Angry Lead Skies

by Glen Cook

  “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I understand, Garrett, actually.” And thirty seconds later it would be, “This’s just like the time me and Doris and Marsha was running the bag for Eddie the Gimp, actually. If we wasn’t right on top of what we was doing every second...”

  I sent a look of appeal up toward Doris, whose turn it was to walk beside the cart. But it was too dark out for him to notice. So I asked, “Doris. How the hell do I get your little brother to shut up?”

  “Huh?”

  I got ready to groan.

  “I don’t know. I just shut him out. Is he running off at the mouth again?”

  “Still. I can’t get him to stay quiet for twenty seconds straight. He’s driving me crazy and he’s making it impossible for Singe to keep her mind on her work.” I suffered a moment of inspiration. “If we don’t pull this thing off, if we don’t find this guy, we blow the job. Which means that none of us will get paid.”

  “Dojango, shut the fuck up. You even cough, I’m gonna slug you.” Doris waved a fist about the size of a bull’s head in his brother’s face. “Where we gonna put him when I do, Garrett?’Cause I’m guaranteed gonna gotta do it on account of he can’t even keep his mouth shut when he’s asleep.”

  “He managed to shut up when he had to that time we all went to the Cantard.”

  “Yeah. But like they say, long ago and far away. And times change.”

  They do indeed. I’d just gotten more words out of one of the grolls than I’d heard before in all the years I’d known them.

  Dojango couldn’t help observing, “Actually, it ain’t really polite to be talking about somebody like they ain’t even there when you —”

  Bop!

  Doris’s blow was almost casual. Dojango rocked and wilted. His brother scooped him up and carried him like a baby.

  I asked, “Wasn’t that a little harsh?”

  “He ought to be getting used to it, Garrett. Actually.” Doris grinned broadly. Moonlight glistened off his snaggle teeth. “This ain’t the first time his mouth has caused us some trouble.”

  “Amen, brother,” Marsha said from up front. “We gotta love the guy on account of he’s family, but sometimes... If it wasn’t for his connection with Cousin Morley...”

  “Guys, we all have relatives like that. I’ve got a great-uncle Medford that somebody should’ve poisoned a hundred years ago.”

  Singe stopped. “You are quite right about Medford Shale, Garrett.” Great-uncle Medford had figured prominently in the case where I’d first made Singe’s acquaintance. “Just as you were right about me needing no distractions if I am to follow this trail. Perhaps I can have Doris knock you out, then have Marsha knock Doris out, then pray that a building collapses on Marsha.”

  “Or we could all take a hint and save the chatter till later.”

  “You could do that. But I am willing to bet that none of you are able.”

  Was it Mama Garrett’s boy who’d said that this ratgirl desperately needed some self-confidence? She sure didn’t lack for it in this crowd.

  Ten minutes later, I called, “Singe, I know where we’re going.” We were headed for the Prose homestead. Maybe Playmate’s luck had changed. Or, from his point of view, maybe he had given in to temptation. “We’re headed for the boy’s mother’s flat.”

  “All right. If you think so. If you want to go there and wait for me, go ahead. I would prefer to stick to the trail. That will reveal if there were other stops he made along the way.”

  A gentle admonition from the expert. I decided to heed it. The girl had a point. Suppose Playmate was headed for Kayne Prose’s place but never made it there?

  40

  He did make it. But he’d gone away again. Singe explained that to me before I ever went upstairs and found a very frightened Cassie Doap holed up behind a barricaded door, refusing to open up for anybody.

  “Cassie, come on. This’s Garrett. The man Playmate hired to find your brother Kip. Now Playmate’s disappeared and I’m trying to track him down, too.” I hoped he turned up soon. My body was doing a lot of aching. “He came here about...” I looked at Singe, whispered, “How long ago?”

  “This morning.”

  “He came here this morning. Why was that? Where did he go from here?”

