Whispering Nickel Idols Part 3

"Belinda is in and out of town all the time. When she does come in she doesn't leave Chodo behind. Somebody might see him without her standing in between. I found out by spying. By lying in wait, hoping to get to him while she was away."

"Dangerous business."

"Yes."

"The woman isn't stupid."

"Crazy, yes. Stupid, no. She brings him in and stashes him."

"That could be handled by having somebody see when she comes in and find out where she drops him."

Temisk chewed his lower lip.

"You've tried that."

"Yes. And lost the man I hired. I'm lucky he didn't know who I was, anymore. I might've lost me, too."

I tried to recollect someone in my racket turning up dead or missing recently. There aren't many of us. On the other hand, ours isn't a well-known and respected profession like palm reader or potion maker. "Anyone I'd know?"

"No. He was an old soak named Billy Mul Tima who used to run numbers on the north side. I gave him little jobs when I could. He worked hard for Chodo before he got into the sauce too far."

So there I was, snoot to snoot with a crisis, getting a face full of Fortune's bad breath. A cusp. A turning point. An instant when I had to make a moral choice.

I resisted the easy one. And said not one word about a lawyer with a heart, and, more remarkably, a conscience. "Tell me about it."

"There isn't much to tell. I gave Billy Mul what I could and sent him off. I a.s.sume he bought all the cheap wine he could carry, then got to work."

"Wino would be a good cover. They're everywhere. And n.o.body pays attention. Go on."

"They found him in a room on the north side a few days later, after he started to stink. He'd burned to death."

I frowned. For a year there have been reports of people burning up without benefit of a fire, always in some slum on the north side.

"Garrett, he burned to death without setting fire to the place where he died. Which was about as awful a tenement as you can imagine."

I can imagine some pretty awful places. I've visited a lot of them. Especially back when my clientele wasn't quite so genteel. "Somebody brought him there."

"No. I went up there myself. I talked to people. Even the Watch. He burned right where they found him. Cooked down like a chunk of burned fat. Without getting hot enough to start a bigger fire."

That jibed with stories I'd heard about other burning deaths. "How could that happen? Sorcery?"

"That would be everybody's first guess, wouldn't it?"

"Always is when an explanation isn't obvious. We're conditioned by long, direct, dire exposure to those idiots on the Hill."

Sorcery, great or small, isn't part of daily life. But the threat of sorcery is. The potential for sorcery is. Particularly dark sorcery. Because our true rulers are the wizards who infest the mansions on the Hill.

I said, "You don't think sorcery is the answer."

"Those kind of people don't show up in that part of town."

A self-taught rogue set on becoming a one-man crime wave might, though. But how would he profit from burning winos?

"It's not a part of town where humans show up much, is it? Isn't that Elf Town?"

"No. But right on its edge. It's mainly nonhuman immigrant housing now. Here's the thing, though. The building belonged to Chodo."

I nodded and waited.

"When I went up I thought it looked familiar. I dug into the records when I got back. We bought the place four years ago. I handled the legal stuff."

"Chodo wasn't there."

"Not when the body was found. But he might have been. People remembered a man in a wheelchair."

"Uhm?"

"I didn't take it any further. I didn't want to attract attention."

"Probably the smart thing." It's unhealthy to ask questions near an Outfit operation. You might develop black-and-blue lumps. At the least.

Temisk asked, "Any brilliant theories?"

"Just the obvious one. Billy Mul tried to get to Chodo. Somebody made him dead for his trouble."

"How would they do that?"

"That would be the question, wouldn't it?"

"And why do it that way? Those things are done simple. Unless somebody wants to send a message."

"A burn-up wouldn't be a message anyone could read. They'd just wrinkle their noses and ask, what the h.e.l.l?"

There wasn't any sense to it. Pieces of the puzzle were missing. Even its general shape wasn't apparent.

Temisk said, "One of the things Chodo paid me to do was bail him out if he got caught up in something weird. This qualifies. And he expected you to help."

"I got that part. I don't like it, but I got it. He knew me better than I know me. What're you thinking about doing?"

"I did it when I got hold of you. You're the expert."

Me. The expert. Cute.

"Then let's set some priorities. What's the most important thing to do?"

"Make sure Chodo is still alive tomorrow morning."

"Back to the birthday party?"

"Back to the party."

8.

From Harvester Temisk's digs I ambled over to The Palms, an upscale eatery and club operated by the dark elf Morley Dotes. My number one good buddy. I approached warily. There might be trouble with Belinda's troops if they were setting up already.

"Holy s.h.i.t! Will ya look at dis? It ain't even been a week an' here it comes agin!"

