“Thanks for standing up for me.”
“I absolutely hate and loathe machismo,” she said.
“But you were pretty impressive there. Was that a genuine aboriginal pointing bone? I always understood the real thing is pretty hard to find.”
“They are,” I said.
“Then you were bluffing?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll never tell.”
“Your face was badly burned,” she said, studying me closely. “I saw it. But now all the burns are gone. And anyone else would have needed an ambulance after a beating like that. But not you. Do you really have werewolf blood in you, Mr. Taylor?”
“Something like that,” I said. “And it’s John, remember? Now, where were we…Ah yes, Melissa. Tell me about Melissa, Eleanor.”
I’ll never know what she might have said then, because we were interrupted again. This time by an oversized goon squeezed into a bright red messenger’s outfit, complete with gold braid. He didn’t look at all comfortable in it and squirmed surreptitiously as he bowed jerkily to Eleanor, ignoring me. He then made a big deal of presenting her with a sealed envelope on a silver platter. There was no name on the envelope. Eleanor picked it up and looked at the messenger.
“Bearer waits,” he said, in a rough and distinctly unmessenger-like tone. “There’s a car outside.”
Eleanor ripped open the envelope and studied the single sheet of paper within. I leaned forward, but all I could make out was a handwritten message by someone who had clearly never even heard of penmanship.
“Oh how dreary,” she said, dropping the message onto the table like a dead fish. “It seems my dear Marcel has got himself in trouble again. You know he gambles? Of course you do. Everybody knows. I don’t know why he’s so keen on it; he’s never been any good. All the reputable houses won’t let him through their doors these days, not since Daddy made it very clear that he wouldn’t underwrite Marcel’s debts anymore. I really thought that might knock some sense into him, but I should have known better. It seems Marcel has been sneaking off to some of the nastier little clubs, where they’ll let absolutely anybody in, and running up his debts there. And while these…people are smart enough to realise they can’t dun my father for Marcel’s losses, they do seem to think they can pressure me.”
“What do they want?” I said, ignoring the messenger goon.
“Apparently, if I don’t go with the messenger right now, in his no-doubt-pokey little car, to discuss the repayment of Marcel’s debts, they’ll send my husband back to me one small piece at a time until I do. He won’t die. He’s immortal now, like me, but that just means his suffering could be infinitely extended…It’s such a bother, but I’d better go.”
“That might not be entirely wise,” I said carefully.
“Then they’d have two hostages with which to extort money from your father. And while he wouldn’t pay up for Marcel, he would for you.”
“They wouldn’t dare threaten me! Would they?”
“Look at the state of the thing they sent as a messenger,” I said. “These people don’t impress me as being a particularly up-market operation.”
“I have to go,” said Eleanor. “He’s my husband.”
“Then I’d better go with you,” I said. “I have some experience in dealing with these sorts of people.”
“Of course,” said Eleanor. “They’re from your world, aren’t they? Very well. Stick around and look menacing, and try not to get in my way while I negotiate.”
“Perish the thought,” I said. I turned my gaze on the messenger, and he shuffled his feet uneasily. “Talk to me,” I said. “Who do you work for?”
“I’m not supposed to answer questions,” the goon said unhappily. “Bearer waits. Car outside. That’s all I’m supposed to say.”
“But I’m John Taylor, and I want to know. So tell me, or I’ll turn you into something small and squishy and jump up and down on you.”
The messenger swallowed hard and didn’t know what to do with his hands. “I work for Herbert Libby,” he said hoarsely. “At the Roll a Dice club, casino, and bar. It’s a high-class place. Real cuisine and no spitting on the floor.”
“Never heard of it,” I said to Eleanor. “And I’ve heard of everywhere that matters. So, let’s go and talk with Mr. Libby and explain to him what a really bad idea this was.” I glared at the messenger. “Lead the way. And don’t try anything funny. We won’t laugh.”
