“Actually, I haven’t seen anything yet,” I pointed out.
“Then take a look . . . but that’s just the window dressing on the disaster.”
The two vacant houses on either side of the Full Moon had been plastered with Senator Balfour’s posters decrying brothels in general, unnaturals in general, and unnatural brothels in particular. With my sharp detective’s eye, I noted that the headlines on two of the broadsheets contained typos, but Senator Balfour’s activists more than made up for their lack of literacy with large capital letters in an extra-bold font. Several posters demanded Pass the Unatural Acts Act Now! (complete with misspellings).
“This wouldn’t be the first place I’d look to rally support for the senator’s bill,” I said. “You’re telling me that his people posted all these when no one was watching? Shows a lot of balls.”
“If they show their balls again, I’ll cut them off,” Neffi said. “Most people are more interested in what goes on inside the Full Moon than in the rest of the neighborhood.”
Savannah and Aubrey, the zombie girls, began pulling down the posters, while the vampire princesses wadded them up and made a pile in the front yard, taking Neffi’s bonfire suggestion seriously.
The mummy madam looked concerned. “Come in and have a look at the rest. It gets worse.”
Inside the brothel, she led me up the curved grand staircase to the lavishly appointed rooms where the ladies did their business. Someone had thrown bricks through the black painted glass, shattering the darkened windows. Shards lay strewn over the comforters on the brass beds.
“Intimidation, pure and simple. The ladies can’t use these rooms now. What if this had happened during broad daylight? All that would be left is a pile of ash and a scorched comforter—and I’d have to hire new ladies.”
“I see your point.” I felt truly concerned now. Would Balfour’s activists go this far? “There’s a big difference between vandalism and attempted murder.”
I recalled the clueless and inept heckler at the Shakespeare in the Dark performance. If the senator’s people had burned down the theater set, they had already gone further than protesting, but this was another giant leap from arson.
“To tell you the truth, the senator’s minions may not have had anything to do with this. I think the mob is trying to twist my arm—and with these old joints, it is not an easy arm to twist.” Neffi held up her brown petrified hand, bent her elbow. “Come, let me show you the worst.”
Inside her office, Neffi paused to steel herself. Someone had broken into her private quarters, found the three carved sarcophagi that held the mummified remains of her pet cats. Two of the three had been smashed on her desk, the gauze-wrapped kitties crumbled to dust and fluff, the third one left intact, either as a taunt or a threat.
“Gone,” Neffi whispered. “Even the best taxidermist in the Quarter can’t put them together again. Who would do that to poor innocent pets?”
“They didn’t do it to the pets, Neffi. They did it to you.” If organized crime was involved, this was the unnatural equivalent of leaving a horse head tucked in her sarcophagus.
“They want to scare me out of business. It’s not going to work!”
It was time, I decided, to take this case a lot more seriously. I called McGoo and asked if he could increase the visible police presence around the Full Moon until I could arrange for private security. He said, “That’s ironic, Shamble, since unnatural prostitution is still technically illegal.”
“Would it help if I asked you to do it for me, McGoo?” You can’t keep spending favors unless you earn them back, but my account wasn’t empty yet.
“Marginally. But you have to promise to laugh at my jokes from now on.”
I hesitated. “All of them?”
“Most of them.”
“Some of them,” I agreed. McGoo realized it was the best he was going to get, so he left it at that.
“What’s the difference between a werewolf and a poodle?” Yes, he was going to make me pay for the favor.
“I don’t know. What?”
“If a werewolf starts humping your leg, you’d better let it finish instead of kicking it away.”
So I laughed, because I had promised, although I had an odd image of Cinnamon in my head.
At daybreak, when part of the Quarter awakened and the other part crawled back into their darkest holes, I decided to get all my mummies in a row and find out as much as I could about Neffi, just to make sure I had the full story.
The Metropolitan Museum wasn’t technically open to the public at dawn, but I had an inside contact. Once upon a time, before the Big Uneasy, patrons would go to the museum to look at the butterfly collection, the gem and geode displays, the dioramas of human civilization, the stuffed wild animals in supposedly natural poses, the hall of dinosaur bones. Lately, the big draw was the original tome of the Necronomicon, the ancient spell book that—through a combination of a rare planetary alignment, the phase of the moon, and a homely old witch’s paper cut that had provided the requisite drop of virgin’s blood—had sparked the reality upheaval that gave birth to all manner of creatures formerly relegated to ghost stories and paranoid imaginations. The museum dioramas, the insect display cases, even the dinosaur bones, now took a backseat to the creepy stuff.
When I gave my name to the security guard at the door and told him I was a friend of Ramen Ho-Tep’s, the man looked skeptical. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”
I was puzzled. “What do you mean? He was a client of mine. I know him well.”
Again, the guard was unimpressed. “Do you know how many groupies hang around the delivery doors just trying to get his autograph?”
“Uh . . . no, I don’t. How many?”
“A lot,” the guard said. “He was the Pharaoh of all Egypt, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that before. Tell him Dan Chambeaux is here—I’d just like a word.”
“You’d better not be wasting my time.” The guard left me standing outside the museum’s side entrance. I continued to smile pleasantly at him, holding back my own comment that this guy was wasting my time. A few minutes later he opened the door again, looking both surprised and humbled. “What do you know? He says come on in. It’s your lucky day.”
“Right.”