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There ain’t no justice, I guarantee absodamnlutely. There I was, comfy as could be, feet on my desk, a pint of Weider’s porter in my hand, Espinosa’s latest potboiler in my other hand, and Eleanor reading over my shoulder. She understood Espinosa better than I did. For once the Goddamn Parrot wasn’t squawking. I sucked up that sweet silence more enthusiastically than I did the beer.
Some fool went to hammering on my door.
His pounding had an arrogant, impatient edge. Meant it would be somebody I didn’t want to see. “Dean! See who that is! Tell him to go away. I’m out of town. On a secret mission for the king. Won’t be back for years. And I wouldn’t buy what he’s selling anyway, if I was home.”
Nobody moved. My cook-slash-housekeeper-slash-factotum was the one who was out of town. I was at the mercy of wannabe clients and the Goddamn Parrot.
Dean had gone to TemisVar. One of his herd of homely nieces was going to get married. He wanted to make sure her fool fiance didn’t wake up before it was too late.
The pounding continued bruising my door. I’d just installed it, replacing one broken down by a villain who couldn’t take a hint. “Damned insensitive jerk!” I muttered. Hollering and threats backed the hammering. The neighbors were going to get upset. Again.
Sleepy, puzzled noises came from the small front room between my office and the door. “I’ll kill him if he wakes that talking chicken.” I glanced at Eleanor. She offered no advice. She just hung there, baffled by Espinosa.
“Guess I better dent a head before I got to deal with another citizens’ committee.” Or had to put up a new door. Doors aren’t only not cheap, they’re hard to come by.
I dropped my feet, stretched my six feet two, got going. The Goddamn Parrot made a noise. I peeked into his room.
The little buzzard was only talking in his sleep. Excellent! He was one pretty monster. He had a yellow head, blue neck ruff, red and green body and wings. His tail feathers were long enough I could maybe someday cash in with a band of gnomes who needed decorations for their hats. But a monster he was, for sure. Somewhere sometime somebody put a curse on that foul-beaked vulture so he’s got the vocabulary of a stevedore. He lives to be obnoxious.
He was a gift from my “friend” Morley Dotes. Made me wonder about the nature of friendship.
The Goddamn Parrot—dba Mr. Big—stirred. I got out of there before he took a notion to wake up.
I have a peephole in my front door. I peeped. I muttered, “Winger. Wouldn’t you know?” My luck and water have plenty in common, especially always heading downhill. Winger was a natural disaster looking for a place to happen. A stubborn disaster, too. I knew she’d pound away till hunger got her. She didn’t look underfed.
She wouldn’t worry about what the neighbors thought, either. She noticed the opinions of others the way a mastodon noticed undergrowth in the woods.
I opened up. Winger moved forward without being invited in. I stayed put and almost got trampled. She is big and beautiful, but her candle doesn’t burn too bright. “Need to talk to you, Garrett,” she said. “I need some help. Business.”
I should have known better. Hell. I did know better. But times were dull. Dean wasn’t around to nag me. The Dead Man had been asleep for weeks. I had nobody but the Goddamn Parrot for company. All my friends were beset by lady friends, a trial that hadn’t befallen me during any recent epoch. “All right. I know I’m gonna be sorry, but all right. I’ll give you a listen. Promising nothing.”
“Hows about a brew while we’re jawing?” Winger shy? I don’t think so. She headed for the kitchen. I took a look around outside before I shut the door. You never knew what might be tagging after Winger. She didn’t have sense enough to look back. She survived on luck, not skill.
“Awk! Holy hooters! Garrett! Check them gazoombies.”
Damn! What I got for not closing the door to the small front room.
The street showed me only a clutter of people and animals and dwarves and elves and a squadron of centaur immigrants. The usual.
I shut the door. I went to the small front room and closed that door, ignoring outraged allegations of neglect. “Stow it, bird. Unless you want to get neglected right into some ratman’s dinner pot.”
He laughed. He mocked.
He was right. I have no use for ratmen, but I wouldn’t do that to them.
Then he yelled rape. I didn’t worry. Winger had heard it before.
“Help yourself, why don’t you?” I said when I hit the kitchen, like she hadn’t helped herself already. She’d glommed the biggest mug in the house, too.
She winked. “Here’s to ya, big guy.” She knew exactly what she was doing but didn’t have the grace to be embarrassed. “You and your sidekick in there.”
“Yeah? You want a parrot?” I drew myself a mug, settled at the kitchen table.
“That crow in a clown suit? What would I do with him?” She planted herself opposite me, beyond dunes of dirty dishes.
“How about get yourself an eyepatch, get into the pirate business?”
“Don’t know if I could dance with a pegleg. It ever say ‘Shiver me timbers’ or ‘Argh, matey’?”
“What?”
“What I thought. You’re trying to stick me with a substandard bird.”
“Huh?”
“That’s no sailor bird, Garrett. That critter is pure city. Knows more gutter talk than me.”
“So teach him some sea chanties.”
“Yo ho ho. Dean finally croak?” She stared at the dishes.
“He’s out of town. Got a niece that’s getting married. Looking for a part-time job?”
Winger had met some of Dean’s nieces, all of whom brought new meaning to the word homely. She controlled her astonishment, though, and pretended to miss my hint about the dishes. “I was married once.”
Oh, boy. I hoped she didn’t get started.
She was still married but didn’t let legal trivia encumber her. “Don’t go misty on me, Winger.”
“Misty? You shitting me? After that, Hell is gonna look good.”
Winger is a tad unusual, case you haven’t noticed. She is twenty-six, as tall as I am, and built like the proverbial masonry privy—on an epic scale. Also, she has what some guys think is an attitude problem. Just can’t figure out how to stay in her place.
“You want my help,” I reminded. Just a poke. My keg wasn’t bottomless. I smirked. Maybe she was desperate enough to take the Goddamn Parrot off my hands.
“Uhm.” She would get to the point only after she had mooched her fill. That quantity would clue me as to the state of her fortunes.
“You’re looking good, Winger.” Even Winger likes to hear that.”Must be doing all right.”
She assumed I meant her outfit. That was new and, as always, remarkable. “Where I work, they want you should dress snappy.”
I kept a straight face. “Unusual” is only the most cautious, gentlest way to characterize Winger’s taste. Let’s say you couldn’t lose her in a crowd. If she went around with the Goddamn Parrot on her shoulder, nobody would notice the bird. “That outfit is pretty timid. When you worked for that fat freak Lubbock . . . ”
“It’s the territory. These guys want you should blend in.”
Again I kept my face straight. Being amused by Winger when Winger isn’t amused can be hazardous to your health—especially if you’re dim enough to, say, crack wise about her blending in.
“Old-timer’s gone, eh? What about the ugly thing?” She meant my partner, the Dead Man, so-called because he hasn’t run any footraces since somebody stuck a knife in him four hundred years ago. “Ugly thing” is apt. He isn’t human. He’s a Loghyr, which explains why he’s still hanging around so long after he was murdered. Loghyr are slow and stubborn, especially when it comes to sloughing off the old mortal clay. They’re deliberate, he would say.
“Asleep. Been weeks since he bugged me. I’m in heaven.”
Winger sneered, flipped blond hair out of her face. “Likely to wake up?”
“Maybe if the house catches on fire. Got something to hide?” The Dead Man’s big trick is mind reading.
“No more than usual. I was just thinking, it’s been a dry spell. Way I hear, weather ain’t been so hot for you, neither.”
That was my pal Winger, so shy and demure. Somehow, with her, the romance and adventure were absent. “Thought you had desperate business.”
“Desperate?”
“You like to tore the door down. You woke up the Goddamn Parrot with your whooping and hollering.” That about-to-become-roasted squab was holding forth up front. “I figured you had killer elves slavering on your trail.”
“I just wish. I told you how my luck’s been. I was just trying to get your attention.” She refilled her mug, did mine, headed for my office. “All right, Garrett. Business first.”
She paused, listened. T.G. Parrot was on a roll. She shrugged, slipped into my office. I followed quickly. Sometimes things fall into Winger’s pockets if you’re not there to keep an eye on them.
I wriggled into my chair, safe behind my desk. Eleanor guarded my back. Winger scowled at the painting, then eyed my book. “Espinosa? Ain’t that a little heavy for you?”
“It’s a real thriller.” Espinosa was beyond me, mostly. He tended to make a big deal out of questions that wouldn’t have occurred to anybody who worked for a living.
I’d gone to visit a lady friend at the Royal Library. The book was all I got.
“Philosophy is thrilling? Like a hemorrhoid. The man should’ve got a hobby.”
“He did. Philosophy. Since when can you read?”
“You don’t need to act so surprised. I been learning. Got to do something with my ill-gotten gains, don’t I? I thought maybe some learning might come in handy someday. But mostly what I’ve learned is studying don’t make you no smarter about people.”
I started to agree. I know some pretty dim academics, people who live in another world. Winger cut me off. “Enough chit-chat. Here’s the gig. This old broad name of Maggie Jenn is maybe gonna come see you. I don’t know what’s up, but my boss is willing to pay a shitload of money to find out. This Jenn crone knows me so I can’t get close to her. What I figured was, why don’t I get you to let her hire you, then you let me know what she’s up to and I can take that to my boss.”
Vintage Winger.
“Maggie Jenn?”
“That’s the name.”
“Seems like it ought to ring a bell. Who is she?”
“You got me. Just some old broad off the Hill.”
“The Hill?” I leaned back, just a harried man of affairs taking a moment out to relax with an old friend. “I have a case.”
“What is it this time? A stray lizard?” She laughed. Her laughter sounded like geese headed north for the winter. “Meow, meow.”
A few days earlier, I’d gotten stung by an old biddy who’d hired me to look for her beloved missing Moggie. Never mind the details. It’s embarrassing enough just me knowing. “That’s on the street?”
Winger swung her feet onto my desk. “All over it.”
Dean was in it deep. I hadn’t told a soul.
“Best Garrett story I heard in a while, too. Thousand marks for a cat? Come on.”
“You know how some old ladies are about their cats.” The cat hadn’t been the problem, really. The problems started when I found a real animal that was a ringer for the imaginary, red herring beast. “Who would suspect a sweet old lady of wanting to set him up for a fall guy in a scam?”
Honk honk, har har. “I would’ve got suspicious when she wouldn’t come to my house.”
What saved me was finding that cat. I caught on when I tried to take him home. “Yeah.”
The Dead Man might have saved me all the embarrassment. Had he been awake.
Part of the discomfort of the mess was knowing he’d never stop reminding me about it. “Never mind that.
Since we’re talking about old ladies, tell me what this Maggie Jenn is going to want.”
“I figure she’s gonna ask you to kill somebody.”
“Say what?” That wasn’t what I expected. “Hey! You know—”
Somebody else was trying out my front door. This somebody had a fist of stone bigger than a ham. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I muttered. “Whenever platoons of people start thumping the door . . . ”
Winger stowed her leer. “I’ll disappear.”
“Don’t wake the Dead Man.”
“You kidding?” She pointed toward the ceiling. “I’ll be up there. Find me when you’re done.”
I was afraid of that.
Having a no-strings, no-complications friendship can have its own complications.
The small front room had grown quiet. I paused to eavesdrop. Not one obscenity marred the precious silence. T.G. Parrot was asleep again.
I thought about making it that jungle pigeon’s last nap, the beginning of the big sleep, the longest voyage, the . . .
Boom boom boom.
I peeked through the peephole. By-the-numbers Garrett, that’s me. Fixing to live a thousand years.
All I saw was a smallish redhead facing three-quarters away, staring at something. That little bit did all that pounding? She was stronger than she looked. I opened the door. She continued staring up the street. I leaned forward cautiously.
The neighborhood pixie teens were chucking rotten fruits off the cornices and gutters of an ugly old three-story half a block up Macunado. A band of gnomes below dodged and cursed and shook their walking sticks. They were all old, clad in the usual drab gray, with whiskers. Not beards, whiskers, like you see in paintings of old-time generals and princes and merchant captains. All gnomes seem to be old and out of fashion. I’ve never seen a young one or a female one.
One spry little codger, chanting a colorful warsong about discount rates and yam futures, pegged a broken cobblestone hard enough to actually hit a pixie. It did a somersault off a gargoyle’s head. The gnomes pranced around and waved their sticks in glee and sent up an ave to the Great Arbitrager. Then the pixie brat opened his wings and soared. His laughter was a mocking squeak.
I told the redhead, “An exercise in futility. All sound and fury. Been going on all month. Nobody’s gotten hurt yet. Probably all die of shame if anybody did.” Gnomes are that way. Gladly make fortunes financing wars but don’t want to watch the bloodshed.
I spied a sedan chair at streetside down toward Macunado’s intersection with Wizard’s Reach. Beside it stood something half man and half gorilla with hands that fit the prescription for whatever it was that had tried to demolish my door. “That thing tame?”
