by Frank Tuttle
“Client or not, dead or not, it’s after hours, and I’m sitting here with a lump on my head and blisters on my heels. I’ve got nothing to report. So beat it. And next time knock first.”
I closed my eyes and leaned way back and held the stinking poultice tight against my face. When I opened my eye again, the lamp flame was steady and bright.
“Nice one, Granny,” I mumbled.
I’ve got a bed in the room behind my office. I sought it out soon after, and when I slept, I dreamed I was being chased by hobnailed children all screaming “bugger!” at the tops of their vicious little lungs.
As ten-year celebrations go, it needed lots of work.
Morning came. I wasn’t impressed. But both eyes were open and aside from a split upper lip and a truly nasty purple bruise around my left eye, I was in better shape than I expected.
A trip to the bathhouse down the street and another stop at Eddie’s for his skillet-fried eggs and burned bacon did wonders for my temperament, if not my appearance. I believe I was even whistling when I rounded the corner a block from home and came face to face with the same well-dressed thug who’d given me the black eye on Regency.
Today, we matched. His left eye was even worse than mine in that it was still swollen shut, and from the way his nose looked, I figured it was not just bruised but broken.
He saw me and stopped and raised his empty hands, just as I’d done.
“I ain’t here to cause no trouble,” he said. “Mr. Owenstall sent me. Said he found out something about that woman you might want to know.”
I nodded. I was too full of bacon and eggs to do anything except sit anyway.
“Fine. Why don’t we go on to my office and talk about it? Unless you’d rather kick me in the back again. That we can do right here.”
He shook his head. “Look, Markhat. We was wrong for jumping you like that. Believe me, we know that now.” He fingered his broken nose. “Maybe this can help make up for it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it will,” I said. I started walking, and he fell into step beside me. “So, what’s your name?”
“Bolton.” He stuck out his hand awkwardly. I didn’t see any reason not to shake it. At least my nose wasn’t broken.
So we shook on it, just in time for Mama Hog to stick her head out her door and grunt and withdraw.
“I ain’t never seen the boss scared of nobody,” said Bolton, after Mama shut her door. “Even during the War. Seen him knock a Troll down and jump on it bare-fisted. But he’s scared of that woman, and that’s a fact.”
“Mama’s meaner than any Troll. So, you served with your boss?”
We were at my door. I unlocked it and motioned Bolton inside.
“Most of us did,” replied Bolton. I assumed he meant his fellow pugilists from yesterday. “We were all in the Fifth, out Hinge way.”
I grunted. That meant they were supply wagon guards and potato peelers.
“I heard you was a dog handler, out West.”
I just nodded. Some guys can’t wait to go on and on about the War. I’d rather forget every miserable minute of it.
“Have a seat. You said your boss found something out about Marris Sellway.”
Bolton sat.
“No Sellways on Regency. Never have been. We asked some of the old folks, the ones who lived on Cawling before it burned. Nobody ever heard of a Sellway, woman or man.”
I waited for more and frowned when I realized nothing else was forthcoming.
“You walked all the way from Regency for that?”
“It ain’t what they said, Mr. Markhat. It’s the way they said it. The old ones, I mean. They went all shifty-eyed and stooped when they heard the name. I know they remembered it. But not a soul would admit it. Now, if this Sellway woman lived on Cawling before the fires, that puts her back a good ten years. That’s a long time to be scared of something.”
I nodded. “Could be they were just scared of you.”
Bolton shook his head. “It ain’t like that, Mr. Markhat. The Boss don’t hold with them ways. We make sure the old ones got firewood in the winter. We make sure somebody talks to ’em every day or so. Hell, we take ’em to doctors if they need it, haul their groceries home. Boss don’t want the people that live on Regency to be scared of us.”
“Just stray finders passing through.”
“We thought you was a scout for another gang, sizing up the take. Happens a lot. People think the Boss is soft cause he don’t beat down the residents.”
I put my fingertips together and assumed my Thoughtful Finder pose while I digested the concept of a civic-minded gang lord.
