Whispering Nickel Idols gf-11 Page 5

  I nudged a curious kitten away from a male pixie who had fallen to the coach floor and lay there on his back, buzzing occasionally, like a downed locust.

  It was weird. But I had trouble giving a rat’s ass. I was mellow, at peace. Without personal ambition whatsoever.

  Some acquaintances would insist that was nothing new.

  Singe and John Stretch seemed vaguely puzzled and sleepy.

  Ditto, the rats.

  I never heard of a drunk spell, but that didn’t mean one couldn’t exist. It only meant that I’d never been hit by one before.

  The pixies passed out. I started suffering urges to sing the Marine Corps hymn or something similarly patriotic. Which don’t hit me when I get snockered the hard way. Not often.

  The coach suddenly bucked, jolted to a halt. What the hell? Traffic couldn’t be that bad. Could it?

  I was two heartbeats away from falling asleep when Playmate yanked the door open. “We’re here. Huh? What’s the matter with you all?”

  I extended a hand. He helped me descend as elegantly as a duchess. Good man he, he did the same with John Stretch and Pular Singe while deftly keeping the kittens from getting away.

  He closed the door on the pixies and baby cats. “What I’m going to do now is, I’m going to stay right here. I’ll come in and pull you out if something bad happens.” That said a ton about Playmate. “That’s white of you, Play. I’ll be more relaxed in there, knowing you’ll rescue me if I need it.”

  Playmate had nothing more to say. His eyes had begun to wobble. Meantime, I was recovering. Fast.

  I was way early in arriving. Even so, several coaches were lined up beside the hall already, each cared for by somebody big and dumb and covered with scars. And with tattoo collections for seasoning. They stared at my companions and their cages filled with rats.

  “Round up those kittens, Singe.” The drunk was gone. Just that fast.

  “You want to take them inside?”

  “Oh, hell yeah. They’re going to be all over in there.”

  These kittens did not behave like cats. They weren’t contrary. They let themselves be caught and tucked into their bucket, with the cloth folded over them, theoretically to keep them in. Only a couple had to be caught and tucked a second time.

  “How many of these monsters are there?” I asked Singe. I couldn’t get a hard count. Hasty estimates during the day had ranged from four to nine. Since even a dead cat can create havoc in two places at once, I suspected the true number was closer to four. Singe said, “Five or six. It’s hard to tell because their markings are so alike.”

  It didn’t matter. As long as I had the majority with me when I went in.

  As I approached the goons checking invitations, I tried to work out why I thought I should go armed with baby cats.

  I guess because I hoped nobody would stay belligerent with a gang of them underfoot.

  One of the goons asked, “The hell you luggin’ a pail a pussy for, slick?”

  “Somebody might want a kitten. I got some to adopt out.” I saluted him with my pussy pail and strolled on into Whitefield Hall.

  12

  Belinda had a second goon squad set up behind an inverted L of tables inside the front entrance. Clever girl, she’d made sure these guys weren’t beholden to her. They were freelancers. Saucerhead Tharpe was one. I recognized two of his three companions, Orion Comstock and June Nicolist. Both had reputations much like Tharpe’s. Absolutely neutral. “Garrett.”

  “Mr. Tharpe.” I’ve known him for years, but his real first name escaped me. No matter. He prefers Saucerhead.

  “Anything to declare?”

  “Eh?”

  “Weapons. Of any sort. You got ’em, you got to declare ’em. You don’t got to surrender ’em, though we’d rather you did. You do, June gives you one of them beautiful scarves. You collect your tools when you leave.” June held up a bright green kerchief. He had a pile handy, and a grin that betrayed teeth of the same shade. Saucerhead said, “That’ll mark you safe.”

  “All right. Give me a hankie. This’s all I’ve got. One bucket of cats.” One bucket of remarkable cats. There was something wrong with them. Any other litter would have staged several jailbreaks by now.

  Saucerhead eyed the kittens. He looked at me. “You’re serious.”

  “As a dose of typhoid.” I needed to move on. I had to fix up some way for Melondie Kadare to sneak inside.