“Mugwump? He’s a sweetheart. And as human as you are.” The redhead’s tone suggested she might be, unwittingly, insulting friend Mugwump.
“Can I help you?” Boy, would I like to help her. Mugwump was old news.
I make a point of being nice to redheads, at least till they’re not nice to me. Redhead was always my favorite color, barely edging blonde and brunette.
The woman turned to me. “Mr. Garrett?” Her voice was low, husky, sexy.
I didn’t owe any money. “Guilty.” Surprise, surprise. She was a good decade older than my first guess. But time had stolen nothing. She was proof on the hoof that aging produces fine wines. Second-guessing, I put her over thirty-five but under forty. Me, I’m a tender, innocent thirty and don’t usually look for them quite so ripe.
“You’re staring, Mr. Garrett. I thought that was impolite.”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Excuse me.”
The Goddamn Parrot started muttering in his sleep. Something about interspecies necrophilia. That got me back to the real world. “What can I do for you, madam?” Other than the obvious, if you’re looking for volunteers. Hoo.
I was amazed. Yeah, female of the species is my soft spot, my blind side, but the mature type didn’t usually get me. Whatever, something about this one totally distracted me. And she knew it.
Businesslike, Garrett. Businesslike.
“Ma’am, Mr. Garrett? Am I that far past it?”
I sputtered. I stumbled around and tripped over my tongue till it was black with footprints. She finally had mercy and smiled. “Can we get in out of the weather?”
“Sure.” I stepped aside, held the door. What was wrong with the weather? It couldn’t have been nicer. There were barely enough clouds to keep you from falling into a sky as blue as you will ever hope to see.
She brushed past without tricks, just close because she had to. I shut my eyes. I ground my teeth. I babbled, “My office is the second door on the left. I can’t offer much but beer or brandy. My man Dean is away.” The woman had to be a witch. Or I was out of practice. Bad.
“Brandy would be perfect, Mr. Garrett.”
Of course. Pure class. “Coming right up. Make yourself at home.” I dove into the kitchen. Dig dig dig till I found some brandy. A bit of a tippler, Dean hides the stuff all over so I won’t know how much he has bought. I poured from a bottle that I hoped contained good stuff. What did I know about brandy? Beer is my favorite food. I zipped to the office. The seasoned redhead had set up camp in the client’s chair. She frowned as she studied Eleanor. “Here you go.”
“Thank you. An interesting painting. There’s a lot there if you look long enough.”
I glanced at my honey as I settled. She was a lovely blonde, terrified, fleeing something only hinted at in the painting’s background. If you looked at that painting right, though, you could read the whole evil story. There was magic in it, though much of that had gone once I got the man who murdered Eleanor.
I told the story. My visitor was a good listener. I managed to avoid getting totally lost in my own chemistry. I observed carefully. I suggested, “You might introduce yourself before we go any further. I’m never comfortable calling a woman ‘Hey You’.”
Her smile softened the enamel on my teeth. “My name is Maggie Jenn. Margat Jenn, actually, but I’ve never been called anything but Maggie.”
Ah, the monster of the prophecy. Winger’s old crone. Must have lost her walker. I blurted, “Maggie doesn’t sound like a redhead.”
Her smile warmed up. Incredible! “Surely you’re not that naive, Mr. Garrett.”
“Garrett is fine. Mr. Garrett was my grandpop. No. It hasn’t escaped me that some women miraculously transform overnight.”
“This is just a tint, really. A little more red than my natural shade. Just vanity. One more rearguard skirmish in my war against time.”
Yeah. The poor toothless hag. “Looks to me like you’ve got it on the run.”
“You’re sweet.” She smiled again, turning up the heat. She leaned forward . . .
Maggie Jenn caught my left hand, squeezed. “Some women enjoy being looked at that way, Garrett. Sometimes they want to look back.” She tickled my palm. I stifled an urge to pant. She was working me and I didn’t care. “But I’m here on business and it’s important, so we’d better get to it.” She took her hand back.
I was supposed to melt, going through withdrawal.
I went through withdrawal.
“I like this room, Garrett. Tells me a lot. Confirms what I’ve heard about you.”
I waited. Clients go through this. They’re desperate when they arrive. They wouldn’t come to me if they weren’t. But they stall around before admitting that their lives have gone out of control. Most end up telling me how they chose me. Maggie Jenn did that.
Some change their minds before they get to the point. Maggie Jenn did not.
“I didn’t realize I was so well known. That’s scary.” Apparently my name was common coin among the ruling class, to which Maggie Jenn clearly belonged, though she had not revealed where she fit. I should avoid the flashy cases. I don’t like being noticed.
“You’re on everyone’s list of specialists, Garrett. If you want a coach built, you go to Linden Atwood. You want unique flatware, you commission Rickman Plax and Sons. You want the best shoes, you buy Tate. You need prying and spying, you hire Garrett.”
“Speaking of prying and spying.”
“You want me to get to the point.”
“I’m used to people circling in on their troubles.”
She reflected a moment. “I see where they might. It’s hard. All right. To the point. I need you to find my daughter.”
“Huh?” She blindsided me. I was all tensed for her to ask me to kill somebody and all she wanted was the basic Garrett service.
“I need you to find my daughter. She’s been missing for six days. I’m worried. What’s the matter? You have the funniest look.”
“I get like this when I think about working.”
“You have that reputation. What will it take to get you out of the house?”
“More information. And the fee settled.” There. I could be proud of me. I was taking command, being businesslike, handling my weakness.
So how come I was practically agreeing to take a case blind?
Actually, despite my reputation and past habit of laziness, I had been working steady, minor stuff, grabbing a few marks while I avoided the house and Dean, the Dead Man and the Goddamn Parrot. The former suffer from the delusion that it will be a better world if I work myself to death. T.G.P. just nags.
“Her name is Justina, Garrett. She’s an adult, though just barely. I don’t hang over her shoulder.”
“An adult? What were you, ten years old? . . . ”
“Flattery will get you everywhere. I was eighteen. She turned eighteen three months ago. Never mind the math.”
“Hell, you’re a spring chicken. Twenty-one with a few years’ experience. You don’t need to stop counting yet. I bet plenty of people take you for Justina’s sister.”
“Aren’t you the sweet talker.”
“Actually, I’m only being honest. I’m way too distracted to . . . ”
“I’ll bet the girls love you, Garrett.”
“Yeah. You hear them chanting in the street. You saw them climbing the walls so they can get in through a second-story window.” TunFaire being TunFaire, my house has only one ground floor window, in the kitchen. Iron bars cover it.
Maggie Jenn’s eyes sparkled. “I have a feeling I’m going to wish I’d met you sooner, Garrett.” Those eyes promised. Maybe I was going to wish that, too.
A redhead will knock me for a loop every time.
She continued. “To the point. Again. Justina’s been running with bad companions. Nothing I can put my finger on, no. Just youngsters I don’t like. I got the feeling they were up to something wicked. No, I never saw anything to confirm that.”
One thing you notice about parents who are looking for strayed children. They never liked anyone the kid liked. The kid is gone because he or she fell in with evil companions. Even when they strain to be non-judgmental, there’s this basic assumption that the friends are no good. If any of the friends are of another sex, boy, howdy!
“I expect you’ll want to know all about her before you start, right?”
We had us a built-in assumption I’d be working for Momma Jenn. Momma Jenn was used to getting her own way. “Best way to do it. I knew a guy in my line whose whole thing was to get right inside the head of whoever he was hunting. He’d ignore everything but the character of that one guy. He’d almost become that guy. ’Course, lots of times he could’ve got his man quicker by looking at the big picture.”
“You’ll have to tell me about some of your cases. It’s not a side of life I see. Must be exciting. Suppose you come to my house for an early supper? You can examine Justina’s room and her things and ask your questions. Then you can decide whether or not you want the case.” She smiled a smile that put her earlier efforts to shame. She was confident. I was getting roasted, toasted, manipulated, and I loved every second of it.
I said, “It happens I’m free tonight.”
“Perfect.” She rose, began donning flesh-colored gloves I hadn’t noticed before. She considered Eleanor. Her face darkened. She shuddered. Eleanor can have that effect. “Fifth hour?” Maggie asked.
“I’ll be there. But you’ll have to tell me where.”
Her face did darken then. Big mistake, Garrett. I was supposed to know without being told. Unfortunately, I knew so little about Maggie Jenn I didn’t know that she would be irked because I didn’t know who she was or where she lived.
The lady was a trooper. She carried on. She dallied only a moment before offering an address.
I got real nervous real sudden.
We were talking way up the Hill, where the richest and most powerful of the rich and powerful live, up where the altitude itself is the best indicator of wealth and might. Blue Crescent Street was in the realm of fairy tale as far as I was concerned.
Maggie Jenn was a lady with big connections, but I still could not recall why I thought I should know her name.
It would come when it was really inconvenient.
I escorted the lovely lady to my front door. The lovely lady continued to smolder and invite. Would the evening have anything to do with a missing daughter?
I stood bemused by Maggie Jenn swaying toward her litter. She knew I was watching. She made it a good show.
That killer stump Mugwump watched me watch. I didn’t get the impression that he wished me well.
“You never stop foaming at the mouth, do you?”
I realized that I had settled down to savor every second of Maggie’s departure. I tore my gaze away, turned to see which of my busybody neighbors was going to permit me to bask in the chill of her disapproval. I discovered, instead, a very attractive little brunette. She had approached from the other direction.
“Linda Lee!” This was my friend from the Royal Library, about whom I’d been thinking while holding Espinosa’s book instead. “This is the nicest surprise I’ve had in a while.” I went down to meet her. “I’m glad you changed your mind.” Linda Lee, barely five feet tall, with beautiful big brown puppy eyes, was just about the cutest bit of a librarian I could imagine.
“Down, boy. This is a public place.”
“Come into my parlor.”
“If I do that, I’ll forget all about why I came here.” She plopped herself down on a step sideways. She locked her ankles together, pulled her knees up under her chin, wrapped her arms around them, and looked at me with a little girl innocence she knew would turn me into a love zombie.
It was my day to be a plaything.
I could handle it. I’d been born for that role.
Linda Lee Luther was no innocent, whatever impression you got at first glance. But she did try hard to be the icemaiden some folks thought a librarian should be. She tried but failed. Real ice wasn’t in her nature. I just stood there, wearing my winningest grin, confident that she would talk herself into leaving the public eye.
“Stop that!”
“What?” I asked.
“Looking at me like that. I know what you’re thinking . . . ”
“I can’t help that.”
“Yes, well, you’re going to make me forget why I came here.”
I didn’t believe that for a second, but I’m a good guy. I can go along with a gag. “All right. Tell me about it.”
“Huh?”
“What brought you here if not my irresistable charm?”
“I need your help. Professionally.”
Why me?
I didn’t believe it. Librarians don’t get into fixes where they need guys like me to get them unfixed. Not cute little bits like Linda Lee Luther.
I’d begun moving toward my door. Preoccupied, Linda Lee rose and followed. I had her inside. I had the front door closed and bolted. I tried sneaking her past the open door of the small front room. The Goddamn Parrot mumbled obscenities in his sleep. Lovely Linda Lee did not take exception. I began to recall why I was so fond of this girl. I asked her, “What’s got you so distracted?”
This was her big chance to come back with something clever and suggestive, an opportunity she wouldn’t have wasted usually. But she just moaned, “I’m going to get fired. I just know it.”
“That doesn’t seem likely.” Really.
“You don’t understand. I lost a book, Garrett. A rare book. One that can’t be replaced. It may have been stolen.”
I eased into my office. Linda Lee followed me. Where was this attraction when I wanted to use it most?
“I have to get it back before they find out,” Linda Lee continued. “There’s no excuse for me having let this happen.”
I told her, “Calm down. Take a deep breath. Hold it. Then tell me all about it, from the beginning. I’m already tied up in a job that’s going to keep me busy for a while, but there’s still a chance I can suggest something.”
I took her by the shoulders, maneuvered her over to the client’s seat. She settled.
“Tell me from the beginning,” I reminded.
Aargh! The best laid plans, and so forth. Instead of spinning her sad tale of woe, she started sputtering and gesturing, original mission completely forgotten.
Uh-oh.
The Espinosa. Right there on my desk.
I hadn’t quite observed all the formalities when I’d borrowed it. The library powers that be don’t trust ordinary folks with books, anyway. Books might give us ideas.
I gobbled something placatory that got lost in the uproar, totally failed to steer her back to that matter of the loss that had brought her to me. “How could you do this to me, Garrett? I’m already in trouble . . . If they miss this book too, I’m dead. How could you?”
Well, the how had been easy. It wasn’t a very big book and the old veteran guarding the door had been napping. He’d had only one leg, anyway.
Words continued to vomit from my lovely Linda Lee. An awesome performance. She got a grip on the Espinosa like it was her firstborn about to be repoed by a dwarf with a polysyllabic name.
