The Manual Of Detection Part 5

Some of the places mentioned in Sivart's reports were as foreign lands to Unwin-he came upon their names often enough to be convinced of their existence, but it was preposterous to think he could reach them by bicycle. For him there were two cities. One consisted of the seven blocks between his apartment and the Agency office building. The other was larger, vaguer, and more dangerous, and it intruded upon his imagination only by way of case reports and the occasional uneasy dream. In a shadowy corner of that other city was a certain taproom, an unofficial gathering place frequented by the enterprising, the scheming, and the desperate. Sivart went there only when every supposition had proved false, when every lead had dead-ended. And because the place rarely had any direct bearing on a case, Unwin usually excised its name from the files.

"The Forty Winks," he said.

Moore nodded. "If you insist on tracking him down, Mr. Unwin, then I suggest you work quickly. I fear I've started the timer on an explosive, but I do not know when it will go off." He rose suddenly from the chaise longue. He was light on his feet and seemed a little giddy.

"What about the woman you mentioned?" Unwin asked. "The one you said showed you the tooth?"

Moore grimaced and said, "I took you at your word when you said you aren't trying to solve anything."

Unwin clenched his jaw. Without thinking, he had started asking questions he did not want to ask. After this, he thought, he would have to put down The Manual of Detection The Manual of Detection for good. for good.

"This way, then," Moore said. "There is a back door-that will be the safest route."

The exit was no taller than Unwin's waist. It was blocked by empty crates, so they worked together to move them aside. The door opened onto the park. Here the trees grew thickly about the back of the museum, and the path was matted with oak leaves, orange and red. Unwin crouched to go through and opened his umbrella on the other side.

Moore bent down to look at him.

"Tell me one thing," Unwin said. "Is it true, what you said? That you wrote The Manual of Detection The Manual of Detection?"

"Yes," said Moore. "So take it from me-it is a bunch of rubbish. They should have asked a detective to write it. Instead they asked me, and what did I know?"

"You weren't a detective?"

"I was a clerk," Moore said, and he closed the door before Unwin could ask him anything else.

HE RODE SOUTH THROUGH the city, his umbrella open in front of him. He ignored the blare of horns and the shouts of drivers as he wove through the midday traffic, keeping his head tucked low.

He pa.s.sed the narrow green door of his own apartment building, then the grime-blackened exterior of Central Terminal. There he caught sight of Neville, the boy from the breakfast cart, standing just out of the rain, smoking a cigarette.

At the next block, Unwin veered east to avoid the Agency offices. He did not want to risk seeing Detective Screed again, or even his own a.s.sistant, not yet. The noise of the traffic receded as the cast-iron facades of warehouses and mill buildings rose up around him, rain pouring in torrents from their corniced rooftops. Unwin's arms and legs were shaking now, but not from the exertion or from the cold. It was that dead face he had seen behind the gla.s.s in the museum. He felt as though it were still mocking him with its awful gold-toothed grin. The thread, the one that connected mystery to solution, that shone like silver in the dark-Sivart had picked the wrong one, and Unwin had strung it up as truth. What did the false thread connect?

In the old port town, Unwin slowed to navigate the winding, crowded streets. Business carried on in spite of the rain, with deals being made under awnings and through the windows of food stalls. He felt he was being watched, not by one but by many. Was there something that marked him as an employee of the Agency? An invisible sign that the people here could read?

He pedaled on, easing his grip on his umbrella. The rain fell softly now. In the maze of old streets that predated the gridding of the city, he pa.s.sed timbered warehouses and old market squares cluttered with the refuse of industry. Machines-the purpose of which he could not guess-rusted in red streaks over the cobblestone.

The crowds thinned. From chimneys, crooked fingers of smoke pointed at the clouds. Barren clotheslines sagged dripping over the street, and a few windows glowed yellow against the day's persistent gloom. Unwin quickened his pace, his memory of Sivart's descriptions serving as map, and came at last to the cemetery of Saints' Hill, a six-acre tangle of weeds, dubious pathways, vine-grappled ridges, and tumble-down mausoleums.

The Forty Winks was beneath the mortuary, a low-slung building of crumbling gray stone at the southeast corner of the block. He had half hoped that the place did not really exist, but the chipped steps leading from the sidewalk down to the bas.e.m.e.nt level were real enough. He chained his bicycle to the cemetery fence, under the eaves of the building.

From the top of the stairs, he could hear the smacking of pool b.a.l.l.s, the clinking of gla.s.ses. He could still go home, if he wanted. Sleep off the day and wait for the next one, hope that everything would right itself somehow. But a window level with the sidewalk creaked open, and someone looked up at him, wrinkling his nose as though trying to catch Unwin's scent. A pair of wide, reddish brown eyes blinked behind the gla.s.s.

