Deadly Quicksilver Lies

  Not once in his life had Chodo Contague let a debt go unpaid. “But...”

  “You and I know. No one else does.”

  He and I knew that Chodo had become a vegetable after suffering a stroke. These days, his daughter was the power in the outfit. She only pretended to take instructions from her father.

  “Crask and Sadler.” Those two knew, too.

  Morley inclined his head slightly. “They might explain a few things.”

  Crask and Sadler had been Chodo’s chief bone-breakers before they turned on him, caused his stroke, tried to take over. They disappeared after Chodo’s daughter outmaneuvered them.

  Coincidentally, there’d always been some doubt about their commitment to masculinity, despite the fact that they were two human mountains on the hoof.

  I described them. Lucky’s discomfort made it obvious he had met the boys. I shot Morley a look. “I don’t need any more complications.”

  Morley prodded Lucky. Lucky admitted, “You won’t see them guys around here. Grange, he’s got a straight look to him back home. Didn’t want them guys turning up in his public life. Figured they’d be lightning rods for trouble around here. So he gave them jobs in Suddleton.”

  Where, I had no doubt, they spent their spare time scheming revenge on me. “Morley, you get the feeling pal Lucky is holding out? He knows an awful lot about the Rainmaker’s business.”

  “I noticed that.”

  Lucky protested. “I just heard his regular guys gossiping. You know how it is, guys sitting around, killing time drinking.”

  “Sure. Tell me, Lucky, where you going to run when we cut you loose?”

  Lucky checked the old folks, shrugged. He was scared. They weren’t, though the old woman had chattered. I wondered if they were something special to the Rainmaker.

  I was about to ask about Zeke when Morley remarked, “We’ve spent enough time here, Garrett. Help could be on its way.”

  Yes, indeed. It could be.

  31

  “You just walk along with us, answer a couple more questions,” I told Lucky and the old folks, “and we’ll be done.” I gestured, a comealong. “There was a guy named Zeke...”

  The Goddamn Parrot did the only worthwhile thing I ever saw him do. He flailed out of the darkness shrieking, “Save me! Oh, save me, mister.” His tone suggested he wasn’t just being obnoxious.

  He wasn’t.

  There were eight of them. Wasn’t hardly fair to them, even considering they were all big, experienced villains. Sarge and Puddle pounded our captives, then vaulted the leftovers and began twisting limbs. There was something evilly fascinating about them at work. It was kind of like watching a snake swallow a toad.

  I didn’t have time to be fascinated. I was up to my crotch in crocodiles. I held them off till help arrived.

  Morley and Spud flew around like they were part of some absurd combat ballet. Mr. Big flapped and squawked. He made more racket than a herd of peafowl. His vocabulary achieved new lows. Puddle, Sarge, Slither, Ivy, and Cleaver’s thugs tried to help him expand that but had nothing to teach him.

  Four brunos took quick dives.

  I’ve heard people that’ve never been there claim it’s impossible to lay somebody out with your fists. That’s true for your average drunken amateur who gets into it with his brother-in-law at the corner tavern but not so for the unrestrained violence of professionals.

  Puddle developed a bloody nose. Spud managed to get kicked in the funny bone. He leaned against a wall clutching his elbow, face pale, language vile. Such a look Morley gave him.

  “Kill them, damnit! Kill them all!” The girlish voice slashed through the mayhem. “Stop playing with them and kill them!”

  I spotted a short guy screaming from what he thought was a safe distance. Cleaver? The Rainmaker himself?

  Morley spotted him. Cleaver’s brunos were coming to the conclusion that it was not a bright idea to piss off guys who could handle them so easily. They didn’t follow orders. Morley grinned and headed for the Rainmaker.

  I was on my way already.

  The Rainmaker, however, did not care to join the party.

  That little bastard could run!

  Naturally, our whole crowd dropped everything and lumbered after us, with predictable results. The Rainmaker vanished down the same rabbithole that had swallowed Zeke. His people grabbed up each others’ parts and headed for the exits. Suddenly, we had us nothing but one big empty building and one hysterical parrot. And, according to Morley, “The Guard’s on its way.”

