Authors: Glen Cook
So somebody with no knowledge had used a wrecking bar for a key. And nobody had heard that?
People do tend to mind their own business.
The room appeared untouched. It was a lot classier than a Jill Craight could afford. I’d seen less luxury in places on the Hill.
Jill Craight had a sugar daddy. Or she had something heavy on somebody with a lot to lose, which could be an explanation for somebody watching and trying to get in. Maybe she had a piece of deadly physical evidence.
A trail of blood led to a door standing two inches ajar. It opened on a room eight-feet by eight, jammed with stuff. That’s all you could call it. Stuff. Jill was a pack rat.
Sprawled amid the plunder was a body, blond, middle twenties, still marked by that weathered look you pick up in the Cantard. He might have been handsome. Now he just looked surprised and uncomfortable. And very dead.
“Know who he was?” I asked.
Jill said, “No.” Maya shook her head. I frowned. Maya let go of the silver doohickey she was about to pocket.
“I’d guess he walked in on somebody who was digging through your stuff and both of them were surprised.” I stepped over the dead man to a door.
The room beyond was where Jill slept and maybe paid her rent. It had that look.
There were two more stiffs in there, and blood all over, like somebody lugged in buckets and threw it around. It looked like several men had chased the guy from the walk-in while more had headed him off at the bedroom door, which opened on a hallway. Both bodies were near the door.
Maybe if you’re a Crask, or Sadler, or even Morley Dotes, you get so the red messes don’t touch you. It took me a minute to get my brain moving, judging the splash patterns and the way things were kicked around. I went over to eyeball the dead men.
I don’t know how long it was. A while. Jill touched my arm. “Garret? Are you all right?” There wasn’t any ice in her eyes. For a moment the woman behind the masks looked out, humanly concerned.
“I’m all right.” As all right as I could be looking at a guy I’d had over to supper less than thirty hours ago.
What the hell was Pokey doing in Jill’s apartment in the first place, let alone getting himself killed there? He’d given the job to Saucerhead and Jill had fired Tharpe before he’d gotten started.
I went to the bed, picked a clean spot, and sat down. I had some thinking to do.
Pokey had been less of a close friend than a professional acquaintance I respected. And he hadn’t been working for me when he’d gotten it. I didn’t owe him. But something got me on a level where there isn’t any common sense.
I wanted whoever had done it.
Maya spoke for the first time. “Garrett,” was all she said but her tone told me it was important.
She was in the walk-in, squatting by the dead man. I joined her. Jill stayed in the doorway, paying attention to Maya for the first time. She did not look happy.
“What?”
“Pull his pants down.”
“Say what?”
“Just do it, Garrett.”
Maya was too serious to answer with a wisecrack. I did it, turning a pretty shade of pink. “Hunh?”
He’d been surgically and thoroughly desexed. He’d healed but the scar tissue was still a virulent purple. It had been done since his return from the Cantard.
I scrunched up like I had spiders stomping on my naked skin.
Jill said, “That’s sick.”
I agreed. I agreed just a whole hell of a lot. That mess of scars gave me the heebie-jeebies.
I didn’t want to, but I went and checked the other one.
He was older. His scars had lost their color long ago.
I went back to my place on the bed. After a while, I told Jill, “You can’t stay here. Somebody will come to clean up.”
“You think I could stay here with this? Are you crazy?’’
“You got anywhere to go?”
“No.”
I sighed. It figured. “What about your friend?”
“I don’t know how to get a hold of him. He finds me.”
Of course he would. Nobody’s husband wanted his mistress turning up on his doorstep. Had he given her his real name? “Put together what you’ll need for a few days.” Now I had to make a choice. I wanted to track the guys who had gotten away. They’d left a bloody trail. But somebody ought to walk Jill over to my place.
I glanced at Maya, looking bad in her colors. She said, “No way, Garrett. I’m sticking with you.”
Hell, it was bad enough having the ones my own age read my mind. Now kids were going to start, too?
Jill said, “I can make it from here to your place, Garrett.”
I didn’t argue. She wasn’t high on my list of favorite people. “You have a lantern around here?”
She told me where to find one.
16
It was quiet out, but it wasn’t trouble quiet. There just wasn’t anybody around.
It was after midnight but that doesn’t make much difference most places. The day people go to bed, then the goblins and kobolds and ratmen and whatnot come out to do the night work. I guess it just wasn’t their kind of neighborhood.