How do you argue with panic? I didn’t.
Linda Lee suddenly made a run for it. I didn’t get around the desk fast enough. She squawked every step to the front door.
Wa-hoo! said the Goddamn Parrot. What a great excuse for raising hell. He went to work.
A moment later, I was watching Linda Lee scamper up Macunado, her anger so palpable eight-foot ogres scooted out of her way.
Her visit lasted so briefly I caught a last glimpse of Maggie Jenn’s litter before it, too, got lost in traffic. Mugwump sent me a scowl to remember him by.
What a day. What next?
One thing seemed certain. There were no more lovelies headed my way. Sigh.
Time to take a minute to see what Eleanor thought about Maggie Jenn.
I settled behind my desk, stared at Eleanor. “What did you think of Maggie, darling? Should I be your basic opportunist? Go for it even if she is older than me?”
Eleanor doesn’t say much but I manage by putting words in her mouth. “Yeah, I know. I went for you. A ghost.” Picture that. I’ve been infatuated a few thousand times but hopelessly in love only twice, most recently with a woman who died when I was four. “So what’s the big deal she’s a few years older, eh?”
Weird things happen to me. Vampires. Dead gods trying to resurrect themselves. Killer zombies. Serial murderers who keep right on killing after you find them and send them off to the happy hunting ground. So why consider a love affair with a ghost outrageous?
“Yeah. I know. It would be cynical of me. What? Sure, she plans to use me, too. I know. But what a way to be used.”
From the hall, I heard, “Yo, Garrett. I’m getting gray hairs hanging around up here.”
Winger. Damn! I can’t remember everything, can I? I rose slowly, still distracted. Maggie Jenn had cast a spell on me, no doubt about it. I’d almost forgotten my disappointment over Linda Lee.
I found Winger sitting on the stairs. “What are you doing, Garrett? The old broad left fifteen minutes ago.” She didn’t mention Linda Lee’s hollering.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“That’s dangerous for a guy in your condition.”
“Huh?” I didn’t have a comeback. For only about the ten thousandth time in my life. The perfect response would spawn sometime as I lay tossing and turning an hour before dawn.
Winger strode to the Dead Man’s door, stuck her nose in. His room takes up half the ground floor. I looked over her shoulder. All 450 pounds of him remained planted in his chair, still as death. The Loghyr’s elephantlike snout dangled down a foot to his chest. Dust had begun to collect on him, but the vermin hadn’t found him yet. No point cleaning until they did. Maybe Dean would come home first and save me the trouble.
Winger backed out of there, grabbed my elbow. “He’s out of it.” She knew because he hadn’t reacted to her. He has no use for females in general and less use for Winger. Once, I threatened to boot Dean out and move her in.
“What did she say?” Winger asked as we headed upstairs. “Who’s the target?”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know squat. All I know is I’m getting paid a shitpot full to find out.”
Money was important to Winger. It is to all of us, in a palsy sort of way: nice to have around, fun to be with. But for Winger, it was like a patron saint.
“She wants me to find her daughter. The girl’s been missing for six days.”
“Say what? I’ll be damned. I was sure it was going to be a hit.”
“Why?”
“No special reason. I guess I added the cues up wrong. Looking for her kid? You take the job?”
“I’m thinking about it. I’m supposed to go up to her place, check out the kid’s stuff, before I decide.”
“But you’ll take it, right? Make yourself some of that old double money?”
“An intriguing idea. Only I haven’t seen single money from anybody yet.”
“You sly bastard. You’re thinking about topping the old broad. You’re here with me and you’re thinking about that. You’re a regular villain.”
“Winger! The woman is old enough to be my mother.”
“Then you or mom is lying about their age.”
“You’re the one that went on about what an old hag she was.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Hell. I forgive you, Garrett. Like I said, you’re here. And she’s not.”
Arguing with Winger is like spitting into a whirlwind. Not much profit in it.
Only through a supreme effort did I get away in time to join Maggie Jenn for dinner.
“Ta-ta,” I told the Dead Man—softly, so the Goddamn Parrot wouldn’t hear. “I spent the day with a beautiful blonde. In penance, I’m going to spend the evening with a gorgeous redhead.”
He did not respond. He sure would have had he been awake. Winger had a special place in his heart. He had half believed my threat to marry her.
Laughing gently, still unforgiven, I tiptoed toward the front door. Before his departure, at incredible expense (to me), Dean had had a key lock installed in the new door, like I hadn’t survived before he was there to slam bolts and bars into place behind me. Dean placed his trust in the wrong things. A key lock never stops anybody but the honest people. Our real protection is the Dead Man.
Loghyr have many talents, dead or alive.
I strutted away smiling at one and all, deaf to their squabbles. We were getting a lot of nonhumans in the neighborhood, mostly rough type refugees from the Cantard, never shy about expressing opinions. There was always a fuss among them.
Worse, though, were the proto-revolutionaries. Those crowded every loft and sleeping room. They overflowed the taverns, where they chattered foolishly about ever less workable dogmas. I understood what moved them. I didn’t think much of the Crown, either. But I did know that none of us, them or me, was ready to try on the king’s shoes.
A real revolution would make things worse. These days no two revolutionaries agree whither the Karentine state, anyway. So they would have to murder one another wholesale before . . .
Revolution had been tried already, anyway, but so ineptly that hardly anybody but the secret police knew.
I ignored the hairy-faced, black-clad agents of chaos on the corners, scowling paranoiacally while they debated doctrinal trivia. The Crown was not in much danger. I have contacts in the new city police, the Guard. They say half the revolutionaries are really spies.
I waved to people. I whistled. It was a glorious day.
I was on the job, however. Though I was whistling my way to dinner with a beautiful woman, I observed my surroundings. I noticed the guy following me.
I roamed. I dawdled. I ambled. I strolled. I tried to get an estimate of the clown’s intent. He wasn’t very good. I pondered my options.
Turning the tables appealed to me. I could shake him, then follow him when he ran to report.
I do have enemies, sad to admit. In the course of my labors, occasionally I inconvenience some unpleasant people. Some might want to even scores.
I hate a bad loser.
My friend Morley Dotes, a professional killer who masquerades as a vegetarian gourmet, claims it’s my own fault for leaving them alive behind me.
I studied my tail till I was sure I could handle him, then hurried along to keep my date with Maggie Jenn.
The Jenn place was a fifty-room hovel on the edge of the innermost circle of the Hill. No mere tradesman, however rich, however powerful, would reach that final ring.
Funny. Maggie Jenn had not struck me as the aristo type.
The name still nagged. I still did not recall why I ought to know it.
That part of the Hill was all stone, vertical and horizontal. No yards, no gardens, no sidewalks, no green anywhere unless on the rare third-story balcony. No brick. Red or brown brick was what the mob used to build. Forget that. Use stone that was quarried in another country and had to be barged for hundreds of miles.
I’d never been to the area so I got disoriented.
There weren’t any spaces between buildings. The street was so narrow two carriages couldn’t pass without climbing the sidewalks. It was cleaner than the rest of the city, but the gray stone pavements and buildings made the view seem dingy anyway. Walking that street was like walking the bottom of a dismal limestone canyon.
The Jenn address was in the middle of a featureless block. The door was more like a postern gate than an entrance to a home. Not one window faced the street, just an unbroken cliff of stone. The wall even lacked ornament, unusual for the Hill. Hill folk build to outdo their neighbors in displays of bad taste.
Some slick architect must have sold some otherwise shrewd character the notion that starkness was the way to shine. No doubt storehouses of wealth changed hands, the ascetic look being more costly than mere gingerbread.
Me, I like cheap. Gimme a herd of double-ugly gargoyles and some little boys peeing off the gutter corners.
The knocker was so discreet you almost had to hunt for it. It wasn’t even brass, just some gray metal like pewter or tin. It made a restrained tick tick so feeble I’d have thought nobody inside could hear it.
The plain teak door opened immediately. I found myself face-to-face with a guy who looked like he got stuck with the name Ichabod by malicious parents back around the turn of the century. He looked like he had spent the numerous intervening decades living down to the image that kind of name conjures. He was long and bony and bent. His eyes were red and his hair was white and his skin was oh so pale. I muttered, “So this is what they do when they get old. Hang up their black swords and turn into butlers.” He had an Adam’s apple that looked like he was choking on a grapefruit. He didn’t say a word, he just stood there staring like a buzzard waiting for a snack to cool.
He had the biggest bony arches over his eyes I ever saw. They were forested with white jungles.
Spooky guy.
“Dr. Death, I presume?” Dr. Death was a character in the Punch and Judy shows going around. Ichabod and the bad doctor had a lot in common, but the puppet was six feet shorter.
Some people have no sense of humor. We had us one of those here. Ichabod neither cracked a smile nor twitched one of those woodlots camped over his eyes. He did speak, though. Fair Karentine, too. “You have some cause for disturbing this household?”
“Sure.” I didn’t like his tone. I never like the tone of Hill servants. It’s filled with the defensive snobbishness you find in the tone of a turncoat. “I wanted to see if you guys really do shrivel in the sunlight.” I had the advantage in this dumb game because I was expected and he’d been given my description. And he’d recognized me.
If he hadn’t recognized me, he would’ve slammed the door against my nose. Word would have gone out to the thugs who defend the rich and mighty from nuisances like me. A band would be hastening hither to deal me an exemplary drubbing.
Come to think of it, they could be hastening anyway, if Ichabod had a confederate with no better sense of humor. “Name’s Garrett,” I announced. “Maggie Jenn asked me to come for dinner.”
The old spook stepped back. He never said a word, but it was plain he doubted his boss’s wisdom. He didn’t approve of letting my kind in the house. No telling what might have to be dragged back out of my pockets before they let me go. Or maybe I’d scratch off some fleas and leave them to colonize the rugs.
I glanced back to see how my tail was making out. Poor sod was playing hell staying inconspicuous.
“Nice door,” I observed as I caught it edge-on. It was four inches thick. “Expecting a debt collector with a battering ram?” Hill people are rich enough to have those kinds of problems. Nobody would loan me enough for me to get in trouble.
“Follow me.” Ichabod turned.
“That should be ‘follow me, sir.’ ” I don’t know why the guy made me antagonistic. “I’m a guest. You’re a flunky.” I began having second thoughts about revolutions. When I go over to the Royal Library to see Linda Lee, I poke around in the books, too. Once I read one about rebellions. Seems like the servants of the overthrown get it worse than their masters do—unless they are perceptive enough to be agents of the rebels.
“Indeed.”
“Ah. A comment. Lead on, Ichabod.”
“The name is Zeke, sir.” The sir dripped sarcasm.
“Zeke?” That was as bad as Ichabod. Almost.
“Yes, sir. Are you coming? The mistress doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Do lead on, then. The thousand and one gods of TunFaire forfend that we distress Her Redheadedness.”
Zeke elected not to respond. He’d concluded that I had an attitude problem. He was right, of course, but for the wrong reasons. And I was a little ashamed. He was probably a nice old man with a herd of grandkids, forced to work into his dotage in order to support ungrateful descendants who were the offspring of sons killed in the Cantard.
I didn’t believe that for a minute, though.
The interior of that place bore no resemblance to the outside. It was pretty dusty now, but it had started out as the daydream of some wharfside loser who imagined himself a great potentate. Or a great potentate with the tastes of a wharfside loser. I’ll get some of these and a bunch of those and . . . And the only thing missing was a troop of houris.
The place was lousy with tasteless billows of wealth. Plush everything and way too much of it, and even more of everything as we moved nearer the center of the pit. Actually, we seemed to advance from zone to zone, each another expression of bad taste.
“Whoa!” said I, unable to restrain myself. “There it is.” It being a mammoth’s-foot cane and brolly stand. “You don’t see a lot of those.”
Zeke gave me a look, read my reaction to that bit of down-home chic. His stone face relaxed for a moment. He agreed. In that instant, we concluded a shaky armistice.
No doubt it would survive no longer than Karenta’s armistice with Venageta, which had lasted a whole six and a half hours.
“Sometimes we cannot relinquish our pasts, sir.”
“Maggie Jenn used to be a mammoth hunter?”
The peace was over. Just like that. He hunked along sullenly. I think that was because I’d admitted I didn’t have the faintest idea what Maggie Jenn used to be.
How come everyone thought I should know who she was? Including me? My famous memory was doing famously today.
Zeke ushered me into the worst room yet. “Madame will join you here.” I looked around, shading my eyes, began to wonder if Madame didn’t used to be a madam. The place was for sure done up in whorehouse modern, probably by the same nancy boys who did the high-fly joints down in the Tenderloin.
I turned to ask a question.
Ichabod had abandoned me.
I almost squeaked for him to come back. “Oh, Zeke! Bring me a blindfold.” I didn’t think I could stand the sensory assault otherwise.
It got to me. I stood around like I’d just made eye contact with a medusa. I’d never seen so much red. Everything was a red of the reddest reds, overwhelmingly red. Ubiquitous gold leaf highlights only heightened the impact.
