Stalking the Dragon Page 10

  “I think probably the most important thing about her is that she pays her rent on time and her checks don't bounce,” replied Mallory.

  The doormen paid no attention as Mallory approached, and remained motionless except to shoot Felina a pair of disapproving glances.

  The entire ground floor, as well as the mezzanine, was filled with shops that made every effort to appear exclusive. Most failed miserably. Which is not to say that there were no unique shops (all of which preferred to call themselves “shoppes”), but rather that they were usually unique for the wrong reasons.

  The first store they passed was a rental agency, and it rented just a single commodity: butlers. It differed from most of its competitors—Mallory was inclined to think all of its competitors, but this Manhattan had conditioned him never to think in absolutes—in that the butlers it was renting were displayed in the store's windows. Not photos of them, or models, but the actual butlers, all standing at attention except for the occasional twitch of an eyebrow or the wrinkle of a nose.

  Take Frothingham home with you, said a sign next to a balding butler. He's brave, loyal, always laughs at your jokes, promises to pinch you when no one's looking, and hardly ever passes out from exhaustion. $75.00 a day takes him away.

  Oglethorpe's the butler for you, said another sign next to another butler. Charming, articulate, mixes a dynamite vodka martini, death and taxes on dirty carpets and smudged windows, and he's always there with an intimate suggestion whenever your visitors are close enough to overhear.

  Try Reginald! claimed a third sign, this one next to an underweight butler who had clearly seen better days, if not decades. He cooks, he cleans, he'll scrub your back in the shower, he'll read Fanny Hill aloud to you while you're in bed, and best of all, you can feed him for less than $5.00 a day!

  “I want that one,” said Felina, pointing to Reginald.

  “No you don't,” said Mallory.

  “Why not?” she asked curiously.

  “You're a growing girl, and he'd barely make dessert,” answered the detective.

  “Then get me two of him,” she said after a moment's thought.

  “Let's concentrate on finding the cookies,” said Mallory, moving on to the next store, which specialized in selling and delivering greeting and holiday cards. There was a huge display of valentine cards in the window, and a discreet sign noting that there was no postage needed because obviously the cards would never leave the building, and delivery could be made within five minutes of the seller receiving a phone call telling him which apartment to deliver them to.

  “Now you're sure you can deliver them at precisely eleven forty-five tonight?” a dumpy middle-aged woman was asking the man behind the counter.

  “Absolutely,” he assured her.

  “That's seventeen valentines, all addressed to me?”

  “Right,” said the man. “Six from Secret Admirer, seven from Lovelorn in Brooklyn, three from You Know Who, and one with just a question mark for a signature.”

  “Okay,” said the woman, slapping a pair of fifty-dollar bills on the counter. “I'd better get back to my mahjong game.” She lowered her voice. “They think I'm in the bathroom.”

  “It'll be our secret,” the man assured her as she left the store and headed to an elevator.

  “Sad,” said Belle, from within Mallory's lapel pocket. “Very sad.” Then: “Thank God I found you before I was like that.”

  Mallory looked from the cell phone to the woman and back to the phone. “You were never going to be like that.”

  “I know,” said Belle. “It was fated that we should meet and spend all eternity together.”

  “Do you have a second topic of conversation?” asked Mallory.

  “Sex.”

  “Forget it.”

  They passed a bookstore that sold nothing but Cliff's Notes and Reader's Digest, a dress store that had meticulously removed the first digit from their dress sizes, so that sizes fourteen, sixteen, and eighteen miraculously became four, six, and eight, and a florist who sold only artificial flowers (and whose slogan was: “You're a busy woman of the world. Why buy something that needs constant care, and which you must eventually throw out?”).

  “I don't like the way some of these women are looking at me,” growled Joe as a trio of residents passed by.

  “Like you're intruding?” asked Mallory.

  “Like they wish I'd intrude,” complained Joe. “One of them even blew me a kiss!”

