Whispering Nickel Idols gf-11 Read online

  “Wino would be a good cover. They’re everywhere. And nobody pays attention. Go on.”

  “They found him in a room on the north side a few days later, after he started to stink. He’d burned to death.”

  I frowned. For a year there have been reports of people burning up without benefit of a fire, always in some slum on the north side.

  “Garrett, he burned to death without setting fire to the place where he died. Which was about as awful a tenement as you can imagine.”

  I can imagine some pretty awful places. I’ve visited a lot of them. Especially back when my clientele wasn’t quite so genteel. “Somebody brought him there.”

  “No. I went up there myself. I talked to people. Even the Watch. He burned right where they found him. Cooked down like a chunk of burned fat. Without getting hot enough to start a bigger fire.”

  That jibed with stories I’d heard about other burning deaths. “How could that happen? Sorcery?”

  “That would be everybody’s first guess, wouldn’t it?”

  “Always is when an explanation isn’t obvious. We’re conditioned by long, direct, dire exposure to those idiots on the Hill.”

  Sorcery, great or small, isn’t part of daily life. But the threat of sorcery is. The potential for sorcery is. Particularly dark sorcery. Because our true rulers are the wizards who infest the mansions on the Hill.

  I said, “You don’t think sorcery is the answer.”

  “Those kind of people don’t show up in that part of town.”

  A self-taught rogue set on becoming a one-man crime wave might, though. But how would he profit from burning winos?

  “It’s not a part of town where humans show up much, is it? Isn’t that Elf Town?”

  “No. But right on its edge. It’s mainly nonhuman immigrant housing now. Here’s the thing, though. The building belonged to Chodo.”

  I nodded and waited.

  “When I went up I thought it looked familiar. I dug into the records when I got back. We bought the place four years ago. I handled the legal stuff.”

  “Chodo wasn’t there.”

  “Not when the body was found. But he might have been. People remembered a man in a wheelchair.”

  “Uhm?”

  “I didn’t take it any further. I didn’t want to attract attention.”

  “Probably the smart thing.” It’s unhealthy to ask questions near an Outfit operation. You might develop black-and-blue lumps. At the least.

  Temisk asked, “Any brilliant theories?”

  “Just the obvious one. Billy Mul tried to get to Chodo. Somebody made him dead for his trouble.”

  “How would they do that?”

  “That would be the question, wouldn’t it?”

  “And why do it that way? Those things are done simple. Unless somebody wants to send a message.”

  “A burn-up wouldn’t be a message anyone could read. They’d just wrinkle their noses and ask, what the hell?”

  There wasn’t any sense to it. Pieces of the puzzle were missing. Even its general shape wasn’t apparent.

  Temisk said, “One of the things Chodo paid me to do was bail him out if he got caught up in something weird. This qualifies. And he expected you to help.”

  “I got that part. I don’t like it, but I got it. He knew me better than I know me. What’re you thinking about doing?”

  “I did it when I got hold of you. You’re the expert.”

  Me. The expert. Cute.

  “Then let’s set some priorities. What’s the most important thing to do?”

  “Make sure Chodo is still alive tomorrow morning.”

  “Back to the birthday party?”

  “Back to the party.”

  8

  From Harvester Temisk’s digs I ambled over to The Palms, an upscale eatery and club operated by the dark elf Morley Dotes. My number one good buddy. I approached warily. There might be trouble with Belinda’s troops if they were setting up already.

  “Holy shit! Will ya look at dis? It ain’t even been a week an‘ here it comes agin!”

  It’s remotely possible that not all of Morley’s associates welcome me all the time. “I was passing by. Thought I’d drop in and see how you’re all doing. How’re you doing, Sarge?”

  Sarge is fat and balding and tattooed and nastier than a bushel of scorpions when he’s in a good mood. He didn’t seem particularly cheerful today.

  Another one enough like Sarge to be his ugly big brother, with extra scorpions, shuffled out of the kitchen. “Hey, Puddle. How’s it going, man?”

