Doc Sidhe (22 page)

Harris looked at him evenly. "I'm not suggesting anything, JayPee. I'm answering questions. I know you didn't have anything to do with this. If you wanted something bad to happen to me, you could have arranged for it lots of times. Stabbed me in a back stairwell or something."

Jean-Pierre slowly relaxed back into his chair. "Well, then." He turned to glare at Doc. "Stop trying to pick fights, Doc."

Alastair slathered balm on the last of Harris' cuts and affixed another bandage.

Doc ignored Jean-Pierre. He said, "The Novimagos Guard found the car. It was wedged too firmly between the trees to drive clear; you chose very well. But the gunmen were gone."

"Great." Harris glanced back over his shoulder, saw that his cuts were all bound, and shrugged back into his shirt. "Thanks, Alastair."

Doc said, "I need to make some talk-box calls. And then . . . I'd appreciate it if you would arrange to go driving again."

"Oh, yeah? And how about gunmen?"

"There will probably be even more this time, and better armed."

"Great," Harris said. "Sign me up."

Gaby glared at him. "I think that too many days of being cooped up here have made you crazy."

"Maybe it'll be an improvement from when I was sane," he shot back.

"You want what?" Fergus asked.

"I want the Hutchen again," Harris said. "I'm stubborn."

"You mean you're mad. I haven't even begun the repairs."

Harris shrugged. "If it's drivable, it's what I want."

Fergus sighed. "Give me a few beats; I have to look over my notes." He turned away from the madman, sorrowfully shook his head, and walked into the little office, closing its door behind him.

Once inside, he kept a nervous eye on the door and picked up the handset of his talk-box double. "Morcymeath five nine one naught," he told the operator.

After a minute, he heard the click of connection, but no voice spoke. Fergus said, "It's me."

The other voice was low and smooth. "What?"

"He's coming out again."

"With anyone?"

"No, alone." Fergus paused a moment. "He'll be in the same car as before. It should be even easier to spot. It's shot up all to Avlann." He waited a moment longer, but the other voice didn't speak again. Fergus replaced the handset in his cradle.

He picked up the Hutchen's key and his notebook and consulted the latter as he walked back out.

"It should carry you," he said, not looking up. "The Hutchen. But don't beat it too much about before I can repair it."

"I won't," Jean-Pierre said.

Fergus looked up, confused. Jean-Pierre stood beside Harris, both of them leaning against the wall, looking identically nonchalant.

"Oh. Both of you? Or do you want a different car, Highness?"

"In fact, we'll need the slabside lorry instead."

Fergus looked in some confusion at Harris. "I'm glad you changed your mind. I'll just get the key to the lorry."

Harris shook his head. "Not yet. Stay here. Doc will be here in a second to talk to you. He's just up in the building's switchboard office."

Fergus's stomach went cold.

He threw his notebook into Jean-Pierre's face and sprinted for the stairwell.

He was two steps from it when an impact like a sledgehammer blow hit the small of his back. He smashed into the wall beside the door, staggered backwards, and felt his head crack on the concrete floor of the garage.

Harris stood over the unconscious mechanic and searched him for weapons. Fergus carried nothing but the tools in his belt.

Jean-Pierre joined him. "I have never seen a jumping kick like that."

"Flying side kick. Best used against immobile targets and blind men. But when it connects, it tends to smart." Harris unbuckled the tool belt and pulled it free of Fergus. "Say, what's all this `Highness' stuff, anyway?"

Jean-Pierre shrugged. "By an accident of birth, I am prince and heir to the kingdom of Acadia."

"Hey. Nice work if you can get it."

The other man smiled thinly. "If I thought it was such nice work I would not be here."

Fergus felt pain in his back and heard a murmur of voices. He forced his eyes open.

Doc's face hovered above him. Fergus closed his eyes again.

He felt Doc seize him by the lapels; then he was swung through the air. His back slammed into the wall and the pain grew. He dangled in Doc's grip, his feet well off the floor, and opened his eyes again.

Doc's face was set in angry lines. Behind him waited his associates, the two grimworlders, and the huge man named Joseph. Their expressions were unforgiving.

Doc said, "Do you want to go to gaol, or do you want to walk away?"

