LITMIR.BIZ

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and saliva samples while he was asleep.

      Allegra taps the side of her mug with her index finger.

      “Technically, we don’t. I’m just hoping.”

      Vidocq comes in with his own cup and sits on their sagging couch.

      “The body we examined is that of an ordinary man,” he says. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

      “Except that he’s missing his heart and, I’m guessing, most of his blood,” I say.

      “Yes. Whatever is in the body is clearly not human.”

      “Could he be a new kind of zombie?” says Allegra.

      “I doubt it, but maybe I should have Brigitte look him over. She’s the Drifter expert.”

      “He could be exactly who he says he is. I mean, no one has died since he appeared.”

      I nod and lean against the kitchen counter.

      “Julie mentioned that. Okay, let’s say he’s the real thing. What am I supposed to do with him?”

      “What would you do if he was just an ordinary man who came to you for help?” says Allegra.

      “Buy him a drink and give him cab fare to the next bar. I almost died wrestling the Angra Om Ya. Don’t I get a day off?”

      “Maybe not.”

      “Maybe time off is not your fate, Mr. Sandman Slim,” says Vidocq.

      He smiles like he’s being goddamn witty. Maybe from his point of view he is.

      And maybe what he said hits too close to home.

      “Fate is what happens when you don’t run fast enough. Keep moving and fate gets dizzy.”

      “Looks like you didn’t run fast enough this time,” says Allegra. “So what would you do if someone came to you for help and you did decide to give it to them?”

      I look at the coffee. Sip it, but suddenly don’t want it anymore and set it down.

      “I’d find out who he was.”

      “You’re already doing that. What else?”

      “I’d find out where he came from and backtrack from there. Maybe look for some physical evidence. All Mr. D had on him was a coat and a knife.”

      “What did the knife look like?” says Vidocq.

      I take it from my pocket wrapped in a red utility rag I found in the Rover and hand it to him. He carefully unwraps it. Picks it up with his fingertips and turns it over.

      “Do you recognize it?”

      “I’m afraid not,” says Vidocq.

      “Me neither,” Allegra says.

      “Do you mind if I run some tests?” says Vidocq.

      “Please do.”

      He takes the knife to his worktable, sets it on an iron disc the size of a dinner plate, selects a green bottle from a jumble of similar bottles at the back of his table. He gives it a shake and unstoppers it. I leave my coffee and go over.

      “What is that?”

      Allegra stands on his other side.

      “My own invention. A personal amalgam of quicksilver, sulfur, and other rarer elements I’ve gathered in my travels.”

      “What’s it going to do?”

      “It reveals the history and composition of any object. Its true nature. Let’s see what it tells us about your knife.”

      He puts an eyedropper into the bottle and suctions up a small potion of shimmering silvery metal. Holding the tip over the knife, he lets three drops fall.

      The mercury slides down the length of the blade, making it look soft and liquid. A few seconds later, it begins to sizzle like someone frying an egg with a blowtorch.

      I lean in for a better look.

      “Is it supposed to do that?”

      “Not necessarily,” says Vidocq.

      Smoke rises from the boiling metal. It shudders. Turns yellow, then deepens to black. The mercury cracks like a broken roadbed, silver veins of the knife blade visible beneath the charred metal crust. A few seconds later, the black fades and the mercury turns back to its original shimmering form, flowing off the tip of the blade. When it falls on the worktable, it spreads and burns a poker-­chip-­size hole in the wooden surface, sending up a ribbon of gray smoke.

      Like me, Allegra leans in to watch.

      Vidocq pushes us both back.

      “Don’t inhale the vapors,” he says.

      The smoke stinks. I go to a window and open it.

      “I’m guessing that hasn’t happened before.”

      “What did we just see?” says Allegra.

      Vidocq rubs his chin with the knuckle of his thumb.

      “I don’t know. It’s never reacted so violently before.”

      I reach for the knife and Vidocq pushes my hand away.

      “I wouldn’t do that,” he says.

      He takes a dark, ragged chamois from a drawer and wipes down the whole knife, holding it in a set of heavy pliers that look like they came from a yard sale at Hannibal Lecter’s. I point at the chamois.

      “What is that?”

      “You don’t want to know.”

      “I might need one later.”

      Vidocq wipes every inch of the blade, not looking at me.

      “It’s the skin from a Hand of Glory, purified and loosened from the bones by soaking it in holy water.”

      A Hand of Glory is the left hand of a hanged man. Powerful hoodoo. Not something you find at Pier 1.

      “I thought you got rid of that thing,” says Allegra.

      “As you see, I need it for my work.”

      Vidocq wraps the knife back in the red utility rag and hands it to me.

      “Where does a person get something like that? I could use it to clean up after Kasabian.”

      Allegra shakes her head.

      “Bad ­people,” she says. “Dangerous ­people.”

      Vidocq picks up his coffee.

      “What safe life is worth living?” he says.

      “What are you going to do with that knife?” says Allegra. “You can’t take it home with you.”

      “I’m not letting that thing out of my sight. I want to know exactly what kind of power is in there.”

      “As do I,” Vidocq says. “Perhaps we should take it to a Fiddler.”

      A Fiddler is a nice resource when you have a troublesome toy, like a nerve-­gas-­pissing knife. Their hoodoo lets them tell you about an object just by touching it. Not all Fiddlers are on the up-­and-­up, but I think I can tell the grifters from the real ones by now.

      I put the knife in my pocket.

      “You sure you want to do that?” says Allegra.

      “I have other coats. Besides, I always have you if it sets me on fire.”

      Allegra pushes a test tube back from the edge of Vidocq’s worktable.

      “I could use the distraction. I’ve been going a little stir-­crazy since the clinic closed.”

      A clusterfuck of cops and vigilantes torched Allegra’s clinic

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