The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Brad Magnarella (ink book reader txt) 📖

know, just chilling out.” That must have been one of the first English phrases he’d learned because it was his answer to every inquiry into his or his family’s well being. I expected him to ask about my long absence, but he shifted immediately to business. “How can help you? Have good, good sale on scorpion today.” He nodded toward a fish bowl squirming with them.

“Oh, no thanks.”

“Boar tail? Sloth wee-wee?”

For a moment I considered the second—it was great for encumbering spells—but I shook my head. “Actually, Mr. Han, I was hoping you could help me with a question.”

“Have question?”

I looked around to ensure the store’s emptiness before stooping toward his small counter. I studied the diminutive man, doubting his connection to the White Hand went any further than having to pay them a business tax. Even so, I would need to proceed with care.

“Does the name Black Earth mean anything to you?”

“Black Earth,” he repeated sharply. He said nothing for several moments. By his blank face, I couldn’t tell if he was even considering the question. But he was checking the name against a mental inventory because when he spoke again, he said, “Mr. Han no carry. Can order. Be here two week.”

He thrust out a pair of fingers.

“No, no,” I said with a chuckle. I’d always liked Mr. Han. “Black Earth isn’t an ingredient. It’s the name of a group, I think.”

Another blank face.

“Maybe one associated with, you know, the bosses?” I looked around to suggest greater Chinatown.

“Boss? I only boss,” he said. “Father boss before me, but gone. Son next boss, but lazy.” He made a face of disgust and jerked his head to the right. “Play videogame but no learn business.”

A pale green curtain fluttered over the doorway Mr. Han had indicated. Beyond, I could make out bursts of electronic gunfire.

“Need Black Earth today?” he said, getting back to my question. “Go to North Wood. Central Park.”

Sensing the line of inquiry was only going to elicit more confused answers, I decided to shift to the shrieker case. I pulled out my notepad and flipped to last night’s scribblings. I noticed my pencil was missing from the spiral binding, probably when the checkpoint guards had rifled my pockets.

“Do you know a man named Chin Lau Ping?”

“Chin drive bus.”

Okay, so I had the right person. But because word of his death hadn’t seemed to have hit the streets yet, I was careful to phrase my next question in present tense. “Does he ever shop here?”

“Chin come many, many time.”

Sounded like another magic dabbler. I was trying to think of an appropriate follow-up question when Mr. Han turned toward the doorway to his living quarters and unleashed an explosion of Chinese. I looked in time to see a shadow recede from the other side of the diaphanous curtain. Mr. Han shook his head and returned his attention to me. “Chin funny man.”

“You mean strange?”

“No, tell funny joke.”

I couldn’t match Mr. Han’s delighted laughter as he related the impossible-to-follow story involving chopsticks and fried bull testicles, but I chuckled at what I guessed to have been the punch line.

“That’s … great,” I said.

Hitting a dead end there as well, I rounded up a few spell items, including a vial of the sloth urine, and paid for them back at the counter. It looked like I was going to have to do my own research at home. Accepting the neat paper bag, I bid the apothecary owner farewell.

“Chill out at Mr. Han anytime!” he called after me.

21

Back home, I reclined in my downstairs reading chair and shook open the afternoon edition of the Scream. The cheap tabloid focused on crime and vice, hence the need for two daily runs. Indeed, while the big city papers were entering their second decade of declining ad sales and readership, the Scream was in boom mode with no signs of slowing.

On the second page, I found what I was looking for:

Gruesome Evisceration In Harlem! Second In Chinatown!

Though the three-column story was long on sensationalism and short on specifics, I picked out a few details. The Hamilton Heights conjurer had been twenty-eight-year-old Fred “Flash” Thomas. He’d worked at a fast-food joint in the neighborhood and was considered something of a prankster.

According to a neighbor, one of his favorite tricks had been to throw his voice to make it sound as though complete strangers were insulting one another. “Started more than his share of fights,” the woman was quoted as saying. “Probably what got him killed.”

Magic was what got him killed, actually. And with the voice projecting, it sounded as though he’d been dabbling in the art for a while. The article went on to list the city schools he’d attended, a couple of them reformatory, but nothing to help answer the question of where he’d picked up the spell.

The coverage of the Chinatown conjurer wasn’t much more informative. I’d gotten the man’s name and occupation correct, though it seemed little more was known about him.

“Given their ritualistic nature,” the article concluded, “the grisly killings are believed to have been perpetrated by the same sick, depraved individual.” My eyes wandered to a composite sketch below.

“Of course,” I said.

The staring eyes were too wide, the nose too large, and the lips too narrow, but I could imagine the back and forth as the elderly couple from the Hamilton Heights apartments described me to the police sketch artist. They’d even included the various scrapes and gouges on my face. My healing spell had all but taken care of those, fortunately, but the physical description of the man wanted for questioning was another matter.

“Six-foot to six-two male,” I read aloud, “dark brown hair, hazel eyes … last seen running westbound on 142nd Street, near Fredrick Douglass Boulevard, carrying a wooden cane.”

Thank God my projection spell had worked last night. Then again, having the jackass duo of Dempsey and Dipinski as alibis was no guarantee of anything.

I thumbed through the rest of the paper. There was no coverage on the