Deadly Quicksilver Lies

  I’d been considering. “For now. For them back there. Might be interesting to see who does what once they figure out what we’re doing.” We were on the Hill now, strutting like we were honest. Act like you belong, who notices you? Even on the Hill there’s plenty of legitimate traffic. The local guardians didn’t dare roust everybody. I remarked, “Someday these clowns will recall their training and set up checkpoints and start issuing passes.”

  Morley snorted. “Never happen.” He didn’t think much of the Hill brunos. “People who live here won’t tolerate the inconvenience.”

  “Probably right.” That’s the problem with public safety. It is so damned inconvenient.

  “You counting on those people back there being as crooked as you are? That would be as bad a bet as counting on everyone to be honest.”

  “Crooked?” I protested, but I knew what he meant.

  “You know what I mean. One might be secret police.” The secret police were a new problem for TunFaire’s underworld. Always flexible, though, Morley seemed to be having no trouble adapting.

  “Might be.” But I didn’t believe that and doubted that he did. The Guard were less shy than these people. Even Relway’s spies.

  Morley did have to say, “Winger could have that kind of connection.”

  Damn! “Yeah. If there’s a profit in it.” I wondered. Could Winger turn up the closest thing she had to a friend, just for money? Scary. I couldn’t answer that one.

  I said, “You gave me some advice one time: never get involved with a woman crazier than I am.”

  “And I was right. Wasn’t I?”

  “Yeah. Oh, yeah.”

  We turned into the alley that passed behind Maggie Jenn’s place. Luck had given us clear sailing so far. Not one patrol even came into sight. We were as good as ghosts in the official eye.

  “Be careful with Winger, Garrett. She is crazier than you.” He stared down that improbably clean alleyway. “Though not by much. It isn’t closed off. Anyone could walk in here,” He sneered, unable to believe the arrogant confidence that showed. Nobody lives so high on the Hill that they’re immune. Even the great witches and wizards, the stormwardens and firelords, who set counts and dukes to shaking in their boots, get ripped off.

  “I’ll worry about Winger later. Right now we need to do a B and E before our fans show. Up there.” I indicated a wrought iron balcony that existed as a drop point for garbage. The ratmen ran their waste wagons in underneath and household staff dumped away. Similar balconies ornamented the rough stonework all along the alley.

  “Except for the clean, they didn’t do much to put on the dog back here, did they?” Morley asked.

  “You want they should’ve done fancy masonry for the likes of us?”

  Sneering, Morley darted forward, found handholds in the rough stonework, scrambled up, did a job on the flimsy door, then hung over the rail to help me up. The balcony creaked ominously. I flailed my way aboard. An instant later, Morley and I were inside. We peeked out an archer’s slit of a window, looking for witnesses. It was a minute before any of our tails entered the alley.

  Morley chuckled.

  I sighed. “Only Winger.”

  “Where does she get those clothes?”

  “If I knew, I’d strangle the seamstresses. That stuff has got to be against divine law if nothing else.”

  “We’re inside. What do we look for?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Anything. Things keep happening that don’t make sense, since I’m only supposed to be looking for a missing girl. I shouldn’t be up to my mammaries in maneating pirates. I’m pretty sure that finding Emerald isn’t the main reason Maggie hired me.”

  “Huh?”

  “You recall I got into this because Winger wanted me to keep tabs on Maggie. She thought Maggie wanted me to waste somebody.”

  “And now you’re thinking maybe Winger was right, that the whole point might have been to get you butting heads with the Rainmaker.”

  “Could be. I thought I might find a clue here.”

  “So let’s dig. Before Winger figures out what happened and walks through the wall.”

  “Absolutely. But first let’s see who else takes a chance on the alley.”

  The whole parade passed by before it was over. Morley got a good look at them.

  “That one,” I said. “That’s the pro.”

  “I see it. I smell it. He’s a major player.”

  “Who is he?”

  “That’s the rub.” Morley looked worried. “I don’t know him.”

