Scanned by wicman99; proofed by Nadie. If you enjoyed this e-text, why not consider buying a print copy?
When I shoved through the doorway of Morley’s Joy House you’d have thought I was the old dude in black who lugs the sickle. The place went dead quiet. I stopped moving. I couldn’t push uphill against the weight of all those stares. “Somebody sneak lemons into your salads?”
Quick check of the talent. It looked like somebody with an ugly stick had gone berserk. That or those guys spent a lot of time diving into walls and shaving themselves with hatchets. I saw enough scars and bent noses to open me a sideshow.
The Joy House boasts that kind of clientele.
“Aw, damn! It’s Garrett.” That was my pal Puddle, safe behind the bar. “Here we go again, troops.” Puddle goes two-eighty, maybe more. His skin is the hue of somebody who’s been dead awhile. You ask me, rigor mortis set in above the neck twenty years back.
Several dwarves, an ogre, miscellaneous elves, and a couple of guys of indeterminate ancestry chugged their sauerkraut cocktails and headed for the door. Guys I didn’t even know. Guys who knew me did their damnedest to pretend they didn’t. A murmur spread as the ones who didn’t know me got clued in.
What a charge for the ego. Call me Typhoid Garrett.
“Hi, everybody,” I chirped, going for cheerful. “Ain’t it a grand night out?” It wasn’t. It was raining cats and dogs and the critters were quarreling all the way to the ground. I had dents in my head from random volleys of hailstones, not being bright enough to wear a hat. On the plus side, flash floods might clear the garbage festering in the streets. Some of that was ready to get up and walk.
The city ratmen get lazier every day.
“Hey, Garrett! Come on over.”
Well. A friendly face. “Saucerhead, old buddy, old pal.” I steered for the shadowy corner table Tharpe shared with another guy. I hadn’t spotted him because of the gloom back there. Even close up I couldn’t make much of Tharpe’s companion. The guy wore heavy black robes, like some species of priest, complete with cowl. He exuded gloom like a miasma. He wasn’t the kind you’d have over to liven up a party.
“Drag up a chair,” Tharpe said. I don’t know why he’s called Saucerhead. He don’t like it much but ranks it higher than “Waldo,” which a parent or two hung on him.
I planted my behind. Tharpe’s companion observed, “Seems you’re less than welcome here. Are you diseased?” He wasn’t just gloomy, he was forthright, a social handicap worse than bad breath.
“Ha!” Saucerhead snorted. “Ha-ha-ha. That’s good, Licks. Hell. This’s Garrett. I told you about him.”
“The mist begins to clear.” But not around him, it didn’t.
“I’m starting to feel a little hurt here,” I said. “You’re wrong.” Louder, “You’re all of you wrong. I’m not working. I’m not into anything. I just thought I’d drop in and catch up on my friends.” They didn’t believe me.
At least nobody cracked wise about me not having any friends.
Saucerhead said, “If you’d come around and socialize sometimes, instead of just when you’re up to your crack in crocodiles, maybe folks would smile when they saw you.”
Grumble grumble. Hard to argue with that. “You’re looking good, Garrett. Lean and mean. Still working out?”
“Yeah.” More grumbles. I don’t much like work. Especially not workout-type work. I figure in any rational world a man will get all the exercise he needs catching his share of blonds, brunettes, and redheads. Got it so far? I’m Garrett, investigator and confidential agent, not animated by any overwhelming ambition, with a penchant for figures of a certain kind and a knack for stumbling into things friends and acquaintances don’t find enthralling. I’m a young thirty, six-feet-two, ginger-haired and blue-eyed, and the dogs don’t howl when I go by, though the hazards of my profession have left traces which give my face character. I say I’m charming. My friends disagree, say I just won’t take life serious. Well, you do too much of that and you end up as dark as this friend of Saucerhead’s.
Puddle arrived with a huge tankard of my favorite food, that divine elixir that makes it necessary for me to work out. He’d drawn it from his private keg, hidden behind the bar. The Joy House doesn’t serve anything but rabbit food and the squeezings thereof. Morley Dotes is a rabid vegetarian.
I took a long drink of bitter beer. “You’re a prince, Puddle.” I fished out a silver mark.
“Yeah. I’m in line for the throne.” He didn’t pretend to make change. A prince indeed. You could buy a pony keg wholesale for that, the price of silver being what it is. “How come you’re in here instead of gamboling through acres of redheads?” My last big case involved whole squads of that delightful subspecies. Unfortunately, only one of the bunch turned out palatable. Redheads are that way. They’re either devils or angels—and the angels are no angels. I think it’s because they try living up to an image from an early age.
“Gamboling, Puddle?” Where did Puddle pick up a word like “gamboling”? The man had trouble with his own name on account of it had more than one syllable. “You been going to school or something?”
Puddle just grinned.
I asked, “What is this, teak on Tommy Tucker night? With easygoing old Garrett playing Tommy?”
Puddle’s grin widened into an unappealing smear of rotten and missing teeth. He was one guy who should convert and become one of Morley’s born-again vegetarians.
Saucerhead said, “You make yourself a fat target.”
“I must. For everybody. You hear what Dean did?”
Dean is the old boy who keeps house for me and my partner and cooks for me. He’s about seventy. He’d make somebody a fine wife.
While we jawed, Tharpe’s tablemate filled and tamped, filled and tamped the biggest damn pipe I ever saw. It had a bowl like a bucket. Puddle snagged a brass coal bucket off the bar. Licks used copper tongs to transfer one small coal to his pipe. He puffed clouds of weed smoke potent enough to sky us all.
“Musicians,” Saucerhead muttered, as though that explained the ills of the world. “I didn’t hear, Garrett. What’s he done now? Found you another cat?” Dean was going through a stray-collecting spell. I’d had to get firm to keep from ending up up to my belt buckle in cat hair.
“Worse. He says he’s moving in. Like I don’t get a vote. And he goes on about it like he’s making some kind of supreme sacrifice.”
Saucerhead chuckled. “There goes your extra room. No place left to stash you a spare honey. Poor baby. Gots to make do with one at a time.”
Grumble grumble. “Ain’t like I’m overstocked. I been doing with none at a time since Tinnie and Winger ran into each other on my front steps.” Puddle laughed. Heathen.
Tharpe asked, “What about Maya?”
“I haven’t seen her in six months. I think she left town. It’s me and Eleanor now.” Eleanor is a painting on my office wall. I love the gal but she has her limitations. Everybody thought my situation was hilarious—except Tharpe’s friend. He wasn’t hearing anybody but himself anymore. He started humming. I decided he couldn’t be much of a musician. He couldn’t carry a tune in a handcart.
Puddle stopped snickering long enough to say, “I knew you was up to something. Not your usual, but you still looking to get bailed out.”
“Damnit, I just wanted out of the house. Dean is driving me buggo and the Dead Man won’t take a nap on account of he’s expecting Glory Mooncalled to do something and he don’t want to miss the news. I defy anybody to put up with those two for half as long as I have.”
“Yeah, you do got a hard life.” Saucerhead sneered. “My heart goes out. Tell you what. I’ll trade you. I take your place, you take mine. I’ll throw in Billie.” Billie being his current flame, a little bit of a blond with temper enough for a platoon of redheads.
“Do I detect a note of disenchantment?”
“No. You detect the whole damned opera.”
“Thanks anyway. Maybe next time.” Saucerhead’s place was a one-room walk-up without furniture enough for company. I lived in places like that before I scored big enough to buy the house I share with the Dead Man.
Saucerhead tucked his thumbs into his belt, leaned back, smirked and nodded, nodded and smirked. A smirk on his ugly face is a wonder to behold. He ever holds one too long the Crown might declare it a national park. He claims he’s all human, but from his size and looks you’ve got to suspect he has a little troll or giant in him. “You ain’t ready to deal, Garrett, I can’t say I got a lot of sympathy for you.”
“I could’ve gone to some second-rate swillhouse and drowned my sorrows in ardent spirits, pouring my woes into the ears of sympathetic strangers, but no, I had to come down here . . . ”
“That works for me,” Puddle kicked in when I hit the part about ardent spirits. “Don’t let us hold you up.”
I never did count him as a friend. He just came with my friend Morley—though Morley’s friendship can be suspect enough. “You take the joy out of the Joy House, Puddle.”
“Hey, Garrett. The place was rocking till you walked in.”
Saucerhead’s pal Licks wasn’t even gurgling now, but he kept puffing like a volcano and grinning. I was getting the smoke secondhand but was ready to start humming myself. I lost track of what I was saying, started wondering why the place was called the Joy House, which made it sound a lot more exotic than the vegetarian hangout it is.
Licks suddenly shot up like he’d been goosed. He headed for the door, sort of floating, as though his toes barely reached the floor. I’d never seen anyone do weed so heavy. I asked Tharpe, “Where’d you find him?”
“Licks? He found me. Him and some other guys want to organize the musicians.”
“Say no more.” I could imagine their interest in Saucerhead. Tharpe makes his living convincing people. His technique involves bending limbs in unnatural directions.
Two or three Morleys descended the stair from the second floor, staring toward Licks as the musician hit the exit. Morley had heard about me. Puddle had warned him through the speaking tube to his office upstairs. Hard to tell through the smoke, but Dotes looked irked.
Morley is a breed, part dark-elf, part human. The elf side dominates. He’s short, trim, so handsome it’s a sin. And sin he does, as often as he can with anybody’s wife who’ll hold still. He’d grown a little pencil-stroke mustache. He had his black hair slicked back. He was dressed to kill—though his type looks good in anything. He drifted our way, showing a lot of pointy teeth.
“What’s that thing living under your nose?”
Saucerhead offered a crude suggestion. Morley ignored him. “You quit working, Garrett? You haven’t been around.”
“Why work if I don’t have to?” I tried looking smug—though my finances weren’t comfortable. It costs to keep house.
“You have something going?” He occupied the chair vacated by Licks, waved at persistent weed smoke.
“Not hardly.” I gave him my sad tale of woe. He laughed too.
“Imaginative, Garrett. I almost believe you. I have to admit, when you make them up they sound like things that could happen. So what is it? Something hush-hush? I haven’t heard about anything shaking. This town’s getting dull.”
He talked that long only because I was stammering. “Damn! Not you too!”
“You never come around except when you need muscle to hoist you out of a hole you’ve dug yourself.”
Not fair. Not true. I’ve even gone so far as to eat some of the cow chow his joint serves. Once I even paid for it. “You don’t believe me? Then tell me this. Where’s the woman?”
“What woman?” Dotes and Saucerhead and Puddle all grinned like shiteating possums. Thought they had me on the run.
“You claim I’m working. Where’s the woman? I get into one of my weird cases, there’s always a lovely around. Right? So you see a honey on my arm? Hell, my luck’s so bad I’d almost go to work just to . . . Huh?”
They weren’t paying attention. They were staring at something behind me.
She liked black. She wore a black raincloak over a black dress. She wore high-top black boots. Raindrops shimmered like diamonds in her raven hair. She wore black leather gloves. I imagined she’d lost a black hat and veil somewhere. Everything about her was black except her face. That was as pale as bone. She was about five-six. She was young. She was beautiful. She was frightened.
I said, “I’m in love.”
Morley’s sense of humor deserted him. He told me, “You don’t want anything to do with her, Garrett. She’ll get you dead.”
The woman’s gaze, arrogant from amazing black eyes, passed over us as though we didn’t exist. She chose to perch at a table isolated from those that were occupied. Some of Morley’s patrons shivered as she passed, pretended they didn’t see her.
Interesting.
I looked some more. She was about twenty. She wore lip paint so red it looked like fresh blood. That and her pallor gave me a chill. But no. No vampire would dare TunFaire’s inhospitable streets.
I was intrigued. Why was she afraid? Why did she scare those thugs? “Know her, Morley?”
“No. I don’t. But I know who she is.”
“So?”
“She’s the kingpin’s kid. I saw her out there last month.”
“Chodo’s daughter?” I was stunned. Also a lot less romantically inclined.
Chodo Contague is TunFaire’s emperor of crime. If it’s on society’s underbelly and there’s a profit in it, Chodo has a piece of it.
“Yes.”
“You went out there? You saw him?”
“Yes.” He sounded a little vague, there.
“He’s really alive, then.” I’d heard but I’d had trouble believing it.
See, my last case, the one with all the redheads, ended up with me and my friend Winger and Chodo’s two top lifetakers going after the bastard. Winger and I took a powder before the dirty deed, figuring we’d be next if we hung around. When we left, Crask and Sadler had the old boy ready to go on the meathook. But it hadn’t taken. Chodo was still boss wazoo. Crask and Sadler were still his top headcrushers, like they’d never had a thought of putting him to sleep.
That worried me. Chodo had seen me plain enough. He wasn’t the forgiving sort.
“Chodo’s daughter! What’s she doing in a dump like this?”
“What do you mean, a dump like this?” You can’t even hint that the Joy House might be less than top of the mark without Morley gets his back up.
“I mean, obviously she thinks she’s a class act. Whatever you or I think, she’s got to figure this’s a dive. This isn’t the Hill, Morley. It’s the Safety Zone.”
That’s Morley’s neighborhood. The Safety Zone. It’s an area where folks of disparate species get together for business reasons with a lessened risk of getting murdered. It’s not your upper-crust part of town.
All the time we’re rattling our mouths, whispering, I’m trying to think of some good excuse for going over there and telling the girl she’s made me her love slave. And all the time I’m doing that, my little voice is telling me: don’t make a damned fool of yourself, any kid of Chodo’s is going to be murder on the hoof.
I must have twitched. Morley grabbed my arm. “You’re getting desperate, hit the Tenderloin.”
Common sense. Don’t stick your hand in a fire. I hung on to my ration of sense. I settled back. I had it under control. But I couldn’t help staring.
The front door exploded inward. Two very large brunos brought half the storm in with them. They held the door open for a third man, who came in slow, like he was onstage. He was shorter by a couple of inches but no less muscular. Somebody had used his face to draw a map with a knife. One eye was half-shut permanently. His upper lip was drawn into a perpetual sneer. He radiated nasty. “Oh, boy,” Morley said.
“Know them?”
“I know the type.”
Saucerhead said it for me. “Don’t we all.”
The scar-faced guy looked around. He spotted the girl. He started moving. Somebody yelled, “Shut the goddamned door!” The two heavies there took their first good look around and got a read on what kind of people hang out in a place like the Joy House. They shut the door.
I didn’t blame them. Some very bad people hang out at Morley’s place.
Scarface didn’t care. He approached the girl. She refused to see him. He bent, whispered something. She started, then looked him in the eye. She spat. Chodo’s kid for sure.
Scarface smiled. He was pleased. He had him an excuse.
There wasn’t a sound in the place when he yanked her out of the seat. She betrayed pain by expression but didn’t make a sound.
Morley said, “That’s it.” His voice was soft. Dangerous. You don’t mess with his customers. Scarface must not have known where he was. He ignored Morley. Most times that’s a fatal error. He was lucky, maybe.
Morley moved. The thugs from the doorway got in his way.
Dotes kicked one in the temple. The guy was twice his size but went down like he’d been whacked with a sledge. The other one made the mistake of grabbing Morley.
Saucerhead and I started moving a second after Dotes did. We circled the action, chasing the scar-faced character. Morley didn’t need help. And if he did, Puddle was behind the bar acquiring some engine of destruction.
Rain hit me in the face, like to drove me back inside. It was worse than it had been when I’d arrived.
“There,” Saucerhead said, pointing. I spied the loom of a dark coach, figures struggling as Scarface tried to force the girl inside.
We pranced over, me unlimbering my favorite oak headknocker as we went. I never leave home without it. Eighteen inches long, it has a pound of lead in its business end. Very effective, and it don’t usually leave bodies littering the street.
Saucerhead beat me there. He grabbed the scar-faced guy from behind, twirled him around, and threw him against the nearest building with a force that drowned the rattle of distant thunder. I slithered into the vacated space, grabbed the girl.
Somebody was trying to drag her into the coach. I slipped my left arm around her waist, pulled, pushed my headknocker past her, figuring I’d pop a bad boy between the eyes.
I saw eyes, all right. Eyes like out of some spook story, full of green fire, three times too big for the wizened little character who wore them. He had to be a hundred and ninety. But he was strong. He hung on to the girl’s arm with hands like bird claws, pulled her in despite her and me both.
I swished my billy around, trying to avoid seeing those eyes because they were poisonous. They scared hell out of me. Made me feel cold all the way down to my tail-bone. And I don’t scare easy.
I got him a good one upside the head. His grip weakened. That gave me a chance to line up another shot. I let him have it.
His mouth opened wide, but instead of a scream, butterflies poured out. I mean like about a million and two butterflies, so many the coach was filled. They were all over me. I stumbled back, flailed around. I’d never been bitten by a butterfly, but who knew about the kind that come flapping out of some old geek’s mouth?
Saucerhead pulled the girl away from me, tossed me back like a rag doll, dived in there, and pulled that old guy out. You don’t want to get in Saucerhead’s way when he’s riled. He breaks things.
The old man’s eyes had lost their fire. Saucerhead lifted him with one hand, said, “What the hell you think you’re pulling, Gramps?” and tossed him over to ricochet off the same wall that had been Scarface’s undoing. Then Tharpe went over and started kicking, one for this guy, one for that, no finesse. I heard ribs crack. I figured I ought to calm him down before he killed somebody, only I couldn’t think how. I didn’t want to get in his way when he was in that mood. And I still had a flock of soggy butterflies after me.
Tharpe calmed himself down. He grabbed the old man by the scruff of the neck and pitched him into the coach. The old boy made a sound like a whipped puppy. Tharpe tossed Scarf ace in on top of him, then looked up. There wasn’t anybody on the driver’s seat, so he just whacked the nearest horse on the rump and yelled.
The team took off.
Hunching down against the rain, Tharpe turned to me. “Takes care of those clowns. Hey! What happened to the girl?”
She was gone.
“Damned ingrate. There’s a broad for you. Hell.” He looked up, let the rain fall into his face a moment, then said, “I’m going to get my stuff. Then what say you and me go get drunk and get in a fight?”
“I thought we just had a fight.”
“Bah. Bunch of candyasses. Wimps. Come on.”
I had no intention of going trouble-hunting. But it did seem like a good idea to get in out of the rain, away from the butterflies. I told you I hadn’t used up my ration of sense.
One of the two thugs was blocking the water flow in the gutter in front of Morley’s door. The second came flying out as we started in. “Hey!” Tharpe yelled. “Watch where you’re throwing your trash.”
I looked around inside. The girl hadn’t gone back in there. Morley and Puddle and I settled down to wonder what it was all about. Saucerhead went off looking for a real challenge.
I did my best to get my money’s worth out of Puddle’s keg while Morley and I dissected cabbages and kings and butterflies and the old days that never were that good—though I’d had me a moment now and then. We solved the ills of the world but decided there was nobody in authority with sense enough to implement our program. We were disinclined to take on the job ourselves.
Women proved a topic of brief duration. Morley’s recent luck undershone my own. It was too much to take, seeing that great blob Puddle tipped back in his chair, thumbs hooked in his belt, grinning smugly in regard to his own endeavors.
The rain continued relentless. At last I had to face facts. I was going to get wet again. I was going to get a lot wet if Dean failed to respond to my pounding and whooping at the door. With set jaw and scant optimism I took my leave of Morley and his establishment. Dotes looked as smug as his man. He was home already.
I hunched my chin down against my chest and wished I’d had the sense to wear a hat. I wear one so seldom it doesn’t occur to me to top myself off when that would be wise. Right away rain started sneaking down the back of my neck.
I paused where we’d rescued Chodo’s mysterious daughter from her more mysterious assailants. There wasn’t much light. The rain had swept away most of the evidence. I poked around and was on the verge of deciding half had been my imagination before I found one big bedraggled butterfly. I salvaged the cadaver and carried it as carefully as I could, cradled in my left palm.
My place is an old red brick house in a once-prosperous stretch of Macunado Street, near Wizard’s Reach. The middle-class types have all abandoned ship. Most of the neighboring places have been subdivided and rented to families with herds of kids. Usually when I approach my house I pause to inspect it and reflect on the good fortune that let me survive the case that paid me enough to buy it. But cold rain down the back of the neck has a way of sapping nostalgia.
I scampered up the steps and gave the secret knock, bam-bam-bam, as hard as I could while bellowing, “Open up, Dean! I’m going to drown out here.” A big flash of lightning. Thunder rattled my teeth in their sockets. The sky lords hadn’t been feuding before, just tuning up for another Great Flood. Thunder and lightning suggested they were about to get serious. I pounded and yelled some more. The stoop isn’t protected from the weather.
Maybe my ears were still ringing. I thought I heard something like a kitten crying inside. I knew it couldn’t be a cat. I’d given Dean the word about his strays. He wouldn’t lapse.
I heard shuffling and whispering inside. I did some more yelling. “Open this damned door, Dean. It’s cold out here.” I didn’t threaten. Mom Garrett didn’t raise no kids dumb enough to lay threats on somebody who could just go back to bed and leave me singing in the rain.
The door creaked open after a symphony of curses and clanking bolts and rattling chains. Old Dean stood there eyeing me from beneath drooping lids. He looked about two hundred right then. He is around seventy. And real spry for a guy his age.
If he wasn’t going to get out of the way I was going to walk over him. I started moving. He slid aside. I told him, “The cat goes as soon as the rain stops.” I tried to sound like it was him or the kitten.
He started rattling bolts and chains. I stopped. All that hadn’t been there before. “What’s all the hardware?”
“I don’t feel comfortable living somewhere where all there is is one or two latches to keep the thieves out.”
We needed to have us a talk about assuming and presuming. I knew damned well he didn’t buy that hardware out of his own pocket. But now wasn’t the time. I wasn’t at my best.
“What’s that you’ve got?”
I’d forgotten the butterfly. “Drowned butterfly.” I took it into my office, a shoe box of a room behind the last door to your left heading back to the kitchen. Dean hobbled after me, bringing a candle. He has decrepitude down to an art. It’s amazing how incapacitated he gets when he has a scam running.
I used his candle to light a lamp. “Go back to bed.”
He glanced at the closed door of the small front room, a door we shut only when there’s somebody or something in there we don’t want seen. Something was scratching its other side. Dean said, “I’m wide-awake now. I might as well get some work done.” He didn’t look wideawake. “You plan to be up long?”
“No. I’m just going to study this bug, then kiss Eleanor good night.” Eleanor was a beautiful, sad woman who lived once upon a time. Her portrait hangs behind my desk. I go on like we’re into a relationship. That drives Dean buggy.
I have to balance the scale somehow.
I settled into my worn leather chair. Like everything else around my place, including the house, it was secondhand. It was just getting adjusted to a new butt. Just getting comfortable, I pushed my accounts aside, spread the butterfly on my desk.