"In or out?" the man called from below.

It was too late to go back. Unwin descended the stairwell, collapsing his umbrella just enough to make it fit. At the bottom of the steps was a slow drain, cigarette b.u.t.ts floating in the puddle that had formed. Unwin pushed the door open with the tip of his umbrella, then stepped over the water and into the Forty Winks.

The tables were lit only by candles, while the bar, on the cemetery side, had the benefit of several windows near the ceiling, through which a greenish light dribbled over bottles of liquor. Most of the bottles were arranged on shelves in a tall, oblong cabinet, its door gaping.

Not a cabinet, Unwin realized. A coffin.

Near the entrance, two men sat with their hats in front of them, speaking close over a guttering candle. At the back of the room, an electric bulb with a green gla.s.s shade hung low over the pool table. Two other men, very tall and dressed in identical black suits, were in the midst of a game. They played slowly, taking a great deal of care with each shot.

Sivart was nowhere to be seen. Unwin took a seat at the bar and set his briefcase in front of him. The man who had spoken through the window cranked it shut, made a show of dusting off his hands, and hopped down from the barrel he had climbed to reach. He ran a hand along the bar as he approached, sweeping up a folded newspaper. "Newsman says there's foul play at the Agency," he said. "An internal affair, they say. The eyes up top suspect one of their own."

A single black curl made an upside-down question mark in the middle of the man's forehead. This was Edgar Zlatari, the caretaker of the cemetery and its only gravedigger. So long as no one was in need of burying, he served drinks to the living. He was someone who knew things, a collector of useful information.

"New faces bring new woes, that's what they say," Zlatari went on. "What about you? You call your troubles by name? Or maybe they call you by yours?"

Unwin did not know how to reply.

"Leave your tongue on your pillow this morning? What's your line, friend?" Zlatari cast a suspicious look at the briefcase, and Unwin slipped it onto his lap.

"Okay, tight-lips. What'll it be, then?"

"Me?" Unwin said.

The bartender looked around, rolling his eyes. He smelled of whiskey and damp earth. " 'Me?' he says. That's a laugh."

The two at the table snickered, but the men at the pool table were unamused. At the sight of this, Zlatari's grin vanished. "Come on, pal," he said to Unwin. "A drink. What do you want to drink?"

There were too many bottles stacked in that coffin, too many choices. What would Sivart have ordered? A hundred times the detective must have named his drinks of choice. But Unwin had stricken them from the reports, and now he found he could not remember even one. Instead the response to Emily's secret phrase came uselessly to mind: And doubly in the bubbly. And doubly in the bubbly.

"Root beer," he said at last.

Zlatari blinked several times, as though maybe he had never heard of the stuff. Then he shrugged and moved away down the bar. On the wall beyond the register was a tattered velvet curtain. In the moment Zlatari drew it aside, Unwin glimpsed a tiny kitchen. A radio was playing back there, and he thought he recognized the song-a slow melody carried by horns, a woman singing just above them, voice rising with the swell of strings. He was sure he had heard the tune somewhere before and had almost placed it when Zlatari pulled the curtain closed behind him.

Unwin shifted on his stool. In the mirror he could see the men at the booth behind him. One tapped his hat excitedly as he said, "Have I got a story!" and the other man leaned forward to listen, though the man with the story told it loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear.

"I saw Bones Kiley the other night," he said, "and we were just talking business, you know? Then suddenly, out of nowhere, he started talking business. business. So I said to him, 'Wait, wait, do you want to talk about So I said to him, 'Wait, wait, do you want to talk about business? business? Because if it's Because if it's business business you want to talk about, then we shouldn't be talking about business, because there's business and there's you want to talk about, then we shouldn't be talking about business, because there's business and there's business. business.' "

"Ha," said the other man.

"So then I asked him, 'Just what sort of business are you in, Bones, that you want to talk about business business?' "

"Ha ha," said the other.

"And Bones gets serious-looking, kind of screws up his eyebrows like this . . ."

"Ha."

". . . and he looks at me with his eyes squinty, and he says in this really deep voice, 'I'm in the business of blood.' "

The other man said nothing.

"So I said to him," and the man with the story raised his voice even higher as he finished his story, " 'The business of blood? The business of blood? Bones, there is no business but the business of blood!' "

Both men laughed and tapped their hats in unison, and the candle flickered and flared, making their shadows twitch on the uneven stone wall.

