Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

“Go ahead,” she told me without hesitation; she really is a pretty good boss. “Do one other thing first, though: call Mr. Charles Kelly and let him know what sort of mess he’s landed this office in. I’ve already had words with him about that, but you can emphasize it, too. If we have to holler for help from the District of St. Columba, I don’t want him to be able to say he wasn’t warned in advance.”

Burning brimstone makes you think of demons. 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. Elmo’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.St.C.”

“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 lip. “Okay, Charlie. Play a game with me, then. Is your feathered friend from groups involved with any of these…?” I named the Garuda Bird, Quetzalcoatl, 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, faster 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 kind 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 mid-forties 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.”

The only thing I’ll say about his office is that it made Tony Sudakis’ look like a slum, and Tony’s beats mine seven ways from Sunday. He poured mint tea, gave me sweetmeats, sat me down, and generally fussed over me until I felt as if I’d gone back to my mom’s for Rosh Hashanah dinner. I don’t care for the feeling at my mom’s and I didn’t care for it here, either.

I answered it with bluntness: “Devonshire dump is under investigation for leaking toxic spell components into the surrounding environment. We haven’t learned exactly what’s getting out yet, but I can give you an idea of how serious the problem is by telling you there have been three cases of apsychia in the area over the past year alone.”

“And you think we are to blame? Slow Jinn Fizz?” Durani bounced—no, flew—out of his chair. His volatility was still there, all right; I just hadn’t conjured it up in polite greetings. “No, no, ten thousand times no!” he cried. I thought he was going to rend his garment. He didn’t; he contented himself with grabbing his turban in both hands, as if he feared his head would fall off. “How can you accuse us of such an outrage? How dare you, sir!”

“Calm yourself, Mr. Durani, please.” I made a little placating gesture, hoping he’d sit down again. It didn’t work. I went on quickly, before he threw the samovar at me. “Nobody’s accusing Slow Jinn Fizz of anything. I’m just trying to find out what’s going on at the dump site.”

“You dare accuse Slow Jinn Fizz of causing apsychia!” He extravagantly wasn’t listening.

“I haven’t accused you,” I said, louder this time. “Have—not. I’m just investigating. And you must admit that Solomon’s Seals are very potent magic, with a strong potential for polluting the environment.”

Durani cast his eyes up to the ceiling and, presumably, past it toward Allah. “They think I am destroying souls,” he said—not to me. He glared my way a moment later. “You wretched bureaucratic fool, Slow Jinn Fizz does not cause apsychia. I—we—this consortium—am—are—is on the edge of curing this dreadful defect.”

I started to get angry at him, then stopped when I realized what he’d just said. “You are?” I exclaimed. “How, in God’s name?”

“In God’s name indeed—in the name of the Compassionate, the Merciful.” Durani calmed down again, so fast that I wondered how much of his rage was real temper and how much for show. But that didn’t matter, either, not if he really was on the edge of beating apsychia. If he could do that, I didn’t mind him chewing me out every day—and twice on Fridays.