Dean waited in the doorway till he saw I wouldn’t react to the accounts being out. Then he huffed off to the kitchen.
I popped a quick peek at the last entry, made a face. That didn’t look good. But go to work? Gah! Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof.
Meantime, there was this raggedy old green butterfly. It could’ve been a beauty before, but now its wings were cracked and chipped and split, bent and washed out. A disaster. I suffered a moment of déjà vu.
I’d seen its cousins in the islands while I was doing my five years in the Royal Marines. There’re a lot in the swamps down there. There’s every kind of bug the gods ever imagined, except maybe arctic roaches. Maybe creation was handled by a heavenly committee. In areas where departmental turfs overlapped, the divine functionaries went to competing. And they all for sure dumped their bug-production overruns in those tropical swamps.
But the heck with the bad old days. I’m all growed-up now. What I had to ask was, what was I doing with the flutterbug in the first place?
I was definitely, for sure, guaranteed, not even a little bit interested in anything involving dried-up old geezers with stomachs so sour they belched up butterflies. I’d done my good deed for the decade. I’d rescued the maiden fair. It was time to get on with things dearer my heart, like hustling Dean’s latest fuzzball charity out my back door.
I swept the bug cadaver into the trash bucket, leaned back, started thinking how nice it would be to put myself away in my nice soft bed.
Garrett!
“Hell!” Every time I forget my so-called partner . . .
The Dead Man hangs out in the larger front room that takes up the whole front side of the house opposite my office, an area as big as my office and the small front room together. A lot of space for a guy who hasn’t moved since before TunFaire was called TunFaire. I’m thinking about putting him in the basement with the other junk that was here when I moved in.
I went into his room. A lamp was burning there. That was a surprise. Dean doesn’t like going in there. I glanced around suspiciously.
The room contains only two chairs and two small tables, though the walls are hidden by shelves of books and maps and memorabilia. One chair is mine. The other has a permanent resident.
If you walk in not knowing what to expect, the Dead Man can be a shock. First, there’s just a whole hell of a lot of him. Four hundred and fifty pounds’ worth. Second, he’s not human, he’s Loghyr. Since he’s the only one of that tribe I’ve ever seen, I don’t know if he’d set the Loghyr girls swooning, but by my standards he’s one homely sucker. Like he was the practice dummy when the guy with the ugly stick was doing his apprenticeship.
After fat you notice he’s got a snoot like an elephant, fourteen inches long. Then you notice that the moths and mice have nibbled him over the years.
The reason he’s called the Dead Man is that he’s dead. Somebody stuck a knife in him about four hundred years ago. But Loghyr just don’t get in a hurry. His soul, or whatever, is still hanging around in his body.
I gather you have had an adventure.
Since he’s dead, he can’t talk, but he doesn’t let that slow him down. He just thinks right into my head. He can also go rummaging around in there, amongst the clutter and spiders, if he wants. Mostly he’s courteous enough to keep out unless he’s invited.
I took another look around. The place was too clean. Dean had even dusted the Dead Man.
Something was up. Those two had gotten their heads together. That was a first. That was scary.
I’m nothing if not cool. I covered my suspicion perfectly. Knowing it was going to be something I wouldn’t like, I decided to get even first.
The Dead Man made a big mistake when he taught me to remember every little detail of everything when I was working. I started talking about my evening.
The theoretical basis of our association is I do the legwork and suffer the slings and arrows and thumps on the head and he takes whatever I learn and runs it through his self-proclaimed genius brains and tells me whodunit or where the body is buried or whatever it is I’m trying to find out. That’s the theoretical basis. In practice, he’s lazier than I am. I have to threaten to burn the house down just to wake him up.
I was dwelling in lingering detail upon the charms of the strange Miss Contague when suspicion bit him. Garrett!
He knows me too well. “Yes?” Sweetly.
What are you doing?
“Filling you in on some odd occurrences.”
Occurrences, incidentally, of but passing interest. Unless your passions have overcome your brain yet again. You could not possibly be considering involving yourself with those people, could you?
I thought about lying just to rattle his chain. We do a lot of that, back and forth. It passes the time. But I said, “There are limits to how much I’ll let a skirt override my good sense.”
Indeed? I am amazed and surprised. I had concluded that you have no sense at all, good or bad.
We do get going. Usually it’s play, wit and half-wit. It’s up to you to guess who’s who.
“One point for you, Old Bones. I’m going to go put myself on the shelf for the night. If Dean explodes in another mad burst of energy and decides to dust you again, tell him he can wake me at noon.” I have this thing about mornings. No sane man gets up then. They come too damned early in the day.
Think about it. All those early birds out there, what do they get? Ulcers. Heart trouble. Caught by homeless cats. But not me. Not old Garrett. I’m going to lean back and relax and loaf my way to immortality.
I wish you could sleep in. After your valiant rescue job and your heroic attempt to turn a profit off that Puddle creature, you deserve a reward.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re about to stick it to me? Why shouldn’t I sleep in? I don’t have anything else to do.”
You have to be at the gate of the Al-Khar at eight o’clock.
“Say what?” The Al-Khar is the city prison. TunFaire is notoriously short on law enforcement and justice, but once in a while some clown is so clumsy he stumbles into the arms of the Watch. Once in a while some brain-damage case actually gets himself some time. “What the hell for? There’s people up there don’t like me.”
If you were to avoid every place where someone does not like you, you would have to leave town in order to find room to breathe. You will be there because you have to tail a man who is to be released at eight.
I had it scoped out. Him and Dean had found me work on account of they were worried about our dwindling funds. The brass-bottomed nerve! They were both getting big-headed. But sometimes it helps to play dumb. I’m a past master at playing dumb. I’m so good I fool myself sometimes. “What would I want to do that for?”
Three marks a day and expenses. It should take only a modicum of creativity to shift our household budget into the latter category.
I got down and peered under his chair. There were still a couple little sacks down there. “We aren’t broke yet.” That’s where we keep our cash. There’s no place safer. Any thief who gets past the Dead Man is somebody so bad I don’t want to mess with him anyway. “If I kick Dean and his cat out and cook for myself, that’d be beer money for months.”
Garrett.
“Yeah. Yeah.” It really was getting time to hustle up some money. Only I didn’t like the idea of jobs being handed to me. I’m the senior partner in this chicken outfit. The boss. Har. “Tell me about it. And while you’re doing that, put one of your spare brains to work thinking about who keeps a roof over whose ungrateful head.”
Phsaw! Do not be petty. This is the ideal job. A simple tail. The client simply wishes to trace the movements of the convict.
“Right! So this clown makes me, leads me into an alley, practices the latest dance steps on my face . . . ”
This man is not violent. Nor should he expect to be followed. It is easy money, Garrett. Take it.
“If it’s that easy, why me? Why not Saucerhead? He always needs work.” I sent a lot his way.
We need the money. Get some rest. You will be rising early.
“Maybe.” How come it’s me that has to get out and do the hustling? “But first, how about you drop me one or two more hints here? Like maybe a description. Just in case more than one guy graduates from college tomorrow. Like maybe the initials of the guy who’s hiring me. So I can practice my deducing and figure out who I’m supposed to report to.”
The client is one Bishoff Hullar . . .
“Oh, great. You got me working for a sleazy taxi-dance operator from the Tenderloin. Bring me down in the world, why don’t you? I used to play with real villains, like Chodo and his boys. Who do I follow? Somebody who stiffed one of his girls? And why?”
The target is one Barking Dog Amato. A colorful name . . .
“Gods! Barking Dog? You got to be kidding.”
You know him?
“Not personally. I know who he is. I thought everybody over ten knew Barking Dog Amato.”
I do not get out much anymore.
I resisted temptation. He’d want me to be his wheels. “Barking Dog Amato. AKA Crackpot Amato. Given name, Kropotkin F. Amato. I don’t know what the F stands for. Probably Fruitcake. The man’s a total loony. Spends all his time hanging around the Chancery steps with a brass megaphone, yelling about how the powers that be swindled his ancestors. He’s got a whole roadshow he hauls around, signs and banners and displays. He hands out broadsides to anybody who gets close enough to let him shove one at him. He’s got conspiracy theories that boggle master conspiracy theorists. He can connect anything up with anything and produce a diabolical plot to rule the world or fleece Kropotkin Amato of his birthright. He’s big on the Emperor being behind everything.”
The empire that preceded the Karentine state fell ages ago, but there’s still an imperial family hanging around awaiting the call. Its only influence on today’s world is it provides some small funding for the Bledsoe charity hospital. Nobody but Barking Dog could imagine them being secret masters of anything.
Interesting.
“Entertaining. In small doses. But if you get too close you’ll get grabbed and told the whole story of how his noble family got defrauded of its title and estates. Hell. His father was a butcher down on Winterslight. His mother was some kind of breed out of the Bustee. The only conspiracy that victimized him was the one that got us all. Conscription and the war. He started his barking after they mustered him out.”
Then the man is harmless, a deluded fool?
“That’d cover it. As harmless, deluded, and foolish as they come. One of our more entertaining street characters. Which is why they let him hang out with his megaphone.”
How did this harmless fool get himself thrown into jail? Why would anyone want him shadowed? Can he be more than he seems?
I was working on that already.
It had been a while since I’d seen the Barking Dog in action. But then, I hadn’t been onto his turf.
I hadn’t missed him. He wasn’t the sort anyone would miss if he disappeared. Maybe once in a while somebody would ask: whatever happened to that cacklehead what used to howl on the Chancery steps? He’d get a shrug and forget it. Nobody would get excited and go looking.
I was sure Barking Dog would have inventive things to say about his prison time. Maybe devils from another world were after him now. He’d never rattled anybody from this world enough to get himself locked up. Maybe it was Venageti secret agents. Or the little people. Or the gods themselves. The god gang don’t need excuses to turn malicious.
“I’m going to bed, Chuckles.” I got out before he could change my mind, muttering, “Three marks a day to tail Barking Dog Amato. It can’t be true.”
The foot of the stairs is just a couple steps from the kitchen door. I leaned in to wish Dean a good night. “After you get rid of that cat, start thinking about the floor in the Dead Man’s room, since you two are such good buddies now. It could use sanding and refinishing.”
He looked at me like he was seeing spooks.
I chuckled, headed for bed. He pulled any more stunts, I’d have him in there for three months, sanding and polishing and painting and generally getting himself a good dose of employer vengeance.
I hit my room, shucked my clothes, brooded about having to go to work for about as long as it took me to plop my head into my pillow. Insomnia isn’t one of my shortcomings.
There are those, old Dean among them, whose major personality flaw is a compulsion to spring up with the first bird chirp. That’s a dandy habit—if you’ve got to get to the worms first. Me, I swore off exotic chow when I parted ways with the Corps. I won’t get into that situation again.
Dean suffers from the delusion that sleeping till noon is a sin. I’ve tried and tried to show him the light, but his brain hardened along with his arteries. He flat won’t admit the truth of my theories. No fool like an old fool.
I made the error of observing that aloud.
Hell, it was barely sunup. You expect me to think at that time of night?
I got me a drizzle of ice water down my spine.
I screamed. I cussed. I said stuff to set dear old mom spinning in her grave.
I got up, to no avail. The old boy had him a head start.
I sat on the edge of my bed, put my elbows on my knees and my forehead in my hands. I asked the gods, which I believe in once a week, what I’d done to deserve Dean. Hadn’t I always been one of the good guys? Come on, fellows. Let’s all play a prank on the universe and let true justice reign for a day. Get that old sucker.
I blinked. Between the heels of my hands I glimpsed Dean peeking around the doorframe. “Time to get up, Mr. Garrett. You have to be outside the Al-Khar in two hours. I’ve started breakfast.”
My suggestion about breakfast reversed the traditional alimentary process. He wasn’t impressed.
He clumped downstairs. I groaned vigorously and stumbled to a window. There was barely enough light to see. The city ratmen were banging and clanging their trash carts while they pretended to do something useful. A herd of dwarves hustled past, carrying bundles bigger than they were. They were a sullen, surly, silent gang. See what getting up early does?
Except for dwarves and street sweepers, the thoroughfare was barren. Sane folk were still in bed.
Only impending poverty kept me from easing back into mine.
What the hell? I could turn old Barking Dog into a career. Anybody dumb enough to have him tailed deserved to have his purse looted. Sure be safer than most jobs that come my way.
I prettied myself up and moseyed downstairs. I paused outside the kitchen to put on a heavyweight scowl—though at that time of night, if my rest is disturbed, scowling comes naturally.
Which did me no good. I stepped into the smells of spicy sausages, stewed apples, fresh hot tea, biscuits just out of the oven. I didn’t have a chance.
He won’t cook like that when I’m not working. I’m just hanging around, it’s maybe a bowl of cold porridge developing a crust. If I want fresh tea, I’ve got to put the pot on myself.
What do you do with these work-ethic fanatics? I mean, I don’t mind if he busts his butt working for me—which I’ve never noticed him doing. My problem is, he’s one of those characters who want to redesign the rest of us. His ambition is to see me collapse from overwork, rich, before my thirty-first birthday. I’m going to fool him. That won’t never come. I’m going to stay thirty forever.
I ate. Too much. Dean hummed as he cleaned his pots. He was happy. I was employed. I felt abused, trivialized. Such a vast array of talents and skills wasted trailing a nut case. It was like using a rosewood four-by-four to swat flies.
Dean was of such good cheer about my employment that he forgot to kvetch till I was halfway through my second helping of apples. “You go past the Tate compound to get to the Al-Khar don’t you, Mr. Garrett?”
Oh-oh. When he Misters me he knows I won’t like what he’s got to say. This time he was pretty transparent. “Not today.” He was going to nudge me to make up with Tinnie. Which I wasn’t going to do on account of I’d decided I was done apologizing to women for things I didn’t do. “Tinnie wants to make up, she knows where to find me.”
“But . . . ”
I got up. “Something you need to think about, Dean. Maybe while you’re finding a home for that cat. And that’s what you’ll do if I suddenly find me a wife to manage the house.” That would hold him.
I headed for the front door. I didn’t get there. The Dead Man’s voice rang in my head. You are leaving without taking adequate precautions, Garrett.
He meant I was leaving the house unarmed. I said, “I’m just going to follow a crazy man. I won’t get into trouble.” Without bothering to go into his room. He doesn’t hear physically.
You never plan to get into trouble. Yet each time you assume that attitude and go out unprepared, you end up wishing you had had the foresight to carry something. Is that not so?
That was uncomfortably close to the truth. I wished it wasn’t. I wished we lived in a more civilized age. But wishing never makes anything so.
I went upstairs, to my closet of unpleasantries, where I keep the tools I use when the tools I prefer, my wits, fail me. I grumbled all the while. And wondered why I resisted good advice. I guess I resented the fact that I hadn’t thought of it myself.
Lessons you don’t want to learn come hard.
TunFaire is not a nice city.
I hit the street in a black humor. I wasn’t going to make the city any nicer.
Like most public buildings in this town, the Al-Khar is generations overdue for renovation. It looks like the prisoners could walk through the walls if they wanted.
The Al-Khar was a bad idea from the beginning, a pork-barrel project making somebody rich through cost overruns and corner cutting. The builder used a pale yellow-green stone that absorbed grunge from the air, reacted with it, streaked, turned uglier by the hour, and did not stand up, being too soft. It chipped and flaked, dropping talus all around the prison, leaving the walls with a poxy appearance. In places there’d been mortar decay enough that stones were loose. Since the city hardly ever jailed anybody, there seemed to be no financial provision for prison maintenance.
It was raining still, though now the fall was just a drizzle. Just enough to be a misery. I posted myself under a forlorn lime tree as down-and-out as any alley-dwelling ratman. It didn’t know the season. But its sad branches offered the only shelter around. I recalled my Marine Corps training and faded into my surroundings. Garrett the chameleon. Right.
I was early, not something that happens often. But since I started my exercises I move a little faster, with more energy. Maybe I should go for a mental workout too. Develop some energy and enthusiasm in that direction.
The trouble with me is my work. Investigating exposes you to the slimy underbelly of the world. Being a weak character, I try to make things better, to strike the occasional spark in the darkness. I have a notion my reluctance to work springs from the knowledge that if I do I’ll see more of the world’s dark side, that I’ll butt heads with the Truth, which is that people are cruel and selfish and thoughtless and even the best will sell their mothers at the right time.
The big difference between good guys and bad is the good guys haven’t yet had a fat chance for profiting from going bad.
A bleak world view, unfortunately reinforced by events almost daily.
A bleak view that’s scary because it keeps on telling me my turn is coming.
A bleak street, that dirty cobbled lane past the Al-Khar. Very little traffic. That was true even in good weather. I’ve felt less lonely, less touched by despair, alone in the woods.
The street was a problem professionally as well as emotionally. I didn’t blend in. People would start wondering and maybe remembering—though they wouldn’t come outside. People in this town avoid trouble.
Barking Dog came stomping out of prison, thumbs tucked into his belt. He paused, surveyed the world with a prisoner’s eye.
He was about five-feet-six, sixtyish, chunky, balding, had a brushy graying mustache and ferocious huge eyebrows. His skin was tanned from decades in the elements denouncing conspiracies. Prison hadn’t faded him. His clothes were old and tattered and filthy, the same he’d worn when he’d gone inside. The Al-Khar doesn’t offer uniforms. Barking Dog, so far as I knew, had no relatives to bring him anything.
His gaze swept me. He didn’t react. He raised his face, enjoyed the drizzle, then started moving. I gave him half a block before I followed.
He had a unique way of walking. He was bowlegged. He had arthritis or something. He sort of rolled along, lifting one whole side of his body, swinging it forward, following with the other. I wondered if he hurt much. Prison wouldn’t do wonders for arthritis.
Barking Dog wasn’t in a hurry. He ambled, savoring his freedom. I’d hang out in the rain myself, enjoying it, if I’d been locked up. But I wasn’t terribly empathic at the moment. I muttered and sputtered and grumbled. Such thoughtlessness! Keeping a crack investigator out in the rain.
Wasn’t his fault, though, was it? I started plotting vengeance on the Dead Man.
Always an interesting mental exercise, that. What sanctions can you exercise against somebody who’s been murdered? Aren’t many options left.
Even us masters of the game get sloppy. It’s easy when you don’t feel threatened. I didn’t feel threatened. Barking Dog wasn’t the kind of street bruno I run into ordinarily, somebody big as a house and half as smart and just as easy to shove around. Barking Dog was damned near a little old man. Little old men don’t get violent. Or, if they do, they pay some big, stupid bruno to do it for them.
I strutted around a corner and—oooph! Right in the breadbasket. Lucky for me, Barking Dog was damned near a little old man and little old men don’t get violent.
I folded up, tried to prance away from his follow-up. Wonder of wonders, I made it. He was, after all, damned near a little old man. I gagged and hacked and got my breath back. Meantime, Barking Dog added things up and decided he hadn’t gotten enough oomph on his punch and his best move now was to apply heels and toes vigorously to the cobblestones.
Not unwise tactics, considering the mood I was in all of a sudden.
I got me trundling after him. Lucky me, I’d been working out so I was in good enough shape to come back quickly. Before long I was keeping up, then I started gaining ground. Barking Dog looked back only once. He saved his energy for streaking away.
Me, I started taking corners more carefully.
It didn’t take me long to catch up, grab him by the shoulder, block his futile blows, and force him to sit on somebody’s steps. “What the hell was that for?” I demanded.
He looked at me like I was a fool. Maybe he was right. I hadn’t exercised a lot of wisdom so far. He didn’t answer me.
It didn’t look like he was planning to make a break, so I sat me down beside him, far enough off so he couldn’t cream me with a backhand. “That hurt, guy. How come?”
That look again. “What you take me for, bruno?”
Oh. That hurt more than the whack in the gut. I’m an experienced investigator, not a street thug. “A crazy old man, ain’t got sense enough to get in out of the rain.”
“I’m one with nature. You going to get to it?”
“To what?”
“The threats. The arm-twisting.”
Ha! My turn to do the looking.
“You don’t fool me with that dumb look. Somebody sent you to keep me from telling the truth.”
Craftily I asked, “What truth would that be?”
Craftier, he told me, “If they didn’t tell you, they don’t want you to know. Wouldn’t want to get you in as deep as I am.”
Crazy. And I was sitting there talking to him. In the rain. Downwind. They hadn’t given him a scrubbing before they turned him loose. “No threats. I don’t care what you do.”
He didn’t understand. “Hows come you’re dogging me?”
“To see where you go.” Get him with a new technique. Tell the truth. Confuse him all to hell.
It worked. He was puzzled. “Why?”
“Damned if I know. Guy paid my partner, who took the job without consulting me. Naturally, he’s housebound. So I’m the one out here drowning.”
He believed me, probably because I wasn’t twisting limbs. “Who’d want to know that?” He seemed lost. “Nobody takes me serious. Hardly nobody, anyway.”
I checked to see if we were drawing a crowd. Barking Dog had one voice level, loud. Like he’d been yelling so long, that was all he could do. Too, I wondered what they’d fed him in jail. He had breath like a buzzard. Not to mention he wasn’t appetizing visually, what with his wild eyebrows, mustache, bulbous nose, and buggy eyes. At least he didn’t try to handbill me or want me to sign a petition.
Might as well push my experiment to the limit. “Guy called Bishoff Hullar.”
“Who? I don’t know no Bishoff Hullar.”
“Runs a taxi-dance scam in the Tenderloin.”
He looked at me queer, sure I was lying or crazy. Then he frowned. “A nominee! Of course.”
“Say what?”
“A nominee. A stand-in who hired you for somebody else.” He began nodding, grinning. Somebody was out to get him. He liked that idea. After all these years, somebody was out to get him! Somebody was taking him seriously! He was about to be persecuted!
“Probably so.” I’d never spent much time wondering about Barking Dog. Occasionally I’d given thought to whether or not he believed what he said. It was common knowledge his claims about his family were exaggerated. None of his conspiracy claims had borne fruit, and that in a town where everybody who was somebody wanted scandal ammunition to use against other somebodies. Nobody tried to shut him up.
“What did they nick you for?” What the hell. I wasn’t going to get much wetter. And the damp was toning down the miasma around Amato.
“Sixty days.”
A comedian. “What was the charge? It’s a matter of record. Wouldn’t take me an hour to get the story.”
He mumbled something.
“What?”
“Public nuisance.” He didn’t boom this time either.
“They don’t give you two months—”
“Third complaint.” His excitement over being persecuted had faded. Now he was embarrassed. He was a convicted public nuisance.
“Even so, more than a few days seems excessive.”
“I kind of got carried away at my hearing. Fifty-five days were for contempt.”
Heavy time, even so. The magistrates I knew were pretty contemptible. They ran their courts like feeding time at the zoo. It would take some barking to aggravate any of them.
I recalled outrageous claims I’d heard Amato make.