“What do you know about Cawling Street, back in the day?”
Bolton shrugged. “It was a slum,” he said. “Bad before we left for the War. Worse when we got back. The Boss staked it out, cleaned it up, saw it rebuilt with some of that Reclamation money.”
“Who was running Cawling, before you boys got back?”
Bolton frowned. “Bunch of punks calling themselves the Bloods,” he said, grinning. “I reckon some of ’em are still running.”
I groaned.
“I say something wrong?”
“No. But you did just expand my search to include aging street gang members.”
“You think they might know something?”
“They might offhand remember the names of the people they extorted, yeah,” I said.
Bolton’s brow furrowed. “The head knocker was a punk named Stick. We never got around to a face-to-face. He took off when he saw we were moving in.”
“Any of the others put up a fight?”
He shrugged. “None that lived to tell.”
“So, you think the name Sellway brought back some bad memories among the old folks, who are too scared to talk to this day. And the gang running the neighborhood is either dead or scattered all over the Frontier by now.”
“’Fraid so.” He pushed my chair back and stood. “Wish I had more to tell, but that’s it. Hope it makes up for yesterday. Boss said you could come back and ask questions if you wanted, no problem.”
“If they won’t talk to the men who tuck them in their beds and carry their groceries they aren’t likely to talk to me either.”
“Well, if anybody does decide to tell any tales, we’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.”
Three-leg Cat emerged from the back room after Bolton was gone. He meowed a few times to express his displeasure at being wakened so early and then settled into my lap for a rare session of loud, rough purring.
I had no desire to shake down frightened, grannies for decades-old neighborhood gossip.
“My best bet,” I told Three-leg, “is to find someone who moved away from Cawling Street about the time Owenstall and his lads took over, or find a surviving Blood and hope they feel like talking.”
Three-leg Cat didn’t seem enthused about either prospect.
Neither did I. Either task could take weeks. And that’s assuming any of the former Bloods had survived until the present. You don’t meet many middle-aged youth gang members. They just don’t live that long, even in postwar Rannit.
But I did have something I don’t usually have when I’m trying to find someone.
I had a fat bag of solid gold crowns.
Three-leg Cat felt the shift in my mood and jumped out of my lap, insulted and stiff-tailed.
“Somebody has to work around here.”
Three-leg broke wind and sauntered out, his opinion of that statement made pungent and all too plain.
I found a printing shop and had them make up a waybill. I ordered four hundred and fifty copies. I’d never seen anybody covered in that much ink ever look so happy.
Then I went looking for Granny Knot. I don’t like spending a client’s money without their say so, and since my client was currently busy pushing up the oft-quoted daisies I figured Granny would have to speak for him.
Mama wasn't home, and when I finally found Granny’s place she wasn’t answering her door either.
Granny Knot had said she had a place on Elfway. I’d been a little surprised. Elfway is one of those old, narrow lanes that twists and turns and are now so popular with the newly wealthy because, I suppose, they look quaint.
And it did. I gathered a lot of people spent a lot of time and considerable effort to keep it looking that way. The storefronts were all tall, with exaggerated overhangs and round-topped doors (because nothing says Elf like a round-topped door, apparently) and leaves worked into every visible surface. Everything was Elf-themed, whether it was taffy or glass or hats or jewels. Even the restaurant menus posted in the windows were done up in faux Elf.
And here I’d always thought Elves were a bloodthirsty lot of murderous elementals with a penchant for casual torture and a taste for human infants.
I kept watching the numbers posted haphazardly here and there, and the street suddenly seemed to end well before I got to Granny’s scribbled address.
I kept going anyway. The street didn’t exactly stop, it just sort of lost its cobbles and became a hard-packed dirt footpath for a while. Vacant lots sprouted weeds and trash about me. Here and there, the hulk of a burned-out building stood twisted in the sun. The backs of buildings a street over rose, windows boarded against the grim sight of Elfway and the burglary-inclined residents thereof, until I made another block.
