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that probably did a land-office business from all the working types across the
street, and also a Spells 'R' Us.
Chocolate Weasel was in the industrial park, a couple of buildings past Mason.
Michael let his carpet down in an open space near the front door. As I undid
my safety belt and stood up, I noticed that a lot of the carpets in the lot
were old and threadbare. People didn't work here to get rich, that was
obvious.
Michael picked up his little black bag. We walked over to the entrance side by
side. The first thing that hit me when we went inside was the music. There
were minisingers involved in the case after all I'd have to tell Saul Klein.
But they weren't playing lieder
 oh my, no. The inside of Chocolate Weasel sounded like an Aztecian bar in
East A.C. or maybe like one down in Tenochtitlan both in style of music and in
volume. I must confess I winced.
All the chatter inside was in Spainish, too. No, I take that back: I heard a
little clucking Nahuatl, too. No
English, not until people noticed us. I got the idea people who didn't look
Aztecian didn t pop into
Chocolate Weasel every day. The Aztecian community in Angels City is big
enough to be a large city of its own, and doesn't have to deal with outsiders
unless it wants to.
By the looks they gave us, we were outsiders they didn t want to deal with.
Those looks got darker when we pulled out our EPA sigils, too. Suddenly
everyone in the place developed a remarkable inability to understand English.
Michael foiled that ploy, though, by asking for the head of the firm in fluent
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Spainish.
I wondered if the secretary would fall back into Nahuatl; she was one of the
people I'd heard using it. If she did, though, Michael would give her another
surprise. I wondered how many pale blonds spoke the old Aztecian language.
Not many seemed a fair guess.
But, rather to my disappointment she didn't In feet, hearing Michael use
Spainish made her unbend enough to remember she knew some English after all,
which put me back in the conversation. She took us down the hall to the
consortium markgrave's office.
Jorge Vasquez looked at us with about as much enthusiasm as a devout Hindu
confronted with a plate of blood-red prime rib. He was a handsome fellow in
his early forties, and doing quite well for himself:
unless I missed my guess, his suit would have run me close to two weeks' pay.
He shoved our sigils back across the desk at us, then leaned forward to glare.
"I am sick and tired of harassment by the EPA," he said. "You people have the
attitude that our spells must be perverse because they are based on the
authentic rituals of our people. It is not true; our procedures are no more
wicked than the thaumaturgy the Catholic Church works through
transubstantiation." He pointed to the crucifix on the wall behind him.
"That's a matter of opinion," I answered. "Myself, I'm Jewish." I didn't
elaborate; what it meant was that
I found any ritual of human sacrifice, no matter how symbolic, on the
unpleasant side.
Vasquez didn't say anything, but his nostrils flared. So he wasn't real fond
of Jews, eh? Well, that was his problem, not mine.
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I went on, "In any case, this visit has nothing to do with the merit of your
rituals, only with the way you're preparing your toxic spell byproducts for
disposal. The Devonshire dump is leaking, and leaking something noxious enough
to cause an outbreak of apsychic births in the neighborhood. Considering some
of the materials and cantrips you use, I hope you can understand how we might
be concerned."
"I tell you again, Inspector Fisher, this is bigotry in action," Vasquez said
"We run a clean shop here.
What do you think we are doing, attempting to bring about the dominion of
Huitzilopochtli over Angels
City?"
That was one of my major concerns, but telling him so didn't seem politic. I
just said, "Why don't you take us over to your flayed human skin substitute
processing facility? That's the likeliest source of thaumaturgic pollution
here, I think."
"It is a legitimate sorcerous substance, permissible under the laws of the
Confederation," Vasquez said hotly. "I repeat, you are harassing Chocolate
Weasel by singling us out "
"Bullshit," I said, which made him sit up straight in his chain not the first
time lately I'd surprised somebody by not talking the way an EPA inspector was
supposed to. I didn't care. If he was hot, I was steaming. I went on, "You are
not being singled out, sir. I've been visiting businesses that dump at
Devonshire for weeks now. You're not being discriminated against because
you're Aztecian, either I've hit Persian places, aerospace firms, what have
you. But even you won't deny flayed human skin substitute is a dangerous
substance, I hope? Now we can do this politely on an informal level or I can
go out, get a warrant, and turn this place inside out. How do you want to play
it?"
He calmed down in a hurry. Somehow I'd thought he might. He said, "What sort
of tests do you have in mind?"
I looked at Michael he was the expert He said, "I intend to use the similarity
test with my own piece of skin substitute to see if uncontrolled
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Huitzilopochtlic influences are present" He was going to try the same test
he'd used back at the dump, in other words.
I didn't know what Vasquez would say about that maybe start complaining about
theological discrimination. But he didn't; he just got up and said, "tome with
me, gentlemen." I concluded he was a lot like Ramzan Durani of Slow Jinn Fizz: [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]