Bitter Gold Hearts (16 page)

“Donni Pell. But female. From Lettie Faren’s place. Came here to hide out maybe a week ago. Right?”

She nodded. She had a little shame left.

“You knew her before?”

“I was there when she first came to the place. She was different than the other girls. Ambitious. But kind of decent then. If you know what I mean. Maybe she got too ambitious.” The knuckles of her right hand whitened as she squeezed the coin. She’d been out of the trade awhile. It had been awhile since she’d seen that kind of money. Doubtless when it had been easy come she hadn’t thought to put any aside. Her gaze strayed to the blood­stains. “She developed weird tastes in friends.”

“Ogre breeds?”

That surprised her. “Yeah. How did you —”

“I know some things. Some things I don’t. You know some things and you don’t know what I don’t know.” I borrowed a trick from Morley Dotes by getting my knife out and going to work on my nails. “So why don’t you just tell me everything you do know about her and the people who visited her here.”

Her bluff was a feeble bolt and she knew it. But she tried. “I yell and the whole place will be in here in half a minute.”

“I’ll bet the fellow in the corner thought the same thing.”

She looked at the bloodstain again. “Fair is fair. I was just seeing if you’d pay a little more. All right? What do you want to know?”

“I told you. Everything. Especially who else was here this morning and where she is now.” To forestall the next round of delays I added, “I don’t mean her any harm.

I’m looking for some of her playmates. She’s gotten herself caught in the middle of a big and deadly game.”

Maybe very deadly for her. If there was to be a next victim in this mess, I’d put all my money on Donni Pell. If I had any chance, I wanted to find her before the villains eliminated the next link in their chain of vulnerability.

“I don’t know where she went. I didn’t know she was gone till somebody found the mess. That’s the gods’ honest truth, mister.”

She sounded like she was telling the truth. I must have had a ferocious look in my eye. She was getting ner­vous. But with a hooker you never know. Their whole lives are lies and some of the falsehoods run so deep they don’t know the difference.

“Look, mister...”

“Just keep talking, sweetheart. I’ll let you know when I’ve gotten my money’s worth.”

“Only three people ever visited her here that I know about. The one who killed himself here this morning.” If she wanted to keep up the pretense on that, it was all right by me. “That was the only time he ever came that I know of. Another one came twice. Both times he was all covered up in one of them hooded cloaks rich guys wear when they go out at night. I never saw his face. I never heard his name.”

Inconvenient for me, that, but she was doing all right, considering. “How tall?”

“Shorter than you. I think. I never was very good judging how tall people are.”

“How old?”

“I told you, he wore one of them cloaks.”

“What about his voice?”

“I never heard him talk.”

“When did he come here?” I was determined to get something.

“Last night was the first time. He stayed about two hours. I guess you can figure what they were doing. Then he came back this morning.”

I was all over her then, trying to pin down the order of events. But she couldn’t get straight who had come when. “I think the cloaked man was first. Maybe not. Maybe it was the one who killed himself. The other one came last, though, I’m pretty sure. Two of them was here at the same time, I think, but I don’t know which two.”

She wasn’t very bright, this woman. Also, she had been very scared. Donni’s third visitor, who, it devel­oped, had visited almost every night, had spooked her.

She was sure, almost, that the cloaked man had been the first to leave. Maybe.

“Tell me about this third man. This regular visitor. This guy who scared you so bad. He sounds interesting.”

He wasn’t interesting to her. She didn’t want to talk about him at all. He was bad mojo. I took that as a good sign. She knew something here. With a little sweet talk... “I’m badder mojo, lover. I’m here.” A little deft work with the knife...

“All right, Bruno. All right. You don’t have to get mean. He can take care of you himself. The guys he ran with him called him Gorgeous. If you ever saw him, you’d know why. He was meaner than a wolfman on weed.”

“Ugly?” Part ogre, I thought. What else? There had to be an ogre in it somewhere.

“Ugly! So ugly you couldn’t tell if he was a breed or not. He came with different guys different times, some of them breeds, some of them not. But always with this one breed he called Skredli.”

My eyes must have lit up, and not entirely with joy. She backed away a step, threw up a hand, looked for some place to hide. “Easy, woman. Skredli? Now that’s a name I’ve been wanting to hear. Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

“You told me only three men ever came here. But now you’ve got this Gorgeous visiting with a crowd.”

