Stalking The Zombie: Fables of Tonight Page 8

  Mallory decided that he might as well leave, since the Gremlins were losing 133 to 58 with less than seven minutes to play, but as he got to his feet the crowd surged forward toward the court, carrying him along with them.

  Mean Marvin took one look at the mass of semihumanity racing toward him and instantly metamorphosed into Meek Marvin, high-tailing it to the locker room. A few spectators ran after him, but most filled the court.

  Suddenly a life-sized dummy that looked remarkably like Marvin McCoy appeared.

  “Here’s what we think of you, Mean Marvin!” cried a gremlin, throwing a rope over the backboard and tying it to the dummy’s neck. Someone else slipped Marvin’s discarded clothes onto the dummy, and set fire to it.

  The crowd screamed in ecstasy as Mean Marvin was burnt in effigy. Mallory was jostled this way and that, and suddenly found himself directly beneath the dummy. Just as he looked up at it, the rope holding it burned through, and the blazing dummy began falling toward him. Only the continued jostling saved him, as the dummy hit the court less that a foot away.

  Mallory ducked, threw up an arm to protect himself, bumped it against the dummy, and suddenly realized that his sleeve was about to catch fire. He brushed the sparks off his arm, flicking them onto his neighbors in the crowd, most of whom were totally oblivious to them.

  As he made his way toward an exit, he overheard one youthful gremlin, armed with an AK-47 and a flamethrower, laugh and say to his companion, “Hey, this is even more fun than a rock concert!”

  “It sure is,” came the reply. “I’m bringing my grenades when we play the Gorgons next week!”

  “Do your mothers know what you’re doing?” demanded an elderly gentleman in outraged tones.

  “Sure,” replied one of the gremlins. “They’re right next door, sticking hatpins into the wrestlers.”

  “Oh,” said the gentleman, taken somewhat aback. “I guess it’s okay, then.”

  Make it a soccer game, and it’s not all that different from my world, thought Mallory as he walked out the front door and hailed a cab.

  “Don’t you understand?” demanded Winnifred in exasperation. “You were almost killed by the Hanged Man.”

  “I was almost set on fire by a rag doll dressed in Marvin McCoy’s pants,” said Mallory. “There’s a difference.” “Damn it, John Justin!” she exploded. “You get a tarot card with your face on the Star, and a framed poster of Humphrey Bogart almost brains you. Then you get a card with yourself as the Hanged Man, and the dummy of a hanging man almost sets you on fire. Don’t you see that there’s a connection?”

  “It was a dummy, not a man,” protested Mallory.

  “And it was a poster of a star, not the star itself,” said Winnifred. “So what? Two cards, two attempts at murder.” “Oh, come on now,” muttered Mallory. “Surely you’re not suggesting that entire riot tonight was set up with the express purpose of dropping a burning dummy on me!”

  “Tarot doesn’t work that way,” she replied. “It’s mystical. It produced the Hanged Man because someone knew this was going to happen. Someone is tinkering with your life, John Justin, and if I can’t make you see it, then you’re going to be killed and there’s not a thing we can to do prevent it.”

  “What do you propose I do about it?” demanded Mallory. “Buy a crystal ball? Rent a magic wand? Hire the Grundy to protect me?”

  She shook her head. “Stop being facetious.”

  “It’s a ridiculous situation.”

  “It’s a deadly situation,” she corrected him. “I think you should see an expert.”

  “An expert in murder?”

  “Be serious, John Justin. An expert in the mystic sciences.”

  “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms—mystic sciences?”

  “Not in this Manhattan.”

  “All right, all right,” said Mallory with a defeated sigh. “Who should I see?”

  “Well, that’s a problem,” admitted Winnifred. “By rights, you should see an expert on tarot.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “There aren’t any experts on tarot in Manhattan. I only recognized those as tarot cards because I saw tarot decks when I was abroad.”

  “Okay, there aren’t any experts. Then what was all the fuss about?”

