Page 12 of Bitter Gold Hearts

  “They?”

  “Courter. It wasn’l really they till later. But Courter didn’t come on his own. They sent him.”

  “I assume you gave him valuable advice on the placement of his elbow.”

  “Yes. So my father took his place. He was as pale and sweaty as Karl had been. And he had a wild look that scared me. Like he was so terrified he was capable of anything. He didn’t get anywhere either. He did a lot of yelling. My father yells a lot. I mostly just stayed out of his reach till Domina came in. She tried to keep me from hearing what she said, but I heard part of it. She’d heard from one of the staff that Karl had heard that Mother was in Leif mold. Meaning Mother could show up any­time because she could get to TunFaire almost as fast as the news that she was coming. Father really got excited then.”

  “And?”

  Amber seemed ashamed. “I want you to know, I love my father. Even when he does irrational things.”

  I tried my raised-eyebrow trick. I hadn’t been practic­ing lately. She wasn’t impressed.

  “He screamed at Domina to get Courter. They’d beat it out of me. She couldn’t calm him down, so she went out, I guess to get Courter. Father came after me. And he actually did hit me. He never did that before. Not himself.”

  “And?”

  “I picked up a shoe and bopped him over the head. He went away. And he didn’t come back. A couple hours later I heard him and Domina having a screaming match all the way from her side of the house. But I couldn’t tell what it was about. I thought about sneaking over and eavesdropping but I didn’t. I was scared to go out of my room. Everybody was going crazy. And then a little while after that, I decided I had to get out of that house. Forever. No matter what. Even if you can’t find the gold.”

  “Why?”

  “Because one of the servants told me that Karl had committed suicide. When I heard that, I knew I had to get away. Far away, where nobody could find me. Or I might be dead, too. Only I didn’t run fast enough, I guess. Because Courter caught up with me just before I got here. He even tried to come in and drag me back out when your man let me in.”

  I considered Courter, then the Dead Man. He would be monitoring Slauce’s reactions as closely as he could.

  The man is a villain for certain, Garrett, but he appears to have no guilty knowledge concerning the death of Karl Junior or his supposed kidnapping. Much of what he has heard here has been news to him. He appears to be slow of wit and it could be that he is considered too stupid to be trusted. I faced Amber. “You’re convinced your brother was incapable of taking his own life?”

  “Yes. I told you that already.”

  “All right. That gives me a new line of attack. Where, when, and how did it happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? You mean you just —”

  “Don’t you start yelling at me too!” She lifted a foot, snatched off a shoe, and brandished it.

  Three seconds later we were shaking with laughter. I got hold of myself, gave Slauce a look, shifted it to the Dead Man.

  He knows.

  “Dean, take Miss daPena to the guest room and get her settled. While you’re at it, you might as well fix yourself up for a few more nights. We’re going to need you here.”

  “Yes sir.” He sounded excited. At least he was in on this thing. “Miss? If you’ll come with me?”

  She went reluctantly.

  __XXVI__

  “i think I have to revise my strategy,” I said. “I was going to let Slauce have the works so he could go home and get things stirred up.”

  /assumed as much. I believe it is time you approached Mr. Dotes on a purely business basis, instead of favor for favor. You need more eyes.

  “Right. Things are stirred up enough without me stick­ing my hand in. Can you make him forget what he’s seen and heard here?”

  I think so.

  “Then let’s see what he has to tell about Junior check­ing out.”

  The Dead Man released his hold on Slauce. Friend Courter was vulnerable. When I asked, he an­swered, and didn’t start toughening up for several min­utes. He gave me an address and an approximate time of death only two hours after Karl had fled his home.

  “How did he do it?” I asked, for Courter’s sake going with the suicide fiction.

  “He slashed his wrists.”

  That was the clincher. “Aw, come on! And you be­lieved that? You knew the kid. If you’d said he’d hanged himself, I might have thought it was just barely possible. But even I knew him well enough to know he couldn’t cut on himself. He was probably the kind of guy who couldn’t shave because he was afraid he might see a speck of blood.”

