TVA BABY and Other Stories (19 page)

“Nope.”

“An ancient statue that comes to life in the full moon. And kills! If that’s not supernatural, what is?”

“Nothing is,” I said. “There is no such thing as the supernatural. There is a natural, scientific, materialist explanation for everything. Didn’t you ever read Arthur Conan Doyle—or Edward O. Wilson?”

“I thought you were a Supernatural Private Eye!” she said, lighting a new Camel off her latest casualty. “That’s why I hired you.”

“This is New Orleans,” I said. We were following the flatbed through the streets toward the museum. No one paid any attention to the big stone gargoyle on the bed of the truck. “Everybody has to have a specialty, the spookier the better. Besides, I got your Enormé back, didn’t I?” “Yes, but it will only happen again. Last night was just a warm up. Tonight is the full moon.”

“Good,” I said, “I’ll be there, watching. Tell Ward the museum is providing its own security.”

We found a rail-thin black man in a Cardin suit waiting for us in Prang’s office.

“Boudin,” he said, extending his hand. “Le Louvre.”

“Welcome to New Orleans,” said Prang. “What can you tell us?”

“The photos were interesting but inconclusive,” Boudin said. He held up a small device the size and shape of my cell phone. “I will do a quantum magneto-scan and let you know.”

Luckily, the new window hadn’t been installed yet, so the Enormé could be hoisted into the museum’s lab by craneand laid out on the table. It was late afternoon before the workmen had fixed the windows and gone.

Prang went out for cigarettes, while Boudin scanned the Enormé with his device. I took the opportunity to get my first good look at the statue I had been hired to recover and protect. It was made out of some kind of smooth stone, and except for its size—about eight feet in length—there was nothing special about it. Laid out, it looked less like a medieval gargoyle and more like a kid’s idea of a monster. It had big blank eyes, short arms, thick legs with enormous claws, and two rows of stone “teeth,” like a shark. It looked sort of Mayan, vaguely European, and even a little bit East Indian. It had aspects of every monster ever imagined, anywhere in the world.

Boudin agreed with my assessment. “Trés generique,” he said. “If it weren’t made out of this odd stone, which is from nowhere in Mexico, it would be of no interest whatsoever. And its age…”

“Its age?”

“According to my scanner the statue in its present form is almost a half a million years old—and so is the stone it’s carved from! Of course that’s some kind of quantum error—too young for stone and too old for art. They’re recalibrating in Paris right now.” He held up the scanner and smiled proudly. “This has a full-time satellite hookup, like GPS.”

I acted impressed because he clearly wanted me to be, but I wasn’t surprised. We live, all of us, in a very small world. Far too small for spooks.

Meanwhile, it was suppertime. I pulled out my trusty cell phone and ordered pizza, with pepperoni.

“Pepperoni?” Prang was back.

“The moon doesn’t come up until after sunset,” I said, shutting off my cell phone to save the batteries. “If I’m staying the night, you’re paying expenses. And I don’t eat pizza plain.”

“Make it pepperoni on one side and mushrooms on the other,” said Prang, as she tore open a new pack of Camels with her teeth. “I’m a vegetarian.”

In a real private eye story this would be the beginning of an unlikely romance, but life, at least my life, is much too likely for that. Boudin went back to his hotel (still jet-lagged) while Prang and I retired to the corner of the lab where the techs watched TV on their breaks, and ate pizza and watched the evening news, which was luckily still Enormé-free.

“Thanks to Ward,” I explained. “He doesn’t want the press all over a story until he can show them a suspect.”

“What’s the rub between you and him?” she asked.

“I was a cop for eighteen years,” I said. “A hostage negotiator. We had an incident where a school principal went postal, took a third-grade class hostage. I was about to get the kids released, when Ward bursts in shooting. Four kids and the teacher were blown away. I broke the blue wall of silence and filed a formal complaint.”

“But Ward’s still there.”

“And I’m not,” I said. “Go figure. And pass the pizza.”

The sun was setting.

The moon rose behind skinny trees, but nothing happened. We settled in to wait.

Prang got the couch; I got the armchair.

I missed my Jim Beam, but I had Charlie Rose on the TV, which is almost as good for putting you to sleep. It was a rerun—Stephen Jay Gould, talking about the intricacies of evolution. A favorite subject of mine.