  Cassie kept telling us to go away. She was terrified. But Singe could detect no odors that would justify such a strong response. And none of the neighbors showed any curiosity, which suggested that great dramas by Cassie Doap were not at all uncommon.

  I recalled Rhafi telling me that Cassie was an actress. She put on characters like clothing. Maybe she was overacting now.

  I wished I had one of my human lady friends along. Particularly Tinnie Tate of the shoemaking Tates. That professional redhead would know how to manage a mere blonde. Tinnie was an accomplished actress herself. At least where the manipulation of guys named Garrett was concerned.

  Singe did make a few calming remarks, loudly enough to be heard through the door, while I tried to talk Cassie out of her hysteria. Singe’s comments were kind of childish but they had their effect. At some point Cassie decided to open the door a crack to see who was out there in the hallway with me.

  I don’t know why my having a ratgirl along should’ve been reassuring, but it was enough so that Cassie decided she’d talk to us. She asked, “What do you want to know, Mr. Garrett?”

  My heart broke. That delectable young woman had called me “mister.” I was nothing but a “mister.” I wasn’t on her list of prospects.

  It’s a cruel world indeed.

  Probably just as well, though. Cassie was the kind of woman Mom warned me against. One goofier than me.

  “Where’s Playmate, Cassie?”

  “I don’t know. He went to find my mom.”

  All right. That made sense. Maybe. To her.

  She was definitely afraid, for real. She had referred to her mother as Mom. She’d always called her Kayne before. “And why did he do that, Cassie? Was she in trouble?”

  “I don’t know. She went to find Rhafi when he didn’t come home. Then she didn’t come home. So I went and got Playmate. And he decided to go looking for both of them...”

  Without bothering to inform me. Or even Winger. Who hadn’t mentioned Cassie. Which probably meant that Winger wasn’t paying attention to what she was supposed to be doing.

  “Just as an aside, did you see a tall blond woman at Playmate’s stable?”

  “No. Is that important?”

  “Probably not. All right. Let’s go back. Rhafi disappeared? What’s the story on that?”

  “That man you had watching Bic Gonlit. Rhafi was hanging around with him. Covering for him when he had to go off. Like that. Then Rhafi just disappeared. While that man was away getting them something to eat. He told us when Kayne and me went to find Rhafi on account of Rhafi was supposed to start a new job today. It’s getting really hard to find somebody who’ll give him a chance anymore. Kayne really didn’t want him to screw it up this time.”

  Now that she’d decided to trust me Cassie gushed, getting rid of the fear and the tension through a flood of words. She didn’t really have much to say except that Rhafi had disappeared, then Kayne had gone looking for him while sending her to tell Playmate. Then Playmate had gone after Kayne. And he hadn’t been seen since. And now Cassie was firmly convinced that the forces of darkness would come for her soon.

  “You get back inside and barricade your door again. I’ll take care of it.” I hoped. I’d done somewhat less than take care of things on several occasions lately.

  41

  “You still have a trail?” I asked Singe.

  “Yes. Getting better than it was.”

  I grunted. I didn’t try to shortcut this time, though I expected the track to lead us straight to Saucerhead.

  Which it did. More or less. Though Tharpe wasn’t at his post.

  I didn’t even ask. I just left Singe to work her wonders.

  “It is not entirely clear but it seems that Mr
. Tharpe accompanied Mr. Playmate. Or he followed him within a very short time.”

  “And they went over to that ugly yellow building, right?”

  “They were headed in that direction when they left here.”

  That was Singe. Making no assumptions.

  “Can you detect any other odors here? That you might’ve noticed in that place we just visited?”

  “That blond woman was here earlier today. And maybe others who left traces in that building. The odors are very faint.”

  “But there’s nothing to contradict the story Cassie told us?”

  “You do not trust her?”