  Do not press, Garrett. You will get him to thinking. For him that might prove to be a dangerous new experience. He just wanted his own job made easier. You go see Mr. Dotes now. By the time you return, Mr. Slauce will have forgotten this episode entirely. He will be a bit intoxicated. Take that into consideration when you are planning how you will remove him from the premises. And you might as well consider doing the other one while you are at it. Right. Grumble. I left him to his fun. Morley rented me five thugs. His discount to the trade left their price only semi-usurious. I assigned one man to keep an eye on my place just in case something happened that the Dead Man couldn’t handle alone. The world is filled with unpredictable people.

  One man got the job of keeping track of Courter Slauce. The remaining three got the unenviable task of trying to keep tabs on the denizens of the Stormwarden’s house. I told them they should report to Morley. Dotes would have a better chance of tracking me down if there was something 1 needed to know. Five men weren’t enough to do the job the way it ought to be done, but this one was out of my own pocket. The only client I had was one who had retained me on a contingency basis, and while I was willing to grab off a chunk of that ransom, I had a pessimistic view of my chances. I made a mental note to quiz Amber about what she had learned regarding Domina Dount’s handling and de­livery of all that gold.

  Disposing of Bruno and Slauce was an easy half hour’s work with a borrowed buggy. An unconscious Bruno got dumped into an alley where he’d soon waken hungry enough to go into the cannibal business. Courter wasn’t all the way out. He was just roaring drunk. I don’t know how the Dead Man managed that. He never said. I just walked Slauce into a tavern, sat him down with a pitcher, then look the buggy back where it belonged. Then it was time to go see what could be seen at the scene of Junior’s suicide.

  __XXVII__

  The wooden tenements, three and four stories tall, leaned against one another like wounded soldiers after the battle. But the war never ended down here. Time was the enemy never to be conquered and there were no reserves to help stay the tide. It was night and the only light in the street fell from doors and windows open in hopes the day’s heat would sneak away. That was a hope only slightly less vain than the hope that poverty would take to its heels. The street was full of serious-faced, gaunt children and the tene­ments were filled with quarreling adults. The corners, though, lacked their prides of narrow-eyed young men looking for a chance under the guise of cool indifference. No dares issued or taken. They were all in the Cantard, burning youth’s energy in futility and fear, soldiering. The war had that one positive spin off. When you wanted to talk about your crime, you had to go find senior citizens who remembered the good old days before the war.

  I still had to watch my step — for reasons evoking no romance at all. There were as many dogs in the street as kids. And at any moment the sky might open and spit out a cloudburst of refuse. There were sanitary laws, but who paid attention? There was no one to enforce them. The place I sought was one more crippled soldier in the host, three stories that had seen their youth spent before the turn of the century. I planted myself across the way and considered it. Assumption: Junior had run to his friend Donni Pell when he felt the heat. Assump­tion: Donni Pell had been in on and had helped stage Junior’s kidnapping. The nature of the place where youn
g Karl had died i mplied that there was something wrong with one or both assumptions. Having collected possibly the biggest ran­som ever paid in TunFaire, why would she hole up in such a dump?

  If he hadn’t run to Donni, then who? No other name had come up. Junior didn’t have friends.

  Not even one, apparently. Death had sniffed out his hiding place in under two hours. All the excitement was over, and had been for many hours. In that part of town even the most grotesque death was a wonder only until the blood dried. I began to be an object of interest myself, standing there doing nothing but look. I moved. There are no locks or bolts on the street doors of those places. Such would only inconvenience the comings and goings of the masses packed inside. I went in, stepped over a sleeping drunk sprawled on the battered floor. The treads of the stair creaked and groaned as I went up. There was no point in sneaking. Sneakery would have been useless anyway. Getting to the right room on the third floor took me past two others that had no doors. Families fell silent, stared as I passed. The death room had a door, but not one that would close tightly. It skidded against the floor as I pushed. It was the sort of place I had pictured — one room, eight-by-twelve, no furnishings, one window with a shut­ter but no glass. A bunch of blankets were thrown against a wall for a bed, and odds and ends were scattered around. One corner had walls and floor spattered with patches and brown spots. It had been messy. But those things always are. There is a lot of juice in the human fruit.

