Bolg, PI: Wolfy Ladies (Bolg PI), page 1
part #3 of Bolg, PI Series
Bolg, PI: Wolfy Ladies
Dave Freer
Electronic edition published by Dave Freer, September 2012.
En earlier version of this short story has appeared in the collection STRIP MAULED (published 2009) edited by Esther Friesner. It is not available elsewhere electronically, or as a stand alone story. All rights to the story are mine.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Bolg, PI: Wolfy Ladies
Dave Freer
“Yes. A werewolf in an advertising agency... That’s me,” Scarlett said, crossing her long slim legs. She was wearing a skirt. Or at least quite a broad belt. The top was low-cut enough for most men not to notice the choker she wore. A beautiful piece -- Irish at a guess, a golden eagle in flight, each feather perfect, with ruby-chip eyes. The rubies matched her lipstick. “I was told you were quite used to that sort of thing.”
“A very appropriate profession, I would say,” I said calmly. I was a little low on silver bullets right now. Actually, I was low on silver of any sort, being down to copper, which is why I had taken on this job. I’m a private investigator. Nature dealt my genes a couple of odd hands. I’m a dwarf. Not the beard-axe-and-gold-obsession kind from fantasy, but the kind with achondroplasia. It meant that I investigated all the weird to paranormal cases. There are a lot more of them than you’d think. It’s bias, but then I have my own biases. I don’t like working for women or even cases involving women. I can deal with men, repress them suitably, and help them to understand that height and size do not equal ‘superior’... Men understand this instinctively, or at leat once I explain it a little with my Glock. Women never do. But I’ve been around a long time and learned to sort of cope with women better than most men. ‘Cause genetics dealt me another odd card, in that I have abnormal telomeres. I’m not a geneticist, but it means that I’m still not dead, and I should have been, a long time back.
People keep trying to change that, but I’m better at avoiding death than dealing with women.
You could say the same about the man Scarlett wanted me to find: Fintan mac Bóchra. He was supposed to have married one of Noah’s granddaughters, which is sort of possible as he might have spent the flood as a salmon. The salmon symbol on which he worked the magic would have to survive, but enchanted metal doesn’t drown any more than salmon do. Fintan was a shape-shifter and symbolic magician extraordinaire. He’d been the wise man to generations of Irish kings. He was a genius with anything except money or women. Or at least, as far as he let’s on, about the money. He always says he’s broke, which may be the secret to not being broke. Oh, and he’s also a master of sartorial elegance. He wears an old robe and he doesn’t like hairbrushes. Just her type.
“So what’s the interest in Fin, Ms.? Romantic?” I asked.
She waved a langorous hand at me, the inch-long red nails perfectly manicured. “Oh please! His potions. I’m only a wolf at full moon, sweetie, and Fintan being missing is playing havoc with my social life and my love life, aside from the probability of my being done for murder, animal cruelty and occasional casual sex with Alsatians. Do you know how embarrassing and demeaning that is? But when a bitch-wolf is on heat and the nearest male wolf is in some wildlife refuge a thousand miles away... a girl has to do what she’s got to do.”
Too much information already! My mind insisted on illustrating the scene for me. “You could, er, go on holiday...” my voice trailed off. She wasn’t the camping-hiking kind, and wolves don’t keep dogs. They consider being kept demeaning, and look down on dogs, preferably just before ripping them apart.
She sniffed. “Wildlife reserves. Huh. I tried visiting one of those dumps at the right time of year - and you thought PMS was a problem! Darling, they’re just so primitive. I don’t DO the countryside, unless it comes with a luxury spa, jacuzzi and heated towel rails. And I haven’t heard any complaints from the Alsatians. I mean, they should be so lucky.”
They should. The rest of the time she was the original Coco Chanel girl from the tips of her Manolo Blahniks to her hair extensions. Anyway, I gather Alsatians aren’t proud. You pick up that sort of information in my line of work. Actually, I could find her a couple of werewolves. This ‘burg had a few. “Anyway, Ms. Ralph...”
“Scarlett, Mr Bolg,” she said, with a coquettish tilt of the head. The behavior was as intinctive to her as breathing.
Huh. Did she think I was going to fall for that one? ‘Oh call me Eochaid’?: I wasn’t born yesterday, or even the day before. Back where I come from we still know that giving someone your real name is a bad idea. Okay, there are some things to be said for the twenty-first century. Being four foot seven high and tattooed in blue patterns from head to foot (it’s a cultural thing. Which means you don’t ask and I won’t tell too many lies) no longer means I can only work in a circus. A chopped Harley and a leather jacket and the world is my snot-flavored bivalve. But people forget things that were hard-learned. Look at Fintan. Smart as a whip, but he’d ended up doing time trapped as a salmon and a hawk, and an eagle, and two out of three times had been because of women. Not me. I still got the scars from the first time. I ignored the bait. “So, Scarlett, when did you last see Fintan?” I asked, taking out my note-pad.
