Terry Bisson - Charlie's Angels

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2024-11-24 0 0 42.78KB 17 页 5.9玖币

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CHARLIE'S ANGELS

by TERRY BISSON

Knock knock!

I never was a deep sleeper. I sat up and buttoned my shirt. Folded the blanket and dropped it behind

the couch, along with the pillow. You don't want your clients to find out that you live in your office; that

suggests unprofessionalism, and unprofessionalism is the bane of the Private Eye, even (and especially)

the...

Knock knock! "Supernatural Private Eye?"

I dropped the Jim Beam into the drawer and opened the door with my cell phone in hand, so it would

look like I had been working. "Can I help you?"

"Jack Villon, Supernatural Private Eye?"

She was somewhere on that wide, windswept chronological plain between thirty and fifty that softens

men and sharpens women, especially those with taste and class, both of which she appeared to have in

abundance.

"It's Villon, not Villon," I said. "And..."

"Whatever." Without waiting for an invitation, she brushed past me into my office and looked around

with ill-disguised disgust. "Don't you have a necktie?"

"Of course. I don't always wear it at eight in the morning."

"Put it on and let's go. It's almost nine."

"And you are...?"

"A paying client with no time to waste," she said, unsnapping her patent leather purse and pulling out a

pack of Camels. She lit a long one off the short one in her hand. "Edith Prang, Director, New Orleans

Museum of Art and Antiquities. I can pay you what you ask, and a little more, but we have to hurry."

"You can't smoke in here, Mrs. Prang."

"It's Ms. and there's no time to waste," she said, blowing smoke in my face. "The police are already

there."

"Already where?"

"Where we're going." She closed her purse and walked out the door without answering, but not before

handing me two reasons to follow her. Each was printed with a picture of a President I had never had the

good fortune to encounter before.

-<*>-

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk...nten/spaar/Terry%20Bisson%20-%20Charlie's%20Angels.html (1 of 17)23-2-2006 23:26:34

Terry Bisson - Charlie's Angels

"Now that I'm on retainer," I said, folding the bills as I followed her out onto Bourbon Street, "perhaps

you can tell me what this is all about."

"As we go," she said, unlocking a sleek BMW with a keychain beeper. The 740i. I had seen it in the

magazines. Butter leather seats, a walnut dash with an inset GPS map display, and an oversized V-8 that

came to life with a snarl. As we roared off, she lit another Camel off the last. "As I mentioned, I am the

Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art and Antiquities."

"Didn't you just run a red light?"

"Two years ago, we began a dig on the Gulf Coast of Mexico," she continued, accelerating through an

intersection, "opening a pre-Columbian tomb."

"Wasn't that a stop sign?"

"We made a remarkable find -- a large statue in nearly perfect condition, which the natives knew of by

legend as the Vera Cruz Enormé, or Giant. We contacted the Louvre..."

"The Louvre?" We were approaching another intersection. I closed my eyes.

"Our sister institution was called in because the statue had rather remarkable features for an artifact

from the East Coast of Mexico. As you can see."

She was handing me a photograph. I opened my eyes just wide enough to see a picture of a statue, half

again as tall as the man standing next to it. Its bulging eyes, hunched shoulders, and feral, sneering face

looked familiar.

"A gargoyle?"

"Indeed," said Prang. "Very similar in fact to the gargoyles on the cathedral of Notre Dame."

I was beginning to get it -- I thought. "So you assumed there was a supernatural connection?"

"Certainly not!" Prang spat. "Our first assumption was that this was perhaps created by the French

during the brief rule of Emperor Maximilian in the nineteenth century. A forgotten folly, or hoax."

"You're supposed to slow down for the school zones," I said, closing my eyes again.

"But even then, it would be of great value, historically. The Enormé was placed in a warehouse, under

guard, since Mexico is rife with thieves who know perfectly well the value of antiquities, even bogus

ones."

I could hear sirens. Though I am no friend of the cops, I rather hoped they were after us. Though I

wondered how they would catch us.

"That was almost a month ago, the night of the full moon. The next morning, both guards were found

with their heads missing. The Enormé was back in its tomb."

"I see," I said. "So you realized you were dealing with an ancient curse..."

"Certainly not!" Prang said, over the wail of tortured tires. "I figured somebody was trying to spook

the peasants so they could blackmail us. I spread around enough cash to keep the authorities quiet, and

crated the Enormé for shipment to New Orleans."

"You covered up a murder?"

"Two," she said matter-of-factly. "Not hard to do in modern Mexico."

The BMW skidded smoothly to a stop. I opened my eyes and saw that we were in the parking lot of

the museum. I never thought I would be so glad to get out of a 740i, after only one ride.

Prang paused on the steps to light a new Camel off the old. "The Louvre is sending a specialist to look

at the Enormé, which arrived here yesterday."

I followed her through the museum's wide front door. We raced through the halls and down a short

flight of stairs.

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