The Shrinking Nuts Case Read online

CHAPTER 13

  RESEARCH

  The next morning, I decided that I didn’t know enough about our so-called visitors from another world, particularly trolls and elves. Know thy enemy, right? So I figured to get geeky with some books and maybe talk to some experts. I hate doing that kind of crap, but sometimes a guy in my line of work has to do what he has to do. Fifty bucks a day is fifty bucks a day. As to my mob and cop problems, I’d play it by ear and hope for the best. A lot of times, if you just ignore a problem, it sort of just goes away, that's my motto.

  First thing I did was arm myself with my thirty-eight. I don't normally expect to need a piece. I have a licence to carry my gun, and like to have it with me, but I don't like to be in situations where I need one. Now like it or not I was in one. A guy I had just talked to had been murdered. So from now on for this case I would wear the Smith and Wesson or at least keep it in the Ford.

  I told Elaine my plan. While I hit the books she would go to Grisim’s bank. I figured that if she poked around, she would be doing her share by visibly working the cases, and thereby keeping the clients happy. Instead, she insisted on tagging along with me. “After the last couple days, I’m not letting you out of my sight,” she said firmly.

  She was getting too bossy to suit me, but I let it pass.

  I needed knowledge, and unfortunately that probably meant books, since I can’t stand computers. So we went to the public library together in the Ford. Why pay out of pocket for books when you’ve already paid for a lot of books with your taxes? The library was a new experience for me, but it turns out that all four librarians knew Elaine by name. Would you believe that she already had her own library card?

  Me being on occasion a reluctant taxpayer, the whole scale of the library operation hit me hard. Land, building, librarians, and so forth, all paid for by taxes! Why did they need so damn many librarians and such a big building?

  Too damn many books, that was obviously the root problem. There were thousands of them, shelves and shelves of them, filling several big rooms, with new ones probably coming in all the time, written by geeks without real jobs. There was no end to the damn things. More and more books meant more and more librarians and geeky writers supported by more and more tax dough. What a racket!

  I wasted a couple of hours looking up references to elves and trolls that turned out to all be either pure fiction or stuff that should have been labeled fiction. It turns out that in novels trolls and especially elves are pretty damn popular, though not as popular as dragons or vampires. I could understand that; how could anything compete with giant, ugly, fire breathing, flying lizards? The very thought of dragons gave me the shivers! Chicks seemed to dig blood sucking vampire creeps; who the hells knew why? There were also tons of books on gaming that discussed trolls as players. Why was any of this stuff so damn popular? I couldn’t figure it. If I weren’t mixed up with them in a case I certainly wouldn’t be wasting any time on all this freaky crap. Real stuff is creepy enough.

  One of the so-called librarians tried to help me but I couldn’t get across to her that I wasn’t interested in lame old folk tales or kids games. “Don’t you have any up to date research on those guys running around all over the country claiming to be real elves and dwarves and trolls?” I asked. “You know, like stuff on what they’re after and how a guy could get rid of the creepy little bastards? Some book worm or other must have written something on that, somewhere in all these damn books!”

  She suggested that I try looking at recent newspaper and magazine articles, which is what Elaine had already figured out to do. It turned out that there were quite a few news stories on elves and such over the last couple of weeks. We found out that there had been hundreds of elves and dwarves traveling around most of the United States, but lately most of the action was in our neighborhood. It looked to me like the little creeps were all zeroing in on Mick, the big ugly creep.

  There were several interviews with elves described, most of them with Loranda, who appeared to be the leader of the whole elf/dwarf shebang. They all told pretty much the same story. The good elves and dwarves simply came here to help mankind against an invasion of nasty trolls. Right. There was no news on any trolls other than Mick. How could one troll, even an ugly bastard like Mick, be an invasion?

  All of the editorial commentary was in support of the elves. Hey, people are stupid, and I’ve got the brains to prove it. There was quite a bit of talk about their ‘stunning beauty’ too, and no mention at all of pointy teeth, pale skin, and the other nasty aspects of our little elf friends. I couldn’t figure that one out.

  As we sat at our out-of-the way table I pointed this out to Elaine, who was looking over some color photos of Loranda and other elves in a woman’s magazine. Why women’s magazines mostly have pictures of snazzy women is one of the great mysteries of life. Would a guy buy a magazine to look at pictures of other guys? Not unless he’s a fruit! I pointed out to Elaine that the elves in the pictures were creepy looking. “What are you talking about Jake?” she said. “Those elf women are flawless. Just look at the photos.”

