by Frank Tuttle
He gulped and nodded.
“Where is Marris Sellway, right now?”
He licked his lips. He took a deep breath. He struggled to put the right words together in the right order.
And then his pupils flared, his muscles went slack, and he passed out face-first into the liquid remains of his last pitiful meal.
Skillet kicked him and spat out a stream of cursing that would have made my old sergeant proud.
Stick was beyond feeling, though. I cussed a bit myself.
“Look, mister, I brung him. You heard what he said. He’s the real thing.”
“You’ll get paid.” I sighed. “Help me haul his stupid butt inside. Be my luck the halfdead will get him if I leave him on the sidewalk.”
We both picked out bits of Stick that were the least encrusted in filth and wrestled his limp form inside my door. I rolled him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke and put a handful of copper into Skillet’s outstretched hand.
The kid’s grin was the only thing about him that still looked young.
“You can stay here too,” I said. “It’s not safe out there.”
The coins vanished. A kitchen knife, honed down to a wicked edge, replaced them. “I got a little sister to watch,” he said.
I just nodded. “Come back around tomorrow. You’ll get the rest then.”
He nodded and was gone. I never once heard a footstep.
Stick moaned and twitched. His attendant stench wasted no time in pervading my office. I lit every candle I had, pulled my favorite lead-weighted head-knocker out of its hiding place under my desk, and settled in for a long and malodorous night.
Chapter Three
The bathhouse attendant, a blind old man named Waters, gathered up Stick’s clothes with the end of his cane and without a word hurled them into the furnace.
“That there man stinks,” offered Waters. “Use all that soap. I’ll go fetch more.”
And off he went grimacing and muttering.
I gave Stick a couple of good hard slaps, which roused him to mutter but not open his eyes.
So I hauled him up by the scruff of his neck and simply tossed his ugly, naked butt into the big, hot, copper bathtub.
Three-leg Cat couldn’t have put on a better show of flailing and howling and sputtering. I put my right hand on his head and pushed him back under briefly.
“Good morning, Mr. Stick.” I had him by the hair, and though he punched and struggled all he did was splash. “It’s bath day. If you behave yourself, it’ll also be breakfast day. If you keep making a ruckus, well…”
I put him under again. The water, I noted, was turning muddy.
At least it was cutting down the smell. Waters arrived as I let Stick back up for air and dumped a bowl of something fragrant into the tub.
“Gonna need more of that,” he opined before shuffling off again.
Stick was furious, but beginning to wake up. He quit trying to punch me, and a ghost of recognition flashed across his face.
“You.”
“Me,” I agreed. “The finder? The one with the coin? The one who wants to know all about Cawling Street and a woman named Marris Sellway? Ring any bells, Stick?”
“You said you pay.”
“I did. And I will. But first you’re going to get yourself clean. And then you’re going to eat. And then you and I are going to sit and talk about the Bloods and Cawling and Marris. Got it?”
Stick closed his eyes and brought up his hands to run water over his face.
“Got it.”
I let go of his head and tossed him a bar of soap. “Waters here did your clothes a favor and burned them. I’m going to go back to my place and get you some of mine. If you want the coin you’ll be here when I get back. You do want the coin, don’t you, Stick?”
The weed-lust in his eyes was the only reply I needed.
“Don’t make trouble for Waters, you hear?”
“I hear.”
I told Waters what I was doing on my way out. My place is just a short walk away, and I swear I could smell Stick in the still, early morning air all the way back to my door.
I found an old shirt and an old pair of brown trousers and a pair of socks with holes in the toes under my bed. They bore the faint aroma of Three-leg, who had apparently been using them as a bed. Even so they were a vast improvement on anything Stick was likely to ever own again.
A pair of old black shoes, soles worn paper thin, completed Stick’s new ensemble. I gathered them all and headed back, more worried about Waters and the possible application of his cane to Stick’s head than I was about anything Stick might decide to do.
Mama popped out of her door as I neared.
