Cruel Zinc Melodies

by Glen Cook

  “Bugs shouldn’t be a problem anymore. Goofy teenagers, I don’t know. I’m working on the ghosts nobody but Alyx believes in as we speak. How about you? Seen any? No? Hey, I met your niece, Heather. Seems to have a good head for business.”

  That didn’t improve his mood.

  “No worries. I’m a one-woman man these days.”

  “Getting ready to settle down?”

  He meant to be sarcastic.

  “Maybe. Not sure the other half of the equation is, though.”

  “And you'll never know if you don’t come up with the guts to ask.”

  “Voice of experience?”

  “Lots. Long time.”

  “So. Again. What’s your take on the ghost business?”

  “I think they’re there. I think somebody besides Alyx has seen them. But they don’t want to admit it. No telling why. I think ghosts are why the workmen have been staying away. In this town it could all be just business. Somebody who wants to keep us out of the theater game maybe hired a sorcerer. Because once we’re serving our beers in our theaters we'll have a huge competitive advantage.”

  Meaning that the Weider brewing empire wouldn’t supply competing theaters. And Weider is the main source of liquid refreshment in commercial quantities.

  I didn’t dismiss that, silly as it sounded when it plunked down in the light of day. Raw capitalism goes on all the time.

  “There was anybody whose head had that kink, I’m sure you’d know his name, rank, and pay number.”

  “Guess what, Garrett? You got rung in because Max and I can’t put a face on that somebody.”

  “I'll figure it out,” I promised. “One way or another.”

  “Or die trying?”

  “I don’t love you guys that much. You found out anything useful here?”

  “That it’s possible the workmen are scared of something nastier than ghosts. Something about spooky music. Nobody wants to talk about that, either.”

  “Smells like a protection racket trying to move in. But I dealt with that already.”

  “And nobody is asking for anything. The purpose of a protection scheme is to extort money. Isn’t it?”

  “You’d think. You going to be around? I’ve got something to do. But I'll be right back.”

  “I'll be here. Though all I can do is look for proof that somebody lied.”

  “What did they tell you?” I hadn’t yet seen anybody who looked like a workman.

  “The ones who did show up are staying out of sight. They don’t want to be seen.”

  “Gilbey, you, me, Max, and every idiot on the payroll here survived the war. That should’ve taught them how to deal with fear.”

  “These are construction guys, Garrett. They did their time in construction companies. If they got into fights it was because the combat battalions didn’t do their job.”

  “Fire some of the people who aren’t showing up. I'll find replacements. They might not be as skilled but they won’t run away. Hire the real guys back later, after they’ve gotten intimate with the terrors of unemployment. For now, I’m going looking for a specialist who can help us with the ghost business.”

  I headed into the Tenderloin, pursuing Morley’s instructions. I assumed I was being followed despite a lack of evidence.

  I was concerned about Morley. He has a gambling problem. He’d had it controlled for a while. I hoped he still did. It isn’t pretty when he weakens. The debts pile up, triggering ticks and irrational behaviors as he tries to get out from under.

  He’d shown that style of anxiety during my visit. And was way too friendly.

  Being a natural born paranoid cynic, I feared my best pal was betting on the water spider races again.

  38

  The Busted Dick wasn’t hard to find. Though the sign out front didn’t help. In timeworn paint it showed dice, domino tiles, and a tumble of noodles or sticks.

  The tumble turned out to represent a game in which skinny sticks with writing on them are shaken in a jar, then tossed onto a tabletop. Not a game common in Karenta.

  There’s a kind of fortune-telling that uses little sticks. I’d never seen that, either.

  I went inside. It was your standard low-end dive. Six small tables, each attended by several rickety chairs, lined the right-hand wall. None were occupied. The bar was to the left, with ten wobbly stools. It had been something special in an earlier century. Two stools were occupied. Three empties stood between them. Neither professional drinker seemed aware of the other. Both, however, took a moment to glance at me and be impressed by my borrowed coat.

