Old Tin Sorrows (8 page)

“I need ten. I don’t know what you’re up to, boy, sucking up to me, but you better believe I’ll use you. Get over to the oven and see how them rolls are coming.”

I did. “Maybe a minute more.”

“What you know about baking?”

I explained the arrangement at my house, where old Dean handles the drudgery and cooking. He’s a good cook. He taught me. I can put together a decent meal when I want. Like when I give him time off because I want him out while I entertain.

“Don’t know if you’re lying or not. Probably are. I never seen a man yet who could cook.”

I didn’t tell her Dean thought the only good cooks were men. “I should get you together. To watch the sparks fly.”

“Huh. Time’s up. Get them rolls out. Drag that pot of butter over.”

I glanced at the butter. “Fresh?”

“Snake just brung it in.”

“He going to join us?”

She laughed. “Not Snake. He don’t have nothing to do with nobody. Just grabbed him some food and lit out. Not sociable, Snake.”

“What’s his problem?”

“Head got scrambled in the Cantard. He was down there twenty years, never got a scratch. On the outside.” She shook her head, started piling sausages and bacon on a platter. “Sad. I knew him when he was a pup. Cute kid, he was. Too delicate and sensitive for a Marine. But he thought he had to try. So here he is, an old man with his head in knots. Used to draw the prettiest pictures, that boy. Coulda been a great painter. Had him a magic eye. Could see right inside things and drawed what he seed. Any damn fool can draw the outside of things, the way they want we should see them. Takes a genius to see the truth. That boy saw. You going to stand there jawing till lunchtime? Or you going to eat?”

I fixed myself a plate without mentioning the fact that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise because I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. She rolled right along. “I told the General then—he was just commissioned—it was a raging shame to waste the boy down there. And I told him again when he come back. And the General, he told me, ‘You were right, Cook. It was a sin against humanity, taking him.’ But, you know, he couldn’t have stopped the boy if he’d wanted. Had that damnfool stubborn streak and thought it was his duty to go with the lord to war.”

The rush came while she chattered. There were two new faces, presumably Tyler and Wayne. They looked like they hadn’t slept. The whole crowd took their platters to the dining room.

I asked Cook, “That Tyler and Wayne?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Lucky stab. Anybody else I haven’t met?”

“Who else could there be?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday you said there were eighteen people here. I’ve seen ten, plus this Snake that’s shy and a blonde that only I can see. Comes up short of eighteen.”

“Ain’t eighteen.”

“You said eighteen.”

“Boy, I’m four hundred years old. ’Less I concentrate, I don’t remember where I am in time. I just cook and set table and wash and don’t pay no attention to nothing else. Just sort of drift. Don’t see nothing, don’t say nothing. Last time I looked up they was eighteen, counting me. Must’ve been a while. Hell. Maybe that’s why there’s so many leftovers. Been cooking too much.”

“I didn’t notice too many places set at the table.”

She paused. “You’re right. Part of me must keep track.”

“Been with the Stantnors a long time?”

“Came to them with my momma when I was a kit. Long time back, when the humans hereabouts still had emperors. ’Fore they ever moved out here and built the first house. This one’s only maybe two hundred. Was a sight when she was new, she was.”

“You must’ve seen some sights in your time.”

“Seen some,” she agreed. “Served every king and stormwarden and firelord right there in that dining room.” She headed that way. That ended our conversation.

I stuck my head in. Nobody showed any special disappointment. Nobody turned handsprings, either. They were a depressing bunch.

These guys had spent their whole lives together. You’d think they could make conversation—unless they’d said everything there was to say. I feel that way with some people, sometimes before anything gets said at all.

Tyler and Wayne were cut from Marine lifer cloth. Whatever the physical differences between men, they gain a certain uniformity in service. Tyler was a lean, narrow-faced character with hard brown eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, and a thin, speckled beard trimmed within a half-inch of his skin. Wayne was my size, maybe twenty pounds heavier, not fat. He looked like he could throw cows around if the passion took him. He was six inches taller than Tyler and blond, with icy blue eyes, yet you felt the sameness in them. You even felt the identity with Chain, who had gone to seed.

I’d spent five years in the company of men like them. Any one of them would be capable of murder if he took a mind. Human life wasn’t anything special to them. They’d seen too much death.

