Whispering Nickel Idols (13 page)

“Uhm?” My vocabulary word of the day.

“You know how many people are watching your place?”

“I have a notion. What I’m not sure of is why. I thought they’d go away after they swept up the last bunch of vandals who tried to wreck my door.”

“I have no idea what you’re babbling about. From a business point of view it would make sense to look over your shoulder twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week.”

“Uhm?” There I went again.

“Shit happens around you, Garrett. Weird shit..
Really
weird shit. You draw it like horse apples draw flies.”

“And here you are, buzzing around my hall.” A gurgling peal of pixie laughter reminded me. “We’re having a party in the kitchen. Come on back.”

Belinda scowled.

She’d lost something. Emotionally, she was back where she’d been when I’d met her. Scared, beautiful, crazy, in a shitload of trouble. She wasn’t as scattered as she’d been back then, but she wasn’t the ferocious Contague crime queen anymore, either.

I said, “Come on. You need to relax.”

Not the best strategy, possibly. Belinda wasn’t beloved by anyone in my kitchen — though Dean probably thinks her worst flaw is her willingness to be seen with me.

Singe gave me bitter looks Belinda didn’t recognize because she doesn’t know ratpeople. Melondie Kadare didn’t contribute. She was on her way to becoming extinct. The kittens
were
pleased to see Belinda. Fifteen or twenty of them piled on as soon as she sat down.

I scooped Melondie off the tabletop. “I’ll take Mel home. Before one of these critters forgets his manners.” The pixie buzzed feebly. I got a grip so she wouldn’t flutter off and smash her head against a wall or ceiling she couldn’t see.

I checked the peephole, saw nothing but bats zipping through the moonlight. I opened up, whistled softly. There would be a sentry. He might need waking up, though. Pixies greatly prefer the daytime.

They found Melondie’s husband. He and her family took over. She was snoring like a six-inch-long, horizontal lumberjack. They bound her wings so she wouldn’t do anything lethal in her sleep.

I went back inside.

Belinda was at the door to my office. She had a pitcher of beer, a pot of tea, a small oil lamp, and appropriate auxiliaries on a tray.

“What’s up?”

“I didn’t feel welcome in there. And I don’t want them listening.”

“Let me get the lamp going. Damn!” I missed stomping a kitten by a cat’s whisker. I dumped another cat out of the client’s chair. It bounced onto my desktop, where it puffed up and hissed at the stone that had come another whisker short of braining me.

Belinda filled me a mug and poured herself a cup of tea, added cream and a hunk of sugar the size of a flagstone. She stroked the kitten that laid claim to her lap.

I asked, “So what’s up?”

She stalled. She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk after all. She forced it. “Do you know where my father is?”

What? “No. Last I saw him, you were getting him out of the hall.”

“Oh.”

“Why? What happened? Did you mislay him?”

“Sort of. I got him out, got him into the coach, started to look for you. The coach took off and hasn’t been seen since.”

“Wow.” I found myself playing with the stone egg — in preference to the unhappy cat in my lap. In a leap of intuition I understood why folks were interested in Temisk. “Any chance one of the district captains grabbed him?”

“No. I’d feel my arm being twisted already. Instead, they’re running in circles trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“Maybe he decided to make a run for it.”

“What?”

“Maybe he’d had enough and made a run for it.”

“He was in a coma, Garrett.”

“You think? You’re sure? One hundred percent? He wasn’t just paralyzed?”

“You know better than that.”

“No, I don’t,” I lied. “You never let anybody get close enough to tell.” She didn’t bother to argue.

I recalled Morley’s hypothesis that some guy named Garrett was the moral anchor and emotional touchstone of the spider woman. I didn’t want the job. Everybody knows what girl spiders do when boys get too close.

Maybe it was one of those deals where, you save a life, it’s your responsibility forever after. You put the knightly armor on, and sometimes they don’t let you take it off.

“What’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking you’re a dangerous woman to be around. And I’m around you a lot.”

“Tinnie knows you pretty well, then.”

“Unfortunately. But my personal life isn’t what I meant.”

“You’re afraid of me?”