She looked at me through her sooty false eye-lashes. “I’m paying you to find him, Mr Bolg. Not to suffer the inquisition. I saw him when I got my last fix, of course. I’ve given you the names of a couple of other girl-wolves. Check them out. If anyone asks how you knew... You can say you come from me.”
She loved saying that bit about the fix, naturally. It would amuse her perverse sense of humor. And it had the merit of being true. The potions Fin sold would fix her bodyform, at least for a while. Humans have this idea that shape-shifting is wonderous, and to be sure it is, at a board-meeting, or when the other side is winning. It’s just not a good trait when it happens inconveniently. Times have changed, and if you’re going to live among the rest of society, well, controlling the shifts helps. Fintan’s potions were a blessing to the average suburban shape-shifter. That’s why they tended to gravitate close to here. To be near the supplier. Word got around among the undead and non-humans too. Fin was a master at shape-shifting himself. He could even split himself in two. Which was very clever, very useful except that you had to get the two halves back together to have Fintan.
I took my leave of her, and took the bike grumbling through town to Fintan’s cave. He hadn’t been there the last time I’d called in. Or the time before that, come to think of it. I had wondered where he’d got to. Or just who he was avoiding. The thing was, after so many centuries, there were more than a few he needed or at least wanted to avoid. And if he was in his cave and didn’t want to be found you had no real chance of doing so. He was a shape-shifter and an illusionist par excellence, when he needed to be. Which, because of women, and occassionally money, was not infrequently. We’ve known each other a long time. He’s never borrowed money -- or at least not enough to worry about, or seriously expect back -- from me, and I’m not his chosen gender-of-interest.
I felt some qualms going into the cave uninvited. Not because I’ve really ever got this whole invasion of privacy thing, but because messing about uninvited in a magician’s cave is just plain stupid. Half of the things in there could kill you, and the other half would. I listened carefully.
But other than a pair of stereoisometric models playing ping-pong with their spare ball and a fossil Hipposiderid, the place was unusually silent. The parrot swam around its tank without a single obscenity. The Schaumberg-Congreve device continued spiraling sponges, powering the flywheel. But nothing else seemed to be moving. I made my way further into the cave cautiously. I’m pretty sure not Fintan himself knows all of it. It has branches, and I am fairly sure not all of them are there all of the time. But Fin always knows when you’re in there. He’s always had a cave, no matter where he’s lived. I have a suspicion they may all be the same cave, which I try to avoid thinking about to much.
This time all trace I could see of him was a case of Jamison’s next to a battered green Rococo Chaise-longue. Ten of the bottles were empty.
Now I had reason to be worried. There were two full bottles, and they had spiderwebs on them.
That was abnormal.
I looked around, examining the scene.
There were three glasses on the floor. Murano glass, I’d guess... Sixteenth century. And very suspiciously only one of them was empty.
Sniffing the other two, most of the alcohol had evaporated away long since. But they’d been full glasses... and left there.
Now I was really worried.
So I left the cave and went to consult one of my informants in a nearby shopping mall. It involved climbing into an access flue to the under-roof space at the top of
“Cost you a pigeon up front,” Larry growled before I even started to speak.
I’ve got a message for the architects in this town: When you do fake Gothic, to add a bit of character to the roof of your mall, the big trick to remember is to put the gargoyles at a height, and in a place, where they can catch their own pigeons. Sooner or later all gargoyles become animate, even concrete ones. It’s symbolic magic, see. Same with the garden gnomes, only the gargoyles are less bad-tempered.
Anyway, Larry sees everything around here, at least everything he can see from up there. He doesn’t sleep and doesn’t move much, and he sees far too much and he remembers all of it. Very useful to a PI... except he doesn’t give information away for nothing either. He doesn’t want much for it... Except pigeons. They sit on a sill about four feet above him, and his arms are only three feet long and he doesn’t jump well. I had one ready in my bag, so I gave it to him, ignoring its squawks of outrage. Contrary to rumor, Gargoyles don’t eat them. Just hold them down and pay the pigeons back. I’ll spare you the details, but I reckon the pigeons would rather be eaten. I waited patiently. There is no other way with gargoyles. Eventually he gave a stony sigh of satisfaction and asked “So whatcha want, Blue-boy?”
It’s the tattoos. From a distance I am blue. “Fintan.”
“Ain’t seen him in coupla months. He useta regularly get chucked out for loitering before that,” said the gargoyle with deep satisfaction. He and Fintan have had words. As the words of a magician are such you’d rather not have them, he treats Fin with respect bordering on fear, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still be pleased at his misfortunes.
“That’s a pretty poor return for a pigeon. I got pecked catching that one,” I said reproachfully.