We left Hecate’s Tea Room, accompanied by many gossiping voices. The bodyguards were back at their tables and sulking quietly, but the Ladies Who Lunched were ecstatic. They hadn’t known this much excitement in their lives in years. There was indeed a car waiting outside. Small, black, and anonymous, it stood out awkwardly among the shimmering stretch limousines waiting patiently for the ladies inside. The uniformed chauffeurs stopped talking together over a passed round hand-rolled, and looked down their noses at the goon in the messenger suit. Eleanor’s chauffeur actually stepped forward and raised an eyebrow inquiringly, but Eleanor told him to take the limousine back to Griffin Hall. She’d find her own way home. The chauffeur looked at the messenger, then at me, and I could see he didn’t like it, but, as always, he did what he was told. Eleanor stalked over to the small black car, stood by the back door, and glared at the messenger until he hurried forward to open it for her. She slipped elegantly into the back of the car, and I got in after her. The messenger eased his feelings by slamming the door shut behind me, and clambered in behind the wheel.
“The Roll a Dice,” Eleanor said coldly, “and step on it. I have things to be about.”
The messenger made a low, unhappy sound, and we pulled out into the traffic.
“I know it’s going to be one of those pokey little places, with sawdust on the floor and back rooms full of cigar smoke, where the cards are so crooked it’s a wonder the dealer can shuffle them,” said Eleanor. “Marcel must really be running out of bolt-holes if he’s been reduced to the likes of the Roll a Dice.”
“Hey,” protested the messenger, “it’s a good club. Got acoustics and everything.”
“Watch the road,” I said. “And anyway, it should be the Roll a Die.
Dice
is plural,
die
is singular.”
“What?”
“Oh shut up and drive,” I said.
The Nightside traffic flowed past us, including a lot of things that weren’t really traffic, driven by things that didn’t even look like people. There are no traffic lights in the Nightside and no speed limits. As a result, driving isn’t so much a journey as evolution in action. The bigger prey on the smaller, and only the strongest survive to reach their destination. Significantly, no-one bothered us. Which meant someone must have lashed out a fair amount of money for some decent protection magics for the car. The goon undid the collar and first few buttons of his messenger suit so he could concentrate better as he drove.
We soon left Uptown behind and quickly turned off into the darker, lesser-used streets, where sleaze and decay weren’t so much a style as a way of life. The Nightside has its own bottom feeders, and they’re nastier than most. The neon signs fell away because this wasn’t the kind of area where you wanted to advertise your presence. People might be looking for you. These were the kinds of clubs and bars you heard about by word of mouth, where everything was permitted because nobody cared. Enter at your own risk, mind your own business, and think yourself lucky if you came out even at the end of the game.
The car finally lurched to a halt before a row of dingy joints that were only a step up from hole-in-the-wall merchants. Blank doors and painted-out windows, with nothing to recommend them but the gaudy names they gave themselves. Rosie’s Repose, the Pink Pelican, the Roll a Dice. The messenger goon got out of the car, started towards the club, then remembered. He hurried back to open the back door for Eleanor. He wouldn’t have done it for me. Eleanor stalked past him to the club, not even deigning to look about her. The messenger hurried to get to the club door ahead of her, leaving me to get out of the car and close the door behind me. The goon made a real production out of his secret knock, and the door swung open to reveal a gorilla in a huge tuxedo. It was a real mountain gorilla, a silverback, with a long, pink scar across his forehead to show where the brain implants had gone in. It nodded familiarly to the messenger, looked Eleanor and me over carefully, and gave us both a sniff for good measure before turning abruptly to lead us into the club. The door slammed shut behind us with nobody touching it, but that probably came as standard in an area like this.
The room before us was silent and gloomy, closed down. Chairs had been put up on the tables, and the roulette wheel was covered with a cloth. The bar was sealed off behind a heavy metal grille. The floor was bare wood, no sawdust. The room stank of sweat and smoke and desperation. This wasn’t the kind of place where people gambled for pleasure. This was a place for addicts and junkies, for whom every card, every roll of the dice or spin of the wheel was a matter of life and death.
There weren’t any staff around. Not even a cleaner. The owner must have sent everybody home. Presumably Mr. Herbert Libby didn’t want any witnesses for whatever might happen now the Griffin’s daughter had arrived to join her erring husband. The gorilla led us through the room, out the back, and down a steep set of stairs. The messenger goon brought up the rear. We emerged into a bare stone cellar, a brightly lit space with bare walls, piles of crates and stacked boxes, and a handful of men standing around one man tied to a chair. The stone floor around the chair was splashed with blood. The man in the chair was, of course, Marcel, or what was left of him.
