When we last saw Rocky, he and James Wong had discovered the missing statue in the house of prominent Los Diablos attorney Sid Hoffman. Adding to the mystery, Hoffman had died in the hospital that very morning. The following takes place just outside the Hoffman mansion in Parker Beach, the morning of April 26, 1949:
The death of Sid Hoffman didn't exactly shock me. He was overweight, smoked the biggest cigars he could find, drank like a fish and didn't care what anybody thought of it. One of those men who dies early and the neighbors shake their heads in agreement that the man just simply didn't take care of himself. We stuffed ourselves into Wong's car and drove off from the house Hoffman left behind. That was when the real bombshell was dropped.
“Our two Communist friends put me on Hoffman's trail,” said Wong. “Imagine my surprise when I found out both he and his wife were in the hospital.”
I didn't mean to laugh and I stopped it cold. “That can't be a coincidence.”
“It's not. The doctors don't know exactly what was wrong with them, but they both came in with the same symptoms. No coincidence."
The gates of Diablos University welcomed us in and the rain started up again in torrents, making up for the lost time. Wong steered his car through a line of flowering trees. Delicate pedals, disturbed by the swelling wind and rain, showered down on us as if we were kings of a distant land. At an impressive stone building he stopped the car and we bolted into the deluge and back out again at the nearest entrance.
Wong's expert's name was Dr. Henry Rutland, head of the art history department. Arriving at his office, we found him bent over a desk. He stood up to greet us, his back still hunched over and his head twisted up at an awkward angle to look at us. We all shook hands and my unexpected presence didn't disturb him.
“Gentlemen,” said Rutland, formally, as he fitted himself into the nearest chair, “you don't know how surprised I am to hear of your discovery. The existence of the statue you describe has long been the stuff of legend. Indeed, many colleagues of mine were of the opinion that it was just that, a legend, a hoax and nothing more.” He swiped a book off a tabletop with a frail hand and opened it to a dog-eared page. When he found what he was looking for, he held the book open for us to see. The right-hand page was a drawing of the statue we saw at the Hoffman house. “The figure of a woman, half-carved in white marble with a discoloration at her hand. She is known simply as Il Pollice Nero, or in English, The Black Thumb. Carved by Paolo Dulcinetta in 1534.”
“That explains a lot,” I replied. “An item like that would be quite valuable.”
Dr. Rutland cracked something like a smile. “Quite. But not for the reasons you think. It is said that the man who touches the dark thumb of the statue can expect one of two outcomes: either a long life filled with wealth and pleasure, or a quick and painful death. A duke in the 17th Century was said to have touched her thumb and fell ill, but he recovered to become one of the richest men in Florence. But others were not so blessed. Even the sculptor himself. Dulcinetta died while carving her, you see, and the legend grew from there.”
It didn't take a genius to figure out the rest. Sid Hoffman was dead and his wife had fallen ill and the statue was standing in the middle of their house. It was sheer craziness to think this story was anything more than a fairy tale you read in a book somewhere, but it was crazier to believe anything about this case was a coincidence.
Wong was amused. “Well, do you believe in legends, Rocky?” he said, grinning.
I stood up. “I don't. What I do believe in is autopsies. Thank you for your information, Dr. Rutland, but we have to find out what killed a man this morning.”
What killed Sid Hoffman? Was it natural causes, or was it, in fact, the curse of The Black Thumb? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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