Cold Copper Tears Read online

  I sort of spread it out among Dean, the Dead Man,

  Tinnie, and Playmate, maybe opening up more to Playmate than the others because I have no relationship with him other than friendship. And there are things I don’t feel comfortable telling him because I value his good opinion.

  Maya sat back down. “He’ll be here in a minute. At first he didn’t believe it was you.”

  “But you convinced him.”

  “I can be pretty convincing.”

  “No lie.” I hadn’t stood a chance once she went to work on me seriously. But that’s my weak spot.

  The barker settled beside me a few minutes later. He leaned forward to look into my face. “It is you.”

  “Last I looked. What’s happening is, I’ve disappeared. Maybe run out of town. You aren’t seeing me. You’re seeing some guy who came down here to gawk.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. Damn, I hate it when people steal my tricks.

  “It’s getting tight. The organization is under pressure. Some of us are turning invisible till we make it ease up.”

  “What’s going on, anyways? Tied up here, all I hear is crazy rumors.”

  “You haven’t heard anything as crazy as the truth.” I told him some of that, including a few details of the attack on Chodo’s place. He didn’t want to believe me, but the story was so outrageous he accepted it.

  “That’s weird,” he said. “They must be really sick. I’m ready to help. We all are down here. But I don’t see what I can do.”

  “Near as we can figure, there are two people who know what we need to put this mess away. One is the woman I was asking about. I can’t give you a name because she uses about a hundred, but I’m pretty sure she’s working that place over there.”

  He looked at it and sneered. “Doyle’s wimp house. All that gorgeous pussy and half of them don’t put out. You figure it, paying just to look.”

  “Takes all kinds to make a horserace. If people weren’t strange, you and I wouldn’t be in business.”

  “You got a point. What do you need to know?”

  “Have you seen an outstanding blonde in and out of that place?’’

  “Several of them. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  I couldn’t be. Jill Craight, for all her looks, had had a sort of nebulous quality, like she really was a whole gang of people, each one a little different from the others. “Forget her. I’ll assume she’s working that place. I’ll get to her if she is. I’ll just sit here till I spot her. How about that guy I came charging out after last night? When you didn’t have time to talk?”

  ‘’What guy was that? I was pretty busy.’’

  “Maya, you describe him. You got a better look.”

  “Not that good. He was short, kind of chunky, had a big nose that looked like it got broken once. His skin was kind of dark. He was bald but you couldn’t tell that if he was wearing a hat. He was dressed in real dark clothes both times. Kind of sloppy, even though the clothes were good ones. Like he wasn’t used to wearing them.” And so on. And so on. I wished I had an eye as quick and sharp.

  The barker said, “Come to think of it, I did see a guy like that before you came roaring up. Only reason I noticed was he was headed out like a demon was chewing his ass.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s all I can tell you. He lit out.”

  That was what I’d expected to hear. “Did you recognize him?”

  “You mean, do I know who he is? No. But I’ve seen him around. Hits the Tenderloin every four, five days. Used to come in for the shows. He’s mostly dropped that and the joyhouses since Doyle come up with his silly talk house.”

  “Don’t seem so silly when you think about it.”

  “No. Guess not. The old fart is cleaning up. I tell you, I’ll never understand the freaks that come down here.”

  I thought he understood them all too well, but I didn’t say so. If guys like him didn’t understand, they wouldn’t be successful catering to people who needed the comforts of a Tenderloin.

  I shrugged. “I guess that’s that. I don’t know what else I could ask.”

  The barker got up. “Always glad to help the kingpin. Hey. For what it’s worth, the little bald gink with the big honker, I think he’s some kind of high-powered priest.”

  Maybe I jumped. Maybe something below conscious level was excited. “You sure?”

  “No. It’s just the way he snuck around and at the same time acted like people ought to bend the knee. I seen other priests act that way. Don’t want to be seen. But the bigger they are, the worse habit they have of expecting special treatment. Get what I mean?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. I’ll mention how you helped. Maybe a bonus will come tumbling down.”

  “I could use it.”

  “Couldn’t we all?” I watched him cross to his post. “A priest,” I muttered. “Another big-time priest, maybe. With a place in the same building where Jill was shacking up with Magister Peridont. That sound any alarms?”

  Maya said, “It doesn’t sound like a coincidence. You think it’s important?”

  I hadn’t told her everything about Peridont. I decided to trust her now. I laid it out from the beginning.

  She didn’t speak for a while. When she did, she said, “I know what you’re thinking. It’s too outrageous.”

  “You’re probably right. But... things tend to tie together. Even when they’re outrageous. And the first time Peridont visited me, he wanted me to find Warden Agire and the Terrell Relics.”

  “Pure speculation, Garrett. Gossamer. Almost whimsy.”

  “Maybe. We could sink it quick with a description of the Warden that doesn’t match that guy.”

  She nodded.

  “Let me run with it. Tell me where the holes are.”

  “All right.”

  “Jill Craight works over there, listening to sad tales of woe. She’s a little greedy so sometimes she meets her clients outside, when she’s off duty. Maybe she’s not completely honest and tries to find out who they are. Maybe it just comes to her by accident. But she finds out she has both the Grand Inquisitor and the Warden among her regulars. Maybe she gets an idea she can make a big hit. Maybe she gets idealistic.