But was it really a rerun? Halfway through their talk, Gould and Rose were joined by Charles Darwin. I recognized him by his beard. Darwin’s cell phone rang, and Rose and Gould both turned into girls, only it was three girls, all armed to the teeth…

I sat up and knew at once that I had been dreaming.
Charlie’s Angels
was on the TV, a re-run for sure. I turned on my cell phone to check the time: almost ten. Prang was asleep on the couch.

Through the lab’s windows came a soft silvery glow: the moon was rising over the trees. My cell phone was beeping: a message.

I retrieved it to shut it up.

“Kill me … please …” The same male voice as in the cemetery.

I heard a groan, behind me.

I turned around. Was I still dreaming? I certainly hoped so, for the Enormé was sitting up, staring straight at me. Its “eyes” were wide open, reflecting the full moon like oversize silver coins.

“Wake up!” I whispered, poking Prang’s shapely hip.

“What?” She sat up. “Oh shit! Where’s your gun?”

“Can’t stand the things. Not that a gun would do any good…”

Still staring straight at me, the Enormé slid off the table in one fluid motion, graceful as a cat. It started across the room toward the couch, stubby arms outstretched in an eerie mixture of menace and plea…

I jumped behind the couch, Prang right behind me. “Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want?”

The Enormé stopped and looked around, as if confused. Then it turned away, toward the wall of windows. Moaning once again, it lowered its head and smashed through the windows, frame and all, and disappeared into the night.

Alarms started to howl, all over the building.

I ran for the window, pulling Prang by the arm. She twisted out of my grasp. “I have to turn off the alarms!” she said.

The parking lot was bathed in moonlight. I climbed out through the broken glass. There was no sign of the Enormé; not even bloody tracks this time. The cold light of the full moon seemed to mock the certainties of a lifetime, which lay shattered all around me, like broken glass.

“Now do you believe?” Prang asked, lighting a cigarette at my side.

“Give me one of those.”

“Thought you didn’t smoke.”

“I didn’t believe in monsters either.”

First Prang called the police to tell them it was a false alarm. Then she used my cell phone to call Boudin at his hotel, waking him up.

He looked annoyed when he arrived; then amazed when he saw the empty table and the broken glass.

“Incroyable!” he said.

“Have you heard from Paris?” I asked. “Any idea where that stone is from?”

Boudin shook his head. “It’s not from anywhere because it’s not stone.” He showed me his scanner. Even with my bad French I could read the word at the bottom of the tiny screen:

SYNTHETIQUE

“It’s also slightly radioactive,” said Boudin. “They’re analyzing the scan in Paris to see if it’s the material or a source inside.”

“One question,” said Prang, raising her chin and stroking her neck between thumb and forefinger. “Why didn’t it pinch our heads off?”

“I think it wants to be followed,” I said. “And it knows we’re the followers.”

“Let’s get following then!” said Prang. “The night is yet young. We have to find it before it kills somebody else. The museum might be liable.”

“I have a hunch we’re not going to find it until it wants us to,” I said. “Boudin, did you scan those eyes?” “Oui.”

“Could they be some kind of photoreceptors?”

“I’ll have Paris check them out.”

“Good,” I said. “While we’re waiting, why don’t we all get some sleep, and meet at my office at noon?”

“Sleep? Noon?” Prang lit another Camel. “Shouldn’t we be out looking for this thing?”

“I told you, I have a hunch. Isn’t that what private eyes have? Isn’t that what you’re paying me for?”

Morning is the only quiet time in the French Quarter. I was dreaming of Darwin again, dispatching killer girls around the universe, when Prang and Boudin knocked at my door.

“You were right about the photoreceptors,” said Boudin, “How did you know?”

“Apparently the Enormé is activated by moonlight,” I said. “And what about the radioactivity?” “Still waiting.”

“What are we doing here?” asked Prang, looking around my office with ill-disguised disgust. “Where are all your ashtrays?”

“We’re waiting for a phone call.”

“From who?”

“From a friend, if my hunch is right. I’m sorry, you can’t smoke in here.”

“What do you mean, a friend?” She took a deep drag and blew it up toward the ceiling. “Tell me more.”