Angry Lead Skies Read online

  “I didn’t need to mention it. Kip told you all you needed. Then. I only know his reputation, anyway. Which doesn’t include murder. He grew up in my part of town. He’d be a little older than me. He’s supposed to have a big taste for fine food and good wine. Including the TunFaire Gold when he can get it. But if that really was him he’s sure gone downhill since the last time I saw him.”

  “That was him. Or his evil twin. Maybe he’s been eating so high he’s had to expand his repertoire.”

  “He wouldn’t just bushwhack a guy.”

  “Why the hell not?” Could Playmate be that naive? Even I would bushwhack a guy fifteen inches taller and fifteen years younger than me, not to mention fifteen stone lighter. Assuming that I was adequately motivated.

  The quality and the nature of the motivation is what’s worth debating.

  On reflection Playmate decided he had no ready answer.

  I asked, “Where is he now?”

  “He took off when he saw me coming. Jumped on a burro not much bigger than him and rode off, covering his face.”

  “Think he recognized you?”

  “I expect that’s why he bothered to hide his face. I mean, how many people of my size and coloring are there? And how many of those are likely to be caught hanging around with you?”

  If Bic Gonlit knew who we were he was about to become scarcer than lizard hair. “Good points. I wonder. Did he know whose head he was bopping before he tried to brain me?” I have a reputation, partly for lacking humor about things like headbashing when it’s my melon involved, partly for having acquired a number of close friends whose responses would be unpredictable if something unpleasant happened to me that wasn’t my own fault. Some might start sharpening their teeth.

  It’s hard to imagine it being my own fault, but, in the laws of obligatory revenge there are exit codicils about “He asked for it,” and “He needed it.”

  Playmate might be one of those friends. My partner is, definitely. I like to believe that Saucerhead Tharpe and Morley Dotes are others, along with several powerful, wealthy family chieftains I’ve helped in my time. Those include the beermaking Weiders, the shoemaking Tales, and the we-don’t-talk-about-what-we-do Contagues.

  The Contagues would be the real worry for any villain, though the least likely avengers. The Contagues captain the Outfit, the Syndicate, the Commission, the central committee of the city’s organized crime. Their strength and reach and savagery when roused are legendary. Even our wizardly overlords on the Hill concern themselves about needlessly rousing the ire of Chodo Contague and his daughter Belinda. Chodo and Belinda do not allow themselves to be constrained by traditional legal customs or the normal rules of evidence. They hurt people. And they kill people. They’re supposed to be my friends and they scare the whiskers off me.

  At the time it did not occur to me that Bic Gonlit might have wanted to collect a bounty on me.

  “What do you want to do?” Playmate asked.

  “Besides find Bic Gonlit and whip fifty pounds of lard off his broad butt? Go home and get cleaned up.” TunFaire’s alleyways aren’t paved. Neither are they kept clean. Where they exist at all they’re little more than broad, shallow trenches where refuse can accumulate in anticipation of eventual rains heavy enough to carry some of the waste down into one of the storm channels that drain into the river.

  It takes a conscientious sort, willing to make an extra effort, to take advantage of the travel opportunities offered by TunFaire’s alleys. The King’s good and lazy subjects employ them when they’re too shy to dispose of something in the street out front. So by the grace of Bic Gonlit I made the intimate acquaintance of some of my neighbors’ greatest embarrassments — most of which, of course, would seem trivial to a disinterested witness.

  Often the secret vice that concerns you most is of no interest whatsoever to anyone whose opinion you dread. The main problem exists inside your own head.

  That’s one of those things most of us learn too late. A life-skills version of the destroyer comeback that pops up wearing a big, goofy grin three hours after some boor qualifies for a sound verbal caning.

  “Thanks,” I told Playmate. “Your timing was perfect.”

  “We aim to please.”

  “Where’s the other one?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy we came out here to watch. The weird elf.”

  Playmate shrugged. “If he was still here he had a knack for the invisible. Maybe the Dead Man was able to keep track.”

