Sweet Silver Blues (2 page)

He was engrossed in his work. Recalling his state since his wife died, I figured he was working off grief.

“Mr. Tate?” He knew I was there. I had cooled my heels for twenty minutes while they told him.

He drove one more nail with a single perfect tap, looked at me over his cheaters. “Mr. Garrett. They tell me you made mock of our size.”

“I get nasty when somebody drags me out before the sun comes up.”

“That’s Rose. If she has to see you in, she’ll see you in the hard way. I made a bad job of her. Keep her in mind as you rear your own children.”

I said nothing. You tell somebody you look forward to blindness more eagerly than to having kids, you don’t win any friends. Those that don’t think you’re lying think you’re crazy.

“Do you have a problem with short people, Mr. Garrett?”

About six flip answers never saw the air. He was dead serious. “Not really. Denny wouldn’t have been my buddy if I did. Why? Is it important?”

“In a sideways sort of way. Did you ever wonder why the Tates are so small?”

I had never dwelled on it. “No.”

“It’s the blood. The taint of elvish. On both sides, several generations before my time. Keep that in mind. It will help you understand later.”

I wasn’t surprised. I’d suspected it before, the way Denny got along with animals. Plenty of people have the taint, yet most cover it up. There is a lot of prejudice against the half elfin.

My hangover had improved, but not much. I had no patience. “Can we get to the point, Mr. Tate? You want me to do a job, or what?”

“I want you to find someone.” He rose from his bench and shed his leather apron. “Come with me.”

I went. He took me into the Tate secret world, the compound behind the manufactory. Denny never did that.

“You’ve been doing all right for yourself,” I said. We entered a formal garden, the existence of which I’d never suspected.

“We manage.”

I should manage so good. “Where are we headed?”

“Denny’s apartment.”

Buildings stood shoulder to shoulder around the garden. From the street they looked like one continuous featureless warehouse. From the garden I could not imagine how I’d ever thought that. These houses were as fine as anything up the hill. They simply didn’t face the street and make temptingly dangerous statements.

I wondered if they killed the workmen when the job was done. “The whole Tate tribe lives here?”

“Yes.”

“Not much privacy.”

“Too much, I think. We all have our own apartments. Some have street-side doors. Denny’s does.” Tate’s tone said “This is a Significant Fact.”

My curiosity was definitely growing. Tate’s whole attitude indicated indignation at Denny’s having had secrets from his old man.

He took me to Denny’s place. The air inside was stuffy and warm, the way closed places get in summer. Nothing had changed since the one time Denny had invited me in—through the street-side door—except that Denny wasn’t there. That made a lot of difference.

The place was as plain and neat as a new cheap coffin. Denny had been a man of ascetic habits. He’d never hinted at the comforts enjoyed by his family.

“It’s in the basement.”

“What is?”

“What I want you to see before I start explaining.” He collected a lantern and lit it with a long match, which he kept burning.

Moments later we were in a basement as spotless as the ground floor. Old Man Tate and his match went around lighting lamps. I made like a cat too lazy to lick his own paws and just hung around with my mouth open.

Tate wore a small, smug smile when he faced me again. “Well?”

The cat that had my tongue could have fought a couple weights heavier than a snow leopard.

The only place you even hear about that much precious metal lying around is in stories about dragon hoards.

Actually, when my mind started working, I saw it wasn’t so much after all. Just more than I’d ever imagined I would see in one place. A few hundred robbers working double shifts for four or five years might pile up as much.

“Where . . . ? How . . . ?”

“I don’t know most of the answers myself, Mr. Garrett. My knowledge is limited to the notes Denny left. They were all written to himself. He knew what he was talking about. There is enough to fill in the outlines, though. I expect you’ll want to read everything before you start.”

I nodded but did not hear him. My friend Denny, the shoemaker. With a basement full of silver. Denny, whose only mention of money had been about the share he had taken when his regiment had overwhelmed a Venageti treasure caravan fleeing the defeat at Jordan Wells.

“How much?” I croaked. I was not getting any better. The little guy that sits in the back row inside my head started catcalling me. I never thought wealth could have so much impact upon me.

