I found Winger sitting on the stairs. "What are you doing, Garrett? The old broad left fifteen minutes ago." She didn't mention Linda Lee's hollering.
"I've been thinking."
"That's dangerous for a guy in your condition."
"Huh?" I didn't have a comeback. For only about the ten thousandth time in my life. The perfect response would spawn sometime as I lay tossing and turning an hour before dawn.
Winger strode to the Dead Man's door, stuck her nose in. His room takes up half the ground floor. I looked over her shoulder. All 450 pounds of him remained planted in his chair, still as death. The Loghyr's elephantlike snout dangled down a foot to his chest. Dust had begun to collect on him, but the vermin hadn't found him yet. No point cleaning until they did. Maybe Dean would come home first and save me the trouble.
Winger backed out of there, grabbed my elbow. "He's out of it." She knew because he hadn't reacted to her. He has no use for females in general and less use for Winger. Once, I threatened to boot Dean out and move her in.
"What did she say?" Winger asked as we headed upstairs. "Who's the target?"
"You don't know?"
"I don't know squat. All I know is I'm getting paid a shitpot full to find out."
Money was important to Winger. It is to all of us, in a palsy sort of way: nice to have around, fun to be with. But for Winger, it was like a patron saint.
"She wants me to find her daughter. The girl's been missing for six days."
"Say what? I'll be damned. I was sure it was going to be a hit."
"Why?"
"No special reason. I guess I added the cues up wrong. Looking for her kid? You take the job?"
"I'm thinking about it. I'm supposed to go up to her place, check out the kid's stuff, before I decide."
"But you'll take it, right? Make yourself some of that old double money?"
"An intriguing idea. Only I haven't seen single money from anybody yet."
"You sly bastard. You're thinking about topping the old broad. You're here with me and you're thinking about that. You're a regular villain."
"Winger! The woman is old enough to be my mother."
"Then you or mom is lying about their age."
"You're the one that went on about what an old hag she was."
"What's that got to do with anything? Hell. I forgive you, Garrett. Like I said, you're here. And she's not."
Arguing with Winger is like spitting into a whirlwind. Not much profit in it.
Only through a supreme effort did I get away in time to join Maggie Jenn for dinner.
6
"Ta-ta," I told the Dead Man—softly, so the Goddamn Parrot wouldn't hear. "I spent the day with a beautiful blonde. In penance, I'm going to spend the evening with a gorgeous redhead."
He did not respond. He sure would have had he been awake. Winger had a special place in his heart. He had half believed my threat to marry her.
Laughing gently, still unforgiven, I tiptoed toward the front door. Before his departure, at incredible expense (to me), Dean had had a key lock installed in the new door, like I hadn't survived before he was there to slam bolts and bars into place behind me. Dean placed his trust in the wrong things. A key lock never stops anybody but the honest people. Our real protection is the Dead Man.
Loghyr have many talents, dead or alive.
I strutted away smiling at one and all, deaf to their squabbles. We were getting a lot of nonhumans in the neighborhood, mostly rough type refugees from the Cantard, never shy about expressing opinions. There was always a fuss among them.
Worse, though, were the proto-revolutionaries. Those crowded every loft and sleeping room. They overflowed the taverns, where they chattered foolishly about ever less workable dogmas. I understood what moved them. I didn't think much of the Crown, either. But I did know that none of us, them or me, was ready to try on the king's shoes.
A real revolution would make things worse. These days no two revolutionaries agree whither the Karentine state, anyway. So they would have to murder one another wholesale before...
Revolution had been tried already, anyway, but so ineptly that hardly anybody but the secret police knew.
I ignored the hairy-faced, black-clad agents of chaos on the corners, scowling paranoiacally while they debated doctrinal trivia. The Crown was not in much danger. I have contacts in the new city police, the Guard. They say half the revolutionaries are really spies.
I waved to people. I whistled. It was a glorious day.
I was on the job, however. Though I was whistling my way to dinner with a beautiful woman, I observed my surroundings. I noticed the guy following me.
I roamed. I dawdled. I ambled. I strolled. I tried to get an estimate of the clown's intent. He wasn't very good. I pondered my options.
Turning the tables appealed to me. I could shake him, then follow him when he ran to report.
I do have enemies, sad to admit. In the course of my labors, occasionally I inconvenience some unpleasant people. Some might want to even scores.
I hate a bad loser.
My friend Morley Dotes, a professional killer who masquerades as a vegetarian gourmet, claims it's my own fault for leaving them alive behind me.
I studied my tail till I was sure I could handle him, then hurried along to keep my date with Maggie Jenn.
7
The Jenn place was a fifty-room hovel on the edge of the innermost circle of the Hill. No mere tradesman, however rich, however powerful, would reach that final ring.
Funny. Maggie Jenn had not struck me as the aristo type.
The name still nagged. I still did not recall why I ought to know it.
That part of the Hill was all stone, vertical and horizontal. No yards, no gardens, no sidewalks, no green anywhere unless on the rare third-story balcony. No brick. Red or brown brick was what the mob used to build. Forget that. Use stone that was quarried in another country and had to be barged for hundreds of miles.
I'd never been to the area so I got disoriented.
There weren't any spaces between buildings. The street was so narrow two carriages couldn't pass without climbing the sidewalks. It was cleaner than the rest of the city, but the gray stone pavements and buildings made the view seem dingy anyway. Walking that street was like walking the bottom of a dismal limestone canyon.
The Jenn address was in the middle of a featureless block. The door was more like a postern gate than an entrance to a home. Not one window faced the street, just an unbroken cliff of stone. The wall even lacked ornament, unusual for the Hill. Hill folk build to outdo their neighbors in displays of bad taste.
Some slick architect must have sold some otherwise shrewd character the notion that starkness was the way to shine. No doubt storehouses of wealth changed hands, the ascetic look being more costly than mere gingerbread.
Me, I like cheap. Gimme a herd of double-ugly gargoyles and some little boys peeing off the gutter corners.
The knocker was so discreet you almost had to hunt for it. It wasn't even brass, just some gray metal like pewter or tin. It made a restrained tick tick so feeble I'd have thought nobody inside could hear it.
The plain teak door opened immediately. I found myself face-to-face with a guy who looked like he got stuck with the name Ichabod by malicious parents back around the turn of the century. He looked like he had spent the numerous intervening decades living down to the image that kind of name conjures. He was long and bony and bent. His eyes were red and his hair was white and his skin was oh so pale. I muttered, "So this is what they do when they get old. Hang up their black swords and turn into butlers." He had an Adam's apple that looked like he was choking on a grapefruit. He didn't say a word, he just stood there staring like a buzzard waiting for a snack to cool.