Which did present one puzzle.

Marines are straightforward kinds of guys. If one wanted the General dead, chances were he’d just do it. Unless there was some overpowering motive to make it a lingering death.

Like, say, hanging onto a share of the old man’s estate?

Worrying about it was pointless. You can’t force these things. They have to unfold.

I helped Cook clear away, then put on my traveling shoes.

11

I hadn’t been to Morley’s place in months. It wasn’t that we’d had a falling out or anything; I just hadn’t had a need, nor any urge to graze on the cattle food that comes out of his kitchen. I arrived about nine. He’s closed to business then. He’s open from eleven to six in the morning, catering to every sentient species there is, all so warped they try to subsist on vegetables.

It takes all kinds. Some of my best friends eat there. I’ve done so myself. Without enthusiasm.

So. Nine o’clock. The place was locked up. I went to the backdoor and gave the secret knock, which means I hammered and howled till Morley’s man Wedge brought a four-foot piece of lead pipe and offered to move my face to my belly button region.

“This’s business, Wedge.”

“I didn’t figure you was in heat for some bean curd. You don’t come around unless you want something.”

“I pay for what I get.”

He snorted. He didn’t think it was right, me using Morley just because Morley had taken advantage of me, at deadly risk and without my consent, to get out of some heavy gambling debts.

“Cash money, Wedge. And he don’t have to get off his butt. He just needs to have somebody do some legwork.”

That didn’t cheer him up. He’s one of the guys who does Morley’s legwork. But he didn’t slam the door.

“Come.” He eased me in and barred the door, led me through kitchens where cooks were butchering cabbages and broccoli, parked me at the serving bar, drew me a mug of apple juice, “Wait.” He went upstairs.

The public room was naked and forlorn, almost painfully quiet. The way it ought to be all the time, instead of overcrowded.

Morley Dotes is a headhunter. A kneebreaker and a lifetaker. Most of the guys who work for him help. Morley is a deadly symbiote feeding on society’s dark underside. He’s the best at what he does, barring maybe a couple of guys who work for Chodo Contague.

Adding up the account, Morley Dotes is everything I don’t like. He’s the kind of guy I wanted to take down when I decided to put on my good-guy hat. But I like him.

Sometimes you can’t help yourself.

Wedge came down shaking his head. “What’s up?” I asked.

“He’s taking this health stuff too far.”

“You’re telling me? He’s like a born again, trying to save everybody else.” The world’s only vegetarian lifetaker. Wants to save the world from the perils of red meat—before he cuts its throat. I don’t know. Maybe there’s no conflict but it sounds like one to me. “He’s added to the list?”

“Been a few months, right?”

“Last time I was here he’d sworn off gambling and was making it stick. He tried women but couldn’t hold out.”

“He forgot that crock. Say that for him. The thing now is early to bed, early to rise. He’s up. Now. Up and dressed and fed and doing his morning workout. A year ago you wouldn’t have caught him dead out of bed this time of day.”

You could have if there was enough money in it. “Wonders never cease, do they?”

“He said come up. You want a refill?”

“Why not? Fruit juice is the only thing here I can handle.”

He winked. He wasn’t one of Morley’s converts. He topped off my mug. I took it up to Morley’s office, which is the barbican to his personal quarters. I’m about as close to a friend as he has, but I’ve never been past the office. My hair is too short and I don’t wear enough makeup.

Dotes was doing sit-ups, chunking them out like a machine. My stomach hurt just watching.

“You’re in pretty good shape for a guy your age,” I told him. I wasn’t sure what that was. It could be substantial. He’s part dark-elf. Elves can last a long time.

“I take it you’re working again.” He said it while popping up and down. Like there was no strain to what he was doing.

I told myself I had to start doing a few exercises. At my age, when you lose it, it’s hard to get back. “Why do you assume—”

“You don’t come down here unless you want something.”

“Not true. I used to bring Maya in all the time.” That was before she and I had gone our own ways.

“You lost a gem there, Garrett.” He rolled over, started doing push-ups.

His dark-elf blood doesn’t scream out. He looks like a short, slim, dark-haired man in good shape. He’s quick on his feet. There’s an air of the dangerous about him, but not one of menace. Maybe that’s why women find him irresistible.

