Dead Men's Boots (61 page)

A minute or so after that, the court clerk picked his way casually to the back row and asked me if I’d mind attending His
Honor in his chambers. I said I’d be delighted, and asked whether I could bring my bronze funerary urn with me. It held the
mortal remains of my uncle George, and it was hard for me to be parted from them.

Runcie favored me with a berserker glare as I walked in, but he had enough presence of mind to dismiss the clerk before he
started in on me. I took the opportunity to sit down on the far side of the dignified mahogany barricade that was his desk.
Runcie was standing, so rigid with indignation that he was vibrating slightly, like a tuning fork. He really looked unwell,
the pallor going beyond ashen into waxy.

“How dare you bring that—thing into my courtroom?” he demanded, waving a finger at the urn, as soon as we were alone. “What’s
the meaning of it?”

I gave the urn a wipe, because the bronze was a bit tarnished here and there. “Well,” I explained, “it’s a mark of respect
for the dead, primarily, but it also gives the living a focus for their grief. Otherwise you could just flush your ashes down
the khazi and use the money for—”

“Don’t give me all that—nonsense,” Runcie interrupted me, forcing the words past clenched teeth. “Why did you bring it here?
Why are you showing it to me?”

“Ah!” I said, shaking my head ruefully at my own misunderstanding. “Yeah, I get you now. Not so much ‘What the hell is that?’
as ‘What the hell is that doing in my courtroom?’ Well, Mr. R., it’s a great, huge, festering, bloated bastard of a memento
mori. Which, if your Latin isn’t up to it, means—”

“I know what it means.”

“—a reminder of death; a vivid or stirring testimony to human mort—”

“I know what it means!” Runcie screamed. “Get it out of my courtroom or I’ll find you in contempt! You’ll do thirty days,
you understand me?”

I massaged my nose thoughtfully. “Thirty days is a long time,” I observed.

Runcie shook his head, his eyes a little wild. “Oh, no. Thirty days is my opening bid, Mr.—whatever your name is. Carson?
Carter? I know you. I know what you’re aiming to do here. You can’t intimidate a magistrate. But you can get yourself into
a lot of trouble trying.”

I didn’t bother to answer. I turned the urn to face him. The name on it wasn’t Runcie, but it made him moan and fall backward
into his chair, all the fight knocked out of him in a second.

“Now,” I said easily, “we know where we stand. You on that road with all the paving slabs made out of good intentions you
never cashed in. And me on your balls.”

Runcie said something. It wasn’t that easy to hear, but the name on the urn was in there, along with some protest or disclaimer
or denial. I turned the slightly dented bronze vessel around again and examined the name. “John Colmore,” I read. “Aka Jack
Spot, the king of Aldgate. That’s you, isn’t it? You would have been one of the early ones, I’m guessing. And far from the
worst. I gather you charged the Jewish businesses around Mile End a lot of money for ‘protection’—but then when the blackshirts
rolled up, you actually weighed in and provided some, which is something of a novelty. And you’ve improved yourself since
then, obviously. Aaron Silver told me some of you had trained as lawyers for tactical reasons, but bloody hell, eh? A beak.
You
can
take the boy out of the gutter.”

Runcie gave me a look that was pure poison, but I forgave him because he had nothing at all to back it up.

“So don’t get me wrong, Jack,” I concluded. “I’ve got nothing against you personally. But I’ve got to look out for me and
mine, and right now, from where I’m sitting, you’re part of the problem. So here’s how it’s going to go. You’re going to serve
an injunction against Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, immediately restraining her against taking Rafi Ditko out of the Stanger clinic.
You’ll also rule yourself
ultra vires
on the power-of-attorney thing and bump it up to one of your mates in the court of appeal with a quiet nudge and a wink to
decide in Pen Bruckner’s favor. These things you will do now, while I watch. And then you might want to clock off early and
have a G and T, because you’ll have earned it.”

Runcie was still glaring at me like I’d trodden dog shit into his Persian carpet. “The law can’t be bought, Mr. Castor.”

