“Cold trail?”
“Not very. And he was bleeding. But it’s getting colder.”
“Back in a few. I know what you need.” He went into the kitchen. Another human-elf breed took his place. He was younger. He plunked a couple of platters on the counter, tossed up some utensils, looked at Maya like he wondered if it was catching, and went to the end of the counter to take somebody’s order.
“That one’s no prince,” Maya told me. “But the old guy was all right.” She eyed her platter.
The special looked like fried grass on a bed of blanched maggots, covered in a slime sauce filled with toadstool chunks and tiny bits of black fur. I muttered, “No wonder vegetarians are so nasty.”
Maya assaulted her meal. When she stopped to catch her breath she said, “This ain’t bad, Garrett.”
I’d begun nibbling the mushrooms out of mine. She was right. But I wasn’t going to admit it out loud, in front of witnesses. I muttered, “Wedge is no prince, either. He takes people out on the river, ties rocks to their feet, dumps them in, and tells them he’ll race them back to shore. Tells them he’ll turn them loose if they beat him. I hear some of them paddle like hell all the way to the bottom.”
She checked to see if I was joking. She saw I wasn’t. Well, maybe I’d exaggerated a little, but Wedge wasn’t nice people. Morley Dotes didn’t have nice people working for him.
She was reading my mind again. “Aren’t there any decent people anymore?”
“Sure. We just don’t run into many.”
“Name two,” she challenged.
“Dean. Friend of mine named Tinnie Tate. Her uncle Willard. Friend of mine called Playmate.”
“All right.”
“Not to mention I have a fair opinion of myself.”
“You would. I said all right, Garrett. Forget I asked. You going to finish that? I’ll take it.”
I pushed my platter over. Where was she putting it?
Wedge came back with the sleaziest ratman I’d ever seen. He had a lot of the old blood: long whiskers, a long snoot, patches of fur, a four-foot tail. He’d be a descendant of one of the less successful experimental strains of two centuries back, when the life magic’s were the rage and anybody who could diddle up a spell was trying to create new forms. None of those sorcerers are remembered today but their creations are with us still. They’d been inordinately fond of messing with rats.
I pride myself on my open mind and freedom from prejudice, but I’ve always found room to exclude rat-people. I can’t help it. I don’t like them and none of them have done anything to improve my opinion.
Wedge told me, “This is Shote, Garrett. As good a stalker as you’ll find. And he’s available.”
I nodded to Shote and tried to shelve the prejudice. “Wedge tell you what I need?”
Shote nodded. “Forrow sssomebody whosss breeding.”
I grinned. None of those guys were going to do any breeding. “Basically, I’ve got a solid starting point. Shouldn’t be hard.”
“Two marks frat fee, I take you to the end of the track. Arr I do is track. No fighting. No pottering. No nothing else.”
“That’s fine with me.” I dug out two marks silver.
Morley arrived. He leaned on the counter beside me. He looked at Maya. “Picking them a little young, aren’t you?”
“This is Maya, my self-appointed assistant and understudy. Maya, the famous Morley Dotes.”
“Charmed.” She eyed him. “He a friend of yours, Garrett?” She’d know the name.
“Sometimes.”
“You going to invite him to the wedding?”
She had set me up and cut me off at the knees.
Morley had to ask. “What wedding?”
“Him and me,” Maya said. “I decided I’m going to marry him.”
Morley grinned. “I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it for a barge loaded with gold.” I’ve seen toads with straighter faces than he had on.
I bet they heard my teeth grind all the way to the waterfront.
“Maya Garrett?” Morley said. “It does have a ring.” He looked at the ratman. “Shote. How you doing? I thought you didn’t have anything going, Garrett.” He was having a hell of a time keeping from laughing.
“I didn’t. Now I do. Somebody offend Pokey Pigotta. I want to ask them why.”
That took the grin off his clock. “You taking it personal?” He thinks I take everything personal.
“I don’t know. Pokey was all right, but he wasn’t really a friend. I just want to know why he turned up dead where he did.”
Morley waited for me to tell him where and when. I disappointed him. I asked Shote, “Are you ready? Let’s go.”
Maya downed the rest of my celery drink and pushed away from the counter. She grinned at me.
Morley asked, “Mind if I tag along?”
“Not at all.” He’d be useful if we walked into something.
18
I expected the dead man’s friends would have collected him, but when we reached that death-trap alley, there he was, taking it easy, like a drunk sleeping it off.
“They left this one where he croaked,” I said. “At least one more was bleeding when they left.”
The ratman grunted and started sniffing around.
“Morley, I want to show you something.” I had Maya hold the lantern while I pantsed the dead guy.
“What are you, some kind of pervert?” Morley asked.
“Just take a look. Ever seen anything like this?”
Morley looked for a long time. Then he shuddered and shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen anything like that. That’s sick. Crazy sick. How did you know? What have you gotten yourself into?”
“This is the fifth one today. All cut bald.” I didn’t go into detail.
Morley said, “Why would anybody let somebody do that?”
“There are a lot of crazies in this world, old buddy.”
“I didn’t think there was anybody that crazy.”
“That’s because you think with yours.”
