Glen Cook - Garrett Files 05 - Dead Brass Shadows

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Glen Cook
Dread Brass
Shadows
From the files of Garrett, P.I.
Whew! The things I get me into!
We had snow hip deep to a tall mammoth for four weeks, then it turned suddenly
hot and the whole mess melted quicker than you could say cabin fever. So I was
out running and banging into people and things and falling on my face because
the girls were out stretching their gorgeous gams and I hadn’t seen one leg, let
alone two, since the snow started falling.
Running? Garrett? Yeah. All six feet two and two hundred pounds, poetry in
motion. All right. Maybe it was bad poetry, doggerel, but I was getting the hang
of it. In a few weeks I’d be back to the old lean and mean I’d been when I was
twenty and a crack Marine. And pigs would be zooming around my ears like
falcons.
Thirty isn’t old to somebody who’s fifty, but when you’ve spent a few years
making a career of being lazy and the belly gets a little less than washboard
and the knees start creaking and you start puffing and wheezing halfway up a
flight of stairs, you feel like maybe you’ve skipped the twenty in between, or
maybe just started spinning The digits over on the left-hand side. I had a bad
case of got-to-do-something-about-this.
So I was out running. And admiring the scenery. And huffing and puffing and
wondering if maybe I ougbt to forget it and sign myself into the Bledsoe cackle
factory. It wasn’t a lot of fun.
Saucerhe.ad bad the right idea. He sat on my front stoop with a pitcher Dean
kept topped. Each time I lumbered past he got his exercise by throwing up
fingers showing the number of laps I’d survived without a stroke.
People shoved me and cussed me, Macunado Street was belly button to elbow
with dwarves and gnomes, ogres and imps, elves and whatever have you else, not
to mention every human in the neighborhood There wasn’t room for pigeons to fly
because the pixies and fairies were zipping and swooping overhead. Nobody in
TunFaire was staying inside but the Dead Man. And he was awake for the first
time in weeks, sharing the euphoria vicariously.
The whole damned city was on a peak high. Everybody was up. Even the ratmen
were smiling
I churned around the corner at Wizard’s Reach, knees pumping and elbows
flailing, gawking ahead in hopes that Saucerhead would be struck as dumb as he
looks and would lose count, maybe a couple laps in my favor. No such luck. Well,
some luck He showed me nine fingers and I figured he wasn’t lying much. Then he
waved and pointed. Something he wanted me to see. I cut to the side, apologized
to a couple of young lovers who didn’t even see me, bounced up the steps with
all the spring of a wet sponge. I looked out over the crowd,
“Well.”
“Tinnie.”
“Yeah.” Well, indeed. My gal Tinnie Tate, professional redhead, She was still
a block away but she was in her summer taunting gear, and wherever she walked,
guys stopped and bounced their chins off their chests. She was hotter than a
house afire and ten times as interesting. “There ought to be a law.”
“Probably is but who can keep his mind on legalities?” I gave Saucerhead a
raised eyebrow. That wasn’t his style.
Tinnie was in her early twenties, a little bit of a thing but with hips that
were amply ample and mounted on
gimbels. She had breasts that would make a dead bishop jump up and howl at the
moon. She had lots of long red
hair. The breeze threw it around wilder than I suddenly hoped I might in about
five minutes if I could run off Saucerhead and Dean and get the Dead Man to take
a nap.
She saw me gaping and panting and threw up a hand hello and every guy in
Macunado Street hated me instantly. I sneered at them for their trouble.
“I don’t know how you do it, Garrett,” Saucerhead said. “Ugly dink like you,
manners like a water buffalo. I just don’t know.” My pal. He got up. Sensitive
guy, Saucerhead Tharpe. He could tell right away when a guy wanted to be alone
with his girl. Or maybe he was just going to head her off and warn her she was
wasting her time on an ugly dink like me.
Ugly? A vile slander. My face has gotten pushed around some over the years,
but it has all the right parts in approximately all the right places. I can
stand to look at it in a mirror, except maybe on the morning after. It’s got
character.
