The Truth (8 page)

It was quite hard to hire Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin. You had to know the right people. To be more accurate, you had to know the
wrong
people, and you got to know them by hanging around a certain kind of bar and surviving, which was kind of a first test. The wrong people, of course, would not know Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin. But they would know a man. And that man would, in a general sense, express the guarded opinion that he may know how to get in touch with men of a Pin-like or Tulipolitic disposition. He could not exactly recall much more than that at the moment, due to memory loss brought on by lack of money. Once cured, he may indicate in a general kind of way another address where you would meet, in a dark corner, a man who would tell you emphatically that he had never heard of anyone called Tulip
or
Pin. He would also ask where you would be at, say, nine o’clock tonight.

And then you would meet Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin. They would know you had money, they would know you had something on your mind, and, if you had been really stupid, they now knew your address.

And it had therefore come as a surprise to the New Firm that their latest client had come straight to them. This was worrying. It was also worrying that he was dead. Generally the New Firm had no problem with corpses, but they didn’t like them to speak.

Mr. Slant coughed. Mr. Pin noticed that this created a small cloud of dust. For Mr. Slant was a zombie.

“I must reiterate,” said Mr. Slant, “that I am a mere facilitator in this matter—”

“Just like us,” said Mr. Tulip.

Mr. Slant indicated with a look that he would never in a thousand years be just like Mr. Tulip, but he
said:
“Quite so. My clients wished me to find some…experts. I found you. I gave you some sealed instructions. You have accepted the contract. And I understand that as a result of this you have made certain…arrangements. I do not know what those arrangements are. I will
continue
not to know what those arrangements are. My relationship with you is, as they say, on the long finger. Do you understand me?”

“What —ing finger is that?” said Mr. Tulip. He was getting jittery in the presence of the dead lawyer.

“We see each other only when necessary, we say as little as possible.”

“I hate —ing zombies,” said Mr. Tulip. That morning he’d tried something he’d found in a box under the sink. If it cleaned drains, he’d reasoned, that meant it was
chemical.
Now he was getting strange messages from his large intestine.

“I am sure the feeling is mutual,” said Mr. Slant.

“I understand what you’re saying,” said Mr. Pin. “You’re saying that if this goes bad you’ve never seen us in your life—”

“Ahem…” Mr. Slant coughed.

“Your afterlife,” Mr. Pin corrected himself. “Okay. What about the money?”

“As requested, thirty thousand dollars for special expenses will be included in the sum already agreed.”

“In gems. Not cash.”

“Of course. And my clients would hardly write you a check. It will be delivered tonight. And perhaps I should mention one other matter.” His dry fingers shuffled through the dry papers in his dry briefcase, and he handed Mr. Pin a folder.

Mr. Pin read it. He turned a few pages quickly.

“You may show it to your monkey,” said Mr. Slant.

Mr. Pin managed to grab Mr. Tulip’s arm before it reached the zombie’s head. Mr. Slant did not even flinch.

“He’s got the story of our lives, Mr. Tulip!”

“So? I can still rip his —ing stitched-on head right off!”

“No, you cannot,” said Mr. Slant. “Your colleague will tell you why.”

“Because our legal friend here will have made a lot of copies, won’t you, Mr. Slant? And probably lodged them in all kinds of places in case he di—in case—”

“…of accidents,” said Mr. Slant smoothly. “Well done. You have had an interesting career so far, gentlemen. You are quite young. Your talents have taken you a long way in a short time and given you quite a reputation in your chosen profession. While of course I have no idea about the task you are undertaking—no idea whatsoever, I must stress—I have no doubt that you will impress us all.”

“Does he know about the contract in Quirm?” said Mr. Tulip.

“Yes,” said Mr. Pin.

“That stuff with the wire netting and the crabs and that —ing banker?”

“Yes.”

“And the thing with the puppies and that kid?”

“He does now,” said Mr. Pin. “He knows nearly everything. Very clever. You believe you know where the bodies are buried, Mr. Slant.”

