Gilded Latten Bones (2 page)

Tinnie uncovered the goods, arrogantly showing off how lucky Garrett was. The eyes that knew no mercy did recognize those marvels when they saw them.

Clang!
That blade brushed aside.
Thump!
A solid whack to the temple. Half a minute to make sure the villains didn’t come back on us. Then, “Trollop.”

“How’s your health, big boy?” She had some clothes on, now. She had become the promise, not the literal truth.

“I had him.”

“Sure, you did. Just a little insurance.”

“Something to tell the grandkids about.”

“Garrett. What the hell is going on? Are you into something? You promised. What are you into?”

“Nothing. When would I have the chance?” That was one of the costs of our monogamy. I had no life that didn’t include Tinnie, nor should I want one as she interpreted monogamy.

Tinnie is a natural-born redhead, long on emotion and not so long on reason. Yet she did recall that our arrangement had not left me time to get involved in the sort of adventures I used to enjoy. “I’m not sure I believe you, but I’ll go out on a limb and take your word.”

“Bless you. I just had a marvelous idea. How about, instead of you sparking arguments by letting your imagination run wild, we ask our guests what brings them here?”

Tinnie grunted.

She can be reasonable. It just doesn’t happen all that often.

3

Neither nocturnal adventurer wanted to share. Neither said a word. Tinnie set limits to how vigorously I could ask questions. She wouldn’t let me get loud or messy.

She could be stubborn about stuff like that. This time she insisted on drafting a night-shift nephew to run to down the Al-Khar to collect a squad of TunFaire’s self-proclaimed finest.

They responded to the Tate name.

If the boy had used mine, the tin whistles might have taken weeks. The Tates have friends in that community of people who think law and order are good for commerce. They have the kind of money that rears up on its hind legs and howls for immediate attention. The red tops nearly beat themselves to the AMC Annex, where Tinnie had us keeping house.

That was her idea of a compromise. She did not want to live in my house. I was dead set against being pulled in and converted into another drone in the Tate family hive.

“This would not have happened on Macunado Street,” I observed. “They wouldn’t have gotten through the door. Unless Old Bones wanted to play with them. And we’d know what it was all about already.”

They say women change once they get their talons in and locked. I wouldn’t presume to enter an opinion. But I am willing to admit that spending time at my place, even with the Dead Man wide awake, had been no problem for Tinnie back when we were just real good friends.

She ignored me. She was working herself up to make a deal with the minions of the law. She ignored our captives, too.

Those two would have a tale to tell their grandkids. If they got lucky, a miracle would happen, lightning would strike, and they would evade the labor gang that was their certain fate at the moment.

A tin whistle named Scithe led the red tops. Scithe was a little too appreciative of a certain redhead. Not a friend, by any means. Most lawmen don’t even trust each other. But he was decent and reasonable, outside his weakness for ginger.

Scithe said, “I don’t understand, Miss Tate. You’re still associating with this known antisocial type.”

“He’s like a wart. Hard to get rid of. And he does have entertainment value. For now, though, I’d be ever so grateful if you could take these two men somewhere and ask them why they interrupted my rest.”

Scithe made an unhappy noise. He considered the villains. They, only now, were getting a grasp on the bleakness of their prospects.

They hadn’t struck me as drunk. Maybe they smoked something before they got what seemed like a good idea at the time.

They had to be brothers. The older one muttered, “We’re screwed.” The only thing either had said yet. They hadn’t tried to talk their way out, using ridiculous logic and excuses, which is what these morons usually do.

“Not necessarily true, my friend,” Scithe said. “As a Civil Guard officer, I’m permitted a certain amount of discretion. You could walk away from this with nothing but your bruises. If you’re the stubborn sort, though, it’s a safe bet you’ll spend time in the Bledsoe, healing up so you can put in a few years helping reclaim the Little Dismal Swamp.”

“Shit,” the younger one opined, without heat. “Just kill us now.”

“There ain’t no easy way out, boys. You done a bad thing. What you got to decide now is how do you want to pay your debt to society.”

Scithe was having fun.

His question was not meant to be answered. Neither villain tried. Both were, now, lost souls wandering a desert of despair.

