The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

I didn't see anything else about which to question Sudakis, so I went back down the spiral stairs. He followed, pausing only to shut the trap door over our heads. As we walked back to his office, I said, "I'll be back with the warrant as soon as I can: in the next couple of days, anyhow."

"Whatever you say, Inspector Fisher." He winked again to show he was really on my side. I wondered if he was. He sounded very much like a man speaking for the Listener when he said, Tm happy to cooperate informally with an informal investigation, but I do need the formal parchment before I can exceed the scope of my instructions from management."

He went out to the entrance with me. I craned my neck to see if the Nothing reappeared as I passed the place where I'd seen it before. For an instant I thought it did, but when I blinked it was gone.

"What's there?" Sudakis asked when I turned my head.

"Nothing," I said, but I meant - I guessed I meant - it with a small n. I laughed a little nervously. "A figleaf of my imagination."

"You work here a while, you'll get those for sure." He nodded, hard. I wondered what all he'd seen - or maybe not seen - since he started working here.

When we got out to the front gate, the security guard again carefully placed the footbridge so it straddled the red line. I felt like a free man as soon as I was on the outside of the dump site. Sudakis waved across from his side, then went back to his citadel.

It wasn't until I'd crossed the crosswalk, chanted the phrase that unlocked the antitheft gear on my carpet, and actually gotten into the air that I remembered the vampires, the werewolves, the kids born widiout souls, all the other birth defects around the Devonshire dump. Getting outside the site didn't necessarily free you from it. Were that so, I wouldn't have had to make this trip in the first place.

Midday traffic was a lot thinner than the usual morning madness. I was more than twice as far from my Westwood office in the Confederal Building as I was when I left from my flat, but I didn't need any more time to get there than I do on my normal commute. I slid into my reserved parking space (penalty for unauthorized use, a hundred crowns or an extra year for your soul in purgatory, or born-judge's discretion: if he thinks you won't rate purgatory, he'll just fine you), then walked inside.

The elevator shaft smelt of almond oil. At the bottom was a virgin parchment inscribed with the words GOMERT and KAILOETH and the sigil of the demon Khil, who has control over some of the spirits of the air the can also cause earthquakes, and so is a useful spirit to know in Angels City).

The almond oil is part of the paste that summons him, the other ingredients being olive oil, dust from close by a coffin, and the brain of a dunghill cock. "Seventh floor," I said, and was lifted up.

As soon as I got into the office, I called Charlie Kelly He listened while I told him what I'd found, then said, "Nice piece of work, Dave. That confirms and amplifies the information I'd already received. Go to work on that warrant right away."

"I will," I promised. "I know just the judge: I'll take the information over to qadi Ruhollah. He's about the strictest man in A.C. when it comes to environmental damage." I chuckled. "Tor that matter, he's a rigorist on just about everything - Maximum Ruhollah, we call him out here."

"Sounds like the fellow we need, al] right," Kelly said.

"Anything else?"

I started to say no, but had to think better of it. There is one other thing, as a matter of fact. Sudakis - the dump manager - wondered how you'd heard something new might be wrong at his place when no one out here had a clue. I couldn't give him an answer, but it made me curious, too."

As it had once or twice when he'd called me at home, the silence stretched longer than imp relay could account for by itself. Finally Charlie said, "A bird told me, you might say."

"A little bird, right?" I started to laugh. "Charlie, I stopped believing in that little bird about the same time I found out the stork only brings changelings."

"However you want it," he said "That's all I can tell you, and more than I ought to."

I thought about pushing some more, but decided not to.

People back in D.C. are supposed to have good sources; they justify the fancy salaries that come out of your purse and mine by knowing what's going on all over the country and how to find out about it even if the people who are doing it don't want it found out. But I was still moderately graveled that somebody a continent away had picked up on something I hadn't heard the first thing about right in my own backyard "Get the warrant, Dave," Charlie said "We'll go from there, depending on what we learn."

"Right," I said, and hung up. Then I grabbed a sandwich and a cup of coffee at the little cafeteria in the building. They perfectly balanced virtue and vice: they were lousy but cheap. Lousy or not, my stomach stopped growling. I made another phone call.