The Cadaver Client m-4

by Frank Tuttle

  The Cadaver Client

  ( Markhat - 4 )

  Frank Tuttle

  Frank Tuttle

  The Cadaver Client

  Chapter One

  “Happy birthday, you mangy fleabag, you.”

  I scratched his battle-scarred head. He rewarded me with the merest flick of his long, black tail.

  I sat in my chair, my shiny new boots propped on my battered old desk, and watched Three-leg Cat lick the stump of his missing paw.

  That’s how I celebrated the tenth birthday of my business. It had been ten years ago today that I’d scraped together enough coin to pay the rent on the office on Cambrit Street and hire a man to paint a finder’s eye on the bubbled glass pane set in the weather-beaten door. Three-leg, then a mangy injured kitten, had been the first living soul to pass through my open door.

  For the last ten years I’d done what every finder does-I’d found things. Sons or daughters or fathers or trouble. If you’ve lost something, or someone, you can seek out my painted finder’s eye, and I’ll pull my feet off my desk, and for the right handful of coin I’ll see if I can find it for you.

  I’d done very well, right after the War, finding fathers and sons left abandoned by the Regency when the Truce was declared. These days, I didn’t look for missing soldiers nearly as often as I looked for straying wives or errant husbands.

  I reflected on that as Three-leg Cat washed his scar. For awhile the soldiers I’d found often brought their families joy, but the news I brought my clients lately was anything but joyous.

  Three-leg Cat looked up, as though he’d heard my thoughts, and gave me a scathing look of feline contempt.

  “Buy your own breakfast then,” I muttered.

  Three-leg Cat leaped down from my desk, and it was then I heard Mama’s voice close by my door.

  I groaned. I’d inherited Mama Hog along with the office. Her card and potion shop was two doors down from mine. She’d taken me on as a project the very first day, and ten years later she was still trying to browbeat me into the Mama Hog version of respectability.

  I hoped she’d pass on by, but as usual, luck was showing no love to Markhats near and far. Mama banged on my door, then tried the latch.

  “You in there, boy?”

  I swung my legs down to the floor. “I’m closed, Mama. No, I’m retiring. Going to sell off my business and buy a barge.”

  Mama guffawed and swung my door open, and it was then I saw Mama Hog wasn’t alone.

  I gaped.

  Mama Hog is old. She claims to be a hundred and twenty, and though I doubt that, I’d buy even odds she is on the bad side of eighty. Mama carefully cultivates every cliched Witch Woman affectation ever spoken-a wild tangle of grey hair, fingernails that could scare a grizzly bear, and a mole that sometimes changes cheeks from day to day. That’s Mama, and I gather the look is good for business, even in downtown Rannit.

  But if Mama was two-dozen cliches stitched together with wrinkles and cackles, her companion was something straight out of myth.

  She was a head higher than Mama, which put her just a bit below my shoulders. If she had hair at all, I couldn’t see it, not beneath that trail-beaten black bowler hat. She wore a faded poncho that might have been striped in orange and black zigzags half a century ago, and six or seven layers of castoff rags under that, all clashing, all tattered and trailing threads or bits of cloth.

  Her face, though-there were eyes, tiny and black, recessed so far beneath wrinkled grey brows I wondered how the woman saw. Her nose was a wart-encrusted proboscis that sprouted its own crop of fine, white hairs from within, and her chin protruded far enough forward to nearly meet the tip of her nose.

  She had hands the color and texture of old leather, and black fingernails four times longer than Mama’s and sharpened to points besides.

  She held a gnarled walking stick in her right hand and a handful of dark rags in her left. She was muttering, and though her black eyes were turned up toward mine, I didn’t think she was talking to me. She confirmed this by raising the rags to her lips and whispering to them, then shaking her head as if they’d replied.

  “Boy, this here is Granny Knot,” said Mama. “I brung her here myself so I could make inter-ductions. Granny Knot, this is that finder what I told ye about. His name is Markhat. Markhat, this be Granny Knot.”