“I’ve talked to one or two of them,” said Mr. Slant. “But it would appear that you have never committed a crime within Ankh-Morpork, otherwise,
of course,
I could not talk to
you
.”

“Who says we’ve never committed a —ing crime in Ankh-Morpork?” Mr. Tulip demanded.

“As I understand it, you have never been to this city before.”

“Well? We’ve had all —ing day.”

“Have you been caught?” said Mr. Slant.

“No!”

“Then you have committed no crime. May I express the hope that your business here does not involve any kind of criminal activity?”

“Perish the thought,” said Mr. Pin.

“The City Watch here are quite dogged in some respects. And the various Guilds jealously guard their professional territories.”

“We hold the police in high regard,” said Mr. Pin. “We have a great respect for the work they do.”

“We —ing
love
policemen,” said Mr. Tulip.

“If there was a policeman’s ball, we would be among the first to buy a ticket,” said Mr. Pin.

“’Specially if it was mounted on a plinth, or a little display stand of some sort,” said Mr. Tulip, “’cos we like beautiful things.”

“I just wanted to be sure that we understood one another,” said Mr. Slant, snapping his case closed. He stood up, nodding to them, and walked stiffly out of the room.

“What a—” Mr. Tulip began, but Mr. Pin raised a finger to his lips. He crossed silently to the door and opened it. The lawyer had gone.

“He
knows
what we’re —ing here for,” Mr. Tulip whispered hotly. “What’s he —ing pretending for?”

“Because he’s a lawyer,” said Mr. Tulip. “Nice place, this,” he added, in a slightly overloud voice.

Mr. Tulip looked around.

“Nah,” he said dismissively. “I fort that at the start, but it’s just a late eighteenth-century copy of the —ing Baroque Style. They got dimensions all wrong. Didja see them pillars in the hall? Didja? —ing sixth-century Ephebian with Second Empire Djelibeybian —ing finials! It was all I could do not to laugh.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pin. “As I have remarked before, Mr. Tulip, in many ways you are a very unexpected man.”

Mr. Tulip walked over to a shrouded picture and tweaked the cloth aside. “Well, —me, it’s a —ing de Quirm,” he said. “I seen a print of it.
Woman Holding Ferret.
He did it just after he moved from Genua and was influenced by —ing Caravati. Look at that —ing brushwork, will ya? See the way the line of the hand draws the —ing eye into the picture? Look at the quality of the light on the landscape you can see through the —ing window there. See the way the ferret’s nose follows you around the room? That’s —ing genius, that is. I don’t mind telling you that if I was here by myself I’d be in —ing
tears
.”

“It’s very pretty.”

“Pretty?”
said Mr. Tulip, despairing of his colleague’s taste. He walked over to a statue by the door and stared hard at it, then ran his fingers lightly across the marble.

“I
fort
so! This is a —ing Scolpini! I’d bet anything. But I’ve never seen it in a catalogue. And it’s been left in an empty house, where anyone could just —ing walk in and nick it!”

“This place is under powerful protection. You saw the seals on the door.”

“Guilds? Bunch of —ing
amateurs
. We could go through this place like a hot knife through —ing thin ice, and you know it. Amateurs and rocks and lawn ornaments and dead men walking about…we could knock this —ing place
over
.”

Mr. Pin said nothing. A similar idea had occurred to him, but in him, unlike his colleague, deed did not automatically follow upon what passed for thought.

The Firm had, indeed, not operated in Ankh-Morpork before. Mr. Pin had kept away because, well, there were plenty of other cities, and an instinct for survival had told him that the Big Wahooni
*
should wait a while. He’d had a Plan, ever since he’d met Mr. Tulip and found that his own inventiveness combined with Tulip’s incessant anger promised a successful career. He’d developed their business in Genua, Pseudopolis, Quirm—cities smaller and easier to navigate than Ankh-Morpork, although, these days, it seemed they increasingly resembled it.