  “I’ve found that it’s best to trust no one completely when I’m working a case. Nobody is ever completely honest with me.”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly. Nobody wants to admit that they’re desperate. But they are. Or they wouldn’t come to me in the first place. They almost never do until things are out of hand. But that’s human nature. You don’t want people to know you can’t manage your life. You’re afraid to look weak.”

  We walked while Singe and I talked. I was moving more freely now but I still hurt. Doris and Marsha were doing a wonderful job of keeping their mouths shut. Dojango was still napping. He was in the cart.

  I had everybody wait in front of the ugly yellow structure while I gave it a careful once-over from outside. The grolls attracted attention wherever they went, of course, but they knew how to discourage gawkers. A growl and a wave of the club each carried, more as decoration than as armament, were enough to discourage most people. For a while.

  I wondered if they would use their clubs if pressed. They’d employed them during our visit to the Cantard but they hadn’t really wanted to. They were actually gentle people, the Rose triplets. Though the two big ones did get a kick out of panicking people once in a while.

  It seemed to me that it might be useful to know what was happening inside Casey’s place before I went storming upstairs. “Doris. I need you to hoist me up so I can peek through a window.”

  Only there wasn’t any window.

  I stared at the blank brick, tried to visualize the inside of the tenement to see if I’d gotten turned around. I hadn’t. So how had I misplaced a window made of glass?

  I had Doris put me down. Then I worked my way around the ugly structure. It did have a few unglazed windows, but very few, indicating that it had been erected during the last attempt at establishing a window tax, with the minimum legal number of openings. None of the existing windows were on the fourth floor.

  What the hell?

  Which was what the place had to be in summer.

  “How high can you count?” I asked Doris.

  “Garrett, I don’t think questions like that are polite.”

  “You’re probably right. But I suspect that I don’t much care. Here’s what I want. Six minutes after I go in the front door you take your club and knock a hole through the bricks right up there where I was feeling the wall. Don’t be shy about it. Haul off and pound a hole right through.”

  “And then what? When they come to arrest me. Go down fighting? I don’t think so.”

  “Hey...!”

  “You’re a big-time bullshitter, Garrett, but you ain’t big-time enough to bullshit me out of knocking somebody’s building down.”

  “All right. All right.” The recent outbreak of law and order was getting to be a real pain. “So don’t bust a hole through the wall. Just thump on it hard enough to distract whoever’s on the other side. Better give me eight minutes to get up there, though. That’s a lot of stairs.”

  Doris grunted, shuffled over to his brother. They muttered at one another, not pleased because whatever happened here would do so in front of witnesses.

  The grolls were beginning to attract gawkers who wouldn’t run from a growl and a brandished club. Mostly they were youngsters who should’ve been asleep, but adults would gather, too, if it became obvious that the grolls would have some entertainment value.

  “Singe, you come with me.” I headed for the entrance to the tenement. That was filled with spectators who wanted to know what was going on. “We’re hunting for Kagyars,” I told them, which dumbfounded everyone.

  The people of TunFaire and Karenta aren’t much interested in their own history.

  My remark would’ve melted their spines half a millennium earlier. The Empire was still in place then but was suffering a swift decline because it was being choked to death by fanatic members of the Orthodox Rite. The Kagyars had been members of a gentle, nonviolent heretical cult whose beliefs must’ve terrified the hierarchy of the established religion. They invested all their energies and all the treasure of the state in a hundred-year campaign to exterminate the Kagyar heresy.

  All that horror and cruelty and evil and today not one Karentine in a thousand can tell you what a Kagyar was. Possibly not even one in ten thousand.

  42

  “What will you do?” Singe asked.

  “Knock on the door and see if anybody answers. Whack them over the head if they do.” I brandished my headknocker. There was no peephole in Casey’s door so he would have to open up in order to respond.

  I knocked. Singe looked around nervously. And sniffed. She said, “It’s hard to tell but I think they may have gone back downstairs again.”

  I knocked some more. “Playmate, Rhafi and I did come up and go down before.”

  Still no answer to my knock.