“The ones who came with him never came inside. They were like bodyguards or something. Except that Skredli guy did come inside this morning, I think, and maybe one other time. Yeah. That’s right. I think he even come here one other time, too, by himself, and stayed with her a couple hours. I forgot about that. Ick.” She shuddered. “Doing it with an ogre.” “I want this Skredli. Where do I find him?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Ogre Town, I guess. But when you find him, you’re going to find Gorgeous, too. And maybe the girl. Only she’ll probably be dressed like a boy again. Using Donny Pell. Why don’t you get out of here? Why don’t you leave me the hell alone?”

“Do you know anything else?”

“No.”

“Of course you do. Who came for the body? What were they going to do with it?”

“I guess they were his family. Or from his family. Fancy people off the Hill with their own private soldiers and no charity in them for poor people. They talked like they were going to have him cremated.”

I grunted. That was the thing to do if you didn’t want anybody getting too close a look at the stiff. Like, say, the woman who had given life to the flesh. Or maybe I was
too
suspicious. This business can do that to you. You have to remember to keep it simple. You don’t need to look for the great sinuous, compli­cated schemes reeking of subterfuge and malice when a little stupidity followed by desperate cover-up efforts will explain everything just as well. And you have to remem­ber to keep an eye out for who stands to gain. That alone will flag your villain eight times out of ten. That, more than any other facet of the affair, baffled me this time. Not the gold side, of course. However that worked out, the gold was its own explanation. But who could profit from the death of Amiranda Crest? How and why?

I stared at the woman. She wouldn’t know. I doubted that she knew anything more worth digging out. “Step back into the corner, please. That’s fine. Now sit yourself down.”

She grew pale. Her hands, clasped around her knees, were bone white as she fought to keep them from shaking.

“You’ll be all right,” I promised. “I just want to know where you are while I go over this place again.”

I found exactly what I expected to find. Zip. I took the doeskin bag and headed out.

As I passed through the doorway the woman called after me, “Mister, do you know anybody who wants to rent a room?”

__XXVIII__

I found myself a syrupy shadow and installed myself across from the tenement. The street was empty of people now, and of the more honest cats and dogs. The yelling and scuffling inside the buildings had died down. The slum was gathering its strength for tomorrow’s frays. I waited. I waited some more. Then I waited. A band of pubescent marauders swept past, in search of trouble, but they didn’t spot me. I waited. After two hours I gave up. Either the woman had no intention of running to Gorgeous and Skredli or she had left the building another way. I suspected she felt no need to take warning. I set myself for a long night. First, home to let the Dead Man know what I’d learned, then to Morley’s place to find out what his people had reported and to learn what he knew about a thug named Gorgeous. Maybe more after that if anything interesting had turned up.

The interesting stuff started before I got to the house. Despite the hour there were a bunch of guys hanging around out front. I held up and watched awhile. That is all they were doing. Hanging around. And not trying to hide the fact. I moved a little closer. I could then see that they wore livery. Closer still, I saw that the livery belonged to the Stormwarden Raver Styx. Not being inclined to cooperate if they were waiting around to do evil when I showed, I slid away and ap­proached the house from the rear. We had no company back there. I rapped and tapped till I got Dean’s atten­tion. He let me in.

“What have we got, Dean?”

“Company from the Hill.”

“I suspected that. That’s why I’m so good in this busi­ness. When I see fifteen guys hanging around in the street, I have a hunch that we’ve got company. What about our guest?”

“Upstairs. Buttoned up tight and keeping quiet.”

“She knows?”

“I warned her.”

“Good. Where is the company?”

“In your office. Waiting impatiently.”

“She’ll have to keep on waiting. I’m hungry and I want to let the old boy in on what I picked up. And I wouldn’t mind guzzling about a gallon of beer before I face that harpy.”

That made two chances I’d given him to ask how I’d guessed that my company was Domina Dount and twice that he’d ignored the bait. He has his little ways of getting even.

“Won’t do no good to bother his nibs. He’s gone to sleep.”

“With an outsider in the house?”

