The Librarians and the Lost Lamp

  “I didn’t even get to finish my steak,” Dunphy whined, oblivious to the stunning Matisse right in front of him. He squatted on a bench, wallowing in self-pity. “What did I do to deserve this? Ever since I lost my lucky penny, I can’t get a break.”

  “Yeah, about that.” Stone tore himself away from admiring an early charcoal study by Seurat to sit down beside Dunphy. “I may know something about that, but we both know that penny isn’t really what this is all about. The Lamp is what matters. Aladdin’s Lamp.”

  “Aladdin…” Dunphy’s jaw dropped “How do you know about … I mean, you’re joking, right?”

  “Not by a long shot,” Stone said. Jenkins had briefed him on his suspicions while he and Dunphy were en route to the art gallery. “Don’t try to con me, Gus. You’re in over your head here, with some seriously dangerous customers hot on your trail. I can’t help you unless we level with each other.”

  “Who are you anyway?” Dunphy stared at Stone in bewilderment. “That woman at the restaurant, she called you a librarian?”

  “And she wasn’t wrong,” Stone said. “I’m a Librarian all right, but not the kind you’re thinking of. My colleagues and I track down dangerous magical items … like the Lamp.”

  Gus started sweating, despite the air conditioning. “I swear to God, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Give me a break, Gus. That didn’t work back at the steakhouse, and it’s not going to work now. The cat is out of the bag, man. You’re not fooling anyone.”

  Dunphy opened his mouth to issue another denial, but his heart wasn’t in it. “You really know about all that?”

  “Yep, and so does our new friend Marjanah and her friends. Seems they belong to a secret society that calls itself the Forty. By all accounts, they’re a pretty cutthroat bunch, and they have been after the Lamp for a long, long time.”

  Gus twitched nervously. “How long?”

  “A thousand-plus years, give or take a few centuries, so they’re not about to give up just because we got away from them once. You need our help, Gus, which means you need to tell us where you stowed the Lamp.”

  He obviously didn’t have the Lamp on him, so Stone had to assume that Dunphy had tucked it away somewhere, far from the trailer that the Forty had already ransacked. At least we know now what they were looking for, he thought.

  “That’s what that woman said, too, aside from the whole slicing me to ribbons thing. How do I know I can trust you?”

  “’Cause I’ve already saved your butt twice now?” Stone backed off a little, not wanting to press Dunphy too hard just as he was trying to win his trust. “Look, forget about letting me in on where the Lamp is for the moment. Can you at least tell me how exactly you came into possession of it in the first place? To be honest, I’m still a little fuzzy on that point.”

  “Pure dumb luck,” Gus said. “I was hiding out—I mean, vacationing—in Santa Barbara last week when it washed up on the beach, covered in seaweed. I wiped it off, thinking it might be worth something … and, poof, this king-sized genie appeared in a puff of smoke, like a magic act on the Strip but ten times bigger and more awesome.” He threw out his arms to try to convey how enormous the Djinn was. “I gotta tell you, Jake, I was positively petrified at first. Part of me was afraid I had gone loco, and another part was afraid I hadn’t.”

  “I hear you, man,” Stone said. “I’ve seen some pretty freaky stuff as a Librarian, let me tell you.”

  “You have no idea.” Dunphy shuddered at the memory. “That genie dude is scary as all get-out, and big as a house to boot. I’m not ashamed to admit that I nearly dropped that Lamp right then and there and ran for the hills.”

  Stone could believe it. “But you didn’t.”

  “Well, genies are all about granting wishes. Everyone knows that, right, so how could I pass up a chance like that? I was down to my last penny anyway, so what did I have to lose? I figured maybe I had finally hit the jackpot at last. A big, scary jackpot, but still…”

  Stone understood where Gus was coming from. His dad had often lived from paycheck to paycheck, while squandering the family finances on booze and bad bets. Growing up, Stone had seen firsthand how reckless that could make a man—and how hungry for that one big break that would turn everything around.

  “So what did you wish for?” he asked.