  “Whatever, she gets some kind of underground dialogue going. Maybe they’re actually working something out. Then the Sons of Hammom hit town. They’re after the Relics for some reason. Agire goes on the lam. He slips the Relics to Jill to take care of while he leads the baddies somewhere else. Peridont doesn’t know what’s going on, he only knows that Agire and the Relics have disappeared.

  “Meantime, Peridont makes a connection with Jill and finds out what’s up with Agire and the Relics. So he doesn’t bother bringing that up anymore. Now he wants to find out more about the Sons, only he doesn’t tell me that. Being a typical client, he knows what he gives me to work with will give away something about him, so he wants to send me out blind and let me thrash around till I kick up something he can use.

  “After that, because he wants to cover his ass and because he’s got Church politics to deal with things go from bad to worse. When he finally decides he’s in so deep he’s got to come clean (so I can dig him out), he gets ambushed as he’s coming to see me. I’m not convinced the man who killed him was one of the Sons of Hammon.”

  It was about the longest continuous speech I’ve ever made, just sort of blurting out and not stopping. When I did turn myself off, Maya didn’t say anything. Maybe she needed a little coaxing.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “I think you’re trying it out on the wrong person. I can’t knock a hole in it. You should lay it out for the Dead Man. He’d tell you why it couldn’t be that way.”

  “You don’t think it was?”

  “I don’t want it to be. And don’t ask me why. It’s just an emotional thing. Actually, I’m scared you’re right.”

  Why should that scare her? Because it might come out and give the scandal hunters a boost?

  Inte
llectually I saw danger. The Sons of Hammon going public with an ascetic lifestyle and a god who really talked at a time when the two major Hanite denominations could be shown to be conniving and powerless and riddled with corruption...

  No. The people of TunFaire wouldn’t go for something as crazy as the Hammon cult right now.

  They hadn’t chosen their time well. They should have waited for the war’s end. Come into the city with any kind of a crazy promise then and I’d bet money, marbles, or chalk dust you could win battalions of converts.

  I thought about that for a long time. I conjured me a grim future, decided me and the Dead Man would have to have a serious discussion about how to make things easier on ourselves. Maybe I’d have to take up Weider’s offer of a job as chief head-thumper at the brewery. The brewery business prospers in hard times.

  Maya just snuggled up and purred. For all I could tell there was nothing going on inside her head. Time drifted away.

  I had a thought, which happens occasionally. “Think Jill would recognize you if she passed you in the street?”

  “No.”

  “I think we ought to spread out, then. I can’t fool her. She sees me, she’s going to hightail it.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I think she’ll panic. I think she’s gotten so far into this changing names that she thinks all she has to do to disappear is call herself something else. If somebody turns up that knows her some other way, she’ll lose her confidence and overreact. It won’t matter who she spots.”

  Maya frowned and gave me a searching look. “I don’t know. But you’re more an expert on people than I am.”

  I snorted. Me an expert? I can’t even figure me out, let alone the rest of the world.

  44

  Part of my job is to remain patient. I probably do more waiting than anybody but a soldier. It ought to be second nature after five years in the Marines and all those since in this investigation racket. But I never was very good at sitting still, especially in the cold.

  I needed to get up and prowl. That would make me easier to spot but my aching butt and stiffening muscles wouldn’t listen to common sense.

  I told Maya, “I’m going to stroll around the block and see how many ways there are to get out of that building.”

  “What if she decides to come out when you’re gone?”

  “There isn’t much chance of that. Won’t take me three minutes.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  The way she kept saying that made it sound like she had some doubts.

  I walked away, forgetting my act for a dozen steps because I was conscious of her questioning look.

  I didn’t find out anything that I hadn’t reasoned out sitting with Maya. There was a back way out, down an outside stair into an alley behind the place. That had to be there because we’d seen no access to the second floor while we’d been inside. Hell.

  Well, I got the kinks out, anyway.

  I headed for the bench and my girl.

  What girl? Maya was gone.

  I gaped like a cretin for maybe fifteen seconds, then looked around, jumping to see over the heads of the crowd. There was no sign of Maya. I scuttled over to my friend the lanky barker. “You see what happened to the gal I was with? Over on the bench?”

  He sneered a sneer that questioned my competence. “Yeah, man. This time I caught the action. Your blonde fluff came galloping past right after you left. Your twitch took off after her. They went that way.” He pointed uphill, which meant back toward the heart of the city, whence we had come, and whence most everyone else came, too.

  “The blonde was in a hurry?”

  “Running. My guess is, she’d made you and was waiting for a chance to run.”

  “Thanks.” I took off, ignoring the curses of those I jostled. I wondered how Jill could have recognized us from over there....

  Damnation! How dumb can a guy be? She probably didn’t recognize us at all. But she sure as hell could’ve recognized the clothes Maya had borrowed.

  How come we never thought of that when we were being so clever about changing who we were?

  I kicked up the pace as the people thinned out. Once I was out of the Tenderloin I couldn’t do anything but guess which way Jill was headed.