“There’s that. You’ve got a temper. But the real problem is, you swim with sharks. I expect jaws to clamp on me any minute.”

“With all your guardian angels?”

“Angels? Name two.”

“Morley Dotes. Deal Relway. Westman Block. Playmate. Saucerhead Tharpe. Not to mention your business partners. Max Weider is no angel. Neither is Lester Tate. And then there’s me.”

Made me feel humble. For maybe ten seconds. Then my natural cynicism got its second wind. Someday

I should fake my own death and see how things shake out.

“So you lost track of your dad. Let’s slink on down to the bottom line. How come you’re in a state where you sneak off? … You aren’t just looking to hide out, are you?”

“No. I walk back out of here in the morning and be who I’ve been since the first time we met.”

“In the morning?”

“I don’t have anywhere to go tonight.”

I began to fiddle with that slingshot stone a whole lot more seriously. “It isn’t like you don’t have other friends stay over.”

“You want to know the truth?”

“Maybe not, the way you’re looking at me.”

“None of those friends are as scary as you.”

Belinda went on petting that kitten, scowling because she’d heard something she didn’t like. She stared at my hands. “What the hell is that thing? What’re you doing?”

I explained. “I left it here before I went to the party. I don’t know. It relaxes me when I handle it.” Belinda extended a hand. I let her have the stone. “You’re right.”

Dean stuck his head in. “You need anything before I go to bed?” He was lugging a brat cat of his own. “I can’t think of anything.”

He scowled at Belinda but couldn’t get his heart into it. He sighed and went away.

Singe didn’t bother to check us out. Which meant she was sulking but didn’t have ambition enough to make anybody miserable.

Belinda poured herself a beer once she finished her tea. We played with kittens and let our hair down, talked like teenagers deep into the night, giggling at stupid jokes. I found out that she’d never had any girlfriends when she was younger. Never had the chance. Her role models were all the sort polite folk don’t invite to holiday dinners.

We drank a lot of beer.

25

Singe wakened me at some godsforsaken hour, chivied in by Dean, who couldn’t face direct evidence confirming or disclaiming the prurient imaginings slithering round the interior of his hard black skull. The fact that his imaginings were exactly that, and only that, meant nothing.

By the time we’d retired neither Belinda nor I was sober enough for anything more energetic than sleep. Singe’s attitude was sour enough.

“What?” I snarled. The morning light at play on my curtains shrieked that it wasn’t anywhere near noon. In fact, it had to be closer to dawn, a time when only mad dogs and madmen got after the early worm.

“A messenger brought a letter from Colonel Block.”

A kitten crabbed out of the covers, stretched, hopped down, and stalked proudly out of the room. Belinda made “Leave me alone!” growls and burrowed deeper into the covers. “Do I need to sign or something?”

“No. It was just a letter.”

Then why was she waking me up now? “Then why are you waking me up now?”

“I thought you’d want to know.”

“Sure, you did.”

Feelings bruised, Singe left. I didn’t care. There is no courtesy and no compassion before noon. I didn’t care, but I couldn’t get back to sleep.

When Belinda started snarling about the tossing and turning and threatened me with an amateur sex reassignment, I surrendered to my conscience and dragged on out.

I sipped black tea thick with honey. No help. I kept seeing two of everything. If I hadn’t spent five unforgettable years as a Royal Marine, I might’ve suspected double vision to be nature’s revenge on fools who believe rational behavior includes hauling out at sunrise in less than apocalyptic circumstances.

Singe bustled around, doing chores, so Dean could do even less real work to earn his board and bread. She was fanatically perky and cheerful. And her coconspirator had put the butcher knives out of reach.

“You are awful in the morning,” Singe declared. Exercising maximum restraint, I chirped, “Yep.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“I could say, ‘Eat mud and die!’ But you’d get your feelings hurt. I have more consideration for you than that. So how about we get together with this critical communiqué?”

Dean and Singe installed me in my office with hot black tea, biscuits, and honey. I got started. More or less. Weighted heavily toward the less.

“What does the note say?” She’d tried to read the message but Colonel Block’s clerk had inscribed it in cursive. She can’t read that yet.

