the first thing my hand found, Genosa's heavy glass ashtray, and flung it hard at the figure. The ashtray rebounded off the inner edge of the door and struck whoever it was. I heard a voiceless gasp of air. At the same time something hissed past my ear. A sharp thumping sound came from the wall behind me.
I shouted at the top of my lungs and ran forward, but my foot tangled in the phone cord. It didn't tug me into a pratfall, but I stumbled, and it gave the shadowy figure time to run. By the time I'd recovered my balance and gotten to the hallway, I couldn't see or hear anyone.
The hall itself was dark, and I couldn't remember the locations of either light switches or doors, which made a headlong pursuit less than advisable. It occurred to me that I made a wonderful target, leaning out of the door of the dimly lit office, and I slipped back inside, shutting and locking the door behind me as I went.
I looked at whatever had thumped into the wall behind me, and found, of all the stupid things, a small dart fixed with exotic-looking yellow feathers fringed with a tinge of pink. I tugged the dart out of the wall. It was tipped with what appeared to be bone instead of metal, and the bone was stained with something dark red or dark brown. I had the feeling it wasn't Turtle Wax.
A poisoned blowgun dart. I'd been ambushed before, but that was pretty exotic, even for me. Almost silly, really. Who the hell got killed with poison blowgun darts these days?
A buzz of noise came from the dropped receiver of the phone. I picked up an empty plastic cigar tube from next to Genosa's humidor and slipped the dart into it, then capped it before I picked up the phone.
"Harry?" Murphy was demanding. "Harry, are you all right?"
"Fine," I said. "And it looks like I'm on the right track."
"What happened?"
I held up the cigar tube and peered at the dart. The poisoned tip gleamed with its semi-gelatinous stain. "It was pretty clumsy, but I think someone just tried to kill me."
Chapter Fourteen
"Get out of there, Harry."
"No, Murph," I said. "Look, I think it was just someone trying to scare me, or they'd have used a gun. Can you get to those records today?"
"If they're matters of public record," she said. "We've got the time difference on our side. What are you hoping to find?"
"More," I said. "This whole thing stinks. Hard to put a puzzle together when you're missing pieces."
"Get in touch if you learn something," Murphy said. "Magic or not, attempted murder is police business. It's my business."
"This time for sure," I said.
"Watch your ass, Bullwinkle."
"Always. Thanks again, Murph."
I hung up and flipped through the next several pages of Genosa's scrapbook, expecting nothing but more articles. I got lucky on the last few pages. He had big, glossy color photos there—three women, and I recognized two of them.
A subtitle beneath the first picture read, Elizabeth Guns. The photo was of Madge, Genosa's first wife. She looked like she'd been in her mid-twenties in the picture and she was more or less nude. Her hair was enormous and stiff-looking, an artificial shade of deep scarlet. She probably had to take off her makeup with a Zamboni machine.
The next photo read, Raven Velvet, beneath a picture of a nearly Amazonian brunette I didn't recognize. She had the kind of build that fairly serious female athletes can get, where the muscles are present, defined with obvious strength, but softened and rounded enough to look more pretty than formidable. Her hair was cut in a short pageboy, and at first I thought her features were really quite sweet, almost kind. But her expression was an unsmiling, haughty stare at the camera. Ex-Genosa two, I supposed. He'd called her Lucille.
The last picture was of the third former Mrs. Genosa. It was subtitled, Trixie Vixen, but someone had written across it in black permanent marker, ROT IN HELL, YOU PIG. There was no signature to tell who was responsible. Gee. I wonder.
I flipped through the album once more but didn't see anything new. At some point I realized that I was delaying going down to the set. I mean, yeah, there were probably going to be naked girls doing a variety of interesting things. And I hadn't gotten laid in a depressing number of months, which probably made it sound a little more interesting.