“Ha! The pot calling the kettle black.”
“If you’re ready?” The ratman sounded offended.
“Whenever you are,” I told him.
“One man went on from here. He was wounded, as you surmised.” Put me in my place. He led off, dropping to all fours so his legs folded up like a grasshopper’s hind legs. That hurt just to see but didn’t bother him. He snuffled and muttered and scooted along, growling at Maya to douse the damned light.
The trail turned south, headed across town a mile, a mile and a half into a better part of the city, not wealthy like the Hill and the neighborhoods clinging to its skirts, but definitely middle-class.
I began to get the feeling I’d missed something important. I suspected I knew something I didn’t know I knew. I tried going over everything.
I should know better than to force it. That never works. Thinking just confuses me.
The stalk turned out to be a giant anticlimax. We caught our quarry in another alleyway. “Dead as a wedge,” Shote announced. “Been gone a couple of hours.”
“He was alone?” Morley asked.
“Did I tell you he was alone? I told you he was alone. He was alone.”
“Touchy, touchy.”
Maya searched the body. I hadn’t done that with the others, except cursorily. I expect it would have been a waste of time. Maya didn’t find anything.
Morley said, “I didn’t know old Pokey had it in him. He was always a talker. He could bullshit his way out of anything.”
“I don’t think he had time to talk.”
Maya asked, “What do we do now, Garrett?”
“I don’t know.” My inclination was to go home and sleep. We’d hit a dead end here. “We could keep going the way we were headed, see if we run into anything that bites.”
Morley said, “There’s nothing ahead but the Dead Zone, the Dream Quarter, and the Slough of Despond.” Those were vulgar names for the diplomatic commun
ity, the area where TunFaire’s religions maintain their principal temples, and the tight island where the city maintains two workhouses and a jail, a madhouse, and a branch of the Bledsoe charity hospital. The Slough is surrounded by a high curtain wall, not to keep anyone in or out but to mask the interior so as not to offend the eyes of passersby headed for the Dead Zone or the Dream Quarter.
There was a lot more to the South End, including industry, fairgrounds, shipyards, acres and acres of graveyards, and most of the Karentine Army’s city facilities. But I thought I caught what Morley meant.
There was a chance our dead madmen had originated in one of those three areas. I’d be hard put to decide which was the craziest.
I said, “Whoever sent those guys might be wondering what happened to them. I’m going back where Pokey got it and see if anybody turns up.”
Maya thought that was a good idea. Morley shrugged. “I’ve had a long day. I’m going to get some sleep. I’d be interested in hearing if you find something, Garrett. Want to head back, Shote?”
The ratman grunted.
I had a thought. That happens. So do lunar eclipses. “Wait up. I want you to look at something. Everybody.” I took out my coin card. “Shine the light on this, Maya.”
“Temple coinage,” Morley said. “Can’t tell what temple.”
Maya and Shote couldn’t tell me anything, either.
Morley asked, “It have anything to do with this?”
“No. These have to do with who sicced Snowball on me. Whoever hired him paid him in these.”
Morley pruned his lips. “Check the Royal Assay. They’re supposed to keep samples of private coinages.”
That was a good idea. I wished I’d thought of it. I thanked him and said good night.
19
Maya and I had a quiet walk back. Maybe she was as worn out as I was. I didn’t try to make conversation.
I tried to stay alert. It was late for chukos but I was crossing town with the war chief of the Doom, showing her colors, asking for trouble if she was spotted.
Trouble didn’t find us. We saw mostly ratpeople sweeping streets, clearing trash, scrounging, stealing whatever wasn’t nailed down. I have to admit they contribute, mainly by doing work no one else wants. They are industrious.
I went back to the steps where Maya and I had been sitting when Jill brought the bad news. The moon had moved along. The place was no longer in the light. Jill’s building was. I watched.
Maya helped. She seemed disinclined to head for her lair. After a while, she said, “The Vampires were really trying to kill you?”
“Sure seemed like it.” I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“Huh? That Snowball is crazy. He’ll try again.”
Was she kidding? “No he won’t. He really is dead, Maya.”
The look she gave me.
After that we didn’t talk much.
I ran out of patience. Weariness will do that. “I’m going over there. See what happened while we were roaming.”
Maya followed me. She moved like she was worn out. At eighteen? After only these few hours? Hell, I was the old-timer here.
We had no trouble getting in the street door, same as before. That implied the place had heavyweight protection, something to check on, though it would lead back to Chodo if the women were what I thought. If the place was his and he found out who sent those men, somebody was in for hard times. Chodo’s enforcers go after their jobs with the gusto and arrogance of tax collectors. They don’t stop coming and they don’t leave you anywhere to hide.
The place was quiet. The keepers had gone home to less winsome company. The kept were asleep, visions of presents prancing in their pretty heads.
We went up slowly, carefully. Earlier there had been lamps to light the way, but now they were dark. I figured the caretaker had extinguished them but I wasn’t going to dance into an ambush because it seemed unlikely.
We reached Jill’s door. I listened. Nothing. I pushed the door. It swung inward, as it should, quietly. I stuck my head inside.
