"Maybe." There was a sort of soft purr in her voice. "You want me to go tell him you want to see him?"
"Sure."
I kept one eye on the place we'd visited last night. One old guy came out. Nobody went inside. I was surprised there wasn't more traffic. It seemed the kind of place that would appeal to the crowd that came down during the day. I still thought the guy who came up with the idea was a genius. We all need somebody to talk to. I did myself.
I sort of spread it out among Dean, the Dead Man, Tinnie, and Playmate, maybe opening up more to Playmate than the others because I have no relationship with him other than friendship. And there are things I don't feel comfortable telling him because I value his good opinion.
Maya sat back down. "He'll be here in a minute. At first he didn't believe it was you."
"But you convinced him."
"I can be pretty convincing."
"No lie." I hadn't stood a chance once she went to work on me seriously. But that's my weak spot.
The barker settled beside me a few minutes later. He leaned forward to look into my face. "It is you."
"Last I looked. What's happening is, I've disappeared. Maybe run out of town. You aren't seeing me. You're seeing some guy who came down here to gawk."
He lifted an eyebrow. Damn, I hate it when people steal my tricks.
"It's getting tight. The organization is under pressure. Some of us are turning invisible till we make it ease up."
"What's going on, anyways? Tied up here, all I hear is crazy rumors."
"You haven't heard anything as crazy as the truth." I told him some of that, including a few details of the attack on Chodo's place. He didn't want to believe me, but the story was so outrageous he accepted it.
"That's weird," he said. "They must be really sick. I'm ready to help. We all are down here. But I don't see what I can do."
"Near as we can figure, there are two people who know what we need to put this mess away. One is the woman I was asking about. I can't give you a name because she uses about a hundred, but I'm pretty sure she's working that place over there."
He looked at it and sneered. "Doyle's wimp house. All that gorgeous pussy and half of them don't put out. You figure it, paying just to look."
"Takes all kinds to make a horserace. If people weren't strange, you and I wouldn't be in business."
"You got a point. What do you need to know?"
"Have you seen an outstanding blonde in and out of that place?''
"Several of them. You're going to have to be more specific."
I couldn't be. Jill Craight, for all her looks, had had a sort of nebulous quality, like she really was a whole gang of people, each one a little different from the others. "Forget her. I'll assume she's working that place. I'll get to her if she is. I'll just sit here till I spot her. How about that guy I came charging out after last night? When you didn't have time to talk?"
"What guy was that? I was pretty busy.''
"Maya, you describe him. You got a better look."
"Not that good. He was short, kind of chunky, had a big nose that looked like it got broken once. His skin was kind of dark. He was bald but you couldn't tell that if he was wearing a hat. He was dressed in real dark clothes both times. Kind of sloppy, even though the clothes were good ones. Like he wasn't used to wearing them." And so on. And so on. I wished I had an eye as quick and sharp.
The barker said, "Come to think of it, I did see a guy like that before you came roaring up. Only reason I noticed was he was headed out like a demon was chewing his ass."
"So?"
"So that's all I can tell you. He lit out."
That was what I'd expected to hear. "Did you recognize him?"
"You mean, do I know who he is? No. But I've seen him around. Hits the Tenderloin every four, five days. Used to come in for the shows. He's mostly dropped that and the joyhouses since Doyle come up with his silly talk house."
"Don't seem so silly when you think about it."
"No. Guess not. The old fart is cleaning up. I tell you, I'll never understand the freaks that come down here."
I thought he understood them all too well, but I didn't say so. If guys like him didn't understand, they wouldn't be successful catering to people who needed the comforts of a Tenderloin.
I shrugged. "I guess that's that. I don't know what else I could ask."
The barker got up. "Always glad to help the kingpin. Hey. For what it's worth, the little bald gink with the big honker, I think he's some kind of high-powered priest."
Maybe I jumped. Maybe something below conscious level was excited. "You sure?"
"No. It's just the way he snuck around and at the same time acted like people ought to bend the knee. I seen other priests act that way. Don't want to be seen. But the bigger they are, the worse habit they have of expecting special treatment. Get what I mean?"
"Yeah. Thanks. I'll mention how you helped. Maybe a bonus will come tumbling down."
"I could use it."
"Couldn't we all?" I watched him cross to his post. "A priest," I muttered. "Another big-time priest, maybe. With a place in the same building where Jill was shacking up with Magister Peridont. That sound any alarms?"
Maya said, "It doesn't sound like a coincidence. You think it's important?"
I hadn't told her everything about Peridont. I decided to trust her now. I laid it out from the beginning.
She didn't speak for a while. When she did, she said, "I know what you're thinking. It's too outrageous."
"You're probably right. But... things tend to tie together. Even when they're outrageous. And the first time Peridont visited me, he wanted me to find Warden Agire and the Terrell Relics."
"Pure speculation, Garrett. Gossamer. Almost whimsy."
"Maybe. We could sink it quick with a description of the Warden that doesn't match that guy."
She nodded.
"Let me run with it. Tell me where the holes are."
"All right."
"Jill Craight works over there, listening to sad tales of woe. She's a little greedy so sometimes she meets her clients outside, when she's off duty. Maybe she's not completely honest and tries to find out who they are. Maybe it just comes to her by accident. But she finds out she has both the Grand Inquisitor and the Warden among her regulars. Maybe she gets an idea she can make a big hit. Maybe she gets idealistic.
"Whatever, she gets some kind of underground dialogue going. Maybe they're actually working something out. Then the Sons of Hammom hit town. They're after the Relics for some reason. Agire goes on the lam. He slips the Relics to Jill to take care of while he leads the baddies somewhere else. Peridont doesn't know what's going on, he only knows that Agire and the Relics have disappeared.
"Meantime, Peridont makes a connection with Jill and finds out what's up with Agire and the Relics. So he doesn't bother bringing that up anymore. Now he wants to find out more about the Sons, only he doesn't tell me that. Being a typical client, he knows what he gives me to work with will give away something about him, so he wants to send me out blind and let me thrash around till I kick up something he can use.
"After that, because he wants to cover his ass and because he's got Church politics to deal with things go from bad to worse. When he finally decides he's in so deep he's got to come clean (so I can dig him out), he gets ambushed as he's coming to see me. I'm not convinced the man who killed him was one of the Sons of Hammon."
It was about the longest continuous speech I've ever made, just sort of blurting out and not stopping. When I did turn myself off, Maya didn't say anything. Maybe she needed a little coaxing.