  “It could be worse,” said Jeeves. “See that gray-haired one in the print dress and the shawl?”

  “Yes.”

  “She whispered something to me as she walked by.”

  “What?” asked Joe.

  “It was so filthy I can't repeat it out loud,” said Jeeves.

  “That's okay,” said Belle. “You can whisper it to me.”

  “Now that's interesting,” said Joe, who was staring at Jeeves. “I've never seen a gremlin blush before.”

  “Are you sure you don't want to tell us about it?” persisted Belle. “Some obscene propositions are better shared.”

  Jeeves shook his head. “Besides, it was a physical impossibility.”

  “Don't be so sure,” said Belle. “I majored in human geometry. Just whisper it to me and I'll tell you if it can be done, and if I don't know, why, my Sugar Daddy here and I will find some private alley or storeroom and field-test it.”

  “One more remark like that and you're back in the pants pocket.”

  “Closer My God to Thee,” intoned Belle.

  “And one more like that and I give you to Felina.”

  “After everything we've been to each other?” she demanded.

  “You heard me.”

  “Wait till you turn down one of these frumps and she hollers ‘Rape!’” said Belle. “Maybe I'll testify and maybe I won't.”

  “I'll just have to live with the doubt,” said Mallory.

  “We could sneak off for an hour and then everyone would know you're too tired to rape anyone,” said the phone.

  “You're all heart,” replied Mallory.

  “Not all,” said Belle seductively. “Want me to prove it?”

  “Not just now.”

  They passed a second bookstore, this one dealing exclusively in paranormal romances—in fact, the manager was in the process of ejecting a woman who'd had the temerity to refer to them as vampire sex books—and since it dealt in such a rigidly defined commodity, there were only about fifteen thousand different titles in the store.

  Posters announced the newest dramas, especially produced for residents of the Tower. There were Hamlet, Macbeth, A Long Day's Journey into Night, and Our Town, each condensed to a thirty-minute one-act play so as not to bore anyone. (Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down, with a larger orchestra than the original Broadway production, was of course playing at its normal length.)

  The busiest shop of all was one that seemed to specialize in lingerie exclusively designed for the Tower's residents. There were padded bras, waist cinchers, corsets that looked like they'd be more at home in medieval torture chambers, and the pièce de résistance—a row of funhouse mirrors that took fifty pounds off anyone who stood in front of them.

  “Can't keep ’em in stock,” confided a salesgirl to Mallory, who was staring into the store.

  “Can't keep what?” he asked. “The bras or the waist cinchers?”

  She chuckled. “The mirrors. We must sell an average of twenty a day.”

  “Makes sense,” said Mallory. “Your clientele consists of a bunch of overweight residents, I take it?”

  “And a bunch of underweight ones, too,” she said. “But of course they buy different mirrors.”

  “Let's stick with the overweight ones for a minute,” said Mallory. “I presume a lot of them have a taste for candies and cookies?”

  “Who doesn't?”

  “If I wanted to buy a chocolate marshmallow cookie without leaving the building, where would I go?”

  “Prob
ably to Satan's, up on the seventy-third floor.”

  “That's the top floor, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything between the mezzanine and the penthouse is condominiums, but the penthouse has a restaurant, a bar, a couple of other things…and of course Satan's.”

  “Thanks,” said Mallory, heading off toward an elevator.

  “Uh…sir?” she called after him.

  “Yes?”

  “They're pretty liberal-minded up there,” she said. “They'll serve goblins and gremlins, and I think they'll even tolerate a cat-thing as long as you keep her under control.”

  “But?” said Mallory. “I sense a ‘but’ in there.”

  “But your cell phone just winked at our janitor.”

  “Belle?” said Mallory.

  “I was just kidding around,” said Belle innocently. “You know you're the only one for me.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Mallory told the salesgirl. He pulled Belle out of his pocket. “Felina, hang on to this.” He tossed the phone to the cat-girl.

