11

By the time we’ve made our way out to Hollywood and begun the climb up through Laurel Canyon, I’ve worked up a pretty good head of steam. I’m incensed enough that there might be a cover-up going on here, but even angrier that I may have been taken for a fool. Rupert was under my care when he died—okay, technically he’d been declared officially sane by Dr. B., but that doesn’t preclude the fact that it was me who got him into the mess in the first place—and I don’t take well to playing the chump.

“I want you to stay away from that . . . that woman,” Ernie tells me. “Let me do the talking.”

“No problem,” I say, though I know that the problem is actually very real and very large. Ignoring Circe when I’m in her presence is like ignoring a polka-dotted elephant doing a samba through the Russian Tea Room. She’s been on my mind more and more often since the last burst of pheromones at Rupert’s funeral, and I’ve got to admit that more than a few dreams have been haunted by that ethereal presence and those savory seasonings.

We arrive at the outer gate to find it, predictably, shut, and the guard, predictably, stubborn. It’s the same fellow from the last time, but he doesn’t recognize us.

“We were here a few weeks ago,” I say. “For the meeting. The meeting.”

His hand doesn’t move toward the gate button. “Don’t care if you were here for the Pope’s birthday party”—and I wouldn’t be surprised if this had been the venue for such a shindig—“you still can’t come in without a pass.”

“Can you make a phone call? This is all I’m asking.”

“If you don’t have a pass—”

“One lousy phone call!” I yell, then drop my voice back to a lower register. “Tell Circe it’s her friend from the funeral, that’s all. She’ll—”

“Please turn your car around. This is private property, sir, and I don’t make the rules.”

“I appreciate that—”

“I don’t think you do,” interrupts the guard. Now he’s moving toward us, and instead of the typical dino gesture of threat—baring of the teeth, unsnapping of the gloves—he actually pulls his jacket aside and flashes a gun. A gun, of all things!

“That’s disgusting,” says Ernie, unable to help himself. I can see distaste well up past his throat, making for his tongue, his lips. There’s a great aversion to unnatural weapons, especially among the older generation of dinos, and Ernie’s no exception.

But the guard doesn’t move an inch, doesn’t even try to cover the weapon up. He feels no shame. “You fellas wanna move along now?” The gun glints in the remaining sunlight, the barrel shiny and new. Probably never been fired, but I can’t take the chance that his lack of practice guarantees bad aim.

Ernie leans across me and out of the car window. “Now you listen to me, you chickenshit piece of a Compy—you pick up your little phone there and tell the boss that two gentlemen from the other night are asking to see her—”

“No can do,” says the guard. “Turn the car around. I’m not going to ask you again.” His hand moves slowly toward the weapon on his hip, coming to rest lightly on the butt. With a grunt, I push Ernie off my lap and back into his seat. I get into enough daily trouble thanks to my partner, I don’t need to be shot for trespassing by a rent-a-cop who thinks he’s the dino answer to Charles Bronson. “Maybe we can go back to Hollywood Boulevard,” I suggest to Ernie. “Get our friend Bob to wrangle us another invite.”

Too late. Unsnapping his seat belt in a smooth, single movement, Ernie pops the locks on my Lincoln and leaps out of the passenger seat, volume at eleven and rising. “Bullshit! Get on your phone, apefucker, and call up to the house—”

I’m up and out of the car, but not before Ernie and the guard have met face-to-face in front of the hood, human-guised noses no more than a centimeter apart. If they were to take off their masks and facial straps right now, their snouts would certainly bump into each other, causing two ugly nosebleeds.

“Hold up,” I say, trotting around to get between these two hotheads. “Hold up.”

But simultaneously each puts out an arm to block my way, and the combined force sends me sprawling back across the hood of my car—scraping my leg on the ornament—and onto the asphalt on the other side.

I look up just in time to see Ernie spitting out his bridge—the worn, human dentures clattering to the ground like a prizefighter’s mouthpiece, kicking up dirt where they land, the bright, sharp teeth snapping hard against one another—as the guard reaches for his gun, fingers grasping the butt tightly, pulling it up and out of the holster, taking dead aim on my partner and best friend’s unprotected chest—

I should probably scream here. No, or Stop, or something of that sort, which can be so moving when played back in slow motion.