  “There are no tarot experts,” said Winnifred. “The greatest authority in the mystic sciences is the Queen of Diamonds.” She walked to the phone. “I’ll make an appointment and tell her it’s urgent.”

  “Tell her it’s idiotic.”

  “The most dangerous things often are,” replied Winnifred seriously.

  Mallory approached the small storefront with some trepidation. He couldn’t help feeling that this was a colossal waste of time, time that could be better spent trying to find a horse that was moving up in class and loved the mud.

  The sign above the door said it all:

  The Queen of Diamonds Palms Red, Futures Told

  Mallory entered the office and instantly heard a hissing sound. He looked down and saw a snake chasing a terrified mongoose around the office.

  Sitting at a circular table was a harsh-looking woman with biceps that would have done a prizefighter proud. She had the body of a linebacker, and the pound of makeup and lipstick that she had applied merely emphasized her lack of femininity. Her dress was black, with hundreds of little red hearts on it, and her rouge hadn’t quite hidden a heart on each cheek.

  A small man in a business suit sat next to her, a notepad in front of him, a quill pen in his hand.

  “You ought to give serious consideration to firing your sign painter,” said Mallory by way of introduction.

  “Why?” asked the Queen of Diamonds, in a voice that matched her physique. At the sound of it both the snake and the mongoose began trembling uncontrollably.

  “It says R-E-D.”

  “So?”

  ‘You want R-E-A-D,” continued Mallory.

  “Silliest thing I ever heard,” said the Queen, holding up her hands, and Mallory could see that the palms were bright red.

  “My mistake. You’re the Queen of Diamonds?”

  “At your service.”

  “My name is John Justin Mallory. I’m a detective. My partner, Winnifred Carruthers, suggested I see you.”

  “Winnie? How is the dear old buzzard?”

  “Worried.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said the Queen of Diamonds, placing a hand on a crystal ball and closing her eyes. “It’s a goiter. Definitely benign. Causing momentary distress, but surgery isn’t indicated at this moment.”

  “Actually, she’s worried that someone is trying to kill me,” said Mallory.

  “Well,” replied the Queen with a shrug, “it had to be one or the other.”

  “She also thought that maybe you could tell me who wants to kill me, and why.”

  “If anyone can do it, the Queen of Diamonds can,” she replied.

  “Actually, you look a lot more like the Queen of Hearts to me,” noted Mallory.

  “Off with his—” began the Queen.

  The little man next to her placed a restraining hand on her arm. “Tut-tut,” he said.

  “—fingernails,” she concluded weakly.

  “Much better, my dear,” he said. The little man turned to Mallory. “She used to be the Queen of Hearts,” he explained. “I’ve been hired to change her image.”

  “Why?”

  “She made too many enemies.”

  “I thought most of them didn’t live long enough to do her any damage,” said Mallory.

  “That was in the old days,” said the Queen’s publicist. “Last year was the final straw. Electricians Local 708 went on strike because of all the beheadings—they had invested their pension funds in an electric chair manufacturer—and the kingdom was without power for months.”

  “Off with all their—” began the Queen.

  “Tut-tut, my dear.”

  “—mustaches,” she finished lamely.

  “Look,” s
aid Mallory. “Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

  “NONSENSE!” bellowed the Queen as three windows shattered and the mongoose fainted dead away.

  “Well, as long as you feel that way about it . . said Mallory.

  “Details,” said the Queen. “I need details.”

  “I keep receiving tarot cards with my image on them, and it’s remotely possible that someone is trying to kill me in ways that are suggested by the cards.”

  “Ah,” said the Queen with a look of grim satisfaction. “We’ll soon get to the bottom of this.”

  “What do you know about tarot cards?” asked Mallory.

  “Absolutely nothing,” she admitted. “But I know almost everything there is to know about murder. Let me see your hand.” Mallory stretched his hand out, and the Queen scrutinized it closely. “Yes,” she muttered. “Absolutely. No question about it. It’s here, and here, and over here too.” Finally she looked up. “I find it difficult to believe.”

