Cruel Zinc Melodies

by Glen Cook

  “Sabotage.”

  Tinnie explained, “It’s actually kind of petty but somebody keeps getting in and breaking things.”

  “Criminals? Trying to shake him down?” That’s how the protection racket starts.

  Most crooks are smart enough to steer clear. Max Weider is rich. And doesn’t scruple in a fight. He'll play fair, businesswise, but try strong-arming him and there’s an excellent chance somebody less personable than me will help you get started on an attempt to swim across the river. With granite in your undies.

  Not even the Contagues, the emperors of TunFaire crime, would risk making a run at Max Weider. Unless the payoff prospects were beyond my ability to imagine.

  Near as I can tell, all hands are happy with the status quo. Possibly excepting the law-and-order extremists at Watch and Guard headquarters in the Al-Khar.

  Alyx chewed her lower lip fetchingly. Reluctantly, she said, “Maybe. But there’s, like, ghosts, too. And bugs.”

  “Ghosts?” Just thinking out loud. Ghosts happen, but I hadn’t run into any recently. The residual personality haunting the Eleanor painting being the last. “It’s the wrong time of year for bugs.” Unless you kept your house too warm. Which nobody can afford to do. Other than on the Hill.

  Around here we can see our breath in the winter. Except in the kitchen. And in the Dead Man’s room when we have company.

  “Tell that to the bugs, big boy.”

  “Tinnie?”

  “It’s all hearsay to me. I haven’t been to the site.”

  “Ladies?” Bobbi and Lindy were content to sit quietly and elevate the temperature of the room. The Dead Man offered no remarks. Singe sat in the corner with her dim candle, working her books.

  Her rat eyes do let us save on lighting costs.

  Tinnie took the opportunity to apply a pinch meant to keep me focused.

  Alyx admitted, “What I’m telling you is hearsay to me, too. Daddy won’t let me go to the construction site.”

  Tinnie observed, “He doesn’t want her associating with the kind of guys who work construction.”

  I snickered. “That’s because he started out as that kind of guy himself. So. Alyx. What do you want? Other than to indulge in one of your special efforts to get Tinnie mad at me?”

  “Daddy wants to talk to you about what’s going on.”

  Max has been good to me. His retainer, meant to inhibit floor loss and general misconduct at the brewery, has kept me solvent through numerous dry spells.

  “Can I catch a ride?”

  “We’re not headed home. We’re going to Tinnie? s. To rehearse.”

  They had a play already?

  Tinnie said, “No, we’re going to the manufactory. There’s more room. And more privacy. The walk will do you good.”

  “I’m so pleased you’re always looking out for me.”

  “You’re very special to me.”

  “What if I slip on a patch of ice?” She was right. It had been a long winter and I’d spent most of it avoiding going outside.

  “I'll bring fresh flowers, lover.”

  Dean finally wandered in, armed with refreshments. Two steps into the room he froze. His jaw dropped.

  He’s old. Around seventy, I’d guess. He’s skinny, shows a lot of bushy white hair this year, and has dark eyes that can twinkle with mischief. On rare occasions. More often they’re alive with disapproval.

  “Damn!” I murmured. “The old goat is human.”

  Tinnie wasn’t his problem. He sees her all the time. And he knows Alyx. He’s never anything but polite when she’s around. But the other two...

  He pulled it together before he turned into a creepy old man. “Good afternoon, Miss Tate. Miss Weider. Ladies. Would you care for something sweet?”

  They all said no, they were watching their figures. And doing a fine job, I have to report. I stayed busy helping them do that. As did Dean. His eyes all but bugged out when the ladies started getting back into their cold-weather duds.

  3

  Back from the front door, I asked, “What happened to you, Dean? You looked like you got a sudden case of young man’s fancy.”

  “The one with the marvelous chestnut hair.”

  “Bobbi.”

  “What?”

  “Her name is Bobbi. Bobbi Wilt. Tasty, huh?”

  He showed me a scowl but it wasn’t his best. “It’s remarkable how much she resembles someone I used to know.”

  Someone who’d had a huge impact. Dean was so distracted he was ready to walk into walls.

