Red Iron Nights (31 page)

“Don’t look the bastard in the eyes,” I reminded her, sliding to one side. I dropped to hands and knees, scooted forward while the villain continued his glacial charge. I cut the tendons behind his right knee and left ankle. It took a while for his brain to get the word, but he fell. Then he started to lift himself up again. I drove my knife through his right hand, pinning it to the floor.

Belinda did his other hand. “You might try to get a gag on him, Garrett.” She did have the Contague flair.

The cumulative pain and damage shocked the man enough that the curse slipped control. The Dead Man jumped on that. The villain became as rigid as stone.

Like a far, far whisper on a contrary wind, came,
You took your sweet time.

I got Candy loose. “How come you keep fooling around with these perverts?” I asked. “What’s wrong with a nice straight guy like me?”

She threw her arms around me. She didn’t say anything, even when Belinda cracked, “Maybe she figured you were taken.” She just clung like she didn’t plan to let go during this lifetime.

Butterflies zoomed around drunkenly. The sulfur fumes were getting to me too. The bugs discovered bare areas on Candy. They called their friends. I didn’t know but what the curse could be carried by the little devils. “Let’s get out of here. Lock them in with the candles.” I considered sliding a few candles into the Dead Man’s room while he was preoccupied, just for effect.

Belinda helped with Candy, though with poor grace.

I glanced at my unwanted guest. Butterflies still crawled out of his open mouth. Belinda said, “We can’t leave him here.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll croak.”

“Ask me if I care.”

“Think, genius.”

Indeed. Boggle us with a first.

“You keep out of this.” I grunted, disgusted. If the villain died, I’d be the only place for the curse to migrate. I didn’t think that was such a great idea. “We do need to keep him unconscious. He might commit suicide.” I had a sudden conviction that the curse had driven Winchell into Hullar’s place to provide a diversion from the attack here.

The Dead Man sent,
Ican keep the man under control.

“Like you were doing when I got here?”

Bind him if that makes you more comfortable.

“Right.” I peeked inside Candy’s room. The big guy’s breath problem had improved. The floor was covered with fallen butterflies. Only a few showed any life. I said, “I’ve got an idea. Get the curse to jump to the Dead Man. Then it wouldn’t—”

“Then it would be able to talk to you direct.”

“Miss Practical.” I rounded up a ball of linen cord and went to work on our villain. I used it all, then gagged him good. Then I saved him from the fumes. I gave Belinda my nightstick. “Bop him if he even twitches.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get Block. To get this character out of here.”

I didn’t get that far. Not right away.

59

I might have known. I should have expected it. Hell, I should have counted on it. It had to be in the stars. It started out being about Barking Dog Amato, and no matter how I wriggled, Amato kept getting in the way. So why on earth should I have been surprised to find Barking Dog camped out in my hallway with Sas and Dean, Sas looking mightily distressed while Amato fussed over Dean and Dean groggily insisted there was nothing wrong. Dean was so woozy he didn’t know he was hurt.

“How do I get around this?” I muttered before anyone spotted me. At the moment I didn’t much care about Barking Dog’s troubles.

“Garrett!”

I’d been spotted. “Don’t start. I’ve got problems of my own and it’s going to be real hard to give a rat’s ass about whatever is bugging you.”

“Hey, yo, no problem. I kind of figured you’d be distracted when I saw this mess.”

“The curse managed to split somehow. I’ve got another killer upstairs.” Damn. That put a sparkle in his eye. What now? “I’m going to get Captain Block.”

“That’s all right. I understand. I’ll hang out here, keep an eye on things.”

“You don’t need to. Go on home. Get some shut-eye. The Dead Man can be pretty handy when he wants.”

I got a smug snicker from the other side of the wall and a denial from Amato. “I wouldn’t feel right, Garrett. After everything you done for me. Anyway, I got to talk to you about my girl. This here Sas ain’t my girl.”

So I’d gathered earlier. I didn’t stay around to find out anything more. I nurtured some small, vain hope that the Dead Man would pity me and run him off before I got back.

The only good thing about finding Block was I got to wake him up. Again. I never had a big case before where I got to wake other people up. It was always somebody coming around wanting me to be bright-eyed at some absurd hour of the morning.

