The Necromancer's Gambit: The Investigation
Nicolas Wilson
The Necromancer's Gambit: The Investigation
cover fee to a woman in her mid-thirties trying too hard to cling to her late twenties. “Hand stamp?” she asks, and I shake my head. “You’re supposed to get a hand stamp.”
I peel a Hamilton and set it on top of the cover. She shrugs and waves us in.
Rook gives me a look. “You don’t trust the ink?” Her tone is skeptical. Exactly how green are the witches out of Salem these days?
“Psychography- spirit writers.” I’m having to talk louder than I like to overcome the music, but the crowd in the Cauldron is 60% mage; it takes more than a dry discussion of magic to turn heads in here.
“I thought that was mostly the ideomotor effect- like dowsing, or using a Ouija board.”
“Adepts can transcribe otherworldly communication- but that’s only half the craft. They use apothecary inks- magic in liquid form.” Generally, the covens like their magic fresh- fresh ingredients, fresh rituals- some bullshit about it being closer to the natural way of things, and more pure. Elixirs like apothecary inks never really caught on, especially in an isolated Circle like hers. “You ever been spirit-written? I don’t recommend it.”
I pull out my phone to send a text, tell Pawn that we’re here. “It helps if you claim to have OCD? Like how vampires tell people they have porphyria. Helps explain away the little eccentricities- keeps people from getting too curious about things they wouldn’t understand.”
Pawn sticks out as he pushes his way through the crowd. He’s in his late forties, early fifties, buzzed, thinning hair, short, stocky build. And he only sticks out more because he doesn’t recognize he’s fifteen years too old for this crowd. “Body’s in the champagne room,” he says, and spends a moment too long looking at Rook.
“Body?” she asks, pretending as a courtesy not to notice him leering.
Pawn leads us past a bouncer, into the backroom. There’s a corpse in the middle of the floor. The body’s charred, and mangled, in an unnatural pose; I’ve seen similar, from falls- particularly somebody who fell without trying to catch themselves.
Pawn stalks around Rook, seeing if she’ll respond to his assertion of dominance. When she doesn’t he figures she’s just a piece of meat. “So this is the rookie, huh? Gotta say, she’s a sight prettier than you when I trained you.”
“Yet you just keep getting uglier,” I say. He grunts; from her look, I can tell Rook feels bad for him, but only because she doesn’t know him. “It’s burnt to hell. You have a vamp sniff it out?”
“Was a vamp that brought it to me, one of my CIs.”
“And I had my money on you pocketing the informant stipend.”
There’s a hint of pain in his expression before he buries it- he doesn’t appreciate being shamed in front of the new girl, but plays it off. “I take my cut, but the informant’s good. Never had a problem with him before.”
“Bring him in. I’ll want to know what he does. Witnesses?”
“Just the vamp.”
“The bouncer?”
“Tim. He was outside. Heard a crack, then the thump. Presumably the port, then the landing. Room was empty at the time. But he got the vamp to check it out.”
“You like the bouncer for it?”
“Nah. He’s a solid citizen. Worked here for better of a decade. Never thrown me out on my ass- which is something. Always pays his taxes. Besides which, bartender corroborates him being outside when she heard the sounds, then him fetching my CI.”
I’m not so sure. “Still, grabbing the vamp-”
“Cauldron’s been a hang out for most of his tenure. This ain’t his first dog and pony.”
Pawn’s being uncharacteristically thorough, tonight, but for some reason that puts me more on edge. “Get him in here anyway.”
The bouncer is a few inches north of six foot, and with his shaved head looks like Mr. Clean. He has a sternness to him, like he’d prefer to crack your skill to talking, but there’s a childlike glee in his eyes- he enjoys playing the heavy, but play is all it is.
“Did you touch anything in the room?” I ask it flat- not quite mean, just cold. I haven’t figured out what kind of witness he’s going to be just yet.
“No.” He’s incredulous, almost laughing at the implication he’s involved.
“Not even the victim? Not to check for a pulse?”
He slows up, recognizes someone sizing him up, and levels his eyes at me- not menacing, but fixing me with his eyes to tell me he’s being polite right now instead of talking with his fists. “He’s a kebab. I also didn’t check my bacon at breakfast for a pulse- or my burger at dinner.”
“Bacon and burgers? Not going to live long that way.” His eyebrows shoot up. Pawn laughs, because between the two of us we justify keeping a Burgerville open 24 hours- the manager on MLK told u as s much one night- whereas Tim's built like a Finnish underwear model.
“And who was here?”
“Just the stiff.”
“Why was the champagne room empty?”
“In this economy, we don’t always staff the room. Bringing in girls who can’t make cab fare during their shift - let alone cover the stage fee- that’s not fair.”
“Stage fee?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty standard. The venue charges a dancer a flat stage fee to perform, to me always seemed more honest than taking a cut. A lot of the clubs in Portland will hold the good shifts hostage unless girls commit to working dead weekday shifts. But they’re more dependent on dancers than we are. We cater to a slightly more diverse crowd.”