Yep. He had run into somebody with no sense of humor, somebody who didn’t know Barking Dog was a genuine loony, harmless in the extreme. Nobody else could get away with the stuff he said. “Maybe you were lucky,” I told him. “You get somebody really pissed, they could toss you into the Bledsoe.” Part of the charity hospital is a madhouse. You get stuffed in there, you won’t get out unless somebody outside springs you. There are plenty of stories about people who have gone in and been forgotten for decades.
Barking Dog went pale under his tan. That scared him. He started to leave.
“Hang on, old-timer.”
He settled, resigned. He thought the threat had come. The Bledsoe. Just sitting there beside him, talking to him, I’d begun to feel like a candidate for the cackle factory. “You won’t talk, eh?”
“No.”
I shook my head. Water from my hair dribbled into my eyes. “I’m getting paid, which maybe ought to be enough, but I’d sure like a hint why I’m spending time with you.”
I suspected that, on reflection, he’d decided that he didn’t know. A cold drizzle can be a great cure for a case of the fantasies.
My thoughts flitted like drunken butterflies, trying to make sense of what was happening. The only answers I found were that this was a practical joke, or a mistake, or a sinister plot, or something. It couldn’t be the job advertised.
I heard the Dead Man: “Three marks a day and expenses.” I hadn’t thought to ask if we’d taken a retainer.
“What’re your plans?” I asked. “Right now.”
“You’re going to get wet, son. First I’m going to go see if I still got me a place to live. If I do, then I’m going to go buy me a bottle and get drunk. You want to hang around, wait for me to sneak off and make contact with your boss’s secret enemies, you just go ahead.” He spoke with conviction when he mentioned getting drunk. That wouldn’t be the first thing I’d go for after leaving jail, but he was maybe a little past catching honeys. As a second choice it didn’t sound bad.
“How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow it’s back to the old grind. Unless it’s raining. Then I’ll stay in and make the acquaintance of another bottle.”
I got up. “Let’s walk over where you live, then. Get you tucked in. Then I’ll see this Hullar clown, find out what’s shaking.” Nobody likes being made a fool—and I was developing the sneaking suspicion I’d done it to myself. I should’ve asked more questions when I was talking to the Dead Man.
I decided to start with him, work my way back to Bishoff Hullar.
Dean let me in. “What in the world are you doing home?” He hoisted his nose at the dripping I did.
“Need to consult the genius.” I pushed past but hung a surprise left into the small front room. Huh. No cat. No sign of a cat. But I smelled it.
Dean shuffled from foot to foot. I gave him my most evil look, pretended to twist a neck to the accompaniment of dramatic noises. I headed for the Dead Man’s room.
He was pretending to sleep.
I knew he wasn’t. He wouldn’t nod off before he heard the latest from the Cantard. He was obsessed with Glory Mooncalled and expected news of the republican general’s adventures momentarily.
I went inside anyway. Dean hustled in with a raggedy blanket he tossed over my chair so it wouldn’t get wet. I settled, stared at the Dead Man, said, “That’s a pity, him drifting off just when we finally hear something from the war zone. Make me a quick cup of tea before I hit the street again.”
What news from the Cantard? . . . You are a treacherous beast, Garrett.
“The treacherousest. As bad as the kind of guy who’d send you out to follow a nut case as a joke.”
Joke?
“You can come clean. I won’t hold a grudge. I’ll even admit it was a good one. You had me out there for hours before I figured it out.”
I hate to disappoint you, Garrett, but the fact is we have been hired to report the movements of Barking Dog Amato. The client paid a fifty-mark retainer.
“Come on. I admitted it was a good one. Let up.”
It is true, Garrett. Though now, seeing the thoughts and reservations and questions rambling across the surface of your mind, I grow curious myself. I wonder if I, too, have not been the victim of an elaborate hoax.
“Somebody really paid fifty marks to have Amato watched?”
There would be nothing under my chair otherwise.
I was sure he wouldn’t take a joke that far. “You didn’t ask questions?”
No. Not the questions you wish I had. Had I known what a Barking Dog Amato was, I would have asked them.
Somebody had begun pounding on the front door. Dean, apparently, was too busy to be bothered. “Wait a minute.”
I looked through the peephole first. I’d learned the hard way. I saw two women. One was hugging herself, shivering. Neither seemed to enjoy the weather.
I opened up. “Can I help you ladies?”
I used “ladies” poetically. The younger had twenty years on me. Both were squeaky clean and wore their finest, but their finest was threadbare and years out of style. They were gaunt and threadbare themselves. One had a trace of nonhuman blood.
Both put on nervous smiles, as though I’d startled them by being something they didn’t expect. The younger screwed up her courage. “Are you saved, brother?”
“Huh?”
“Have you been born again? Have you accepted Mississa as your personal savior?”
“Huh?” I didn’t have the foggiest what the hell was going on. I didn’t even realize they were talking religion. That doesn’t play much part in my life. I ignore all the thousand gods whose cults plague TunFaire. So far I’ve seldom been disappointed in my hope that the gods will ignore me.
Apparently my not slamming the door was great encouragement. Both women started chattering. Being a naturally polite sort of guy, I halfway listened till I got the drift. Then I grinned, inspired. “Come in! Come in!” I introduced myself. I shook their hands. I turned on the old Garrett charm. They became uneasy almost to the point of suspicion. I probed only deeply enough to make sure their brand of salvation wasn’t limited to humans. Most of the cults are racist. Most of the nonhuman races hold to no gods at all.
I confessed, “I’m not free to entertain a new system of beliefs myself, but I do know someone who should see you. My partner is the most ungodly sort you can imagine. He needs . . . Let me caution you. He’s stubborn in his wickedness. I’ve tried and tried . . . You’ll see. Please come with me. Would you like tea? My housekeeper just put the kettle on.” They chattered steadily themselves. What I had to say mostly got shoved in in snatches.
They followed me. I had a hell of a time keeping a straight face. I sicced them on the Dead Man. I didn’t stay around to watch the fur fly.
As I hit the rain I wondered if he’d ever speak to me again. But who needed spiritual guidance more? He was dead already, already headed down the path to heaven or hell.
But the grin on my clock wasn’t any smug celebration of my ingenuity. I’d had me another attack of inspiration. I knew how to turn the Barking Dog business into a scam that would make us both happy.
The man could read and write. He did his own signs and broadsides. And he was harmless. And he needed money. I’d seen that where he lived. So why not have him keep track of himself? I could hand his journal over to my client, split my fee with Barking Dog, save myself hunking around in the weather.
The more I thought about that, the more I liked it. And who’d know the difference?
So the heck with Bishoff Hullar. I wouldn’t press my luck there. I’d stay away except to collect. I chose a new destination.
I went off to sell Barking Dog. I didn’t anticipate any trouble. I would appeal to his sense of conspiracy.
Some white knight, eh? Our hero, third-string con artist.
I didn’t suffer much guilt. The Bishoff Hullars of the world deserve what they get. Hell, before I got to Barking Dog’s place I was chuckling.
Some of us take a notion we’re what the world perceives us to be, so we create images the world feeds back. You see it especially with kids. You get some pathetic louse of a parent, always sniping at his kid, telling him he’s no good and dumb, pretty soon he’s got a dumb, no-good kid. That’s your one-way version. I’m talking about creating yourself.
I worked at it, not always consciously, when I wanted the world to think I was bad. I didn’t make my bed. I changed my socks only once a week. I cleaned house once a year whether the place needed it or not. When I wanted to look real mean, I stopped brushing my teeth.
Barking Dog must have lived in those same two rooms for about eleven thousand years without cleaning once. The place could become a museum where mothers showed their kids why they ought to pick up after themselves.
The smell suggested it was the one place in TunFaire not infested by vermin. The smell was the smell of Barking Dog Amato, confined and reinforced by time and made heavier by oppressive humidity. Barking Dog had no handle on the principles of hygiene.
Thank whatever gods he’d been out of there awhile.
I’d never seen that much paper anywhere, not even in the offices of royal functionaries. Once Barking Dog muffed both sides of a handbill sheet, he flipped the cull over his shoulder. When he brought in food, its wrappings, paper or cornhusk, joined the rejected handbills. The broken cadavers of earthenware wine bottles lay everywhere. Unscathed survivors apparently were returned for the deposits.
The entire history of Barking Dog Amato lay there, in sedimentary layers, ready to be excavated by a historical adventurer unencumbered by a sense of smell.
I took that in at a glance after Amato invited me in. I wasted a second glance on his furniture. That amounted to an artist’s easel where he painted posters and placards and a rickety table where he calligraphed handbills. A semiclear corner boasted a ragged blanket.
Two steps inside, I saw that I’d leapt to an erroneous conclusion. Barking Dog did indeed clean house. There was a second room, with no door in its doorway, where he moved his trash whenever his primary got too deep.
He didn’t apologize. He seemed unaware that his housekeeping varied from the norm. He just asked, “What did you find out from that Hullar?”
“I didn’t go see him. What happened was, I had an idea.”
“You didn’t strain nothing doing that?”
It must be on my forehead in glowing letters that don’t show up in a mirror. “You’ll like it. Be good for both of us. Here’s the plan.” I told him how we could make a few marks. His eye developed a malicious twinkle.
“Son, I’m maybe gonna like you after all. You ain’t as dumb as you look.”
“It’s my disguise,” I grumped. “Want to do it?”
“Why not? I can always use an extra mark. But don’t you figure we ought to go fifty-fifty? When I got to take time out of my busy schedule to do all the work?”
“I figure the split’s fine at two for me and one for you. I have the contract. I’ll have to rewrite whatever you give me. And I’ll have to hike over to the Tenderloin to deliver it.”
Barking Dog shrugged. He didn’t argue. “Found money,” he muttered.
“Speaking of money. How do you live? Not to mention pay for all that paper?” Even junk paper isn’t cheap. Papermaking is a labor-intensive industry.
“Maybe there’s some with enough sense to see the truth and want to spread it.” He glowered. He wasn’t going to tell me squat.
Could be a helpful believer. TunFaire boasts a fine crop of lunatics, with more ripening daily. Or maybe he was stealing paper. Or maybe he had a fortune stashed with the gnomish bankers. You never know. In this town, almost nobody is what he seems.
I answered surliness with a shrug. “I’ll catch you every couple days.”
“Yeah. Hey! Maybe you could give me a hand.”
Only at long range. His breath had taken on new freight, a heavy wine odor that combined with its previous fetor in a lethal gas. Maybe we could bottle it and send it to the Cantard. It could discourage entire Venageti brigades.
“How?”
“Some religious nut grabbed my spot while I was away.”
“Set up next to him, stick close, outlast him.” The man’s faith wouldn’t outlast Barking Dog’s aroma. “That don’t work, then ask me.”
“All right.” He was doubtful. He couldn’t smell himself. His nostrils were corroded to the bone.
“See you.” I had to get out. My eyes were watering. My nose was running. My head was spinning.
I didn’t hurry home. I let the rain rinse the smell off me. I wondered if it would ever stop raining. Should I invest in a boat?
The weather had a bright side. Flying thunder-lizards hadn’t pestered TunFaire since the rains started.
Everyone cheered when those monsters first appeared. They gobbled rats and cats and squirrels and, most especially, pigeons. Pigeons don’t have many fans. But the thunder-lizards shared some of the pigeons’ worst habits. The missiles they launched were both larger and more precisely targeted.
There was talk of bounties. The monsters tended to be attracted by the Hill, where the rich and powerful live. They favor high places. The upper classes and thunder-lizards both. If the latter had had the sense to stick to the slums, there would have been no dangerous talk.
The only warning was Dean’s smirk, filled with so much childish malice I knew something was going on.
Garrett!
Oh-oh. I’d forgotten I’d left him with those evangelists.
I considered taking a powder. But, hell, it was my house. A man is king in his own castle. I stepped into the Dead Man’s room. “Yeah?”
Sit down.
I sat, warily. He was too calm.
Have you contemplated the state of your immortal soul?
I believe I screeched. Next thing I knew, I was headed down the hall staring back at his closed door with bugged eyes. Somewhere a cat meowed. This couldn’t be happening to me. It wasn’t real. I was going crazy. If this kept up, I’d be out there howling at the sky alongside Barking Dog.
It got worse. I ducked into the kitchen for a beer, found Dean at the table having tea with the religion women. One had a kitten in her lap. Dean seemed spellbound by the ropes of sand the other was spinning. The cat woman said, “Won’t you join us, Mr. Garrett? We were just sharing the wonderful news with Dean. Won’t you share the joy with us too?”
Joy? She was as joyous as the piles. She didn’t know the meaning of the word. The fraud. She was smiling, but that was a domino. Everything behind it was holier-than-thou sour. She would remain constipated as long as she suffered the suspicion that somebody, somewhere, was having a good time. “Sorry. Some other time. I’m just going to grab a biscuit and run.” I knew her kind. A Barking Dog with a bath, only her fantasy contained a harsh, metallic flavor of violence. Barking Dog was determined to expose imaginary devils. She wanted to scourge them with fire and sword. Yet she was painfully formal and polite. If I stopped moving for a second, she would pin me and soon drive me over the edge. She wouldn’t let go till I’d gotten so damned rude I’d be embarrassed for a month.
I grabbed my biscuit and fled to my office. I asked Eleanor, “You haven’t gone gaga on me too, have you?”
She gave me her best enigmatic look.
I settled behind my desk. Things were falling apart around me. I had to take charge before chaos conquered all. I had to get this storm-tossed ship back on a steady keel.
It was my own damn fault, trying to pull a fast one on the Dead Man.
I groaned. I’d just gotten comfortable, and now somebody was pounding on the front door. Nobody ever comes around except to see me. Nobody ever wants to see me unless they want me to work. Nobody ever wants me to work except when I’ve just gotten comfortable. Then my attitude improved. Maybe it was more evangelists. I could turn the new bunch loose on the pack already infesting the place. They could go to the theological mattresses right here. I could have a ringside seat while they fought it out, toe to illogical toe.
See. I’m an optimist. Whoever said I always look on the dark side? I did? Right. Well, when you do that, your life fills with pleasant surprises, and seldom are you disappointed.
Answering the door provided one of the disappointments.
I did peep through the peephole first. I did know I wouldn’t be happy once I opened up. But I didn’t have much choice.
His name was Westman Block. He was the law. Such as the law is in TunFaire. He was a captain of that same Watch that couldn’t catch anyone more dangerous than Barking Dog Amato. I knew him slightly, which was too well. He knew me. We didn’t like each other. But I respected him more than I did most Watchmen. When he took a bribe, he stayed bought. He wasn’t too greedy.
I opened up. “Captain. I nearly didn’t recognize you out of uniform.” Polite. I can manage it sometimes. I glanced around. He was alone. Amazing. His bunch run in crowds. That’s one of their survival skills.
“Can we talk?” He was a small, thin character with short brown hair graying around the edges. There was nothing remarkable about him except that he seemed worried. And he was almost polite. He’d never been polite to me before. I was suspicious immediately.
A healthy dose of paranoia never hurts when you deal with the Westman Blocks.
“I have company, Captain.”
“Let’s walk, then. And don’t call me Captain, please. I don’t want anyone guessing who I am.” Damn, he was working hard. Usually he talked like a longshoreman.
“It’s raining out there.”
“Can’t put anything past you, can they? No wonder you have that reputation.”
See? Just not my day. I pulled the door shut without bothering to holler to Dean. What did I have to worry about? I had a heavenly host on guard. “Why don’t we scare up a beer, then? I feel the need.” For about a keg, taken in one big gulp.
“Be quicker if we just walk.” His little blue eyes were chips of ice. He didn’t like me but he was working hard not to offend me. He wanted something bad. I noted that he’d acquired a little mustache like Morley’s. Must be something going around.
“All right. I’m a civic-minded kind of guy. But maybe you could drop me one little hint?”
“You figured it already, Garrett, I know you. I need a favor I hate to ask for. A big favor. I got a problem. Whether I like it or not, you’re probably the only guy I know of can solve it.”
I think that was a compliment. “Really?” I swelled with newfound power. It almost matched the growth of my paranoia. I’m the kind of guy gets really nervous when my enemies start making nice on me.
“Yeah.” He grumbled something that must have been in a foreign language, because no gentleman would use words like the words I thought I heard. Watch officers are all gentlemen. Just ask them. They’ll clue you in good while they pick your pocket.
“What?”
“I’d better just show you. It isn’t far.”
I touched myself here and there, making sure I was still carrying.
After a block, during which he muttered to himself, Block said, “We got a power struggle shaping up up top, Garrett.”
“What else is new?” We haven’t had a big shake-up or a king bite the dust for a couple years but, overall, we change rulers more often than Barking Dog changes clothes.
“There’s a reform faction forming.”
“I see.” Bad news for his bunch. “Grim.”
“You see what I mean?”
“Yeah.” I’d heard grumblings myself. But those were there all the time. Down here in the real world we don’t take them seriously. All part of politics. Nobody really wants change. Too many people have too much to lose.
“Glad you do. Because we got something come up that gots to be tooken care of. Fast. We got the word. Else it’s going to be our balls in a vise.” See? He even talked like a gentleman.
“Where do I come in?”
“I hate to admit it, but there ain’t none of us knows what to do.” Damn! He was in trouble. He was scared. They must have showed him a vise heated red hot, with ground glass in its jaws. “I put in some time thinking. You was the only answer. You know what to do and you’re straight enough to do it. If I can get you to.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear. Keeping my mouth shut kept my options open. Marvelous, the restraint I showed in my old age.
“You help us out with this, Garrett, you won’t be sorry. We’ll see you’re taken care of fee-wise. And you’ll be covered with the Watch from here on in.”
Well, now. That would be useful. I’ve had my troubles with the Watch. One time they laid siege to my house. It took some doing to work that one out.
“Right. So what is it?” I had a creepy feeling.
Didn’t take a genius to figure it would be something big and nasty.
“I better just show you,” he insisted.
Despite his fine-sounding offer I was liking this less and less.
We walked only a mile but that mile took us over the edge of the world into another reality, into the antechamber of hell, the Bustee. Now I understood why he was out of uniform.
TunFaire boasts peoples of almost every intelligent race. Mostly they clump like with like in closed neighborhoods. Likewise with humans not of the ethnic majority. Breeds fall into the cracks, live in between, catch as catch can, often welcome nowhere. Two-thirds of the city is ghetto slum. Poverty is the norm.
But the Bustee is to those slums as the slums are to the Hill. People there live in tents made of rags or in shanties put together from sticks and mud and trash scavenged before the ratmen could collect it. Or they cram in a hundred to the building meant for five or ten two hundred years ago, when the structure had windows and doors and flooring that hadn’t yet been torn up to burn for heat during the winter. They lived in doorways and on the street, some so poor they didn’t have a grass mat for a mattress. They lived amidst unimaginable filth. The ratmen wouldn’t go in there without protection. The soldiers wouldn’t go in less than company-strong—if at all. Too many soldiers had come out of there and wouldn’t go back even to visit.
The Bustee is the bottom. You can’t roll downhill any farther. You roll that far, chances are you’ll never climb back. Not till the dead wagons come.
Only the deathmen are safe in the Bustee. Each day they come with their wagons, wearing their long gray robes with the veils that conceal their faces, to collect the dead from the streets and alleys. They chant, “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” as they work. They won’t leave the streets to collect. They load their wagons and make their deliveries to the city crematoriums. They work from dawn to dusk, but every day they get a little farther behind.
Death in the Bustee is as ugly as life.
In the Bustee there is no commodity cheaper than life.
In the Bustee there is only one commodity of any value at all. Young men. Hard young men who have survived the streets. These fellows are the only real beneficiaries of the Cantard war. They enlist as soon as they’re able and use their bonuses to get whoever they can out of hell. Then, despite their hard and undisciplined youths, they work hard at being good soldiers. If they’re good soldiers they can make enough to keep their families out. They go down to the Cantard and die like flies to keep their families out.
That such love should flourish, let alone survive, in the Bustee is ever an amazement to me. Frankly, I don’t understand how it does. In the more affluent slums, youth seems to victimize those closest to it first.
Another world, the Bustee. They do things differently there.
Block stopped walking. I halted. He seemed to be having trouble getting his bearings. I looked around nervously. We looked too prosperous. But the streets were deserted.
Maybe it was the rain. But I doubted that. There was something in the air.
“This way,” Block said. I followed, ever more alert. We saw no one till I spotted a pair of obvious Watchmen, though out of uniform, peeking from a narrow passageway between two buildings that might have been important back at the dawn of time. They were as big as they get in the Bustee. The men faded back into the passageway.
My nerves worsened. I was supposed to go back in there with a guy loved me the way Block did? But he didn’t dislike me that much. Not enough to bring me down here for that kind of fun.
I stepped into the passage—and almost tripped over an old man. He couldn’t have weighed more than seventy pounds. He was a skeleton with skin on it. He had just enough strength to shake. The deathmen would collect him before long.
“All the way back,” Block said.
I didn’t want to go. But I went. And wished I hadn’t.
I like to think I developed a solid set of emotional calluses in the Marines, but that’s only because my imagination can’t encompass horrors worse than those I saw and survived in the war. I keep thinking there’s no devil’s work that can surprise me anymore.
I keep on being wrong.
There was a little open area where porters had made deliveries in a bygone age. Several Watchmen were there. They had torches to break the gloom. They looked like they hoped the rain would drown the torches.
I didn’t blame them.
The girl had been about twenty. She was naked. She was dead. None of that was remarkable. It happens.
But not the way this had happened.
Somebody had tied her hand and foot, then hung her from a beam, head down. Then they had cut her throat and bled her and gutted her like a game animal. There was no blood around, though the human body is filled with an amazing amount. I muttered, “They caught the blood and took it away.” My meals for the month wanted to desert me.
Block nodded. He was having his troubles too. So were his boys. And they were angry besides. Hell, I was angry, but my anger hadn’t had time to ripen.
No telling why she’d been gutted. Maybe for some of her organs. Her insides had been dumped on the ground but were gone now, carried off by dogs. They had been at the body too, some, but hadn’t done much damage. Their squabbling had brought about the discovery of the corpse.
Block told me, “This is the fifth one, Garrett. All of them like this.”
“All in the Bustee?”
“This’s the first one down here. That we know of.”
Yeah. This could happen here every day . . . I looked at her again. No. Even in the Bustee there are limits to the sickness they’ll tolerate. They don’t kill for sport or ritual, they kill for passion or because killing will, directly or indirectly, put food in their mouths. This girl had been killed by somebody insane.
I said, “She came from outside.” She was too healthy, too pretty.
“None have been Bustee women, Garrett. They’ve turned up all over town.”
“I haven’t heard about anything like this.” I hadn’t been out listening, though.
“We been trying to keep it quiet, but word’s starting to get around. Which is why we’re about to go in the vise. The powers that be want this lunatic and they want him sudden.”
