VII

I set the statue down on a bedside table, making sure that the thump this made was loud enough to momentarily snap her out of her dazed state. Her eyes focused on the toboda, and the look in them was the same as one I’d once seen when Id stumbled cross an otter caught in a poacher’s trap.

“Here’s your statue.” I stated. “You wanted it, I got it. If it’s that valuable to you, maybe you could spring for at least another fifty for all my trouble”

Considering the glazed look in her wide eyes, I knew I was wasting my time. Right now, she was dealing with a lot more than she, or anyone else, could handle. Money was clearly out of the question.

She was furiously muttering something over and over, it took a few seconds for me to realize she was repeating ‘you brought it here,’ at a mile a minute.

My voice somehow did penetrate through her panic. Her gaze shifted minutely. Just enough that she could take in both the toboda and me. She seemed afraid to look away from it, as if it would suddenly spring for her jugular. When she responded, it was in a rushed whisper.

“Take it away! I don’t want it! Go! Just take it with you. Throw it in the ocean for all I care. Just leave!”

Maybe it was having to strain my ears slightly to make out the individual words, but I was suddenly aware of a slight sound that had been there for the last minute or two. It sounded like stone-on-stone -- the sound a kid would get trying to make a spark by striking two stones together. I tried to place it, and my thoughts naturally went to the toboda. But no. It was squatting where I’d left it on the bedside table, not having moved an inch or shifted its position. So that option was, rather surprisingly, out. Then what was making the repetitive sound, and where was it coming from?

It was an overcast night that promised rain before morning. We’d had rain nearly every evening for the last week, so what were the odds that I could get a break from the weather? However, the rain had held off so far tonight, and the moon was making periodic appearances through occasional gaps in the cloud cover. As I glanced past my rigid client, the rectangle of the window behind her caught my eye. That was when I got the answer to my unspoken questions regarding the thing from the antique shop.

It was mostly a stirring in the outside gloom. The moon was indulging in one of her shy moments, having coquettishly pulled a cloud or two in close. I had a brief impression of some vague form stirring beyond the glass, then the suggestion of something outside grew. Physically grew until the lower half of the pane seemed largely obscured. Then the flickering started. It was as if there was a crescent of flame just outside. I had a sudden idea of just what I was seeing.

The girl noticed my rapt stare and turned. That was when the cloud cover parted, revealing the damned thing I’d played tag with in the antique shop and beyond. It had evidently gotten around the problem of the lobby lighting by simply climbing up the hotel facade. I idly wondered if anyone on the floors below had noticed anything in passing and called to desk to complain.

One bulky fist came up and tentatively struck the pane. The thing seemed to be gauging the thickness of the glass. Evidently it decided that the clear barrier presented no problem, because it struck a second time -- this one more insistent. This was followed by a barrage. The glass bulged slightly inward and began to crack.

Now the toboda on the bedside table moved. There was no mistaking the shift that brought the eyes around to regard the thing that was doing its best to break through to it. I had a distinct feeling that if anything was going to happen, it would happen within seconds. I mentally cursed my decision of not taking a gun along for my visit to the shop. But that was hindsight for you. I’d never anticipated finding more than an abandoned building and a few inert effigies.

Then, several things happened at once, or nearly so. Figuring the glass would be shattered in a few seconds anyway, I swept up the toboda and pitched in a long lateral, aiming as best I could for the monster outside’s yellow-rimed eyes. I’m not completely sure what I was thinking at that moment. Maybe I figured that once it had the toboda back, it would return to the shop. Or I might have hoped that a good, sound hit between the eyes might dislodge it. As the thing had seemingly taken it at least ten minutes to scale the outer wall, that should be enough time for me to get the hell out of there before it picked itself up and repeated its climb. Bonus be damned, I wasn’t sticking around for a second visitation.

A split second after the statue left my hand, there was a loud sound of footsteps and excited voices in the hallway outside. I turned to face the door and, in doing so, nearly missed the second occurrence. I know what I saw, and yet I know it couldn’t logically have happened.

As the toboda smashed through the already weakened glass, something glittering and green materialized at the side of the things head and dug deep. I just got a brief glimpse of it, and that was more of an impression than a clear view. I’d have sworn it was one of the jade-topped needles Masaka habitually wore in her hair.

