Petty Pewter Gods (15 page)

Not at all. And since you have been given the opportunity to save them, any disaster is sure to come to roost here swiftly, whether or not they are able to discern your presence.

“They want a key, Chuckles. And I don’t have a clue where to look for one. Or what it would look like if I tripped over it. Did Linda Lee help us out there?”

With her invaluable aid 
—
and I cannot overemphasize just how much the child impressed me 
—
I reviewed the available literature both on these pantheons and on those mechanisms used to determine presence, place, and status in the Dream Quarter.

“Wonderful. Does all that wind mean you figured something out?”

Restrain yourself. You are not safe here, nor is time ours to squander.

I rolled my eyes and beat back the urge to head upstairs right now. I was more than ready to get intimate with my bed. “I’m not the one blowing like the wind.”

Based upon available information, supplemented by reason, I have concluded 
—
albeit with a reluctance approaching despair 
—
that you yourself are the anointed key. Additionally, it seems improbable that the interested parties have yet entertained that possibility.

“Say what?” I squeaked.

You are it, Garrett. They do not know yet. That has been your grand piece of luck to this point.

“No shit.” If he was right. He couldn’t be right. I didn’t want him to be right.

They would break my legs so I couldn’t run, then clap me in irons and toss me into a cage and rivet it shut, then surround that with magical spells.

I have no doubts whatsoever.

“Shit,” I said again. I was going through one of those vocabulary droughts that set in after a really bad shock. “Shit. It’s me? I’m the key? How the hell does anybody fit me into a lock?”

You have to begin from the fact that where religion is concerned, as is the case with magic, much of what you deal with is metaphor and symbol. In this instance metaphor and symbol have taken life.

That kind of babble usually sets me off. This time I was too tired and achy to squabble.

Dean brought a tray. I stared at a gigantic lamb chop, vegetables, cherry cobbler fit for the king and a mug of beer big enough to suit one of the divine thugs making my life miserable.

“Is there some metaphorical way to kick symbols in the ass so they leave you alone?”

Doubtful. They are gods 
—
albeit as petty as they get. You are not. In all the histories of all the races of this world there have been only two methods proven efficacious in dealing with the gods. You must appease them or you must befuddle them.

“There you go stating the obvious again. Let’s back it up some. What makes me the key? How and when did I get hung with it?”

I cannot offer an informed answer. I have a theory, but it is too tenuous and unsettling at this point.

“Bullshit.” My buddy, my pal, who don’t like getting caught being wrong so won’t say anything till he is certain he is going to be right. “I’m not buying any of this premature...”

Though time is indeed precious, your best option now is to rest. It should be possible to maintain the illusion of your absence for a time. Sleep. And, henceforth, please do not resort to any of the options offered by the cord given you by that Magodor creature.

“I done figured that one out for myself, Smiley.”

I suppose you have, at that. Sleep, Garrett.

My bed felt like a little slice of heaven, with whipped cream on top.

29

It was a night too short. Some thief of time ripped off the four best hours. Cruel wakeup arrived with a crueler sunup. Somehow, my curtains stood open. Sunbeams flailed around like whips in the hands of morons. I faced away, tried to den up like a groundhog under the covers, but there was no escape. There is no enemy so relentless as the sun.

I know I shut my door before I collapsed into bed. It stood open now, perhaps betraying the first feather-stroke of Dean’s vengeance campaign. My struggle against a return to the realm of the waking suffered savage reverses at the beak of the Goddamn Parrot, who was perched atop the open door and deft enough of wing to evade a flying shoe traveling at high speed.

This was the last straw. He was gone.

I was not likely to fail to remember who was operating him, either. The very bone-lazy bonehead who had helped so little with my recent cases, the deadbeat who would not wake up if you set a fire under his chair.

To hell with him. I packed my blanket tight around my ears.

Stubbornness gained me nothing. I stayed in bed, all right, but didn’t get any more sleep. I just lay there wishing. While the Goddamn Parrot preached sermons.

