Whispering Nickel Idols gf-11 Read online

  It’s a hell in brick. Those who deliver themselves to the hospital’s mercy are, generally, thoroughly desperate. Meaning parts may be falling off already. The stenches of disease, rotting flesh, and deep despair lie heavy on the whole area. The neighbors pray for foul weather to wash and blow the stink away.

  The sound was the choir of madness singing in the insane wards-lair of the Bledsoe’s deepest and most abiding horrors.

  Those wards do help finance the hospital. For a few coppers you can tour them. For an extra copper you can rent a stick to torment the mad folk. You can even rent the most dramatic loons for home entertainment.

  Money. That’s why.

  Money and the complete indifference of ninety percent of the population. That’s why.

  The Bledsoe is a charity hospital. Its main support comes from the family that provided emperors to the Empire before the kings of Karenta replaced them. The Empire survives in the imaginations of that one family, so there are still emperors around. But nobody cares. Other than the directors of the Bledsoe, who depend on the imperial family for the donations they steal.

  The Bledsoe is the most corrupt institution in TunFaire. We’ll see truly interesting, entertaining times if Director Relway ever goes after the parasites there.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked, stopping to stare once I got a clear look at the hospital. Its face was covered by scaffolding. Masons, hod carriers, and other workmen bustled around cleaning and restoring the facade. Though there weren’t many of them.

  “You know, I don’t know,” Morley said. “This is new to me, too.”

  Repairs were decades overdue. How come the money for this hadn’t gotten stolen? I had no trouble imagining somebody donating enough to renovate the place. But I couldn’t believe that its directors would use the money for its intended purpose. “We need to look into this.”

  “Why?”

  “Uh…” He had a point. This wasn’t a battle that needed Garrett galloping in in rusty, secondhand armor. Garrett was here to look dark and dangerous and make sure a client of Belinda’s got the sort of treatment the Bledsoe can provide when its staff wants to bother. “You’re right. One thing at a time. I’ll do what I came to do. Relway will get to this place someday.”

  “I’ll just stroll along with you. I’m curious about the construction.”

  He did sound curious. Like a gangster wondering how anybody would be doing something without getting his permission first.

  A large man without a hair on his head had a notion not to let us in. I’d never run into guards before. Morley asked, “You’re kidding, right? You don’t really want to be the next patient here, do you?”

  My guess is, the bald guy recognized Morley. He got out of the way.

  Next obstacle, an admissions clerk. Who was no challenge at all.

  The clerk was a volunteer. Of the female persuasion. Ellie Jacques. Meaning it took Morley about thirty-seven seconds to have her ready to jump her counter and devour him. She gave up the whereabouts of the burned woman immediately. The patient was Buy Claxton. She was getting the best care the Bledsoe could deliver. With Morley making eyes Ellie admitted Mrs. Claxton was getting the best because the doctors knew the Contague name.

  The Contagues and the Relways tend to get results.

  I asked the clerk, “What’s going on outside?” Which earned me a look of disdain. How dare I intrude on her romantic interlude?

  Morley offered a whispered apology. I was good of heart. And the question intrigued him, too.

  Homely and middle-aged, Ellie was desperate to please. “A charitable trust came in. They wanted to fix the place up. But they wouldn’t hand over the money. I guess they’re not stupid, even if they are bumpkins. They insisted on doing the work themselves. The directors resisted till they came up with the notion of going after matching funds.”

  Morley batted his eyes and made implied promises. Ellie implied a willingness to play any game Morley wanted.

  Bumpkins? Yes. A consortium of civic-minded, successful businessmen from Ymber. Yada yada yada. The “give something back” yammer nobody with smarts enough to get in out of the rain ever buys. Give it back? What did you get in the first place? From whom?

  Morley suggested, “Why don’t you visit Mrs. Claxton?” Reminding me that I had a mission. He swung the charm beam back to the volunteer. Who admitted she was a Mrs., too, but wasn’t fanatic about it.

  “Right,” I said. “Why don’t I go check on her while you hang around here?”