“Sixty thousand marks in Karentine coined silver. The equivalent of eighteen thousand marks in coined silver of other states. Eight hundred four-ounce bars. Six hundred twenty-three eight-ounce bars. Forty-four one-pound bars. One hundred ten pounds in larger bars. Just under one thousand coined goldmarks. There’s some billet tin and copper, too. A nice amount, but it doesn’t count for much compared with the silver.”

“Not unless a couple copper sceats would make the difference between eating and starvation. How did he do it? Don’t tell me making ballroom slippers for fat duchesses. Nobody gets rich . . . working.” I almost said “honestly.”

“Trading in metals.” Tate gave me a don’t-be-stupid look. “Playing the changes in the shifting exchange rate between gold and silver. Buying silver when it was cheap against gold, selling it when gold was cheap against silver. He started with his prize money from the army. He switched back and forth at the best points in the cycle. That’s what I meant when I said keep the elvish blood in mind. We people of elvish ancestry have a feel for silver.”

“You’re stereotyping yourself, Pop.”

“You understand what I’ve said? How he came by it? I don’t want you to think it’s dishonest wealth.”

“I understand.” That did not make me think it was necessarily honest.

Anyone with a knack for reading the shifts could get rich the same way. Silver goes up and down violently according to the army’s fortunes in the Cantard. As long as we are plagued by sorcerers, there will be an incredible demand for the metal.

Ninety percent of the world’s silver is mined in the Cantard. Under all the excuses and historical claims, the mines are what the war is all about. Maybe if we could rid the world of magicians and their hunger for the mystic metal, peace and prosperity would break out all over.

“Well?” Tate asked.

“Well what?”

“Will you do the job for us?”

Good question, I thought.

3

I looked at Tate and saw a momentary idiot, a fool trying to twist me into doing something he feared I’d turn my back on if I knew the whole story. “Pop, would you make shoes if you didn’t know the size? If you hadn’t even seen the person who was going to wear them? Without knowing anything about getting paid? I’ve been real patient on account of you being Denny’s old man. But I’m not going to play games.”

He hemmed and hawed.

“Come on, Pop. Open the poke. Shake it out. Let’s see if the little porker oinks or meows.”

His expression became pained, almost pleading. “I’m just trying to do right by my son. Trying to carry out his last wishes.”

“We’ll put up a statue. When does the clam open up? Or do I go home and finish sleeping off this hangover?” Why do they always do this? They bring you in to handle a problem, then lie about it or hide it from you. But they never stop screaming for results.

“You’ve got to understand—”

“Mr. Tate, I don’t have to understand anything except exactly what is going on. Why don’t you start from the beginning, tell me what you know, what you want, and why you need me. And don’t leave anything out. If I take the job and find out you have, I’ll get extremely angry. I’m not a very nice man when I get angry.”

“Have you had your breakfast, Mr. Garrett? Of course not. Rose wakened you and brought you straight here. Why don’t we do that while I order my thoughts?”

“Because there’s nothing guaranteed to make me madder quicker than a stall.”

He went red in the face. He was not used to backtalk.

“You talk or I walk. This is my life you’re wasting.”

“Damn it, a man can’t . . . ”

I started toward the stairs.

“All right. Stop.”

I paused, waited.

“After Denny died, I came here and found all this,” Tate said. “And I found a will. A
registered
will.”

Most people don’t bother to register, but that didn’t amount to anything remarkable. “So?”

“So in the will he names you and me his executors.”

“That damned sawed-off little runt! I’d break his neck for him if he hadn’t already done it himself. That’s it? All the shuffle-footing and coy looks is because he rung in an outsider?”

“Hardly. It’s the terms of the will that are embarrassing.”

“Yeah? He tell everybody what he thought of them?”

“In a way. He left everything but our executor’s fees to someone none of us ever heard of.”

I laughed. That was Denny. “So? He made the money. It’s his to give away.”

“I don’t deny that. And I don’t mind, believe it or not. But for Rose’s sake . . . ”

“You know what he thought about her? Want me to tell you?”