  Mama caught my sleeve and hissed at me. “Don’t you dare make no mock of her, boy.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Granny Knot.”

  Granny whispered into her handful of rags, then held it to her ear, listened and cackled.

  “Granny here needs to be hirin’ herself a finder,” said Mama. “I told her you was the best, boy. And I told her you’d deal fair with her. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

  I groaned.

  “Mama,” I began. “I just took on a big case, I was just headed out the door-”

  “I pays,” said Granny Knot. Her black eyes sparkled, back in the shadows. “I pays good. Got old coin. Three hundred crowns. Pays you fifty.”

  I almost snorted. Three hundred crowns, especially in pre-War old coin, was a small fortune. I didn’t figure Granny Knot of the handful of rags had ever seen three crowns stuck together, much less three hundred.

  “Granny here is a spook doctor,” said Mama. “Best in Rannit.”

  “Nice meeting you, Granny.” I rose. Spook doctors claim to converse with spirits. For a price, of course. Always for a price. “Nice hat.”

  And that’s when Granny cackled again and pulled a canvas sack from somewhere beneath her rags and let it fall onto my desk with a tinkle and a thump.

  “Three. Hundred. Crowns.”

  And then Granny cackled again and went back to her whispered conversation with her pet rags.

  Mama grinned at me, her two front teeth shining in triumph.

  “I’ll leave you two alone to talk business,” she said. She made a small courtly bow to Granny, who plopped down in my client’s chair while a pair of grey moths escaped her wardrobe and began to dart around my office.

  Mama stomped out. Granny beamed at me, and the coins in the sack shifted with that magical sound of gold on gold.

  “You’ve hired yourself a finder, looks like.” I said. “So, tell me what it is you’ve lost.”

  Three-leg Cat was back on my desk, working now on his left front paw. He’d glanced at the bag of Old Kingdom coins on my desk, and then ignored it once he determined it contained neither bacon nor mice.

  I took the bag in my hands and hefted it. Three hundred crowns. Hell, had I made three hundred crowns in the last ten years? I doubted it. Maybe I had, before you deducted my beer and sandwich tab at Eddie’s. A man has to eat.

  I shook my head, shoved the bag in the big drawer of my new desk and locked it up tight. Not that a mere lock would deter thieves. I hoped Granny had the sense to keep her mouth shut where the subject of bags of money was concerned.

  I gathered Granny did though. She’d been full of surprises, after Mama left. Beginning with her first words to me.

  “I trust you’ll keep all our dealings confidential, Goodman.”

  That was the first thing Granny had said, once we were alone. In perfect Kingdom, not a syllable slurred, not an inflection out of place. And none of it aimed at her handful of rags, which lay in her lap.

  I’d managed to nod an affirmative. She’d laughed at my surprise.

  “Yes, I am both literate and quite sane,” she said. “Though my own clients expect a rather more colorful figure. It’s a pity, really. I do get so tired of mumbling and cackling, and these bloody rags itch all summer.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Granny laughed too, and doing so took twenty years off her face.

  “You sho
uld be on the stage, Miss.” I poked the bag of coin. “Is this a prop too?”

  “Call me Granny. No, the coin is quite genuine. As is my talent, and my wish to hire you.”

  I let the genuine spook doctor comment pass. I hadn’t been ready to believe in her spirits any more than I was ready to believe her handful of rags was whispering to her earlier.

  But I do believe in Old Kingdom crowns. Oh, yes. That’s something we finders can all have faith in.

  “You do not believe me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. But no matter. Believe or disbelieve, I wish to hire you. On behalf of a client of mine.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “A spirit. Does that concern you, Mr. Markhat?”

  “Not as long as I get paid, Granny.”

  She smiled. “Wonderful.” A moth flew between us, and she giggled, high and girlish. Coming from her ancient countenance, the effect was oddly disturbing.

  “Ten years ago, a man came home from the War.”

  “Good for him. Huzzahs all around.”