As I grabbed my mug and took a long drink, just to replace fluids, a dark-
skinned, weaselly little guy with black hair and a pencil-stroke mustache
grabbed Tinnie’s chin with his left hand. His other hand was behind her, out of
sight, but I never doubted what he was doing.
Neither did Saucerhead. He let out a bellow like a wounded bison and flew off
the stoop. His boots never touched the steps. I was right behind him yowling
like a saber-tooth with his tail on fire, eyes teared up so I couldn’t see who I
was trampling.
I didn’t run into anybody, though. Saucerhead broke trail. Bodies flew out of
his way. It didn’t matter if they were two feet tall or ten. Nothing stops
Saucerhead when he’s mad. Stone walls barely slow him down.
Tinnie was down when we got there. People were clearing out. Nobody wanted to
be near the girl with the knife in her back, especially not with two madmen
roaring around.
Saucerhead never slowed down. I did. I dropped to one knee beside Tinnie. She
looked up. She didn’t look like she was hurting, just kind of sad. There were
tears in her eyes. She reached up with one hand. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t
ask anything. My throat wouldn’t let me.
Maybe it was our bellowing. He squatted down. “I’ll take her inside, Mr.
Garrett. Maybe His Nibs can help. You do what you have to do.”
I grunted something that was more of a moan than anything, lifted Tinnie into
his frail old arms He was no muscleman, but he managed I took off after
Saucerhead.
Tharpe had a block lead but I gained ground fast. I wasn’t thinking. He was. He
was pacing himself, matching the assassin’s stride, maybe following to see where
he led. I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about anything. I didn’t look
around to see what else was happening on the street. I wanted that blademan so
bad I could taste blood.
I came churning up beside Saucerhead. He grabbed my shoulder, siowed me down,
kept squeezing till the pain took the red out of my eyes. When he had my
attention he made a couple of gestures, pointed.
I got it. First time, too. Must be getting smarter as I age.
The skinny guy didn’t know his way around. He was just trying to get away.
There aren’t many straight streets in old TunFaire. They wander like they were
laid out by drunken goblins blinded by the sun. This character was sticking to
Macunado Street even though we had passed the point where it changes its name to
Way of the Harlequin and then again to Dadville Lane after it narrows down.
“I’m gone.” I cut out to the right, into an alley, through, darted down a
narrow lane, ducked into a breezeway, skipped over some ratmen wasted on weed
and a couple of blitzed human winos, then blasted out into Dadville Lane again,
where it finishes the big, lazy loop around the Memorial Quarters. I chugged
across the street and leaned against a hitching rail, waiting, puffing, and
wheezing and grinning because boy, was I in shape for this.
I was ready to dump my guts.
And here they came The gink with the mustache was going all out, scared to
death, trying so hard he wasn’t seeing anything. All he knew was the pounding
feet were catching up.
I let him come, stepped out, tripped him. He flew headlong, rolled like he
had some tumbling experience, came up going full speed—wham! Right into the end
of a watering trough. His momentum kept his top half going. He made a fine big
splash.
Saucerhead got on one side of the trough I got on the other. Tharpe slapped
my hand away. Probably that was best. I was too upset.
He grabbed that gink by his greasy black hair, pushed him under, pulled him
up, said, “Winded as you are, you ain’t gonna hold your breath long.” He shoved
the mustache under again, pulled him up. “That water’s going to get cold going
down. You’re going to feel it going and know there ain’t one damned thing you
can do to stop it.” The big louse was barely puffing. The guy in the trough was
wheezing and snorting worse than me.
Saucerhead shoved him under, brought him up a half second before he sucked in
a gallon. “So tell us about it, little man. How come you stuck the girl?”
He would have answered if he could. He wanted to answer. But he was too busy
trying to breathe. Saucerhead shoved him under again.
He came up, swallowed an acre of air, gasped, “The book!” He gobbled some
more air—and that was the last breath he drew.
“What book?” I snapped.
A crossbow bolt hit the guy in the throat. Another thunked into the trough,
and a third put a hole through Saucerhead’s sleeve. Tharpe came over the trough
in one bound and landed smack on top of me. A couple, three more bolts whizzed
past.