  Probably wouldn’t admit it if he did. “Let’s say I’m cynical about his ability.” There was no sign of the Goddamn Parrot, either. Nor any of pixies. Did some small-size skulls get cracked, too? Might be worth the headache if somebody capped that dodo. “Did you notice what happened to Mr. Big? My bird?”

  Playmate shook his head.

  “Never mind.” I wouldn’t bet two dead flies on tripping over the amount of good luck necessary to get me shut of that magpie cleanly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Playmate grunted. He was uncomfortable there. He was a preacher, not an adventurer. And unwanted adventures seemed to bubble up around me. Maybe it’s my diet. Though if complained at I’d point out that he’d brought this one on himself.

  We abandoned the alley, brokenhearted over our failure.

  Folks on Wizard’s Reach raised eyebrows, pinched their noses, and turned away. But nothing helped me. It didn’t matter which way I turned my head or how tightly I pinched my nose, I could still smell me. And I was way past ripe.

  Maybe a sudden thunderstorm would come up and wash me down to the river.

  Maybe they ought to put all the unemployed ex-soldiers to work cleaning the city.

  Never happen. Makes too much sense. And it would cost public monies that can be put to better use lining somebody’s pockets.

  The neighbors lost interest in me when somebody hollered, “There goes one!” and everything came to a halt while the entire population stared at the sky. I was a couple beats late. I saw nothing. “What the hell is that all about?”

  Playmate looked at me like he’d just flipped a boulder and discovered a new species of fool. “Where have you been? There’ve been strange lights in the sky and weird things hurtling around overhead for weeks. Longer than that, if you believe some people. I thought everybody in TunFaire knew about them and was watching for them.”

  “Well, not me. Tell me.”

  Playmate shook his head. “You have to get out of the house more, Garrett. Even when you’re not working, You need to know what’s going on around you.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  6

  “What the hell?” My front door stood wide open.

  “Maybe Kip ran away.” From the vantage of his superior altitude Playmate surveyed Macunado Street, uphill and down. “Which would be stupid. He can’t find his own way home.”

  I gave him a raised eyebrow look. “Where do you find them?” He’s worse than Dean is. Dean being the antediluvian artifact who serves as my live-in cook and housekeeper. Who has several huge personality flaws. Those include acting like my mom and my dad and having a soft heart bigger than my often somnolent sidekick. But Dean does confine his overweening charity to kittens and strange young women. Playmate will take in anything, including birds with broken wings and nearly grown boys who need a guide to get around their own hometown.

  Playmate was too concerned to talk. He charged up my front steps and into the house. I followed at a more dignified pace. I wasn’t used to all that exercise.

  “Hey, Garrett! He’s right where we left him.”

  Absolutely. Kip was nailed to the client’s chair, wearing an expression like he’d just enjoyed a divine visitation. The Dead Man was holding him there. But that couldn’t account for the goofy expression.

  “Then who left the door open?”

  Your lady friend became distressed when she could find no one willing to make her breakfast. When the boy just stared at her and drooled she
stormed out. That sparkling sense of amusement hung in the air once more, rich and mellow, with well-defined edges.

  “But you had plenty of brainpower left over to hold and manage this nimrod.”

  Being dead had corrupted somebody’s sense of relative values. The streets are swamped with goofballs. But Katie is unique. Katie is like a religious epiphany. “And what happened to the talking buzzard?” He would know. The Goddamn Parrot was almost a third arm and extra mouth for him anymore. He’s going to weep great tears when that vulture bites the dust. Though Morley is fond of reminding me that parrots can live about a million years. If something doesn’t wring their scrawny necks.

  I’ll weep myself when he’s gone. Tears of joy.

  Mr. Big is tracking the creature you failed to capture because you were unable keep your attention on the matter at hand.

  “You mean Bic Gonlit, the guy who made his escape on a galloping donkey? Because nobody bothered to warn me that it was him hanging around in the alley, leaving me unprepared?”