  Tharpe asked, “You didn’t even bring your knob-knocker?”

  “Nope. Nothing but my own bare hands.”

  Saucerhead sighed. “You may be sorry.”

  “I’m a trained Royal Marine.”

  “You used to be. Here.” He handed me a yellow kerchief instead of letting June give me a green one.

  “Yellow, huh?”

  “It don’t mean nothing. Green and yellow was what was the cheapest.”

  “What keeps a guy from just stuffing the hankie in his pocket?”

  “Nothing. Except that you should be wearing it.”

  He waved me past. I proceeded to hunt for a window to crack. Behind me, Saucerhead’s pals expressed doubts about me being the famous Garrett.

  I was still looking for a window when I spied a plump brown rat. The critter took time out to stop and wink.

  Once I jiggered a window, Melondie and her swarm wobbled inside and fluttered around, finding places to hide. Nobody noticed. Everybody focused on a screeching knock-down-drag-out about table setups. I shut the window, grabbed my bucket, went looking for the hostess and guest of honor.

  I heard scurryings in the walls and floors and the hum of little wings overhead.

  I glanced back. Somebody I didn’t know was suffering through Saucerhead’s checkpoint.

  Maybe Tharpe did do me a favor. He never patted me down like that. Though if I wanted to sneak something in, I would’ve hidden it under a stack of docile baby cats.

  Whitefield Hall had been slapped together with nothing but function in mind. It was mainly an open floor where you could dance, hold a banquet, have a grand meeting, put on a play, do anything you wanted to do without having to endure a lot of weather. Nowadays plays were the big thing.

  Plays are a big thing around town, period. Drama is the latest fad.

  The memorial commission also rented the hall for private functions. Like wedding receptions. Or birthday parties for underclass personalities who loom large in city life.

  The floor had enjoyed loving care forever but remembered generations of feet shod in working-class shoes. The ceiling was twenty feet high. There were tilt windows up there so you could let the heat out in summer-or whenever there were too many bodies jammed into the hall. There was a stage at the end opposite the main entrance, facing it from a hundred feet away, three feet higher than the floor. Bickering workmen dragged tables in through a door to the left of the stage.

  The two directing setup might have been chosen for their devotion to stereotype. Their wrists were limper than a dead octopus’s arms. They bullied one another like a pair of harebrained girls. Still, there’s hardly an adult male human today who isn’t tough. Anybody over twenty-four had what it took to get through five years of wartime service with his ass still attached. Including this squawking brace of fancies.

  The guys doing the actual work were the sort you don’t offend gratuitously. They didn’t have half a neck between them. If their shirts got ripped off by a freak wind, they’d show more body hair than cave bears. They probably had trouble recognizing their own names in print even if you gave them two weeks’ head start.

  Our hostess made her appearance through the doorway to the right of the stage, from the kitchen area. She wasn’t dressed for the occasion. Yet. “Garrett. You sweet man. You came early.” Strange. My eyes didn’t roll up inside my head. I didn’t drool. No gush of nonsense syllables erupted from my mouth. I didn’t forget she was deadly and dangerous. Maybe I was immune. Finally.

  Belinda Contague is a tall, slim woman in her mid-twenties,
as beautiful as you can imagine a woman to be. Her hair, as ever, was absolute black, with sheen. Her skin she’d whitened whiter than ivory, I hoped with makeup rather than arsenic. Her eyes were so blue I suspected cosmetic sorcery. Her lips were the color of arterial blood. She has serious emotional problems.

  And all this before she put herself together for the evening.

  “I had to be early. I heard there’ll be some unsavory characters showing up. Have you lost weight?”

  “You noticed. You are a good man. Yes. A few pounds.”

  Too many pounds, I thought. She was gaunt. Another indication of internal problems? She was in a positive mood. That’s always good. She said, “I need to get Keron and Arnot focused on their work. They shouldn’t bring personal problems with them.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. It was one of her specials. It told me she’d gladly put it somewhere else. “Then I’ll have the technical staff try to turn me into something presentable.”