  “Absolutely perfect, my friend.”

  Enjoying the therapeutic aroma of the Bledsoe, I climbed two flights of stairs to one of the hospital’s celebrity suites. The crooks in charge are clever enough to keep a few available in case somebody with lots of money stumbles in, bleeding. Belinda’s father had used one occasionally when he was younger and got into those sorts of situations.

  Buy Claxton’s physicians had betrayed their normally hidden competence by making her pain go away, then followed up by doing mysterious, wonderful things to reduce the damage caused her by burns. Their respect for the Contague name led them to bring in a wizard with a strong healing talent.

  I don’t doubt that they found gentle, unobtrusive ways to pad their fees.

  Buy was awake. “I remember you. You tried to help.”

  “Yes, I did. Miss Contague asked me to make sure they’re taking care of you. And to see if you need anything.”

  “They’re treating me like a princess. Because they’re scared shitless of what’ll happen if they don’t.”

  “Are you unhappy about that?”

  “Shit, no. I’m thinking maybe I’ll just camp out here from now on. I got no desire for my ass to be some kind a symbol to them what thinks the ruling class…” They must have drugged her as soon as I showed up downstairs. Just in case. She mumbled through most of that, then faded completely.

  “Belinda put the fear of God in them,” I told Morley as we left. “And how was your day?”

  “The things I suffer for friendship.”

  “Bet you she cooks you a nice two-pound steak… What do you suppose these clowns are really doing?” We’d stopped to watch the men working on the Bledsoe’s sad face.

  “Looks like they’re taking bad bricks out and putting in new ones.”

  “No. They aren’t. I worked as a bricklayer’s apprentice for about six months one week, back before I went in the Marines.”

  “You left an honest career for life as a tick on society’s underbelly?”

  “I got fired. I couldn’t make them understand that the workday shouldn’t start before noon.”

  “All right. You’re an authority on bricklaying. What do you see that I don’t?”

  “They’re fixing things that aren’t broken. This place is still sound. It just needs the rotten mortar scraped out and new mortar tucked in. But they’re making holes in the wall.” I could see several places where bricks had been removed to create hollows.

  “All right. I see that.”

  “Didn’t your friend say most of the workmen didn’t show up today?”

  “She said the financing came from Ymber. I recall that.”

  “Why don’t you pop back in and find out if those philanthropists had bad taste in trousers. I’ll talk to these guys here.”

  Dotes looked sour, but he went. He had his own beef with the Ugly Pants Gang.

  I strolled over to a hod carrier of fifteen summers who seemed to share my youthful lack of enthusiasm for clambering up ladders lugging mass quantities of bricks or mortar. “I’m trying to figure out what they’re doing up there.”

  I got the right note of naive bewilderment into that. After an instant to decide whether the old guy deserved some attitude, the kid grunted. “They’re just tuck-pointing and replacing bad bricks.” TunFaire is built almost entirely of brick. Everybody knows something about the upkeep of brick buildings.

  “I get that. I did your job when I was your age, a couple hundred years ago
. I never saw nobody pull good bricks out.”

  “Oh. That. They’re making these niches. Usually, there’s a lot more guys working. They put these metal things inside, then brick them up. Over there you can see where they’ve already done that about ten times.”

  “So you’re, like, getting in on a slow day, eh?”

  He chuckled. “This is the best day I’ve had since this job started. Aw, crap! I had to open my yap. Now my old man wants me to bring up some mortar.”

  The boy stirred the mortar in a nearby mixing boat, splatted twenty pounds into a mortar hod, then went up the ladders and scaffolding like a monkey. I wasted ten seconds hating him for being that young, then drifted over to where the boy had pointed out some finished Ymber craftsmanship.

  They weren’t bricklayers by trade. Not even apprentice bricklayers.

  Morley said, “You’re psychic,” from behind me.

  “I’ve been accused of everything else. Why not that?”

  “The philanthropists from Ymber brought a crew of volunteer workmen. Every single one wore filthy green plaid pants.”

  My new young friend spidered to the ground as Morley made his remarks. He overheard. I asked, “Would those be the guys who didn’t show up today?”

