Wicked Bronze Ambition: A Garrett, P.I., Novel (38 page)

Mud
Man had trailed Vicious Min to one of the rooftop hideouts belonging to the little blonde and her friend. Dollar Dan had trailed the other big people and the Black Orchid to the same place. Nobody paid attention to rat people.

The blonde and her friend left Orchidia with injured Min, the slow youth, and the crippled elder.

I said, “I hope Orchidia isn’t in a black mood when she wakes up.”

Dan said, “She was awake before they got her to the place where they meant to keep her.” Before I asked, he volunteered, “An unconscious human gives off a different odor than one who is only pretending.”

“Good to know.” Might even be useful, someday.

Singe made a chuckling noise. “You smell different when you are faking sleep, too.” A trick I employ often when I don’t feel like getting out of bed.

“I see. Good to know again.” Then I yelped and jumped about a yard straight up. “What the hell was that?”

“Fireworks. Premature fireworks. It is the Day of the Dead. We should start seeing costumes once the moon comes up.”

There was always a huge orange full moon, assuming the overcast let it be seen. And, as midnight approached, there would be fireworks.

Yes. Fireworks. But later.

Morley said what I was thinking. “Costumes and fireworks would make great camouflage for serious villainy.”

People wouldn’t pay much attention, would they? Weird and unusual were supposed to happen tonight.

Shadowslinger had anticipated that, and something else she felt compelled to go the whole mystery route about.

A second rocket went up. This one exploded huge, presenting a globe of gold and pink sparks. The dogs pulled in close, made uncomfortable by the boom and subsequent crackle of secondary explosions.

Morley laughed. “You know what that’s all about, don’t you?”

“I know exactly what it is. Some enterprising kid found a way to get into the fireworks magazine. He liberated some of the bigger shells.” Boys try every year. It’s a tradition. “The summer before the summer I went off to boot camp, Mikey and I got three star shells.”

So there I was, thinking about my departed brother on an evening when you were supposed to do exactly that. Mikey and I had had a great time that summer, but the shadow of the future had begun to loom. I would be off soon, on a road that had proven cruel for so many Garrett men already.

Till the information officers brought Ma the news and Mikey’s medals, I never considered the possibility that he would be the next Garrett not to come back. I’d been sure that I had a lock on a one-man lie-down six feet under in the land of the giant snakes and spiders, if I didn’t turn to croc shit first.

I’m not sure what brought Mikey so strongly to mind. I mean, yes, it was that night, but I’d gotten through Days of the Dead and All-Souls untroubled for several years. Why should this one be different?

I launched a general question. “Should we consider rescuing Orchidia? She’d be handy to have around if we end up slow-dancing with a magister of the Church.”

Dollar Dan opined, “It is likely that she will rescue herself when the time seems right. She may have done so already.”

“Singe, for the gods’ sake, lie to this guy. Tell him you’ll marry him. Or tumble him blind. Or something, because he’s starting to make me feel inadequate, he’s working so damned hard to show off his smarticals.”

“Smarticals? A new word for that special occasion when one of the Other Races amazes you by being able to tie his own shoes?”

That was kind of saying sideways that no way was she, the inimitable Pular Singe, going to be impressed by anything done by Dollar Dan Justice. He was just doing what he was supposed to, as far as she was concerned. Publicly.

But she was impressed. She was my little girl. She had grown up in my house. I knew her better than anyone but maybe the Dead Man. Dollar Dan was wearing her down.

John Stretch intercepted us soon afterward. “I stopped by your house on my way.” Talking to Singe, not to me. “Those girls are not happy. Penny thinks she is going to miss the fireworks. The other one has her feelings hurt because she has not been able to spend any time with Garrett, and that is her whole reason for being with us.” He turned slightly, to me. “You should give her more attention.” As though I knew exactly what he meant and why.

I did not, and I tried to make that clear. “Why? She’s a cute little thing . . . But she’s just another stray . . .”

I’d said something wrong. I had no idea what, but all four dogs growled and showed me their teeth. I got wicked, irritated looks from some of the others.

“Godsdammit! Tell me!”

Morley was not one of the irritated. He answered with a shrug. He didn’t get it, either.

“Well?” I demanded of Singe.

“I cannot help you. I should not. It cannot work that way.”

“I do believe that I am about to lose my temper.”

“This is one of those thing you have to work out for yourself, for good or ill. It is a moral bridge. No one can cross it for you, nor should anyone ease your way. It is all on you. And you are running out of time.”

“And patience!” No shit.

I knew Singe wanted to help. She owed me. I had made it possible for her to become the prodigy that she was. But there were witnesses.