On reflection, I said, “Captain Block, sir, I don’t believe you’re being entirely forthright. Maybe if there’d been fifteen or twenty of them and people were getting panicky, they’d bestir themselves up there. But you’re not going to convince me they give one rat’s ass what happens to four or five street girls.”
“They don’t care, Garrett. But these ain’t street girls. They was all from top families. All of them gave some perfectly good, even trivial reason for going out the days they were killed. Extended errands. Visits to friends. Everything perfectly safe.”
“Yeah? There’s no such thing as perfectly safe in TunFaire. And that kind of woman doesn’t go anywhere without armed guards. It’s a status thing. So what about their guards?”
“Most of them don’t got no idea what happened. They delivered their charges to friends’ houses, went on about their rat-killing. There’s something going on, but the guards aren’t it. Though maybe their memories would improve some on the rack. Only we ain’t been authorized to go that far. Yet.”
“Any leads at all?”
“Diddly. Nobody’s seen or heard nothing.”
That’s the standard state of affairs throughout TunFaire. Nobody sees anything.
I made a sick grunting noise and forced myself to look at the victim yet again. She’d been a beauty, slim, with long black hair. Unpleasant as the truth may be, you feel it more when they waste the pretty ones. Block looked at me like he expected some blast of wisdom. “So what do you want from me?” As if I didn’t know.
“Find out who did this. Give us a name. We’ll take it from there.”
I didn’t have to ask what was in it for me. He’d told me. His word was good. Like I said, he stayed bought. “What else do you know?”
“That’s it. That’s all we have.”
“Bullshit. Come on, Block.”
“What?”
“That right there tells you a bunch just by being what it is. Especially if the others were like it.”
“They were.”
“All right. They gutted them. They took their blood. That stinks of dark religion or black sorcery. But if it’s a cult, it can’t have a base, else the bodies would have been disposed of there.”
“Unless they wanted them found.”
“There’s the weakness in my thinking. Maybe we’re supposed to think it’s ritual when it’s just crazy. Or maybe crazy when it’s ritual. Though it’s crazy for sure. Nobody sane would do that.”
“You keep saying ‘they.’ You figure on more than one?”
I thought about it. It’d been a gut reaction. “Yeah. Somebody had to get her away from her bodyguards. Somebody had to bring her here. Somebody had to strip her and tie her and string her up and do that. I don’t think a solo crazy could manage.”
I flashed on a kidnapping I’d helped break up one rainy evening, went stiff and cold. Any connection seemed unlikely, but . . . “These girls got anything in common besides being high-class? They know each other? They all the same physical type?” This one couldn’t have been confused with Chodo’s brat, but she did have a similar build, black hair, and dark eyes.
“Age range is seventeen to twenty-two. All with dark hair and eyes except for one blond. All between five-four and five-eight. Built pretty much alike, near as I could tell, seeing them this way.”
“Five of them.”
“That we know about.”
There was that. In TunFaire there might be that many more not yet found or reported. “You have yourself a blue-assed bitch of a problem, Captain. These things are hard to untangle because there’s nothing to grab hold of that makes any sense to anybody who isn’t crazy. If you get many more, the thing will turn into a circus.”
“I know that, Garrett. Goddamnit, that’s why I came to you. Look, you want me to beg, I’ll beg. Only—”
“No, Block. I don’t want you to beg.” That had its appeal, but I couldn’t stomach it. “I want you to calm down. I want you to come walk with me in the rain and tell me everything you know. And I mean everything. Whatever little thing you hold back, to keep from embarrassing somebody important, might be the key.”
I hadn’t decided to get involved. Not yet. I wanted to distract him long enough to walk him over to my place so he could have a sit-down with the Dead Man. The Dead Man could sort everything stashed in his feeble mind and, probably, hand him what he needed to solve his case. Thus would I satisfy my civic obligation. I could feel smug without having to stick my neck out.
Only thing was, going back out that narrow passage, Block’s boys went with us, carrying their torches. Those spat and sputtered in the drizzle and gave me more light than I’d had coming in. Which meant there was enough light for me to spot the butterflies.
There were three of them. They weren’t anything special. Just little green butterflies. But how come there were butterflies dead in an alley in the Bustee?
I stopped when we reached the narrow street. “Take that old man somewhere and feed him. Get a doctor to look after him. Do whatever you have to do to get him well enough to tell us what he saw. If he saw anything.”
Block told his men, “Do it.”
I headed for home, Block hustling along beside me, telling me anything he thought might help. I didn’t listen as closely as I could have. Besides being horrified, I was bemused by the fact that I might hold the fate of the Watch in my hands. I could destroy the useless bastards. Or maybe even force them to become some small percentage of what they were supposed to be. Hell, people will do anything to keep their jobs. Sometimes even do their jobs.
I wasn’t used to that kind of power. Maybe I’d have to have Dean follow me around whispering in my ear to remind me I was mortal.
Dean had noticed that the door was unlocked. He’d locked it. I whooped and pounded till he tore himself away from his evangelists. When he opened up, he had a gleam in his eye that had nothing to do with salvation.
“You rogue, you.” He pretended he didn’t understand what I meant. Hell, a fling would be good for him and them both. If it didn’t kill him.
I’d never let Westman Block enter my house before. He did so warily, like a soldier visiting an enemy stronghold.
The Dead Man is no secret. Anyone interested in such things would know he lives with me. But hardly anyone has seen him. They go into his room with all sorts of wild prejudices, then find out the real thing is worse than anything they imagined.
I told Block, “You take the chair. I need to pace.”
He couldn’t stop staring. “What’re we doing here?”
“Old Bones there is a genius. You don’t believe me, ask him. I thought we’d lay it out for him. He’ll find connections, tell you where to start looking.” Old Bones wasn’t talking. I couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or bad. I did know that if he cooperated he would bring more than genius to bear here. He’d been around a long time. Something from yesteryear might be the key to today’s horror. It had happened before.
There are horrors that recur in long cycles, like locust plagues, but separated by generations. If these murders were cultist, they might fit one of those cycles.
The Dead Man wasn’t talking but he was listening. He was poking around. He’s damned subtle, but when he starts prying, I can tell. If I’m paying close enough attention.
Garrett. Shall we set all sham aside? Shall we abandon all childish efforts to abrade one another’s nerves? I will not yet admit that we must pursue this monster, but I will stipulate that we owe the situation a close look.
“You grow up, I’ll grow up.”
Block gave me a strange look. He hadn’t heard the Dead Man’s end. The Dead Man can do that if he wants. It makes some of our conversations spooky.
Excellent. I will set my concern for your soul in abeyance for the moment.
Oh, boy. He wasn’t going to let me off. Those women had offended his sense of rationality. He hates people who won’t examine beliefs critically. Most of the time he hides it when he deals with me, but he holds the majority of humankind in contempt. Of the gods-know-how-many sentient species in the world, we humans are the only ones who insist on fervent belief in things logic and our senses demonstrate to be implausible. Amongst other races those who stumble into never-never-lands of wishful thinking are considered insane and are dealt with about the way we deal with Barking Dog. Or more harshly. Other races don’t make priests out of their nuts, then give them money and follow them wherever they lead.
“I take it you’re going to handle this, Garrett,” Block said. He was nervous as hell. Most people are around the Dead Man. He has a considerable reputation, all of it deserved. He’s done some amazing things since I’ve known him.
“We’re considering it.” I was fighting myself. Laziness and the desire not to get involved in another bizarre case warred with outrage. Outrage was ahead by a nose. The white knight had been on the shelf too long, his only chance to strut his stuff his rescue of Chodo’s spooky daughter. But the white knight has his weaknesses. While he doesn’t mind charging full tilt against a visible villain, rusty sword flailing, he hates having to hunt the villain down. Legwork buries his resolve faster than anything the hard boys can do by way of threat or violence. And this thing would be solved by legwork.
Relax, Garrett. It should not be so bad as you anticipate. I saw Block jump, so knew the Dead Man had included him in this time. Captain Block. I sense that you have a great deal hanging upon the outcome of the investigation you propose.
Block turned pale, took on kind of a green tinge around the edges. Having somebody talk right into your head is not a reassuring experience. Not the first time. And especially so when you’re a guy who has a whole encyclopedia of corruption stashed and doesn’t want it out where the world can see. I guess you’d say it was a measure of his distress and determination that he coped so well. He bounced back quickly. “Yes. There’s a lot of heat from the top of the Hill. It’ll get hotter every time some dizzy bitch gets herself offed.”
You are certain there will be more?
“Damn straight. What do you think?”
I think you are correct. The Dead Man was all business now. The killings will continue and will come more and more rapidly until the people responsible are destroyed. I think we are up against something like nothing any of us has seen before. The evidence I glean from your minds tells me this is the work of a compulsive killer who cannot help doing what he is doing and who will have to do it again, ever more often, to appease the devil that drives him. But it also tells me he is not doing this without help.
I asked, “You figure there’s a connection with—?” With what had happened at Morley’s place. Only he cut me short.
Yes. We had something he didn’t want handed to Block. Garrett, I see you shrinking from the legwork this will entail. You are correct in your estimate. This will require talking extensively with everyone even remotely involved. The families of the dead women. Their guards. The people who found them, and the Watchmen who followed up. People in the neighborhoods where the bodies were found.
He knows how to beat a guy down. I shrank with every word. I was the size of a mouse. I looked for a hole in the baseboard so I could scoot off and hide. He was talking about the rest of my life.
I do legwork because it’s what I do; talk to people and talk to people and poke and prod until things start to happen. But I don’t like it, partly because I’m lazy, but mostly because of the people. I never cease to be amazed and appalled by the sheer scope of human wickedness.
You are not considering our resources, Garrett.
Right. I was busy feeling sorry for myself.
We have the Watch. A thousand men for legwork. Is that not so, Captain? Will not every man of the Watch throw himself into this with the greatest vigor?
“It’s our asses if we don’t. They’re already hinting. We have another five murders, I figure the Watch is out of business.”
Break my heart.
I saw what the Dead Man meant. I’d been too involved in myself. The Watchmen would do anything to cover their asses. Maybe even their jobs. We just had to grab them by their instinct for self-preservation.
Then do as I tell you. I want to interview the bodyguards and the parents myself. Also those who found the corpses. Your men will canvass the neighborhoods where the women were found. Also the areas where they were seized. I doubt you will gain much cooperation, but cooperation is unnecessary. Even you Watchmen will have developed a rudimentary sense for when someone is not being forthcoming. Bring any such persons to me. I will open them up.
I marveled. The Dead Man makes me look hyper. Usually I have to threaten mayhem just to get his attention when there’s work to do. He was jumping into this one headlong. I hadn’t agreed to do anything yet. His enthusiasm suggested a secret agenda. Or he knew something he wasn’t sharing. I eyed him narrowly as he continued with Block, telling him what times he wanted whom to come be interviewed.
Suspicion and paranoia become habits in this business. You take fits where you don’t even trust yourself.
When the Dead Man takes a notion to snooze, he can hang in there for months. And when he’s awake, he can go around the clock for days. He had that in mind. Poor old Dean was going to die answering the door.
Block had to borrow pen and paper to remember all his instructions. It took him half an hour to write them down. I paced and worried and wondered. Then the Dead Man dismissed the Watchman. I walked him to the front door.
“You’ll never regret this, Garrett. I guarantee. We clean this up, you got a free pass for life.”
“Sure.” I know how long gratitude lasts. About as long as it takes for the bill to come due. Especially in TunFaire. The only guy I know who sticks to that kind of promise is Chodo Contague. He used to drive me crazy repaying imaginary debts.
That gave me a shiver. Old Chodo always paid his debts. And he owed me a big one.
I closed the door behind Block, put Chodo out of mind, went charging back to find out what the hell old Chuckles thought he was doing.
Not yet, Garrett. Dean! The Dead Man did not often extend his mindtouch beyond his room. That was a courtesy he extended us. Get rid of those harridans. Commend them to your nieces. We have a commission.
“His nieces?” I hurried into his room. “You want to create monsters?” Dean had a platoon of spinster nieces, all front-runners for Miss Homely TunFaire. They drove him to despair. Which was why he had conscripted himself as a full-time member of my household. He couldn’t take it anymore. “Can you imagine that pack in pursuit of a mission from God?”
Dean has sense enough to avoid that eventuality. While we await him, I will tell you what to do. Backtrack from events at Mr. Dotes’s place. But first bring Mr. Dotes and Mr. Tharpe to see me. We will want their help.
“ ‘We’ might want it, but how are ‘we’ going to afford it? My share of what I’m getting to watch Barking Dog won’t—”
Captain Block will assume expenses. You should pay closer attention. I quoted an exorbitant fee. He was desperate enough not to quibble.
“If they’re as scared as he puts on, they could put up enough from bribe money to pay anything.”
Exactly. We have been handed an unprecedented opportunity. Where he’s concerned, money has no provenance. It’s never dirty, only the people who handle it are. I intend to pursue it with vigor.
With my vigor, he meant. “That’s the reason you’re jumping on this?” I didn’t believe it.
Let us say that I find my mind growing as flabby and slothful as you allowed your body to become. I must get into shape before it is too late. I am not yet prepared to slide into oblivion.
Oblivion. I put that away where I could find it next time he started in on the condition of my immortal soul.
What he said sounded good. I didn’t believe it. And he knew that. But he didn’t let me press. There is no time to waste. Get Mr. Tharpe and Mr. Dotes.
Mr. Tharpe didn’t want to get got. He’d gotten rid of Billie and had replaced her with a little blond who could have been her sister. The new hadn’t worn off enough for him to see that. He wanted to stay home and play.
“Anyway, it ain’t even dark out yet, Garrett.”
“You only work at night now?”
“Getting in the habit, doing these odd jobs for Licks.”
“So sunlight for me. Talk to the Dead Man. You don’t want the work, no harm done. I’ll get somebody else. Won’t be as good, but I’ll make do.” Never hurts to butter him up.
“What’s shaking?”
“A serial killer. A real psycho. His Nibs can fill you in. I don’t know why he wants you. He just started spouting orders like a fountain.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to him.” He looked at his friend. She scorched me with a lethal stare.
I said, “I got to see Morley,” and got out of there before the woman carved their initials in my trunk.
Morley’s place was sparsely populated. It had just opened. His customers are like the stars, seldom seen before dark. Those in there then were early bats trying to get a jump on their competition.
Nobody got excited when I walked in. Nobody knew me. The guy behind the counter was new. He was a skinny little half-elf like Morley, handsome as hell but barely old enough to think about taking advantage of that. He was trying to grow a mustache.
It was catching. “I need to see Morley,” I told him. “Name’s Garrett. Tell him it is business and there’s a shitpot in it.”
The kid looked me straight in the eye. “Morley? Who the hell is Morley? I don’t know any Morley.”
One of those. “Kid, I’ll take into account the fact that you’re new. I’ll take into account the fact that you’re young and dumb, and figure you got to be a wiseass. When I’m done accounting, I just might pull you over the bar and pound away till Morley comes down to see about all the screaming. Get on the tube.”
The audience wasn’t much, but it did exist. The kid thought he had to show me. Quick as an eyeblink he showed me a razor. Elves have a love affair with sharp steel, especially the young ones. He was so predictable I was there with my headknocker as fast as he was with the blade. I popped his knuckles. He yowled like a stomped cat. The razor flew down the counter. The audience gave us a hand. And a mountain of a man lumbered out of the kitchen.
“Garrett. What you doing?” This was Sarge, another of Morley’s old hands. He came out of the same production batch as Puddle.
“I asked to see Morley. Kid pulled a razor.”
Sarge shook his head sadly. “What you want to go do that for, Spud? Man wants to see Morley, give Morley a howl. Morley wants to have him friends like this, that’s his lookout.”
“Spud?” I asked. What kind of name was Spud? Not even a dwarf would tag his kid Spud.
“What we call him, Garrett. Name’s really Narcisio. Morley’s nephew. His sister’s kid. Got to be more than she could handle. Morley brought him down here so he could straighten him out.”
Meantime, the kid talked to the voice tube that connected to Morley’s office.
I shook my head. Morley Dotes going to set somebody’s feet on the straight and narrow? Morley, whose real career is cutting throats and breaking bones and running an occasional con or even a straight ripoff if the stakes are big enough? My pal Morley?
Sarge put on a big grin. “I know what you’re thinking. But you know Morley.”
I knew Morley. He could believe mutually contradictory things at the same time, with religious fervor. His whole life was a tangle of contradictions. He lived them all with passion. He could sell you anything, because he believed every word he said when he said it. That was why he did well with the ladies. And no matter that he might take up a completely new passion five minutes hence. He was completely committed now.
Morley had done some good where Spud was concerned. The kid wasn’t happy about being shown up, but he put it away from him. He told me, “Morley will be down in a few minutes. You want something while you’re waiting?”
“Puddle still got his keg back there? Tap me one off it. He owes me a couple gallons.”
Sarge chuckled. “Whyn’t you finish the whole thing? I love to watch him puff up like a big old toady frog when he comes in and finds out somebody’s been at his keg.”
“I’ll do my best. Company?” I jerked a thumb skyward.
“Yeah. His luck’s coming back.”
“Glad somebody’s is.”
Sarge chuckled again. “You shoulda married that Maya when she asked. She was all right.” He patted Spud’s shoulder, said, “You done all right. Just don’t be so fast with that razor. Next guy might not be nice like Garrett.” He headed for the kitchen. I wondered what he was doing back there. I wouldn’t trust him anywhere near food in preparation. Not even the horse fodder they serve at Morley’s place.
I figured the kid’s ego needed a boost so I sort of sideways apologized for being so hardass. The audience had lost interest, so he could halfway apologize too. “I only been here a couple days, Mr. Garrett.” He recognized the name now. “Always somebody coming in here to pester my uncle. You looked like an unhappy husband.”
I laughed. “Not a husband, just unhappy.” Morley isn’t satisfied unless he’s taking needless risks. Like refusing to fool around with a woman if she isn’t married. He used to have a bad gambling problem too, but he got over that.
Morley came downstairs looking smug. Without saying so, he wanted me to know his life was going great. Way better than mine. I couldn’t argue. Lots of people’s lives were going better than mine.
“What’s going on, Garrett?”
“Need some privacy to talk.”
“You on a job?”
“This time. Dead Man says we might need to subcontract. Also, he wants to pick your brain.”
“Take the table in the corner.”
I picked up the beer Spud had drawn off Puddle’s keg. “You have so many of them up there you can’t hide them all?” Usually we went to his office to discuss business.
“No. Place is just a mess. Got a little carried away.”
That one he didn’t make me believe. Maybe it wasn’t a woman. Maybe they wanted me to think it was a woman because it had to do with his real business.
I didn’t ask. I just went to the table and sat, then told him what there was to tell. He listened well. He can do that when he wants.
“You think there’s a connection with what happened the other night?”
“I don’t know. The Dead Man thinks so. And he knows how to handicap.”
“Interesting.”
“You’d say something else if you’d seen that girl.”
“I expect so. I don’t approve of killing people who don’t ask for it. I mean, I find interesting the idea of taking money from the Watch for once, instead of seeing it go their way.”
I raised an eyebrow. It’s one of my finest skills.
He said, “That’s the way it works, Garrett. I’m not under Chodo’s protection. I don’t want to be part of the outfit. There’s always a price for independence.”
Made sense when I considered it. There were a thousand Watchmen and only a handful of guys in his bunch. As long as the Watch didn’t get greedy, it would be easier for him to pay than fight. Not that he would like it. But he was very much the pragmatist.
The Watch wouldn’t bother Chodo, of course. A lot of people are beholden to him. And he wouldn’t take kindly to any attempt to muscle his operations.
Morley thought about what I’d told him. “Let me finish up upstairs. I’ll walk over to your place with you.”
I watched him climb the stairs. What did he have going? He’d set it up so he’d be sure he was with me when I left. So I wouldn’t hang around outside to see who left after he did? That didn’t make sense. If I wanted to know, I could ask the Dead Man after Morley talked to him. If I let the Dead Man know I wanted him to peek.
Ah, paranoia.
Saucerhead opened the door. “A butler,” Morley cracked. “You’re coming up in the world, Garrett.”
Saucerhead didn’t crack a frown. “Who shall I say is calling, sir?” He filled the doorway. A charging bull couldn’t have moved him. Morley didn’t when he started inside.
“Hey! What gives? Check it out, big guy. It’s raining out here.”
I said, “I’m thinking about getting into the boat business. Might be the coming thing.”
Saucerhead cocked his big ugly phiz like he was listening. He was waiting for the Dead Man’s go-ahead. Even on us. Which meant Old Bones had convinced him anything could happen. Saucerhead was the type to make damn sure it didn’t while he was on the job.
The Dead Man had him not trusting his own eyes? What was this? What did he suspect?
Saucerhead finally grunted, stepped aside. Like he didn’t think it was such a hot idea. Morley shot me a puzzled look, headed down the hall. He ducked into the Dead Man’s room. “Garrett says there’s something sinister about what happened at my place last night.”
For twenty minutes I felt like an orphan. “Five of them?” Morley said. “They’re keeping a good wrap on it, then. I only heard about one, last month, down at the Landing.”
I jumped in. “That was the one before the one before the one they found this morning. This nut is on a shrinking time cycle. After the first one he waited six weeks. Then four weeks for the one in the Landing. Then three weeks, then a couple days over two weeks to get this last one.”
“Unless there’s some in there we don’t know about.”
“They’d be hard to miss, all of them strung up with their throats cut and the guts gone. And the Watch hasn’t had any reports of daughters missing from the Hill.”
“The guy doing this has got to be doing some homework up front. He’s not just hanging out on the corner waiting for the right rich girl. He’s picking his targets and he’s working several at the same time.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He blew the snatch on Chodo’s kid but grabbed another woman in time to have her hung up this morning.”
Crazy don’t mean stupid, my old mom used to say. I’ve seen that proved often enough. The man doing this was doing a lot of planning. He’d be aware that his fun would cause a stir. He’d be real careful.
“Morley, the guy made a real dumb move last night. Maybe double dumb. He did it in front of witnesses. And he went for Chodo’s kid. He’d get less heat going after the King’s sister.”
“You remember she was scared when she came in. I have a notion the snatch was blown once already and somebody was desperate to cover his tracks. Far as going after Chodo’s kid . . . What you have to do with this character—and I can’t myself—is put yourself inside his head. Try to think like he does. He’s a genius and knows it. He’s been messed up and playing out psychotic dramas since he was a kid and he keeps getting away with it. Maybe he doesn’t quite see the rest of us as real anymore. Maybe we’re just things, like the bugs and rats he started out on. Maybe he thinks there can’t be any kickbacks as long as he’s careful. In his mind Chodo might not be a worry any bigger than Dean is.”
I understood but wasn’t sure Morley’s ideas held any water. I didn’t know what to think. TunFaire has killers by the battalion, but none like this. Muckers and coldblooded pros were the multiple murderers I knew. This monster was a hybrid, a mutant.
