Brent Talanta, also known as Handsome? No children. Wife deceased. Survived only by his mother. Handsome was her only source of support. A forensic sorcerer had connected the knife found in the hand of a Stomper known as Funboy to Handsome’s wounds. Likewise, the shoes of several gang members to bruises on the corpse. Handsome’s remains had been sent on for cremation at a contract crematorium. Funboy’s body had been sold to a resurrection man. The rest of the Stompers were headed for a labor camp.
I told Old Bones, ‘‘I have to admit that I forgot all about Handsome. Even though I promised Max.’’
Miss Pular wrote the report. Joe Kerr will take it to Mr. Weider in the morning. Mr. Weider will do the right thing. Now. For someone who keeps telling himself how amazed he is by his advancing maturity, you do seem to work with a solid teenage mind-set most of the time.
Ouch. Possibly true. But doubly hurtful since the harvester of so much marvelous information barely qualified as a teen herself.
But wait! There is more!
There would be, wouldn’t there?
The keg I’d found down under the ruin had been purchased from the Goteborg Enterprise by Riata Dungarth. Riata Dungarth was the personal servant of Elmet Starbottle, a member of the Faction known to his crew as Slump, who was a cousin of the twins, Berbach and Berbain, who seemed to have walked away from the Faction. The keg had been delivered to the ruin, wrestled downstairs, and installed by Idris Brithgaern, who made all the deliveries for the Goteborg Enterprise brewery. Mr. Brithgaern delivered a new keg the first day of each week, always prepaid by Riata Dungarth. The ruin was outside Brithgaern’s normal range, but he did not mind. He got to keep the beer in the old keg. Sometimes that had not been touched. He could sell that beer, legally, off the back of his wagon. But, mostly, he took it home and enjoyed it himself. It was a beer that deserved a man with a discerning palate.
By this point I was ready to whimper. The little tramp obviously vamped. . . . I had a couple smart-ass questions in inventory but reserved them because I was afraid the little witch had reported what color socks Idris Brithgaern wore.
Mismatched. Gray to the left, brown on the right.
‘‘Argh!’’
I jest. But there is a lesson in all this.
‘‘Yeah. And I don’t need help from you figuring out what it is, Laughing Boy.’’ Simply, Penny Dreadful had no trouble with the concept of hard work. Given a task, she whapped it in the schnoz with both fists and pounded it into instant submission.
I could fake that kind of youthful enthusiasm. For a few minutes. Sometimes. ‘‘So, who does this Brithgaern creature work for?’’
The Goteborg Enterprise craft brewery.
‘‘All right. My mistake. Let me get focused.’’ Weider Dark Select might not match up with Goteborg, but it’s pretty damned good. ‘‘Make that Riata Dungarth. Who’s he work for?’’
Elmet Starbottle. Where Elmet Starbottle would seem to be a name chosen by the person wearing it. There are no Starbottle families amongst the elites in this city.
I could have told him that. Silly-ass name. Starbottle. Ha. ‘‘What you’re doing now is prancing around the fact that you don’t know which one of the Faction uses the name Starbottle.’’
Pretty much, there. Yes. Pretty much. Unless it might be the boy they call Slump, as I might have mentioned earlier.
He’s so smug.
I expect all that will be cleared up for sure next time I see Penny.
‘‘You mean next time she decides to mooch a meal?’’
I believe she has earned a few.
And I did feel petty even before he chastised me. So I punished myself by draining another mug of beer. Then I trundled on upstairs, clambered into bed behind my favorite gal in the whole wide world, and fell asleep in about seven seconds.
45
Tinnie didn’t put away as much holy elixir as her favorite man. But she had less experience handling it. She woke up with a pounding head an hour before the early birds took wing. She turned into the beautiful woman who never heard of mercy.
‘‘Rise and shine, Malsquando. For the first time in your life you’re going to do an honest day’s work.’’
‘‘Ow!’’ Not good news. Not good news at all. I’m no Morley Dotes but I am acquainted with the comfort of a dishonest day’s work. A day with as little real work in it as I can arrange.
I was over last night already.
‘‘This may be why we can’t get to a grown-up solution to our grown-up problems,’’ I grumbled. ‘‘Here you come, six hours too early for even thinking, let alone working.’’
No argument. No snide commentary. Just another stiff finger and sharp nail between a couple of my favorite ribs.
I almost said something I couldn’t take back. Lucky me, though. I have a resident guardian angel.
Do not! open your idiot mouth!
I clung to that advice for the dozen seconds my sweetie needed to lose focus and fall asleep again.
I went back to sleep, too. Wondering, for the first time, about the discrepancies between my partner’s report on the compliance device and Kip’s. Kip isn’t real good about making up plausible stories.
Next time I woke up it was time to set the beer free. That took a while. Then I poured a little in to replace what had gone away. Tinnie snorted and snored worse than Saucerhead or Playmate, both true champions. The racket didn’t bother me. I climbed back into bed and, after a few random thoughts, got down to business making it through to the crack of noon.
Old Bones—or maybe the gods themselves—did something to the redhead while she slept. She woke up in a sunny mood. Unfortunately still convinced that Ma Garrett’s boy ought to haul out and become an important ingredient in her wonderful day. ‘‘Don’t you got some books to balance? Or maybe some bribe sheets to update?’’
Tinnie has some big generational differences with the elder Tates. But none having to do with milking maximum cash from folks interested in our manufactory’s products. Her number-one mission is to maintain the waiting list of three-wheel buyers.
Bribes paid to move names on the waiting list generate more cash flow than sales of the units themselves.
Every entrepreneur and financier in this burg hates us.
I don’t get it, myself. I really don’t. People are nuts over the three-wheels. I’ve ridden them. They’re fun. They make getting around a little faster. But not much. Not when you have to deal with everyday traffic in twisty, narrow streets. And, more especially, not when you have to deal with the upsides of hills. Not to overlook the ride on cobblestones. And the even harder pull where there are no pavements at all.
And then there are thieves. Though my senior partners had been smart about that.
Every three-wheel has a unique signature spell applied, traceable by the company Charmstalker. Should your three-wheel be commandeered by a freelance socialist, it can be located, and justice can be delivered, with dramatic quickness. It happens often enough to discourage all but the terminally stupid.
If only there were some way to deal with those people before they breed.
Deal Relway may be on to something. He’s clearing the raging idiots out of the criminal class.
There are people out there in definite need of disappearing. Problem is, once you start, how do you confine yourself to the ‘‘right’’ bad guys? And do we want our only surviving criminals to be people too smart to get caught?
Garrett. It is past time you dragged your self-deluded posteriorout of bed.
Everybody has an opinion. And, as my old platoon sergeant explained, they all reek like the waste sphincter everyone also has.