  They must have fastened him down somehow. You don’t carve on someone without them putting up a fuss. I kicked around the place but found no ropes or straps or anything that might have bound him. I guess even ogre breeds have sense enough to pick up after themselves sometimes.

  Or did they?

  Mixed in with the tangle of bedding was a familiar item, from Karl’s description. It was a doeskin bag with a heavy, long drawstring. Just the thing to pop over a guy’s head and choke him unconscious. It was stained with dried vomit. I pictured some fastidi­ous thug hurling it aside in disgust. You might not need to tie a guy if you strangle him before you cut. He could bleed to death before he woke up.

  “It’s a half-mark silver a week, as is. You want furnish­ings, you bring your own.”

  I gave the woman in the doorway my innocent look. “What about the mess?”

  “You want cleanup, that’s a mark right now. You want fix-up, take care of it yourself.”

  “Come off the rent?”

  She looked at me like I was crazy. “You pay up front, every week. You show me you’re reliable, after a few months I might understand if you’re one or two days late. Three days and out you go. Got that?”

  She was a charmer in every respect. Had she not possessed the winning personality of a lizard, a guy might have been tempted to have her hair and clothes washed. She couldn’t have been much past thirty, only the inside had gone completely to seed. But the rest wouldn’t be far behind.

  “You’re staring like you think the place comes with entertainment.” She tried a cautious smile from which a few teeth were missing. “That costs you extra, too.”

  I had a thought. An inspiration, perhaps. What do hookers do when they get too old or too slovenly to compete? Not all can become Lettie Farens. Maybe this was someone Donni had known before she had become a landlady.

  “I’m not so much interested in the room as I am in the tenant.” I palmed a gold piece, let her see a flash. Her eyes popped. Then her face closed down, became all suspicious frowns framed by wild, filthy hair.

  “The tenant?”

  “The tenant. The person who lived in the room. Also the person who paid for it, if they weren’t the same.”

  Still the suspicious eyes. “Who wants to know?”

  I looked at the coin. “Dister Greteke.” Old Dister was a dead king, of which we in TunFaire are blessed with a lot. We could use a live one — if he’d do something worthwhile.

  “A double?”

  “Looks like one to me.”

  “It was a kid named Donny Pell. I don’t know where he went. He paid his own rent.” She reached.

  “You’re kidding. Donny Pell, eh? Did you meet him while you were still in the trade?” I put the coin on the windowsill, drifted away. She licked her lips, took one step. She wasn’t stupid. She saw the trap taking shape. But she couldn’t shake the greed, and maybe she thought she could bluff me. She took another step. In moments she was at the window and I was at the door. “You going to tell me?”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Donni Pell. But female. From Lettie Faren’s place. Came here to hide out maybe a week ago. Right?”

  She nodded. She had a little shame left.

  “You knew her before?”

  “I was there when she first came to the place. She was different than the other girls. Ambitious. But kind of decent then. If you know what I mean. Maybe she got too ambitious.” The knuckles of her right hand whitened as she squeezed the coin. She’d been out of the trade awhile. It had been awhile since she’d seen that kind of money. Doubtless when it had been easy come she hadn’t thought to put any aside. Her gaze strayed to the blood­stains. “She developed weird tastes in friends.”

  “Ogre breeds?”

  That surprised her. “Yeah. How did you —”

  “I know some things. Some things I don’t. You know some things and you don’t know what I don’t know.” I borrowed a trick from Morley Dotes by getting my knife out and going to work on my nails. “So why don’t you just tell me everything you do know about her and the people who visited her here.”

  Her bluff was a feeble bolt and she knew it. But she tried. “I yell and the whole place will be in here in half a minute.”

