His question was not meant to be answered. Neither villain tried. Both were, now, lost souls wandering a desert of despair.
Tinnie said, "They could probably get some cooperation points if they came clean right now, couldn't they, Senior Lieutenant?"
I took a closer look at Scithe. Sure enough, he was sporting senior lieutenant's pips. He was bounding up the law-and-order ladder.
The man had a knack for something besides mooning after redheads. He could get villains to keep him happy by confiding in him, urged along by his implying that he could provide something they wanted badly: a way out.
"Gentlemen, you have to give me something. I know you aren't stupid." Which was a bald-faced lie. "You know how the system works. You'll go to the Al-Khar because I can't not take you in. We have to see if you're on the wanted book for something ugly. If you have no majors there, you could walk out under your own power." In chains, headed for the swamp. "You know we do let folks go to encourage the rest of you to cooperate. So far, here, all we've got is a jimmied lock and some folks who aren't happy about getting waked up in the middle of the night. So why not tell me? What's the story?"
The elder brother thought he'd give cooperation a chance. Condemnation to the Little Dismal Swamp project amounted to a death sentence. Though some prisoners might complete their sentences, someday. None have yet but the project isn't all that old.
"We was supposed to catch the woman and take her someplace. The guy wasn't supposed to be here. If he was, we was supposed to bop him on the head and get out. With her."
That sparked interest all round. None of us expected Tinnie to be a target.
Scithe can be blisteringly obvious. "Why?"
Shrug. "We didn't get paid to ask questions."
"You did get paid?"
Tin whistles looked at me like I knew what this was all about.
"Talk to him," I grumbled. "He's the one with the answers."
Here was one now. "Forty percent. The balance on delivery."
"Let me get this straight." Scithe was having trouble getting his mind around something. "You were hired to kidnap Miss Tate."
"Ain't that what I just confessed?"
"You did. Yes." Scithe took no offense, nor did he argue, however senseless the villain's statement. "Who might be so starved for Miss Tate's company that he, or she, would enlist your assistance in arranging a date?"
Both bad boys frowned and wrestled with that. The younger one worked it out. "Jimmy Two Steps hired us."
I gave Tinnie a dirty look. I was so out of touch I didn't know who Jimmy Two Steps was. Then me and the minions of the law exchanged eyebrow lifts. They didn't know Jimmy, either.
Neither did Tinnie, who said, "I don't know anybody named Jimmy."
Mysteries. We got mysteries. We got off-the-wall mysteries.
It was the way things started. There was a smoldering hot-tie underfoot. But, Tinnie? It was usually a personable wench from the grass-is-greener side.
I told myself, "This isn't something getting started. This is just random." But even clicking my heels didn't convince me.
4
After turning up Jimmy Two Steps, the brothers gave us nothing more. A lot of clever questioning went to waste. I told Scithe, "Take these guys over to your shop. Tomorrow I'll check with my old contacts and see if somebody doesn't know where to find Two Steps."
Tinnie blistered me with a look because she was part of the subtext of what I'd said. I didn't feel the heat.
Once the brothers dropped the name they stayed busy whining about how they knew Jimmy only from drinking with him at a place called Raisin's Bookshop.
I remembered Raisin's Bookshop. It was the lowest of low-life bars. The kind of place where our night visitors would hang out. Nobody knew why it was called the Bookshop. If somebody named Raisin was ever connected with it that was so long ago nobody remembered that, either.
Scithe suggested, "Garrett, stick to your job as a security specialist. You try to pick up where you left off, you'll find out how much you don't got it anymore. Miss Tate? He's in your custody. Keep reminding him that TunFaire's Civil Guard handles these things these days."
"I will." I had no doubt that she would-often, and strongly.
My natural-born cynicism failed me. The tin whistles had been amazingly effective, lately. I took the lieutenant at his word, thinking the Guard would wrap the mess in a day or two.
"All right. Do your job. Just don't leave us twisting in the wind. Let us know why these cretins were after Tinnie. In case we need to be ready to entertain another clutch of numskulls."
Tinnie gave poor Scithe a look that made him forget he'd been happily married for years to a perfectly wonderful but ordinary woman. "I'll do that," he promised. "I'll do that for sure."
Tinnie turned on the heat in the distractions department as soon as I got back from making sure our guests had actually left the premises. "I know what you're going to say, darling."
"Which would be why a roasting holiday goose is usually better dressed than you are right now."
"I can't fool you for a minute, can I?"
No, but she could do a damned good job of diverting me, after which, to be contrary, I didn't have anything to say. I lay there and brooded till I woke up in the middle of the next morning.
5
I asked, "You recall last night?" Tinnie was trying to make breakfast. Trying hard. She wanted to do good. She had nothing else left in her arsenal of distraction. Sadly, she's much better at looking good than at cooking good.
"Yep. Yep. I remember."
Ha! Nervous. Maybe even feeling a little guilty, though the Guard's inquisitors wouldn't get her to admit that.
"The sausages aren't as bad as they look," she promised. "And the toast will be fine if you scrape it a little with your knife."
"Kip Prose has a thing for making perfect toast." I let it go, though. She had used one of the prototypes to burn this toast.
"I just wanted a normal life."
I said nothing. Let her have the argument with herself. Of course, silence is my best tactic in this sort of situation, four times out of five. I let her ramble where she liked.
She ran down. She glared at me. Then she got her second wind. "Gods damn it, Garrett! I know what you're thinking. It wasn't you that those thugs came for. It was me."
Admitting that cost her. Getting any Tate to admit being wrong about anything, even obliquely, is more rare than hens' teeth. And certainly more precious. Having one 'fess up without provocation, voluntarily, is rare beyond compare.
I soldiered on, keeping my big damned mouth shut, a skill I'm still having trouble mastering. Had I done so years ago, I could've saved myself a lot of hard knocks.
"All right! You're right! It never would have happened if I hadn't insisted that we live up here. The Dead Man would have wrapped those idiots up before they damaged the door."
They might not have come at all. Hardly anybody is stupid enough to take a chance with the Dead Man anymore. They would have caught Tinnie somewhere else. They would have made her disappear quietly.
Which they should have done anyway. Why try for her here, at night, when there was such a damned good chance that I would get involved?
They wanted me involved. Had to. Or whoever sent them did. Ha! Butch and his brother hadn't been well briefed on what to expect before they set off to capture the savage redhead.
Maybe Jimmy Two Steps hadn't had a clue, either.
That is the way I would have worked it if I was in the villain trade. I'd make Jimmy a cutout.
I put some toast and sausage down and did not gag. I took a relaxing breath, announced, "I'm going to visit Singe and the Dead Man."
Tinnie stopped rattling pots.