  “For luck, naturally. What else?” Gus seemed genuinely surprised by the question. “Not enough to win every time, ’cause where would be the fun in that, but enough to beat the house and make me a real high roller at last.” He smiled wanly at the memory. “It’s not like I was actually cheating or anything. I just wanted a bit of an edge, you know?”

  “I get it,” Stone said. “But here’s the thing, Gus. Magic like that is never free, not really. It always comes with a price, and usually a steep one. That’s why my friends and I try to keep objects like that Lamp filed away where they can’t do any harm … to you or anyone else.”

  Dunphy didn’t want to hear it. “But I wasn’t hurting anyone.”

  “Maybe,” Stone said, “but what about what the Forty might do if they get control of that Lamp? Do you really think that somebody like Marjanah cares about what her wishes might do to innocent people? And what if the Genie himself ever escapes from the Lamp and runs amok? You said yourself that he’s scary as hell and nothing we can risk setting loose on the world. From what I hear, there’s a reason he was bound to the Lamp centuries ago. He’s not on your side, Gus. In the long run, he’s not on anybody’s side but his own.”

  “I don’t know,” Gus said, waffling. “He’s done all right by me so far.”

  “For now, maybe, but look at all the trouble he’s already gotten you in. You really want to live like this, always looking over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop?” Stone reached out to Dunphy, man to man. “You strike me as a good guy at heart, Gus. Let us take the Lamp off your hands and put it somewhere safe.”

  “Forget it.” Dunphy shook his head emphatically. “That Lamp changed everything for me. No way am I going back to being a loser again.”

  “Even if it gets you killed?”

  22

  2016

  A private elevator led from the lobby to the penthouse suites on the top floor of Ali Baba’s Palace. As she and Ezekiel stepped into the empty elevator, Cassandra fretted that she wasn’t dressed expensively enough to pull this off. She kept expecting someone to call her out as a trespasser.

  “Remind me why we’re doing this again?”

  Ezekiel waited for the elevator doors to close before replying. “It only figures that Dunphy would want to keep the Lamp close at hand, so his sweet new digs are the obvious place to look, especially since Stone says that Dunphy isn’t about to turn it over to us willingly.” He grinned impishly. “I can live with that. Stealing things is always more fun than asking for them.”

  Unlike Cassandra, he looked perfectly relaxed, as though breaking into a luxury hotel suite was no big deal. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself a little too much.

  Stands to reason, she thought. “So I guess casino heists are your happy place?”

  “That and priceless museum exhibits,” he replied. “Those are a treat, too.”

  Cassandra envied his confidence. “I suppose this is kind of exciting,” she said, trying to borrow some of his dashing, devil-may-care attitude. “It’s like we’re in one of those Ocean’s Eleven movies.”

  “Please!” Ezekiel rolled his eyes. “That’s the Hollywood version of a heist. If they really wanted to get it right, they should have consulted an actual master thief, such as yours truly.” He gave her a devilish wink. “You want to see a true professional at work, get a load of this.”

  The button panel inside the express elevator featured only two destinations: the lobby and the top floor. Ezekiel produced a blank key card that he slid into a slot in the panel before pushing the upper button, which lit up at his touch. The elevator immediately commenced a smoot
h ascent.

  “See,” he bragged, “real thieving requires research and technical expertise, not to mention a huge amount of sheer natural talent.” He retrieved the key card and returned it to his pocket. “I spoofed my first electronic skeleton key before I was old enough to boost a car for a joy ride.”

  Cassandra had to admit that Ezekiel knew what he was doing when it came to hacking into locks and security systems. She made a mental note to thoroughly erase her web history as soon as they got back to the Annex, even as the elevator shot straight to the top of the hotel. A bell chimed to announce their arrival. The elevator doors slid open.

  “Voilà!” Ezekiel crowed. “Do I know my way around a security system or not?”

  “I never doubted it,” she said.

  They stepped out of the elevator into a circular waiting area directly beneath the Palace’s gilded dome. Radiating from the circle were the penthouse suites themselves, four in all. Ornate Arabic numerals marked the doors to each suite. Cassandra automatically calculated the dimensions of the accommodations, deducting the space occupied by the elevator shaft, and concluded that each suite was approximately 15.3 percent larger than her modest apartment back in Portland. She could only imagine what the nightly room rate was, including taxes.