  “Yeah. And I ain’t missing them, neither. I never seen such a bunch of useless assholes.”

  I tried to find out more, but somebody up top kept hollering nonsense about lollygagging and slacking. I told Morley, “Sounds just like the guy who fired me fifteen years ago.”

  The kid said, “That’s my old man. Don’t worry about him. He’s all hot air.” But he got busy working the mortar boat. You don’t, the mortar sets up.

  22

  Morley seemed preoccupied.

  I was preoccupied myself. Just what was going on at the Bledsoe?

  Here it was, direct as a smack in the chops with an iron fist. The Green Pants Gang was underwriting renovations in order to install metal somethings inside the Bledsoe’s outside walls. Dean was sure the gang was in town to catch Penny Dreadful and her kittens.

  What would Penny say, if pressed? “We need to catch that kid who dumped the kittens on Dean.”

  “We do? Believe it or not, I do have a life outside my career as your sidekick. Considering Belinda Contague is involved, you might look into doing your own lifting and carrying.”

  “Ouch!”

  “My point being, I don’t need to catch something that’s looking for you.”

  “Man. You’re a pal, all of a sudden. Like Puddle or Sarge in a bleak mood.”

  “Could be. Life isn’t fair. You going to try Harvester Temisk now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good luck. I’m headed home. Before one of those idiots burns the place down.”

  What suddenly made him want to get away fast?

  Harvester Temisk hadn’t resurfaced. He had, however, begun to interest somebody besides me. A minor, dim thug named Welby Dell was asleep across the street from Temisk’s, in a spot well suited for lurking and watching. Dell was another associate of Teacher White’s. Being a thoughtful kind of guy, I toddled on without disturbing Welby’s nap.

  I picked up a tail. He wasn’t anybody I knew. He didn’t care if I knew he was there. Meaning he was a Relway Runner.

  I changed course, headed for the Al-Khar, where I asked to see Colonel Block. Naturally, the ground level of the bureaucracy made that impossible. So I asked for Director Relway. With identical results.

  I trudged on home. Smug. Block couldn’t accuse me of evading my civic duty. Dean was in the throes of creating chicken and dumplings. He can be a killer in the kitchen when he wants.

  Melondie Kadare was on the table, still hungover, in a foul temper. Singe sulked because I’d taken off without getting John Stretch’s report. Her brother had gone and come and gone again in my absence.

  Dean was in a good mood. “Mr. Mulclar will be here to fix the door tomorrow.”

  “Good.” I settled down to eat. A kitten climbed my leg and set up shop in my lap. Others prowled the kitchen. Singe held one. It wore the smug look of master instead of pet.

  “Dean, talk to me about Penny Dreadful and these cats.”

  He started to hem and haw.

  “Dean, this is serious. People are getting busted up. They’re getting dead. The guys who keep trying to break our door down got into fights with Belinda’s people, Morley’s guys, and Relway’s gang. More than once. And when they aren’t picking fights they’re doing exterior renovations on the Bledsoe. What’s the connection there?”

  Dean grimly said, “You’d better tell me the whole thing. I may have been too trusting.”

  “You think so? That’s never happened before, has it?”

  Singe said, “You do not have to be nasty, Garrett.”

  I resisted a temptation to insist that I had the right. I related the highlights. “I don’t think the Watch has the whole gang. Colonel Block says there were ten guys in green and two more who were in charge. At the Bledsoe, though, I got the impression that there were more than that.”

  Dean sucked in a gallon of air, set it free. “All I know is, those men serve A-Laf, some kind of masculine devil god. His cult has taken over in Ymber. It’s really aggressive and intolerant. The feminine cult of A-Lat was its big competitor. I told you what Penny had to say already.”

  “And because she big-eye-orphaned you, you swallowed her story whole.”

  “Admitted. Which doesn’t mean she was lying.”

  “Don’t mean she was telling the truth, either. How do we get hold of her?”

  Dean shrugged. “That’s up to her. I don’t think she’ll come back here. Not since she saw the Dead Man. That rattled her.”

