Another woman had just stamped into The Palms. She headed toward me and Morley, elbowing Morley’s men aside.
Winger definitely survives more by luck than by any good sense.
“Winger.” Morley’s greeting was less than enthusiastic. I suspect he’d had a bad personal experience there, once upon a time. Which would teach him to pay attention to his own rule about not getting involved with women who’re crazier than he is.
“The very one,” she retorted.
Winger is a big old gal, more than six feet tall, and solidly built, though she’s actually quite attractive when she bothers to clean herself up. If she was a foot shorter and knew how to simper she’d be breaking hearts wholesale just by looking the wrong way.
“Hey, Garrett,” she roared. “What the hell are you doing sitting on your ass in this nancy dump? You was supposed to —”
“You don’t listen too well, do you? Word went out that I got the snot beat out of me last night. To you, too. The man who told you is standing right over there. Meantime, I’ve got bruises on my bruises. I’m stiff all over.”
“Yeah? How’bout where it counts? Didn’t think so. You’re another one that’s just all talk.” She glared at Morley. “Get up and walk it off.”
Winger is something like a thunderstorm and something like a female Saucerhead. Except with better teeth. And she’s a lot more stubborn than Tharpe. It may take Saucerhead a while to work something out but he’ll change his mind. Winger has never been wrong in her life. Unless it was that time she thought she was wrong but it turned out that she wasn’t.
Big, blond, meaty, goofy, completely dangerous where your valuables are concerned, she’s likely to be part of or taken in by the most outrageous scams imaginable. And yet she’s one of my friends. One of the inner circle. One of those who’d take steps if something happened to me. And I’ve never figured out why we like each other.
“Come on, Garrett. Get up off that fat ass. Don’t you figure you done left Saucerhead twisting in the wind about long enough?”
I did think that. But Saucerhead was getting paid. And he, too, had been told of my misfortune.
I asked, “Where’s Playmate? You’re supposed to be covering for Playmate.”
“Oh, he went off somewhere this morning, before your messenger came. When I got bored I decided...”
I sighed. Morley shook his head.
“What?”
I said, “I’m sure you’ve heard the word ‘responsibility’ a few times. You have any idea what it means?”
Chances were she did but just didn’t care.
“What?” Winger demanded again.
“If you came over here because you’re bored, who’s minding Playmate’s stable so the other crooks don’t walk off with everything in sight?” It was really stupid of us to have left all of Kip’s inventions unguarded. But the gods of fools had been with us. Word had come that Playmate hadn’t suffered any losses. He had wonderful neighbors. “Who’s getting paid to make sure that doesn’t happen?”
“Other crooks? What do you mean, other crooks? Wiseass. Look, I’m actually here because I’m kind of worried about Play. I thought he was going off to meet you. I figured he’d come back when he heard you wimped out on account of you got a couple of bruises and a scrape.”
I said, “Well, I’ve had all the fun here that I can take. I’m going home.”
It took me nearly a minute to get out of my chair. Then I couldn’t stand up straight. “Guess I’ll have to look on the bright side.” I looked left. I looked right. “So where the hell is it?
“Winger, for heaven’s sake, go take care of that damned stable.” I had visions of footpads absconding with my own personal three-wheel. “And don’t give me any of that crap about I’m picking on you because you’re a woman. I’m picking on you because somebody hired you to do a job and you’re just letting it slide. Again.”
“Gods. Somebody get this man a drink. He’s gone totally cranky.”
36
Singe and Dean both awaited me on the stoop. The old man came down the steps to help me make the climb.
Winger had been right. A little exercise had loosened me up. But hardly enough. I still moved like somebody twice my age, suffering from rheumatism. I’d begun to worry that the ratmen might have done me some internal damage.
Once I’d eaten and downed a quart of Dean’s medicinal tea, though, I no longer felt like we needed to send for a witch doctor.
With Singe’s help Dean moved a padded chair from the small front room into the Dead Man’s room. I occupied it, prepared to discuss business. Instead, I went to sleep. I stayed that way a long time. When I awakened Dean was there with more food and fresh tea. Singe fluttered about nervously.
We find ourselves facing a disquieting development. Mr. Playmate has disappeared.
“No. I didn’t want to hear that.” I don’t like losing a client. That means I have to work three times as hard. Usually for no pay.
Miss Winger sent word to the effect that he has not yet surfaced. I took the liberty of sending Dean to Mr. Dotes with an appeal that he send a few men to support Miss Winger. This would seem an opportune time for raiders to try scooping up Cypres Prose’s inventions.
“It would, wouldn’t it? And it’s Mrs. Winger. She’s got a husband and a couple of kids she abandoned, somewhere out in the country.”
The good news is, an hour ago a messenger delivered a letter from Reliance. It was a bit formal, stiff, and strained, but he renounced all further interest in Miss Pular.
“Hear that, Singe? You can go outside without worrying about the bad guys...”
Reliance cannot, and does not, guarantee the good behavior of all ratmen, Garrett. Call it a weasel clause if you like, but he did advise us that he is not able to control the actions of some of the younger ratmen. He denounced a certain John Stretch in particular.