“So you’re not just the bouncer.”
“Part owner, now. I started bouncing, and back then room and board was part of the compensation. Then the recession hit and things started going lousy, Trish began paying me in shares of the club. Eventually I just owned half- so now it’s half mine and I work here for a cut of the profits- which is usually just enough to cover my tab at the bar.”
“Was all that before or after you started shtupping Trish.”
He blushed a little, which was even easier to tell with his cue ball head. “Uh, I think I had about a 40 percent stake, then. We’d worked together for seven years or so. She tends bar, and I bounce, seven nights a week. Spend that much time with somebody and you either really get to appreciate them, or really start to hate them.”
“So you’re plowing the bartender, congrats,” Pawn says. “That part of your compensation package make up for the lost pay?”
“I could pop you like the hairy little zit that you are.” I actually bet he could- and it kind of makes me want Pawn to keep provoking him.
But when he doesn’t, I continue with the questions. “That does muddy the waters, though. If your girlfriend is your alibis for not being in the room when it happened.”
“Ask around. The place weren’t exactly empty when it happened. Just about any table should have at least one person who can vouch for me.” I nod at Pawn and he heads back to the main room to find out.
“You weren’t in the room. What’d you hear?”
“Loud pop. Like a car backfiring, or a gunshot. I actually was a little scared it was a gunshot.”
“This place got a gun?”
“Under the bar.”
“And you didn’t get it?”
He smiled, that kind of smile that says he knows he did something foolish. “Well, I’m four steps down the hall when I think I should get the gun. But then you have me turning tail away from trouble- which never looks good- a bouncer lives or dies on his reputation. And it would showcase me second-guessing myself, which makes me look like an indecisive fool.”
“In front of Trish.”
He blushes all over again. “Yeah. So I tell myself I’ve never had to pull out the shotgun before, so tonight can’t be the night I’ll need to. Denial to save my pride- and I’m sure Trish will give me an earful tonight about it. But I bust in. And there’s the corpse. I’m relieved, actually, not to have a gun in my face. So I come out all calm, shrug at people looking to me for some kind of information, and tell Trish we’ll want to put in a call to you. But then I see somebody at the bar, somebody I remember seeing with your stout friend.” He nods at where Pawn had been standing a moment ago.
“The vamp?” Pawn comes back in, and nods that he’s got confirmation.
“Yeah. So the vamp sniffs out the area, and of course there’s magic in the air. But before I can even get back to Trish to put through a call, your Pawn shows up.”
“Before?”
“Hey, I was in the car, in the area. On my way to a strip club, if you need to know, but I wasn’t more than three minute’s distance.” That seems too convenient. But I’d seen enough of Pawn’s expense reports to know he probably didn’t have a CI he didn’t wine and dine in strip joints.
“So am I done here?” Tim asks.
“I think so. But we’ll need to get the body out. You mind doing the honors?”
“I was hoping to go home not smelling like old jerky tonight.”
“And I was hoping not to catch a corpse. Tonight seems to suck all around.”
“Shouldn’t we analyze the crime scene?” Rook asks.
“This isn’t the scene, just where they dumped the body,” I tell her. But there’s something hopeful in her voice, so I decide to give her the remedial lesson quickly.
I kneel beside the body, and use my pen to move what’s left of his pants to the side. “Look at the burns, melted skin, charred muscle. Heat of this kind would have destroyed this room, but the carpet isn’t so much as singed. Point of fact, there’s no blood, no melted skin, nothing in the carpet. He was overcooked before he ever got here.”
“The other reason we won’t find anything is here: look at the ankles. Snapped, but through the burnt flesh- you can see the difference between the meat on the outside and on the in; body fell post-mortem. And you smell the brimstone- sulfur, rotten egg stink? Killer teleported it in here, and either fucked up the transport spell or didn’t give a shit, because the exit was too high. Corpse came in in an orthostatic position- standing; the fall caused the compound fractures, probably to the tibia. Best we’re going to get will come from the corpse itself, but we’ll have to get it to the lab to analyze it.” I turn to Pawn. “Bring my car around.” I toss him the keys.
I unfold a wedge of silk and lay it flat next to the body. Tim helps me roll it up like a burrito, and I put my coat on its shoulders. “Now help me lift the bastard.” I get most of the weight in the legs, and Tim lifts the head and throws that over my shoulder.
We make our way across the dance floor muttering apologies. “He’s a little drunk. Excuse me. My friend’s sick. Can you let me through?” We’re lucky it’s nearly last call, and everybody’s either hammered or looking to get laid. Rook’s an appreciated distraction, and makes two men carrying a body through the club less seedy than it should be.
Pawn pulls up, and I set the corpse in the front seat with a little difficulty, belt him in.
Rook gets in the back, and Pawn saunters off. “What was that about a vamp?” she asks as I start the car and pull out into traffic.