  He has worked for me since I bought the house. In the beginning he lived with one of his brigade of homely nieces. Then it just made sense for him to move into one of the extra rooms upstairs. That kept him from bringing the nieces round, trying to fix them up. He never said much about his olden days. He was in the Cantard the same time as my grandfather. They never met. He knew folks on my mother’s side.

  None of which matters now. Dean cooks for me and keeps house. And works hard at filling in for my judgmental mom.

  Dean shook like a big old dog that just ambled in out of the rain. “I guess when you’re my age, everybody looks like somebody you’ve already met.”

  “Who does she remind you of?”

  “A girl I knew. My own Tinnie Tate. An old regret. It doesn’t matter anymore. It was a long time ago.”

  Clever. He got in a dig even there.

  “Must have been something special.”

  “She was. She was indeed.” He drifted toward the kitchen. “We’re out of apples again.”

  Pular Singe is addicted to stewed apples. Dean indulges her shamelessly. Despite ingrained prejudice.

  Ninety-eight of a hundred TunFairens loathe ratpeople just for existing. They can’t help it.

  “I’m not inclined to pay a premium because we’re way off season.”

  “Noted. You aren’t inclined to pay more than the minimum for anything in any season.”

  Sharper than a serpent’s tooth, the ingratitude of a servant confident in the security of his position.

  “I hope you have something ready for lunch. I have to go out, soon as I fill up.”

  He paused long enough to benefit me with his full frontal scowl.

  4

  In some parts of town they’d given up trying to keep the streets clear. In others they kept after the snow with a dogged fervor. The city fathers had invoked emergency regulations to keep the more critical thoroughfares passable.

  Lucky me, it wasn’t my day to help clear my block. Unlucky me, it hadn’t snowed. Today’s crew wouldn’t have much to do.

  The sky was a cloudless blue. There was no wind. Light melting had begun in direct sunlight. So ice could form in all the low places once the sun went down.

  It’s a couple miles to the Weider brewing complex. Not a tough walk. No hills of consequence. A few historical landmarks I never notice because they’re always there. Furniture of the world.

  There were a lot of people out, enjoying.

  I was in a good mood myself by the time I got where I was going. Nobody stalked me. Nobody bopped me on the noggin. Nobody even gave me a second glance.

  Some days it’s the other way around. Too many days.

  The big brewery stinks even in cold weather, because of the fermentation. The employees and neighbors no longer notice.

  This was the mother brewery, the heart of the Weider empire. There are several dozen lesser operations around TunFaire, onetime competitors who surrendered their independence to the Dark Lord of the Hops. The lesser breweries concentrate on local and specialty products.

  The queen brewery is a Gothic redbrick behemoth. It looks like a folklore hangout for vampires and werewolves. It is festooned with towers and turrets and odd little gables and dormers and lofts that have no connection with producing nature’s holy elixir.

  The towers house swarms of bats. Max thinks bats are cool. He enjoys seeing them swarm out on a summer’s evening.

  The whole strange p
lace is Max’s imagination given form, weird because Max wanted it weird. And he could afford to build it that way.

  A smaller version faces it from across Delor Street. The Weider family shanty.

  Max originally meant that to be his brewery. When it went up it was the biggest beer-making operation in all TunFaire. Two years later it was too small to handle demand. And Max’s wife, Hannah, was pregnant for the third time. So he tossed up the monster across the way.

  Max and Hannah produced five children: Tad, Tom, Ty, Kittyjo, and Alyx. Alyx was the baby by half a decade. Tragedy stalked the family, maybe punishing Max for his worldly success. Tad died fighting in the Cantard. Tom and Ty survived? with Tom gone mad and Ty condemned to a wheelchair. Kittyjo and I were an item once upon a time but she was too loony for me.

  My pal Morley Dotes says the absolute first rule of life is, don’t get involved with a woman crazier than you are. A rule I haven’t always pursued with due diligence. Because of more immediate distractions.

  But like I said, tragedy hounds Max Weider. Tom and Kittyjo were murdered. Hannah died that same night, destroyed by the shock.

