Half of a private detective’s job is simply keeping his eyes and ears open and going to places where people are willing to let their guard down and talk. That’s why you see so many PIs frequenting bars and nightclubs. It’s work-related. Really.
The Goblin Tavern is the sort of hangout you’d expect, a homey and dingy place where everybody knows your name, but they don’t hold it against you. A long wooden bar lined with stools, some of them wide and reinforced for the larger customers; a handful of dark tables with splintered wooden chairs; an array of liquor bottles on the top and bottom shelves; three taps for beer; a medical-grade refrigerator for donated blood packs, soy blood, and a special stainless-steel locker for the good stuff.
Cobwebs were carefully cultivated along the rafters and in the corners; one big glass jar held pickled eggs in a murky fluid, right next to a nearly identical jar filled with preserved eyeballs; the two jars had different-colored screw lids, so customers wouldn’t get confused. Shrink-wrapped packets of jerky, made from a wide variety of flesh, filled a cardboard box next to the cash register.
Ilgar, the goblin owner, hated the place and hated the customers. In his lair in the back room, you might catch a glimpse of him, hear the clack and chatter of his adding machine, maybe a muttered curse when the ledgers didn’t add up to his satisfaction. He was rarely seen working the bar.
Because it’s my business to collect information, I knew a secret about Ilgar and his tavern, but I kept it to myself. He was in very serious negotiations with an outside food-and-drink conglomerate, the Smile Syndicate, that wanted to franchise the Goblin Tavern—a great relief for Ilgar, no doubt. The guys-in-ties were exploring the possibility of opening a chain of duplicate Goblin Taverns across the country, catering to curious humans who wanted a safe taste of the Unnatural Quarter, something like the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland, except with plenty of alcohol available.
Many humans are morbidly fascinated by the dark side of the city. Large, secure tour buses drive around the Quarter so that curiosity seekers can watch the monsters in their unnatural habitat. As part of the route, and the experience, the buses drop off the passengers for a drink at the Goblin Tavern, one of the highlights of the tour. Next year, the place was going to be a zoo, when the World Horror Convention was due to come to town.
Ilgar had a terrible time keeping bartenders and cocktail waitresses; he’d gone through three in one particularly bad week (two had quit, one hadn’t survived). That changed when he found Francine, a fiftyish human woman who’d seen it all, had dealt with tough customers throughout her life, and didn’t put up with any guff from rowdy unnaturals.
“I’ve waited on slobs, pigs, and jerks in human bars too,” she once told me. “Certain people turn into assholes when they’re drunk. Doesn’t matter whether they’re truck drivers or necromancers. I know how to spot ’em, and I know how to deal with ’em.”
And she did. Francine settled right in at the Tavern, got to know the regulars. You might not think a human bartender could relate to the problems of unnaturals, but Francine had been through three marriages, a bankruptcy, a house fire, a drug-addict kid, and persistent plantar warts that made her feet so sore that she hated to stand all day (although she had no choice). As a career bartender, she was well practiced in listening to the customers’ woes. She didn’t try to offer solutions, just poured another drink and knew when to pick up a round.
I entered the tavern as night fell and took my usual seat at the bar. Even before she came over, Francine grabbed a pint glass.
There are stages of being a regular customer at any establishment. First, as the bartender gets to know you, she’ll try to earn points by remembering you and your order. “Tap beer? Large?” Second, she goes to the next stage, asking the coy question, “You want the usual, Dan?” even though she knows what the answer will be. But we were past all that. As soon as Francine saw me, she pulled the beer without asking anything at all.
Yes, I come here that often.
My taste buds aren’t as sharp as before, and I always have a funny aftertaste in my mouth, so the brand of beer no longer matters to me. And liquor doesn’t affect me the same as it used to (Sheyenne might say that my thoughts are often fuzzy anyway). Even back in the old days, I never hung out at bars to get drunk, but for the social benefits. It’s part of my job, although I haven’t yet figured out a way to submit my tab as an expense that the IRS would allow. While death isn’t a sure thing anymore, taxes still are.
Since it wasn’t yet full dark, the Goblin Tavern remained fairly empty: a transition time, like changing shifts in a factory. The night crew began to rise up while the day lovers slunk back to their well-lit homes; others, not caring whether it was night or day, remained up for twenty-four hours.
Francine brought the beer. After only a cursory glance at my face, she said, “Looks like you had some work done.”
“Just a touch-up.” I self-consciously put a finger to the mor-tician’s putty that filled the hole in my forehead.
“Looks good.”
