slowing down in your dotterage.”
“For a moment there I couldn’t remember if it was time to unlock the cuffs or take my little blue pill. The lady is Theresa Fort. Tress, this is Detective Viagra.”
“Vergara- and it’s not too late for me to mace you.” My phone rings. It’s the VC. I silence the call. But almost the moment I do they call right back. “Getting urgent calls at this time of the night? The only kinds of people who have to urgently respond to a call like that deliver drugs.”
“You’re welcome to search me.”
“And the car?”
“If you need to; you’ll find all manner of powders, again- but none of them drugs- again.” She sighs; we’ve danced that tango before, and from what I heard her captain wasn’t very happy when he got the bill back from his lab, with absolutely nothing to convict on.
“Where’s my body?”
“Is that an existential question? Because I’m pretty sure if I just point to you you’re going to mace me for being a smart ass.”
“The extra crispy corpse you stole out of the Cauldron.”
“I didn’t see your name on it. And I licked it.” She glares at me. “He was a friend of mine. I needed to find out what happened. I can get you the body.”
“That’s not good enough. Your little mysterious thing is all well and good when you’re helping me out, but my chain of custody is now thoroughly fucked. No evidence we might obtain from the body will be admissible in court. You’ve fisted my investigation, without lube, and without so much as a McFish sandwich dinner.”
“There was no physical evidence.”
“That’s not your call to make.” She sighs; maybe it’s because the last time I told her there’d be no physical evidence there wasn’t any- statistical likelihood be damned. “What’d you find?”
“That’s… complicated. But the body was mutilated, and in such a way that I think it’s part of a larger series of murders.”
“A serial killer?”
“Maybe. Obviously wasn’t his first time cutting up a body.”
“Okay, consider my interest piqued. But if you’re jerking me around, the pair of you will become part of a larger series of bodies.” She gets back into her car and starts up the engine. I wait, hoping she’ll drive away so we can get to the VC. Then she rolls down her window, “Well? Let’s get going. That call sounded urgent.”