The other said, "Clean. Clean as a baby's bottom, that place."
"Excuse me," Jessie said, sliding by them.
"Sure-a, sure-a," the one Italian said. He had sauce all over the front of his shirt and a strand of spaghetti on his lapel. Poor son-of-a-bitch.
In the men's room, Jessie found the place was as clean as the Italians had said it was, all white porcelain and plastic and polished glass, six stalls off to one side, eight urinals out in the open, half a dozen sinks. He walked to one of the urinals and was about to use it when one of the stall doors opened behind him and someone said, "Blake?"
"Yes?" he asked, turning.
Medusa stood there, in a toga, her eyes boring into his, her hair not hair at all but a furious tangle of writhing snakes.
"Uh—" Jessie said.
"Not to worry," she said, moving toward him. "It's only temporary, darling, until we can get you out of the picture."
As he turned to stone under the Medusa's awful gaze, Jessie could think only two things: First, if he had not heard the legend of Medusa, didn't know the myth well, she would not have affected him this way — for she only had the power to petrify those who were conversant with her story; second, he wondered what a woman was doing here in the men's room.
Chapter Seven
In the office of Hell Hound Investigations, Helena and Brutus stood in the middle of Blake's private room and watched the company robot move the furniture against the walls. Soundlessly, it hoisted the desk, chairs, the day bed, and shoved them out of the way, then came back to stand dutifully in front of the hound, waiting for further instructions.
"Do you think this will work?" Helena asked.
"It'll work," Brutus told her. To the robot, he said, "That's all for now. Please retire to the waiting room — far enough away so your audio receivers can't hear us."
The robot clanked out of the room, closing the door behind it.
"You don't trust him?" Helena asked.
Brutus said, "Anything a robot hears is stored in its microdot memories. It can be subpoenaed in court, and that might be disasterous."
"Is what we're doing illegal?" Helena asked.
"It may be, depending on how it develops," Brutus said. He looked up at her and said, "You want to leave, too?"
"Oh, no!" she said. "I'd do anything to help get Blakesy back."
The hound tilted its head. "Blakesy?"
Helena smiled. "I sometimes call him that, in private, when it's just the two of us."
"Christ," Brutus said.
"I didn't know you could use words like that."
"They don't bother me," the hound said.
She clapped her hands together as if she were making a starting signal, and she said, "Where do we begin?"
"I had the robot put all the stuff out for you," Brutus said, crossing the room to a black, enameled tray filled with instruments. "First, I want you to fit a piece of chalk to that string compass and draw a big circle in the middle of the floor."
"How big?" Helena asked, picking up the tool and the chalk, biting her full lips prettily as she tried to slip the white stick into the proper clamp.
"A three foot radius ought to do it," the hound said.
She got on her hands and knees, her skirt riding up behind, and she crawled around the room, outlining the circle. "There!" she said, when she was done, beaming as if she'd created a work of art.
"Now, draw a smaller circle," Brutus said. "A foot and a half diameter, due north of the circle you just finished."
"I don't see how this will get Jessie back," she said.
"You'll see," Brutus said.
She drew the second circle.
"You know what a pentagram is?" the hound asked.
"Sure."
"Draw a pentagram inside each circle, with the points touching the circle walls."
She needed a couple of minutes to do this, but when she was done, the pentagrams were tucked neatly inside the circles, never overlapping at any point, a detail Brutus had made sure of.
"Now," he told her, "light the seven black candles and the seven white."
She did this, while he directed the placement of each taper. Then she placed the leather-bound Bible in the center of the largest circle and went to turn out the lights, like he said.
"What now?" she asked, as the glittering, orange candlelight cast eerie shadows about the room.
Brutus' eyes shone a brighter red than ever, magnified both by the darkness and the flickering flames. "Come here and stand beside me in the largest circle, and don't step outside of it again until I tell you to."
When she was beside him, she said, "What in the hell are we doing, Brute?" He didn't like her nickname for him any more than he liked "Blakesy" for Blake, but he didn't say anything. If she got mad and walked out on him, he'd have to rely on the robot for anything that needed hands, and he trusted Helena to keep her mouth shut, in court, more than he did that mechanical dodo.
"We're calling forth a demon," he said.
"With magic?"
"That's right?"
"Chants and spells?"
"That's the sum of it, baby."
She frowned. "Why don't we just use the nether-world telephone?"
"Because that's legal," Brutus said. "And it doesn't give you any control over the demon; it only lets you talk to him."
"Who are we calling forth?" she asked.
"Zeke Kanastorous."
"That horrible little creep?"
"He's the one. He may know where they've taken Jessie."
"And you want to have control over him, so you can force him to tell you. Is that it?" she asked.
"Helena, you're a genius."
She stooped and ruffled his furry head, pressed his cold nose between her hefty breasts. "I like you, too, Brute. Okay, then, let's get on with it." She pulled away from him and sat down, cross-legged, like an Indian. "I'm going to enjoy watching that little creep suffer."
"So am I," Brutus said.
For a time, they were both silent, letting the night settle down, the air grow still, the ethereal vibrations quieten.
The walls of the room appeared to draw closer as they meditated, and the darkness between the fourteen points of sputtering candle flame grew even more intense.
"Remain perfectly still," Brutus said.
Helena didn't even nod in response.
Lowering his head, closing his fiery eyes, the hell hound began to chant in a low, monotonous voice, reciting the names of the places where human souls were said, sometimes, to rest in preparation for Judgment Day: Hell, Hades, The Pit, Satan's Antechamber, Limbo, Purgatory, The Black Grotto, and a hundred others. Next, he went through the names of the hundred most powerful demons in the Satanic hierarchy, from that list to a rigidly worded chant which he said in Latin.
Helena thought that the room was growing perceptively cooler, and she hugged herself for warmth, unconsciously shifting a bit closer to the hell hound.
"Kanastorous! Ezekial Kanastorous, answer me!" The hell hound's voice was a great, thundering command as he finished the chant and raised his head like a howling wolf.
In that same instant, before the echo of his cry had died away, the air inside the smaller circle, due north of them, seemed to shiver, to take on a vague phosphorescence.
"It's working!" Helena cried, slapping the hell hound on the back.
"Of course it is," Brutus said.
Then Kanastorous was there: four feet tall, scaly, somewhat green, flicking his chartreuse tongue and looking anxiously about, bewildered. He caught sight of Brutus and Helena beyond the candle flames that separated them, and he said, "What is going on here?"
"Just a little black magic," Brutus said.
Kanastorous looked confused, then angry. He started forward but came to an abrupt halt, as if he had run into an Invisible brick wall, when he tried to step beyond the chalk barrier that Helena had drawn. He looked down at his feet and said, "A pentagram?"