“No time now, Mama,” I said. “Bath emergency.”
Mama eyed my bundle, and wrinkled her nose at me. “Something stinks. Come back around when ye finish your doings. Got some things to say.”
Don’t you always, I thought. I just nodded and kept that to myself.
Stick was still in the bathtub when I got back. Waters had near-empty bottles of bath salts lined up by the tub, and he was emptying the dregs from each one onto Stick.
He had at least managed to knock the smell down.
“Gonna have to charge you double, Markhat. Can’t use this water for nothin’ but fertilizing flowers.”
“Not a problem.” I put the clothes down where Stick could see them. I think he muttered a toothless thank you.
Beneath the grime and the filth, Stick looked thin and pale and weary. And no amount of bath salts was going to wash that yellow skin away, or heal those open sores.
I paid Waters and got Stick dried off and dressed. The man had to have help getting shoes on. He simply couldn’t operate more than two fingers at a time.
We left the bathhouse to the sound of Waters draining the tub and burning the towels.
“You’re bathed. You’re fed. Now let’s talk about Cawling Street and Marris Sellway.”
Stick swallowed the last bite of biscuit and washed it down with water. I’d never seen a toothless man eat a slice of baked ham before. I hoped I never did again.
“She lived in old Number Six. Up top. Nice lady. Baked us bread when she had extra.”
I nodded. Number Six hadn’t been on the waybill either.
“What did she do for a living, Stick?
He looked confused by the very concept.
“Did she have a job? Did she take in laundry or sewing?”
“She sewed some,” said Stick. “I remember. She sewed some.”
“That’s good, Stick. That’s very good.” I shoved another biscuit his way. “Now tell me about her husband. Did you know him too?”
Stick had half a dry biscuit in his mouth, and he nearly choked trying to reply.
“No husband,” he finally choked out. “Dead. Dead and gone.”
I frowned. But maybe that’s what she told people, when he didn’t come home.
“Died in the War?”
Stick shook his head no. Biscuit crumbs went flying.
“Kilt in a bread riot. Stabbed in the street. We brung him home. She cried and cried.”
Something in the back of my mind said softly but plainly, I told you so.
“What? Tell me again. And tell me who died, and who you brought home.”
Stick rubbed his chin. “Mr. Sellway. Got hisself stabbed dead in a bread riot down on Forge. We found him, brought him home. Me and Eggs and Lark and Stubby. Mrs. Sellway. Marris. She cried and cried.”
Bread riot. The last one had been on Midsummer Eve, a year before the War ended.
Which meant my dead client-or Granny Knot-was lying through his metaphorical teeth.
“Army wouldn’t take him. Mr. Sellway. He had a bad leg. Bad hand, too, all twisted up.” Stick curled his right hand into a claw and held it limp at his side. “We didn’t know what to do. She just stood there crying and screamin’. Eggs started cryin’ too. Lark took off. Me and Stubby wound up sitting with her ’til the dead wagons ca
me. She had to let him burn. Couldn’t afford no burial. Can I have another biscuit?”
“Are you telling me the truth, Stick?”
Stick tilted his head, genuinely confused. “I think so. Is that not what happened?”
I looked into his yellowed, rheumy eyes, and I realized he no longer had the capacity to create such an elaborate lie.
“I’m sure it is, Stick. Here, have two.”
I sat back and watched him gobble down a week’s worth of food. Tears ran down his cheeks, from what I couldn’t discern.
“What happened to the lady after that, Stick? What did she do? Where did she go?”
Stick gobbled and nodded. “Heard she took up with some other fella,” he said. “Or something. Moved after the second fire. Up and took off, left her door wide open. Don’t know about that.” His face clouded. “War ended, them soldiers came. Lark dead. Eggs dead. Stubby…”
He teared up again. I tossed him my last biscuit. He gummed it and gobbled like he’d not just eaten six of its kin.
“So, let me get this straight. Her husband died in a bread riot a year before the War ended. She was seeing another man shortly after. Then came the fires, and she left in a hurry. Is that about right?”