While the man with the story was telling it, the two at the pool table had set down their cue sticks. Identical faces, lips pale gray, eyes bright green: Unwin wondered if these could be the Rook brothers, Jasper and Josiah, the twin thugs who had aided Enoch Hoffmann in the theft of the Oldest Murdered Man, and in countless other misdeeds during the years of his criminal reign. The worst thing that can happen, The worst thing that can happen, Sivart often wrote, Sivart often wrote, and the other worst thing. and the other worst thing.

Shoulder to shoulder the two approached, leaning toward each other with every step. It was said that the Rooks had once been conjoined, but were separated in an experimental operation that left them with crippled feet-Jasper's left and Josiah's right. Each wore two sizes of boots, the smaller on the side of that irrevocable severance. This was the only sure way to tell them apart.

The twins stood over the table with their backs to Unwin, obscuring his view of the men seated there. He felt a great heat coming off the two, drying the back of his neck. It was as though they had just come out of a boiler room.

"My brother," said one in a measured tone, "has advised me to advise you to leave now. And since I always take my brother's advice, I am hereby advising you to leave."

"Yeah, who's asking?" said the man who had told the story.

"In point of fact," said the other, in a voice that was deeper but otherwise identical to his brother's, "my brother is not asking, he is advising."

"Well, I don't know your brother," said the man with the story, "so I don't think I'll take his advice."

In the silence that followed, it seemed to Unwin that even the dead in their graves, just behind the wall where the mirror was hung, were waiting to hear what would happen.

One of the twins licked the tips of his thumb and forefinger and leaned over the table. He pinched the candle flame, and it went out with a hiss. From the dark of the booth came a m.u.f.fled cry. Then the two men walked to the door with the storyteller between them, his feet kicking wildly a few inches above the ground. They deposited him outside, facedown in the puddle over the slow drain. He lay slumped amid the floating cigarette b.u.t.ts and did not try to pick his face up out of the puddle.

The brothers returned to the back of the room. One chalked his cue stick while the other considered the table. He took his next shot, sinking one ball, then another.

The man still in the booth blinked, his eyes not yet adjusted to the change in light. He put his hat on and went outside. After a moment's hesitation and a glance back into the bar, he lifted his friend out of the puddle and dragged him up the stairs.

Zlatari came out from behind the curtain, muttering as he went to close the door. Once he was back behind the bar, he uncorked the bottle in his hand and slid it across to Unwin.

The two men at the back of the room had finished their game, and were seating themselves side by side at the booth nearest the pool table. One of them nodded at Zlatari, and Zlatari raised his hand and said, "Yes, Jasper, just a moment."

Eight years had pa.s.sed since the names Jasper and Josiah Rook had appeared in Sivart's reports-like Hoffmann, the twins had gone into hiding following the events of The Man Who Stole November Twelfth. There were times when Unwin had hoped to see them come back-but only on paper, not in the flesh.

"Well," Zlatari said to him, "it's your lucky day. We're about to play some poker, and we need a fourth."

Unwin raised one hand and said, "Thank you, no. I'm not very good at cards."

Josiah whispered something into Jasper's ear-it was Josiah, according to Sivart's reports, who served as counsel, while Jasper was generally spokesman. The latter called to Unwin, "My brother has advised me to advise you to join us."

Unwin knew enough to know he had no choice. He took his bottle and followed Zlatari to the table, seating himself at the gravedigger's right. The Rooks regarded him unblinkingly. Their long faces, molded as though from the same mottled clay, could have been lifeless masks if not for the small green eyes set in them. Those eyes were very much alive, and greedy-they caught the light and did not let it go.

Zlatari dealt the cards, and Unwin said, "I'm afraid I don't have much money."

"Your money is no good here," said Josiah, and Jasper said, "To clarify, my brother does not mean that you play for free, as the expression may commonly be interpreted. Only that we do not play for money, and thus yours is literally of no value at this table."

Zlatari whistled and shook his head. "Don't let Humpty and Dumpty here spook you, tight-lips. That's just their version of gentlemanly charm. Mine is traditional generosity. The bank will forward you something to start with. And like he said, we don't play for money at this table. We play for questions."

"Or rather," said Jasper, "for the right to ask them. But only one question per hand, and only the winner of that hand may ask."

Unwin did know a thing or two about poker. He knew that certain combinations of cards were better than others, though he could not say for sure which beat which. He would have to rely on poker-facedness, then, which he knew to be a virtue in the context of the game.

"Ante is one interrogative," said Zlatari.

Unwin placed a white chip beside the others on the table and examined his cards. Four of the five were face cards. When his turn came, he raised the bet by one query, though under the guise of hesitancy. Then he traded in his single non-face card and received another face card, a king, in its place. A handful of royalty, then. What could be better? Minding his poker face, however, he made sure to frown at his hand.

