The Librarians and the Lost Lamp (14 page)

“Out of order, dude,” Bad Toupee growled. “Move it along.”

This was not what the baffled tourist wanted to hear. He fidgeted restlessly as he looked in vain for any signs to that effect. “Um, are you with the casino? 'Cause you don't exactly appear to be dressed the part.…”

“You deaf, buster?” Bad Toupee glowered at him in a very inhospitable way. “Take a hike.”

The tourist gulped, getting the message.

“N-no problem. I'm going.” He cast a lost, longing look at the men's room door. “Um, by any chance, do you know where the next closest restroom is?”

“Do I look like an information booth? Scram.”

The tourist made himself scarce.

Probably a smart move,
Stone thought. Whatever these guys wanted with Dunphy, they clearly didn't want to be interrupted, which probably meant that the gambler's luck was taking a serious turn for the worse. Stone covertly inspected the self-appointed sentry barring the door. Bad Toupee didn't look remotely Middle Eastern, like the crew that supposedly came looking for Dunphy at the trailer park, so who else was tailing him?

Only one way to find out.

Stone casually approached the men's room, acting as harmless as possible.

“Out of order,” Bad Toupee said. “Take it somewhere else.”

“Seriously, man?” Stone feigned discomfort. “'Cause this is kind of urgent, if you know what I mean.”

“Not my problem. Beat it.”

The guy's surly attitude made it a lot easier to do what came next. “Thanks for nothing,” Stone grumbled. “You'd think a classy place like this would want to treat their customers more—”

A right cross to the jaw dropped Bad Toupee to the floor. His wig went askew.

“Sleep it off,” Stone said, massaging his knuckles.

Leaving the stunned goon in the hallway, Stone slipped into the men's room, which was probably one of the few areas of the casinos that didn't have cameras watching everywhere—or so one would like to think. The sound of a toilet flushing helpfully drowned out the sound of his entrance, so he had a chance to check out the situation—which was pretty much as dire as he had expected.

Dunphy was face down in a toilet, getting an old-fashioned swirly. A burly tormentor, boasting a shaved skull with an eight ball tattooed onto it, held Dunphy's head down in the oversized handicapped stall, while his significantly smaller associate looked on approvingly. Stone guessed that the little guy, who wasn't getting his hands dirty, was the brains of the operation and most likely the boss. Wearing a six-gallon hat and a bolo tie, he snarled at Dunphy as the eddying waters drained and the big enforcer yanked Dunphy's head up by his hair. Idle hands shuffled a pile of chips that had probably come straight from Dunphy's pockets.

“Think you can cheat me, you red-headed moron? Well, you've got another thing coming.”

Dunphy sputtered. “I swear, Rudy, this is just a misunderstanding. I didn't cheat nobody!”

“That's a load of bull and you know it. No one's that lucky!”

The door swung shut behind Stone, alerting them to his presence. Rudy looked both confused and annoyed by the new arrival, but more the latter than the former. He made a face as though he smelled something bad. “How the hell did you get in here?”

“Er, through the door?” Stone replied, all innocence. “Am I interrupting something?”

“None of your business, hayseed. If you're smart, you'll turn around and head back out that door.”

“Whatever, man. I don't want any trouble.” Stone milked his good ol' country boy routine for all it was worth. He started toward an adjacent stall. “I'll just take care of business and be on my way.”

Leaving Dunphy for a moment, the big, bald bruiser got in Stone's face. “Don't think you're listening, pal. You need to hit the road, pronto.”

“What's your problem?” Stone feigned confusion. “Your buddy outside said it was okay.”

“He did?” Eight Ball looked puzzled for real. He looked past Stone toward the door, no doubt wondering how Stone had got past the lookout. “He tell you that?”

That was all the opportunity Stone needed. The veteran of more bar brawls than he really ought to admit to, he grabbed the enforcer by his lapels, swept his leg out from under him, and threw the guy sideways into an empty stall. Eight Ball crashed through the swinging metal door, and his butt collided with the toilet … hard. The door bounced halfway back into position.

“You okay, man?” Stone asked. “Think you slipped on a puddle there.”