  She ignored me. “This man made his way to his wife’s door. He’d fought in so many battles. He’d nearly died a dozen times. Yet, when he stood there, his hand raised to knock, he heard something inside. A baby was crying. His baby.”

  I nodded.

  Granny shook her head. “He didn’t knock, Mr. Markhat. He stood there, knowing his wife was inside, knowing she was raising their child by herself, wondering each and every day if her husband was dead or alive or near or far. She lived her life around that door. And the man knew that. But even so, he didn’t knock. In fact, after a while, he turned and walked away, and he never went back.”

  “Sad story. Which brings us to what?”

  “This man died, Mr. Markhat. He died six months ago. He died without ever seeing his wife or his child again. By his own choice, yes. A choice he still doesn’t understand. He has regrets, Mr. Markhat. Deep regrets. He cannot rest.”

  Realization began to dawn on me.

  “So this bag…”

  “Yes,” said Granny. “He spent ten years amassing this. Perhaps not honestly. He spent the rest of his life trying to atone for that one moment at the door, Goodman Markhat. But he died before he could see it given to his wife-and now I intend to help him see that done.”

  “By hiring me? To do what?”

  “Find the wife he abandoned, Mr. Markhat. Find her, or her child, or both. And give them his fortune.”

  I frowned. “I thought ghosts had all kinds of mystical powers. Why can’t he just float around and find her himself?”

  “How, Mr. Markhat? He can no longer ask questions. He can no longer even hear or see many of the living. Rannit itself is never quite the same twice, for him. He could wander the streets, certainly-but she might well be dead and gone before he chanced upon her.”

  “So, what he’s really afraid of is meeting the Missus in the next world without sending her a hefty bribe in this one?”

  Granny laughed. “Mama said you were given to somewhat plain speech. I rather enjoy it, Goodman. It’s quite refreshing. Even at my age.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to decide what to say next. The bag of gold on my desk suggested a hasty yes, but that little voice in the shadows of my mind still had objections.

  “How did you come by this money? I didn’t think spooks kept their pockets in the Blessed Hereafter.”

  “He kept it buried in an old butter churn buried beneath a public privy.”

  I nodded. It was nice to know I wasn’t the only working person who found himself in some unsavory locales from time to time.

  “And he showed you where to find it.”

  Granny’s black pinprick eyes had bored right into me. “He did. You could of course simply take the money and claim you delivered it, if you doubt me so thoroughly,” she noted. “If my talent is a sham, I’ll have no way of knowing whether you found the missing wife or not.”

  “I’m not in the habit of cheating my clients, Granny.”

  “Nor am I, Mr. Markhat.”

  I guess we stared at each other for a good four breaths. To this day, I don’t know who blinked first.

  I do remember getting out my good pen and my prized pad of rough-edged paper, so I could take names and dates and particulars.

  Even a dead client deserves nothing but my utmost attention.

  An hour later, I had names. And dates. And an address, which promised to be less than helpful because that whole neighborhood had burned to the ground and been rebuilt twice since the end of the War.

  Granny Knot was gone. She had lapsed back into her put-on old hag stoop and deranged bout of muttering before she even opened my door. She had left with a wink, the handful of rags held close to her ear.

  I’d listened to her shuffle and mutter down the street and away, and I’d wondered if Mama was putting on a similar act, one she dropped when I wasn’t around.

  Three-leg Cat batted at one of Granny’s stray rag-moths. I read the names and dates I’d written down, let them sink in. I’m terrible with names, and nothing is more awkward for a finder than forgetting who you’re trying to find while you’re out asking questions.

  Marris Sellway, the abandoned wife. Doris Sellway, the name of the child. Marris would be forty years old now. The child, nineteen. They’d lived in the top of a tall, narrow walk-up at Number Six Cawling Street.

  Cawling Street didn’t exist anymore. That much I knew. And nothing else.