But that was impossible. We were nine floors up and the wall outside was virtually sheer unless you happened to have powerful claws that could dig into the concrete and tile façade. Masaka had nails, but not claws.

The toboda struck the thing in the center of its ugly face, probably driving in several slivers of the shattered window as it did so. The brute rocked back from the wall, driven by the force of the impact. I assume it fell, but the third thing that happened got my full attention. It was a good two minutes before I cast another glimpse at the broken window, and by then it revealed nothing but a night sky and a few scattered city lights in the distance.

The reason it took me that long was because Ed Alley had so many questions that were suddenly very pressing. Evidently my precipitous arrival at the hotel, coupled with my wild-eyed appearance, had alarmed the night clerk. Maybe they’d had trouble with sneak thieves. I never got a full story on that.

At any rate the clerk had called the police. Alley had been putting in some overtime, and once he heard the thumbnail description of the unexpected intruder, he connected a few dots and came up with me. Naturally enough, given his all-consuming ambition to put me away for the next fifty years, that brought him running.

As a detective, Alley’d make an almost passable plumber. He has virtually no detecting skills, and chiefly solves whatever case he can bring to a close by blindly bulling along, trusting Lady Luck to feel sorry for him and toss him a bone. Once he got to the hotel, he naturally had no idea where to start his search. That put him in a sensitive spot. He didn’t want to look like a complete fool in front of the three uniforms he’d bought along for the ride.

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He’d spent maybe five minutes in the lobby, asking all kinds of absurd and irrelevant questions until the clerk had gotten fed up with all this and mentioned that a paying guest had arrived shortly after I’d showed up. Maybe there was some connection, though he couldn’t possibly see what it might be. Desperate, Alley had followed God knew what lead the desk clerk could provide and rushed to the ninth floor. Unbeknownst to me, he’d hammered on three prior doors before responding to the noise of the demon trying to break and enter.

I briefly considered warning him to be leery of the contents of the case, but decided that he’d like nothing better than to suggest to a judge that the city might be better off with me sent away for extended therapy. Besides, the way I saw it, maybe Alley was due for a shock. It was getting increasingly nettling that

Alley had issues, as I could have predicted. There was the matter of the broken window, a damaged hinge on the lobby door, and the suitcase of unexplained figurines. Alley chose to regard all this as highly suspicious ,and slapped us both in separate cells. That was enough for now. He’d sort it all out in the morning. At least that was the line he fed to the desk sergeant when we arrived at the station. Alley made it sound like he’d uncovered a vast conspiracy to do…something. He faltered just a little when the man at the desk inquired as to just what kind of cabal he’d broken up.

I had the ‘pleasure’ of spending the night in jail. My client emerged from her state of shock, made a strategic call to what I presume was a high-profile lawyer, and was out on the street within the hour. Not so her sample case, which was held in evidence, as Alley had figured it would work against me. He was nonplused when it mysteriously vanished from the locked evidence room. Alley was sorely disappointed that there he was no way he could tie the vanishing to me.

I couldn’t say the night was anything new. got my one allowed phone call, and was sprung the following morning. I left the station house to the accompaniment of low growling from a frustrated Alley, who had hoped he finally had something definite on me. To Alley’s disappointment, the hotel had decided that the damage to the room was the sole responsibility of my former client. I knew that galled him.. He’d figured that, for once, I’d overstepped my bounds. He probably realized that I’d been the one to break the window, but there was no clear way for him to prove it..

My being back on the streets turned out to be the very least of Alley’s woes. It developed that she was a smuggler catering to high-dollar collectors. Since her haul came from several widely-scattered cultures, not all of the items could be returned to the proper owners. A fair amount ended up at The Presbytère. I decided that was one museum I’d steer clear of from that date on.

There were a few questions left unanswered. Neither the client nor I had mentioned the toboda or the thing that had come calling, but I’d at least expected the police to find one or the other on the sidewalk, hopefully with the former had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

From what I’ve subsequently been able to find out through a few discrete questions, the toboda hasn’t been seen again. Not so far, at least There was predictably no mention of the guardian beast. I have to figure it went back to wherever it had come from, either alive or -- if that was possible -- dead.