  I saw nothing.

  I wondered why I bothered. I wondered if Maya would hang on. I wondered what Jill would do if she couldn’t shake Maya. I wondered how Maya would get in touch if she did run Jill to ground.

  I looked down cross streets as I passed them. I questioned street-side vendors. Some told me to get the hell away from them. Some just looked blank. Here, there, one gave me a straight answer. One of those actually had noticed Jill.

  She was still headed toward the heart of town.

  I wasn’t going to get much cooperation just being Garrett. So I swallowed my pride and started alluding to Chodo Contague. That kicked the level of cooperation up a few notches. A man with a sausage cart on a corner needs the goodwill of the kingpin. Else somebody’s liable to put him out of business.

  That kept me on the trail until I got out of the area where there was anyone to ask, by which time Jill’s course had shifted southward.

  I wished I knew more about her. Where could she run? But I’d had no time to research her. In any of her guises, let alone all of them. More than ever I felt that things were moving too fast.

  I’m a plodder. I get to the end of the trail through sheer stubbornness, just keeping on until I get there, doing what I have to do. I hadn’t had a minute to catch my breath since Jill first turned up on my doorstep.

  When you’re moving like that sometimes you don’t have time to think. Your mind works on things out of sight and you come up with hunches. Three minutes after Jill’s trail turned southward I had one.

  She was headed for the Dream Quarter.

  She did have that one resource. That little gink who used the apartment across from the one Peridont provided. If he was who I thought he was... But Warden Agire had disappeared. I’d heard nothing about him turning up again. But I’d been too busy to stay in touch with that situation.

  “Bet the long odds,” I told myself. I adjusted my course and increased my pace. Ten minutes later I got to Playmate’s stable.

  He was about to close his main gate. But he brightened like a rising sun when he saw me. He always does. He is the one grateful former client I can count on any time. “Garrett. Been wondering about you. Where’ve you been?”

  “Working. I’ve got a real mind-twister going. You been keeping up with the scandals?”

  “Not much to keep up with lately. Too much other excitement. That your place where the demon turned up last night?”

  “Yes. Part of what I’m working on.”

  “You’re playing with fire this time, then.”

  “The hottest. You don’t know the half. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  “In a hurry?”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “Usually. What do you need?”

  “A horse so I can make up some time on somebody I’m chasing. And some info. The horse shouldn’t be one of your damned Lightning’s or Firebrands, either. I want one that will run but won’t play games.” Horses and I don’t get along. I don’t know why but the whole damned tribe is out to get me. They think it’s great fun making my life miserable.

  “You always say that. I can’t figure a guy your age being scared of horses. But since you are I picked up a nag so docile and stupid even you’ll be satisfied.”

  Grumble grumble. He led me into the stable. While we walked I asked, “You heard anything about Warden Agire and the Terrell Relics?”

  “Funny you should ask. Agire turned up last night. Minus the Relics.”

  “Ha!” I’d guessed right, more or less. But there wasn’t time to congratulate myself. I had to move. “I need the beast fast. I have to get to the Dream Quarter before somebody who’s already way ahead of me.”

  Playmate threw a saddle blanket o
n a monster that didn’t look docile to me. There were moments when he surrendered to a nasty sense of humor. This was no time for that. I jumped him as he started cinching the saddle.

  “No joke, Garrett. The animal is a pussycat.”

  “Yeah?” I didn’t like the way it looked at me, like it had heard of me and was determined to make a liar out of Playmate.

  I have that kind of trouble with women, too, and have never understood it.

  “Here we go.”

  “Thanks.” I grabbed the horse by the bridle and looked it in the eye. “I got work to do. I don’t got time to mess around. You want to play games, just remember that around here you’re never more than a couple miles from the glue works.”

  It just looked back at me. I went around and mounted up. In a moment I was pounding through the streets. People cussed me. Some threw things. What I was doing was against the law because it was so damned dangerous. But there was no one to stop me. I had several narrow misses. The horse slipped and slid on sections that were cobbled, and a couple times I thought we were going down. As we neared the Dream Quarter I began to feel foolish. I was ready to bet that I’d outguessed myself and was going to find nothing.

  Wrong. They were there. I spotted Jill first, from three blocks away, passing Chattaree, blonde hair flying. She was in a sprint for the Orthodox complex. Maya was right behind her and looked like she’d decided to catch her. Jill glanced over her shoulder. She didn’t see me.

  I booted the horse into an all-out gallop.

  A gallop wasn’t good enough. Jill reached the gates. Ordinarily those were open and unguarded, but not today and not since the scandals had begun. Jill spoke to the guards, glanced at Maya, then spotted me.

  Maya reached Jill when I was still a block away.

  The guards grabbed both women, flung them inside, and closed up.

  I reined in outside. Though I could make out no specific words I heard the women and a man arguing inside the gate house. The gate the women had gone through was a small pedestrian entrance now shut. I eyed those steel bars, then the coach gate beside it. A guard looked at me nervously. He was unarmed but determined. I didn’t have to talk to him to know he wasn’t going to let me in or, probably, even answer me.