“Last night is the only starting place we have,” Morley said. “We have to talk to the girl.”
I made an ugly noise.
“I know. Means the outfit gets in on the hunt.”
I was surprised they weren’t already. I said so.
Morley observed, “Means she didn’t mention it when she got home. Maybe she was doing something her father wouldn’t approve.” He wore a frown, though, like he thought that couldn’t be quite right.
“Boyfriend?”
“She’s human.”
I backed off inside and considered, bitten by sudden suspicion. She’d run into Morley’s place when she was in trouble. She’d shown no sign of knowing him, but . . . No. He wouldn’t. His need to take risks wouldn’t push him that far. Would it?
The Dead Man intervened. Gentlemen, I sense the approach of persons I must interview. I will be at that all night. Garrett. I suggest you rest till morning. I may have suggestions for you then. Apparently he’d shuffled through Morley’s head and had gotten what he wanted. If there’d been anything there.
Sometimes that was arguable.
I was wound up more than I realized. “I could start—” Like I was eager to get to work.
If I calculate accurately, we have eleven or twelve days before the killer acts again. That should be ample time. The wheels of the law and Mr. Contague’s organization will grind every clue fine by then. There is no need to rush and risk doing ourselves harm.
What? He was going to stamp his approval on my loafing? I’m no fool. I hustled Morley out the front door, brought in the couple I ran into there, introduced them to the Dead Man as the parents of the first victim, then headed upstairs.
As soon as I was flat on my back I thought of fifty things I should have discussed with Morley. Like did he have any idea who those brunos were who stormed into his place after Chodo’s brat? He would have tried to find out. I knew him. After he’d brooded awhile he’d have decided that booting them around and chucking them out in the rain wasn’t good enough. He’d want a whack at the guy who’d sent them.
He might be miles ahead of me.
I let my thoughts drift back to what had happened, went over it, seeking a clue.
Nothing that special about the three men. If you had the money, you could recruit a thousand like them. Only thing remarkable was that they’d dared invade a place owned by Morley Dotes. Local professionals knew better. Those three hadn’t had out-of-town accents. Therefore, they weren’t professionals. Not streetside, anyhow. I didn’t doubt they were professional thugs.
Which led me off blue-skying. Who had thugs on staff who wouldn’t get into the streets much? Only priests and people on the Hill. The priest angle was so juicy I set it aside to look at the other first.
Off the Hill? A lunatic up there would be in a fine position to observe the movements of prospective victims. I tried to recall the appearance of the old geek with butterfly indigestion. That didn’t match any Hill people I knew.
What about the coach? I recalled it, though details were getting vague. Big, black, and fancy. A custom four-horse job. Silver brightwork. The killer had money.
Couldn’t be many coaches like it.
I fought it for fifteen minutes but it was a struggle foredoomed. Eventually I swung my legs off the bed, got up, and hunked downstairs. So much for good intentions. I donned a cloak and, marvel of marvels, a hat. The hat was Dean’s. I didn’t think he’d miss it.
Saucerhead came to see what I was up to. “I’m going out for a while. Shouldn’t be long.” I scowled at the closed door to the small front room. “Tell Dean that if that cat’s still here when I get back, they both go out in the rain.”
I went to see a friend. His name was Playmate. He was nine feet tall and black as coal, big enough to make Saucerhead nervous. But he was as gentle as a lamb and religious to boot. He was in the stable business. He owed me. Early in both our careers I’d saved him from human sharks.
He never ceased to amaze me. No matter what time I showed, no matter how inconvenient my appearance, he was always glad to see me. This time was no exception. “Garrett!” he boomed when I strolled into his stable. He dropped a curry comb and bounded toward me, swept me up in a ferocious hug. He turned me loose only after I started squawking like a bagpipe.
“Damn, Playmate, sometimes I wish you was a woman. Nobody else is excited to see me.”
“Your own fault. Come around more often. Maybe you wear out your welcome.”
“Yeah. It’s been a rough year. I’ve been neglecting my friends.”
“ ’Specially that little bit, Maya.”
I forgot my mission momentarily. “You’ve seen Maya? I thought she left town.”
“Been a while, come to think. She used to come around, help out some, just ’cause she liked the horses.”
“I knew there had to be something wrong with her.”
The look he gave me told me more than he could have said in words. Maya had cried on his shoulder. I couldn’t really look him in the eye. He said, “You’ve been having troubles all the way around, I hear. Miss Tinnie. Somebody named Winger.”
He was implying it, so I said it. “Yeah. I have a way with the girls. The wrong way.”
“Come over here and sit. I have a pony keg I’ve been nursing. Should be a sip or two left.”
Which was all right by me, except it would be warm brew. Playmate liked his beer warm. I prefer mine just about ready to turn to chunks. But he was offering beer. Right then I had an inclination to surround several gallons. I settled on an old saddle, accepted a big pewter mug. Playmate plopped his behind on a sawhorse.
“Trouble is,” he told me, “those gals all been growing up, getting interested in something besides fun.”
“I know.” It’s hell, getting older.
“Don’t mind me. It’s the preacher getting out.”
I knew that too. Back when I saved his bacon, he’d been thinking of getting into the religion racket on his own. He’d have done good but wouldn’t have gotten very big. TunFaire has a thousand cults. Always there are plenty of disenchanted would-be believers eager to sign on with the thousand-and-oneth. Playmate had taken a look around, decided that he was insufficiently cynical and dishonest to make a real go of it. He may be religious personally, but he’s practical.
“The preacher is right, Playmate. And it’s maybe him I need to talk to.”
“Problem?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought so, soon as I saw you.”
What a genius. With Playmate I commit the same sin as with Morley. I don’t go around unless I need help.
I resolved to do better in the future.
Right, Garrett. Duck! Here comes a low-flying pig.
I laid it out for Playmate. I didn’t hold back. My story upset him so badly I was sorry I hadn’t softened it some. “Who’d want to go and do something like that, Garrett? Killing little girls.”
They hadn’t been little, but that was beside the point. “I don’t know. I mean to find out. That’s where I thought you might help. That coach outside Morley’s wasn’t any junker or rental. I don’t think there’s another like it. Nearest I’ve ever seen is Chodo Contague’s coach. And it didn’t have the gaudy silver brightwork.”
Playmate frowned at every mention of Morley Dotes. He didn’t approve of Morley. He frowned again when I mentioned Chodo. If Playmate was the kind to keep a little list, the first name on his would be Chodo Contague. He sees Chodo as a cause of social ills rather than as an effect.
“Custom coach?”
“I’d guess so.”
“And similar to Chodo Contague’s.”
“A little bigger and even fancier. Silver trim and a lot of carving. Tell you anything? Know whose it is?”
“Don’t know that, but I can make a good guess who built it. If it was built in TunFaire.”
Bingo! I almost let out a whoop. Maybe I did let out a whoop. Playmate looked at me oddly for a moment, then grinned shyly. “Helped some?”
“As soon as you tell me that coachmaker’s name.”
“Atwood. Linden Atwood.”
That name meant nothing to me. At my income level I don’t buy many custom-built coaches. I don’t hang out with those who do. “Where would I find Mr. Linden Atwood, coachmaker?”
“Tinkery Row.”
Excellent. That narrowed it right down to a whole neighborhood where potters potted, tinkers linked, and at least one wainwright wrighted wains. The neighborhood lies south of the Tenderloin and north of the brewery district, stretching east to west beginning a few blocks in from the river, and parallels a street called Tinker’s Lane. That is one of the oldest parts of town. Some artisan families have been established there for centuries.
Playmate glanced toward the stable door. “Going to be getting dark soon. You figure on going down there right away?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not a nighttime neighborhood. Pretty soon they’ll all close up, have supper, then the menfolk will head for the corner tavern.”
“So it’s late. It’s already too late for five women. The Dead Man thinks this guy won’t kill again for another eleven or twelve days, but I don’t count on it.”
Playmate nodded, conceding the point. “I’ll walk with you.”
“You don’t need to do that. Just tell me where—”
“Trouble follows you. I better go with you. Takes a certain touch to deal with Atwood, anyway.”
“You’ve done enough.” I didn’t want to put Playmate at risk. He didn’t deserve it. “My job is dealing with people.”
“Your style is maybe a touch too direct and forceful for Atwood. I’ll walk you down.”
Arguing with Playmate is like arguing with a horse. Don’t get you anywhere and just irritates the horse.
Maybe if he would get into another line I’d visit more often. Any line where there weren’t so many horses around. I don’t get along with those monsters. Their whole tribe is out to get me.
“I’ll get my hat and cloak,” he said, knowing he’d won before I conceded. I looked around, wondering where he’d hidden the circus tent he’d wear. I spied a horse eyeballing me. It looked like it was thinking about kicking its stall down so it could trot over and dance a flamenco on my tired bones.
“Don’t waste time. The devils have spotted me. They’re cooking something up.”
Playmate chuckled. He has one big blind spot. He thinks my problem with horses is a joke. Boy, do they have him fooled.
We stopped to have supper, my treat. Which strained my budget severely. Playmate ate like a horse, but not cheap hay. “You’re on expenses, Garrett.”
“I was just figuring on cleaning the Watch out of pocket change, not driving them into bankruptcy.”
He got a good laugh out of that one. Simple pleasures for simple minds.
Tinkery Row is all light industry, single-family operations that produce goods without producing much smoke. The nastier stuff is down south, the nastiest across the river. The air gets chunky and takes on flavor when the wind is from the east, past the smelters and mills. Their stench can make you long for the heavy wood and coal smoke of winter or the rotten garbage of summer.
Tinkery Row is four blocks wide and eight blocks long, approximately, measuring by normal city blocks. There aren’t many of those in TunFaire. There never has been any planning applied to the city’s growth. Maybe we need a good fire to burn it all down so we can start over and do it right.
Playmate insisted on sticking with me. He said he knew the neighborhood and knew Linden Atwood. I gave up. I needed to spend some time with somebody who wasn’t going to give me a lot of hassle.
I let him lead but insisted on setting the pace myself. My legs weren’t long enough to match his prodigious stride. He strolled. I scampered. Once we got into Tinkery Row he chatted up people who still had their doors open hoping for a late sale. I huffed and puffed. Tinkery Row is a safe neighborhood. The villains stay away because the natives have this habit of ganging up. Justice is quick and informal and applied with considerable enthusiasm.
Everyone seemed to know Playmate. Nobody knew me, but my feelings weren’t hurt. That’s a plus in my line. I puffed out, “You spend a lot of time down here?”
“Grew up here. One street over. Pop made tack.” Which explained the interest in horses, maybe. “But I changed in the war. Came back too nervous, just couldn’t fit in. Kind of slow and timeless around here. People don’t change. Get fixed in their ways. I could probably tell you who is where doing what right now, though I haven’t been around for months. Right now Linden Atwood is having supper with his missus at home. His sons are having supper with their families, and his apprentices are eating bread and cheese while they clean the shop. About a half-hour from now they’ll start drifting into the Bicks and Kittle. Each one will buy a pint of dark. They’ll all go into a corner and nurse their pints for an hour, then somebody will say he’d better get on home and get to bed ’cause he has to make an early start in the morning. Old Linden will tell him to stay, have another on him, and he’ll buy the round. They’ll all sit another hour, find the bottoms of their mugs at the same time, then they’ll get up and go home.”
A thrill a minute, life in Tinkery Row.
It was the longest speech I’d ever heard from Playmate. While he made it he led me to and into the corner tavern with the name I found unfathomable. Most taverns do have odd names, like Rose and Dolphin, but that’s because most people can’t read. A sign with a couple of symbols will hang over the door, serving as both name and address. Bicks and Kittle didn’t have a sign, and when I finally asked Playmate about the name, he told me those were the families who ran the place.
Some mysteries just aren’t worth unraveling.
Playmate studied the layout. The place wasn’t crowded. He held me back while he chose a table. “We don’t want to trespass on the regulars.” Apparently they became disturbed when casual trade usurped their traditional tables. Playmate chose a small one in the middle of the small room. It appeared less shopworn than most.
Playmate ordered but I paid. He asked for the dark beer. “You can get any beer you want as long as you’re willing to go down the street for your pale or lager.”
“Real set in their ways.” I do like the occasional dark beer, though. And this proved to be a fine brew with a strong malt flavor. I like to taste the malt more than the hops.
“Hardheaded. Atwood comes in, let me pick the time and do the talking.”
I nodded. Made sense.
The place began filling. Young and old, they were all cut from one bolt. I wondered if there would be a problem, what with Playmate’s being the only dark face in the place. Nope. Soon guys started dropping by to exchange a few words of greeting while eyeing me sidelong, curiously, but with manners too steady to express that curiosity aloud.
Playmate identified the apprentice coachmakers when they arrived. “Atwood never took apprentices till a few years ago. The war’s fault. He lost a couple sons, then none of his grandsons made it back. Has three still doing their five years, though. Maybe they’ll get lucky.”
The apprentices were old for that. Middle twenties. “In Atwood’s place I’d take kids, educate them so they could avoid the line units. Supply outfits always need wainwrights.”
Playmate looked at me like I’d missed the point of everything he’d said tonight. “Where would he find kids? Any Tinkery family with kids would bring them up in the family trade.”
All right. I did miss that, sort of.
The surviving sons appeared, then Linden Atwood himself. Linden Atwood was that rare creature, a man who fitted his name and looked like a coachmaker. In my preconceptions. He was a skinny little dink, old, with leathery skin, all his own hair, intelligent eyes, and plenty of bounce. His hands were hands that still did their share of work. He stood like he had a board nailed to his back, seemed confident of his place in the world. He and his crew were one big happy family. He was no aloof patriarch. He, his three sons, and four apprentices got into a spirited argument about whether or not the King’s Rules were turning TunFaire’s football players into gangs of whining candyassed wimps.
Now there was something worth arguing about. King’s Rules went into effect before I was born.
Karentine football, or rugger, is so rough now I wouldn’t want my enemies playing. In Old Style football I think the only rule was: no edged weapons.
“I take it football is popular down here.”
“Serious business. Best players come out of Tinkery. Every block has a team. Kids start out as soon as they can walk.”
Not only hardheaded but not very bright. But I kept that thought to myself. “Not very tolerant” goes along with the other two, most places.
“Played some myself when I was younger,” Playmate told me.
“Why am I not surprised?” He’d have made a team all by himself.
Playmate was slick. He managed to insinuate an opinion into an argument so old it was obvious ritual, elicited a response because, apparently, in his olden days he’d been a star. Before I understood what was happening, he and I were part of Atwood’s crowd. I pursued Playmate’s advice diligently. The Dead Man would have been impressed by how long I kept my mouth shut.
In time the Atwoods veered from the tried and true long enough to betray polite curiosity concerning Playmate’s presence. Playmate gave them a big grin, like he was mocking himself for taking anything seriously. “My pal Garrett and me, we’re on sort of a crusade.”
Those guys understood a crusade. They were religious. Real salt of the earth and backbone of the nation. Hadn’t had an original thought in generations.
Pardon. I do get overly critical at times.
Curiosity levels rose. Playmate played with them a minute, then said, “I better let Garrett tell it. He’s the one been closest to it. I’m just trying to lend a hand.”
I pictured Block exploding if he heard I was hanging out his dirty laundry all over town, grinned, told the story of the dead girls. The Atwoods were properly horrified. I played to that, noted the old man paying closer attention than the others, who just wanted to be entertained.
I said, “So right now it looks like the only way to trace this monster is through his coach.”
Everybody got it then. The whole gang got quiet and grim. All eyes turned to the old man. He considered me neutrally. “You suspect that coach came from my shop, Mr. Garrett?”
“I have no idea, Mr. Atwood. Playmate says you’re the premier coachmaker in TunFaire. If it was built here, according to him, you’re the only man with the talent to have built it.”
“I expect so. Describe it again.”
I did, recalling every possible detail.
The sons were less skilled than he at concealing their thoughts. I knew that coach had been built by Linden Atwood. The question was, would the man expose his buyer?
He would. “We delivered that coach, built to strict and exacting specifications, about three years back, Mr. Garrett. I do not believe in false humility. It was the finest coach ever built in TunFaire. I will accept responsibility for that, but I refuse any blame.”
“Excuse me?”
One son muttered, “Damn thing’s jinxed.”
The old man glared. “Madame Tallia Lethe, wife and mother of the Icemasters Direfear, commissioned it. Three months after she took delivery, there was an accident. She fell. A wheel rolled over her head.”
Oh, boy. “I knew we could get some big-time sorcerers into this.” Karentine wizards mainly belong to the Elemental Schools: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The Windmasters and Storm Wardens of the Air school are common, Firelords more so. There may be Earth schoolers elsewhere in Karenta, but none in TunFaire. Water-school types are almost as rare. “I didn’t know we had any Icemasters here.”
“We don’t,” the old man said. “The woman lived here. The Icemasters are dead, anyway. Crossbones Bight.”
Ah. The big naval battle of the War. We got our Karentine asses kicked. Unfortunately for the Venageti, a naval triumph hadn’t meant much strategically. “I see,” I said, not seeing at all.
“Madame had no heirs. The estate passed to the Crown. The Crown agents auctioned everything. Lord Hellsbreath bought the coach.”
There was a name to conjure nightmares.
The only Hellsbreath I recalled was no healthier than Madame Lethe. “He had some bad luck himself, right?”
“He was murdered. The assassin got away.”
“He was in the coach when it happened,” a son volunteered.
“Crossbow bolt right in the eye,” another said. He demonstrated with enthusiastic gestures and sound effects.
“Then who got the coach?”
“Duchess of Suhnerkhan. Lady Hamilton.”
I knew that one. “Does seem like it was unlucky.” The King’s great-aunt, Lady Hamilton, had decided to visit the family estate at Okcok. She hadn’t bothered with an escort, though there’d been a full moon out. Werewolves had given her a fatal set of hickeys.
Linden Atwood grunted but conceded nothing.
“That was a year and a half ago. I guess it’s changed hands a few more times?”
“No. Crown Prince Rupert brought it back to town and stored it in the coachhouse behind Lady Hamilton’s town house. Far as I know, it hasn’t been out since.” The old man produced a pipe and pipeweed. He filled up, lit up, leaned back, closed his eyes, puffed, and thought. The clan waited quietly. I followed their lead. Playmate signaled for another round of the dark. On me, naturally.
The beer’s arrival wakened Atwood. He tilted forward, drained half his mug, wiped foam with the back of a hand, belched, said, “I don’t put no stock in this jinx stuff, Garrett.” We were pals now. I’d bought him a beer. “But was I you, I’d be careful. Seems like everybody that gets near that coach gets dead.” He frowned.
He didn’t like that at all. What if word got out? What if people started thinking it was the coachmaker’s fault?
“I’m not much on haunts and jinxes,” I told him. “But if that coach is jinxed, you got any notion how come?”
“Beats the shit out of me.” He guzzled the other half of his beer. “Shit happens. Sometimes it don’t make no sense.”
Playmate horned in. “Thanks, Mr. Atwood. Sure was good of you to talk to us.” He nudged me with a knee, got up. I wondered why he was in a hurry, but I’d promised to follow his lead. I piled on my share of thanks and excused myself, followed Playmate into the rain.
“What was that? How come the run-out?”
“Atwood was getting glassy-eyed. In about a minute he was going to start in on his boys that didn’t make it home from the Cantard. I thought you might want to get some sleep tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. You got to feel sorry for the guy. But that don’t mean you got to go live in his hell with him. He’s got to lay his own ghosts himself.”
True. But I was surprised that Playmate thought so. I pulled my cloak tighter. There was enough wind to make the night cold.
“Past my bedtime, Garrett. Hope all that helped.”
“You hope? Hell, it cracked the thing. All I need now is to find out who’s been using that coach.” And how hard could that be? I mean, the Crown Prince’s duties included running Karentine internal security. The TunFaire Watch were one obscure arm of the many he oversaw. And if what Block said was true, the heat on the Watch had good old Rupert behind it.
“Come around more often, Garrett,” Playmate said. “At least soon enough to let me know how this comes out.” He strode off like he was late for a date with one of his mares. I stood absorbing some rain for a moment, startled, then shrugged. Playmate did these things. He didn’t know he was being rude and unsociable.
What now?
Morley’s place, that’s what now.
It wasn’t that far out of my way. I dropped by. My reception was no more charming than before. Maybe not as good. More people departed. The others seemed edgy, except for Saucerhead’s pal Licks, who was at the same shadowed corner table stoned out of this world.
Puddle gave me a huge scowl, glanced down at his keg. I told him, “That rat Sarge said he was going to blame it on me. Morley here?”
Puddle already had a finger pointed skyward and an eyebrow up. I nodded to make sure he understood that I wanted to see Morley as well as to know if he was home. With Puddle you have to take it by the numbers. He don’t fill in the gaps so good.
He was the kind of guy who thought if you couldn’t solve a problem with a right cross or a club, then it wasn’t a problem in the first place and therefore didn’t need solving. Ignore it and it would go away.
Puddle grunted, growled at the speaking tube, fluttered a hand to indicate that I should go on up. Apparently Morley didn’t have company.
I climbed the stairs, tiptoed to Morley’s door, listened before I knocked. I didn’t hear anything. Usually there was scurrying as somebody’s wife headed for cover. All I heard was Morley telling me to come in.
I opened the door. Something zipped past the end of my nose. Morley was behind his desk, his feet up, leaning back, tossing darts. I didn’t recognize the painted face serving as his target. “You doing the hoodoo voodoo on somebody?”
“Not really. Found all that in a junk shop. Velvet painting of a guy who looks like my sister’s husband.” Zip. Wham. Another eye put out. “What’s up?”
“No company tonight?”
“Too wet out there these days. Nobody’s going to be seeing much company as long as this weather keeps up.” Zip. Wham. Right in the end of the nose. “Want to get those darts for me?”
“You’re a bundle of ambition tonight.”
“Yeah. Long as you’re doing my legwork, you see that creep Licks downstairs? So I don’t have to go look for myself?”
“He’s there. Unconscious, I think. The smoke was pretty thick.”
He snagged his speaking tube. “Puddle. Toss that creep Licks out now. Don’t leave him where he’ll get run over.” Morley put the tube down, looked at me. “I hope he gets pneumonia.”
“You have a problem with the man?”
“Yes. I don’t like him.”
“So bar him.”
“His money’s as good as yours. Maybe better. He spends it here.” That didn’t get a rise, so he asked, “What’s up? You look like you can’t wait to get something off your chest.”
“I got a line on the coach.”
“Coach? What coach.”
“The one out front that they tried to drag Chodo’s kid into. I found the man who built it. He told me where I can find it.” I explained.
Morley sighed, took his feet down. “Isn’t that just like you? Here I am, having the time of my life, and you have to walk in and mess it up.” He got up, opened a closet, dug out a raincloak and fancy hat that must have set him back a dozen broken bones.