“Garrett.”
Maggie Jenn. I didn’t have the strength to turn. I was scared she’d be wearing scarlet and lip rouge of a shade that would make her look like a vampire at snack time.
“You alive?”
“Just stunned.” I waved a hand. “This is a bit overpowering.”
“Kind of sucks, don’t it? But Teddy loved it, the gods know why. This place was Teddy’s gift, so I keep this part the way he liked it.”
I did turn then. No, she hadn’t worn red. She wore a peasanty sort of thing that was mostly light brown and white lace and a silly white dairymaid’s hat that set off her hair. She also wore a heavyweight smile that said she was amusing herself at my expense but I was free to join in the fun. I told her, “I’m missing something. I don’t get the joke.”
Her smile faded. “What do you know about me?”
“Not much. Your name. That you’re the sexiest woman I’ve run into in an age. Various self-evident characteristics. That you live in a classy neighborhood. And that’s about it.”
She shook her head. Red curls flew around. “Notoriety isn’t worth much anymore. Come on. We don’t stay here. You’d go blind.”
Nice to have somebody crack wise for me. Saved me the trouble of thinking them up and pissing her off.
She led me through several memorable rooms which weren’t important enough to note. Then we roared out into the real world, bam! A dining room set for two. “Like a night in Elf Hill,” I muttered.
She hadn’t lost her hearing. “I used to feel that way. Those rooms can be intimidating. Go ahead. Plant it.”
I took a chair opposite her at the end of a table long enough to seat two dozen people. “This is a love nest?”
“Smallest dining room I’ve got.” Hint of a smile.
“You and Teddy?”
“Sigh. How fleeting infamy. Nobody remembers except the family. That’s all right, though. They’re bitter enough for everybody. Teddy was Teodoric, Prince of Kamark. He became Teodoric IV and lasted a whole year.”
“The king?” Bells began to ring. Finally. “It’s starting to come.”
“Good. I won’t have to put myself through a bunch of explanations.”
“I don’t know a lot. That all happened when I was in the Marines. In the Cantard, we didn’t pay much attention to royal scandals.”
“Didn’t know who was king and didn’t care. I’ve heard that one.” Maggie Jenn smiled her best smile. “I bet you still don’t follow royal scandals.”
“They don’t affect my life much.”
“It wouldn’t affect your work for me, either, you knowing or not knowing all the dirt.”
A woman came in. Like Zeke, she was as old as original sin. She was tiny, the size of a child about to lunge into adolescence. She wore spectacles. Maggie Jenn took good care of her help. Spectacles are expensive. The old woman posed, hands clasped in front of her. She neither moved nor spoke.
Maggie Jenn said, “We’ll start whenever you’re ready, Laurie.”
The old woman inclined her head and left.
Maggie said, “I will tell you some of it, though, to soothe that famous curiosity of yours. So you do what I’m paying you to do instead of rooting around in my past.”
I grunted.
Laurie and Zeke brought in a soup course. I began salivating. I’d eaten my own cooking too long.
That was the only way I missed Dean, though! You bet.
“I was the king’s mistress, Garrett.”
“I remember.” Finally. It was the scandal of its day, a crown prince falling for a commoner so hard he set her up on the Hill. His wife had not been thrilled. Old Teddy had made no pretense of discretion. He’d been in love and didn’t care if the whole world knew. A worrisome attitude in a man who might be king.
It suggested character flaws.
For sure. King Teodoric IV turned out to be an arrogant, narrow-minded, self-indulgent jerk who got himself snuffed within a year.
We aren’t tolerant of royal foibles. That is, our royals and nobles aren’t tolerant. Nobody else would consider assassination. It just isn’t done outside the family. Even our mad dog revolutionaries never suggest offing the royals.
I said, “I do wonder, though, about this daughter.”
“Not Teddy’s.”
I slurped my soup. It was broth and garlic somebody tossed a chicken across. I liked it. Empty bowls went away. An appetizer course appeared. I didn’t say anything. Maggie might talk just to extinguish the silence.
“I’ve made my dumb mistakes, Garrett. My daughter was the result of a lulu.”
I chomped something made of chicken liver, bacon, and a giant nutmeat. “This’s good.”
“I was sixteen. My father married me off to a virgin-obsessed animal who had daughters old enough to be my mother. It was good for business. Since nobody ever told me how you don’t get pregnant, I got. My husband had fits. I wasn’t supposed to whelp brats, I was supposed to warm his bed and tell him he was the greatest there ever was. He went buggo when I had a daughter. Another daughter. He had no sons. It was all a female plot. We were out to get him. I never had the nerve to tell him what would happen if us women really gave him what he deserved. He got a taste, though.” Nasty smile. For one second, a darker Maggie shone through.
She nibbled some food and left me room to comment. I nodded and kept chomping.
“The old bastard never stopped using me, whatever he thought about me. His daughters took pity and showed me what I needed to know. They hated him more than I did. I bided my time. Then my father got killed by robbers who got twelve copper sceats and a pair of junk boots more than a year old.”
“That’s TunFaire.”
She nodded. That was TunFaire.
I nudged, “Your dad died.”
“So I no longer had any reason to please my husband.”
“You walked.”
“After I caught him sleeping and beat the living shit out of him with a poker.”
“I’ll take that to heart.”
“Good idea.” There was mischief in her eye. I decided I was going to like Maggie Jenn. Anybody who could live through what she had and have a little mischief left . . .
It was an interesting meal. I got to hear all about how she met Teddy without hearing word one about what she did between her shoeleather divorce and that first explosive encounter with the future king. I suspected she had loved Teddy as much as he’d loved her. You wouldn’t keep something as ugly as those red rooms in memory of somebody you disliked.
“This place is a prison,” she told me, a little misty.
“You got out to visit me.” Maybe they let her out on a tease release program.
“Not that kind of prison.”
I stuffed my face and let that old vacuum suck more words out of her. I don’t deal well with metaphor.
“I can leave any time I want, Garrett. I’ve been encouraged to leave. Often. But if I do, I lose everything. It’s not really mine. I just get to use it.” She gestured around her. “As long as I don’t abandon it.”
“I see.” And I did. She was a prisoner of circumstance. She had to stay. She was an unmarried woman with a child. She had known poverty and knew rich was better. Poverty was a prison, too. “I think I’m going to like you, Maggie Jenn.”
She raised an eyebrow. What an endearing skill! Few of us have sufficient native talent. Only the very best people can do the eyebrow thing.
I said, “I don’t like most of my clients.”
“I guess likable people don’t get into situations where they need somebody like you.”
“Not often, that’s a fact.”
The way things started, I became convinced that a certain eventuality had been foredoomed from the moment I’d opened my front door. I’m not a first date kind of guy, but I’ve never strained too hard against the whims of fate. I especially don’t struggle to avoid that particular fate.
Dinner ended. I was unsettled. Maggie Jenn had been doing these things with her eyes. The kind of things that cause a bishop’s brain to curdle and even a saint’s devotion to monasticism to go down for a third time in those limpid pools. The kind of things that send a fundamentalist reverend’s imagination racing off into realms so far removed that there is no getting back without doing something stupid.
I was too distracted to tell if the front of me was soaked with drool.
There had been banter and word games during dinner. She was good. Really good. I was ready to grab a trumpet and race around blowing Charge!
She sat there silently, appraising me, probably trying to decide if I was medium or medium well.
I made a heroic effort to concentrate. I managed to croak, “Tell me something, Maggie Jenn? Who would be interested in your affairs?”
She said nothing but did the eyebrow trick. She was surprised. That wasn’t what she’d expected me to say. She had to buy time.
“Don’t try to work your wiles on me, woman. You don’t get out of answering that easily.”
She laughed throatily, exaggerating that huskiness she had, wriggled just to let me know she was capable of distracting me as much as she wanted. I considered distracting myself by getting up and stomping around to study some of the artwork decorating the dining chamber but discovered that rising would be uncomfortable and embarrassing. I half turned in my chair and studied the ceiling as though seeking clues amongst the fauns and cherubs.
She asked, “What do you mean about people interested in my affairs?”
I did pause to reflect before I gave away the store. “Let’s back up some first. Did anybody know you were coming to see me?” Of course somebody did. Else Winger wouldn’t have come to me first. But I needed Maggie’s perspective.
“It wasn’t a secret, if that’s what you mean. I did ask around once I decided I needed a man of your sort.”
Hmm. What was a man of my sort?
This was not an unfamiliar phenomenon. Sometimes the unfriendlies get the jump because they hear about my client asking after someone who can help. “Next step, then. Who would be bothered if you started looking for your daughter?”
“Nobody.” She was getting suspicious.
“Yeah. It would seem like nobody ought to care. Unless maybe they were to give you a little support.”
“You’re scaring me, Garrett.”
She didn’t look scared. I said, “Might be a good idea to be scared. See, I knew you were coming.”
“What?” She was troubled for sure now. She didn’t like that at all.
“Just before you showed up, a friend who’s in my racket stopped by to warn me you’d be coming.” Saying Winger and I are in the same business is stretching a point, maybe. Winger is into anything likely to put money in Winger’s purse, preferably fast and easy. “He thought you were coming to buy a hit. That’s why he warned me.” Catch that clever misdirection. Not even a dead Loghyr often mistakes Winger for male.
“A hit? Me?” She knew the argot. She was off balance but coming back fast.
“He was sure of it.” But I wondered. Winger took shortcuts. Big, slow, lovable, goofy, crafty, bigoted, and lazy Winger. She was confident that anybody she couldn’t sweeten with reason she could bring around with a good old-fashioned ass-kicking. She was just a big old simple country girl with simple country ways—if you accepted her the way she wanted to be taken.
I was going to have words with Winger about Maggie Jenn. If I could find her. I didn’t think that would be tough. The big goof was bound to turn up on her own, soon. Probably before I was ready.
I said, “Then somebody followed me here.”
“What? Who? Why?”
“Got me. I only mention it to show you that somebody out there is interested.”
Maggie shook her head. It was a fine head. I was starting to lose my focus again. I concentrated on describing the villain who’d followed me.
Maggie smiled wickedly. “Garrett! Don’t you ever think about anything else?”
“Lots of times.” I thought about starting a little contest in which we would see who could run the fastest.
“Garrett!”
“You started it.”
Unlike many women, she did not deny her complicity. “Yeah, but . . . ”
“Put yourself in my place. You’re a red-blooded young man who’s suddenly alone here with you.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.” She chuckled. Ouch! This was getting painful. “You do dish up a ration of shit, don’t you?”
I chuckled right back and put myself into my own place, assuming she meant to put herself into her own place and things would proceed to proceed. But after a painful pilgrimage to her side of the table all proceedings proceeded to grind to a halt. Reluctantly—it seemed—she slipped away from me. I muttered, “We can’t keep on like this if you want to sell me on looking for your daughter.”
“You’re right. This is a business arrangement. We can’t let nature get in the way.”
I was willing to let nature play havoc, but I said, “Durn tootin’. I don’t sell that way, anyway. I sell on logic and facts. That’s me. Just-the-facts-ma’am Garrett. How about you start giving me some of those instead of using all your energy on those come-hither eyes?”
“Don’t be cruel, Garrett. This is as difficult for me as it is for you.”
So, eventually, we reached the suite belonging to Maggie’s daughter Emerald. “Emerald?” I asked. “What happened to Justina?” Emerald. Wouldn’t you know? Where are all the lovely Patricias and Bettys?
“I named her Justina. Emerald is what she uses. She picked it, so don’t give me that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you’re shitting me. She picked it. She was fourteen. Everyone else went along, so I use Emerald sometimes myself.”
“Right. Emerald. She insisted.” Of course. That’s what became of Patricia and Betty. They started calling themselves Amber and Brandi and Fawn. “But she might be going by Justina. When life gets serious, they fall back on their roots. Anything I need to know about the suite before I start digging?”
“What do you mean?”
“Am I going to find something you think needs excusing ahead of time?”
Wonder of wonders, she understood. “You might. Only I never go in there, so I don’t know what it might be. Yet.” She gave me a strange look. “Are you looking for a fight?”
“No.” Though maybe, unconsciously, I didn’t want her hanging over my shoulder. “Back to that name. Might as well go after this by the numbers, find out everything you can tell me before I start looking for things you don’t know.”
She gave me that look again. I was a bit testy. Had I developed that strong a dislike for work? Or was it because I knew she would lie and distort and whatever else it took to shape reality to her own vision? They all do, even when there’s no hope they won’t get found out. People. They do make you wonder.
“Justina was after my grandmother.”
I understood from her tone. Never was a kid who did not resent hearing how he or she was named after some old fart they never met and couldn’t care less about. My mom played that game with me and my brother. I never figured out why it meant anything to her. “Any special reason?”