  I worried, too. I could figure Winger was working for Winger and anybody else she could get to pay her. The fierce pirate had to be on Cleaver’s payroll. But what about this slick pro?

  They did seem to be aware of one another.

  Their sneakery caught some squinty eyes. Guard thugs began to appear. Even Winger cleared out rather than tempt those clowns too much.

  “Quit your snickering and get to work,” Morley advised. “The guys with the squashed noses won’t hang around forever.”

  We started right there in that very room.

  39

  We had been whispering. Soon I wondered why. We found no trace of Maggie or her marvelous staff.

  I thought it but Morley voiced it first. “People don’t live here, Garrett. They haven’t for years.” Not one room that I hadn’t visited earlier wasn’t in mothballs and choked with dust. I kept hacking and honking.

  “Yeah. It’s a stage set they used to play out a drama for me.”

  “Make a guess. Why?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out, if Winger wasn’t right the first time.”

  Over and over, all we found was more of the same old dusty rooms filled with covered furniture.

  “Some nice antiques here,” Morley noted. He pretended indifference, but I sensed his disappointment. He could find no wealth that was easily portable. He was trying to think of ways to get the furniture out.

  In time, because we had time to look, we did find an upper-story bedroom that had seen use but which I hadn’t visited before. Morley opined, “This was occupied by a woman with no compulsion to clean up after herself.”

  And nobody to clean up for her, apparently. Remnants of old meals provided spawning grounds for blue fur.

  Morley said, “My guess is this stuff dates from before your visit. Let’s check this room carefully.”

  I grunted. What genius.

  A minute later: “Garrett.”

  “Uhm?”

  “Check this out.”

  “This” was a shocker. “This” was a woman’s wig. “This” was a wild shock of tangly red hair so much like Maggie Jenn’s that, in an instant, I was mug to ugly mug with a horrible suspicion.

  “What’s that?” Morley asked.

  “What?”

  “That noise. Like somebody goosed you with a hot poker.”

  “I tried to picture Maggie without hair.” I lifted that wig like it was an enemy’s severed head.

  “Out with it. Out with it.”

  “Know what’s the matter? Here’s a hint. You take a wig like this wig and grab the Rainmaker and stuff his head into said wig, you’d have a dead ringer for the little sweetheart who hired me to find her kid — assuming you dressed her girlie style. A dead ringer for a sweetheart who all but point-blank invited me up here for...”

  Morley grinned. Then he snickered. Then he burst out laughing. “Oh! Oh! That would have made the Garrett story to top all Garrett stories. People would have forgotten the old lady and the cat like this.” He snapped his fingers. He started grinning again. “I’ll bet you Winger knew. I’ll just bet she did. At least she suspected. Maybe that’s what she wanted to find out. Send in Garrett. He has a way with redheads. He’ll go for it if you drop one in his lap.” He was breaking up now, the little shit. “Oh, Garrett, she just rose way up in my estimation. That’s a slicking I wouldn’t have thought of.”

  “You have a tendency to think too complicated,” I prote
sted. “Winger don’t think that way.” I went on, arguing, I don’t know with whom. My voice rose and rose as I imagined the myriad piratical horrors that might have befallen me simply because of my connoissieur’s appreciation of the opposite sex. Just because Maggie Jenn, who had heated me to a rolling boil, might have been wearing a wig.

  I glared at that wig. The fury of my gaze changed nothing. It remained a perfect match for Maggie’s hair.

  “You get it?” Morley asked, like it hadn’t been my idea in the first place. “Grange Cleaver put on a wig and fooled you one thousand percent.” His leer set my cheeks ablaze.

  “Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. Let’s say he did. Just for now, let’s say he’s the Maggie Jenn who hired me. Let’s ignore the fact that that makes things make even less sense than before. Cleaver wouldn’t aim a dagger at himself. So let’s look for the bottom line. Let’s figure out what my employer really wanted, whoever he, she, or it was.”