Livid with rage, Eight Ball sprang back to his feet and charged at Stone. “You're going to regret that, you—”

Stone kicked the door so that it swung back and smacked the goon in the face before he could make it out of the stall, knocking him back into the rear of the compartment. He slumped onto the toilet, the fight knocked out of him for the moment.

Eight Ball, corner pocket,
Stone thought.
One more to go.

“You stupid hick!” Rudy reached into his jacket, almost surely for a weapon, but Stone lunged at Rudy, body slamming into him and pinning his arm to his chest. The back of Rudy's head banged against a wall-mounted hand dryer, activating it. Hot air blew noisily from the unit as Stone grabbed Rudy's wrist and, twisting, relieved him of a Smith & Wesson pistol. He ejected the cartridge, almost as smoothly as Baird might have done, and lobbed the pistol into the nearest urinal, where it cracked loudly against the enamel. Rudy slid down the wall onto the floor, landing in a sitting position on the pseudo-Arabic tiles. His cowboy hat sat askew atop his head as he practically spat at Stone.

“You're making a big mistake, buster! You have no idea who you're messing with.”

“Neither do you.” Stone pocketed the cartridge, just to keep it out of the wrong hands, and tugged Rudy's hat down over his ears. “Would you believe this isn't even the first time I've busted heads in a men's room? I should really look at my life choices.”

Dunphy gaped at him from the handicapped stall. “Who … why…?”

“Later, man.” Stone grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to his feet. “We've got better places to be right now.”

Dunphy nodded, still looking understandably shaken. Stone hustled him out the door into the hallway, where a pack of senior citizens were clucking over the sprawled form of Bad Toupee. One of them cautiously prodded him with her foot, eliciting a low moan.

“Will you look at that?” Stone shook his head. “Some people just can't hold their liquor.”

He figured that it was only a matter of time before the casino's own security staff showed up, so he hauled Dunphy out of the casino onto the sidewalk with all due haste. Oddly enough, as Stone knew from experience, local authorities were seldom keen on meddling Librarians disturbing the peace, and getting bailed out by Baird was not high on his to-do list.

“Thanks, buddy!” Dunphy said. “I owe you one, big time!”

Water dripped from his soaked red hair onto his shoulders. Stone was glad he'd managed to barge into the restroom before anything worse happened to their unlikely person of interest. Aside from possibly using magic to beat the odds at gambling, Dunphy struck Stone as harmless enough. Looks could be deceiving, especially where magic was concerned, but Dunphy wasn't exactly giving off a diabolical mastermind vibe. He seemed better suited to Gamblers Anonymous than the Serpent Brotherhood.

Then again, sometimes clueless amateurs, messing with forces they didn't really understand, could be more dangerous than an actual black magician or mythological creature. Like that well-meaning college student not long ago, the one who accidentally opened a doorway to another reality and sicced a hungry, tentacled monster on her campus.…

“We probably ought to stick to public places.” Stone guided Dunphy toward an empty bus stop, planting him down on a bench, before pausing to take stock of the situation and look Dunphy over. “You okay, man?”

“Pretty much, I guess. Just a little rattled, you know.” Dunphy wiped his brow and tried to slick his hair back into place. “Good thing you came along when you did.”

“Glad to be of service,” Stone said. “What was that all about anyway?”

“Bunch of sore losers, that's what. I cleaned Rudy out at a high-stakes poker game last night. He didn't take it well, accused me of cheating him somehow.” Rudy shrugged. “Guess he holds a grudge.”

That doesn't sound like the same crew who ransacked the trailer,
Stone thought. Then again, a guy like Dunphy who had been winning big, and conspicuously so, was probably bound to attract the wrong kind of attention from more than one party. “Some people just don't like losing, which means they're probably in the wrong town.”

“Ain't that the truth.” Dunphy extended his hand. “Gus Dunphy, by the way.”

“Jake Stone.” He shook Dunphy's hand. “Glad I could play Good Samaritan for you. Guess anybody who wins big needs to keep looking over their shoulder around here.”