Fergus felt a little surge of hope rise through all the fear. "Walk, please."

Doc dropped him. Fergus' heels hit the floor but his legs would not hold him up; he slid down and sat, legs drawn up, at Doc's feet.

Doc glared at him. "You have to do two things. First, tell me everything you know about the place you called to—Morcymeath five nine one naught."

"It's the number he gave me." Fergus heard his voice quavering, but he couldn't stop it. "It belongs to a man named Eamon Moon."

"Tell me about him."

"My height. Lean, like Jean-Pierre. The ladies all seem to like him and he spends a lot of money on them. He has a flat in Morcymeath."

"That's all you have?" Doc shook his head. "It's not enough. Take him to gaol."

"No,
please
." Fergus frantically searched his memory for things to say, presents to give Doc so that the man might think better of him. "I met him at the Tamlyn Club once. He has a regular table there. I saw him meet another man there once."

"Describe this other man."

"A strong-looking redcap, a graybeard from the old world. He has a lowland accent."

"Angus Powrie." Doc thought about it for a moment. "Very well. That's enough for us to start.

"Second." The anger he turned on Fergus made his previous attitude seem like one of affection. "Why?"

Fergus felt his breath catch. The anger he'd held down for years threatened to surface. It wouldn't do to vent it on Doc if he still had a chance to get away. But he couldn't keep the resentment out of his voice. "It's not my fault. You're to blame."

"Explain yourself."

"
Ten years
I've worked for the Foundation. Every year I apply to be a full associate. Every year you turn me down, keep me chained in this hole." He gestured at Jean-Pierre and the rest. "I could have been one of them, but you just wanted me to keep their cars running.
I'm as good as they are.
She—" he pointed at Gaby "—is here less than a week, and already you're talking about taking her on, too. What about me?" His voice cracked on the last word.

"No doubt you've told this to others. At a pub, say, after hours."

Fergus didn't answer.

"And, no doubt, one day you found a friend in Goodsir Moon. He bought you drinks and told you, yes, you are as good as they are, but they hate you and laugh at you."

Fergus felt a flicker of confusion. That was exactly what had happened. "Maybe."

"They don't deserve you, Fergus." Doc's tone was harsh. "You know, you could do your family a lot of good with just a few more coins every moon."

The mechanic didn't answer. His anger was gone, replaced by a cold sickness. If he concentrated hard, maybe he could keep from throwing up on Doc's boots.

Doc stared down at him a long moment. "Alastair, take him to Galt Athelstane at the guard station. Tell them to hold him until his words prove true. Or forever, if they do not."

The next evening, Harris and Doc walked into the Tamlyn Club with the confidence of the wealthy dilettantes they saw all around them. "Goodsir Cremm's table," Doc said, and the maître d' led them across the crowded floor.

The club was huge, a vast expanse of tables dressed in gold tablecloths and decorated with fresh flowers, white china, and gleaming silverware.

Green-jacketed waiters served brightly hued patrons. On stage, Addison Trow and his New Castilians, in matching white jackets and blood-red pants, played for the dining audience. Their sound was like big band played entirely on strings and woodwinds. Harris decided that he liked it.

The maître d' brought them to the table where Alastair sat. The doctor glanced up at them, looked away, and did a classic double-take, breaking into a wide grin. He waited for the maître d' to leave. "I didn't recognize you two."

"That's the idea, isn't it?" asked Harris. He and Doc sat.

Doc's skin was the color of a deep California tan, just slightly lighter than the suit he wore, and his short-cropped blond hair matched his tie. Harris was as dark as old wood and he knew the Van Dyke beard and mustache he wore dramatically altered the lines of his face.

"Where did you get all that?"

"Doc showed me to Siobhan Damvert's old makeup kit. The makeups were mostly too old and dried up, so I sent out for more, but the hairpieces were mostly in working order." Harris gingerly touched his beard; the spirit gum was holding fine.

"Harris has a fine hand for this sort of work," Doc said.

"He does," Alastair said. "Very well. If you'll try not to be too indiscreet about it and take a look at the tables nearest the stage . . . The small round one with only one man at it. That's Eamon Moon."