And then there was Masaka’s possible intervention. That left a number of questions unanswered. If I had indeed seen one of her needles sticking from the side of the monster’s head, I felt I needed to know exactly how she’d managed things. First, how she’d known where I was and what was happening. Second, how she’s managed to attack the thing nine floors up, seemingly in midair.

I decided to make a point of asking her the next time we met. Not that I’d imagined in my fondest dreams that I’d get an answer.

There’s a postscript to all this. Days later, business once again found me in the neighborhood of Jovanovic’s shop. Given my preferences, I’d have detoured around that block, but necessity dictated that I cruise on by, keeping my eyes averted if at all possible. I needn’t have bothered.

Before I reached the adjoining side street, it became obvious that some changes had been made. The side wall of the shop showed a patina of dark smudges streaking it. The front window was broken and what glass still clung to the cross bars was blackened to the point that it was no longer reflective. The ornate facade had been pulled down and was now stacked in a staggered pile at the curbside.

I stopped and took the time to peer in through the shattered display window. The inside had been gutted, and the net lines of display cabinets were gone. I ambled next door to a coffee shop whose interior had largely been done up in driftwood, fishing floats, glossy shellacked crabs, and orange and green detailing, and inquired what had happened.

The acne-spotted teen lounging at the counter, laboriously working through a detective pulp, sullenly asked if I wanted a menu. I declined, and got the impression that response was expected. The place was, after all, empty at twelve noon.

It took time, but I managed to get a bit of relevant information from him. He lived in a shared room above a store across the street, and had happened to be out front for a smoke about midnight, Evidently, there had been considerable activity in the curio shop the previous night. Lights flashing around inside, and didn’t burglars use flashlights?

I assured him they sometimes did. He’d briefly considered reporting it to Schwartz, the local beat walker, but that would have required expending actual energy. Looking my informant over with a critical eye, I decided that the conservation of energy was a deeply held belief for him.

He had finally eased his conscience with the thought that, with all the ‘weird stuff’ in the shop, it wasn’t as if whoever was inside would find anything they’d want to steal. I had to agree with him on that one. Even so, he’d stood there for over thirty minutes, watching the dance of the flashlights. He thought he’d been in bed by one.

Then, he continued, about two o’clock, there’d been considerable banging and hammering from somewhere out on the street. Prompted by a roommate, he’d finally dragged himself out of bed and looked out the window. A good part of the ornate facade was half off the shop and lying on the cracked pavement.

As far as he was concerned, that solved the mystery. The ‘oddball guy’ had finally gone out of business and was probably moving his stock to a truck parked in the alley. Anyway, he continued, the heat had kept him awake for a while, but just as he’d managed to fall into an uneasy sleep, the sound of sirens had again jolted him awake. The antique shop was now on fire. What with the inconsiderate clamor of the firemen who were laboring to keep his current place of employment from going up in shared smoke, it had been nearly dawn before he was able to close a bleary eye. No wonder, he summed things up in an aggrieved tone, he was barely able to keep his eyes open.

I pretended empathy and took my leave, now considerably more troubled than I’d been when I’d set out half an hour before. It looked as if Jovanovic had decided New Orleans wasn’t a healthy place to be, and had pulled up stakes. Maybe he had feared his rival might tell the police something that would lead back to him. How he determined that she was under arrest, I didn’t know.

It was equally possible that his infernal watchman had somehow survived the fall and returned to appraise him of the situation. Maybe it had also recovered the toboda. I hoped not, and that the damned thing had been smashed in the fall. If not, well, I didn’t want to think about that at the moment. That might mean that the statue was still on the loose, along with a myriad of small stone followers.

Conversely, the fire in the shop might mean that some sort of diabolical pact had been voided, and Jovanovic had been ‘revoked’ in a most unpleasant way. Though I really wanted to go with that option, the dismantling of the shop didn’t seem to fit that scenario. It seemed more like the actions of a human agent. In the interests of a good night’s sleep, I decided that it was likely that Jovanovic had simply closed up shop and had moved on some other city to start over.

Still, that was not a pleasant thought.

END