Tinnie said, “They could probably get some cooperation points if they came clean right now, couldn’t they, Senior Lieutenant?”

I took a closer look at Scithe. Sure enough, he was sporting senior lieutenant’s pips. He was bounding up the law-and-order ladder.

The man had a knack for something besides mooning after redheads. He could get villains to keep him happy by confiding in him, urged along by his implying that he could provide something they wanted badly: a way out.

“Gentlemen, you have to give me something. I know you aren’t stupid.” Which was a bald-faced lie. “You know how the system works. You’ll go to the Al-Khar because I can’t not take you in. We have to see if you’re on the wanted book for something ugly. If you have no majors there, you could walk out under your own power.” In chains, headed for the swamp. “You know we do let folks go to encourage the rest of you to cooperate. So far, here, all we’ve got is a jimmied lock and some folks who aren’t happy about getting waked up in the middle of the night. So why not tell me? What’s the story?”

The elder brother thought he’d give cooperation a chance. Condemnation to the Little Dismal Swamp project amounted to a death sentence. Though some prisoners might complete their sentences, someday. None have yet but the project isn’t all that old.

“We was supposed to catch the woman and take her someplace. The guy wasn’t supposed to be here. If he was, we was supposed to bop him on the head and get out. With her.”

That sparked interest all round. None of us expected Tinnie to be a target.

Scithe can be blisteringly obvious. “Why?”

Shrug. “We didn’t get paid to ask questions.”

“You did get paid?”

Tin whistles looked at me like I knew what this was all about.

“Talk to him,” I grumbled. “He’s the one with the answers.”

Here was one now. “Forty percent. The balance on delivery.”

“Let me get this straight.” Scithe was having trouble getting his mind around something. “You were hired to kidnap Miss Tate.”

“Ain’t that what I just confessed?”

“You did. Yes.” Scithe took no offense, nor did he argue, however senseless the villain’s statement. “Who might be so starved for Miss Tate’s company that he, or she, would enlist your assistance in arranging a date?”

Both bad boys frowned and wrestled with that. The younger one worked it out. “Jimmy Two Steps hired us.”

I gave Tinnie a dirty look. I was so out of touch I didn’t know who Jimmy Two Steps was. Then me and the minions of the law exchanged eyebrow lifts. They didn’t know Jimmy, either.

Neither did Tinnie, who said, “I don’t know anybody named Jimmy.”

Mysteries. We got mysteries. We got off-the-wall mysteries.

It was the way things started. There was a smoldering hot-tie underfoot. But, Tinnie? It was usually a personable wench from the grass-is-greener side.

I told myself, “This isn’t something getting started. This is just random.” But even clicking my heels didn’t convince me.

4

After turning up Jimmy Two Steps, the brothers gave us nothing more. A lot of clever questioning went to waste. I told Scithe, “Take these guys over to your shop. Tomorrow I’ll check with my old contacts and see if somebody doesn’t know where to find Two Steps.”

Tinnie blistered me with a look because she was part of the subtext of what I’d said. I didn’t feel the heat.

Once the brothers dropped the name they stayed busy whining about how they knew Jimmy only from drinking with him at a place called Raisin’s Bookshop.

I remembered Raisin’s Bookshop. It was the lowest of low-life bars. The kind of place where our night visitors would hang out. Nobody knew why it was called the Bookshop. If somebody named Raisin was ever connected with it that was so long ago nobody remembered that, either.

Scithe suggested, “Garrett, stick to your job as a security specialist. You try to pick up where you left off, you’ll find out how much you don’t got it anymore. Miss Tate? He’s in your custody. Keep reminding him that TunFaire’s Civil Guard handles these things these days.”

“I will.” I had no doubt that she would — often, and strongly.

My natural-born cynicism failed me. The tin whistles had been amazingly effective, lately. I took the lieutenant at his word, thinking the Guard
would
wrap the mess in a day or two.

“All right. Do your job. Just don’t leave us twisting in the wind. Let us know why these cretins were after Tinnie. In case we need to be ready to entertain another clutch of numskulls.”