“The name’s been in the family forever. And Granny would have been hurt if . . . ”
The usual. Never made sense to me. You sentence a kid to a lifetime of misery on account of somebody might get his feelings hurt if you don’t. Three rousing oriental cheers, say I: foo-ee, foo-ee, foo-ee. Who is going to be upset the longest?
You entered Emerald’s suite through a small sitting room. There you found a small writing desk with its chair, in blond wood. There was an oil lamp on the desk. There was one more chair, a storage chest with a cushion on top, and a small set of shelves. The room was squeaky clean and more spartan than it sounds. It did not look promising.
I hate it when they clean for company. “Your daughter ever take a powder before?”
Maggie hesitated. “No.”
“Why did you hesitate?”
“Trying to decide. Her father kidnapped her when she was four. Some friends convinced him that a child is better off with her mother.”
“Would he try something like that today?”
“Probably not. He’s been dead eight years.”
“Chances are he wouldn’t.” As a rule, the dead don’t get involved in custody disputes.
“She got a boyfriend?”
“A girl from the Hill?”
“Especially a girl from the Hill. How many does she have?”
“What?”
“Look, believe it or not, it’s easier for Hill girls to slip around than it is for downtown girls.” I offered examples from my own cases, one of which had featured a bevy of Hill girls working the Tenderloin just for the thrills.
That stunned my Maggie Jenn. She had a blind area, an inability to believe her baby could be anything less than the absolute image of what she desired. It hadn’t occurred to her that Emerald was going to break her heart. Plainly, she didn’t understand that people sometimes did the wicked stuff for other than survival reasons. Whoring as an amusement was a concept too alien to encompass.
Only the classes in between don’t believe in whoring.
“You didn’t grow up on the Hill.”
“I admit that, Garrett.”
I had the suspicion that my pretty Maggie had maybe had to make ends meet to make ends meet during the hiatus between husband and crown prince. I didn’t need to know about that, though. Not yet, anyway. Maybe later, if it began to look like the past had some bearing. “Plant yourself on a chair. Talk to me about Emerald while I work.”
I prowled.
Maggie said, “To my knowledge she has no boyfriends. Our circumstances don’t let us meet many people. We aren’t socially acceptable. We form a class unto ourselves.”
A very classy class it was, though Maggie Jenn and her kid weren’t its only members. The sisterhood of mistresses is quite large. At these rarified heights, a man is expected to have a mistress. It demonstrates his manhood. Two is better than one.
“Any friends at all?”
“Not many. Girls she grew up with, maybe. Maybe somebody she studied with. At her time of life, kids are real status conscious. I doubt anybody would let her make any strong connections.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Me, twenty years less shopworn. And wipe that silly grin off your mug.”
“I was thinking how looking for you twenty years younger would have me hunting somebody barely out of diapers.”
“And don’t forget that. I want my baby found, not—”
“Right. Right. Right. Any special stress between you before she disappeared?”
“What?”
“Did you have a fight? Did she stomp out yelling about how she was never coming back in ten thousand years?”
“No.” Maggie chuckled. “I had a few of those with my mother. Probably why she didn’t squawk when my father sold me. No. Not Emerald. This kid is different, Garrett. She never cared about anything enough to fight. Really, honestly, swear to whatever god, I wasn’t a pushy mother. She was happy just to go along. Far as she was concerned, life is a river and she was driftwood.”
“I maybe lost something in all the excitement. Or maybe I’ve started remembering things that never happened. I could have sworn you were going on about her having fallen in with bad companions.”
Maggie chuckled. She snorted. She looked uncomfortable. She did it all fetchingly. I tried to imagine her as she might have been in Teodoric’s day. I was awed by the possibilities.
She stopped wriggling. “I fibbed a little. I heard about you having a relationship with the Sisters of Doom and figured you were a sucker for a kid in trouble.” The Sisters of Doom is an all-girl street gang. The girls were all abused before they fled to the street.
“It was a relationship with one Sister. Who left the street.”
“I’m sorry. I overstepped.”
“What?”
“It’s obvious I just stomped on some tender feelings.”
“Oh. Yeah. Maya was a pretty special kid. I messed up a good thing because I didn’t take her serious enough. I lost a friend because I didn’t listen.”
“Sorry. I was just trying to find a sure hook.”
“Did Emerald see anybody regularly?” Business would take me away from memories. Maya was not one of my great loves, but she was pretty special. And both Dean and the Dead Man had approved of her. There had been no separation, she just didn’t come around anymore and mutual friends all hinted that she wouldn’t unless I grew up a little.
That don’t punch your ego up, considering it traced back to a girl just eighteen.
Emerald’s writing desk had numerous cubbies and tiny drawers. I searched them as we talked. I didn’t find much. Most spaces were empty.
“She does have friends but making friends doesn’t come easy.”
That wasn’t the story as it was told a few minutes ago. I suspected Emerald had troubles that had nothing to do with social status. Chances were she was lost in her mother’s shadow. “Friends are where I’ll find her trail. I’ll need names. I’ll need to know where I can find the people who go with them.”
She nodded. “Of course.” I slammed a drawer, turned away from her. I had to keep my mind on business. The woman was a witch. Then I sneaked a peek. Did I really want to leave all that, to go hunting somebody who probably didn’t want to be found?
Ha! Here was something. A silver pendant. “What’s this?” Purely rhetorical. I knew what I had. It was an amulet consisting of a silver pentagram on a dark background with a goat’s head inside the star. The real question was, what was it doing where I had found it?
Maggie took it, studied it while I watched for a reaction. I didn’t see one. She said, “I wonder where that came from?”
“Emerald into the occult?”
“Not that I know of. But you can’t know everything about your children.”
I grunted, resumed my search. Maggie chattered like the fabled magpie, mostly about her daughter, more in the way of reminiscences than useful facts. I listened with half an ear.
I found nothing else in the desk. I moved to the shelves. The presence of several books brought home how much wealth Maggie stood to lose. Because a book takes forever to copy, it is about the most expensive toy you can give a child.
I grunted as I picked up the third book. It was a small, leather-bound, time-worn thing with a goat’s head tooled into its cover. The leather was badly foxed. The pages were barely readable. It was one old book.
My first clue was that it was not written in modern Karentine.
Those damned things never are, are they? Nobody would take them seriously if any schnook could pick one up and decipher the secrets of the ages.
“Check this out.” I tossed the book to Maggie. I kept one eye on her as I resumed my search.
“Curiouser and curiouser, Garrett. My baby is full of surprises.”
“Yeah.” Maybe. That whole visit was full of surprises. Including those tree-sized fingers pointing at witchcraft of the demonic sort.
The bedroom and its attached bath yielded more occult treasures.
Much later I asked, “Is Emerald especially neat?” Neat would not describe any teen I knew.
“Only as much as she has to be. Why?”
I didn’t tell her. I had gone into full investigator mode. We crack first-line investigators never answer questions about our questions, especially if those are posed by our employers, lawmen, or anybody else who might help keep us out of the deep stink. Fact was, though, that Emerald’s apartment was way too neat. Compulsively so. Or nobody lived there. My impression was of a stage set. I was wondering if it might not be exactly that, carefully primed with clues.
All right, I told me. Get busy deducting. Clues are clues to something even when they’re artificial or false.
I was not that sure. What I had was some inconsistent indications of witchcraft—which did little to amaze, dismay, alarm, or otherwise excite my new employer.
Maybe I was going at this from the wrong end.
Tap on the shoulder. “Anybody in there?”
“Huh?”
“You just froze up and went away.”
“Happens when I try to think and do something at the same time.”
She did her eyebrow trick. I distracted her by flashing her back. I told her, “I’ve got enough to start. You give me that list of names. As soon as we settle the finances.”
We had no problems there till I insisted on half my fee up front. “It’s an inflexible rule, Maggie. On account of human fallibility. Too many people get tempted to stiff me once they’ve gotten what they want.” But that was not the only reason I pressed.
The less a client argues the deeper his desperation.
My pretty Maggie Jenn argued way too long. Finally, she huffed, “I’ll have Mugwump bring you that list as soon as I can.”
I was thrilled. I really wanted to see Mugwump again. Maybe I could tip him a talking parrot.
I stood in the shadows down the street from Maggie’s, just staying out of sight while I thought.
Like most folks, I don’t get any kick out of being played for a patsy. But people do try. It’s an occupational hazard. I’m used to it. I expect it. But I don’t like it.
Something was going on. I was being used. None too subtly, either. Unless Maggie my sweet was a lot less worldly than I suspected, I didn’t see how she could think I would buy everything.
I’d sure enjoyed the job interview, though. As far as it had gone.
The thing to do now was what she had said she didn’t want me to do: investigate Maggie Jenn. For my own safety. In my line, what you don’t know can get you killed as fast as what you do know. Once I could guess where I really stood, maybe I’d do something about Emerald.
I glanced at the sky. It was dark but still early. I could touch some contacts, take a few steps along the path to enlightenment. Right after I dropped Maggie’s retainer off at home. Only a fool carries a load like that longer than he must. TunFaire teems with villains who can count the change in your pocket at a hundred yards.
I could imagine no explanation of recent events more convincing than what Maggie purported. Nevertheless, there was Winger. I shook my head. The cobwebs did not go away. They never do. All part of the service. All part of my naive charm.
I looked for my tail. No sign. Maybe he got tired and went home. Maybe the Hill’s security thugs whispered sweet nothings in his ear, like, “Get lost pronto or you’ll crawl home with two broken legs.” Or maybe his job had been done once he’d found out where I was going.
I shoved off. All that thinking was giving me shin splints of the brain.
Good thing I exercise. I had oomph enough to vacate the area steps ahead of an unpleasant interview with the goon squad, who did not seem to care if I had legitimate business on the Hill. They had been summoned by Ichabod, no doubt, in a vain hope that my attitude could be improved.
I zigged and zagged and backtracked and used all my tricks. I didn’t spot a tail so I went home, got rid of Maggie’s retainer, drew myself a long draught, then sat down for a cold beer and a chat with Eleanor, who seemed concerned about the state of my soul.
“Yeah,” I confessed, “I’m getting more flexible when it comes to taking money.” I spoke in a whisper. I did not want to waken the Goddamn Parrot. I’d even tiptoed in and filled his seed tray.
If I remembered to feed him more often, he might have a higher opinion of me. Maybe.
“So what? If they’re villains, they deserve to be done out of their money.” She had taught me that money has no provenance. “If they aren’t villains, I’ll see that they get their money’s worth.”
More or less. Sometimes I don’t exactly deliver what the client has in mind. One such case resulted in Eleanor coming to live with me.
It had taken me a while to outgrow the notion that taking a man’s money meant having to go for the results he wanted. I must be getting old and judgmental. These days, I try to give people what they deserve instead.
Which yields mixed results for sure. Even so, I get more offers than I want. But a lot of fat jobs go elsewhere because some folks have decided to avoid me. Most especially the kind who rob people with paper instead of a blade. Lawyers and slicks. I have embarrassed my share of those.
Actually, I mostly avoid working. I don’t think anybody ought to work more than it takes to get by. Sure, I wish I could afford my own harem and fifty-room palace, but if I worked hard enough to get the money, I’d have to work as hard to keep it. I wouldn’t get a chance to enjoy it.
After a few beers, I developed a whole new attitude. I told Eleanor, “Think I’ll go down to the Joy House, hang out with the guys.”
She smirked.
“It’s just to pick up street talk about Maggie Jenn.”
Eleanor didn’t believe one word.
I had to find me a new girlfriend.
Morley Dotes never changes but his neighborhood can. Once upon a time, that was the worst. You weren’t alert, you could get killed for the price of a bowl of soup. For reasons to do with Morley’s intolerance of squabbles and his sometime role as arbitrater of underworld disputes, the neighborhood grew almost reputable and came to be called the Safety Zone. Those who worked the shadow side met and did business there, with every expectation of suffering none of the embarrassment, unpleasantness, or disappointment one faced at the hands of lone wolf socialists in other neighborhoods.
Every city needs some quiet area where business can get done.
“Waa-hoo!” shrieked the guy who came sailing out the door as I walked up to Morley’s place. I ducked. That fellow touched down halfway across the street. He made a valiant effort to land running and did a laudable job till a watering trough slunk into his path. Slimy green water fountained.
Another man came out sprawled like a starfish, spinning and howling. He was one of Morley’s thugs-turned-waiter.
This was backwards. The way these things go is Morley’s people toss troublemakers. They don’t get dribbled along the cobblestones themselves.
The howling waiter went across the street like a skipping stone. He crashed into the guy trying not to drown in the horse trough. If you ask me, putting those things around was a grave mistake. Horse troughs are sure to draw horses. TunFaire is infested by enough evils.
On hands and knees, I peeped around the edge of the door frame and discovered true pandemonium.