She’s a fast learner, though she’ll never teach Karentine literature. Which consists mainly of sagas and epics inhabited by thoroughly despicable people being praised by the poets for their bad behavior. Or passion plays, which are hot today, but which are moronic if you read them instead of watching them.

“It says the priest at the temple of Eis and Igory, in the Dream Quarter, is from Ymber. It says the Watch wouldn’t be disappointed in their old pal Garrett if his curiosity caused him to visit this Bittegurn Brittigarn, whose thoughts about guys in green pants might be of mutual interest.”

“Meaning they do not think the priest will talk to them and they have no convincing excuse to pull him in.”

“Basically.”

“Garrett, what would the world be like if everyone was as caring as Dean?”

“It would be knee-deep in hypocrisy, standing on its head.”

“Which still makes him better than most everyone else.”

“Glory be, girl. Don’t
you
go turning into a street preacher.”

“The more I become a person, the more I get upset by how people treat each other for being different.”

“I don’t want to get into a debate.”

“Too early in the morning?”

“No. Because I’d have to play devil’s advocate and argue that stranger means danger. Which nobody can say is wrong. We’ve all got those harsh moments somewhere in our lives.”

“Very good, Mr. Garrett,” Dean said from the office doorway. “Indeed, flawless.”

“We can’t afford it.”

“Sir?”

“Whatever you’re buttering me up for. Hey, I don’t want either one of you outside today.” I heard Belinda beginning to stir upstairs. Dean and Singe looked puzzled.

“The Dead Man.” I told them, “We’ve had several visitors the last couple days. The kind that pay attention. They’ve probably picked up on the fact that he isn’t doing much singing or dancing right now. Folks tend to get bold when they think he’s snoozing.”

Dean looked numb. This was his nightmare. He loathes the Dead Man. But we need the Loghyr’s protection. People carry grudges.

“It would help if you two took a real shot at waking him up while I’m out there, one lonely man, a flawe white knight holding the fragile barricade between honor and the chaotic abyss.”

Belinda appeared behind Dean. “Gorm, Garrett. You couldn’t be more full of shit if they pounded it in with a hammer.”

Dean headed for the kitchen. He came right back with everything Belinda needed to tame a hangover and get set herself for another glorious day of crime and corruption.

She announced, “Whatever Garrett claims, it’s a lie. He was snoring before I got my shoes off.” Dean was pleased. Though he’d heard it before, from me. But that was different. My version didn’t signify. He preferred not to believe me if that could be avoided.

I asked, “What am I supposed to do with you? Besides get you out of here before Tinnie hears rumors?”

She hadn’t considered that. But really didn’t care.

“Take care of it, Dean,” I said. “Try to avoid making a millennial-celebration kind of production moving her out.”

The old man gave me a look. It said I had the advantage of him, this once. And he didn’t like it. “I’ll handle it, Mr. Garrett.”

I might ought to put on my chain mail underpants.

26

I didn’t wander alone. A secret-police tail fell in behind me half a block from the house. He made no effort to be discreet.

Spider Webb was intimidated. But he didn’t give up. He just dropped back. He vanished later, when I wasn’t looking. So did several others whose fashion sense suggested a connection with the world of untaxed adult entertainment. But my main man just shuffled along with me, so close I had to listen to him hum.

He never stopped. But he had more trouble lugging a tune than my favorite antisinger, me. I never could tell what he was laying down.

The Dream Quarter gets its name because humanity’s spiritual imagination runs riot there. And because the war in the Cantard produced generations of veterans so cynical that belief in anything traditionally religious could only be a bad joke that nobody got. In the Cantard nobody prayed for help cleaving to the path of righteousness. It was all, “Dear Lord, won’t you please save my scruffy butt?”

Heavenly responses were random and erratic. Some of the sorriest clowns in the Cantard were guys who got what they asked for. Life with an ass but no arms or legs ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Dream Quarter is one long street that runs from the river’s edge deep into one of TunFaire’s wealthiest enclaves. Location on the street defines the status of the deities established there. In a complex dance that remains mysterious even after my several encounters, the gods and goddesses of the Dream Quarter move sedately up and down the street, from temple to temple, according to how many worshippers they claim. And, more significantly, according to how rich their congregations are.