  I looked at the photos. Models are almost always too damn skinny for my taste, so I ignored that part, though the elves pictured surely could have used some fries and burgers to fill in some curves better. Besides being too skinny though, these elf bitches were freaks, pure and simple. “There,” I said, pointing. “Look at the pointy teeth on Loranda, and the weird eyes, and the white skin, and the big ears. I don’t keep up with all that fashion shit, but silver hair is a bit out of style too, ain’t it?”

  Staring at the same photo, Elaine shook her head. “Are you putting me on? The hair is blonde, the skin is tanned, and the eyes, teeth, and ears are normal. Better than normal; perfect even. I hate to say it, but she’s a ten.”

  “Ten? You can count better than that; don’t screw with me, Baby,” I said, laughing. “I suppose that the guy elf on that page looks OK to you too?”

  She smiled and licked her lips. “Does he ever! Ten-plus!”

  “Don’t screw with me Baby,” I repeated, more worried now than angry. Was she going wacky too, like the cops?

  “I’m not!”

  “Are you serious? You don’t see the same things as me?”

  “Not if you see silver hair and other freaky things I don’t.”

  “Damn! They have you drugged too!”

  “No way, Jake.”

  “Ask one of your librarian friends what she sees,” I suggested.

  Elaine showed the photo to one of her librarian friends. The woman smiled and actually sighed when she looked at the photo, so I knew right off that she didn’t see the deformities either, unless she was a freak herself, but what she did say that she saw was even more mind-blowing. I somehow refrained from calling her a stupid bitch, as Elaine pulled me aside to our table where we could talk.

  “She sees a beautiful woman with brown hair,” Elaine whispered excitedly. “I see blonde; you see silver.”

  “Seems that way. So go ask some other folks.”

  She showed the Loranda photo to half a dozen other people in the library and asked them about hair color. I tagged along and watched discretely. We got several different answers as to hair color and style and so-forth. Weird. Were all these people color blind, or what? Maybe being stuck here in a library all day, day after day, had screwed them up. After all, the place was already getting to me.

  We retired back to our table. “It’s some kind of damn trick picture!” I exclaimed, as I grabbed the magazine out of Elaine’s hands and studied it from different angles. One of them hologram things, I figured, like the poop in Henry’s yard. But it looked the same to me from any angle. The ugly bitch was still an ugly bitch. With silver hair.

  “What did you do to it?” Elaine asked, as she looked over my shoulder.

  “Do to what?”

  “That’s the photo of a silver-haired vampire or something,” she said, pointing at Loranda.

  “That’s just what I’ve been saying right
along.”

  "That's the same picture?"

  "Sure it is."

  “Why don’t you show it again to our friends in the library?” she suggested.

  “We just did that.”

  “I did it. Now it’s your turn.”

  “They’ll think I’m a loon.”

  “They already think that. Come on Jake, just do it.”

  I did as she suggested. I showed them all the same photo that Elaine had showed them minutes earlier. Every damn person said they saw the vampire-like features and silver hair this time, and several made nasty faces and comments about pointy teeth and so forth. Elaine and I retreated to our table again.

  I was too stunned to even gripe about her loony library friends, but Elaine was smiling. “Give me the magazine, Jake,” she asked, reaching for it. She held it and looked at it for a few seconds, blinked, then looked at it again. “Blonde again,” she announced.

  “Shit,” I remarked. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Same thing that’s been going on all along, Jake, we were just too dumb to figure it out. Let me try one more thing though. Give me a kiss.”

  “What? Right here in the damn library? Ain’t that against some kind of library rule?”

  “Just a little peck on the cheek should do.”

  A walked around the table, took off my fedora for a moment to get it out of the way, kneeled beside her, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. She smelled really good, I noticed.

  “Just as I thought,” she said, looking at the magazine. “Silver hair again. You can cancel out the magic by either being near the magic object or the person looking at it.”

  “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “I didn’t either, until you were shrunk down to turkey size. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  My face might have changed color. “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t think you have to worry any more about getting shrunk, Jake.”

  “I never worried about it in the first place, Baby, but it happened anyway.”