“To be expected, I guess. We’re still better off than we were. I can’t imagine too many of those youngsters being crazy enough to want to get the Outfit after their tails.”
The young often cannot connect cause and effect, Garrett. You see stupid behavior on the street every day. It will take only one fool who believes he can outwit Reliance and the Outfit to ruin Miss Pular’s prospects.
“I’m pretty sure Miss Pular is bright enough to outwit any of her kind who might be stupid enough to come after her.”
Indeed.
Singe preened.
But she will have to remain alert and ready for trouble for some time to come. Until the rat tribes acclimate themselves to the new situation. Reliance’s letter is there before you. I asked Dean to leave it when he finished reading it to me.
His mention of the letter was a hint that I should read it. I did so, wondering who had written it. I’d never heard of a ratman who could read or write.
“I’d say this is less than a total victory for Singe.”
That is correct.
Singe asked, “What is wrong?”
“The way Reliance states this, he isn’t just giving up his claims on you, he’s telling us you don’t have any more claims on the community of the ratpeople. He won’t let you.”
Singe thought for a while. Then, “Please explain more. In case I do not understand correctly.”
“He’s exiled you from your people. You know exile?” She nodded. “He’s basically saying that since you won’t play by his rules he isn’t going to let you have anything to do with your own people. I guess you’ll have to decide if that’s a price you’re willing to pay.”
“I have decided already.”
“Are you...?”
“Reliance does not have much longer. And while he does last he cannot be everywhere, keeping me from making contacts I might want. He is too old and too slow. And an enforced exile will compel me to learn my way around the rest of the city more quickly.”
“Wow!” I said.
Yes. Perhaps you should marry her after all. In five years you might be a king.
>
Old Bones let Singe in on the part where he showed that he was impressed. The rest he sent only to me. One of his poor excuses for a joke.
Garrett. Miss Pular. You will have to pick up Mr. Playmate’s trail at his stable. Track him to wherever his hidden demons have taken him. You might search the boy’s workshop. It is conceivable that Mr. Playmate found something there that led him to believe he could find the boy on his own.
Actually a notion that had occurred to me when first I’d heard that he was still missing.
I said, “Excellent thinking, Old Bones. I see only one problem with the scheme. I’m so beat-up I can hardly move. At my best speed today I can grow a foot-long beard faster than I can make it to the river.”
A difficulty anticipated and overcome. In my communications with Mr. Dotes I arranged for you to be transported wherever Miss Pular’s nose leads her.
“Who’s going to pay for all of this? We’ve got Saucerhead out there somewhere getting gray. We’ve got Singe and Winger working. We’ve got who knows how many of Morley’s gang backing up Winger. Where’s the money coming from? Kayne Prose don’t have a pot to pee in. Her kids don’t seem to be producing. Playmate isn’t much better off than Kayne. Anytime he gets two extra coppers to rub together he gives one of them away.”
You are going to pay for it. As an advance cut out of your share of that lake of gold you see yourself tapping in the future.
“What? Are you digging around in my head again?” There was entirely too much of that stuff going on around here lately.
The outbreak of warfare amongst the pixies prevented me from going off on a rant.
The Goddamn Parrot wanted a part of this action. He started hooting and hollering and cursing the pixies.
I believe your help has arrived.
37
Somebody knocked on the door with a battering ram. Plaster dust fell all over the house. The pounding didn’t stop. Dean came roaring out of the kitchen armed with a cleaver, ready to offer somebody some advanced training in etiquette. He beat me to the door. He was in such an evil temper that he opened the door without first using the peephole.
“Gah!”
Who would’ve thought a man that old could jump that far? And backward at that, while inscribing sagas on the air with the edge of his lightning cleaver.
I caught him “Hey! Maybe you want to settle down. Before you damage the woodwork. It can’t be all that bad.”
“I’m all right,” Dean insisted right away. “They just caught me by surprise.”
An odor wafted in through the open doorway, like the southern extremity of a northbound skunk or, more likely, the last thing you smell when you meet up with one of the big flesh-eating thunder lizards out in the woods. It was bad breath on an epic scale. I hadn’t encountered it in a long time but I knew it of old. Its provenance was just coming back to me when I got up to the door and leaned out just in time to get the full benefit of the exhalations of a pair of humongous creatures who’d bent down to peer into my house.
These boys both fell out of the ugly tree at a young age, hitting every damned branch on the way down. Then their mommas whupped them with an ugly stick and fed them ugly soup every day of their lives. They were Uh-glee, with a couple of capital double-ugs.
“Doris. Marsha. How’re you fellas doing?”
Doris and Marsha Rose were two of three brothers who insisted they were triplets born of different mothers. Doris and Marsha have a greenish cast and stand twenty feet tall. They have teeth that stick out all which way. One is crosseyed and one is walleyed but I can’t keep that straight. Sometimes they trade off. They’re grolls, a seldom-seen result of what can happen when giants and trolls fall in love. Doris and Marsha aren’t very bright. But they don’t have to be. They’re so big hardly anything else matters.
“We’re all doing marvellously, actually,” a small voice piped. Of course. The grolls seldom went anywhere without the third triplet, Dojango, who, being a half-wit, was the brains of the family.