A behemoth of a black man, who beat my six feet two by a good three feet, and who had to slouch so he wouldn’t split his noggin on the ceiling, was having himself a grand time cleaning house. He snarled and roared and tossed people and furniture. Those few men accidentally exiting through the front door were lucky. They were out of the action. Those who tried to leave under their own power got grabbed and dragged back for the fun.
The feet of the walls were littered with casualties. The big man had a fire in his eye. No mere mortal was going to quiet him down. Some very skilled mortals had tried and had found places among the fallen.
I knew the berserk. His name was Playmate. He was one of my oldest friends, a blacksmith and stable operator, a religious man who was as gentle a being as ever lived. He went out of his way to avoid stepping on bugs. I had seen him weep for a mutt run down by a carriage. Like all of us, he had done his time in the Cantard, but I was sure that even there he had offered violence to no one.
I thought about trying to talk him down. I left it at a thought. We were good friends, but Playmate had equally good friends among the fallen. Everybody loved Playmate.
And I had learned about being a hero doing my five years as a Royal Marine.
No way could Playmate have gone this mad.
Morley Dotes himself, dapper and exasperated, watched from the stair to his office. He was a darkly handsome little character, dressed way too slick for my taste. Anything he put on looked like it was baked onto him. Anything I put on looks slept-in after ten minutes.
Morley was so distressed he was wringing his hands.
Guess I’d have been upset myself if someone was busting up my place. The Joy House started as a front—Morley was an assassin and bonebreaker—but it had grown on Dotes.
A short, slim form snaked through the crowd and leapt onto Playmate’s back. The big man roared and spun. He did not dislodge his rider, Morley’s nephew Spud, whose mother had passed him to his uncle because she could not manage him anymore.
For a while, Spud just held on. Once he was confident of his seat, though, he let go with one hand and fumbled at his belt. Playmate kept spinning. The idea gradually got into his head: spinning and prancing and roaring would not get the weight off his back.
He stopped, got his bearings by consulting stars only he could see. He decided to run backwards and squish Spud against a wall.
Spud had his own plan, though.
Spud was set on being a hero in his uncle’s eyes.
The kid wasn’t stupid, he just suffered from natural elvish overconfidence.
His hand came up from his belt clutching a black cloth sack. He tried popping that over Playmate’s head. Guess who did not cooperate?
That sack was a mark of the esteem in which Playmate was held. The guy was set on destroying the world, but nobody wanted to stop him badly enough to kill him. Not one soul inside the Joy House wanted to do anything but get him under control. Not your true TunFairen attitude, I guarantee. Life is the cheapest commodity of all.
Morley moved as soon as he understood what the kid was doing. He didn’t run or appear to hurry, but he got there right on time, a moment after Spud did get his bag into place, a moment after Playmate started his all-out plunge toward the nearest wall. Morley hooked a foot behind the big man’s heel.
Boom!
Playmate sprawled. Spud separated just in time to keep from being sandwiched. He was a lucky kid. Instead of getting squashed and collecting some broken bones, he just got coldcocked.
Not so Playmate. My old pal tried to get up. Morley popped him a bunch of times, so fast you barely saw him move. Playmate didn’t like that. He figured maybe he ought to take that sack off and see who was aggravating him. Morley hit him a bunch more times, in all those places where blows are supposed to incapacitate.
There came a day when Playmate, buried under a dozen people, finally stopped struggling.
Morley looked down at Playmate. He was breathing hard. I strode inside, chirped, “Congrats. You wore him down.”
Morley checked me from glazed eyes, failed to recognize me for a moment, then wailed, “Oh, damn! You. On top of everything else.”
I looked behind me to find out who was causing my best pal so much distress. I’d fix him! But the guy was too fast for me. The doorway was empty.
I put on my best hurt face. I get to practice a lot around the Joy House. Morley’s guys are always riding me. Naturally, I play along.
I righted a table, selected a chair, made myself comfortable. I eyeballed Playmate. “What happened? You have to pump that guy up on weed to get him to swat flies.”
Morley took several controlled breaths, picked up a chair, and joined me. “Excellent question, Garrett.” Playmate wasn’t doing anything now. In fact, the roars from beneath the flesh pile sounded suspiciously like snores.
Morley Dotes is a bit short for a grown man but isn’t entirely human. He has dark-elf forebears. But he never lets the human in him get in his way.
Maybe the mix is responsible. He is a mass of contrasts, especially in his profession as opposed to his hobby. His health food haven has become a hangout for half the villains of TunFaire. Contrast again: the clientele is half those double-nasties and half the kind of clown you expect to find gnoshing tubers of uncertain provenance.
“Boy did pretty well,” Morley observed, glancing at Spud. The kid’s real name was Narcisio. Only his mother used that.
“Pretty good,” I admitted. “More balls than brains.”
“Runs in the family.”
“What happened?”
Morley glowered. Instead of answering me, he shocked the house by bellowing, “Eggwhite! Get your heathen ass out here!”
I was amazed, too. Morley employs vulgarity only rarely. He fancies himself a gentleman rogue. Gentlemen rogues are slick like they’re covered with lard. But a villain is a villain, and Morley is one of the worst because he gets away with everything. I should try to take him down. I don’t because he’s my friend.
A thug ambled out of the kitchen. He wore cook’s garb but carried his professional resume scarred on his face. He was old and looked as stupid as a stump, which answered a question: what becomes of hard boys if they live long enough to get old? They become waiters. I didn’t see how this goon had survived to get there, though. He looked like a guy who needed a major run of luck to get through any given day.
Maybe the gods do love the incapacitated.
Morley beckoned.
Eggwhite edged our way. His gaze kept darting toward Playmate. Playmate had begun to reappear as guys climbed off and went to set the bones of their buddies.
“Big mess, huh?” Morley said.
“Yeah, boss. Big ole mess.”
“You have any idea why I would entertain the notion that you might have been at fault? Can you tell me why your face popped into mind the moment my friend asked me what happened?”
Will wonders never cease? He never called me friend before.
Eggwhite muttered, “I guess on account of I got a weakness for doing jokes.”
Morley grunted. “That one of your pranks?” Playmate was sleeping like a baby now, but he was going to be hurting when he woke up. “That big ha-ha there?” Morley’s tone was hard, the street leaking through. He was angry. Eggwhite was petrified.
Morley asked, “What did you do?”
“Put angelweed in his salad?” Eggwhite made it a question, like a kid caught in a lie experimenting with a new tactic.
“How much?”
Excellent question. Angelweed didn’t earn its heavenly name because it will boost your mind into paradise but because it will send you off to hallelujah land if you aren’t careful. Slipping it into a salad would be a clever way to dose somebody. The leaves look like spinach that’s gone a little bluish.
“Half a dozen leaves.” Eggwhite looked everywhere but straight at Morley.
“Half a dozen. Enough to kill most people.”
“He’s humongous, chief. A goddamn mountain. I thought it would take—”
“And there’s the problem.” Morley’s voice dropped way down, to a level of softness that meant he was in a killing mood. Eggwhite started shaking. Morley continued, “I told you when I hired you I didn’t want any thinking. I wanted you cutting vegetables. Get out.”
“Chief, look, I can—”
“You’re gone, Eggwhite. Out the door. Walking or carried. Up to you.”
Eggwhite gulped. “Uh . . . Yeah.” He headed for the door.
I observed, “He’s making off with your cook outfit.”
“Let it go. I don’t want to make a scene.”
I gave him an encore look at my eyebrow trick.
“I hate firing people, Garrett.”
I added the fish-eye to the raised eyebrow. This was the most feared hired knife in town? Was he putting me on?
He kept plugging. “I do it only because you have to if you want to be successful in business. Besides, I owe him eight days pay.” Before I could comment, he eyed me directly. “What is it this time, Garrett?”
“How about a platter of that stuff with the black mushrooms, pea pods and whatnot, on the wild rice?” I dropped money onto the table.
Morley gave me my fish-eye back with interest. He gathered my coins, examined them as though he suspected they were counterfeit. “You want to eat? Here? And you’re willing to pay for it?” He sank his fangs into a coin, the classic hardness test.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to employ the concept of privilege, but it is an age of wonders. You’ve converted me. I’m born again. I’m never going to eat anything but swamp tubers, bark, and gravel ever again.”
Morley stirred Playmate’s fingers with his toe. “He’s alive, but I couldn’t tell you why.” He came back to where I was wolfing the mushroom stuff. It contained more garlic than mushrooms. “Trying to keep the girls away?”
“I don’t need garlic for that. I have natural talent.”
He wasn’t in the mood for banter. Guess I wouldn’t have been either had my place just gotten trashed. “What are you into now, Garrett? What do you need?”
“I’m doing a missing person caper.” Love that word. I told him the story, leaving out only those parts a gentleman leaves out. “I want to know whatever you know about Maggie Jenn. Felt like she was running a game on me.”
“Somebody must be running a game on somebody. I don’t think you saw the real Maggie Jenn.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind the witty remarks. I’m thinking you must have been chosen for your ignorance.”
“Thanks. How about shoving a stick in the spokes of the scheme by lighting a torch in the darkness?”
“That wouldn’t be right. Not quite. You not being up on the adventures of the royals could be part of it, but . . . ”
“All right. I don’t know what you know, Morley. That’s why I’m here.”
“It isn’t impossible that you spent the afternoon with a king’s lover, but I’d call it wildly improbable. Maggie Jenn exiled herself to the Isle of Paise after her Teddy boy died. If there was a daughter I never heard. Kind of thing that would be kept quiet, though. On the other hand, that place on the Hill sounds like the one where Teodoric stashed his doxy. Curious.”
That was an understatement. “I’m lost, Morley. None of this makes sense.”
“Only because you don’t have the key.”
“I’m missing the key, the lock, the damned door, and all the hardware. Somebody ran a game on me? I’ll buy that. Happens all the time. But the woman also paid me to look for her daughter.”
“How well?” Was that smile a smirk?
“Handsomely, shall we say? Enough so I’m sure she expected something in return. Even top of the Hill don’t throw money away.”
“Good point.”
“If Maggie Jenn came back,” I mused, “what would she do?”
“She has no reason to come back. She lives like a queen out there. She’d find nothing but trouble here.” Morley eyed Playmate. “Pity you didn’t get here earlier. He always kept track of the royals.”
“He won’t be doing anything but whine about his headache for a week.”
“You in a hurry?”
I wondered. “Maybe not. No apparent jeopardy. Just a puzzle. Maggie didn’t seem in any hurry, just worried.”
“You buy the woman’s story?”
I never take a client’s story at face value. Some natural law compels them to lie part of the time. “Maybe. Some. It feels like the truth being used for something else.”
“I’ll put out feelers. Meantime, you ought to corner Winger.”
“That occurred to me.” I didn’t relish trying to get anything out of her, though. “It’s not an appetizing idea.”
Morley chuckled. “She’s a handful. The trick is get her thinking what you want is her idea.”
“Ingenious. How?”
“With great difficulty.”
“I can get advice like that from my parrot and save the price of this fish food.”
“Way I hear, Dean is out of town and the Dead Man is asleep. You being hard up for company, I just wanted you to feel at home. Crumbs! You try to be a pal.” He grinned a diabolical dark-elf grin.
“You want to be a pal, find out about Maggie Jenn.”
His grin dwindled. “Try to be a pal.” He shook his head.
He would check around because he thought he owed me. And I agreed. I collect like a loanshark.
“Bed is starting to sound good,” I thought aloud. “It’s been a hard day.”
Morley grunted. His nephew came to the table. Getting no hint that he ought to take his big ears elsewhere, he spun a chair around and straddled it. Around us, Morley’s people, moving slowly and muttering about their aches and pains, put things together again. Spud asked, “How is Mr. Big, Mr. Garrett?”
I cursed.
Morley had sent me the Goddamn Parrot when he was in an Eggwhite mood. That was far enough out of character that I suspected Sarge and Puddle had a hand in developing the scam. The bird came guaranteed to have a major hatred for cats and a habit of attacking them from above. I accepted him because Dean had a habit of accumulating strays.
Spud gave me a dirty look. He was the only one in the world with any use for that foul-mouthed jungle chicken. Make that any love. The Dead Man had a use. Wherever I went, he could send Mr. Big after, nagging.
I had tried to give the beast away. There were no takers. I gave it every chance to fly away. It wouldn’t escape. I was getting near taking heroic measures. “Spud, you’re so worried about Mr. Big why don’t you come get him? He needs a home where he’s appreciated.”
“No, you don’t,” Morley sneered. “That there is your bird, Garrett.”
I scowled. This was a squabble I couldn’t win.
Dotes showed all those pointy teeth again. “I hear some parrots live a hundred years.”
“Some, maybe. In the wild.” I could donate Mr. Big to a charity. Like some hungry ratman. “I’m out of here, friend.”
Morley laughed.
It was dark out. That did not help.
Neither did the fact that I didn’t see them coming. I had no chance to get ready.