Tharpe didn’t bother making me comfortable. He did stick his head up for a
second. “When I roll off, you go for that door.” We were about eight feet from
the doorway to a tavern. Right then, that looked like a mile. I groaned, the
only sound I could make with all that meat on top.
Saucerhead roiled off. I scrambled. I never really got myself upright. I just
sort of got my hands and feet under me and made that door in one long dive, dog-
paddling. Saucerhead was right behind me. Crossbows twanged. Bolts thunked into
the door. “Boy!” I said. “Those guys are in big trouble.” Crossbows are illegal
inside the city wall.
“What the hell?” I gasped as we shoved the door shut. “What in the hell?” I
dived over to a window, peeked through a crack in a shutter still closed against
winier.
The street had cleared as though a god had swept a broom along it, excepting a
mixed bag of six nasties with crossbows. They spread out, weapons aimed our way.
Two came forward.
Saucerhead took a peek. Behind us the barkeep went into a “Here, now! I won’t
have trouble in my place! You boys clear out!” routine.
Saucerhead said, “Three dwarfs, an ogre, a ratman, and a human. Unusual mix.”
“Odd, yes.” I turned. “You got trouble already, Pop. You want it out of here,
lend a hand. What you got under the bar to keep the peace?” I wasn’t carrying
anything. Who needs an arsenal to lumber around the block? Tharpe didn’t carry,
usually. He counted on his strength and wit. Which maybe made him an unarmed man
twice over.
“You don’t get going you’re going to find out.”
“Trouble’s the farthest thing from my mind, Pop. I don’t need any. But tell
that to those guys outside. They already killed somebody in your watering
trough.”
I peeked again. The two had pulled the mustache Out of the water. They looked
him over. They finally figured it out, dropped him, eyeballed the tavern like
they were thinking about coming inside.
Saucerhead borrowed a table from a couple of old boys puffing pipes and
nursing mugs that would last them till nightfall. He just politely asked them to
raise their mugs, picked the table up, and ripped a leg off. He tossed me that,
got himself another, turned what was left into a shield. When those two arrived,
he bashed the dwarf’s head in, then mashed the ogre against the door-frame with
the table while I tickled his noggin with a rim shot.
One of their crossbows didn’t get broken. I grabbed it, put the bolt back in.
popped out the door, and ripped off a one-handed shot at the nearest target I
missed and pinked a dwarf ninety feet away. He yelped. His pals headed for the
high country.
Saucerhead grumbled, “You couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a ten-foot pole
if you was inside the barn.” While I tried to figure that out, he grabbed the
ogre, who was as big as he was, and tried to shake him awake. It didn’t work.
Not much of a necromancer, my buddy Saucerhead.
He didn’t try the dwarf That guy had gotten pounded down a foot shorter than
he started out. So Tharpe just stood there shaking his head and looking baffled.
I thought that was such a good idea I did it, too. And all the while, that old
bartender was howling about damages while his clientele tried to dig holes in
the floor to hide in
“Now WHAT ?" Saucerhead asked.
“I don’t know.” I peeked outside.
“They gone?”
“Looks like. People are starting to come out.” A sure sign the excitement was
over They would come count the bodies and lie to each other about how they saw
the whole thing, and by the time any authority arrived—if it ever did—the
story’s only resemblance to fact would be that somebody got dead
“Let’s go ask Tinnie.”
Sounded like a stroke of genius to me.
Tinnie Tate wasn’t some mousy little homemaker for whom the height of adventure
was the day’s trip to market. But she Wasn’t the kind of gal who got messed up
with guys who stick knives in people and run in packs shooting crossbow volleys
at citizens, either. She lived with her uncle Willard. Willard Tate was a
shoemaker. Shoemakers don’t make the kinds of enemies who poop people. A shoe
doesn’t fit, they bitch and moan and ask for their money back, they don’t call
out the hard boys.
I thought about it as I trotted. It didn’t make sense. The Dead Man says when
it doesn’t make sense, you don’t have all the pieces or you’re trying to put
them together wrong. I kept telling me, Wait till we see what Tinnie has to say.
I refused to face the chance that Tinnie might not be able.
