It wasn't far: a big sprawling place that'd seen better days but was still hanging on into the modern world, like the Mother herself. The third house along was a seedy tenement, maybe a rooming house but more probably a brothel. Not a prosperous brothel, either, from the look and smell of the entrance, but that was par for the district. I told Lysias to wait, climbed the stairs and knocked on the door of the first floor flat.
The old woman who answered had three teeth. She could've kept a fair-sized cheap cosmetics factory going single-handed.
'Yeah?' she mouthed.
Gods, she was ugly! I took a step back, but she closed the gap.
'Uh…I'm sorry to disturb you, mother,' I said, 'but I'm looking for a guy called Smaragdus.'
That got me a twenty-candelabra glare. 'Top floor. And less of the mother, dearie.'
'Right. Right.' I backed away again: wine I enjoy, but not second-hand; and not mixed with raw onion, either. 'Sorry.'
'You won't find him, though.' She flashed her brown teeth at me. 'The bugger's out. He's been out for days. I'm giving him to the end of the month and then he can pick his stuff up in the street.'
Oh, shit, here we go again. Was nothing simple? 'You know where he's gone, maybe?' I said.
The door behind her opened further and two girls sidled out. One was big, blonde and busty, the other was a rake-thin negress. They wore skimpy, grease-stained tunics and their eyes were glass-hard.
'No. But then maybe I can find out, lord.' The old woman's grin widened. 'Why don't you come in meantime? My daughters'll amuse you while I'm gone. Isn't that right, girls?'
The fake blonde — I could see the black roots under the dye — gave me a slow smile.
'Sure,' she said. 'We'd enjoy the company.'
'Maybe some other time, okay?' I took out a silver piece and slipped it down the top of her tunic. She giggled and caught it half way down. 'Today I'm in a hurry. Just point me in the right direction.'
'Harpalus would know,' the negress said. The blonde looked at her and gave another giggle. 'Why don't you try Harpalus?'
'Yeah. I might just do that.' I pulled out another coin; hell, this was getting expensive. 'You know where I can find him?'
She glanced down at her piggy bank. Ah, well. In it went.
'You sure you don't want to stay?' she said.
'No, I'll settle for Harpalus, thanks.'
The blonde giggled again and leaned over to whisper something in the negress's ear. The second girl shook her chime-bar earrings and laughed.
'Suit yourself,' she said. 'If that's your fancy. But he'll be at work just now. In the bird shop, two doors down.'
I turned to go. The blonde's voice caught me as I reached the stairs.
'Watch yourself, dear,' she shouted. 'The bastard charges over the odds. Particularly for Romans.'
7
The bird shop was one of these sad grey places smelling of dank feathers, old blood and bird droppings that you get near temples and that double as religious suppliers and on-the-claw delicatessens. Under the awning, cages packed with pigeons, thrushes and ortolans hung waiting for punters to make their choice and either take it off live to the Mother of the Gods or have its neck wrung there and then for the stew pot or the griddle. There was only one splash of colour. On a perch next to the door was a red and green parrot.
Yeah. Unusual, right? Parrots are strictly high-class merchandise: you see them preening themselves outside the chichi shops around the Marketplace, tricked out with ribbons and bells like Corinthian prostitutes and being cooed over by fluffy matrons with more bangles than brains. Only this one looked more like something that had staggered home pissed out of his skull after a wild all-night party and been woken by the neighbours' dog an hour later.
In other words he looked familiar. Hauntingly familiar. If he hadn't been so obviously a bird I'd almost have sworn that…
I went over for a closer look. I was right. All the feathered bastard needed was a broad-striped mantle and he'd be the spit and image of my Uncle Cotta. No exaggeration: literal truth. It was weird.
'Hey, Cotta.' I stroked his back. 'How's it going, pal?'
The parrot hunched his shoulders, opened a jaundiced, red-flecked eye and fixed me with a glare like I was a cockroach he'd found among the lupin seeds in his feed tray.
'Bugger off, sunshine,' he said.
He meant it, too, I could tell. Yeah, sure enough, Cotta to the life. I chucked him under the beak, nearly losing a finger for my trouble, and went inside. There was someone ahead of me, an old woman buying a pair of doves to go. I waited until she'd finished then walked up to the counter.
After what the girls at the rooming house had said, or at least implied, the guy behind it had to be Harpalus. Maybe he saw himself as one of the gilded butterflies of the City porches, but he just looked sad as the birds he sold. He was no kid, for one thing: twenty-five if he was a day, thin-haired and balding already, with a broad coarse-pored face and the hands of a navvy. Forget the 'gilded' as welclass="underline" the face that turned towards me wasn't so much made up as seriously enamelled. It brightened, though, when he saw me. Thinking of the big blonde's parting shot about Romans, I didn't know whether to take that as a compliment or not.
'Yes, lord.' He smiled. Bad teeth, too: it seemed like the poor guy had nothing going for him at all. 'And what can I do for you?'
'That parrot outside. He for sale?' Shit. I hadn't meant to say that, it just came out. Still, as an opening it was as good as any, and you don't come across a psittacine version of Cotta every day.
'Nestor?' The guy looked surprised. 'Sure. Fifteen drachmas.'
Ouch! And Nestor? Jupiter in spangles! 'Ten.'
'He's worth fifteen, lord. And in the City you'd pay thirty.'
'True enough, pal, but not for a bird with his colourful turn of phrase. That's no delicate toy for the Beautiful and Good you've got there.'
He glanced at the door. I could almost hear him mentally weighing twelve silver pieces in the hand against one very foul-mouthed bird on the porch. Avarice — or maybe it was pragmatism — won out.
'Okay,' he said. 'We'll call it twelve. And I'll throw in the perch.'
'Deal.' I took out my much-slimmed-down purse. 'Your name Harpalus, by the way?'
He paused. 'What if it is?'
'You're Smaragdus's friend?'
'We know each other, yes,' he said cautiously.
'You know where I can find him?'
'Maybe.' He wasn't smiling now. If anything he looked nervous. 'What's your business with Smaragdus, lord?'
I reached into the purse and brought out a shiny half gold piece. 'I need to talk to him urgently. About a certain article he and his partner are handling. His ex-partner, rather. I was hoping you might be able to help. If you can then Nestor's price has just gone up and there's no need to tell your boss by how much.'
His eyes fixed on the coin and he wet his lips. Forget nervous; for some reason — and I'd've given a lot to know what it was — he looked scared as hell.
'You're from Eutyches, aren't you?' His voice had sunk to a whisper.
I kept my face straight. 'Maybe.'
'Very well.’ He swallowed. ‘I'm making no promises, but I'll pass your message on. How can I get in touch with you?'
'You can't, sunshine.' I wasn't going to give him my name; no way. Not after that little exchange. 'I'll call back tomorrow. Same time. Okay?'
'Okay.'
I passed the gold over. This time I didn't regret it, because he'd told me a lot. For a start, that he — and so Smaragdus — knew about the Baker. Secondly when I'd given him a time limit he hadn't blinked, so if he could deliver the message to Smaragdus and come back with an answer inside a day then Smaragdus couldn't be far away. Lastly, he'd handed me another piece to the puzzle, even though I couldn't place it. Who the hell was this Eutyches? Somebody important and, from the guy's reaction, none too chancy.