Bitter Gold Hearts (15 page)

“Terrified.”

“Like he had seen a ghost?”

“That’s funny.”

“What is?”

“That’s exactly what I thought then. That he must have seen a ghost.”

“Maybe he did. At least secondhand. Go on. He left?”

“As soon as he knew I wasn’t going with him.”

“Any hint where?”

“A safe place with an old friend is what he told me when I asked.”

“Donni Pell?”

“Maybe. That’s what I thought when he said it. The way he said it. Donni Pell or Ami. I just figured he knew where Ami went.”

“Why Amiranda?”

“They grew up together. They were close. They always had their heads together. If she ran away, he had to know where she went. She wouldn’t go without leaving him a message somehow. Even if he was kidnapped when she went.”

The more I saw of them, the more the workings and relationships of the daPena family baffled me. “All right. It could have been Amiranda but it wasn’t because she was dead. We have to assume it was Donni Pell. That might not be true but anything else seems unlikely. Given his nature, it would have been a woman. Correct? Who else did he know? No one you or I know about. I guess I’ll have to go there and see.”

This business was all legwork. Morley would approve of the exercise I was getting. “Go on with the story. Your brother decamped, headed for parts unknown, fright­ened. Then what?”

“Twenty minutes later, Courter came. They knew Karl was out. They wanted me to tell them where he went.”

“They?”

“Courter. It wasn’l really they till later. But Courter didn’t come on his own. They sent him.”

“I assume you gave him valuable advice on the placement of his elbow.”

“Yes. So my father took his place. He was as pale and sweaty as Karl had been. And he had a wild look that scared me. Like he was so terrified he was capable of anything. He didn’t get anywhere either. He did a lot of yelling. My father yells a lot. I mostly just stayed out of his reach till Domina came in. She tried to keep me from hearing what she said, but I heard part of it. She’d heard from one of the staff that Karl had heard that Mother was in Leif mold. Meaning Mother could show up any­time because she could get to TunFaire almost as fast as the news that she was coming. Father really got excited then.”

“And?”

Amber seemed ashamed. “I want you to know, I love my father. Even when he does irrational things.”

I tried my raised-eyebrow trick. I hadn’t been practic­ing lately. She wasn’t impressed.

“He screamed at Domina to get Courter. They’d beat it out of me. She couldn’t calm him down, so she went out, I guess to get Courter. Father came after me. And he actually did hit me. He never did that before. Not himself.”

“And?”

“I picked up a shoe and bopped him over the head. He went away. And he didn’t come back. A couple hours later I heard him and Domina having a screaming match all the way from her side of the house. But I couldn’t tell what it was about. I thought about sneaking over and eavesdropping but I didn’t. I was scared to go out of my room. Everybody was going crazy. And then a little while after that, I decided I had to get out of that house. Forever. No matter what. Even if you can’t find the gold.”

“Why?”

“Because one of the servants told me that Karl had committed suicide. When I heard that, I knew I had to get away. Far away, where nobody could find me. Or I might be dead, too. Only I didn’t run fast enough, I guess. Because Courter caught up with me just before I got here. He even tried to come in and drag me back out when your man let me in.”

I considered Courter, then the Dead Man. He would be monitoring Slauce’s reactions as closely as he could.

The man is a villain for certain, Garrett, but he appears to have no guilty knowledge concerning the death of Karl Junior or his supposed kidnapping. Much of what he has heard here has been news to him. He appears to be slow of wit and it could be that he is considered too stupid to be trusted.
I faced Amber. “You’re convinced your brother was incapable of taking his own life?”

“Yes. I told you that already.”

“All right. That gives me a new line of attack. Where, when, and how did it happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You mean you just —”

“Don’t you start yelling at me too!” She lifted a foot, snatched off a shoe, and brandished it.

Three seconds later we were shaking with laughter. I got hold of myself, gave Slauce a look, shifted it to the Dead Man.

He knows.

“Dean, take Miss daPena to the guest room and get her settled. While you’re at it, you might as well fix yourself up for a few more nights. We’re going to need you here.”