We had a curious and rocky relationship, Tinnie and me. Sort of can’t live
with and can’t live without. We fought a lot. Though it hadn’t been going
anywhere, the relationship was important to me. I guess what kept it going was
the making up. It was making up that was two hundred proof and hotter than
boiling steel.
Before I got to the house, I knew it wouldn’t matter what Tinnie had done,
wouldn’t matter what she’d been into, whoever hurt her would pay with interest
that would make a loan shark blush.
Old Dean had the house forted up. He wouldn’t have answered the door if the
Dead Man hadn’t been awake. He was, for sure. I felt his touch while I was
pounding on the door and hollering like a Charismatic priest on a holy roll.
Dean opened the door. He looked ten years older and all worn out. I was down
the hall pushing into the Dead Man’s room before he finished bolting the door
behind Saucerhead.
Garrett!
The Dead Man’s mind touch was a blow. It was an icewater shower, It stopped
me in my tracks. I wanted to scream. That could only mean.
She was there on the floor. I didn’t look. I couldn’t. I looked at the Dead
Man, all four hundred fifty pounds of him, sitting in the chair where he’d been
since somebody stuck a knife in him four hundred years ago. Except for a ten-
inch, elephantlike schnoz he could have passed for the world’s fattest human,
but he was Loghyr, one of a race so rare nobody has seen a live one in my
lifetime. And that’s fine by me. The dead, immobile ones are aggravation enough.
See, if you kill a Loghyr, he doesn’t just go away. You don’t get him out of
your hair that easy. He just stops breathing and gives up dancing. His spirit
stays at home and gets crankier and crankier. He doesn’t decay. At least mine
hasn’t in the few years I’ve known him, though he’s a little ragged around the
edges where the moths and mice and whatnot nibble on him while he naps and
there’s no one around to shoo them away.
Do not act the fool, Garrett. For once in our acquaintance astound me by
pausing to reflect before you leap.
That’s the way he is. Usually more so. My tenant and sometime partner,
sometime mentor. Despite his control I croaked, “Talk to me, Chuckles. Tell me
what it’s all about.”
Calm yourself Passion enslaves reason. The wise man. .
Yeah. He does go on like that, hokey philosopher that he is. Only not in the
really grim times . . . I began to suspect something.
Once you get used to a particular Loghyr, you can read more than words when
he thinks into your head. He was angry about what had happened but not nearly so
outraged and vengeance hungry as he should have been. I began to control myself.
“I did it again, eh?”
You get more exercise jumping to conclusions than you do running.
“She’s going to be all right?”
Her chances seem good. She will need the attention of a skilled surgeon,
though. I have put her into a deep sleep till such time as one becomes
available.
“Thanks. So tell me what you got from her.”
She had no idea what it was about. She was involved in nothing. She did not
know the man who wielded the knife. He left out his usual stock of sarcastic
comments when he added, She was just coming to see you. She went to sleep
completely bewildered.
He loosened his hold on me, let me settle into the big chair that’s there for
me when I visit.
Till you lumbered in with your recollections, I assumed it was random
violence. Meaning he had sorted through my memories of the chase.
Saucerhead joined us. He leaned on the back of my chair, stared at Tinnie. He
jumped to the same conclusion I had. I admired his self-control. He liked Tinnie
and had a special place in his heart for guys who wasted women. He’d lost one
once, that he’d been hired to protect. No fault of his own. He’d wiped out half
a platoon of assassins and had gotten ninety percent killed himself trying to
save her. He hadn’t been the same since.
I told him, “Smiley over there put her to sleep. She’ll be all right, he
thinks.”
“Sons of bitches must pay anyway,” he growled, hanging on to the tough, but he
looked relieved all over. I pretended I didn’t see his show of “weakness.”
The book? the Dead Man asked. That is all you got before the sniping started?
Like it was my fault. Some sniping was about to get started here. He knew damned
well that was all we’d gotten. He’d sifted our minds.
“That’s all.” Play it straight. That was my new tactic. It drove him crazy
when I didn’t fight back.
There was nothing in her thoughts about a book.
“Ain’t much to go on,” Saucerhead said. He had lost his mad urgency. Tinnie
was going to be all right. He didn’t have to go out and lay waste. Not right
away, anyway. He—and I—would keep an eye out for the characters responsible,
though.