  Apparently an oversight on my part. I detected no second presence out there. Which is no longer of any consequence, now, anyway. But I would be remiss if I failed to point out that you should have been better prepared, knowing there could be difficulty.

  “No consequence? Difficulty? You aren’t the one the little pork-ball whapped upside the head.”

  Spare us your unconvincing histrionics, Garrett.

  Unconvincing? I was convinced. I took a deep breath. I’d never gotten in the last word yet but like an old-timer married fifty years I’m an eternal optimist. It could happen. There might come a day. It might be today.

  Actually, it’ll probably come when I’m on my deathbed and the Reaper snatches me before Old Bones can come back at me. Except that Chuckles might decide to come after me. He’s already got a head start.

  Death. Now there’s a guy who knows how to have the last word.

  Mr. Big is following the creature I sensed in the alley, Garrett. Not any sad little manhunter named Gonlit. I had thought you would understand that. A most unusual creature this is, too. Nothing like it has entered my ken before. Most notably, it seems capable of rendering itself invisible by fogging the minds of those around it. It is amazing.

  “And you keep telling me there’s nothing new under the sun.”

  Playmate’s scrawny young buddy finally collected himself enough to notice us. “What happened to you guys? You smell awful.”

  My good and true friend Playmate announced, “What you smell is Garrett. I myself am redolent of roses, lilacs, and other sweet herbal delights.”

  I glared at Playmate. “We ran into Bic Gonlit.” I turned my glower on the boy. He did not leap at the opportunity to have a chuckle at my expense. Maybe he wasn’t a total social disaster at all times. Maybe he retained some rudimentary, skewed sense of self-preservation.

  That’s Mama Garrett’s big boy. He can find a silver lining inside the ugliest sow’s ear. Maybe he didn’t have any sense of humor at all. Kip looked to Playmate for confirmation. Playmate told him, “It was Gonlit.” Then he told me, “Do something about your sweet self. I have a strong feeling we’re about to get out amongst the people. I wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself.”

  Yet again the stardust of amusement twinkled in the air. I would propose that Mr. Playmate has offered excellent advice, Garrett.

  I smelled doom. I smelled it like I’d smelled leaf mold in the jungle every time it’d rained while I was in the islands. It was in the air, sneezing thick. I did not have to sniff to catch a whiff.

  I was about to be cursed. Squirm as I might I was about to have to go to work. All because I had been dim enough to open my door and let trouble walk in.

  I whined, “Where on the gods’ green earth is the beautiful girl?” It’d never failed before. I’d always gotten some wonderful eye-candy out of... “Yike!”

  Old Dean, who pretends to be the chief cook and housekeeper around here, but who is really the wicked stepmother, had stuck his bitter, persimmon-sucking face into the office. “Mr. Garrett? Why is it that I return home to find the front door standing wide open?”

  “It was an experiment. I was trying to learn if crabby old people will kick a door shut before they start complaining about it having been left open. Of particular interest are crabby old men who live in a household where their status more closely approximates that of a guest than something more eternal. So you tell me. Do you have any idea? Where’s the girl?”

  Dean doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. He offered me the full benefit of his hard, gray-eyed stare. As always, he was rock-confident he could demonstrate to the world that my second greatest flaw is my frivolous, incautious nature.

  He believes my greatest failing to be my persistent bachelorhood. That from a character who never got within rock-flinging range of matrimony himself. I put up with him because he is a wonderful cook and housekeeper. When the mood takes him. And because he’s cranky enough to hold his own with the Dead Man — though when he has his druthers he has nothing to do with Old Bones at all.

  “Let’s not fuss,” I told him. “I have a client here.”

  Bad word choice. That brightened Dean right up. Little pleases him more than knowing that I’m working.

  I ground my teeth a bit, then continued, “So let’s get this sorted out quickly. I’ve got to catch up with Katie.” Before she developed an attitude toward me that I was sure to regret.

  Dean scowled as he headed toward the kitchen. Katie isn’t one of his favorites. He doesn’t approve of Katie. He hasn’t been able to charm her the way he did my few other, occasional female friends.