“Yes!” I insisted, after getting through to his quarters. “You get off your fat political butt and come on over, you can see for yourself. The curse has spawned. You don’t grab this guy, it keeps right on going like we never met anybody called Winchell. I guarantee. You think I’m running around at this hour because I’m nursing a grudge? You know me better.”

Block grunted. “Unfortunately. You can’t just bring him in tomorrow?”

“I’m going home. When I get there I’m handing this guy over to whoever’s around. If that’s nobody, he walks. And I don’t have nothing more to do with unraveling curses by old-time lunatic wizards. You really want to give me a thrill, come up with some excuse for arresting Barking Dog Amato. Material witness, maybe. He’s set to drive me crazy.”

Block observed me under his brows briefly, maybe wondering if he ought to jump on such a great straight line. A nasty smile crawled around on his lips. I said, “Don’t go getting any ideas about doing something I’m going to regret.”

“Me? Forsooth. Maybe even more sooth than that. Echavar!” A servile type materialized as though he’d been lurking outside, just hoping Block would holler. “Inform Relway that I need a squad to accompany me when I arrest another curse carrier. Or, failing that, a leading public nuisance.”

I got the impression he wasn’t talking about Barking Dog.

Block didn’t recognize the man who’d invaded my place. Neither did his troops. After checking him over and taking statements from Candy and the Dead Man, Block grudgingly admitted, “It looks like you did the right thing, Garrett.”

“I always do the right thing.”

“Tell it to your smelly buddy downstairs.”

Barking Dog hadn’t gone home. The girl called Sas had, but only because Block’s men had pried her loose from Amato. Block and Barking Dog still weren’t wasting any love on one another.

Block and I observed while Relway and crew bagged my villain. Block asked, “You want me to vag him?”

“Say what?”

“Vag Amato. Oh. Sorry. You haven’t been in on discussions of the tools we’re getting to attack crime. Vagrancy laws. Relway’s idea. Came out of the research on those old wizards. Had those kinds of laws in imperial times. You can’t show you’re gainfully employed or have money in your pocket, bam! You got a sudden choice of getting into a cell or getting out of town. Amato would be had if we went after him. He never has had a job.”

“Don’t do that.” This was some scary shit. “Since when do you go around nailing people because one of your guys has an idea?”

“Since Rupert liked it so much he got it decreed as law. Applies to anybody inside the walls. Race don’t matter. There’s enough slack in the treaties to let us handle layabouts and social parasites as criminals—if we treat everybody the way we treat humans.” Nasty smile.

We might have us some unpleasant times ahead. I hadn’t a doubt that the law-and-order gang would deal with human undesirables more nastily than they would others.

“Meantime, my pals Crask and Sadler are out at the kingpin’s place scheming up some special way to pay me back for whatever they think I did.” That irked me. Block and his boys were panting with law and order, but Crask and Sadler had walked away because of their connections.

“Way it goes, Garrett. I could’ve let Relway deal with them, but you’da bitched about that too.”

“Huh?”

“Crask coulda hanged hisself while he was inside. Out of remorse, maybe.” He grinned. Remorse? That was a good one. ‘”Somebody coulda stuck Sadler tonight. But if that’d happened, you’da pissed and moaned until we was all ready to help you swallow a chicken bone.”

He was right. Morley was right. I really did have to hone me up a more practical set of ethics. It’s a proved fact, fanatic adherence to ideals can be fatal in the real world. Especially in TunFaire, where ethics and ideals are mystic words in a tongue unknown to ninety-nine percent of the population.

I admitted he was right, possibly. “But pretend I’m your conscience sometimes. Don’t get so eager taking back the streets that you forget why we have laws in the first place.”

“Thanks, Garrett. Any day now I figure to see you in a long gray robe, howling on the steps of the Chancery.”

I had to get away. He might brainwash me. I was that tired. He had me halfway gone already. That was scary, agreeing with the Watch about anything.