All but two lamps had burned out, and those wouldn’t be with us long. I saw no evidence that we weren’t alone. “See if you can find some oil.” While she looked I checked the corpses. They hadn’t walked away.
I came back to find Maya filling lamps. “Long as we’re here I’m going to toss the place. Those guys were looking for something and they didn’t find it.”
“How do you figure?” She got a couple of refills burning.
“They didn’t have anything when we found them. And we accounted for all of them. So whatever it was it’s here or wasn’t here to begin with.” I thought. I hoped.
“Oh.”
“I’ll do this room first so we can get the lights out. Keep an eye on the street. Anyone comes, holler.”
I ripped the room apart. Jill would be pissed if she found out. I wouldn’t tell her. Let her think the bad boys did it.
I demolished furnishings. I looked for secret hiding places. I didn’t find doodly squat. And Maya didn’t see anything in the street.
“Darken the room so nobody will see the lights and wonder. Stay back a few feet so the moonlight doesn’t hit your face.” I recalled the face she’d seen in the window of a supposedly empty apartment. Maybe we’d take a look in there, too.
“All right.”
“Getting tired?” She sounded it.
“Yes.”
“I’ll hurry.”
“If you’re going to do it, do it right. I’ll stay awake.”
I hoped so. I didn’t need a surprise like the one Pokey got.
I did the walk-in next. All I found out was that Jill couldn’t get rid of anything. There are two kinds-sentimentalists who keep everything for what it meant, and the ex-poor, who keep everything as a hedge against revenant poverty. I pegged Jill for the latter.
I hit the kitchen next. All I learned there was that Jill didn’t eat at home. In fact, as I went along, despite the heap of stuff in the walk-in, I began to suspect that Jill didn’t really live there, but just kept stuff there and met someone there.
I stalled doing the bedroom until I’d drawn blanks everywhere else. I didn’t want to keep climbing over Pokey, reminded that life is chancy for guys like us. It might be enough to rattle me into getting a job.
I didn’t like it but I went at it, doing a fast round first, in case something turned up the easy way.
It didn’t. I hadn’t counted on it, anyway. The only thing that comes easy is trouble.
I went after it the hard way.
Still nothing.
Well, Jill hadn’t struck me as stupid. She’d had plenty of storm warnings.
I wondered if she’d carried whatever it was over to my place. I hadn’t watched her pack. Sure she had, if it had been here and was portable.
Had I just wasted a couple of hours I could have spent sleeping?
I made only one find of more than passing interest.
A small chest of drawers stood beside the bed. It was an expensive piece. The top drawer was just two inches deep. Jill had used it to dump small change. There had to be a pound of copper in there. Junk money to her, probably, though there were characters on the street who would take her head off for less.
I sat on the bed, pulled the drawer into my lap, and stirred its contents. The coins weren’t all copper. Maybe one in twenty was a silver tenth mark.
The mix was eclectic, new and old, royal and private, as you’d expect of general change. Should I let Maya know the rainbow ended here?
Whoa! A perfect, mint-condition brother of the copper coin on the card in my pocket. A gem of the min-ter’s art. I fished it out.
It meant nothing, of course....
“Garrett!” Maya called.
I shoved the drawer into the chest and headed for the front room. “What you got?”
“Take a look.”
I looked. Six men moved around the street below, furtive, studiously ignoring the building while they talked.
> Maya asked, “How do we get out?”
“We don’t. Keep watching. I’ll be across the hall. Let me know when they come inside.” I got a lamp, scurried across the hall, knelt, and got to work with a skinny knife.
I had the door open when Maya arrived. “Four are coming in.”
I doused the lamp and moved forward into darkness, assuming the layout to reflect that of Jill’s apartment, going slowly so I wouldn’t get bushwhacked by rogue furniture.
I’d gone about eight feet when somebody knocked me ass over appetite. I never saw him, just heard his feet and Maya’s squeak as he pushed past her. I fought off a man-eating chair with fourteen arms and legs. “Close the door. Quietly.”
She did. “What do we do now?”
“Sit tight and hope they don’t break in here. You carrying?”
“My knife.”
They always have that. For chukos the knife is who they are. Without it they’re just civilians.
“You get a look at that guy?”
“Not really. He was bald. He was carrying something. A corner of it hit me in the tit. I thought I’d scream.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“What’d I say?”
“You know... Ssh!” They were in the hall. They were trying to be quiet but had invaded unfamiliar territory in the dark.
Maya whispered, “He had a funny nose, too.”
“Funny how?”
“Big and bent. Like it was broken or something.”
“Sshh.”
We waited. After a while I sent Maya to watch from the window, in case they left without us hearing them. I got into ambush near the door in case they decided to drop in. I wondered what had become of the guy who had run out. If he’d been one of them we’d have had company by now. And if he’d run into them there would have been some kind of uproar.
It was a long wait. The sky had begun to show some color when Maya said, “They’re leaving.”
I went and watched. The two biggest men each carried one of the lighter corpses. The other two carried the heavier corpse. The whole bunch got out of there fast.
I figured the smart thing would be to follow their example. So of course I took my dead lamp across the hall to see if I couldn’t get it lit.