Clients like to have updates, and I wanted to tell Stentor the ogre what I had learned, even though there wasn’t much to report. I might have half a dozen cases going at any one time, and to each client their problem is the most urgent matter. Sure, finding an ogre’s lost voice isn’t like curing some terrible disease, or running an orphanage, or ending world hunger, but solving cases is what I do. Does everybody need a world-shaking purpose for existence?
I made my way to the Phantom’s opera house, where I would find Stentor. Even without a voice, he would be practicing his singing, trying to convince his boss not to let an understudy take over the role of Don Giovanni, although I doubted anyone could fill the ogre’s shoes (it would probably require six or seven feet inside each one).
Out on the streets, people were pointing up at the sky. Though the afternoon remained blessedly clear and blue, clouds gathered in ropy strands like vapor trails from high-flying jets. As I watched, the white smears bent around like finger painting in the sky. The vapor trails formed giant words, using the air above the Unnatural Quarter as a wide-open billboard:
Vote Alastair Cumulus III
For Climate Change You Can Believe In
Suddenly, a wild wind gust nearly blew the fedora off my head, but I grabbed it in time. I’d had a lot of practice recently. As the breeze strengthened, I could hear a thin whistling sound through the bullet hole in my forehead; I really did need to patch that up with mortician’s putty.
Pedestrians shouted and ran, and the vengeful wind became so strong that two ghosts flitting along the boulevard were scattered apart, fighting to make their way. Outside an apothecary shop on a rack marked down for quick sale, several magic amulets jangled together, until the locomotive of wind barreled down the boulevard, knocked the stand over, and swept up into the sky.
A man in his late forties with a bushy brown beard and disheveled brown hair stood in the street wearing an eyeball-offending tie-dyed wizard’s robe. He clutched a handheld sundial talisman at his throat and gesticulated with his other hand, drawing imaginary letters with his middle finger. At his feet crouched a black tuxedo cat that looked extremely annoyed at having its fur ruffled by all that wind. The cat stalked off in a huff, leaving the wizard to continue his antics.
Manipulated by the gust of wind, the words in the clouds were erased, then rearranged, replacing the name of “ALASTAIR CUMULUS” with “THUNDER DICK.” The tie-dyed wizard seemed delighted with his work. “Ha! Showed you!”
Seconds later, a competing wind blast came in from the opposite direction, scrambling the skywritten letters once more. The battling breezes tangled the vaporous campaign slogans into illegibility, and the wizard in the tie-dyed robe—Thunder Dick—strode away, both frustrated and satisfied.
As storekeepers picked up the mess in the wake of the gusty commotion, I knew we would all be glad when the election was over.…
The opera house was a grand old building built in an ornate Gothic style, with pillars, flying buttresses, pointed eaves, and numerous shadowy alcoves. Gargoyles had once adorned the façade, but the Phantom had chased them away for squatting, calling them deadbeats.
The Phantom was a bitter, humorless old man who had dreamed of a career in the opera, but possessed no singing talent. He was also hardened because of his loveless life, unable to find a girlfriend despite his frequent patronage of unnatural singles services. He blamed his romantic misfortune on his acid-scarred face, but many women would have overlooked that, given his stylish mask. No, it was the Phantom’s prickly personality that made them place a moratorium on second dates.
Posters outside the box office showed a dramatic picture of Stentor the ogre decked out in his full Don Giovanni costume. The oft-quoted quote from the National Midnight Star graced the bottom of the poster: The most fabulous performance by an ogre opera singer in weeks!
A sticker across the top of the poster announced, “On indefinite hiatus.”
I went around back to the performer’s entrance, where a vampire set director and three zombie carpenters in overalls lounged against the brick wall, chain-smoking. Mounds of crushed butts around their feet implied how long they had been standing out there.
The rate of cigarette smoking had skyrocketed among unnaturals, much to the delight of tobacco companies. One brand marketed specifically toward the undead was called Coffin Nails. What did they have to lose? It wasn’t as if they had health considerations.
“I’m here to see Stentor,” I said. “Is he inside?”
The vampire stage director gestured with his cigarette in a long, lacquered holder. Vampires loved their affectations. “Sure, he’s varming up—but it’s pointless. Just follow the sqveaks. You can’t miss him.”