  I invited myself aboard the center of the ‘tween stools. It had been polished by thousands of dissolute heinies. “Beer.” I laid down a small silver piece. That would keep the cold barley soup coming. “Good beer.”

  They would have a special keg reserved.

  A generous mug materialized. Its contents were drinkable.

  My change reflected the quality of my purchase.

  The Busted Dick must get a few up-class drop-ins, using it as a way station when sneaking toward or away from the Tenderloin.

  I pushed a copper back to the barman. He nodded his appreciation. I doubt my companions ever tipped. I relaxed, enjoyed the barley nectar.

  No local barman made anything that fine in a thirty-gallon tub in a room in back. The small guys don’t have the patience to do the water right. They don’t boil it long enough; then they don’t fine all the chunks out. They don’t have time. They can’t store and age their product. They’ve got to turn it over.

  I raised my mug. “I need a refill.” Like a serious drinker.

  My flanking competitors hadn’t raised their mugs twice between them while I drained mine.

  Having delivered the new trooper, made change, and pocketed his tip, the barman failed to go back to cleaning mugs, which seems compulsory whenever they’re not separating a customer from his cash.

  He leaned back and waited for my pitch.

  It was obvious that I wasn’t some derelict who had wandered in looking to build a quick buzz. My coat gave me away.

  I enjoyed half my second mug before I asked, “You know Horace?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I need to talk to a guy named Horace who works at the Busted Dick. A name I’d like explained almost as much as I’d like to connect with Horace.”

  “A busted dick is the worst possible throw of the sticks in the game of points. Like snake-eyes, shooting craps. Only worse. I take it you’re not a points player.”

  “I never heard of it. From context, I’d guess it’s a gambling game.”

  “You catch on quick. It came from Venageta. Prisoners of war brought it back. I’ve never figured it all out. The rules go on and on. There’re thirty-six sticks. They have symbols on all four sides and the ends are colored. None of them are the same. You shake them in a jar, then dump them out. There’s a million ways they can fall. Come in some night, there'll be games at every table. Used to be dominoes. Them that gets into the game get into itseriously. The only reason they aren’t at it now is, we don’t let them in till nighttime. On account of, everybody’s got to get some sleep sometime.”

  “Horace?”

  “There a reason?”

  “Yeah. He can put me in touch with my old Army buddy, Belle Chimes.”

  The barman’s eyes narrowed. He glanced past me, toward the door. He was caught in the forked stick of the underground economy. You’re there, you need customers. But you can’t know for sure who they are when they come round jingling silver. Sometimes not until it’s too late.

  I could be some guy sent out from the Al-Khar to fish for people looking to cut costs and corners by hiring uncertified specialists.

  Same trap is right there waiting for the consumer.

  “I can probably get you in touch with Horace. What would you want with this Bill?”

  “Weider Brewing is building a theater a little ways from here. Some of the workmen say the site is
haunted. I hear tell Belle can maybe help me find out if that’s true.”

  The barman stared over my shoulder.

  I finished my beer. “I could use a refill.”

  That stirred him. He took my mug to the quarter keg filled with the good stuff. He brought it back full. So distracted that he forgot to take my money. He said, “The loo? Back there. Through that door. Take your beer with you. Unless you want it to disappear while you’re gone.”

  He did take my money then.

  So much for him being rattled.

  I took my beer.

  The loo wasn’t. As I’d expected. For places like the Busted Dick the jakes is just the alley out back.

  The barman joined me. “Be quick. Those two will drain the taps.” He kept a foot inside so the door wouldn’t close all the way. He could duck back in and leave me holding my own if he wanted. Or he could see his clients if an impulse toward larceny brought them back to life.

  “I told it. I’ve got a purported ghost problem. I need an expert without conflicting motives to check it out. To tell me if it’s true. And how to cope with it if it is. And to tell me why people think it’s true if it isn’t. I'll pay a reasonable fee for the service.”