“She is his sister.”

“Not that he had any choice about it. The nicest thing he ever said about her was, ‘She’s a useless, lazy, whining, conniving freeloader.’ The word
bitch
came up a few times, too.”

“But—”

“Never mind. I don’t want to hear it. So what you want is for me to find this mysterious heir, eh? And then what?” They want you to do some crazy things sometimes. I could guess why Denny registered his will. A Rose with thorns.

“Just tell her the bequest is here for the claiming. Get a statement of intent we can file with the registry probate. Already they’re harassing us about showing them that we’re doing something to execute the terms of the will.”

That figured. I knew those jackasses. Before the brewery gave me the consulting job, I did investigations for them, free-lance, to make ends meet. “You said ‘her.’ This heir is a woman?” Denny never mentioned knowing any women all the time I knew him. I had him figured for a complete asexual.

“Yes. An old girlfriend, from when he was in the army. He never fell out of love, it seems, and they never stopped writing letters, even though she married somebody else. You’ll find your best leads in those letters. You were in the Cantard, too, so you’ll know the places she talks about.”

“The Cantard?”

“That’s where she is, yes. Where are you going?”

“I’ve been to the Cantard once. I didn’t get a choice that time. This time I do. Find yourself another patsy, Mr. Tate.”

“Mr. Garrett, you’re one of the executors. And I’m too old to make that trip.”

“Won’t hold a shot of legal water, Pop. An executor don’t have to do squat if he didn’t say he would and sign to do it up front. Good-bye.”

“Mr. Garrett, the law allows the executors to draw up to ten percent of the value of an estate to recompense themselves and to cover their expenses. Denny’s estate will go on the up side of a hundred thousand marks.”

That was a stopper. Something to make me think. For about two winks. “Five thousand ain’t to die for, Pop. And I don’t have anybody to leave it to.”

“Ten thousand, Mr. Garrett. I’ll leave you my side. I don’t want it.”

I admit I hesitated first. “No.”

“I’ll pay your expenses out of my own purse. That makes it ten thousand clear.”

I stayed clammed. Was the old coot in training for a devil’s job?

“What will it take, Mr. Garrett?”

“How come you’re so hot to find this frail?”

“I want to meet her, Mr. Garrett. I want to see the sort of woman capable of making a monkey of my son. Name your price.”

“Even rich don’t do you any good if the wild dogs of the Cantard are cracking your bones to get at the marrow.”

“Name your price, Mr. Garrett. I am an old man who has lost the son he expected to follow him. I am a wealthy man with no more need to cling to wealth. I am a determined man. I will see this woman. So again I say, name your price.”

I should have known better. Hell, I
did
know better. I’d been saying so for ten minutes. “Give me a thousand on account. I’ll look over the stuff Denny left and do some poking around at this end, just to see if it’s feasible. I’ll let you know what I decide.”

I went back down the stairs and pulled up a chair behind the desk where Denny’s letters and notes were piled.

“I have to get back to work,” Tate called. “I’ll have Rose bring you some breakfast.”

As I listened to Tate’s tiny footsteps fade away, I couldn’t help but weigh the possibility of dear Rose slipping something poisonous into my food. I sighed and turned to my work, hoping this next meal wouldn’t be my last.

4

The first thing I did was look for the stuff Denny’s family had missed. Misers always have something they think they have to hide. A basement like that, plain as it looked, had a thousand crannies where things could be squirreled away.

Just as I spotted it a little dirt fell from the under-flooring overhead. I cocked an ear. Not a sound. Somebody was doing a passable job of cat-footing around up there.

I had my feet on Denny’s desk and was expanding my literary horizons when Rose and my griddle cakes sneaked on stage. I checked her over the top of the first page of a letter that somehow had a quality of
déjà vu.
But I didn’t pay much attention. The smell of griddle cakes with wild honey, tea, hen’s eggs, hot buttered bread, and steamed boodleberry preserves was a bit distracting to a man in my condition.

Rose was distracting, too. She was smiling.

Snakes smile that way before they strike.

When her sort smile you had better check over your shoulder for a guy with a knife.