And then I was on cobbles again. A hand-painted sign informed me I had just entered Old Elfway and that I should enjoy my visit.
The prospect seemed unlikely. The structures were all pre-War wood, grey with age and weather and neglect. Not a board I could see had been spared curling and splitting.
Faces moved behind curtains. Doors slammed shut as I passed.
I decided Mama would be right at home in Old Elfway just as I reached No. 19.
Granny’s door had no glass. But painted on it was a grinning white face, which, like my painted finder’s eye, led the illiterate to our doors.
As I said, Granny wasn’t there. I knocked, and then I sat down on her tiny rotten porch. I decided to wait until the Big Bell clanged out four before I headed back to the print shop to check on my waybills.
Granny’s neighbors began to show themselves once they could see I was waiting for Granny and not, therefore, looking for random heads to knock. Half a dozen paraded back and forth before me, carefully not making eye contact or acknowledging my wide and charming smile.
Still, I waved and greeted each one.
I was still waving and greeting when I heard a familiar cackle ring out down the street, followed by a much softer muttering.
I stood up and wiped ants off my britches. Mama and Granny ambled up, gabbing away in some private, incomprehensible Old Lady tongue while giggling and snorting like tipsy teenagers with their first bottle of grown-up hooch.
“Good day, ladies,” I said, with a practiced tip of my hat. “I hope I’m not too late for tea.”
Granny shrieked in laughter and gobbled something at Mama. I suppose it was funny because it set them both off for so long I nearly sat back down again.
“I was hoping to talk to you, Granny,” I said when the gales of laughter subsided.
Granny muttered into her fist of rags, and then scampered up and unlocked her door.
Mama barged in, right at home. I followed, stooping to fit beneath the door, which lacked a rounded top but was scaled for Elves nonetheless.
Granny shut the door behind me and then listened to her rags for a moment before motioning me into a chair beside Mama.
I sighed and sat. Asking Mama to leave would be like asking goats to take up painting.
“I need to spend some of that money,” I said without preamble.
I laid out the problems inherent in locating people who’d last been seen ten years and two major fires ago. I hinted that something that had happened in that neighborhood, which might not have had anything to do with Marris Sellway, was making people nervous and therefore quiet.
Then I described my plan to use good old-fashioned greed to provoke recollection and loosen lips.
If Granny had rather Mama didn’t hear our dealings, she’d have to throw her out herself. She didn’t.
Mama chuckled, and Granny held a long conversation with her rags. When that was over, she looked me in the eye and nodded, and when Mama wasn’t looking, she winked.
That was all I needed.
Almost all.
“I do have a question, Granny.”
She tilted her head, silent and expectant.
“Something’s bothering me. You say the dead—you say your client spent ten years wracked with guilt, amassing a small fortune to give to this Marris.”
Granny nodded. Mama listened, too, her beady Hog eyes fixed in a frown.
“Why doesn’t he know where she is, then? Surely he kept tabs on her, on the kid. Anybody willing to put that much coin in a bag isn’t going to just let them vanish. He’d want to know if they had a roof, had food. He’d want to know if they were dead or alive. So, why can’t he tell you where she is?”
Granny listened. Her handful of rags apparently had things to say, directly into her ear, as usual.
“He couldn’t bear it.” Her voice croaked and wavered. “The guilt. The shame.”
“Horse flop.”
“Boy!” Mama grabbed my elbow. “Don’t you shame me with that lack of manners.”
“I’m not saying Granny is lying. I’m just saying that if her spook had the ability to tell her where the bag of coin was, it’s reasonable to ask why he suddenly forgot an address he certainly knew.”
“The dead. Don’t think like the living. Confused. Life fading like a dream.”
I sighed. I was really wishing Mama would scoot, so I could speak to Granny in plain Kingdom and dispense with the carnival sideshow diction.