The phone rings.

Ernie’s midair bite comes to a halt, leaving his mouth in a confused, half-open grimace. The guard relaxes his grip. The phone rings again. Backing up slowly, keeping a quarter of an eye on me but the rest on Ernie and his rows of sharpened teeth, the guard reaches into his booth and lifts the handset. “Yes? Yes, ma’am. Yes, they . . . No, he was going to . . . Yes. Yes, ma’am. I understand. Thank you.”

We get a pass. We get an apology. We get super-detailed instructions on how to drive up to the main house and where to park. We make the guard repeat them three times even though we already know full well how to get there. We spin the wheels and kick dust in his face as we drive off.

The little smattering of daylight that remains before the sun drops over the hills reflects off the marble columns of the main house, throwing the whole thing even further back to its ancient architectural roots. Ernie and I trudge through the parking lot—surprisingly, there are quite a number of autos parked here—up the hillside stairs, and into the main corridor, fully prepared to check our costumes. But the Ornithomimus from the other night’s meeting is not at her assigned spot, and the guise-check room is locked up tighter than the waterproof sealant on a Nakitara Gold series Latex Bonding Package #9.

“We’re not always so informal,” comes a voice from down at the other end of the corridor. “We like to be natural, sure, but it’s a hassle if you’re running errands in the outside world all day.” An Iguanodon—unguised—is walking toward us, familiar in some way. It’s the deep voice that gets me, the one two shades lower than that of James Earl Jones—who is, by the way, one of the dinosaur community’s most prized actors. I saw him do Othello once in an all-dino cast, and to see such a masterpiece performed the way Shakespeare intended it—with an Allosaur in the title role—was nothing short of breathtaking.

Got it now—he’s the one who introduced Circe at the party the other night. The memory returns just in time, for as the Iguanodon approaches, I’m able to stick out my hand and say, “Samuel, right?”

“Yes. Circe sent me to come get you. Please, follow.”

We trail after Samuel, his tail swishing mesmerizingly back and forth along the ground. Even though I’ve been told it’s not necessary, I feel an urge to rip off my guise and go naked and free, but we don’t stop in any one place long enough for me to unfasten any of the buckles. Ernie notices what I’m trying to do and slaps my hand away. “Leave your damn clothes on,” he mutters. So old-fashioned.

The house becomes mustier as we make our way through, and whether it’s from dust bunnies or something blooming nearby, my sinuses are starting to act up. A few sneezes later, I take a handkerchief from my pocket and wipe down my nose, dismayed to find that nothing’s coming out; I must have misaligned the nostril holes again, which means by the end of the day, I’ll end up with a lovely trail of mucus gumming up the works beneath my mask. It’s times like this—the misalignments, the pinched buckles, the poorly tightened straps—that make me want to throw myself headlong into the Progressive lifestyle, to rip it all away and go running wild, much as the ancestors must have done in the carefree days when the mammals were more interested in swinging from trees and having sex with anything that moved than they were in eradicating other sentient species from the planet.

We wend our way through another series of corridors, passing through countless doors and passageways, everything set off by more of that dino artwork. Many of them are unfamiliar, as I’ve always been something of a Philistine when it comes to the visual arts, but some of the pieces are nevertheless familiar to me, due to whatever cultural concepts have filtered into my brain by chance over years of osmosis. I know that for every mammalian piece that Modigliani put out, for example, he produced at least one in a more naturalistic state. Woman with Child was meant for humans to marvel at; Bronto Lies Down was painted strictly for our persuasion. And, lo and behold, there it is on the wall, resplendent in its verdant hues. And it is, no doubt, the original.

I try not to sneeze on it.

A series of winding staircases are next, a double helix of steps curving round and about one another, and after what feels like a climb through the Andes, we arrive at the top floor and a tight, narrow corridor leading to a single door at the end of the hall.

