"I ought to go say hello to her," Jessie said.
"If you do, I'll use that fireplug she's chained to."
"You wouldn't," Jessie said, shocked. "Anyway, you couldn't. The hell hound myth indicates you can ingest whatever you want, but there isn't a word about elimination."
"Well, it would be a symbolic thing," the hound said. "I'd just let out a stream of ectoplasm."
"I think we better forget it," the detective said, stepping over the chained arms in front of the door and going inside.
In the mirrored foyer, a golden boy with huge wings and a halo rakishly over his head approached them and said, "Good evening, gentlemen. I am Robert, your host." He was wearing white robes and leather sandals, a very winning angel.
"What happened to Mabel?" Jessie asked.
"The Shambler?"
"Yes, her."
"Mabel comes on when it gets dark and goes home before dawn. She's a night beast, you know."
"I guess I knew, but I forgot," Jessie said, punching out a tip on the angel's stand and letting the scanner have his thumbprint. "How does she find time to terrorize children if she works during the night and hides from the sun during the day?"
"She's off on weekends," the angel said. "Saturday and Sunday nights, she terrorizes."
"I see," Jessie said.
"May I take your coat, sir?"
"I'll keep it, thank you. Just take us to Mr. Kanastorous. He ought to be here already."
"Yes, of course," the angel said. "That round-headed little—"
"Demon," Brutus finished.
"Thank you," the angel said. "I've nothing against Mr. Kanastorous, or his kind, you understand. It's just that I find it hard to say that word and others like it." He opened the inner doors and took them into the main club room.
Because it was still light outside, some of the club's more exotic denizens, like Mabel, and vampires, and other beasts, had yet to leave their coffins for dinner. Though the club was half-filled, with maseni and humans and supernaturals, the spirits here now were rather plain. They passed a table of four big black men who were all wearing overalls and eating huge slices of watermelon. They laughed raucously and used phrases like "scrumptious good" and "lordy mama" and "dis a fancy sweet melon, all right." Jessie could see that all four of them hated the goddamned watermelon, but were compelled to gobble it up. They'd have to finish a slice apiece, spitting seeds across the room, before they could order what they really wanted. That was, after all, what the white-man-made myth said the "nigger" was supposed to do. At another table, a group of mythical Italians were suffering a similar problem. Three men (all dressed in baggy suits, vests, badly-knotted ties) and three women (in baggy, flowered dresses, slips showing, hair in greasy disarray, all wearing rosaries around their necks) were working on small plates of spaghetti, sauce running down their chins, laughing uproariously, speaking in heavily accented English, using phrases like "atsa good spaghet" and "you licka da sauce, or isa too tomatoey?" and "mama mia" and "atsa way to eat, Vito, bambino!"
In some ways, Jessie thought, if you had to be a supernatural being, it was better to be a ghost, a hell hound, a demon, a vampire, a werewolf, a ghoul — almost anything other than a mythical Wop or Nigger. Those poor sons of bitches had it rough.
"Ah, my friend the shamus!" Zeke Kanastorous cried, when the angel brought Jessie to the table at last.
"Hello, Zeke."
"Sit down, sit down. We'll order drinks and dinner, from the intercom, and then we can chat."
They were served their drinks by a lumbering zombie whose eyes were pure white, containing no pupils or irises. In a sepulchre voice, the creature said, "Your dinner will be served in fifteen minutes." Then it stomped away, lurching down the crooked aisles between the tables.
"They must be hard up for help," the demon said, clicking his long green tongue with distaste.
"Yeah," Jessie said. "Now what about Gayla?"
"And it better be good," Brutus added.
Nervously, Kanastorous explained. "She was with this Aimes character for several hours, and when he was in the right mood, she tried bringing him around to this maseni you're interested in, this Tesserax fellow. His reaction was immediate and antagonistic. He revealed that he had been given special emergency powers for the detention of human and supernatural civilians, and he ordered her to remain on his bed, not to dematerialize and go elsewhere. Then he got on the nether-world communications network, and he called someone."
"Who?"
"We can't say for sure. But it was someone high up in Satanic rule, someone who could give orders to a demon like myself or a succubus like Gayla. In a minute, Moloch materialized in Aimes' bedroom, in answer to the call."
"Moloch? Satan's secretary of state?" Brutus asked.
"The same," Kanastorous said. "He ordered Gayla to break her contract with me, and with other clients, and to report for special work as Satan's envoy in Japan."
"They've gotten her out of the scene, then, even though she didn't learn anything," Brutus said.
"Maybe they're afraid she did know something, from her association with Aimes, something he didn't even realize he'd told her," the demon said.
"Whatever their reasons for silencing Gayla," Jessie said, "they've proven there's something big brewing around Tesserax's disappearance."
"Maybe too big for you to handle," the demon said.
"Maybe," Blake said.
"What will your next step be?"
"I'll have to think about it," the detective said.
"You won't expect my fee back, will you, old gumshoe buddy?" the demon asked anxiously, leaning toward Blake, his martini glass cautiously clasped in both hands.
"You can keep it," Jessie said. "I may not have learned what I had hoped to learn from Gayla — but the incident has taught me other things."
Their dinner arrived, along with a bottle of wine which Kanastorous was paying for, and they spoke no more of Tesserax or Gayla or the strange situation that Hell Hound Investigations had become involved with. Instead, they drank a second bottle of wine, which Jessie paid for, and they chatted about mutual acquaintances.
By the time they'd finished dessert, Jessie said, "I'm afraid I must be excused for a moment. I suffer from a condition of the bladder which you people don't have to contend with."
"By all means, go ahead," Kanastorous said, letting go of his glass with one hand to wave airly toward the men's room door. His other hand slipped on the wet glass, and he dropped his wine into Brutus' lap.
"You clumsy little creep," Brutus growled.
"Now, now," Jessie said. "It'll be all gone by the time I get back. Zeke can't help that he's got only four fingers a hand."
"You don't even have fingers," Zeke told Brutus, petulantly.
As Jessie walked away from the table, the zombie was lumbering toward the scene of the accident, a dish towel draped over one arm.
"Don't be nasty with him," Jessie told the white-eyed monster. "He can't help it if he's not got any thumbs."
"He could drink out of a dish, like that friend of yours," the zombie said. "I'm not paid to be a nursemaid."
"He's a good tipper, though," Jessie said.
The zombie's expression remained grim, his voice deep and monotonous, but he said, "Well, I guess anyone can have an accident now and then." He went on, heavy-footed, for the table where Brutus was barking at the demon.
As Jessie entered the men's room, two of the mythical Italians were coming out. "Atsa nice-a toilet," the one Italian said.