“Thass the breaks, Blue-boy.” He gave a rumble that might have been gargoyle stomach noises, or maybe a laugh. “But ask me another. I needed that pigeon.”
“Werewolves. You seen any lately?” I asked. “Changed ones, that is.”
“Funny you should ask,” said the gargoyle. “You don’t see them with the fur out much, but lately... full moon and there’s a pack running. I saw them over on that vacant lot by Campher’s yard. In between the used cars they got parked there. Hunting hobos, most likely.”
Now if there is anything that is just un-natural it is weres hunting hobos. Werewolves are not your equal opportunity biter. They have a tradition to stick to. Their nearest and dearest (if they don’t happen to be wolves themselves), and then soft white throats. They weren’t going to find many of their normal diet items among the clapped-out special bargains on the lot. “Anyone you recognised?”
“Coulda have been, “ he said, coughing meaningfully.
“What about an IOU?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Paper is no substitute for a pigeon,” was his gruff reply.
And he wouldn’t take plastic or Kentucky either, I knew.
So I had a choice -- go pigeon hunting or try to read between the lines. It had to be someone I would know. That rounded it down nicely to half the town. And someone that didn’t fit the bill of ‘ordinary human’. That was down to about five percent, then. Only problem was that even I didn’t always know when they weren’t ‘ordinary’, which left me back where I had started.
Much to my regret I was going to have to try arcane means. I hate the yellow pages, and if I’d been any good as a magic worker, I wouldn’t have been working in the private investigations line. OK, so most of my work is with the undead -- but ask any PI: that’s normal. Right now it was the phone book or following Scarlett’s leads... So I went back to my place, and faced up to it.
Now, I’d like to say that I live in palatial splendor, but I haven’t done that for a thousand years. If I had a ratty office it would go with the image, but I work from home. I spent my pension money from the freak-show and circus on buying property back when it was both reasonable and a good investment. I’ve got a white picket fence and so far I have managed to resist putting the skulls of my enemies on the spikes. I’ve grown some sweet-peas on the trellis, though, which is nearly as good.
It took me a while to get the divination paraphernalia out of the attic. It was one of Fintan’s experiments... which meant that it was brilliant, expensive, and dangerous. He liked high-end symbolic magic... In the old days it was just a quick appeal to the Gods, a slash of the athame and a spill of entrails, but there are bylaws about that kind of thing now. I don’t always operate strictly inside the law, but it didn’t work too well anyway. Not that fuzzy logic, electronic inertial dithering, and a CD of Gregorian chants played backwards can’t mess me around badly, but once I’ve hooked up the laptop to the mechanical dart-thrower, there is no way out of the spell that isn’t terminal.
I switched on the fan, put the telephone book in the pentacle and took cover, hoping the neighbors wouldn’t complain about the wailing again. Last time the dart ended up in the attending officer’s forehead. I got off on self-defence, seeing that it had worked, and it turned out that he was the murder-perp I was looking for.
This time the dart ripped through my earlobe, ricochetted off the shoulder of a small marble bust of Beethoven on the piano, and severed the electric cable to the hanging light in a shower of sparks and cascading light-fitting.
In the sudden darkness and silence I heard the solid thunk of the dart hitting paper. PI’s like me, with experience of the arcane, always put a flashlight in their pockets before doing this sort of experiment.
Some of them probably remember to check the batteries first too.
I found and lit one of the black candles without breaking too much more or setting fire to anything. I crunched across the glass to the telephone directory.
The dart had spiked through a bunch of oyster-folded and half-torn pages, in a sort of phone-book origami of a wolf’s-head.
I went and tried the earth leakage switch on the mains. It must have been my lucky day, because the rest of the lights, the chants and the fan came on again. By the time I had the CD player turned off, the breeze from the fan had ripped several of the dart-stabbed pages. Oh yeah. Divination and the occult, at its best!
I sat and made a list -- as best I could -- from the ripped pages. Some of it was so obvious... natural professions for werewolves, occupations where the wolfish side was bound to help, like repossessions and dog-catching. Or ones that could be really useful to shape-changing wolves... like Marie’s Manicure and Beauty Salon. The top page was really shredded... something that began with an A.
I decided that a manicurist was safer than a repo man. Shows how wrong you can be. Oddly -- none of them were names from Scarlett’s list. And yet part of the search parameters I’d entered into the programme had been ‘Fintan’ and ‘werewolf’.
***
I kicked the bike onto its stand, just in time to hear a shriek of mortal agony from inside the Beauty Salon. Once I would have kicked the door in and entered swinging a sword around. Now... I just loosened the Glock in its holster and peered in at a window.
Someone peered right back at me. Opened the door. She was one of those leggy women who always make me feel even shorter. “Get out of here before I call the cops,” she snapped.
“I thought you might need me to call them for you,” I said as I heard another choked-off scream.
