A Fatal Glass of Beer Read Online Free PDF

ancient and all-too-often fickle gods. The native bearers had all fled. It was just me, Applejack, and the rhino. When the beast was no more than two pool-tables’ distance away, Applejack fired. The beast fell at my feet. Left the carcass to the natives, took the horn, had it pulverized into an aphrodisiac which dissolved admirably in a martini.”
    The noises of the Faraday accompanied us as we slowly ground downward in the steel-barred elevator cage. Arguing, musical instruments, laughter, singing, the clacking of an occasional typewriter came from offices on each floor. The Faraday was not the class location of downtown L.A. Just off the corner of Main and Hoover, it was home, often a very temporary home, to talent agents, jewelry distributors, quacks, music teachers, baby and publicity photographers, and a fortune-teller named Juanita the Seer, who was standing before the elevator when it came to its usual jerky stop on the main floor.
    “W. C. Fields,” she said as I opened the door. She held out her hand.
    “Don’t,” I said, but it was too late. Juanita had touched him.
    “Madame,” he said gallantly as he stepped out, removing his straw hat, “I can say that, outside of the stage itself, particularly a certain Kitty Majestic who did a magic act, I have never witnessed a female as confidently clad.”
    Juanita was somewhere around Fields’s age. She had gone through three husbands back in New York. Her second husband had been half owner of a trio of successful men’s shops. Juanita was financially set, but a few years after her third marriage, to a candy distributor in the Bronx, she got the calling. She claimed that one morning she just woke up and knew things. Husband number three died two weeks later in a subway accident, and Juanita moved west.
    And here she stood, ready for work, gypsy costume of yellow flowing skirt, billowing red blouse covered with a repeating pattern of fruit ranging from mangoes to bananas. She wore a massive string of multicolored stones around her neck and a turban of gold. Her earrings matched the stones in her necklace, and her dark lipstick came close to the cherries on her blouse.
    “Confidentially—” Juanita said. “And Toby knows this—I wear all this stuff for the customers. They want a little show, a little color with a glimpse of their future. So, I’ve got a table, crystal ball, the whole chozzerai .”
    “Garbage,” said Fields. “Picked up a smattering of the Yiddish tongue in my sojourns.”
    “You got it,” she said.
    “We’ve got to go,” I said, gesturing Fields onward toward the door, but he stood watching Juanita, who touched the stones around her neck and said, “He or she is dead.”
    “Dead?” said Fields.
    “Let’s go,” I urged.
    “The one you’re looking for,” she said.
    “Hipnoodle?” he asked.
    “Not yet, but soon. And another one. Two dead men. One’s been dead for some time. The other soon will be. See it as sure as I see you now. There will be a quest,” she said matter-of-factly. “Then you’ll find out the one who’s sending you on your journey is dead, has been for a while, can’t say exactly how long. Wait, another one’s gonna die. That’s three. This death stuff is creepy. Gives me the shpilkes. Sorry, gotta go now, got a couple of Mexican brothers upstairs waiting for advice on how to stay out of the way of the cops.”
    She closed the elevator door and headed up.
    “What in the name of Godfrey Daniel was she talking about?” Fields asked.
    “I’ve come to believe in Juanita,” I admitted as we walked across the lobby, the elevator rising behind us. “The trouble is that I can’t figure out what she’s telling me till it’s over and too late.”
    “Cassandra,” Fields said, nodding his head in understanding. “I too have witnessed soothsayers, one particularly in Mozambique who had such powers, probably from indulging in too much catawhowoo, a beverage so pungent and alcoholic that even I had