Whispering Nickel Idols gf-11

by Glen Cook

  Whispering Nickel Idols

  ( Garrett Files - 11 )

  Glen Cook

  Glen Cook

  Whispering Nickel Idols

  (Garrett Files — 11)

  This one is for my mom, who was a rock in aturbulent stream.

  With thanks to Jim K. and Ellen W.

  1

  There I was, galumphing downstairs, six feet three of the handsomest, ever-loving blue-eyed ex-Marine you’d ever want to meet. Whistling. But it takes me a big, big bucket to carry a tune. And my bucket had a hole in it.

  Something was wrong. I needed my head examined. I’d gone to bed early, all by my own self. And hadn’t had a dram to drink before I did. Yet this morning I was ready to break into a song and dance routine.

  I felt so good that I forgot to be suspicious.

  I can’t forget, ever, that the gods have chosen me, sweet baby Garrett, to be their special holy fool and point man in their lunatic entertainments.

  I froze on the brink of my traditional morning right turn to the kitchen.

  There was a boy in the hallway that runs from my front door back to my kitchen. He was raggedy with reddish ginger hair all tangled, a kid who was his own barber. And his barber was half blind and used a dull butcher knife. There were smudges on the boy’s cheeks. He stood just over five feet tall. I made him about twelve, or maybe a puny thirteen. His tailor was a walleyed ragpicker. I assumed he had a pungent personal aura, but wasn’t close enough to experience it.

  Was he deaf? He’d missed the racket I’d made coming down. Of course, he had his nose stuck in the Dead Man’s room. That view can be overwhelming, first time. My partner is a quarter ton of dead gray flesh resembling the illegitimate offspring of a human father and pachydermous mother, vaguely. In the nightmare of some opium-bemused, drunken artist.

  “Makes you want to jump in his lap and snuggle up, don’t he?”

  The kid squeaked and backed toward the front door, bent over so he sort of probed his way with his behind.

  “And you would be?” I asked, more interested than I could explain just by my finding a stranger marooned in my hallway.

  The kitchen door squeaked. “Mr. Garrett. You’re up early.”

  “Yeah. It ain’t even the crack of noon. Clue me in, here.”

  The party exiting the kitchen was Dean, my live-in cook and housekeeper. He’s old enough to be my grandfather but acts like my mom. His turning up explained the kid. He was lugging something wrapped in dirty old paper.

  Dean collects strays, be they kittens or kids.

  “What?”

  “You’re up to something. Else you wouldn’t call me Mr. Garrett.”

  Dean’s wrinkles pruned into a sour face. “The sun always sets when there is fear of saber-tooth tigers.”

  That means you see what you’re afraid to see. My mother said it a lot, in her time.

  “This house is safe from tigers.” I stared at the boy, intrigued. He had a million freckles. His eyes sparkled with challenge and curiosity and fright. “Who’s this? How come he’s poking around my house?” I kept on staring. There was something appealing about that kid.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  I expected psychic mirth from my deceased associate. I got nothing.

  Old Bones was sound asleep.

  There’s good and bad in everything.

  I focused on Dean. I had a scowl on. A ferocious one, not my “just for business” scowl. “I’m not whistling now, Dean. Talk to me.” Grease stained the packet the old boy carried. Once again, at second hand, I would be feeding a stray.

  “Uh… this is Penny Dreadful. He runs messages for people.”

  Dreadful? What kind of name was that? “There’s a message for me, then?” I gave the urchin the benefit of my best scowl. He wasn’t impressed. Likely nothing troubled him as long as he stayed out of grabbing range.

  I saw nothing suggesting aristocratic antecedents, though Dreadful is the sort of name favored by the sorcerers and spook chasers on the Hill, our not so subtle secret masters.

  “Yes. There is. In the kitchen,” Dean blurted. He pushed past. “I’ll get it in a minute. Here, Penny. Mr. Garrett will let you out. Won’t you, Mr. Garrett?”