I went through the back hallways of the opera house, where understudies mumbled to themselves, practicing lines. I heard female singing coming from deep below, wafting through the grates in the floor. It was a warbling voice, heart-wrenching in an operatic sort of way.
I knew the Phantom ran an academy for would-be opera singers down in a large sewer vault, where he kept his best pipe organ that had been relocated from Paris, piece by piece. He claimed that the sound quality down in the tunnels was perfect for his purposes. He had a portable Wurlitzer for other occasions.
I wondered if he had the same landlord down there as Jody Caligari, our junior mad scientist.
From behind a closed door, I heard singing, of a sort. It sounded like the lead vocalist from a chipmunk cover band having a bad voice day. The words were delivered in bombastic Italian in a dramatic fashion, but because they sounded as if they were sung by the Munchkin boys’ choir, the effect was absurd.
When I knocked on the door, the singing stopped, mercifully. The ogre’s big eyes lit up when he opened the door to let me in. He grabbed a glass, upended it into his enormous mouth, gargled, and spat the liquid into a bucket, where it smoked and steamed. He cleared his throat, but his voice remained a squeak. “Mr. Shamble! Do you have news?”
I said, “You were right: Your voice was definitely stolen. Using a spell called an amphibious transference protocol, someone kidnapped your voice for his or her own purposes.”
“But who did it? Can you track them down?” Stentor asked. “I want my voice back.”
“I was hoping you could suggest the names of anyone who might have a use for your voice? Do you have any enemies … say, operatic rivals?”
He shook his enormous shaggy head. “It’s a small field, Mr. Shamble. If one of my rivals started using my voice, everyone would know right away. We don’t even have an understudy for my part in Don Giovanni. No one can handle it. The thief can’t be anyone from the opera world.”
I sighed. “I’ll keep digging. Don’t you worry.”
Stentor began singing again, to my dismay. Even worse, he seemed to want me there to listen so he could draw moral support.
A man barged into his dressing room, decked out in a black tuxedo. The white porcelain mask that covered half of his face didn’t manage to conceal his sneer. “Enough, Stentor!” He clapped a hand to his forehead, almost dislodging the mask. “I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve taught many abysmally talented students down below, but you make their worst caterwauling sound like a superstar diva. We are done—do you hear me? Done!”
“Maybe you could find a different part for me,” Stentor squeaked.
“No! I am canceling Don Giovanni as of today. The show is ruined.”
“But,” the ogre said, his inner-tube–sized lower lip quavering, “but you can’t! The opera is my life.”
“And the opera is my livelihood,” said the Phantom. “And until your last name is ‘Of The Opera’ like mine, you’re expendable. Since you don’t have an understudy and can’t sing anymore, I’m changing the docket. As of today, I’m starting auditions for a revival of Cats. We’ve been waiting a long time for a popular show, and I think the Quarter is ready for it.”
“No!” Stentor wailed. “Not Cats. Just give me a little more time—Mr. Shamble here is tracking down my voice. He’s the best detective in the Quarter.”
“Best zombie detective,” I said, always careful to define the parameters.
The Phantom dismissed me with a quick glance. “I thought he was just a fictional character. Well, when he finds your voice, maybe you can get some work as a radio voiceover artist. But not here in my opera house!” With a flick of his tuxedo tails, the Phantom swished out of Stentor’s dressing room.
The ogre started blubbering, and tears flowed in rivulets down the canyons of his face. I tried to reassure him, patting him on the shoulder. “The only way you can make this better is to find my voice, Mr. Shamble,” he said.
“I’m on it. I promise.” I left the dressing room, heavyhearted. I knew how much this case mattered to the big guy.
The Phantom stalked off and entered his own office down the hall, where a sign on an easel announced, “Auditions today.” A yowling and caterwauling came from the room, and I saw half a dozen feline shapes run down the hall: Siamese cats, calicos, Persians, Russian blues, orange tabbies, Maine coons, even a tuxedo cat that looked like the one I had seen next to the tie-dyed weather wizard in the street.
When the Phantom announced auditions for Cats, it was like setting out saucers of cream. Felines from all over the Quarter came racing in to practice their best Webberian chorus, instead of yowling on fences and in back alleys.
I left the opera house, not wanting to hear those auditions, and headed off to another case. Robin and I had an appointment at the Mad Scientists Patent Office.