There ensued a whirl of bets, calls, and folds, until finally only Unwin and Josiah were still in the game. Josiah set his cards on the table, and Jasper said for him, "Two pair."

Unwin revealed his own cards, hoping that someone would interpret.

"Three kings," Zlatari said. "Tight-lips takes the pot and keeps his nickname for now."

Unwin tried not to look pleased as he claimed the pile of chips. "I may ask my question now?"

"Sure," said Zlatari. He seemed cheerful at the Rook brothers' loss.

"But you just asked it," said Josiah, "and now you are down one query." As he said this, he blinked for the first time since they had started playing, though it was less a blink than a deliberate closing and reopening of the eyes.

"Shouldn't you have told me the rules before we started?" Unwin said.

"The laws of the land are not read to us in the crib," was Josiah's reply. "And you just expended another query, though you are allowed only one."

"It was rhetorical," said Unwin, but he tossed aside the two chips anyway.

Zlatari said, "h.e.l.l, we should be fair to the new guy," and he told Unwin how to trade up: two queries for a single inquiry, two inquiries for a perscrutation, two perscrutations for a catechism, two catechisms for an interrogation, and so on.

Unwin's next hand did not look to him as strong as the first, and he folded early, a.s.suring himself there were better cards to come. Worse hands followed, however, and the other players directed their questions at one another, ignoring him. He listened carefully to their answers, but they were of little use because he hardly understood the questions. He heard names he did not recognize, references to "jobs" that were "pulled" rather than worked, and a lot of talk that sounded more like code than speech.

Zlatari asked, "Would putting the hat on the uptown bromides win dirt or be a fishing expedition?"

"A few rounds of muck could show ghost," was Josiah's reply.

At the end of the next hand, it was Jasper who threw in enough chips for a perscrutation and said to Zlatari, "Tell me about the last time you saw Sivart."

Zlatari shifted in his seat and scratched the back of his neck with grimy fingernails. "Well, let's see, that would have been a week ago. It was dark when he got here, and he did a lot of things he doesn't usually do. He was nervous, fidgety. He didn't ask me any questions, just took a seat in the corner and read a book. I didn't know the man could read. He stayed until his candle burned down, then left."

The Rooks appeared dissatisfied with the account. Apparently a perscrutation was a rather weightier kind of question and required a more thorough disclosure. Zlatari drew a breath and went on. "He said I might not see him again for a while. He said that Cleo was back in town, that he had to go and find her." Zlatari glanced at Unwin when he said this, as though to see if it meant anything to him. Unwin looked down at his chips.

Cleo could only be Cleopatra Greenwood, and Unwin had long ago come to fear-even loathe-the appearance of her name in a report. She had first come to the city with Caligari's Traveling Carnival and for years was one of Sivart's chief informants. But to file anything regarding her motives or aims was to risk the grueling work of retraction a month later. Mysteries, in her wake, doubled back on themselves and became something else, something a person could drown in. I had her all wrong, clerk: I had her all wrong, clerk: how many times had Unwin come upon that awful admission and scurried to fix what had come before? how many times had Unwin come upon that awful admission and scurried to fix what had come before?

The others were waiting for Unwin's next bet. His winnings were largely depleted, so he traded an inquiry for two queries but quickly lost both. The Rooks, as though sensing that Unwin would soon leave the table, turned their attention on him. Jasper used a query to learn his name, and Josiah spent an inquiry to ask what kind of work he did.

Unwin showed them his badge, and the Rook brothers blinked in tandem.

Zlatari's brow wrinkled behind his question-mark curl. "Well," he said, "it wouldn't be the first time I've had an Eye at my table. Detective Unwin, is it? Fine. Everyone's welcome here." But on this last point he seemed uncertain.

Unwin lost and lost again. All the questions came to him now, and he gave up answers one after another. His opponents were disappointed at the spottiness of his knowledge, though Zlatari licked his lips when Unwin told what he knew about Lamech's murder, about the bulky corpse at the desk on the thirty-sixth floor, its bulging eyes, its crisscrossed fingers.

Zlatari dealt new hands, and Unwin's was unremarkable: no face cards, no two or three of any kind. His beginner's luck had run out. This would be his last hand, and he had learned so little.

Zlatari folded almost immediately, but the Rook brothers showed no sign of relenting. They eagerly took up their new cards and just as eagerly counted out their bets. Unwin was going to lose. So he said to Zlatari, "A two, three, four, five, and six of spades: is that a good hand?"

Again that slow, sleepy blink from the twins.