Lizard Men of Los Angeles

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Los Angeles

By Lewis Shiner
Distributed under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/

The beautiful black-haired woman suddenly turned, raised the gleaming revolver, and fired six resounding shots. Five .38 caliber slugs ripped into the wooden packing crate that Johnny Cairo had crawled into only moments before. The sixth bullet exploded a vase of red carnations that stood next to the crate.
Something slumped against the inside of the wooden box. A thread of bright crimson oozed between the pine boards and slowly trickled downwards.
The woman lowered the pistol, shock and horror spreading across her elegant features. The empty revolver clattered to her feet and she took one tentative step, then another, toward the crate.
"Stop!" cried a man's voice from the back of the theater. "Don't touch that box!"
The audience turned, gasped, and broke into applause as they saw that the speaker was none other than Johnny Cairo himself, changed from his dark suit and cape to evening clothes and sporting a bright, blood-red cummerbund.
*
Backstage, the entire vaudeville troupe mingled with journalists and well-wishers, though in this Depression year of 1934 the crowds were smaller than they'd ever been. When the rest had departed, one lone man remained behind. He was heavy set, with elaborate side-whiskers and thinning hair. He carried a cashmere topcoat and scarf that had attracted some notice from those exiting past him.
He approached the magician and spoke in a deep and resonant voice. "I'm sorry, but I missed the evening's...entertainment. You are Johnny Cairo? The man the press refers to as 'Mr. Impossible?'"
Cairo nodded, and gestured to the black-haired woman beside him. "This is Myra Lockhart, my associate." She had covered her revealing stage costume with a black velvet dressing gown. From a distance she had appeared to be in her twenties, but fine lines around her eyes and mouth made her true age much harder to determine. Those eyes, set in a complexion as white as cream, flashed a keen intelligence.
"Miss Lockhart," the man said with a short bow.
"Mrs.," she replied coolly.
"Errr, yes." He paused, then inquired, "Mr. Cairo, are you entirely well?"
Cairo had closed his eyes. He too seemed much older than he had from the stage. Beneath his heavy pancake makeup he was perspiring and his complexion had taken on a yellowish hue. "It's nothing," he said. "A legacy of my travels--dengue fever, a persistent amoebae, a trace of jaundice. How may I assist you, sir?"
"My name is Emil Rosenberg. I understand that you, under certain circumstances, have been known to undertake confidential investigations."
Mrs. Lockhart interrupted. "Certain very specific circumstances."
"I seek knowledge, Mr. Rosenberg," Cairo elaborated. "My investigations are always directed toward the great Mystery."
Rosenberg shook his head. "I fear you've lost me, sir."
"Some believe life to be full of mysteries. My studies in the East--and elsewhere--have convinced me there is but One, a single web of relationships that binds everything in the universe together. It's the principle by which magic works."
"I am not a magician, sir. And my concern is with what seems to be a single mystery, the disappearance of my daughter, Vera. The police are stymied and I'm afraid something drastic may have befallen her."
"I'm sympathetic, of course, Mr. Rosenberg," Cairo offered, "but surely this is a matter for a conventional private investigator, not someone of my particular talents."
"There are...other factors involved. Factors that I believe you might...Good Lord!" The color drained from Rosenberg's face as he pointed a shaking finger toward the hallway outside the dressing room. "There's one of them now!"
Cairo spun around to look. A sinister figure, heavily muffled in a wide-brimmed hat, raincoat, and baggy trousers, had just turned from the doorway and scuttled toward the stage door exit.
*
Cairo leaped to his feet, his previous semblance of weariness gone. He bolted down the corridor in feverish pursuit of the mysterious onlooker. The heavily muffled man--if man it was--slammed open the bright red stage door and banged down the metal steps outside. As Cairo emerged into the warm darkness of the Los Angeles night he saw the figure moving rapidly down the sidewalk, its body strangely contorted. It was bent at the waist, its short arms jerking convulsively, as if fighting the impulse to drop to all fours.
Only a dozen yards separated Cairo from the creature as it turned the corner onto a side street. When Cairo rounded the same corner seconds later, it had disappeared.
Mrs. Lockhart found Cairo there, staring at a scarf, hat, coat, and pants lying in the gutter. A damp, fetid smell rose from the clothing. "Methane," Cairo said. "Swamp gas."
"I suppose," Mrs. Lockhart said, "this means we'll be taking the case."
*
"Have you ever," Rosenberg asked, "heard the name Aleister Crowley?"
They sat the parlor of Rosenberg's house in the community of Silver Lake, located to the north and west of Los Angeles proper. Rosenberg was fortifying