No. I suggest you both calm yourselves, then recall those blackguards
carefully. Any insignificant detail might be consequential. Garrett, if you feel
this is of great importance, you might consider collecting the debt that Chodo
Conrague imagines he owes you.
A reflection of my thoughts, that. “I will if I have to. Too soon to think
about that. I need to see Tinnie taken care of and get my mind straightened out
before I go off on any crusade.” That was a straight line of the sort he scarfs
up usually, but this time he let it slide. “Something happens and she goes, I'll
ring in Chodo like that. . . .“ I snapped my fingers. I’m a fountain of talent.
Chodo Contague, often called the kingpin, is the grand master of organized
crime in TunFaire. In some ways he’s more powerful than the King. He’s no
friend. He’s damned near the embodiment of everything I hate, the kind of creep
I got into my line to pull down. But just by doing my job I’ve managed to do him
some accidental favors. He has an obsessive, if skewed, sense of honor. The
slimeball thinks he owes me, and I’ll be damned if he won’t do almost anything
to pay the debt. If I wanted, I could say the word and he’d put two thousand
thugs on the street to make us square.
I’ve avoided collecting because I don’t want my name associated with his. Not
in any way. Be bad for business if people suspected I was on his pad.
Hell. I haven’t really said what I do I’m what the guys who don’t like me call
a peeper. An investigator and confidential agent, the way I put it. Pay me—up
front— and I’ll find out things. More often than not, things you didn’t really
want to know. I don’t dig up much good news. That’s the nature of the racket.
On the confidential-agent side I’ll do a stand-in, like pay off a kidnapper or
blackmailer for you, and make sure there’s no last-second comedy. I’ve worked
hard to build a rep as a straight arrow, a guy who plays square, who comes down
like the proverbial ton if you mess with my client. Which is why I wouldn’t want
anybody to think I’d roll over for Chodo.
If Tinnie died, I’d change my rules. For Tinnie it would be dead ahead full
speed, and whoever got in my way had best have his gods paid off because I
wouldn’t slow down till I ate somebody’s liver. If Tinnie died.
The Dead Man said she ought to pull through. I hoped he was right. This once.
Usually I hope he’s wrong because he’s damned near infallible and works hard
reminding me of that.
Dean came in with a tray, beer, and stronger spirits if we needed them.
Saucerhead took a beer. So did I. “That’s good. That hits the spot after all
that running.”
The Dead Man sent, I suggest you go see her uncle. Inform him what has
happened and find out about arrangements. Perhaps he can give you a clue.
Yeah. He had to bring it up. I’d been wondering about who was going to tell
the family. There had to be somebody I could stick with that little chore.
The candidates constitute a horde of one, Garrett.
He figured that out all by himself. He is a genius. A certified—and
certifiable—genius. Just ask him. He’ll tell you about it for hours.
Any other time I would have given him a ration of lip. This time the specter
of Willard Tate got in the way. “All right. I’m on my way.”
“Me too,” Saucerhead said. “There’s some things I want to check out.”
Excellent. Excellent. Now everything is under control I can catch up on my
sleep.
Catch up. Right. In all the years I’ve known him his waking time hasn’t added
up to six months.
I let Saucerhead out the front door. Then I headed for the kitchen, got Dean
to draw me another of those wonderful beers. “Have to replace everything I
sweated out.”
He scowled. He has some strong opinions about the way I Jive. Though he’s an
employee, I let him speak his mind. We have an understanding. He talks, I don’t
listen. Keeps us both happy.
I hit the street without much enthusiasm. Old Man Tate and I aren’t bosom
buddies. I did a job for him once, and for a while afterward he’d thought well
of me, but a year of me playing push-me pull-you with Tinnie had somehow soured
his outlook.
The Tate place will fool you. It’s supposed to. From outside it looks like a
block of old warehouses nobody bothered to keep up. You can see why from the
street out front. First, the Hill. Our overlords are buzzards watching for
fortunes to flay through the engines of the law Second, the slums below. They
produce extremely hungry and unpleasant fellows, some of whom will turn you
inside out for a copper sceat.