  “I’ll bet the fellow in the corner thought the same thing.”

  She looked at the bloodstain again. “Fair is fair. I was just seeing if you’d pay a little more. All right? What do you want to know?”

  “I told you. Everything. Especially who else was here this morning and where she is now.” To forestall the next round of delays I added, “I don’t mean her any harm.

  I’m looking for some of her playmates. She’s gotten herself caught in the middle of a big and deadly game.”

  Maybe very deadly for her. If there was to be a next victim in this mess, I’d put all my money on Donni Pell. If I had any chance, I wanted to find her before the villains eliminated the next link in their chain of vulnerability.

  “I don’t know where she went. I didn’t know she was gone till somebody found the mess. That’s the gods’ honest truth, mister.”

  She sounded like she was telling the truth. I must have had a ferocious look in my eye. She was getting ner­vous. But with a hooker you never know. Their whole lives are lies and some of the falsehoods run so deep they don’t know the difference.

  “Look, mister...”

  “Just keep talking, sweetheart. I’ll let you know when I’ve gotten my money’s worth.”

  “Only three people ever visited her here that I know about. The one who killed himself here this morning.” If she wanted to keep up the pretense on that, it was all right by me. “That was the only time he ever came that I know of. Another one came twice. Both times he was all covered up in one of them hooded cloaks rich guys wear when they go out at night. I never saw his face. I never heard his name.”

  Inconvenient for me, that, but she was doing all right, considering. “How tall?”

  “Shorter than you. I think. I never was very good judging how tall people are.”

  “How old?”

  “I told you, he wore one of them cloaks.”

  “What about his voice?”

  “I never heard him talk.”

  “When did he come here?” I was determined to get something.

  “Last night was the first time. He stayed about two hours. I guess you can figure what they were doing. Then he came back this morning.”

  I was all over her then, trying to pin down the order of events. But she could
n’t get straight who had come when. “I think the cloaked man was first. Maybe not. Maybe it was the one who killed himself. The other one came last, though, I’m pretty sure. Two of them was here at the same time, I think, but I don’t know which two.”

  She wasn’t very bright, this woman. Also, she had been very scared. Donni’s third visitor, who, it devel­oped, had visited almost every night, had spooked her.

  She was sure, almost, that the cloaked man had been the first to leave. Maybe.

  “Tell me about this third man. This regular visitor. This guy who scared you so bad. He sounds interesting.”

  He wasn’t interesting to her. She didn’t want to talk about him at all. He was bad mojo. I took that as a good sign. She knew something here. With a little sweet talk... “I’m badder mojo, lover. I’m here.” A little deft work with the knife...

  “All right, Bruno. All right. You don’t have to get mean. He can take care of you himself. The guys he ran with him called him Gorgeous. If you ever saw him, you’d know why. He was meaner than a wolfman on weed.”

  “Ugly?” Part ogre, I thought. What else? There had to be an ogre in it somewhere.

  “Ugly! So ugly you couldn’t tell if he was a breed or not. He came with different guys different times, some of them breeds, some of them not. But always with this one breed he called Skredli.”

  My eyes must have lit up, and not entirely with joy. She backed away a step, threw up a hand, looked for some place to hide. “Easy, woman. Skredli? Now that’s a name I’ve been wanting to hear. Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “You told me only three men ever came here. But now you’ve got this Gorgeous visiting with a crowd.”

  “The ones who came with him never came inside. They were like bodyguards or something. Except that Skredli guy did come inside this morning, I think, and maybe one other time. Yeah. That’s right. I think he even come here one other time, too, by himself, and stayed with her a couple hours. I forgot about that. Ick.” She shuddered. “Doing it with an ogre.” “I want this Skredli. Where do I find him?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Ogre Town, I guess. But when you find him, you’re going to find Gorgeous, too. And maybe the girl. Only she’ll probably be dressed like a boy again. Using Donny Pell. Why don’t you get out of here? Why don’t you leave me the hell alone?”