Read The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 1: American Nightmares (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #1) for Free Online

story high-stakes room of the Poker Palace in downtown Havana. Baum didn’t own the Poker Palace, but because he brought in most of its business and took so much cash off the house, he might as well have. It was one of those American-owned gambling joints that had started flourishing in Cuba right when Prohibition went into effect, where the island rum flowed like a tropical sea. It stayed popular thanks to the efforts of El Presidente Batista and the Chicago Outfit in equal measure.
    The high-stakes room was a sumptuous hole with a green-felt topped card table between blue walls adorned with prints of palm fronds and naked women. Sly Baum sat in one of the chairs at the corner. He wore a shining blue tuxedo, the bowtie undone, so he looked like he was trying to blend in with the wall. His dark hair was in unkempt strands and his eyes were darting around the room. He looked pathetic. Clearly, the ace gambler’s cards were all on the table.
    “You just got here?” he asked, looking up at me and Weatherby Stein. “Oh, thank god. Thank god for that. Do you want anything? I can get Paco to mix you up a drink or—”
    “I disdain alcoholic libations,” Weatherby announced. “I have no wish to become swept up by the endless Bacchanalia which pollutes this muddy strip of sand.”
    He still wore his full Victorian suit and vest, despite Cuba’s dry heat. I had my trench coat draped over the chair, only wearing my shirtsleeves. That showed off my twin Colt automatics in crossed shoulder-holsters, but I don’t think Baum minded much. I shrugged. “Let’s just get down to business,” I suggested. “You called Stein and Candle, Mr. Baum. That means you got a problem the average private dick can’t help you solve. What is it?”
    “It’s my son. My little boy. Jesus Christ, he’s about the only thing I care about. The only thing that matters.” He reached into his tuxedo jacket and set the picture on the table. “My Henry Wallace.”
    I stood up and looked at Henry Wallace Baum. The kid was maybe ten or eleven, scrawny as a plucked chicken and smiling nervously at the camera. He had his father’s dark brown hair, but wore a pair of glasses that made him look owlish, and a white suit, bowtie and trousers. I looked up from the picture at Sly. “And what happened?”
    “He’s been kidnapped. It happened while I was visiting Miss Rosa. I go once a week.” Miss Rosa was Rosa Dominguez, a high end mistress who had every gringo in Havana lusting for her. Baum was a concerned father, but he wasn’t a family man. “He was waiting downstairs, reading some comic books I had imported from the States for him, and then a bunch of masked men came in, held the bouncer at gunpoint and dragged him away.” Baum shook his head. “He’s my son, Mr. Candle. He’s been the only thing that’s good in this goddamn dirty world of mine.”
    Weatherby looked down at the photograph. I saw the kid’s lips form a grim line. I had seen him worked up before, usually about the Nazi stooges that gunned down his parents in front of him, but not over someone else. “We’ll get him back, Mr. Baum,” Weatherby announced. “You have my word.”
    “Did the kidnappers leave a note?” I asked. “And have you gone to the police?”
    “Batista’s idiots are too busy looking the other way to be of any help,” Baum muttered. “And yeah, I got a note. I think the kidnappers might know me.” He pulled a crumpled lined piece of paper and set it on the table. Weatherby and I looked it over. “The dough they’re asking me to lay down – it’s almost the exact sum I owe to Don Vizzini.”
    “Vito Vizzini?” I asked.
    “Yeah. The bandaged don himself.” I had heard a little of Don Vizzini. Every wiseguy had. He was almost an urban legend, something crooks talked about to scare each other. He was supposed to be a Sicilian member of La Cosa Nostra who fell afoul of Mussolini during the early days of Fascism. Mussolini handed him over to the