  Puddle brandished a commercial-weight rolling pin.

  This didn’t look encouraging.

  Morley emerged behind Puddle. Amazing. Dotes seldom has much to do with the daily grind of his place. “What do you want, Garrett?”

  “Damn, Morley. Get a sense of humor. I know a guy on the Landing…”

  “What do you want, Garrett?”

  “Right now I’d like to know why it’s hilarious when you stick me with a foul-beaked fowl like the Goddamn Parrot, but it’s haul out the meat cleavers when I get you back with a nympho nymph.“

  Two more staffers materialized. Lugging industrial-grade butcher’s equipment. In a vegetarian establishment. “Them new-generation eggplants must be fierce.” Everybody seemed intensely interested in managing a wily envelopment of their good buddy Garrett.

  Not promising at all.

  Dotes made a slight gesture. “One more chance, Garrett.”

  “I wanted to check on how things are coming, setting up for tonight. And to say hi.”

  “And why are you interested?”

  “Because I have to be here, cabbage breath boy. I can’t weasel out. And I don’t feel good about the setup.”

  Morley glared at me. Slim and dark, handsome and always impeccably bedecked in the latest fashion, he radiates a sensuality that sets them swooning even when he strolls through a nun shop.

  “You got smudge under your nose.” He’d begun sporting a thin little mustache.

  Morley didn’t grin. “Sit down, Garrett.”

  I picked a chair. The one closest to the door.

  Morley sat across from me. He stared. Eventually, he said, “Word’s out that you’re on Belinda’s payroll now.”

  “That’s a crock. Who said that?”

  “Belinda. Last time she was here messing the arrangements around.”

  “It ain’t true. You know me better. I wouldn’t work for her even if I needed work. And I don’t. I’ve got me a nice little piece of the hottest manufactory in TunFaire. You’re just trolling for an excuse to get your bile up.”

  “She was convincing.” Dotes studied me some more. Something big was bothering him and all his boys. Nobody wanted Mama Garrett’s favorite boy for a friend.

  “Spit it out, Morley. What’s going on?”

  “This party is bound to go bad. And here you come, supposedly Belinda’s full-time top stud, ambling in ten minutes after your honey sends word the party won’t happen here after all. The Palms will just cater. The party will happen in Whitefield Hall. Because my place isn’t big enough. Too many people in the life want to pay their respects to the kingpin.”

  “I don’t know anything about any Whitefield Hall. Is that the Veterans’ Memorial hall that commemorates the War of Coady Byrne’s Broken Tooth?”

  Karenta had a lot of little wars over a lot of little provocations in Imperial times. Then we changed up, became a kingdom, and jumped into one big war that lasted over a hundred years. The one I was in. Along with every human male I know, including my brother and father and grandfather, and Grandpa’s father and grandfather and all their brothers and cousins and bastard kids.

  The killing is over now. So far, the peace has been worse than the war.

  “I don’t know anything about your wars,” Dotes replied. Being half dark elf, he enjoys treaty exemption from some human laws. Like the one establishing conscription. And he doesn’t give a feather about history. He doesn�
�t care about last week-unless last week might sneak up and whack him on the back of the head. “But it is some kind of soldiers’ memorial.”

  Morley is shallow. Morley is pretty. Morley is the nightmare that wakes fathers screaming in the night. He’s the daydream their daughters take to bed, fantasizing. He’s the bad boy the girls all want, thinking they can tame him, before they settle for some dullard who’ll just work for a living and treat them like they’re people.

  I’m so jealous.

  “I can’t picture it. What’s special about it? Why would she move there?”

  “I told you. Because she can get more people in. Because it isn’t operated by people she doesn’t trust.”

  “Belinda doesn’t trust you?”

  “Are you that naive? Of course she doesn’t. Not to be what she wants me to be.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Her tool, fool.”

  “Don’t start with the vegetarian poetry. It don’t make sense on a day when the sun is shining.”