  “What are you seeing?” asked Mallory.

  She tried to suppress an amused smirk. “You’ve actually bet on Flyaway 33 times in a row!”

  “That’s all you see?”

  “Well, I also see that you don’t wash your hands after every meal. I shudder to think of the way your elbows must look.”

  “What about the tarot cards?”

  “I’ve never seen one. We don’t have them in Manhattan.”

  “Why not?” asked Mallory curiously.

  “Because the only possible illustration for the Death card would be the image of the Grundy, and since he demands an exorbitant royalty for the use of it, the manufacturers simply don’t distribute their cards in Manhattan.”

  “Surely they could use a different symbol for Death,” said Mallory.

  “Name a better one.”

  Mallory considered the question and finally shrugged. “You have a point.” He began to get to his feet. “Thank you for your time. I think I’d better be getting back to the office now.”

  “I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU YET!” said the Queen at a decibel level that flattened the snake and caused a crack to form on the wall behind her. “SIT!”

  Mallory sat back down.

  “Take off that ridiculous hat.”

  Mallory removed the fedora.

  “Now lean over.”

  He leaned across the table, and she began feeling his head with long, incredibly strong fingers.

  “Ah!” she said. “This is more like it. This is something I can get my teeth into!”

  Mallory flinched at the thought of the Queen’s teeth digging into his skull, but finally decided that it was merely a figure of speech, since she kept probing his head with her fingers.

  ‘Yes, I see it all clearly now,” said the Queen. “The fog is lifting, and what remains is the truth.”

  “Good,” said Mallory. “What do you see?”

  “Neil Armstrong will be the first man to set foot on the moon,” she intoned as if in a trance. “Seattle Slew will beat Affirmed by three lengths in the Marlboro Cup. Lincoln will free the slaves.”

  “I guess the only difference between my head and the World Almanac is that the World Almanac isn’t losing its hair,” remarked Mallory dryly.

  “DON’T INTERRUPT!”

  “Sorry,” said Mallory meekly.

  She kept probing his scalp with her fingers. “Solomon will have 700 wives, but he’ll have a special spot in his heart for number 493. Saint Augustine’s boasting of his debaucheries will be misinterpreted as contrition. Babe Ruth will call his shot against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series.” She pressed her fingers against his head even harder. “Here it is! Someone’s trying to kill you, Mallory!”

  “That’s it?” demanded Mallory. “That’s the sum total of everything you’ve learned from reading my skull and my palm and looking into your crystal ball?”

  “Not entirely,” she replied defensively. “I also know you have dandruff and that your fingernails are filthy.” “Thanks a heap,” said Mallory, getting to his feet again.

  “I can tell you one more thing, Mr. Mallory,” said the Queen of Diamonds.

  He stopped at the door and turned back to her.

  “What is it?”

  “Something’s fishy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “You said something’s fishy.”

  “Right.”

  “And I said, what does it mean when you say something’s fishy?”

  “You want interpretations, go see an oracle,” answered the Queen of Diamonds. “I deal in facts. And it’s a fact that something’s fishy.”

  Mallory left even more confused than when he had entered.

  “Well, John Justin,” said Winnifred when he returned to the office, “how did it go?”

  “About as I expected.”

  “That bad?”

  He lit a bent Camel and didn’t answer.

  “Are you at least convinced that the danger is real?” persisted Winnifred.

  “Everyone seems to think so,” said Mallory noncommittally. “Well, almost everyone. Maybe I ought to go to the source.”

  “The source of the threats?”

  “The source of all magic and all evil, so I can find out if these damned cards are actually predicting what’s happening.”

  “The Grundy?” gasped Winnifred.

  “The Grundy.”

  “But he’s the most powerful demon on the East Coast!”

  “Outside of you, he’s also the only person in this world who’s never lied to me.”