  I was impatient. But I knew the romance was necessary.

  You don’t find independently operating sorcerers hanging out on street corners. Folks on the Hill have no qualms about getting lethal while enforcing their monopoly. But they won’t come out to back up your everyday kind of guy. Somebody like Mom Garrett’s blue-eyed baby boy. For a freelance you have to find a winner in the birth lottery who got a load of talent but no ability whatsoever to play well with others.

  I exaggerate, but we all know those people. Reeking with genius. Dripping talent. And completely incapable of sustaining a personal relationship. With almost as much trouble keeping a job.

  Careful, Garrett. Sounds a little autobiographical.

  “This ghost problem. Where would it be again?”

  “Hop, skip, and a jump. The World. The theater the Weider Brewery is building.”

  “It’s farther than that. But not much. Let’s go back inside. You buy another beer. I'll ask my dad if he knows somebody who can help you.” He pulled on the door.

  We got back to the bar in time to save one of the professional drunks from suffering a severe moral lapse. He was just fixing to slide behind the bar, empty mug dreaming of a refill. Caught, he faked a stumble, then headed on back to the jakes.

  The barman filled me up. “I'll be right back. Keep them honest.” He hit what looked like a skinny pantry door at the back end of the bar. An equally narrow stairway lay behind that. He had to go up with his shoulders turned slightly sideways.

  The width of the stairs dated the structure. There’d been a time, a hundred fifty years back, when TunFaire’s dwarf and ogre populations were very restless. Neither species would be narrow enough to climb that stair.

  I’d have real trouble myself.

  If the barman ditched me by sneaking out a back way, I’d serve beer on the house.

  A little old man pushed through the stairway door. He was maybe five feet tall. He’d been taller in the long ago, but the weight of time had bent him over and had shrunk him. He had what the old folks call a widow’s hump. He was a shiny chestnut color. I saw nothing to suggest any actual kinship with the barman, who came out the stairway door a moment later.

  The little old man shuffled over. “Who you looking for?”

  “Belle Chimes. Friend of mine says he can give me advice about D’Guni racing.”

  He frowned. “Here’s some, now. Don’t do it.” Hard to tell about that frown, though, looking downhill into that nest of wrinkles. “Who told you to see him about the bug races?”

  I didn’t want to give Morley up. But his name might be the password.

  A freelance sorcerer might have a different name for every shill he had referring trade. “Morley Dotes. I don’t know where he got the name.”

  “Who was you supposed to talk to when you got here?” I told him what Morley told me.

  The old man took a deep breath, stuck one shaky old hand back over the bar. The barman brought a brown briar walking stick up from somewhere down below. The old man took it. “Let’s walk, boy.”

  “All right.” I held the door for him, going out to the street.

  The old man got more spry as soon as the door closed. He headed for the World. Not exactly smoking fast, but without the shuffle. “Talk to me about money, boy.”

  “Some could end up coming your way.”

  “No shit. I'll retire to my own vineyard on the slopes of Mount Kramas.” He referenced the mythical mountain where the grapes are so perfect only the gods themselves are allowed to drink what comes of letting their juice rot.

  My doubts about the man’s credentials as a sorcerer faded before we got to the World. When we arrived he was twenty years younger and four inches taller. And moved with corresponding ease and grace. And was miffed because I didn’t ooh and aah over his transformation.

  I’d run into masters of illusion before. Hell, I’m halfway engaged to one particular redheaded mistress of illusion.

  Tinnie got into the mix because she and Alyx Weider’s girl gang had turned up while I was off recruiting. Alyx and Heather were harassing poor Manvil Gilbey.

  My new friend became ten years younger, fast, while making little purring sounds of appreciation. “There might be a perk or two here, after all.”

  “Just stay away from the redhead.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “And taken.”