“Yes sir.” He sounded excited. At least he was in on this thing. “Miss? If you’ll come with me?”

She went reluctantly.

__XXVI__

“i think I have to revise my strategy,” I said. “I was going to let Slauce have the works so he could go home and get things stirred up.”

/
assumed as much. I believe it is time you approached Mr. Dotes on a purely business basis, instead of favor for favor. You need more eyes.

“Right. Things are stirred up enough without me stick­ing my hand in. Can you make him forget what he’s seen and heard here?”

I think so.

“Then let’s see what he has to tell about Junior check­ing out.”

The Dead Man released his hold on Slauce. Friend Courter was vulnerable. When I asked, he an­swered, and didn’t start toughening up for several min­utes. He gave me an address and an approximate time of death only two hours after Karl had fled his home.

“How did he do it?” I asked, for Courter’s sake going with the suicide fiction.

“He slashed his wrists.”

That was the clincher. “Aw, come on! And you be­lieved that? You knew the kid. If you’d said he’d hanged himself, I might have thought it was just barely possible. But even I knew him well enough to know he couldn’t cut on himself. He was probably the kind of guy who couldn’t shave because he was afraid he might see a speck of blood.”

Do not press, Garrett. You will get him to thinking. For him that might prove to be a dangerous new experience.
He just wanted his own job made easier.
You go see Mr. Dotes now. By the time you return, Mr. Slauce will have forgotten this episode entirely. He will be a bit intoxicated. Take that into consideration when you are planning how you will remove him from the premises. And you might as well consider doing the other one while you are at it.
Right. Grumble. I left him to his fun. Morley rented me five thugs. His discount to the trade left their price only semi-usurious. I assigned one man to keep an eye on my place just in case something happened that the Dead Man couldn’t handle alone. The world is filled with unpredictable people.

One man got the job of keeping track of Courter Slauce. The remaining three got the unenviable task of trying to keep tabs on the denizens of the Stormwarden’s house. I told them they should report to Morley. Dotes would have a better chance of tracking me down if there was something 1 needed to know. Five men weren’t enough to do the job the way it ought to be done, but this one was out of my own pocket. The only client I had was one who had retained me on a contingency basis, and while I was willing to grab off a chunk of that ransom, I had a pessimistic view of my chances. I made a mental note to quiz Amber about what she had learned regarding Domina Dount’s handling and de­livery of all that gold.

Disposing of Bruno and Slauce was an easy half hour’s work with a borrowed buggy. An unconscious Bruno got dumped into an alley where he’d soon waken hungry enough to go into the cannibal business. Courter wasn’t all the way out. He was just roaring drunk. I don’t know how the Dead Man managed that. He never said. I just walked Slauce into a tavern, sat him down with a pitcher, then look the buggy back where it belonged. Then it was time to go see what could be seen at the scene of Junior’s suicide.

__XXVII__

The wooden tenements, three and four stories tall, leaned against one another like wounded soldiers after the battle. But the war never ended down here. Time was the enemy never to be conquered and there were no reserves to help stay the tide. It was night and the only light in the street fell from doors and windows open in hopes the day’s heat would sneak away. That was a hope only slightly less vain than the hope that poverty would take to its heels. The street was full of serious-faced, gaunt children and the tene­ments were filled with quarreling adults. The corners, though, lacked their prides of narrow-eyed young men looking for a chance under the guise of cool indifference. No dares issued or taken. They were all in the Cantard, burning youth’s energy in futility and fear, soldiering. The war had that one positive spin off. When you wanted to talk about your crime, you had to go find senior citizens who remembered the good old days before the war.

I still had to watch my step — for reasons evoking no romance at all. There were as many dogs in the street as kids. And at any moment the sky might open and spit out a cloudburst of refuse. There were sanitary laws, but who paid attention? There was no one to enforce them. The place I sought was one more crippled soldier in the host, three stories that had seen their youth spent before the turn of the century. I planted myself across the way and considered it. Assumption: Junior had run to his friend Donni Pell when he felt the heat. Assump­tion: Donni Pell had been in on and had helped stage Junior’s kidnapping. The nature of the place where young Karl had died i mplied that there was something wrong with one or both assumptions. Having collected possibly the biggest ran­som ever paid in TunFaire, why would she hole up in such a dump?