“Vincent,” cooes Circe as we enter a room filled with cushioned chairs and throw pillows scattered on the plush carpeting below. It’s the 1970s version of a harem, only green instead of pink, and a shade too bright to be accidentally tacky. “It’s so good to see you again. Better times, yes?” A flowing green gown covers her otherwise naked, natural Raptor hide, a slit in the back cut out for that sensually curved tail. “And Mr. Watson, a pleasure.”

We’re each given a hand to shake and a peck on the cheek, and I must admit that my body instinctively dives in for a whiff of that maddening scent. Strangely enough, it’s barely present. I expect to be transported to a world of Pterodactyls and Diplodoci, but I find only a hint of cilantro and marjoram, hardly enough to send me back in time even five short minutes. I’ll get more accomplished this way, sure, but I can’t say I’m not disappointed.

“Lovely room you have here,” I tell her. “Very . . . comfy.”

A little lip-curl, a bat of the lashes. “It’s my lounge. I come here before large events, to . . . prepare, if you will.”

“Large events?” I ask.

“Yes. I’m sad to say, but we’ve had some misfortune of our own,” purrs Circe. “A dear friend has passed on—”

“I’m sorry—”

“She was very old, her time had come. She was at peace with the ancestors. But the funeral is downstairs in a few minutes—we do seem to meet at these occasions, don’t we?”

“We could come back,” Ernie suggests, some vestige of social graces clinging to his investigator’s tone.

“Please, stay. I have a few moments. Now, what can I do for you boys?” asks Circe, curling her tail up and around her body. She’s got incredible control over that thing—it glides through the air with ease, flicking out at my knee, almost teasing it while she speaks.

“My . . . friend and I have been talking,” I begin, “ever since that first night. About Progress, about what you believe in, what you stand for.”

“Good, good. We encourage discourse,” she says.

“And then the funeral, when we saw you . . .”

Circe nods empathetically. “Yes, quite a shame.” That tail of hers still on the move, still making for me. I try to evade, but that thin slab of flesh manages to work its way down to my feet and up into the leg of my pants, seeking out the latex covering beneath. I leap backward, and Ernie shoots me a confused look.

He takes over. “Did it bother you when Rupert left the group?”

“Bother me? No. Was I concerned for him? Of course. We’re all free to live our lives however we choose, Mr. Watson, but it saddens me when a dinosaur, so previously entrenched on the road to a meaningful, fulfilling life, strays from the path of truth.”

“He seemed happy enough.”

“Until he killed himself, you mean?” Point one for Circe.

I step up. “We’re interested in your organization. In the next step.”

“You wish to join, then? It’s not an easy path.”

“We understand. But it . . . it intrigues us. Though we have some questions.”

“Don’t we all?” she says. “Please, anything I can do to help is purely my pleasure.” Another caress with the tail.

Now a wholly different part of my guise is tightening up, and I have to think about nuns and painful vaccinations and old horses being sent out to pasture in order to relieve the tension. I’m quite glad at this point that I was unable to disrobe earlier; the H-series of buckles wrapped tightly around my groin is keeping me from a world of embarrassment.

“Well, gentlemen,” says Circe, “are we going to stand around all night or get to it?”

“Get—get to it?” stammers Ernie. He’s flushed, the old dickens! I’m glad to see that it’s not just me who’s been rising to the occasion.

“You had questions, didn’t you?” Circe backs up to a massive beanbag chair on the ground and plops atop it. “I assume some of these questions you have are about your friend.”

“And yours, if I’m not mistaken.”

She nods and amends her statement. “And mine. Though I must be frank, I did not know your friend very well. We’ve had a great number of converts in recent years, and though I wish I could get to know them all personally, I am unable to.”

“But isn’t the goal one of personal communication between dinosaurs?” I say.

“Of unfettered communication, yes. We believe that our costumes—like that guise you’re wearing now, manufactured by an impersonal conglomerate somewhere in Japan—”

“Taiwan, actually,” I correct. “It’s a Nakitara, but from their secondary plant.”