  39

  I told Gilbey, “There’re some ragged potato sacks over there. One of the dead guys was using them to keep warm.”

  “Figuring on swapping them out for that coat? Where did you get that thing?”

  “No. I thought you might help me stuff Alyx into one.”

  “I’m about ready.” Gilbey was out of patience with Alyx.

  I couldn’t figure what her problem was. She was a long step past the usual. Maybe she was trying to impress old Belle. Now insisting on being called Bill.

  Poor Alyx. Bill wrote her off two minutes after they met. Beauty can take a girl just so far? especially if she’s only one of a posse of smoking-hot females and the rest all come equipped with manners.

  Bill went to work. Or so he said. He ambled on inside the World.

  I cut my sweetie out of the pack. “How come you guys are down here? And how come you’re all the time running with this bunch instead of being over at the manufactory busting that sweet patootie to make me rich?”

  “Why, Mr. Garrett! I do declare! You say the most romantical things. You in your fancy coat. You who could be over there making your own self rich.”

  “I just can’t help being romantic when I’m around you. My brain turns to mush. I drool. And the most absurd things?”

  “Quit while you’re ahead, Malsquando.” Referring to a legendary lover of ages past. He’d even seduced the queen. And her daughter. And her son, according to some. The king hadn’t been pleased. It’s not a good idea to piss off the king if you haven’t seduced him, too.

  “I quit.” I’m no fast learner with some of this stuff. But pain is a fine teaching tool. Tinnie has been plying that one for a long time. She’s almost got me broken in.

  “Come here, Malsquando.”

  Good little doggie, I heeled and trotted after.

  She turned on me as soon as we were safe from eyewitnesses.

  I didn’t even have to apologize for something I didn’t know I did.

  I came up for air about ten years later, panting and speaking in tongues. But feeling a certain pride of workmanship. My favorite redhead was thoroughly disheveled and fighting for breath herself. She gasped, “So where have you been lately?”

  I’m so smart. I have skills I haven’t even used yet. I made dead sure nothing left my mouth that even remotely sounded like words. Words are treacherous. They could clump together to offer some
silly notion about me having been in exile because of the quirks of somebody who wore her hair big, long, and criminally red.

  When you’re the guy in the couple that includes one of those women, you’re right there at the end of the rainbow. But you pay for it. You’re always in the wrong.

  “Will you kids quit snogging long enough to get something accomplished, here?”

  Manvil Gilbey had found us. And was not happy to see us preoccupied by trivia.

  Heather Soames was right behind Gilbey. And looked like she envied us our distraction.

  Manvil told me, “If you can drag yourself away, Bill is back. He says he needs to talk to you. He seems rattled.”

  Uh-oh. That didn’t sound like anything I wanted to hear.

  Bill had reacquired most of the years he’d shed coming over from the Busted Dick. He radiated grim seriousness. He reached up and took me by the elbow, eased me away from the crowd. I steeled myself for a sales pitch.

  “What’s the story, Bill? And how much is it going to cost me?”

  Naturally suspicious right down to my brittle little toe-nails, I even wondered if Bill might not be the one haunting the World. Just to provide himself some employment. Which wasn’t rational thinking.

  He said, “My profession brings out the cynic in clients like no other. They come crawling, desperate because they don’t know where to turn. But then they can’t trust me to do what they need to have done.”

  Had he been following me around, making notes?

  “So, tell me the horrid news, Bill. How much special equipment and how many specialist sorcerers from the underground economy am I gonna need to deal with this?”

  “Your cynicism spring is wound too tight, boy. Hear me out before you decide you’re being scammed.”

  I have been known to accept good advice when I hear it. “My lips are sealed. For the moment.”

  “Excellent. Here goes. There’s something down there.” He wagged a finger. “Uh-uh. You'll learn more with your mouth shut.”

  More good advice. Given me on a regular basis by various associates. Especially the big guy at home. I'll get it someday. “Go.”