“Fine. Our heart-broken, guilt-ridden spook can lead you to a bag of coin in a buried butter churn in a privy, but he can’t cough up even part of an address. Wonderful. So I have your assurance, Granny, that he won’t come a rattling his chains at my place in the middle of the night because I spent thirty of his precious crowns to find his estranged spouse?”
Granny dutifully whispered all that back to her rags, giggled at the reply, and finally gave me my answer.
“No. Do it.”
I nodded. “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me, I have chores to tend.”
We exchanged farewells, Mama and Granny and Granny’s rags and me. I got out of there when Granny uncorked a bottle of something pungent and dark. The prospect of seeing Mama tipsy was far more daunting that walking back through Elfway and its faux Elf tackiness.
I didn’t figure the print shop was even a quarter of the way rolling out my handbills. So I had time to take the long way back toward my place. Long enough to visit the workhouse over on Kerston, long enough to gather up a mob of street urchins and feed them all at a soup stoop, and then sit them down and explain what I wanted them to do.
They listened with an intensity far more mature than their years should have allowed. I wasn’t going to mind parting with that portion of the treasure. It would probably be more money than any of them had ever seen.
Sad thing was, I knew it would probably be just that, for the rest of their lives.
Once they were fed and instructed, I placed myself at the head of the line, and led my very own soot-faced parade all the way across town and to the very heart of Regency Avenue. I made sure my soiled army understood their mission, made sure they knew the lay of the streets and the way the neighborhood had grown and shifted. We went up and down the street, then up and down Talent and Farstair and Wicker and Holt, where I hoped at least a few former residents of Cawling might have settled.
That down, and dark and the Curfew approaching, I led my parade back to the printer’s, and we waited outside for the handbills. True to their word, the staff of Carson and Sons made the deadline, and as the Big Bell banged out the last hour before Curfew I was divvying up waybills and handing out final instructions.
>
I told them all to wait until first light before they struck out. And I could see it written plain on their dirty faces that none of them meant to let things like the Curfew or the prospect of a grisly death deter them from making their wage.
I’d not truly thought through my promise of a bonus to the lad who brought the gift horse to my door. But it was too late to change the plan.
I just hoped the vampires would leave them be in favor of older, cleaner fare.
My brave mob dispersed, waybills clutched in their eager hands, the promise of coin burning like true love in their thin, little chests.
I went home feeling dirty.
I sat in my office, daring that lamp-flame to find a wind in the dead still air. It didn’t.
But it did illuminate my waybill.
SEEKING MARRIS SELLWAY, it read. FORMERLY OF CAWLING STREET. MOVED AFTER WAR.
The printers had inserted a little artistic do-dad below that. It did help to space out the words.
SOUGHT BY THE FINDER NAMED MARKHAT ON CAMBRIT STREET. LOOK FOR THE DOOR WITH THE FINDER’S EYE.
And below that, a perfect rendition of the same.
THE PERSON BRINGING THIS WAYBILL AND ACCURATE INFORMATION CONCERNING THE WHEREABOUTS OF MISS MARRIS SELLWAY FORMERLY OF CAWLING STREET WILL RECEIVE TWENTY (20) OLD KINGDOM CROWNS. THE FINDER WISHES NO ILL TOWARD MISS SELLWAY. AN INHERITANCE IS INVOLVED.
Below that, the printer had decided to reinforce the point by adding a crude drawing of a pile of coins.
And below that, centered, was a number. I’d assigned a range of numbers to each kid, and the one who brought in the winning talker would get a gold crown of his very own.
And they’d all get a half crown just for handing out each and every one of their waybills.
So I sat, and I did what I’d done so many nights when I’d served my six in the Army. I got my whetstone and my oil and my leather rag, and I laid into my old Army double-edged combat knife while I listened for footsteps heading my way.
It didn’t take long. I’d loosed a band of half-starved kids out past Curfew, and hunger scared them a lot worse than any vague threat of the halfdead.
Mumbles and a knocking at my door. I scooped my whetstone and oil and cloth into a drawer and accidentally left my knife in its sheath under my shirt before I opened my door.