“Taiwan, then. These costumes only serve to separate us from ourselves, but perhaps even more importantly, they separate us from our fellow creatures. Did you know that back in the days of our ancestors, we could make positive identification of one another from miles away?”

“I didn’t—I mean, I’d heard, but it’s just an old wives tale, right?”

“Why is it,” ponders Circe, “that an old husband is wise, while old wives are full of nonsense? No matter. There are others—old wives, young husbands—who say we were able to communicate with our scents. Not verbally, mind you, but almost in hallucination. In meaning. In spirit.” Is she talking directly to me here? Did she feel what I felt back at the party the other night? At the funeral?

“What’s the point?” asks Ernie. “We’ve got phones nowadays.”

“And maybe that’s a problem, too,” says Circe. “We rely on such modern conveniences only because we’re following the mammalian construct. We had the ability to create such technology tens of millions of years before the humans climbed down out of the trees, but did we? Certainly not. Because we didn’t need to. We had everything we wanted, and none of the problems inherent in this so-called modernized society.”

“Sounds romanticized to me,” I point out.

“How so?”

“Everything was better back in the good old days,” I say. “Talk to any geezer, they’ll tell ya.”

Circe can’t help but laugh, a giggle that sends a tingle down to the tip of my tail. “Perhaps you’re more advanced than we thought,” she says, and leaves it at that.

We chitchat our way through more of the Progressive belief system, most of which revolves around reestablishing closer ties with both the ancestors and their ways, and in doing so, becoming a whole dinosaur. Or something like that; even after a fifteen-minute in-depth discussion on the matter, I’m not quite sure. “Are you saying we’re only part dinosaur now?” asks Ernie.

Circe nods. “I’m saying we’re but mere fractions of our possible selves.”

All of this philosophy has got my head spinning ‘round. I stand up from my cushion and stretch my legs. “I must say, it’s a fascinating system you’ve come up with.”

“Oh, it’s not mine,” says Circe. “Any more than the group is mine, or this house is mine. It’s all of ours, all of it, but we do owe a lot to our founder.”

This must be the one that Jules told us about back at the wax museum—the vacuum-cleaner salesman with the ego complex. “And where is he?” I ask.

“Oh, Raal doesn’t come around much anymore,” says Circe, and that name strikes a chord with me. Raal. “He’s one hundred percent dinosaur natural, and I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it is to maintain such an incredibly high level of Progress living in a mammalian-dominated society.”

I assume that “doesn’t come around much” is her euphemism for dead, but it’s possible that Circe actually believes that instead of moving on to a better place, this Raal simply moved on to a different place. “So we can’t see him,” says Ernie.

“Oh, not until you’re further along,” is Circe’s response. Then she stands up and brushes off the few strands of dust that have clung to her green velvet robe. “I’m afraid the funeral is about to begin. Would you boys like to attend?”

Odds are, there’ll be some free grub afterward, so Ernie and I hop after Circe as she makes her way downstairs. Her movement is effortless, graceful, Audrey Hepburn all the way, and I feel like the most awkward of toddlers walking next to her.

As we approach the ballroom, there’s a murmur similar to the one from the other night, but this time it’s lower, more somber, and behind it is a familiar pop and crackle that I’m currently unable to place. Halfway between a giant bowl of Rice Krispies and the white noise of a radio tuned to a missing station, it almost sounds like . . . like . . .

Fire. Flaming licks of heat steam up from a wide hole carved into the ballroom floor, the air above shimmering in a decadent belly dance of carbon dioxide and ash. The sheer temperature variation pushes me back out of the ballroom for a second, but I steel myself and enter the sweltering area, making myself at home among the horde of other dinos—some in costume, some natural—waiting for the festivities to begin.

I certainly didn’t notice anything like this the first time I was inside the ballroom, but as I look closer—shielding my eyes against the glare with the side of my hand—I can see that the floor has been retracted, possibly mechanically, and that the miniature version of Hades ten feet down is filled with what looks a lot like molten lava, if my Discovery Channel memory serves.

“Nice fire pit,” Ernie whispers to me.

“Sure is,” I reply. “You bring the marshmallows?”