He raised his head slowly to look at Eleanor and me. He might have been glad to see us, but it was hard to tell past the mess they’d made of his face. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose had been broken and bent to one side, and his lips were cracked and bloody. They’d cut off his left ear. Blood soaked his left shoulder and all down the front of his shirt. Marcel’s breathing was slow and heavy, interspersed with low moans of pain and half-snoring noises through his ruined nose. Eleanor made a low, shocked noise and started forward, but I grabbed her arm and held her still. No point in giving these scumbags what they wanted this early in the game.
One of the thugs standing in the semicircle beyond the chair stepped forward, and it was easy to identify him as the boss, Herbert Libby. He was large and blocky, fat over muscle, with a square, brutal face and a shaven skull to hide the fact that he was going bald. He wore an expensive suit as though he’d just thrown it on, and his large hands were heavy with gold and silver rings. He had the look of a man who liked to indulge himself, preferably at someone else’s expense. There was blood on his hands, and his cuffs were soaked red. He smiled easily at Eleanor, but it was a cold thing that didn’t touch his eyes. He ignored me to glare at the goon in the messenger suit.
“Charlie, I told you to bring back Eleanor Griffin. What is John Taylor doing here? Did I ask you to bring back John Taylor?”
The messenger squirmed unhappily under his boss’s gaze. “Well, no, Mr. Libby, but…”
“Then what is he doing here, Charlie?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Libby! He sort of…invited himself.”
“We’ll talk about this later, Charlie.” Libby finally deigned to notice me. He nodded briefly, but didn’t smile. “Mr. John Taylor. Well, we are honoured. Welcome to my very own little den of iniquity. I’m afraid you’re not seeing us at our best, at the present. Me and the boys got a little carried away, expressing our displeasure with Marcel. I do like to think of myself as a hands-on kind of manager…And since I’m the owner of the Roll a Dice, I take it very personally when some aristocratic nonce comes strolling in here with the express purpose of cheating me out of my hard-earned…”
“My husband doesn’t cheat,” Eleanor said flatly. “He may be the worst gambler that ever lived, but he doesn’t cheat.”
“He came in here to play without the money to cover his bets, or the means to pay off his debts,” said Libby. “I call that cheating. And no-one cheats me and lives to boast of it. I do like to think of myself as a reasonable and understanding sort, but I can’t let anyone get away with cheating me. That would be bad for business and my reputation. Which is why we are using Marcel here to send a message to any and all who might think they can welch on a debt and get away with it. What are you doing here, Mr. Taylor, exactly?”
“I’m with Eleanor,” I said. “Her father asked me to see that she got home safely.”
“The Griffin himself! What a thrill it must be, to move in such exalted circles!” Libby smiled again, like a shark showing its teeth. “You and he have both made a name for yourself in the Nightside, as people it is very dangerous to cross. But you know what, Mr. Taylor? Uptown reputations don’t mean anything down here. Down here you can do anything you want if you can get away with it. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I am top dog.”
“If I’d known, I’d have brought you some biscuits,” I said brightly. “I could throw something for you to fetch if you want.”
The other thugs stared blankly. People didn’t talk like that to Mr. Libby.
“Funny man,” Libby said dispassionately. “We get a lot of those in here. But I’m the one who ends up laughing.”
He grabbed Marcel’s bloody chin and forced the battered face up so I could see it more clearly. Marcel moaned softly, but didn’t struggle. All the resistance had been beaten out of him.
“We get all sorts in here,” said Libby, turning Marcel’s face back and forth so he could admire his handiwork. “They come into my club, big and bold and full of themselves, and they throw all their money away at cards or dice or at the wheel, and when the time comes to make good, surprise surprise, they haven’t got the money on them. And they expect me to be reasonable. Well, reasonable is as reasonable does, Mr. Taylor. I extended Marcel here a longer-than-usual run of credit because he assured me his father-in-law would be good for his debts. However, when I take the quite reasonable precaution of contacting Mr. Griffin about this, he denies this. He is, in fact, quite rude to me. So, if Marcel can’t pay, and the Griffin won’t…where am I going to get my money?”