“About.”
“Any idea who this second man was? A name?”
Stick shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said. Worry creased his brow. “Sorry. Don’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ve told me what I needed to know.”
“I get the coin? The twenty crowns?”
“That was the deal. You did your part. I’ll do mine.”
I flipped him a single Old Kingdom gold crown. He could buy a decent place to sleep with that for a month, and food, and clothes, and maybe even a middling good set of carved oak false teeth.
Or he could blow it all on weed and vein and whatever other drugs were in vogue, and wind up encrusted in his own wastes and drooling before the Curfew bell rang again.
It took Stick a long time to count the single coin he gripped in his skeletal hand and realize that one coin was, just possibly, fewer than twenty.
His face darkened.
“You said twenty.”
“I didn’t say all at once.” I pulled my Army knife out and stuck it point-first in my desk. Weedheads don’t respond to subtlety.
“We both know what’ll happen to you if you walk out of here with twenty gold crowns in your pocket, Stick. You got a place? You got a bank? Have you got so much as a sack to keep your money in?”
“I want my money.”
“Those pants you're wearing have holes in both pockets. So, that coin will do you for today. I’m going to put the rest in a bank, Stick. They’ll keep it safe for you, and you can take all of it out, if you want. I hope you won’t. I hope you’ll clean yourself up and get off the weed and have what’s left of your life. I doubt that’ll happen. I figure you’ll march into whatever bank I choose and take all of it out and you’ll be dead before you spend a tenth of it. But that’s your decision. This is mine.”
He eyed me and eyed the knife and finally his eyes fell on the crown in his palm.
“This is a lot of money,” he said.
“Enough to buy you a brand new life. Come back around before Curfew. I’ll tell you where your bank is; give you the bank chit so you can get to the rest anytime. Deal?”
Maybe, just for an instant, Stick really meant to start over. Maybe he realized what a stroke of rare good fortune had befallen him, and maybe he meant to turn his miserable life around.
He stood. He looked me in the eye. And after I stood, too, he shook my hand.
“Thanks,” he said. “I mean it.”
And then he was gone.
I did all that, by the way. I went to Crowther and Sons. I opened an account in the name of Mr. Stick. I deposited the nineteen gold crowns. I had the bankers make up a chit just for Stick, made them promise not to throw him out even if he stank, and I put Stick’s bank chit in my pocket.
Stick never returned. The chit is in my desk, waiting for him. I suspect it will wait forever.
Even rare good fortune can be too little and too late.
I spent the rest of the morning greeting other respondents to my waybills. I stopped counting Marris Sellways after the fifth one sashayed into my office. All of them, though, seemed surprised to learn they had a daughter. One couldn’t even recall where she’d lived. One was obviously a man.
Mixed in with the would-be Marris Sellways were the people who claimed to have known her. Not a one recalled her daughter’s name, or much of anything else. Reported ages ranged from teenager to granny lady. One asked me, “How old do you want me to say she was?”
I shooed them all out and only had to resort to waves of my head-knocker once.
I paid the urchins, as promised, and I even flipped a pair of coppers to the man in drag because at least he showed a sense of humor about the whole wretched mess.
Skillet came back around and got the rest of his pay and his bonus. By early afternoon, the crowds had thinned out, and I posted Skillet at my door with instructions to tell any stragglers they’d have to come around later.
I wasn’t very happy when I left Skillet behind and hit the street. The sun could beam and the birds could sing all they wanted to-I’d been lied to, either by a dead man or the old lady who claimed to speak for him. And since Granny was the only one of the pair with a corpus, it was her I headed to see.
I stopped by Mama’s, more out of a desire to snag a cup of her tea than anything else. She was waiting, and instead of her usual tea she’d splurged and made coffee. I cleaned off a spot on her card-reading table and plopped myself down.
“I seen quite a crew file in and out of your place,” she said.
I grunted. “All a waste of time. All but one.”