It's remotely possible that not all of Morley's a.s.sociates welcome me all the time. "I was pa.s.sing by. Thought I'd drop in and see how you're all doing. How're you doing, Sarge?"

Sarge is fat and balding and tattooed and nastier than a bushel of scorpions when he's in a good mood. He didn't seem particularly cheerful today.

Another one enough like Sarge to be his ugly big brother, with extra scorpions, shuffled out of the kitchen. "Hey, Puddle. How's it going, man?"

Puddle brandished a commercial-weight rolling pin.

This didn't look encouraging.

Morley emerged behind Puddle. Amazing. Dotes seldom has much to do with the daily grind of his place. "What do you want, Garrett?"

"d.a.m.n, Morley. Get a sense of humor. I know a guy on the Landing..."

"What do you want, Garrett?"

"Right now I'd like to know why it's hilarious when you stick me with a foul-beaked fowl like the G.o.dd.a.m.n Parrot, but it's haul out the meat cleavers when I get you back with a nympho nymph."

Two more staffers materialized. Lugging industrial-grade butcher's equipment. In a vegetarian establishment. "Them new-generation eggplants must be fierce." Everybody seemed intensely interested in managing a wily envelopment of their good buddy Garrett.

Not promising at all.

Dotes made a slight gesture. "One more chance, Garrett."

"I wanted to check on how things are coming, setting up for tonight. And to say hi."

"And why are you interested?"

"Because I have to be here, cabbage breath boy. I can't weasel out. And I don't feel good about the setup."

Morley glared at me. Slim and dark, handsome and always impeccably bedecked in the latest fashion, he radiates a sensuality that sets them swooning even when he strolls through a nun shop.

"You got smudge under your nose." He'd begun sporting a thin little mustache.

Morley didn't grin. "Sit down, Garrett."

I picked a chair. The one closest to the door.

Morley sat across from me. He stared. Eventually, he said, "Word's out that you're on Belinda's payroll now."

"That's a crock. Who said that?"

"Belinda. Last time she was here messing the arrangements around."

"It ain't true. You know me better. I wouldn't work for her even if I needed work. And I don't. I've got me a nice little piece of the hottest manufactory in TunFaire. You're just trolling for an excuse to get your bile up."

"She was convincing." Dotes studied me some more. Something big was bothering him and all his boys. n.o.body wanted Mama Garrett's favorite boy for a friend.

"Spit it out, Morley. What's going on?"

"This party is bound to go bad. And here you come, supposedly Belinda's full-time top stud, ambling in ten minutes after your honey sends word the party won't happen here after all. The Palms will just cater. The party will happen in Whitefield Hall. Because my place isn't big enough. Too many people in the life want to pay their respects to the kingpin."

"I don't know anything about any Whitefield Hall. Is that the Veterans' Memorial hall that commemorates the War of Coady Byrne's Broken Tooth?"

Karenta had a lot of little wars over a lot of little provocations in Imperial times. Then we changed up, became a kingdom, and jumped into one big war that lasted over a hundred years. The one I was in. Along with every human male I know, including my brother and father and grandfather, and Grandpa's father and grandfather and all their brothers and cousins and b.a.s.t.a.r.d kids.

The killing is over now. So far, the peace has been worse than the war.

"I don't know anything about your wars," Dotes replied. Being half dark elf, he enjoys treaty exemption from some human laws. Like the one establishing conscription. And he doesn't give a feather about history. He doesn't care about last week-unless last week might sneak up and whack him on the back of the head. "But it is some kind of soldiers' memorial."

Morley is shallow. Morley is pretty. Morley is the nightmare that wakes fathers screaming in the night. He's the daydream their daughters take to bed, fantasizing. He's the bad boy the girls all want, thinking they can tame him, before they settle for some dullard who'll just work for a living and treat them like they're people.

I'm so jealous.

"I can't picture it. What's special about it? Why would she move there?"

"I told you. Because she can get more people in. Because it isn't operated by people she doesn't trust."

"Belinda doesn't trust you?"

"Are you that naive? Of course she doesn't. Not to be what she wants me to be."

"What would that be?"

"Her tool, fool."

"Don't start with the vegetarian poetry. It don't make sense on a day when the sun is is shining." shining."

Dotes shook his pretty head. He didn't want to play. "Belinda wouldn't trust me if I swore ten thousand ironbound oaths. That's part of her insanity. She can't trust anybody. Except you. Probably for the same sick reason Chodo trusted you. From where I sit, that would be because you're too d.a.m.ned dim to be anything but honest."

Morley's morals and ethics are situation dependent. Which doesn't stop him being a nice guy. Most of the time. When it's convenient.

"Your expression of confidence warms the c.o.c.kles of my heart, Mr. Dotes."