  I climbed the steps to the main brewery entrance. An old, old man sat behind a small table in a cubby just inside. He was a retiree putting in a few hours of part-time. He was almost blind. But he was aware of me because I came in with a creak of hinges and a blast of cold air.

  “Can I help you?”

  “It’s Garrett, Gerry. Looking for the boss. He here today?”

  “Garrett? You ain’t been around in a while.”

  “Cold and snow, Gerry. And nothing happening to worry the boss.” My function is to stimulate the consciences of the brew crew. So they don’t surrender to temptation. Not too often, in too big a way. “What about the boss?”

  “If he’s here, he came over underneath. And he don’t do that much no more. Less? en it’s really foul out. So, chances are, he ain’t here. Yet.”

  Max is a hands-on owner who visits the floor every day.

  By “underneath” Gerry meant through the caverns below the brewery. Those were the reason Weider chose to build where he did. The beer is stored there till it’s shipped.

  “How’s business? Any cutbacks because of the weather?”

  “I hear tell a ten percent drop-off on account of it’s hard to make deliveries. The local brew houses picked up most of the slack. The boss didn’t lay nobody off. He’s got the extra guys harvesting ice. It’s a good year for that.”

  “So I hear.” They would be cutting the ice from the river. “Thanks, Gerry. I'll head on across.”

  Would he believe I was just looking for the boss? The whole brewery would know I was on the prowl before I found Max. Any villainy would scurry into the shadows to wait the danger out.

  Privilege, private law, is vibrantly alive. Max Weider is a comfortable practitioner. He cares for his troops. Most return the favor by limiting their pilferage.

  It seemed colder outside. Because it’s always hot inside the brewery. From the fires used to boil water and warm the fermenting vats.

  The steps up to the Weider mansion door had received only a half-hearted cleaning since the last snow. I understood. We’d all had enough of that.

  I knocked.

  The man who answered was new. And a disaster on the hoof. If there was a race that could mix with the human, his ancestors had mixed it up. There had to be a half dozen kinds of human in the blend, too.

  He would be five feet tall on his tippy-toes on his best day. His head was huge for his height and almost perfectly round. With a couple saucers smashed onto the sides where his ears belonged. The only hair on him was a huge, drooping black mustache. Its twisted ends hung four inches below his nonexistent chin. His eyes were slits stuffed with chips of coal. His mouth was a lipless gash under a nose fit for an elfin princess. He didn’t look worried about her showing up to claim it.

  His body was another globe. His stubby arms sort of stuck out at his sides. How the hell did he dress himself?

  He didn’t speak, just stared at me. Filling the doorway. Immovably.

  “Name’s Garrett. The boss wants to see me.”

  One bald eyebrow twitched.

  “Alyx came by my place. Said the Old Man wanted me to come by.”

  The other naked eyebrow shivered.

  “Be that way. I didn’t feel like working today, anyhow.”

  I could go down to the river, see what it looked like frozen over. It wasn’t far past the brewery. I could watch the ice sledges bring the harvest home.

  The living art form of ugly did nothing to help me out. He just stood there.

  I turned away.

  “Hang on, Garrett.” Manvil Gilbey, Max’s sidekick, materialized behind the short and wide. “Come on in. Don’t mind Hector. It’s his job to keep the riffraff out.”

  “Then I’d better start hiking. I’m about as riff y a rack of raff as you’re likely to step in.”

  “Always the charmer.”

  “One hundred and ten proof.”

  “We didn’t expect you this soon. I would’ve told Hector to bring you straight to Max.”

  Gilbey belongs to Dean’s generation. Old as original sin. He and Max have been best friends since their Army days, in a war that began before they were born and continued till their grown children were dead. Until a year ago. Devouring Karentine youth all the while.

  Hector stepped aside. I followed Gilbey through the foyer, down into the vast ballroom that takes up half the ground floor. Click-clack across the bare serpentine floor. Then up to the mezzanine on thick, custom carpeting.

  I murmured, “What was that?”