It must be true that she wasn’t even supposed to offer a clue.

Irked, I imagined the Dead Man needling me with some remark to the effect that I had every clue I needed already. I should put in a little effort.

Oh, sigh. This had the feel of one of those face-offs with a moral tilting point that make life so damned uncomfortable.

I bet Belinda never suffered such quandaries. She never met a problem she couldn’t solve by breaking something or killing somebody.

It sucks, this “figure it out on your own or it has no value” crap. The real truth is, people are covering their asses so they take no blame if you make the sinister choice.

Paint me cynical. Very, very cynical.

“I’ll get you all, someday. You’ll have the shit raining down. You’ll be begging for a steel umbrella. And I’ll sit there in my rocking chair humming ‘God Save the Queen.’” Which is a particularly filthy drinking song about a cross-dressing fellow who has mad skills as a streetwalker but often gets into trouble because what he keeps hidden under his skirt has a mind of its own.

Singe told me, “You being deliberately disgusting changes nothing.”

It made me feel better, though not much.

The Black
Orchid wasn’t where she’d been last seen, nor were any big people there, either. There was no evidence of a struggle. They had vanished right under Mud Man’s whiskers. He couldn’t understand how, nor even when. There were odors in the hide, thick, but no trail leading away. Even Singe could find nothing.

“Sorcery,” Dollar Dan suggested, cleverly.

“Indeed.” Of course, sorcery, assuredly courtesy of the Black Orchid, for whom sneaking to commit murder was a way of life.

We knew what Orchidia wanted. How would she get it? Was there any good reason to interfere?

Well, yes. Of course. I would be most unhappy if she got her revenge before I got my kids back.

Singe mused, “There is a possibility that the lady has made a pact with the big people.”

That did seem plausible. The little blonde and her friend had tried to thwart the attack on Orchidia’s twins. The basis for a partnership existed.

“Morley. The blond kid. Her big guy. Seen either one lately?”

“I have not. Which may mean only that they’re making more of an effort to stay out of sight. I do feel like we’re still being watched.”

I grunted. Sometimes I got that creepy sting-between-the-shoulder-blades feeling myself. “I haven’t smelled anything for at least a day.”

“That might be Bell’s fault. She put it out that Fehlkse’s health outlook would be rosier if he stayed away.”

I doubted that Lurking Fehlske would be intimidated, and recalled that Little Bit and her pal had swept the man up. I kept that to myself. “She figure out who he was working for?”

Morley shrugged. “Not yet.”

Mikon seemed antsy suddenly. He might have an uncomfortable idea.

I suspected that Lurking Fehlske no longer signified. That he had no place in the game anymore. We were coming up on a crisis, if not the crisis. Despite all the other distractions, that came down to last desperate attempts by Magister Bezma to salvage something from a scheme that never really came to life in the first place.

Funny notion. The incompetent villain. In the grand stories, like Jon Salvation’s dramas, the villains are all clever and brilliant and stay two steps ahead till virtue works its magic and triumphs at the end. This time, though, we seemed to be dealing with a self-deluded screwup who had spent two generations and several lives cobbling together a total cluster fuck.

Bezma/Stornes could do damage and cause pain in an effort to tie off tangled loose ends by midnight—assuming I had mined anything sensible out of the confusion. I was sure he couldn’t get his dream to unfold. I was just as sure that he could still cause a heap of pain and death.

Morley said, “I may have to bail on you, Garrett. I don’t have much go-power left.”

I was amazed that I hadn’t had to put him in the wagon already. Being selfish, though, and anxious to have the knife I most trusted covering me, I hadn’t volunteered to release him from any misplaced sense of obligation.

I hoped my selfishness didn’t cost him ground in his healing process.

Most of my friends were hurt these days, though, one way or another. And my wife was dead.

I tossed an inquiring glance toward the sky gods. How much of that lay at the end of a red thread of blame leading back to me?

A lone raindrop got me square on the forehead.

Some lesser deity in the rain racket had taken to sniping at me.

“John Stretch. Sir. Mud Man and Dollar Dan are bound to be wiped out, too, after this long day.” No rat man was ever famous for his stamina. “Perhaps they could see my friend safely to . . .”

Morley said, “Wake up, Garrett. The vampire gambit has yet to be played.”

“Oh. Yeah. So you’re not going to bail?”

“Of course I am. But after that.”

“Then we’d better get that done.”

We didn’t need to concern ourselves with where the Black Orchid might be or what she might be doing. That itch on the spine was all her. She made herself known as we closed in on the place where Magister Bezma was hiding.