Mama nodded sagely. “The stinkin’ one?”
“He ran a gang called the Bloods back before the fires, when Cawling Street was Cawling Street. He remembers the Sellway woman. Remembers her kid. He also remembers her husband getting himself killed in a bread riot a year before the War ended. That business about the spook being a soldier coming home never happened.”
“I reckon dead ’uns ain’t no more honest than the living.”
“And I reckon I’m being played, Mama. Spooks my ass. You know Granny. Tell me why she’d need to make all that up? If she wants me to find Marris Sellway, fine, I don’t even need a reason. Just hire me to find her. No questions need be asked.”
I half-expected Mama to shake her dried owl at me, but she just shook her head.
“Boy, I know you don’t believe. And maybe I don’t blame you much. For every Granny Knot, there’s two dozen put-ons. Just like for me. You do believe in me, don’t you, boy?”
“I worship the ground you drop feathers on, Mama, you know that. But Granny. I don’t know her. And somebody is lying to me. What am I supposed to believe?”
“You ain’t never supposed to believe nothing but the truth, boy.” Mama cackled. “Trouble is, sometimes the truth gets buried with the dead.”
I thought about Stick. “Sometimes it’s better that way.”
“This ain’t one of them times. I done some askin’ on my own, boy. I got some answers you ain’t going to like.”
I can read Mama pretty well. When she lowers her voice and leans in toward me, I know to expect Eldritch Wisdom wrought from her dealings with things Mystical and Arcane.
“This involves portents and signs, doesn’t it?”
“There’s worse things than tellin’ lies afoot, boy. There’s killin’. And a powerful want to kill.”
“Throw in some vengeance from beyond the grave and I’m sold.”
“Ain’t about vengeance, boy. At least folks might have a reason for wantin’ that. Ain’t no reason here.”
“That part I believe.”
Mama snorted. “Boy, I’m telling you plain that Granny ain’t a fake. That means you are dealing with a dead man.”
>
“A dead man who’s so far lied about everything but the money.”
“Why do you reckon that is, boy? Why do you reckon he’s gone to all this trouble just to find that woman, if what he said about being her husband ain’t true?”
“I don’t know. Yet.” I stood and drained my cup. “I’m going to see Granny and ask her.”
“Take this with you.”
Mama rose and rummaged around on a shelf behind her and finally produced a little cloth bag tied at the neck with a piece of dirty yellow yarn.
“You get in a tight with that there dead man’s shade, you remember you got this.”
She put it in my hand.
“Mama.”
“And if you drop that in the gutter a block from here I’ll know it,” said Mama. She shook her owl for emphasis. “Took me all night to mix that up and hex it. Now get. The Eltis sisters are comin’, any minute.”
I put the pitiful little bag in my pocket.
“Thanks, Mama. The coffee was good.”
“The advice was better. One day you’ll appreciate that.”
“I always do, Mama.”
I heard a cab slow to a halt outside, so I hurried out.
Again, Granny wasn’t home.
I didn’t sit on her porch this time. I started banging on doors. Having once been seen in Granny’s company, a couple of faces poked outside. No, they hadn’t seen Granny today. No, she didn’t keep any kind of regular hours. The first face had no idea where she might be.
The second gave me a “what, are you stupid?” look and suggested Granny might be down at the bone-yard.
Some finder I am. Where else would I look for a spook doctor but the cemetery?
Rannit’s well-heeled dead spend their eternal rewards laid out on the Hill, on the other side of the Brown River. On this side of the Brown, the lucky ones get planted at Noble Fields. Those who can’t afford a plot there wind up providing ash for the crematorium smokestacks or being interred, on a yearly paid basis, in one of the tiny, rocky cemeteries granted grudging existence by the Church. Poverty plots, they’re called.
Families who go more than seven days late on a payment wake up to find their deceased relative dumped without ceremony on their doorstep.
No one ever accused any of Rannit’s churches with being sluggard when it came to collecting their due.