Dojango Rose isn’t much over five feet tall. Well, taller than Bic Gonlit, so maybe he’s five and a half. He’s indistinguishable from a thousand other weasel-eyed, furtive little grifters on the streets of TunFaire. He’d have no trouble passing for human if he wanted, though he can’t be more than one-eighth human in reality. In some fashion he’s distantly related to Morley Dotes. Morley tosses snippets of work his way when finesse and a low profile aren’t critical components in the grand scheme.
I descended the front steps amidst booming greetings from the larger brethren and the worst carrying-on by the pixies since their own arrival. I barely noticed. Already their hell-raising was becoming a commonplace, part of the background noise of the city. Seldom is TunFaire completely quiet.
Dojango Rose had himself in harness between the shafts of Kip Prose’s two-wheeler man-hauling cart. He grinned. “Bet this’s something you never thought you’d see, actually.”
“Actually. You really think you can haul that thing around town with somebody in it?” Dojango seemed to have gone a few rounds with consumption since last I’d seen him. He looked lucky to be able to shift himself.
Based on prior experience chances were good he had his brothers carrying him most of the time.
“I am kind of counting on my brothers to help, actually,” Rose admitted. “But there’s more to me than you think, actually.”
“Actually.” Dojango Rose had some annoying verbal tics. “There just about has to be. Hey! Knock it off! Let her go.”
Doris unpinched thumb and forefinger. A pixie buzzed away in dazed, staggering flight.
Amazing. Some people will respond automatically to any loud, commanding voice.
“Ah, Garrett, I was just —”
“I know what you was just.” I climbed into the cart, every muscle arguing back. “Save it for the villains. We’re liable to run into some. Godsdammit!”
There I was in the street about a thousand steps downhill from my front door and I hadn’t brought anything out with me... Dean and Singe materialized, each with arms filled. They clattered down the steps. Singe dumped her load into my lap. That consisted of enough instruments of mayhem for me to start up my own small army.
Singe and Dean stayed busy around the back of the cart for a while, with trips into the house and outside again. Then the old man headed back up the steps. Eventually, Singe came up beside me. “We are ready to travel.” She tossed Dean a cheerful wave. Dean returned the gesture.
She had outstubborned him and overcome his prejudice by force of personality. Singe was, indeed, a wonder girl.
“What were you doing back there?”
“Storing provisions. You do not plan your travels properly. Especially in the area of food. So Dean and I fixed us something to take along.”
While I was digesting that Dojango suddenly called out, “Where to, boss?”
38
There were subtle signs that some parts of Playmate’s place had been searched. I asked Winger, “Has anybody been in here since you took over? Since Playmate wandered off?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” She was irked. I was daring to question her faithfulness to her commission.
“I didn’t think so. So you have to quit going through Playmate’s stuff.” While she sputtered I took a lamp into Kip’s workshop. At first glance the only change there was the absence of the cart I’d ridden over here. Behind one or another of the grolls, mostly. As I’d anticipated.
Three blocks from my house Dojango was already trying to mooch a ride.
With Doris or Marsha pulling the cart, though, there were problems. Problems which sprang from their size. Neither could fit between the cart’s long shafts. So whichever one was on the job dragged the cart along one-handed. The ride became a series of wild jerks as the groll swung his arms.
Then there was the problem of height. The grolls’ hands were eight feet off the ground when they stood up straight. Whe
n they pulled the cart I ended up lying on my back.
But we had arrived at Playmate’s stable. Marsha had volunteered to carry me around in his arms when he saw how much trouble I had levering my stiff old bones out of the cart. “I’d take you up on it, too,” I told him. “Except for the fact that you’re too tall to go anywhere inside here.”
That was one big problem with being those two guys. Hardly any structure in TunFaire was tall enough to accommodate them.
So I limped a lot and leaned on things. I was crabby. I snarled at people for no good reason. And I didn’t find a single clue as to where Playmate had gone. But I did have Singe. She’d located Playmate’s newest track and was ready to move out on it long before I finished my rounds of Playmate’s digs. I swore there had to be something incriminating somewhere. Something to tie him into the evil equine empire.
I kept returning to Kip’s workshop, convinced that there was something I was overlooking. There was nothing missing and nothing wrong there but something deep inside me kept telling me to watch out for something.
I never did figure out what it was. But I trusted my hunch. I told Morley’s associates to keep a close eye on Kip’s junk. “Something here has something to do with what’s going on. I don’t know what it is yet. So I don’t want you to let anybody in. Don’t let anybody touch anything. And in particular, don’t let Winger touch anything. But otherwise, consider her to be in charge.”
I gave Winger a big grin and a glimpse of the old raised eyebrow trick.
Winger gave me the finger.
“Promises, promises.”
That earned me a matched set of flying fingers.
39
Singe was having trouble concentrating. Dojango kept distracting her. He wouldn’t shut up. Which was a habit of his that I’d forgotten. Kind of the way you forget how much a broken bone hurts until the next time you bust one.
I explained, on three separate occasions, how difficult it was for Singe to follow a trace as old as Playmate’s, to explain that she had to concentrate all her attention on the task at hand.