604: The Safe House

Synopsis

Stumbling through the rain and fog of the French Quarter at some unknown hour after midnight, the investigators follow Devin Black's directions toward the river. Tallahassee is still in his underwear and fedora and is carrying the wounded Necronomidog wrapped in an overcoat. Devin points out a shuttered tailor shop, Dupree and Sons Fine Clothiers, where a doorman in a newsboy cap waits under the awning and jazz drifts from inside. Devin gives the code phrase, "I'm here for a fitting." The doorman leads them through a speakeasy, the Golden Lily, and up a narrow staircase to a makeshift surgery. The room holds a tailor's bench covered in clean sheets, gleaming instruments, jars of herbs labeled in French and English, a carved wooden effigy, a row of dog tags, a brass crucifix and a photograph of a woman in a nurse's uniform.

The doctor introduces himself as Dr. Isaiah Calhoun ("they just call me the Doc") and says that he has worked "on the other side of respectability" with Goodman Gray's people, the Invisible College. With Dr. Shrimp Puerto Rico standing on two stacked stools to assist, he closes and bandages Devin's stump. Reattaching the hand is not possible. He then removes Necronomidog's ruined fifth leg with a bone saw. Major Bakersfield keeps watch on the stairs and Grant Jameson watches the street from the window.

Calhoun explains that the Axe Man first appeared seven or eight years earlier, killed a number of people, was never caught and then vanished, until he reappeared a few weeks ago. Calhoun suspects that he "wasn't exactly everything he was implied to be in the newspapers." Tallahassee finds a Times-Picayune from November 1919 in Calhoun's stack of old papers. Under the headline "Terror by Night: The Axe Man Returns: Eight Dead, Four Injured", it lists the attacks of 1918-1919:

• Dr. Auguste Durey, an amateur astronomer, and his wife
• Louis Ravel (killed) and Adele Fontaine (survived), with scorch marks on the cellar floor
• Clara Benoit (survived)
• Etienne Morel, a musician and bookkeeper, found dismembered beside a phonograph wound down on a single shrill note, after neighbors heard strange music
• a noted astronomer and head of the Meridian House Society, killed in his observatory near Basin Street after witnesses heard hammering and a low hum
• Charles Delacroix and his wife, in Gretna, where metal filings and oil streaks were found
• Steven Dupree (survived), believed to be a copycat attack
• nurse Sarah Lamoine (survived), who remembered distant music
• clerk Marcel Pepin, found decapitated in his bed

The paper also reprints the Axe Man's letter "from Hell" of March 13, 1919, which promises to spare any home with a jazz band in full swing.

Calhoun lists the new killings: the Doucet twins at the cemetery in December, a university professor named Armand about a week later, and a detective killed in his home around December 15 or 16. Then nothing, until tonight. Devin explains the bloody symbol as the sign of Amduceus, a demon general of hell from the Ars Goetia, which the party thinks fits the letter's claim to be a demon and the creature's regeneration. Calhoun identifies Brigitte Girouge as "the Duchess", the city's leading voodoo figure and a successor of sorts to Marie Laveau. He does not know where she lives, but he gives them the address of her shop, La Maison Rouge, off Burgundy Street in the French Quarter. Told that the party is hunting Corbitt, the "Miskatonic Mangler", he notes that the coincidence is a big one. The party's attempt to describe the horse-headed Axe Man to him turns into chaos.

Calhoun lends Tallahassee some ill-fitting clothes, offers them the room for the night and puts a jazz record on before he leaves, just in case. Going over the article, the group notices that some victims were butchered and others only beaten, wonders whether there is a copycat or someone using the Axe Man as cover, and notes the two astronomers and the strange music. Shrimp is told that Tulane University is the best place for research. They plan to visit Girouge tomorrow and find out whether Professor Armand was also an astronomer. They take turns on watch, and the night passes without further incident.

Funny Moments

• Devin improvises on the code phrase: "A hand fitting."
• The doorman takes one look at the party: "You need a fitting all right. You better get up to the doc, or they'll be fitting you for a pine overcoat."
• Calhoun on Necronomidog: "Something only a mother could love." Tallahassee insists that he's a rescue.
• Shrimp has to stack two stools to reach the operating table.
• Devin asks for a machine gun or a chainsaw on his stump in place of his hand.
• "Teddy Roosevelt" and "the Axe Man" both confuse the doctor: "Hurt people hurt people."
• The party tries to describe the Axe Man with a sock-and-foot metaphor, which collapses when real socks, Devin's stump, his severed hand and its middle finger (as the horn) are used as props. Meanwhile everyone keeps calling the doctor "Isaac."
• The table debates whether the Axe Man's head was shrunk with voodoo or the horse's head was hollowed out "like a pumpkin."
• The first thing Calhoun hands Tallahassee from the wardrobe is a dress.
• "We finish each other's... sandwiches."

Notable Quotes

• "I'm here for a fitting." —Devin Black
• "I'm Devin Black. I'm a man that needs no introduction." —Devin Black
• "That was me, the only useful member of this party." —Devin Black
• "Corbitt knows how to summon demons." —Dr. Shrimp Puerto Rico
• "Ain't nothing out here, fellas." —Grant Jameson
• "You want me to hunker? You hardly know her." —Tallahassee Turner