  The building shuddered. Doris was on the job.

  Something fell behind the door.

  I did a fast picklock job between club strokes. “Get back against the wall,” I told Singe. “Squeeze your eyes tight shut.” I pushed the door inward, knelt, tripped the rug booby trap. I got the same crackle, pop, and flash. I avoided problems with my hair this time but did get the fuzz crisped off the outside of my forearm. Casey must’ve adjusted the aim of his sorcerous implement.

  A glance across the hallway assured me that was true. The wall was smoking at a site two feet removed from the previous. And the crisped area was significantly larger.

  I began to suspect that Casey might not plan to honor our new alliance. And I began to reflect on the fact that this particular silver elf wasn’t as reluctant as the others to resort to violence.

  “Don’t expose yourself yet,” I told Singe. “This thing’s going to pop a couple more times.”

  Second try wasn’t a charm. As before, the fury of the sorcery was considerably lessened. But its aim had shifted since the first flash. I lost most of my stick and got a mild case of roasted knuckles. The lead from the end of my stick was still liquid when I peeked.

  We were collecting witnesses now, the older ones probably thinking about launching a raid as soon as the dangerous people got out of the way.

  Doris kept whapping the outside wall. That was sure to attract attention out there. Police attention, eventually.

  I told Singe, “We probably won’t have much more time.” But haste could be painful. Or even lethal.

  I got down on the floor and slid my arm in to trip the third flash. It was more feeble than the last time I’d done this, though plenty bright enough to have me seeing spots.

  Then I recalled Casey having just hopped over the trigger carpet.

  Better safe than sorry.

  I hopped.

  There were no changes in the room behind the door. Casey had returned his possessions to their appointed places. Every item in the place looked precisely positioned.

  I had a suspicion that Deal Relway’s place would be very much like this.

  I looked at the window that wasn’t there on the outside of the building. The view it presented was impossible. What it should have shown was the wall of the building next door. Instead, I found myself looking down into the street out front.

  Interesting.

  Something thumped behind the closed curtain of Casey’s bedroom.

  “Come in and close the door,” I told Singe. “Keep an eye on this window. Lo
ok for anybody who might belong to the Guard. Or who just gives you the feeling that they might be trouble.” I yanked the curtain aside. And said, “Well, hello.”

  I’d found some of my missing people. Rhafi and his mother. Kayne was unconscious. So was Rhafi, but he was restless. Neither had a stitch on. Rhafi’s clothing lay on the floor, as though discarded by someone undressing in a hurry. Nowhere could I find anything that looked like it might have come off Kayne.

  I tried not to get distracted by the still life.

  “Hey, Singe. You think you could track somebody’s clothes if somebody else was wearing them?”

  She stepped over where she could see what I saw. “My.” She kept looking back and forth between the window and the naked people. “Well.” And, “Can you wake them up?”

  I was trying to do that already. I wasn’t having any luck. I tried to avoid any expression as Singe took her opportunity to inform herself of the nature of human bodies.

  “Would you consider the female attractive?” she asked.

  With any other woman I know I’d have to consider that a trick or loaded question. Singe, I guessed, actually wanted to know. “Yes, she is. Especially considering her age and the fact that she’s borne three children.”

  Singe becomes horrified whenever she contemplates the size of human babies. Her people have babies in litters of up to eight, the aggregate weight usually being less than that of one human newborn.

  “And the male? Is he attractive?”

  “Not to me. But that’s partly because I know him. He could be attractive to some women.” Nature appeared to have blessed Rhafi in one respect. I returned to my question. “Could you track the woman’s clothing? I think our villain might’ve used it to disguise himself.”

  Singe eyed Rhafi dubiously, looked at me in mild alarm, then shifted her attention to the window. She thought. I kept trying to waken Kayne and her son.

  It became obvious that they were under some kind of enchantment that I couldn’t penetrate.

  After several minutes of silence, Singe told me, “I can follow the horses again.”