If he hadn’t run to Donni, then who? No other name had come up. Junior didn’t have friends.

Not even one, apparently. Death had sniffed out his hiding place in under two hours. All the excitement was over, and had been for many hours. In that part of town even the most grotesque death was a wonder only until the blood dried. I began to be an object of interest myself, standing there doing nothing but look. I moved. There are no locks or bolts on the street doors of those places. Such would only inconvenience the comings and goings of the masses packed inside. I went in, stepped over a sleeping drunk sprawled on the battered floor. The treads of the stair creaked and groaned as I went up. There was no point in sneaking. Sneakery would have been useless anyway. Getting to the right room on the third floor took me past two others that had no doors. Families fell silent, stared as I passed. The death room had a door, but not one that would close tightly. It skidded against the floor as I pushed. It was the sort of place I had pictured — one room, eight-by-twelve, no furnishings, one window with a shut­ter but no glass. A bunch of blankets were thrown against a wall for a bed, and odds and ends were scattered around. One corner had walls and floor spattered with patches and brown spots. It had been messy. But those things always are. There is a lot of juice in the human fruit.

They must have fastened him down somehow. You don’t carve on someone without them putting up a fuss. I kicked around the place but found no ropes or straps or anything that might have bound him. I guess even ogre breeds have sense enough to pick up after themselves sometimes.

Or did they?

Mixed in with the tangle of bedding was a familiar item, from Karl’s description. It was a doeskin bag with a heavy, long drawstring. Just the thing to pop over a guy’s head and choke him unconscious. It was stained with dried vomit. I pictured some fastidi­ous thug hurling it aside in disgust. You might not need to tie a guy if you strangle him before you cut. He could bleed to death before he woke up.

“It’s a half-mark silver a week, as is. You want furnish­ings, you bring your own.”

I gave the woman in the doorway my innocent look. “What about the mess?”

“You want cleanup, that’s a mark right now. You want fix-up, take care of it yourself.”

“Come off the rent?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “You pay up front, every week. You show me you’re reliable, after a few months I might understand if you’re one or two days late. Three days and out you go. Got that?”

She was a charmer in every respect. Had she not possessed the winning personality of a lizard, a guy might have been tempted to have her hair and clothes washed. She couldn’t have been much past thirty, only the inside had gone completely to seed. But the rest wouldn’t be far behind.

“You’re staring like you think the place comes with entertainment.” She tried a cautious smile from which a few teeth were missing. “That costs you extra, too.”

I had a thought. An inspiration, perhaps. What do hookers do when they get too old or too slovenly to compete? Not all can become Lettie Farens. Maybe this was someone Donni had known before she had become a landlady.

“I’m not so much interested in the room as I am in the tenant.” I palmed a gold piece, let her see a flash. Her eyes popped. Then her face closed down, became all suspicious frowns framed by wild, filthy hair.

“The tenant?”

“The tenant. The person who lived in the room. Also the person who paid for it, if they weren’t the same.”

Still the suspicious eyes. “Who wants to know?”

I looked at the coin. “Dister Greteke.” Old Dister was a dead king, of which we in TunFaire are blessed with a lot. We could use a live one — if he’d do something worthwhile.

“A double?”

“Looks like one to me.”

“It was a kid named Donny Pell. I don’t know where he went. He paid his own rent.” She reached.

“You’re kidding. Donny Pell, eh? Did you meet him while you were still in the trade?” I put the coin on the windowsill, drifted away. She licked her lips, took one step. She wasn’t stupid. She saw the trap taking shape. But she couldn’t shake the greed, and maybe she thought she could bluff me. She took another step. In moments she was at the window and I was at the door. “You going to tell me?”

“What do you need to know?”