Dread Brass Shadows (23 page)

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.”

“That was luck.” That was something I’d brought away with me. I suspect, though, that I’d been more motivated than Sadler had. “But you sent a note.”

“Crask wrote it. He picked up a little here and there. I been thinking we could get us a tutor after Chodo croaks and we take over. Only now it don’t look like he plans on checking out, ever.”

“So you’re figuring on helping him along.”

“Something like that.”

“I don’t do assassinations.”

“You was in on the old kingpin biting the big one.”

“He didn’t bite it, it bit him. And you know how it went down. Morley Dotes set me up. If Saucerhead or I had known what was happening, we’d have been on the other side of town instead of helping Dotes lug his vampire.”

“You help us, Garrett, you’d have friends could help you back.”

“How? Chodo embarrasses me now, carrying on like I was his favorite kid.”

Sadler was startled. Why? He grinned but didn’t say. He had lousy teeth. “Maybe so. But he sure as hell ain’t never going to give you that book.”

“Would you?”

“I can’t read and Crask ain’t much better. You figure we could hire somebody to read it for us? You figure we could have that thing and hang on song enough to learn how to read? Without everybody in the world coming after us?”

“You have a point But I have a problem.” I don’t do assassinations. I didn’t have much use for Chodo but didn’t want in on sending him to the big rackets in the sky. He hadn’t earned it from me.

I didn’t not want in badly enough to tell Sadler no, though. He might decide I had to be put to sleep so I wouldn’t tell anybody his plan. “It don’t look like I have too many options. How you going to do it?” It’s called temporizing.

“Old Chodo, he’s going to be partying tonight. Going to be distracted. His daughter is in town for the wingding he throws her every year

“His what?”

“His daughter.” Sadler laughed. “Not a lot of people know about her You’d like her. She’s a looker Must take after her old lady I never saw the broad. Before my time, Chodo put her away himself ‘cause he caught her screwing the guy who was the boss back then. So what? History is history. Important thing is, he’s throwing a birthday party tonight. Goes on like they have before, everybody will drink themselves blind arid pass out. Me and Crask figure if we hit about three in the morning, it’ll be a walk.”

“Why do you need me, then?”

He grinned again He was doing more of that than in all the time I’d known him. “Garrett, you do that innocent so damned good. Man, I wish I could do that.”

“Glad you get a kick out of it. Because I really don’t know what the hell you’re yapping about

“Sour today. Little chickie tell you no? Okay. You remember a while back we all had us a problem with that thing that thought it was a dead god? Wanted to bring itself back to life?

That wasn’t all that long ago I didn’t want to remember. That had been a hairy one. There’d been some sick people involved. Only good that came out of it was Maya. “I remember.”

“No wisecrack? You must be getting old. So. One day you come out to the house. Dotes was with you. We gived you a little stone. An amulet, like Eh? Maybe you thought we forgot to take it back”

I’d been hoping. That stone was hidden in the Dead Man’s room with our most precious possessions. I’d expected to have to use it someday.

It was a magical gizmo that kept the thunder-lizards away, Chodo isn’t fond of unannounced visitors. To discourage them, he has his grounds walled. Behind the walls he keeps whole herds of small, carnivorous thunder-lizards. They’re more efficient than dogs, though he has packs of those, too. Thunder-lizards don’t leave much evidence laying around. No telling how many valiant adventurers have scaled Chodo’s wall only to become monster munchies.

“You set me up.”

“We thought it might be handy someday, having one on the outside.”

“You guys are too damned smart for me.”

“That’s a fact.”

I doubted it, but he and Crask were a lot smarter than they let on. “So you need the stone to get through to the house, where everybody’s going to be polluted. Then what?”

“Then Chodo expires in his sleep. Maybe because they’re all drunk and not watching what they’re doing, a couple thunder-lizards get inside and gobble up a few guys who been trying to take over me and Crask’s spots.”

“You think you can run the outfit?”

“Between us we can. It don’t take a lot of running. We got the machine all oiled up. We go break somebody’s head once a month or so, it keeps running smooth. We can handle that.”

No doubt. “And I get the book, eh?”

“Soon as we find out where it is. That’s a promise. And we’ll find it. You know that.”

They would if they wanted. But would they really deliver? That is, would they bother collecting it if it turned out to be in the clutches of a Fido Easterman or would they just point me in the right direction? “Three in the morning, eh?”