  Just like the old days. I was given a name and coin, and I was expected to sally forth and not return until I’d found a breathing body or a lonely grave. Of course, in those days, I’d been looking for soldiers. And soldiers all belonged to units, and the units been paid, and all that left records behind which were easy for a former soldier with the gift of literacy to uncover. I suspected there would be no written records of the former Mrs. Marris Sellway left behind anywhere.

  But neighbors know, and remember, and odds are many of them hadn’t moved far from Cawling Street even after the second fire.

  “Time to get to work,” I said to Three-leg Cat.

  Instead of ignoring me, he backed growling into the corner, every matted hair on his scarred three-legged body standing up, his back arched, his yellowed fangs bared and issuing a loud, ferocious hiss.

  I swung around, expecting to find another cat or a Troll or a brace of wayward pumas lurking close at my back-but there was nothing, save my own awkward shadow.

  Three-leg Cat arched up more and his growl rose. I got up and opened my front door before the daft creature attacked me.

  He vanished in a blur of mismatched feet and freshly shed hairs.

  I looked back. I saw nothing but my shadow, my desk and a single moth flapping blindly below the ceiling.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said aloud. “Just so you know.”

  And then I locked my door and followed Three-leg Cat into the daylight.

  Cawling Street, before the fires, was maybe an hour’s walk from my place. Or twenty minutes in a cab, if one was so inclined.

  One was, and thus I was across the town and in the middle of the tall, new brick buildings that rose like square-caved canyons on each side of Regency Avenue, formerly Cawling Street.

  Regency is a nice place. They planted rows of poplars on each side of the street, and one day long after I’m a ghost myself, they’ll maybe peek above the rooftops. For now, though, the trees are dwarfed by the buildings, and they only get a good swallow of sunlight at noon.

  The sidewalks were wide and straight. The street itself was cobbled and sported far fewer potholes than any street between there and my place. The people I met were brisk and purposeful, and some of them even felt like smiling.

  I remembered the original neighborhood as I walked. Cawling had been just a few more sunken roofs and broken windowpanes from being an outright slum. The street had been so thoroughly mined for cobblestones it was more mud than
pavement. The ramshackle wood-frame buildings had leaned and huddled like so many drowsy drunks.

  I came upon a roofing crew as I walked. While the roofers themselves scrambled around hammering and shouting out of sight far above, a band of ogres was positioned on the scaffolding below. The ogres, rather than hauling the bundles of shingles up ladders, simply hurled them from one to another as easily as you or I could have tossed a bag of feathers.

  A mob of kids danced and hooted as the ogres tossed. The ogres were hamming it up, throwing their loads underhanded, overhanded, eyes closed, from behind. The kids rewarded particularly impressive displays by throwing the ogres fat, red apples, and the ogres thanked them by pelting them with the soggy cores.

  All in all, I wasn’t sure the fires had been such a bad thing after all.

  Four out of every five of the new buildings around me were residential. Some housed bakeries or bathhouses or pubs or smoke shops or eateries. I didn’t figure I’d get any help from those-no, what I was looking for was an elderly woman with a broom, or an old-timer idling on a bench in the poplar-dappled shade.

  I was having no luck finding either, until a door opened right at my left elbow and out popped a well-dressed, elderly gent with a child in hand on each side.

  “Bugger,” announced the man.

  “Bugger,” cried both children, with the inerrant instincts of the very young concerning curse words. “Bugger bugger bugger!”

  The man’s face went crimson, and he nodded apologetically to me.

  “Me and my mouth,” he said. “Daughter’s gonna choke me for sure.”

  I laughed and stopped walking. Both kids danced and continued to employ their new word for my benefit.

  “Obviously not the first time they’ve heard it,” I said. “And it certainly won’t be the last. If that’s the worst thing they encounter today, I’d say you’ve done a fine job of babysitting.”

  “Isobell sure as…sure as the world won’t see it that way,” said the man.

  I shrugged. “Name's Markhat,” I said, before he could get away. “Say, you don’t happen to remember this place when it was called Cawling, do you?”