But when to meet? He didn't state a time.
I didn't jump up and run over, though. Despite my interest. That sort of thing isn't done if you care to survive in this line. There are proprieties one observes when dealing with mysterious messages. Like sending some sucker... er, friend... to scout the terrain. "Hey, Dean." I didn't have anybody else left.
"I have dishes and laundry to do, Mr. Garrett. One extra body seems to triple the workload around here." This from the kitchen, shouted.
"Wait a minute
"I don't have time to run any errands."
Who the hell is the mind reader around here? "How did you know .
"That's your favor-asking voice. Perhaps you could send Miss Ramada."
He sucked me in there. I wouldn't send Carla Lindo. And because I wouldn't, he'd know I hadn't been about to send him after rutabagas so we could have rutabaga pie tonight. In the following silence I could almost hear his brain creaking and squeaking as he mulled over how to get even for me even considering getting him involved in something chancy.
I caught the edge of a mental chuckle from across the hall. I was everybody's entertainment. I got up and plodded into the kitchen, drew me a beer. "You're going to stay on after I get married, aren't you? We're going to need all the help we can get."
Dean's face brightened He forgot all about me thinking of sending him out where the bad winds blow. He knew he wasn't going to get rid of one of his nieces but having me shackled to any woman was the next best thing. He was a born-again advocate of marriage, though he'd managed to evade martyrdom himself. "It would be an honor to serve Miss Tinnie, Mr. Garrett."
I felt almost bad, digging at him like that. Almost. "Not who I've got in mind."
"Miss Maya certainly is devoted to you, but don't you think she's a bit young for a man of your years?"
My years? He'd get no mercy now. "Not Maya. I'm thinking about asking Winger. You got to admit, she's more my type. We'd make a hell of a team out on those mean streets."
He looked scandalized, horrified, proceeded rapidly toward apoplectic. His face got red. He gulped for air. I poured it on. "I'm not really cut out for these sleek little beauties, Dean. I need somebody who can be a real partner. A pal. A real man's man everywhere but in the dark. I think Winger is the gal I've been waiting for. She's a take-charge type. She'd get things straightened out around here."
Garrett!
I must have overdone it. That squeak of horror came from up front.
I'm used to Dean taking everything too serious, to him taking forever to figure out he's being ribbed. But not the Dead Man. I finished up, "Don't you think?"
Dean just stood there with a pan dangling from one hand, his mouth open and his eyes crossed. He looked so forlorn I almost let up. If Carla Lindo hadn't been upstairs, I would have. Instead, I headed for the front door.
"I'd better take care of it right away."
35
Does anybody know who this guy Sinkler was? Does anybody care? Somebody put up a statue, didn't they?
Hell, maybe that ugly hunk of rock was there when they built the city. It looks worn out enough. If anybody does know, they haven't been talking. Whatever Sinkler did, it's a secret from me. Only the pigeons have much use for him. They perch on his upraised arms and tricorner hat and wait for primo targets to come by. Once upon a time he was covered with copper. Thieves took care of that ages before I was hatched.
Sinkler stands in the center of a small square where five streets butt heads, maybe half a mile northwest of my place. His main significance to me is he marks the frontier between your ordinarily dreadful city and the Bustee, which makes any part of town you care to name look like a suburb of heaven. The Bustee is where the real poor folks live. The Bustee is a quarter Chodo Contague wouldn't enter without an army, let alone wimps like the Watch. Hell, it's gotten so bad lately some of the landlords have gotten chicken to collect their rents.
Of course, a Chodo wouldn't bother going into the Bustee. People there are so poor they can't afford names. They survive by looking poorer than their neighbors.
Hell on earth. In the Marines I met guys out of there. They thought the Corps was great, despite the war. They got food to eat, clothes to wear, shoes on their feet, their life expectancies were better in the Cantard than at home, and they even got paid. So how come you rich boys are all pissing and moaning?
My folks never had a pot to pee in, but I'd grown up rich compared to those guys.
You'd think those people would bust out and go berserk. They never have. Like nobody is taking advantage of the fact that all the lords of the Hill are off to catch Glory Mooncalled. People have a sense of order and place and caste. Most figure if they're poor and dying of starvation, the gods want it that way. Probably they earned it in a former life.
It's a strange world. It's people are stranger.
What am I on about? What's this got to do with Sadler or the Book of Dreams? Not a damned thing. Just indulging the social observer within.
Speaking of Glory Mooncalled, there was a lot of talk. News had come north. People were telling perfect strangers. They'd grab you by the shirt to get you to hold still long enough so they could get the thrill of being first to tell you.
Mooncalled had engineered some apocalyptic collision between the massed Karentine and Venageti armies but lost most of his own making it happen. He was on the run. Or maybe not, depending on your informant. I hung out with Sinkler and absorbed stones. I'd hand them all to the Dead Man when opportunity arose. If ever it did.
I'd spent an hour perched on the pedestal where Sinkler stood, spreading his benevolence. I was beginning to suspect I'd been tricked. At best Sadler wasn't making it easy. Whatever he had in mind. If it was Sadler who sent that message.
It was. He showed eventually. He came creeping out looking around like he was into the loan sharks for half a million and hadn't made his vigorish in a year. I didn't recognize him till he was almost in my lap. He looked like a bum. He wasn't the lethal character I knew and loathed.
He settled beside me, all scrunched up so his size wouldn't give him away. He started throwing crumbs to the pigeons. Nobody would recognize him doing that.
"Where you been?"
"Underground. Had to do some thinking. Couldn't just keep on after I knew why Chodo wanted that book."
"Um?"
"Think what he could do with it."
"I have been. One reason I'm not fond of the idea of him glomming on to it."
"Me neither. Crask too."
"Crask?"
"Took him a little longer but he figured it out. He got a message to me. We met up and talked. We decided we got to do something. We want to bring you in."
His crumbs had brought in pigeons from miles around. They'd been climbing over each other. Now they exploded off the pavement. I glanced up, figuring a flight of thunder-lizards was coming in. But the birds had panicked because of one lone morCartha who appeared to be drunk. Sadler expressed my sentiments for me. "Out in the daytime now, too. Somebody ought to do something. Put a bounty on them, maybe. Give the kids something to do besides cut purses and roll drunks."
Yeah. Things just aren't the way they were in the old days. We had us some respect when we were kids. And so forth. I knew that routine by heart. "How come you're coming to me?"
"You just said you don't want Chodo getting that book."
"I don't want anybody to get it. Not him, not you, not Crask, not the Serpent, not Gnorst Gnorst or Fido Easterman. Hell, I wouldn't trust the old guy who keeps house for me with it. There isn't anybody alive who could resist the temptation."
He thought a minute. "Maybe. I can figure all I could do with it if I could read for shit."
"You can't?"
"My name. A few signs and things I seen all my life. I never got a chance to learn. In the army they didn't teach guys like they did you Marines."