Gilded Latten Bones (15 page)

I got it, then. It wasn’t the twisted healer. It was the Dead Man. I laughed. “Somebody lied. But not to worry. He doesn’t poke around inside people just because he can. And when he does he passes on only what is germane. In this case, what this man knows about what was done to Morley Dotes. Meantime, we’re going to lose him if he carries out the hypnotic instructions driving him.”

“That can’t be. I know a little about hypnotism. We use it in interrogations. You can’t make somebody kill himself.”

“Old Bones tells me you can if your victim doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing. You make him think he’s doing something else.”

Whoever prepared this man was a genius. He started with a typical healer and made the man over into an assassin without triggering any serious conflict.

“And quick enough to prep him for Morley?”

Pay attention. We have established that this man has committed other crimes. I suspect that similar mental manipulations were used on Jimmy Two Steps.

“There
is
a connection?”

Information in General Block’s mind, compared with facts in the healer’s, makes that seem likely. The puppet master evidently agrees with the Al-Khar about you. You need to be kept away. You are a wild card. The cascade of events so far suggests that they might be right.

“Interesting.” I began making further connections.

Yes. The attack on you and Miss Tate took place soon after Miss Contague decided to ask you to protect Mr. Dotes. Then, on successive nights, attempts were made to get you at Fire and Ice.

“Me? Not Morley?”

You, I am certain. Mr. Dotes would be useful collateral damage but would be neutralized anyway once he started his medication. You, however, have a history of stumbling around and causing avalanches of unexpected consequences. It is what you do. Particularly in the mind opposing us.

“This is someone we’ve run into before.”

I expect only obliquely, if at all, with us taking no notice. Aha! I broke the code. I found the key to the sequence.

“Huh?”

The healer. I can save him. I have cracked the progression of suggestions laid into his mind.

“Good. Once you have him calmed down and set to go, turn him loose on Playmate. Accept no excuses.”

Of course.

Block asked, “Interesting private chat?”

“Yes. He figured out how to save our healer assassin from himself.”

“Excellent. I do have some questions for that man.”

“Go through His Nibs. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time.”

Block did follow. He nodded, admitted, “This isn’t the first bad guy to turn up with no notion why he did what he did and no idea who told him to do it.”

Intriguing. The General is reflecting on thefts of chemicals that turned up in that warehouse.

“Bring them around, General. Let Old Bones chat them up. Meantime, how about you see the Children of the Light about this guy? They might be able to shed some light.”

He refused to acknowledge my clever word play. “Ooh! That sounds like fun. Deal will be all over that. We wouldn’t even be breaking any recent rules. This would be a separate case. An attempted murder possibly connected to successful murders that had no obvious connection with a warehouse in Elf Town.”

I started to ask if the Guard had canvassed the neighborhood. I got a caution from the Dead Man. That had been ruled out by Prince Rupert.

“How about hunting the resurrection men? Has that been disallowed?”

Block smirked. “Not yet. But they’re damned hard to find. They’ve been told to lie low and keep quiet by somebody who scares them more than we do.”

That figured.

Belinda leaned into the doorway, which was the best she could do because of the crowd in the room already. “I got Kolda. It took a while. We had to run him down.”

40

Block had arrived looking for one thing. He went out with something else in mind, but happy and eager to get to work.

The Dead Man would give him additional information. Soon the Al-Khar would be a-bustle. No one but the Director and the commanding general would know that the Guard was violating the spirit of their orders.

Kolda joined me in with Morley. He was nervous. Our history, while limited, left him no reason to think that he was in a good position. I told him, “You’re an expert in chemicals and exotic herbs. My friend, here, has been poisoned. It’s not lethal, it just keeps him from waking up. And it makes him heal really slow.”

Kolda gave me a big-eyed, frightened look but didn’t say anything.

“The pudgy character with Dollar Dan’s paw tangled in his collar delivered the poison. That was given to him, along with a lot of money, by a third party, after Miss Contague engaged him to heal my friend. She gave him a lot of money, too.”

