The Green Lama: Horror in Clay (The Green Lama Legacy Book 2) (6 page)

“Modesty, huh. Not used to that. I’ve read about you in the tabloids. Did you really date what’s-her-face, the woman from that film
Trouble in Morocco
, or whatever the hell it’s called?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah, but she’s not that pretty in person. But you’re Jean Farrell, right? I saw you in
Our Town
. You’re good.”

Jean firmed her lips and hoped she wasn’t blushing. “Thanks.”

“Can I lower my arms now?” Dumont asked tentatively.

“Yeah, you can put ’em down,” she said, lowering her pistol as well. “So, did Pali tell you anything?”

“Just that he wanted me to see if I could get a friend of mine to translate this.” He reached in his pocket and brought out the piece of parchment Pali had secreted earlier.

“Oh, great,” Jean sighed. “The Dracula writing.”

Dumont raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Nothing,” she said, rubbing her eyes, hoping that it might help push back the memories from earlier that day. “You know someone who could read that?”

“Probably. I have a friend who’s a professor of linguistics. I was about to go see him when I thought I heard you scream.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Guess I was having a bad dream.”

“It’s all right. Except for the whole, you know, pulling a gun on me part.”

“No offense, but for future reference, it’s probably not the best idea to leave a girl with an itchy trigger finger alone with a gun in a strange place.”

“Duly noted. I should get going, though. Don’t want to make Charles wait for an answer. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. If you need anything, just ask my assistant, Tsarong; he’ll be more than happy to help.”

Jean quickly slipped into her shoes and grabbed her coat and hat off the chair.

“You should probably rest,” Dumont said, clearly concerned. “Charles did say you had an awful scare.”

“Heh. If you—or Pali—think that I’m gonna just lay around while you boys have all the fun, you’ve got another thing coming. And besides, after what I saw today, closing my eyes is the last thing I want to do.” She threw on her coat and cloche hat, and stormed out of the bedroom. “Well, you coming?” she said as she stepped into the hallway. She looked back at Jethro, who was watching her with an oddly familiar smirk. “Where are we going, by the way?”

• • •

Columbia University’s linguistic department was buried deep in the catacombs of the school’s library. Piled under the miles of books, tons of masonry, and behind a worn and splintered door sat the offices of the department head, Dr. Craig Allen. Jethro lightly knocked against the frosted glass of the door. He hadn’t expected Jean to awaken so soon after their ordeal in the factory—which was now nothing more than a smoking pile of rubble on the West Side—or he would have never dispensed with the Pali disguise. He had been able to explain away the fact that he and Pali lived in the same building, telling Jean that Pali rented one of the apartments from him; the difficult part was trying to cover up the Green Lama connection.

“So, you’ve never actually met the Green Lama?” she had asked on the drive over.

Jethro cocked his head to the side, giving the appearance of someone trying to retrieve a long forgotten memory. “Not in the most literal of senses, no. I’ve helped him on a case or two, but solely through correspondence. Have you ever met him?”

Jean raised an eyebrow at him. “Several times.”

“I hear he’s kind of…
intimidating
,” he said with a nervous grimace.

“Insomuch that a guy walking around in a green night robe can be.” Jethro shot her a look, indignant. “But, he can crush solid metal with his bare hands, so what do I know?” Jean said before Jethro could interject. “Maybe green is terrifying.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. There was definitely something off about Jean, but he couldn’t pinpoint what had changed. She wasn’t as sharp and seemed a bit dazed, but that might have just been the blow on the head. He hadn’t noticed any significant bruises or bleeding, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t significantly injured internally. No, it was more than that; it was almost as if she were giving off some sort of dull electrical charge, not unlike the way he did after consuming the radioactive salts.

But that would be impossible.

Jethro shrugged off the thought. What concerned him now was the identity of their attacker at the factory. He was almost certain that it was the same person who attacked the German consulate, but in the madness of the building collapse he hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of the man. He wanted to believe that their attacker perished beneath the collapse of the building, but the malevolent sensation that had pervaded his mind since the attack on the embassy persisted. Whoever—or whatever—he was had shaken Jean down to her very core—so much so that she hadn’t spoken for almost an hour.

Jethro had begun to knock again when Dr. Allen swung the door open with an audible creak. A thin, bespectacled, and heavily bearded man persistently clad in a tweed jacket with the elbows rubbed through, he had the look that befit a college professor. Dr. Allen had been a good friend of Jethro’s father, and Jethro had always considered the linguist something of an uncle.

“Jethro!” he exclaimed, embracing him without hesitation. “What a pleasure it is to see you! Has it really been nearly a half-year since we’ve spoken?”

“Far too long, Craig,” Jethro said, patting the professor lightly on the shoulder. “This is my friend, Miss Jean Farrell.”

“Miss Farrell, a pleasure!” Dr. Allen grasped Jean’s hand, shaking it vigorously. “It’s so nice to see someone was able to nail down our young Jethro, what with the wanderlust and all!” he said with a wink.

“What? Oh!” Jean exclaimed, belatedly catching Dr. Allen’s insinuation. “Oh no. No, no. I just met him today.” She and Jethro shared a look of mutual discomfort and interest.

“Ah, well, like my wife always says, ‘Get ’em while they’re hot,’ eh?” Dr. Allen winked once again, elbowing Jean in the ribs.

“Yeah… right,” Jean said, massaging the sore spot on her side.

“Ah, but we digress! Come sit, sit! Jethro, you mentioned over the phone that you needed something translated.” Dr. Allen plopped down into the small leather chair behind his desk, effectively burying himself up to his neck in leatherbound books. Jethro and Jean took their seats across from him, but still needed to crane their necks to look directly at the jovial doctor.