  “You could be right.” These days, people actually called for official help. These days, the police forces sometimes actually responded.

  Morley snapped, “Narcisio, catch that faggot pigeon and shut it up.” Mr. Big was no joke right then.

  I checked to see if all our people could leave under their own power. No major injuries. Workable legs were available. It was brains that were in short supply.

  Slither and Ivy helped round up the GDP. Mr. Big made it easy. He flew into a wall full speed, cold-cocked himself.

  Pity he didn’t break his neck.

  I considered wringing it and blaming it on the bird’s own erratic piloting, but Spud kept too close an eye on the beast.

  As we hustled into the street, I asked Slither, “That short guy was Cleaver, wasn’t it? The shrimp with the girl voice?”

  Morley seemed intensely interested in Slither’s reply. Could it be he’d never seen Cleaver before?

  “Yeah. That was him. That hunk a shit. I’da caught the little turd I’da turned him into a capon. Put me in the bughouse. I’da used my bare hands. Twisted’em off. I’da fixed him.” But he was shaking. He was pale. He was sweating. Rock-throwing range was as close to Grange Cleaver as he wanted to get.

  Cleaver must be some swell guy.

  I checked Ivy. Ivy didn’t have an opinion. Ivy was all wrapped up in his feathery buddy.

  Morley opined, “Cleaver is going to turn scarce now.”

  “Think so?”

  “His being in town is no secret now, Garrett. A lot of people who don’t like him will hear. And he’ll have a good idea how many enemies he has once he gets together with Lucky.”

  “Think he’ll leave town?”

  “No. But he would if he had the sense the gods gave a goose. You going to have another chat with Winger?”

  Guess who was hiding in the shadows outside when we came thundering out. “You saw her, eh?”

  “I saw her.”

  We cleared the area before the Guard arrived. Safely away, I checked our surroundings more carefully. No more sign of my oversize blond friend. Maybe she wasn’t interested anymore.

  “You need to get her to talk, Garrett.”

  “I know. I know. But I want to let her come in when she’s ready.” I wondered why Winger wasn’t off looking out for Chastity Blaine.

  Morley made no mention so I supposed he’d missed the other watcher, the character who’d followed me to Maggie Jenn’s place.

  I was confused. Nothing made sense.

  It wasn’t going to get any better.

  “Don’t wait too long,” Morley told me. “Two tries in two nights means the Rainmaker is serious.”

  “Seriously disturbed.” Cleaver’s enmity made the least sense of all. “Yeah. With that thought in mind, I’m going home and get some shut-eye.”

  Spud had the Goddamn Parrot. He kept whispering to the fancy pants little drunk. I tried to ease away before anyone noticed. Morley grinned and shook his head. “No, you don’t. Narcisio.”

  My luck stays stuck in the same old rut.

  32

  Slither surprised me. He was a decent cook, which I learned when I stumbled down for breakfast, after having been rousted out by Ivy, who must have caught something Dean had left behind.

  “You have to loosen up, Ivy,” I grumbled as I toddled into the kitchen. “This isn’t the service. We don’t have to haul out before the goddamn crack of noon.”

  ?
??My daddy always told me a man’s got no call lying in bed after the birds start singing.”

  Inertia more than self-restraint kept me from expressing my opinion of that perverted delusion.

  One songbird was wide awake up front, rendering chorus after chorus of such old standards as, “There was a young lady from...” I wondered if Dean still had some of that rat poison that looked like seed cakes. The rats were too smart to eat it, but that bird...

  “You’re working on a job, aren’t you?” Slither was still vague about what I do.

  “The mission,” Ivy mumbled. “Old first rule, Garrett. Even a jarhead ought to know. Got to follow through on the mission.”

  “Watch that jarhead stuff, Army. All right. All right.” Good old attitudes from the bad old days. But was the mission more likely to be advanced at sunrise than at high noon? Excuse me for entertaining doubts.

  I wondered if they had noticed the changes in TunFaire. Probably not. Neither was in close touch with the world outside his skull.