“What you doing?”
“Let’s go check it out.”
“Huh?”
“Way I see it, that beats hell out of trying to get to see Chodo. You carrying?”
“Here and there.”
“Finally started to learn, eh?”
“I guess. What’s the problem with Chodo? I thought you were tight. It’s me that’s on his list.”
“I don’t know. I sent word I needed to talk. That it was important. I never got an answer. That’s never happened before. Then comes a roundabout kind of hint that nobody out there wants to hear from me and if I’m smart I won’t bother them ever again.”
“Odd.” I couldn’t figure that. Morley was an important independent contractor. Chodo owed him a listen.
“Been odd ever since you and Winger went out there. And getting odder every day.” We were headed downstairs now.
I asked, “What’s with the mustaches? That the coming thing?”
“Huh?”
“I’m seeing them all over. On you it don’t look bad. On Spud it would look good if he could grow one. But on Puddle it looks like some damn buzzard built its nest on his lip.”
“He doesn’t take care of it.” Morley darted to the counter, spoke to Puddle briefly. I noted Licks’s absence and Puddle’s wet shoulders. Licks remained with us in spirit. The smoke was thick enough to slice.
When it rains and the wind blows, it gets real dark in TunFaire. Streetlamps won’t stay lighted, though those lamps exist only in neighborhoods like the Hill and the Tenderloin, where the wraths of our lords temporal and lords criminal encourage thieves and vandals to practice their crafts elsewhere. Tonight the Hill was darker than a priest’s secret heart. I didn’t like it. Given my choice, I want to see trouble coming.
Morley was as excited as a kid planning to tumble an outhouse. I asked, “What’s your thinking on this?” I looked around nervously. We’d approached Lady Hamilton’s place unchallenged, which made me just that much more anxious.
I don’t believe in good luck. I do believe in cumulative misfortune, in bad luck just lying back piling up interest till it dumps on you in one big load.
“We climb over the wall, see if the coach is there.”
“You could give Glory Mooncalled lessons in innovative tactics.” I didn’t like his idea. We could get ourselves arrested. We could get ourselves hurt. We could get ourselves fatally unhealthy. The private guards on the Hill are a lot less inhibited than their public-payroll counterparts.
“Don’t get all worked up, Garrett. Won’t be anything to it.”
“That’s what you said the time you conned me into helping deliver that vampire to the old kingpin.”
“That time you didn’t know what you were doing.”
True. But where would he get the idea I knew what I was doing now? “You’re too optimistic to live.”
“Comes of living right.”
“Comes of eating horse fodder till you have the sense of a mule.”
“You could do with more horse fodder yourself, Garrett. Meat is filled with the juices of things that died terrified. They make you timid yourself.”
“I have to admit I never heard anybody call a cabbage a coward.”
“There they go. All clear.”
There who go? Were we hanging around soaking because he’d seen someone? Why didn’t he tell me these things?
He did have better night vision. One of the advantages of his elvish blood. The disadvantages, of course, started with a conviction of personal immortality. It isn’t true, what you hear about elves being immortal. They just think they are. Only an arrow through the heart will talk them out of the idea.
Morley took off toward the Hamilton place. I followed, watching everywhere but where I was going. I heard a sound, looked for its source as I jumped ten feet high, walked right into the Hamilton wall.
“You must have been some Marine,” Morley grumbled, and continued muttering about no wonder Karenta couldn’t win in the Cantard if I represented the kingdom’s best and brightest.
“Probably a hundred thousand guys down there would be happy to let you show them how to do it.” Morley wasn’t a veteran. Breeds don’t have to go. The nonhuman peoples all have treaties exempting people up to one-eighth blood. The nonhumans you see in the Cantard are natives or mercenaries, and usually both. And agents of Glory Mooncalled besides. Except for the vampires and werewolves and unicorn packs, who are out to get everybody.
The Cantard is a lot of fun.
Morley squatted, cupped his hands. “I’ll give you a boost.” The wall was nine feet high.
“You’re lighter.” I could toss him right over.
“That’s why you go first. I can climb up there without help.”
A point. Not one that fired me up to go first, but a point. This business was more in his line than mine. He wouldn’t buy my plan which was to go pound on the front gate and ask to see the deadly coach. That was too prosaic for his sense of adventure.
I shrugged, stepped into his cupped hands, heaved my reluctant bones upward, grabbed the top of the wall in expectation of getting my fingers ripped to hamburger by broken glass. Broken glass is an old trick for discouraging uninvited company.
Oh, my. Now I was really disheartened. There was no broken glass. I pulled my chin up level with the top, peeked. Where was the trap? They had to have something really special planned if they didn’t use broken glass.
Morley whacked me on the sole. “Better move your ass, Garrett. They’re coming back.”
I didn’t know who “they” were but I heard their footsteps. I took a poll. Opinion was unanimous. I didn’t want to find out who they were. Up and over I went. I landed in a small garden, gently, failing even to turn an ankle. Morley landed beside me. I said, “This’s too easy.”
“Come on, Garrett. What do you want? You have a closed house here. Who’s going to guard that?”
“Exactly what I want to know.”
“You ever begin to sound optimistic, I’m going to flee the country. Come on. Sooner we do it, the sooner you’re out of here.”
I grunted agreement. “Looks like the coach house there.” I don’t like sneaking, much. I still thought we should have tried the front way.
Morley scooted to a door in the side of the coach house. I let him lead. I noted how carefully he moved, for all he did so quickly. Whatever he said, he wasn’t taking chances.
In his line you didn’t get old taking anything for granted. My line either, for that matter.
Neither of us had brought a lantern. You do dumb things when you rush. Still, there was light enough leaking from nearby homes to let Morley see a little. He told me, “Somebody was here before us. They jimmied the lock.” He tried the door. It opened.
I looked over his shoulder. It was blacker than the inside of a buzzard’s belly in there, and about as inviting. Something made noises and shuffled around. Something breathed. Something a lot bigger than me. Always a courteous kind of guy, I offered, “After you, sir.”
Morley wasn’t that sure he was immortal. “We need a light.”
“Now he notices. This the kind of planning you re going to do when you take over in the Cantard?”
“I’ll be back in five minutes.” He vanished before I could argue.
Five minutes? It was more like twenty. The longest twenty I ever lived, excepting maybe a few dozen times in the islands when I was in the Corps, dancing the death dance with Venageti soldiers.
He wasn’t gone ten of those five minutes when, from my lurking place under a crippled lime tree—where I was trying to drown less speedily—I noted a light moving past a downstairs window inside the Hamilton house. Probably a candle. It had a ghostly effect, casting a huge, only vaguely humanoid shadow on a drawn shade.
I gulped air.
Damn me if my luck didn’t hold. Somebody came outside and headed straight for the coach house. I heard muttering, then realized that there were two of them. The guy with the candle was leading.
Closer. It was my old buddy with the bad stomach. He didn’t look like much now, a sawed-off runt in clothes that had been out of style since my dad was a pup. He wore the kind of hat they call a deerstalker. I’d never seen one outside a painting before. He was bent and slow and shaky and a damned near perfect match for my notion of what a pederast ought to look like.
Hunking along behind, having trouble navigating, was Scarface, the guy Saucerhead had bounced around so thoroughly. He moved slower than the old guy, like he’d aged a hundred years overnight. Saucerhead hadn’t broken much but he’d left both of them with plenty of pain.
Now what? Jump in and make a citizen’s arrest? Accuse somebody of something and maybe get my own bones rearranged? Maybe cause the geezer another attack of dyspepsia and have him belch carnivorous butterflies all over me? Maybe just end up in court for assault? My mind wanders at such times, examining the dark side. I wish I had Saucerhead’s capacity for lack of doubt.
There are advantages to being simple.
While I tried to decide and wondered where the hell Morley was with the light, those two dragged their bruise collections inside the coach house. Light flowed through cracks as they lit lamps or lanterns. Talk continued, but I could distinguish no words.
I crept to the doorway, still could make out nothing. I heard a horse snort, jumped. Boy, was I glad I hadn’t gone in there before. They would’ve ambushed me for sure.
It sounded like they were fixing to harness a team. The cussing level suggested that was difficult when you were all bruised up. Sounded like some impressive descriptive work being done in there. I wanted to hear more. I need to expand my vocabulary.
I slipped my fingers into the gap between the door and its frame, pulled outward slowly till I had a crack through which to peek. So I could spy on a whole lot of horse stalls and tack racks doing a whole lot of nothing. Pretty dull stuff. I had the wrong angle.
Someone had the right angle to see the door move inward. I heard one voice say something soft but startled. Heavy footsteps lumbered my way, like a stomping troll wearing stone boots. I thought about doing a fast fade but thought too long. I barely had time to duck aside before the door flew open.
I couldn’t run, so I did the next best thing. I bopped Scarface over the head with my listen stick. His conk thunked like a thumped watermelon. He sagged, looked at me like I wasn’t playing fair. Well, why should I? That’s dumb with his kind. I’d get hurt if I tried. I thumped him again to make my point.
I bounced over Scarface, popped inside, charged the little character with the sour stomach and antique clothes. Don’t ask me why. Seems plenty dumb in retrospect. Just say it seemed like a good idea at the time.
He was trying to get the street doors open. I can’t imagine why. His team were still in their stalls. He wasn’t going to drive away. And he wasn’t going to outrun anybody on foot either. But there he went, heaving away and spitting green moths.
He heard me coming and spun around. For him a spin was a slow turn. His one hand dropped to a kind of frayed rope that served him as a belt, hitched his pants. His eyes started glowing green. I got there with my stick.
One of his moths bit me. Stung like hell. And distracted me so the old boy could slide aside enough for me to whap his shoulder instead of the top of his gourd. He howled. I bellowed and flailed at bugs. His eyes flared and his mouth opened wide. I avoided his gaze and the one big green butterfly that flew from his maw. I flailed crosswise, catching him alongside the jaw.
I put too much on it. Bone cracked. He folded like a dropped suit of clothes.
My juices were flowing. I bounced around looking for more trouble, so cranked the horses just backed up in their stalls and waited for me to go away. I checked Scarface. He was snoring, getting soggier by the second. I darted back to the old man . . .
Who wasn’t snoring. He was making funny noises that said he wouldn’t be breathing at all pretty soon. I’d broken more than his jaw.
A green giant butterfly crept halfway out from between his lips, got stuck. He held on to his crude rope belt with both hands, like he didn’t want to lose his pants, and started shaking.
I’m not in the habit of croaking people. I’ve done it, sure, but never really by choice and never because I wanted to.
Now I was wound up. This was the Hill. Up here the guardians of the peace were no half-blind, unambitious Watchmen interested only in collecting their pay. If I was caught anywhere near a dead man . . .
“What the hell is this?”
I didn’t quite leap into the hayloft. Just maybe ten feet. Not even a record for the standing broad jump. But I was out the door the old man had wanted to use, thirty feet into the wet, before I recognized Morley’s voice.
Still shaking, I went back and told him what had happened. The presence of a dying man didn’t rattle him at all. He observed, “You’re learning.”
“Huh?”
“Case solved and wrapped in a day. You dig up your buddy Block, tell him where to find his villain, end up with your pockets stuffed with gold. You still have the luck.”
“Yeah.” But I didn’t feel lucky. I didn’t know that that little old man had gotten his thrills carving on pretty girls.
Morley closed the yard door, eased toward the street door. I said, “Hold it. I have to take a look around in the house.”
“Why?” He said that sharply, like he didn’t want me going that way.
“In case there’s any evidence. I need to know.”
He gave me the fish eye, shook his head, shrugged. The notion of a conscience was alien to him. “If you have to, you have to.”
“I have to.”
I tripped over the old man’s sidekick as I stepped into the garden. Well! Another mystery. Some wicked soul had come along and stabbed him in his sleep.
I scowled at Morley. Morley wasn’t abashed. “Didn’t need him, Garrett. And now you won’t need to keep looking back.” Just because the guy had caused a scene at the Joy House.
I didn’t argue. We’d had the argument more times than I liked to recall. Morley knew neither pity nor remorse, only practicality. Which, he had a habit of reminding me, was why I turned to him so often.
Maybe. But I think I go to him because I trust him to cover my back.
I’d grabbed the old man’s lantern. It was out now, after my spill. I pushed it aside, dragged the body into the coach house, closed the door, and headed for the big house by the light of the lantern Morley carried. I snagged the extinguished lantern as I went.
The house wasn’t locked. It took us only moments to get inside and find something.
We entered through a dusty kitchen. We needed go on no farther. Seconds after we entered, Morley said, “Check this, Garrett.”
“This” was a three-gallon wooden bucket. A tribe of flies had made it a place of worship. Their startled buzz and the smell told me that it was no water pail. Rusty cakes of dried blood adorned it.
“They had to use something to carry the blood away.” I shone my light around, spotted a set of knives on a drainboard. They were not ordinary kitchen knives. They were decorated with fancy symbols. They were decorated with dried blood too.
Morley observed, “They didn’t take good care of their tools.”
“You didn’t see the way they moved. After they’d danced with Saucerhead they probably didn’t feel much like doing housework.”
“You satisfied now?”
I had to be. “Yeah.” No point lollygagging around, maybe getting ourselves hanged with all that evidence.
Morley grinned. “You really are learning, Garrett. I figure maybe another hundred years and you can get by without a baby-sitter.”
I wondered if maybe he wasn’t a little too optimistic.
Being no fool, Morley went his own way. I found Captain Block the last place I expected, at the bachelor officers’ quarters at the barracks the Watch shares with the local army garrison. Those troops are less use than the Watch, coming out for nothing but ceremonies and to stand guard at various royal edifices.
I got the usual runaround trying to reach Block, but it had no heart in it. Maybe he’d left word a certain battered old Marine might want to get hold of him sometime.
He was dressing when I walked in and started dripping on his carpet. “I take it you’ve got something, Garrett.” For the life of me I couldn’t figure why he wasn’t thrilled to see me, just because it was after midnight.
“I found your man.”
“Huh?” Dumbstruck is really amazing on a naturally dumbfounded face.
“That villain you wanted found? The fellow who entertained himself by whittling on pretty girls? If you want him, I’ve got him.”
“Uh . . . yeah?” He didn’t believe me yet.
“Put your slicker on, Cap. I’ve had me a long, hard day and I want to get on home.”
“You found him?”
Ta-da! First thing you knew, he’d figure it out. “Yep. But you’d better get rolling if you want to cash in.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He was in a daze. He couldn’t believe this. For a moment I entertained suspicions. They didn’t get too rowdy. “But how? I had a thousand men looking. They never caught a whiff.”
“Didn’t know where to sniff. You get the nose when you have to make your living at it.”
“Sounds like you plain got lucky.”
“Luck helps.”
“Should I bring some men?”
“You won’t need them. They won’t give you any trouble.”
Must have been an edge to my voice. He looked me askance but was too shocked still to pursue it. He shrugged into an army overcloak, jammed a waterproof hat onto his head. “You don’t know how much we appreciate this, Garrett.”
“I have my suspicions. Just show me by making sure you don’t forget to drop my fee off at my place.”
“What?” He managed to look affronted. Somebody had the audacity to question the integrity of the Watch? “You think we’d screw you?”
“The gods forfend. Me? Think a thing like that about our brave Watchmen? Surely you jest, Captain.”
He heard the sarcasm and didn’t like it, but had become too excited to take offense. Hell, he took off like the proverbial bat, dashing boldly into the night and rain—till he realized he didn’t know where the hell he was headed.
“I’m moving as fast as I can, Captain,” I told him. And I was. I did want to get home. I had big ambitions in the night lumber trade. “I put in about two thousand miles of legwork today, tracking these monsters down.”
“Monsters? There’s more than one?”
The man didn’t listen. I shook my head. He fell into step beside me, as bouncy as a five-year-old.
“One more than one, Captain. The big villain was a guy about a thousand years old who was some kind of wizard. The other was your basic street bruno, middle thirties.”
“Was?” Now he sounded nervous, even wary. “You keep saying ‘was.’ ”
“You’ll see.”
He saw. He was less than thrilled. “Did you have to kill them?” He stared at the old man like he hoped the crazy bastard would rise from the dead.
“No. I could’ve let them kill me. But then you’d still be looking, wouldn’t you?” I stared at the old man, rattled. Block didn’t notice.
First, the old boy had crawled to the garden door before he’d checked out. Then he’d gotten naked. What there was of him was so dried up it looked like something had sucked out everything inside his skin. That skin was dead white. I wondered if maybe he wouldn’t rise from the dead. If he hadn’t already, a time or two. Then I shook off the fit of superstition and concentrated on a problem that was real and immediate.
Someone had been into the coach house in my absence. Somebody who had stripped the dead man and had ripped off a crazy miscellany from the tack and tool racks. That smelled of a crime of opportunity committed by some down-and-out amateur. By someone who had seen a door open, had darted in for a nervous peek, had taken what he could use, and had grabbed everything else he could carry that looked like it might sell for enough to make a down payment on a bottle of cheap red wine. Was I to go a-hunting this thief, I’d keep an eye peeled for a short, skinny wino all cocked up in a new suit of old clothes, complete with one of those absurd deerstalker hats.
Block complained, “Would’ve had a lot more impact if I’d been able to bring them to trial.”
“I don’t doubt it a bit. It would’ve been a circus. The show of the year. I would’ve loved to have seen it. But he was belching butterflies and staring green fire and getting ready to lay some serious sorcery on me. I couldn’t talk him out of it. Come on. Let me show you some evidence.”
I led him to the kitchen, showed him the bucket. I wanted to show him the knives but they weren’t where I’d seen them last. That damned Morley, collecting souvenirs. I felt more comfortable in the house now that I had an officer of the law along to explain to the local custodians. I took time to look around more carefully. I didn’t see anything new. “You satisfied?”
“I expect.” He held up a big glass jar Morley and I had overlooked. It contained a human heart in a clear fluid. “I’ll have my people come take the place apart.”
“You know who owns it?”
“I know. Ironic coincidence. There won’t be any problems, though. The Prince is determined. He’ll just be doubly pissed because somebody dared. He’ll breathe fire.”
I chuckled. “You’re welcome to collect the kudos, Captain. I don’t want his kind noticing me. Just see that I get paid. Then you’re happy, I’m happy, and TunFaire is happy soon as word gets out. Now, unless you insist on my help, I’m dragging my weary ass home and putting it to bed.”
“Go ahead,” he said distractedly. “And, Garrett?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. You’ll get your money. And I’ll still owe you for this miracle.”
“There you go.” I got me out of there while the getting was good.
The Dead Man was still doing interviews when I got home. There were people in with him and people waiting in the small front room. Dean was doing a shift on the door. I gave him my most malicious smile and sneered. “Now you know what it feels like to be up at an absurd hour.” I made a quick sally into the small front room in search of feline game but did not find my prey. Dean eyed me nervously and kept his mouth shut.
Excellent, I thought as I trudged upstairs. First thing in the morning we’d have a talk about that cat.
First thing in the morning, I didn’t talk to Dean at all. About cats, anyway. He rolled me out at some absurd hour before noon, told me, “His Nibs wants you in his room. I’ll bring your breakfast there.”
I groaned and rolled over.
Dean didn’t bother with the usual roust. That should have warned me. But it was morning. Who thinks in the morning? I just grumped some ill-placed gratitude in the general direction of heaven and burrowed into my pillow.
Bugs started chewing on me.
Felt like bugs biting, anyway. When I started flopping and swatting and cussing and digging around, I couldn’t find a thing. But the nibbling kept on keeping on.
It was morning. It took me a while to figure it. Old Dean hadn’t salted my bed with insects. The Dead Man was prodding me.
Still cussing and dancing and swatting, I pried myself out of bed. That part of my mind that was working duly noted the discovery of a hitherto unsuspected aspect of my partner. He would persecute his allies as readily as his enemies.
Though my eyes only pretended to be open and my legs rebelled at every step, I made it downstairs without suffering any disaster. I stumbled into the Dead Man’s room and dropped into my chair, weakly looking around for something I could use to start a fire as soon as I got the ambition.
Good morning, Garrett. You wouldn’t think you’d get much expression out of his style of communication, but he sure managed to sound as happy as a clam that didn’t know it was being fattened up for a chowder. I am so pleased you could join me.
The sentiments I expressed were less sociable. “What the hell you bubbling about? What the hell did you drag me down here for? The sun ain’t even up yet.” Which wasn’t strictly true. Somewhere out there, above the rain clouds, there was a sun that had been up for hours. It just hadn’t been up for enough hours.
I could contain my curiosity no longer. The gentlemen of the City Watch came round to pay their respects and debts this morning. They were generous beyond belief.
“Don’t mean much. Them showing up with one sceat makes them generous beyond belief. How much?”
The full one thousand marks. Moreover—
“Only a thousand?” I grumped. Naturally, I grumped. A thousand was a major score, but I’d have grumped if they’d brought money around by the wagonload. “You could’ve waited till a decent hour.”
Moreover, he continued, ignoring me completely, they brought the latest news from the Cantard. My theories have been vindicated at last. The expected collapse of Glory Mooncalled’s revolution, indicated by all those defections and desertions, has proved chimerical. He was just biding his time against the ripe moment.
“Aw, hell.” Now I understood why he’d dragged me out. Didn’t have a thing to do with money. He’d gotten his big chance to crow—with me in no condition to fight back.
I’d figured Mooncalled was on his last legs. The evidence was there. Defections and desertions had been strong indicators that the rebellion was about to fold. Hell, there were refugees from the Cantard scattered all over Karenta now. I’d seen plenty right here in TunFaire.
I didn’t bother asking how Mooncalled had conjured another miracle. The man did these things. I went to work on the breakfast Dean brought and waited on the Dead Man. He would want to rub it in. He loves it when I lose an argument completely.
He let me have it blow by blow, the uneconomical way. The way I do him when I want to yank his beard.
He claimed most of the defections and desertions hadn’t been genuine. Furthermore, Mooncalled had just been lying low, staying ahead of the various armies, occasionally encouraging the Venageti forces or Karentine to come to blows while he awaited one of those rare but exceedingly violent storms that sweep into the Cantard from the gulf. I saw a few of those while I was down there. All you can do is take cover and hope the cover stands up to the wind and rain.
While his enemies were paralyzed, Mooncalled had struck. In both directions. One force attacked Full Harbor, Karenta’s biggest bridgehead in the Cantard. He’d tried before and had failed. This time he’d succeeded, taking Full Harbor with all its supplies and munitions.
Another force attacked Quarache, Venageta’s logistical bastion in the southern Cantard. Quarache is bigger and far more important than Full Harbor. It surrounds the only big, reliable oasis in that part of the desert. The Venageti war effort hinges on continued control of Quarache. Without it they wouldn’t be able to project their power far enough to threaten the silver mines.