  “Sure, I will. I’m one of the good guys, aren’t I?” I stood against the wall as Dean pushed past again, headed the other way.

  The kid clutched the packet and retreated. Odd. My internal reaction wasn’t overpowering, but it was of a strength usually reserved for those darlings who make priests regret their career choices.

  I opened the door. The ragamuffin slid out and scurried away, hunched like he expected to get hit. He didn’t slow down till he reached the intersection of Macunado Street with Wizard’s Reach.

  He looked back while he was eating, saw me watching. Startled, he zipped around the corner.

  Buzz! Buzz! Tinkling, musical laughter. Something tugged my hair. A tiny voice piped, “Garrett’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Hello, Marienne.” Marienne was an adolescent pixie of the female variety. A squabbling nest of the wee folk live in the voids inside the exterior walls of my house. Marienne loved to give me a hard time.

  “Looked a little young to me,” a second voice observed. My hair suffered again. “Too tender for a butcher whose forest is getting a little thin in back.”

  “Hollybell. You horrid little bug. I knew you’d never let Marienne out of your sight.” Hollybell and Marienne are inseparable. Before the leaves finish falling, though, they’ll discover boys who aren’t all smell and dirt and stupid. Soon the slightest sigh would have universe-shuddering importance.

  “Mr. Garrett?”

  Dean wanted me. He always horns in when I want to play with little girls.

  2

  Dean had fetched the message packet. “Go in your office. Figure out what this is. I’ll bring tea and biscuits, then get breakfast started. I was thinking those little sausages and soft-boiled eggs.”

  “A real treat.” I gave the old boy the fisheye. “What are you up to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I said. You’re up to something. It might include that kid-who the pixies say is really a girl.” The red-blooded Karentine boy inside me had sensed the truth. “If you turn polite and start acting like a real housekeeper, you’re up to some villainy. There’s no need for a show of wounded dignity, either.”

  The old-timer needed to polish his act. He was as predictable as me.

  I settled behind my desk, in the glamorized janitor’s closet I use for an office. I turned sideways, blew a kiss at Eleanor. She’s the woman in the painting hanging behind my chair. She’s fleeing a brooding mansion on a really stormy night. A light burns in one window only. She’s terrified. But she was in a good mood at the moment. She winked.

  I opened the message wallet. A sheaf of documents fell out.

  They were from Harvester Temisk. A lawyer. The kind who is at home in lawyer jokes. But with a perpetually dumbfounded look on his clock.

  Harvester Temisk has just one client. Chodo Contague, erstwhile emperor of TunFaire’s multiple kingdoms of crime. The king of kings of the underworld. The head crook.

  These days Chodo snoozes along in a coma while his beautiful, criminally insane daughter runs the family business. Belinda pretends she gets instructions from the emperor’s own lips.

  Dean brought orange tea and sugar cookies. “The sausages are cooking. And there’ll be stewed apples instead of eggs. Singe wants stewed apples.”

  More proof Dean was up to no good, serving specialty tea and sweets. “She’d live on stewed apples if she could.” Pular Singe has weaseled herself into an apprenticeship and is angling for junior partner. She’s go
od people and good company. She keeps me from turning into a disgusting old bachelor.

  Dean scurried away. Yet more proof. He didn’t want to be questioned.

  I started reading.

  Harvester Temisk reminded me that I’d promised to visit him once I wrapped the case I was working last time we met. I never got back to him. “Dean!”

  “I’m cooking as fast as I can.”

  “I can’t find my notes about Chodo’s birthday party: When did I say it was supposed to be?”

  “It’s tonight. At The Palms. Miss Contague reserved the whole club. How could you forget?”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to remember.” You don’t want to socialize with the Contagues. Well… Belinda… when she isn’t totally psychotic…

  Belinda Contague is the perfect beautiful woman without mercy. The grim, unforgiving world of organized crime quickly grew deadlier after her advent. Only a few people know she’s the true brains of the Outfit. The fact that her father is comatose is a closely held secret. Maybe five people know. One of those is Chodo.