I put up a fight, though. I dented some heads good with the weighted oak head-buster I carry when I go out. I tossed one guy through the only glass window in the street. But I just never got rolling. I had no chance to use the tricks I had stashed up my sleeves.
Somebody whapped me up side the head with a house. I think it was a house. Had to be a house. No mere man could hit me that hard. The lights went out—with me still trying to figure out who and why.
Ordinarily, I come around slowly if I’ve had my conk bopped. Not so this time. One minute I was in dreamland, the next I was bouncing along face downward, wrapped in something soggy, staring at a floor sliding past inches from my nose. Four guys were carrying me. I was leaking red stuff. I couldn’t recall drinking any wine. I had the worst headache anyone ever had since the dawn of time.
A fine pair of female legs strode along practically in nibbling range. I really wanted to appreciate those. In other circumstances, I would have devoted hours to those legs. But a guy does have to keep some perspective.
Things were not going well. This sort of thing was not a normal part of my life. I tried to shove the pain away long enough to think.
Aha! They had me wrapped in a wet blanket. I didn’t want to poop somebody’s party, but that didn’t make me happy. I roared and twisted and flopped and wriggled and bellowed. I failed to make any impression. I did get a gander at what went with the gorgeous gams. The wealth was piled on all the way to the top. I could have fallen in love. But this was not the time or place. Beside a fire, maybe on a bearskin rug, maybe just her and me and some TunFaire Gold wine . . .
I didn’t like the looks of the guys. They weren’t the brunos I danced with earlier. Those had been standard lowlife, out for the price of a drink. These clowns wore dirty, ragged uniforms.
That failed to cheer me up.
They were unreasonable. They wouldn’t answer questions. Nobody responded at all, except Miss Legs. She just seemed sad. I hollered and flopped some more. They kept on lugging me down a long hall.
Long hall, huh? And what was that smell?
Everybody stopped but me. I thrashed some more. I was serious about it now. I knew where I was. This was the crazy floor of the Bledsoe, the imperial charity hospital.
The empire is long gone, but its works and the imperial family linger, the latter hoping for a recall. They sustain the hospital, which serves the indigent poorly.
The cackle factory is a bad place. They stick you in there you could be gone forever. Wouldn’t matter that somebody made a mistake.
“Hey! Put me down! What the hell is this? What am I doing in here? Do I look like I’m crazy?”
That was the wrong question. I had to look like a prime specimen. And the way things work, they would assume that they wouldn’t have me if I didn’t belong.
Man, this was the dirtiest trick anybody ever played on me.
A door crashed open. It was oak and iron and about nine inches thick. I glimpsed my destiny.
One of my guides bellowed. Somebody scuttled away. The boys tossed me through the doorway without missing the frame. I landed hard. The Legs gazed at me pityingly. The door closed before I convinced her this was all a horrible mistake.
I unwrapped myself by rolling around, stumbled over and wasted energy pounding on the door. I exercised the full range of situationally specialized vocabulary, but without the enthusiasm I might have managed had my head not hurt so much. You do these things even when you’re wasting your time. The rituals must be observed.
I heard noises behind me. I spun around.
At least a dozen men stood staring at me. I checked the ward beyond them. There were lots more men back there. Plenty were wondering about the new guy. Some studied my outfit. Plainly, there had been no general clothing issued in years. Nor had anyone taken a bath during the modern era. Here was the source of the odor I’d caught in the hall. A glance told me the welcoming committee all belonged inside. It was obvious in their eyes.
I pounded and yelled some more. Service did not improve.
At least they hadn’t dumped me into the violent ward. Maybe I stood a chance.
An old character who looked like he weighed about fifty pounds stumbled toward me. “How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”
“I was doing great till about five minutes ago, Ivy.”
“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”
“He don’t say nothing else, Ace.”
Right. I’m a quick study. Ivy never even looked at me. “Gotcha.”
A guy about nine feet tall guffawed. “You don’t pay Ivy no nevermind, boy. He’s crazy.”
“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”
This was the tip of the iceberg. The part that would be easy. It was sure to get weird.
After thinking a while, somebody yelled at the big guy, “You got so much room to talk, muddlebrain?”
“Yeah? What do you know? I don’t belong in here. I was set up. Somebody drugged me or something. I woke up in here.”
Oh, my. A fellow traveler as bad off as I. I had a lot of sympathy for him—till some grinning idiot shrieked, “Powziffle! Powziffle pheez!” Or something like that.
The big guy hunched up, stooped, made gurgling noises, and started running around the ward like a gorilla, howling. His howls would have chilled the spine of a banshee.
“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”
The big man’s racket started some other guy screaming. His cries were a species I’d heard in the islands, coming from a guy caught out in no-man’s land with a bad gut wound, begging for somebody to kill him. Soldiers from both sides would have done so gladly after a while. But nobody was dumb enough to go out there and let the other side snipe. So we’d all just laid low and listened, ground our teeth, and maybe thanked our personal gods it wasn’t us.
I glared at that door. Maybe I could chew my way through.
Or maybe . . . My pockets hadn’t been cleaned. They must’ve been in an awful hurry to get me put away. A real bunch of screwup Charlies.
Patients came to check me out—those who still had a foot in our world. Many were timid as mice. A look sent them scurrying. Others . . . Some might have been there as accidentally as I, only instead they belonged in the ward for the dangerous.
I wished everybody would back off.
Any doubts I had about the irregularity of my commitment disappeared when I discovered that they hadn’t cleaned my pockets. Had I been brought in legitimately, all my possessions would have been taken from me and would never have surfaced again.
I was encouraged. About a roach-weight worth.
The physical plant wasn’t encouraging. The ward was a hundred feet wide, three hundred feet long, and two storys high. There were rows and rows and rows of sleeping pallets but not nearly enough to go around.
The ceiling was way up there, a good twenty feet. Windows peeked through the wall opposite the door, way high, too small for a man to get out even after he cut the bars. I supposed they passed light during the day. What little light was available now leaked through windows high on the door side wall, there so the ward could be observed by hospital staff.
“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”
“I’m doing just fine, Ivy. What say you and me bust out of this toilet?”
Ivy looked at me directly, startled, then scampered away.
“Anybody want to break out?”
My suggestion drew an underwhelming response. I gathered that half the patients could not be dragged out and the other half thought I was crazy. There? Forsooth!
The big man who had cautioned me about Ivy’s lack of capacity recapacitated himself. He came over. “Ain’t no way out, Slick. They was, half these guys would be long gone.”
I glanced around again. The prospects seemed ever less promising. “They feed us?”
The big guy grinned that grin the old salts put on when they see a chance to teach a greenhorn. “Twice a day, you’re hungry or not. Through them bars down there.”
I looked. I shrugged. Them bars was hopeless. “Things are that bad I might as well get me some shut-eye before I start my serious worrying.” I looked for an empty pallet. I had some thinking to do. Especially about why I found myself in such straits.
I wanted to scream as loud as any of the whacks in there with me.
“You get in line for a bed,” the big guy cautioned me. “You make friends, maybe somebody will share. Otherwise, you just wait till enough guys die to leave you your own.” His casual manner told me this was one of the capital laws of the ward. Amazing. You’d expect it to be total survival of the strongest.
“My kind of flophouse.” I settled near the door. That didn’t seem to be a popular area. Plenty of elbow room there. I pretended to fall asleep.
There were no corpses in the ward and no smell of death. That suggested that staff removed the dead quickly. So, how to use that in a scam the staff hadn’t seen before?
I gave the notion of a riot a look. Feeble. If I was the Bledsoe staff, I’d just let everybody starve till the fuss stopped.
“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”
My act wasn’t fooling Ivy. I considered putting him out of his misery.
Which gave me an idea. A twist on the riot scheme. I went looking for the big guy. I found him seated against the far wall. I planted the reverse side of my lap on the hardwood, grunted. “I got about enough splinters.”
“Send out for a chair.”
A wise guy. “How come it’s so quiet?”
“Maybe on account of it’s the middle of the goddamn night.” Eloquent verbal stylings, too.
“I mean, we only had one screamer.” Not counting him. Nobody was yelling at the moment. “I heard there was lots of screamers. Mostly guys who can’t handle what they remember about the Cantard.”
His face darkened. “Yeah. There’s some of them. They get drugged if they get too bad. Like they get each other going.”
Interesting. “Know any way to set one of them off now?”
He studied me narrowly. “What you up to, Slick?” He thought there had better be a damned good reason for pulling a stunt like that.
“Up to getting out of here.”
“Can’t do that.”
“Maybe not. But they didn’t empty out my pockets before they dumped me in here. You game to try?”
He thought about that. His face grew darker. “Yeah. Yeah! I got business out there. Yeah. You get the damned door open, I’ll go.”
“You figure any of these guys would help?”
“Plenty would go if the walls fell down. I don’t know how many would help make them fall.”
“So could you get some guy screaming as the first step?”
“Sure.” He got up, strolled to the far end, messed with somebody a minute, headed back. Plenty of inmates watched him. The man he’d visited started screaming. Chills slithered all over me. He was one of the lost souls.
The big man asked, “Good enough?”
“Perfect. Now try to round up some guys willing to help out.”
He went away again.
I went into my act. “Shut up down there! I’m trying to sleep.”
The guy didn’t stop screaming. I’d been afraid he would. I glanced at the observation windows. Someone was up there, but the racket didn’t interest him. Were they that indifferent? I needed to be seen.
I yelled at the screamer. Somebody yelled back at me. I yelled at him. Some genius yelled at both of us like that would shut us up. The racket picked up. We were like a troop of monkeys. Some of the men started moving around, just shuffling numbly, without purpose.
The uproar finally caught the ear of whoever was on duty. He looked down but didn’t seem concerned.
I screamed louder than the screamer, threatening mayhem if he didn’t shut it up.
“How are you doing? I’m Ivy.”
“Pack your trunk, Ivy. We’re checking out of this cuckoo inn.”
The big guy came by. “I got a dozen guys willing, Slick. You want more?”
“That’s plenty. Now I need everybody back away from the door. It’s going to get nasty there when they come in.” I hoped. If I hadn’t been suckered too bad.
“They’ll figure we’re up to something, Slick. They only look dumb.”
“I don’t care. That won’t matter. I just need the door open.”
He sneered, confident I was on a fool’s quest.
I screamed some more at the screamers.
There were several people at the observation windows now—including she of the glorious gams.
I chuckled, sure I was on my way out. No woman would work the Bledsoe unless she had a giant soft spot. I roared, bounded over pallets, started strangling the loudest screamer.
The big guy came by and pretended to drag me off. I gave him further instructions, then ran him off. He wasn’t a bad actor.
Me, I was a master. I made it look real good. To my surprise, none of my fellow patients tried to stop me.
I only strangled my victim a little, enough to cause unconsciousness.
I galloped to the other end of the room, went to work on another screamer.
Soon there were guys flying all over the place. The majority got into the spirit. It wasn’t exactly a riot, though. Real violence was almost nonexistent. But the pandemonium was not pretend.
I glimpsed the woman arguing with the men. She wanted to do something. They didn’t.
Excellent.
A little goblin breed three feet tall scrunched himself into a ball near the door.
Upstairs, charity apparently overcame common sense.
I kept the show rolling. People did get hurt, but I wasn’t in a charitable mood, to put it mildly. If I stayed a nice guy, I wasn’t ever going to get out. If I didn’t get out, I’d never get the chance to crack the heads of the clowns who’d put me in.
The big guy came around again. He bounced me around some. “They’re coming,” I told him. “And you don’t have to be so enthusiastic here.”
He seemed scornful. I don’t know about what.
I glanced at the door, then cautioned the big guy, “Take it easy. We don’t have to convince them now.” No one was near the door but the little breed. He would be sorry he had volunteered. “How many will come?”
The big man shrugged. “Depends on how worried they are. Least eight or ten. You better watch out.” He tripped me. I tripped him back. We rolled around and punched each other. He was having a great time. “They have a policy of kicking the living shit out of troublemakers.”
“I kind of figured that was part of the program. Hell, I’ve stopped bleeding. I’m ready for anything.” I wasn’t looking forward to the kicking part. You lays your bets and takes your chances, but I was hoping things would go well and I would not have to deal with any boots.
You have to believe you’re going to win.
I did have to win. Nobody knew where I was. It could be weeks before anybody even missed me, what with Dean out of town and the Dead Man sleeping. It might be weeks after that before anybody tracked me down. If anybody bothered to try.
I didn’t have weeks. I didn’t feel I could waste the time I’d spent inside already. The Dead Man might chuckle and tell me to consider it a learning experience, which is what he does when I have a bad day.
If I didn’t break out, it was going to be the all-time bad day to start a long string of bad days.
The woman stayed at the observation window. I kept howling my head off and throwing people around and strangling other guys making noise.
The thing that got me, down deep, was that almost half the guys in the ward didn’t get involved. Most of those never opened their eyes. They just laid there, indifferent.
Man, that was scary. That could be me in twenty years if I blew this.