“I know you been keeping regular hours But that’s the way it is.”

Another night without much steep. And no nap between now and then because I’d be trying to think of a way to slide out of being part of a gangland killing.

Morley would say this was an opportunity to show I wasn’t under Chodo’s thumb, forgetting it would give Crask and Sadler a rather ferocious hold on me Speaking of Morley Dotes, where was he? Now I needed a helpful hand. Not to mention Saucerhead. “Hey, you got any idea what’s become of Dotes and Tharpe?”

“Nope. Still sulking?”

“Looks like.” Something about his answer told me he really didn’t know. Probably it was the fact that his tone said he didn’t care.

He asked, “You aren’t thinking about bringing them guys with you?”

I caught the edge of something there. “No.” This deserved some thought. “Just haven’t seen them since this mess started. I’m concerned.”

“Um. I been sitting still too long. Got to keep moving. Don’t want to let anything catch up. We’ll meet you at the milestone on the hill down the road from Chodo’s place. Two o’clock. Bring that amulet stone.”

“Sure.”

Sadler went away, stooped like he was a hundred and ten. He did it pretty good. I wouldn’t have recognized him from a distance.

I wondered what they would do if I didn’t show.

He’d left his packet of crumbs. I fed the pigeons while I mused, till some jerk came up and pounced, wanting to tell me all the latest from the Cantard.

36

I hadn’t gone a block when Winger fell into step beside me “Must be my lucky day.”

She asked, “What was that about?” No sensitivity, Winger I wondered if she could be insulted.

“What’s what about?”

“Your little cheek-to-cheek with Chodo’s boy Sadler.”

So she had an eye. His disguise hadn’t fooled her. “You’re too nosy, along with all your other charms.”

“That’s what they tell me.” She gave me a big grin, followed with a comradely punch to the shoulder. Would I ever get used to her? Tell the truth, I hoped I didn’t have to. There were moments when I wished the odds would hustle up and overtake her. “Bet I can figure it.”

“Go right ahead.” I did my surly best to lengthen my stride till she couldn’t keep up. Lot of good it did me. She cruised along, had me huffing and puffing before I was halfway home. Big old country girl.

“How’s this, Garrett? Sadler and his boyfriend figure out their hopes for moving up ain’t worth squat if their boss grabs that book. Eh?” Big chuckle, up from the gut, like a Saucerhead Tharpe chuckle. “They put in their time, played it straight, figure they deserve better. Eh?”

“That you been following me all over?” I hadn’t sensed her presence at all. Nor that other presence, if that hadn’t been her Scary, her that close and me not feeling a thing And her in that outfit.

“Only since you left Easterman’s hangout Them guys want you to help them promote themselves, don’t they?”

Was I giving myself away? Usually I do good hiding my thoughts. She laughed. “Yeah. I thought so. When they going to do it?”

“What’re you babbling about? You been smoking weed?”

“Sure. My imagination’s gone berserk. You ever seen that place that Chodo lives?”

“I’ve been there.”

“Bet whoever cleans that out would be set for life.”

“Be a short life if somebody tried.”

“Them thunder-lizards? No problem. Your pals got some way to get past them. I ride in on their coattails, stay low while they’re doing the dirty deed, grab a sackful of the best loot, hightail out in the confusion afterward. No big deal.”

Incurable optimism. “When did you get out to look at the place?”

“I get around. You made a big deal about the guy being bad, I figured I had to check him out.”

“You ever sleep?”

“I got a lot of energy. You do when you got ambition. You, you’re an old box turtle. Never move unless you’re starving and then only far enough to get yourself fed. You’re never going to amount to anything, Garrett.”

Was she taking lessons from Dean? “I manage. I have my own house. Not many can say that.”

“I heard about how you made the money, too. People kept sticking pins in your ass till you did something. Then you fell in the shit and came up with a sack of gold.”

It really was something like that. But I do think I gave value for money. I stomped up the steps to my front door. Winger invited herself along. I thought about tossing her hack when I recalled my little joke on Dean. What the hell? It would do his old heart good to get to pounding. I knocked.

Dean opened up. He took a look at Winger. His face scrunched up but he didn’t say anything. Winger said, “How you doing, Pops? You got any more of that good beer? I’m dry as a mummy.” She gave him a friendly thump on the chest. He almost went down. He regained his balance, took off down the hall shaking his head.