“I wouldn’t dream of trying,” I protested, throwing out my arms in injured innocence. “Although I suspect Jenna-Jane did.
But this—this is extortion, not bribery.”

“You can’t threaten me.”

“Can’t I? Let me paint you a picture, then. You’re a ghost sitting in a body, which, if I’m any judge—pardon the pun—is already
starting to reject you. Your friends aren’t around anymore to help you get the whip hand again. No more inscriptions, now
or ever, so there’s no going back. Which leaves you with three options. Sing along if you know the words.” I counted them
off on my fingers. “One. You hold on for dear life and savor every last second of your fleshly existence until, finally, the
last one of your fingernails is prized loose and you go sailing off into eternity like a balloon with its string cut.

“Two—and this is a risky one—you let go. Leave now, while you’re still strong, instead of wearing yourself out with a fight
you can’t win. Find yourself a fresh corpse to nest in or a dog to redecorate. Come back as a zombie or a loup-garou and live
to fight another day. If you opt for two, I can even give you some pointers. I’ve been around the track a few times when it
comes to borrowed flesh.

“But then there’s three. Are you ready for three?”

Runcie had his head buried in his hands and didn’t give any sign of hearing me, but I knew he was listening.

“Three is this. You piss me off, and I play you a short, merry tune. And then it’s all over, Jack. Right here and right now.
Because I’m the bingo caller from hell, and I’ve got your number. And some of my friends are dead because some of your friends
liked to shoot first before anyone could ask any questions, so I don’t owe you a single fucking favor in the whole wide world.”

I stood up. “Your choice. And because I’m in a bright, bubbly, expansive mood today, I’m going to give you until I reach the
door.”

    
Twenty-eight

T
HAT COUNTED AS A HAPPY ENDING, IN MY BOOK. IT was a case I was able to walk away from, which put me among the front runners
if you look at the statistics. Rafi was safe from Jenna-Jane’s scientific curiosity, for the moment, at least. He could relax
and unpack in his padded cell made for two. And that, in turn, put me back in good with Pen, to the point where she could
actually bear to talk to me for whole minutes at a time. I even had grounds for hope that she might break down and let me
come and live in her attic again when Ropey Doyle came back from Ireland with a snow-white tan and a broader accent.

The righteous will get their reward in the kingdom of heaven. The rest of us poor sons of bitches have to content ourselves
with what we can scrape together here on earth.

I think back, in idle moments, to when I was a kid in Walton, Liverpool. Sometimes in summer, on really hot days, we’d go
down to a place called the Sisters. It was a series of bomb craters on a huge expanse of waste ground next to a closed-down
railway track. The bigger craters had filled up with water over time and become ponds.

Even on the hottest day, the water would be freezing cold. You’d stick your foot in, then swear a lot and back off, and get
jeered at both by kids who’d already gone in and by kids who had no intention of trying. So you’d wade in a bit deeper, and
a bit deeper—foot, to calf, to knee, to hip—and the cold would be biting into your legs, and it would be agony. Then it was
lapping at your stomach and it was worse. You kept hoping you’d acclimatize, but the more you drew it out, the more it hurt.
Until, suddenly, you were in over your shoulders and—just like that—it was absolutely fine. Cool, refreshing, the best thing
ever. Best of all, you got to laugh at all the other poor bastards who were still at the toe-dipping stage.

I always envied the few hardy souls who took a running jump, hit the water all curled up into a ball, and then opened up,
laughing, already there: the whole incremental ordeal bypassed in a single moment of raw courage.

So what I’m getting at is this. Okay, maybe it’s cold in the grave. Maybe you come out of the light and think, Fuck your mother,
this is bad. This is worse than anything I would have guessed. But the trick is to clench your teeth, get a running start,
and dive.

When I hit that other country from whose bourne no traveler backpedals, I’m going to be moving fast. I’m gambling the first
ten seconds or so will be the worst.