Thus, the Tate place pretending to be poverty’s birthplace.
The Tates are shoemakers who turn out army boots and pricey stuff for the
ladies of the Hill. They’re all masters. They have more wealth than they know
what to do with.
I gave their gate a good rattle. A young Tate responded He was armed. Tinnie
was the only Tate I knew who faced the world outside unarmed. “Garrett. Haven’t
seen you for a while.”
“Tinnie and I were feuding again.”
He frowned. “She went out a couple hours ago. I thought she was headed your
way.”
“She was. I came to see Uncle Willard. It’s important.” The kid’s eyes got
big. Then he grinned. I guess he figured I was going to pop the question. He
opened up. “Can’t guarantee he’ll see you. You know how he is.”
“Tell him it can’t wait till it’s convenient.”
He muttered, “Must have been hell being snowed in.” He locked the gate. “Rose
will be devastated.”
“She’ll live.” Rose was Willard’s daughter, his only surviving offspring,
hotter than three little bonfires and as twisted as a rope of braided snakes.
“She always bounces back.”
The kid snickered. None of the Tates had much use for Rose. She was pure
trouble. And she never learned.
“I’ll tell Uncle you’re here.”
I went into the central garden to wait. It looked forlorn. Summertimes it’s a
work of art. The Tates all have apartments in the surrounding buildings, They
live there, work there, are born and die there. Some never go outside.
The kid came back looking pained. Willard had scalded his tail for letting me
in but apparently hadn’t told him to get hurt trying to throw me out.
The thought made me grin. The kid was as big as any Tate gets, about five two.
Willard once told me there was elvish blood in the family. It made the girls
exotic and gorgeous and the guys handsome but damned near short enough to walk
under a horse without banging their heads.
Willard Tate was no bigger than the rest of his clan. A gnome, almost. He was
bald on top, had ragged gray hair that hung to his shoulders in back and on the
sides. He was bent over his workbench tapping brass nails into the heel of a
shoe. He wore a pair of TenHagen cheaters with square lenses. Those don’t come
cheap.
One feeble lamp battled the dark. Tate worked by touch, really. “You’ll ruin
your eyes if you don’t spring for more light.” Tate is one of the wealthiest men
in TunFaire and one of the tightest with a sceat.
“You have one minute, Garrett.” His lumbago was acting up. Or something Couldn’t
be me.
“Straight at it, then. Tinnie’s been stabbed.”
He looked at me for half the time he’d given me. Then he put his tools aside.
“You have your faults, but you wouldn’t say that unless you meant it. Tell me.”
I told him.
He didn’t say anything for a while. He just stared, not at me but at ghosts
lurking behind me. His had been a life plagued by loss. His wife, his kids, his
brother, all had gone before their time.
He surprised me by not laying it off on me “You got the man who did it?”
“He’s dead. I ran through it again.
“I wish I could have had a piece of him.” He rang a bell. One of his nephews
responded. Tate told him, “Send for Dr Meddin. Now. And turn out a half-dozen
men to walk Mr Garrett home.” Now I had me a “mister.”
“Yes sir.” The nephew bounced off on a recruiting tour.
“Anything else, Mr. Garrett?”
“You could tell me why anybody would want to kill Tinnie.”
“Because she was involved with you. To get at you.”
“A lot of people don’t like me.” Present company included. “But none of them
work like that. They wanted to get my goat, they’d burn my house down. With me
inside it
“Then it has to be senseless. Random violence or mistaken identity.”
“You sure she wasn’t into anything?”
“The only thing Tinnie was involved in was you.” He didn’t say it but I could
hear him thinking, Maybe this will learn her a lesson. “She never left the place
except to see you.
I nodded. Undoubtedly he kept track.
I wanted to believe it was random. TunFaire is overcrowded and hagridden by
poverty and hardly a day passes when somebody doesn’t whittle on somebody with a
hatchet or do cosmetic surgery with a hammer. I would have bought it except for
those guys who danced the waltzes with me and Saucerhead.
I said, “When we caught him, the guy said ‘the book’ just before his friends
croaked him.” If those were his friends. “Mean anything to you?”