The reason that they had done well, he’d realized, was that sooner or later people went soft. Take the trollish Breccia, f’rinstance. Once the Honk and Slab route had been established all the way to Uberwald, and the rival clans had been eliminated, the trolls had got soft. The
tons
acted like society lords. It was the same everywhere—the big old gangs and families reached some kind of equilibrium with society and settled down to be a specialist kind of businessman. They cut down on henchmen and employed butlers instead. And then, where there was a bit of difficulty, they needed muscle that could think…and there was the New Firm, ready and willing.

And waiting.

One day there’d be time for a new generation, Mr. Pin thought. One with a new way of doing things, one without the shackles of tradition holding them back. Happening people. Mr. Tulip, for example, happened all the time.

“Hey, will you —ing look at this?” said the happening Tulip, who had uncovered another painting. “Signed by Gogli, but it’s a —ing fake. Look at the way the light falls here, wilya? And the leaves on this tree? If —ing Gogli painted that, it was with his —ing
foot
. Probably by some —ing pupil…”

While they had been marking time in the city, Mr. Pin had followed Mr. Tulip, trailing scouring powder and canine worming tablets, through one after another of the city’s art galleries. The man had insisted. It had been an education, mostly for the curators.

Mr. Tulip had the
instinct
for art which he did not have for chemistry. Sneezing icing sugar and dribbling foot powder, he was ushered into private galleries, where he ran his bloodshot eye over nervously proffered trays of ivory miniatures.

Mr. Pin had watched in silent admiration while his colleague spoke colorfully and at length on the differences between ivory faked the old way, with bones, and the —ing new way the —ing dwarfs have come up with, using —ing refined oil, chalk and —ing Spirits of Nacle.

He’d lurched over to the tapestries, declaimed at length about high and low weaving, burst into tears in front of a verdant scene, and then demonstrated that the gallery’s prized thirteenth-century Sto Lat tapestry couldn’t be more than a hundred years old because, “see that —ing bit of purple there? No way was that —ing dye around then. And…what’s this? An Agatean embalming pot from the P’gi Su Dynasty? Someone took you to the —ing
cleaners,
mister. The glaze is
rubbish.”

It was astounding, and Mr. Pin had been so enthralled that he had all but forgotten to slip a few small valuable items into his pocket. But in truth he was familiar with Tulip on art. When they had occasionally to torch a premises, Mr. Tulip always made sure that any truly irreplaceable pieces were removed first, even though that meant taking extra time to tie the inhabitants to their beds. Somewhere under that self-inflicted scar tissue and at the heart of that shuddering anger was the soul of a true connoisseur with an unerring instinct for beauty. It was a strange thing to find in the body of a man who would mainline bath salts.

The big doors at the other end of the room swung open, revealing the dark space beyond.

“Mr. Tulip?” said Mr. Pin.

Tulip drew himself away from a painstaking examination of a possible Tapasi table, with its magnificent inlay work involving dozens of —ing rare veneers.

“Huh?”

“Time to meet the bosses again,” said Mr. Pin.

William was just getting ready to leave his office for good when someone knocked at his door.

He opened it cautiously, but it was pushed the rest of the way.

“You utter, utter—ungrateful person!”

It wasn’t a nice thing to be called, especially by a young lady. She could use a simple word like “ungrateful” in a way that would require a dash and an “ing” in the mouth of Mr. Tulip.

William had seen Sacharissa Cripslock before, generally helping her grandfather in his tiny workshop. He’d never paid her much attention. She wasn’t particularly attractive, but she wasn’t particularly bad-looking, either. She was just a girl in an apron, doing slightly dainty things in the background, such as light dusting and arranging flowers. Insofar as he’d formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.

Now he could see her a lot plainer, mostly because she was advancing towards him across the room, and in the light-headed way of people who think they’re just about to die he realized that she was quite good-looking if considered
over several centuries
. Concepts of beauty change over the years, and two hundred years ago Sacharissa’s eyes would have made the great painter Caravati bite his brush in half; three hundred years ago the sculptor Mauvaise would have taken one look at her chin and dropped his chisel on his foot; a thousand years ago the Ephebian poets would have agreed that her nose alone was capable of launching at least forty ships. And she had good medieval ears.

Her hand was quite modern, though, and it caught William a stinging blow on the cheek.