Prologue

 

I think I just stood there; my mouth open like a statue gasping for breath.

Monahan pointed, saying, “We think that one used to be Phillip Vanderhauk, the one who took over Shultz’s old outfit.

Frankie stood just behind me, his face partially covered with a scented handkerchief, “Omi…gawd…”

“What is this, again?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I heard the story right earlier.

“As far as we know, a maid knocked on the door while a meeting is going on. She entered the condo, clutched her throat, struggling to breathe. Then her skin begins to darken and flake away. She screams, flailing about as if she’s on fire and then she just crumbles. Before she does that, every made man in the place is hit with whatever it is. These piles,” Monahan points, “Are all that’s left.”

I asked, “How do you know that? And…what is this, some kind of new plague?”

Monahan replied, “The other maid wasn’t affected. She’s the sole witness.”

Luccesi’s voice said, “No, it is… an inconvenience.”

We turned.

The crime lord stood there in the doorway, a slight scowl marring his typically well-composed expression, murmured, his eyes as flat as a snake’s.

“What are you doing here, Luccesi?” Monahan asked in a low mutter.

Luccesi waved a hand, “This is one of my properties. They,” he pointed at the piles of reeking gruel that used to be people, “were my employees. Whether you like the situation or not, Chief Monahan, I am involved.”

Monahan scowled at me and growled, “M freaking M. Lovely.”

MM is the term the police use for most of the cases I have that involve them in some way, Mandolin Madness as if I am the reason San Francisco is the universal center for what is hinky. Chicago doesn’t even come close in that regard. Yeah, both cities have folks who crap on the sidewalk, but in my city, the crap can sometimes get up and start walking.

I was looking at the scene because I was supposed to be asking someone a question. Now I had other questions to ask. Once again, MM had struck, and this time it was a doozy. What in the hell could cause people to rot away in seconds? The more important question was, was it contagious?

♦ ♦ ♦

 

                                                Chapter 1

A week earlier

 

I think it was the pain that woke me. It couldn’t have been the dream; little Tony adored that kind of fantasy. The upper half of the right side of my job throbbed. It was like each beat of my heart pulled the pain register a little bit higher. I’m pretty sure I whimpered.

I sort of fell and rolled out of bed and then staggered my way to the bathroom. In my line of work having painkillers on hand isn’t a convenience, it’s a necessity. You see, I’m Tony Mandolin, the PI to the weird and the un-wonderful.

Several years ago, I stumbled upon a case that involved a vampire. The conclusion of the case got me noticed by the sort of folks normal people just never run into… and live to tell about it. I lived, and because of that, my casebook reads more like the Brothers Grimm than Sam Spade.

After dry swallowing three or four pills, I grabbed my robe and headed for the stairs.

My house is a three-story Victorian that faces south onto a small neighborhood park. It isn’t a mansion, but it's more than big enough for me and my housemate and business partner, Franklin Amadeus Jackson, a reformed black drag queen with the size and the strength to dismay any NFL lineman. He’s also a gourmet cook with the personality of a chameleon, but since he’s saved my life at least a dozen times, the big guy gets considerable slack cut.

Greystoke, my German Shepherd dog padded over to me as I hit the bottom of the stairs into the kitchen. I knew what he wanted. It was time to visit the grassy bathroom.

“Morning, Tony,” Frankie said from the stove.

He was working on breakfast, and if I wasn’t hurting as badly as I was, my mouth would have been watering.

He turned to add, “I think you’ll like this— Oh, my dear Lord, what is wrong with your face?”

I mumbled, “Toothache…”

And then things got fuzzy and faded to black.

I woke up to several faces staring down at me.

I asked, “Uh…”

The Frankie face said, “Oh thank you, Jesus, you’re alive.”

The larger, bearded face, Tiny, the owner and bartender of my neighborhood hang-out, The Snug, said, “Tony, we’re going to have to talk.”

The female face, Alcina, my girlfriend said, “Yes we are, and when I find whoever did this, I’m going to introduce them to the world of inside out.”

Did I mention my girlfriend is a very powerful witch?

I noticed the pain was gone and reached up to feel my jaw. It felt normal.

Tiny said, “Sit up, Tony. I’ve got something to show you.”

I noticed I was in the front room of my house. They had laid me out on the couch. Just like the outside, the inside and the furnishings were Victorian. They built stuff to last in those days. The neighborhood, all of the same vintage, has survived several earthquakes with barely a scratch.

Sitting up, I said, “Okay, show me.”

Tiny held out his hand. Sitting in the center of his country ham-sized palm was a tooth, a molar.

I asked, “Is… that mine?”

Tiny grunted, and then added, “Yep. And if I hadn’t gotten it out when I did, it would have killed you. Let me see your pendant, please.”

He held out his other hand.

I reached into my shirt and pulled out the pendant. It hung on a gold chain. It was shaped more like an ankh than a cross, kind of a cross with a loop on the top. It had a soft rose gold color to it but with iron gray undertones. It had been made out of the iron in my blood, by Landau Bain.

Bain was the wizard. Not ‘a’, the. He was and remains as scary as hell, but like Frankie, I have to give him credit for saving my life… a lot. Sure, there’s a ton of magic workers in the city. It is San Francisco after all, but every single one of them is afraid of Bain. I’m just lucky he likes me.

Tiny fingered the pendant, and then he sighed, “It’s as I thought. It needs recharging.”

He held up the molar between his thumb and forefinger. It looked more like a tiny white pea than a tooth right then.

He said, “Someone or something managed to push through your personal ward, Tony, and turned this,” he waggled the molar, “into a bomb. It used the beating of your own heart as a fuse, and after a certain number of beats it would have exploded, turning your head into so much red mist.”