Tate shook his head. That straggly hair pranced around. “I didn’t figure it
would. Damn. You get any ideas, let me know. And I’ll keep you posted.”
“You do that.” My minute had stretched. He wanted to get back to work.
The nephew returned and announced he had a squad assembled. I said, “I’m
sorry, sir. I’d rather it had been me.”
“So would I.” Yes. He agreed a hundred percent. Man. You be nice to some
people. .
I plopped into my chair, reported to the Dead Man while the Tate boys collected
Tinnie. They had a cart to carry her home. The best medical care would be
waiting. It was out of my hands now.
Nothing gained, the Dead Man sent when I finished.
“I think Tate hit it. They got the wrong woman. You’ve been around awhile.”
Like half of forever. “You sure 'the book’ doesn’t ring any bells?”
None. There are books and books, Garrett. Even some men would kill for,
considering their rarity or content. I do not hazard uninformed guesses. We
cannot, now, be sure that man even meant a book as such. He may have meant a
gambling book. He may have meant a personal journal capable of indicating
someone. We do not know. Try to relax. Have a meal. Accept the situation, then
put it behind you.
“Nobody came around asking about the dead men?” TunFaire’s Watch aren’t
exactly police. Their main mission is to keep an eye out for fires or threats to
our overlords. Catching criminals is way down their list, but sometimes they do
bumble around and nab a baddie. TunFaire is blessed with some pretty stupid
villains.
No one came Go eat, Garrett. Attend to the needs of the flesh. Allow the spirit
to relax and become refreshed. Forget it. All is well that ends well.
Good advice, even coming from him. But he’s always so damned reasonable and
wise—when he isn’t trying to play games with my mind. He got my goat, being cool
and sensible. I headed for the kitchen
Dean was in shock still, distraught because uncaring fate had cast a cold eye
so close to home. His mind was a thousand miles away as he stirred some kind of
sauce. He didn’t look at me as he handed me a plate he’d kept warm. I ate
without noticing what, which is a crime itself, considering the class cook Dean
is. I was drifting around a few yards away myself. I didn’t interrupt the old
man’s brooding. I was pleased that he cared.
I rose to leave. Dean turned. “People shouldn’t ought to do like that, Mr.
Garrett.”
“You’re right. They shouldn’t ought. You’re a religious sort. Tell the gods
thanks for not making it worse than it was.”
He nodded. He’s a gentle sort generally, a hardworking old fellow trying to
support an ungrateful gaggle of eligible but terminally homely nieces who give
him more grief than any ten men deserve from their female kin. Generally. Right
now he had him a bloodthirst bigger than a vampire who hadn’t fed for a year.
I couldn’t relax. It was over, but my nerves just wouldn’t settle. I prowled
up the hail to the front door, peeked outside. Then I checked the small front
room to the right like there might be a forgotten blonde cached in there. I was
fresh out. I trudged back to the deluxe coffin I call an office, waved at
Eleanor on the wall, then crossed the hall to the Dead Man’s room. That takes up
most of the left side of the house. It contains not only himself but our library
and treasury and everything we particularly value Nothing for me there. I
glanced up the stairs without going up, went into the kitchen, and got a mug of
apple juice. Then I did the whole route over, taking a little longer at the door
to see if my place had become a dwarfish tourist attraction. I didn’t see any
watchers. Time dragged.
I got on everybody’s nerves. That’s what I do best, anyway, but now I was
fraying my own. Now even I resented my mumbled wisecracks. When Dean growled and
tested the heft of his favorite frying pan, I decided to take myself upstairs.
For a while I looked out a window, watching for
Saucerhead or somebody in a black hat watching me back. The watched pot
didn’t boil.
When I got tired of that, I visited the closet where I keep the more lethal
tools of my trade. It’s a nifty little arsenal, something for every occasion,
something to go with every outfit. You never catch me carrying a weapon that
clashes.
Everything was in tip-top shape I couldn’t work off any nervous energy
sharpening and polishing. I eyeballed the ensemble. Nothing I had was worth much
in a scrimmage with crossbowmen.
