Babayaga

night. The room smelled of cleansers and stale smoke. Oliver led Will to a red-leather back booth where they found three black men in matching blue suits sitting with their drinks, playing knock rummy. Oliver slid into the booth next to them, and Will looked around for a chair.
    “Hullo, boys. Cigarette? Sorry, all I’ve got are Gitanes.” Oliver held out the pack and they all politely refused. Oliver took one and lit it. “Flats. Kelly. Red. This is Will. He’s an adman, but he’s a good egg too.”
    The man called Flats raised an eyebrow. “Adman? Meaning you make advertisements of some sort?”
    “Yes, sort of. I help make them.”
    “So, you draw the pictures?”
    “No, I oversee all the other stuff, the research, the client relations, strategic thinking, you name it.”
    “That’s interesting,” said Flats, mulling this over, “because I can’t honestly say I’ve ever noticed anything resembling ‘thinking’ in any advertisement I’ve come across.”
    Will couldn’t tell if he was being joshed or not, but before he could reply, Oliver had changed the subject. “Listen, we’re here with a bit of hard news. It seems Boris—you know Boris, yes? Ned’s friend? The oversized Russian with a face like a bad dog’s?” The men nodded. “Yes, well, he dropped dead in the middle of a card game today. Quite sudden. Suspect it was foul play of some sort, we’re looking into it now. Anyway, the gist of it is, we’re wondering have you all heard of any other funny stuff going on around town these days?”
    The three men locked eyes with one another, as if some shared thought had simultaneously popped into their minds. The man called Kelly looked as though he was going to say something when Red put a hand on his wrist and stopped him. Leaning forward, Red looked at Oliver and Will. “Now, before we share any of our own observations on this particular subject, one thing I’m curious about is why you and this ad guy here are asking? Not exactly your usual beat, is it?”
    Red had the slow, careful manner of a person who is always distrustful, and Oliver was cagey with his reply. “It’s a mix really, a little personal, a little business. First and foremost, Red, Boris was a friend, a good friend. Also, coincidentally, I think whatever is going on might be decent material for a story, and a writer such as myself needs those. Chicken in the pot, and all that. If I did get a story, I could possibly squeeze a few francs out of my pals over at the Herald Tribune . Of course, if you helped I’d be happy to provide you with a cut.”
    “Sounds reasonable, though you never looked much like a man who needed to hustle for his chicken,” said Flats.
    “Oh, you’d be surprised,” said Oliver with a grin. “A well-tailored suit is awfully good at hiding an empty stomach.”
    Flats nodded, as if this were an acceptable enough answer, and Kelly leaned forward. “The next question is, why you coming to us? Why do you think we can help?”
    Oliver moved around in his seat a little nervously as he answered. “Fair enough. The truth of the matter is Boris might have been passed some bad medicine, if you know what I mean.”
    Flats nodded again and Kelly looked around the table. “Okay, bad medicine. I get it. Fact is, there has been stuff happening. Ugly stuff going down. More than a few folks keeling over of late, yours here being the third in only these last three days, which is a pretty high mortality rate, even for users. The other two were residents over at the Arc Hotel, long-timers. Be good to know what your friend was taking.”
    “Yes, well, we found this…” Oliver reached into his pocket and took out the tinfoil. Unwrapping it, he placed the small resinous ball at the center of the table. The five men looked down at it like rare gem merchants studying a precious stone.
    “Looks like opium resin to me,” said Kelly. “And I ain’t about to do anything other than look. They say one of those fellows at the Arc flipped into some crazy convulsions till his body stopped cold, and word is the other went running out the window like he was being chased by voodoo spirits.” He tapped the edge of the tinfoil.
    “Yep, pretty clear there’s bad medicine going round,” said Red.
    “Be a good time to stay clean, if you could,” said Flats.
    “If you could,” agreed Kelly, nodding.
    “That’s all very interesting, yes. Funny, though, I hadn’t seen any news about these other deaths,” said