Kolda had a worse flair for fashion than me. He couldn’t keep his hair combed or his shirt tucked in. He was always nervous. His social skills were negligible. But he was a genius in his field. And he owed me.

I had insisted, to Block, that Kolda wasn’t a poisoner. But he did poison me, once upon a time. I’m still breathing and complaining. The evidence suggests that I found the antidote.

I said, “Healer, give this man the bottle you brought today. Then Dollar Dan will take you across the hallway. Your redemption begins when you start work on Playmate.”

He didn’t want to do that. Freebies went against the code of the Children of the Light. “I understand.” His voice was slow and toneless. He dug out a little bottle identical to the one he had given us during his visit to Fire and Ice.

I asked the air, “What are the chances this bottle contains the same ingredients as the first one?”

Indeterminate.
Ten seconds passed.
Clever catch, Garrett. He did, in fact, consult a contact after he heard that you needed more medicine. The excuse we provided was of a sort to excite the suspicions of a paranoid supplier.

“We do still have the original philter. Kolda can compare them.”

The healer surrendered his new bottle. Dollar Dan hustled him across the hall.

I gave Kolda the original bottle. “This stuff goes three drops to a two-quart pitcher of water.”

“Potent, then.” With commendable caution he unstopped each bottle and took a gentle sniff. Of the new bottle he said, “This is vanilla, a touch of clove oil, another of castor oil, in wood alcohol. There is something more that I don’t recognize.” After sniffing the original bottle, he said, “This includes everything in the other bottle, with less of the unknown odor and more of something that smells like death.”

“Definitely different formulas, then?”

“Yes. But subtly. Both would be deadly, in different ways.”

I asked the air, “What do you think?”

You may be on the right trail. Neither oil of clove nor oil of castor ought to dissolve in cold water but their presence, with the vanilla, might be there to suggest that the concoction is medicinal.

“The poison has to be something that is effective in amounts so small...”

The beans from which castor oil is rendered. They contain a poison so deadly that infinitesimal amounts can kill scores. The poisoner’s dilemma has always been how to remain unpoisoned himself, then how to disperse the poison in an effective manner. It would appear that someone has found a way to use it, one customer at a time.

Ah! Friend Kolda has begun thinking along the same lines. I will spare you the admiration he has for the genius of his fellow chemist.

Kolda said, “Someone has done the impossible. Someone has achieved an unbelievable breakthrough.”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Someone has found a way to extract the poison from castor beans.”

“You dud. That’s been known for years. What nobody does know is how to use the poison safely.”

Kolda gave back an unhappy grunt. He might not be as ignorant as we hoped.

He
was
ignorant about the Dead Man. I’m not sure I approve but last time we crossed paths Old Bones added some trapdoors to Kolda’s memory.

Kolda will never remember anything he learns while visiting us.

I was beginning to think my partner wasn’t as swell as I claimed he was.

I felt a touch of amusement from outside.

41

With Kolda and the healer gone to see the Dead Man there wasn’t much for me to do with Morley. And it was almost time for the ratwomen.

I decided to cultivate my atrophied social skills. But only a handful of guests remained. The healer, Kolda, and Playmate were in with the Dead Man. The rest were in Singe’s office. Jon Salvation was talking up his next play. I checked the corners and under Singe’s desk. Still no Winger. How did he manage?

The Dead Man’s special student, Penny Dreadful, hadn’t fled when I turned up. There had been enough witnesses for her to feel safe.

My, how she had grown!

You notice these things when you’re male and still alive.

Morley’s longtime associate Sarge was there, too. He looked lost. He looked like somebody just poisoned his kitten.

I snagged the last available chair, beckoned Sarge, indicated my willingness to share the contents of a pitcher clearly in need of refurbishing. Sarge was slumped on a chair in a corner not occupied by Saucerhead Tharpe’s or Singe’s office furniture. He brightened slightly and dragged his chair over.

“How is the restaurant managing without our boy?”

“We don’t need no barkin’ from Morley to make dat work, Garrett. We been in da racket so long da business rolls on like a mill wheel turnin’. But he’s our frien’, too. An’ none of us know what we’ll do if’n he don’t make it t’ru dis.”