  I fear Miss Shaver will have to wait, Garrett.

  “No. Not hardly. Right now there’s nothing more important than Miss Shaver.”

  Playmate and Kip appeared startled. Old Bones hadn’t included them in his message. Though Kip did look baffled and kept rubbing his head and looking around like he knew something was going on.

  I have exceeded myself somewhat, ethically, in reviewing the boy’s memories. There being so many questions accompanied by so few answers it seemed possible that the best course was to see if he might not know something without being aware that he knew it.

  Plausible, if prolix. I had used that argument on him a time or three, trying to prod him into becoming a little more aggressive in mining the thoughts of visitors and suspects. “And what did you discover?” You have to give him his line or he won’t communicate.

  Very little, to tell the truth. This boy has no more than two toes anchored inside our reality. His head is occupied by a totally eclectic jumble of fantasic nonsense and it is amidst that that he lives most of the time. He is always the hero in his own tale.

  Well, aren’t we all?

  Some of his fantasies recall well-known epics and sagas. Some have their genesis in common storytellers’ tales. Some are mutant versions of historical events. And even a few things might possibly have some basis in truth — behind the fantasy stuff he has built on top of genuine events. Inside his head it is impossible to discern the real from the imagined.

  “If most of it concerns girls it sounds like the inside of a normal boy’s head.”

  You would think that way. And you would be incorrect. While it does concern girls, some of it, it does so principally in the clever and daring methods by which he rescues the enchanted princess or other damsel in distress. While there are several of them I have yet to discover any of his fantasy women less than chastely clad or treated.

  I gave Kip a quick glance consisting of about eighty percent worry and twenty percent accolade. Though I suspected that respect for women was not a real part of the equation. Naïveté would be the real culprit.

  The Dead Man continued, He is acquainted with creatures he knows as Lastyr and Noodiss. They are not human but the boy has not cared enough about the answer to find out what they really are. The images in his mind are not familiar to me.

  The image that appeared in m
y mind, then, was unfamiliar to me as well. “Inbreeding? Or interbreeding?” You need only stroll around TunFaire a few hours to see the incredible range of Nature’s artistry and her bottomless capacity for the cruel practical joke.

  Perhaps. And, perhaps, they are something never before seen. In this world.

  “Let’s not turn alarmist!” I growled. Alarmed. Once upon a time not long ago I got into a head-butting contest with something never before seen at that time: very nasty, never-brush-their-teeth and talk-back-to-their-mamas foul, elder gods who thought that the god racket would be a lot softer if they could bust out of the dark place where they were confined and could come set up shop in our world.

  There was nothing supernatural about the watcher in the alley, Garrett. Quite the opposite, I think. There was no magic in it at all. It seemed as though it stood entirely outside the realms of the magical, the metaphysical, and the supernatural.

  I gobbled a couple pints of air while I tried to make sense of that, trying to sort through the countless implications. A world without magic! A place of order and predictability, with all evil fled!

  Darker possibilities occurred to me as well.

  Playmate began to poke and prod me with a singletree forefinger. “Garrett, I know it’s a big, empty wasteland without many landmarks but how about you don’t get lost inside your own head right now?”

  I shook the gourd in question. The waste space was anything but empty right now. Most of that speculation seemed to be leaking over from the Dead Man’s secondary minds. Suggesting that the puzzle had him sufficiently intrigued that he had become incautious where his thoughts strayed.

  “Sorry. Chuckles got me going for a minute.”

  “’Twould seem that he’s gotten Kip going, too.”

  The boy was as rigid as a fence post. All the color had drained from behind his freckles. His eyelids were closed. When I lifted one I found his eyeball rolled up so that he seemed to have no pupil. “What did you do here, Smiley?”

  The Dead Man launched a long-winded paean of self-exoneration. I sensed its complete lack of substance right away and focused on Playmate. “So cut the bull and tell me what you want from me.”