“I thought you couldn’t read, Bill,” I said.
“I can look at the pictures, and the shop had an old vampire proofreader who mumbled aloud as he read the words,” Bill said. “As a golem, you hear things.”
“The important thing is that Mr., uh, Bill found us,” Robin said. She had been sold on the case as soon as the golem told us his plight. If it weren’t for Sheyenne looking out for us, Robin would be inclined to embrace any client in trouble, whether or not he, she, or it could pay.
Since joining us, postmortem, Sheyenne had worked tirelessly—not that ghosts got tired—to manage our business and keep Chambeaux & Deyer in the black. I didn’t know what I’d do without her, professionally or personally.
Before her death, Sheyenne had been a med student, working her way through school as a cocktail waitress and occasional nightclub singer at one of the Unnatural Quarter high-end establishments. She and I had a thing in life, a relationship with real potential, but that had been snuffed out when Sheyenne was murdered, and then me, too.
Thus, our romance was an uphill struggle.
While it’s corny to talk about “undying love,” Fate gave us a second chance . . . then blew us a big loud raspberry. Sheyenne and I each came back from the dead in our respective way—me as a zombie, and Sheyenne as a ghost—but ghosts can never touch any living, or formerly living, person. So much for the physical side of our relationship . . . but I still like having her around.
Now that he was moisturized, Bill the golem seemed a new person, and he no longer flaked off mud as he followed Robin into our conference room. She carried a yellow legal pad, ready to take notes. Since it wasn’t yet clear whether the golem needed a detective, an attorney, or both, I joined them. Sheyenne brought more water, a whole pitcher this time. We let Bill have it all.
Golems aren’t the smartest action figures in the toy box—they don’t need to be—but even though Bill was uneducated, he wasn’t unintelligent, and he had a very strong sense of right and wrong. When he started talking, his passion for Justice was apparent. I realized he would make a powerful witness. Robin fell for him right away; he was just her type of client.
“There are a hundred other disenfranchised golems just like me,” Bill said. “Living in miserable conditions, slaves in a sweatshop, brought to life and put to work.”
“Who created you?” I asked. “Where is this sweatshop located? And what work did you do?”
Bill’s clay brain could not hold three questions at a time, so he answered only two of them. “We manufacture Unnatural Quarter souvenirs—vampire ashtrays made with real vampire ash, T-shirts, place mats, paperweights, holders for toothpicks marketed as ‘stakes for itsy-bitsy vampires.’ ”
Several new gift shops had recently opened up in the Quarter, a chain called Kreepsakes. All those inane souvenirs had to come from somewhere.
More than a decade after the Big Uneasy brought back all the legendary monsters, normal humans had recovered from their shock and horror enough that a few tourists ventured into the Quarter. This had never been the best part of town, even without the monsters, but businesses welcomed the increased tourism as an unexpected form of urban renewal.
“Our master is a necromancer who calls himself Maximus Max,” Bill continued. “The golems are mass produced, slapped together from uneven clay, then awakened with a bootleg animation spell that he runs off on an old smelly mimeograph. Shoddy work, but he doesn’t care. He’s a slave driver!”
Robin grew more incensed. “This is outrageous! How can he get away with this right out in the open?”
“Not exactly out in the open. We labor in an underground chamber, badly lit, no ventilation . . . not even an employee break room. Through lack of routine maintenance, we dry out and crumble.” He bent his big blunt fingers, straightened them, then dipped his hand into the pitcher of water, where he left a murky residue. “We suffer constant aches and pains. As the mimeographed animation spell fades, we can’t move very well. Eventually, we fall apart. I’ve seen many coworkers and friends just crumble on the job. Then other golems have to sweep up the mess and dump it into a bin, while Maximus Max whips up a new batch of clay so he can create more golems. No one lasts very long.”
“That’s monstrous.” Robin took detailed notes. She looked up and said in a soft, compassionate voice, “And how did you escape, Bill?”
The golem shuddered. “There was an accident on the bottling line. When a batch of our Fires of Hell hot sauce melted the glass bottles and corroded the labeling machine, three of my golem friends had to clean up the mess. But the hot sauce ruined them, too, and they fell apart.
“I was in the second-wave cleanup crew, shoveling the mess into a wheelbarrow. Max commanded me to empty it into a Dumpster in the alley above, but he forgot to command me to come back. So when I was done, I just walked away.” Bill hung his head. “But my people are still there, still enslaved. Can you free them? Stop the suffering?”
I addressed the golem. “Why didn’t you go to the police when you escaped?”
Bill blinked his big artificial eyes, now that he was more moisturized. “Would they have listened to me? I don’t have any papers. Legally speaking, I’m the necromancer’s property.”
Robin dabbed her eyes with a tissue and pushed her legal pad aside. “It sounds like a civil rights lawsuit in the making, Bill. We can investigate Maximus Max’s sweatshop for conformance to workplace safety codes. Armed with that information, I’ll find a sympathetic judge and file an injunction to stop the work line temporarily.”
Bill was disappointed. “But how long will that take? They need help now!”
“I think he was hoping for something more immediate, Robin,” I suggested. “I’ll talk to Officer McGoohan, see if he’ll raid the place . . . but even that might be a day or two.”
The golem’s face showed increasing alarm. “I can’t stay here—I’m not safe! Maximus Max will be looking for me. He’ll know where to find me.”
“How?” Sheyenne asked, sounding skeptical.
“I’m an escaped golem looking for action and legal representation—where else would I go but Chambeaux and Deyer? That’s what the tourist map says.”
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Spooky, call Tiffany and tell her I’ll come to her comedy improv show if she does me a quick favor.”