  “This way,” Ezekiel said. “Trust me, I’m just getting warmed up.”

  He headed straight to the door of Dunphy’s suite. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung from the doorknob, despite the fact that Stone was currently keeping Gus under wraps in the Fine Arts district across town, where the Forty would (hopefully) never think to look for him. Cassandra wondered if maybe Dunphy had hung the sign to keep the housekeeping staff from poking around in the suite when he wasn’t around—or had the Forty hung the sign to keep from being interrupted while they searched the place?

  “Careful,” she warned Ezekiel. “Remember, we’re not the only ones looking for the Lamp.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not Ezekiel Jones.” He rapped on the door. “Hello? Room service.”

  No one answered, which eased Cassandra’s concerns somewhat. Still, she remained on guard as Ezekiel tried the knob and chuckled in amusement.

  “Got to love these state-of-the-art electronic locks. The older, mechanical ones were a bit trickier to pick. Not impossible, mind you, just trickier.”

  He slid his counterfeit key card into the lock, which clicked from red to green.

  “Open sesame,” he said with a smirk.

  “A literary reference?” Cassandra remarked. “From you?”

  Despite being a Librarian, Ezekiel wasn’t much of a reader, aside from take-out menus and technical manuals.

  “Hey, I’ve seen the movies, too.” He shrugged. “Well, at least the ones that weren’t made before I was born.”

  Moving quickly, so as not to be observed, they slipped quietly into the suite and shut the door behind them.

  “Oh, dear,” Cassandra said. “Are we too late?”

  At first glance, it appeared that the luxurious suite, which, like the rest of Ali Baba’s Palace, was decked out in ersatz Arabian Nights splendor, had already been looted. The place was a mess, with discarded clothes strewn across the carpeted floor, closet doors hanging open, empty champagne bottles cluttering coffee tables and counters, dirty glasses piled high in the sink of a built-in bar, rumpled bathroom towels draped over the back of a plush divan, and other evidence of disorder. Something squished beneath Cassandra’s feet, and she looked down to see that she had stepped on a cold, greasy pizza crust.

  Ick.

  “Nah,” Ezekiel said, looking around. “I think Dunphy’s just a slob.” He made a face as he delicately picked a rumpled sock from the floor and gave it a sniff before dropping it in disgust. “I swear, some blokes have no class at all.”

  Looking closer, Cassandra realized Ezekiel was probably right. Aside from the dirty laundry and other refuse scattered everywhere, the suite had not actually been trashed the way Dunphy’s trailer had been. Nobody had sliced open any cushions or emptied the drawers and closets onto the floor, which Cassandra chose to take as a sign that they were one step ahead of the Forty for once.

  Taking out her phone, she rang Baird, who was maintaining a lookout downstairs in the lobby. “We’re in,” she reported. “Are we still clear?”

  “So far,” Baird replied. “Nobody matching Stone’s description of his assailants has gone anywhere near the penthouse elevator, so you shouldn’t be interrupted. I’ll let you know if it ever looks like you’re expecting company. Any sign of the Lamp yet?”

  Cassandra swept her gaze over the messy suite. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  Wrapping up the call, she saw that Ezekiel was already casing the scene. A loose pile of chips, in high denominations, was gathering dust on an end table. He casually pocketed them on his way to a Persian carpet hanging like a tapestry on a wall.

  “They’re making this way too bloody easy,” he sighed. “I’m almost insulted.”

  He swept aside the tapestry to expose a concealed wall safe, no doubt provided as a convenience for the big-time gamblers and A-list guests who usually occupied the penthouse. Of course, they probably just stowed cash and jewelry for safekeeping, not a magic lamp.

  “Can you open it?” Cassandra asked.

  He shot her an incredulous look. “Okay, now I am insulted.”