  “You’re a step or two beyond that already.”

  “Hardly. Wait till you see. You won’t be able to resist.”

  “Go. Do what you need to do. And don’t blame yourself if you find out that I’ve turned into an old man.”

  “Why do you have a pail of kittens? Are they dead? I guess not. One just winked at me.”

  “You know Dean. He took in a litter. I brought them because I had this crazy notion somebody might want one.” A mad idea, indeed. Most people looking for free cats are furriers, violin makers, or those guys who turn up at the edge of crowds, selling pigs in a blanket and other theoretically meat-based products of mysterious provenance.

  Belinda shrugged, then set sail toward the two men trying to set up according to two different plans.

  The squabbling ceased instantly, and was heard no more. The two clowns turned almost as pale as Belinda herself.

  You could look her in the eye and know, absolutely, that you were nose to nose with swift, remorseless death. There would be no appeals, no continuances, no stays, no reprieves, no commutations, no mercy. This death no more cared for your soul or emotions than it did for those of a roach.

  Chodo had had that knack, too. But he'd indulged in random acts of commutation. All of which had worked out in the long run. Where was the old man?

  Melondie Kadare dropped onto my shoulder. “You’re a real bright candle, aren’t you?”

  “What did I do now?”

  “You shut the window after you let us in. We need to come and go. Unless you’re figuring on getting reports from the rat king through divine inspiration.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I hadn’t thought that part through. But I’m not used to deploying a special-needs entourage. “I’ll fix it. Have you seen an old man in a fancy wheelchair, looks like he might be dead?”

  “No. The rats might have. They’re all over. Ask John Stretch.”

  “I can take a hint.”

  “Really? Amaze me.”

  Is that a female thing? A youth thing? Or am I just a lightning rod for cynicism and sarcasm?

  I cracked the same window a few inches, then roamed around trying to spot villainy before it happened. And looked for Chodo. I wanted to see what Belinda planned to roll out.

  Melondie Kadare buzzed up behind my right ear. “When are you going to open that window, ace?”

  “I just did, bug. You were there. You saw me.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I did, didn’t I? Well, it ain’t open no more, stud. And Aliki Nadkarni wants in.”

  She was right. Some moron had closed the window. I opened it, then headed for the kitchen.

  I didn’t get there. Melondie brought her henchwoman’s report about what John Stretch had heard from his rats. Wouldn’t it be grand to leave out the middlepixies and middleratfolk? Where could I get a fast lesson in conversational rat?

  The information was good, considering. It gave me a fair idea of the layout, including more than I wanted to know about odors in the basements and under the building where there were no basements.

  I learned where Chodo was stashed. A dark pie pantry, halfway underground. Like an idiot cousin who had to be kept out of sight so he wouldn’t embarrass the family.

  Nobody paid attention to anyone who was inside already. You must be all right. You’d been checked out. I could go anywhere I wanted.

  Melondie Kadare caught up as I headed for Chodo’s hiding place. “That window is closed again, Big Boy. You want to do something about that? Like jamming it in its frame?”

  I set my pail of cats down. “You guys wait here.” Like I thought they’d stay put. Just because their behavior had been exemplary. From the human point of view.

  Hello, Garrett. The relationship between cats and people has just one dimension: the value to the cat, at a given moment, of a handy set of opposable thumbs. I opened the window, stood back, waited. Pixies zipped in and out. Rats slunk along the base of the wall. Or rattled around inside it. No one else noticed. One of the setup queens came by, spotted the window. “Darn it! Who keeps opening this thing?”

  “I do. And I’m not in a charitable mood. Next time I find it closed I’ll throw somebody through it. You get the picture?”

  The young man looked willing to fight. Briefly. “It’s too darned cold…” His belligerence faded. I’d been about to recommend a place he could go if he wanted to warm up. But the window suddenly wasn’t worth a fight.

  A kitten mewed and started climbing my pants.

  Even when they’re little their claws are sharp. “What’re you doing? Hell. I guess the honeymoon is over.”

