"Doesn't that scavenging shark Strakhov realize that this is a free country?" Sam rattled on, gaining speed. "Well, maybe not free," she corrected, thinking of the rent on their warehouse where their new offices were located, and of the price of asparagus and popcorn at the movies. Still, she had a point to make, even if only to herself. She noticed Bogie's eyes seemed glazed over like freshly made donuts.
"Are you listening, Bogart? I'm not talking just to hear myself talk."
The glazed look vanished and her brother tuned back in.
"Just think how proud the Founding Fathers would be of us. I mean, they were into trade and all. And Jefferson! Why, we would probably get a congressional medal of honor if he were alive. Too bad none of them came back as ghosts. I always wanted to ask Adams about the Alien and Sedition Acts."
"How do you figure that, about medals?" Bogie asked, glad he was paying attention now. He'd always wanted a medal.
"Why, our great-grandfather made a business out of zip, nothing, nada. He saw an unexplored market in the supernatural world and tapped into it. That's what America is about: seeing a need, filling it and getting paid damn well for it!"
"We do get paid the big bucks," Bogie agreed. Bustin' work was dangerous and ofttimes deadly. Poorly trained Paranormalbustin' companies had very high mortality rates.
"Besides, we Americans are a driven bunch. All of us are going for the American dream—a four-car garage and six-television household. Now some rat-faced Russian decides he can come stomp all over our hopes with his chiseling comrade boots?" Sam finished grandly, proud of her thesis on American capitalism.
Bogie shrugged again, wondering what chiseling comrade boots were.
"We'll dump these cages with the gargoyles at the warehouse and then go home. Uncle Myles should still be up. I have a job for him," Sam decided.
Bogie glanced askance at her, wondering what devious plan his scheming sister had in mind that would involve their nutty relative. "Uncle Myles?" he asked.
"Uncle Myles." she said, smiling evilly. "I've got a scheme for that sleezebag Strakhov! I'll teach him to mess with me, that vodka-loving, sabotaging stooge of a Slav! I bet he doesn't even know the Star-Spangled Banner or who Willie Nelson is! I bet he hates maple syrup. And in Vermont, that's hard to swallow!"
Bogie shuddered. He knew that evil smile of his sister's and, Mafia don of the supernatural world or not, it didn't bode well for one Mr. Nicolas Strakhov.
Against the World—or the Strakhov Brothers, Anyway
As soon as Sam walked through the door of the Hammett household she felt like she had stepped onto the set of a 1940s film-one starring Humphrey Bogart and complete with a baby grand piano. It really wasn't surprising; this was how she always felt. Her family had always been nuts about Bogart movies.
Her parents had named her Samantha—Sam, for the Samuel Spade character adapted from the movie The Maltese Falcon, the Dashiell Hammett novel. It had made it more inevitable since their last name was also Hammett, though no relation to the author.
Her middle name was Sabrina, chosen from the movie with Bogart and Hepburn. Her brother, of course, was named after the late and great film star himself. Both brother and sister privately thought that her parents, children of the sixties, had been bogarting each other's joints when they'd come up with the names.
Her uncle was the same. He relished the fact that his name was Myles; Myles Archer was Sam Spade's partner in the detective agency from The Maltese Falcon. However, his moniker had more to do with the fact that his grandfather had been named Myles than any movie nostalgia.
Walking into the vast den, Sam took a quick scan of the room filled with bookshelves. Some of the books were just good reading, while others were references and research materials in various dealings with ghosts, gargoyles and other things that flew or bit by night. Titles ranged from Raising Dead Children, by Dr. Spook; The Road to Hell, by Goode N. Tentions; Dancing with the Devil, by Ginger Astaire; Stoned Until Dusk: a Gargoyle Study, by T. O'Leary; to, of course, the ever popular Thirteen Ghosts, misleadingly compiled by Two Ghosts and a Banshee.
She spied her uncle in his favorite chair by the fireplace. He wasn't a handsome man; his nose was too big and his features too large for his thin face, but he was a good man who loved both her and her brother. He had once again fallen asleep reading.
Uncle Myles was in his late fifties, and tonight he was dressed in a dark pinstripe double-breasted suit. His typical fedora lay on the coffee table beside him. When it was on his head, he wore it slightly cocked to the right side of his face. Everything he did, he tried to emulate his idol, Humphrey.
Sam smiled. Her uncle had been looking for the Maltese Falcon for the past eighteen years, but other than that odd quirk he was fairly normal—considering the guy acted, talked and dressed like a reject from a Humphrey Bogart film festival. He even called women "dames" and "dolls." Fortunately, Sam wasn't into feminist sensibility issues. However, when all was said and done, there was nobody better at scouting out information. The years of practice her uncle accrued while looking for the black bird had sharpened his reconnaissance skills even more than Sam's own tracking skills of shadowing black vampire bats, black gargoyles and any other preternatural flying hazards that came her way.
Sam gently tapped her uncle's shoulder. "Time to wake up."
Opening his eyes, Myles reached for a toothpick in his suit pocket. "Hello, sweetheart, what's stirring?" He stuck the toothpick between his teeth and looked her over from head to toe, noticing the large mustard yellow bug stains on her coveralls. "Rough night?"
"You could say that again."
"Rough night?" her uncle repeated, his silver hair shining in the golden glow of the lamp.
She nodded wearily. Well, maybe he had another odd quirk. Sometimes he took everything literally. "He's at it again."
"The Fat Man?" Myles asked curiously, his eyes suddenly bright and alert.
"More like the Fat Russian," Sam corrected, wondering if Nicolas Strakhov was overweight. She knew he was in business with his two younger brothers, and that Monsters-R-Us was a family business, just like her own, but she didn't know what he looked like. Nor did she much care. Probably he was some macho, squatty foreigner with hairy eyebrows and fish breath from all that caviar. But was he overweight? Probably not. It was too hard to chase sharp-toothed little gremlins and leaping goblins if you were carrying around a bunch of excess baggage.
She addressed her uncle: "Strakhov's certainly not a straight shooter. The dirty rat hit us again—sabotaged us by switching our sunlamp for a fluorescent one. We had to use the iron netting and lost six of the gargoyles. No, the job tonight didn't go down easy—as you can see," she added grimly as she glanced at the rips in her steel-mesh coveralls. Not only could the gargoyles' slashing claws have hurt her and her brother, but also they both were now going to have to replace their coveralls. It was an expensive but necessary prospect, as a Paranormalbuster didn't capture creatures without the right equipment; there was too much room for error, and too much chance of ending up disfigured, put out of commission or killed.
"Tough break. You all right, precious? And Bogie?"
"We're fine," she replied. "Baby brother is cleaning out the truck."
Myles pulled an old Colt .45 out of his inner jacket pocket. "That dirty-rat Russian better watch out, or he'll be picking iron out of his liver."