  “Suddenly I'm a this?” demanded Belle. “I'm not even a her?” Her voice softened. “I was just fooling around, killing time, honest I was. I couldn't even tell you anything about him, except that he has brown hair, is probably about five foot ten, maybe one hundred and sixty-five pounds, blue eyes, straight teeth with no more than five fillings on the lower molars, and his suit was starting to wear out at the elbows. Oh…and he hasn't shaved since yesterday.”

  “Maybe he needs a phone,” said Mallory.

  “No!” screamed Belle. “Just put me back in your pants pocket, and pay no attention to my piteous, body-wrenching sobs.”

  “Deal,” said Mallory, taking the phone back from Felina and putting it in a pocket. “Now let's get this show on the road.” He led Felina, Jeeves, and Joe to an elevator, where the obviously annoyed operator was speaking on his cell phone.

  “Come on!” he was saying. “You're my union steward. You have to stick up for me.” He listened for a moment. “I'm telling you: I goosed her twice, and she only tipped me once. I want to make an official complaint. If I'm going to go around pinching and goosing women for free, they're going to be women I want to touch, not the frumps who live in this joint…Yeah, you bet your ass I will!”

  He put the phone in a pocket and turned to face his passengers.

  “I remember when being a member of a union meant something,” he said.

  “I remember when elevator operators said ‘Which floor?’” replied Mallory.

  “Okay, okay—which floor?”

  “The seventy-third.”

  “Is it all right with you if I just hit the seventy-third,” came the sarcastic reply, “or do you want me to say ‘Going up’ too?”

  “Just hit it before I hit you!” snapped Joe.

  “You think I'm scared of a goblin?” said the operator contemptuously.

  Joe screamed and aimed a karate kick at the side of the elevator, which caved in. “Are you?”

  “How did you know?” said the operator, promptly pressing the button for the seventy-third floor. “I'm sorry if I offended, sir,” he continued. “I'll pinch your cat-thing for free if you'd like.”

  “Why not?” said Mallory as Felina hissed and spat at the operator. “You'll still have one hand left for pushing buttons.” He smiled at the operator's discomfiture. “Maybe we'll just stand still, be quiet, and ride up in silence.”

  “That's a very good suggestion, sir,” said the operator as the elevator began ascending. “I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact—”

  “Joe,” said Mallory, “pull your sword out, and if he finishes that sentence, cut his tongue off.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence, and a moment later they stepped out onto the seventy-third floor of the Frump Tower.

  The first thing Mallory saw was the restaurant. He'd seen a lot of rooftop restaurants that revolved left to right, or right to left, but this was the first one he'd ever seen that revolved top to bottom. Tables had been nailed to the floor, their magnetic surfaces held the metal dishes and glasses motionless, the chairs were affixed to the floors and the diners strapped into the chairs, and attentive if officious waiters covered each dish and wine goblet as its table tilted enough for them to begin spilling over the sides. The diners, about ninety percent of them women, chattered on, paying no attention to the waiters or the room.

  “Odd,” said Jeeves, staring in through a window. “Very odd.”

  “But original,” Joe noted.

  “Originality is a greatly overrated virtue,” said Mallory. “The first case of nausea was original, too.”

  He noticed a discreet sign in the window:

  Help wanted: Waiters lacking in social graces. Must be French (or at least must be able to approximate French accents). Arrogance and condescension essential. No prior experience needed.

  “Why am I not surprised?” muttered the detective.

  “I think I see what we're looking for,” announced Joe, pointing to a shop just past the restaurant.

  Mallory looked where Joe indicated. It was a store called Get Thee Behind Me, Satan, and given the goodies in the window, Mallory concluded that that was precisely where most of the calories were going to wind up. He walked over, entered the store, decided that although he was in perfect health it would be completely understandable if he lapsed into a diabetic coma in the next sixty seconds, and looked around for elephant-shaped chocolate marshmallow cookies. He found them right between the candied dinosaur eggs and the fruit-flavored malted milk balls.