Dunphy glanced around nervously, even though the passing crowds were ignoring them. “Yeah, you're probably right about that.” His stomach grumbled audibly. “Say, Jake, I know a great steakhouse downtown. You want to join me, maybe watch my back? My treat, naturally.”

Stone mulled over his options. Befriending Gus had not been part of the plan, but maybe he could work with this? He needed to stick close to Dunphy anyway.

“Sounds good to me. Let me just check in with my old lady.” He stepped away from the bus stop and dialed Baird. “Sorry to interrupt your reunion with your buddy, but we've had some new developments.”

He concisely briefed her on recent events, including the fracas in the restroom and his unexpected dinner invitation.

“Seems like I've ended up as Dunphy's temporary bodyguard.”

“There are worse ways to shadow him,”
Baird said over the phone.
“Do you need backup? I can cut things short here and rendezvous with you.”

“Nah. We're just going out for steak. I don't expect things to get hairy.”

To be honest, a nice slice of rib eye was sounding pretty good.

“Okay. Just keep your eyes open and stay on your toes. Remember what Dunphy's former neighbor said about loan sharks, ex-wives, et cetera. Lots of people may want a piece of him, including any number of sore losers … or worse.”

“Duly noted,” Stone said. “I'll keep you posted.”

Wrapping up the call, he returned to Dunphy, who looked visibly relieved to have him around.

“Everything cool with your lady friend?”

“You bet,” Stone said. “So, you were saying something about steak?”

 

12

2016

“Heads or tails?”

Jenkins flipped the purloined penny.

“Tails,” Cassandra said, not entirely sure this was the most scientific way to test the coin, which landed heads up on the conference table in the Annex. “Does that count as a win or a loss?”

“Unlucky for you,” Jenkins said, “but possibly lucky for me?” He flipped the penny again and got tails this time. “I must say, I'm not really observing anything remarkable about this coin so far.”

Cassandra was reaching the same conclusion. She scanned the penny with a handheld magic detector that resembled a battery-powered egg beater with spinning silver globes at the end of the probes. A lighted display panel measured any unusual electromagnetic energies, but was failing to register any anomalies along both the conventional and paranormal spectrums. She recalibrated the device, which she had customized herself, to search for unlikely quantum fluctuations, which you'd expect if probability was being messed with, but struck out again.

“I know what you mean,” she says. “I'm not detecting any supernatural emanations at all. And the composition of the coin is perfectly standard as well. 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper … well, copper-plated zinc, to be exact.”

“As one would expect from any US penny manufactured after 1982,” Jenkins confirmed. He stopped flipping the coin and tallying the results long enough to consult a massive tome lying open on the table, which he had retrieved from the reading room earlier. He leafed through the book while examining both sides of the coin with a magnifying glass. “Hmm. Just as I suspected. Zumwalt's
Guide to Arcane Numismatics
has nothing to say about a 2003 copper penny minted in Denver displaying any special properties.” He put down the magnifying glass. “Now if it had been an 1857 Flying Eagle penny from the secret mint in Baltimore that would be another story, but this, to all appearances, is a perfectly mundane piece of currency, of no particular distinction.”

Cassandra scanned the penny one more time, looking for residual traces of manna or ectoplasm, but found nothing but greasy fingerprints. Nor could she spot any occult sigils hidden in the engraving.

“I'm striking out here,” she admitted. “Could it be that we're on the wrong track?”

“That certainly appears to be the case.” Jenkins closed the book on the matter, literally. “It seems Mr. Dunphy's lucky penny is nothing but a red herring as far as our investigation is concerned. If there is indeed a magical explanation for his improbable winning streak, it must lie elsewhere.”

Discouraged, Cassandra put away her scanner. “So this has all been just a wild goose chase?”

“Not if the Clipping Book dispatched you there. More likely, you have simply taken a wrong turn.” He stepped away from the table. “Which reminds me, though, I need to collect some eggs from the Golden Goose. She gets cranky if her nest gets too full.”

Cassandra's eyes widened. “We have a goose?”

“Nothing you need concern yourself with this minute,” Jenkins said. “You had best deliver the results of our analysis to Colonel Baird and the others.”