  I worry about being one of the other four. I have no trouble seeing the logic of reducing four to a more manageable three. Or even two.

  The Outfit may collapse into civil war when the underbosses find out that their orders come from a woman. Though Belinda has worked hard to restructure the organization, advancing people she finds more congenial.

  I didn’t want to attend Chodo’s party. Too many people connect me with the Contagues already. My being there would only convince the secret police that I’m more significant than I am.

  Beyond the accusatory note, the packet contained documents signed by Chodo. Before the incident that resulted in his coma, presumably. Maybe Chodo saw it coming.

  Harvester Temisk held the opinion that his employer conspired against the future as a matter of course. He had given Temisk a power of attorney, picked some fool named Garrett to handle his mouthpiece’s legwork.

  All through his dark career Chodo had guessed right. He’d been in the right place at the right time. The exception-perhaps-having been that one time when it had become possible for his daughter to live a nightmare, keeping the man she hated most where she could torment him daily.

  The Contagues aren’t your ideal, warm and loving, fuzzy family. They never were. Chodo murdered Belinda’s mother when he found out she was cheating on him. Belinda is still working on forgiving him. She hasn’t had much luck.

  Dean arrived with breakfast.

  Temisk didn’t say what he wanted me to do. Mostly, he was worried about whether or not I would keep my word.

  I thought and ate and couldn’t conjure one workable way to weasel out of the obligation.

  I owed Chodo. Multiple ways. He’d helped me frequently, without being asked. He’d known me well enough to understand that I’d trudge through life oppressed by the imbalance.

  As well as always being in the right place at the right time, Chodo understood what made people work. Except Belinda. The mad daughter was his blind spot. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be in a wheelchair drooling on himself.

  Dean brought more tea. “Do we have a new case?”

  He was up to something for sure.

  “No. I’m about to pay the vig on an old debt.”

  He grunted, underwhelmed.

  3

  Pular Singe wandered in later. She didn’t fit well, on account of her tail. She lugged a big, steaming bowl of stewed apples. “Want some?” She was addicted to stewed apples, a food you don’t usually associate with rats.

  “No, thank you.”

  TunFaire is infested with rats, including two species of the regular vermin and several kinds of ratpeople. Ratpeople are intelligent, smaller than human critters, with ancestors who came to life in the laboratories of mad sorcerers early last century. As ratpeople go, Singe is a genius. The smartest I’ve ever met, the bravest, and the best tracker ever.

  “What’ll you do after you’ve gobbled this year’s whole apple crop?”

  She eyed me speculatively, sorting potential meanings. Ratpeople have no natural sense of humor. Singe does have one, but it’s learned and can take a bizarre turn.

  She knows that when I ask a question with no obvious connection to daily reality, I’m usually teasing. She even manages the occasional comeback.

  This wasn’t one of those times. “Is there a new case?” She hissed, dealing with her sibilants. Those old-time sorcerers hadn’t done much to make it easy for rats to talk.

  “Nothing I’m going to get paid for.” I told her about Chodo Contague and my old days.

  Singe got hold of her tail, wrapped it around her, and hunkered into a squat. We have only one chair that suits the way she’s built. That’s in the Dead Man’s room. Her usual dress is drab, durable work clothing tailored to her odd dimensions.

  Though they walk on their hind legs like people, ratfolk have short legs and long bodies. Not to mention funny arms. And tails that drag.

  “So you blame yourself for what happened to that man.”

  Clever rodent.

  “Even though it was unavoidable.”

  Time to change the subject. “Got any idea what Dean is up to?”

  Singe still isn’t used to how human thought zigs and zags. Her genius is relative. She’s a phenom for a rat. As a human she’d be on the slow side of average-though that fades as she gets a better handle on how things work.

  “I did not notice anything unusual. Except the bucket of kittens under the stove.” Her nose wrinkled. Her whiskers wiggled. No cat smaller than a saber-tooth was likely to trouble her, but she had the instincts of her ancestors.