  I surrendered. “I guess we can hit Wixon and White.”

  At the moment, the occult shop was my only angle. Mugwump had not yet materialized with the promised list of contacts.

  Slither’s cooking would have appalled Dean and sent Morley into convulsions. He fried half a slab of bacon while baking drop biscuits. He split the biscuits and soaked them in bacon grease, then sprinkled them with sugar. Poor people food. Soldier food. Food that was darned tasty when it was hot.

  33

  It had rained during the night. The morning air was cool. The breeze was fresh. The streets were clean. The sky was clear. The sun was bright. It was one of those days when it was too easy to relax, too easy to forget that a brighter sun means darker shadows.

  Fortunately, even the shadows were relaxing. Not a one belched a villain bent on mischief. The whole town was in a rare humor. Hell, I heard singing from the Bustee.

  It wouldn’t last. Before sundown, the wicked would be slashing throats again.

  We did develop a following, including the inept creature who had followed me to Maggie Jenn’s place and a guy with an earring who was maybe a ferocious pirate, but I doubted that.

  Even Ivy noticed the clumsy guy.

  “Let them tag along,” I said. “They’ll go cross-eyed. What I do is excruciating to watch. Not to mention tough on the feet.”

  “Be like being back in the Corps,” Slither observed.

  Ivy had the Goddamned Parrot with him. That obscene buzzard had a great time. “Holy hookers, check them melons. Oh. Look it there. Come here, honey. I’ll show you...” We were lucky his diction was sloppy.

  The streets were crowded. Everybody wanted a lungful of rain-scrubbed air before TunFaire returned to normal. The old and weak would be falling over left and right. All that fresh air would be poisonous.

  Before we reached the West End, I spotted another tail. This guy was a first-string pro. I made him by accident, my good luck and his bad. I didn’t know him. That troubled me. I thought I knew the top players.

  It was quite a parade.

  34

  Wixon and White were open. I told Ivy, “You stay out here. You’re the lookout.” I went inside. Slither followed me. I wished I was as bad as I tried to look.

  Both Wixon and White were on board, but no other crew or passengers were. “Bless me,” I murmured, pleased to have something go my way. And, “Bless me again. More fierce pirates.”

  The guys eyeballed us and took just an instant to decide we weren’t the sort of customers they hoped to attract. Neither mislaid his manners, though. Neither failed to notice that between us Slither and I outnumbered them by two hundred pounds.

  “How might we help you?” one asked. He made me think of a begging chipmunk. He had a slight over-bite and the obligatory lisp. He held his soft little hands folded before his chest.

  “Robin!...”

  “Penny, you just hush. Sir?”

  I said, “I’m looking for somebody.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Big smile. A corsair comedian.

  Penny thought it was funny. Penny tittered.

  Slither scowled. Garrett scowled. The boys got real quiet. Robin looked past us, toward the street, as though he hoped the answer to his dilemma might show up out there.

  “I’m looking for a girl. A specific girl. Eighteen. Red hair. So tall. Freckles, probably. Put together so nice even fierce pirates might take a second look and maybe shed a tear about choices made. Probably going by either Justina or Emerald Jenn.”

  The guys stared. My magic touch had turned them into halfwits.

  Outside, Ivy told a dowager type that the shop was closed, only for a little while. She tried to disagree. The Goddamn Parrot took exception and began screeching crude propositions.

  I moved around the shop, fingering whatever looked expensive. The boys had a lot of square feet and plenty of bizarre furnishings. “That description ring any bells?” I couldn’t read their reaction. Its schooled neutrality gave nothing away.

  Penny sneered, “Should it?” I could tell him from Robin only by the size of his mustache. Otherwise, they could have passed as twins. A strong strain of narcissism united these wild and woolly buccaneers.

  “I think it’s likely.” I described the black magic stuff I’d found in Emerald’s rooms. My descriptions were faultless. The Dead Man taught me well. Those studied neutral faces betrayed teensy cracks.

  Penny for sure knew what I was talking about. Robin probably did. Robin was a better faker.