We are shushed by at least five different dinos. Progressives, as a rule, lack the crucial humor gene on their DNA. Then again, if I had to eat raw newts all the time, I’d be pretty miserable, too.

It doesn’t take long for the funeral to get started. Circe takes her place atop a slightly raised dais, and begins a long monologue about the deceased, about how she’d found her way in life through Progress, and a bunch of other hoo-ha that has the effect of bringing the crowd to tears.

It is Samuel and another Progressive, a pudgy Triceratops wearing no guise but sporting a pair of Armani spectacles, who wheel out the body of the old Ornithomimus. Yep, she’s dead, all right.

“As many of our ancestors met their end in the fires of the Great Showers, so we now admit our sister into the heart of our shared heritage. As the ancestors left this earth, so shall we.”

“So shall we,” echoes the audience, Ernie and I excepted. No one gave us cue cards.

At this signal, Samuel and the Trike place the deceased atop a long, wooden plank with four wheels and begin to push the improvised gurney toward the open, roaring fire pit. The dead Ornitho’s arm drapes over one side, but no one seems to notice, even as her claws scrape along the floor, sending up a terrific screeching noise as the plank draws nearer to its incineration.

“Fire to fire,” intones Circe, “ancestor to ancestor.”

“Fire to fire,” repeats the crowd. “Fire to fire.”

With a final shove by the pallbearers, the Ornithomimus and her wooden conveyance slide off the ballroom floor and fall into the pit, wheels clattering for an instant against the marble before the rejuvenated flames tear up into the air, rejoicing at a new source of fuel. The congregants sway back and forth in unison, a massive underwater plant drifting with the current, low gurgles trickling off their throats. And Circe stands above it all, arms held high, tail raised to the ceiling, light from the flames flickering, caressing her body.

I can smell burning flesh. Next to me, a T-Rex is crying and salivating all at the same time. Something has grabbed hold of my stomach lining and is proceeding to twist it into all manner of Boy Scout knots, wringing out my belly like a towel thick with water.

“We oughta get outta here,” I gurgle to Ernie.

“You feelin’ okay?”

“Let’s just—” A burp surfaces, and I’m barely able to suppress the accompanying nausea. “Let’s just go.” Ernie, God bless him, agrees.

But we’re not more than halfway to the door when the crowd parts—aha, an easy exit—and Circe appears, standing in our way. I’d usually be more than happy to see her, but at this point there’s not much more I’d like to do than make it to the safety of a restroom or, should it be necessary, a copse of bushes.

“I should have warned you about the smell,” she says, instantly diagnosing my problem. “It can be rough the first time out.”

And just like that—I don’t know if it’s the words, the sentiment, or some burst of her own magic scent—my nausea is gone. In fact, I’m starting to feel a little hungry. I’m about to thank Circe for her intervention, but she’s already on to the next topic, two small envelopes suddenly appearing in her hands.

“Before you go, I wanted to have a word with you.”

“We’re in a hurry,” explains Ernie.

“One moment, please. We’re having a get-together this weekend,” she says, “sort of a Progressive convention, and I’d be honored if you two would come as my guests. I’m embarrassed to admit that there’s a slight fee involved. . . .”

“That’s not a problem,” I say immediately. Even if the group isn’t in need of money from their recruits, we nevertheless want to fit in with their upper-middle-class member profile. Money should not seem like an issue.

“Excellent,” she says. “If you need quick travel arrangements, you’ll find some numbers here for a few agents we use over in Santa Monica.”

“Travel arrangements?”

“For the flight.”

“The flight?”

“To Hawaii,” says Circe, and I can feel the cash bottoming out of my pocket already. “You can fly into Maui or Kauai, it doesn’t make a difference. The hydrofoil will pick you up and bring you over to our private island in the afternoon, so make sure you book a flight that arrives in the morning.”