“Belinda has probably made you crazy trying to figure out what Morley was up to when he got hurt, but...”

“Dat’s for sure. But she don’t listen to what nobody tells her so she ain’t never gonna get nowhere. She’s one a dem people what figures out ahead a time what dey’re gonna believe, den dey don’t never hear nothin’ dat disagrees.”

I’d known Belinda longer than I liked to remember and more intimately than the world needed to know. She had huge intellectual flaws. Willful disdain of facts was never one of those. “For sure? Like how?”

“Well, you know, Morley don’t got a lot a use for his et’nic roots. He’s a dark elf, but, yeah? So what? He’s in business in a human city an’ half da people dere, dey don’t know dat, can’t tell dat, an’ maybe don’t need ta know dat if’n dey’re da kind what gives a shit about dat.”

I nodded. Sarge’s dialect was thicker than usual but I was following him. He was saying Morley wasn’t one for living in the past. “Did something change?” He
had
been found in that zone where greater TunFaire fades into the neighborhood known as Elf Town. Folk there, who never saw a house in their home country, live in tenements twelve to a room and insist that they’ll never put the old ways and old tongue behind them.

“Sumptin’ did. Maybe dat bint what his folks arranged him ta marry came ta town.”

“I thought he bought his way out of that a couple years ago.”

“We all t’ought dat. Maybe he just wished he did.”

Jon Salvation joined us, uninvited. He planted himself in front of me, hands on his skinny little girl hips. “Garrett, you have to help me.”

Story of my life. “I can’t afford to invest in one of your plays. And I’m busy, here.”

“I don’t need investors. I have people lined up to buy into anything I put on. I stick with the Weiders because they give me artistic control. But you’re the only one I can count on to make my next project a success.”

I forgot Sarge and Morley briefly. Pilsuds Vilchik had presented me with a grand conundrum. No way could a street operator like me assure the success of a stage drama. Unless he wanted me to sell seats at knifepoint. Or maybe he wanted Winger kept out of his hair.

“Where is Winger?”

“Getting into mischief somewhere.” He shrugged. “What I want is for you to get Tinnie to come back. She’s perfect for the lead in
The Faerie Queene
.”

“You want to cast Tinnie as a fairy? Man, that’s a stretch. She is way too substantial.” That wisp Furious Tide of Light was far more suitable.

“That’s the point. I’m not doing fairy-tale fairies. They won’t be ethereal. They’ll be like elves, only from a realm at right angles to our own. Tinnie’s coloring and attributes, her stature and sharp attitude, even her freckles, make her the perfect Mathilde.”

“Will this go on at the World?”

“Main stage, expanded. This will be my biggest hit yet, Garrett.”

“Tinnie doesn’t get along with Heather Soames.”

“I’ll make them get along.”

I liked his confidence.

He said, “Tinnie
is
Mathilde but I will send her packing if she behaves the way she did before. You don’t need to tell her that. I’ll make it clear at first rehearsal.”

Interesting times were headed our way. “Look at you getting all self-confident and assertive. What happened to the Remora we knew and loathed?”

“He found his passion. Are you going to pitch Mathilde to Tinnie?”

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

“I’m committed to my own passion. That will keep me here with my injured friend. If you want Tinnie, head on over to Factory Slide. Or, better, catch her at work. Go in the afternoon. She’ll be sick of accounting. I can give you a letter to get you past the guards.”

“If that’s the way it has to be. Would you be interested in a small role? I need a banged up hulk to play the faithful old soldier...”

“Jon, you need to come at me some other time. I was involved in an important discussion with Sarge when you horned in.”

The playwright goggled. He had lost his appreciation of direct talk.

People did talk to the Remora that way, back when. They talked to Pilsuds Vilchik that way in the once upon a time. They didn’t talk that way to the town’s hottest celebrity today.

Sarge volunteered, “I’d make a good fait’ful old sojer what’s been banged aroun’ enough ta have some character.”

And there was another reason Jon Salvation felt free to unleash his inner dick. People put up with it because he might cast them in a play.