“Bird, your life expectancy is minutes. You don’t shut up you’re going to be creamed chipped squab on toast.” Dean would put together a championship gourmet experiment.

The bird got the message. His inclination toward self-preservation overrode the Dead Man’s low, practical joke kind of humor. For the moment. That was one stupid bird.

All right. I could tuck that triumph in my pocket. So how come I couldn’t get back to sleep? How come some sadistically self-abusive part of me kept insisting it was time to get up and get at it?

“Get at what?” I muttered. I dropped my feet into the same abyss as yesterday. “There ain’t nothing, but nothing, out there that can’t get through the day without me.”

Good morning, Garrett. Please exercise emotional caution today. The house is being observed. I believe I have your presence adequately masked. To maintain the illusion I must have you remain placid. Please refrain from these unproductive outbursts.

“Then don’t provoke me,” I grumbled. I staggered around and fell into some clothes I found lying around, mostly what I had shucked in the middle of the night. They were not completely ripe. They would do.

I took my life in my hands, peeked out my window. “Damn!”

Garrett! Calmly, please.

“It’s
bright
out there.” Whatever happened to all those gloomy, overcast days we’d been having? The world seemed to be getting warmer.

Stay away from the window. Someone might see the curtain move and reason that you are here after all
 —
particularly since the movement came at your window.

It was going to be one of those days, was it? Nags punctuated by nagging? I reconsidered my bed. It had been so nice in there, so toasty warm. My dreams had been of a paradise where the motives of all the beautiful women were blatant and straightforward and the “me key, you lock” symbolism was direct and obvious. There were beer taps everywhere, and you would gain five pounds a day on the food if you ate it in the waking world.

By jingo June, as Granny used to say — I
did
hear her say that once — I ought to get my buddies together so we could cook us up our own religion. Most of them believed in booze and bimbos, and some enlightened religions already considered that sort of stuff important enough to rate its own underling gods and goddesses. Star was one example. Maybe we could get Star to jump the Godoroth ship by offering her a better contract.

A diffuse wave of disgust emanated from downstairs. “You don’t like the way I think, quit poking around inside my head.”

I was not seeking adolescent fantasization. I was trying to reexamine your experiences of yesterday.

“You were playing voyeur because you can’t think that stuff up for yourself. The best you can come up with is bug parades and goofball political theories.”

I cannot deny what is self-evident. I am a creature of intelligence and intellect, disinclined toward obsession with pleasures of the flesh.

“You can’t deny what is self-evident, which is that you couldn’t do anything about it if you wanted, so you just sit there making sour remarks about those of us who still have a little fire in our blood.”

While we amused ourselves, I negotiated the stairway, an epic adventure any morning early. I trudged into the kitchen and drew a mug of tea from the pot. Dean was at the stove. He offered me a look of exasperation, like I had ruined his whole day by not staying in bed so he could experience the enjoyment of rousting me out. I tapped every reservoir of contrariness within me, put on my brightest Charlie Sunshine face, chirped, “Good morning, Dean. Did you sleep well?”

He glowered a deep black glower, sure I was putting him on. “Breakfast will be a while yet.”

I poured myself a refill. “Take your time. Me and the big guy got schemes to scheme and cons to crack.” I was sure that, immortal players or not, there were charades going on in this temple squabble. Overall, the Shayir probably were more straight with me, and one sex of them sure was friendly, but I was sure we didn’t have the full map in front of us yet. “Dean?”

“Sir?”

“Did the wedding go well? Was the trip worth it?” I could not recall having asked before,

“It all went quite well. Your gift was received with considerable pleasure. Rebecca expressed amazement that you even remembered her, let alone thought so well of her.”

“There was a time when neither one of you let me forget for a minute. That gift was a sigh of relief.” Back then Dean’s whole mission in life, it seemed, was to get me married to one of his numerous nieces.

A hint of a smirk pranced around the corners of the old boy’s mouth. He said, “It was an interesting journey. We even fell afoul of highwaymen on the return leg, gentlemen so inept they didn’t know what to do when they found out that everyone aboard the coach was stone-broke. I enjoyed myself a great deal, but it’s good to be back home.”