“I’d feel better if I knew who did it to me.”
Here at the tavern I hoped I might bump into someone or something useful for one or more of my open cases, the Jekyll divorce, the mummy emancipation case, Sheldon Fennerman’s missing vampire neighbors, the Straight Edge hate group, a black-market blood ring I had uncovered over at Basilisk … not to mention Sheyenne’s murder, or my own. It was like herding caffeinated cats to move all my active cases toward a resolution.
My mind liked to juggle the various puzzles at the same time. One piece might lead to another clue in a different case, then to another. Running a private investigation agency poses a mental-organization and time-management problem that’s rarely discussed in detective fiction. Life isn’t like a TV show, where the private eye works on one crime exclusively from start to finish, beat after beat after beat, until the whole case is neatly solved by the end of the episode. I have a lot of things going at once, at different paces.
Officer McGoohan came in and swung up onto the stool on my right. “Hey, Shamble.”
“Hey, McGoo. Fancy meeting you here.”
He looked around the tavern. “Nothing fancy about it.”
“Tough day?”
“Isn’t it always?”
Francine pulled McGoo his own beer and set it in front of him. He returned a quick nod of thanks and slurped the foam off the top. He and I have been meeting here regularly for years. The comfortable place is a vortex of normalcy in the chaotic Quarter, so long as you can ignore the more bizarre patrons.
McGoo sniffed, frowned at me, then got up and moved to the stool on my left—his other usual stool. “I love you, man, but I don’t love the aroma. I’m going to sit upwind.”
“Yeah, you’re a breath of fresh air yourself,” I said. He knew I didn’t smell any different from most people. It’s part of his schtick.
“Hey, Francine,” McGoo called across the bar, “how can you tell when you get a letter from a zombie?”
Francine rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t want to know.”
“It has a tongue attached to the stamp!”
We were supposed to groan. I fought back a smile. “Sorry, I’ve been having trouble moving my facial muscles lately.”
“Well, you are a dead guy, and you’re a private detective.” He elbowed me. “So I guess that makes you a stiff dick!”
I know he doesn’t mean anything by his off-color comments. McGoo wants to be the life of the party, but has no idea how to do it. To an outsider, especially a sensitive and politically correct outsider, he comes across as abrasive and insensitive. But even though his jokes are in poor taste, I’ve never seen McGoo treat anybody with less respect because of their gender, ethnicity, or unnatural type. He knows it goes both ways and would have been perfectly open to dumb cop jokes or stupid Irishman jokes. Not many people tell those anymore; to be honest, I think Officer McGoohan misses it.
He and I met in college. We both got degrees in criminal justice. Afterward, I decided to go into private investigating, while McGoo went into the police force. I thought I was going to have it made with a big-ticket freelance job—the potential for lots of money, be my own boss, have all the freedom in the world.
McGoo wanted the prestige of the uniform, the respect of the public, being an important guy who stopped criminals and kept the streets safe. The satisfaction of a job well done was all he needed. Unfortunately, both of us were wrong, but by then we were stuck.
Early on, we each married a woman named Rhonda. We were too young, and both of us still considered the marriage to be one of the worst mistakes of our lives (although there was always room for us to make even bigger mistakes). One Rhonda was a strawberry blonde—mine—and the other a brunette—McGoo’s; both were beautiful, both were bitchy. He and I spent a lot of time commiser-ating with each other, wondering if we had picked the wrong Rhonda. But either way, we would have ended up just as miserable. Both marriages broke up after less than three years, but our friendship had lasted for decades. Through life and death, you might say.
The door opened, and three cadaverous women shuffled in, dressed in gaudy clothes, their faces painted, their hair done up. I recognized Cindy, Victoria, and Sharon from the embalming parlor. Their body movements did not have the seductive grace they imagined; in fact, they looked like a trio of skeletal marionettes with tangled strings and an inept puppeteer.
“Oh, God, let’s hope I’m never that desperate.” McGoo took a long swallow of his beer. The three women regarded, then dismissed us as prospective prey and took seats at the far end of the bar. Francine went to take their orders.
“Any word on who smashed up the Hope & Salvation Mission?” I asked. “You sure Mrs. Saldana’s all right?”
“She’ll start patching up the place in the morning. No clues. We got some skin scrapings from the broken glass, but there were so many shamblers around—including a couple of ripe ones that dripped all over the crime scene—I doubt any of the tissue samples are uncontaminated.” He looked over at me. “How about you? Your vampire client still afraid for his life?”
“I’m working up a supplemental security plan for him, but I think he may be overreacting. I’ll talk with the landlord about the missing neighbors.”