  “Sorry.” She was starting to wonder why she had even bothered joining Ezekiel on this operation. “Never mind. Do your thing.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” he said, confidently working the keypad on the safe. “The day I can’t crack a Model Nine Glen Reader commercial wall safe is the day I go straight for good … so, in other words, never.”

  The safe chirped cooperatively.

  “I rest my case.” He tugged open the safe, then blinked in surprise. “Okay, that I was not expecting.”

  Instead of Aladdin’s Lamp, as described by Jenkins, they found only a cheap resin trophy cup of the sort awarded at high school assemblies. Ezekiel squinted at the inscription on the base, reading it aloud.

  “Augustus Dunphy. Voted Mostly Likely to Hit the Jackpot. Class of 1998.” Ezekiel stared at the trophy in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Cassandra groped for an explanation. “Maybe it has … sentimental value?”

  “But this doesn’t make any sense,” Ezekiel griped. “Who doesn’t store their valuables in a safe if there’s one available?”

  “Someone who is worried about people like you?” Cassandra suggested. “Or who maybe doesn’t trust the casino they’re taking to the cleaners?”

  “Good point,” Ezekiel said. “I know I’d be worried about me, if I wasn’t me.” He shuddered. “There’s a scary thought, not being Ezekiel Jones.”

  Funny, Cassandra thought. Up until recently, I would have given anything to be someone else.

  But that was before she became a Librarian.

  “You might as well tell Baird that we struck out.” Ezekiel closed the safe with a little more force than was strictly necessary. He trudged toward the door. “Talk about a waste of time.”

  “Hang on,” she said. “Give me a chance here.”

  Throwing open her hands to unlock her synesthetic senses, so that hallucinatory diagrams and formulae floated before her eyes, she made a sweep of the suite, going from room to room, calculating the volume of every object that might contain an antique Chinese lamp: vases, cushions, cabinets, ice buckets, and overflowing waste baskets. Spatial geometries spun luminously, accompanied by the taste of raspberry jam and a melodic ringing in her ears, as she worked her way through the living room, dining area, and bar, before entering a mock Arabian bedchamber, complete with an elaborate canopy bed that looked as though it hadn’t been made for days. Something about the bed captured her attention, although she couldn’t quite place it right away. She paused to examine it more closely.

  “What is it?” Ezekiel tagged along behind her. “Are you onto something??
??

  “Shh,” she hushed him. “Let me concentrate.”

  She paced the room, computing its angles and comparing the height of the room to the height of the bed. By her estimation, there was at least an eight-inch gap between the top of the canopy and the ceiling, which might be large enough to hide the Lamp.

  “Up there,” she said, pointing. “There’s a space above the bed that could hold the Lamp, at least if the canopy isn’t stretched too taut.” Collapsing her private blackboard, she hopped onto the messy bed, cringing at the sloppy sheets, and laid down on her back, peering up at the stretched fabric overhead. Was it just her imagination, or was the canopy sagging in the middle more than it ought?

  No, she decided, something’s up there, weighing it down.

  Her heart racing in excitement, she rolled out of the bed onto her feet and stood on tippy-toes to try to peer into the gap, only to find that she was still too short to see over the top of the canopy without a boost.

  “Find me something to stand on!”

  A brass tea table rested on the carpet a few feet away from the bed. As Ezekiel shoved it toward her, pushing aside scattered items of clothing, Cassandra spotted another clue: four deep indentations in the carpet, as though a heavyish piece of furniture had once resided there—before Dunphy moved it to use as a stepstool and then tried to put it back where it belonged? The indentations perfectly matched the feet of the tray table.

  “This is it!” she exclaimed. “We’ve found it! Almost.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ezekiel said, sounding positively offended. “He hid a priceless magical relic on top of the bed? Who does that?”

  “Got by you, didn’t it?” Cassandra couldn’t resist puncturing his supercharged ego just a bit. “And I’ll bet not even the maids look up there very often.”

  Scrambling atop the table so that she could just reach the gap, she groped for the Lamp, straining and stretching until she was rewarded by the feel of something hard and polished atop the canopy. Her extended fingertips grazed the surface of the object, which felt oddly warm to the touch.