  “I knew it. Kittens, eh? He hasn’t tried that for awhile.”

  “Don’t be angry. His heart is in the right place.”

  “His heart may be. But he does this stuff at my expense.”

  “You can afford it.”

  “I could if I didn’t waste wages on a do-nothing housekeeper.”

  “Do not yell at him.”

  That would take half the fun out of having Dean around. “I won’t yell. I’ll just get him a pail of water. Or maybe a gunnysack with a brick in it.”

  “You are awful.” Then she observed, “You have a lot to do if you are going to be ready for the birthday party.”

  True. Besides the business of getting cleaned up and dressed up, I needed to visit Harvester Temisk.

  “I just had a great idea. I can take those baby cats along tonight and give them away as party favors.”

  “You are so bad. Go see them before you decide their fates.”

  “Cute don’t work on me.”

  “Unless it comes in girl form.”

  “You got me there.”

  “Come see the kittens. Before Dean finds a better place to hide them.” She rose, collected her empty bowl and my tray. We were getting domestic.

  “How do you hide a bucket of kittens? They’d be everywhere.”

  “These are well-behaved kittens.”

  That sounded like an oxymoron. “I’ll just look in on the old bone bag, then be right with you.”

  4

  One weak candle burned in the Dead Man’s room. As always. It’s not there to provide illumination. It gives off smoke that most bugs find repugnant.

  Old Bones has been dead a long time. But his species, the Loghyr, get in no hurry to leave their flesh. When they’re awake they do a fair job of discouraging vermin. But my partner has a tendency toward sloth, as well as championship procrastination. He’s getting raggedy.

  The candles work pretty good on people, too. They don’t smell much sweeter than the northernmost extremity of a southbound polecat.

  I try to keep the Dead Man’s door closed. But kids keep wandering in. They never leave anything the way they find it.

  I entered the kitchen saying, “His Nibs is really asleep. I dumped my trick bag. Nothing worked.”

  Dean looked worried. Singe sort of collapsed in on herself.

  “It ain’t a big
deal. He’s taking a nap. We always get through his off-seasons.” Dean didn’t want to be reminded, though. I never do things the way he wants them done.

  I said, “So, Dean, I hear tell a tribe of baby cats has infiltrated my kitchen.”

  “They aren’t ordinary kittens, Mr. Garrett. They’re part of an ancient prophecy.”

  “A modern prophecy has them taking a trip down the river in a gunnysack with a couple broken bricks as companions on the voyage. What’re you babbling about?”

  “Penny isn’t just another street urchin. She’s a priestess.”

  I poured some tea, eyed the bucket of cats. They looked like gray tabby babies. Though there was something strange about them. “A priestess. Right.” No surprise in TunFaire, the most god-plagued city that ever was.

  “She’s the last priestess of A-Lat. From Ymber. She ran off to TunFaire after her mother was murdered by zealots from the cult of A-Laf. Who’re in TunFaire now, looking for the kittens.”

  Somebody had gotten somebody to invest heavily in off-river wetlands. Similar scams are out there every day. People turn blind stupid if you say there’s a god involved.

  Even Singe looked skeptical. She said, “They are cats, Dean.” Coolly.

  “Ymber, eh?” I had only vague knowledge of that little city. It’s up the river several days’ journey. It has problems with thunder lizards. It’s supposedly a party town, ruled by a very loose goddess of love, peace, and whatnot. Ymber ships grain, fruit, sheep, cattle, and timber to TunFaire. And lately, thunder lizard hides. It’s not known for exporting religious refugees. Or zealots.

  One of TunFaire’s own main products is flimflam folk. Though I did not, immediately, see how the girl could sting Dean with a bucket of cats.

  The religious angle was suggestive, though.

  I said, “I’m listening. I haven’t heard how the cats tie in.”

  “They’re the Luck of A-Lat.”