  “Excellent. You guys know the items. Presumably, you provided them. So tell me to who.” I picked up a gorgeous dagger of ruby glass. Some true artist had spent months shaping and carving and polishing it. It was one beautiful, diabolic ceremonial masterpiece.

  “I wouldn’t tell you even if... Stop that!”

  The dagger almost slipped from my fingers.

  “What? You were going to say even if you knew what I was talking about? But you would tell me, Penny. You’d tell me anything. I’m not nice. My friend isn’t as nice as I am.” I flipped the dagger, barely caught it. The boys shuddered. They couldn’t take their eyes off that blade. It had to be worth a fortune. “Boys, I’m that guy in your nightmares. I’m the guy behind the mask. The guy who’d use a priceless glass ceremonial dagger to play mumbletypeg on a tempered oak floor. The guy who’ll vandalize you into bankruptcy. Unless you talk to me.”

  I put the dagger down, collected a book. At first glance it seemed old and ordinary, shy any occult symbols. No big thing, I thought, till the boys started squeaking answers to questions I hadn’t asked.

  They babbled about the man who’d bought the stuff I’d described. Puzzled, I examined the book. And still saw nothing special.

  Why had it loosened their tongues so?

  Its title was The Raging Blades. That made it the central volume of the semi-fictional saga trilogy No Ravens Went Hungry. The Raging Blades was preceded by The Steel-Game and followed by The Battle-Storm. The whole related the glamorized story of an historical character named Eagle, who plundered and murdered his way across two continents and three seas nearly a millenium ago. By today’s standards, the man was a total villain. Friend or foe, everyone eventually regretted knowing him. By the standards of his own time, he’d been a great hero simply because he’d lived a long time and prospered. Even today, they say, kids in Busivad province want to grow up to be another Eagle.

  I asked, “Might this be an early copy?” Early copies are scarce.

  The boys redoubled their babble. What was this? They were ready to confess to murder.

  “Let me check this. You say a man with red hair, some gray, green eyes, freckles, short. Definitely male?” Nods left me with one theory deader than an earthworm in the noonday sun. Not even these rowdy reever types would mistake Maggie Jenn for a man. “Around forty, not eighteen?” That fit no one I’d encountered so far, unless maybe that nasty runt in the warehouse. “And you don’t have any idea who he was?” I hadn’
t caught the colors of Cleaver’s hair and eyes. “You know anything about him?”

  “No.”

  “We don’t know anything.”

  Eyes stayed stuck to that book while their owners tried to pretend everything was cool.

  “He paid cash? He came in, looked around, picked out what he wanted, paid without quibbling about inflated prices? And when he left, he carried his purchases himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “A peasant, indeed.” Smiling, I put the book down. “You see? You can be a help when you want. You just need to take an interest.” Both men sighed when I stepped away from their treasure. I asked, “You don’t recall anything that would connect all that junk together?” It had seemed of a sort to me when I’d seen it, but what did I know about demon stuff? Mostly, I don’t want to know.

  I got headshakes.

  “Everything had its silver star with a goat’s head inside.”

  Penny insisted, “That’s generic demon worship stuff. Our stock is mass-produced by dwarves. We buy it in bulk. It’s junk with almost no intrinsic or occult value. It isn’t fake, but it doesn’t have any power, either.” He waved a hand. I stepped to a display box filled with medallions like the one I’d found in Justina’s suite.

  “You know the girl I described?”

  Headshakes again. Amazing.

  “And you’re sure you don’t know the man who bought the stuff?”

  More of that old shaka-shaka.

  “You have no idea where I might find this guy?”

  They were going to make themselves dizzy.

  “I might as well go, then.” I beckoned to Slither.

  Wixon and White ran for their lives for their back room. I don’t know what they thought I meant to do next. Nothing pleasant. They slammed the door. It was a stout one. We heard a heavy bar slam into place. Slither grinned as he followed me outside.

  35

  Slither glanced back. “How come you didn’t push them harder? You seen how they sweated,’specially when you was messing with that book.”