  Dotes shook his pretty head. He didn’t want to play. “Belinda wouldn’t trust me if I swore ten thousand ironbound oaths. That’s part of her insanity. She can’t trust anybody. Except you. Probably for the same sick reason Chodo trusted you. From where I sit, that would be because you’re too damned dim to be anything but honest.”

  Morley’s morals and ethics are situation dependent. Which doesn’t stop him being a nice guy. Most of the time. When it’s convenient.

  “Your expression of confidence warms the cockles of my heart, Mr. Dotes.”

  “What does that mean? I’ve always wondered. What are cockles?”

  “Seafood? I don’t know. But it sounds good.”

  “I’m tempted to change my mind again.”

  Even so, looking sour, Sarge, Puddle, and the rest went back to work.

  “This will be the event of the decade for the Outfit.”

  “Isn’t that special?”

  “You know Harvester Temisk?”

  “Chodo’s legal beagle? I’d recognize him if I tripped over him. That’s it.”

  “He’s still Chodo’s mouthpiece. Know anything about him?”

  “He played straight. For a lawyer. He was Chodo’s friend since they were kids. Why?”

  Sometimes the best way to handle Morley is to tell the truth. Or something approximating truth, truth being so precious you don’t just give it away. Something close enough to get him to do what you want, that’s the thing. “He came at me when we were putting the three-wheel company together.”

  “Where they give you extra profit points to stay away. I’ve heard about what a pain in the ass you are with your moralizing and ethics jabber.”

  I refused the bait. “I’ve got a case.”

  Morley loves to argue. It makes him the center of attention.

  “Come tell me all about it when you’re done, Garrett.”

  “You got any idea what she plans to pull tonight?”

  “No. But I’ll be very careful. Very alert. Very stay in the kitchen. You might do the same. If you really must attend.”

  “Oh, I must. I must. Maybe I’ll wear my iron underwear. You ever hear of Chodo doing anything with sorcery?”

  “No. He didn’t like it. Though he’d hire a hedge wizard sometimes. That’s all. He resented wizards for having more direct power than he did.”

  “I mean himself. Personally.”

  “His gifts ran to murder, mayhem, and management. As a wizard he had all the talent of a tombstone.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Admitting what I was thinking. Twice. Being right up-front with my pal.

  “What have you got going?”

  “Temisk says strange things keep happening since Chodo’s accident. I want to get a handle.”

  “That your case?”

  “That’s not what it’s about. It’s just something I need to understand.”

  “Is Temisk working you by claiming you owe Chodo?”

  “Some. I need to work that out, too.”

  “Walk away. Stop being you. Save yourself the pain and grief.”

  “You know anything about these people who’ve been catching on fire?”

  “No. That part of your case, too?”

  “I don’t think so. I just wondered. Never hurts to ask you something. You’re full up on weird and wonderful. And sometimes, you tell me what you know.”

  “Weird and wonderful, he says. And he’s the one shacking up with a dead thing and a talking rat.”

  “And Dean. And a bucket of baby cats. I think I’ll bring those with me tonight. Give them away.”

  “There’s an original idea. Giving away kittens at a mob summit. The one guy who takes one will feed it to his pet anaconda.”

  “An idea whose time has come. Feed all the cats to the snakes. Singe would go along.”

  “Then what do you do with the snakes? They like rats more than cats.”

  “Know anything about a street kid, calls himself Penny Dreadful?”

  “I know he needs to find another name if he doesn’t like being smacked around. Otherwise, no. Why?”

  “He’s really a girl pretending to be a boy. And Dean’s source for the bucket of kittens. He has a majorly strange story about the kid.”

  “Strange stories about people in your life? Fie! Balderdash!”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t become you, sir. Considering you’re one of the main people in my life. And definitely one of the strangest.”

  “I’m the standard against which everyone else is measured.”

  “You hang in there. I’ll go for help.” I eyed the front door, inches away. My chances of making it looked better than they had. “How’s your love life?” I cackled evilly, then fled.