Ernie’s managed to get his invitation open, and he’s already gaping, slack-jawed, at the finely printed words on the rice-paper backing. ATTAIN A HIGHER LEVEL OF PROGRESS AT OUR NATURALIZATION CONVOCATION, it reads. SPECIAL SPRING PRICE, $4,000, INCLUDES ALL FOOD, DRINK, AND LUXURIOUS ACCOMMODATIONS FOR THE WEEKEND. PREPARE TO PROGRESS!

I take a long swig of self-confidence, follow it down with a jigger of bravado and a dash of foolishness, and wait for the mixture to settle in my belly. “We’ll be there.”

* * *

 

“We sure as hell won’t be there,” Ernie is saying as we pull up to the office. “I’m not asking Louise for this kind of cash—”

“Do you wanna find out who killed Rupert?”

“If he was killed—and I’m still not so sure of that—then, sure, I wanna find the guy. Or gal.”

I let that last bit go. If there’s one thing I want to believe, it’s that Circe is innocent. I don’t know where this impulse comes from—though I must say that the notion is tinted in the same colors as those herb-induced fantasies I’ve been so prone to lately—but at least 83 percent of my intuition tells me it’s true, and majority rules in this brain. “And if you wanna find out who killed Rupert, don’t you think his own sister would be willing to shell out a few extra bucks?”

No response from Ernie. I park the car too close to the curb, so I back out and try it again. My contacts are drying out in the arid night air, and I’m forced to blink nonstop like a southern belle trying to land a mate.

“Listen,” Ernie says after I’ve slammed into the curb six or seven times, “I could get the money out of my ex-wife with no problem. I can go upstairs and call Louise and tell her that we’ve been following up on Rupert’s death. And I’ll tell you what—for that she’ll be pleased. I can tell her that we’ve begun to view it more as a homicide than a suicide. For that, she’ll be intrigued. But if I tell her that we’ve been associating with the Progressives, if I tell her that we’ve been socializing with their leader, if I tell her that we want almost ten thousand dollars to give to the very same group that had been draining her coffers for the past two years—for that . . . for that, she’ll be nothing more than hurt. And I won’t hurt her. Period, paragraph, end of story.” Ernie gives me a second to let his little soliloquy sink in.

We climb the stairs in silence, and though I want to bring up the Hawaii trip again, and I think it’s not only a good idea but a necessary one—we are, after all, investigators, and neither rain nor sleet nor lack of available funds should stop us in our appointed task—I keep quiet out of respect for Ernie’s respect for his ex-wife. My reticence won’t last long, though—I’m giving it five minutes before I bring the matter up for a second review.

The office door is open.

“You don’t think . . .” says Ernie.

“I do.”

“Little apefucker . . .”

It’s Minsky once again, suit and tie rumpled, wrinkled, all a shambles, and this time he’s pacing back and forth rather than sitting nonchalantly on my desk, but the sight of the little guy in our private space is enough to throw me into a frenzy registering 4.3 on the hissy-fit scale.

“How many times do I have to tell you this is illegal?” I bellow, drawing as much out of my natural dino self as possible. I hope to work in a good roar or two. “And how many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want to see you again? I haven’t had to crack heads in a while now, but you’re pushing me, Minsky. . . .”

But he’s not even listening to me—if he were, he’d be stumbling backward, away from my advancing claws, rather than coming toward me, his own stubby arms raised beseechingly.

“You gotta get her,” he whines, that tinny little voice like a champagne glass shattering across my ears. “The bitch went too far this time.”

Ernie’s not having any of it. He grabs Minsky by the back of his wig—attached with some incredibly strong epoxy, it seems, because the whine turns to a howl in no time—and proceeds to drag the bite-sized Hadrosaur across the floor.

“Waaaait,” he whimpers, “it’s all different now! It’s all different now!”

Against my better judgment, I place a hand on Ernie’s shoulder. He’s still got Minsky by the hair, but the mousse the midget put on this morning is slicking up my partner’s hand. “What is it now?” I ask. “You know we’ve put a moratorium on doing any business with you.”

Ernie loses the battle with Minsky’s hair, and the midget falls to the ground. He lifts himself up, doesn’t even brush off, and storms back toward me, shaking his finger up at my incredulous expression. “I want you to find her, and I want you to—to—to do whatever it is you do to those people.” His face has flushed the guise skin into a deep crimson, and I won’t be surprised if I get a chance to use my CPR training in the next few minutes.