  “Well, I won’t have any part of it,” said Winnifred. “I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back after he’s gone.”

  She walked out and slammed the door behind her.

  Mallory looked around the office, and finally found what he was looking for, lying languorously atop the refrigerator.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I’m not afraid of the Grundy,” said Felina.

  “It’s nice to have one loyal friend,” said Mallory.

  “Oh, I’m not loyal and I’m not really your friend,” she corrected him. “I’ll desert you in the end. But I’m not afraid of the Grundy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, John Justin.”

  “Oh well, we might as well get this show on the road,” said Mallory, walking over to the phone. He picked it up and dialed G-R-U-N-D-Y, then waited. But instead of summoning the demon, as it had in the past, the only thing that happened this time was the receiver was filled with maniacal laughter.

  “Maybe he changed his number,” muttered Mallory.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to you,” offered Felina.

  “There must be some way to attract his attention,” said Mallory, looking around the office. Finally his gaze fell upon the morning paper, which, as usual, featured a drawing of the Grundy. (Photographs of him turned out blank.)

  Mallory cut out the drawing, taped it to a wall, then took out his personal set of darts from a desk drawer. He withdrew a dart, took careful aim, and hurled it at the demon’s left eye.

  Suddenly a clawed hand materialized out of thin air, just in time to catch the dart before it reached its target. The hand was attached to a strange being that appeared an instant later. He was tall, a few inches over six feet, with two prominent horns protruding from his hairless head. His eyes were a burning yellow, his nose sharp and aquiline, his teeth white and gleaming, his skin a bright red. His shirt and pants were crushed velvet, his cloak satin, his collar and cuffs made of the fur of some white polar animal. He wore gleaming black gloves and boots, and he had two mystic rubies suspended from his neck on a golden chain. When he exhaled, small clouds of vapor emanated from his mouth and nostrils.

  “I thought that might bring you here,” said Mallory. “Permit me to say that I have even less admiration for your sense of humor than your ethics,” replied the Grundy coldly. “What is it that you want
from me, John Justin Mallory?”

  “Tell me about tarot cards.”

  “They are exactly like playing cards, only different.” “You’re not being very helpful,” noted Mallory.

  “It is not my function to be helpful,” answered the Grundy.

  “Don’t explain your function to me again,” said Mallory. “I’m in a hurry. Someone is trying to kill me.” “That pleasure is reserved for me.”

  “Good,” said Mallory. “Then you stop him.”

  “I cannot,” said the Grundy with honest regret. “My nature forbids me from interfering with acts of violence.” “Then tell me who’s trying to kill me and where I can find him, and maybe, as the bride-to-be said to her fiance, I can save myself for you.”

  The Grundy shook his head. “I cannot.”

  “Against your religion, huh?”

  “You think I have free will,” said the Grundy, “but in truth, my actions are as constricted as your own. Perhaps even more so.”

  “You’re saying that you’re like a blackjack dealer who wants to hit on 17?” suggested Mallory.

  “An infantile analogy, but not without an element of truth.”

  “Then can you just tell me if these damned tarot cards are influencing events, or if they’re just my would-be killer’s way of teasing me?”

  ‘Yes.”

  “Yes, they’re influencing events, or yes, they’re simply his calling cards?”

  ‘Yes, I can tell you.”

  Mallory sighed. “But no, you won’t?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Is there anything you can tell me?”

  “There is one thing,” said the Grundy.

  “What?”

  ‘You had better solve this puzzle quickly, for your opponent is not likely to make too many more mistakes.” “Who is my opponent?”

  “That,” said the Grundy, starting to fade from view, “would be telling.”

  “That’s the general idea,” said Mallory, but he was talking to an empty space where the demon formerly stood. Suddenly he noticed Felina sniffing the air. “Is he still around?”

  “No. He’s vanished to wherever he vanishes to,” said the cat girl. “And he took your dart with him.”

  “What were you smelling, then?”