“Maybe. I do miss her, some. She was a good kid.”

“Pretty, too. So you going on with Tinnie?”

My friend Tinnie Tate, professional high-tempered redhead. Ours is an unpredictable relationship. “I see her. When she doesn’t think I deserve to be punished by not seeing her.”

“Only smart thing you’ve done since I’ve known you is not tell her about Maya.” He completed fifty fast ones, jumped up. He wasn’t sweating. I felt like kicking his behind. “What’s up?”

“You heard of General Stantnor?”

“Used to be Marine Commandant?”

“The same.”

“What about him?”

“A guy who works for him, my old company sergeant, called in a debt. He got me to do a job for the old boy.”

“Don’t you ever work just to be working? I never saw anyone like you.”

“I know. I’m a dog. You never see a dog do anything when he’s not hungry. If I’m not hungry, why work?”

“What about the General? I do work when I’m not hungry. And I’ve got plenty of that here.”

“The old boy is trying to die. My old sergeant thinks somebody is trying to kill him. Slowly, so it looks like a wasting disease.”

“Is somebody?”

“I don’t know. He’s been doing it a long time. You know a way to do that?”

“What’s his color like?”

“His color?”

“Sure. There are poisons you could use in cumulative dosages. The color is the giveaway.”

“He’s kind of a sickly yellow. His hair is falling out in clumps. And his skin has a translucent quality.”

Morley frowned. “Not blue or gray?”

“Yellow. Like pale butterscotch.”

He shook his head. “Can’t tell you based on that.”

“He has seizures, too.”

“Crazies?”

“Like heart tremors, or something.”

“Doesn’t sound familiar. Maybe if I saw him.”

“I’d like that. I don’t know if I can arrange it. They’re all paranoid about strangers.” I gave him a rundown on the players.

“Sounds like a bughouse.”

“Could be. All of them, except Jennifer and Cook, spent at least thirty years in the Marines, mostly in the Cantard.”

He grinned. “I’m not going to say it.”

“Good for you. We all make the world a little holier when we resist temptation. One more thing. The old man thinks he hired me to find out who’s stealing the silver and his old war trophies.” I produced the list. Morley started reading. “I’ll pay legwork fees for somebody to make the rounds and see if any of that is moving through the usual channels.”

“Saucerhead needs work.” Saucerhead Tharpe is a friend, of sorts, in a line somewhere between Morley’s and mine. He has more scruples than Dotes and more ambition than me, but he’s as big as a house and looks half as smart. People can’t take him serious. He never gets the best jobs.

“All right. I’ll pay his standard rate. Bonus if he recovers any of the articles. Bonus if he gets a description of the thief.”

“On the cuff?” That was a hint.

I gave him advance money. He said, “I thank you and Saucerhead thanks you. I know you’re doing an old buddy a favor but it seems damned tame. Especially if the old guy is just dying.”

“There’s something going on. Somebody tried to off me.” I told him.

He laughed. “I wish I could have seen the guy’s face when he swung that ax and you bonged like a bell. You’ve still got the luck.”

“Maybe.”

“Why are they after you?”

“I don’t know. Money? That’s the one angle that makes this interesting. The old boy is worth about five million marks. His son is dead. His wife died twenty years ago. His daughter Jennifer gets half the estate and the other half goes to his Marine cronies. Three years ago he had seventeen heirs. Since then two died supposedly natural deaths, one got killed by a mad bull, and four disappeared. A little basic math shows that nearly doubles the take for the survivors.”

Morley sat down behind his desk, put his feet up, cleaned his pearly white teeth with a six-inch steel toothpick. I didn’t interrupt his thoughts.

“There’s potential for foul play in that setup, Garrett.”

“Human nature being what it is.”

“If I was a betting man I’d give odds that somebody is fattening his share.”

“Human nature being what it is.”

“Nobody walks out on that kind of money. Not you, not me, not a saint. So maybe you have something interesting after all.”

“Maybe. Thing is, I don’t see any way to tie it up in a package. If I find out who’s stealing—which makes no sense considering the payoff down the road—I’m not likely to find out who’s killing the old man. That doesn’t make sense for whoever is cutting down the number of heirs. He’d want the old man to hang on.”