I opened the lantern’s shutter and looked for blood spots. They got harder to see as they dried.
Maya asked, “How come all the lights in her place, Garrett? She must have had twenty lamps burning.”
“You got me.” It had been bright in there. I hadn’t paid attention, though. “Guess they wanted to see what they were doing.”
“She done pretty good since she left the Doom.”
“If you say so.” Was she going to chatter at me all night?
“You don’t think so?”
“Is that your goal in life? To have some guy keep you in an apartment full of dead men? Those guys came with whatever is going on in her life.”
She had to think about that. I finally got some quiet.
It didn’t last. “You notice she had real glass windows in that fancy sitting room?”
“Yeah.” That I’d noticed. Real glass is expensive. I know. I’ve had to replace a few panes. Those had impressed me.
“The other apartment had them, too.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So somebody was watching us from there when we left.”
“Oh?” Interesting. “What did he look like?”
“I couldn’t even tell if it was a he. All I saw was a face. It was only there for a second. Plain luck I saw it.”
I grunted, not giving her my complete attention. The trail was getting harder to follow, like maybe the guy doing the bleeding had had most of the juice squeezed out. The going was getting slower.
The trail led into an alley so narrow a horseman would lose his knees if he tried to get through. It was not an inviting place. I shone the light in but couldn’t see anything.
“You’re not gong in there, are you?”
“Sure I am.” I fished out my brass knuckles. I hadn’t brought my favorite head-knocker. It hadn’t seemed appropriate dress for a dinner date.
“Is that smart?”
“No. Smart would be to throw you in first and see what eats you.” Either Maya had begun to wear or I was getting crabby. “How come you’re following me around, anyway?”
“So I can learn the trade. So I can find out what kind of man you are. You put on a good show but nobody is that decent. There’s something weird about you. I want to find out what it is.”
Maya was wearing real thin. Weird! No woman had called me that before. “Why’s that?”
“I’m thinking about marrying you.”
“Hoo!” I went into that alley without throwing rocks first. There was nothing in there that scared me now.
I found the dead guy ten paces into the darkness. Somebody had set him down with his back against a building, had made him comfortable, then had gone on, presumably to get help. He’d bled to death there.
I squatted, checked him out. Maya held the lantern.
He was still dead. He didn’t have anything to tell me. I figured he was even less happy about the situation than I was. But he wasn’t complaining.
I took the lantern and moved on.
There was more blood, but not much.
Poke had put him up a hell of a fight.
The trail petered out in the next street. I gave it my best look but couldn’t take it any farther.
Maya asked, “What’re you going to do now?”
“Hire a specialist.” I started walking. She caught up. I asked, “Doesn’t any of this bother you?” She’d stayed cooler than Jill Craight.
“I’ve been on the street five years, Garrett. Only things that bother me are the ones people try to do to me.”
She wasn’t that tough, but she was getting there. And that was a shame.
17
Sometimes it seems Morley’s place never closes. It does, but only during those hours of the dawn and morning when only the most twisted are up and about. Noon to first light the place serves its strange clientele.
It had thinned out, but forty pairs of eyes watched us from the entrance to the serving counter, eyes more puzzled than hostile.
Wedge was behind the counter. Of all Morley’s henchmen he’s the most courteous. “Evening, Garrett.” He nodded to Maya. “Miss.” Just as though she didn’t look like death on a stick and smell like it, too.
“Morley still up?”
“He’s got company.” The way he said it told me the company wasn’t business.
“That resolution didn’t last long.”
Wedge flashed me a smile. “Were you in the pool?”
“No.” They would, that bunch.
Wedge went to the speaking tube, talked and listened, talked and listened, then came back. “He’ll be a while. Said have dinner while you wait. On the house.”
Ugh.
Maya said, “That sounds great,” before I could turn him down. “I could eat a horse.”
I grumbled, “You won’t eat one here. Horseweed, horse fennel, horseradish, horse clover, yeah, but...”
Wedge yelled into the back for two specials, then leaned on the counter. “What you need, Garrett? Maybe I can save you some time.”
I glanced at Maya. She smiled. She knew damned well Wedge was being nice because I had a woman along.
How do they get that way so young?
“I need a stalker, Wedge. A good one. I’m trying to track a guy.”
“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.”