Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His novella, Bubba Ho-tep, was made into an award-winning film of the same name, as was Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. Both were directed by Don Coscarelli. His works have received numerous recognitions, including the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, American Mystery Award, the International Horror Award, British Fantasy Award, and many others. All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, his first novel for young adults, was published last year. His most recent novel for adults is Edge of Dark Water.
The Case: Mabel Weaver’s grandmother left her a family heirloom passed down through generations of women—a nearly flawless yellow diamond, Hecate’s Golden Eye, said to kill any man who touches it. Her cousin Agnes has stolen it and Mabel needs help to get it back.
The Investigators: Jack Fleming—a former reporter who is now a vampire and private investigator—and his British partner, Charles Escott, private agent and former theatrical actor.
HECATE’S GOLDEN EYE
P. N. Elrod
Chicago, June 1937
Hanging around this alley gave me the creeps because it looked exactly like the one where I’d seen a man gunned down in front of me. That had been shortly before my own murder.
The man in front of me tonight was my partner, Charles Escott, who was unaware of my thoughts while we waited for his client to show. I didn’t like the meeting place, but the client had insisted, and Escott had to earn a living. At least he’d invited me along to watch his back. Too often he ignored risks and bulled ahead on his own, which was damned annoying when it wasn’t scaring the hell out of me.
The air was muggy to the point of settling down in your lungs and forgetting to pay rent. I had no need to breathe regularly anymore, but still found the heaviness uncomfortable in this hot, windless place. A car cruised by, briefly visible in the alley opening. The faint wash of light from its headlamps allowed Escott to see my face.
“Stop worrying, old man,” he said, speaking quietly, knowing I could hear. “Miss Weaver just wants to be careful.”
That would be Miss Mabel Weaver, his prospective client, who was late. She’d made the appointment hours ago when the sun was up and I lay dreamless and, for all other purposes, dead in the basement under Escott’s kitchen.
Yeah, dead. I’m undead now, the way Bram Stoker defined it, but don’t ask me to turn into a bat. He got that wrong, among other things.
I moved closer so Escott could hear. “Careful? Wanting to meet you in a dark alley is nuts.”
“Less so than wanting to meet you.”
He had a point, but Miss Weaver didn’t know I was a vampire, so it didn’t count. “Charles, this has to be a setup. Someone with a grudge paid some pippin to get you here. They figured you wouldn’t be suspicious if a dame called asking for help.”
“I considered that, but there were notes of hope, anger, frustration, and desperation in her voice that are difficult to convincingly feign . . . I think I know when someone is lying or not.”
He was uncannily good at reading people, even when there was a telephone in between. I could trust his judgment; it was this damned alley that put my back hairs up. Just like the other place, it had stinking trash barrels, a scrawny cat nosing through the garbage, and sludgy water tricking down the middle.
This one didn’t have a body in it yet, but my mind’s eye could provide.
“I have my waistcoat on,” Escott added, meaning his bulletproof vest. His business occasionally required dealing with all sorts of unsavory characters—I was considered by a select few to be one of them—so I was grateful he’d bothered. How he could stand the extra weight of those metal plates in this heat was a mystery, though.
“You think you need it?”
He gave a small shrug, fingers twitching once toward the pocket where he kept his cigarettes. That told me he had some nerves after all. A smoke would have calmed him, but it was also a distraction. For a meeting with an unknown client in a dark alley he’d keep himself focused.
We glanced up at the sound of thunder rumbling a long, slow warning. I couldn’t smell the rain yet, but change was in the sky. It would get worse before it got better. Storms coming down off the lake from Canada were like that.
“Crap,” I said.
He grunted agreement. “If she doesn’t appear before—”
We jumped when the door in the building on my left abruptly opened, filling the alley with the noise and brightness of a busy kitchen. A large man in a sweat-stained undershirt banged out with two buckets of leavings. The scrawny cat went alert and darted toward him with an impatient meow, tail up. This was a regular event. Escott must have come to a similar conclusion, but he relaxed only slightly.
The stink of cooked food fought against the rotting stuff in the garbage cans a few yards away. Fresh or foul, unless it was blood, all food smelled sickening to me. Coffee was the one exception; I’d yet to figure out why.
The big man dumped the buckets’ contents more or less accurately into a trash barrel and tossed a large scrap of something to the eager cat, who seized it and ran off. The man fit one bucket inside the other, giving Escott and me a hard once-over.
We had no legitimate reason to be here, and I looked suspicious. Escott was respectably dressed, but I was in my sneaking-around clothes, everything black and cheap, because sneaking around can be rough work. The man would be within his rights to tell us to clear out or dump us into the barrel with the leavings—he had the size for it.
“You waitin’ for someone?” he finally asked.
It was Escott’s turn to take the difficult questions. I made sure the guy didn’t have a gun or friends with guns.
“I’m from the Escott Agency, waiting for a Miss Weaver. Is she an acquaintance of yours?”
He gave no answer, going back into the kitchen. A second later, a tall, sturdily built woman hastily emerged.
She was too big-boned to be fashionable, but there was grace in her simple blue dress. A matching hat teetered on her head, barely held in place by several hatpins stuck in at various angles. The hat was an oddball thing with a brim that was supposed to sweep down to cover one eye, but now askew, as though she’d pushed it out of the way and then forgotten. She had a small purse, but no gloves. My girlfriend never left her flat without them.
“Miss Weaver?” Escott stepped forward into the spill of light.
“Yes, but not here,” she whispered. She shut the door, moved toward him, and promptly skidded on something in the sudden dark. I caught her before she could fall. She gave a gasp of surprise. I can move fast when necessary, and this alley murk was like daylight to me. I decided to be kind and not tell her what she’d slipped in. Maybe that cat would come back later and eat it.
“Sorry,” I said, letting go when she got her balance.
“Mr. Escott?” She squinted at me, uncertain because my partner and I have nearly identical builds, tall and lean. Our faces are very different, and I look about a decade younger even though I’m not.
“The skinny bird with the English accent and banker’s suit is who you want. I’m just here for the grouse hunt.”
Escott shot me a pipe down look. “I am Charles Escott. This ill-mannered fellow is my associate, Jack Fleming.”
I tipped my hat.
“Mabel Weaver,” she said, and ladylike, extended a hand to let us take turns shaking her fingers. She had dusty red-brown hair, a long, narrow, humped nose in a long face, and a lot of freckles no amount of makeup could conquer.