“ ‘Whatever it is we do’?” echoes Ernie. “I don’t think you’re asking us what I think you’re asking us. . . .”

“Are you telling us to hurt Star?” I ask.

Minsky’s sneer of revulsion is genuine. “Do what you have to.”

“I think you’ve got us pegged wrong,” I begin, though I’m sufficiently intrigued by the little guy’s anger to hear him out. “We don’t do that sort of thing. Violence. I mean, sure, if it comes at us first, or if there’s a really good reason. Or if I’m in a pissy mood. Or if—”

“Just find her. You do that, don’t you?”

I nod and set a pot of coffee on the burner. “Of course. Then again, it seems we’ve been hired to find this girl before, but you did a pretty damn good job of finding her yourself.”

“Why don’tcha just use your dick?” Ernie jokes. “Made a pretty good divining rod last time.”

Ooh, that’s got him going good. The pacing starts again, rapid little pitter-patter steps that shoot him in small circles around the office, anxious as a racehorse at the gate. “Last time, last time—last time doesn’t matter. Never happened. I was a fool for going back to that—that—”

A string of profanities rarely heard by these delicate ears follows, and Ernie and I check our watches as the tirade carries on well past five minutes. When he’s done, Minsky is out of breath, but a little of that rancor has slipped away from the muscles lining his heart and into the open air. He’s out of coronary danger at least.

The coffee has begun to percolate into the pot, hissing with every drip. “She’s dropped out again, I take it.”

“She has,” Minsky admits.

“And this time, it’s more than just ether.”

“How’d you know that?”

Ernie fields this one. “Last time you weren’t this upset. I think last time you wanted us to find her so you could pork her again.”

I turn to Minsky, fold my arms across my chest. “What’d she take? Money? More drugs?”

Ernie chimes in. “Your basketball net? Shoe lifts? Stepladder?”

A mumble from the midget, a susurrated slur, and for a second I think I hear what he’s saying. No, that can’t be it. “Come again?” I ask.

“She took my . . .” Minsky pauses, sighs, stares at us with his hands on his squat hips. “You’re gonna make me say it again, ain’t ya?”

Ernie clears his throat. “It—it sounded like you said she took your . . . your dick.”

The protest I expected from the dentist does not emerge. He just stands there, defeated, eyes glancing the short distance down to his feet, cheeks flashing crimson.

“She stole your shlong?” I ask, my normal voice rising up a notch in surprise. “She pinched your penis? Detained your—”

For once in his weaselly little life, Minsky’s eyes are filling with true shame. Stumbling toward the door, little legs pushing hard against the worn floorboards, he slams into Ernie’s legs, bounces, rebounds, and makes for the hallway in a flailing blur, shouting, “Forget it, you two just forget it—”

But Ernie catches him with an easy left-field snatch and hauls the pipsqueak back into the room. “This ain’t the kinda thing you can just forget,” he explains. “It ain’t every day a client comes in tells us his Johnson got jimmied.”

Ern and I run through a few more good euphemisms for the old trouser snake, then make a quick U-turn back to business. “We’re talking the human kind, I take it.”

“Of course,” says Minsky. “It was a Mussolini.”

Ernie’s low, impressed whistle echoes through the room. “Musta set you back a pretty penny.”

“I inherited it,” explains our client. “It was my father’s, and his father’s before him.”

Unfortunately, I’m not doing too good of a job following the conversation. My standard-issue human phallus has always served me quite well, and since most of my romantic trysts take place out of guise—with a few notable drunken exceptions—I don’t find that I need to employ its services all that often. Somewhere in the back of the rotting file cabinet of my memory there’s a manila envelope with the name Mussolini on it, but the secretary is out of the office today, and there’s no hope of retrieving it myself. “What’s a Mussolini?” I ask, expecting a barrage of incredulous stares.

I get them. “Only the finest handcrafted human phallus in existence,” Ernie says, shocked at my naivete.