McGoo grew more serious. “Made any progress on your own case, or Sheyenne’s? I really feel sorry for you, man. Scout’s honor. If I can do anything to help, I will.”
“I’ll take you up on that, as soon as I figure out what to ask. I just gotta poke around. In the meantime, I’m turning up the heat on Harvey Jekyll for the divorce case. His wife is convinced he’s up to something, and if I can find a little leverage …”
Back in my younger years, I didn’t think of myself as a nosy person, but I fit in with lots of different people. I kept quiet, but within earshot of gossipy types who dished out juicy stories like rumor-mongering Typhoid Marys. I collected these details, thinking of them as tools for future use, rather than hand grenades to lob indiscriminately. If the information doesn’t help me solve a case, then I do nothing with it. People—whether natural or unnatural—are entitled to their privacy, so long as they don’t hurt anybody.
Being a detective isn’t a fantasy profession like astronaut or pro football player or movie star, not something I had dreamed of doing since I was a kid. But I’m good at investigating, and the only way I can stay good is to maintain my personal social network of contacts, friends, even a few paid informants.
In order to have someone owe you a favor, you have to do them a favor first—earn the goodwill before you can spend it. I pay for McGoo’s drinks most of the time, but that’s just a minor gesture. After all, he’s my Best Human Friend, and it gives him the opportunity to grouse about his minuscule cop’s salary, although my earnings as a private detective, dead or undead, are just as minuscule.
As Francine delivered our second round, the door opened, and I saw the plaid suit jacket coming first, with Brondon Morris arriving half a second later.
The trio of zombie ladies at the bar perked up. “Brondon! We hoped you would come,” cooed Sharon.
“I can help him come more than once,” cackled Victoria.
Cindy patted the empty bar stool at her side.
Without the least bit of embarrassment, Brondon sauntered up to the bar and stood behind the women so he didn’t have to choose one over the others. “Oh, barkeep!” He raised his hand. “I’d like a Scotch and soda, please.”
He acted as if he didn’t know Francine’s name and she didn’t know damn well that he drank Scotch and soda. I’d seen the sales rep in the Goblin Tavern several times, and I found it odd that he treated the human bartender with less respect than he gave the undead clientele. “And another round of drinks for these lovely ladies.” He leaned closer to the cackling cadavers. “What’s your poison? Lemon drops?”
“Margaritas tonight.” Cindy lowered her voice to a raspy whisper that everyone in the bar could hear anyway. “Tequila makes me horny.”
Based on that, I thought it might be best if she steered clear of the tequila, but that wasn’t my call.
“You three look ravishing tonight.” Brondon set his sample case up on the bar and opened it, removing tiny sachets. “I’d like you to try this. A towelette for just a sniff, not enough to give it away, but these are the first samples of our Fresh Loam scent.”
The three women fawned over him. Over the course of the conversation, I watched Brondon “accidentally” trace his fingers over Sharon’s shoulders and give Victoria’s arm a playful touch. He flirtatiously brushed against Cindy’s back.
Next to me, McGoo shuddered and concentrated deeply on his second beer. “Guess the guy likes cold fish. I don’t even want to think about what they might do together.”
“You’re being prejudiced, McGoo. Even unnaturals want love.”
“Well, that guy’s looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes. Hey, Shamble, do ghouls eat popcorn with their fingers?”
I was distracted by the interplay at the other side of the bar. “What?”
“No, they eat the fingers separately!”
I doubted Brondon had ever actually slept with any of the ladies, but he treated them as something special. It was all a game, which they seemed to enjoy as much as he did. They went home with perfume and toiletry samples, and he inspired goodwill with the core customers of Jekyll Lifestyle Products and Necroceuticals.
In my earlier surveillance, I’d seen Brondon tagging along with Harvey Jekyll, no doubt feeling special because the boss had invited him to party with the big boys, though I’d never figured out what sort of party Jekyll was attending. Brondon might be an opportunity for me to track down Jekyll tonight.
After he sipped one drink with the zombie cougars and saw no new customers around the bar, Brondon bade them goodbye to a chorus of disappointed pleas. He just laughed and waved, promised he would see them all again soon, then slipped out of the Goblin Tavern.
I decided to follow him. He might be nothing more than a JLPN lapdog, but you never know where things might lead. I finished my beer, put some money on the bar, and said, “Gotta go to work, McGoo.”
“If you say so. I’m going to take my time here. Thanks for the beer.” I left the tavern, turned left, and quietly shadowed the perfume salesman.