Tinnie gave poor Scithe a look that made him forget he’d been happily married for years to a perfectly wonderful but ordinary woman. “I’ll do that,” he promised. “I’ll do that for sure.”

Tinnie turned on the heat in the distractions department as soon as I got back from making sure our guests had actually left the premises. “I know what you’re going to say, darling.”

“Which would be why a roasting holiday goose is usually better dressed than you are right now.”

“I can’t fool you for a minute, can I?”

No, but she could do a damned good job of diverting me, after which, to be contrary, I didn’t have anything to say. I lay there and brooded till I woke up in the middle of the next morning.

5

I asked, “You recall last night?” Tinnie was trying to make breakfast. Trying hard. She wanted to do good. She had nothing else left in her arsenal of distraction. Sadly, she’s much better at looking good than at cooking good.

“Yep. Yep. I remember.”

Ha! Nervous. Maybe even feeling a little guilty, though the Guard’s inquisitors wouldn’t get her to admit that.

“The sausages aren’t as bad as they look,” she promised. “And the toast will be fine if you scrape it a little with your knife.”

“Kip Prose has a thing for making perfect toast.” I let it go, though. She had used one of the prototypes to burn this toast.

“I just wanted a normal life.”

I said nothing. Let her have the argument with herself. Of course, silence is my best tactic in this sort of situation, four times out of five. I let her ramble where she liked.

She ran down. She glared at me. Then she got her second wind. “Gods damn it, Garrett! I know what you’re thinking. It wasn’t you that those thugs came for. It was me.”

Admitting that cost her. Getting any Tate to admit being wrong about anything, even obliquely, is more rare than hens’ teeth. And certainly more precious. Having one’fess up without provocation, voluntarily, is rare beyond compare.

I soldiered on, keeping my big damned mouth shut, a skill I’m still having trouble mastering. Had I done so years ago, I could’ve saved myself a lot of hard knocks.

“All right! You’re right! It never would have happened if I hadn’t insisted that we live up here. The Dead Man would have wrapped those idiots up before they damaged the door.”

They might not have come at all. Hardly anybody is stupid enough to take a chance with the Dead Man anymore. They would have caught Tinnie somewhere else. They would have made her disappear quietly.

Which they should have done anyway. Why try for her here, at night, when there was such a damned good chance that I would get involved?

They wanted me involved. Had to. Or whoever sent them did. Ha! Butch and his brother hadn’t been well briefed on what to expect before they set off to capture the savage redhead.

Maybe Jimmy Two Steps hadn’t had a clue, either.

That is the way I would have worked it if I was in the villain trade. I’d make Jimmy a cutout.

I put some toast and sausage down and did not gag. I took a relaxing breath, announced, “I’m going to visit Singe and the Dead Man.”

Tinnie stopped rattling pots.

“Singe won’t know Two Steps but her brother might.”

“You told Lieutenant Scithe that you would let it alone.”

“The Dead Man might have a perspective that I overlooked.”

“You promised.”

“I’ll stop by Morley’s place and see what he thinks, too.” Morley Dotes is my best friend.

“Garrett, you aren’t —”

“He should be able to get word out that it won’t be healthy to mess with my number-one girl.”

Tinnie chomped some air. That made it all about her. Further argument now would make her look petty.

Not a failing she has concerned herself with much in the past.

“Nobody is likely to come after you here, now.” She has a raft of draft-age male relatives. Two were outside as we spoke, illegally armed and ready for war. “Stick to business and you’ll be fine. No bad guy will ever make it as far in as the financials office.”

I wasn’t seeing the full picture. Tinnie way far more than normally insecure. And every word out of my mouth was one she didn’t want to hear. Including, “You are supposed to be getting the books straightened out today, aren’t you?”

One of the draft-age cousins, Artifice, redder in the head than Tinnie, walked in without a knock or an invitation. “There’s somebody out here wants to see you, Garrett.” He seemed nervous. He evaded Tinnie’s basilisk stare.

I made the head knocker at home in my hand. “Duty calls, my love.”

My love sent me off with the kind of language used by men in combat. Then decided to come along and see what was what.

She began showing fierce verbal skills once we stepped outside.