Going home wasn’t much improvement. I got rid of the worst of my uninvited guests, but then there was still Barking Dog. I wasn’t especially kind. “I’ve been awake more hours than I know how to count. During that time three different people tried to kill me.” Maybe I exaggerated. Who knows what might have happened had certain parties had their way? “They tried to kill friends of mine. The state I’m in, I’m not going to listen to much complaining. You got a bitch, bring it around in a few days.” I didn’t remind him that I wasn’t on his payroll and he had no bitch coming.

So much for restraint. My remarks won me all kinds of points with the ladies. Belinda opened her trick bag and discovered she had eleventeen varieties of hell she could give me for mistreating my elders. Candy got thoroughly huffy and completely forgot who’d just saved her delicate posterior. She took Barking Dog home and didn’t return.

She is his real daughter
, the Dead Man told me.

“I figured that out. Didn’t even have to count on my fingers.”

It is a long story.

“Then don’t waste your time telling it. I’m going to bed.” I sped Belinda a meaningful look. It didn’t have any meaning for her. She fussed over Dean, who had set up in the small front room again. Things she told him suggested she wouldn’t be following through on earlier threats.

Her mother entered a liaison with a man Candy truly believed to be her father till quite recently.

“Must we? Now?” I eyed the front door. The door that wasn’t anymore. Could I trust the Dead Man to stay awake while I got some rest?

He indicated he could be trusted. Amidst his tear-jerker story, in which our beautiful young heroine overcame all obstacles to be reunited with her real father.

“Right, Chuckles. We all saw how she was just foaming at the mouth to be reunited.”

I figured she’d be sick of him in about two days. In fact, she already knew enough that she hadn’t wanted anything direct to do with him till tonight. Maybe never forever after once she got a look at the dump where he lived.

The Dead Man went on but I was stubborn. I shut him out. I shut out all their demands and went up to bed. During the several seconds it took me to fall asleep, I waxed nostalgic about the good old days when I lived alone and sometimes got to do things the way
I
wanted.

60

Dean let me in through the new door. His arm wasn’t broken after all, and our disaster hit the spot for a busybody like him. He’d had workmen in, and was nagging them green, as soon as the sun rose. When I’d been able to sleep through the end-of-the-world racket no longer, I’d gotten up and gotten out, pursuing the Dead Man’s suggestion that I double-check on Block and his boys.

“What they did,” I told the Dead Man when I got back, “was stuff them in cells while they were unconscious. Then they bricked up the doors. The cells don’t have windows. There’s a slot in the door so food can be passed through.”

That may be enough. Or a sewage chute . . . 

I jumped in smugly. “All taken care of, Smiley. Taken care of. I noticed the business about the rope belts.”

The what?

“Rope belts. All our villains wore them. And then Winchell turned up at Hullar’s with his belt partly unbraided. The guy that tore up our place had on what looked like it was what was missing from Winchell’s rope. I knew what was happening, then. The rope carries the curse.”

You failed to mention that.

I snickered. “So I cheated a little so I wouldn’t get all the glory hogged away.”

What glory? There will be none for you. The public is going to believe that the triumph over the curse is all Captain Block’s fault. He will see to it.

Killjoy. “Block has the ropes locked up in a box stashed inside a sealed coffin in another bricked-up cell.”

The Dead Man remained dubious, given the ineptitude of the Watch. I was worried too. I concealed it. “Got some final translations on my research. I was right. The whole thing started over a woman. They even found me a portrait of Drachir . . . ”

Who was a ringer for the old man in the coach, I presume.

“Yeah.” You can’t hold out on a determined mind reader. “And he wore butterfly earrings.”

He had a strong interest in butterflies.

“Apparently.”

And a stronger interest in outliving his rival.

He was stealing my thunder. Here I’d come home chock-full of news and he was stealing it out of my head or he’d figured it out already. “Yeah. He’d figured out how to become immortal the hard way. When he set up the curse thing, he put an extra twist on it so the Candide woman, who’d spurned him, would be sure to get got. Then he let himself get killed. Didn’t matter to him. He would come back to life through his curse. Except his curse always gets stopped just before it finishes recreating the man who created it.”

You have to wonder about people like Drachir, who are willing to sacrifice hundreds on the off chance they might whip death for a while themselves. There are people out there, masquerading as human beings, who never see you and me as having any more value than a beetle. It’s a pity they aren’t content to devour each other.