Harris turned as if to watch the band and spotted the man Alastair described. Moon was a lean, handsome man with a pencil-thin mustache and a sophisticated look. He sipped from a wineglass while smiling at the musicians.

Alastair continued. "He's been here most of the afternoon. Sitting alone, but occasionally people come up to talk to him. It looks like social contacts for the most part, and I've recognized a couple of royal ministers and one captain of the guard among those he's spoken to. Others have the look of strong-arm men about them. They don't stay long after he speaks to them."

"Noriko and Jean-Pierre went through his flat," Doc said. "It seems barely lived in. The talk-box was attached to an interesting device. A wireless transmitter made for cabled doubles to plug into. I think it must send his calls on to another site."

"Not here. I've seen him take no calls."

"Go home and get some rest."

Alastair nodded. He drained the last of his uisge glass, made a face that suggested both pain and contentment, and left.

A waiter asked Harris and Doc whether they were here for dinner or drinks. Doc ordered wine.

Harris discreetly watched Eamon Moon. The man did little but listen to the musicians, sip his drink, and exchange words with other patrons as they passed his table. "Boring guy."

"Where's his fire?"

"His gun? I don't know. Do you?"

"Yes."

"Well, where?"

"My point is that you should be able to tell me."

"Oh." Harris looked a little more closely. "This is where all these damned baggy fair world clothes are going to trip me up."

"There's no need to curse, Harris."

After two more of the band's songs, he said, "He's a compulsive kind of guy. Does everything the same way. Lifts his wineglass the same way everytime. Checks his pocket watch every so often."

"Yes."

"Left armpit."

"Yes. How do you know?"

"He checks it every time he pulls out his pocket watch, doesn't he?"

"Very good. Where is his bodyguard sitting?"

"Bodyguard?"

The band's instrumental number ended. The crowd applauded. A large, dusky-skinned musician stood and took center stage; at the back of the band, a bagpiper stood.

The piper began to play an eerie, unhappy wail. In an earthquake rumble of a voice, the other man sang,

He tells me again, "I can do you no more,
No work to be had," and he shows me the door.
Long day of walking, I'm sore o' the foot,
Naught to show for it but a hole i' my boot.
The door to my flat does not yield to my knock.
The boy says my lady has changed out the lock.
And through the barred door all the world hears her say,
"From my room and my bed I must turn you away."
 

The rhythm was wrong, the instrument was wrong, the setting was wrong, but Harris felt a sudden shock as he recognized what he was hearing. He put his head down on the table. "He's singing the blues."

"What do you mean?"

"That's what we call it on the grim world. The blues." Harris lifted his head to stare imploringly at Doc. "But, oh my God, on the
bagpipe
?"

"That's the way it's done. What else could sound so soulful?"

"Do you suppose anyone would get mad if I beat both of them to death?"

"I think it would spoil our watch."

"Oh, yeah." Harris suffered through eight more stanzas of the mournful musician's troubles. He felt much better when the singer and piper sat to the audience's inexplicable applause. Two other musicians rose and began a duel of hammered dulcimers.

Harris' relief didn't last long. Angus Powrie appeared at Eamon Moon's side and leaned over to speak in the man's ear. Harris stiffened.

"Better than I had hoped," Doc said.

Powrie didn't stay. He clapped Moon on the back with rough familiarity and walked toward the exit.

Doc dropped a coin on the table and rose. "A change in plans," he said. "I'll follow Powrie. You call the Foundation and have someone come out to join you. Jean-Pierre, preferably. Keep watching Eamon Moon."

"Right."

Doc walked after Angus Powrie with studied casualness.

Harris signaled the waiter. When the man came over, he said, "I need a talk-box for an outside call—oh, hell."

Eamon Moon was on his feet, placing coins on his table. So was the thick-waisted, gloomy man Doc had identified as his bodyguard.

"Never mind," Harris said, and waved the waiter away. He kept his face turned toward the band but watched Moon and his man leave the club. Once the bodyguard was out the door, Harris followed. He struggled to keep his breathing regular.

It got worse. As soon as he got out to the sidewalk, Harris saw Moon and his bodyguard pull away from the curb in a gleaming red convertible.