“I suppose he trusts you to handle it.” Dean’s tone suggested he had a suspicion that the Dead Man’s genius had lapsed, that maybe he’d rounded the last turn and was headed down that final stretch toward Loghyr heaven. It looked like I now had two of them who couldn’t keep straight who owned the house and who was the guest or employee. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dean wasn’t thinking about moving in. He’d reached the occasional nag-about-money stage.

“Be nice, Dean. Or I’ll leave you standing at the altar and run off with Willa Dount.”

He didn’t find that amusing.

“I might as well be married the way things are going around here.”

He slapped a plate in front of me like an old wife in a snit. But the food was up to par.

I permitted myself a satisfied smirk.

__XXIX__

Up north along the edge of the thunder-lizard country there is a region called Hell’s Reach. It’s not wholly uninhabitable but nobody lives there by choice. Every­where you turn there are hot geysers, steaming sulfur pits, and places where the raw earth lies there molten, quivering, occasionally humping up to belch out a big
ka-bloop!
of gas. The lava pools sprang to mind the instant I saw Willa Dount. All her considerable will was bent toward re­straining a hot fury. She had an almost red glow about her, but was determined to give it no vent.

“Good evening,” I said. “Had I expected a caller, I wouldn’t have stayed out so late.” I settled myself and my mug. “I hope you haven’t been inconvenienced too much.” Before I’d left the kitchen Dean had reminded me about sugar, vinegar, and flies, and I’d taken his advice to heart.

It’s not smart to go out of your way to make enemies of the Hill, anyway.

“It has been a wait, but my own fault,” she replied. Amazing that she would admit the possibility of fault in anything she did. “But had I sent someone to make an appointment, I would have been delayed even longer — if you would have been willing to see me at all. I’m certain you would have refused to come to me again.”

“Yes.”

“I’m aware that you don’t hold me in high regard, Mr. Garrett. Certainly your contacts with my charges have done nothing to elevate your opinion. Even so, that shouldn’t interfere with a business relationship. In our contacts thus far you have remained, for the most part, professionally detached.”

“Thank you. I try.” I do. Sometimes.

“Indeed. And I need you in your professional capacity once more. Not just for show this time.”

It was my turn to say, “Indeed?” But I fooled her. I showed her my talented eyebrow instead.

“I’m desperate, Mr. Garrett. My world is falling into ruin around me and I seem to be incapable of halting the decay. I have come to my last resort — no. That’s getting ahead of myself.”

I told my face it was supposed to look enrapt with anything she might say.

“I have spent my entire adult life in the Stormwarden’s employ, Mr. Garrett. Beginning before her father died. It’s seldom been pleasant. There have been no holidays. The rewards have been questionable, perhaps. By being privy to inside information, I’ve managed to amass a small personal fortune, perhaps ten thousand marks. And I’ve developed an image of myself as a virtual partner in the Stormwarden’s enterprises, able to be trusted with anything and capable of carrying any task through to the desired conclusion. In that spirit I’ve done things I wouldn’t admit to my confessor, but with pride that I could be trusted to get them done and trusted not to talk about them later. Do you understand?”

I nodded. No point slowing her down.

“So a few months ago she was called to the Cantard because the course of the war seemed to be swinging our way and it was time to put on all the pressure we could. She left me to manage the household, as she has done a dozen times, and especially charged me with riding herd on her family, all of whom had been showing an increas­ing tendency toward getting involved in scandals.”

“The two Karls, you mean? They’re the ones the ru­mor mill loved. I never heard of the daughter till the other day.”

“She was blind, the Stormwarden. Those girls were the ones who were deserving. Though Amber had begun to show signs of getting wild, just for the attention.”

I nodded as my contribution.

She took a deep breath. “Since she’s been gone this time, it’s been like I’ve been under a curse. Father and son were determined to circumvent me at every turn. Then that kidnapping business had to come. I had to deplete the family treasury severely, selling silver at a discount, to get that much gold together. It was a disaster, but for a cause the Stormwarden could respect once her temper cooled. I might even have survived Amiranda’s having taken flight during the confusion. The girl was restless for some time before she took off. The Storm-warden herself had remarked that it was coming. But putting out two hundred thousand marks gold to ran­som Karl, only to have him take his own life, that’s insupportable.”