“A mere seventeen left in the entire world,” Minsky says proudly. “Three in America. Benito Mussolini’s half-brother, Alfredo, handcrafted them during a four-year period just before the Second World War, and to date there is no finer instrument. It’s like a glockenspiel, only longer. Precision ball bearings, clockwork timing, dual-thrust motion sensors. We’re not just talking pricks—we’re talking phallic perfection.”

“They’re worth millions,” Ernie tells me. “But nobody ever sells.”

“They’re priceless,” Minsky clarifies. “Priceless.”

I get it—I think. “And Star . . . she took it?”

“We were sleeping after one of our . . . Anyway, we were sleeping—at least, I was sleeping—and when I woke up, she was gone. And my Mussolini was gone. I looked down at my guise, and all I saw was this. . . .” He starts to choke up, tears welling in his squinty eyes. “All I saw was a big gaping hole . . . where it used to be.”

“You think she plans to hock it?” Ernie asks.

“I think she plans to use it. She loves that thing, can’t get enough of it. I tried to take it off once, to have sex with . . . you know, with my real . . . Anyway, she wouldn’t go for it. She has to have that Mussolini. And now . . . now she does.”

Oh, super—my favorite kind of case: retrieve the golden dildo. When I got into the PI business, I expected to have to pay my dues, to spend a lot of time in cars and crappy apartment buildings, eating take-out food and snapping off cheap photos, but it’s very possible that Minsky’s case will sink me to a new investigative low.

“And you want us to retrieve it?” I ask.

“You have to. You find her, you grab hold of that no-good, rotten . . .” Once again, Minsky’s union-truck-driver alternate personality emerges, and the profanities spring forth from his lips like a filthy, frothing fountain.

By the time he’s done ranting, the coffee is ready. I dole out the cups, and we all have a nice sip of java to get our nerves jangling good and hard once again. “Partner, can I see you alone for a second?” I ask.

“Sure, kid,” he responds. I’ve asked him not to call me kid in front of clients before, but as it’s meant as an endearment I let it go. Undermines my authority a little, but you gotta give up something in the name of bonding.

We step out of the office and into the hallway, making sure to ensconce ourselves in an echo-free area. I’ve had an idea brewing ever since I put that pot of coffee on the fire, and I think it’s just about time to serve it up.

“You think he’ll go for it?” Ernie asks once I’ve laid out the basics for him.

“I think he wants his fake dick back so bad he’d sell his own real one to get to the girl.”

“Think it’ll come to that?”

“Hope not,” I say. “But let’s not count it out.”

We step back into the office, plastic grins plastered across our faces. “We’ve got some good news for you,” Ernie announces, and the grin that springs to Minsky’s face is half joyous, half crazed. “We’ve got a lead on where she might be, and we think we can find her, not to mention your whang.”

“Whatever it costs, do it.”

“Cost is an issue, yes. We’ll most likely have a good deal of expenses . . . at least ten thousand dollars’ worth, maybe more.”

“Anything,” he says. “Find her, bring her back, throw her to the cops, and get my Mussolini back. That’s all I care about.”

“It may take a little bit,” I point out. “A week or so. Longer, perhaps.”

“Didn’t you guys hear me?” says Minsky. “Whatever—it—takes. I want you to get her and get her good.”

“Are you sure about this?” Ernie asks, completing the triumvirate of double-checks.

“Sure as a pile of shit behind a dead-eyed Diplodod,” says Minsky, and though I don’t exactly know what this means, I’m pretty darn sure that he’s pretty darn sure. And when it comes to the amount of cash we’re talking about, that’s good enough for me.

The next half-hour is spent getting Minsky to sign documents and budget agreements that pretty much let us spend whatever we need wherever we need to in order to get the job done.

The next two hours after that are spent at my condominium as I rifle through my drawers and closets, trying to pick out and pack the proper clothing for our upcoming adventure. For the first time in some time, I’m actually at a fashion crossroads—I haven’t got a clue what to wear.

Aloha, native Hawaiian girls. This is one Velociraptor who is ready to get leid.