“Yes, our mutual friend Dr. Pali gave me this,” Jethro said, revealing the small scrap of parchment, “in hopes I could translate it, based upon my travels, but I confess that I am unable to decipher the symbols and hoped you might be able to shed some light as to their meaning.”

Jethro handed the parchment over to Dr. Allen, who skimmed it quickly. He took off his glasses and gave Jethro a look of paternal reprimand. “Jethro, my boy, I am disappointed in you. All your travels and you can’t even recognize Hebrew!”

“Hebrew, of course!” Jethro slapped his forehead. “Well, is my face red. You’d think that’s something I’d have picked up somewhere along the way.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, son. Outside of the synagogues and the more conservative groups of Judaism, ancient Hebrew is practically a dead language these days. A shame, if you ask me—such a fascinating tongue to study. A Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic family first formed around the second millennium BC. Ah, but once again I fear I have moved us from the matter at hand. You asked me to translate this for you, not lecture you…” He tipped his glasses to the edge of his nose and brought up the scrap of paper. “Hm…”

“What is it?” Jean inquired, craning her neck to get a better look at the parchment.

“Well, at first I thought this was from the Torah—the Old Testament, as it were. But I’ve never seen this phrase before…” Dr. Allen shrugged. “I can tell you what it says, but I’m not sure I can tell you what it means. You’d probably have to ask a rabbi for that. Luckily, I know one, Brickman is his name if you need—”

“Craig… What does it say?” Jethro asked, his patience beginning to wear thin.

Dr. Allen cleared his throat and translated: “
Yatzar mamash me-tohu ve-oseh et ayno yeshno
… He formed substance out of chaos and out of nothing He made something. But I’ve always been partial to the admittedly inaccurate phrasing ‘…from the empty void He made the solid earth, and from the nonexistent He brought forth Life.’”

Jean let out a long, rattling sigh, wrapping her arms around her midsection and curling down over herself. Jethro reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Jean, what is it?”

“Are you all right, Miss Farrell?” Dr. Allen asked, craning over his mountain of books.

“Yeah… Fine,” Jean replied, shaking her head. She looked over at Jethro. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”

Chapter 5

BIG TOP, BIG TROUBLE

“I have a bad feeling about this, Herr Leutnant.”

Caraway leaned forward against the steering wheel and gave his less than enthusiastic “partner” a bemused expression. “Look, buddy, you’re clearly a smart cookie, seeing as you made it all the way to Colonel, or whatever the hell you people call it,” he said, tapping the ranking pins on Gan’s lapel, “so I’m not going to spell it out for you.”

Gan sat in the passenger seat, massaging his temples. “Spell it out, please. Pretend I am an imbecile. Pretend I am you.”

Caraway sighed audibly. “Fine. Our little encounter with Pomatto got me thinking. Much as I hate to admit it—and I really do hate it—you’re probably right that he isn’t the man we’re looking for. Sure, Pomatto’s got the height, right? But nothing else matches up. So, I started thinking about what your buddy Johann was saying. The man we’re after is tall, but he’s also got some major scarring on his forehead. That narrows the field a bit, but still doesn’t give us our man. Then I saw that”—Caraway pointed at the large poster across from them—“and I got to thinking it all sorta fit together a little too perfectly.”

Gan glanced over at the poster and then shot Caraway a skeptical look. “I think you’re being ridiculous, Herr Leutnant.”

“Don’t tell me you krauts don’t have circuses over there.”

Gan looked at the massive painted poster of the exhibit touted as the World’s Tallest Man: “Gorgeous Gordon.” The poster claimed that Gordon was over seven feet tall and the strongest man in the Western Hemisphere. To underline these declarations, the poster showed Gordon resting one elbow on what was meant to be a normal-sized man whilst lifting a large barbell with the other arm.

“
Ja
, we have circuses in Germany, but this is a fool’s errand.”

“You’re more than welcome to sit this one out. In fact, I insist! We don’t want you goose-stepping your way into another international incident, do we?” Caraway said as he got out of the squad car, slamming the door behind him.

“
Arschloch
,” Gan grumbled after a moment, crossing his arms and letting his anger steam up the inside of the car. The investigation was only a little more than a day old and it was already becoming a wild goose chase. Working with Caraway had only compounded the issue—Gan had been tempted to
ward
homicide more times in the past day than in all his years. Gan knew the longer this farce continued, the further he would be from achieving his purpose here. And so, as much as he hated it—and he did hate it—he would continue to work with Caraway until they could find some solution to this mystery. Gan shoved open the car door and chased after Caraway, who was already near the entrance of the main tent.

“Told you, you could stay in the car.”

“And miss watching you make a fool of yourself? I think not.”

Caraway had his men stationed just outside the fairgrounds so as not to arouse any suspicion amongst the circus folk—he didn’t want to deal with another incident like they had with Pomatto—so for now it was just him and Gan. It was still a few hours before the show was scheduled to begin, but they could still hear music emanating from within the tent. As they walked through the entrance, he expected to find the performers wrapping up a last-minute rehearsal, but was surprised to find the center ring empty. The ethereal music continued to play on, echoing around them and sending shivers down his spine.

“When was the last time you went to the circus, Gan?” Caraway whispered, nervously scratching at his mustache.

“I was four,” Gan breathed.

Caraway glanced over at Gan’s balding head. “So that was, what, 1885?”

“Believe it or not, Herr Leutnant, I am only thirty two.”

“Wow. That’s depressing.”

“This is ridiculous,” Gan said as they found themselves in the center ring. “I shall not wait here for the next shoe to drop. HELLO! Is anyone there?!”

The music continued to play. Gan looked over at Caraway.

Caraway shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

Just then the music died down, leaving an eerie silence behind.

“Aw… This can’t be good,” Caraway murmured.