  “Don’t be so touchy, Garrett.” He kept fighting the giggles.

  “The question, Morley. The question. I got paid a nice advance. Why?”

  “You could always assume you were supposed to do what you were hired to do. Find the girl. When you think about this mess, Maggie Jenn not really being Maggie Jenn makes sense.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look. If she was Cleaver in disguise, then there’d be no conflicts in what us old experts told you about the woman.”

  “I saw that when you waved that damned wig in my face. The real Maggie Jenn is probably on her island with her feet up and not a suspicion that her old pal Grange Cleaver is blackening her reputation by pretending...”

  “You have to wonder how much he did that in the old days. When she was involved with the crown prince.”

  “Not around the prince, he wouldn’t have. The prince definitely preferred girls and wasn’t patient with girls who played hard to get. He knew the real Maggie Jenn.”

  “But a fake Maggie could have gone around looking at places that interested the Rainmaker.”

  “Somebody told me Cleaver might be her brother. Maybe they were twins.”

  “He was his sister’s pimp?”

  “Like that’d be the first time a guy ever sold his sister?”

  “You’re right. I lost it for a second. Wishful thinking. Thought I’d outgrown that. Shouldn’t ever forget what slime humans can be.”

  “We’ve still got rooms to search.” I didn’t want to get into the subject of necessity — though Morley would have to slither down there under a snake’s belly to hold an opinion of my species lower than I do.

  Necessity I understand. Necessity I won’t condemn. The despicable are those who sell their sisters and daughters and wives because that saves them having to work. “Bear with me, Morley.”

  “I do, Garrett. And with all your kind. Like it or not, you’re the present and future of the world. The rest of us are going to have to find what niches we can. Otherwise, time will pass us by.”

  “Bravo!” I clapped. “You’ve got the vision. Get yourself appointed to the city board of aldermen.”

  “I’m not human enough. And I wouldn’t have time.”

  I boggled for an instant. My facetious remark had been heard seriously. Interesting. Morley Dotes, bone-breaker and lifetaker, your alderman and mine?

  Actually, that could be an idea whose time had arrived. The Goddamned Parrot could do as well as the crooks and incompetents and senile halfwits running things now.

  TunFaire is a human city in the human kingdom of Karenta. This is established by numerous treaties. It means human rule prevails except in such ways as may be modified by treaty in particular regards or areas. TunFaire is also an “open city,” meaning any race with a treaty can come and go freely, essentially with the same rights and privileges as Karentine subjects. And, in theory, the same obligations.

  In practice, all races come and go, treaty or no, and a lot of nonhumans evade their civil obligations. Centaurs are the outstanding example. All treaties with centaurs perished when the tribes went over to Glory Mooncalled. Legally, they’re enemy aliens. But they’ve been flooding into city and kingdom as Mooncalled’s republic fades and nobody except extremists seems to object.

  Guest workers and resident nonhumans make up half of TunFaire’s population. With the war winding down and ever more folks realizing that society is headed for dramatic changes a lot of resentment is building.

  Shouldn’t be long before the nonhuman question becomes a central fact of politics. It is now for splinters like the Call. You won’t find any euphemism or circumlocution in the message of the Call. Their strategy is kill nonhumans till the survivors flee.

  Gods, I didn’t want this mess of mine to lead me into the snakepit of racial politics. Lords Above or Below, render me outside politics of any stink.

  Morley and I pressed on. We searched high and low, right and left, north, south, east, and west. We placed special emphasis on the suite supposedly belonging to Justine Jenn. Morley opined, “Nobody lived here, Garrett. It was stage-dressed.”

  I agreed.

  “Think there’s anything else to find?” he asked.

  “I doubt it. Want to try the basement?”

  “Do you?”

  “I remember the last time we did a basement. I’m more inclined to go shopping.”

  “Wixon and White. The hens’ teeth salesmen. They actually knew the girl?”