  “Or getting controlled by elves, or rained on by manure, or seeing beauty where it isn’t.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No, you don’t. Put it all together, Jake. If you even get close to someone who is under a spell, you cancel it out, like you did with Joe and the Lieutenant at the Precinct. Harry’s magic poop disappeared near you. It all adds up Jake, that’s your so-called curse, or at least part of it. Mick put a spell on you so you couldn’t be fooled by the elves, or rained on by magic poop, or whatever. Your magic curse is an anti-magic one.”

  Anti-magic? I actually felt a little relieved. I had been wondering about the curse thing, but this didn’t sound half bad, as curses go. But what was it for? “Why would he do that to me?”

  “Because otherwise you’d be under elf control like everyone else they want to control.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re a detective and he wants you to do a detective job for him, just like he says, and he doesn’t want the elves and dwarves to stop you with their magic.”

  “Shit,” I remarked. She was right. It did all fit. So I really was under a troll spell, but one that protected me from elf spells, and even protected other people from their spells, if they were close enough to me.

  I still didn’t like it. Sure, it wasn’t as bad as being shrunk or rained on by poop, but I was still being used by these bastards in their little game, whatever that game was, in a way that was way-too up-close and personal. I was right in the middle of this thing, even more than I ever thought I was. “Son of a bitch,” I remarked, too loud for in a library. A couple of the librarians gave me the evil eye. One of them had really nice legs, so I forgave that one.

  “Jake, don’t you see what a break this is? We should tell Vinnie so that the Family doesn’t dispose of you.”

  “Sure, Kid; it’s just great news. Might as well tell them.” Why not? The elves, being in this magic business, must already know. I was a danger to them. But then why didn’t they simply get rid of me, rather than grill me?

  The answer was obvious; they wanted me to lead them to the troll. Then they would kill me, probably, if the mob didn’t kill me first. Just like Henry. Dandy. But I had no choice, really. This wouldn’t be over with until the troll was caught. There was at least one other little tiny catch. I didn’t know where the troll was! Oh yeah, and the mob would bump me off too, if I turned the ugly bastard in. Almost forgot that part.

  It was still only morning but I had a headache already, and wanted a stiff drink. Elaine and I left the library and went to Sam’s Bar for drinks and sandwiches. I watched, but didn’t see any tails, but I knew they must be there somewhere, from both the elves/cops and the mob. I felt like a rat in a maze, and I wanted out.

  After throwing down a couple of shots I stood up at our booth and loudly made an announcement. “Trolls, elves, dwarves, I wash my hands of the lot of you. You hear me? I quit. Play your games without me. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.” I got a few casual looks from my fellow drinkers at Sam's, but that was about all. People that start drinking before lunchtime hear all sorts of nonsense, lots of it from their own mouths.

  I got more of a reaction from Elaine. “That better be Jack Daniels talking, and not you,” she said. She seemed to be a little pissed.

  “A little of both, I think.”

  “Do you really want to turn-tail, Jake?”

  “You could call it that. Listen Baby, I've got it all figured out. The troll has had it, with or without my help. There are hundreds of elves, dwarves, and cops out there looking for the big ugly bastard, and they’ll find him soon, and that will simply be the end of it. The mob won’t even care, because this whole business will be over with. The way I see it, Jack Daniels and I spend the next few days here together, getting real chummy while I regrow my mustache. As long as I don’t help anyone on either side, I’m in the clear. Plus, Grisim pays us when the troll finally gets caught. That’s my new plan. It's foolproof.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Hah?”

  “How do you know you’d be in the clear? Why shouldn’t the elves just get rid of you anyway, for being a royal pain in the ass? And why do they want the troll so bad? What happens when they get him? Maybe the elves like it here; maybe they'll want to stay and continue to run things. And maybe the mob won't like it if you don't try to help the troll. I tell you this, if you accept any money from Grisim, the mob will see it as a payoff, and you are done-for. Then there's the little matter of you being framed for Henry's murder."

  “My head hurts," I complained. I had already made that quick stop at the bank and cashed the new check from Grisim, but hadn't told Elaine. I chugged down another shot of whisky. So OK, she was right. I was a dead man a lot of times over. It seemed like the walls were closing in on me.

  Meanwhile, she droned on. "The troll is the key, somehow, but unless we know more, we don't know if we should find the troll, or what to do if we do find him. Henry must have known something, that's why he was killed. The key to the troll and this whole business must be Henry and his trip to Arizona."

