The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

his money on. There were three other longshots in the race. It could have been any of them.”

“What went wrong?” I ask. “You’ve broken lots of hexes for me.”

“Yeah, but they were from normal, run-of-the-mill mages. Not this time.”

“Who the hell does the Goniff have hexing for him?” I ask.

“You ever hear of Dead End Dugan?” says Milton.

“Dugan?” I repeat, frowning. “When did he get out?”

“Not out,” Milton corrects me. “Up. They buried him in Yonkers, and that was supposed to be the end of it.”

“So?”

“So he’s a zombie now, and my magic isn’t strong enough to counteract his.”

“Look, Milton,” I say, “this is serious. If I take one more beating like this, I’m out of business, and probably out of fingers and other even more vital parts as well. What am I going to do?”

“You need a real expert to go up against him.”

“A voodoo priest, maybe?” I ask.

“Yeah, that might do it,” says Milton.

I gather Benny Fifth Street and Gently Gently Dawkins and tell them we’re leaving the track early, that we’ve got to find a voodoo priest before I can go back to work. Benny immediately suggests we buy plane tickets to Voodooland, but I explain that there isn’t any such place, and Gently Gently says that he’s got a friend up in Harlem who belongs to some weird cult and for all he knows it’s a voodoo cult, and I tell him to offer his friend anything but make sure he brings his voodoo priest to my place, and I’ll be waiting there until I hear from him.

So I go home, and I send Benny out to bring back some healthy food like blintzes and chopped liver and maybe a couple of knishes, and then there is nothing to do but sit around and watch the sports results on my new twenty- inch crystal ball. The big news of the day is Lowborn Prince, and it is so painful to watch that I almost can’t eat my blintzes, even though I have loaded them up with sour cream and cinnamon sugar, but at the last minute I decide I have to practice a little self-denial so I only pour one container of strawberries on them, and I spread the chopped liver over little poker-chip-sized pieces of low-cal rye bread.

Finally, at about eleven o’clock, there’s a knock on the door, and it’s Gently Gently Dawkins. He walks in and tosses his hat onto a table.

“So where is he?” I demand.

“He’s on his way up the stairs,” said Gently Gently. “He’s an old guy. He don’t climb as fast as I do.”

“And you left him alone?” I yell.

“Believe me, no one’s going to bother him,” says Gently Gently, and just as the words leave his mouth in hobbles this stooped-over, bald, wrinkled, old black guy, and I would say he was dressed in rags but Ezekial the Rag Merchant would take offense.

“This?” I say. “This is what you spent all day looking for?”

“I’m pleased to meet you too,” says the old guy.

I turn to him. “You’re really a voodoo priest?”

He shakes his head. “Do I look like an amateur?”

“Don’t ask me what you look like and maybe we won’t come to blows,” I say. “If you aren’t a voodoo priest, just what the hell are you and why are you here?”

“I’m here because this nice man-” he gestures toward Nicely Nicely Dawkins “-put the word out that he was looking for someone who could neutralize a zombie’s hex.” He smiles and taps his chest with an emaciated thumb. “You’re looking at him.”

“Okay, you’re not a voodoo priest,” I say. “What are you?”

“The answer to your prayers,” he replies. “Also, I happen to be the only mundumugu in New York.”

“What’s a mundumugu?”

“You might call me a witch doctor.”

“I might also call you a crazy old man who’s wasting my time,” I say.

He makes a tiny gesture in the air with his left hand, and suddenly I can’t move a muscle.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he says with a sigh. “I ought to leave right now, but Dead End Dugan is giving a bad name to both hexes and corpses. My name is Mtepwa.” He extends his hand, and somehow I extend mine, even though I am not trying to. “And you are Harry the Book. I am almost pleased to meet you.”

He snaps his fingers, and suddenly I can move again.

“I hope you didn’t take offense, Mr. Mtepwa, sir,” I say. “It’s been a bad day.”

“I understand,” says Mtepwa. “But tomorrow will be better.”

“It will?”

“It will, or my name isn’t Cool Jumbo Cool.”

“But your name isn’t Cool Jumbo Cool,” I point out.

“Details, details,” he says with a shrug.

“Uh, I hate to seem forward,” I say, “but what is this gonna cost me?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he says. “But whatever it is, I promise you’ll be pleased with the price.”

The fourth race at Belmont is coming up, and I’m getting really nervous. Bilgewater, who couldn’t beat my mother around the track, even if she was carrying 130 pounds on her back and running with blinkers, is 120-to-1, and this time the Goniff doesn’t even use a runner, he comes up and makes the bet himself: $1,800 on Bilgewater.

“That’s a big bet,” I note. “I’ll probably have to lay some of it off.”

“You can if you can,” he says, and I realize that the word is out that Dead End Dugan has hexed the race and there is no way that any other bookie will take part of the bet. “I hear you’ve got a new boy working for you,” continues the Goniff.

“Boy isn’t exactly the word I’d use,” I reply unhappily.

“I just want to do you a favor, Harry,” he says. “Don’t waste your money on another mage. I guarantee you that nothing in the field can beat Bilgewater. There’s simply no way.”

He utters a nasty laugh and walks off to his private box, and Mtepwa approaches me.

“That was Sam the Goniff?” he asks.

“That was him.”

He looks after the Goniff, and nods his head. “I knew someone who looked just like him-a long time ago.”

“Maybe it was just the Goniff when he was younger,” I say.

“I doubt it,” says Mtepwa. “This was before Columbus discovered America.”

I wonder just how gullible he thinks I am, but we have more important things to discuss, and I tell him that the Goniff has admitted that Dead End Dugan has hexed the race and that nothing in the field can beat Bilgewater.

“Well,” he says with a shrug, “if they can’t, they can’t.”

“What?” I scream, and then lower my voice when everyone starts staring. “I thought you were here to put Dugan in his place!”

“You have undertakers to do that,” answers Mtepwa. “I’m here to make sure that his hex doesn’t work.”

“But if no one in the field can beat Bilgewater… ” I begin, but then there’s a cheer from the crowd and I realize that the race has started and I turn to watch it, and I immediately wish I hadn’t turned, because Bilgewater is already leading by ten lengths and as far as I can tell he hasn’t drawn a deep breath.

I look at the rest of the field. Most of them are lathered with sweat, half of them are lame, and the rest spend more time watching the birds in the infield than the horses ahead of them.

“I should never have listened to Milton!” I mutter. “Voodoo priest my ass! I need a.550 Nitro Express and a telescopic site.”

“Be quiet,” says Mtepwa. “I must concentrate.”

I don’t know why, but I do what he says. Bilgewater enters the far turn fifteen in front, and Flyboy Billy Tuesday hasn’t touched him with the whip yet, and then Mtepwa mumbles a little something that sounds like it’s right out of King Solomon’s Mines, and suddenly there is a big black-maned lion on the track, and he