Losing Full Harbor would hurt the Karentine effort but not cripple it. Karenta has other bases along the coast. Venageta doesn’t.
I tried a weak sally. “Your boy is in deep shit now, Chuckles. They’ll send the Marines to take the Harbor back. He’s never gone up against Marines.”
Except for a sly touch of amusement he ignored me. He continued his story.
Quarache didn’t go the way of Full Harbor. Mooncalled hadn’t had the strength to carry it completely. Fighting continued as the Venageti rushed reinforcements in from everywhere, were reclaiming Quarache in prolonged, desperate, expensive house-to-house combat.
Like most ordinary Karentines, I’ve developed an affection for Glory Mooncalled. Not that I want my kingdom to lose a war. But when you spend your whole life a witness to the corruption, incompetence, and greed shown by our overlords, you can’t help but admire a guy who makes rude noises in their faces and brassily dares them to do their worst—then dances around mocking them while they stumble over their own feet. Too, I think a lot of us nurture the secret hope that Mooncalled’s antics will compel an end to the endless war.
“This is really why you dragged me out of bed?”
This and the fact that I wish to hear details of what happened last night. And he did seem intensely interested. I recalled that he had been from the beginning, like he’d suspected something he didn’t want to share. How was it that you managed to conclude the thing so quickly?
“Ah? I think I detect a hint of jealousy. A note of disbelief.”
The law of averages suggests you should be capable of stumbling through unaided occasionally. It is true that I remain amazed at your ability to flout that law so frequently.
Yes. He was piqued. He’d put all that time into all those interviews, which we hadn’t yet discussed, expecting to dazzle one and all with a startling indictment. Then I’d had to go spoil his game by tracking down that jinxed coach. Garrett the Killjoy, that’s me. “You want to tell me what you thought was going on when Block first told us about the women?”
Somebody pounded on the door, timing it as though the Dead Man had had him waiting in the wings.
That will be Mr. Tharpe. I allowed him to return home last evening. He had personal matters to settle. Stay seated. Dean will handle the door.
I yelled, “Dean, throw that cat out when you let Saucerhead in.” I waited till Tharpe came in before I started my story.
“You got lucky,” Saucerhead said when I finished.
“Lucky, hell. That was a prime piece of deducting and detecting.”
Tharpe grunted, unconvinced.
“I didn’t see anybody else thinking about attacking it by looking for the coach.”
“I still say you lucked out, Garrett. How about if the old geezer used some regular coach? How about if he walked?”
“But he didn’t. And that’s the point. And that’s what cost him. He decided to break in on a closed house and use it for his base, and found him a spiffy, neato coach there and just couldn’t resist going in style. And it cost him.” For a second I wondered if the jinx had gotten old butterfly-breath. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t much bothered by having croaked him, now. I hadn’t run into many people who’d needed killing more. I couldn’t feel bad about doing the world a favor.
“You lucked out,” Saucerhead insisted. And wouldn’t be swayed. Neither would the Dead Man.
Mr. Tharpe, I have an errand for you, should you care to extend your employment.
“You pay, I play.” Saucerhead liked the Dead Man for some reason.
This building has become suspiciously free of vermin. That was because I’d burned a dozen sulfur candles one day while he was taking one of his six-week naps. I thought I’d do him a favor. Bugs like to snack on him. I am accustomed to employing large numbers of insects when I examine the various permutations of action available to the forces operating in the Cantard. I cannot indulge my curiosity without them.
“You already heard what Glory Mooncalled done, then?”
Yes. I am excited. I need a few thousand insects with which to evolve through the options available to the surviving combatants.
He had a habit of lining bugs up on the wall, like soldiers, and running them through maneuvers. A disgusting vice.
“Now, wait a minute,” I protested. “I just got this place deinfested.” Bugs and mice are the Dead Man’s worst enemies. Left unchecked, they would devour him in no time.
So. You are the villain responsible.
He knew darned well I was, he just hadn’t brought it up before.
“I am he,” said I. “I’m also the guy what owns this dump. I’m also the guy what’s feeling damned put upon on account of I’ve got a housekeeper who’s moved in uninvited and figures it’s his duty to drag in every stray cat he can find. I’m also the guy what don’t like the floor crunching under his tootsies whenever he starts looking for the chamber pot in the dark. Never mind about the bugs, Saucerhead. Let him use his imagination.”
The Dead Man sent me an exaggerated mental sigh. So be it. I fear, then, Mr. Tharpe, that we have no further need for your services.
I gave the Dead Man a narrow-eyed look. He’d given up too easily. “He’s right. What do we owe you?”
“Not enough so I don’t got to go back to raising knots on heads for that creep Licks.”
A sad story. Nobody liked Licks. Including me, and I didn’t know him. “Guy has to make a living, I guess.” I counted out a few coins, not much. Tharpe seemed satisfied. He hadn’t done anything but answer the door.
“You might maybe add a little tip on account of personal hardship, Garrett.”
“Personal hardship?”
“I had to be here instead of home. Though maybe from what I hear, you done forgot about women.”
“Not quite. Not yet. But it’s fading fast.”
“So be cynical and self-serving. Go apologize to Tinnie.” He liked Tinnie. Hell, I liked her. I just couldn’t get along with her redheaded temper. For now. The songs you sing do change. Abstinence does make the heart grow fonder.
Saucerhead seemed in no hurry to leave. He and the Dead Man were wondering what might have snapped inside the butterfly man’s head and left him wanting to carve up women. I figured this was my chance. I gathered my breakfast leavings, took them to the kitchen. Once I disposed of the evidence, I’d slide upstairs and catch me forty winks.
Somebody banged on the door.
What was this? I’d worked so hard to discourage customers that I didn’t get this many visitors in a week anymore. Dean made like he was too snowed in cleaning up, so I took care of it myself.
Hoping for some randy sex goddess, I got Barking Dog Amato. I’d forgotten him completely.
“You forgot all about me, Garrett,” he accused, pushing inside, forcing me back with his personal chemistry.
“No,” I lied. “I figured you hadn’t had time to get anything ready yet.”
“Been raining. Not much else to do. Making signs and handbills gets old.”
You’d think a drenching would wash the grunge away. Not so. Water just brought it to life. I considered propping the door open, maybe opening a few windows so the wind could blow through. If I’d lived on the Hill, I might have tried it. In my neighborhood you wouldn’t dare. Even during a typhoon there would be some opportunist ready to accept the challenge. Besides, I only had one downstairs window.
Once past me, Amato halted, dripped, reeked, looked around. “You got that thing, that whatsit they call the Dead Man. I’d sure like to take a gander at that, you know what I mean?”
I tried shallow breaths. I don’t know why we bother. It never helps. “Why not? You’re a man he ought to meet.” I wished Old Bones had him a working sniffer. I’d lock them in together till Amato sold him his whole zany conspiracy collection.
I opened the Dead Man’s door, held it for Amato. Saucerhead, in my chair, half-turned, saw Barking Dog.
His face scrunched up into a world-class frown. He didn’t ask, though.
He got a whiff, that’s why. He gasped, “I see you got a client I’d better go good-bye,” all in one long exhalation. He slid out the door almost before I got through. He tossed me a look that told me he wanted to hear all about it. Later. A lot later, after the miasma cleared.
I winked. “Make sure the front door is closed.”
Barking Dog said, “My God, it’s an ugly sucker. Got a hooter like a mammoth, don’t it?”
Another missionary, Garrett?
“This is Kropotkin Amato. You recall the arrangement we made.”
You know what I mean. You still intend to harass me? You will recall that your previous effort met with a singular lack of success.
“Me? No . . . ”
Nor did you bother mentioning any arrangement, though I discern the details in your mind. We did not contract to have the man watch himself.
“We didn’t contract anything, Smiley.”
Barking Dog looked baffled. I would have too, hearing only half the conversation. I changed subjects. “You can understand why I did it.” I didn’t want to bruise Amato’s feelings. The Dead Man could peek inside his head, see why we didn’t have to mount a major campaign.
You are correct, Garrett. This time. However unlikely, he believes his theories. Which, you will understand, make them the reality in which he lives. I suggest you do meet our principal, try to ascertain why he deems it worthwhile to keep tabs on Mr. Amato.
Good morning, Mr. Amato. I have been anxious to make your acquaintance since Mr. Garrett first undertook to trace your movements.
The rat was going to lay it off on me.
“Uh . . . hi.” Barking Dog was at a loss for words. Maybe I ought to check to see if this was really him.
One breath and I knew I didn’t have to check. “Look here, Chuckles, don’t you go—”
Mr. Amato and I have a great deal to discuss, Garrett. I suggest you visit Mr. Hullar and see if you cannot unearth a reason for his interest.
“Yeah, Garrett. What you been doing, anyhow? You was supposed to . . . ”
I fled, defeated. Would Barking Dog care that I’d neglected him only to save TunFaire from a vicious serial killer? He would be sure they had bought me off. Even though he was the subject I was supposed to investigate for them.
I gave the stairway one longing look, then got into my rain gear. I checked my pockets to see how much cash I had. Maybe I could rent me a room and catch a few winks.
I made a sudden sally into the small front room before I left, thinking I’d snatch Dean’s cat and drag it along. But the cat wasn’t in evidence, only the scratches it had left on my furniture.
Then I realized that I had nothing to report to Hullar. I trudged back and pried Barking Dog’s report away from him. He and the Dead Man were weaving drunken spiderwebs of conspiracy theory already.
The Tenderloin is that part of town which caters to the side of people they keep hidden. Any vice can be found there, any sin committed, almost any need fulfilled. The hookers and the drug dens and gambling pits are just the surface, the glamour. At least, those aspects of those things that can be glamorous when seen from the street.
It’s a glitzy street. Or streets, really. The area is bigger than Tinkery Row. And more successful. Nothing sells like sin. After the Hill it’s the most prosperous, cleanest, safest, and most orderly part of the city. Some very unpleasant people make sure it stays that way.
It all belongs, directly or indirectly, to Chodo Contague’s empire.
Bishoff Hullar’s taxi-dance place is as tame a dive as you can find there. That’s all the girls do, dance and talk to lonely fellows and try to get them to buy drinks. Maybe a few make personal arrangements, but there are no facilities on the premises. The place is as shabby as they’re allowed to get down there. Frankly, I don’t see how Hullar stays in business, competing with neighbors who offer so much more.
The place wasn’t jumping when I arrived, but it was just after noon then. A couple of sad-looking sailors sat at a table talking to a sad-looking girl who sipped colored water and didn’t pretend very hard that she gave a damn about what the sailors were saying. A doddering ratman mopped around the other tables. All those had chairs piled atop them. There was nobody on the dance floor, though a couple more girls were loafing by the bandstand, where three worn-out old musicians weren’t trying very hard to stay awake. Both girls glanced at me, wondering if I was worth the effort of making so long a trek. One, who looked like she might break out in a case of puberty any day, lazily packed a pipe with weed.
The guy behind the bar had to be the world’s oldest dwarf. He wore the full costume, complete with a pheasant’s feather in a peaked little cap. He had a beard that should have kept the floor swept of debris. “What’s it going to be, Ace?” He wiped the bar in front of me with the same rag he’d been using to polish mugs.
“Beer.”
“Pint?”
“Yeah.”
“Light? Dark?”
“Light.”
“Lager? Pilsner? . . . ”
“Just draw one. Surprise me. Weider’s, if you got it.” I figured I owed Old Man Weider a little commercial loyalty, what with him having had me on retainer so long.
“Hasty. Always hasty.” He drew me a pint. “Wet enough for you out there?”
Oh, my. A talkative bartender. “Wet enough. Hullar around?”
“Who wants to know?” Suddenly he was completely alert.
“Name’s Garrett. I’m supposed to be doing something for him.”
“Yeah?” He wiped the bar next to me while he thought about that. After a moment he said, “I’ll check.” Off he trundled. I rose onto my toes, watched, wondering if he’d stumble over his beard.
“Hi. I’m Brenda.” The pipe smoker had puffed up enough ambition to hike all the way over. I glanced at her, resumed studying the wasteland behind the bar. The woman was less interesting.
Up close it was obvious she wasn’t a child, that that was just her hook. The gamine had gone a long time ago, probably before she was old enough to become a gamine. I said, “I’m just here to see Hullar. Business.”
“Oh.” Her voice had had little life before. Now it was dead.
I glanced at the musicians. “I could part with a few coppers, though, if you could explain why those band guys are here at this time of day.” I didn’t know Hullar’s place well, but didn’t think there was any music during the day.
“Somebody kicked the shit out of them last night after work. They’re waiting to talk to some guy about it.”
Licks? Coming in to put the arm on them?
“You’re in, Ace. The man says come on back.”
I dropped a half-dozen coppers into the woman’s hand. She made an effort to find a smile but had trouble remembering where she’d left it. I wanted to say something to waken her spirit but couldn’t think of a thing. So I just said, “Thanks,” and hurried after the dwarf. If I let him get too big a head start I’d miss out when he tripped over his beard.
Bishoff Hullar was five feet tall, three feet wide, bald as an egg, in his sixties, ugly as sin itself. The width wasn’t fat. I’d heard he was a strongman in his younger days and that he kept up in case there was a call for his talents. “Sit, Garrett.” He indicated a rickety antediluvian chair. He had a voice like rocks tumbling around inside an iron drum. Somebody had done the lead-pipe thing on his throat in his once-upon-a-time. “You got anything for me?”
I gave him Barking Dog’s report. He took it, started reading. I said, “I have some questions.” I glanced around his workplace. You couldn’t call it an office. He sat behind a table with some writing tools on it, but also makeup pots, which suggested the girls used the place for a dressing room. Overall, it was as tacky as the rest of the place.
“Huh?” He looked up, piggy little gray eyes narrowed.
“Basic stuff my partner never got around to asking because he thought this job would be a good joke on me.”
Hullar’s eyes got narrower. “Joke?”
“Barking Dog Amato. Nobody in the world is going to pay somebody to spy on a lunatic. Least of all a guy who runs a place like this down here. I can’t see you even knowing Barking Dog.”
“I don’t. Wouldn’t know him if he walked in and sank his fangs in me. What’s it to you? You’re getting paid.”
“I’m the guy what takes his butt onto the street amongst the slings and arrows, Hullar. I kind of like to know why I’m doing that, and who for. That way I have a notion what direction to expect trouble from when it comes.”
“You’re not going to see no trouble.”
“They all tell me that. If there wasn’t trouble, though, they wouldn’t come to me in the first place. I don’t play blindfolded, Hullar.”
He put the report down, looked at me like he was making up his mind whether to kick my butt or not. Not won the toss.
“You got a good rep, Garrett. Why I picked you. I’ll take a chance.”
I waited. He brooded. The dwarf bartender waited at the door, maybe to see if the boss would need help. There wasn’t much tension, though. I didn’t feel threatened.
“I ain’t got much here, Garrett. We ain’t got much. But we’re like family. We take care of each other on account of we’re all we’ve got. This here is like the last ledge before the fall into the pit.”
I couldn’t argue that. I kept my opinion to myself. My old mom used to suggest strongly that I just might learn something if I could manage to keep my mouth shut long enough to listen. Mom was right, but I didn’t get the message for years—and I still forget it far too often.
“Somebody works for me comes to me with their trouble, usually I try to lend a hand. If I can. I do that, maybe they give me a little help when I need it. Right?”
“Makes sense.” Only in the real world it doesn’t work that way very often. “One of your people wants Barking Dog watched?”
He eyed me, still taking my measure. “You’re a cynic. You don’t believe in much. Especially not people. Maybe that’s a good thing in your line, kind of folks you probably have to deal with.”
“Yeah.” I was proud of me. I kept a straight face.
He glanced at the dwarf, got a response I didn’t catch.
“All right. Here’s the way it is, Garrett. Amato’s kid works for me. When he got himself tossed in the Al-Khar, she—”
“He’s got a daughter?” You’ve heard that one about knocking a guy over with a feather? That feather would have smashed me like a bug.
“Yeah. This Amato, he’s a loony. But harmless. You know that. I know that. Only he’s got a habit of naming names. She’s scared maybe he named the wrong one, some Hill-type asshole what don’t got a sense of humor. Maybe the old man is about to get his ass in deep shit. Girl’s a little light-headed herself, if you get my drift. But she’s family here, and when my people worry, I try to fix it so they don’t. So what I want from you is you should keep an eye on the old nut, let me know if he’s about to step in it so I can yank him out of the way before he gets run over. Understand?”
Yes. And no. Barking Dog with a daughter? How did he ever manage that? “A bit hard to buy.”
“Yeah? Something about it you don’t like? You just say you’re out. I’ll get somebody else. I picked you on account of they say you’re almost honest. But I can live without you.”
“It’s just a big chunk to swallow. You don’t know Barking Dog. You did, you’d know why. I can’t figure him for having a kid.”
“Crunch. Tell Sas to bring us a couple of beers.”
The dwarf left. We didn’t talk. After a while a woman came with two beers, light for me and dark for Hullar. I’d seen her with the gamine, muttering with the musicians. I hadn’t noticed then, but up close the resemblance to Amato was there. She even had those spooky eyes that looked like they were seeing things hidden from the rest of us. She pretended not to study me while I pretended not to study her.
“Thanks, Sas.”
“Sure, Bish.” She left.
“Sure looks like him,” I admitted.
“There you go. Any problems now?”
“Not really.” I wondered if she’d studied me because the dwarf had told her who I was. Probably. Maybe he’d sent her back more to give her a look than to give me one. “This supposed to be a secret?”
“Secret?”
“I’ll tell my partner, of course. He won’t kick it around. But is it supposed to be a secret from the rest of the world?”
“Probably wouldn’t hurt. The guy maybe does have an enemy or three.”
“Suppose he catches on that I’m watching? Am I allowed to tell him why?”
“I don’t figure that would do Sas no good. Look, I know this ain’t in your usual line. Pretty tame, you being used to mixing it up with sorcerers and gangsters and Hill folk, but it means something to us. You don’t got to make a career out of it. I ain’t paying that much. But we’d all appreciate it if you’d let us in on it should he get his ass into something he can’t handle. Right?”
I rose. “Good enough.” I believed him because I wanted to believe him. You don’t much see people do nice things for people. “One of your girls said your musicians are having problems.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. Tooken care of.” For a moment he looked like the evil thing I’d pictured him to be. “Or will be, real soon. How about you take my mug back out to Crunch?”
I took both mugs.
The dwarf grunted when I made my delivery. For an old guy—especially for an old dwarf—Crunch was astonishingly polite.
As I headed for the street, I glanced at the bandbox. And almost tripped over my feet.
A man had joined the musicians. He was one guy I’d hoped I wouldn’t ever see again. He stared at me. I stared back.
He had nothing on me in height and only a little in weight, but size didn’t make this man. He reeked menace the way Barking Dog Amato reeked uninspired personal hygiene. He scared you just by being around, even when he smiled. His name was Crask. He was one of Chodo Contague’s top cats. He hurt people for a living. He enjoyed his work.
I realized I’d stopped to stare. He kept staring too. Each of us was wondering what the hell the other was doing there. When my brain unfroze again I had no trouble figuring him. He was there because of the battered musicians.
Old Licks didn’t have a license from the outfit. Him and his buddies would be in deep shit if Crask caught up. Especially deep for picking on musicians in the Tenderloin. The Tenderloin was Chodo’s. Even the King doesn’t mess around down there.
I almost made it to the door before I got stunned again.
The girl blew in as I reached for the latch. I dodged, gaped. For all she reacted, I was a ghost.
She was the one those villains had dragged out of Morley’s place. The one Morley claimed was the kingpin’s daughter. I turned, stared, maybe panted some, as she strode toward Crunch.
Crask’s face went as cold as death. My heart jumped. But it wasn’t me he was watching.
The girl glanced his way, stopped, made a little sound of surprise, whirled, and sprinted for the street. She ricocheted off me as she went. I purred. Whip me, beat me . . .
Crask came pounding up behind me as I stepped into the rain to watch her fly away. He halted beside me. “What the hell was that?” I asked.
“What you doing here, Garrett?” He sounded suspicious. Nasty suspicious. Like getting-ready-to-break-arms-and-legs suspicious.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were too big-time for legwork.”
“She come here to meet you?”
“Huh?” That was a surprise notion. “Uh-uh. No touch. I’ll break things.” Crask was scary, but I wasn’t afraid of him in any head-butting contest. I figured our chances were equal if we got to prancing around pounding on each other. He was scary because he was a killer and a smart one. If he decided to send you over, you might as well start counting your beads.
“You stay away, Garrett. Or they’ll find parts of you all over town.”
“I didn’t know you had a woman. Who is she?” Fact was, I thought he and his sidekick Sadler had a thing.
“Huh?”
“I’m going to tell you this once, Crask. I don’t know the girl. I have seen her before. Once. She walked into Morley Dotes’s place night before last. Two minutes later a bunch of guys roared in and tried to kidnap her. Me and Morley and Saucerhead showed them what we think of guys who pick up their girls the rough way. She disappeared before we finished. Beginning and end of story. Now it’s your go. Who is she? How come you got your balls in an uproar?”
“You don’t need to know.” The girl was out of sight now. Crask frowned after her, as much puzzled as angry. He’d bought my story, probably because I’d not lied to him much in the past. “What was she doing at Dotes’s place?”
“You got me. Never said a word. Just came in looking scared, sat by herself, then three guys blew in and dragged her out.”
He grunted. “I didn’t know about that. Thanks, Garrett. I’ll give you one back. Tell Tharpe it ain’t going to be healthy hanging around with those guys trying to mess with the musicians.”
“I was going to suggest that anyway after I saw you in there.” I started moving, planning to put some distance between us before it occurred to him to bring up old business.
“Garrett.”
Damn. “What?”
“You see the girl around again, pass the word. We’d like to know.”
“Sure. But why? Who is she?”
“Just do it.” He went inside without turning his back.
I hustled away, breathing hard. It had been an encounter I’d dreaded more than necessary. Maybe. Maybe the street in front of Hullar’s place didn’t strike him as the best stage for my demise.
Peace and harmony broke out all over. I had nothing to do but loaf, deliver the occasional report to Hullar, and keep an eye on Dean’s crowd whenever he had them over for one of his rehab parties. You wouldn’t believe how rowdy old men can get.
There weren’t any cats around, and except for his barbs about me not working, Dean wasn’t a nuisance. The Dead Man went to sleep, visions of Glory Mooncalled dancing in his head. Saucerhead resigned from the musician-organizing racket just before Morley reported that he was no longer obliged to endure the custom of that human smudgepot Licks. I got out and visited, bought a few rounds for friends, reforged contacts, even dropped by the brewery and spent a few days checking employee theft for Weider. As always, he wanted me to take the job full-time. As always, I couldn’t overcome my horror of holding down a real job.
Nobody’s life stays on that high and relaxed a level. Especially not mine. The gods have a special Garrett harassment squad dedicated solely to my persecution.