“That’s right, Salem doesn’t have a colony. But vampires can smell magic. They’re not too specific; this guy could either be magic or have died by it, but it at least lets us know when to look into things, and when to just leave it for the normal cops.”
“So where are we taking the body?”
“Bishop’s lab.” That didn’t seem to be enough for her. “You could call Bishop a renaissance man- but she’d probably say that’s sexist. She’s our resident polymath.”
“She?”
“Yeah. We recruited her from a Seattle coven, when our old bishop, Alfil- the elephant- quit. We never thought he’d retire. He never used to forget anything, but his mind started to go. First little things, incantations, names of spirits, but it got worse, until half the time he’d forget I wasn’t a pawn anymore.”
“About that. Pawn said he trained you. But unless I’ve got things backwards, you basically outrank him- at least as far as a Gambit can be said to have ranks.”
“It’s a long story. And since you’ve only met him tonight, a little too early to tell. But that long story short, I took his spot, he took mine.”
“In other words, he got demoted, and they promoted you.” Almost too bad she isn’t looking to be a horsy. Seems to have the chops.
And I’ll cop to being impressed that when we get to Bishop’s lab, she isn’t dainty about getting the corpse back on my shoulder. He’s still heavy, but I shudder to think how much he’d weigh before most of the moisture was cooked out of him.
Rook beats me to the front door by several seconds, and is about to reach for the door. “Wait.” She stops, and lets me through. I knock out, “Shave and a hair cut,” and leave a six beat pause before finishing with, “two bits.”
“A second,” comes Bishop’s voice through the door, then she opens it. Rook is shocked that Bishop’s younger than her.
I push my way between them with the corpse. “Fresh delivery of long pig, a little overdone. But I know you like your meat- as charred and blackened as your shriveled heart.”
She smiles at me. “You always bring me the nicest things. But come in, come in, the coffee’s a little cold, but the hot cocoa’s warm and fresh.”
I set the corpse down on her slab, while Rook stares at her. “You’re so pleasant, and, and bubbly. It’s weird.”
“It helps that the cocoa’s caffeinated. Loco Cocoa. But it’s only weird because of the dichotomy, after spending the evening with the glower twins. They see the ugly side of people. I get to see the fascinating side- the inside.” Bishop sets down her mug, and tears into the silk sheet, unwrapping the body like it’s Christmas. “You want the sheet back, or the usual?”
“Yep, burn it.” She’s got a chute down to her incinerator in the basement, and she drops it in. The silk is contaminated, physically from contact with the body and magically, because I’ve carried it around. Burning it means keeping the next crime scene clean, and preventing somebody from dumpster diving and using it as the focus of a sympathetic spell against me.
“So this is the Salem Rook, huh? Seems a bit dainty to be a castle, but it’s nice to meet you.” Rook frowns, and looks at her own skinny arm with some confusion. “And nicer still that your coven is finally joining the 21st century.”
“Uh, it’s nice to meet you, too.” Rook reaches out and shakes Bishop’s hand. Bishop immediately walks to the sink and begins vigorously scrubbing her hands.
“No offense. But I don’t want to contaminate the evidence.”
“Okay,” Rook says, while Bishop finishes drying her hands and puts on a pair of gloves. “So what is it a Bishop does?”
“I’m a protoscientist. I study things that aren’t accepted as fact by most people, but that exist anyway. Alchemy’s a good example. Before chemistry was a science, a lot of the foundation for it was laid by alchemists. Same with the astronomical aspects of astrology. But protoscience isn’t just limited to the arcane. For example a colleague of mine in BC is studying binaurul beats, used to induce specific brain states, applicable for health or just getting someone baked with sound. The theory is that it can be used to induce shamanic trances, but it’s really just sigil magic by a different name.”
Bishop spends a moment taking in the body, before she says, “I was thinking of getting some KFC, and when you said you were bringing the new Rook I thought we could split a bucket, but now, the smell of this- why go out when we can eat in?” Rook stares at her with wide eyes. “What, are we not laughing about that, yet?” Then she says, “Oh, right- she doesn’t know the story.”
I take that as my cue to tell it- since Bishop only knows it secondhand, anyway. “Alfil, in one of his later in life oopsys- this was right before he retired- was supposed to check some decomposition for me, to see if it was natural or supernatural. Instead, he spent the better part of an evening performing a complex diagnostic spell on sliced peppered turkey, while eating corpse, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Really, he was lucky; he only got mild food poisoning. I get worse from the Chinese take out down the street.”
“I think that’s because they put corpses in it,” Bishop said solemnly.
“How long you think it’ll take to get an idea what we’re looking at?” I ask her.
“I can tell you you’re looking at a big burnt guy. If you want me to be able to point out more than roast chestnuts and a blackened tree stump, you’ll have to give me a few hours.”
“Cool.” I check my phone. “It looks like Pawn’s got his CI to the safehouse. Let us know when you've got something concrete.”