  “May I help you?” asked a young man from behind the counter.

  “I have a question about these,” said Mallory, indicating the elephantshaped cookies.

  “I can assure you that no elephants were harmed in the creation of these cookies, sir,” said the young man, smiling at his own joke.

  “Have you sold any in the past seven or eight hours?”

  The young man looked into the display case. “All right, so they're not that fresh. I'll give you three percent off.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “Fifty percent off?”

  Joe leaped onto a nearby counter and withdrew his sword. “Answer the question!” he yelled.

  “Not in the last seven or eight hours, no sir.”

  “How about the past two days?” Mallory turned to Jeeves. “Whoever stole her may have known this is what she eats, and planned ahead.”

  “Someone bought some yesterday,” said the man.

  “Who?”

  The man shrugged. “He paid cash, so I don't have a record of his name.”

  “Can you describe him?” said Mallory.

  “A large man, with horns growing out of his head.”

  “Brody,” said Mallory.

  “No, my name's Irwin.”

  “Not you,” said Mallory. He turned to Jeeves. “How long can she go without eating?”

  “Toy dragons have a very high metabolic rate,” said the gremlin. “She has to eat every two or three hours. If she tried to sleep the night through, she'd be very sick and very weak by morning.”

  “And no one's bought any of these things except Brody,” mused Mallory.

  “She'd get the same nutrition value out of any chocolate marshmallow cookie,” said Jeeves. “She just prefers these.”

  “But if she's starving, she might eat one of a different shape?” persisted Mallory.

  “Yes, but…”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Mallory. “If the thief knows she eats these things, he'd get them for her…and if he doesn't know, then he won't think of getting her a chocolate marshmallow rhino or lion either.”

  “So where to next?” asked Joe.

  Mallory turned to the young man behind the counter. “You got a phone book I can borrow for a minute?”

  “Hey, you've got me, Hot Lips,” said Belle. “Just tell me what you want and I'll ring up Information for you—providing you press your lips very cl
ose to me when you're speaking.”

  “Cancel the phone book,” said Mallory, as he pulled Belle out of his pocket.

  “Okay, Big Boy,” she said in her best Mae West accent, “what can I do for you, other than the obvious?”

  “I know there's a Bureau of Missing Persons,” said Mallory, “because my first case took me there. I know it's going to sound crazy, but I'm wondering if this Manhattan also has a Bureau of Missing Creatures?”

  “Checking…” said Belle.

  “I don't want to be rude,” said Jeeves, “but time is running out, and that may be the silliest suggestion I've heard all night.”

  “I heard two sillier ones when I was a teenager,” Joe chimed in, “but that was before I learned what you could and couldn't do inside a small phone booth with a naked goblin girl.”

  “Probably the same thing I couldn't do with a gremlin girl in a null-gravity bathysphere,” said Jeeves.

  “I'll bet it's not as silly as what I suggested to Sally Ann McDermitt after she had three drinks last night,” said the young man behind the counter. He paused thoughtfully. “All I got out of it was a slap in the face. I'll bet she'd have tried it if I could have just gotten her to have that fourth drink.”

  “Anyway, Mallory,” said Jeeves, “it's silly, and that's all there is to it.”

  “I sadly concur,” said Joe. “We need another plan of action.”

  “Even I agree,” said the young man, “and I have no idea what's going on.”

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” said Belle, “but do you need the phone number of the Bureau of Missing Creatures, or will the address be sufficient?”

  CHAPTER 13

  11:51 PM–12:44 AM

  The old, dilapidated building was one of Manhattan's many deserted high schools. This one had miraculously avoided being burned to the ground by students who resented homework or parents who resented their illiterate teenaged children being given mediocre grades for sub-mediocre work. Since those halcyon days as a (theoretical) institution of learning, it had been a flea market, a crack house, and an auxiliary of the City Morgue, but now it sported a sedate, tasteful sign on what had been the gymnasium, stating that it indeed housed the Bureau of Missing Creatures.