I did have a few little bottles left over from the time I’d done undercover
work for the Grand Inquisitor. I took the case down, looked inside Three
bottles, one emerald, one royal bue, one ruby, each about two ounces. You threw
them. Once they broke, the stuff inside took the fight right out of guys. The
contents of the red one would melt the flesh off their bones I was saving that
for somebody who really got on my nerves. If I ever used it, I’d have to stand
back a ways.
I put the case away, secreted knives all over me, hung the longest tool legal
on my belt, then took down my most useful all-round instrument, an oaken
headthumper eighteen inches long. It had a pound of lead inside the business
end. It did wonders making me more convincing when I got into an argument
So what was I going to do now? Go looking for some villains, just on general
principles? Sure. Right. The way my luck runs, I’d have a building fall on me
before I found any bad boys to astonish and dismay.
I managed to kill time till supper came along. I spent most of it trying to
figure out why I was restless and uneasy. Tinnie had been hurt, but she was
going to make
it. Saucerhead and I had—sort of—dissuaded her attacker from becoming a repeat
offender. Everything had turned out all right. Things were going to be fine.
Sure.
I didn’t get much sleep that night.
It was a time of weirdness for TunFaire, maybe because of the weather. The whole
world had turned cockeyed, not just me with my running and my going to bed early
so I could get up before anybody sane was oriented vertically. Mammoths had been
seen from the city wall. Saber-tooth tigers were at large within a day’s travel.
There were rumors of werewolves. There were rumors of thunder-lizards being
sighted near KirtchHeis, just sixty miles north of TunFaire, two hundred south
of their normal range. To our south, centaurs and unicorns, fleeing ferocious
fighting in the Cantard, had penetrated Karentine territory Every night, here in
the city, the sky filled with squabbling morCartha, weird creatures who
traditionally confined their brawls to rain-forested valleys on the marches of
thunder-lizard country.
Where the morCartha disappeared during the day no one knew—nobody gave a big
enough care to find out— but all night they zoomed over the rooftops settling
old tribal scores or swooped down to mug citizens or to steal anything not
nailed down. Most people accepted their presence as proof the thunder-lizards
were migrating. In their own country morCartha lived in the treetops and slept
during the day. That would make them easy snacks for the taller thunder-lizards
Some of these stand more than thirty feet tall.
Despite the morning’s excitement I tried going to bed at what Dean and the Dead
Man perversely call a reasonable hour. My theory was that if I rolled out early,
my neighbors wouldn’t be out to giggle and point at the spectacle of Garrett
running laps. But that night the morCartha brought their flying carnival to my
neighborhood. It sounded like the aerial battle of the century. Blood and broken
bodies and war cries and taunts rained down. Whenever I threatened to drift off,
they staged some absurd, cacophonous confrontation right outside my window.
I decided it was time somebody on the Hill suffered a stroke of smarts and
enlisted them all as mercenaries and sent them down to the Cantard to look for
Glory Mooncalled. Let him lose sleep while they squabbled over his head.
Old Glory probably wasn’t getting much sleep, anyway. The Karentine powers
that be had thrown everything into the cauldron down there They were grinding
his upstart republic fine, inexorably and inevitably, permitting him no chance
to catch his breath and turn his genius toward their despair.
The war between Karenta and Venageta has been going on since my grandfather’s
time It’s become as much a part of life as the weather. Glory Mooncalled started
out a mercenary captain in Venageti service, had a major falling out with the
Venageti warlords, and came over to our side swearing mighty oaths of vengeance.
Once he had smashed everybody who offended him, he suddenly declared the
Cantard—possession of which is what the war is all about—an autonomous republic.
All the Cantard’s native nonhuman races supported him. So, for the moment,
Karenta and Venageta have a common cause, the obliteration of Glory Mooncalled.
Once he’s gone, it’ll be back to war as usual.
摘要：

GlenCookDreadBrassShadowsFromthefilesofGarrett,P.I.Whew!ThethingsIgetmeinto!Wehadsnowhipdeeptoatallmammothforfourweeks,thenitturnedsuddenlyhotandthewholemessmeltedquickerthanyoucouldsaycabinfever.SoIwasoutrunningandbangingintopeopleandthingsandfallingonmyfacebecausethegirlswereoutstretchingtheirgorg...

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