Fear provided the inspiration I needed to keep howling and foaming at the mouth. I tried speaking in tongues. That came to me naturally. A little something for when I got too old to make it on the street. A good howl and roll man can start his own church.
The door opened.
Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, those dopes actually opened the door.
It swung outward. Attendants boiled inside. They knew something was up. They were ready for bear. They had clubs and small shields. They all looked about twelve feet tall. They formed in a tight knot before they started forward.
A few months earlier, in a moment of weakness brought on by engulfing an inland sea of beer, I’d bought some stuff from a third-rate wizard who’d called himself Dread but whose name was really Milton. You don’t never trust the skills of a wizard named Milton—as I’d learned to my sorrow on trying to use one of his charms. His stuff came with a warranty, but he wasn’t around to make good on it.
In my pockets were several tiny bottles, the last of my purchase. According to Dread, they constituted the ideal means of dealing with unfriendly crowds. I didn’t know, never having tested them. I wasn’t sure I even recalled Dread’s instructions. It was real drunk out that night.
I told me I had another good reason for wanting out. I had to find old Milt and register a consumer complaint.
As I recalled, all I had to do was throw a bottle against a hard surface, then stand back.
I did the throwing part. My bottle missed all the boys and bounced off the wall. It skittered back into the midst of the attendants. Guys walked all over it, but it didn’t break.
My guardian angel was on the job. Cursing him, I tried again.
The second bottle broke. Gray mist boiled off the wall. It reached the attendants. They started cussing. Cussing turned to howling fast.
Meantime, my little breed volunteer slithered into the doorway so it couldn’t be closed. His job was going to get nasty if the staff got determined.
The attendants in the ward lost all interest in quieting people down. They were too busy scratching and rubbing and yelling.
Maybe Dread wasn’t a complete fraud.
I inhaled a bushel of clean air and charged. I was ashamed of me for pulling such a dirty trick. Almost. I wouldn’t take it back. If I spent much time hanging out with Ivy and the boys, I’d end up singing in the same choir.
The mist didn’t bother me much. I did start itching a little. Since I had a major headache and an acre of bruises, an itch seemed pretty trivial.
Somebody was hollering in the corridor. They’d left somebody to cover the door. He was aggravated at my breed doorstop.
Who wasn’t doing so good. The mist tended to settle. He’d gotten more than the attendants had.
Nonetheless, he fulfilled his mission.
I smashed into the door so hard I feared I’d dislocated my shoulder. Oh, damn, did that hurt! And that damned door only gave barely enough to let me skip over the whining breed.
“Surprise!” I popped the guard outside. A whole herd of patients stampeded out behind me. Those that didn’t have scores to settle with particular attendants still inside.
Naturally, luck would have another squad of staffers arriving just then. I did my banshee routine and charged. Boy, was I going to have a sore throat when all the hollering was over.
These attendants were bigger and meaner than the first bunch. There were eight of them. That put the odds in my favor because I was mad enough to whip a whole battalion. “Nothing personal, guys.” Then I recognized two of the clowns who had carried me in the wet blanket. “Like hell!”
I didn’t get a lot of help at first. Surprise did for a couple of attendants, but then the others got going. They played a game using me for a shuttlecock. My companions had been beaten too often. They held back till my nine-foot buddy jumped in.
“Oomph!” I said, breaking some guy’s knuckles with my forehead. “Took you long enough.”
It turned into a real brawl. Fists and feet and bodies flew. I skinned my knuckles to the elbow pounding handy chins and jaws. I got my own chin and jaw liberally pasted. My nose avoided rearrangement.
All that thumping was just the thing for a headache.
I had opportunities to be thankful that I have good teeth as I sank them into people who didn’t have my continued good health foremost in mind.
When the fur stopped flying and the dust settled, me and the big guy were the only ones standing. And I needed the help of a wall.
I stumbled to the door at the end of the hall, beyond the vanquished attendants. It was locked. It looked every bit as massive as the door to the ward. Well, all that work for nothing. I exchanged glances with the big guy. He grinned, said, “I told you.” He wiped blood off his face, grinned some more. “They going to have a time cleaning this one up, though. We got most of the night staff in here.”
“Fine. We’re a step closer. Let’s drag these guys into the ward.” Maybe we could use them as hostages.
All of a sudden, we had plenty of helpers. Guys turned brave, thumped heads soundly whenever an attendant threatened to wake up.
I checked the end of the hall I hadn’t checked before. Another locked oaken vault door. Of course. “I guess this just isn’t my day.” It had had its moments earlier, but the downs were starting to outweigh the ups. “Anybody want to guess how long it’ll be before they come after us again?”
The big guy shrugged. Now that the active part was over he seemed to be losing interest.
I produced two tiny folding knives that hadn’t been taken, reflected that this incident was going to generate strident calls for an investigation of how blades and sorcerous gook and whatnot had gotten to the inmates. Like there’d ever been a doubt that any inmate who could flash the cash couldn’t buy any damned thing he wanted.
An investigation might mean hope. If it was serious, it would require my testimony. That would mean the pointing of fingers at the kind of people who’d take bribes for falsely imprisoning heroes like me. Ugh! They’d be villains who’d be aware of the distress my testimony could cause their careers. Surely they’d take steps to assure a paucity of witnesses likely to testify.
I gave the big guy a knife. “Carve me some kindling out of anything wooden. If we get a decent fire going, we can burn our way through those doors.”
He grinned but without the wild eagerness he’d shown before. He was winding down.
The notion of arson did excite some of the others. We all got to work ripping the stuffing out of pallets and whittling on the ward door.
Then I suffered another brainstorm, way late, unlike the hero of an adventure story. I claim genius only because nobody else thought of the obvious first. The adventure boys would have planned it from the start. It’s one of their old tricks.
The Bledsoe staff wore uniforms, scruffy though those were.
I got my fires burning at both ends of the hall. Ivy tended them. His vocabulary didn’t improve, but he became more animated. He liked fires. He even paid attention when I said, “Use plenty of horsehair. We want plenty of smoke.” The horsehair came out of the pallets.
Ivy grinned from ear to ear. He was one fulfilled lunatic.
The people outside would have to make a move. They couldn’t wait us out once we had fires burning. Fires had to be fought.
I had to have a guy follow Ivy and make sure his fires didn’t grow too fast. Already they seemed likely to burn through the floor before they ate through the doors.
Once the smoke was thick enough, I picked an attendant my size and started trading clothes. He got the best of the deal.
My companions caught on. Soon they were squabbling over the available uniforms. I made sure Ivy and the big guy got theirs. I wanted one for the little breed who’d body-blocked the ward door, but he’d have gotten lost in a shirt.
Interesting that I had so many supporters now that it looked like I had prospects.
The smoke almost got too thick before somebody outside decided action had to be taken now.
They brought almost every warm body they had left. They burst through both doors at once, behind thrown buckets of water. They concentrated on the fires to begin, taking what lumps they must until those were extinguished, then they started whipping on anybody in arm’s reach. When they got into the ward, they started hauling fallen comrades away.
It was real exciting for a while. The issue was definitely in doubt.
The smoke got to me more than I expected. After they dragged me out and I decided it was time I made a run for it, I found that my legs were saying no way.
“Don’t. You aren’t ready yet.”
I didn’t look up and give myself away. Around me, impelled by the cunning of madness, my buddies did the same. What a team!
There were better than twelve men scattered along the hallway, many from the ward. The rest had gone down in the current invasion.
The speaker was a woman, the owner of the legs. She added, “Get the smoke out before you do anything.”
I coughed and made noises and kept my face hidden. She moved on, evidently to tend someone else who was stirring. A female doctor? How about that? I never heard of such a thing, but why not?
I scooted back till my spine found a wall, raised myself up against that, lifted my head to scope out an escape route. I kept seeing two of things when I could see through the water in my eyes. I got my feet under me again and practiced standing up till I could do it with no hands.
My chosen escape route did not become overgrown while I was catching my breath. I shoved off the wall and started staggering. There was a stairwell door straight ahead, out in the remote distance, on the far horizon, about twenty feet away. All kinds of racket came from behind it, as though thunder-lizards were mating in the stairwell. I didn’t pay the racket any mind. I didn’t have any mind left over. What I had was busy thinking “out.”
I was chugging right along, hardly ever falling down, when she of the glorious gams intercepted me. “What are you trying to do? I told you . . . Oh!”
I grinned my winningest grin. “Oh-oh.”
“Oh, my god!”
“Hey, no. I’m just a regular guy.”
Maybe she had trouble hearing over the racket from the stairwell. Or maybe she had trouble hearing over the uproar from the hall and ward. She sure didn’t get my message. She whooped and hollered like she thought she was going to get carried off by a lunatic or something.
I grabbed a wrist, mostly to keep from falling down. I noticed that she was blond and recalled that that was one of my favorites but I didn’t have oomph enough to let her know. The bleeding had stopped a long time ago, but my head wasn’t much better. The smoke hadn’t done me any good, either.
I hacked out, “Pipe down! We’re going for a walk, sister. I don’t want anybody should get hurt, but that ain’t my top priority. You get the drift? You keep on wailing—”
She shut up. Blue eyes big and beautiful, she bobbed her head.
“I’ll cut you loose at the front door. Maybe. If you’re good and I don’t get no more trouble.” Snappy rhetoric, Garrett. Your roots are showing.
I was getting the edge on the smoke, though. I was ready to bet myself she would be good. A figure like that, it burned. No. Forget fire. Fire means smoke. I just swallowed enough smoke to last forever.
I leaned on the lady like she was my sweetie. “I need your help.” Rotten to the heart, I am. But this would be our only date.
She nodded again.
Then she tripped me, the naughty girl.
And then my friend Winger blasted through that stairwell door, flinging battered orderlies ahead of her. “Goddamn, Garrett! I bust in here fixing to save your ass and what do I find? You trying to bop some bimbo in front of the whole damned world.” She grabbed my collar, hoisted me away from my latest daydream, who had gone down when I had. Winger set me on my feet, then proceeded to whip the pudding out of a burly, hirsute attendant who meant to object to the irregularity of the way she was checking me out. Between punches she grunted, “You got to get your priorities straight, Garrett.”
No point mentioning who tripped who. You don’t explain to Winger. She creates her own realities.
While she was amusing herself with the hairy orderly, I asked the lady doctor, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
She wouldn’t answer even after I apologized for playing so rough.
“For heaven’s sake, Garrett, give it a rest,” Winger snapped. “And come on.”
I went along because she grabbed hold and took off. I grabbed the blonde as we went past. Down those stairs we went, stepping over the occasional moaning attendant. Winger had come through like a natural disaster. I bubbled, “I do hope I haven’t been too much trouble. Unfortunately, I can’t hang around just because somebody out there wants me in here instead of stomping on his toes.” I put on my grim face. “When I catch up with him, I’ll make sure he gives you a big donation. Big enough to cover damages.”
Winger rolled her eyes. She didn’t slow down and she didn’t let go.
The lady of the legs said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Winger grumbled, “As serious as he can get when he’s in rut.”
My new friend and I ignored her. I said, “That’s right. I find things for people. Just this morning, a lady from the Hill asked me to find her daughter. I’d barely started looking when a band of ruffians set upon me. Next thing I knew, I was coming to and there you were and I thought I’d died and gone to one of those afterlives where they have angels, only my head hurt too much.”
“I risked life and limb for this,” Winger muttered. “Your head is about to hurt a whole lot more.”
The lady doc looked at me like she really wanted to believe. She said, “He does spread it thick, doesn’t he?”
“With a manure rake,” Winger growled, reverting to uncultured country ways. You can take the girl out of the sticks, and so forth.
I said, “You ever feel the need to get in touch, just go up Macunado Street. When you get to Wizard’s Reach, start asking around for where the Dead Man stays.”
The lady offered a weak smile. “I might do that. I just might. Just to see what happens.”
“Fireworks. For sure.”
Winger suggested, “Save yourself for marriage, honey. If there’s anything left.”
The lady’s smile vanished.
You can’t win them all. You especially can’t when you have friends intent on throwing the game.
We’d reached the street in front of the Bledsoe. I tried to sprint off into the night at a fast shamble. I figured I ought to make tracks before some avenging orderly appeared.
After I’d gone a few steps, Winger observed, “That was the most disgusting display I’ve seen yet, Garrett. Don’t you ever stop?”
“We have to get out of here.” I glanced over my shoulder at the Bledsoe. A glimpse of the place nearly panicked me. That had been close. “We got to disappear before they send somebody after us.”
“You think they’re not going to know where to look? You all but gave that bimbo your address.”
“Hey! You’re talking about the love of my life. She won’t give me away.” I didn’t let her see my crossed fingers.
Winger shifted ground. “Why would they bother, anyway? Really?”
At this point, they probably wouldn’t. Anything they did now was likely to draw more attention than they could stand.
I shrugged. That’s always a useful, noncommital device.