  “A girl,” I grumped, identities being so shifty lately.

  “Good point. But it’s a start. Mind if I tag along? I haven’t been out that way for a while.”

  “Gee. I’m psychic.” I’d just known he would want to go. “Wasn’t for those buccaneers, I’d have serious doubts that the girl exists.”

  “A girl. Like you said. What say let’s don’t just hit the street?”

  “Good thinking.” We checked for observers. Winger and a ferocious pirate type were holding down the alley, pretending they couldn’t see each other. “Nice to see folks get along.”

  “Makes the world run smoother. Crack that view slit up front and check the genius out there.”

  The front face of the house wasn’t as featureless as it had looked from the street. I peeked.

  The pro had decided we would walk out the front door like we lived there. Which he’d have done himself. He had done and admirable job of fading into the background. Nobody looking for him was going to miss him, though.

  There was no sign of the inept guy. Curious.

  Chuckling, Morley asked, “How long will they wait if they don’t know we’re not in here anymore?”

  “How?”

  “The rooftops.”

  I chuckled right back. “Sounds like an experiment worth making. Let’s do it.”

  “We could even sic the brunos on them after we’re clear.”

  “No, no. That’s too much. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life watching over my shoulder for some of Winger’s paybacks.”

  “Good point. Let’s go.”

  We went. It was easy. The roofs were all flat. The only hitch we encountered was getting down.

  40

  We tried three downspouts. None would support me. “Need some home repairs in these parts,” I grumbled. “People ought to show some pride. Ought to keep up their property.”

  “Or we could start a weight loss program at the Garrett dump.” Morley, the little weasel, could have gone down any of the spouts.

  Worse, last try we had caught the eyes of some prematurely cynical kids who’d jumped to the conclusion we were up to no good. Just because we were running around on the roofs. We could have been roofers shopping for work.

  No more fun. The patrol would be along soon.

  Morley bent over the edge, tried another downspout. A herd of preadolescents watched from the street. I made faces, but they didn’t scare. Morley said, “This will have to do.”

  I shook it myself. Not that I didn’t trust him. He was right. It would have to do. It was more soli
d.

  Still...

  “We have to get down now, Garrett.”

  “I’m not worried about getting down. What concerns me is how many pieces of me there’re going to be after I get there.”

  Morley went over the side, abandoning me to my fate. I gave him a head start, then followed, my weight taken by different supports. I had descended about eight feet when furious elvish cursing broke out below me. For a second, I thought I had stepped on his fingers.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “I’m hung up.”

  I leaned out so I could see. Sure enough. His shirt was out and tangled in one of the supports that anchored the downspout to the building. He tried to climb a little to get loose. For reasons known only to the gods who engineer these things that only made things worse. I heard cloth tear. Morley started cursing all over again. He let go with one hand and tried to work his shirt loose.

  It would not yield. But he was being awfully damned delicate about it.

  Down below, some kid came up with the notion that it would be fun to throw rocks at us. First shot he got Morley on the knuckles of the hand he was using to hang on.

  Only thing that saved him was that his shirt was hung up.

  The gods give and the gods take away.

  Morley’s shirt tore a little more.

  Morley’s temper ripped. He invented new curses.

  “Cut it loose!” I yelled.

  “It’s a new shirt. First time I ever wore it.” He continued fighting with it.

  Stones peppered the wall. A racket from up the street gave warning of the patrol. “You’d better do something. In a couple of minutes, you’re going to have people throwing more than rocks at you.”

  “I am?”

  “You am. I’m going to climb down over you and leave you hanging.”

  He started to say something testy, but a small stone hit him in the back of the head.

  Blur of steel. Pretty cloth flying. Morley down that spout like a squirrel as kids shrieked and scattered. I caught up while he was trying to decide which kid to run down. “Let’s go.” The patrol were damn near in spear-chucking range.

  Morley looked like he’d rather stay and fight. He wanted to hurt somebody. He rubbed the back of his head and got set.