“Yeah. No place like.” Especially for me. “Sounds like somebody pounding on the door.”

Garrett. Please step into your office and close the door.

“Huh?”

Our visitors are Mr. Tharpe, Miss Winger, and an associate of Mr. Dotes’ known as Agonistes. They will leave shortly. I should like them to depart convinced that you are not on these premises.

That sounded like a reasonable idea, but who would want to admit it to Himself?

Who was this Agonistes? I didn’t know anybody by that name in Morley’s crew.

“Agonistes” is what you people call a street name.

“Oh. Silly me. I really thought somebody’s mother would hang a tag like that on him.”

Dean passed me, headed for the front door, wiping floury hands on a dishrag. I ducked into my office, which is a large, messy closet across the hall from the Dead Man’s spacious suite. I swung the door most of the way shut. I left it cracked both so I could hear what was said in the hall and so I could peek at the Dead Man’s visitors. “Dean, remember to keep an eye on Winger. She’ll try to kype something.”

“I always do, sir. All of your friends.”

He started fumbling with locks and latches and chains, taking away any chance I would have had to speak on behalf of my friends.

The man’s birth name was Claude-Ned Blodgett.

I didn’t know that name, either, but I could see why he would take up just about anything else. Who was going to be scared of a gangster named Claude-Ned Blodgett? Was he going to pop you with a farm implement?

Agonistes, though, had a kind of self-selected sound to it. Names picked up on the street don’t usually come that dramatic. Pretty often, they really sound plain stupid. Our great wizard lords on the Hill pick their own business names, and they always choose something like Raver Styx.

Winger started barking before Dean got the door all the way open. I hoped the Dead Man just had her doing legwork. She could complicate things real bad if she got in far enough to get ideas for some scheme.

30

“Garrett here?” Winger demanded.

“I fear not, Miss.”

“I’d swear I heard his voice.”

“Holy hooters!” the Goddamn Parrot squawked. “Look at them gazoombies!” He managed a creditable wolf whistle. Winger is blessed. Nobody will ever doubt that she is female, despite her six-foot stature.

“If Garrett wasn’t my best friend I’d throttle that critter,” Winger said.

I wanted to jump out and tell her not to hold back on my account, go for it, turn the little vulture into mock chicken soup.

Though he knew I would do no such thing, the Dead Man did brush me with a cautionary touch. Up front, the Goddamn Parrot continued to flatter Winger. Saucerhead’s rumbling laugh filled the hallway. “I think he’s in love, Winger. I bet you Garrett would let you take him home.” He knew.

“Shee-it.”

“Think of the advertising. That bird around wherever you went.”

“Double shee-it.”

I leaned in an effort to look through the narrow crack by the door hinges. I wanted to see this Agonistes character. I didn’t get much of a look, though he waited for Winger and Saucerhead to go into the Dead Man’s room first. He didn’t look like a thug. He looked like a lawyer, which is a whole different species of villain. But, then, Morley is trying to polish his image these days.

I listened carefully. I couldn’t catch a sound from the Dead Man’s room. Dean went back to the kitchen, prepared a tray with tea and muffins. My mouth watered. I was hungry. I resisted temptation. Those three did have to leave the house convinced I was still on the run. Dean wouldn’t be able to go out at all now. We would have to survive on whatever we had on hand. Unless Dean had managed some marketing, that would not be much. I had eaten out while the old boy was gone.

On his way back to the Dead Man’s room, Dean stepped in and quietly handed me tea and several hot muffins. He winked, crossed the hall. Before the Dead Man’s door shut I heard Winger carping about me being so cheap I wouldn’t serve a decent breakfast.

Winger is one of those people you love because they have style. Anyone else who did the things she does would have no friends. Winger does it and you just sort of sigh and chuckle and shake your head and say, “That’s Winger.”

That kind of person always irritates me
 
—
along with guys who never get dirty or rumpled — but I fall under their spell as easily as anybody.