  “Hector?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Son of a man Max and I soldiered with. A hero himself, Hector was, but he was having a hard time making it. Life is tough if you don’t have pure blood.”

  “Crap,” I said. “We’re not getting into all that human rights bullshit again, are we?”

  In Karenta, in TunFaire especially, “human rights” means the rights of humans to preferential status. The Other Races and artifact peoples get whatever is left.

  “No. Our problems are in a new arena now.”

  “Alyx said something about building a theater. That seems out of character.”

  “I'll let Max explain.”

  I glanced back. Hector was standing by, ready to answer the door. Beside a rack of lethal tools, there in case his immovable object had a showdown with an irresistible force.

  “A true exotic. Maybe even a unique.” Slang terms for mixed breeds of extreme aspect.

  “Would you believe Hector has a wife and five kids?”

  “If you say so. But I don’t want to meet the kind of woman who finds him attractive.”

  “He may have hidden assets and unexpected talents.”

  “He’d have to have, wouldn’t he?”

  “You’ve got a bad attitude, Garrett. People could tag you for some kind of racialist.”

  “I am. The kind that don’t give a shit what you are so long as you leave me alone.”

  It had been a while since I’d seen Max. But when I stepped into his den it seemed I’d been away only minutes.

  It was a room twenty people could fill and all be comfortable. A fleet of overstuffed chairs jockeyed for position in front of a big fireplace. A major accessory to that was a lackey whose calling was to feed the flames. The room was sweltering hot. The fireplace end was almost intolerable. But Max was in a chair up close, roasting himself. I guess so he’d make a good-looking corpse when he was done.

  Max is not a big man. He stands maybe five feet six when he stands. Which he doesn’t do much, anymore. Since Hannah’s death he spends most of his time by the fire, waiting. Once a day he ambles over to the brewery, mainly to be seen taking an interest.

  5

  Max rose as I approached.

  Max Weider is a round-faced man with rosy cheeks and a twinkle in his eye even when he’s down so deep he can’t fi
gure out which way is up. He still has hair but his barber isn’t getting rich charging by the hour. The part down the middle is six inches wide.

  Max’s mustache was bushier, maybe to balance the weak crop up top. Though it would never threaten the beast lurking under Hector’s nose.

  I was startled. There was a definite twinkle in Max’s eye this morning. I asked, “Manvil, what’s happened?”

  Gilbey understood. This was the surprise he’d promised. “He’s found a reason to live.”

  Max shoved a beefy hand at me. “Damned straight. How you doing, Garrett? Enough friggin’ snow for you?”

  Sounded like he had been taste-testing the product. “I’m filled up on it, yeah. Alyx came by the house. With a covey of?”

  “Felt like a rooster in a henhouse, didn’t you? That Bobbi makes me wish I was forty years younger, I'll tell you.”

  I glanced at Gilbey. Manvil had a twinkle in his eye, too. “Have you guys suddenly turned into dirty old men? Suddenly?”

  “No,” Max said. “We’re too far past it even to pretend.”

  “Speak for yourself, Weider,” Gilbey snapped. “This soldier ain’t ready to lie down.”

  “It ain’t the lyin’ down, Bubba. It’s the gettin’ up.” Old Man Weider made a wave-off gesture, then indicated a chair close by. “Park it. Let’s talk.”

  “I can’t take the heat.”

  “I should remember. I’m the lizard. The rest of you are warm-blooded.” He compromised. He moved far enough from the fire that I would just sweat, not drip drops of grease.

  “So, what’s the story? Alyx was vague.”

  “That girl’s always vague. She ain’t right. I need to find her a husband.”

  “Don’t look at me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d volunteer. One of the reasons I like you. Though never too close to my baby girl.”

  Gilbey asked, “Want a beer while we talk?”

  “Sure. And you bringing that up makes me wonder if I shouldn’t change my mind.”

  “About?”

  “About marrying. Alyx. I’d have free beer for life.”

  Max chuckled. “It wouldn’t be a long one, Garrett. That girl has notions about how things oughta be, even if she ain’t figured out where she fits. Still, you talkin’ about marryin’ for the beer instead of the money... I like that.”