  Why is another story, already told.

  9

  “Hey!”

  A rock whizzed past my ear. It hit Morley’s door so hard it bashed a hole in a panel.

  Dotes bounced out beside me, looking ferocious. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Somebody took a whack at me with a sling.” I assumed. How else throw a rock that hard?

  “Primitive.”

  “But effective if you aren’t ready for it.”

  “Who was it? Where did he go?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was that chunky guy over there. Wearing the stupid green pants. The one so busy looking nonchalant.” This one looked like the runt of the Ugly Pants litter. He was hard at work pretending to be interested in the gaps between buildings and the shadows under stoops.

  “Stay here. He might want you to follow him. I’ll round up a crowd. He owes me a door.” Dotes went back inside.

  I collected the stone that, but for an instant of luck, might have knocked another hole in my noggin. You need a couple extra to get into my racket, but I wasn’t prospecting for more.

  The stone had a slight egg shape, being an inch and a quarter in one dimension and just under an inch in the other. It was heavy. It was green, like serpentine or low-grade jade. And it was polished. It didn’t look like something a guy would pick up strolling down a creek bed.

  Morley returned with some of his troops. I said, “This might be a trick to get you away from The Palms.”

  “I warned Sarge and Puddle. Where did he go?”

  “Turned south into Ironstar Lane.”

  “Let’s go spring the trap,” Morley said. Very direct, my friend.

  “You’re too eager. You make me nervous when you’re eager.”

  “I ever mention that you worry too much?”

  “Only on those occasions when I’m close enough to hear you talk.”

  We jogged off with half a dozen guys who pretend to be servers at Morley’s place, none the sort who wait tables because they love the work.

  Dotes insists that he’s out of the life now, yet persists in surrounding himself with men like these.

  I worry, what with the dedication shown by the secret police lately. Deal Relway doesn’t worry about due process. In his ow
n mind, he is the law. Too often, those left behind will agree that you had it coming.

  Nevertheless, the underworld goes on. As strong and committed and obsessed as Relway is, he isn’t able to do much but nibble at the Outfit’s peripheries.

  We turned into Ironstar Lane. And came to a many-legged, confused halt.

  The character who’d tried to trepan me with a stone wasn’t a block ahead. He ambled along, searching shadows, like he had no idea somebody might chase him down.

  “What’s the game here, Garrett? That moron is toddling along like he doesn’t have a care.”

  “You can’t hold me responsible because somebody else is an idiot.”

  “It’s arguable. Sins of the blood and all that stuff.” He came close to using bad language.

  I asked, “Instead of standing around debating, why don’t we take advantage?”

  Morley signaled his boys. We moved out.

  Traffic was light, but that’s normal in Ironstar Lane. There aren’t any shops.

  We surrounded the squat man before he realized someone was after him. His response was bewilderment. For an instant I thought I’d fingered the wrong guy. Like all of a sudden everybody in TunFaire had taken to wearing hideous green pants, and bad fashion sense wasn’t a sure sign of innate villainy.

  Then he charged, went right through one of Morley’s boys.

  “Wow!” I said.

  “Yes. Be careful.”

  The squat man didn’t run. He did make it unpleasant to get too close. At intimate range he was quicker than Morley, who, till now, had held the record. In my experience. And he was strong. He flung me thirty feet, easy.

  We took turns bopping him from behind. Which was kind of like bull baiting, only this bull never made a sound. He didn’t answer questions. He just fought on, emphasizing doing damage to Ma Garrett’s only surviving son.

  We outnumbered him only eight to one so it was our great good fortune that police whistles began squealing in nearby streets. We broke it up immediately. Nobody wanted to visit the Al-Khar. Not today.

  As though there’s any good day now.

  “That was exhilarating,” Morley said as we inventoried limbs, combed cobblestones out of our hair, and figured out who got bragging rights for suffering the biggest bruises. “If I’m alive in the morning, I’m going to give that guy another look. With Doris and Marsha doing the heavy lifting.”