The officers get to wear pretty uniforms and they like to show them off. The theater is a good place.
This bunch was grumbling about a crime so monstrous that popular outrage might get their butts kicked until they had to go out into the streets and do something. The consensus among the wives was that the Army ought to evict all the lower classes and nonhumans.
I wondered who they thought would cook for them and garden and do their laundry and make their cute little shoes and lovely gowns.
"What the hell was that all about?" I asked the guy who was squiring me from blonde to blonde at the Stratos.
"You haven't heard?"
"Not yet."
"Biggest mass murder in years, Garrett. A real massacre. It's all over town. You had your head under a rock?"
"A sheet. Cut the editorializing. What happened?"
"In broad daylight this afternoon a bunch of gangsters busted into a Wharf Street flophouse down in the South End and killed everybody. Smallest number I've heard is twenty-two dead and half a dozen dragged away as prisoners. They're saying Chodo Contague did it. Looks like we're in for a gang war."
I muttered, "When Chodo gets mad you don't have any trouble understanding his message." I wondered what Crask and Sadler were getting out of their prisoners. I'd hate to think they were ahead of me because they were less restrained in their methods.
What could I do? The one angle I had was Jill Craight. And that was turning up a big dead end.
Hell. Might as well go home, get in eight hours, and make an early start in the morning.
32
As Dean let me in he whispered, "There's a young woman here who wants to talk to you about Maya." His wrinkled nose told me what he thought of the visitor. And gave me a good idea who she was.
"Tey Koto?"
"She didn't offer a name."
Tey had gotten into the beer while Dean was away. "You got it whipped, you know that, Garrett?" She tried to pour beer down like she'd been drinking for twenty years, got some down the wrong pipe. She coughed foam all over the kitchen. Dean wasn't pleased. I pounded her on the back.
And as though he'd been waiting for me to get home, someone started pounding on the front door.
"Damn it! Now what?" I stomped up the hall, took a peek. It wasn't anybody I knew. He did have the rangy, weathered, impoverished look I associated with the Master's gang. So Chodo hadn't gotten them all.
I gave a look around to make sure he wasn't part of a tribe, then eyeballed him to get an estimate of what he might do himself. He kept pounding away.
"Guess I'd better talk to you before Saucerhead eats you up." Having a flight of guardian angels occasionally gets in the way.
I yanked the door open, grabbed him by the jacket, jerked him inside, and slammed him against the wall. He was astonished. "What?" I demanded.
He gobbled air and stammered.
I slammed him against the wall a couple more times. "Talk to me."
"The Master... The Master..." He had a set speech to make me think my welcome had put him off his pace. He'd lost his lines.
Slam! "I can't play all night, low grade. You got something to say, spit it out. I'm ticked off at you guys already. Try my patience and I'll hurt you."
In a semi-coherent babble he let me know that the Master felt the same about me and was going to allow me one chance to get out of his way and start minding my own business. Or else.
"Or else he'll put a bug down my shirt? Come on. The creep has more nerve than brains. He's dead meat. He's got about as long as it takes Chodo Contague to find him. If you and your buddies have the sense of a goose you'll dump him and run back where you came from." I started muscling him out the door. "Tell your harebrained boss he is my business and I intend to mind it real close."
"Wait!"
The "or else" came. It wasn't the personal threat I expected. I've been threatened plenty so I don't pay much attention anymore. But this guy told me, "The Master said to tell you he has your friend Maya Stump and it will be she who pays if—"
Wham! Back against the wall. "And I have you, old buddy."
"I am nothing. I am a finger on his hand. Cut me off and another will grow in my place."
"You really believe that crap?" He did. What our commanders in the Cantard wouldn't give for a few thousand guys who didn't mind being expendable. "Tey! Come in here."
She came. She'd been eavesdropping, anyway. "What?"
"This guy says his boss has got Maya and they're going to do nasty things to her. He doesn't care what we do to him."
She sneered. "He'd care before I got through with him." Oh, the easy cruelty of the young.
"He would. But his boss wouldn't have sent him if he knew anything. So I think I'll just bruise him a little and throw him out with the trash."
Like I said, she was a smart kid. She figured out what to do. "Well, if I can't have him, the hell with you." She pranced back to the kitchen. And out the back door to talk to the Sisters she would've left around the neighborhood.
I banged the guy off the wall again. "You tell your boss if he messes with Maya he better pray Chodo finds him first. All Chodo wants to do is kill him.
"There. We've threatened each other and pounded our chests and acted like jerks. Get out before I lose my temper."
He looked at me like he thought it was a trick. Then he edged toward the door. When he was almost there I jumped at him. He yelped and took off.
I settled on the stoop and watched him go.
All that bullying hadn't accomplished a thing. I hadn't gotten any pleasure out of it. It didn't make me feel good now. I couldn't even convince myself there had been purpose in it.
33
Tey came out of the dark. I asked, "You got somebody tailing him?"
"Yeah."
"So that's taken care of. Why did you come? Dean said it was about Maya."
"Yeah. I think we've got a lead."
I gave her my raised eyebrow. It went to waste in that light, so I said, "How's that?"
"You hear about that mess on Wharf Street? Where Chodo's boys offed a whole mob? That sounded like some of what you told me about. We went down there and talked to kids who live there. Some of them saw the whole thing. Chodo's guys didn't kill everybody. A bunch got away out the back. They dragged a couple people with them. One of them sounded like Maya."
Well, well. "Very interesting. Where did they go?"
"We couldn't find out. They jumped into boats and headed down the river. But they didn't go far. The kids told us what the boats looked like. We found one of them a half mile away. And we know they didn't leave TunFaire because that one just came here to threaten you."
I sure as hell didn't feel like taking a walk but I said, "Suppose we go nose around?"
I told Dean what I'd be doing. I expected some backchat, because he'd had to stay away from home a lot. But he didn't say a word. I bet he would've said a few if I hadn't been looking for Maya.
It was several miles to the Wharf Street massacre site. Tey's boats had gone south from there, a goodly hike. After a while we started talking, mostly Tey making herself shine bright in the Doom. I asked her about Maya. She wouldn't tell me anything I didn't already know. From time to time a messenger came to tell her about the man being followed. He was headed the same direction we were. Tey told the messengers our anticipated route so she could be found again.