  I chugged down another shot. It was all spinning in my head. Elves, trolls, giants, dwarves, mobsters, and marriage. Help the troll and I'm a dead man. Don't help the troll and I'm a dead man. Henry's murder. Henry's trip west. The mob. The cops. My future in-laws. Suddenly out of the blue, or maybe out of the booze, it came to me, a way out! "I have to go to Arizona," I announced.

  "What?"

  "Henry went to Arizona and found something out, something that had to do with the troll, something that got him killed. He mentioned a Navajo shaman to his buddy at the bank. He got his artifact and whatever he knew about it from that shaman. When I find the shaman then I can find out what's going on here, I'm betting."

  "But Arizona? That's so far away!"

  "This is the twenty-first century, Baby; I could be there and back again in a day or two. Meanwhile you can hold do
wn the fort here. Besides, I'll have a new cell phone. We can stay in touch. End of story."

  "But Jake honey, it could be dangerous. Henry went there, and someone killed him."

  I shrugged. "Danger is my business, Baby."

  When we got back to the apartment I showered and packed for the trip, and worked things out some more in my head.

  While Elaine showered I phoned the airlines and booked an early afternoon flight to Phoenix. Better still, the flight had just a one hour layover in Phoenix, then continued on to Hawaii. I had always wanted to go to Hawaii. I heard that the chicks on the beach there are eager for sex and almost naked. No trolls, no elves, no Jersey mob. OK, no Elaine either, but that's the breaks. You can't have everything. By late tonight, given the time zone business with the Earth spinning and so forth, I’d be in Hawaii!

  Don’t get me wrong, Elaine is a fantastic chick, but me get married? Having a great chick is like having a great piece of spicy chicken. Just right while you’re eating it, every hot juicy bite a sweet chunk of heaven, but in the end it’s just chicken, and your fingers are all greasy, and you poop burning crap and flush the stinking stuff away. It was time to flush. There were other chicks. In Hawaii. I'd look terrific on the beach wearing my white fedora.

  Elaine wanted to go with me to the airport, but I insisted that she get right back on the case. We left in the Ford, tailed by a black sedan.

  I dropped Elaine off at the Bank and we kissed for the last time. She figured I’d make everything better and be back with her in a day or so. She had faith in me, but I knew me better. Besides, she’d be better off without me, that’s for sure, any chick would.

  I drove myself to Henry's place. I had just enough time before the flight to look for clues there. I could mail whatever I found to Elaine from Phoenix, and tell her I was being followed by someone nasty looking there in Arizona. Everyone would believe it; I was being followed all the time. When I never returned everyone would figure someone had bumped me off in Arizona. It was a foolproof escape.

  I parked the Ford a block from Henry's place and walked the rest of the way. On the outside the place looked better than it did the last time I was there. Stuff was still tore up, but except for the normal little piles of dog doo that everyone gets in their yards; the flying shit was all gone. The place had yellow tape across the door, but no other signs of cops.

  I broke in through the back door. The inside of Henry's place was a mess. Whoever got Henry had been looking for something all right. Papers, clothes, furniture, and some red smears that must have once been part of poor Henry were scattered all over the house. "Shi-i-it," I remarked.

  If this was a murder scene, a lot of this stuff should have been bagged or sponged up, but given the current state of our city’s finest, the murder investigation was probably even more lax than usual. Besides, they already had me as their patsy, so why look any further?

  Probably, the cops weren’t even the ones that tore up this place looking for something, but someone had trashed the joint when they killed Henry. Poor Henry’s study was the worst. All of his fancy old books were shredded to bits. It had to be the artifact that they were looking for, the figurine that looked like a little man, along with anything in books that might relate to the artifact.

  Just then, I got the weirdest feeling. Like I was snug inside a dark place, hiding. “Find me,” said a strange voice in my head!

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked of nobody in particular.

  “Come get me,” said the voice. I couldn’t hear it with my ears, but it was in my head as clear as anything! And somehow I knew I should head east to find it. East, towards the bank and the mob and the troll.

  Like hell, I figured. I had enough of this. Newark Airport was to the north, and I ran back to my car and headed that way, losing the tail first, thanks to a few side trips down alleys and through backyards. The black sedan that had been tailing me ended up in a swimming pool, a victim of brains over brawn. Hopefully the sedan was packed full of short little elves and dwarves that were in over their heads.