  My bucket had sprung a leak. Baby cats were everywhere. Thirty or forty of them, it looked like. I steeled myself for a blowup.

  It didn’t come. Nobody seemed upset. They were weird cats. They never made anybody jump or stumble.

  The skinny gink with the window fetish went back to his tables. Still without feuding with his partner.

  13

  I went back to hunting the man whose birthday was the excuse for the gathering.

  I stole a candle, lit it, slipped into the pie pantry. There he was, slumped in a wheelchair, looking two decades older. “These aren’t the best circumstances,” I told him. There was barely room for all of us and the wheelchair. “But I promised Harvester Temisk that I’d do what I could. That guy is your best friend.” Near as I could tell. A few years in my racket will leave a saint cynical about the motives of nuns. Too many people don’t have a pimple of conscience to slow them down.

  Chodo did not move, twitch, or demonstrate any awareness of my presence.

  A kitten did meow nearby. I took that to be a good omen. But there was a scurry as a rat took an opposing view.

  “I wish there was a way to tell if your mind is alive in there. But I can’t get you away someplace where we could work on it.” Speaking of out, there my candle went. I headed over where there was enough light to see while I relit the candle. Somebody hustled past, duck waddling with a huge pot. “Smells good,” I told him.

  He clomped onward, dead silent. I don’t think he agreed.

  There was a lot of new racket as the catering crew arrived. I wouldn’t have much more time with Chodo.

  I ducked back into the pie pantry. “You didn’t sneak away when you had the chance.” Chodo hadn’t done anything but breathe. Which was good. Real good. Because, all of a sudden, I had an awful spooky feeling.

  Something wasn’t right. And I didn’t know how to make sense of it. Or figure out what it was.

  I dropped to my knees so I could look Chodo in the eyes. They were open. They blinked. But they weren’t seeing anything. They weren’t blinking out messages. I told him to blink once for yes and twice for no, then asked questions. He blinked yes at random.

  Was his brain alive at all? Temisk thought so, but I saw no evidence here. If I had him stashed somewhere safe, I could study and experiment on him. Or I could take him home and put him in with the Dead Man. Old Bones would wake up someday.

  Yelling broke out not far off. Time to g
et back on the job. One last experiment, though. To see if he felt anything. “Nothing personal here, Chief.” I touched the candle flame to the outside of his left wrist.

  The pie pantry filled up with burned-hair smell.

  Chodo did nothing. I could’ve roasted him whole if I wanted.

  Voices were almost close enough to be understood.

  The candle went out. Snap! That sudden, without a breath of air in motion.

  A shriek came from the kitchen.

  “Got to go, Boss.”

  Burned-hair and burned-meat smells hit me. In the scullery I found people standing around a smoldering rat. But the screaming came from the kitchen proper. Voices yelled the sort of things people do in an emergency where nobody knows what should be done, but everybody wants somebody to do something.

  The burned-flesh smell was stronger there. I heard a crackle like bacon frying.

  Water flew through the air. A slim tide washed my toes, then receded. The crackle of bacon lost its zeal.

  People made unhappy noises. I recognized some as part-time kitchen help of Morley’s. “Out of the way!” I barked. “If you’re not doing something useful, change your luck by getting the hell out of the way.”

  I got through. Somebody calmer than most had rolled a heavy woman in wet tablecloths. A couple guys kept dousing her with water. She kept screaming. She was on fire under those wraps, somehow. The bacon sizzle was all her. Buckets of water rapidly slowed that down.

  Morley appeared. “What’s happening?”

  I shook my head and shrugged, then nudged a couple men who were supposed to be setting tables. “Hoist her into the tub where the beer kegs are cooling. After the kegs are out.”

  That bacon crackle was coming back.

  The woman never stopped screaming.

  She went into the ice bath as Belinda Contague arrived. The woman went silent as the fire finally died. She would hurt for a long time, though, if she was burned as badly as I suspected.

  Belinda eased close. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. It started before I got here. Looks like she caught on fire somehow.” I raised my voice. “Anybody see how this started?”