She had decided that her best means of acquiring her target was to join up with folks who knew where to find him.

Morley told me, while she still awaited us just ahead, “I don’t think she’s here alone, either.”

True. The sky gods were feeling capricious. There was no overcast at the moment. Orange moonlight was splashing in from somewhere over to the east, and that silhouetted my skywalking little friend atop a building behind Orchidia.

I said, “Good evening, Lady Farfoul. I presume that you have had your moment with Vicious Min and are now ready to rejoin me.”

“As promised.” Rather sarcastically.

The darkness was such that neither of us could get a good look at the other. Even so, I was at a disadvantage—though numbers and diversity of talents lay on my side of the ledger.

Orchidia seemed content to pretend that we were old pals. I know I was. And maybe we did have a deep commonality of interest.

She fell in beside me, walking carefully. “Blisters,” she explained. “Not in shape for this stuff anymore. I don’t get out of the house enough.”

“We’re all worn down to the nubs. If I understood Constance right, though, this mess still has to be wrapped up by midnight.”

“The Meyness Stornes part should be. If that happens, the rest will fall into place before All-Souls ends.” Before I could question her about Vicious Min and the big folks, she asked me, “You do know where to find Stornes, don’t you? You are on your way to deal with him?” She surveyed my companions like she was sure that this particular crew would not have come together otherwise.

“We’re on our way, yes, and working against that deadline.”

“You have more time than you think.”

“How so?”

“The midnight transition isn’t iron, as long as Meyness Stornes is thwarted. Dawn will see the real pressure begin to build. And even then your margin should be sundown.”

“His margin for what?” Morley asked, assuming that I wouldn’t ask for myself.

Orchidia frowned like she thought he must be intellectually challenged, then caught my empty look and realized that neither of us had a clue.

My best pal reminded her, “This fellow here is Hill people because he shares a bed with somebody from up there. Genius isn’t sexually transmitted. He wasn’t born to it. He wasn’t raised to it. And I only hang out with him, so I’m even further clueless.”

I added, “I’m the kind of guy you have to draw pictures for.”

Morley said, “He was fourteen before he could remember how to tie his shoes.”

“Hey! I had it down before that. I showed it off at my twelfth birthday party. Remember? I got it right five tries out of seven.”

The right corner of Orchidia’s mouth twitched, but her being amused didn’t help. “I see what you mean. Even Furious Tide of Light may have suffered from an unjustifiably optimistic illusion that you understood more than you did because everyone else she knew understood.”

“Finally. Somebody gets it.” I put on my most charming, big-eyed, eager-to-learn moon face—which she wiped off the slate immediately.

“Constance should have understood that when no one else did. Either health issues overtook her before she could deal with it or she wanted the situation to be what it was. What?”

“Huh?” seemed appropriate, though I thought I knew what came next.

“Whatever, the decision to advance your education isn’t mine to make. Make your ignorance clear to Constance first chance you get. It’s possible that she miscalculated seriously.” Under her breath, she added, “And that wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there might have been a time when Constance Algarda secretly suffered from the same disease that claimed both Machtkess girls, not just Mariska. Constance was the one who brought Meyness Stornes into the original Breakers gang.”

I started to ask how she could possibly know about stuff that happened before she was born but recalled that she had an uncle who had been there and was now supporting the hunt for the killer of his grandnephew and grandniece. I didn’t have to look like an idiot.

But . . . I considered the Meyness Stornes I knew by report. Old, ugly, disheveled, and dirty, with a repulsive growth on his head. I couldn’t picture an entire generation of Hill girls straining for a chance to be exploited by him.

I tried asking Orchidia’s opinion.

She rolled her eyes in Morley’s direction.

All right. I got it. For ages I’ve watched women practically break down doors to get at Morley without understanding why. I’ve never heard one of them explain it in any way that makes sense. I don’t expect that I ever will.

Sometimes you just have to accept what is and forget figuring out why, like accepting the Will of God. It is what it is.

Orchidia suggested, “The time for analysis is after the action.”

“What?”

“There are things that need doing now. Time is running out. We should use what is left more profitably than this.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good point.”

Singe wanted to know our destination. I explained. Dollar Dan remarked, “The big main room there would be ideal for something on the scale of what Magister Bezma seems to be planning.”

My, oh my. How could he possibly know . . . ? Kevans’s bodyguard crew. Of course. They would have tracked her kidnappers. The derelict house would be swarming with ordinary rats by now.

I looked at Mikon D. Though he was intent on the cobblestones, he sensed my scrutiny. He nodded agreement with Dollar Dan’s assessment. “There aren’t many safe empty places with that much space,” he mumbled.