Frankie murmured, “Ewww…”

Alcina growled, “Like I said, inside-out.”

I felt for the space and yep there was a gap where that molar used to go. I was going to have to see about getting that replaced. I’d chewed on some of my most favorite things with that tooth.

I held up a hand, “Two questions.”

Tiny grunted and nodded.

I asked, “How, and why?”

Tiny stood up. He was one of the few men I know who made Frankie, who topped out somewhere near seven feet, but seven feet with arms the size of tree trunks, look normal.

He said, “I don’t know, Tony. That’s something a detective is going to have to figure out. You wouldn’t happen to know one, would you?”

He smiled and left.

After the front door closed, I muttered, “Ah… crap.”

♦ ♦ ♦

I sat at my desk, my old black Ma Bell rotary phone staring back at me, daring me to make the call. The tooth, one of my back molars sat on the blotter, centered before me. If what Tiny had told me, there was a magic worker out there with a grudge against Mama Mandolin’s baby boy, and the pendant Landau Bain had made for me, out of my own blood mind you, was losing its mojo.

It would take Bain to recharge it but getting that done meant getting hold of Bain. The situation was not all that different from having to retrieve a priceless treasure from a woodchipper, and having to do that while the thing was running.

“Do you want me to contact him?”

Alcina stood in the doorway to my home office. There really wasn’t that much room in it for anyone but me. There was another chair, but it had seen better days. I’d brought it from my real office downtown, and the part of the city that was in emphasized the word down.

I could let my girlfriend do the job I should be doing. I really could. I mean, this is an era where the men are men and so are the women, right?

No, wrong. I was being a coward and I knew it. The only way to get to the bottom of this thing was to get some help in the area it happened, and that meant the wizard. I just hoped he wasn’t on another bender.

The first time I met him he’d been working on a continuous drunk for about a century. Wizards live a long time, and they can, apparently put away enough cheap booze to kill an entire platoon.

When he’s sober, Bain is scary. When he’s been drinking, he can be terrifying, and that’s to those he considers friends. His first interaction with me, well… technically the second, he slammed the door in my face the first time, and on the second, seconds later he did something that fried every nerve in my body, like a taser set to eleven.

Finally, I had to say, “No, I’ll do it. I just hope I catch him in a non-homicidal mood.”

I reached out and picked up the phone. Bain did not have a cell phone any more than he had one connected to the wall, like real people. What he did have was a service where you could leave a message and he would respond, or not, if you were lucky.

Dialing the number, I waited for the message, “If you’re sure you want to do this, it’s your hide. Leave a message.”

After the click, I said, “Bain, it’s Tony Mandolin. Somebody tried to kill me by turning one of my back teeth into a bomb. I just thought you should know. Tiny says my pendant needs a recharge.”

Then I hung up.

“Let me see it.”

That was Bain’s voice and he’d been drinking.

Keeping my sphincters as tightly closed as possible, I turned toward the voice and held out the pendant.

Bain stood in the doorway where Alcina had been. She was behind him, peering around the sleeve of his overcoat. His eyes were deeply shadowed and had several sets of baggage beneath them. I could smell his breath from where I sat.

I did the only thing I knew would keep me from getting turned into a toad.

I asked, “Do you need a drink?”

He nodded, and then said, “Just bring me a bottle.”

I said to Alcina, “You know what he likes.”

Wisely, she did not argue the point.

As she was getting the booze, I asked, “Can I—?”

“No!” He cut me off, “It’s personal, Mandolin, and I’d rather keep you as a friend if you don’t mind. Just leave it at that, okay?”

I shut up and just nodded.

He grunted and took the offered pendant.

“So, the bartender said this is running out of power?” He held the pendant up before his eyes.

“No,” I said, “He said it needed a recharge.”

“Semantics,” Bain muttered, still examining the thing.

Alcina returned with a bottle of the cheaper scotch I keep for less favored guests.

Bain took it out of her hand with a muttered, “Thanks,” and then upended it after popping the cork.

He drank down several good swallows and gasped out, “Bwahhh… oh but I needed that.”

I asked, “Feel better?”

I’d be comatose for days if I tried that.

Bain replied, “Yes, I do. Now let’s see about this pendant, and then I’ll want to see that tooth.”

I just sat there and watched. It was like being part of a still photograph. Bain wasn’t moving and neither was I.

After what seemed like a few hours, Bain lowered the pendant, and said, “I’m sorry, Tony. I should have thought of doing this a couple of years ago. If I had, you probably wouldn’t have lost that tooth.”

He tipped some more scotch into his mouth and then sat heavily on the extra chair.

He held the pendant out to me, “Here’s it’s all juiced up. I added a little extra so if whoever tried it does again, the rebound will fry them but good.”

I said, “Thanks, and I mean that. What about the tooth?”

Bain lowered the bottle and said, “Yes, let me see that thing.”

He picked it out of my hand and held it up.

“Hmm…” He said, turning it this way and that. “Nasty little piece of work. Real nasty. You’re lucky Mandolin, if Tiny hadn’t been here Jackson would be mopping up the rest of your brains right now.”

I did not need that mental picture.

I asked, “How? How did… whoever… turn my tooth into an IED?”

“They had to have something of yours, Mandolin, a hair, a nail clipping, even a used napkin from a restaurant will do, as long as what they have came from your body. Think of it as magical DNA. Whoever did this to you was once connected to you in some way.”

“Lovely,” I thought.

Now all I had to do was search through ten-plus years of cases to narrow the next search down.

♦ ♦ ♦