So I should have known the good times were over the morning I went out to run and found that the rains had returned.
I was in my office busting my skull trying to fake up numbers that would impress the tax thugs with the depths of my destitution. Somebody hammered on the door. I groaned. It was nearly suppertime and Dean was fixing a standing rib roast that would be bloody rare and would melt in my mouth, with all the extras. Smelling the odors from the kitchen had me drooling already.
Dean asked, “Shall I ignore it?”
“No. It’s probably Saucerhead.” Tharpe had been around a lot lately. His flame had walked. His luck hadn’t been good since. “There enough to feed him too?”
“Barely.” Saucerhead does put it away. “There won’t be anything left over.”
I shrugged. “I’ll get even with him someday.”
“You just want to get away from what you’re doing.” He tottered down the hall to the accompaniment of renewed pounding. Somebody was awfully anxious.
Dean was right. I did want to get away. I hate the whole idea of taxes. What have I ever gotten from the Crown? A pack and a collection of weapons and a five-year adventure in the war zone. I had to give back the pack and weapons. They just wanted to rip me off so they could give some other kid a chance to see the acne on the ass of the world.
I got out of having to be creative, but, all things considered, I’d rather I’d stayed with the taxes.
It wasn’t Saucerhead. It was a guy I’d hoped never to see again, Captain Block. Dean showed Block into my office. Block looked frazzled.
I couldn’t help myself. “Now what?”
Block planted his behind, settled his elbows on his knees, buried his face in his hands. “Same as before. You’ll have to see it.”
“Look, I bailed you out once. Isn’t that enough? Dean’s cooking supper. It’ll be ready in half an hour.”
“So he told me. Also told me you were busy doing taxes.”
“Yeah.”
“You wouldn’t be the kind of guy who’d forget to report a fat cash payment from the Watch, would you?”
Damned right I would be. “Why?”
“One mission of the Watch is to investigate alleged tax fraud. We don’t do much of that, but when there’s a report, we have to act to cover our butts.”
“I’ll find my hat. How far do we have to go?”
“Not far.” He smiled weakly. “I knew I could count on you. And I’m sure your purse won’t get hurt this time, either.”
No happiness came through his smile. He looked more stressed than last time. What had him by the short hairs now?
Something that would be politically painful, surely. By getting out, tapping the wind of rumor whispering through the streets, I knew Block had turned catching old bug-breath into a big score. Suddenly there was a lot of stuff going on in the shadows. Prince Rupert was getting behind Westman Block. Block had hidden irons in the fire. It all had the knights of the street feeling nervous.
I made sure I was equipped for trouble, just because of the company I’d be keeping. Trouble followed Block.
We talked about the Cantard as we walked. Glory Mooncalled had abandoned his effort to capture Quarache but had hamstrung the Venageti ability to project their power far into the desert. I’d also been on the mark about the Marines getting the job of retaking Full Harbor. That operation had begun. I had mixed feelings. They brag that when they turn you into a Marine they make you a Marine forever.
The more we talked, the more I realized that Block was thoroughly spooked. Whatever his problem, it was going to be something I wouldn’t like.
Now I was spooked.
“Identical,” I said, staring at the gutted, naked girl. She hung in an alleyway behind abandoned tenements on the near south side. Those tenements had been occupied by ratmen squatters until a few hours ago. They were long gone now.
In the rain and poor light the dead girl was a ringer for the one Block had shown me in the Bustee. “This can’t be, Block. I got them.” I had to believe I’d gotten them. I’m not made to shake off killing the wrong villains.
Block wasn’t so scared for his behind that he couldn’t see what was bothering me. “You got the right guy, Garrett. Don’t doubt that for a minute. After we got the Prince’s go-ahead, we took that place apart. You wouldn’t believe what we found. They’d been in there a long time. They kept pieces of all their victims. There were bodies in the cellar, girls, but not the type. My guess is they used them for practice before they went after the real thing.”
I stared at the new corpse, listened to the flies sing. “There was one thing . . . ” I told him about that missing clothing and knives. I’d discovered that Morley hadn’t taken away any souvenirs. I didn’t mention Morley’s name. It wouldn’t appeal to Block.
“You didn’t mention any of this before.”
“I thought everything was wrapped up before. But—”
“Yeah. But. Elvis!”
A nondescript Watchman hurried over. “Captain?”
“Show Mr. Garrett what you found.”
Elvis had a folded scrap of paper tucked into a pocket inside his rain cape. Inside it were three green butterflies. I shivered as though the rain had turned to sleet. “How long since the last murder?”
“Twelve days. This one was right on schedule.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” I’d been confident he would. I don’t know why I asked. Maybe I hoped he’d show me I was wrong.
“The killer is dead but the killing goes on. How can that be, Garrett?” Now I understood why Block was so rattled. This wasn’t just a matter of his career being in jeopardy.
“I don’t know. What happened to the old man’s body?”
“It was cremated. I saw them both go into the ovens.”
“What did you do with the old man from the Bustee? Did you get anything out of him?”
Block looked embarrassed. “He died.”
“Huh?”
“We tried too hard. Gave him too much of everything. He overdid himself to death.”
I just shook my head. It could only happen around me. “You recheck the Hamilton place since you found this?”
“Got the report before I came after you. Nothing there. No connection.”
“What about the coach?”
“Hasn’t moved. The wheels are chained so it can’t be. And the horses were sold. They didn’t belong there. They were squatters too.”
“Know who this girl is yet?”
“No. But it won’t be long before we do. She’ll be somebody.”
He meant she’d be related to somebody. None of the dead girls had been important in their own right yet, but they’d all come off the Hill. “If the pattern holds.” I was scared and confused. I told Block I was scared and confused and didn’t know what to do now, except, “We’d better talk it over with the Dead Man before we do anything. He did interview all those people.”
Block brightened. “Yeah. If there’s anything to start on, he ought to have it.”
I recalled my roast. That wonderful, expensive roast that had had me drooling for hours.
I wasn’t hungry anymore.
“It probably don’t mean a thing now,” I said, “but did you ever find out who we caught?”
“The old guy?”
No, dipshit. The lead horse in the team in . . . “Yes.”
Block glanced around, then whispered, “Idraca Matiston.”
“Whoa! Scares me. Who the hell is . . . was . . . Idraca Matiston.”
“Keep it down, will you?”
“Somebody, I take it, that was enough of a somebody that you don’t want word getting around.”
Whisper. “Idraca Matiston, Viscount Nettles. Lady Hamilton’s lover. Had a bit of a bizarre reputation to begin, which is why we wrapped it fast and quiet and other quarters let it out he’d passed on from complications. He was in and out of the Hamilton house all the time and nobody thought anything of it because he’d always been. Now I know what I know, I’d go back and take a closer look at Lady Hamilton’s mishap if the Prince would let me.”
“I still don’t know who you’re talking about. I don’t keep up with the ruling class’s scandals. Guess it doesn’t matter now, anyway.”
“No, it doesn’t. We’re under orders to forget that episode.”
I was willing to forget everything except when I looked at the young woman without her entrails. I shut up, did not press Block, but I did wonder about a woman who would take an antique like old butterfly-breath for her lover.
“Your dream came true,” I told Dean when he let us in. “I’m employed. You’d better be more careful what you wish for.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Worse. Go wake up the Dead Man.”
“What about supper? Everything is overdone now.” He almost whined. He’s proud of his cooking.
“If you’d seen what I did, you wouldn’t want to eat either.”
“Oh. Then I’ll have to get everything off the stove and put away right away.” Thus he evaded having to deal with the Dead Man. He has a real talent for getting out of things by having something else to do that has to get done first.
I told Block, “We may have to light a fire under him. I think he’s only been asleep about a week. Sometimes these spells last for months. Dean. Since you don’t want to handle His Nibs, you get to go get Morley.” That would fix him. He was less comfortable at Morley’s place than in the Dead Man’s room.
The brave Captain Block endured our juvenile maneuvers without comment. Maybe there was a human being in there. Maybe I could grow to like the guy, incompetence and all.
I led the way, storming the ramparts. Or whatever.
I hadn’t been into the Dead Man’s room since well before his nap began. Things had changed.
“Gods!” Block swore.
I made an inarticulate sound something like a squeal.
The place was full of bugs. Big bugs, little bugs, enough bugs to carry the Dead Man away if they got into teamwork. And I knew who was to blame.
The fat stiff had worked a deal with Saucerhead behind my back. The real question was, how had he worked it so the creepy-crawlies hadn’t gotten into the rest of the house to give his scheme away? I muttered, “I hope you’re enjoying your dreams about the Cantard.” Despite my efforts, chitin crunched underfoot.
“What is this?” Block asked.
“He collects bugs. Believe it or not. And doesn’t bother to get rid of them when he’s done playing with them. Now I’ll have to use sulfur candles again. I hate it when I have to do that.” I wondered if Dean had been in on the deal. Probably. That would explain the absence of the cat. He’d know I’d start exterminating as soon as I found out. No cat would survive a thorough sulfur-candle job.
I started considering doing a sulfur-candle job on myself. It had been half an hour.
“He dead?” Block asked. “Like for good?” His Nibs hadn’t twitched a mental muscle.
“No. Just napping. Really. He picks his times for when it’s most inopportune.”
“How come?”
I shrugged. “These things happen to me.”
“What do you do?”
“Fuss and fume and threaten to light a fire under him. Scream and yell and run in circles.”
“What if that don’t work?”
“Then I muddle through on my own.” I started loosening up to do my screaming and circling. I’d exhausted fuss and fume and threaten.
Block started wadding scrap paper from a trash box nobody had emptied in an epoch. He tossed the wads under the Dead Man’s chair. I got attentive. “What’re you doing?” My money was under there. I hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“Going to start that fire you mentioned.”
“Hell, you got balls after all.” I talked about it but never seriously considered doing it. I leaned against the doorframe, watched. This could get interesting.
The bugs started getting excited—more excited than they usually do when someone is stomping around. I began to suspect that my partner wasn’t as far away as he’d like me to think.
Block grabbed a lamp.
Damn. He was going to go for it. All the way. I wouldn’t interfere in it for anything. Grinning, I observed, “I figure the fire will get his attention before it’s big enough to be a threat to the house. After four hundred years he’s pretty dried out. Ever hear about how when the Dewife invaded Polkta they couldn’t find enough wood to heat their stills—no trees in Polkta—so they dragged old mummies out of the ancient Polktan tombs and burned them instead?”
Block paused. “Really?” He had a big dopey frown on.
“Really. A body dries out for a few hundred years, it’ll burn. Not great, but good enough so you don’t have to do without your liquor.”
“Oh.” Block didn’t care about curiosa. In fact, he was baffled. What did this have to do with a bunch of drunken barbarian tomb robbers in a faraway land a hundred years ago?
I had to wonder about the man. And my cherished notions about the Watch. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they weren’t all bone-lazy and graft-bitten. Maybe some were well-meaning—like Block most of the time—but were too stupid to handle their jobs.
Block squatted to shove the lamp under the Dead Man’s chair.
Call him off, Garrett.
“It lives! Hang in there, Captain. I’m starting to get something.”
Garrett!
“Take a peek inside a head or two, Old Bones. We’ve got a problem.”
Block froze, flame a foot from the wastepaper, eyes a hair too high to spot my stash.
I have called you a curse upon my waning years, Garrett. I have been too kind. Many a time have I been tempted to terminate our association. I should have yielded. You are rude, pushy, thoughtless, uncouth. Only a certain crude charm shields you.
“My mother loved me. But what did she know, eh?”
I could spend hours cataloging your shortcomings. But this is not the time.
“You’ve done it often enough that I know them by heart anyway.”
Excellent. You do have your redeeming virtues.
First time I’d heard that from him. Tinnie and Maya and one or twelve other ladies had mentioned an occasional virtue and a more-than-occasional failing, but—
Including an all-consuming laziness. However, this once, you were correct to disturb me.
“Gods, you can carry me away. I’ve seen it all now.”
Your manners are deplorable. You might have found a more civil means of obtaining my attention. But your assessment is correct. You cannot handle this without my assistance.
Smug character, eh? I signaled Block to back off. “He’s awake.” I breathed easier with the Watchman away from the household fortune.
I feared it would come to this. The hints were there. But I allowed your success on the Hill, come so swift and with such apparent finality, to deceive me. Because I wanted it to be true. Yes. Even master realists such as myself may, in a lifetime, succumb occasionally to wishful thinking. The mind and the heart naturally eschew horror.
Brag about your failures loudly, longly, humbly, and you can make a virtue of them. Make it look like you’re a regular guy. I asked, “How come I get the feeling you weren’t asleep at all, you were just rehearsing? Cut the aw-shucks comedy, Chuckles. Girls are dying right on schedule. They shouldn’t be. You talked to everybody who had anything to do with the others. Did you get anything? Give us an angle. Tell us how to stop this thing for good.”
That may not be possible. Not in the sense you mean. If it is what I feared at first glimpse. Captain Block, I need to know about that man you took from the Bustee. Garrett, I want to know about those ritual knives.
I felt him digging into my mind, deeper than usual. Presumably he was doing the same to Block at the same time. Block’s eyes got huge. In my case I felt him digging after things I hadn’t noticed noticing at the site of the most recent murder.
It’s neither fun nor comfortable having somebody prowl through your head. I hate it. You’d hate it too. There are things in there that nobody ought to know. But I didn’t shut him out.
I can do that—if I work at it hard enough.
He surprised me. Butterflies?
“Yes. So?”
Three times now, butterflies. This is a new twist. Though no one has mentioned butterflies in connection with any of the victims you did not see yourself, I feel that we are dealing with a single killer.
“No shit?” I couldn’t see there being a bunch of guys all getting the same idea: hey, wouldn’t it be neat if I found me a pretty young brunette and strung her up and bled her and cut her guts out?
Indeed, Garrett. Absolutely. One particularly interesting fact that emerged from my interview series was that the blond young lady, Tania Fahkien, was not a natural blond. In fact, the state of blondness had befallen her only hours before her demise.
“Are any of them natural blonds? Not many, in my experience.”
Just so. The point is, the coloring of the victims is worth pursuit.
Even Block had gotten that far. I said so.
Of course. But we forgot that in our excitement over having brought the killer to ruin. Correct?
“The details do seem inconsequential when you’ve got your bad guy nailed down and everything wrapped. You said you feared this. Did you have some idea what was going on before I spoiled everything by getting lucky but not as lucky as I thought?”
Yes. As you suspect, these sorts of murders have come around before. I know of three previous series, though without any direct knowledge of the first two outbreaks. Those occurred while I was still among the ambulatory, surrounded by a people whose foibles and tribulations were, at best, of marginal and academic interest. The victim types and killing methods were similar, but insofar as I recall, there were no butterflies.
“So maybe nobody noticed. You don’t see what you’re not looking for.” But Block’s one man had.
Perhaps. There was no reason to look for butterflies. Though, as I noted, I was not that interested in those outbreaks—other than as behavioral curiosities amongst the unwashed and ignorant latecoming barbarian, a creature capable of firing his distilleries with the remains of his dead.
He does like to get his needles in. “All right. You know something. You said you feared this. How about you get to the point before all the brunettes in town are lost to us? I confess to a personal penchant for redheads, but brunettes are a valuable resource in their own right.”
Horrors out of olden times, Garrett.
“It’s happened before. Right? Surprise me a surprise. Fact me a fact.”
I was never involved with those prior cycles. Yet they were dramatic enough to stick in mind, though with few useful details.
“I can see that.” I was getting exasperated. And he was enjoying that. “How about remembering what you can remember?”
He sighed mentally but forged boldly into new territory by ignoring my impatience. Then, as now, the victims fell into a narrow range of physical characteristics. They were female, young, brunette, attractive by human standards, with very similar features. In fact, facial similarities seemed more important that height or weight.
The faces of many women flickered through my mind, as he had reconstructed them from his interviews and ancient recollections. None were related, but all could have passed as sisters. All had faces much like that of Chodo’s daughter—if not as pale—and wore their hair as she had when I’d run into her at Hullar’s . . .
Hey. For the first time I realized that she’d worn her hair differently there. That she’d had a full head of hair, hanging long, not the helmet I’d seen at Morley’s place.
Hairstyle could be a key. The Dead Man produced several notions of styles from olden times. The faces and figures remained vague, but the hairstyles were identical with that worn by Chodo’s daughter at Hullar’s. All the recently departed had had bushels of hair.
“So maybe we got us an unhappy hairdresser,” Block said. “Stalking down the corridors of history, eliminating the gauche and passé.” The man had a sense of humor after all. Weird, but he had one.
I said, “This mess is getting kind of spooky, Smiley.” And I wasn’t alone in thinking so. Despite his flirtation with levity, Block was green around the gills.
There is sorcery in it, Garrett. Grim, gruesome, ancient, and evil sorcery. Necromancy of the darkest form. Dead men who have gone to the crematorium do not rise up and resume their atrocities.
“Really?” What genius. “Hell, I figured that out.” I’m not a detective for nothing. Deductive reasoning. Or was it inductive? I can never keep those two straight.
There is a curse at work. If this outbreak is indeed connected with those that went before, it is a very potent curse. In those cases, when the guilty parties were apprehended and executed, the killings stopped.
“But did start up again later.”
Eventually. Apparently. After generations.
“They started up again right away this time,” Block said.
This was the first time the guilty party was caught quickly. This was the first time without a trial and execution. This was the first time the guilty party was cremated.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Block demanded. He was into the thing now. In fact, he was back over by that lamp looking like he was thinking about starting a fire just to make the Dead Man get on with it.
He wasn’t as dumb as he pretended.
As I recollect, the earlier killers were caught, tried, convicted, and hanged. Two were hanged. I believe the first was beheaded. Beheading was the punishment in fashion then. In each case the remains went into unmarked graves.
Executed criminals still go into unmarked graves. That’s part of the punishment. “And?” I asked.
“So?” from Block.
Garrett, Garrett, must you be so determinedly thick of wit? I have given you everything you need. Use your brain for something more than landfill that keeps your ears from clacking together.
The same old challenge. Use my gods-given mind and talents to figure it out for myself. He’s no fun at all. But he thinks he’s bringing me up right.
Block grabbed the lamp and headed for the Dead Man’s chair.
I waved him off. “He’s right. Sort of. He’s given us what we need. Anyway, if you bully him, he gets stubborn. It’s a pride thing. He’ll let you burn him and the house both before he’ll give you a straighter answer.”
Block eyeballed me a moment before he decided I was telling it straight. “A goddamned oracle, eh?” He put the lamp back where it belonged. “So what’s he talking about? Where’s our point of attack?”
I didn’t have the foggiest. All I knew was that the Dead Man had seen some fog, and if he had, then it was right there in front of my face.
Of course, you not being in the middle of it, stressed out and confused and still smelling the stink of a girl who died in terror, you have it all scoped out and you’re telling yourself that Garrett, he’s too dumb to be believed.
I nearly had it. I started to get a eureka grin. My unconscious was hinting that it might pay off if I was a good boy. But then somebody went to hammering on the door. The front door is the curse of my life. Could I brick it up? Slide in and out the back way? It some pest found himself facing nothing but rough brick, would he persist in trying to inflict himself on me?
I lost whatever was about to surface. I glanced at Block. He looked like he was having trouble figuring out how to spell his own name. No help there. I trudged to the door, glanced through the peephole. I saw Morley and Dean staring back. I was tempted to leave them there. But Morley was the kind of guy who would chew his way through a door if he thought you were letting him cool his heels. Anyway, he didn’t deserve to be left out in the rain. And I didn’t see how I could let him in without admitting Dean too, so I opened up and let the whole crowd stamp in with their ingrate comments about how long it ought to take to unlock a door.
It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I could sell my place for a lot more than I paid for the wreck it was when I bought it. I could move on somewhere where no one knew me. I could get me a real job, put in my ten or twelve hours a day, and suffer no hassles the rest of the time. Whoever bought my place could enjoy what I left behind. I could make the sale more attractive by offering the house’s contents at no extra cost. Caveat emptor. So long, Dean. Good-bye, Dead Man.
“You got me over here, you’d better catch my attention fast,” Morley told me. Not even a query about my health. But what are friends for, if not to make us feel little and unloved? “I’ve got a date—”
“Indeed.” I tried my Dead Man impression. “You will recall a certain corpse in a certain coach house on a certain Hill, not so long ago? Relating to a certain series of distinctly unpleasant murders?”
“As in the waste of high-grade dalliance talent?”
“Probably for someone far less deserving than you or I, but yes. The one we came across during our evening constitutional one night.” Why were we doing this? I’d started it and I didn’t know—except that Dean was there to witness whatever we said. But why should I care what Dean thought? The guy liked cats. There’s something fundamentally wrong with a guy who likes cats. Why should his opinion concern me?
“What about it?”
“This about it. The gentleman who got his deserts that night, despite having found his way into a city crematorium, hasn’t given up his hobby.”
“Say what?” Morley couldn’t stay with the game.
“There’s been another murder. Just like the others. Right on schedule. We don’t know who she was yet, but we will soon.” I gave a jerk of the head toward the Dead Man’s room. “Official company. The Dead Man tells us there’s a curse involved. Sorcery.”
“No! Really?”
“You don’t have to take that tone. Dean! You have work to do. You want to hang out here twenty-six hours a day, you damned well better . . . ”
He might be in his seventies, but he didn’t let the years slow him a bit. He stuck his tongue out like he was six. Then he headed for the kitchen fast as a glacier, smoke boiling around his heels. As he fled I told Morley about my plan to sell the place, as is, to anybody who had a few marks to invest. He didn’t jump at the opportunity. Dean wasn’t impressed with the threat. I had to spend more time on the streets, had to learn how to be nasty again.
Dean beat the seven-year locusts to the kitchen. I celebrated the new age by nudging Morley into my office, explaining the situation here. Being Morley, part elf and familiar with things sorcerous and eldritch, he cut straight to the heart of it, immediately finding the thing that had been nagging me since the Dead Man had told me he’d given me enough to go on.
“The man you skragged was naked when you brought the Watch captain. The men buried in the old days would have gone into the ground wearing whatever they had on when they were executed. Which would have been what they were wearing when they were caught. The clothes must be the key. Or something the old boy had on him. An amulet. Jewelry. Something that whoever got into the coach house took when he stripped the corpse.”
“Cut it.” By that point I’d gotten the point, if you follow me. It wasn’t the man that was cursed, it was something that went with the man. Like maybe some knives.
I shuddered. I shivered. I went cold all over. This was grim.
I would have to do some legwork. One hell of a lot of legwork. I would have to dig out records that went back to imperial times to see what the villains had in common. What piece of apparel, decoration, or whatnot, that might carry a curse compelling a man to waste ladies who ought to be conserved for fates sometimes known as worse than death.
Is it really worse, girls?