  With all the extra driving around, I was in danger of missing my flight from Newark. To save time I even parked in the close-to-terminal, high rate parking. That was a first for me but I was never coming back anyway. I remembered to leave my Smith and Wesson revolver in the Ford: nowadays they frown on carrying guns on airplane flights. I was leaving behind both my car and gun.

  I ran to the terminal with my bag to pick up my ticket and check my bag to Hawaii. I got to my gate in time for final boarding, but inside the airplane flight attendants insisted that I sit in first class instead of coach, in seat 2a instead of 20a. The answer to the little mystery of my upgrade was already sitting in 2b, and he needed all the extra shoulder room of a first class seat.

  “Sit the fuck down,” said Uncle Vinnie. “You damn near missed your flight, Kid.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Elaine. She fears for your sorry ass on this little trip. Good thing I came, too. The airline fucked up and had you booked through all the way to Hawaii. Now ain’t that something?”

  “Shit yeah, what a screw-up. Lucky thing for me that you checked.”

  He smiled his shark smile at me. “Reminds me of another guy that did something similar. He was supposed to go to London for us but he somehow got himself booked through to Paris. Guess what happened? He ended up at both places! Ain’t that a good one?” Vinnie grinned.

  I didn’t get it, and it must have showed.

  “You get it Kid; there was parts of him in London, and there was parts of him in Paris. Fifty-fifty split; sort of messy.”

  My jaw dropped open.

  “Don’t worry Kid, you’ll get through this OK. I promised Elaine I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”

  “That’s a comforting thought.”

  “We’re going to see a guy named John Nomoxin, by the way.”

  “We are?”

  “The Arizona shaman that Henry vacationed with, Jake. You ain’t too well informed, are you?”

  “You got that from Henry?”

  “From his papers we found at his place.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Why the fuck would I do that, Jake?”

  “Maybe you went to him and asked some questions he didn’t want to answer. Questions about elves and trolls that the Family had a business interest in.”

  “Could have happened, but think about it.”

  “I have been thinking.”

  “Think some more. You just been to his place, so you seen the mess.”

  “Messy isn’t your style?”

  “Not unless it's necessary to make a point. And if it was messy accidently, we’d have burned the place down and not left all that shit lying around. Evidence, is what it is. No, if we got to Henry soon enough, he’d still be alive. He knew some things, all right. That’s why we have some of our guys in Arizona checking things out.”

  “You have guys in Arizona?”

  “Friends of the Family. Business acquaintances.”

  “All the way out in Arizona?”

  “They’re going to meet us at the airport.”

  I must have made a sour face, and Vinnie must have noticed. “Cheer up Jake, it could be worse. We got other friends that could have met parts of you in Hawaii.”

  That gave me something to think about for the rest of the flight. Also our two flight attendants were really cute. A brunette and a redhead, both young and fully equipped. They kept coming back to us, asking if we wanted anything. At first I thought they were just looking me over, like women usually do, but then I noticed Uncle Vinnie slipped them some bills every time they came by, and they were smiling at Vinnie a lot. I’d have never even thought about doing something like that, giving away dough that way to a broad that wasn't even a hooker or a stripper. Vinnie had the style, not to mention the spare dough, to carry it off.

  I drank a few of those tiny little bottles of brandy they have, and relaxed for the rest o
f the flight. Then I must have dozed off. I even missed the movie, if there was one.

  I had a weird dream though. I was in a dark place, and I was hearing a voice. “Come get me,” said the tiny mystery voice.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

  “I be you. You be me. Come find me. We be one again.”

  “Fuck off!” I yelled, apparently out loud, because a big hand tightened on my shoulder like a vise and shook me so hard I thought my head would fall off.

  “Wake up, Jake!” Vinnie said, and then the shaking stopped.

  I opened my eyes and there was Vinnie, standing over me as big as a mountain. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t hold your liquor?”

  “Naw, just a bad dream.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit in it this time. Different problem.”

  He sat down in his seat but kept his beady little eyes locked on mine. “Some free advice. Don’t fuck up no more, Jake. You ain’t a kid no more, except compared to an old fuck like me. You got responsibilities now.”

  “I understand.” I was massaging my shoulder, trying to get some feeling back into it.

  “You say that, Jake, but it ain’t so. If it was so, your luggage wouldn’t be going to Hawaii.”

  I didn’t fall asleep again, but we were landing anyway.

  ****