  “I’ll bet.” Hardly anybody wants to be around the Dead Man when he’s awake. If they know what he is. I have reservations myself. I continued. “Give me a guess about the connection with the Bledsoe. The Ugly Pants Gang is putting out a ton of money so they can put metal statues in the walls.”

  Dean looked bewildered. “I don’t have any idea. This is the first I’ve heard.”

  Singe brought me a cold mug of beer, reminding me that we had business of our own to attend to.

  She made sure surly little Melondie got a tiny cup to nurse, too. Always thoughtful, my pal Pular Singe.

  “So, darling junior junior partner. What do I need to know that nobody’s bothered to tell me yet?”

  Melondie Kadare piped, “You need to know that your goddamn superior friggin’ attitude needs a major adjustment, Biggie.”

  “Ouch!”

  Singe said, “She is giving you attitude because her tribe was most incompetent at gathering useful information. They were too busy stealing food, wine, beer, and small valuables to accomplish anything.“

  That started Melondie on a classic rant. She sputtered and raved for eight or ten minutes. Her big problem was Singe’s being right. Her tribe had demonstrated a decided lack of discipline.

  “Do you have any idea how the fires started?”

  “No. I was outside.” She produced a fair picture of the encounter between the Ugly Pants crew and Playmate, Saucerhead Tharpe, and the drivers of sundry carriages. The good guys won by weight of numbers. Though Melondie thought the outlanders were sluggish, confused, and weak.

  For no clear reason, and to his own astonishment, Dean announced, “It was dark, wasn’t it? ‘A-Lat’ means ‘Queen of the Night.’ ”

  “Uh…” I mused. “I guess that’s handy to know.”

  Not to be outdone, Singe promised, “John Stretch will have a better report once he gets his rats together.”

  “That’s good,” I said. Not believing it for an instant. The rats from Whitefield Hall couldn’t possibly remember details this long after having their brains scrambled by terror.

  “It’s been a hard day,” I grumbled. “And it’s getting dangerous out there. I’d better not go drinking. So here’s my strategy. I’ll do my drinking and thinking here, after you all go to bed
.”

  Singe filled my mug. She refilled her own. Melondie tapped the rim of hers, an ivory thimble that came down to me from my mom.

  23

  Dean said, “It’s Colonel Block again.”

  “Uhm?”

  “At the door? You just told me to answer it? Remember?”

  “Sir, I have no recollection of those events.” Making mock of a statement heard frequently in the High Court lately, as the Crown reluctantly prosecutes the most egregious disturbers of the peace involved in recent human rights rioting and minority persecution. The Crown Advocate’s usual attitude toward minorities is that they should expect to be treated like minorities. If they don’t like it, they shouldn’t come here in the first place.

  Dean brought the Colonel to my office. I’d already settled in to sweet-talk Eleanor in fluent Drunkenese. I asked, “Don’t you ever take time off?”

  Block isn’t married. He isn’t engaged. He isn’t the other kind, either. He has just one love. And she’s blind.

  He romances her continuously, hoping she stays blind.

  He’ll be sorry someday.

  “Uh…” It never occurred to him to step away and relax.

  “Go fishing.”

  “I tried that once. I didn’t like it. But if you want to come along?…”

  I flashed a yard of my most charming smile. “Pointtaken.” To go fishing you need to go out into the country. Where the wild bugs are, and the hungry critters, some of them as big as houses. I don’t go there, given a choice.

  I did my time with the bloodsuckers and carnivores in the Corps. “You wanted to share something with me?”

  “I was more hoping that you’d open up to me.”

  “Naturally. You’re hoping I did Relway’s job for him and now, because I’m a civic-minded kind of guy, I’ll fill you in on anything that’s puzzling you. Like Relway don’t have a couple brigades of thugs to do his hoof work for him.”

  “Good point, Garrett. But Deal isn’t on the inside. Deal somehow managed not to have even one friendly eye in the neighborhood when Belinda Contague held her summit at Whitefield Hall.”